Between January 21st and February 26th, five wintertime art installations will enliven Toronto’s waterfront on Queens Quay West. In a collaboration between Winter Stations and the Waterfront Business Improvement Area, the “Ice Breakers” exhibition was created “to inspire exploration of the urban Waterfront in the colder months.”
“The Waterfront is one of Toronto’s busiest communities in the summertime but, like The Beach, it can be under-appreciated as temperatures drop,” explains Roland Rom Colthoff, principle at RAW design and a Winter Stations co-founder. “Like Winter Stations, Ice Breakers is an interactive celebration of public art. We want to nudge Torontonians back outside and inspire them to keep engaging with the city.”
The five installations will be on display at Harbourfront Centre, HTO Park, Rees Street Parkette, Peter Street Basin, and the Music Garden East. Read on to see all five proposals.
Leeward Fleet / RAW (Canada Square, Harbourfront Centre)
Leeward Fleet / RAW. Image Courtesy of Ice Breakers
Celebrating Toronto’s rich harbour history, design studio RAW introduces three pivoting structures to Canada Square. Inspired by ice and sailboat technology, enamel masts hold up brightly coloured sails, each of which serve as sculptural references to the days prior to ferry transportation.
ICEBOX / Polymetis (HTO Park)
ICEBOX / Polymetis. Image Courtesy of Ice Breakers
The Canadian winter is a landscape of contrasts: between empty blank whiteness and things not fully shrouded in snow and ice; between the (more-or-less) static physical world and the temporal surfaces of frozen water that accumulate and dissipate over it; between being inside, in the warmth, and being outside, in the cold. “ICEBOX” seeks to manifest these contrasts and provide space for introspection, social interaction, and shared appreciation of winter.
Winter Diamonds / Platant (Music Garden East)
Winter Diamonds / Platant. Image Courtesy of Ice Breakers
The shimmering lights emitted from “White Diamonds” attract contemplation of these fragile, yet solid structures. The viewer is invited to engage with a poetic and dreamy focal point, in a vast winter landscape.
Incognito / Curio Art Consultancy and Jaspal Riyait (Rees Street Parkette)
Incognito / Curio Art Consultancy and Jaspal Riyait. Image Courtesy of Ice Breakers
Using architectural massing models as the inspiration for the structures, “Incognito” explores what happens when you make the City’s architectural interventions invisible. Adopting the same camouflaging technology used by warships, the wintery environment will render the installation truly incognito, shaping the public’s interaction with the piece.
Tailored Twins / Ferris + Associates (Peter Street Basin)
A set of faceted wooden hands rise three metres from the lookouts at the Peter Street Basin. Their gold-mirror palms bath the basin in a warm sun-like glow.
Leyda Valley is located on the west side of Chile’s central coastal mountain range. About 7 km. from the Pacific Ocean sea side. 95 km. to the west of Santiago.
The Leyda Valley is reknowned because of it’s proximity to the coast, in the area there is an important development of viticulture. Because of their vicinity to the sea, their varieties are very special. From the other side, by the coast, there’s an expansion of large areas for shipping containers; they are unloaded at San Antonio’s Port, this activity is pushing the city limit towards the East.
Leyda raises as a frontier between this two situations.
We were commissioned to design a weekend house, on top of a group of hills, within a large countryside lot. We were asked to take special care, with an emphasis on austerity, a very low-budget was mandatory.
Floor Plan
On the other hand, we found ourselves in this border situation between two kinds of activities, this seemed to us a project trigger.
We had exceptional panoramic views towards the vineyards located to the Southeast. By contrast, there’s an expansion of the industrial quarters, from the coast, displacing rural houses. For this side, we wanted a hermetic project, but this would at the same time make it difficult to get the best Northwest sunlight.
As a first approach we tried to synthesize the project as a simple volume that we took from the ephemeral shelters used on the nearby strawberry crops. These kind of shelters can be found across the land from here down to the east side of Rapel Lake. We saw on these light constructions a very strong formal guide, with a very impressive visual value, on how this low-cost countryside house could be solved. A synthetic form, solves all economic issues by its lack of particularities. That’s how the equation between views / sun light became an opportunity, and its solution gave identity to the project.
