Collaborators: Fred Schmidt, Joseph T. Connell, Tim Wolfe, Eric Mersmann
From the architect. SRAM Corporation engaged Perkins+Will to design their new headquarters in the vibrant Fulton Market District of Chicago. Initial visioning uncovered SRAM’s desire for a space that connected their staff by providing them active and fun workplace choices through many collaborative space types.
For example, a 1/8 mile test track winds through the office, stitching the large open floor neighborhoods together. Also integrated into the workplace are commuter and test bikes, serving as screens along the bike track and open office neighborhoods.
The resulting design is punctuated by the SRAM red, a branding mark utilized in a controlled and functional way to tell the story of the company’s product offerings, philanthropy, and rich biking culture.
The residence belonging to famed Postmodernist architect Michael Graves will be sold to Kean University, home to the new Michael Graves College for architecture and design, after receiving approval from its board of trustees. Following Graves’s death last year, the architect’s will stipulated that the residence, his studio, another property were to be donated to Princeton University, Graves’s neighbor and longtime employer. But Princeton University felt the buildings would be better served in another capacity and rejected the gift, allowing Kean to step in.
“We were grateful to be able to consider the possibility of accepting Michael Graves’s properties, but concluded that we could not meet the terms and conditions associated with the gift,” Princeton said in a statement.
The sale to Kean University, located 30 miles north of Princeton in Union, New Jersey, will be made for just $20. But the terms and conditions outlined by the Graves Estate, including preserving the buildings and renovating them for educational use, will cost an estimated $300,000, along with annual maintenance costs of $30,000 to $40,000.
The will had stated that if rejected by Princeton, the property would be offered to another non-profit institution. Graves’s firm approached Kean earlier this year about acquiring the property under those terms. Kean was already quite familiar with the Grave’s estate, as the architect had spent the final years of his life working with the university to create its new architecture school, which welcomed its inaugural class this past fall.
Kean intends to preserve the function and aesthetic of the residence and studio, known as the Warehouse. Graves had already treated the home like a museum and meeting space, and the Warehouse will continue as a residence and studio. Despite Princeton University passing on the complex, the buildings will be open to students from the nearby campus.
From the architect. Upon retirement after 40 years of teaching Fibre-Arts and Interior Design at Texas State University (formerly Southwest Texas State University), the Lamans desired a gallery and studio to compliment their modest 1970’s era modern home, taken from Heritage Homes plan books originally started by Henry D. Norris AIA. Clad in white stucco, the 1800 sq. ft. residence is characterized by a tripartite plan arrangement of two shed roof’s flanking a central core.
The Lamans expertly sited the house amongst a dense canopy of live oak and cedar elm trees on a 1 acre, hill country lot in San Marcos, Texas. Over the past 30 years, they have carved out a series of outdoor rooms, a secret garden and sculpture courts around their home leaving only one logical area for an addition – the front yard. While in most situations an addition would supplement the operation of an existing structure, this situation presented an opportunity for the addition to supplant the home – completely transforming it’s identity and creating a new entry.
The program called for an exhibition gallery, a painting studio, a library and a new master suite. Taking queues from the parti of the existing home’s massing, the addition is comprised of paired towers (gallery and studio) flanking a foyer and upper level library. The addition is located in a bowl-like depression at the head of a dry creek bed and so must be accessed via a series of bridges which allowing natural water runoff to flow around and between the existing and new structures.
Floor Plan
The atmosphere in the towers is animated through two distinct lighting strategies. Ambient light is filtered by the North facing translucent walls while carefully placed skylights project pools of light through a series of ceiling baffles throughout the day. Depending upon the location of the sun, the color temperature of the natural light provides a diverse reading to the Lamans’ art.
The library is defined by shelves which cantilever into the voluminous modified-gambrel roof forms of the towers – linking the spaces through section. Perched atop the entry, views to the surrounding canopy of trees create an intimate gathering space for conversation and contemplation for the Lamans and their guests.
The Lamans’ appreciation for outdoor living is realized with the addition of a new sculpture garden and bocce court off of the gallery, ideal for large showings or family gatherings. While in a more intimate setting, the master bedroom and bathroom open directly into a private Zen garden.
The master suite was reconfigured through a sensitive addition of a bathing and dressing room while shifting the existing bedroom out, forming a linear gallery hall which bisects the existing house and new addition. Movement along this corridor not only makes the user aware of old and new but has framed views to the new outdoor rooms as well.
