The Naomi Milgrom Foundation has released plans for Studio Mumbai founder Bijoy Jain’s design for the 2016 MPavilion, the Australian counterpart to London‘s wildly successful Serpentine Gallery Pavilion program. Continuing the concepts driving Studio Mumbai’s work, the pavilion will utilize a process Jain describes as ‘Lore,’ an exploration of handmade architecture and simplicity of building craft that centers on the relationship between making and human connectedness.
The 2016 MPavilion will consist of an 18 meter by 18 meter structure built of bamboo, rope, earth and bluestone sourced from India and Australia. Reaching 12 meters tall, the pavilion will become the largest bamboo structure ever built in Australia, and will be capped with a roof made from karvi panels (similar to a wattle and daub form of construction). The awning and roof panels will then be covered using a traditional Indian technique “whereby a mix of cow dung and earth are tied to the bamboo structure and covered in a waterproof white lime daub,” which will take on the color Australian landscape.
“The idea is not to guide observers but to allow discoveries through visual layers of thinking, making and seeing,” explains Bijoy Jain.
Courtesy of Studio Mumbai
The pavilion borrows from the Indian typology of the ‘tazia,’ an elaborate tower used in traditional Indian ceremonies, to connect the strata of earth, sky and gravity that is shared by all humans. The project’s tazia was constructed in Bharuch, India, by a family who has specialized in building the ornate towers for generations.
“I wanted to create a space that connects the entire culture of the land. The tower or ‘tazia’ is an imaginary building that reaches deep into the stars, so it is otherworldly, and through it you can see the stars, the sky, other dimensions,” says Jain. “I want the MPavilion to be the scaffolding that provides a creative space that suspends visitors between earth, ground and sky.”
The pavilion will provide shade and space for lectures and public events, and will also feature a coffee bar and market for selling local produce.
“I want the building to be a symbol of the elemental nature of communal structures – a place of engagement, and a space to discover the essentials of the world and of oneself,” he said. “What’s interesting about the site is that the garden’s edges are formed by the streets and roads – in some ways it is a non-place. MPavilion relocates this space and makes it a place of meaning.”
Naomi Milgrom AO, MPavilion founder said: “Bijoy Jain’s practice is unique in that it focuses on honouring age-old crafts and building-techniques, which resonate strongly in this technologized world. As an architect, Bijoy thinks like an artist. His buildings are realised around a central idea, and are then fleshed out through an extensive process of collaboration, and always, careful consideration of the surrounding environment.”
Jain and his design team have been working for the past six months alongside a team of Australian builders, who Jain flew to Mumbai to involve in his collaborative approach to design and construction. Engineering and construction for the project is led by Studio Mumbai and Kane Construction in India in partnership with the Melbourne and Mumbai offices of Arup Engineering.
The pavilion is expected to take 8 weeks to build, with a grand opening in October. Once completed, the pavilion will welcome visitors for a series of talks, workshops, performances and installations until February 2017. It will then be moved to a new home in downtown Melbourne where it can become a part of the city’s architectural landscape.
From the architect. Among the pines trees, a stone plateau is drawn to a scale that can no longer be understood as a courtyard. The space embraces a wide area of trees.
The more open side of the house creates a water tank through the connection of geometries. A space that embraces its context is created through this closed extension.
“OK, let me see your list.” I was fresh out of architecture school and working on my first project as a designer. It was one week before our design Development Deadline. The project manager asked me to draw up a list of remaining design issues.
“Here are the ten things I have left,” I said as I handed over the list. “It was hard to prioritize them. They’re all really important.” I was fortunate to be working with an experienced project manager who, in addition to being extremely patient with me, saw it as her responsibility to mold and shape green architecture graduates into fully functioning architects. Not an easy task…
“So you’re telling me that designing custom coat hooks is as important as fine-tuning the proportions of the massing?” she asked with a raised eyebrow.
“Well… I mean… no. Not when you put it that way…” I stammered.
“And,” she continued, “do you really think the restroom tile pattern will bring as much to the project as finishing the design of the entrance lobby?”
“No, but…”
She held up her hand to save me any further embarrassment. “We have one week left. I want you to pick out the two issues from the list that will bring the most impact to the project. And then work on ONLY those two issues. Nothing else matters.”
“So no custom coat hooks?” I asked incredulously.
Instead of a sharp rebuke, she chuckled and said “A big part of your job as designer is to identify the parts of the project that are most important to the design. The parts that will make or break the project. And then you need to focus on those areas relentlessly. Everything else is just a distraction. Like your coat hooks.”
“OK, I understand… only the two most important things” I replied and headed back to my desk.
So I quickly got over my wounded pride, rolled up my sleeves and got to work. The project didn’t win any design awards but the client was extremely happy with the results and hired us to do another project soon after.
Though I didn’t know it at the time, this was my first introduction to the 80/20 rule.
