Venice Architecture Biennale 2016: a team of architects and academics has created a room of architectural evidence from Auschwitz that shows how the Nazi concentration camp was purposefully designed as a killing facility (+ slideshow). (more…)
House Renovation in Sils im Engadin is a project completed by Ruinelli Associati Architetti. It is located in Sils im Engadin, Switzerland. Photos by: Ralph Feiner
London-based architects Matthew Butcher, Kieran Wardle and Owain Williams have been successful in securing an unusual design contract from commissioners Hexham Book Festival and Arts&Heritage. Called the Mansio, the team beat off strong competition from a range of emerging and established architects and artists who responded to the brief.
Initial selection resulted in proposals being sought from Matthew Butcher, FleaFolly Architects, Sean Griffith’s Modern Architecture, NEON and Dutch artist Krijn de Koning.
Butcher, Wardle and William’s winning design, described as a ‘mobile ruin’, references northern England’s historic and industrial remains and will appear in 2016 like a translucent ghost amongst the traces of the past armies and inhabitants from all over the Roman world who occupied the trading posts, forts and settlements of this remote border landscape.
Amongst the venues that the Mansio will visit are the archaeologically significant and spectacular sites of Vindolanda, Arbeia, Birdoswald and Senhouse in Maryport.
Mansios were Roman teahouses and official stopping places located along a Roman road, or via, for the use of officials and those on business whilst travelling. This new version will be a place for visitors to explore, take refreshment and listen to new written work by authors and poets who have been resident at Arbeia, Vindolanda, Carlisle and Maryport during the preceding months.
Launching at Arbeia Roman Fort in South Shields on 1 May, supported by Queen’s Hall Arts and working with other partners across the country, the Mansio presents a startling sight when it arrives for week-long visits to the locations along the line of Hadrian’s Wall. Visiting the Roman Forts of Arbeia, Birdoswald, Senhouse and Carlisle Castle (Cumbria), Walltown Quarry in Northumberland National Park and the stunning excavations of Vindolanda, the Mansio project also involves Northumbria University, Northumberland County Council, Tullie House Museum and schools and libraries across the country that will run related activities, talks and workshops.
Arts&Heritage associate and architecture curator Peter Sharpe, who is leading on the commissioning process, said: “We invited national and international architects and artists to respond to the Mansio brief and received some fantastic proposals; this will be a really unusual structure that functions as a listening booth, gallery and teahouse. We are really looking forward to realising Butcher, Wardle and Williams’ winning design”.
Matthew Butcher, project design team, said: “We are hugely excited and honored to receive this commission. We feel the project provides an outstanding opportunity for our practice both as a new design team and as individuals. We are very much looking forward to developing the project from design to construction eventually setting it off on its six month Journey around sites along Hadrian’s Wall across the North East and North West of England.”
The Mansio project is a collaborative project that has been developed by Hexham Book Festival and the commissioning agency Arts&Heritage with funding support from the Arts Council England Strategic touring fund and technical support from London-based engineers Structure Mode.
Susie Troup, Director of Hexham Book Festival, says: ‘The rich history of Hadrian’s Wall and its peoples provide a creative foundation for the authors involved in the Mansio project, writing new responses to the ever-present issue of borders and colonisation and the unique history of this ancient Roman landscape. We are very pleased that poets and authors have been fascinated and drawn to this project and we have commissioned Daljit Nagra, David Almond, Fiona Shaw, Lem Sissey, Holly McNish, Ben Myers and Malachy Tallack to take up residencies across the country. The public will have the opportunity to meet the authors who will be appearing at the locations of the tour over the course of next year when the Mansio is in situ.’
Niches cut into zig-zagging concrete surfaces display leather accessories “like artefacts” at Valextra’s David Adjaye-designed space in London department store Harrods (+ slideshow). (more…)
From the architect. This is a Single Family housing project designed as a work of spaces crystallization.
The site is on a narrow and quiet street on the center of Mora, a village in La Mancha, in central Spain. This location, a bit hide for the city inhabitants, will determine the project concept. The house plays with this “discrete urban situation”, surrounded by other quite simple buildings, becoming a little find, something different that the pedestrian will discover by chance, on the same way that a geologist finds this precious mineral that he has been looking for a long time and suddenly shows up on the most unexpected place.
The different spaces have a tectonic configuration, sticking each other, like rock crystallization, coming from a great central space where the whole home revolves around. This space is like a double high covered yard, connected to the other “crystals” making the house. It has also several points where the natural light can get inside, with a wooden stair as the main spatial objet embracing everything.
The exterior façade materials (a combination of travertine and sandstone) provides to the building a stony look, following its mi- neral concept, and getting a quiet and elegant colors and textures combination, appropriate to not blend with the environment.
On the back house façade we will find an open air yard, also finished with stone, with a pond that will contribute to generate this quietness perception, exactly where the main bedrooms, the living room and the kitchen will be open. The advanced building energy systems will make this house quite energy efficient and green.
House R+ is a little find on a narrow street of La Mancha region, a home defined from the crystallization of its spaces.
From the architect. There is not enough space in the buildings of the first phase for the world’s second-largest book fair, with its two million visitors, which is why the building of additional large exhibition halls has been planned in the very short term. The journey is the reward – in terms of construction as well as politics. Since the start of the competition twelve years ago and the award of the contract ten years ago, the German architects of gmp from Berlin, together with their Iranian colleagues from NJP of Tehran, have shown patience during the step- by-step development of the project, and in the process have established friendly relationships.