The 2016 Venice Biennale has highlighted that dealing with natural disasters may become one of the main preoccupations of architecture in the future. But nature has its destructive ways, and volcanic eruptions are among the most extreme case in point. On the Island of Fogo (Cape Verde), the Natural Park Venue designed by OTO – and elected Best Building of the Year 2015 by Archdaily readers – was destroyed by molten lava flow only one year after its opening in 2013. The building, which combined a cultural center and administrative activities, helped to activate the economy in the island’s most remote area. Following the disaster, Adrian Kasperski, a student at Krakow University, devoted his master’s thesis to the redevelopment of this area, by proposing the expansion of the existing roads and hiking trails and designing facilities to improve alternative tourism offerings.
Kasperski first noticed that the northern part of the island lacked road access. Extending the existing road to the north would contribute to the island’s economic development and help reduce the traffic in the south. The project also suggests improved access to the caldera via hiking trails. Whereas OTO’s project lay in the caldera next to a village, Kasperski decided to relocate activities on the edge of the volcano to protect it from eruptions. In his proposal, the cultural center and former village are placed north of the caldera, and an extra hotel and winery are proposed on the south part of the road.
The cultural center is perhaps the most interesting part of the project. As with the former OTO design, the facility was developed by taking advantage of the local topography. Placed at the border of two very different landscapes, “the building seems invisible from a distance,” explains Kasperski, “only when one approaches closer, a slight cut in the caldera starts to emerge.” Just as in Dominique Perrault’s Ewha Womans University, the building features a public plaza, staircases and seating area at its center. The glass facades along the plaza bring natural light into the building that lies mostly underground. Moreover, the elongated plaza frames a view of the volcano, which is complemented by the use of slotted roofs.
For his winery and hotel, Kasperski also placed local topography at the core of his design. This time, the structure was not entirely underground. The building features a low rise structure – which is, as OTO already proved, very suitable to the existing landscape. The form raises slightly above the ground to form a horizontal block on one side, and the shape follows the slope of the rocky Caldera on the other.
On the northern side of the volcano, the village aims to relocate the people that lived in the caldera before the eruption. The village is placed in the island’s most remote area to preserve a sense of community. The project includes public facilities – a school, a market and a church, as well as a network of alleys, irrigation canals and theme pavilions. Kasperski uses topography lines to define the streets, and serial housing accordingly raises along the hillside.
The emphasis on the ground and analysis of topography lines follow a recurrent theme in contemporary architecture, as initiated by parametricist architect Zaha Hadid. With his cultural center, Kasperski illustrates what historian Andrea Ruby calls “inflated ground.” “Instead of depositing the program as an object on the ground,” Ruby explains, “it is injected like a liquid,” and “raises the surface of the ground to the ceiling, in the process creating an artificial topography.”[1]
But, one might wonder whether the necessary materials and construction techniques would be available on the island. For their Natural Park Venue, OTO used black masonry block made of cement and ashes of the volcano. Ashes also covered the roofs, thus blending the building with its surrounding. Indeed, in such a poor region it seems obvious that using available resources is a necessity. Instead, Kasperski doesn’t specify any use of local materials. The cultural center with its artificial topography, and the winery and hotel with its unconventional form would both rely on high-technology techniques. The village’s public infrastructure and housing seem similarly far from the island’s economic reality. Proposals to strengthen the island’s economy and recover from natural disaster are welcome; however, while Kasperski offers an interesting narrative that can make us dream his vision, and any similar ideas for Fogo Island, will likely remain hypothetical for the time being.
[1] Ilka & Andreas Ruby, Groundscapes: The rediscovery of the ground in contemporary architecture (Barcelona: Gustavo Gili, 2006), pp. 22-24.
An urban house, but nevertheless cozy, warm but open to the surroundings, light but also full of shadows, with modern engineering and using natural materials. These were the first clear concepts agreed with the owners for their future home in the Jardins neighborhood of São Paulo.
To this end, we thought to occupy the plot with a single volume that ran parallel to one of its sides, with a view of the dense garden created in front of this prism. The living and dining room — with a double-height ceiling — was centered in this volume and also features an indoor garden throughout the circulating area. The bedrooms, on the first floor, occupy the two ends of the volume and communicate via a walkway that bisects the double-height living room.
Seeking the best angle for sunlight and the most privacy, the pool and terrace were located in the back of the grounds. Large roof eaves, slender structure, transparencies and wood and stone finishing sought to achieve the sensations idealized by the couple for their house.
