The building is part of a group of houses built in the eighteenth century in the district of Arenal, outside the ancient city walls, facing the medieval shipyards and next to the river Guadalquivir. Consisted of two floors and mezzanine, while the lower destined to storage, the higher to owner’s house.
The house aim of the intervention has a very elongated, substantially rectangular plan with two long party walls called “medianeros”, and facades to Calle Dos de Mayo and Calle San Diego.
Axonometric
Before his recovery the house was divided into two dwellings by a thick wall parallel to the main façade and was in a state of total ruin, to which survived only his two facades. Inside the house a series of double arches supported by robust stone columns (some from Roman times) defined their internal space.
Therefore, the only constructive elements that have been incorporated into the project have been the facades, the party walls and the arches, to which the addiction of a new one replacing the old bearing wall, enabled the construction of a single space.
The key decisions can be summarized in just two: building a narrow services strip (ladder, lift, toilets, storage, etc) resting on one of the party walls; and opening a skylight overhead flooding the whole space with natural light, from the deck to the ground floor.
The new construction is solved with metal structure left in sight, in which pillars and lightened metal slabs define and organize the different spaces while draw a subtle and delicate calligraphy that contrasts with the presence of preexisting thick walls.
Last week ArchDaily attended the 2016 World Architecture Festival (WAF) in Berlin. Following his opening keynote address, we talked to Ben van Berkel of UN Studio who spoke of his interest in using technology in architecture to improve not only user experience, but to affect qualitative aspects of design itself. Together with his partner Caroline Bos, Van Berkel recently published Knowledge Matters, a book positioned “to help architects to run a better studio and to share knowledge.”
Ben Van Berkel: What motivates me at the moment in architecture is to design with knowledge and information. So it’s not any more that I design building forms alone; I’m more interested in how, with new technology, we can develop a sustainable and hopefully healthy environment.
Think about it: when it comes to the environment we are for 80% of our time indoors. And think about the bad air. We are often indoors and the way how we with new technology can improve that is my fascination. And of course I’m interested in the technological side and improvement and expansion of that, but I’m also interested in the cultural side. So the expansion of the profession needs to dare stretch up much more than we ever did before. Because all of these technologies are available right now. On the cultural side we can refer to design, fashion, literature, art and all those aspects of the cultural side so that we can further use it in the integral way of how we can improve our architecture.
The way that I’m inspired by these latest ideas of improving the profession is by teaching a lot, reading a lot – I go easily from neuroscience towards the way in which today the technology of a car has improved by maybe having 40 sensors. Meanwhile, why do we have only one sensor in a building? To regulate our temperature. That technology is not available yet in architecture. So I often read a lot and reflect a lot on the way how we can improve.
OMA, led by partner Ippolito Pestellini Laparelli, have been chosen as the “Creative Mediators” for the 12th edition of Manifesta, which will be held in Palermo in 2018. The practice will assemble an interdisciplinary team to investigate the role of governance in the Italian city, and address how contemporary urban centers are affected by tourism, gentrification, migration and climate change. They will also work “with specialists from the fields of contemporary art, sociology, music, cinema and architecture” to develop a series of “interactive, interdisciplinary, performative and artistic interventions.”
The previous incarnation of Manifesta, which took place this year in Zurich, enabled a group of Swiss students to design a floating pavilion on Lake Zurich. The Mayor of Palermo (who has held the position twice before), Leoluca Orlando, has said: “After being listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site, with its Arab-Norman Palermo and the Cathedral Churches of Cefalù and Monreale, Palermo has confirmed its nomadic and migrant vocation.” He expects [Manifesta 12 “to be another milestone in the development path of Palermo; a social and economic enhancement based on culture and the arts, addressing the issue of human mobility.”
Pestellini Laparelli, himself Sicilian-born, most notably developed the Monditalia exhibition as part of OMA/AMO at the 14th Venice Architecture Biennale. “In the current political climate,” he has said, “Palermo’s history and character make[s] it the ideal laboratory to re-imagine, from a Mediterranean perspective, the liberal values we share, and to address crucial issues for the present and future of the European city.”
The concept for Manifesta 12 and the team of specialists will be announced beginning of 2017.
Fully exposed to spectacular sunsets and impressive thunderstorms, the Beach House embraces the prairie skies and changing waterscapes. This 2,000-square foot residence was designed to echo the stone and wood cottage vernacular of this beachside community. Harmonizing with the surrounding landscape, cedar and fir were used both inside and out, and emit the natural aesthetic of an age-old building material.
With a playfulness of scale, low rooflines introduce the visitor to lofty interior spaces that celebrate a panoramic view and an ocean-like horizon line of water and sky. The interior is extended outward across the deck with a wall of windows that open to create what feels more like a screened-in porch with a dramatic roof overhang and the summer breeze sweeping through it.
Adorned with Western Red Cedar, roof planes transition to wall surfaces. Horizontal siding clads the front and back facades as a subtle twist on traditional shiplap planking of surrounding cottages. The cedar was left exposed to allow the wood to silver with age.
