Design: Empresa de Desarrollo Urbano EDU – Medellin Taller de diseño EDU
Enterprise Work Team: CEO: Cesar Augusto Hernandez Correa, Margarita Maria Ángel Bernal (2012-2015)
Design Director: John Octavio Ortiz Lopera
Collaborator Architects: Victor Hugo Garcia Restrepo, Gustavo Andres Ramirez Mejia, Ana Carolina Restrepo acosta, Juan pablo Ramos Gaviria, Catalina Ochoa Rodriguez, Jorge Ramirez, Julián Camilo Yepes, Julián Esteban Gómez Carvajal
Technical Designs Consultant: Empresa CONCAVAS Ingenieria.
Technical Design Controler : Empresa EIP.
Enviromental And Lansdcape Consultants: Mauricio Jaramillo Vasquez + ARBOREA
From the architect. Articulated Units Life, UVA, are urban interventions in neighborhoods, intended for the public meeting, the promotion of sport, recreation, culture and community participation, under the concepts of:
Joint Programmes, Projects and City:
-Facilities that promote balance in services for the neighborhood and the city
-These spaces are articulated to a high offer of programs for sports, culture and recreation.
-Recycling of Existing and Unused Urban Spaces
-Revive restricted urban spaces in effective public space understanding that in Medellin we have few spaces for new infrastructure, areas such as soccer fields are an opportunity for the development of new projects multipurposes
-Light for Recovery Regarding Urban
-Resignifying the neighborhood landmarks as representative cityscape
-Facilities that become referents 24 hours, lighting of quality in sports venues, contribute to build safe environments
-Spaces to Enjoy with the Five Senses
-Architectures that interact with the public, which generate experiences, to walk through various programs and the interaction with water in public spaces.
The UVA (life articulated unit) Sol de Oriente, is the transformation of an old neighborhood soccer field built in sand located in the top of the slopes of Medellin, used intensively by all its inhabitants in different sports and community events. It is a strategic icon in the historical memory of people, protective equipment against urban sprawling and a strategic project of the Comuna 8 of Medellin. This project was conceived from a collective construction by the ideas of citizens and embodied in imaginary workshops with a lingering interest to preserve the soccer field and its original measures, along with the opportunity to incorporate a range of various services to the community without leave aside their sporting traditions.
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In an urban level, this equipment located on the edge of the city is part of a comprehensive transformation of habitat framed in the Metropolitan Green Belt project, corresponding to his fringe of consolidation was thought as part of strategies to curb the rapid growth of the urbanization toward the high side.
In the Cerro Pan de Azúcar of Medellin was formulated this urban-rural master plan, a sector that for many years has been affected by violence and social debt of the state, but in the last eight years a high public investment has been made by the government that has allowed it to offer quality in all development programs to close this gap of inequality, thus achieving that quality public facilities become a platform for social transformation, in this case sport, culture and recreation merge and create a multipurpose equipment, giving a new meaning to the community imaginary and the stories that were lived there.
“We learned to listen to our main clients, the citizens”
From participation and community ideas a urban transformation was generated “to elevate” the existing soccer field and fold it to create a seats system which serves too as a large square, a privileged public space opened 24 hours to people. Once elevated, an architectural program of services is inserted instead of; it goes from one to five new sports scenarios for citizen meeting, sports, fitness, dance hall, auditorium, commercial spaces, community rooms and playroom among others inserted in its place.
“An open architecture, where the act of approaching is friendly to citizens, pleasant transition spaces between the street and the depths of the building connected to the neighborhood daily.”
This building is a volume in concrete specifically crossed in the middle by a neighborhood street that connects the existing health care center and surrounding houses. A series of vertical sunbreakers are part of bioclimatic strategy for solar protection and building identity itself through color in their facades, crowned by a soccer field in synthetic turf of high quality for a popular neighborhood of Medellin, which replaces the polluting dust of the previous court, to become the new icon and referent. We have made of public architecture, a reference that dignify the poorest areas of the city.
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It is a soccer field- terrace, a mixture of two fundamental spaces in the way we live our hillsides, the soccer fields are sacred scenarios in the neighborhoods of Medellin, the terrace as the neighborhood house’s is that intimate space for future growth of our homes has become in the setting for many activities in daily life, for our mountain condition are privileged city balconies.