We solved the program in a very simple way. At the ends, the bedrooms, each one with its own bathroom, at the middle, the living and dining areas. In opposition to the usual orientation on this geographic location, we designed the house facing to the South, giving protagonism to the views towards the vineyards, which spread like blankets, over the valley with the coastal mountain range on the background. We injected light from the North through openings in the roof, that’s how we achieved a space that looks toward the landscape with a gentle sunbath from its rear side.
In terms of materiality, this house was structured with traditional timber frames. As a cladding we used an asphaltic membrane that is elastic and continuous. The volume was thought as monolithic block without any recognizable parts. There are no eaves, no rain gutters, no seams or joint lines of any kind; this is how we generated a synthesis of the expression.
This block was worked as a solid, a bar that in its sheer simplicity reached the economy required by the clients brief. Mass was subtracted and moved vertically through the volume, this operation generated the openings that solve the views, the natural lighting and the general implications suggested by the surroundings and the location. The synthesis of all of this aspects, formally determine the project.
“The Architect“, directed by Jonathan Parker, is a film that moves between drama and comedy. It features a humorous (and some would say believable) satire of architects. In the film an egocentric, and grandiose architect named Miles Moss, played by actor James Frain, works with a couple who wants to build their dream home.
Colin and Drew, played by Eric McCormack and Parker Posey, hire Moss, who throughout the movie ends up exhausting their patience as well as their bank accounts. In one of the scenes, Moss complains, “I don’t know why people hire architects, and then tell them what to do,” referring to the famous quote from Canadian architect Frank Gehry.
However, the film doesn’t only portray the self-centered side of architects. Moss sometimes takes a break from his ego and shows his more human aspects, for example when he says: “As an architect, I have the job of transforming hopes and dreams into wood, glass, steel, and concrete.”
Driessen House is a private home located in Alicante, Spain. Completed in 2016, it was designed by Antonio Altarriba Arquitecto. Photos by: Diego Opazo
Project Team: Vishu Bhooshan, Henry Louth, David Reeves, Nhan Vo, Mattia Santi, Sai Prateik Bhasgi, Karthikeyan Arunachalam, Tommaso Casucci, Marko Margeta , Filippo Nassetti, Mostafa El Sayed, Suryansh Chandra, Ming Cheong, Carlos Parraga-Botero, Ilya Pereyaslavtsev, Ramon Weber
From the architect. It is a wonderful coincidence that we started work designing the Science Museum’s Mathematics Gallery in the bicentennial year of the birth of Ada Lovelace, a pioneering woman in the history of computers and of ‘poetic science’. Her inspirational influence on our approach to the design of the project, from inception to completion, cannot be overstated. Just as her Notes unravelled the abstract world of the analytical engine and its logic to generations beyond, we hope the design of the Mathematics Gallery complements the curatorial ambitions to inspire and engage further generations with the instinctive and physical aspects of mathematics. Collections like those housed within the Science Museum in London are instrumental in allowing the human mind to explore the many dimensions of innovation. The new group of objects on display in the Gallery is meticulously curated to narrate seemingly everyday moments in innovation driven by mathematics.
Our design for the Gallery responds to the ambition of David Rooney and his team to present mathematics not as an academic concept, but as a practice that influences technology and enables the environment around us to be transformed. Mathematics and its tools have always played a central role in the evolution of the human understanding of nature and the constructed world: for example, Sir Isaac Newton’s methods to derive the laws of gravitation, Henri Poincaré’s extension of the Cartesian geometries to the planetary system and Lord Kelvin’s use of the mathematical technique of curve-fitting to predict the tides.
Mathematics forms one of the cornerstones of the foundations of computing and of scientific methods of research within architectural practices. It has had a profound influence on architectural shapes and forms (known as morphology) and their origins, basing them on sound structural principles. The enhancement of the performative aspects of design with respect to the built environment, its manufacture and ultimately the comfortable navigation by people within these environments, forms an integral part of building on these foundations.
