Exhibition design by Gae Aulenti. Installation view: The Italian Metamorphosis, 1943–1968, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, October 6, 1994–January 22, 1995. Photo: David Heald
This article originally appeared on guggenheim.org/blogs under the title “Nine Guggenheim Exhibitions Designed by Architects,” and is used with permission.
Exhibition design is never straightforward, but that is especially true within the highly unconventional architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim Museum. Hanging a painting in a traditional “box” gallery can be literally straightforward, whereas every exhibition at the Guggenheim is the reinvention of one of the world’s most distinctive and iconic buildings. The building mandates site-specific exhibition design—partition walls, pedestals, vitrines, and benches are custom-fabricated for every show. At the same time, these qualities of the building present an opportunity for truly memorable, unique installations. Design happens simultaneously on a micro and macro scale—creating display solutions for individual works of art while producing an overall context and flow that engages the curatorial vision for the exhibition. This is why the museum’s stellar in-house exhibition designers all have an architecture background. They have developed intimate relationships with every angle and curve of the quarter-mile ramp and sloping walls.
The Guggenheim is Wright’s one and only art museum. Approaching the museum holistically, he conceived of it as a comprehensive display system, intending the museum to frame art objects naturally: continuous skylights on the ramps were designed to pour natural light onto walls that are set, like easels, at a 97-degree angle. He envisioned paintings simply resting against the angled back walls, and the gallery was equipped with an integrated security system—the sloped apron-base that joins the gallery floor to the back wall was developed to keep visitors a safe distance away from artwork. [1] All of these built-in details were nice in theory, but even Hilla Rebay and James Johnson Sweeney, the first two directors of the museum, had their concerns. Since the inaugural exhibition in 1959, the skylights have been covered and substituted with artificial light and the artwork hung vertically—mounted off the back walls.
Exhibition design by Zaha Hadid with Patrick Schumacher. Installation view: The Great Utopia: The Russian and Soviet Avant-Garde, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, September 25, 1992–January 3, 1993. Photo: David Heald
Since 1959, the Guggenheim has hand picked a select few esteemed architects to interpret and confront Wright’s rotunda, three of whom now hold the most prestigious award in architecture, The Pritzker Prize. Both Frank Gehry and Zaha Hadid’s offices designed their own retrospectives (in 2001 and 2006, respectively), but prior to designing the display of their own work, the architects had each designed notable exhibitions at the museum. In 1992, Hadid designed The Great Utopia: The Russian and Soviet Avant-Garde. Her design was characterized by sharply angled vitrines and a prominent red wall that zigzagged down the ramps. In 1998, one year after the opening of the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Gehry designed The Art of the Motorcycle. His design took its cue from the materiality and craftsmanship of the vehicle, cladding the face of the museum’s ramps with chromed stainless steel. The intervention accentuated the curves of the rotunda, offering distorted reflections that revealed fleeting glimpses of the motorcycles and emphasized a feeling of speed. The installations embodied each architect’s signature aesthetic while actualizing very specific display solutions for the work on view.
Exhibition design by Frank O. Gehry and Associates. Installation view: The Art of the Motorcycle, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, June 26–September 20, 1998. Photo: David Heald
The architects Gae Aulenti and Arata Isozaki chose a more minimalist approach to the ramps, establishing dramatic “moments” in the rotunda. For China: 5,000 Years (1998) Isozaki, architect of the Guggenheim SoHo (a branch of the Guggenheim Museum formally operating in lower Manhattan, 1992–2001), designed four statuesque sculptural banners that sliced vertically through the rotunda’s ramps. The banners were accompanied by a streamlined system of white vitrines, the cohesion of which facilitated the display of a wide variety of works. Aulenti, best known for converting a train station into the main hall of the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, conceived of a giant sculptural installation for The Italian Metamorphosis, 1943–1968 (1994): triangular wire-frame structures that projected into the museum’s central void. As visitors walked up the ramps, the shapes appeared to transform, visually overlapping and collapsing.
Jean Nouvel fashioned a dramatic design for the 2001 exhibition Brazil: Body and Soul, painting the rotunda almost entirely black and installing a large-scale light projection that loomed over the space. Perhaps the most striking object featured in the exhibition was a monumental 18th–century carved and gilded cedar altarpiece that towered over the floor of the rotunda, reaching halfway to the oculus. The altarpiece’s arrival from Brazil was delayed, which meant that early visitors to the show got to witness its painstaking assembly as they walked up the ramps.
In 2002, Hani Rashid and Lise Anne Couture, of Asymptote Architecture, experimented with playful materials in their design for Moving Pictures, an exhibition of photography, video, and film. On the top ramp of the museum, they clad tall inclined walls with bright blue pyramid foam, creating small cave-like theaters in the museum’s bay galleries. The material not only provided soundproofing but also served as a bold design accent, much like the dark industrial felt employed by Enrique Norton, of Ten Arquitectos, and Meejin Yoon, of Höweler + Yoon, for The Aztec Empire in 2004. The architects enveloped Wright’s bays, deploying serpentine walls to accommodate variously sized artifacts with a range of humidity-control and lighting requirements. The felt covering absorbed both light and sound, effectively rendering the museum mute.
