From the architect. The Monastère des Augustines, site of the first hospital in America north of Mexico, offers visitors a unique holistic wellness experience and direct contact with the rich heritage of the Augustinian Sisters. The new reception hall, playing with transparency, showcases the ancient building wings that have been completely restored and refurbished to accommodate the new proposed activities.
The project includes a museum visitor’s path describing the legacy of the Augustinian Sisters and their contribution to the development of health care in Quebec, as well as archives, an exhibition space, a restaurant, areas reserved for retreats, and a guest room section focusing on holistic health. An entire floor has been added above the sisters’ residence to house a conservation facility for the collections of all the twelve Augustinian monasteries in Quebec.
The new reception hall, a structurally separate interstitial building, is located where the circulation zones from the various wings intersect. This glassed-in section is designed to reflect the community’s openness, house the reception areas, clearly define the circulation zones, and showcase the historic buildings’ façades. Conceptually, this new building consists of a central hall bordered by a screen wall (an analogy to the grid of the grand parlor – the nuns were cloistered until 1960) and a completely transparent connector, which deploys in gateways in front of the Sisters’ Choir.
The project also includes the restoration of the historic buildings’ roofs and facades, the repair of all the layered windows, the addition of a new staircase, the integration of mechanical services to the old buildings, normative and safety adjustments, structural repairs, restoration and refurbishment of interiors from the ancient vaults to the attic, new contemporary rooms, the restoration of all finishes and built-in furniture, landscaping, as well as the demolition of outdated tunnels, the existing entry building and other accessory constructions.
Product Description. Parklex real wood stratified louvers were used in the main hall (wall and ceiling) instead of massive wood planks to comply with code restrictions, allowing us to keep the warm visual feel of real wood. The louvers were used to include black insulation boards underneath to upgrade the acoustic of the hall. It was also possible to install them inside and out, which was conceptually required.
Just the weekend before I had been thinking that I should write something about BIG. For weeks, one spectacular and interesting project after another had been popping up on Bjarke’s, Kai-Uwe Bergmann’s and a couple of others’ Facebook pages.
It was photographed fabulously from above by Iwan Baan, as the building is just catching the day’s last sunbeams. We have just seen in the Aspekte movie how the building stands out among the structures of the Manhattan Skyline.
BIG produces images that are instantly imprinted in the brain—which is not to say that the projects are simple. Besides the fact that the activity that takes place in these buildings is complex in itself, BIG is keen to ensure that the projects are equipped with a complexity of their own. However clear the concepts may be, one always finds deviations and exceptions that enrich the Whole and make room for the Individual.
BIG is not only Bjarke Ingels. By now the office has a couple hundred employees and interesting, independently acting partners such as Kai-Uwe Bergmann and Jakob Lange. The office regularly seeks collaborations with others, including architects and artists whose way of working is completely different from their own.
For Superkilen they worked with the landscape architects of Topotek 1, the art collective Superflex, and not least with residents of the neighboring area; for Google they worked with Thomas Heatherwick, for Hyperloop among others with Elon Musk and Ove Arup, and so on.
I’m going to venture a guess—that I was invited to deliver this laudation because I wrote SuperDutch, an international bestseller on architecture in the Netherlands in the 90s, 15 years ago. As it happens, there are indeed a couple of ties that connect BIG to the pragmatic taking-the-bull-by-the-horns and the affirmation of a second modernity by the Dutch people at the time. Bjarke Ingels worked for Rem Koolhaas at OMA, for example, on the library in Seattle.
In the meantime, Bjarke and BIG have long developed further and work on projects all over the planet. Unlike architectural practices in the past, BIG has been an international practice from the beginning. They work on the big issues, challenges and possibilities of our time: globalization, sustainability, social coherence, technology and innovation.
Bjarke Ingels himself is listed among the 100 most influential individuals in Time Magazine this year. Regarding this, Rem Koolhaas contributes a text in which he identifies himself as a friend. Even more important though, is that he emphasizes that Bjarke represents a completely new type of architect that is a perfect fit for the current Zeitgeist. “He is the first architect,” Koolhaas writes, “who has separated the profession completely from fear.” I have never heard Rem speak so generously of another architect.
