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From the architect. The commercial building, which was completed in October 2013, is a hybrid of two different building typologies. On the one hand, the building follows the historic model of a mixed-use building, with the retail functions on the lower two floors and apartments on the top floor which, in this case, has been extended to include a full residential loft. On the other hand, the building represents a development of the department store typology; three separate units are interwoven over four levels in the middle zone and the upper floors are largely shielded from the street. As a result, the building is more open to the city on the top floor and lower two floors, while the design of the elevations of the middle floors is more withdrawn.
City spaces
The compact organisation of the inside of the building and the city structure – its immediate environment – create a tension that is the basis of this design. The commercial building has been built on several historic plots, and forms a perimeter block along three very different streets. It is situated opposite two historic churches, St Michael (1583-97) to the north and St Anna (1735) to the south, as well as the connecting buildings of the “Alte Akademie” at Neuhauser Strasse and the former convent at the Altheimer Eck. Eisenmannstrasse at the front of the building is a narrow alley, which connects Neuhauser Strasse, a busy shopping street, with the Hackenviertel behind Altheimer Eck.
The building
The commercial building is semi-detached at the end of the block: two distinct building volumes at the two main elevations form two heterogeneous opposites –bronze and glass versus render; pitched roof versus recessed penthouse floor; angled versus rounded – and face the historic buildings on the other side with their contrasting elements, forming different city spaces with them. The two building volumes with their contrasting design rules are linked by a third one along Eisenmannstrasse. This does not form an additional volume, but merely presents a sculpturally articulated surface in its own right. In this way the whole development comprises three different elements, which seamlessly merge on the inside.
Neuhauser Strasse building
Opposite the “Alte Akademie”, the building creates a new urban space. The corner development is dominated by a bronze and glass curtain wall façade, which, in the upper floors, envelops the building as a non-tectonic cloak of pilaster strips of varying widths. In contrast, the bronze pillars on the ground floor continue through to the roof in five places only, and mark the historic plots. The other pillars are arranged in a specific order on the lower two floors and correspond with that of the attic floor, which also features an independent rhythm of pilaster strips of varying widths.
All glass elements in the lower two floors and the rainscreen glazing in the storeys above consist of clear glass with a low iron oxide content; the slender, over 11 m outer panes consist of two parts of laminated glass which is 3 cm thick and bonded with structural foil. The glazing of the shop windows on the ground and first floors is fitted flush with the outside of the metal pilasters, thus revealing their sculptural quality only on the inside.
Altheimer Eck building
Opposite St Anna, continuity with the adjoining and opposite developments has been achieved with a solid tectonic building, without imitation. The theme on the rear – with its largely closed façade – is structured in the form of a large-scale relief with only a few open windows and a primarily blind window structure. The
large scale of the glass panels – with their few details – matches the side façade of St Anna and, with only a few high storeys, has a calming effect on the alley. An important design element, which has an impact on the alley, is the slight curvature of the light-coloured rendered façade, which projects in a concave curve and thereby visually widens the street.
In order to achieve a façade without construction joints, it was constructed in reinforced concrete including a 20 cm thick intermediate insulation layer. Special concrete anchors were used to tie the three layers together while also allowing sufficient flexibility for the construction to withstand thermal expansion movement. The outer skin of the external wall is firmly connected with the overall building through its monolithic tie to the lower floors. In contrast to the usual insulated render system, it does not consist of a detachable and replaceable outer insulation but instead of a concrete skin that has been textured in relief form during the shell construction and then finished with a lime-based plaster.
Eisenmannstrasse façade
The third façade, which has as much a separating function as it has a connecting one, is purely a blind façade. It is characterised by display windows on the ground floor and a suspended curtain wall façade in bronze on the upper floors. The patinated metal has been folded in irregular patterns and forms a relief along the narrow Eisenmannstrasse. In this way it adopts the type and material of the main façade while also relating to the sculptural relief of the rendered rear façade.
All bronze elements used in the building consist of 2 mm thick brass sheeting with a CuZn37 alloy. In total approx. 45 tonnes of brass were used for the project. Some of the sheets are up to 4 m long. Each individual sheet was dipped in its completed shape into two different patinating liquid baths in sequence using a manual process; between dips the panels were cleaned by hand, polished and protected against corrosion with a special wax solution.
