In the newest video by architects Wahyu Pratomo and Kris Provoost of YouTube’s #donotsettle, the duo visit MVRDV’s “The Stairs” installed outside Centraal Station in Rotterdam. The project commemorates the 75th anniversary of the city’s reconstruction after World War II by devising the staircase now attached to the Groot Handelsgebouw, a landmark and one of Rotterdam’s first post-war buildings. In the video, Pratomo and Provoost discuss the idea of temporariness, experience-driven architecture, context, and symbolism inspired by MVRDV’s intervention, all the while asking other visitors for their own reactions to the spectacle.
Pratomo and Provoost started #donotsettle on YouTube while they were architecture students and urban enthusiasts studying at TUDelft in The Netherlands. Now, the duo regularly visit new and noteworthy architectures sites, both in Europe and around the globe, creating user-oriented architecture videos imbued with a playfulness and experiential authenticity.
MVRDV’s “The Stairs” is a free installation and will be open until June 12.
The design theme and name of the ASH NYC 2016 VIP Lounge was Office Space, which merged office culture with the exuberance of the art fair experience, by reinterpreting cubicles, dropped-ceiling panels, and ready made office furnishings. The lounge occupied a 1250 square foot space located at the heart of the Collective Design fair and featured a 60 foot long modular table, called Office Table, that was made from the same reclaimed heart pinewood used for the new floors at the Whitney Museum.
Diagram
The piece connected the lounge to the public café program and served as a café, cubicle, bar, lounge, and stage for the event. A series of informal seating cubes, Office Chairs, ran along the edges of the space as a whimsical ensemble of functional sculptures where visitors could gather. In addition to the above, ASH also produced a limited-edition WC4 chair, that was available for purchase on-site.
A flexible system of horizontal blinds enclosed Office Space on all four sides, while clusters of the limited-edition WC4 chair were scattered among office plants to form intimate gathering spaces. Ceiling panels were wrapped in reflective mylar to compose a mirrored drop ceiling.
As floor becomes table, blinds become walls, and ceiling panels become mirrors, a bricolage of standard office elements take on a second life to reveal a space that is at once familiar and unknown.
The Oslo Architecture Triennale has announced the program and participants for this year’s sixth edition of the event, titled After Belonging, which will open in September of this year. Participants will contribute to two exhibitions, occurring alongside a conference, and collateral events, taking place September 8-November 27, 2016.
As described by the Oslo Architecture Triennale website: “The 2016 Oslo Architecture Triennale designs the objects, spaces, and territories for a transforming condition of belonging. Global circulation of people, information, and goods has destabilized what we understand by residence, questioning spatial permanence, property, and identity—a crisis of belonging. Circulation brings greater accessibility to ever-new commodities and further geographies. But, simultaneously, circulation also promotes growing inequalities for large groups, kept in precarious states of transit. After Belonging examines both our attachment to places and collectivities—Where do we belong?—as well as our relation to the objects we own, share, and exchange—How do we manage our belongings?”
“…speculates on architectural intervention strategies at a selection of sites—in Oslo, the Nordic region and around the globe—that are understood to encapsulate the contemporary transformation of belonging.”
“…dissects the architectures entangled in the contemporary reconfiguration of belonging, documenting the ways in which these architectures redefine residence, and the spatial, aesthetic, technical, and sociopolitical implications of this redefinition.”
“…[considers] what is architecture’s role in the contemporary reconfiguration of belonging? How has this process transformed the notion of residence? What are the spatial, technical, and sociopolitical consequences of this transformation?”
“…investigates the objects, spaces, and territories of our transforming condition of belonging. Global circulation of people, information, and goods has destabilized what we understand by residence, questioning spatial permanence, property, and identity—a crisis of belonging. Circulation brings greater accessibility to ever-new commodities and further geographies. But, simultaneously, circulation also promotes growing inequalities for large groups, kept in precarious states of transit.”
The Academy Organized by Oslo School of Architecture and Design, September 11-18, 2016:
“…will bring schools from around the world to enter in a global dialogue and knowledge-sharing experiment, reflecting on issues related to the topics explored in the Oslo Architecture Triennale 2016: After Belonging, including new forms of residence, contemporary states of transit, and the ways in which architecture and design are responding to new forms of belonging and belongings.”
“…is a stateless embassy that represents, through cultural means, the ideals of ‘stateless democracy’ developed by Kurdish communities of the autonomous region of Rojava, northern-Syria. The embassy is conceived and designed by Studio Jonas Staal, and takes the form of a temporary installation in Oslo. Through assemblies and public debate it will present the cultural and political ideals of this new autonomous region. The aim of the project is to rethink non-state models of political representation through art, as well as to engage a large public in the unique cultural and political ideals being developed in this war-torn region.”
“…a series of [events], both in Oslo and around the various In Residence Sites that respond to the curatorial framework for OAT 2016:After Belonging. These programs are expected to multiply the perspectives and formats of the discussion taking place at the Triennale.”