With this characterization, it is remarkable that Bjarke Ingels is awarded the International Highrise Award here in Germany. Because here, theory purports, Zeitgeist and fear produced the utopian projects of Expressionism. Today, however, large-scale projects are sometimes considered utopian in Germany and Europe, and they produce a fear that defines the Zeitgeist.
Bjarke Ingels and BIG show that we can enter the universe of great ideas once again—actually, that maybe we have to—and that it is indeed possible that such imaginations are realized.
They shamelessly have a department called BIG Ideas.
This department, among other projects, works on the Hyperloop connection between Dubai and Abu Dhabi, where in 2020 small pods will stop for us when we want them to, and then cover the distance at a speed of 700 kilometers per hour in no time.
The quality of the projects by Bjarke Ingels and BIG in large parts does not stem from the way they look, but rather from how they are created and what they achieve.
Bjarke likes to use the term “Bigamy” for a method employed by BIG, because two sometimes well-known but entirely different phenomena are regularly brought together in order to produce something new and unknown—such as perimeter development and highrise in Via 57 West.
And this does not only consider the thing, the object, but rather essentially a form of social engineering which is kick-started by the building. This social engineering has no pre-defined ending.
It is a creative process that in some ways coincides with Byung-Chul Han’s approach of interpreting a form of innovation that emerges from Shanzhai, meaning from the act of copying well-known products, whereby a sort of evolutionary process with lots of participants occurs due to misunderstandings or small improvements.
The exceptional thing about Bjarke Ingels and BIG is that one never feels like they are losing ground. Sometimes their work reminds one of Otto Neurath’s dictum that we are like boatmen who have to remodel their ship on the open sea without ever having the possibility of disassembling it in a dock and rebuilding it from the best parts.
Kai-Uwe Bergmann describes BIG and Bjarke as a “mixture of Scandinavian ‘being social’, Mediterranean verve and American Can-Do-Spirit. (…) On one hand, we are shaped by a social responsibility that is not felt in the same way in the USA,” he says, “and at the same time, on the other hand, by a ‘Can-Do-ness’ that is lacking a bit in Europe.”
Thus, we see that in Via 57 West, 20% of the apartments, 142 units, are auctioned off as affordable rental units to people who earn a maximum of 30-50,000 dollars.
These low rents at Via 57 West did not diminish, as we have just seen, the large investment in facilities that enable a communal life of which one can only dream, even in Vienna.
This is more than amazing in a city where, not far away in Hudson Yards, the starting bid for a one bedroom apartment is 1.95 million dollars.
From the architect. Invited by Walk&Talk festival to participate in its 6th edition on the island of São Miguel in the Azores, Moradavaga took inspiration from the rich sea life that exists in and around the atlantic archipelago to produce a site specific piece of interactive art.
Influenced by the stunning landscapes and the mystic aura related to all that concerns whale hunting (in the past) and observation (in the present) our mind wandered through old tales like Moby Dick, by Herman Melville, and 20.000 Leagues Under the Sea, by Jules Verne, and the presence of sperm-whales along the Azores coasts led us to devise a character, “Vernie” the giant squid, that came from the depths of the ocean to serve as a communicative playful tool for passersby of all ages at Portas do Mar in the city of Ponta Delgada.
BIG has completed their second building on U.S. soil, a 92,000-square-foot office building at 1200 Intrepid Avenue in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania that also marks the firm’s first realized office building design. Located within the revitalized Philadelphia Navy Yard master plan (designed by Robert Stern), the four-story building features a bowing, double-curved facade and a supersized “periscope” inspired by the historic battleships docked a few blocks away.
Located adjacent to the James Corner-designed Central Green Park, the building volume responds to its setting in its curving front façade, constructed through the stacking of High Concrete precast panels of varying sizes in a basket-weave pattern and bowing inwards to create “a generous urban canopy” over the front sidewalk. The other three sides of the building relate to the rigid city grid, remaining perpendicular to the ground and showing off the structure’s signature paneling.
