From the architect. Drapers Field has a strategic role in the Olympic Legacy. This new park in east London is the first project integrating new Olympic developments within the Olympic Park to existing communities. KLA were commissioned to revitalise three parks in Leyton in the east London borough of Waltham Forest, through Olympic Section 106 funds. Working strategically in the Lea Valley on these projects, KLA were responding to the London Legacy Development Corporation’s direction to ‘Stitch the Fringe’ around the Olympic boundary.
Leyton is a key regeneration area bridging the existing east London communities, the new East Village (formerly the Athletes’ Village) and the Olympic Park. Drapers Field, which was used during the 2012 Olympics as a service facility, sits at this intersection of new and old. The new park at Drapers Field is linked – via the KLA designed Temple Mill Lane – to several Olympic Village projects: the Chobham Academy and Community Playing Fields and four residential plots. KLA made strategic proposals for all these sites and the practice has used design to help bridge the gap between different projects on either side of the Olympic boundary. Historically, Drapers Field was primarily used for football but was greatly under-utilised by the local community. The initial client brief called for the re-provision of the sports facilities, the refurbishment of the pavilion and the development of a play area. Building on the client’s initial brief, a shared goal emerged that both existing and new communities should bene t from the idea of a wider Olympic Legacy – a legacy that encouraged children and young people into sport, through play and informal activity. This informed the design focus.
Plan
Therefore, a main aim for the park was to create a place of sport and play on the route to school at Chobham Academy, which is located within the Olympic Village. KLA have designed the external spaces for Chobham Academy within the Olympic Village, making it easy to have a common aesthetic between the two sites.
In addition to improved sport facilities, the innovative landscape encourages informal play and other active uses such as a cycling route which can also be used for cycle training. The refurbishment of the pavilion – to become a key community hub and cafe – also has a new strong, physical relationship to the park. The new bold, large-scale corrugated landscape makes the whole landscape playable.
Section
The enticing corrugated forms, made of grass and concrete, enhance the play opportunities and challenges of the play equipment. Cutting through the corrugated grass plane, the playful route also encourages spontaneous activity on the trampolines and other play elements located along it. Water-play, embedded within the corrugated forms, incorporates water pumps and children can control the water’s ow through channels, creating splash pools. The playful route to school includes a bike track with space for obstacles and for basic bike skills courses. This relates to the London Cycling Campaign’s drive for safe cycling routes to schools and to GLA objectives. By increasing footfall into the Olympic Village, Drapers Field is now one of the main opportunities for the new and old community to meet and integrate. KLA have now completed the Chobham Academy project within the Olympic Village and have also designed Temple Mill Lane with a playful urban realm to promote play on the route to school.
Danish firm CF Møller have been tapped by the LEGO Group to design a 52,000 square meter (560,000 square foot) global hub for the company’s headquarters in Billund, Denmark. The design, which draws inspiration from the colored modular bricks for which LEGO is known, will provide new flexible work arrangements and community spaces centered around a brightly lit 4-story atrium, as well as a new public park for the campus.
Courtesy of C.F. Møller
The new construction will contain offices for a large portion of LEGO’s Danish-based employees, while also serving as a facility to welcome guests and LEGO employees from around the world. To foster interaction between these different groups, the building is designed to be open, with plenty of points where spontaneous meetings can occur. The new atrium will serve as the connection point for the facility, where wide curving staircases are shared by employees and guests and they move throughout the building.
LEGO-familiar motifs and elements have been employed throughout the complex, including round skylight apertures in the atrium reminiscent of holes in a LEGO block and facade panels that evoke the blocks’ stud pattern. The iconic LEGO yellow is featured throughout the interiors and as a pop of color on the building’s exterior.
Another feature of the new office building will be the LEGO People House, an area containing “playspace” facilities as suggested by input from LEGO employees.