With historical training in geometric methods to understand morphology, architects are well positioned to contribute to this collaborative endeavour of delivering information-rich settings that support the complex needs of humans within the built environment. A large proportion of our own work emerges from our fascination with mathematical logic and geometry, with advances in design technology enabling us to rethink form and space. The fluid surfaces and structures of each project thus generated are defined by scientific innovations. Our design for the Mathematics Gallery realises such an effort.
The successful flight of the Handley Page aeroplane in the 1929 Guggenheim competition, with its short take-off and landing distances, represents a triumphal moment in the accessibility of aviation to ordinary men and women. The spatial organisation of the Gallery places a central emphasis on this important product of British aviation, and the transformational capacity of mathematics and science, by taking inspiration from one of the key moments in the flight of the plane and the concepts of aerodynamics embodied within.
While mathematical logic and geometry can provide an intuitive model to understand the natural world, computational tools allow us to examine scenarios that enable a nuanced understanding of the mechanisms of nature. Using the principles of a mathematical approach known as computational fluid dynamics which acts as an organisational guide, the layout of the Gallery allows for the virtual lines of airflow to be manifested physically. The positioning of the more than 100 historical objects, and the production of robust arch-like benches using robotic manufacture, all embody the mathematical spirit of the brief. The resulting spatial experience created by these components within the Winton Gallery enables visitors to see some of the many actual and perceivable ways in which mathematics touches our lives.
Dual House is a private home located in Kfar Shmaryahu, Israel. Completed in 2015, it was designed by Axelrod Architects & Pitsou Kedem Architects. Photos by: Amit Geron
MU77 is a private home located in Los Angeles, California, USA. It was designed by ARSHIA ARCHITECTS. MU77 by ARSHIA ARCHITECTS: “Located on Mulholland Drive, this single-family residence scheme was molded by the strict regulations of the Mulholland Scenic corridor plan along with extreme site constraints. The residence is integrated into the surrounding landscape with a geometric appearance mimicking the terrain and sudden deviations of rock formations within the natural..
With the onset of the Great Depression in the 1930s, the great World’s Fairs that had been held around the globe since the Crystal Palace Exhibition of 1851 lost much of their momentum. With the specter of another global conflict looming like a stormcloud on the horizon in the latter half of the decade, prospects for the future only grew darker. It was in this air of uncertainty and fear that the gleaming white Trylon and Perisphere of the 1939 New York World’s Fair made their debuts, the centerpiece of an exhibition that presented a vision of hope for things to come.
Image via nyworldsfaircollections.tumblr.com (Public Domain)
The 1939 Fair was initially conceived in 1934 as a celebration of the 150th anniversary of the inauguration of the United States’ first president, George Washington, and the ratification of its constitution. However, the committee formed to plan the fair quickly changed its focus, and by 1936 had settled on a final theme that had little to do with American history: “Building the World of Tomorrow.” Pressure from sponsors ultimately led to the commercialization of this guiding theme, with much of the fair grounds given over to exhibitions of the consumer goods produced by the fair’s supporters; while the idealistic vision of the future remained, its basis was now abundant consumerism unrestrained by the harsh economic realities of the 1930s.[1]
The variety of exhibition halls and pavilions that arose on the site of a former dump in Flushing Meadows all followed this optimistic mandate, but the greatest manifestation of this ideal was to be found in the fair’s enormous centerpiece structures. The Trylon and Perisphere were, respectively, a three-sided obelisk and a sphere mounted on five steel pillars. Connecting and encircling the two buildings was a 950-foot ramp called the Helicline. The two steel-framed structures dominated the fair grounds: the Trylon stood 610 feet (186 meters) tall, and the Perisphere had a diameter of 180 feet (55 meters). Thanks to their enormous dimensions, the Trylon and Perisphere were visible from miles away, an effect intensified by the fact that both were painted pure white.[2,3]