“The ‘shock wave’ of the public space spreads like rings in the water, invading the footprint of the building to create a generous urban canopy at the entrance,” explains Bjarke Ingels. “The resultant double-curved facade echoes the complex yet rational geometries of maritime architecture. Inside, the elevator lobby forms an actual periscope, allowing people to admire the mothballed ships at the adjacent docks.”
In reference to the site’s maritime history, a functioning periscope penetrates into the building lobby, providing both natural light and projected views of ships docked in the nearby Navy Yard basin. The central atrium is open to all floors and allows for maximum light exposure for bordering offices.
“In many cases, architects design big, boxy buildings that could be placed anywhere and don’t connect directly to the site. You would really be hard-pressed to place 1200 Intrepid anywhere else, due to how it connects with its surroundings. Our commission involved creating a speculative office building, for which no tenants were committed. The key challenge here was to create a reason for tenants to be here with the constraint of a stringent budget,” said BIG partner Kai-Uwe Bergmann.
In a region where extensive livestock predominated in the past, the promotion of tourism has given rise to new activities.
Plan 1
Following its expansion plan, Sebrae chose to deploy its new headquarters in Bonito, aiming to support micro and small enterprises that are emerging in that region of the state.
The architectural project was designed with an emphasis on sustainability, both in construction and in operationalization of the building. It also features references to the natural attractions of the region, where the transparency and color of the water are unique aspects.
When preparing the project, we sought to intervene minimally in the natural terrain profile, which has an uphill triangular conformation, with an area of 6,771.26 square meters.
Section
The building suggests floating on a water mirror, coated in porcelain tiles that refer to the tone of the waters of the Formoso River, the municipality’s main tributary.
Similarly, the color indigo adopted in certain internal spaces refers to the waters of the blue lake grotto, the city’s most iconic place.
External seals are contain thermal insulation in polyurethane and melamine coating panels. The interior, in turn, is made in plasterboard.
Plan 2
Linear openings in the cantilevered floor end over the water surface, plus the ridge vent along the thermoacoustic coverage, promote aeration while reducing the need for mechanical ventilation systems in the lobby.
The building is equipped with photovoltaic panels to provide energy self-sufficiency, as well as systems for reusing rainwater.
It has 718.40 square meters in built area, distributed over two stories. It houses administrative offices, internal and external training rooms (through the dock truck adapted for itinerant courses) and a lobby, designed as a multipurpose space to be used also by the community, as needed.
BIG’s VIA 57 West has been unanimously chosen as the winner of the 2016 International Highrise Award (IHA) for the world’s most innovative highrise.
One of the world’s most important architectural prizes for tall buildings, the award is presented by Deutsches Architekturmuseum (DAM) every two years to the project that best exemplifies the criteria of future-oriented design, functionality, innovative building technology, integration into urban development schemes, sustainability, and cost-effectiveness.
Described by DAM as a “grandiose building sculpture [representing] a varied and sensual experience from all perspectives,” the winning project was selected from over 1500 highrises commissioned worldwide over the last two years, which was narrowed down to 30 nominated buildings and later a 5-strong shortlist.
“It is a great honor that VIA 57 West receives the International Highrise Award 2016,” said BIG founder Bjarke Ingels. “It is a rare new breed of building combining the communal qualities of a european courtyard with the density and views of a highrise. I see this prize as an invitation for us and others to think differently about how we want inhabit our future cities”
In the west the site is separated from the Hudson River by a multi-lane motorway, in the north stands a historical electricity plant, in the south there are the noises and smell of the newly built waste sorting centre, while a conventional, blue-glazed, 130-metre-high residential tower rises up in the east, whose view of the Hudson River may not be obstructed – these were the unattractive framework conditions in the very mixed district “Hell’s Kitchen”.
The architects responded to this with the innovative concept of a “courtscraper”. The hybrid of an American high-rise and a European perimeter development turns away from the building to the north-east and is orientated towards a green interior courtyard. The balconies integrated into the roof surface afford protected views of the Hudson River in the West. Almost all of the 709 apartments enjoy a view of the river and the sunset, which would have been geometrically impossible for a normal perimeter development. This sculptural prototype therefore offers a quiet, sheltered oasis within the loud city, without being closed off from it. BIG Architects have created great innovations with this building.