Exhibition design by Asymptote Architecture. Installation view: Moving Pictures, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, October 3, 2003–May 12, 2004. Photo: David Heald
Exhibition design by Enrique Norton and Meejin Yoon. Installation view: The Aztec Empire, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, October 15, 2004–February 13, 2005. Photo: David Heald
The distinctive exhibition design of each of these architects was ultimately a system of highly functional design interventions. The installation of these environments has been a perennial feat by the Guggenheim’s in-house design, construction, and fabrication teams. Their collaboration with each architect has produced a series of holistic atmospheres that have set the stage for viewing multifarious art objects. Rather than suppress the unique qualities of Wright’s museum, each of these reinventions of the space amplified its singularity. The building never fades into the background.
[1] Levine, Neil. “Competing Visions of the Modern Art Museum and the Lasting Significance of Wright’s Guggenheim.” The Guggenheim: Frank Lloyd Wright and the Making of the Modern Museum. New York: Guggenheim Museum, 2009. 85. Print.
As part of a new exhibition at the National Building Museum in Washington D.C., a group of 24 American architects, designers and architects have been commissioned to create “dream homes” in the format of the contemporary dollhouse. Part of Small Stories: At Home in a Dollhouse, in which twelve historical dollhouses spanning the past 300 years from London’s Victoria & Albert Museum of Childhood are being presented in the United States for the first time, these 21st Century interpretations intend to showcase a “diverse array of perspectives, demonstrating the limitless creativity of building in miniature.”
The museum expects that visitors will witness a collection of designs that are “instantly familiar, completely fanciful, and even slightly eerie.” Some have been made using traditional furnishings; others from materials such as clay, insects, and 3D-printing techniques.
In my dream room, Reverie of the Stars, I chose to highlight two pieces from past series of my work. The walls are covered with one of my “Coastline” paintings– the coastline of Turkey, to be specific. I cut the painting into pieces that would fit on the walls. The other is from a series of over 200 miniature theaters I created a few years ago. This one, “Teatro della Fantasma,” or the theater of fantasy is standing on stilts to benefit the lighting provided in the ceiling of the box. Inside the theater the figure of an old man walks, as if sleepwalking, between an open window frame and an all seeing eye. Also in the Dream Room stands a bed covered with a blue velvet and diamond coverlet referencing the stars on the walls. In the background stands a card of Our Lady of Lourdes, the Blessed Virgin Mary, mother of all creation; her halo is a diadem of stars. Nearby is an empty chair out of scale with the bed, and a tiny workman who paints the floor. Near the front stands a pedestal topped with a crystal gazing ball used for seeing into the future. From above, a key hangs in mid-air as if to provide answers to the puzzling questions of our dreams. The checkerboard floor adds a graphic element but also recalls a game of chess.
Combining these elements, in the manner that I have, creates a dreamlike air of mystery and foreboding. It is a place both within a dream and without a dream. Are we voyeurs looking in on the dream of another, or are we the dreamers ourselves?
I wish that I had a room to which only I would have the key. A room apart from the restless, hectic world. A room where I could let my daydreams run rampant and uninterrupted. A room that would fill me with a sense of possibility and hope and wonder. A room that would inspire me. A room where I could hide away.
Transforming Micro-Micro Apartment / Resource Furniture and Ollie
This micro-micro apartment is an artistic interpretation of an actual apartment in Carmel Place, a new micro-apartment building in New York City. Featuring transforming furnishings from Resource Furniture and an all-inclusive living experience from Ollie™, this apartment shape-shifts throughout the day, allowing the tiny little occupant to seamlessly move from sleep to work to entertainment without missing a beat. Carmel Place was built by Monadnock Development and designed by nArchitects.
“Canopy bed” was the first thing to pop into my head when asked to create a Dream Room – that is, a tree canopy bed. Perhaps not surprising, as trees are my favorite subject, whether a forest landscape art quilt, or a teapot set of birch trees constructed entirely of thread. As a fiber artist, I had plenty of materials right at hand in my stash, and experience in making three-dimensional objects. My signature style of “thread sculpture” worked well for the tree-stump chair and potted plants.
The room evolved into a combination bedroom/playroom of a preteen who likes to draw. The world starts to open up at that age, and children begin to dream about their future – anything is possible. But awareness of bad events comes too. In addition to childhood fears of scary things in the closet and under the bed, there are fledgling fears of real dangers, represented by the tornado, flying saucer, and mushroom cloud. No wonder she has the covers pulled over her head.