A quarter section of the Perisphere reveals its steel skeletal structure. ImageImage via nyworldsfaircollections.tumblr.com (Public Domain)
While the forms of the 1939 Fair’s theme structures became iconic for their geometric simplicity, the design process was anything but simple; according to the fair’s delineator Hugh Ferriss, the sheer amount of studies in geometric form and materiality produced by the architects occupied the entire wall space of their drafting room.[4] Given the symbolic and visual prominence of the project, it is unsurprising that architects Wallace Harrison and J. André Fouilhoux so exhaustively considered its formal possibilities. The eventual “spike and sphere” design on which they settled was intended to represent the finite and the infinite, a fitting analogy for the vision of a heady future built using existing technologies being presented by the fair at large. The names for each of the structures were based in Greek: while the tri in Trylon simply signified its three sides, the peri in Perisphere referred to the “all-around” view presented within its featureless white mass.[5]
Visitors entered the Perisphere by riding an escalator—at that time the world’s largest—from the Trylon. The exhibition space within the Perisphere, roughly twice the size of the Radio City Music Hall auditorium, was home to a diorama depicting an ideal city of the future.[6] This concept design, named “Democracity,” covered an area of approximately 11,000 square miles (28,500 square kilometers) and supported a population of 1.5 million people. It was primarily a vision of suburbia, one based on Ebenezer Howard’s Garden Cities model: a central business district named Centerton surrounded by industrial Millvilles, residential Pleasantvilles, park lands and agricultural fields, all interconnected by a network of modern automobile expressways. Visitors overlooked the tableau from moving platforms, while a light show above them displayed workers from a wide variety of trades coming together to build the World of Tomorrow.[7,8]
Image via nyworldsfaircollections.tumblr.com (Public Domain)
Despite the utopian promise embodied in the Trylon and Perisphere, their construction was hampered by the limitations of reality. The original dimensions of a 700 foot (213 meter) tall Trylon and 200 foot (61 meter) diameter Perisphere had to be scaled down due to budget restrictions, altering their proportions in the process. More noticeable, however, was the necessary compromise in building materials: while Harrison had intended to use concrete for the exterior cladding, he was ultimately forced to accept gypsum board and plastered with stucco. The resulting façade was not perfectly smooth as concrete would have been, detracting from the effect of the otherwise pure geometry.[9]
These compromises did little to detract from the public’s admiration. While the classical layout and “confused” aesthetic of most of the fair drew ire from contemporary critics, the abstract modernism of the Trylon and Perisphere was often singled out for praise.[10] As much a symbol of the 1939 Fair as the Eiffel Tower had been at the Exposition Universelle fifty years before, the Trylon and Perisphere were depicted on almost countless forms of advertising and memorabilia during the fair’s two-year run. The unmarked white shell of the Perisphere was used as a surface for projections each evening, transforming its stucco surface with images of cloudy skies, intricate patterns, or—on Halloween of 1939—a gargantuan Jack-o-Lantern. By day or by night, the ‘ball and bat,’ as they were humorously referred to, stood as the unmatched climax of the fair.[11]
A commemorative postage stamp was one of the many pieces of memorabilia to bear the likeness of the Trylon and Perisphere. ImageCourtesy of Wikimedia user Ecphora (Public Domain)
The promise of the 1939-40 World’s Fair in signifying a brighter future seemed to vanish before the fair itself had even closed. The outbreak of the Spanish Civil War led to the closing of the Spanish Pavilion, and as Nazi Germany began its conquest of Europe, Poland, Denmark, Norway, Belgium, the Netherlands, and France were forced to drop out as well.[12] When the Trylon and Perisphere themselves were dismantled so that their materials could be put to use in the war effort, it seemed as though the fair’s dream of a better tomorrow had been destroyed with them.[13] However, their influence would continue to be felt in the years that followed the war, as a new wave of development in the United States hearkened back to the prosperous suburban ideal presented in Democracity. The Trylon and Perisphere themselves, while no longer physically extant, have earned an enduring legacy as one of the world’s greatest symbols of hope for the future when there seemed to be no hope at all – a vision of the World of Tomorrow that has yet to be forgotten.[14]