In 1896, an Italian economist named Vilfredo Pareto published a paper that showed 80% of the land in Italy was owned by 20% of the people. Pareto looked at other countries and found that this 80/20 distribution of wealth was extremely consistent.
Fast forward to 1941. A management consultant by the name of Joseph Juran discovered Pareto’s research and applied it to quality issues. Much like Pareto, Juran found that the 80/20 distribution held true. In Juran’s case, he discovered that 80% of quality problems were caused by 20% of the issues. Juran called this phenomenon “the vital few and the trivial many.” It is also known as the Pareto Principle or the 80/20 rule.
The 80/20 rule states that 80% of your results in any activity will come from just 20% of your effort. Essentially, there are certain actions you do (your 20%) that account for most of your success and happiness (your 80%). While the numbers aren’t always exactly 80/20, what’s important to understand is the lopsided ratio of effort to results.
So how do we apply this to architecture and design?
Take a look at your own work and see if you can identify an 80/20 distribution of results to effort. For example, in a given day, 80% of your work is probably completed in just 20% of the time. Or 80% of your design time is spent on just 20% of the building.
Here are some other suggestions for applying the 80/20 rule:
If 80% of your firm’s work comes from 20% of your clients then cultivate those relationships.
If 80% of RFIs come from 20% of the building then focus your documentation on those areas.
If 80% of your marketing photographs are taken in 20% of the building then apply more design effort to these areas.
The trick with the 80/20 rule is identifying the 20% that really matters and focusing on those areas because they are the ones that drive your results. In my case, it was my project manager who helped me identify the 2 design issues out of the 10 on my list that would bring the most impact to the project.
It’s easy to get caught up in the minutia of our various tasks and lose sight of what really matters. Likewise, it’s easy to treat all the tasks on your list as having equal importance. Don’t fall for the hard work paradox. Instead, take a critical look at what you’re doing and focus relentlessly on those few things that really matter. Do this and you’ll super-charge your productivity.
From the architect. La Roca house is a refuge located in Jose Ignacio Point, a fishing village 80 km north of Punta del Este on the Atlantic.
Plan 0
Plan 1
Plan 2
The site presents a double slope along its length and width, terminating in rocks and the ruins of the foundation of a pre-existing building which now forms a natural garden of succulents.
The program considers a principal volume for social spaces, and another for the residences that results in two boxes of the same height which generate two patios in the voids that the boxes leave between and under themselves. The master bedroom is located in the residential volume with panoramic views of the surroundings.
Elevation
Sketch
Elevation
La Roca House is defined through a sequence of spaces, almost square in plan, in which run entering from the most public to the most intimate, crossing terraces, patios, exterior, intermediate and interior spaces and arriving finally to the master bedroom.
In winter the gallery space captures heat, but in the summer, the master bedroom acts as a chimney for the convection of rising warm air creating ventilation that eliminates the need for air conditioning.
Section
The roofs of the boxes are succulent gardens that work to improve the thermal quality while at the same time integrating the architecture with the landscape.
Model
Gray water from the house is recycled for the irrigation of these gardens. The materiality consists of Ipe and exposed concrete with the idea that from the rocks emerges two volumes, lifted up on feet, integrated into the site as elements as radical as the landscape itself.
First Prize Winning Proposal "U-CAN" by I-Ting Chuang, Jing-Yao Lin, Takanori Kodama, Yu Han Wu. Image Courtesy of Bee Breeders
Through their international architecture competitions, Bee Breeders give young architects and designers the platform to question the social and political role of architecture. Their latest competition, a Cannabis Bank without a specified site, was an open-ended question into the role and relevance of the increasingly normalised substance. The judges selected three winners and six honorable mentions, all of which presented ideas that open up the discourse around cannabis and its integration into the built environment.
As the architecture of cannabis still remains undefined territory, it has historically been associated with refits of other building types such as tea houses, cafes, public houses or pharmacies. This ambiguity left the field open for entrants to be as fantastic and progressive as they desired, with respect to the impact of the program on their social context. The judges commented that the most successful projects presented a, “consideration of individual experience — medicinal, psychological, and spiritual; sensitive accommodation in space and circulation for both the intimate and social; clearly defined context and locale; and innovation of an undefined spatial, tectonic, and architectural typology.”
FIRST PRIZE WINNER – U-CAN
First Prize Winning Proposal "U-CAN" by I-Ting Chuang, Jing-Yao Lin, Takanori Kodama, Yu Han Wu. Image Courtesy of Bee Breeders
U-CAN distributes cannabis dispensaries across rooftops in Taiwan, in the ad hoc additions which are typically constructed by residents without permission from their local government. This draws a parallel between the illegality but social acceptance of these structures and the growing acceptance of cannabis, suggesting a sense of collectivity and cohesion that is above the law. The scheme sees private consultation rooms littered across the rooftops, marked by illuminated chimneys to reaffirm the peaceful presence of cannabis in the city. The scheme “plays the social and political ambiguities against each other” and comments on the prevalence of marginalised activities that take place far above ground level.