Though this is intended to be the bedroom of any child, it became somewhat autobiographical. Astronomy has been a hobby since grade school (ceiling); The Lord of the Rings books remain favorites since 7th grade (on the dresser and nightstand); I worked professionally as a cartographer and married another cartographer (globe on the dresser); my son’s drawings are included (reduced versions on desk and closet door); my daughter’s artwork publications are also on the desk (she and her boyfriend have a page in the Little Nemo: Dream Another Dream book, cover courtesy Locust Moon Press). If you don’t know why Little Nemo is so fitting for this Dream Room, please look him up. The startled rocking horse was made by her boyfriend, Jonathan Tune, an animation artist.
Banana loves waking-up and starting his day off soaking in a cool tub of milk and cereal while devouring a great book. As a single banana living in Snuggle City, he embraces the morning quiet before heading off to a long day at work. Liz & Jimmy Reed are the husband and wife team behind Cuddles and Rage, a disturbingly cute comic about food and animals. They’re best known for their mixed media style, telling stories through both illustrations and sculpted dioramas. Their work has been featured on HelloGiggles, BuzzFeed, and The Huffington Post. Their debut picture book, Sweet Competition, comes out November 2016 with Harper Collins.
Available now: Charming, self-supporting flat for single occupant in well-established, peaceful neighborhood. Conveniently situated on Level Six, above transit loop, between seed library and downtown community replicator. Features unique plasticated kitchen and dining area, like-new battery bank and recumbent power generator. Cozy sleeping loft connects to spacious, encoded workstation. Vintage 2040’s style throughout! Integrated security system and independent water collection module provided. Original native plant wall maintains average AQI of 4! Fully digital/retinal/voice enabled- continuous monitoring included! Owner must relocate. Won’t last long.
As a child, I spent countless hours lost in books, and the worlds within those pages were as real to me as the town we lived in. This room is my homage to the magic that shaped my childhood, to my fervent faith in the power of imagination—that, if only I believed hard enough, my toys really would spring to life and tiny worlds would tumble out of my wardrobe, from under my bed, and out of every bookcase. The belief that anything is possible has followed me well into adulthood, fueling the creation of businesses, books, and other projects that initially looked improbable when viewed through a “responsible,” pragmatic lens. So, even if talking sandwiches and wardrobe woodlands are merely a pleasant fiction, my faith in imagination has served me well, urging me to wander outside of the comfortable, mapped-out regions of life and to search for magic… everywhere.
Reconnecting with one’s family history has become very important in recent years – understanding our family background and ancestry. Present generations are searching for generations of the past. This Dream House room spatially illustrates the structure of genealogy, a 3-dimensional representation of a family tree.
Thin white vertical members support acrylic panels representing monitors with images of ancestors, which seem to go on infinitely through the use of mirrors on the vertical faces of the room. Heavy black structural members hold a stepped pathway where family members experience the space. The living person, weighed down by gravity, is limited to the walkway, while the images and memories of loved ones, sit much more lightly in the space – almost floating. The room becomes a living memorial, unifying the past generations with the present through shadow, light and reflection.
I find my zenith doth depend upon A most auspicious star, whose influence If now I court not, but omit, my fortunes Will ever after droop. Here cease more questions… —The Tempest (1.2.182-85)
PEEPS Playing Poker / Rebecca Heaton and Suzan Maher
There is often a room in each home where people gather casually to chat and play cards or board games, whether it be the kitchen, den, dining room – wherever. That is this “dream room”.
Inspired by the famous “Dogs Playing Poker” paintings by Cassius Coolidge, we decided to create the room using five marshmallow bunny Peeps and two marshmallow chick Peeps to represent the dogs. In this case, we based it on Coolidge’s “A Friend in Need” painting in which the two bull dogs are cheating. They have their pipes, cigars, beer – all just as in the original painting – except these Poker players are all marshmallow candy. With the use of lots of balsa wood, wood stain, Sculpey, pipe cleaners, paint, and scraps from around the house, everything was hand-made to match the items in Coolidge’s famous painting – all scaled to the size of the marshmallow Peeps.
Since Coolidge’s painting does not show the entire room, we completed the scene as we imagined it should be by adding baseboard, crown molding, and hand-made wood flooring. The poker-playing Peeps’ two favorite framed pictures are hanging on the right and left walls. One is “Hidden Peeps” which won the 2015 Washington Post diorama contest, and the other is the painting on which the room is based. And of course, what is a proper Poker game without a package of Peeps on the table to share?
An Ordinary Evening / Wendy Evans Joseph and Fleet Hower
Do you look under the bed before you go to sleep? Maybe you should look further? A child is sleeps soundly while surrounded by creatures looming in a crawl space surrounding the bedroom. Tonight is not a special evening. Tonight is an ordinary evening in an ordinary house, in an ordinary bedroom. There is an ordinary bed and an ordinary chair behind an ordinary door. Tonight is an ordinary evening. In dreams, the child escapes the ordinary. The model is made of white, laser-sintered nylon. It is printed on an Eos Printer by Shapeways.
