As part of the Danish contribution to the 2016 Venice BiennaleUrban Agency embarked on a challenging feat: the construction a 1:50 concrete model. The firm—based in Dublin, Copenhagen and Lyon—contributed three projects to the “Human Architectures” exhibition at this year’s Danish Pavilion.
The video shows the careful, painstaking process of molding, setting and assembling the 150kg model. Urban Agency told ArchDaily,
“Enjoy watching our conceptual 1:50 concrete model come to life! This short film shows the process of creating the model, while the model tells the story behind the architecture. After many endeavors on the way, the 150kg heavy design arrived safely in Venice alongside our two other “Human Architectures” and will be on display in the Danish Pavilion until the 27th of November. “
This museum stands as a tribute to Violeta Parra (1917-1967), one of the most complete and notable artists born in Chile. The multiplicity of her facets, (music, poetry, visual art, ceramics, popular researcher, stubborn defender of the people, uncompromising artist) make her work and her life a kind of cultural kaleidoscope where multiple edges and infinite reflections are mixed.
The museum is located on the edges of the historic center of Santiago in the “San Borja” neighborhood, an urban area that has evolved from a compact city model to a city of isolated towers where the formal clarity of traditional public space has become blurred in time.
Plans
The site, a large rectangle 44 x 95 meters, is between two important streets in the urban fabric of the city, Avenida Vicuña Mackenna (east boundary), one of the structural axes of Santiago.
The Violeta Parra museum assumes the longitudinal deployment of its facade as urban strategy, with the responsibility to shape the pedestrian walkway. Compression and expansion of this facade along the route results in a figure whose variable width imposes slower traffic on the urban space. Within this route,the access to the Museum is defined by a broad concavity which suggests a pause in the journey.
Elevations
The main facade of the building, which receives light from the south, is made up of double glazing panels with a wicker weave in between, which allows on the one hand, the passage of subdued light and on the other a private and protected interior. This wicker weave announces, from the urban space, the artist’s commitment to craftsmanship.
The “anchor” programs are located at the ends of the building. To the west there is a small 100-person auditorium, while the exhibition halls are located on the east. The internal circulation extends into the room on the second level, through a ramp that rises between the wicker weave and the wall of the rooms. There, a set of strategically arranged windows reveal the inside of the exhibition halls.
The offices and archives, located on the second level, extend between the exhibition and auditorium areas. Outside, on the top floor, garden areas prolong the central courtyard vegetation. The idea is that the green covers the interior walls of the courtyards obliterating the architecture and displaying a vegetable universe as the dank and cold jungles of southern Chile that Violeta Parra loved.
Courtesy of Avoid Other Architects + TETRA Architects and Planners
Highways have been operating in largely the same way since the early twentieth century. In the Bao’an District in Shenzhen, China, rapid urbanization and industrialization within the built environment is not mirrored in its infrastructural spine, the G107 highway. In order to investigate the possibilities for this strip and its adjacent areas, a visionary open competition was organized earlier this year. A team lead by Avoid Obvious Architects (AOA) and TETRA Architects and Planners presented a redefinition of the highway typology, with a system complex enough to properly service the rich productivity it is connecting.
AOA and TETRA’s new G107 is a multi-modal transport system, focused on allowing futuristic modes of transport as it is on implementing cutting edge levels of sustainability. Also referred to by the consortium as an “organic highway,” the proposition aims to foster and connect a network of “green manufacturing,” with the strategic vision of making Bao’an a carbon neutral city by 2045.
Organized jointly by the People’s Government of Bao’an District, Shenzhen and Urban Planning, Land & Resources Commission of Shenzhen Municipality, the competition drew responses from seven global design firms, one of which was OMA. Spawned from the desire to match the infrastructure to the speed of production, the competition objective was to push teams to conjure up technologically focused, sustainable solutions.
Courtesy of Avoid Other Architects + TETRA Architects and Planners
The current 30km long 12-lane G107 is seen as the antagonist to efficient productivity and transport, and it cuts off the city’s western waterfront development areas from its mountain ranges to the east. AOA and TETRA’s scheme reconnects these two natural amenities, creating an urban landscape between the arterial G107.
We started the G107 challenge by questioning the role of a highway. We propose that traditional highways are outdated and inefficient. Our presentation will demonstrate that multimodal transportation systems that integrate automated technologies like drones, auto-pilot vehicles and high-speed transit are the future of 21st century urban development. We believe there is no need to expand Bao’an’s 12-lane highway. Instead of treating the traditional highway as a fixed piece of infrastructure, we will design a smaller, more fluid, multi-layered, thoroughfare that will be a spectacular starting point of growth for an organic smart city.