Read the full interview with the first prize winning team here.
SECOND PRIZE WINNER – CANNALEONIC BANK
Second Prize Winning Proposal "CANNALEONIC BANK" by Albert Pla, Joan Pau Albertí and Héctor Durán. Image Courtesy of Bee Breeders
Albert Pla, Joan Pau Albertí and Héctor Durán | Spain
The second place proposal is situated in the medical research park of Barcelona, Spain, and was praised by the judges for its contextual relevance and political commentary. The sites adjacency to the beach presents a playful dichotomy of the medical and recreational aspects of cannabis. The external skin is covered in informational pamphlets, presenting a literal wall of information buffering the external from the protected interior. The interior houses a series of loosely organized rectilinear volumes, which open up to a central courtyard which functions as the key social gathering space. The recognizable silhouette of the curvilinear floating roof and regular base form an iconic building that can be readily identified and attributed to its cause.
Read an interview with the second prize winners here.
THIRD PRIZE WINNER – CANNABIS RIVER CRUISE
Third Prize Winning Proposal "CANNABIS RIVER CRUISE" by Sheehan Wachter and Cruz Crawford. Image Courtesy of Bee Breeders
The third place proposal takes the unassigned typology of cannabis architecture and marries it to the architecture of river boats. Acknowledging the historical importance of steamboats in the advancement of society, the boat brings with it new ideas and substances from outside of the known and accepted realm. Just as passenger boats evolved to places of great social extravagance, with their ball rooms and luxurious dining rooms, this project suggests that cannabis too can transgress from mere cargo to something of worth and prestige. The design sees the traditional program of the passenger boat subverted, with the great hall becoming “an intimate and other worldly meditative space for the use of medicinal Cannabis.”
Read an interview with the third prize winners here.
HONORABLE MENTIONS
Pierre Shi Thach, Kevin Ting-Yu Huang and Daniel Xu Fetcho
Liliana Szulakowska
Elżbieta Komendacka
Teruaki Hara, Sai Hu and Marija Sassine
Charles Jones, Robert Mosby, Matt Decotiis and Jill Thompson
Miroslav Stafi, Julia Azamatova and Nikita Petrov
For more information on each of the winners and honorable mentions, check out the competition website.
From the architect. Last 16th April, Chaplin’s World, a museum dedicated to Charlie Chaplin, was inaugurated after more than 2 years of construction. Conceived by the IttenBrechbühl SA of ce and realised by the general contractor HRS Real Estate SA, the project integrates a new large-scale building that is both sober and modern as well as the restoration and transformation of the Manoir de Ban and its outbuildings in a preserved rural environment.
The universe in which Charles Chaplin lived during his exile in Switzerland was composed of a mansion (The Manoir de Ban), the outbuildings and agricultural buildings. With the new Musée Chaplin, an additional complex, the Studio, is now being added. It is subtly integrated into its unique environment and revalues the existing elements.
Set up as a continuation of the garage, this new half-buried two-storey building houses the cinematographic universe of the artist, actor and director over more than 1350 m2. Five volumes interlock to form a streamlined and sober building. Realised
in pre-cast concrete slabs, the mineral facades play the part of a background in the landscape. The shadows of the surrounding cherry trees are projected onto the facades of this simple volume, as if it were a cinema screen. By its simplicity, the building pays homage to the site and to the existing buildings.
Inside the volume, a multimedia scenography makes it possible for visitors to nd out about the cinematographic heritage of Chaplin from different perspectives. The entrance is located on an open, bright and airy overhang. It opens out onto a cinema theatre which transposes visitors into the secret universe of Chaplin’s work. The screen then rises to reveal an emblematic street with a Hollywood air which invites visitors to wander through spaces producing the films of Chaplin. At the end of this path on both floors of the building, the visitor comes up from the basement into a light, glass space opening out onto the restaurant.
Ground Plan
The Manoir de Ban or Chaplin’s house
Registered with the Swiss Inventory of Cultural Property of National Significance, the Manoir de Ban, of neo-classical style, was built in 1840 by the Vevey architect Philippe Franel, author, among other things, of the Château de l’Aile and the hôtel des Trois Couronnes in Vevey.
In collaboration with the Monument and Site service of the Canton of Vaud, it has been completely restored and renovated by the IttenBrechbühl Of ce architects and HRS company.Many artisans have contributed towards the restoration of the slate roof, the replacement of the molasse door and window frames, the enhancement and preservation of the vaulted cellars and the restoration of the building’s original colours. Environmental and security upgrades were necessary to make the building accessible to the general public. Today, the ground floor and the first floor house the areas devoted to the private life of Chaplin including the reconstruction of the artist’s and his family’s private rooms. The attic has been transformed into one single large reception area.