“Architecture without limits; public transformations erase barriers reject “locked” spaces and favor open
Yuri Grigoryan founded Project Meganom in 1999 in Moscow with his partners Alexandra Pavlova, Iliya Kuleshov, and Pavel Ivanchikov. Together, the group all graduated from Moscow’s Architectural Institute, MArchI in 1991, the year of the Soviet Union’s collapse, and then practiced at the studio of Moscow architect Alexander Larin. Today Project Meganom is headed by Grigoryan, Iliya Kuleshov, Artem Staborovsky, and Elena Uglovskaya, and keeps in close contact with the theoretical side of architecture: Grigoryan teaches at his alma mater and until recently he was the Director of Education at Strelka Institute, founded in 2009 under the creative leadership of Rem Koolhaas, while in 2008 the practice was involved in the Venice Architecture Biennale with their San Stae project for curator Yuri Avvakumov’s “BornHouse” exhibition. All of this gives Grigoryan an interesting overview of Russia’s unique architectural context. In this interview from his “City of Ideas” column, Vladimir Belogolovsky speaks with Grigoryan about the issues facing Russian architecture and how Project Meganom has responded to those challenges.
Vladimir Belogolovsky:You travel often and participate in student critiques in the West and in Russia. Do you notice any particular difference in approaches?
Yuri Grigoryan: First, the West is not homogeneous. For example, in the late 1980s, during what was then a very rare trip to the USA I had a chance to visit some of the leading studios and schools. I remember how during our visit to the IIT in Chicago the students would sit and methodically place four pieces of paper, forming laconic spaces precisely following Mies van der Rohe’s principles. That was very strange and I did not see any influences coming from outside of that particular school of thought. I could say the same about Russia. At the height of the Constructivist movement, the teachings of our great educators Nikolai Ladovsky and his students Ivan Lamtsov and Mikhail Turkus at Vkhutemas lead to the situation where the figure of a teacher lost its meaning; it was replaced with methodology that was to be obeyed as if it were a sort of religion.
Until today, if you place your pieces of paper in opposition to the precise principles prescribed by the great pioneers of Constructivism who are long gone, you can forget about getting a good grade. In other words, if a student is attempting to construct an interesting dynamic composition in his own way, he is stopped and forced to use the so-called “approved” solutions. I am against that. On the contrary, I try to encourage all kinds of initiatives. I say to the students, “Burn it, experiment!”
To say “no” to students in their first year is wrong. But they are told, “This is not according to the canon.” In other words, originally, the Constructivists overturned all possible canons and precedents, after which their own discoveries were then made into a stale canon that defines a particular territory for prescribed creativity. So often students at MArchI who have fresh ideas are crippled in their first two years. There is little time spent on discourse and self-searching, and more attention is given to learning practical skills.
I teach students from third to sixth year and often I end up unteaching them. They often ask, “Can I do this or that?” I always respond, “Before asking such questions say, ‘Yes, I can’ and ask me the next question.” In other words, you can do anything. Do what you want. You can and need to do absolutely anything. This simple idea puts many students into shock because before they were always told, “No” and were shown the “right” way.
VB:You once pointed out that Russia, just like other national architecture schools, needs to define its identity. But Russia already has its strong Constructivist roots and a number of leading western architects, such as Hadid, Libeskind, Tschumi, Koolhaas, Holl, and others, even get their inspiration precisely from this architecture. Why then does this theme not seem to be the primary source of inspiration for contemporary Russian architects?
YG: Again, you have to look at this movement and understand what was its fate. There was a time of incredible freedom and exchange of ideas among the leading masters in the West and Russia. Gropius, Le Corbusier, and Wright understood that Russia was brimming with interesting ideas and that such Constructivists as Moisei Ginzburg and the Vesnin brothers were creating the type of architecture that was causing a stir all over the world. But as I said, even before Stalin reorganized architecture in the early 1930s, the dogmatic methodology of teaching at the Vkhutemas lead to the evaporation of the spirit of freedom of the initial years. The Constructivist projects were turned into icons.