In AOA and TETRA’s design, the existing 12-lane highway is split into two 4-lane enclosures which interweave vertically and horizontally along the 30km strip. With sections at grade, above grade and below grade all being utilized for greenery and public amenities, a new density of public program is established. The sections above grade snake through buildings on both sides of the highway, allow pedestrians access to the new transit hubs. Distributed along the strip are new cultural centers which celebrate art and design.
Multimodal transit systems will be employed making travel time from one area to the next within a 15 minute timeframe. An added benefit will be to reduce the city’s dependence on cars. In order to foster an economy of sharing, each intersection will feature transit hubs with shared vehicles.
The design for the new G107 interlaces water management, landscape treatment and transportation so seamlessly that it is almost impossible to differentiate between them. Within the multi-layered design, smart technology to manage air pollution and water are integrated into the roadways themselves.
Courtesy of Avoid Other Architects + TETRA Architects and Planners
Our design intent is not to give up Bao’an as a manufacturing town, but to upgrade its facilities into a “Green Manufacturing City” with the power to share and connect people, places, and amenities. This sustainable city will celebrate the new “sharing economy” with facilities like transparent factories, drone ports for deliveries, open platforms for experiments, mobile offices and natural amenities to share. The new G107 will be a place to live, work and play.
While Shenzhen have been recognized as the greenest city in China, Bao’an is behind on its pollution management and green ratio. The new G107 plan would see Bao’an become the greenest city in China, a carbon neutral, green manufacturing zone which would become the model for other cities to aspire to. Aside from the vision to achieve sustainability, the city would also become a world leader in technologically innovative infrastructure, cementing Shenzhen’s title as the “City of Design.”
MOR Architects has won first prize in the competition to design the Konaki Averof Cultural Center in Thessaly, Greece. The competition sought out proposals to convert an existing complex with historic importance into a modern socio-cultural multiplex.
In an effort to reinterpret the relationship between the building and its urban environment, the winning proposal reintroduces the horizontality of the landscape, before human intervention.
The design not only provides maintenance and restoration of the existing external shells of the complex but additionally creates a “new, free-standing longitudinal roof with extensive cantilevers on both sides.”
Courtesy of MOR Architects
Courtesy of MOR Architects
Courtesy of MOR Architects
Through this new wing, the building is unified in its revitalized form as a space to host community functions such as events, exhibitions, and workshops. Furthermore, the addition creates a zone of protected open-air circulation between units of the complex.
Courtesy of MOR Architects
Courtesy of MOR Architects
Similarly, “the shaded open-air spaces of the building, together with the existing tall trees of the site aid towards a sustainable microclimate while—at the same time—escalating the transition from the outdoor to the indoor space and constituting an integrated unit of public space for the community.”
From the architect. This modern rammed earth house, winner of the international prize for contemporary earthen architectures Terra Award 2016, is located in Ayerbe, a little village in the Spanish Pyrenees. Rural migration in the region during middle 20th century led to the disappearance of traditional architecture techniques. This house attempts to awaken the interest of the community and the curiosity about this type of sustainable buildings that are strongly linked to the territory. The project has been inspired by old local earthen buildings regarding their orientation, morphology and the use of local materials.
A life cycle analysis has shown a 50% reduction of CO2 emissions. Local materials like stone, earth and straw represent 80% of the weight of the building. Hydraulic lime, roof tiles, wood and sheep’s wool have also been used, obtained from an area within 150 km radius. The house includes passive solar strategies as windows specially designed for an efficient use of natural light, thermo-insulating blinds, cistern for reutilization of rain water, thermal accumulator clay plastering, biomass heating boiler, etc.
With her own home design, the architect has tested all techniques and materials to their limits in order to achieve not only a natural and sustainable house, but also an energy efficient, environmentally and socially engaged building.
Plan
The passive solar design used is also allowing research work focused on the thermal behavior of the earthen walls according to their position, as well as the study of a sample of a trombe wall.
The site is within the town, has a rectangular shape with its long side facing the north. The surrounding buildings use one or another earth construction technique (adobe, rammed earth and mixed stone building techniques). The house adapts to the street levels and is built in three floors.
Section
Following the traditional strategies, a patio was opened in the south. The passive solar design, combining big windows in the south face, little ones in the north and skylights with earth walls, ensures thermal comfort, natural light, and cross ventilation. These passive design principles maximize sunlight access trough the south façade improving benefits of earthen walls thermal mass.
In winter, heat is stored in earthen walls during the day and it’s transmitted to the interior spaces throughout the night. In summer shadow systems as eaves, wooden curtains prevent the light access to the interior of the house.
Upper floors are built in 45cm thick earthen walls and timber decks support the housing spaces. Earth selection was objective and was tested in laboratory. A discontinuous sedimentation test and a screening test were made in order to know lime, sand and gravel’s proportions. It was also made a carbonates test to quantify the carbonates proportions contained in the sample. Straw fivers were added to the mixture to increase thermal and shrinkage qualities. The interior and exterior lime plaster was built using the “calicostrado” vernacular technique. Wooden work form used was a standardized system and was mounted continuous and simultaneously fitting it immediately before the filling. The construction process was mechanized to improve execution and economical performance. The mixture, the elevation and the pouring were made by a single machine. The compression was made by hand with an electric compressor.
