© Malte Brandenburg

In this series, entitled Stacked, photographer Malte Brandenburg takes a closer look at the architectural merits of Berlin’s post-war housing estates. Captured against a flat blue sky, the images seek to strip away the historical and social burdens carried by the buildings, presenting them instead as pieces of pure architecture.

© Malte Brandenburg

Once seen as symbols of freedom and prosperity for the German middle class, providing ample space at affordable prices in a time of reconstruction after World War II, a large number of these buildings have fallen into states of neglect. Today they are viewed by many as a blight on the city’s skyline. By placing the buildings outside their usual context, Brandenburg sought to highlight the towers for the qualities that once made them desirable.

In the photographer’s words, “For me they are not ugly leftovers from past decades in a city’s skyline. I find they tell a story, which is still relevant today, namely the tension between urban development and the human element.”

Brandenburg’s full portfolio can be found here.

© Malte Brandenburg

© Malte Brandenburg

© Malte Brandenburg

© Malte Brandenburg

© Malte Brandenburg

© Malte Brandenburg

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EU Barcode (OMA*AMO). Image © flickr user eager. Licensed under CC BY 2.0.

In a recent interview with the BBC, Rem Koolhaas (OMA) has spoken out against the campaign seeking to remove the United Kingdom from the European Union, upon which the British people will vote in a referendum next week. Reflecting on his time spent at London’s Architectural Association (AA) in the 1960s and ’70s, Koolhaas fears that advocates for withdrawal may be looking at the past through rose-colored glasses.

If you look at the arguments to leave you can see this is a movement of people who want to fundamentally change England back into the way it supposedly was before.

Rem Koolhaas. Image Courtesy of flikcr user Strelka. Licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Instead, Koolhaas explains, before entering the EU in 1973 the United Kingdom was a “world of pea soup and a complete absence of coffee.” Joining the EU injected both the AA and the country as a whole with a rush of new cultures. “The school was unbelievably English,” he continued. When he returned around eight years later, the school was staffed by people from Germany, Czechoslovakia, and France. “It had completely transformed. I think that that moment of transformation was something that on a bigger scale happened to England as a whole. It opened up itself, helping to modernize the whole of English mentality, the whole of English civilization.”

A long time supporter of the European Union (EU), Koolhaas also has professional ties to the situation and the ideas behind what is at stake. In the early 2000s the research division of his firm, AMO, worked extensively with the EU to develop new identity and branding strategies. These collaborations resulted in a new “Barcode Flag,” which featured a complex arrangement of colors from the flags of each member state and a set of panoramic murals expressing the evolution of the continent. Trusting in the enormous potential of the union, OMA*AMO had hoped the project would result in an EU that would be seen as “bold, explicit, popular.”

There is much more at stake, I think, than simply being in or out.

EU Barcode. Image © OMA*AMO

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© Juan Durán Sierralta

• Architects: Alejandro Soffia
• Location: Guanaqueros, Coquimbo, Coquimbo Region, Chile
• Area: 30.0 sqm
• Project Year: 2016
• Photographs: Juan Durán Sierralta

• Budget: U$365 / sqm2

© Juan Durán Sierralta

In 1953 Le Corbusier wrote a letter to the Chilean Architects, and was sent through Emilio Duhart, a very important Chilean Architect that was drawing for him the buildings that he was doing in that moment in India. In this letter he emphasize the need on taking care of people while developing a design process. He said that “in that moment academic ideas where left behind, and the smallest measurements, the shorter distances or the smallest built spaces, become precious as a glass of water in the desert”. 

Since I was in the School of Architecture, I faced  little projects, like cabins, vacation homes, etc. But they they were not just small in terms of area, they had also a small budget. So my first professional challenges where to manage doing good design with a few money. The big problem afterwards was that I kept on receiving this kind of assignments, because in some way or the other, I had specialized on doing ‘low cost design’. 

© Juan Durán Sierralta

© Juan Durán Sierralta

So I started developing different strategies for reaching this goal of good design. I went on survey for prefabricated architecture, thinking of the technical possibilities of building with more control, faster, and cheaper. And I had some interesting experiences as my SIP Panel House in Santo Domingo, Chile. But prefabrication techniques require some industrial processes, related to commercial markets, that have a limit if you want to go down on the building cost. So then I tried working on ‘low tech’ design. In a country like Chile, you usually find precarious contexts were buildings rise. So is easy then to get in touch with local precarious techniques and workforce. And this precariousness is very well related to design in terms of the capacity of solving architecture problems with less time, local materials and little technological knowledge. This was the strategy that I used in my ‘Hostal Ritoque” in Quintero, Chile.

Elevation / Section

Diagram

Model

This Polycarbonate Cabin is a small house for rent, just beside another bigger house for holydays in the coast of Guanaqueros village. The owner lives on renting this two houses for people that are left outside the main beach resorts of the country. It’s a small scale personal enterprise to offer a place to stay and enjoy the beach, so in the beginning there was a very tight budget to build, just U$365 / sqm. So in this case I tried again working with low tech design, working with just one carpenter, with the techniques he knew, assimilating all this conditions in the beginning of the design process.

