NEIGHBOURHOOD: Where Alvaro Meets Aldo / Inside Portugal’s Pavilion at the 2016 Venice Biennale

June 18, 2016signordalLeave a comment

NEIGHBOURHOOD: Where Alvaro meets Aldo / Curators Nuno Grande and Roberto Cremascoli. Portuguese Pavilion at the 2016 Venice Biennale. Images © Laurian Ghinitoiu.

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.

As a response to the 15th International Architecture Exhibition’s challenging theme, Portugal presents a “site-specific” pavilion, occupying an urban front in physical and social regeneration on the island of Giudecca: Campo di Marte. In actual fact, the installation of the pavilion on-site triggered the completion of Campo di Marte’s urban project designed by the Portuguese architect Álvaro Siza thirty years ago.

The pavilion exhibits four notable works by Siza, in the field of Social Housing – Campo di Marte (Venice); Schilderswijk (The Hague); Schlesisches Tor (Berlin); and Bairro da Bouça (Porto) – exposing his participatory experience as a peculiar understanding of the European city and citizenship. These projects have created true places of “neighbourhood”, an important subject of the current European political agenda, towards a more tolerant and multicultural society.

Siza developed those concepts in contact with the Italian architectural culture, particularly with the conceptual legacy of Aldo Rossi, whose important essay The Architecture of the City was published exactly fifty years ago. In fact, Siza’s plan for Giudecca integrates one of Rossi’s last projects.

The exhibition unveils the common ground between Alvaro and Aldo, two names which may well represent, metaphorically, all the citizens whose paths cross every day in every corner of those neighbourhoods. Finally, and after “squatting” in Siza’s building site, the Portuguese Pavilion will give place to a real habitat in the community of the Giudecca.

In 2016, a few months before the opening of the Venice Biennale, Álvaro Siza returned to all the four neighbourhoods presented in this exhibition. In Venice, The Hague, Berlin and Porto, Siza visited and met several residents, old and new neighbours, realizing their habitat’s evolution, but also the major social and urban changes which took place in there, nowadays shared by many other European cities: processes like immigration, ghettoization, gentrification and touristification.

Those visits and those neighbours are now depicted in photos and videos, presented on the outside and inside of the Portuguese Pavilion respectively. These are real everyday life documents, only possible due to the residents’ goodwill, to whom we thank the involvement.

These visual documents were produced by a qualified multidisciplinary team, mostly with the support of the Media partners SIC/Expresso, to whom we acknowledge the commitment shown. Numerous other architectural documents were granted by the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA), one of the main institutional partners, together with ATER Venice, IUAV, the Municipality of Venice Murano Borano, UNESCO Venice, Instituto Camões, and Ordem dos Arquitectos Portugueses, which were essential to this initiative.

Our last recognition evidently goes to Álvaro Siza, notable architect, world citizen and now also a fellow neighbour of the welcoming island of Giudecca.

Where Alvaro meets Aldo

Exactly 50 years ago Aldo Rossi published L’architettura della città (The architecture of the city), one of the most seminal works of European architectural culture of the second half of the twentieth century. The influence of this essay in successive generations of architects led, as it is well known, to some eminently academic affiliations, but encouraged other interpretations, more subjective and more poetic about the relationship between city, architecture and society. It is in this second universe that we inscribe the vision of Álvaro Siza, contemporary of Rossi (only two years younger), who, since their first mutual contacts, learned how to read between the lines of his theoretical work. In doing so, Siza established a dialectical relationship with the “rossian” imaginary, contributing since the 70s to a methodological approach of the so-called “School of Venice” and “School of Porto”.

Just like Rossi, Siza also perceives the “texture” of the historical city, looking for its permanent structures, its invariants, its primary elements or its urban artifacts, to use some of the book nomenclatures. Just like Aldo, Álvaro was also invited, 40 years ago, to participate in the 1976 Venice Biennale, in the collective event Europa-America, Centro Storico-Suburbio, coordinated by Vittorio Gregotti and Peter Eisenman. In contiguous spaces at the Magazzini del Sale in Zattere, they both exhibited their work.

Siza presented his first social housing projects, in Porto and in Caxinas, translated by a beautiful amalgam of sketches. Aldo Rossi, Eraldo Consolascio, Bruno Reichlin and Fabio Reinhart exhibited there, for the first time, the remarkable collage La Città Analoga (The Analogous City). Using different languages, Álvaro and Aldo brought the same message to that Venice Biennale: the city that we know and that we continually design results from the accumulation of different architectural types – as objets trouvés -, repetitively renewed or recycled by the “collective memory” throughout History.