In this same spirit of conservation, the facades of the farm and the garage have been entirely renovated and restored, but the interior spaces have been completely remodelled. The old farm accommodates the of ces in the “housing” part and the restaurant in the “working part”. An adjoining terrace makes it possible to accommodate more than 200 people. The ticket of ce and shop are situated in the constructed area of the old garage.
The facades of these two buildings have been repainted according to the romantic trend at the time they were built. In order to obtain a clean and noble aspect, the materials have been completely reproduced in trompe-l’oeil on a roughcast or paint base. This technique has the advantage of concealing all the defects which the original materials could show.
The maintenance of the park is also continued in the spirit of Chaplin. He liked flowers and planted rare species in the garden. The garden therefore always invites a walk which, because of the splendid view of the mountains, constitutes an unparalleled experience. The transformation of the site into a museum also entailed important access infrastructure work in order to harmoniously integrate the new institution into the local urban fabric: redevelopment of highway access, new pedestrian precinct, cycle path, drop off area and parking for motor bikes, bicycles and coaches, and access to some 230 car parking spaces on the site.
After being banned from staying in the USA in 1952, Chaplin settles in Switzerland with his family. He moves into the Manoir de Ban in Corsier-sur-Vevey, above Lake Geneva. He will spend the rest of his life there until his death on Christmas Day 1977.
In the nineties, after the death of their mother Oona, the children bequeath all the property of the Manoir de Ban to the musée Chaplin Foundation so that a museum will be built in tribute to their father. Following 16 long years of study and work, a building permit was granted in 2009 and finally after 2 years of construction, the museum opened its doors to the public on 17th April, 2016.
Dream of Venice Architecture, the second in a series by Bella Figura Publications, has brought together a collection of contemporary architects and architectural writers to share their personal experiences of La Serenissima: the great Italian city of Venice. “Water runs through her veins,” Editor JoAnn Locktov writes. “Bridges, palaces, churches – every structure is a testament to the resiliency of imagination.”
What can we learn from a city that is over 1,500 years old? How does her immutable reality challenge our own sense of urban living? Venice was built where no land ever existed.
“Riccardo De Cal took a photograph for each essay,” Locktov continues. “He has illustrated the words with an evocative Venice; one that basks in blue winter light, sleeps quietly and becomes an apparition when shrouded in fog. This is the Venice that greets you when you turn a corner and enter an empty campo. This is the Venice that is a contemplative paradox of stone and air. If we can understand what Venice offers us, we will respect her fragility. We will continue to learn her lessons, and cherish her existence.”
In 1992, I designed an open-plan wooden pavilion for the Universal Exposition of Seville in Spain. This project brought me the opportunity to work in Venice. I was commissioned to design an art school for Benetton Group, asked by Mr. Luciano Benetton—who visited and appreciated the Expo’ 92 pavilion—to renovate a 17th-century villa in Treviso, a suburb of Venice.
An important aspect of working overseas is the enticement of each city when there are pieces of architecture and townscapes I personally wish to see. Venice, of course, appeases these anticipations. In this beautiful city, there are dense layers of history such as Piazza San Marco and works of Andrea Palladio and Carlo Scarpa. This fact had already attracted me to want to work in the city before any opportunities had come my way.
After these initial undertakings in Venice, I became involved in two important revitalization projects—the Palazzo Grassi and the Punta della Dogana, commissioned by Mr. Francois Pinault. These projects included restoration and conservation of historical buildings while simultaneously requiring the establishment of new spaces within the old structures. Though we struggled with many difficulties throughout the projects, we were supported by the Venetians’ strong dedication to architecture. We organized a team with local engineers and historians, and united our objectives in order to tackle these comprehensive undertakings. More than anything, what deeply impressed me is the fact that they truly love architecture.
Though the Japanese culture has developed the habit of repeating “scrap and build” philosophies based upon economic rationality, I believe that architecture should be essentially rooted in society and be immersed in a lapse of time. This is exactly what I learned in Venice. Genuine affection for architecture and the city is spontaneously shared among the Venetian people. The projects in Venice brought me chances to contemplate what architecture should be, which became a precious experience for me.
The first time I saw Venice my hair was long and my skirt short—the hair long enough, and blonde enough, to attract two Italian soldiers on holiday as I was strolling along the sun-splashed lagoon; the skirt far too “mini” for the decency standards one had to meet to enter the gilded realm of St. Mark’s Basilica. That night the soldiers somehow tracked my brunette friend and me to our student hotel in Mestre and noisily tried to break into our room. The next morning, sleep-deprived and wearing a borrowed modest raincoat, I returned to St. Mark’s and the quiet of its sanctum.
For twenty-one years, those were my vivid memories of Venice. Not the exotic Moorish architecture, not the deep darkness of the calli at night, not the canals awash with motion. Then I made the second of what is now many visits. Too warmly dressed in a white tuxedo shirt and a pair of black velvet leggings, I sweated through the September parties for the fifth Venice Architecture Biennale, but as I waited for the vaporetto at the Giardini stop, the sound of every wave slapping against the fondamenta was like a soothing mantra. Though water can be cruel, that day it cast a spell.
