The reconversion of the Mining Site of Wallers-Arenberg is in the middle of the Agglomeration community “La Porte du Hainaut” which is, at the same time, initiating and owner of this project.
The wish to mobilize this site for a project emanates from several points:
To rehabilitate and reallocate a site with very high historical and patrimonial value, classified as an Historic monument at the World heritage list of UNESCO, under Evolutionary Cultural Landscapes. http://ift.tt/1WEiLIk
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To establish the research laboratory “CREW” of the University of Valenciennes on the site and to develop its activity on it.
The creation of the “Pôle Image” (July 1st, 2009) on the Region Nord-Pas-de-Calais joins together the trades and excellence in terms of cinema, audio-visual, video game and virtual worlds. The ambition is “to innovate to be able to produce differently, more quickly and less expensive”. This regional project is shared by three territories which decided to join their forces: Lille-Métropole, Valenciennes-Métropole and the Agglomeration “La Porte du Hainaut”.
The original building is Shanghai New Phoenix Town Hotel operated by the Government of Yangpu District, Shanghai with lodging, catering and entertainment functions. Now, due to social progress and changes of government policies, the hotel decays gradually. By means of functional replacement-oriented renovation and regeneration, the hotel can be transformed into a creative design park that is able to meet increasingly diversified user demand. In this way, we can inject new vitality into the building and the decayed neighborhood in the city.
Replacement of Function and Adaptive Improvement of Space
Different functions have varied demands for space, circulations and privacy. The first step of design is to carry out targeted renovation of the the original hotel space, demolish and update the space that affects actual use in order to adapt to the demands of the new creative office building. Then, we will arrange and replan the usable indoor and outdoor space based on the organizational structure, workflow and special requirements of the enterprise.
New Phoenix Town Hotel, which is originally located in the base, is a building group consisting of a three-storey main building and eight two-storey guest room buildings, about 5,000m2 underground and semi-underground space, as well as three gardens. As a principle of renovation design, it is necessary to respect the overall layout of the original building and retain the original trees; any addition that is necessitated by functional demands should echo the original building in shape as far as possible, and a low-profile design method should be adopted to vanish the volume; if green space is reduced due to such addition, we will try to balance the reduction by designing new sunken gardens and adding green space elsewhere in order to maintain the original ratio of green space.
We add a dedicated access for employees on Kongjiang Road which is near to a subway entrance, and build additional hallways between the main building and smaller buildings to enhance the connections between them and realize more reasonable and convenient circulations; by adding the four sunken gardens, we manage to increase the ventilation and lighting quantity of the underground space and improve the office environment of the underground space.
On this basis, we rearranged the walking circulations across the whole park based on the organizational structure and working characteristics of the enterprise: we add glass corridors at the ends of smaller buildings, so the landscape platforms formed by the platforms on the first floors of smaller buildings and the roofs of the added main hallways can help enhance the three-dimensional connections between the two groups of buildings. The space that is originally inaccessible, negative and isolated in the park is now completely connected by the new traffic circulations. The spatial flow brings changes and vigor to the interior office units, creates communication place for relaxation and encounter while improving office efficiency, thus offering a source of creative inspiration.
The functions have been expanded at the same time of spatial regeneration. We have transformed the original swimming pool and part of underground space into a multifunctional space with great sense of design, integrating the functions of conference, exhibition and communication.
Renovation and Renewal of “New and Old” Architectural Form
The façade renovation follows the principle of “mixing the new and the old”, which means that it is necessary to retain historical traces and memory, and add elements of the new era to reflect the culture of the creative enterprise and the characteristics of the times.
The exterior facades of additional buildings mainly use glass curtain walls, which are transparent and graceful, and are able to reflect the comparison between newness and oldness and show respect for the facades and overall environment of the original building while demonstrating a modern sense.
The exterior walls of the main building use white pottery clay louvers as brand-new building skin. By controlling the distance between louver blades, it is possible to ensure the visibility of the red face bricks on the original exterior walls and retain the surrounding residents’ memories of the original building, and also bring new life to the old building and rebuild a brand-new image of the building following the functional replacement.