However, while Rossi dedicated his urban research to systematize a precise number of (arche)types found in the historical city, Siza devoted his career to multiply his own (hetero)types, inscribing them in numerous geographies and cultures. It was that “other” critical sense, also “rossian”, which led Siza: to carefully study the urban fabric of Venezia Minore – as described by Egle Trincanato -, in his plan for Giudecca; to reinvent the Haages Portiek in order to distribute his housing typologies in The Hague; to revisit the Berlin modern architecture in search of his design for a new corner at the Kreuzberg district; to merge the urban structure of Porto’s popular quarters (ilhas) with the Modern Movement housing models, in his Bouça neighbourhood project (Program SAAL/North).

Álvaro and Aldo were also companions in trips, meetings, competitions, and debates: in Portugal, during the post-revolutionary period (1974); in Santiago de Compostela (1975); in the Venice Lido, at the conference Quale Movimento Moderno? (1976); at the University of the Andes in Bogotá (1982), in the company of a common friend – Oriol Bohigas; and finally, in the implementation of the Campo di Marte plan in Giudecca (1985-1997). That was a long relationship that would only be interrupted by Rossi’s premature death in September 1997.

Reading the work of Aldo, Álvaro learned to regard cities as places of collective memories and shared neighbourhoods, two important issues that we should go on analysing, supporting and reporting to Europe, a continent which is living a present crisis in its relationship with the “other”. After all, Alvaro and Aldo can also be any of us.

Learning from Venezia Minore

Álvaro Siza’s project for the Campo di Marte area resulted from a restricted invitation tender, launched in the mid-80s by the Venice IACP (Autonomous Institute for Public Housing) – today ATER Venezia -, on a much degraded (and partially demolished) residential area on the Giudecca island. The Portuguese architect was the winner of this interesting exchange of ideas involving other competitors: Aldo Rossi, Carlo Aymonino, Rafael Moneo, Mario Botta, Boris Podrecca, Aldo van Eyck, James Gowan, Gianfranco Caniggia and Tomasz Mankowsky. Having the French architect Bernard Huet as head of the jury, the tender predicted not only different building stages, for the winning proposal, but also the possibility of including some of those other competitors in its future development.

Anticipating this possibility, Álvaro Siza designed an orderly and cadenced urban fabric based on the elongated structure of the old cadastral division, layout from north to south – between the Giudecca Canal and the Lagoon – and resuming some of the existing architectural archetypes of the island: galleries, porticos, courtyards, loggias and top balconies. To this end, he carefully studied the urban analysis developed by Egle Trincanato, noted researcher at the Istituto Universitario di Architettura di Venezia (IUAV), in her seminal book Venezia Minore, published in 1948. From that study, he learned how to identify the typological invariants of the popular housing fabric, which formed the interior of the Giudecca Island, and from which emerged, by contrast, the magnificent churches and palaces placed at the borders of the canal and the lagoon. This type-morphological analysis proposed by Trincanato, within the “School of Venice” in the late ’40s, anticipated counterparts work done by Giuseppe Samona, Saverio Muratori and Aldo Rossi in the following decades.

Siza also assimilated that influence and opted, in his general plan, for a cohesive urban composition, height uniformity, and windows arranged in a constant rhythm along the extensive facades. This kind of “meta-project” was later interpreted by Aldo Rossi, Carlo Aymonino and Rafael Moneo, three architects listed in the tender and invited to design different buildings adjacent to the quarter assigned to Álvaro Siza, in the centre of Campo di Marte. Over the following decades (1986-2006) only the two Italian architects were able to complete their works. Nowadays, Siza’s project is partially completed (the builder filed for bankruptcy in 2010), and that of the Spanish Rafael Moneo is at an early stage of study.

In 2015, Portugal has proposed to ATER Venezia to install its official representation at the Venice Architecture Biennale of 2016 in the incomplete front of the block designed by Álvaro Siza, a fact that helped trigger its completion and, predictably, the future making of the adjoining square. In that process, Siza returned to Campo di Marte in February 2016 and met some of the people living in the concluded part of his project. The meeting made him understand how the population had appropriated the building typologies, but also the collective spaces. Visiting different local residents, Siza talked, smoked and toasted with them during a lively afternoon of conviviality. There he heard, in a local dialect, that Giudecca is the last island where the authentic Venetians live, in contrast to an accelerated depopulation and “touristification” of the central island around the Grand Canal. In Campo di Marte, Siza finally realized why it was worth studying the urban form and social life of this Venezia Minore, where it is still possible to build true neighbourly ties.

Crossing the Haagse Portiek

The social housing neighbourhoods designed by Álvaro Siza in the renowned SAAL Program (Serviço de Apoio Ambulatório Local/Local Ambulatory Support Service), implemented after the April 1974 Revolution in Portugal, deserved, from then on, special attention by international architecture critics, but also by politicians and activists involved in similar experiences in other European cities. It so happened to Adri Duivesteijn, councillor for Housing and Urban Development of The Hague, in the Netherlands, who would invite Siza in 1984 to redesign a degraded and stigmatized area of his city – the Schilderswijk neighbourhood – and build new social housing in it. Predominantly inhabited by immigrant populations, mainly from Turkey, Morocco, Cape Verde and Suriname, the quarter had a previous development plan, based on functional zoning and formal segmentation, modernist paradigms which did not please the young councillor.