The original notion of the Gothic Bath was simply of an indoor space where family and friends could take a soak in the grandeur of a gothic setting and sing their songs with natural reverberation. A happy stained glass window would provide the light. A house cat would provide a homey touch. I built the piece from polymer clay, wood and glass. The figures were based on live studio models and my cat, Annie.
We began creating our nature art in 1987 while living on a small farm in Washington state. We loved gardening and spent most of our time outdoors, so when winters came we missed our gardens and the inspiration they gave us. On our walks, we had collected many different kinds of wildflowers, grasses, wild herbs, leaves, branches and other “treasures” from nature and stored them in the rafters of our garage. We even hung dried hydrangeas from the ceiling in our living room, which created a beautiful garden-like feeling and reminded us of our many hours in our garden.
We felt so inspired by all of our lovely nature gatherings that we began to create little fairy furniture: small chairs, beds, tables and other intricate pieces. Soon, we had quite a menagerie of amazing little creations from natural materials. We began to do art shows and boutiques to sell our unusual pieces. In 1991, “Victoria” magazine published a wonderful article about our nature art. We received over 800 letters and hundreds of phone calls from excited collectors and from there, our art career with nature really bloomed.
Remember the original Borrowers movie from 1973? A resourceful family of tiny people lived under the floor boards. This Mouseum in a Box is inspired by that movie. Within the wood stud walls and safely under the electrical wiring, away from the hustle and bustle of the Victoria and Albert Museum of Childhood’s Small Stories exhibit, mice have borrowed and scavenged materials to make their own museum. Tall glass enclosures showcase extra small dollhouses young mice played with throughout history. The roofs and staircases come in a variety of classic architectural shapes, just like children’s dollhouses. One combines a barrel vaulted roof with a straight run stair and the other combines a gabled roof with a spiral stair.
The Mouse Stories dollhouse exhibit is juxtaposed with ten 1” cube Rooms of Mouse Dreams – half display glorious cheese sculptures while the other half celebrate deconstructed mouse traps reconfigured into modern art. In the corner, across the terra cotta floor tiles, we peek through a hole in the wall into the National Building Museum’s Great Hall.
A Family. Lives defined and documented. Three generations of certificates, clippings, correspondence, diaries, diplomas, emotions, feelings, ledgers, love letters, mementos, photos and remembrances. Treasures irreplaceable. What kind of Paper Trail will you and our forthcoming generations leave?
Rung by rung, I climbed to my aerie to await him, to gaze at night sky, to remember daydreams, and to warm myself by the fire without and my fire within. Then, my imagination summoned him. A lark winged in to sip the wine I spilled. She sang and whistled my passions large while embers glowed and night sky cooled. But I was warmed, then warmer still, then drowsy passion came fulfilled. Or at least I dreamed it. Stars and moon, lark and ladder, wine and sky, wind and him.Fire and slumber, blue and umber—all of this, within.
Time Warp through Coraline’s Door and into Treasure! / Sushmita Mazumdar
When Sushmita left India to come to the US to marry her sweetheart, she had to tear herself away from a family, a place, a culture, and an identity that had formed over 29 years. As she started her new family in a new culture a new identity started to form. She was now also a wife, and immigrant, a foreigner, and a mom. And then, she was an artist and writer. When her friend asked her why all the stories she writes for her handmade artist’s storybooks were about a girl from India, Sushmita realized that a physical move hardly represents places where the soul resides.
In her Dream Room: Time Warp through Coraline’s Door and into Treasure! Sushmita imagines a place for the unfinished conversations, the constellations of untold stories, and the characters from her life that are lost in time. She dreams of a tiny Coraline’s door of her own that would take her into another world, through a tear in time, where she could meet people like they were “back then” so she could finish the conversations and record the stories from that vast treasure she left behind.
#ru4everhappyyet? / Kendall Dorman, Wiebenson & Dorman Architects PC
Solving the world’s problems is an admirable goal – solving a problem for someone of limited means is a loftier goal. The goal of a dignified shelter for everyone has yet to be achieved no matter how small we make it… although we keep trying with rediscovered old ideas that are rebranded into new ideas with renewed fanfare – clashing together the latest fads, with recycled parts, modern technologies, hype and extremes. In time these ideas will be refuted and then retired until they are reimagined again with a reinvented name. We keep trying.
The Cupboard Under the Stairs / Louise Krasniewicz
Poor Harry Potter had to live with his awful Muggle relatives, the Dursleys. They put him in this cramped cupboard under the stairs until he received his letter from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. For fans of the Harry Potter story, leaving this cupboard was the beginning of Harry’s dream of a better and more exciting life. In my miniature reproductions of scenes from popular movies, I like to depict such moments which can suggest an entire story and the world that generates it. Rather than seeing miniatures as childish playthings, I like to see them as physical models of imaginary worlds that adults as well as children use to experience alternative realities.
