On November 3, TheatreSquared Executive Director Martin Miller and Artistic Director Robert Ford unveiled the completed plans for the company’s new permanent home, a 50,000 square-foot building in Fayetteville, Arkansas designed by London-based theater planners Charcoalblue and New York–based Marvel Architects. The new building will include two theaters, a rehearsal space, staff offices, design workshops, a community space, a 24-hour cafe/bar, three levels of outdoor public space, and a separate building housing eight guest artist apartments.
Charcoalblue worked to preserve and enhance the sense of panoramic immersion in the current space, adding 100 seats to the theatre’s base seating capacity while only deepening the room by one row, said senior project manager Clem Abercrombie. I’m proud to say this is one of the most intimate, yet immersive, theatre spaces Charcoalblue has designed.
The theater achieves acoustic isolation with an acoustic envelope composed of board-form concrete, shielding the performance spaces from the noise of downtown Fayetteville. Meanwhile, the assemblage of volumes integrates the theater with its surroundings: the theaters and rehearsal space project out from the building’s facade, and the outdoor areas are designed for transparency to the community at large.
TheatreSquared is the professional regional theater of Northwestern Arkansas. Named one of the nation’s foremost emerging theaters by the American Theatre Wing, founder of the Tony Awards, TheatreSquared has expanded its audience tenfold in the last five years and now hosts 40,000 visitors annually. In 2015, TheatreSquared was chosen as one of three inaugural beneficiaries of the Walton Family Foundation’s Northwest Arkansas Design Excellence Program, which funds the development of public spaces by renowned architects. Since launching in 2015, the Program has curated a group of 36 architecture and landscape architecture firms to participate in all phases of design projects aimed at elevating the quality of Northwestern Arkansas’s built environment while complementing the region’s rich architectural history.
Maybe with the sole exception of railway stations, public space is generally understood as outdoor space. Whether in the United States or in Europe, especially now with heightened concerns around security, there seems to be this determined way of privatizing everything that is indoors, even as we are increasingly aiming to improve access to public space outdoors. But in the layered systems of our cities of the future, we will need to focus on the public spaces that are found inside buildings—and make them accessible.
In 1748, Giambattista Nolli made this wonderful map of Rome where he only had two distinctions—what was private and what was public. Whether it was indoor or outdoor, whether there was a church space or a plaza, it didn’t really matter. It told a different story of the city. There are some examples from today—the roof of our Oslo Opera House is outdoors, for instance, but it’s on the building and publicly accessible. Opening up the Louvre and trying to let people walk through it 24 hours a day—as with the museum’s recent takeover by the artist JR—is another way of not making a distinction between indoor and outdoor public space.
These kinds of programming decisions are essential to the way new architecture typologies develop, and architects should definitely have influence on them. In certain situations, accessibility to indoor public space is enough. In other situations, you have to define the program for the particular indoor or outdoor spaces to be adequate. To use the example of the roof of the Opera House in Oslo again, it was basically programmed only for one thing, and that’s to be walked on, for a promenade. But on occasion, it could be reprogrammed to hold an outdoor concert. Or it could be reprogrammed against the original intention by skaters or by a biker who actually drives his motorbike up and down the roof.
Maybe the outdoor can be programmed in such a way that it unlocks the possibility of the public spaces indoors. There’s always a bit of urban planning in designing interiors. There’s always a bit of interior design in an urban space. There’s no question that interior architecture is professionalizing itself as well—interior architects are not seen as decorators of interior space anymore. The same is true of landscape architects. And those are only the traditional design professions.
Every architect doesn’t need to be trained in every specialized profession, but what is lacking is an overall understanding of how people should collaborate. That’s why we’ve introduced transpositioning as a working method in our office, where you not only sit around tables with a lot of specialists, but you actually swap professions during creative workshops. The only thing that can save the essence of architecture is some kind of collaborative model like this.
By adopting this model, both in education and practice, I think we would be better equipped to fully understand the effects of programming. We are usually generalists enough to understand that a change of use is sometimes demanded and that we shouldn’t try to desperately hold on to certain kinds of programming. But the profession itself should, in my opinion, really contain that kind of knowledge, simply because it’s so tightly connected to the actual design task. How can we change the relationship between buildings and the public unless we’re directly involved in programming ourselves?
Kjetil Trædal Thorsen is a founding partner at Snøhetta. The firm’s recently completed projects include the Ryerson University Student Learning Centre in Toronto and the expansion of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
In the beginning of 2010, Russian President Dmitri Medvedev announced the creation of a “Silicon Valley for Russia,” to be located in a southern suburb of Moscow, that would feature research facilities, university laboratories, start-ups, meeting hubs, and housing. After an international competition in 2011, each of the districts within this larger project was awarded to its own architect. After careful planning, Agence d’Architecture A. Bechu & Associés has unveiled its design for District 11 of the project.