After visiting the neighbourhood and listening to the inhabitants’ wishes – together with a team of local architects, social workers and translators – Álvaro Siza designed the first construction phase, in the district’s south area: the Punt Komma blocks, carried out between 1986 and 1989. On that area, Siza has recreated the morphology of the historic city blocks, using its dominant cladding – brick – and recreating a traditional space of access to the buildings from the street – the Haagse Portiek. This portico allowed him, through a wide exterior staircase, to have access to a common landing for the new apartments’ entrances. This “culturalist” visit to the history of The Hague was accompanied by the creation of flexible housing typologies, adaptable to the different family lives, regardless of the inhabitants cultural and religious origin.

Siza’s proposal was continually debated with several local neighbours through full-scale simulations of the interior spaces, built at ROL (Spatial Development Laboratory, The Hague). There, everyone had the possibility to know the new apartments’ layout and suggest possible changes, in a participatory method of real social empowerment.

In a second phase, between 1989 and 1993, in the Jacob Catsstraat area, the Portuguese architect took again some of the previous references – compact blocks, brick cladding, access through a portico, the evocation of the Hanseatic architecture – and diversified the typological solutions, from collective dwellings to single-family row houses, once more in accord with The Hague’s urban culture.

In March 2016, Álvaro Siza returned to the Schilderswijk neighbourhood, meeting, once more, his old client and friend Adri Duivesteijn, now a distinguished member of the city Senate. Together they walked down the well-maintained streets of the area, in the company of Lisbeth Alferink, the team’s former social worker, visiting some Turkish, Syrian and Moroccan families who have settled there for the past 25 years.

After crossing the Haagse Portiek, the group entered into several houses, taking off their shoes, sitting comfortably in the lounges, talking to the families and drinking the inevitable Rize tea served by affable Turkish women. On the journey from Schipol airport, someone had warned Álvaro Siza about the insecurity of the neighbourhood, nowadays known by many as the “Sharia Triangle”. However, this visit would make it obvious to everyone that the announced “ghettoization” of the quarter is, first and foremost, an alibi used by the most conservative political rhetoric in the Netherlands. In Schilderswijk the good neighbourly relations hold on and are highly recommended.

Kreuzberg, Que Pasa?

When Álvaro Siza visited Berlin at the end of the 70s, the city remained surrounded for more than fifteen years by a physical and political Wall, one of the main symbols of the Cold War. Still bearing the wounds of World War II, Berlin was then launching its “critical reconstruction” under the urban programme of IBA (Internationale Bauausstellung, 1979-1987). Siza took part in two competitions, without the expected results, but decided to try a third time, responding to the challenge of regenerating a complete quarter in Schlesisches Tor, the Kreuzberg district. Situated in the vicinity of the Wall, Kreuzberg was then a troubled neighbourhood on the outskirts of West Berlin, characterized by an aging population, Turkish immigrants, and some newly arrived squatter artists. The block was covered by funding for ageing areas (IBA Altbau), as opposed to new investments and projects underway in the central city area (IBA Neubau).

Álvaro Siza won the mentioned tender in 1980 on the basis of a proposal that critically interpreted the fragments and the urban voids left there by the war devastation and trying to integrate them in a sensitive composition, which did not rebuild the block but allowed to discover the richness of its interior. Similarly, and avoiding excessive “social hygiene”, Siza included some of the residents’ main ambitions by proposing two social pieces of equipment at the heart of the neighbourhood: a Nursery School and a Day Centre for the elderly. Finally, in one of the corners of Schlesisches Strasse, the Portuguese architect has designed a residential building of seven floors, learning once again from the surrounding architectural diversity: he transformed the corner into a “monumental” point, raising the parapet of the building and extending the cornices of a neighbouring property. He sought to incorporate the existing Turkish restaurant in the base of the building; he marked the corner with a “suspended” pillar; he announced the main entrance by detaching one of the facade porticos; and finally, he kept an urban “rift” on the block as an invitation to discover the hidden backyard.

Similarly, he diversified the apartments’ typologies and access systems, making them more flexible, given the social and cultural diversity of their inhabitants. A sarcastic graffiti of literary inspiration painted on the parapet curve of the building – Bonjour Tristesse – would eventually imprint the first critical “appropriation” from neighbours, questioning the regular design of its windows and the melancholy color of its facades. In fact, in this project Siza revisited the “expressionist” imagery of the city, evoking some of the heroes of the Berlin Modernism: Erich Mendelsohn, Bruno Taut and Hans Scharoun.

