© Cosmin Dragomir

• Architects: Vlad Sebastian Rusu Architecture Office
• Location: 1848 Square, no. 7, Blaj, jud. Alba, Transylvania, Romania
• Author : arch. Vlad Sebastian Rusu
• General Manager: sc. Asiza Birou de Arhitectură srl. Cluj-Napoca
• Project Year: 2016
• Photographs: Cosmin Dragomir

• Collaborators: arch. Ilinca Marcu, s.arch. Cătălin Iliescu, s.arch. Teodor Vintilă, s.arch. Raluca Mirea, s.arch. Felicia Todericiu
• Archive Research: arch. Ioana Bârsan, arch. Vlad Sebastian Rusu
• Economic Documantation: sc. Prima Invest, ec. Florin Pop
• Structure: sc. Asiza Birou de Arhitectură srl. Cluj-Napoca, ing. Ovidiu Rusu
• Installation Design: sc. Grad Instal Cluj-Napoca, ing. Paul Biriș
• Stage Technology Design: Bosch Rexroth
• Builder: sc K&Kiss srl Cristuru Secuiesc and sc. Herbau srl. Miercurea Ciuc
• Site Supervisors: Nicușor Pintea, Adrian Pastiu
• Client: City Administration of Blaj

© Cosmin Dragomir

From the architect. The Cultural Palace was designed in the year 1930 by the Bucharest architect Victor Smigelschi, and its primary purpose was to host ASTRA Cultural Association’s events.

© Cosmin Dragomir

The first changes to the original design were to building’s main hall and these were made in the early 1960’s in order for it to accommodate a new function as the city’s cinema. Also from the same period the first floor of the building underwent some minor functional changes to accommodate the History and Ethnography Museum of Blaj and the Town’s Library and Blaj’s Wire Broadcasting Centre.

Before

© Cosmin Dragomir

In the winter of 1995 a violent fire burnt down most of the building, severely damaging the roof and the interior space of the main hall. It remained a ruin until 2012, when the municipality initiated a project for the rehabilitation and refunctionalisation of the Palace. The building would be predesignated to incorporate a flexible multipurpose hall, which could be lit both artificially and by daylight, and which could host a wide variety of cultural events such as concerts, galas, theatre plays, conferences, exhibitions etc. The building would also serve as the headquarters for the Alba branch of the Romanian Academy.

Ground Floor Plan

Longitudinal Section

Research
The Cultural Palace of Blaj was excluded from the list of the Romania’s Historical Monuments, even though it is located in the Historical Monuments National Protected Area. Sections of the initial architectural project attributed to Victor Smigelschi were found in the National Archive, as well as two pictures in which the building can be seen shortly after its inauguration. Regrettably, no records were found relating to the original interior design of the main hall.

© Cosmin Dragomir

© Cosmin Dragomir

Design Concept
With the benefit of historical research and with technical expertise it was decided that the spatial and functional design concept of the building, which was now a ruin, would follow the initial project. That decision meant that the alterations that were made in order to accommodate the later institutions had to be removed. The new design follows two directions: firstly, to evoke the recent tragic history of the building and secondly, to create a flexible interior and exterior space that can easily be adapted to the needs of the community that it serves. The main hall becomes a multi-purpose space by removing all the seating and through the addition of more daylight through the new roof lights. Other small reversible changes such as, the metal structure of the roof, the brick cladding and the suspended ceiling reminds the visitor of the recent fire.

© Cosmin Dragomir

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Our Amazon Frontline / Pabellón de Perú en la Bienal de Venecia 2016. Image © Laurian Ghinitoiu

As part of ArchDaily’s coverage of the 2016 Venice Biennale, we are presenting a series of articles written by the curators of the exhibitions and installations on show.

The Amazon rainforest is our common frontline: constant battles are being fought to preserve the greatest source of biodiversity, oxygen production and climate regulation of the planet.

The Amazon is also the battlefront between the ancestral vision of its inhabitants and the modern vision that western society has over this territory. If we were to learn from the indigenous knowledge, now endangered by hegemonic “western civilization”, we would open an unforeseen insight about medicine, nutrition, and the sustainable production of the rainforest. The dissolution of this last frontline would have global implications and it would even change the way we see our world.

The Peruvian Pavilion tells an unprecedented action in this sense: fighting poverty and preserving the Amazon Rainforest through education. The “Plan Selva”, a large-scale public program in our amazon region that reconstructs and rebuilds hundreds of schools scattered in inaccessible places without services, with a new educational program that favors multiculturalism and rescues the native languages.

Our Amazon Frontline / Pabellón de Perú en la Bienal de Venecia 2016. Image © Laurian Ghinitoiu

The starting point for the project is an attentive dialogue with the Amazonian communities. It proposes a kit of modular parts that allows adapting to particular pedagogic requirements, topographical conditions and size of communities. The result is a climatic-sensitive modular architecture, respectful to the Amazonian way of life.