Concentrating on ecological housing, this district will contain individual houses dedicated to researchers and their families, under the greater goal of positive social interactions.
Like penguins gathering on ice in a circle to keep each other warm, one hundred villas are grouped in tens, in a vast clearing surrounded by a river to accommodate snowmelt explained the architects in a press release. This organization also allows for the formation of micro-communities around a central square, reminiscent of a village.
Each of the villas will be unique, giving occupants their own identity within the urban ensemble, but will all feature a modular concrete frame, green roof, and use of renewable energy and water recycling.
From the architect. The Wehrhahn Line is the largest and most sophisticated recent urban development project in Düsseldorf, reaching its successful conclusion this weekend after 15 years of construction and planning. One highlight of the route is the design of the new U-Bahn tunnel and the six U-Bahn stations. Architecture and art strikingly come together, characterizing impressions of the spaces. The artists also contributed to the remarkable decisions as equal partners from the beginning of planning and have not permitted any advertising spaces in the new stations.
Pempelforter Strasse Station: “Surround” Model
The project was implemented by the office of netzwerkarchitekten from Darmstadt together with artist Heike Klussmann, who together in 2001 won the EU-wide architecture competition for all six stations against major international competition. Together they developed the overall concept of a U-Bahn tunnel as an “underground continuum,” similar to a giant snake as it slips through the earth, widening at the respective stations before continuing on its path. In contrast to the colored spaces of public space, it features a light relief-like grid structure. The smallest graphic unit of the design is a rhombus generated by the structural joints and constantly varied, resulting in a spatial drawing. The structure of Continuum systematically shrinks or expands resulting in a dynamic spatial effect.
The stations are connected via openings to the urban space, each maintaining its own identity while acting as a connection to the city above. The central guidelines for the design of the stations were spaciousness, generous sightlines between platform levels and concourse levels, clarity, easy orientation and allowing as much natural light as possible deep into the stations. During the second competition in 2002, artists Ralf Brög, Ursula Damm, Manuel Franke, Enne Haehnle and Thomas Stricker were selected. Together with the architects each developed a specific design for the access areas of a specific station. Additionally, Heike Klussmann undertook the design of Pempelforter Straße.
For the station at Kirchplatz, Enne Haehnle wrote poetic texts and then gave them sculptural life. The lines of text leading passengers down into the subway begin at the three entrances, lead down into the station, intersect there and then accompany the passengers to the tracks. A fourth text scrolls across the central skylight. The lines of writing, forged from steel cables that were then covered with a bright color, can each only be read from certain perspectives owing to their 3D qualities. A game between abstraction and legibility thus unfolds, depending on the passengers’ location and angle of vision.
Manuel Franke has used hundreds of panels of luminous green glass to create an immersive chromatic environment interrupted only by a powerful flow of lines that accompany the passenger from the street, through the concourse and down to the platform. Delicate linear subdivisions alternate with explosive bursts of color. These zestful colors were achieved by way of a specially developed analog process realized by an artistic intervention during manufacturing.
Benrather Strasse Station: “Heaven Above, Heaven Below” / Thomas Stricker
Through a conceptual inversion of the space surrounding the architecture, Thomas Stricker has brought the universe, with its planets and stars, its tranquility and weightlessness into the underground world of the subway station. In cooperation with netzwerkarchitekten, the interior design of a spaceship was developed for the station. A stainless steel embossed matrix covers the walls, interrupted by large panoramic windows in the form of multi-media displays. These screens show 3D video animations of the universe, giving passengers a window looking out onto outer space.
Heinrich Heine Allee Station: “Three Model Spaces” / Ralph Broeg
Ralf Brög designed the three new entrances to the Heinrich-Heine-Allee station as visual and acoustic venues for the performance of changing sound compositions – as an “Auditorium”, a “Theater” and a “Laboratory”. Each of the three model spaces boasts a high-quality sound system, enabling the most wide-ranging acoustic interventions possible; they can be used in coming years to present works by as broad an array as possible of composers and sound artists. For the opening, contributions by author and director Kevin Rittberger (Theater), composer Stefan Schneider (Laboratory) and musician Kurt Dahlke and artist Jörn Stoya (Auditorium) were to be heard.
The “Laboratory” focuses on the experimental use of tones. Sound sculptures hang in space while opposite the “Interference Atlas” visualizes optical phenomena. In the “Theater” a theater curtain can be discerned on the ceramic surface. Messages and other sound material is audible. Viewers find themselves asking where they stand: Are they a part of the play or are they the audience? The “Auditorium” is equipped with 48 loudspeakers that can be individually controlled. The 3D wall elements enable the spread of sound to be modulated, thereby optimizing the acoustic properties of the room. This equipment facilitates a unique compositional approach and an equally unique listening experience.