“Basically, this project is a major milestone for housing, and not only in the extreme residential market of New York,” said DAM Director and jury member Peter Cachola Schmal.
“It not only brings in an exciting new typology, a hybrid of a skyscraper and a perimeter development, but also shows how impulses from current European movements, building groups, and cooperatives can be applied to quite different residential areas. The metropolitan inhabitant residing alone is no longer lonely, but finds the necessary social contact with like-minded fellow beings within the same block. “
The Jury also awarded a special recognition to the Housing & Development Board (HDB) of Singapore for their “exemplary leadership as a public agency realizing innovative high-rise sustainable residential community projects.”
Led by 2014 IHA winner Stefano Boeri, the competition’s world-class jury also featured Lamia Messari-Becker (civil engineer, Professor at the University of Siegen), Ole Scheeren (architect, Buro-OS, Beijing/Berlin), Brigitte Shim (architect, Shim-Sutcliffe Architects, Toronto), Horst R. Muth (Head of Project Management at Deka Immobilien GmbH, Frankfurt/Main), Peter Cachola Schmal (Director of Deutsches Architekturmuseum, Frankfurt/Main), Thomas Schmengler (CEO of Deka Immobilien GmbH, Frankfurt/Main) and Felix Semmelroth (Former Deputy Mayor in charge of Culture and Science for the City of Frankfurt/Main). Substitutional Jury members were: Claudia Meixner (architect, MEIXNER SCHLÜTER WENDT Architekten, Frankfurt am Main) and Holger Techen (civil engineer, imagine structure, Frankfurt am Main).
An exhibition on all 30 nominated projects, titled “Best Highrises 2016/17 – International Highrise Award 2016,” will be on display at Deutsches Architekturmuseum in Frankfurt from November 4, 2016 through January 15, 2017.
LIAG has designed a sustainable residential villa for a private client. The design consists of a distinct framework, finished in Western Red Cedar cladding, that contains the different functions of the building.
The kitchen and swimming pool form two volumes that protrude out on either side of this framework. In the front yard the main volume floats above a rising landscape of Marram grass. The facade takes a step back to create space for a breakfast patio with a grand view of the inland shipping in the ever-busy canal. The terrace at the rear forms an extension to the living room, connected via expansive glazed sliding doors.
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Through the use of mobile hanging cabinets in the form of room dividers the villa has a wide variety of options for interior transformation, giving it variable arrangements and atmosphere. This way the kitchen can be completely separated from the living area but also connected to serve as an open kitchen. The same goes for the study room. It can be part of the living area to create a vast open space, or can be separated when required.
Parking is made easy and convenient by creating a carport underneath the main floor to allow direct access to the house. The lower floor accommodates a cinema, storage areas and guest bedrooms.
The heating and cooling is provided by an Aquifer Thermal Energy Storage system. The villa has demand-controlled ventilation. The swimming pool has a separate heating installation using a heat pump system. The villa is also designed with 78 solar panels on the roof for a sustainable supply of electricity. By giving them a 10-degree angle the panels are not visible from the street.
This house is located in the area of San Andres, on the north hillside of Ranco Lake, which leads us to the first condition that we must respond to in the project: views to the south and natural light from the north, for which we propose public areas plus bedrooms overlooking the lake and living room located towards the hills of Futrono.
The site where the house is located spans from a valley of the condominium to the highest hillside overlooking the lake, thus ut is located at the top, which generates its form, a resounding parallelepiped anchored on stilts over the ground.
Plan
Section
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The house, a second home, proposes integrated common areas to become meeting places, besides being able to join each other generating flexibility in their use depending on the time of year and number of people
The materials we proposed were black Fibrocement to give it a warehouse look, and a contrast with the interior which was designed in local wood painted white, so that it was warm and noble like the floors and doors.
As a way to obtain a sample of participatory architecture from all over Mexico, last October, the Mexican Fine Arts Institute (INBA) published an open call for entries. Works by 31 teams—out of more than 200 registered—were selected to be part of Mexico’s Pavilion in the Venice Biennale, which was curated by Pablo Landa.