Courtyard
As a trace of the historic structure, a central courtyard has been retained from first floor level as a morphological element without concrete function. It serves to subdivide the building volume while at the same time, functioning as a threshold area, it can only be seen from a few places inside the building. This inside- outside relationship is further enhanced by using a theatre-like greenhouse on the south side. Seen from the opposite, northern side, the dense vertical winter garden is reflected in the folded mirror glass of the blind side walls; this reflection becomes a kaleidoscope and allows the artificiality of this hidden space to become real.
All plants, both inside and outside, are watered and fertilised with the help of systems that are installed underground or within the steel structure. In addition, the greenhouse includes high-pressure spray nozzles, plant lights, heating elements and ventilation flaps which are controlled by a sensor and thus ensure an ideal climate for the exotic plants used here. Particularly notable are the passion flowers that climb across several floors creating a delicate cloak of flowers.
Using shortcuts to control the playback of your music on your computer makes life just a little bit easier. Instead of needing to open up an app, we’ve shown you how to use keyboard shortcuts, a Notification Center widget, and even Siri to control music on your Mac. Now we’re going to show you how to use your iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch as a remote control.
Apple’s own Remote app will let you control iTunes on your computer, but there’s two fatal flaws to it. First, you can’t control the music from your Control Center—the app actually has to be open. Second, you can only control iTunes music… more
Being a Victoria’s Secret Angel comes with showing off plenty of skin while parading up and down in skimpy lingerie, but on Sunday (January 25th), American top model Karlie Kloss left close to nothing to the imagination when she sashayed for Atelier Versace.
The twenty-two year-old head turner was seen making good use of her catwalk queen prowess in Paris, where she took part in the Atelier Versace runway spectacle to showcase one of that Italian luxury fashion brand’s exquisite Spring/Summer 2015 creations as part of the first day of the French style capital’s biannual Haute Couture Fashion Week.
With her honey blonde locks styled in a side part and curtaining down over one of her smokey cat-lined eyes, Kloss stepped onto the spotlight in a sleeveless figure-hugging white jumpsuit which was flared below the knees and featured incredibly daring strappy cutouts on one side of the torso, just barely concealing her otherwise exposed modesty. The look’s accessories included a metallic choker, a matching clutch purse and several finger rings.
If you’ve ever flashed a custom ROM on any of your devices, one of your main motivations for doing so was likely the set of neat tweaks and extra options that come with something like CyanogenMod. Another deciding factor was probably the fact that most custom ROMs offer a much cleaner interface than manufacturer skins.
But with a Nexus, the pure Android stock ROM that comes preinstalled on the device is one of the main draws. No carrier bloatware or TouchWiz nonsense to worry about, so the allure of flashing a custom ROM is at least slightly diminished.
Update: Last week, Hadid and the New York Review of Books agreed to a settlement agreement, with Hadid accepting the apology of the New York Review of Books and, in conjunction with the settlement, donating an undisclosed sum of money to a labor rights charity. You can read the full joint statement at the end of this article.
For those that follow the ins and outs of architectural criticism, it will have been hard to miss the news this week that Zaha Hadid is suing the New York Review of Books, claiming that the critical broadside launched by Martin Fuller against Hadid in his review of Rowan Moore’s book Why We Build was not only defamatory but also unrepresentative of the content of the book. Hadid’s lawyers demanded a retraction of the review, which they claimed had caused Hadid “severe emotional and physical distress.”
Hadid’s lawsuit did manage to elicit an apology from Filler, but probably not the one she was hoping for: Filler posted a retraction admitting that his review confused the number of deaths involved in all construction in Qatar in 2012-13 (almost 1,000) with the number of deaths on Hadid’s own Al Wakrah stadium (exactly zero). However, much of Filler’s comments criticizing Hadid’s cold attitude to conditions for immigrant workers in Qatar remain unaddressed.
Throughout the week, a number of other critics took this opportunity to pile more criticism on Hadid, unanimously agreeing that the lawsuit was a bad idea. Read on after the break to see the six reasons they gave explaining why.
1. The lawsuit makes Hadid look self-absorbed
“When unhappy subjects of criticism sue the critics who criticize them they rarely come through it looking anything other than spoiled and self-absorbed,” says Paul Goldberger in his article for Vanity Fair. That’s a fairly straight forward way to put it, but other writers were even less charitable: Anna Kats, writing for Blouin ArtInfo, called the lawsuit “a disturbing, if not absurdly comical, measure of her social consciousness.”
2. It shows that Hadid needs to check her privilege
The claims of emotional and physical distress claimed by Hadid’s Lawyers sit unfortunately in the wider context of the issue at hand, with Kats stating bluntly that ”construction workers across the Gulf are regularly exposed to rather more serious forms of such distress while toiling to realize the formal whimsies of many a lauded architect.”