Ursula Damm has created an interactive installation involving multiple elements. At its center is a large LED screen displaying the real-time movements of passersby on the city surface – transformed through a computer program. The resulting images of small, virtual life forms are create through the constantly changing dynamic energy of the passersby. This concept recurs in the blue glass of the station’s walls. Geometrically interpreted aerial views of Dusseldorf are presented as whole or excerpts.
At the Pempelforter Strasse station Heike Klussmann works with the 3D effects of the space’s specific geometries. She measured the station and transposed the measurements onto a 3D model. She took the directions of movement from each entrance, extended them into the station and placed four white bands, each with the same measurements as the entrances, as an inverted sculpture over the floor, walls and ceiling. The directions of the edges of the space were recorded so that they could break and process the geometry of the room. The band structure has an independent existence after breaking with the geometry of the space and as an inverted sculpture cuts across the perimeters of the station’s spaces. The resulting three-dimensional effect of this game with the dimensions of surfaces and spaces is surprising. It seems that the actual boundaries of the subway station have dissolved.
… A really small facing South plot, the result of Judith’s parent’s house segregation…
This brief site description contains the main conditions to explain the project strategy: The size explains the height and number of floors (3) and the minimum occupation possible (40 m2). Parents are the reason to concentrate the free space converting the garden into access and lobby of the house. The orientation explains how the south facade is the main source of light and views; it does so without any limit, using a set of large recycled windows. The overtures are complemented by a polycarbonate greenhouse gallery that performs as heat collector and sun protector. Only the north facade contains other windows to allow good cross ventilation.
The stairs, single-section, transversal and reversible, acts as vertical circulation and distributor of the six resulting spaces, only the bathroom and laundry are specific to it’s function, the rest five assume in ambiguous way the domestic program awarded at the end by customers. The spaces are highly characterized in terms of geometry, material, and comfort but little in terms of function.
A good friend of mine bought an old house some years ago and asked us to develop a concept for its refurbishment. It became the first project of our Hamburg-based architectural studio, asdfg Architekten: the conversion of an old miller’s house into a home for a family with three kids. Due to its history and location, we considered the project a big challenge, but we also saw significant potential for it to become a very unique single family house with a small garden in the center of one of the most popular neighbourhoods in Berlin.
Because of its status as the oldest building of Prenzlauer Berg (built in 1844), the authorities asked us to reconstruct the facade of the heritage-protected building precisely as depicted on a historical drawing from 1844. We wanted to show the history of the old building, but we didn’t want to pretend that the facade would be 170 years old. In an architectural drawing, a line can be interpreted in many different ways: e.g. as a gap in the wall, a section line or a difference in height. The concept we developed was to argue that the lines in the historical drawing could be read as differences in the height of the plaster-rendered facade using ancient techniques and materials. It took us quite some time and many visualisations and physical models to convince the authorities of our approach. As a result of its prior use as a police station and a workshop, followed by many years of vacancy, the house was in a very dilapidated condition, and the interior was divided into many very small rooms. In order to create a generous space, we only kept the outer walls and one massive wall in the middle. The staircase, kitchen, as well as the sleeping galleries for the children are ‘plugged’ into this wall. The main inner-staircase is divided in two parts. The first five steps lead through the big wall on a small platform, where it is possible to experience the full height of the main room. The second part hangs from an open gallery which spans from one wall to the other, creating the parents’ working and sleeping spaces, which are separated by a huge sliding door. For the staircase and the kitchen interior, we reused the wood of the old beams of the former ceilings. The old brick walls were left uncovered and are visible from the inside.
The design process was carried out in close consultation with the client, which resulted in many highly personalized and individually created elements. Not only the cabinets, but almost everything, from the shutters to the washbasins and even the bathtub, was custom made for this project.
Just 15 kilometers far from the center of Hanoi, the suburban district Dong Anh has witnessed pervasive urbanization – one of the major causes for a trend towards a maximum use of volume and quantity of construction areas. Lesser importance has been attached to the quality of used space and surrounding scenery. This has resulted in a large number of “suffocating” buildings as often found in newly planned, stuffy urban areas characterized with land plot subdivision for building row houses in Vietnam.
Diagram
A “properly breathing” solution
Featured in both living and working space, a “properly breathing” house serves as a solution to the quality improvement of used space by creating a natural sense of breathing rhythm in monsoon tropical conditions, which is attributed to the two built-in functions: The Inside and outside. The inside offers many voids while the outside has double-skin facade including the inner layer as all-glass panels; the between as corridor for movement; the outer layer as recycled ceramic bricks (40cmx40cm). Pot plants are also randomly arranged to absorb the humidity and mitigate calorific radiation.