Among the teams selected are Arquitectos Artesanos and RootStudio, both based in the city of Oaxaca. Works by these offices stand out because they recover and adapt traditional building techniques for new contexts, and because they are often realized through the collaboration of architects and organized communities.
Clay Women
The featured project by Arquitectos Artesanos is Clay Women (“Mujeres de Arcilla”). A decade ago, a group of catechist women visited the parish house in the city of Huajuapan, Oaxaca. Surprised by the spatial and visual qualities of this house, the women approached its architect—Juan José Santibáñez—to ask him for help in the design of their own houses in nearby rural communities.
Courtesy of INBA
They started working soon after: women learned how to make adobe bricks and put them together into elaborate structures. Together, they erected sixteen houses after a design by Santibáñez. Mexico’s pavilion in Venice includes isometric drawings of this design and photographs by Marcela Taboada.
Courtesy of INBA
Courtesy of INBA
As part of the same project, María Santibáñez started producing a self-building manual that would allow for the construction of more houses. As her work progressed, however, the manual became a short story illustrated with engravings that shows what can hardly be captured by manuals: the spiritual dimension of the house among the people of the Mixtec highlands. The book Voz de Sol – La Casa Viva, the result of María Santibáñez’s work in collaboration with Dánae Cházaro, is also featured in Mexico’s pavilion.
Works in San Pedro Apóstol
Courtesy of INBA
The second team from Oaxaca whose work is on view in Venice is RootStudio, an office that recovers and adapts vernacular typologies and building techniques. Often, this firm designs and builds simultaneously; architects work alongside a structure’s future users.
Courtesy of INBA
The form has done a number of works in San Pedro Apóstol, a small town in Oaxaca state. A decade ago, members of the indigenous council in this community began an environmental management project. They built small dams, planted trees, and reintroduced endangered native animals. Later, they started building common spaces; at this stage, they invited RootStudio to collaborate with them. The firm built a sports center in rammed earth and bamboo, and a community-owned house for events and retreats. These buildings have contributed to the re-evaluation of vernacular building techniques and have reactivated traditional community work.
Active Processes
Courtesy of INBA
RootStudio has started the construction of a daycare center in Atzompa, a suburb of the city of Oaxaca, through a collaborative process with local families and OIDHO, an organization that defends the human rights of indigenous communities. The daycare will be built over the course of the Biennale, and will be the site of workshops and conversations among different people participating in this event. This work seeks to further conversations on the social dimensions of architecture and its potential to generate benefits for local communities.
Courtesy of INBA
Similarly, the book Voz de Sol – La Casa Viva—the second edition of which was produced as part of the preparatory work for Mexico’s Pavilion—will be presented in different locations in Oaxaca and other Mexican cities. The dissemination of this book and the works of architecture it describes will activate conversations on the potential contributions of vernacular architecture to works by other offices and to housing policies and regulations in Mexico.
Interiors is an Online Publication about the space between Architecture and Film, published by Mehruss Jon Ahi and Armen Karaoghlanian. Interiors runs an exclusive column for ArchDaily that analyzes and diagrams films in terms of space.
Kanye West followed up his demented masterpiece Yeezus with an art project—an album never officially released, never officially completed, and one that is continuously being revised and restructured. It’s a continuous work in progress, a painting that’s never finished, which has evolved before our eyes (known by many titles including So Help Me God, Swish, Waves, until finally settling on the anachronistic The Life of Pablo).
It’s no wonder then that The Saint Pablo Tour, which kicked off in Indianapolis on August 25th, 2016 and is tentatively scheduled to end in Brooklyn on December 31st, 2016, feels unlike anything Kanye West has done before, while staying true to his creative vision. If 2013’s Yeezus Tour was an operatic experience that was more about the performance aspect, 2016’s Saint Pablo Tour is an active experience that is more about creating a Disneyesque attraction.