#unicornsarereal is a self-portrait that recreates my personal dream space: my artist studio. It is an homage to my studio at the Arlington Arts Center, where I recently completed a six-year residency. For an artist, the studio is, at various times or all at once, mystical, challenging, exciting, depressing, and ecstatic. It is the place to which artists retreat to create, wrestle with inspiration, battle self-doubt, and search for calm. It can be a loving space, or horrible, futile, and frustrating. An artist’s studio is a snapshot of the tumult of magic, creativity, and inspiration battling within her soul, as much as the actual artwork that she creates. I am my studio and my studio is me.
This diorama reflects the artist’s dreams and hopes for the future, influenced by recent developments and visits to Montsegur, France, where her fiancé lives. He is not, in fact, a beetle. The historic sites there are now under threat by the tourist industry, and Daisy is working on outreach to protect the land and archeological remains in addition to her other work. This is a dream/fantasy room in a place that really occupies every waking moment! The beetles shown are Chalcosoma atlas beetles from Southeast Asia. The castle doorway is a replica of a Dire Wolf jaw fossil. Can you spot the bumblebee? It was found on a sidewalk, naturally deceased.
Bathrooms are not just a place for cleansing the body. They can be an escape, a sanctuary for renewal, or rejuvenation. In this room, the viewer becomes the user, drawn in by the clear, calm blue waters that lie just beyond. They might imagine soaking in the large blue tub for two. Maybe they are relaxing in the chaise lounge contemplating whether or not to take a quick swim. Or taking an extended shower in the indoor/outdoor shower equipped with body jets and oversized rain head. Picture your very own private beach getaway each time you step into your bathroom. As the viewer ponders the possibilities, the ‘Dream’ becomes reality.
The room is titled White House, White Room. (I had considered another title – A Woman in the White House – but opted for something apolitical during this election year.) The mixed-media assemblage borrows – in concept and composition – from architecture, theater and history. The works tries to respect for the host, the venue and the occasion: the National Building Museum, the Pension Building, and the Dream Rooms section of the Small Stories exhibition. “White House, White Room” is what I call a little theater, a dream stage, art that ArtSee DC describes as “typically playful, sometimes provocative, and always clever little theaters (that) take the viewer on a delightful journey into a tiny, magical world beyond his own.” Art Registry of D.C. says the little theaters are “sculptures in the form of assemblage shadow boxes . . . Enigmatic, and address the formal elements of art: Line, color and form.” Sometimes my works might initially seem whimsical, and that’s all right. I like it when people smile. The longer a viewer looks at the art, the composition usually begins to communicate something poignant. The works tell or provoke visual stories, visual dramas.
Though the design process represents the freedom of artistic expression, at times working in the design field can become overwhelming and stressful. The dream room we created is a space where one’s mind can rest and reflect. A room where one can take a step back, focus in a relaxing atmosphere, sort out the stress and calmly examine the problems that need to be solved in a design. The room itself is also a source of inspiration; the blank walls and simple furniture allow for a creative’s mind to ideate without being distracted by color or unnecessary detail. The open window to a serene garden is there to provide natural light, and our main source of inspiration, which is nature and natural sound and movement. In a dream world, time would stop when one enters the room, giving a sense of calm and peace before stepping back into the fast-paced, hectic world of deadlines and demands
The materials used for the creation of this dream room are the same materials our studio uses to create our architectural models. Creating and envisioning ideas in white or blue, depending on the material used, helps us design the form and function for our projects. We create several different form studies that lead us to the final, more refined form in an architectural design.
Small Stories: Dream House is on display at the National Building Museum in Washington D.C. from May 21, 2016 to January 22, 2017. The Dream Rooms are available for purchase at the close of the exhibition, which supports the Museum’s educational mission and programming.
Los-Angeles-based CO Architects has released the plans for the Biological Physical Sciences Building (BPSB), a new life sciences facility at the University of California in San Diego. In order to “blend the richly diverse fields” of neurobiology, chemistry, and biochemistry, the seven-story, 128,000-square-foot building will promote collaborative research and visibility in teaching spaces.
Our goal at UC San Diego is to create opportunities to maximize interdisciplinary collaboration between multiple research and academic units, said Jennifer Knudsen, AIA, LEED AP BD+C Principal at CO Architects. We want the building to accommodate a range of research activities and teaching models capable of evolving over time.
Courtesy of CO Architects
Inside, the building will include space for biology and chemistry research, instructional space, a 175-seat auditorium for research symposia, and a permanent home for the school’s nationally recognized Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) facility.