Section
Coverings of interior partitions were made by local clay plasters. The roof is isolated with 20cm of sheep’s wool in order to avoid thermal loss during winter and overheating in summer. Inner wooden floors are isolated with natural cork boards.
Pinewood carpentry has double glazing with internal air chamber. Windows opened to north and west facades have interior wooden shutters. South windows have heavy interior curtains and roller exterior wooden shutters to manage shadows. Both strategies are the traditional ones for each orientation, adapted to local climate and it’s management is known by users.
Detail
A cistern for reutilization of rain water is buried in the patio. A biomass heating boiler heats the house and produces hot water needed.
With UNESCO’s recent announcement that 17 buildings by Le Corbusier are to be added to the World Heritage List, Monocle 24’s Section D speaks to a number of organisations—including the Twentieth Century Society, devotees of Frank Lloyd Wright in Arizona, London’s Victoria Albert Museum, and the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian in New York City—in order to understand why architectural preservation is important, and who decides what’s worth saving.
From the architect. In April of 2015, The Oslo School of Architecture and Design (AHO) was awarded the first prize in the LIXIL International University Architectural Competition. During the following summer, we developed the project in detail and made construction drawings, supervised by architects from Kengo Kuma and Associates. This winter, the Inverted House was built in Taiki-cho, Hokkaido, and we were working closely on site with the local contractor throughout the process. Now the house is awaiting its new life as the 5th competition house on the open fields of Memu Meadows.
The theme of the competition was atypical: “House for Enjoying the Harsh Cold”. Traditionally, architecture has created a strong division between inside and outside, keeping the cold at bay while preserving heat within. The Inverted House seeks to challenge this idea and to bring the ‘harshness’ of the world into the house itself. By minimalizing heated interior spaces and creating a series of sheltered exterior spaces, the building reads the legacy of traditional Japanese Sukiya-zukuri in the light of Scandinavian frugality. Its rough walls create a clear division in the landscape, holding together precisely articulated wooden roofs and floors. The resulting unity becomes an instrument, using wind, snow and sun to change the feeling of the world for its inhabitants.
Diagram
Diagram
The house is approached through the first space defined by the cross-wall: the Garden Room, that gathers snow in winter and keeps it until late spring in the shadow of the high walls. From here, the Outside Living Room is entered through the main entrance, where a series of elevated wooden floors leads to the fireplace, while a large, gently sloping roof extends toward the surroundings and the sunset. Adjacent, the Room for Cooking is protected from the strong winds by a very steep roof. A narrow passage around the cross wall leads to a protected interior, the Inside Room, a narrow, dark space, heated by an open fireplace. A long, low window focuses the view on winter snow or summer flowers in the Garden Room outside. At its other end, one finds the most intimate spaces: a bathtub is hidden beyond the wall, closely under the roof, and a sleeping platform floats above the snow, facing the sunrise, with a roof opening towards Memu’s full sky.
We imagined Inverted House as a delicate instrumentation of many pieces, rather then one dominating concept. Each wall, floor, roof, pillar, and step, has been carefully considered in proportion and relation to the building as a whole and to the world in which it is built.
The lot, where the house is inserted, have a non-regular shape, longitudinal and perpendicular to the street Nossa Senhora da Conceição, Matosinhos. In a consolidated urban area, the surrounding buildings, are, in most of the cases, buildings with a ground floor and attic. These constructions for their constructive time presents nonconventional height.
The urban density of this road presents buildings with different temporal characteristics, and for that reason, with different constructive approaches, with different elevations, materials, etc… a result of the growth andevolution of this road.
Concerning the volume, the house will be distributed in two floors (ground floor and 1st floor), which are dissimulated in the facade with horizontal lines to point some alignments with the surrounding buildings.
It is proposed a house with two floors. The interior spatial distribution is separated by function and by floors. The social/ service area, at the groundfloor, is composed by the entrance hall, the toilet, the kitchen, the dining / living room, the vertical access to the 1st floor (stairs) and the garage.
Due to the longitudinal nature of the lot, and the fact that it only detains two fronts for construction, it was proposed an exterior yard at the center of the house to allow natural light to dining/living room and kitchen. On the 1st floor, the private area, is composed by the rooms and its toilets and a lounge / reading area. At this floor, the interior yard, gives some more natural light to the interior rooms.
From the architect. Eniwa is a house that has been built in the city’s subdivision. Appearance as listed in the project title is the black profound image, introspection is a soft finish, was a completely different look at the inside and outside.
Place the water around the core-like, to separate the living space and dining kitchen, which is a characteristic that the core upper part is connected to the children’s room.