Until July 3rd, you can experience the latest and last work of artist duo Christo and Jean-Claude. Called The Floating Piers, the floating dock extends over the water of Italy’s Lake Iseo.
The work consists of a three kilometer walkway wrapped in 100,000 square meters of yellow cloth, which is supported by a floating dock system composed of 220,000 high-density polyethylene cubes. These elements naturally undulate with the movement of the waves at Lake Iseo, which is located 100 kilometers east of Milan and 200 kilometers west of Venice. The floating yellow roads extend from the pedestrian streets of Sulzano, connecting the islands of San Paolo and Monte Isola.
The Floating Piers is the first large-scale work of Christo for more than a decade after making The Gates in 2005 with Jeanne-Claude, who passed away four years later. Due to the importance of Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s work and the inspiration they have given to many architects, we wanted to investigate the process of building this spectacular project, which makes the dream of walking on water a reality.
August 2014: At the textile manufacturer, Setex, 90,000 square meters of shimmering yellow fabric are produced. (Greven, Germany)
January 2016: At a factory in Fondotoce at Lago Maggiore, 200,000 high-density polyethylene cubes are manufactured over a period of eight months before delivery to the work site in Montecolino
January 2016: At the headquarters in Montecolino, construction workers assemble the piers, which are assembled in 100-meter-long segments and stored outside Montecolino on Lake Iseo
February 2016: Aerial view of the project’s building yard on the Montecolino peninsula and the parking area for the thirty 100 by 16 meter sections on Lake Iseo.
March 2016: A diver connects a rope made of ultra-high-molecular-weight polyethylene (UHMWPE), covered with a polyester protective layer with a breaking load of 20 metric tons, to one of the anchors on the lakebed to keep the piers in place.
April 2016: Frames are attached underneath the cubes to the deadweight anchors on the lakebed with rope made of ultra-high-molecular-weight polyethylene (UHMWPE), covered with a polyester protective layer and with a breaking load of 20 metric tons.
April 2016: Aerial view of the project’s building yard on the Montecolino peninsula and the parking area for the thirty 100 by 16 meter sections on Lake Iseo.
May 2016: The felt that will cover the cubes underneath the yellow fabric is transported from Montecolino to San Paolo island by Elimast Helicopter Service.
Junio 2016: From the evening of June 15 to the evening of June 17, teams unfurl 100,000 square meters of shimmering dahlia-yellow fabric on the piers and pedestrian streets in Sulzano and Peschiera Maraglio
A proposal from George Batzios Architects for the Konaki Averof Cultural Center in Greece uses a cutting edge, sustainable approach to revive a deeply historical site. The design intertwines elements of architecture and agriculture to refit an existing structure with reference to the Thessalian plains on which it lies. The new architecture recreates the existing envelopes with straw cladding, regenerating the “golden environment” which defined the place in the late 19th century.
The structure is scattered among the ruins of buildings in the Thessalian plains, a vast site that once functioned as the granary of the Greek territory and beyond. Georges Batzios propose that the historical architecture cannot simply be reinterpreted as a copy, as the landscape has evolved to the extent that the original architecture is no longer functional. The urban life that existed there has become superseded by the growing urbanization of nearby Larissa, and the vibrancy of the existing structures has faded.
Courtesy of Georges Batzios Architects
The architects propose that the unique characteristics of Konaki Averof are invigorated by combining the qualities of the old with the capability of modern construction technology. The context and the addition relate dominantly through materiality, enabling the refitting of the building to revitalize “the site, not only the artifact.”
Courtesy of Georges Batzios Architects
The Thessalian land traditionally bore golden wheat crops, which is directly translated into the evolved building’s primary material: straw. The exposed straw is compressed and forms the entire outer skin of the building. This construction technique, developed in Northern Europe, is here used to this extent for the first time. The material’s insulation capabilities are able to reduce 95% of the building’s energy needs, creating a passive thermal environment. Visually, it presents a golden glow, reinstating the lost color and texture of the plains.
Courtesy of Georges Batzios Architects
The main area of the building contains two levels; the ground floor, which houses the functionality of the building, and the attic, which becomes the “social playground.” The two are rationalized in completely different ways, the first a clear segregation of programmatic elements and the latter a public open space, able to be used freely.
Courtesy of Georges Batzios Architects
The proposition was developed as a response to the Konaki Averof Cultural Center Competition, in which Georges Batzios received second place.