The exterior curtain walls of the original swimming pool use metal glaze tile louvers as the new skin, which offers unique highlights in appearance while serving the purpose of sun shading and energy saving, and also demonstrates the unique image of a design enterprise.
Remodeling of “Four Gardens” Landscape under Garden-style Office Philosophy
By making full use of the existing environmental advantages and landscape resources of the base, drawing design inspiration from nature, utilizing the original three gardens and adding a new one, we manage to form four garden spaces with different themes, namely, “Front Garden”, “Nature Garden”, “Corporate Grove” and “Damie Garden”. By introducing the “four garden” landscape into the entire office space, we can improve the quality of the office space, and create a high-efficiency, high comfort and high value-added office space by the adoption of the “garden-style office” philosophy.
Elevation
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The rearrangement and integration of the original spatiality, the injection of new vitality and image, as well as different experience offered by the “four gardens” allowing people to feel season changes, combine to form a diversified and colorful environmental settlement and transform the original hotel into an office space that is most suitable for the development of cultural creativity ecology.
Photographs: Courtesy of Farshad Mehdizadeh Architects + Ahmad Bathaei, Parham Taghiof
Civil Engineer: Hooman Farokhi
Courtesy of Farshad Mehdizadeh Architects + Ahmad Bathaei
From the architect. This project is located in Hamedan, one of Iranian historical cities. Hamedan has active urban space which is characterized by squares and an important north-south urban axis which connects them together. This axis cross the site from the western side.
Diagram
The brief was designing a two floor building with commercial functions: a retail in ground floor and a private office in the first floor. The second floor (roof) should follow its neighbor’s height, in terms of the urban skyline, through a 2.5 meters height wall. So, this project encompasses three different characters in three levels with different communication with urban space.
Courtesy of Farshad Mehdizadeh Architects + Ahmad Bathaei
Courtesy of Farshad Mehdizadeh Architects + Ahmad Bathaei
Since this project has different addressees for each function, the idea was connecting the functions separately and directly to the urban space. Furthermore, we need to find a vertical access solution. The separator between the functions (retail & office) recognized as most critical part of this project to implicate as architecture element to generate the form. That separator was the slab which characterized from one side, as office floor and from the other side, as retail ceiling. The retail ceiling slab bended and became habitable as stairs to connect the office directly to the walkway in front.
Diagram
Diagram
The roof was devoted to the office, as roof garden for business ceremonies and outdoor parties. The facade is a continuous covering system which made of local bricks that patterned with local and traditional brick layering techniques, in order to match with the context.
Courtesy of Farshad Mehdizadeh Architects + Ahmad Bathaei
‘White edge on brick’ is the small mixed-use building with five separate rental housing units and a two-story owner’s house and a retail space on the ground floor. The site for this project is located in a little old planned town, which is a part of the verge of the capital city, Seoul. As the continuous growth of the city, the boundary of Seoul is changing and the town is being redeveloped.
The client of this project dreamed to have his two-story house for various indoor and outdoor activities like a penthouse above the rental spaces. The architects suggested dissimilar colors, textures and materials of the façade to reflect two different purpose – rental or own space – on the street view. Furthermore, the combination of disparate shapes – classical brick box for economical rental residences, and trendy white trapezoid for distinctive luxurious house – consequentially maximizes their own program properties.
Elevationes
The pilotis and retail space are designed by considering active connection and expandability towards other retail places on the street. The main gate and interior space of the ground floor are colored with vivid colors – red and lime, which helps the building to deliver its attractiveness to its neighbors.
The yellow staircase meets up with diverse colors according to the floor. People would not only recognize which floor they are on by the colors but also find unaccustomed scene in common space – lobby, hallway, and stairs. This unfamiliar experience allows core spaces to be more unexpected and enjoyable.
