This edition of Section D, Monocle 24’s weekly review of design, architecture and craft turns its editorial gaze “back onto our own turf” to consider how to cover design and architecture, both in print and online. The episode asks whether or not “traditional magazines are as influential as they used to be, and whether clicks and online-only articles can actually pay the bills?” In search of answers, Monocle’s Henry-Rees Sheridan talks to ArchDaily’s co-founder and Editor-in-Chief, David Basulto, and European Editor-at-Large James Taylor-Foster, about the origins of the platform and some of our motivations.
You can hear the ArchDaily segment at around fifteen minutes into the show. This episode also features a discussion with editor and design consultant Katie Treggiden, along with art director and award-winning infographic designer Francesco Franchi.
It’s gone beyond simply replicating the content of a traditional print publication online and become an engine for debate, news, opinion and insight among professionals and aficionados alike.
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The new city hall in Deventer unites the old historical city hall with a new city office. The new building complex is located at the ‘Grote Kerkhof’ and extends as far as the ‘Burseplein’. The 24.000 m2 large project consists of 20.000 m2 new buildings and 4.000 m2 renovation and restoration of existing listed monuments. The project consists of an entrance building with a main building behind it and unites all of Deventer’s employees, formerly divided over the city, under one new roof. It houses the city council and all municipal services and invigorates a formerly forgotten part of the inner city.
COURTS AND SQUARES The City Hall’s design seamlessly blends in with Deventer’s typical urban tradition of gardens and squares that are interconnected via alleys, lanes, pathways and gates. The building is organized around two new public squares: an open court surrounding the former mayor’s residence and a covered inner square; the building’s central hall where citizens, visitors and employees can meet one another. Adjacent to the office buildings in the Polstraat and Assenstraat two large city gardens are situated next to the neighbouring residential buildings.
At ground floor level the building creates a link between the city’s two most important squares through a new continuous route that starts at the ‘Grote Kerkhof’, continues via the open Mayor’s Court and covered central hall to the Burseplein and ends at the main ‘Brink’ square. Perpendicular to this passage is a second walking route that connects the inner city with the IJssel river shore. Both are public routes. At the first level a closed circuit has been made for City Hall staff and employees connecting all historical buildings with the new ones. This route lies around the Mayor’s Court and enables a fast connection between all functions and departments.
Plan
BUILDING AND ENVIRONMENT The front building at the ‘Grote Kerkhof’ consists of two layers with a sloped roof and a facade composition with strong vertical lines, like its neighbouring buildings ‘de Hereeniging’ and the old city hall. This continuity makes the front building effortlessly fit in with its historical surroundings. By placing the roof backwards a city balcony is created. This makes the facade appear more separated, creating a recognizable facade at the ‘Grote Kerkhof’.
The main building consists of three layers, like most buildings surrounding it. The tall vertical windows blend in with the architecture of the inner city and allow daylight to cast deep into the building, together with the skylight of the large hall. The main building has a roof surface consisting of alternating mansard roofs and green flat roofs, creating a skyline similar to its environment. The mansard roofs create spacious interiors in the attics. The roof terrace alongside the Mayor’s Court offers a panoramic view over Deventer’s inner city.
Elevation
FACADES AND ART Open filigree wooden frames and closed brick volumes alternate within the facades. The stone facades consist of large block masonry with protruding window frames. The bricks are multi-coloured creating a lively image. The filigree facades consist of a grid of different sized oak wood frames. The oak framework provides space to integrate contemporary art in the building’s architecture.
In collaboration with local artist Loes ten Anscher a series of aluminium grids was designed to fit within the oak framework, containing 2.264 unique fingerprints of 2.264 different citizens of Deventer. Spread out over the outer and inner facades of the building they form one large work of art. The visible presence of Deventer citizens in the facade turns the city hall into a true ‘Citizen House’.
MATERIALS AND DETAILS The city hall contains both public and private spaces that have received their own materialisation and detailing. Robust materials and sober details characterize the public spaces. The anthracite coloured natural stone floor leads the visitor from the different main and side entrances over the ground floor to all public spaces such as the central hall and the Mayor’s Court. The walls, stairs, columns and panelled ceilings are made out of concrete and finished with solid oak frames and fillings. The oak filigree facade with aluminium fingerprints is continued from the street to the interiors surrounding the court and central hall, making the interior part of the outer public space. The confined spaces are mainly situated in the main building and contain the city’s offices and back offices. Concrete and solid oak are used in combination with soft white and grey tones in the interior and furniture.