“LEGO People House creates a unique social environment that serves as a vibrant, global gathering point, not only for the employees working there on a daily basis but also for the many LEGO employees from the rest of the world, when they visit Billund. It will house exciting facilities, where employees can be physically active and socialize, both during and outside working hours. It is our clear intent that the atmosphere will be both informal and inspirational, making it ideal for employees to get together with colleagues from around the world,” explains Claus Flyger Pejstrup, Senior Vice President at the LEGO Group, and responsible for the LEGO Group Headquarters in Denmark.
Courtesy of C.F. Møller
In addition to the facility’s progressive workplace design, the building also strives for progressive environmental practices; the structure has been oriented to provide optimal daylighting conditions for the office space and will be constructed to meet low-energy consumption standards. To embrace the surrounding community, the new park will be integrated into the master plan for Billund Municipality.
“In close collaboration with LEGO and employees, we have ensured that the project radiates openness, quality and sustainability – all key LEGO values,” says Klaus Toustrup, partner at CF Møller.
Three decades ago the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank (HSBC) Headquarters by Norman Foster emerged onto the architectural seen as an exemplary product of industrial design. The open layout with its exposed steel structure generated a powerful corporate identity for the bank. But the restrained atmosphere of white architectural lighting and the lack of distinctive façade lighting has lost its attractiveness after sunset. Now the colorful and dynamic relighting presents a remarkable example of how an architectural icon has shifted from a productivist ideology towards a scenographic image. To the western observer the multicolored light language may give off a playful impression, but to the local culture the transformation evokes grandiosity.
The briefing for Norman Foster was ambitious when the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank asked him to create “the best bank building in the world.” To add to the complexity the client requested a short timescale, which led to the pragmatic solution of a high degree prefabrication and the suspension structure which allowed the contractors to build efficiently both downwards and upwards. The architecture therefore embodies a functional product, as Kenneth Frampton characterizes this style: an open undecorated system with a flexible network and articulated structure characterized by industrial production.
Foster’s structure enables a generous daylight-filled atrium with a 50 meter-high glass wall and a large mirrored sunscoop that reflects sunlight down through the atrium to the public plaza below. For Chris Abel, the British born architectural theorist, the financial institution emanated a sense of a sacred building, as he wrote for The Architectural Review: “There is a lot more that is Gothic than Classical in all this structural and spatial magic, contrary statements about Foster’s work notwithstanding. If the ‘medieval’ services towers, ‘flying braces’ and ‘incomplete’ appearance of the building had not already promoted the idea, then the soaring proportions of the atrium … and the great translucent eastern window, easily justify the building’s popular description as a ‘cathedral of commerce.’”[1] But the productivist attitude suppressed the use of colorful stained glass windows—or any modern light-based equivalent—typical of gothic cathedrals and focused on white for daylight and illumination.
Foster and his lighting designer Claude R. Engle abstained from any decorative or expressive lighting effects in order to achieve a clear architectural message, with lighting as a servant for performance. Regarding the office lighting Engle used only three components: daylight, cool florescent lighting and warm halogen-tungsten lighting. This strategy allowed an easy conversion from a cool lit office area into a warm lit meeting zone for clients without a new installation. In that way the lighting design revealed a very pragmatic approach without losing a representative expression. For the high atrium, the recessed downlights seemed to vanish in the mirror ceiling thereby working with light and not luminaires as a design parameter. Special downlights with narrow beams minimized the glare for a discreet look. Hence when viewed as part of the city the HSBC skyscraper appeared to be softly glowing from within with a nice transparency for detecting interior patterns.
However, 30 years later the atrium lighting no longer fulfilled the bank’s expectations regarding their visual identity. In the meantime, Hong Kong had become much brighter, more colorful, and dynamic concerning lighting. The relighting of the HSBC atrium, designed by Simon McCartney & Peter Kemp and installed in 2015, now presents a distinct counterpoint. The subtle contrasts of cool and warm color temperatures have been substituted by saturated colored light. The LED and lighting control technology have opened an unprecedented flexibility to change hue and saturation. Clean lines emphasize the horizontal structure of the floors and the sunscoop mirror ceiling. They add spectacle and drama to the grand hall. In contrast to the original design the luminaires are clearly visible now.