In the West, there is a very different attitude toward Constructivism. It is much looser. For example, I heard that when Alvin Boyarsky, the head of the AA in London, was following Zaha Hadid’s experiments with Arabic calligraphy, he suggested to her to unite it with Russian Constructivism. That’s when her new forms started to appear. They were rooted in Constructivism, but they also merged into something uniquely her own. Her architecture grew out of her passion to invent a new language, in which she succeeded as very few did in the 20th century. Just like Le Corbusier, she invented her own architectural language. You can say she changed the planet. She transformed nature. After we saw her projects, they changed our understanding of freedom that one can acquire. Architecture is often just a matter of emulation – you can do this or that. But suddenly, here came someone whose creative process was absolutely free and boundless. And I don’t feel freer because now I can copy what she did, but because I understand that anything is possible.
VB:And why wouldn’t Russian students and architects feel free to experiment with the Constructivist legacy today? Wouldn’t you agree that they should have a special affinity toward this architecture?
YG: We still don’t have such teachers who could direct students in this direction. Don’t forget what kind of country we lived in until very recently. There was just one kind of ideology, one kind of truth. There were only certain things that you could do.
Still, if you glance at the work of our leading architects today you can see that the ideas they are exploring are rooted either in functional works by Moisei Ginzburg or more romantic projects by Ladovsky and Leonidov. You can’t deny the relation of contemporary Russian architecture to Constructivism. Yet, this does not take place on a massive scale and we don’t talk about this as a particular movement as much as this is discussed in the West.
Theater Mercury, Moscow, 2006. Image Courtesy of Project Meganom
VB:Where do you derive your inspiration?
YG: In anything and everything, really – from city to nature and specific projects by various architects whose work I follow. I am also inspired by the work of artists. The Weather Project [2003], or the Sun, by Olafur Eliasson at the Tate Modern in London influenced me tremendously. I’m not sure how but since seeing that installation I am a different person. It was the moment when the world, the entire cosmos, people’s behavior suddenly transformed. I was absolutely happy. It changed my life. Another artist who had an effect on the entire Russian culture is Alexander Brodsky.
Moscow River Competition, 2014 (under construction). Image Courtesy of Project Meganom
VB:How?
YG: Very simple. Those of us who consider ourselves modernist architects see architecture as a particular medium that can help us to make order in everything around us, to transform our reality into the world of organized geometry. And when we walk into an ordinary world oversaturated with advertisements and leaning fences everywhere it is natural for us to want to bring everything into order. But how? The chaos surrounding us is constantly growing. It is so irritating because you understand that even if you solve this problem of chaos in one particular apartment or even a whole building you can’t do anything about what happens everywhere else. Brodsky showed to us that everything that in our opinion looks like a mess is in fact life, a vital life. And it is quite beautiful. He simply included everything that’s around us into the archive of what art is. He turned around our glasses. Since that we understand that beauty is the chaos of our life. Now we look at everything around not with the eyes of architects but with the eyes of ordinary people.
Masterplan of former ZIL automobile factory redevelopment, Moscow (ongoing). Image Courtesy of Project Meganom
VB:And how did this revelation change your architecture?
YG: It is not as ambitious and with much less pathos. Our gestures are confined to specific situations. They are relevant. We decided not to fight chaos. For this reason, we are constantly searching for new forms specific to each place. We try not to come with predetermined solutions. Our studio is an educational project. We educate ourselves based on the life around us and on the work process. We are not after a particular style. We are constantly in the process of forming our style.
VB:How would you define your mission in architecture? What are your goals in addition to those set by your clients?
YG: In finding the right type of building, in changing the actual archetype or inventing an entirely new type. This process of finding the right type is the most interesting part to me. Today building types constantly pulsate, mutate, and lead to new hybrid types. The goal is to find the most straightforward solution.
VB:Once you remarked that building a project is not the purpose. So what is the purpose then?
YG: Any realization is the intermediate phase. Architecture is not simply utilitarian or functional. Many buildings go through reincarnations and change their purpose many times. Architecture is interesting because forms or so-called shells can be filled with various functions over time. This is the goal of an architect – to create a kind of form that would correspond to different functions.