Venice may be too hot, too cold, too humid, too crowded or too easy to get lost in, but “her streets, through which the fish swim, while the black gondola glides spectrally over the green water”—as Hans Christian Andersen eloquently stated—release us to imagine alternatives to the general standard of urban living. Venice is not on the sea but of the sea, eclipsing the tale of Atlantis with a modern mythology both repeated and rewritten with every tide.
More than any other city, Venice embodies a defined urban form, compact fabric and unitary body composed by successive historical transformations. Composing an extraordinary stratification of these ages and disparate cultures, Venice today presents itself as a privileged place, rich in history and memory. But the city also has a dynamic reality that the architect Le Corbusier reinterpreted in its modernity beyond its fantastic aspects. His carnets contain sketches, travel notes, perspective views and comments that represent his ability to grasp the more essential aspects of the urban structure. The articulation of the buildings, the plant of the monuments and the urban spaces are juxtaposed against the blueprints of the city. Through this discovery and analysis of articulations, joints between monumental elements and a compact fabric encompassing the surrounding area, the lattice of its assembly presents a rich conformation.
Le Corbusier came to explicate this heritage of knowledge, interest and attention through an unrealized hospital project. My relationship with Venice was strongly influenced by the Maestro’s critical reading and by my encounter with Bepi Mazzariol, who made me physically know the city. By way of large paths, and walks along its typical fondamente and calli, he taught me to love it, to criticize it; to confront the contradictions of my work and encounters with modernity—always supported by this heritage in which he saw, to quote Louis Kahn, the past as a friend.
Because my training as an architect was completed in Venice between 1964 and 1969, I participated in a fantastic season, coming into contact with a close-knit group of intellectuals and artists who were, above all, humanists: Mazzariol, of course, but also Carlo Scarpa and the painter Emilio Vedova. Two extraordinary opportunities merit mentioning: my role as trait d’union between the hospital administration and Le Corbusier’s Paris studio, and in assisting Louis Kahn in drafting the Palazzo dei Congressi.
I owe Venice a debt of gratitude for these—a feeling that resurfaces every time I return—as well as for my involvement in the restoration of Palazzo Querini Stampalia where Carlo Scarpa masterfully intervened. These bring a heartfelt tribute that awakens in me, a sort of repossession of these “friendly” spaces that nurtured my hopes during my studies as I awaited the challenges of the profession.
When I hear the voice of Venice, my mind wanders into that nebulous space where time momentarily stops and I am quietly propelled into an intimate dialogue with my own free floating thoughts. The voice of Venice thankfully reminds me that there is an arena in which fantasy and reality can collide, coexist, and comfortably accommodate contradictions. Venice, for me, is a metaphor for unexpected creative possibilities. This notion never fails to captivate me.
Spatially, Venice amplifies the joy of unanticipated, variegated pleasures inherent in experiencing architecture. What a delight it is to feel the opening and closing of space as you amble down a narrow, noisy cobblestone street at the canal’s edge, which miraculously transforms into the enormous expansiveness of Piazza San Marco. This, of course, is always in the context of savoring a series of sensuous changes in scale–from the tiniest mosaic tile to the vastness of the surrounding sea.
Temporally, Venice embodies similar aesthetic contradictions. While it is the living history of handcrafted costumes and masked balls hiding surreptitiously behind thick, textural stone walls, it is simultaneously the contemporary global exchange of cutting edge artistic critical thought emanating from the continuous cycle of Art and Architecture Biennales.
Whether frivolous or substantial, Venice is a place where, at any moment, something mysteriously intriguing may happen. It is the native soil of an open-ended spirit of creative opportunity. Knowing that this free space exists, situates me in the expansive realm of inventive ideas that is the essence of my artistic process. For this, as an architect, I am most thankful.
Both mistress and servant of its lagoon, Venice is a city of ships, boats, ferries, gondolas and vaporetti. The very forms of successive waves of its enticing architecture owe much to the sea. And yet, the vast majority of those who visit the city arrive today not by water, but from the air, squeezed into winged buses proffering the smallest possible views through tiny windows. On landing, the majority of visitors are then packed into coaches for the drive to Piazzale Roma, one of the least prepossessing gateways to any of the world’s great cities.
And yet—but only if you are lucky enough to own or charter a light aircraft or willing to spend on a brief helicopter flight from the mainland—there is an alternative. What once was Venice San Nicolo and is now Giovanni Nicelli airport on the northern tip of the Lido is one of the world’s most delightful points of arrival. It is both a few miles and a whole era away from the city’s Marco Polo International airport opened in 1960.