The large opaque eastern façade, which fills the atrium at daytime with diffuse daylight and which did not have a representative illumination in the original concept, is turned by the new lighting into a colorful pixel screen. Here, invisibly installed luminaires and light sequences are synchronized with the atrium edges and the mirror ceiling. The expressive static building structure vanishes in the evening in favor of a bright, dynamic spectacle of colored lines and pixels to reflect a modern corporate identity for clients and employees. In contrast, the relighting of some executive areas in the HSBC building were more conservative regarding the relighting and luminaire design, with downlights and pendant elements.
However, the first major lighting change at HSBC was even more extravagant than the atrium lighting, and was already installed about a decade earlier, in 2003, for exterior branding. Thus the façade illumination has changed from a discreet glow from within into colorful light lines and bright search lights to create a beacon of light for the Hong Kong skyline, designed by Simon McCartney for Laservision. Since 2004 the Hong Kong Tourism Commission has tried to become a benchmark for city marketing in Asia with the largest sound and light show in the world. With globalization, rising economic competition and political changes, the city has looked to tourism to increase business and to mark a strong, modern and dynamic identity. For the nightly 14 minute show, called “Symphony of Light,” the team from Laservision analysed the skyline and its buildings in regard to the visibility of structures to select significant architectural forms and textures. The show has already undergone five phases of upgrades and now incorporates 45 buildings located on both the Hong Kong and Kowloon sides of Victoria Harbour. Without the façade lighting update, the HSBC building would not have been recognizable as a relevant player for the urban light show.
Nevertheless the 2003 façade lighting did not cover the new expectation of higher visibility and more explicit messages of brand communication. For that reason the façade lighting was amplified with a media wall for the 150th HSBC anniversary in 2015. The new sophisticated media screen, designed by Simon McCartney & Peter Kemp at illumination Physics, enables a legibility from a distance of 100 meters, as well as from the opposite side of Victoria Harbour 2-3 kilometers away. Small vertical LED strips, applied to the inside of the façade, enable a high transparency for the façade and yet the strips appear invisible from outside at daytime. Additionally, the old façade lighting was completely updated with LED technology, which led to an increase of possible hues, more saturation, far less energy consumption and longer lamp life for less maintenance. Synchronized with the façade lighting, the media walls offer a very flexible infrastructure for independent content or echoing the effects of the architectural lighting on the screen or vice versa. The triangular animations and kaleidoscopic patterns refer clearly to the HSBC logo for luminous branding. There’s even a smart phone application which enables people to follow the scenography in real-time on their phone wherever they are. With this new media content the HSBC strives again for visual leadership in Hong Kong´s skyline.
Erected on the ground of a British colony as a distinctive British high-tech office tower, localized with a feng shui geomancer, the HSBC building resides now on an autonomous territory of China. The search for a new identity, significantly influenced by globalization, has led to a new luminous mask to conceal a tough and cold finance building. This colorful overlay of pattern, made of light, has turned the HSBC into an obvious dualism: at daytime it conveys the cool rational image of productivism, but at night the explicit scenography demonstrates a soft emotional character. The brightness of the façade has induced a loss of transparency in favor of luminous decoration, where light has become a brand message. For the western observer this multi-colored and dynamic attention-seeking might embody a loss of clear identity for a respected bank. However, the grand light gesture at HSBC, in combination with the city-wide Symphony of Light show, has positioned Hong Kong as one of the world’s most visited cities, where people regard the colorful scenery at night as more beautiful than at daytime.