Courtesy of CO Architects
Twelve labs will be supported by a satellite vivarium with short-term holding and procedure rooms to study the brain at a more fundamental level.
Upper levels will feature wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling glazed surfaces to provide natural light for labs and learning studios that allow for visibility into these spaces without disturbing the occupants.
Courtesy of CO Architects
Teams and visitors in the building will be able to meet in conference rooms, gather on the main exterior terraces with views to the Pacific Ocean, and breakout to informal scholarly spaces.
Courtesy of CO Architects
The building is additionally oriented to optimize natural lighting and exterior views and will utilize façade materials like self-tinting glazing and honeycomb glazing to address solar heat gain.
Courtesy of CO Architects
Further sustainability measures include high-efficiency fume hoods, chilled beams in labs and offices, air quality monitoring in research labs, and a 45% water-use reduction in response to California’s drought.
Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) is pleased to announce a research residency at the Wimbledon House, a modern masterpiece designed by world-renowned British architect Richard Rogers. Open to accomplished professionals and scholars working in any field related to the built environment, the Richard Rogers Fellowship is dedicated to advancing research on a wide range of issues—social, economic, technological, political, environmental—that are critical to shaping the contemporary city.
The fellowship is inspired by Rogers’ commitment to cross-disciplinary investigation and social engagement, evident across his prolific output as an architect, urbanist, author, and activist. Harvard GSD is currently accepting applications from accomplished architects, landscape architects, planners, historians, economists, and other specialists whose research will benefit from access to London’s extraordinary libraries, archives, practices, institutions, and other resources. Fellowship winners will be awarded a three-month residency at the Wimbledon House (Spring, Summer or Fall), travel expenses to London, and a cash award of $10,000 USD.
The deadline for the 2017 fellowship is November 28, 2016, midnight Eastern Standard Time. Winners will be notified in early December.
From the architect. At least that’s what Züst Gübeli Gambetti thought upon reading the ETH Zurich’s competition brief. To the young firm, the proposed program seemed to be a quick fix, the opposite of a sustainable solution. Yet they were drawn to the idea of contributing their own progressive architectural statement to the Hönggerberg—Zurich’s Mt. Olympus of architecture. Now their winning proposal stands on that very site, three times as large and three times as solid as the container village original- ly anticipated by the client. Moreover, for its size, it is the most cost- effective structure ever built by the university.
With its elongated shape and stepped massing, the iconic HCP building marks the start of the Science City campus for all who approach from downtown. In deference (though not subordination) to its architectural older brother, the adjacent HCI chemistry complex, the new arrival lies low and hugs the ground. Züst Gübeli Gambetti make clever use of the site’s topography, developing a cross section for the 200-metre long project that requires only a single lift to serve its various floors. As an added bonus, this sectional solution generates multi- functional covered spaces and terraces. Flanked on the one side by the towering HCI building and on the other by expansive views, these out- door areas attain a careful equilibrium between enclosure and openness.
In its entirety, the building represents an intelligent synergy of economic and architectural considerations. On the outside, the wrap around chequerboard façade accentuates the balanced volume’s sculptural qualities while ensuring flexibility of use with its modular, repeat- ing open and closed elements. On the inside, the radically horizontal layout encourages communication and allows for efficient floor plans. Organizational efficiency is complemented by operational efficiency: the building taps into the campus’ ‘anergy grid’, an innovative system for harvesting, storing and distributing low-grade energy, and relies on a common-sense low-tech building services strategy for carbon-neutral energy delivery and ease of maintenance.
From the architect. After two years of work, 5+1AA Alfonso Femia Gianluca Peluffo architecture agency ends a housing complex of four buildings with a shop in Asnières-sur-Seine (92).
The project is situated between the end and the beginning of an urban axis of fundamental importance for the whole city because of the forthcoming opening of a major train station for the Grand Paris Line. The trapezoidal shape of the area of the project is particularly evident in aerial images. A first reflection arises: how to manage this arrangement? How to present the project towards Grésillons Avenue and the train station, since this area represents a structural interface from a functional point of view? How to dilate, in addition to the space already provided, this area and make it a true gateway to the neighbourhood?
Courtesy of 5+1AA Alfonso Femia Gianluca Peluffo
The project was developed thanks to an analysis of possibilities: the atmosphere, the landscape light, the environmental constraints and the formal game that consists in a series of cuttings, openings, slidings defining the three bodies of the building. The city is in continuous dialog with the internal park, creating a building/landscape rhythm. The architectural writing of the project is based on this notion of rhythm (openings, materials, treatment of the top floors): it favors, in a common grammar, the diversity of the urban landscape created between city and nature.