Masterplan and renovation of The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts (ongoing). Image Courtesy of Project Meganom
VB:Do you ever create forms that may hint at a particular function?
YG: I don’t think this is possible because in reality a building has a purpose, not just a function. Functionalism in itself is not productive despite the fact that any building has certain degree of utilitarianism. Only such projects as pavilions, tombstones or monuments can truly be the highest manifestations of architecture in the sense that they are not utilitarian. Other buildings have to be utilitarian, but that does not mean that thinking about their functions leads to the best possible form. Take such examples as Brunelleschi’s Dome, St. Basil’s Cathedral in Moscow or the National Parliament of Bangladesh by Louis Kahn. None of those buildings’ forms express their interior spaces. In these examples, forms are completely independent of their functions. Any form is artistic. All buildings are made up. They illustrate either one thing or another.
VB:And what then is the purpose of architecture?
YG: The thing about architecture is that an architect can imagine any building in his or her own way, in his or her own language of gestures and techniques. The meaning and purpose of architecture is in inventing a form, but not just a new form. Such a form should instead be local and specific.
VB:In addition to defining forms specific to each project, you explore such themes as a building’s skin and how it admits light within.
YG: This fascination started with one tiny shed structure in Nikola-Lenivets, a town near Moscow that over the last quarter of a century has become a real laboratory for artistic and architectural expressions for many leading Russian architects. This shed is the laconic form of a typical village log hut. All sides of the shed were perforated with apertures – 600 apertures per square meter. During the day, it was full of light bursting in, and at night, bright light was coming from within. It was this project that instigated our exploration of a building’s skin and how it could be penetrated by light. Now it is our concern in every project. The shed has become our manifesto.
The main thing in our architecture is a story that we are presenting with the help of a particular form. The point is to create a form that is able to tell its own story. Our architecture is literary. We can tell a story about every one of our buildings and why it has one particular form and not another. A form carries a story that is possible to read. That’s why every time the form is different. In other words, each of our buildings has its story and its goal.
VB:You said that architecture is always in a state of a crisis, and that it is a never-ending process.
YG: It is like a city. Any city in its development is going through a crisis and it is precisely a crisis that creates fruitful development. Any solution leads to a new search and it is impossible to find an ideal solution to a question which will only come up in the future. Our world is constantly changing and there will always be new challenges. That’s why we always have to aim at being ahead, ahead of others and ourselves. We can’t use yesterday’s solutions and that’s why we are always in crisis. Architecture can’t be created only for the sake of realizing a building. This is not interesting. Architecture must respond to new challenges of the ever-changing times.
Masterplan and renovation of The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts (ongoing). Image Courtesy of Project Meganom
Belogolovsky’s column, City of Ideas introduces ArchDaily’s readers to his latest and ongoing conversations with the most innovative architects from around the world. These intimate discussions are a part of the curator’s upcoming exhibition with the same title which premiered at the University of Sydney in June 2016. The City of Ideas exhibition will travel to venues around the world to explore ever-evolving content and design.
From the architect. The project Five Houses proposes to realize the dream of living in a forest dominated by ancient pines and lush vegetation, in a privileged place. The site is located 3 minutes from the junction of the new Toluca – Avándaro road, which includes a bicycle path. Its location is strategic, between the center of Valle de Bravo and Avandaro Golf Club, 10 minutes from the lake. For the construction of the project we took into consideration saving the largest possible number of trees in the nearly seven thousand square meters of land area, in order to respect the environment as much as possible. This, together with the use of the slope of the site, accentuates the feeling of being immersed in the forest from the built spaces.
The design and layout of the elements of each house as well as the project on the ground create a sense of privacy. Thus, the inhabitants of Five Houses enjoy the tranquility of the forest.
To access the project and each of the houses, we drew up a dirt road from the entrance, passing through the parking areas of each house and ending in a common paddle tennis court, with minimal disruption to the environment.
Five Houses is a horizontal condominium with private area, divided into five lots totaling 7,000 square meters, of which 5,800 are green areas. In addition to the built area, each lot has a large open field where it is possible to integrate a jacuzzi.
Each house is a sum of spaces with contemporary spirit, where comfort is an essential aspect. Their rural location, with full respect for nature, and clearly avant-garde design, are their main attractions.