But not everyone is excited about the luminous prosperity of Hong Kong. Environmentalists and astronomers have already pointed out the negative effects of light pollution. Jason C.S. Pun, Astronomer at the University of Hong Kong, has found that the night is on average 1000 times brighter in his city than a natural night due to the light used for advertisement and decoration. This loss of the night makes seeing stars impossible.
The trend of global urbanization will bring more buildings into our cities where owners will not tolerate a modest visual identity at night, but seek to send explicit luminous messages into the urban environment. Hence, conflicts will intensify with the public and environmentalists about nocturnal lighting. This 30 year review of the HSBC’s lighting history may even appear small when compared to contemporary skyscraper developments. For instance the super-tall Shanghai Tower by Gensler from 2015 has already set a new benchmark for monumental urban scenography. Its media facade was implemented from its opening, covering the entire 632-meter skyscraper, and appears as an urban movie screen. It is a challenge to imagine how this building and its environment will look in 30 years: Will the latest LED technology last without a larger relighting within this time? Which lighting language will create an appropriate meaning and icon? Will the citizens be able to appreciate the beauty of the urban night and gaze at stars again?
References
Abel, Chris, A building for the Pacific Century. The Architectural Review, July 1986
Light matters, a monthly column on light and space, is written by Thomas Schielke. Based in Germany, he is fascinated by architectural lighting and works as an editor for the lighting company ERCO. He has published numerous articles and co-authored the books “Light Perspectives” and “SuperLux”. For more information check www.erco.com, www.arclighting.de or follow him @arcspaces.
From the architect. The proposal for the 90 square meter Repossi flagship on Place Vendome divides the store into three distinct spaces – contextually referred to as street, gallery and salon. Based on the idea that the collection of jewelry will be experienced and purchased at three different speeds – fast, slow, very slow – each floor responds to the different paces of shopping.
The ground floor is the most public space. It works as an extension of the street providing a quick experience of the store. The first floor is a gallery, the level where the entire Repossi collection is exhibited. The basement is a salon. The most intimate space of the boutique, it allows customized service for clients and patient exploration of special pieces.
The underlying idea for the design was to synthesis architecture and display, using the whole space as a stage for Repossi’s production. Unconventional materials were used, emphasizing this relationship and pulling away from the typical jewelry store. Special colored mirrors developed in collaboration with Dutch designer Sabine Marcelis introduces diverse degrees of reflections and color refractions. Aluminum cladding – both plain and foam – fold over the volume of the staircase and expand onto each floor.
Movement is an integral component of the project. The wall on the ground floor is conceived as a gigantic rotating billboard with three alternating sides: a bronze colored mirror, a traditional mirror, and a display system. Developed in collaboration with Italian-based manufacture, Goppion, the kinetic installation is both display and architecture,transforming the space while adapting to alternating functions. When the jewelry is not displayed, the ground floor is transformed into a pure void, leaving the space free for unlimited occupancies. In the overcrowded retail context of Place Vendome, a “void” is the ultimate form of luxury.
The staircase, an imposing presence in the 90 square meter store, is designed by overlapping two vertical systems: a solid excavated mass that extends between the ground floor and the basement, and a light suspended tread floating between the ground floor and the first level.
Liberated from the traditional requirements of jewelry display, the new flagship store creates an immersive setting, where jewelry is subtly embedded into an architectural void.
This house represents a very common situation in São Paulo, a long and narrow ground [5.6×30.0m], with only the front elevation free of interference of the buildings around it.
The challenge increased from the moment that we had to meet an extensive program for this area, which led us to maximum occupancy allowed, 170m2.
Plan
Plan
With the value of land ever higher, reaching a solution that meets twice the ideal area for small plots like this has been our work and of many other architects who seek to propose good projects for its clients, for themselves and for the city.
Considering the inevitable verticalization of its neighbors, all of them glued at the boundaries, the first step was to reverse the facades, think the project “inside out”, as it will take out a glove.
