As the second chapter in his series, Iconic Norway, Alejandro Villanueva has released a time-lapse of the Trollstigen Visitor Center, a project by Reiulf Ramstad Architects for the Norwegian Public Roads Administration in Oslo, Norway.

Courtesy of Reiulf Ramstad Architects

Designed to “enhance the experience of the Trollstigen Plateau’s location and nature,” the Center utilizes water as a dynamic element and rock as a static element, in order to “create a series of prepositional relations that describe and magnify the unique spatiality of the site.”

Courtesy of Reiulf Ramstad Architects

Experience the beauty and nature of the Visitor Center by watching the video, above. 

Courtesy of Reiulf Ramstad Architects

News via Alejandro Villanueva and Reiulf Ramstad Architects.

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© Arménio Teixeira

• Architects: Nuno Brandão Costa
• Location: Padrao de Legua, 4460-732 Custóias, Portugal
• Area: 4804.0 m2
• Project Year: 2011
• Photographs: Arménio Teixeira

• Collaborators: Filipa Júlio, Luísa Moura
• Structure : Ana Isabel Vale (ABprojectos)
• Hydraulic: Ana Isabel Vale (ABprojectos)
• Electrical: Maria Da Luz Santiago (RS Associados)
• Mechanical : Raul Bessa (GET)

© Arménio Teixeira

From the architect. On the pretext of designing a pre-primary and primary school for children, the solution to an urban problem was sought: the quarter available for construction was characterised by a great void stuck between discordant scales and languages, open to integration into the urban fabric.

Sketch

The brief for the school comprised three main strands: classrooms, a library, and a common space for a gymnasium and a canteen, each with different areas and volumes. This difference in size and brief enabled its division into different bodies, siting them at different points on the land so as to punctuate a triangular plot with an envelope of varying scales.

© Arménio Teixeira

The classroom block occupies the largest, lowest and markedly horizontal side of the land lengthwise, relating in landscape terms to the existing void to the north and having the main classroom wing facing south.

© Arménio Teixeira

The canteen block is a larger volume which relates to the collective housing buildings in this urban area.

Ground Floor Plan

At the tapering end of the plot stands a triangular prism, accommodating the reading space and finishing off the quarter to the west to create a proximity with the most informal area of the urban fabric.

© Arménio Teixeira

These three buildings are connected by a peripheral wall in exposed brick masonry which forms a continuous boundary for the entire complex, connecting the school’s open spaces (playgrounds and courtyards) and built spaces. This brick wall is a strong feature of the urban intervention, somehow maintaining its original calling as a large space available to the city.

© Arménio Teixeira

It confers an organic expression on it, connecting the construction to the ground and effecting a permanent continuity between the interior and exterior areas.

© Arménio Teixeira

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Pawson's sketch of the new London Design Museum

This month London’s Design Museum will officially open it’s new home on Kensington High Street. The project, which has been redeveloped and designed in collaboration with Rotterdam-based practice OMA and London-based studio Allies & Morrison, has seen a Grade II* Listed Modernist monument sensitively restored into contemporary galleries. For John Pawson—who has been commissioned to create “a series of calm, atmospheric spaces” ordered around a large, oak-lined atrium—this scheme marks his first major public work.

© Gareth Gardner

According to the Design Museum’s own narrative of the spaces, “visitors [will] find themselves in a central atrium with striking views up to [an] iconic hyperbolic paraboloid roof.” Here galleries, learning spaces, a café, an events space and a shop are arranged like an “opencast mine” beneath the building’s iconic concrete roof.

© Gareth Gardner

Two temporary gallery spaces will display up to seven temporary exhibitions per year. According to the museum, a “double-height basement also features a dedicated museum collection store with a glass window, allowing visitors a behind-the-scenes glimpse of pieces not on display.” In addition, a 200-seat Bakala Auditorium will “allow the museum to expand its public programme and evening talks.”

© Gareth Gardner

“Italian terrazzo flooring is used throughout the basement and ground floors, transitioning to warm-toned Dinesen oak flooring and wall panels on the upper floors. A key element of the Pawson vocabulary, a wooden bench with concealed lighting spans one side of the Weston Mezzanine. The bench sits in front of a series of marble panels conserved from the original building, which before that had previously been installed in the Imperial Institute in 1857.”

Sketch (John Pawson)

Plan: Lower Basement

Plan: Upper Basement

Plan: Ground Floor

Plan: First Floor

Plan: Mezzanine

Plan: Second Floor

Sketch (John Pawson)

Section B

Section A

There are ‘moments’ in the building that I relish every time I walk around, but I think it is really the way everything comes together – the new and the old – that gives me the greatest pleasure. I hope the Design Museum shows people that you don’t have to tear down and start from scratch to make exciting new cultural spaces.

© Gareth Gardner

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