Balance is one of the central features of the houses. It is felt everywhere: between the buildings and the nature that surrounds them; between the proportion of the built space and the site; between the privacy of each house and their openness to the forest; between the property of each house and the common area, and between the materials used, light and open, and at the same time, solid and welcoming.
Each house occupies an area of 300 square meters, divided into three volumes:
1. Living area and Terrace, separated by sliding glass doors that expand and link the spaces, or divide them. Both benefit from fresh wind during warm seasons. In cold weather, a fireplace covering two walls heats both spaces. The view opens to the forest, through the cantilevered roof onto the terrace, and gives the feeling of being in nature.
2. Four Bedrooms, connected with the family area, maintain their independence. Three of them are on the ground floor, one of them with private terrace. The family room is on the first floor and the large master bedroom, whose bathroom is characterized by a very special element: its roof is glass, overlooks the treetops.
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3. The service area is located on a separate rectangular volume, which rises above the sloping ground and includes kitchen, pantry, laundry room and utility room.
In addition to these three volumes, there are two interior courtyards whose function is to link the spaces. One is located to one side of the main entrance, overlooking the living room, and the other is a visual end to the bedroom hallway.
On the grounds of the Tripoli International Fair (Rashid Karameh International Exhibition Center) in Lebanon, one finds one of the five largest exhibition centers in the world [1]. The 15 structures, designed by legendary Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer in 1963, remain unfinished due to the project’s abandonment during the country’s civil war in 1975.
Photographer Anthony Saroufim, who is based in Beirut and Paris, captured the site’s unfinished concrete structures. The photographs reveal the simultaneous hints of progress and crisis, and of imagination and ruin.
Check out Anthony Saroufim’s gallery of this striking, unfinished Niemeyer project.
Ely Court is a 44-dwelling mixed-tenure regeneration scheme in London’s South Kilburn Estate. The scheme demonstrates the ability of a Local Authority to lead the process of enlightened city building, by commissioning and delivering housing of the highest calibre to integrate previously segregated communities.
Ely Court forms part of Phase 1b of the South Kilburn Estate Regeneration masterplan, a result of Brent’s rolling programme of invited design competitions for each phase. The scheme is the product of a collaboration for two sites within Phase 1b. ABA was invited by Lifschutz Davidson Sandilands to design 44 dwellings on the Ely Court site, while LDS designed 144 units on the Cambridge and Wells site to the northeast.
In May 2016, the After Belonging Agency discussed the theme of the forthcoming Oslo Architecture Triennale—entitled After Belonging: a Triennale In-Residence, On Residence, and the Ways We Stay In-Transit—as part of In Therapy, the exhibition of the Nordic Pavilion at the 2016 Venice Biennale. The hour-long discussion, which also includes presentations by Shumi Bose and Füsun Türetken, begins with an in-depth description of how the Triennale intends to focus on the future challenges of migration by investigating how cities and architecture can react to large groups of people moving and resettling.
Oslo is Europe’s fastest growing city and it is expected that, according to statistics, half of its population will consist of immigrants by 2040. “This global circulation of people,” the Triennale believes, “creates new situations where our relationship to objects, places and belonging are changing.”
All climates like exceptions. Warmer when it is cold. Cooler in the tropics. People do not resist thermal shock well. Nor do works of art. Such elementary observations have influenced the Louvre Abu Dhabi. It wishes to create a welcoming world serenely combining light and shadow, reflection and calm. It wishes to belong to a country, to its history, to its geography without becoming a flat translation, the pleonasm that results in boredom and convention. It also aims at emphasizing the fascination generated by rare encounters.
It is rather unusual to find a built archipelago in the sea. It is even more uncommon to see that it is protected by a parasol creating a rain of light.
Elevations
The possibility of accessing the museum by boat or finding a pontoon to reach it by foot from the shore is equally extraordinary, before being welcomed like a much-awaited visitor willing to see unique collections, linger in tempting bookstores, or taste local teas, coffees and delicacies.
It is both a calm and complex place. A contrast amongst a series of museums that cultivate their differences and their authenticities.
It is a project founded on a major symbol of Arab architecture: the dome. But here, with its evident shift from tradition, the dome is a modern proposal.