3. The lawsuit will extend the bad press
Hadid has had something of a bad year for PR in 2013, not least for the comments she made in February saying it isn’t her duty to solve the issues of working conditions in Qatar, which formed the basis of many of Filler’s criticisms. With Filler’s article only available to NYRB subscribers, some thought it was ill-advised to bring this controversy back into the public spotlight, with James S Russell noting that “the retraction should not have been hard to get; a suit simply extends the damage to her reputation,” and Martin C Pedersen confirming in Metropolis Magazine that ”all this legal action does, in the short term, is keep interest in the story alive and link the Zaha brand (sorry about that) with human rights abuses.”
Goldberger also makes this point, but in a (perhaps unintentional) reference to Hadid’s infamous personality, he does so by drawing a comparison to well-known diva Barbra Streisand ”who sued to block publication of aerial photographs of her residence in Malibu in 2003, and in so doing drew so much publicity to the matter that the picture… was eventually downloaded more than 400,000 times.”
4. Hadid is likely to lose the case
“Good luck here: winning a hurt-feelings lawsuit, based on an essay penned by widely recognized critic,” says Pedersen. This handy article by Amy Schellenbaum at Curbed explains the complexities of this type of defamation lawsuit well, and with Filler’s apology for factual inaccuracies already out the way, the case will likely come down to whether Filler’s article can be categorized as ‘fair comment’ – or as most people would call it, ‘opinion’. If Hadid cannot demonstrate that Filler’s comments are outside the realm of opinion, then there is little chance of her winning the case.
5. Martin Filler could turn out to be right after all
Although Martin Filler was wrong in saying that workers had died on Hadid’s project, this is mostly due to the fact that construction hasn’t even begun on the stadium yet. “The suit’s claims of damage done to Hadid’s reputation are serving as a counterattack against the architect’s many critics, not an answer to their very legitimate concerns,” says Kats, adding that “nothing suggests that more such tragedies won’t transpire with the commencement of construction of the stadium.”
Indeed, when we hear of the first deaths on the project – a virtual inevitability considering Qatar’s track record on other construction projects – it is now all the more likely that the question of whether Hadid feels a responsibility to these workers will be raised again. Which leads us to the final, most important criticism of Hadid’s Lawsuit:
6. Hadid is focusing on the wrong enemy
“Instead of pursuing initiatives that would ensure worker safety and drastically distinguish her construction site from prevalent working conditions for laborers in Qatar,” says Kats, Zaha Hadid “pillories the press.” Similarly James S Russell adds that, though Hadid receives an unfair proportion of the criticism which could be doled out to the whole industry, “architects do have a moral imperative to collectively work with labor-rights groups and other construction-related professions to end abuse of the powerless by the powerful.”
Goldberger has the last word, making it clear that the same celebrity status which enabled Filler to write such derisory comments – and enabled Hadid to sue him for them – could be the key to making a lasting change to the conditions in Qatar: ”Hadid has exploited her celebrity with more skill and determination than just about anyone. It is time that she made the most of this aspect of her celebrity too, and decided that there is nothing wrong with taking a moral stand.”
The full joint statement from Zaha Hadid and the New York Review of Books:
On January 22, 2015, following extensive settlement negotiations, Ms. Zaha Hadid withdrew her lawsuit against the New York Review of Books and Mr. Martin Filler. Under the terms of the settlement agreement, which remain confidential, Ms. Hadid has accepted the apology of the New York Review of Books and Mr. Filler, and is pleased to announce, in conjunction with the settlement, the donation of an undisclosed sum of money to a charitable organization that protects and champions labor rights.
Ms. Hadid is pleased to have put to rest this dispute, and to have resolved it in a way that demonstrates her commitment to safe and fair working conditions at construction sites around the world,’ said Gonzalo Zeballos, one of the BakerHostetler attorneys representing Ms. Hadid. The other BakerHostetler attorneys working on the matter were Oren Warshavsky and Maryanne Stanganelli.
Zaha Hadid Architects remains deeply committed to promoting safe and fair working conditions. The authorities in Qatar managing the Al Wakrah site operate at the highest levels of worker health and safety, with no loss-time injuries since works began over a year ago. Workers live in high quality accommodations near the site, and the Emir of Qatar personally confirms that new laws protecting workers’ rights will be enforced, demonstrating that the parties delivering the Al Wakrah stadium are leading by example.
Sig Nordal 