Courtesy of The AA School of Architecture

The AA School of Architecture’s DRL Masters Program has developed a thesis project, entitled Growing Systems, which explores adaptable building systems using methods of robotic fabrication and generative special printing within the context of housing.

Centered on a new method of structural 3D vertical extrusion, the project combines the precision of prefabricated elements with the adaptability of on-site fabrication, in response to the flux and dynamism of cities. The method becomes a system of elasticity that can accommodate site parameters, as well as future adjustments.

Generally speaking, the new design method combines techniques of 3D vertical extrusion with the natural behavior of the material—a biodegradable plastic—to create novel geometries that are additionally sustainable, efficient, and aesthetic.

Courtesy of The AA School of Architecture

Through its adaptability, Growing Systems facilitates programmatic housing changes, for example, a house in need of expansion as a family grows. Such changes are possible due to the project’s phase-changing construction material, which, when heated, becomes sticky and can be connected to new constructions. Similarly, the plastic can be melted to remove an unnecessary portion of the building.

Courtesy of The AA School of Architecture

Courtesy of The AA School of Architecture

Furthermore, the plastic material has the advantage of being strong and flexible, while also lightweight.

The system can also negotiate at a larger scale maintaining its entropy – When two houses starting from different initial conditions change over time, one needing to grow while the other shrinks – an exchange of material can occur, balancing the system.

Courtesy of The AA School of Architecture

In the construction process, a robotic arm is utilized on-site, so as to quickly build with minimal disruption, including an elimination of the need for scaffolding, as well as an elimination of waste.

Courtesy of The AA School of Architecture

Courtesy of The AA School of Architecture

Courtesy of The AA School of Architecture

The robotic arm will be embedded with intelligence, being able to scan the environment and the printed geometry and provide feedback. It will also be equipped with a generative algorithm that will adjust the design real-time fully erasing the line between design and fabrication.

Project Team: Shajay Bhooshan Studio: Marta Bermejo, Ruxandra Matei, Vladislav Bek-Bulatov, Li Chen

News via The AA School of Architecture. 

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© Tuomas Uusheimo

• Architects: Arkkitehdit NRT Oy
• Location: Otakaari 1, 02150 Espoo, Finland
• Architect In Charge: Arkkitehdit NRT Oy
• Design Team: Matti Nurmela, Tuomo Remes, Teemu Tuomi Architectural design team: Teemu Tuomi, Matti Nurmela, Tuomo Remes, Timo Kilpiö, Kristiina Suoniemi, Jani Koivula, Heikki Ruoho, Tuula Olli, Susanna Anttila, Tommi Suvanto, Kimmo Roponen, Heikki Saarinen, Tuula Hikipää, Sini Papakonstantinou, Mila Viksilä
• Area: 47985.0 sqm
• Project Year: 2015
• Photographs: Tuomas Uusheimo

• Contractor: Aalto University Properties Ltd.
• Partner In Charge: Teemu Tuomi, (2008-2012 architect Matti Nurmela)
• Project Architect: Tuomo Remes
• Building Consultant: Olli Jaakkola, Juha Pesonen
• Structural Designer: Keijo Saloviin
• Hvac Designer: Paavo Tikkanen
• Electrical Designer: Kirsti Pakkanen
• Acoustic And Av Designer: Ari Lepoluoto, Juha Storm

© Tuomas Uusheimo

From the architect. The former main building of the Helsinki University of  Technology took on a new role when three universities  
were merged as Aalto University in 2010. The Otaniemi  Campus designed by Alvar Aalto was chosen as the shared home of the Aalto Schools of Engineering, Business and  
Arts & Design.

© Tuomas Uusheimo

The main building was originally completed in two stages in 1964 and 1974. The entire building was in need of renovation to bring it up to a modern-day university’s needs, including improved accessibility and flexible educational spaces. Some facilities were repurposed as they no longer served their original function. The HVAC systems, safety exits and fixtures were  also in need of modernization.

© Tuomas Uusheimo

Renovating such a prestigious landmark – exemplifying as it does a ‘total work of art’ – was a challenge. With the advent of flexible working and learning practices, old buildings – even masterpieces – must adapt to changing user needs to maintain their value. Retrofitting flexible educational spaces in an old building without altering the original architectural concept is difficult, however. The building required new HVAC systems and safety exits for which no space was allocated in the original plan. Architects NRT showed exemplary skill in overcoming these challenges in their tailored planning and execution.