In 2016, thirty years after the completion of this process, Álvaro Siza returned to Schlesisches Tor accompanied by architect Brigitte Fleck, his friend and collaborator on the project. They strolled down the Nursery gardens, climbed up to the top of the Day Centre and got a warm reception from the elderly users. In the building Bonjour Tristesse they met again some of its first residents, of Turkish origin, realizing, however, that the building is now in a full process of social gentrification. The building was acquired by an Austrian real estate fund and its apartments and shops are now getting new occupants by means of “expelling” many families and existing activities. The Turkish restaurant on the ground floor gave way to a new Mexican food franchise of the brand Que Pasa (What’s happening?). It is a pertinent question to ask Kreuzberg, a formerly peripheral neighbourhood which became the trendy and cosmopolitan centre of the reunified new capital of Germany. The Berlin Wall fell almost thirty years ago; other “vicinities” germinated since then.

The several lives of the Bouça neighbourhood

In the Portuguese summer of 1974, just three months after the April 25th Revolution, Nuno Portas, then Secretary of State for Housing and Urban Development, launched a governmental dispatch which allowed the most deprived inhabitants to organize themselves and politically fight for the “right to housing” and for the “right to the city”, remaining in their places of origin or settlement. This program, called SAAL (Serviço de Apoio Ambulatório Local/Local Ambulatory Support Service), led to the creation of housing projects proposed by different architects, in an ongoing dialogue with the various residents’ associations, established in the meantime. In Bouça, at the centre of Porto, many plots were then squatted by the population, a fact which would directly involve Álvaro Siza, author of a housing project intended for that quarter. Receptive to the new demands of the Bouça squatters, the architect readjusted his project so it could include a greater number of deprived residents.

Siza’s proposal was based upon a double historical revisit: on the one hand, he interpreted the forms and spaces of the old popular districts of Porto: the ilhas; on the other hand, he evoked learned models of working-class housing, developed by European modern avant-garde in the 20s and 30s. This fusion resulted in the “first life” of the Bouça Neighbourhood. In 1975, two elongated buildings were built, with four floors (2 duplex apartments), with direct entrances from the street or from a high gallery. Community relations were then established in the daily use of the different extended courtyards between the housing blocks, some marked by a succession of multi-functional outdoor stairs.

This first life was suddenly interrupted after 1976 with the end of the SAAL program. Since then social housing policies passed into the municipalities’ administration, in an electoral representation system opposing the “participatory” democracy models, as those which had characterized the SAAL process. For twenty years, the neighbourhood remained “amputated” and was progressively degrading until the moment when the residents’ association, in conjunction with another housing cooperative, proposed the municipality to complete the project by Álvaro Siza. This action led to the “second life” of the Bouça neighbourhood, giving opportunity to the author to finally demonstrate the sense of architectural adjustment and urban integration of his proposal. This second life, established in 2006, inevitably brought new residents from different social and cultural conditions to the neighbourhood.

In 2016, a decade after the quarter conclusion, Álvaro Siza visited the area and got inside some of the residents’ houses, realizing how they lived in them. There he met again some of the first inhabitants who, with his support, had fought for the founding of the residents’ association in 1974. He heard their complaints about the construction works completion process and how many of their companions had not wanted or been able to return to the houses that were meant to them.

In other visits, Álvaro Siza knew the outcome of this gentrification process, meeting young architects, designers, and artists who became the owners of those houses placed on the market by the housing cooperative. Avoiding any false moralism, Siza realized that the neighbourhood was no longer just part of his revolutionary imaginary of 40 years ago, but had become an inter-classist, intercultural and inter-generational fragment of the contemporary city. What better conditions, after all, to generate a true place of neighbourhood? The “third life” of Bouça has only just begun.

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Frëims Condesa / Arqmov Workshop

June 18, 2016signordalLeave a comment

Architects: Arqmov Workshop
Location: La Condesa, Mexico City, Mexico City, Mexico
Area: 235.0 sqm
Project Year: 2016
Photographs: Rafael Gamo

Architectural Design: Eduardo Micha, Fabio Correa, Gabriel Merino, Christian Rodriguez, Oscar Osorio, Patricia Pérez, Miguel Ángel Chiney, Eduardo Acosta, Armando Hernández Maricruz Pérez, Mario Moreno

From the architect. The project involved the renovation of a house built in the 1920s, to transform it into the first restaurant specialized in serving waffle sandwiches in Mexico, along with a great variety of freshly brewed coffee made with the best extraction methods available.

The new franchise is based on an entirely new approach where the primary concern is to ensure that each space takes on its own personality. The design features a flexible program where normal commercial restaurant activities are enhanced by integrating different cultural and artistic expressions, thus providing a suitable space for reading groups, book presentations, acoustic concerts, and wine tasting events. The common thread consists of using the spaces distributed all through the venue to promote art and literature, including a gallery where different artists can exhibit their work for certain periods of time. This specific part of the project included an interior wall put up in the patioto create a focal visual point from the moment you walk into restaurant that offers a platform for artists to exhibit their works.