Dome pattern
A double dome 180 meters in diameter, offering horizontal, perfectly radiating geometry, a randomly perforated woven material, providing shade punctuated by bursts of sun. The dome gleams in the Abu Dhabi sunshine. At night, this protected landscape is an oasis of light under a starry dome.
The Louvre Abu Dhabi becomes the final destination of an urban promenade, a garden on the coast, a cool haven, a shelter of light during the day and evening, its aesthetic consistent with its role as a sanctuary for the most precious works of art.
The appearance of the office building has changed to an astonishing extent. It now looks spacious, light and airy. Only the thick concrete pillars give away that this is not new. The climate façade makes the building lighter and more energy-efficient. Winter gardens – bright open spaces with mature trees – have been laid out between the outer and inner façade. The highest winter garden admits daylight to the newly added underground conference centre. Floors have been cut away to create voids, admitting plenty of daylight to what used to be dark and gloomy worksites and creating a very attractive, open working environment.
The façade design combines good looks and well-thought-out technical performance. The orientation of the windows on each floor varies, giving the building a layered appearance reminiscent of the original façade. At the same time, the slanting façade sections ensure that reflected daylight penetrates far into the building and guarantee optimum circulation of ventilation air through the cavity. Moreover, the light-weight prefab facade cladding can be mounted quickly, cleanly and without undue noise.
The architecture, interior design and garden lay-out combine to form a strong overall concept, which is worked out to the finest detail. The slanting lines of the façade are repeated in the walls of the conference units, the edges of the atria with built-in worksites and the design of the tree planters. The building is divided into three wings, which are given individual colour schemes – green, yellow and purple – for ease of orientation. These colours are repeated in the floor and wall finishings, and even in the choice of the plants in winter gardens and roof terraces. These features distinguish the design of the a.s.r. offices from that of a conventional office building, giving it a surprising, instantly recognisable look.
The design of the work environment is based on flexibility, collaboration and casual meetings. The 2,800 flexible worksites provide room for 4,000 users. There is a great diversity of workplaces, like enclosed spaces for concentrated work or making phone calls, comfortable lounge areas for informal meetings and flexi-work tables for collaborative work. The public area, with a coffee bar, brasserie, conference centre, work lounge and restaurant, offers a varied and inspiring work environment.
The building has been rated BREEAM Excellent for sustainability. During construction 98% of the demolition waste has been recycled. For example, concrete rubble has been used to lay out bicycle tracks. Not only the building has been renovated, also a great deal of the old furniture has been redone and reused. With the new facade and building installations, including the climate ceiling, user responsive lighting and heath-cold storage, energy consumption has been reduced by over 50%. In addition, 1,200 solar panels have been placed on the roof. Green facades, birdhouses, roof gardens and beehives contribute to the local ecological structure. All these measurements allow the renovated buidling to compete with newly constructed buildings regarding sustainability.
The design for the new art gallery, one of the largest and most prominent in Beirut, is an adaptive reuse of a historic theatre, Masrah al Madina, which is converted into a space dedicated to showcasing prominent as well as up and coming Lebanese and Arab artists. Before being transformed in the 90s into a theatre, the underground space was as early as 1969 one of the first cinemas in the Middle East to project art and experimental movies of Fellini and Gavras as well as Soviet films.
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Located mostly underground, the attempt was to create a smooth transition from the ground level to the lower gallery level, from the sidewalk to the catwalk, while bringing natural light to the buried space.
Starting with the existing theatre space, the intent was to preserve essential characteristic elements of the space, and introduce new elements that allude to the history of the space while serving its new program.
A new staircase, reminiscent of theatre promenade staircases, cascades its way down to the underground main gallery space from the ground floor, going through secondary office spaces. The cascading nature allows visual continuity between upper and lower levels, and daylight to pierce its way down to the basement.
The ceiling of the theatre has been renovated to highlight its steel catwalks, and transforming it into a repository for the gallery lighting, both ambient and accent lighting. A new electric chain hoist, usually hidden in the back of house, is fore fronted in the ceiling of the ground floor when needed, and is supported on exposed I beams that continue the industrial look of the gallery ceiling into the ground floor ceiling. The hoist would carry the art work crates down to the main gallery space, showcasing the back of house logistics and foregrounding them into the entry level.