Flying to and from the Lido has always been glamorous, an experience dating back to 1911 when Umberto Cagno took to the air in a Farman II from in front of the Hotel Excelsior. The airstrip at San Nicolo itself was laid out in 1915 when French Air Force fighters and Royal Italian Navy seaplanes took on their Austro-Hungarian enemy. Rebuilt in 1935 by architects led by Antonio Nori in a singularly handsome “Italian Rationalist” style, with a hint of Art Deco, the airport brought Hollywood stars to the new Venice Film Festival; Spitfire pilots to the rescue against Nazi Germany in 1945; and, since its recent restoration, new-found glamour to the Lido. While the perfect way of arriving in Venice has to be from the sea, from the wings, the Nicelli airport plays an enticing second fiddle.
Venice always strikes at me from afar, from D.H. Lawrence, Mann, and Voltaire. From Calvino’s Invisible Cities, of course. I kept a battered, used copy (which doubled as a convenient and inexpensive notebook for my own scribblings) next to my equally battered and equally used laptop when I was an architecture graduate student back in the nineteenth century. And from the more obvious Architecture Biennale, where Rem seemed to say nothing about Venice but everything about everywhere else.
I am not ashamed to say I have never been there. I have been to many places and have not been to many places. Venice is one of the “have not been to” places… until I go. But I have no plans at the moment to go—unless someone foolishly sends me there to write something about it. Yet, somehow, I am always asked to write about this place I have never been to. I can never escape Venice.
I think, if I ever go, it would corrupt me and I would suddenly be unable to write about it. What is the saying? Visit for a week and write a book. Stay for a year and you can’t write anything. What if I never go? I could write about Venice forever—even after the sea swallows it. The new habitable datum will be the second floor. All stairs will lead to water. This is now a line drawn horizontally across the city. I think it should be drawn for real, on buildings and monuments, before the water comes. I should write a grant proposal to do this. Maybe then I would have to go.
My friendship with Aldo Rossi began with the Competition for reconstruction of La Fenice Theatre after it was devastated by fire in 1996. Meeting him in person, having studied his works, gave me the privilege of his unique point of view—a multifaceted perspective, thrown together like a mosaic of deep and highly creative emotions.
It was a strange coincidence: I had accidentally filmed the fire since we lived nearby. Then I studied the evolution and causes of that fire as a technical consultant to the official inquiry and lived inside the ruins of the theatre for an entire summer as part of the team analyzing surviving stonework.
Rossi was enlightening. We were creating something that I had lived knowing only as a place of destruction. Memories of the theatre in my youth came back to me. It was time to make it live again for what it was, and through the ideas of Aldo I discovered that his way of creating something new was in perfect communication with what it had been before. The Sala Rossi, inspired by Palladio, is an example.
He used the same approach as for the Carlo Felice in Genoa, winning the Competition with “the wise use of what exists.” Aldo was immediately kind, likeable and down-to-earth. He was a breath of fresh air from which spontaneous ideas and passion for thorough research were far more important than material things.
His design method was unique. His ideas arrived at the table together with a glass of wine, or came from an image drawn from a book or a film along with the atmosphere that enveloped them. His continual exploration, his motor, which rotated 360 degrees, was fascinating.
Tadao Ando is a self-taught architect from Japan. In Venice, he has designed the restorations for Palazzo Grassi and Punta della Dogana. He is renown for his elegant use of concrete and spatial volumes. He has won numerous international awards, including the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1995.
Cynthia Davidson, co-curator of the United States Pavilion for the 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale, is a writer and the editor of the international architecture journal ‘Log’ and the Writing Architecture Series books, based in New York.
Mario Botta was born in Mendrisio (1943) where he still lives and works. From the first single-family houses in Ticino, his practice has encompassed all building typologies: schools, banks, administrative buildings, libraries, museums and sacred buildings. In 1996 he was a prime mover of the Academy of Architecture in Mendrisio.
Louise Braverman is an award-winning architect who established her New York-based firm in 1991. A graduate of the Yale School of Architecture and a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects, she presented her work at the Venice Architectural Biennales in 2012 and 2014 and was invited to exhibit again in 2016.
Jonathan Glancey is a critic, journalist, author, and broadcaster. He currently writes for the Daily Telegraph, L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui,Architectural Review, and BBC World. His books include New British Architecture; C20th Architecture; LostBuildings; London: Bread and Circuses; Dymaxion Car: Buckminster Fuller (with Norman Foster), and The Story of Architecture.
Guy Horton is a Los Angeles-based writer and contributing editor for Metropolis magazine. He has also written for Architectural Record,ArchDaily, Archinect, and The Atlantic’s CityLab.
Francesco da Mosto is a Venetian architect, author, filmmaker and television presenter. He has presented four BBC 2 television series on Italy, Venice, the Mediterranean and Shakespeare and written four best selling books. His family arrived in Venice in the ninth century.
Riccardo De Cal (photographer) was born and lives in Asolo, Italy. After receiving his degree in Architecture at IUAV in Venice he has developed a career as an award winning documentary filmmaker and photographer. His research is focused on the themes of suspension of time and abstraction of spaces.