The building is located on one of the busiest avenues in La Condesa neighborhood in Mexico City and was brought back from a prolonged state of abandonment and remodeled in a way that preserved its original layout to the extent possible. The facade was renovated and adapted to its new use, and its original materials were kept throughout the house and garden to serve as “testimonies” to the building’s historical nature, with examples including the fountain, benches, and boundary walls, in addition to the conservation of construction techniques from the era in which it was first built.

A set of openings allow the sun light to penetrate well into the interior, and the window works were replicated to arrange the architectural language both inside the building and in the distinctive patio, whose original fountain’s silhouette has been respected, reinterpreted, and adapted in harmony with the outlines created for the new design. Set up around the new water-mirror fountain is an ample space for intimate group dining intended to add an element of diversity to the way people eat by creating an environment that allows for contemplation, relaxation, plentiful vegetation, shaded areas, and the natural fresh and cool air flows provided by the restaurant’s location.The original architectural layout of the spaces has been respected, which means that the structure of the house has been altered as little as possible. For example, the kitchen was remodeled to fit its original area and ensure the optimization of its space and functionality.

A key consideration in the development of this project was the recovery and recycling of materials that were used to design the furniture, the original windows, the ceramic plaster floors, and the wood paneling.

The interior flooring was made to resemble polished concrete, with the patio decked in colored paved stones with solid bases and hollow spaces strategically created as planters to grow greens and an organic garden.

The primary elements featured in the design of this restoration project include the basic lighting provided with Edison light bulbs, and old-fashioned or concrete lamps, whose soft lights accentuate the combination of materials and textured facades.

It is, in essence, a light-hearted space for art and socializing that offers diners a relaxing experience and a welcome diversion from the daily grind.

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SUTD Professors Design 3D Printed Mesh Pavilion

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Professors Felix Raspall and Carlos Bañón from SUTD Singapore have designed a 14.5-meter-long fibrous mesh made out of metal and nylon 3D printed nodes and aluminum bars for the SUTD Open House 2016.

Rather than utilizing 3D printing to create a scaled model, the pavilion project applied 3D printing technology directly to functional architectural components at a large scale.

All of the printed nodes (19 of which are metal, and 72 of which are nylon) were parametrically tailored specifically for their own geometric positions based on the number of concurring bars, and the angle between them. This strategy results in a true, free-form shape where connections are optimized and flush with the section of the bars.

“Behind the apparent chaos, a strict tetrahedral geometry is embedded in the structure of the volume, as a strategy to confer stability and robustness to the whole system. In addition, the lightweight structure serves also as a support for three five-meter-long solid flat platforms which, hovering at different heights, exhibit a selection of students’ works,” said designers from SUTD.

The pavilion, which was a central hub for congregation at its opening, has now become a familiar and “almost imperceptible” piece due to its low ratio between mass and volume, such that visitors walk through it when crossing the lobby space.

News via the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD).

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Innovations and Technologies Center / Artstudio Project

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Architects: Artstudio Project
Location: Tbilisi, Georgia
Project Team: G.Sulaberidze, R.Khetsuriani, S.Lobzhanidze, T.Mikautadze, O.Sulaberidze, D.Rusitashvili
Interior Design Team: S.Lobzhanidze, O.Sulaberidze, N.Chkhartishvili, N.Ostapenko, T.Gorgasanidze
Area: 3200.0 sqm
Project Year: 2015
Photographs: Sandro Sulaberidze

Structure: Cubicon
Mep: O.Aloian

Design site is located adjacent to Mtatsminda Park, in Tbilisi, Georgia. The design envisaged reconstruction of existing building with the function of Technological Park. The complex itself (consisting of two blocks, connecting by means of bridge) used to be a scientific-research center of apiculture. The concept of the design aims at informing people about influence of up-to-date gadgets and technologies over people’s daily life throughout the world and especially in the region. A space, connecting two administrative buildings, is presented to be an innovation and achievement of modern technologies. The main objective of the design is to express in architecture the importance of eco-system and to combine high-end planning with harsh environment of engineering and modern technologies.

Building appearance will have various impressions on the guests of Techno Park; it consists of naturalness, creativity, science and technology, everything that meets challenges of modern lifestyle. The plot area totals 6940 m2 and geographically is a south part of ‘Mama Daviti’ mountain slope. The terrain within the plot is not even with absolute sea level, varying from 782 to 790 metres; the plot accommodates administrative building consisting of two blocks and boiler house, surrounding by massive forest and greenery. According to the design, external walls will be plastered with sand-cement mortar and insulated with Rockwool and next finished with high quality wooden boards (treated with anti-septic and painted). Existing floor slab will serve as terrace in Administrative Block. It will accommodate plant pots and appropriate furniture (for open spaces) for leisure and meetings.

As for the roof of Educational Block, there will be mainly located mechanical equipment. Central Block is of mixed-type structure: main, load-bearing skeleton of the building is reinforced-concrete, while steel frame is used to support glass facade. The “cube” in interior mainly serves as atrium. First floor comprises reception, waiting area and library. In cube, there will be installed hydraulic type lift, connecting 4 levels: from the last level accessing to terraces of other two blocks.