© Tuomas Uusheimo

Each wing – variably 2-4 storeys high – is designed to function as a separate building linked to the campus complex. The main volume is rhythmically articulated by small courtyards. Aalto envisioned a leafy, American-style enclosed campus with  paths traversing the yards between the main building, library  and shop. The striking, auditorium-like roof of the low-rise  main building is an iconic campus landmark 

Floor Plan

Floor Plan

The main façades, spatial logic and detailing were fully  preserved, with the entrance hall, auditorium and main cor- ridors superbly restored to their former glory. The workroom wings underwent heavier modifications, with spaces opened  up for greater flexibility. Most of the new ventilation engine rooms are now located in the basement, maintaining the hori-zontal profile of the teaching wings. The architects preserved the most valuable features of the architecture in a logical  hierarchy. The laboratories, studios and lecture rooms were  converted into open spaces that can be furnished adaptably  to serve group learning activities. The open-plan work hubs  are spatially ingenious, though the furniture could be more inspiring and better balanced with the architecture.

© Tuomas Uusheimo

Today the architect is no longer a ‘creative genius’ so much  as a ‘master negotiator’ who strikes a balance between  the project’s architectural aspirations, the wishes of various  user groups and other practical requirements. In this project,  Architects NRT successfully reconciled goals that were to  some extent contradictory. The building was still in use by  the university when the renovations began, and its user base  expanded after the school became part of Aalto University.  NRT did excellent work in catering to the needs of all of  
the school’s faculties in this ambitious renovation project. HR

© Tuomas Uusheimo

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Model. Image © Fondation Le Corbusier (FLC/ADAGP)

Le Corbusier made an indelible mark on Modernist architecture when he declared “une maison est une machine-à-habiter” (“a house is a machine for living”). His belief that architecture should be as efficient as machinery resulted in such proposals such as the Plan Voisin, a proposal to transform the Second Empire boulevards of Paris into a series of cruciform skyscrapers rising from a grid of freeways and open parks.[1] Not all of Le Corbusier’s concepts, however, were geared toward such radical urban transformation. His 1965 proposal for a hospital in Venice, Italy, was notable in its attempt at seeking aesthetic harmony with its unique surroundings: an attempt not to eradicate history, but to translate it.

Sectional Model. Image © Fondation Le Corbusier (FLC/ADAGP)

There was no shortage of demand for Le Corbusier’s work in Italy after the end of the Second World War. The country experienced incredible economic growth in the decades following the war; what had previously been primarily an agricultural economy rapidly transformed into a major industrial nation.[2] The architect had already been commissioned to design a new headquarters for the Olivetti Company outside of Milan when the city of Venice approached him with their own commission for a new hospital. The new building, which would stand in the neighborhood of San Giobbe, was to serve as a facility for care of the seriously and terminally ill.[3]

Le Corbusier’s proposal did not stand out from the rest of the city as a brazen Modernist landmark. Rather, it utilized the existing urban vocabulary to appear as a seamless continuation of the old city. The hospital was conceived as a network of interconnected modules clustered around a number of square courtyards, a clear analogue for Venice’s traditional urban fabric. As with the rest of the city’s buildings, the new hospital was supported by a number of piles driven into the Venetian silt. However, these were not typical wooden piles; in reference to his own design canon, Le Corbusier chose instead to perch the hospital atop a grid of his trademark concrete pillars, or pilotis. The overall intent was that the new hospital would extend the urban fabric rather than interrupt it.[4]

Plan

Long Section

While Le Corbusier chose to emulate the typical Venetian structural typology, he did not sacrifice functionalism to do so. The modules that comprised the hospital were to be almost identical, featuring 28 patient rooms facing onto three corridors; four of these squares, dubbed “care units,” were arranged around a small central square, the corners of which branched off into corridors connecting to other squares. The system was designed to allow the hospital to expand as needed in the future, ensuring it would have space both for added patient load and newly-invented medical equipment. The hospital was also vertically stratified programmatically: administrative and entry services were located at the ground level, patient bedrooms were on the top floor, and all other hospital program needs on the level between the two.[5]

One curious aspect of the design was the lack of conventional windows in the care units. The only daylight to enter the space did so through clerestory windows along the inner corridor walls of each hospital room; an American journal considered this an “unkindness,” as it denied patients the opportunity to gaze out at the Venetian lagoon during their stay.[6]

Plan

Another design move which elicited concern was the automobile gangway leading from the Santa Lucia Railway Station directly to the hospital’s ground level entry. Though an automobile causeway had already been built alongside the rail bridge leading from the mainland to the station, Le Corbusier’s proposal would have brought cars even further into a city that remained largely devoid of their presence – firmly out of choice. The same journal which questioned the lack of conventional windows considered the provision for automobiles “inexcusable,” even declaring that it was the one feature that would prevent the hospital from achieving the same architectural vitality as the surrounding historical structures.[7]