So when we brought the frames inside, we could use them to exhaustion, making it extremely open interior, as opposed to the fully enclosed outer perimeter. Then we positioned two inner courtyards, but functioning as the outside areas ofthe house. And they, like with other office projects, organize everything. In addition to providing necessary light and ventilation for health and spatial quality, articulate the rooms.
Section
Section
Another unexpected decision for the client was the positioning of the bedrooms at the ground floor, usually used for the social areas, and so we ascend the “ground” to the upper floor.
This decision given for intimate floor, the bedrooms, greater privacy and silence.
For social pavement provided integration with the roof slab, used as a recreational area, and so therefore, not occurring the interruption by the intimate floor. It also has become the social areas better lit and ventilated. At the request of the client one of the courtyards became a water mirror, and with it, another important factor was the simultaneous design of the landscaping project.
In this way it was possible to provide appropriate structure to receive both a large tree on the top deck, at the outdoor terrace adjoining the room, as the slabto bear the weight of the trays with plants that fall on the water mirror. Again scarce resources, but a lot of commitment to propose ways to follow that become the critical thinking in a viable work.
With its overblown rental market and the rising costs of tertiary education, London is turning from a city that welcomed creative individuals to one that locks them out. Tomaso Boano and Jonas Prišmontas believe that “creativity should not be linked to social status,” and the way to counter this is through the creation of affordable spaces. As a response, they have created the “Minima Moralia”; a compact, modular steel frame assembly with infinite possibilities for customization.
Boano and Prišmontas envision the Minima Moralia as a type of “urban acupuncture” which infills misused open spaces with active and well-designed structures. In doing so, it bridges the gap between private and public spaces and furthers the investigation into live/work typologies. The designers are interested on how these spaces might pop up in clusters, forming new creative communities throughout London.
Masterplan. Image Courtesy of Tomaso Boano & Jonas Prišmontas
Several Minima Moralia prototypes were constructed and displayed throughout the London Festival of Architecture, each occupied by a different field of creativity. An architect, a carpenter, and fashion designer all used the space differently, with the tight confines allowing them to bring only what was absolutely necessary to their craft.
Architect's Studio. Image Courtesy of Tomaso Boano & Jonas Prišmontas
Whilst this acted to show the different ways in which the cellular pop-ups could be staged, it also gave visitors a window into the different workspaces, which Boano and Prišmontas believed would give the chance to reveal “the secrets of their craft.”
Carpenter's Studio. Image Courtesy of Tomaso Boano & Jonas Prišmontas
These ‘revelations’ occur through a series of openings such as a movable canopy, a movable window, and a fixed skylight. The folded openings lift to reveal the internal space, allowing visitors to “take a peek,” whereas the skylight provides illumination during the day and a portal to the stars above at night.
The Minima Moralia pop-ups were displayed at Dalston Roof Park in London throughout June, acting as event spaces to support the local community of artists. For more pictures of the installation, check out the gallery below.
Architecture firm Broadway Malyan has been appointed by Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. to design its new $100 million cruise terminal in Miami. As the “gateway to Miami,” the project will be the firm’s first major design in North America and will service the largest cruise ships in the world, aiming to become a new icon on the waterfront.
Courtesy of Broadway Malyan
Nicknamed the “Crown of Miami,” the Terminal has been designed to reflect the shape of a crown when viewed from the water, the “M” of “Miami” when viewed from the east or west, and “waves rising or ships passing” when viewed side-on.
Courtesy of Broadway Malyan
Additionally, the design incorporates sustainability elements such as an energy-efficient window glazing, rainwater collection, and recycling, which will be used for cooling, toilet flushing, and irrigation. Efficient building materials like a prefabricated frame and prefabricated flooring panels mean that the building can be constructed quickly.
Overall, the Terminal is designed to enhance the arrival experience for passengers extending along the waterfront to maximize views of docking ships. Furthermore, the sides of the building are angled to reflect the water providing the terminal’s unique shape, which echoes the Royal Caribbean brand.