The creation of a public equipments complex within the warehouse Macdonald allows to realize the link between existing architecture and architecture to come, revealing the needs and developments of a changing society. It is also the pretext of the connexion between traditional processes and contemporary needs.Existing warehouse’s architect, Marcel Forest, described it as a base, convenient to the reception of future extensions.This one will be realized by a light metallic structure, a support of a big linear roof sheltering an ensemble of public services.
This big roof put on the existing base, participates in the development of an architectural heritage by adapting it to contemporary functional needs.By its dimensions, its situation and its size, the existing building and its extension is to be looked as and considered on a territorial scale, offering a horizon, proposing an infrastructure. The territory becomes therefore support of the new project; the existing offers the base whereas the roof serves as an unifying element, sheltering a succession of spaces and functions.
The project is located in a strategic position, at the start of the 600m long existing warehouse, between the viaduct of railroad networks and the boulevards Maréchaux, in the center of a zone in full urban restructuration connected to the city and its surrounding by new tramway lines. The insertion of the project answers three imperatives:
– The urban reglementation
– The will to create a strong and contemporary architectural image
– The will to join the context in a just balance, responding to the obligation of preservation of the North facade
The architectural intervention is made of a game of horizontal which strengthens the expression of the existing building. The unity and the homogeneity of the place are looked for to avoid the expression of the programmatic accumulation. The rhythm of the facade, sequenced, is given by a succession of metallic vertical elements. The continuity of the architectural vocabulary of the various equipments confers to give to the building a unity which joins on the scale of the whole masterplan designed by OMA.
It shelters all the programs and puts in relation the inside and the outside. The overhang generates an interstitial space and defines a profile while marking the continuous statutory line of 65.26 NGP. The ascending edge of the roof from east to west also gives to the silhouette the expression of the start of the general complex.
Structure
Thanks to a folded plans vocabulary, public places are connected to the private spaces, as well as the outside square and the inner courtyards. On the outside, its materiality is reinforced by the use of a parisian traditional material (zinc) whereas on the inside, it become lighter and perforated through an alternation of glass elements and zinc panels, allowing the best enlightening for the courtyards.
The composition and materiality of the façade respond to the general design given by OMA masterplan. Each has to be composed through a superposition of horizontal stratas, materialized with crystal and mineral elements. The structure grid is the starting point for the general composition of the façade. Density of the louvers allows to express the privacy of the functions beyond.
Detail
Façade
The relation between inside and outside is handled through the use of filter. It composes, defines and distinguishes facades and is therefore decline through 2 different types: on the outside dark grey metallic louvers that dialogue with the context marked by its industrial past , on the inside a double glass skin, made of an alternation of glass panels and of a metallic membrane which spreads the light. The depth of the filter is investigated in its multiple dimensions. Space and light are therefore amplified.
The succession of the courtyards organized in terrace on different levels allows the needed separation between the junior schoolyard and the high school courtyard. The sequence of the outside spaces is materialized by the implementation of vegetable strips: these are also similar in a way to a filter and bound the space without creating real borders.
“The clients approached SAOTA to design a family holiday home that responded to the site, especially the views. They wanted a relaxing, yet elegant home that would be comfortable when entertaining many guests whilst also feeling intimate and cosy when it’s only one or two of them in the house,” said director and project leader Phillippe Fouché. Other factors that drove the conceptual organisation of the building were the views, sunlight, prevailing wind direction and the zoning parameters.
Upper Basement Plan
Ground Floor Plan
1st Floor Plan
Site
This site is located to the South of Beacon Isle in Plettenberg Bay. The site slopes down to the beach and has uninterrupted views over the Indian Ocean, Robberg to the South East and the Outeniqua Mountains in the distance towards the North. The original contour plans revealed that this site was originally a dune with a higher mound towards the southern part of the site.
The house was conceived as a simple box, floating over the dune, capturing and framing the view. The outer shell of the box is finished in a rough textured concrete, contrasting with the smooth reveal and soffit that tapers to create a delicate frame.
“From the beach, the building is expressed as a stone plinth, representing “earth”, with the bedroom spaces appearing to float over it,” noted Mias Claassens, architect at SAOTA and member of the project team. The upper bedroom wing is finished in a natural sand coating, a direct response to the original dune on the site. In order to exploit the maximum height allowed on the site, the southern part of upper level is higher and appears to be sliced off from the northern part in a sculptural way. This opening extends vertically through the building, washing northern light through the deeper spaces of the house. “Stairs are delicately suspended within this carved opening, also allowing views through it and lit from a skylight above. The geometry of the staircase continues as a diagonal line that extends the cantilevering entertainment terrace towards Robberg,” said Phillippe Fouché.