In spite of all the financial difficulties, a 1,600 meter-long sunken landscape garden with a water course in its middle was created as a first step in midst the dusty and barren land, bordered on both sides by avenues and shade-giving colonnades in reminiscence of ancient Persian garden culture that goes back thousands of years. The center is taken up by a circular water basin with fountain, from which the exhibition grounds to the north of the axis are accessed. The first building phase includes the main hall and the largest exhibition hall, each with its own architectural character. While the tall central distribution hall has been designed with reference to the two-and-a-half thousand years of architectural history such as the hundred columned hall of the palace at Persepolis the exhibition hall features three distinct sections with impressive rhombic vaulting.
The shaded exhibition axis, which is protected from the wind and will connect all planned exhibition halls with each other, has also been laid out as a sunken, linear “Persian” garden, and is lined with colonnades. This sunken area allows circulation at two levels and therefore the separation of vehicular and pedestrian traffic. While the first section is now in use, construction on the remaining parts is making swift and visible progress the infrastructure and foundations for the future arched halls are already in place. In its completed state, with 16 halls providing 120,000m2 of exhibition area, as well as additional conference facilities, the new Tehran exhibition center with its magnificent urban landscape design will be a pilot project symbolizing the end of decades of isolation, similar to the Neue Messe exhibition center in Leipzig after German reunification.
Casa Paravicini is a private home designed by Cristian Hrdalo in 2014. It is located in Cachagua, Zapallar, Valparaíso Region, Chile. Photos by: Nico Saieh
Clerkenwell Design Week 2016: British designer Tom Dixon has installed furniture and lighting inside a church in London’s Clerkenwell, transforming it into a co-working space and restaurant (+ slideshow). (more…)
The Lantern
The literal and mythological meaning of the lantern is highly significant throughout Asian history—it leads you through the dark, showing you the way and indicating the beginning and end of a journey. Neri&Hu’s radical transformation of an existing five storey building in Seoul, South Korea, into a grand flagship store for leading Asian skincare brand Sulwhasoo is inspired by these notions of the lantern.
The building was designed by Korean architect IROJE and built in 2003. Celebrating the roots of the brand, Neri&Hu wanted to develop a concept with strong connections to Asian culture and traditions, ultimately allowing customers to discover the wealth of Asian wisdom that underpins the Sulwhasoz ethos.
The concept originates from three key points that were defined at the very start of the project – Identity, Journey and Memory. Neri&Hu aspired to create a space that appeals to all the senses, that captures the customer immediately as they approach the building, creates an experience that continues to unfold during the journey through the store, and leaves a strong impression with visitors long after they have left.
This is what led to the lantern concept, where a continuous brass structure is the element ties the whole store together, guiding customers while they explore the full extent of the space.
In creating a series of voids and openings in the building, visitors fully experience the structure as it moves through the space and envelops the different programs. Mirror volumes are inserted into a wooden landscape to reflect and amplify the seemingly endless structure.
The delicate structure rests upon a solid ground of wide timber floor boards that occasionally rises up to form wooden counters with inserted solid stone blocks, on top of which Sulwhasoo’s products are displayed as precious objects. While it is primarily a guiding mechanism, the lantern structure is also a source of light—hanging within it are custom light fixtures that turn the structure into the main attribute to frame and highlight the products on display.
Navigating through the five storeys, customers experience changes in atmosphere. The basement spa with its dark brick walls, earthy grey stone treatment rooms and warm crafted wood floors has a sense of intimacy and shelter for visitors. Moving up the building, the material palette becomes lighter and more open, inviting visitors to interact with the space, culminating finally in a roof terrace with its free-flowing brass structure canopy that frames vast views of the surrounding city.
The journey is a constant contradiction between two counterparts: enclosed to open, dark to light, delicate to massive.The holistic approach to the lantern concept—from space-making to lighting to display to signage—gives visitors a sense of endless intrigue and urges them to explore the spaces and products with passion and delight.
From the architect. The 1920s packing shed is the only building remaining from the once prosperous Nestle condensed milk factory—an important centre of Toogoolawah’s economic and social life until the factory was destroyed by fire in 1951. The inception of the art gallery and workshop project began in 2012 with a grass -roots push from the community. The opening exhibition in December 2015 featured 31 local artists and a display by the Toogoolawah and Districts History Group, positioning the building as a catalyst for the ongoing cultural life of the region.
Fundamentally, the design was conceived to preserve the building and its architectural qualities as found, rather than attempting to restore it to an original condition. Weatherboards were removed to install insulation, and an insulated structural skin was laid over the existing roof, leaving the interior of exposed roofing iron, stained concrete floor and walls, largely unchanged. The collapse of the western third of the building due to termite damage provided an opportunity to re -compose this elevation, subverting the symmetry of the gable, and creating a contrast to the eastern entry.
The new western end also plays an important structural role, contains the amenities, and disguises the location of the airconditioning plant within the existing building section. Where the existing building remained, the weatherboards were painted in their original red oxide colour. New walls are differentiated with a darker red and complemented with a combination of pinks, reds and browns for detail elements.
Close up, this complex palette produces a vibrant effect, and makes the building’s history legible. From afar, the project reinstates the original building form, and is perceived as a simple red shed in the landscape. While primarily used as an art gallery, the interior is planned for flexibility and various concurrent uses. The design also takes advantage of the existing outdoor terraces (remnants of other factory buildings) that broaden the building’s potential for public events and private functions. New concrete elements that provide fire egress and outlook, double as stages, allowing these external spaces to be utilised for performance.