From the architect. This children’s area is linked to the new world headquarters of Japan Tobacco International in Geneva. Located between two imposing buildings, the headquarters of JTI and WMO, the nursery school is envisaged as an ‘inhabited landscape’. The building is based on a regular frame and alternating arches in offset bands which are spread out across the whole site and form the body of the building which is covered by a vegetated roof. This structural principle generates either sheltered spaces when the arch is convex, or open spaces which serve as an interior playground when it is concave. The Origami nursery school derives its specific nature from the way in which it varies a repetitive geometrical principle. There is a mixture of structural materials, the mullions, transoms and uprights being in metal and the horizontal caissons in wood.
Its architectural design can be described as the theatrical staging of the landscape aspect of the building. The entrance is created by lowering the core layer giving access to the centre of the site. On entering one discovers play areas in relation with outside amenities and intersecting views between the different sections.
Once dubbed a “flying saucer,” the Parish (Church) of the Holy Sacrifice is a Modernist expression which embodies the complex colonial history of the Philippines. Located on a university campus in Quezon City (formerly the capital of the nation, now a part of the Metro Manila National Capital Region), the domed concrete church was the product of Filipino architect Leandro Locsin, and of three other national artists who contributed to the building’s interior.[1] Locsin’s design, which combines elements of traditional Filipino architecture with postwar International aesthetics, is a potent symbol of a newly-independent nation following centuries of imperial control.
The Republic of the Philippines was one of the many governments to rise from the ashes of the Second World War. The new country’s independence on July 4, 1946, saw the Filipino people liberated from imperial control for the first time since Spain took control of the archipelago in the late 16th Century. The colony passed from Spain to the United States in 1898 as a result of the Paris Treaty that ended the Spanish-American war. Plans to transition the colony to independence were delayed by the outbreak of the war and subsequent Japanese invasion in 1941. At the war’s end, the Philippines was finally given its long-awaited freedom, but at enormous cost: its capital, Manila, had been almost totally destroyed during Japan’s retreat from the islands.[2]
Courtesy of Wikimedia user Ramon FVelasquez
One of the most prominent architectural losses caused by the conflict were the country’s many Catholic churches. Catholicism had reigned supreme on the islands since the arrival of conquistador Miguel Lopez de Legazpi in 1565; the missionaries attending him, along with their brethren to follow, erected hundreds of Baroque, Neo-Gothic, and Rococo churches throughout the Spanish imperial era. These structures, which typically dominated the central squares of colonial communities and served as fortifications for the Japanese, became primary targets toward the end of the occupation. When the time came to rebuild, the process was carried out by a new wave of architects trained or influenced by the United States – among them, Leandro Locsin.[3]
Locsin studied at the University of Santo Tomas in Manila between 1947 and 1953. The prevailing trend in Filipino architectural practice at the time was to emulate the Modernist architecture of the West, an attitude which stemmed from the impression that such buildings represented order, progress and sophistication. More traditional architecture, especially indigenous design, was popularly seen as unsophisticated. Although Locsin worked in the Modernist style, he was noted as being one of the only contemporary designers to capture a “distinct Philippine look” in his designs.[4]
Courtesy of Wikimedia user Ramon FVelasquez
Shortly after Locsin’s graduation from the UST, he was commissioned by Frederic Ossorio to design a school chapel for the Victorias Milling Corporation. Once the design was underway, however, Ossorio was called away to the United States, and the project ultimately fell through. In 1954, Locsin met Father John Delaney, who was seeking an architect to design a chapel for the University of the Philippines campus at Diliman. With permission from Ossorio, Locsin adapted his previous design for the university.[5]
Delaney’s primary directive for the project was that the chapel should reflect the spirit of the youths who would worship there. Noting that the students tended to sing the Mass in unison, Locsin drafted a circular plan that dissolved the traditional boundary between the congregation and choir.[6] This egalitarian sensibility was further enforced by the placement of the altar at the center of the chapel; a symbolic gesture that, while in line with Delaney’s wishes, was found ill-suited to traditionally linear Catholic rites. There was no single, defined entry point, with several entrances distributed evenly around the perimeter of the chapel. The space was sheltered by a concrete dome, supported by reinforced columns and a ring beam; the apparent lightness of this structure earned the Parish its nickname, “the flying saucer.”[7]