When approaching from the road, the scale of the house is modest and the living spaces concealed on a lower level. Timber shutters provide privacy to the gallery-like bedroom passage above whilst protecting the façade from the afternoon sun. A strong horizontality is articulated in the entrance canopy which is planted with indigenous shrubs cascading over the slab edge. A stone wall introduces the plinth from the lower levels and appears to fall away as one steps down to the front door. The living space is column free with the bedroom wing above supported by a large sculptural fireplace. Oxidised copper, salvaged from discarded hot water cylinders, is woven to line the inner part of the fire place. This allows the colour of the ocean to extend visually into the living room as the primary focal point.
The large sliders open past the envelope of the building, permitting unhindered access and views between the wind-protected entertainment courtyard, the living space and the front terrace. The kitchen is practically positioned to serve the living spaces and the Northern courtyard where a pizza oven chimney is a strong vertical element, counter-balancing the horizontal entrance canopy and floating bedroom wing. The kitchen volume opens upwards allowing northern light into the space and connecting to the gallery passage above.
Section
The bedrooms are given privacy and protection from the morning light by means of large timber, sliding shutters. The rooms are designed to take maximum advantage of the space available, raised bathrooms open up to the room, allowing views to the ocean from anywhere in the room. Small skylights allow natural light into the bathrooms which otherwise would have been reliant on artificial lighting. Large mirror surfaces at the ends of the rooms further accentuate the space and strategically reflect either Robberg or the Outeniqua mountains depending on the vantage point.
The main bedroom is placed on the higher part of the upper level to take advantage of the ocean views. All bedrooms’ en-suite bathrooms and dressing rooms open up to the room and to the ocean views.
The stone plinth on the lower level accommodates a games room, large guest suite, audio-visual room and service spaces behind. The pool is located on this lower terrace but remain conveniently connected to the main entertainment spaces by means of a stone staircase, articulated as part of the plinth. The pool is situated centrally to this garden/ deck area to allow the main tanning deck to extend to the end of the site where the afternoon sun can be enjoyed. The water level of the pool is 20mm above the deck surface, a rim flow all round creates the impression that this reflective water body slots into the timber deck. The lowered boma (fire pit) in the far corner of the terrace is protected from the wind by glass panels, this is a more secluded space to sit around an open fire, close to the beach.
“Minka 2013” is the residence of a farmer husband, his nutritionist wife and their daughters. The wife is a skillful cook and uses plenty of the vegetables picked by her husband. Because of that, a large “Doma” (earthen floor room) *1, “Engawa” (a veranda facing the garden) *2 and “Kura” (a storage room) *3, to keep such things as homemade “miso” soybean paste, were necessary. In traditional Japanese “Minka” (the general residences for people who farmed), there are Doma, Engawa and Kura. Living in such a house is suitable for people whose life is in farming. With this project, we reconfigured each of these elements under a single roof since the aim was to build a compact and modern Minka for a nuclear family living in the countryside.
3D
The site is in a thriving agricultural region. All these elements were arranged within one space, and from the center of the site, and with differences in height, the plan was to gradually spread out concentrically the Kura, the Engawa, the Doma, the eaves and the garden. On top of this was put a large and deep roof. The center of the building is static, and the further out you go from the center it is open and dynamic.
The loft at the center is a calm place that is surrounded by the roof, while the wooden floor space and the tatami mat space are places where one can rest, relaxing on the floor or sleeping. The wooden floor space and the tatami mat space are a level higher than the Doma, making them veranda-like spaces that you can sit on. On the other hand, the Doma, which includes the kitchen, is an intermediate area that connects the outside and the inside, along with being a place of activity and where people circulate. It is a place that is connected to daily life, and a space where neighbors can be invited into.
Plan
Since this region is inland, the summers are hot, and the winters are also bitterly cold. Because of that, the aim was for a residence where the indoor environment was stable all year round with efficient use of energy. First, it was thermally insulated and the airtightness secured with external insulation covering the entire outside of the residence (roof 100mm, walls 50mm). The floor of Doma and the Kura at the center of the residence are concrete, thus, the inside has sufficient heat storage by using materials that are high in specific heat.
With a mass of concrete at the center that is not impacted by the sunlight, it can stabilize the indoor environment through heat accumulation and radiation. In the summer, the accumulation of cool air from the cool night wind emits coolness during the day. In winter, the Doma accumulates heat from sunlight streaming through the windows, preventing a drop in the indoor temperature from night to morning. In addition, since a rapid temperature change can be prevented, it is possible to comfortably open the windows, realizing an open and stable indoor environment.
We created a modern version of the Minka by reflecting the elements of a traditional Minka in a modern way of living.
*1 Doma: In traditional Japanese Minka, these spaces are made at the same height as the ground. As outdoor-like spaces, they played an important role as workspaces where cottage industry such as agriculture and handicrafts could be done.
*2 Engawa: The part of the building’s edge that has an overhanging wood floor. A buffer space between the inside and outside that is beneath the eaves. It is an open space where one can talk to guests while relaxing with them.
*3 Kura: A structure built separately from the house that is a storeroom or vault. It is constructed for the temperature to be very stable in order to keep grains, alcohol and valuables.
Sig Nordal 