The interior further showcases the versatility of wood design applications but also introduces an aesthetic of raw steel and concrete: solid fir roof beams are anchored with custom steel rafter ties; and a board-formed concrete feature wall is constructed with a built-in staircase and fireplace.
Product Description. Western Red Cedar was selected for its top-performing durability, structural ingenuity and relatively low maintenance. The No.1 Blue Ribbon, Perfection, CCA treated, 18″ Western Red Cedar, resquared & rebutted (R&R) shingles and horizontal 1” x 4” boards used on the exterior of the Beach House were not finished with a paint or stain to allow the wood to silver with age, conveying a subtle, modern twist on traditional ship plank of the surrounding cottages.
According to Spanish media outlet El País, Foster + Partners and Rubio Arquitectura have won an international ideas competition to design the new addition of the Museo del Prado in Madrid. The team beat 47 other participants, including firms such as Cruz y Ortiz Arquitectos, OMA, and Souto Moura Arquitectos, and will be in charge of the renovation and transformation of the Salón de Reinos.
El País reports that the project will cost €30 million and will “provide a large atrium to access the building’s south façade.” This “will lead to an exhibition space on the first story,” while also making the park and surrounding site more pedestrian friendly.
During a press conference, the Spanish Minister of Culture, Íñigo Méndez de Vigo, announced that construction will begin in 2019 to coincide with the bicentennial of the museum’s founding. The Museo del Prado is not only one of Spain’s most important museums but also enjoys international recognition and acclaim.
Clients : Conseil général du Nord & Sem ville renouvelée
Courtesy of TANK Architectes
From the architect. The hive of small enterprises is located in the heart of the site La Tossée in Tourcoing (North of France). The program brings together a hive of innovative textile companies and a 450-spaces-silo parking. The two programs are combined within a single entity.
The medium-term mutability of the parking in a tertiary program is made possible by a peripheral-honeycomb-structure releasing trays of all bearing points. The project builds on both flagships of the industrial revolution and textile industry to federate a context carried by a blend of history and innovation.
Product Description. – The filling of the cast-in-place concrete cells is achieved by a two-level curtain wall façade consisting of a frame of the WICONA – MECANO 2 range, with WICLINE 65 hinged windows.
Detail
The filling of the non-glazed parts is made with insulating sandwich panels composed of an exterior face of ALUCOBOND – Natural Line 401 and an inside face made of rough galvanized sheet, separated by a rock wool of 30mm.
As the birthplace of our most recent Pritzker Prize winner, Alejandro Aravena, Santiago, Chile is full of iconic architecture. Because many of these buildings are situated in busy urban areas, their superior design is easy to miss. In an effort to encourage viewers to slow down and appreciate the volume, facades, context, and function of these urban landmarks, Benjamin Oportot and Alexandra Gray of San Sebastian University guided their 4th-year students in producing axonometric drawings of 11 buildings. The project centered on medium-sized office buildings built between 1989 and 2015, particularly focusing on their use of reinforced concrete.
The design of this building, made to be the headquarters for Transoceánica companies, is based as a part of the implementation of an energy efficiency system aimed at reducing consumption, improving the quality of workspaces and adopting a respectful attitude towards the environment. (Extract from project report)
The new building for the Ministry of Social Development is placed in a complex site. On the one side, the church of Santa Ana, one of the most beautiful expressions of religious architecture of the twentieth century in Chile, and on the other, the North-South freeway, one of the largest urban interventions of the 70s that divides Santiago’s city center in two. (Extract of Project Report)
In addition to taking advantage the building’s capacity for diverse uses and services as well as its design and structural advantages, we found that a parallelepiped element, similar to many great examples of quality architecture that we reviewed (SAS Building, United Nations in NY, Mies buildings Van der Rohe, and many others), would keep the building from wearing out or boring easily, thanks to its austerity and repetition. (Extract of Project Report)
The towers are seen from below. The triumph of structure over gravity becomes all the more perceptible and manifest the closer we get to the raised mass, until completely vanishing from our visual range; And the estimation of the dimensions changes with a sensation of danger, as in vertigo. (Extract of Project Report)
The building was designed so that both volumes are harmonic and are understood asbeing part of a set, with the same cubic volume language from the existing building, a treatment of controlled openings, interior gaps and a new coating material on the facade that respects the color of the existing building’s tone and weight. (Extract of Project Report)
Our proposal consisted of designing a building where we could demonstrate at least 4 forms of work: a double entry matrix in which one part contained formal and informal work, and the other, individual and collective work. On top of that, it has always seemed to us that face-to-face contact is unparalleled when it comes to creating knowledge. That is why we made plenty of places where people can come together throughout the building (Extract of Project Report)
We wanted to project the building as a simple and clear volume, mainly consisting of a regular parallelepiped shaped, 17 story tower that falls directly to the ground on an open corner facing a plaza, and partially encompassed by a shorter and closed 10 story volume on the opposite two sides facing the existing buildings on the interior the block. (Extract of Project Report)
The clients made a special request. They asked us for a building that would not look like an office tower and that it would be more “like a house”. Trying to figure out what this might mean, we started off with the office tower. What they didn’t want was the typical glass building with all its side being the same and that could be anywhere in the world. A building where the interior was connected to the outside only by the sense of sight. (Extract of Project Report)
We were looking for a single mass that was easy to heat or cool without the need to add layers or use up a lot of energy. For our first mold, like a prototype, we started with the archetypal image of a solid cube and with systematically organized openings. Then we stretched the openings vertically, breaking any relationship between the location of the spans and the number of floors of the building. (Extract of Project Report)
Managing this project linked real estate developers and the architects, working together on the questions that would let both parties get what they wanted. It contains four levels of parking, two levels of commercial spaces and another 12 floors of offices. (Extract of Project Report)
11. El Golf Building / Izquiero-Lehmann-Lira-Peñafiel Students: Jesús Burgos + Felipe Hernández
Courtesy of Universidad San Sebastián
We were entering into in the urban context of formal and volumetric chaos, so we wanted to define the body of the building as a regular parallelepiped with a symmetrical structure, determined by a reasonable optimization of the constructibility of the ground within the parameters established by current ordinances. (Extract of Project Report)
Pod House is a private home located in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. It was designed by Nic Owen Architects in 2016. Pod House by Nic Owen Architects: “The owners of this existing Victorian house located in Fitzroy North wished to renovate and extend to better cater for their family of 5. The 1980’s rear skillion extension was removed and replaced with an open place living ‘pod’. This pod contains the social..