The project is characterised by a reafirmation of the decor with the use of ceramics and the ornamentation of the façades represented by six angels. This reafirmation invites to reconsider housing as a home, a place to live, and not only an addition of requirements to satisfy. Unity, urban rhythm, classical vertical stratification, a unique matter that integrates some shades able to foresee the soft metamorphosis towards the sky, where are the ancestors of the cities, observing us, looking towards the horizon, towards the sky. The decoration reappears in the city as a means of identity and pleasure, beauty and culture.
Courtesy of 5+1AA Alfonso Femia Gianluca Peluffo
The two façades situated on the edge of the site bene t from a specific treatment. The northern façade gives onto the area in front of the RER regional high-speed train station and acts as an entrance to the urban development zone. The shop on the ground floor has a completely glass façade. As for the south façade it presents the urban face of the project along with the car park, it is in total contrast with the glassfronted façade to the north.
The programme consists of 144 affordable housing units and 39 social housing units going from R+1 to R+8, and includes 360 square metres of commercial space. The project’s composition of volumes is divided up into three buildings developed mainly along the length of the RER line C. This segmentation allows for the central section to remain completely visible, a reduction in the number of solely north-facing units and the creation of a supplementary southfacing façade. The different blocks are interlocked, in a way that highlights the unitary elements of the composition and encourages urban diversity.
From the architect. In accordance to the guidelines given by the Israeli ministry of education (who is financing a substantial part of the building cost of educational facilities in the country) the site was provided by the municipality for this project. It was enough space to contain a primary school, a gymnasium, two basketball courts and exterior areas for the entertainment of the 700 children attending this compound.
The site position plan resembles a “Tetris” game structure. Each part of the whole creates the negative space of the other, making the site organization – simple, straight forward, and coherent.
The entrance to the compound is from the south east corner, through a public square. As one passes the guard booth and enters the compound, the school building is revealed in all of its glory and function as a barrier enclosing the front playground for the youngest students.
The 2 story building, a rectangular elongated shape was designed with two distinguished wings: The Entrance hall and Administration wing, and the classrooms with its appendix wing.
The building designs leading idea was to create a simple homorganic envelope. A simple building but not simplistic, an elongated box, dignified and at the same time humoristic and loose.
Section
Section
Section
Mostly cladded with white stone, the envelope has twists in it – a plastic, 3 dimensional and staggered fenestrations, resembling the random, chaotic nature of the young students. These fenestrations were cladded with “Fundermax” 8 mm exterior HPL to appear in contrast to the white monolithic walls.
Those two patios were designed as “exterior classrooms” for the enjoyment of the young students. The patios are wide and intimate at the same time and are an integral part of the building, accessible from within and from outside. Their harmonious atmosphere and peaceful design makes them attractive for the young users who find them a joyful-shaded-protected play area.
Moreover, the patios location in the structure makes them easy spaces for future growth in the next decade as the neighborhood population grows. They can be closed and built upon adding usable space to the building without harming and damaging the appearance and the integrity of the façade.
Each patio includes seating areas and two poplar trees giving them a peaceful “Zen” feeling. The design is in a way a dialogue with the “Mediterranean court yard” known in these part of the world due to the harsh climate and hot temperatures.
The general design derives its logic from that same courtyard idea so that the building is not a simple closed envelope, rather it’s a long folded shape with many exist and exterior spaces enclosed between the building volumes.
As a result, the building is highly ventilated, lit, and shaded simultaneously. The corridors function as transparent hallways – lighting and reflecting the activities inside and outside, and still being protected from the sun.
According to the program given from The Ministry of Education, the building was designed to have three sections that could have been built in stages without harming the ability to learn during construction.
The design commission also included designing the interior and the furniture. A holistic approach led to the concept of using “quiet-calm” soft bright colors. Finishing materials were chosen to look young and fresh.
From the architect. The South Yard, namely a southern courtyard, is located in Sanjia, Yangshan Village, Guling Town, Mashan County, Nanning, Guangxi Province. Through ages, this tranquil and plain village has been settled by three clans: Huang, Liang and Tang, thus named Sanjia (Three Surnames). The unparalleled Karst Landform surrounds the village, forming a green barrier naturally. In the bottom of mountains, a brooklet flows slowly through the village, with children swimming and housewives washing vegetables and clothes beside it. The melodious sound of three-part folk music comes from far away, attractive and pleasant to the ear.
The birth of the South Yard begins with the ‘Beautiful Village Reconstruction Project’. Under the dramatic reconstruction of village, most of old houses were removed, leaving a lonely old cob-brick house beside a creek, hidden in a corn field. Originally as a private dwelling with a history of more than sixty years, the house has been repaired many times by its owner, ended up abandoned. And its owner built a new brick-concrete house in the opposite of the river. Partly dilapidated, its adobe walls was mottled and ruined and the inner space was cramped and dim. But surprisingly the gable wall forward brooklet was intact with a angle of its roof nearly 45°. Shaded by verdant hills in the distance and surrounded by new houses of village, It looks considerably unique.