Courtesy of L.E.FT Architects
Along the same lines, storage aisles on either side of the main gallery space were turned into intimate art galleries, the back of house becoming part of the foregrounded experience of art. A large archive gallery in the lower basement was also introduced for private client meetings.
From the architect. This compact double fronted Victorian workers cottage in set within a gritty one way street in Richmond – a stone’s throw from the MCG and just down from the corner of the infamous Royal Hotel. Unlike other boom style Victorian double front dwellings in Australian cities this cottage is compact and quaint. This area of Richmond (in a process of gentrification) contains mostly compact and heterogeneous building types built up to the street with comparatively narrow or short lot sizes and in many cases not designed for the long term.
The conceptual drive for the interior of this house is largely in response to a brief which crystallised into a need to be connected with ‘green’ space. Beyond the heritage front the project wanted to not necessarily increase floor area but to increase amenity. To make spaces feel bigger, more functional, to be light filled, and to visually extend &borrow from within and beyond the site.
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‘Shakin’ Stevens’ is not only about a coloured front door but the experience of what’s beyond it. Conceptually beyond this green door, there are no doors; the newer space is about flow and continuity where delineation of space is soft and less finite than expected from the street. In a clear formal idea the rear composes 3 extruded white cubes that look essentially like they have been let go, landing like dice randomly on top of each other next to a Victorian (monopoly) house. The 3 cubes, as with the existing villa, are composed so as to be immediately deciphered internally or externally and in clear programmatic zones all house different functions. The cubes which are opened at their ends (or sides where required) are utilised as devices to orchestrate views to green elements within the structure and to greenery within or beyond the site.
At just over 200sqm & 25m depth, opportunities arose from site constraints. The site boundary walls were conceptually designated as internal and lined with perimeter greenery set for maturity. The existing building was seen as an endearing element worth retaining, to be celebrated and re-programmed through colour and detail into the whole.
Ground Floor Plan
1st Floor Plan
The rear spaces both internal &external are about volume & enclosure and conversely lack of it, flexibility to be undefined, spaces you move through rather in or out of. Definition is brought through the allocation of detail- ensuring structural tolerances mean cubes don’t touch, concealing fixed window framing so materials run flush continuously through thresholds. Variation of volume, material and colour similarly assist the clarity and expression of the formal idea whilst also being practical to particular spaces – living is more open, dining more intimate. ‘Non-cube’ materials are deliberately recessive – recycled timber floorboards line circulation areas while glazed panels conceal into cube walls.
‘Shakin’ utilises many micro level ESD principles – siting, sun protection, thermal mass, passive temperature regulation, low embodied energy (& cost @ $550k) construction techniques& materials, structural depth with high R values. A grey water system, 2 side water storage tanks, fake grass & ‘succulent’ planting temper water usage whilst providing intrinsic features of the colour scheme.
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Beyond these at a macro level this interior is about future robustness meaning users now have the amenity to avoid suburbia using up precious planet resource and transport time. They have borrowed what was previously laying dormant within and beyond their walls. This is the real ‘sustainability’- a model for space/s that can sustain user types (a couple, 2 couples, a family with teenagers, guests) through separation of sleeping zones about a flexible living zone that they can up-size (externally). This interior proposes to extend beyond its enclosure & embrace its ‘green-ness’!
The structures of different periods are connected yet seemingly separated by a central courtyard and vertical stair chasm. Colour & detail variation are utilised tactfully to exaggerate the settings & temporal divisions of the structures. Although clearly a strategy of ‘viva la difference’ the different structures are married by shades of green chosen to adorn feature elements within each.
The client requested a predominantly white interior with a feature highlight colour. Green became an obvious choice, working in combination with the proximity of the garden. The green spaces within and beyond the site -instead of being the backdrop to the white interior – became the focus. The white cubes became the lens for these events– effectively assisting in bringing the green inside and dissolving barriers of enclosure. Interior, exterior and landscape -through colour- all inform each other with equal importance. Colour was vitally important in adding glow and clarity to this expression.
Sig Nordal 