From structural point of view, the buildings were of load-bearing wall system, with strip footing, hollow floor slabs and flat roof; existing building in plan is of rectangular shape (42.60 X 12.60m). Under the design, it is planned to preserve only one floor with slab and adding of two floors. In existing hollow slabs there will be installed r/c beams 40x40cm. Part of existing balconies will be rehabilitated as well.

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Monocle Films Report from the National Pavilions at the 2016 Venice Biennale

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In a short film exploring some of the National Participations at this year’s Venice Biennale, Monocle Films take a considered look at how different countries have responded to the Biennale theme, Reporting From the Front in both explicit and more indirect ways. Visiting the Austrian Pavilion, the Nordic Pavilion, the Turkish Pavilion, the British Pavilion, the Irish Pavilion, the Australian Pavilion and the Romanian Pavilion, the film studies what discourses are being waged in the compressed geo-political world of the Giardini di Biennale.

Central Pavilion, Giardini. Image © Francesco Galli

Find out more about Monocle Films, here. See all of ArchDaily’s coverage of the 2016 Venice Biennale, here.

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Alterations and Renovations to the Port Elizabeth Opera House / The Matrix… Urban Designers and Architects

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Architects: The Matrix… Urban Designers and Architects
Location: Whites Rd, Port Elizabeth, 6001, South Africa
Architect In Charge: The Matrix… Urban Designers and Architects
Area: 310.0 sqm
Project Year: 2015
Photographs: Rob Duker

Structural Engineers: AfriCoast Consulting Engineers
Mechanical Engineers: Royal Haskoning DHV
Electrical Engineersz: Royal Haskoning DHV
Quantity Surveyor: Markus Burri Quantity Surveyors
Heritage: Bryan Wintermeyer and Gerrie Horn
Contractor: GVK-Siya Zama Building Contractors (EP) Pty Ltd
Text’s Author: Tony Danev

From the architect. The Port Elizabeth Opera House was originally designed by local architect George William Smith and opened its doors on 1 December 1892. Four additions followed – the first in 1911, followed by extensions in 1927, 1934 and 1985. The current Opera House is thus made up of five distinct parts which throughout the years have merged into a single building of a distinct neo-classical style. At present the Opera House is the oldest theatre in Africa and also the oldest operating theatre in the Southern hemisphere.

In 2011 the Port Elizabeth Opera House Board decided to rationalise circulation in the Opera House, renovate the building internally, and to extend the cabaret theatre and improve its access. In order to achieve this, the following formed part of the Project scope:

• Addition of a dedicated Foyer space and passenger lift serving the cabaret theatre – known as ‘The Barn’

• Extensions to ‘The Barn’

• Renovations to existing Opera House foyer and main theatre inetranlly, including internal/external painting and damp damage repairs

• Upgrade of Staff offices, including new circulation core

• Replacement of Carpets and Wallpapers

• Major upgrade of Air-Conditioning, Lighting, Fire Detection and Ventilation systems

• Compliance with National Building Regulations in terms of access for disabled persons

The Matrix… Urban Designers and Architects were appointed in September 2011 to facilitate the Project and conceptualise the Design brief and it implementation.

Following extensive consultation with local heritage practitioners and public stake holders through the preparation of a comprehensive Heritage Impact Assessment, the design approach taken was based on three main principles:

Contrast:

In line with contemporary heritage practices to avoid re-creating a false impression the ‘new’ extensions are intentionally contrasted with the ‘old’ through form, materials, tectonics as well as spatial character. The vertical and horizontal proportions of the ‘old’ building is re-interpreted in an elegant stainless steel screen. The new Foyer Extension is also spatially extraverted in nature further contrasting the largely introverted old building. Floor levels are intentionally ‘misaligned’ further articulating the threshold between the different spaces through a ‘transparent’ glass bridge. It was further decided to acknowledge the history of the building throughout the years by creative use of colour and painting the various additions throughout the years in different hues from the same palette. The colours vary from light (oldest) to dark (newest) thus depicting a visual timeline of the Opera House throughout the decades.

• Background Building: The Foyer Extension is distinctly contemporary, however, far less articulated compared to the old building thus achieving a background aesthetic instead of competing with the richly decorated ‘old’ building. The extension further recedes ‘behind’ the old Opera House while the height is kept lower than the existing. A clear glass ‘break’ is deliberately established separating the ‘old’ from the ‘new’ both spatially and visually

• ‘Green’ Principles: The new Foyer Extension is naturally ventilated though means of a stack effect. Cool air is drawn into the building at lower levels through ducts and a stack effect is used to circulate hot air out at the top through a system of motorised louvers.