Living in Nanning, owner teacher Huang always devotes herself to rural building construction and children’s natural education activities. With her persistence and effort, this old house has been preserved integrally, being the only memorial of this village. The South Yard is the connector between city and country. Architects conceived an ‘old and new’ method: reconstructing the old house completely and constructing a new open building in an open area beside it.
Because of many interlaced walls inside the old house，internal space was narrow. Therefore, architects removed the internal walls and rebuilt them with steel structure to form larger space and to add a layer inside. The steel structure and brick walls support a new roof and make the dilapidated wall more stable. Workers rebuilt the collapsed wall with cob bricks removed from internal walls, torn down tiles from roof and then put down them again carefully. Old and new materials, earthly yellow bricks, white steel structure and brown boarding, are blended in the old house, producing gallery-like artistic effect. Brilliant sunshine pouring from skylights and flickering shadows make people feel the flight of time, and make this 60-year-old house revitalization.
Isometric
Isometric
Architects built a new house in a corn field between the old house and the brooklet to enlarge the space and increase the functions of the old house. In order to preserve the gable wall, the new house was built separately from the old one. The majority of walls made from glass not only ensure transparency of the new house but also serve as a foil for the dignified old one. The main structure of the new house is made from high strength bamboo fiber composites which are as slender and warm as woods. Courtyards with different scales planned in every direction of the new building and glass with various transparency bring outside picturesque views into the building. The only cob-brick wall of the new house is installed on one side of the kitchen, which is design to correspond to the texture of the old one. The cob-brick walls of these two buildings will show similar trace of time after many years. These two buildings, a new one and an old one, a heavy one and a light one, provide the perfect foil for one another.
Although villagers did not fully understand why this kind of house was built in the village after project of South Yard was completed, all of them said they like these two buildings because of the familiar bricks and tiles of the old one and the kindly new one. Children in the village like coming here and because of many courtyards inside the building they can run, play and read lightheartedly. Tourists like coming here as well and they find this is a place completely open and full of the color of living. So they like to have a rest and take a picture of the buildings.
The South Yard is the last old building of Sanjia Village. It witnesses the transition of village’s history and keeps close watch on the stunning natural beauty with a brand new living posture.
From the architect. A Simple Home for a Growing Family addresses one of the more ubiquitous challenges of raising a family of five; preserving spaces for adult entertaining and relaxation while permitting the joys and mess of childhood to playout simultaneously. The ability to be together and open or be separate and contained allows the home to be reconfigured based on a variety of daily inhabitations; from the afternoon childhood play time returning from school, to the early evening baby nap, to the noise and excitement of a family dinner in the kitchen, to entertaining with adult guests in the dining room enjoying a glass of wine.
The design utilizes a series of operable screens to open or separate space depending on the needs of the family. The design allows for four states of enclosure and openness; from cross ventilated, breezy and open to the exterior, to air conditioned and internally open yet distinct from the exterior, to separations between public and private use internally allowing children play areas distinct from formal entertaining areas, and finally to a completely separated state for quietude, evening entertaining, and concurrent sleeping for children. This flexibility also creates a variety of atmospheres and relationships to the equatorial climate of Singapore.
Floor Plan
The timber screens allow for a visual interference while permitting light to pass through in a veil like quality of hazy diffuse daylight and noise reduced ambience. Laminated glass, positioned between the timber verticals break down space both acoustically and climatically, articulating one space from the other in quietude with distinct states of comfort. The vertical screen pattern likewise mitigates sound reverberation in the public areas of the home creating a hushed atmosphere even with high levels of noise with children at play.
A series of modifications to the original apartment maximize reuse of existing materials. The original marble floor is retained, re-polished and extended, as is the existing timber floor. The cerused oak used throughout the home is selected to match the existing tonality while allowing daylight to reflect into the relatively deep floor plate naturally illuminating the interior. A long gallery, wrapped in cerused oak center to the sleeping area links four bedrooms into a distinct private zone. Two long balconies flank the home, providing additional space for evening relaxing to the master bedroom and living space on the east elevation, while the western facing balcony is repurposed for service areas while minimizing heat gain from the afternoon sun.
Diagram
A minimal material palette, select furniture choices to complement the existing collection and an overall attention to craftsmanship tie the design together into a simple yet intelligent design for a growing family all attune to the realities of family life on the equator.
The Whittaker Cube was designed as two levels of just 8 metres x 8 meters with immaculate detailing of durable materials and a cost effective structure.
Despite the compact footprint the house features three bedrooms and the upstairs living spaces feel light and spacious.
Plan 1
Located in the small sea side settlement of Kakanui near Oamaru although maximizing sea views was important this had to balance the need for privacy from the street and neighboring properties.
The cedar cladding is used as a rain screen and allows flashing’s to be hidden, which creates a simple uncluttered look, the modern interior features American Oak feature throughout.
Sig Nordal 