Courtesy of Broadway Malyan
Construction of Terminal is planned to begin in 2017, and the project is expected to be operational by the end of 2018.
From the architect. The Cultural Palace was designed in the year 1930 by the Bucharest architect Victor Smigelschi, and its primary purpose was to host ASTRA Cultural Association’s events.
The first changes to the original design were to building’s main hall and these were made in the early 1960’s in order for it to accommodate a new function as the city’s cinema. Also from the same period the first floor of the building underwent some minor functional changes to accommodate the History and Ethnography Museum of Blaj and the Town’s Library and Blaj’s Wire Broadcasting Centre.
In the winter of 1995 a violent fire burnt down most of the building, severely damaging the roof and the interior space of the main hall. It remained a ruin until 2012, when the municipality initiated a project for the rehabilitation and refunctionalisation of the Palace. The building would be predesignated to incorporate a flexible multipurpose hall, which could be lit both artificially and by daylight, and which could host a wide variety of cultural events such as concerts, galas, theatre plays, conferences, exhibitions etc. The building would also serve as the headquarters for the Alba branch of the Romanian Academy.
Ground Floor Plan
Longitudinal Section
Research The Cultural Palace of Blaj was excluded from the list of the Romania’s Historical Monuments, even though it is located in the Historical Monuments National Protected Area. Sections of the initial architectural project attributed to Victor Smigelschi were found in the National Archive, as well as two pictures in which the building can be seen shortly after its inauguration. Regrettably, no records were found relating to the original interior design of the main hall.
Design Concept With the benefit of historical research and with technical expertise it was decided that the spatial and functional design concept of the building, which was now a ruin, would follow the initial project. That decision meant that the alterations that were made in order to accommodate the later institutions had to be removed. The new design follows two directions: firstly, to evoke the recent tragic history of the building and secondly, to create a flexible interior and exterior space that can easily be adapted to the needs of the community that it serves. The main hall becomes a multi-purpose space by removing all the seating and through the addition of more daylight through the new roof lights. Other small reversible changes such as, the metal structure of the roof, the brick cladding and the suspended ceiling reminds the visitor of the recent fire.
As part of ArchDaily’s coverage of the 2016 Venice Biennale, we are presenting a series of articles written by the curators of the exhibitions and installations on show.
The Amazon rainforest is our common frontline: constant battles are being fought to preserve the greatest source of biodiversity, oxygen production and climate regulation of the planet.
The Amazon is also the battlefront between the ancestral vision of its inhabitants and the modern vision that western society has over this territory. If we were to learn from the indigenous knowledge, now endangered by hegemonic “western civilization”, we would open an unforeseen insight about medicine, nutrition, and the sustainable production of the rainforest. The dissolution of this last frontline would have global implications and it would even change the way we see our world.
The Peruvian Pavilion tells an unprecedented action in this sense: fighting poverty and preserving the Amazon Rainforest through education. The “Plan Selva”, a large-scale public program in our amazon region that reconstructs and rebuilds hundreds of schools scattered in inaccessible places without services, with a new educational program that favors multiculturalism and rescues the native languages.
The starting point for the project is an attentive dialogue with the Amazonian communities. It proposes a kit of modular parts that allows adapting to particular pedagogic requirements, topographical conditions and size of communities. The result is a climatic-sensitive modular architecture, respectful to the Amazonian way of life.
This project sets a unique precedent in a Peruvian public institution: it relies on architecture for a massive educational program, restores dignity to a population that was historically relegated and offers a space for the balanced encounter between two apparently irreconcilable worlds.
Accompanying this architectural action, the exhibition immerses us in the Peruvian Amazon through visual actions that show the immeasurable mystery of its inhabitants and give a true ” radiography ” of the impenetrable lushness of the jungle.