Given Le Corbusier’s typical contempt for pre-existing urban fabrics, his deference to the traditional Venetian aesthetic seems anomalous. In the brief of his Plan Voisin, he decried the Haussmann-era buildings and boulevards of Paris as a grotesque mix of mismatched buildings and narrow trenches – a relic which, he insisted, was nothing short of disgusting.[8] While he reviled Paris, however, he developed a peculiar fondness for Venice. As early as the 1930’s, he referenced the Italian city as an ideal urban model, lauding its canal network and the acceptance of multiple architectural forms and styles without the need for false, superficial continuity. While Paris would represent his Modernist desire to wipe the slate clean and build anew, it was in Venice that he would contradictorily espouse the benefits of historic preservation.[9]

Model. Image © Fondation Le Corbusier (FLC/ADAGP)

The Venice Hospital project came very late in Le Corbusier’s life; he proposed the final design only a few months before his passing in 1965. Debates over the value of the hospital as a form of urban renewal ultimately became moot as, due to a lack of funding, the city ultimately chose a different design for a site on the mainland.[10] Nonetheless, Le Corbusier’s proposal represents the synthesis of his seemingly contradictory viewpoints – a sort of functional, Modernist historicism. It was fitting, perhaps, that Le Corbusier’s final design project was for a city that he came to admire so deeply.

ArchDaily would like to acknowledge Socks Studio as a key source of material for this article.

References
[1] Le Corbusier. “Plan Voisin, Paris, France, 1925.” Fondation Le Corbusier. Accessed May 18, 2016.
[2] Signoretta, Paola E. “Italy – The Economic Miracle.” Encyclopedia Britannica. May 12, 2016. [access]
[3] Flint, Anthony. Modern Man: The Life of Le Corbusier, Architect of Tomorrow. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014. p184.
[4] Verderber, Stephen, and David J. Fine. Healthcare Architecture in an Era of Radical Transformation. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000. p24.
[5] Fabrizi, Mariabruni. “The Building Is the City: Le Corbusier’s Unbuilt Hospital In…” Socks Studio. May 18, 2014. [access]
[6] Verderber, Stephen, and Fine, p24.
[7] Fabrizi.
[8] Le Corbusier, “Plan Voisin.”
[9] Corbusier, Le, Stanislaus Von. Moos, and Arthur Rüegg. Le Corbusier before Le Corbusier: Applied Arts, Architecture, Painting, Photography, 1907-1922. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002. p153.
[10] Verderber, Stephen, and Fine, p24-25.

• Architects: Le Corbusier
• Location: Venice, Italy
• Architect In Charge: Le Corbusier
• Client: Comune di Venezia
• Project Year: 1965
• Photographs: Fondation Le Corbusier (FLC/ADAGP)

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© Kilian O'Sulivan

• Architects: Hayhurst and Co.
• Location: London Borough of Hackney, UK
• Area: 99.0 sqm
• Project Year: 2015
• Photographs: Kilian O'Sulivan, Courtesy of Hayhurst and Co

© Kilian O'Sulivan

Garden House is a new home, studio and gallery under a ‘hanging-basket’ roof for Whitaker Malem: the artist and costume-maker duo behind works by Allen Jones, fashion designers Hussein Chalayan and Alexander McQueen and numerous film costumes including Harry Potter, Batman and Wonderwoman.

3D

On the site of a single-storey workshop they self-built in the mid-1990s, the clients wished to create a new home and studio which maximised the space and natural light available within their tight, north-facing site behind Victorian terraced housing in Hackney’s de Beauvoir Conservation area, London’s East-End

© Kilian O'Sulivan

Built within the original brick party walls they shared with their neighbours on all sides, the design was devised as three different roof pitches to create a ‘form of best fit’ – a negotiation between maximising internal accommodation and protecting adjacent residential amenity. Garden House sets a model of how to retrofit buildings and maximise residential accommodation in sensitive inner city areas.

© Kilian O'Sulivan

The building is entered through a winter garden with a large skylight and mirror-polished stainless steel reveals which ricochet light around the entrance, distorting the scale of the space and the fall of light. This leads on a connected set of living spaces lit by natural light through sculpted shafts from the roof.

© Kilian O'Sulivan

On the ground floor, storage and display for the owners’ art collection is provided in the form of bespoke white steel shelves that continue into a steel staircase that floats away from the wall, allowing natural light to pass behind it into the house.

© Kilian O'Sulivan

The upper floor is lined with oak panelling to provide a rich environment for the studio, which is also used as a fitting room for clients and as a gallery space for private exhibitions of the owners’ work. The space is naturally lit with a large top light and storage and desk space built for sewing machines and embroidery areas.

Section

The roof is a bespoke hanging garden formed from lapped, stainless-steel profiles hung over a GRP membrane. Topped with this unique and visually dramatic ‘hanging’ garden, Garden House provides a prototype for brownfield development that offers dense, adaptable, urban living.

© Kilian O'Sulivan

Detail

© Kilian O'Sulivan

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