SUSTAINABILITY The Deventer City Hall is one the most sustainable public/government buildings in the Netherlands. Thanks to a clever design with tall spaces, vast amounts of daylight and air, optimized use of as many natural sources as possible, the implementation of green and multiple technical sustainable measures.
The great amount of windows, roof lights and high ceilings allow natural light to enter the building everywhere, creating an agreeable working environment and simultaneously lowering the electricity consumption. The exposed concrete inside the building contributes to a high-quality, comfortable indoor environment: the concrete stores warmth or cold in various seasons. Concrete core conditioning is also used. The shed roof construction in the public hall prevents direct sunlight from entering and overheating the building. Ventilation ducts and grids in the windows and floors let fresh air seep into the building. By transporting this heated air out of the building via the atrium, surplus heat is used in an efficient way. The use of sunlight, rainwater and water from the IJssel river (for cooling and heating) increases the building’s sustainability with 25% as opposed to similar offices in the Netherlands. The City Hall received the Dutch sustainable GPR score of 8 to 9 as well as the international qualification BREEAM ‘Excellent’.
House-U is a residential project designed by Marco Carini Interior Designer in 2015. It is located in Milan, Italy. Photos courtesy of Marco Carini Interior Designer
From the architect. The project involves the recovery of an old country barn partially damaged by the earthquake. The volume of the building and its size remained invariate. The project redefines the interior spaces and the distribution system, while externally develops a dual opening system.
The main facade is almost no openings except the front door and two small windows on the first floor, while the rear façade that overlooks the countryside opens fully to the outside and the plain landscape is the background to the internal space.
The environment is characterized by the presence of disused farm buildings have been abandoned and the cultivated fields of the Modena plain. The building claims its membership to sites with a main front from the harsh nature, grumpy and unhelpful, which is opposed to a domestic and faithful interior space and a large façade that opens the endless countryside.
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Sir Anish Kapoor’s studio has been present on a South London street for 20 years. Since 2010 the artist with CFA have collaborated on the transformation of a series of industrial buildings into new flexible studio spaces for making art using a variety of materials and processes.
The project consists of six separate spaces incrementally transformed to allow the continuous use of the site by the artist during the period of the build. The project creates a total of 3,100msq for art making.
Section
The project brief developed through the period of the project to its completion in late 2015. Individual spaces have differing atmospheres from near gallery specifications to robust studio workspaces. The history of the pre transformed spaces was retained with the archaeological surfaces left untreated where the artist had drawn or sketched maquettes of early work.
The new building comprises of 900msq of floor area spread over two floors with three distinct types of interior. A 9 m high north lit ground floor volume created by removing a significant area of the first floor A upper level painting studio together with a ground floor 4meter high volume that retained the fabric and material of the original.
CFA edited openings making new diffuse glazed windows within retained openings and in filling others with low grade brickwork maintaining the discordant surface of previous interventions.
From the architect. This project is to reconstruct an office in a high-rise building, the original space is in inadequate streamlined layout with multiple irregular shapes and dead space, and the overall utilization rate is low. The client wants the designers transform his office into a place where his staff can take a breath of nature behind the reinforced concrete walls. To this end, the designers abandoned the idea of traditional cubilces, and instead, they lined desks and bookshelves in curved shape alongside the walls and ceiling and moved the “forest” into the office, making it an open space with natural vitality.
The client specifically requires the designers to spare the space at the office entrance for meetings and negotiations, which makes the rest of the work area an irregular triangular space. In order to maximize the utilization of space, the designers creatively converts the disadvantage into the highlight of the project by using irregular curves in such an irregular space. The three sides are designed to naturally spread around the center of the area, thereby making the entire space in a streamlined layout without any dead space. In addition, the designers have made full use of sunny windows, making the area by the windows into a free space for exchange and sharing. The introduction of green plants has also brought rhythm and cadence to the office.
Design Concept
Streamlined space with winding entrance makes people feel like straying into the Peach Blossom Garden when entering the office.
Finally, an injection of fresh blood has been brought to the traditional office building. For the interior space, the designers have designed a peaceful and pleasant office garden without changing the original structure of the building, connecting the indoor and outdoor areas naturally and thus creating a new form of boundary.
Here, people can escape the urban fog and haze, feel like working in a tranquil garden, which allows them to relax during intense work and thereby increases work efficiency.