© Juan Durán Sierralta

But there was another problem. The site had already a built house, and even a pre-existing room beside of 9 sqm. So there was a tight area also to build this second holiday house, and that meant lack of sunlight. That’s why I used two design operations aiming to solve this problem. The first was mismatching the walls of both rooms to create a light patio within the pre-existing room. And the second operation was to build with polycarbonate, the large wall that separate both house were it develops an 90 cm wide corridor. With this two operations we could give the house a very tight relation with the site, and a lot of sunlight for this Cabin.

© Juan Durán Sierralta

This polycarbonate cabin is named like that because it has a long polycarbonate wall on the setting sun side. This white wall can reflect light and be translucent. As was told before, this little cabin is located in a site that has already a house. Being so close to each other, this polycarbonate wall gives light both the inside of the cabin, and the walkway between the houses. The structural system is done with standard boards of raw pine wood. All the house was built just by one craftsmen within 2 months.

© Juan Durán Sierralta

© Juan Durán Sierralta

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Courtesy of West 8

Urban design and landscape firm West 8 has released images of a newly designed sculpture park for Duke University. To be known as Three Valleys Sculpture Park, the 140 acre design will be set within the sprawling Duke Forest, alongside the Olmstead Brothers’ designed Campus Drive, and will help to strengthen the link between Duke’s east and west campuses.

Courtesy of West 8

Central to the park’s design is its interaction with the hub-and-spoke plan of the Nasher Museum of Art, designed by Rafael Viñoly Architects. The park will surround the building, transforming existing parking lanes into green space and creating new entrances into the 5 glazed corners of the museum’s atrium. Gently curving pathways will bring pedestrians to terrain for sculpture as well as a new vantage point from which to view the museum.

Courtesy of West 8

Further along the path, the three valleys from which the park gets its name will be given new bridges to replace outdated culvert systems, creating a more practical stream ecology and giving students and visitors the ability to enjoy the landscape for the first time. West 8’s vision plan also includes improvements to Campus Drive, museum gardens and plazas, a sculpture slope and a series of walkways.

Other current West 8 projects include a collaboration with SHoP Architects for Philadelphia’s Schuylkill Yards and a revitalization of the Silverton district in West London.

Courtesy of West 8

Courtesy of West 8

Courtesy of West 8

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© Rob Duker

• Architects: The Matrix…cc Urban Designers & Architects
• Location: Port Elizabeth, South Africa
• Architect In Charge: The Matrix…cc Urban Designers & Architects
• Design Team: Prof. Albrecht Herholdt, Gianni Geminiani, Neal Fisher
• Area: 2147.0 sqm
• Project Year: 2016
• Photographs: Rob Duker

• Structural Engineers: Sigma Consulting – Hannes Loots
• Mechanical Engineers: CARIFRO – Peter Gatang’I, David Frost
• Electrical Engineers: CARIFRO – Timothy de Vos, David Frost
• Text’s Author: Gareth Leonard

© Rob Duker

Site Plan

From the architect. The competition was won by the Matrix…cc Architects & Urban Designers, whose scheme proposed a structurally playful building that reformed the previously fenced off connection with the local community through the creation of a public square. The inclusion of the building and greater campus into the surrounding context was one of the primary conceptual drivers.

© Rob Duker

1st Floor Key Plan

Section Main Building

In establishing the spatial massing of the proposed site to hold the space, the design reinforces the creation of a strong pedestrian entrance, defined by the spire of the main administration building, accentuating the axial link between the square and campus. 

© Rob Duker

The creation of a new campus gateway resulted in the programme of the building being split in two, with a ‘Classroom Building’, consisting of central atrium and gallery space linking three levels of training facilities, lecture rooms and computer facilities, and an ‘Office Building’, which hosts the administration, security and staff facilities. A grand entrance canopy, defining the gateway threshold into the campus and layering the transition between public spaces, visually and spatially links the two buildings.

West Elevation Admin Building

South Elevation Admin building

The orientation maximises natural light and ventilation, creating a bright and inviting atmosphere that permeates the triple volume gallery of the building. Serving as the central circulation spine, the gallery links the various classroom, training and computer centres with a range of communal spaces, conversation pits and a generous open atrium at the entrance. This mix of studio and study spaces is further extended to the outside of the building, where generous verandas, external terraces and an embanked grass amphitheatre allow for a range of personal and communal events.

© Rob Duker

The design is further highlighted by the inclusion of a heavy hanging fascia beam that spans along the upper edge of the building.. Much of the clarity of the structure however resides in the minimised palette of materials employed. Guided by the original face brick design used throughout the Missionvale campus, the building limits itself to off-shutter concrete, face-brick and steel, with accents of painted finishes in the corporate red and blue colours of the NMMU.

© Rob Duker

Drama in materiality is also created with subtle variations in application and surface; concrete floors are polished to reveal the contrast between the smooth exposed aggregate and off shutter concrete; perforated metal screens designed to enclose the industrial fire escape staircases, while the milled steel roof sheeting to the soft roofs results in a wonderfully textured dappling effect along the southern facade. The colourful mosaic tiles placed on the playful and interactive conversation pit, suspended within the atrium and puncturing the glass facade of the building, create a burst of colour and provide a central focal point.

Detail

Detail

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