Courtesy of INTERIORS Journal
The planning process, which Kanye West has said lasted at least eight months, began with his team traveling around the world, meeting with top stage designers. In addition, Kanye West worked with his longtime collaborators and fellow visionaries, such as Elon Rutberg and Virgil Abloh (who has an accomplished background in Architecture). The intention was to create a new idea in touring, something that goes beyond the idea that it’s about idly watching the artist. The result is that people actually become part of the experience, taking the concept of a concert to another level. In this sense, audience members are singing, dancing and engaging with Kanye West. It is the first concert in recent memory that actively uses the crowd as part of the experience of the show.
The design of the tour is broken down into two stage components, its Main Stage and Secondary Stage (or “Spaceship” Stage as it has been named by many). These stages feature an elaborate pulley and track system. The open web steel joists compose the elaborate framing system that attaches to the structure of each arena.
Courtesy of INTERIORS Journal
The Main Stage is roughly a 30 by 20-foot (9 by 6 meter) rectangular steel platform that is less than two feet thick. Kanye West is attached to the center of the platform with a type of carabiner and wire. This stage is attached to two parallel steel joists that span roughly 75 feet (23 meters). These parallel steel joists allow the main stage to travel left and right, forward and backward through a type of motorized track system. It’s also able to tilt along its long axis with a pulley system, with the ability to also drop and move closer to the crowd.
These parallel steel joists are connected to a larger steel frame system—a second pair of parallel steel joists—that span almost the entire length of the arena, which is at least 200 feet (60 meters). The Main Stage has roughly 36 spotlights surrounding the edges of the platform and roughly 28 spotlights lining the bottom of the platform surface (which shine directly onto the crowd during certain moments of the show).
The Secondary Stage is roughly a 200 by 45-foot (60 by 14 meter) rectangular steel platform, also less than two feet thick. This stage has roughly 172 spotlights surrounding the edges and over 1,000 spotlights lining the bottom of the platform surface, which provide different light cues throughout the show and change color and brightness depending on the song that is being performed. In addition, parts of this stage are able to detach from the rest. There are four rectangular forms (each roughly 65 by 10, or 20 by 3 meters) that can move independently from one another, which allows for different designs during songs like “Heartless” and “Wolves.”
The Saint Pablo Tour is divided into three sections with two transitions. The first section of the show consists of Kanye West entering on the main stage during “Father Stretch My Hands Pt. 1”—at first, only the spotlights on the edges of the platform are on for the first group of songs, with lighting cues that represent Kanye West’s arrival, gradually building energy and momentum for the show. The second section includes additional lighting cues with Kanye West traveling closer to the opposite end of the arena. The third section sees parts of the stage transforming with more lighting cues and effects from the Secondary Stage and ultimately concluding with Kanye West traveling back to a bright spotlight in the center of the stage during “Ultralight Beam.”
Courtesy of INTERIORS Journal
Interiors has created two diagrams for The Saint Pablo Tour, which includes two elevation drawings showing each side of the show. The short elevation depicts the show during “Freestyle 4” where a large crowd is directly below the Main Stage. The long elevation depicts the show during “Wolves” where the Secondary Stage breaks apart, rotates, and shines onto the crowd.
The Saint Pablo Tour draws heavy inspiration from a variety of sources (most notably the films of Ridley Scott and Stanley Kubrick). The shows consist of two intermissions where the Secondary Stage rotates along its short axis, bearing a striking resemblance to Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977). The show even takes on a Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) feel with Kanye West’s time on the Main Stage with the crowd directly under him.
There are few artists, if any, who do as much for the sake of art as Kanye West. This is an artist who has continuously combined Film, Architecture, and Fashion into his work, creating concerts that feel like theatrical experiences—even going so far as to redefine our understanding of tour merchandise, making tour shirts feel like their own in-demand clothing line. Kanye West has transformed Stage Design and Performance Architecture, with each live performance now redefining the way we envision and experience the medium, much in the same way his idols, Steve Jobs and Walt Disney, transformed their respective fields.
The Yeezus Tour was a feat in terms of design and production, but the Saint Pablo Tour is a feat in terms of engineering—and few artists can say they’ve created a transcendent experience that goes beyond what is expected of a “concert.”
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Architectural Drawings and Graphics were created by Interiors (www.INTJournal.com)
Sig Nordal 