Courtesy of Wikimedia user Ramon FVelasquez
The decentralized, open nature of the Parish of the Holy Sacrifice forced Locsin to use vertical dimensions and light to define independent spaces. The low ceiling forming the rim of the chapel promotes movement from the exterior to the interior of the space, humbling visitors as they enter into a place of worship. The transition from the glaring tropical daylight of the Philippines to a shaded concrete passage further emphasizes the sense of movement toward a different, sacred, environment. Once one passes through the peripheral ring, the ceiling rises toward the apex of the dome, which is brightly lit by clerestory windows at the dome’s base – a gesture that simultaneously unifies the worship space and differentiates it from the surrounding passage, all without the use of boundary walls.[8]
Locsin’s chapel initially appears to eschew Filipino tradition entirely, favoring the contemporary design sensibilities of the Western nations that had, until just nine years earlier, been a controlling architectural vocabulary in the Philippines for centuries. The concrete shell dome was, at the time, a new development in Asia – a form without precedent in regional architectural tradition. However, while colonial churches in the Philippines were noted for massive, bottom-heavy walls to withstand frequent earthquakes, the Parish of the Holy Sacrifice’s shell is characterized by visible lightness; at its summit, the dome is only ten centimeters thick. This suspended lightness hints not at Spanish or American influences, but at a traditional Filipino forebear: the bahay kubo (“cube house”).[9]
Example of a typical "bahay kubo". ImageCourtesy of Flickr user Neil Bryan Sietereales
The bahay kubo, the traditional indigenous home built in the Philippines, comprises a single-room house built of bamboo with a steep thatched roof, set atop stilts. The elevation and permeable walls keep the bahay kubo ventilated, cool, and dry – highly desirable qualities in the tropics.[10] The elevation of the house gives it the appearance of suspension in midair, a quality Locsin mimicked for the Parish of the Holy Sacrifice’s dome.[11]
Courtesy of Wikimedia user Ramon FVelasquez
The Parish of the Holy Sacrifice was formally inaugurated on December 20, 1955, with a midnight candlelight procession. Almost immediately, the chapel became a popular center for the faithful in Metro Manila, a status it retains to this day.[12] It is also an enduring symbol of what Locsin himself referred to as a “hybrid culture;” while many Filipino architects continue to emulate the aesthetics of contemporary American architecture, Locsin’s “flying saucer” remains one of the few prominent examples of distinctly Filipino Modernist design.[13,14]
References
[1] “The University” (PDF). University of the PhilippinesDiliman. Retrieved 3 May 2014. [access] p8. [2]Encyclopædia Britannica Online, s. v. “Philippines”, accessed June 22, 2016, [access] [3] Rodell, Paul A. Culture and Customs of the Philippines. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2002. p82-85. [4] Paredes-Santillan, Caryn. “A Study on Bipolarity in the Architecture of Leandro V. Locsin.” Journal of Asian Architecture and Building Engineering JJABE 8, no. 1 (2009): 1-8. p3-4. [5] “The University.” p8. [6] De Ayala, Fernando Zóbel. “The Chapel of the Holy Sacrifice at the University of the Philippines.” Philippine Studies 5, no. 1 (1957): 1-8. [access]. p2-7. [7] Paredes-Santillan, Caryn. “Approaching The Sacred: A Study Of The Spatial Manifestations Of Liminality In The Churches Of Leandro V. Locsin.” Accessed June 22, 2016. [access]. p4-7. [8] Paredes-Santillan, “Approaching the Sacred.” p8-9. [9] Ogura, Nobuyuki, David Leonides T. Yap, and Kenichi Tanoue. “Modern Architecture in the Philippines and the Quest for Filipino Style.” Journal of Asian Architecture and Building Engineering JJABE 1, no. 2 (November 2002): 233-38. p237. [10] Hila, Ma Corazon A. Arkitektura: An Essay on Philippine Ethnic Architecture. Manila: Sentrong Pangkultura Ng Pilipinas, 1992. p11. [11] Ogura et al, p237. [12] De Ayala, p8. [13] Paredes-Santillan, “A Study on Bipolarity in the Architecture of Leandro V. Locsin.” p8. [14] Ogura et al, p238.
The house is located on the edge of a rock above a lake. The project preserves grown trees, emphasizes the view to the water, and allows access to the meadow in the middle of a forest.
Sketch
A simple cubic mass 15x15x4 m contains interior spaces formed in a more complex manner.
Organically moulded labyrinth of the interior habitable space allows more day- and sunlight, vistas out and through from the depth of the layout.
Ground Floor Plan
The house hovers over the landscape, it is not founded traditionally. A steel load-distributing modular raft is bedded on existing granite blocks – remnants of former mining. A 2×4 timber frame is erected on the raft. The roof structure is nailed trusswork. The roof is flat finished with extensive green. The façade is ventilated made of lumber. Windows are aluminium.
Sig Nordal 