Curvilinear workspace contrasts with the rectilinear corridor, continuous curve divides the office into different spaces, providing people a completely different transition experience.
Floor Plan
The plants interspersed between tables enable the employees to feel the atmosphere of nature, and at the same time can effectively improve the indoor micro-climate and working environment. Plants are mainly those suitable for growing indoors, such as happy tree (Radermachera hainanensis Merr), with relatively low ferns and other small plants among them, making every corner full of green.
Glass partition in the conference room blurs the boundaries of space, which alters the stiff impression of conventional partitions. Natural and lightsome are the themes of this project. Abundant plants bring an attractive highlight to the office.
Traditional office is usually a semi-open space. Now, in this project, the office space is divided into various areas in picturesque disorder interspersed with trees and rocks, which makes the office more interesting and provides employees with a better experience.
Section
Section
The intensive use of wood conveys a sense of intimacy. Wood tables and decorations, together with white walls, form rich textural levels. With bookshelves and sofa as transitional spaces, the office becomes even more comfortable and pleasant by placing adequate plants. Graphic design elements in each functional area enrich the visual experience.
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Collaborators: Luis Fernando Taco, Roberto Alban, Gustavo Aguirre, Mateo Torres, Santiago Egas, Gabriela Loaiza, José López, Tatiana Chávez, Lucia Gómez
From the architect. The projects in which we get involved come as an answer to the understanding of all parties and to the singularities of each particular environment. Our intention is not to look for predetermined solutions, so the ideas for this house are born from wishes, experiences and the clients’ ways of living.
When the owner was a little kid, he wanted to decipher the mechanisms of old clocks. His passion for mechanics drove him into motorbikes and Land Rover cars. He was interested in a very didactic, utilitarian and dismantable house (in the understanding of the pieces in the manner of the mechanics of these vehicles). Constructive solutions had to be visible, no matter their manufacture. When we understood this direct connection to metal, the idea and the desire to live in a container house appeared. One of the main reasons to experiment with this material was the energy saving. These objects become waste after their life cycle (there are so many in the world that it becomes a problem). When changing their function and making them habitable, not only are we giving them a new use but we are also building in a clean manner. Design wise we worked towards simplification using only the necessary pieces.
Seven 20 feet containers and one 40 feet container arrived, later, to La Morita (Tumbaco) from Guayaquil. These units should help assemble a unique housing, located in a big green, fairly flat area and disconnected from the city’s mundane noise.
Containers are imperfect. They keep all their scars as a legacy to their dent register and history of uses. These objects were conceived as the complementary spaces of the house: storage rooms, bathrooms, closets and kitchen. They are basically used in their natural state. It was at this point that we considered to not change their original structure and in case of doing so, finding the responsible justification to intervene. By doing so, modifications were strategic and linked to lighting, air circulation and connection between exterior and interior spaces.
With the intention of showing the essence of the material, factory paint was removed to the exterior (visible metal), whilst a neutral and sanitary nature guided by the colour white was kept at the interior. Works on the floor would be done later, keeping its original wood.
The process
Four building phases were planned:
The first one related to the melting of the platforms, some rectangular basis of polished concrete, strategically laid out and organized along the topography in the manner of small functional stains. Due to a slight variation in the levels of the land’s longitudinal cut, platforms outstand as less as possible from the highest ridge, turning into small blurry island in sight.
The second phase was the assembly, alignment and moorings of the containers to the concrete platforms with a mechanical crane. In all cases, containers are supported on top of the concrete, slightly flying towards the exterior, offering a sense of balance and weight control. These pieces are set apart from each other with the intention of creating and delimiting habitable spaces and at the same time constitute the vertebral column of the house on which the roofs are settled.
The third phase relates to the positioning and soldering of the metallic beams system. These beams cross from container to container and help in the reinforcement of the concrete tiles.
Planta
Lastly, the fourth phase consisted on lowering a system of cables and beams from the roof which helps to give form to the bedrooms, where wood is the main material.
The house keeps a very strong connection with the exterior (green area and mountain) and all spaces in between containers are a sort of lack of material where the only noticeable elements are the metallic frames with the glass.
Three mechanical systems were designed to transform the use of spaces, a manual elevator to go up to the second floor, operable shutters placed in the bedrooms and a flexible floor in the master bathroom which folds and unfolds to discover a bathtub. All these solutions are like a game that allows the user to be a part of a style of architecture thought specifically for them.