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Floating in Nature / INUCE

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Architects: INUCE
Location: Fuzhou, Fujian, China
Project Year: 2014
Photographs: Courtesy of INUCE

From the architect. Intact nature: After three decades of accelerated urbanization, most cities in China are tormented by thick clouds of smog and the stench of polluted rivers. Not so Fuzhou: Enclosed by intact forests and infused with parks and green belts, the capital of Fujian Province maintains the best air quality amongst all major cities in the country. The water quality of the city’s Min River is good, allowing citizens to refresh themselves in its cool floods during summer.

Transformation into high density work environment: One of the major Chinese real estate corporations is developing a large scale SOHO district at the southern shore of the Min River, transforming the undeveloped riverbank into a dense urban work environment for hundreds of start-up companies. To build a “lifestyle gallery” vis-à-vis with the actual construction site can provide customers with a “real life” experience of the development prior to its completion.

Completion in less than 150 days: The challenge for the architect was to plan and realize the architecture from sketch to handover within the nearly impossible timeframe of less than 150 days. The gallery was assembled on site using prefabricated steel, glass, and aluminum components. The usual project phasing was abandoned in favor of an intricate overlapping of planning and construction as far as reasonably possible: Foundations were laid once the schematic plans had been drafted. The construction of the interior was well on the way even before the curtain wall had been installed. Three 8-hour shifts kept the construction ongoing for 24 hours a day.

Unexpected Idyll on muddy construction site: In order to meet young buyers’ need for a creative and flexible work environment, which offers urban convenience whilst upholding a close link to nature, the architecture needed to constitute a space which turned the visit of a muddy construction site into an unexpected fun experience and celebration of the riverside location.

Literally built on top of a water surface, the gallery is composed of two staggered volumes orbiting around a central water fountain. The upper volume is cantilevered by 8 meters and supported by a single column. It constitutes a floating courtyard focusing the view onto the blue sky above. Floors, walkways, staircases and squares are conceived as a continuous trajectory which provides a constant exposure to the surrounding nature. Inside the gallery visitors embark on a carefully planned experience route around the courtyard – from receiving a welcoming drink at the reception bar, all the way to enjoying the exclusive river view from the full – scale sample units. Upon returning home, the visitor has a last look from the viewing platform onto the construction site and witnesses the “soon-to-be-his” SOHO unit being built.

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TN Nursery / HIBINOSEKKEI + Youji no Shiro

June 17, 2016signordalLeave a comment

Architects: HIBINOSEKKEI, Youji no Shiro
Location: Mie Prefecture, Japan
Area: 1242.37 sqm
Project Year: 2016
Photographs: Studio Bauhaus, Ryuji Inoue

Surface Area: 846.57 square meters
Site Area: 4529.83 square meters

From the architect. The site is located at north of housing development, which is about 10 kilometers from Tsu City in Mie Prefecture.

It is an area surrounded by sufficient nature with green where you can feel change of season such as field, pond, forest, woods and others, and in addition, comfortable wind blows.

For those who live in this area, the field, pond and trees they can see from the site are not special but close to them. The change of the nature they can feel by season teaches children variable facts throughout a year. In summer, water spreads in the field, trees turn red in autumn, snow falls in winter and flowers start blooming in spring. In this project, we emphasized that this scenery they feel naturally is input into the body of the children deeply and they learn by experience.

In dining room, a large window is set at two phases where they can see the scenery such as the field and pond. By this setting, they can enjoy eating while seeing change of the scenery throughout a year. At front, a terrace is set, and they can have lunch by feeling sunlight and wind at their skin as if they were having a picnic on nice day. To stimulate imagination of the children, in the hall, we set a light at random as if it were constellation they can see from here. By discovering the constellation by themselves and teaching each other, they develop joy of discovery, mind of searching and curiosity. A device of accumulating water is designed on top of the terrace in the hall, and cooled air is brought into the building by using vaporization heat. On hot days in summer, it is used as an Ashimizu (putting foot in the water to cool down) where they can have fun, and thereby they can live without relying on air conditioner.

As a place for developing an area and establishing a community, we created a place where raising of the children is supported. Its purpose is not only to reduce stress of child care of the parent who has a problem in raising children but also mothers and those in the area can communicate each other easily. The space as if it were an open café lounge makes visitors feel relaxed and provides an environment where they can easily consult.

In the garden, a variety of trees such as the one producing fruit are planted. They bring this fruit to the kitchen, cook it by themselves and eat. By this experience, they develop sensitivity, curiosity and mind of searching.

Recently, as there are numerous plays where they do not use their body in the building, they lack a variety of experiences they need when they are growing up. It leads to increase of children who cannot communicate with others well. In this project, we created an environment where they develop the mind that they feel beautiful when they see the beauty and feel delicious when they eat delicious food by creating an environment where they feel bounty of nature at their skin all the time through their experience.