18 June 2015: Denmark has a new right wing government. A couple of months later, despite student protests in front of city hall, the new government declares a decision to cut 8.7 billion Danish kroner (over $1.2 billion US) from education in Denmark, effectively cutting nearly 30 million kroner (around $4 million US) from the Danish Royal Academy of Fine Arts Schools of Architecture, Design and Conservation (KADK).
The result? 31 employees have been laid off this month; the student body is to be reduced by 30% over the coming years; 4 masters courses in architecture are being discontinued within the next 4 years; and 6 bachelor programs, 7 special programs and one entire institute in the Design School are being terminated. Teaching is being refocused towards technology and the professional sphere, but will this really improve the prospects of fresh architecture graduates, as they claim? Is it more important to challenge, or to adapt?
These changes in architectural education are being titled “A New Focused KADK; A plan of action to secure more graduates jobs, faster.” This is the brief, the challenge, being set by the Danish government in a country where education, including the 5 years necessary to become an architect, is free for all. However, the unemployment rate of designers and architects in Denmark was double the average of all other graduates of higher education between 2008 and 2012.[1] Is there a consensus in the government that Denmark is not getting value for money when it comes to architecture graduates? Does this skepticism extend beyond this small Scandinavian nation? Are we simply doing it wrong?
One of the major changes awaiting the architecture school is a mandatory internship over one semester, cutting out the option of an exchange during one’s Bachelor period. Anne Romme, Head of the Bachelor Program at the Institute of Culture at KADK, says that this decision “is probably a good one.” She continues to explain: “One could also discuss the question, because it directly cuts away a very fruitful and valuable semester out of a ten semester education; but if we do it in the right way, I think it can become a good thing that opens up our minds and sends students out to all corners of the profession and the world, and brings back new impressions. I think it’s probably going to be a very positive thing, we just have to do it in the right way.”
The vocational direction that the school is taking is an attempt to answer to the demands placed by the government. The possible advantages that await are obvious: higher employment rates, and architects that are better prepared for a life in the profession. On the other hand, the architectural discipline could begin to go down a less desired path.
“It’s very important to remember this balance between educating people directly for the profession, as if it was a kind of conveyor belt where we spit out people who hopefully fit into the ‘sharper,’ ‘better,’ front running part of the profession, but also our role in pushing the profession to new places,” says Romme. “It’s a balance. Architecture is a profession, but it’s certainly also a discipline, which is much more grounded in long-term questions and proposals. It’s not so concerned with which computer program is the ‘hottest’ right now… or what the big architecture firms in Denmark need right now; we need to tell them what they need.”
It’s undeniable that this change in Denmark’s most well known architecture school, the starting point for many well-known architects such as Bjarke Ingels and Henning Larsen, will affect the evolution of the entire architecture discipline in Denmark; and who knows what it could do to the profession beyond Danish borders? Will it dampen exploration, in favor of safety?
Young architecture students have responded to the Administration’s decisions with critical retaliation, albeit with minimal success. Yet Romme is positive: “There’s a lot of disagreement in the school whether this is the right decision, but luckily enough that’s good for schools: disagreement.” Hopefully this process will give birth to greater architects than ever. We’ll have to wait and see.
References:
Ledelessekretariatet. “Indstilling til bestyrelsesmøde d. 26. september 2016.” 16 Sept. 2016: n. pag. Print.
For Casa Cor Rio 2016, the most important architectural and interior design event in Brazil, Gisele Taranto Arquitetura was challenged to create six different designs for a dining room. The 26th edition of the event takes place in a house surrounded by Burle Marx gardens in Gávea, an affluent residential neighborhood located in the South Zone of the city of Rio de Janeiro. Ovoo Dining Room by Gisele Taranto –..
Sig Nordal 