Our Amazon Frontline / Pabellón de Perú en la Bienal de Venecia 2016. Image © Laurian Ghinitoiu

This project sets a unique precedent in a Peruvian public institution:  it relies on architecture for a massive educational program, restores dignity to a population that was historically relegated and offers a space for the balanced encounter between two apparently irreconcilable worlds.

Our Amazon Frontline / Pabellón de Perú en la Bienal de Venecia 2016. Image © Laurian Ghinitoiu

Accompanying this architectural action, the exhibition immerses us in the Peruvian Amazon through visual actions that show the immeasurable mystery of its inhabitants and give a true ” radiography ” of the impenetrable lushness of the jungle.

Planta General. Image Courtesy of Barclay&Crousse

The visitors will follow a ribbon printed with the faces of the Amazonian children by Musuk Nolte, and the footprint of the jungle, the “Amazogramas” created by Roberto Huarcaya.  This ribbon is suspended from a wooden canopy, in permanent equilibrium. Also suspended, a group of tables and chairs brought from the Amazonian schools, reveal the precarious and harsh conditions in which teachers and students interact today. The balance of the fragile and undulating ribbon compels us, as in the Amazon rainforest, to be responsible for preserving its balance.

Corte. Image Courtesy of Barclay&Crousse

OUR AMAZON FRONTLINE

Venue: Sale d’Armi, Arsenale
Participants: Ministry of Education – Plan Selva Project: Project leader: Elizabeth Añaños Team: Militza Carrillo, Miguel Chavez, Sebastián Cillóniz, Alvaro Echevarria, Gino Fernandez, Claudia Flores, Luis Miguel Hadzich, Daisuke Izumi, Alfonso Orbegoso, Carlos Tamayo, Alejandro Torero, Karel Van Oordt, José Luis Villanueva
Commissioner: José Orrego
Curators: Sandra Barclay, Jean Pierre Crousse
Patronage: Fundación Wiese, El Comercio
Production: Patronato
Photography: Roberto Huarcaya, Musuk Nolte, Rodrigo Adb
Project Managers: Claudia Ortigas, Mateo Eiletz
Graphic Design: Arturo Higa
Supporters: Promperu, Mincetur, Ministerio de Cultura, Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores del Peru, Ministerio de Educación, Ministerio del Ambiente y Asociacion de Estudios de Arquitectura

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Beartooth Portal. Image Courtesy of ENSAMBLE STUDIO

• Architects: ENSAMBLE STUDIO
• Location: Fishtail, MT, United States
• Architect In Charge: Antón García-Abril & Debora Mesa
• Area: 46000000.0 sqm
• Project Year: 2016
• Photographs: Courtesy of ENSAMBLE STUDIO

• Construction Master: Javier Cuesta
• Project Director: Ricardo Sanz
• Media Director: Artemio Fochs
• Project Team: Massimo Loia, Borja Soriano, Walter Cuccuru, Giorgia Pisano, Simone Cavallo.
• Structural Engineer: Jesús Huerga; Beaudette Consulting Engineers
• General Contractor: OSM

Beartooth Portal. Image Courtesy of ENSAMBLE STUDIO

Inverted Portal. Image Courtesy of ENSAMBLE STUDIO

Located at the edge of Yellowstone Park in Montana, Tippet Rise Art Center -with an extension over eleven thousand acres of wilderness- is born as a new destination for the arts, in which music performances and large-scale outdoor sculptures play a major role.

Domo. Image Courtesy of ENSAMBLE STUDIO

Beartooth Portal. Image Courtesy of ENSAMBLE STUDIO

How the current local fauna and ranching activity can coexist with the added artistic and architectural interventions is a challenge that the project needs to embrace.

Domo. Image Courtesy of ENSAMBLE STUDIO

This challenge has fueled the research that started with our early experiences in the quarry and continued with experiments like The Truffle, advancing the knowledge and appreciation of what preexisting natural conditions can bring to us, as architects and as users of architecture.

Model Studies Perspectives

Once again we go back to primary elements to configure site-specific architectures in harmony with nature. Working with earth, with rocks, and learning from their formation logic, different techniques and processes are developed to manipulate the structural, acoustical and thermal properties of these local materials at different scales; and geological transformation processes –sedimentation, erosion, weathering, crystallization, compaction, metamorphism- reinterpreted to cultivate structures made of landscape, from landscape.

Structures that stir existing matter and reinforce it, using highly engineered processes while welcoming unpredictable results.

Beartooth Portal. Image Courtesy of ENSAMBLE STUDIO

The forms obtained have been twinned with those taken from the land that previously contained and supported them when in state of rest, from which they retain memory and imprint and to which they introduce new meaning and tension. They are structures of landscape because they are born from it and give it order, transforming matter into inhabitable space and unfolding a new constellation of programs among the plateaus, ridges, canyons and hills of brutal beauty that compose the site.