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LSD Residence / Davidov Partners Architects

June 17, 2016signordalLeave a comment

Architects: Davidov Partners Architects
Location: Melbourne VIC, Australia
Architect In Charge: Davidov Partners Architects
Area: 400.0 sqm
Project Year: 2015
Photographs: Jack Lovel

Interiors: Davidov Partners Architects
Landscape Architect: John Patrick Landscape Architects
Structural Engineers: Pat Baygar and Associates

From the architect. LSD Residence was designed for a couple of soon to be empty-nesters. A significant driver behind the came about from the irregular sized lot on which the residence was built. The aim was to make both inhabitants and visitors unaware of the change in width reducing from 12m to 8m wide. The perceived width of the property is maximised through the careful consideration in the programming of both levels. As the site is fairly linear, the design was conceived as 3 blocks punctuated by 2 glazed interstitial zones which contain the staircase/entry and kitchen/bar/alfresco areas.

The kitchen’s design proves to be a novel element in LSD Residence. The clients required a public kitchen or bar to be presented in such a way for it to be a natural hub when visitors and family are around, however also wanted another private kitchen for the real cooking and cleaning to take place. This resulted in a butler kitchen designed in close proximity to the central island of the now communal kitchen area.

Additionally, the master bedroom, which has been designed in the guise of an open plan hotel suite, has a feature façade glazing which extends from below the floor level to the parapet line allowing for completely full height windows which maximise view lines. The room also incorporates an innovative oculus in the concrete rendered shower which features a concealed LED lighting halo as the only artificial light source. The curved wall of the shower animates the stark façade of the building, which, depending on the lighting levels and time of day emerges and submerges from view from the street.

Apart from the irregular block for the site, a major challenge during the project were town planning restrictions. Attempting to maximise view lines on such a constrained block brought up limitations with overlooking. Additional challenges that needed to be catered to were overshadowing, and boundary walls due to the limited space present.

Sustainability

LSD Residence achieves a 6 star energy rating through the use of multiple sustainable design featured. All glass employed in the design is high performance and has a low E value and the use of brick veneer walls and an insulated concrete slab on ground further improves the thermal performance of the house. The finishes and render used internally and externally are significantly hard wearing and low maintenance allowing the building to age gracefully. Solar boosted hot water and rain water harvesting is also present in the design. The 2 feature ponds are also intended to assist in passive cooling. The limited palate of natural materials, namely cement render and unfilled travertine are used throughout the house both internally and externally. Over time the contrasting effects of external wear and internal protection will allow the inherent nature of these materials to become more pronounced adding another layer of interest and subtle contrast to the house.

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Watch the Louvre Abu Dhabi Perimeter Flood

June 17, 2016signordalLeave a comment

Earlier this week, the temporary sea wall that had been separating the Louvre Abu Dhabi from the seawater of the Persian Gulf was removed, creating a new harmony between site and structure as envisioned in the original project renderings. The building, which was conceived in 2007 and designed by Jean Nouvel, is set to open later this year.

Courtesy of Tourism Development & Investment Company

The museum sits on an artificial island that employed a hydraulic cutoff wall to remove water during construction, allowing for excavation, piling, and subsequent building to proceed with dry conditions. The recently completed saturation process can be seen in a time-lapse video above, in which adjacent waters rise slowly and systematically, allowing for the structure to be precisely framed by the seawater; an opposition of white stone and azure waters. According to Tourism Development & Investment Company (TDIC), the master developer of tourism, cultural, and residential construction in Abu Dhabi, which is also behind the museum project, the removal of the seawalls and subsequent site flooding took place in three stages.

“This is a great milestone in the development of Louvre Abu Dhabi,” said His Excellency Ali Majed Al Mansoori, Chairman of the Board at TDIC. “This delicate process is the result of months of planning and preparation to ensure that the inflow of seawater takes place in a controlled manner around and within strategic places in the museum. We are confident that once it is concluded future visitors to Saadiyat island will be able to see the beauty of Louvre Abu Dhabi and experience first-hand how the vision for this project has been turned into reality.”

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The World Around Us

design

NEIGHBOURHOOD: Where Alvaro Meets Aldo / Inside Portugal’s Pavilion at the 2016 Venice Biennale

Where Alvaro meets Aldo

Learning from Venezia Minore

Crossing the Haagse Portiek

Kreuzberg, Que Pasa?

The several lives of the Bouça neighbourhood

Frëims Condesa / Arqmov Workshop

SUTD Professors Design 3D Printed Mesh Pavilion

Innovations and Technologies Center / Artstudio Project

Monocle Films Report from the National Pavilions at the 2016 Venice Biennale

Alterations and Renovations to the Port Elizabeth Opera House / The Matrix… Urban Designers and Architects

Floating in Nature / INUCE

TN Nursery / HIBINOSEKKEI + Youji no Shiro

LSD Residence / Davidov Partners Architects

Watch the Louvre Abu Dhabi Perimeter Flood

Where Alvaro meets Aldo

Learning from Venezia Minore

Crossing the Haagse Portiek

Kreuzberg, Que Pasa?

The several lives of the Bouça neighbourhood

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