Planta General. Image Courtesy of Barclay&Crousse
The visitors will follow a ribbon printed with the faces of the Amazonian children by Musuk Nolte, and the footprint of the jungle, the “Amazogramas” created by Roberto Huarcaya. This ribbon is suspended from a wooden canopy, in permanent equilibrium. Also suspended, a group of tables and chairs brought from the Amazonian schools, reveal the precarious and harsh conditions in which teachers and students interact today. The balance of the fragile and undulating ribbon compels us, as in the Amazon rainforest, to be responsible for preserving its balance.
Corte. Image Courtesy of Barclay&Crousse
OUR AMAZON FRONTLINE
Venue: Sale d’Armi, Arsenale Participants: Ministry of Education – Plan Selva Project: Project leader: Elizabeth Añaños Team: Militza Carrillo, Miguel Chavez, Sebastián Cillóniz, Alvaro Echevarria, Gino Fernandez, Claudia Flores, Luis Miguel Hadzich, Daisuke Izumi, Alfonso Orbegoso, Carlos Tamayo, Alejandro Torero, Karel Van Oordt, José Luis Villanueva Commissioner: José Orrego Curators: Sandra Barclay, Jean Pierre Crousse Patronage: Fundación Wiese, El Comercio Production: Patronato Photography: Roberto Huarcaya, Musuk Nolte, Rodrigo Adb Project Managers: Claudia Ortigas, Mateo Eiletz Graphic Design: Arturo Higa Supporters: Promperu, Mincetur, Ministerio de Cultura, Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores del Peru, Ministerio de Educación, Ministerio del Ambiente y Asociacion de Estudios de Arquitectura
Beartooth Portal. Image Courtesy of ENSAMBLE STUDIO
Inverted Portal. Image Courtesy of ENSAMBLE STUDIO
Located at the edge of Yellowstone Park in Montana, Tippet Rise Art Center -with an extension over eleven thousand acres of wilderness- is born as a new destination for the arts, in which music performances and large-scale outdoor sculptures play a major role.
Domo. Image Courtesy of ENSAMBLE STUDIO
Beartooth Portal. Image Courtesy of ENSAMBLE STUDIO
How the current local fauna and ranching activity can coexist with the added artistic and architectural interventions is a challenge that the project needs to embrace.
Domo. Image Courtesy of ENSAMBLE STUDIO
This challenge has fueled the research that started with our early experiences in the quarry and continued with experiments like The Truffle, advancing the knowledge and appreciation of what preexisting natural conditions can bring to us, as architects and as users of architecture.
Model Studies Perspectives
Once again we go back to primary elements to configure site-specific architectures in harmony with nature. Working with earth, with rocks, and learning from their formation logic, different techniques and processes are developed to manipulate the structural, acoustical and thermal properties of these local materials at different scales; and geological transformation processes –sedimentation, erosion, weathering, crystallization, compaction, metamorphism- reinterpreted to cultivate structures made of landscape, from landscape.
Structures that stir existing matter and reinforce it, using highly engineered processes while welcoming unpredictable results.
Beartooth Portal. Image Courtesy of ENSAMBLE STUDIO
The forms obtained have been twinned with those taken from the land that previously contained and supported them when in state of rest, from which they retain memory and imprint and to which they introduce new meaning and tension. They are structures of landscape because they are born from it and give it order, transforming matter into inhabitable space and unfolding a new constellation of programs among the plateaus, ridges, canyons and hills of brutal beauty that compose the site.
Inverted Portal. Image Courtesy of ENSAMBLE STUDIO
Domo. Image Courtesy of ENSAMBLE STUDIO
Structures of Landscape enable habitation without exploitation, and intimate relationships with the environment. They resonate with the immensity, the roughness, the silence and the magic loneliness of the place amplifying its values, and situate our actions in an ambiguous position between nature, architecture and art; they can be one and all, or a completely different category that only makes sense where it was born.
Inverted Portal. Image Courtesy of ENSAMBLE STUDIO
Sig Nordal 