Image via MetMuseum.org (Public Domain)
References
[1] Sennott, Stephen. Encyclopedia of 20th Century Architecture. New York: Fitzroy Dearborn, 2004. p929. [2] Wurts, Richard, and Stanley Appelbaum. The New YorkWorld's Fair, 1939/1940 in 155 Photographs. New York: Dover Publications, 1977. p3. [3] Yu, James. “Trylon and Perisphere.” University of Maryland Digital Libraries. Accessed November 15, 2016. [access]. [4] Ferriss, Hugh. The Power of Buildings: 1920-1950; a Master Draftsman’s Record. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2008. p64. [5] Wood, Andrew F. New York’s 1939-40 World's Fair. Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2004. p21. [6] Wurts, p3. [7] Klein, Maury. The Power Makers: Steam, Electricity, and the Men Who Invented Modern America. New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2008. [8] Wood, p23-25. [9] Yu. [10] Sennott, p929. [11] Wood, p21-22. [12] Goucher, Candice Lee., and Linda A. Walton. World History: Journeys from past to Present. Vol. 2. New York: Routledge, 2008. [13] Burgess, Helen J. Highways of the Mind. University Of Pennsylvania Pr, 2014. [14] Findling, John. “World’s Fair.” Encyclopedia Britannica. September 30, 2011. [access].
Photographs: Courtesy of Flickr user Richard, Samuel Gottscho via MetMuseum.org, via nyworldsfaircollections.tumblr.com, Courtesy of Wikimedia user Ecphora
Reydon Grove Farm is a private home located in Suffolk, England. Completed in 2016, it was designed by NORM Architects. Reydon Grove Farm by NORM Architects: “Situated on the border of a working farm in Suffolk (UK), the Scott House has been designed as a long and narrow flat roofed pavillon, to give the building a sufficient magnitude and scale to correspond sizes of the existing barn and the old..
This project located next to Hong-ik University, in Seogyo-dong Seoul, has the art department of reputation. So young artists have settled their small studios in old houses along with the university streets, and influenced arts, design, architecture, literature, and more. Then this town became a huge space for cultural exchange of young people and this activity changed old buildings into a brand new or unique remodeled buildings to fit artists’ lifestyle.
Diagrams
This town was no longer a residential area, but artists’ and young people’s cultural space. However, long-term and great alteration in the town led rise of land price and investment for profit. Architects and public officers tried to keep the cultural atmosphere from big investors to use the town as a real estate investment.
Our site was a two-story residence surrounded by commercial facility remodeled from a residence. In this condition, the client wanted to move out and change the use of the residence. He asked for a flexible space for variety programs such as bar, café, restaurant, and club that operates properly.
We suggest a renovation rather than a new building to reduce the budget and to produce unique space matching with surrounding contexts. There were two points to approach this project. The first was how we change this old red brick house to a brand new space for young people who set the trend of streets around. The second was to provide required programs by client at the brick-built structure that has limited space.
To solve the problem, limited space had to be changed to fit the new programs. Firstly, existing wall removed and installation of exterior deck for communication to street actively. Secondly, removing gable and planning exterior space on whole floor, where connect each other from first floor to roof.
Section
Removing roof to make outside space each floor for connecting all the floors from ground to roof garden which allows to use whole building to be used at once. And also, the walls inside and facing outside space were demolished to link inside and outside.
The next step was to take off worn façade. Old red brick façade didn’t fit for young cultural space and we tried to find out materials that is not disparate from surrounding contexts. The upper mass was covered with Dark steel plate and bright grey brick finish in the lower mass for dark steel box to look floating and symbolic. There is a staircase covered with steel-mesh to the rooftop space and shows the way to a whole new experience with lighting cube tables enjoying the night club party.
Section
Inside materials are not very different from outside. Hairline stainless steel and dark steel plate is used for the bar, bathroom, and staircase to emphasize wall and inside small masses. We overcame such a low ceiling height for commercial use with cnc-cut organic patterned wood panel ceiling and plastic fabric carpet to make young and active space.
Sig Nordal 