Clerkenwell Design Week 2016: Swedish firm White Arkitekter has installed a barn-like structure in the centre of London’s Clerkenwell, which is dedicated to the area’s creative past and present (+ slideshow). (more…)
Comments update: Apple’s latest store in San Francisco by Foster + Partners showcases the tech giant’s new approach to retail, but does the rethought design offer a better shopping experience for customers? Read on for more on this and explore our comments page to keep up with the latest discussions. (more…)
From the architect. The first time I visited this property and took in the desert and the diaphanous, clear water running along a horizontal line in the background, I felt the enormous drive of water under a scorching sun. This piece of land, located in the middle of a coastline dotted with “All Inclusives,” would have to be transformed into a box that contained its own sea –practically its own air– given the happy circumstance that the universe had created a desert joined to the sea along a horizontal line. It was the purest, most minimalist landscape a horizon could have drawn. On either side, this dreamlike scenery collided with what humans consider to be aesthetic and build and baptize as architecture. I wanted to draw my own version, apart from the rest.
I believe that the greatest virtue of architecture is the generation of sensations through space on a series of planes that are found within the realm of sensitivity. I believe this capacity becomes still greater when your surroundings allow you to meld into them, forming thus part of your own space; in this sense, I wanted to take that horizon and bring it into the foreground. The water is an event that borders the entire project; all of the volumes open up toward the sea and turn their backs on the city, which is all that remains of the original surroundings, burdened by noise. Mar Adentro is a kind of Medina that opens out onto the sea. Each floating volume contains interiors that form, in turn, independent universes. Each room visually contains a piece of the sea; no one can resist gazing out at it.
For a long time, I have felt that construction has failed to evolve on a par with other endeavors: the automobile, for example, in a hundred years went from being a wagon to what we know today. And yet when I look back at the Pavilion by Mies Van Der Roe, it is in essence very similar to what we see today in architecture, albeit transgressed a bit perhaps through involution. We see unnecessarily complicated, but relatively non-complex structures scattered around the world. There are some risky proposals that form part of the current panorama we refer to as modern or contemporary, but they have not been very evolutionary.
Each room was built in a factory. Poliform was our ally. We built the entire interior structure and sent it in boxes across the sea to its destination, where it was assembled on site by local hands. In a question of days the first room was ready, of a quality subject to the tyranny of a machine and the wisdom of hands dedicated over the course of a lifetime to construction. There was no room for improvisation, and yet the room was fashioned with intelligence, imagination, and dedication. I learned from those German and Italian manufacturers what we sometimes fail to intuit from schools or books over the course of many years.
Our project can be constructed entirely through this process, employing a module whose versatility allows it to be divided or added onto, thus becoming autonomous or dependent on another structure. Our main module, for example, is a kind of loft divided in half in order to create two rooms, as simple as that. In summary, the module is a two-, three-, or four-bedroom apartment; a house can be formed by adding on two or four more modules. The important thing is the versatility of this structure, one that can be entirely factory-made then raised on site in a friendly manner.
Too many architects only talk to other architects that share the same views, and are becoming increasingly irrelevant as a result, according to OMA founder Rem Koolhaas. (more…)
Studio Gang has designed a new home for the Academy for Global Citizenship (AGC), a Chicago Public Charter School in the Garfield Ridge neighborhood. Established eight years ago with the operating philosophy that a more sustainable world begins at school, the proposed campus is an urban farm and educational institution wrapped into one.
Courtesy of Studio Gang
According to the Studio, “[the design] reimagines the concept of ‘school’ as a place that embraces the innate curiosity of children, the natural systems of the world, and a responsibility to make positive change, instilling in students a mindset of sustainability and wellness.” In creating a design that focuses on the school’s distinct character and goals, Studio Gang believes the institution can be a model for global change.
Courtesy of Studio Gang
Currently AGC operates out of two buildings separated by a busy road. The school partnered with Studio Gang in 2015 to design a new purpose-built 21st-century learning campus. The proposed design is a series of indoor and outdoor learning environments around a central courtyard. Students and teachers from different grade levels are placed in collaborative environments, aiding the school’s inquiry-based approach to learning. The different areas of the school are thought of as “neighborhoods” and are connected by a “Wonder Path” that unites the school’s indoor and outdoor environments, hands-on laboratories, and learning stations.
Courtesy of Studio Gang
Through the use of solar energy, greenhouses, seasonal gardens, stormwater management, natural ventilation, and geothermal systems, the school reduces its energy load and improves the definition of wellness for its students. One part of this is the urban farm, which not only allows students to participate in agriculture, food preparation, and animal care, but will also supply produce for meals. The school also believes that this process aids in the development of patience, self-confidence, empathy, an open mind to new and healthy foods, and an interest in becoming better global and local citizen.
Courtesy of Studio Gang
In addition, the building’s orientation is meant to provide peak solar access for outdoor learning spaces and greenhouses, while also maximizing photovoltaic energy collection, and providing the most natural light for indoor classrooms and spaces with clerestory windows. The school also hopes to achieve net-positive status, producing more energy than it consumes through solar and geothermal sources. With sustainability and wellness as guiding principles, the school seeks to demonstrate a position of environmental stewardship that it hopes to impart on the students.