Inverted Portal. Image Courtesy of ENSAMBLE STUDIO

Domo. Image Courtesy of ENSAMBLE STUDIO

Structures of Landscape enable habitation without exploitation, and intimate relationships with the environment. They resonate with the immensity, the roughness, the silence and the magic loneliness of the place amplifying its values, and situate our actions in an ambiguous position between nature, architecture and art; they can be one and all, or a completely different category that only makes sense where it was born.

Inverted Portal. Image Courtesy of ENSAMBLE STUDIO

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Courtesy of Studio Toggle

• Architects: Studio Toggle
• Location: Al Bida’a, Kuwait
• Credits: Hend Almatrouk, Gijo Paul George, Abid Naqvi, Abdul Rashid, Yahia Galal
• Project Year: 2016
• Photographs: Courtesy of Studio Toggle

• Engineers: Al Turath consultants
• Main Contractor: Al Nisf Co.

Courtesy of Studio Toggle

The F.LOT house can be described as a minimal composition of 2 seemingly floating masses intersecting at right angles. A 5m cantilever adds drama and gives the composition its unique character. 

Courtesy of Studio Toggle

The house features a 15m long pool which appears to float above the parking. The pool bisects the longitudinal volume which houses the main social spaces and the living quarters.

Courtesy of Studio Toggle

The open-plan ground floor is organized on either side of the pool, which is quite clearly the focal point of the house. These spaces flow into each other connected by a bridge which is enclosed by panoramic sliding windows. The barrier free design of the ground floor is emphasized by the open kitchen and dining, with sliding-folding doors, giving unrestricted access to the landscape/deck and the pool.

Courtesy of Studio Toggle

Plan

Courtesy of Studio Toggle

The basement houses the ‘Dewaniya’ (traditional Kuwaiti gathering space for men), parking for 3 cars under the floating pool, and the staff quarters. The Dewaniya opens into a large courtyard at the basement level, covered in white pebbles, which breaks up the harsh Kuwaiti sun and lights up the basement spaces in a glow of diffused natural light.

Section

The first floor houses the private living quarters and is lit by panoramic windows on both sides. Aluminum louvers and deep recessed balconies offer effective sun-protection and mitigate the heat gain due to the large window openings.

Courtesy of Studio Toggle

An austere palette of white plaster, exposed concrete and white epoxy flooring gives the social spaces a sense of ethereal openness reminiscent of an art gallery. The first floor on the other hand features solid teak wood and rough-cut travertine cladding giving the living spaces a warmer texture.

Courtesy of Studio Toggle

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© Photographix

• Architects: SPASM
• Location: Malavli, Maharashtra, India
• Project Team: Sangeeta Merchant, Sagar Mehta, Divyesh Kargathra, Mansoor Ali Kudalkar, Sanjeev Panjabi
• Project Architects: Sagar Mehta, Divyesh Kargathra
• Area: 10500.0 ft2
• Project Year: 2016
• Photographs: Photographix , Sebastian Zachariah & Ira Gosalia

• General Contrator: Delux Construction Corporation
• Structural Engineer: Gmr Consultants
• Mep: Mep Consulting Engineers
• Landscape: Professional Landscape Designs
• Electricals: G.Mody And Sons
• Swimming Pool Agency: Samunder Pool Equipments
• Plot Area: 40,000 Sq Feet

© Photographix

The Stone, beneath the sky, stood cold –
Between the runes, a vapour strolled
…a cloak of fleecy fog consoled
-The Quest, Terry O’Leary

© Photographix

This second home has a rather peculiar story. Spasm was commissioned to demolish an existing structure, which was deemed structurally unfit for occupation, and build a new home on the same site. An in depth study, prompted us to reimagine the idea of occupying the site.

© Photographix

Plan

© Photographix

Many radical strategies were adopted
Retaining and recycling the debris of the demolished building as a mound.
The sleeping spaces as an introverted assembly around existing trees on the ground level, where one descends into the coolness and comfort of the earth. 

© Photographix

Plan

© Photographix

The main pavilion-esque living space on the upper faces the north, overlooking the mature trees which stood on site. The pool sits at the upper level terrace and seems to rise out of the mound.
The house has been imagined in Blue Gray Kotah, an Indian stone which forms the main substance of the expression. The naturalness, monolithic quality, cost, availability in different formats, and wear-worthiness of the stone led to its choice as the best defense against the harsh humidity and fierce rain that affects this region. Kotah stone is used in several forms, from fine chips, to strips, to slabs, to solid cove cut skirtings. The bath spaces are finished in white Indian Bhanswara marble.

Section

Section

The spatial construct makes the occupation of this home about the elements. The changes in light intensity are palpable, as is the mood of the rain whether gentle or violently loud. We hope we have delivered the vessel for the family to live a life under the skies, a place to enjoy the rain, wet breezes, encounter rare bugs , a place to grab the dew laden cool grass between their toes.

© Photographix

Gomati, is what this home is called lovingly in the memory of the client’s mother.

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