Together with the inner duplex, the layer of ceramic bricks is to purify dust and smoke, suck in fresh air and take heat away through open panels alternated with pot plants on the facade. This filter helps revitalize the architectural space by balancing the breathing of human and nature, and promoting the connection and interaction between the inner and outer scenery, roofs with creepers above and pot plants and vegetables below, sunlight and shade,…
As a breathing space is only considered an existence; therefore, a properly breathing space is required so that it can breathe properly towards a healthy life in both natural and socio-cultural habitat particular to each region. In this sense, the properly breathing house is expected to contribute to highlighting the local architecture in a current global context.
From the architect. The Ji County Geological Museum has taken “the exhibition of the history of tier and fold of rocks” as its theme, using stones of rare shapes which have evolved over billions of years to construct the outline and space of the museum. The museum imitates the special forms of geological structure, forming a spiral plane layout.
Master Plan
The irregular curving eaves and the newly built wall made of the stones from the discarded mountain houses look just like laminating stratum formed after billions of years’ sedimentation.
The architecture looks so natural as if it is grown from the underground layer after layer, showcasing the unique charm which can only be seen after great changes.
From the architect. Learning and training center for hair and beauty students located in the most prestigious area of Gangnam. The 8-story building includes training rooms, auditorium for large seminars and cultural events, and a rooftop penthouse lounge space.
The main training salon is a double height space on the 5th floor that is the showcase for Juno Academy. The highlight of a multi-level academy for hair and beauty, this space can transform into a venue for presentations, seminars and shows. Free-standing designer stations are easily movable allowing flexible layouts. The raw-industrial materials of pre-cast cement blocks and brushed-finish bronze ceiling panels extend outward to the underside of a double-height cantilevered terrace. Images of the moon are projected on this ceiling at night contributing public art to one of the most exclusive retail districts in Gangnam.
Exposed concrete block columns are spaced according to the designer station module emphasizing the verticality of the space and bringing texture and scale to this large volume. The upper level offers views of the training activity below for visitors.
The building sits on a narrow site with the main stair and elevator hall taking up over a third of the floor area. In order to maximize the public space, these fire separate halls are opened to the main function spaces so that there is constant interaction between them. The halls are used as an informal lounge space with the walls showing the history of the academy and expressing the vision and mission of its founder.
Floor Plan
Floor Plan
Floor Plan
The top floor with access to a lush roof garden is based on a library loft concept with sitting, dining and open kitchen areas. The library bookshelves with a mezzanine level filling the entire wall is the centerpiece of the space. Natural walnut wood floors and long dining table, wood slat ceiling, copper mesh between the kitchen and dining, and brushed metal finishes continues the industrial theme but with a much warmer tone, color and lighting. Its become a favorite place for meeting, dining, and informal parties.
To accommodate large conferences and events, the basement level maximized the site area by pushing the walls to the site boundary line and eliminated columns by transferring all the structure to the outside building line. The column-free space with 5m high ceiling has movable walls for flexible space configuration and full-height pivoting glass entry doors to allow the space to flow into the foyer area. With a sunken garden planted with giant bamboo trees, this basement level gets plenty of natural light and ventilation.
The typical training spaces follow the same layout as the main training salon with island movable training stations, and fixed stations along the wall. The color and material concept in wood, metal, and exposed concrete floors continue here with details and lighting to match the scale of the space.
The church for 1,100 people is part of a three phase project for a Catholic parish in Oceanside, with which the firm has worked for over twenty years. Located on a hillside at the intersection of Melrose Road and Cannon Drive, the parish grounds also include a 4,000 square foot community hall, administrative offices, and surrounding garden courts.
The church is built on the highest elevation of the site, with a 60 foot bell tower lending visibility and definition from afar. The solid volumes flanking the bell tower oppose harsh Western sun with staggered walls and clerestories that filter light softly into the interior.
Inside, the design of the sanctuary celebrates the congregation itself as the center of liturgy. Pews made of cherry wood from the Pacific Northwest are arranged in a semicircular layout to encourage interaction and visibility among parishioners. Overhead, cherry ceiling louvers envelope the congregation and choir, providing a sense of warmth and unity.
At the altar, angled walls of cross-cut Chilean travertine and raw concrete deliver diffuse light onto the sanctuary’s focal point—the crucified corpus. The bronze sculpture was created by artist Lynn Kircher; the cross frame by Renzo Zecchetto Architects.
The building takes advantage of natural sea breezes for cooling. An underfloor plenum supplies conditioned air through the perforated supports of the pews.
The eastern elevation is defined by transparency and openness: the narthex is here reimagined as a curtain wall and overhang that welcomes parishoners directly from the courtyard and gardens.
The glazed courtyard doors further increase accessibility and visual connection to the rest of the campus and its outdoor spaces which, thanks to the temperate Southern California climate, provide year-round places for contemplation and repose.
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_YOONSUN'S_FOREST_(1).jpg?1476260703 "© Yoon, Joonhwan")
Sig Nordal 