Every rental housing has its own veranda which is the only exterior space in the unit. The red frame of the space highlights its uniqueness from both inside and outside of the building. Additionally, all window steel frames emphasize overall windows and façade clearly and strengthen insulation and waterproof function.
As reported by Nigerian news website NAIJ.com, the celebrated Makoko Floating School, designed by Nigerian architect Kunlé Adeyemi of NLÉ, collapsed after heavy rain battered the city of Lagos last Thursday. Photographs show the roof of the school still largely in tact, but sitting directly on top of the building’s floating base of 256 plastic drums, as the lower levels and supporting structure appear to have failed completely.
Details of the event are still largely unclear. It’s unknown how exactly the rain caused the collapse, and also unclear whether any people were harmed by the collapse of the structure, which was designed to accommodate 100 pupils and their teachers in a poor neighborhood which is partly built on stilts above Lagos Lagoon.
In any case, the building’s collapse will deal a blow to NLÉ and the entire profession of architecture. Just over a week ago, NLÉreceived the Silver Lion at the 2016 Venice Biennale for their exhibition based on the original Makoko Floating School structure. The jury called the design “a powerful demonstration, be it in Lagos or in Venice, that architecture, at once iconic and pragmatic, can amplify the importance of education.”
ArchDaily will update this story once more information becomes available.
Earlier today, the 17th Serpentine Gallery Pavilionwas unveiled with a press preview ahead of its public opening this Friday. With its 13-meter tall “unzipped wall” of square fiberglass tubes, the pavilion is an impressive presence in Hyde park, standing next to the single-story Serpentine Gallery. As described by Bjarke Ingels in his design statement, the pavilion is all about its visual effects from various angles – going from an expansive, transparent rectangle when viewed from the side, and an opaque, curving sculptural shape when seen from either end.
With so much visual intrigue, the project offers plenty to be explored through photography – and accordingly, photographer Laurian Ghinitoiu was there at the opening to investigate the project’s visual effects. He also captured the pavilion’s neighboring Summer Houses, by Kunlé Adeyemi of NLÉ, Barkow Leibinger, Yona Friedman and Asif Khan. Read on to see the gallery.
Designed And Constructed : ARKit, Advanced Prefabricated Architecture
Plan
From the architect. A stunning site along Eagle Rock Parade in Aireys Inlet, we have designed and built a compact three bedroom home for a family of 5. The emphasis for the design focused on expanded and contracted social spaces, one where the parents could entertain separate from the children when other families stayed with them.
Whilst maintaining a high level of transparency within and through the architecture, the other design principles of strong environmental design and construction, outdoor living and an abundance of natural light the result is a building that sits lightly on the ground.
Designed around a compact footprint, a linear kitchen allows for the inclusion of a large size dining table to accommodate an extended group of family and friends. Decks to the north and south provide for covered indoor/ outdoor connections and effectively double the living area of the house.
An outdoor shower and secondary entrance provide an opportunity to wash off from the beach before heading inside. A bunk room complete with custom designed trundle beds creates accommodation for six and the adjacent spill out space gives kids a room of their own to camp, play and explore.
Crafted from a suite of robust, environmentally friendly materials the house is externally clad in western red cedar with plywood kitchen, timber flooring, low/no VOC finishes and blackbutt decks and pergola. Siting considerations included minimising impacts to the existing vegetation and maximising privacy. ARKit’s scope included revegetation of the site with indigenous plant species.
East Elevation
South Elevation
The project was built offsite in ARKit’s workshop, allowing for frequent visits by the owners prior to transportation to site.
From the architect. Technology giant Barco officially moves into its new Kortrijk campus. The new headquarters, ‘The Circle’, is the crowning jewel. The circular, transparent icon takes centre stage on the campus, with the goal of connecting the Barco employees and visitors with each other. Jean-Michel Jaspers, CEO at Jaspers-Eyers: “The building just is really dynamic, and gives Barco the appearance it deserves.”
Barco needed a centralised infrastructure because the distance between the sites in Kortrijk and Kuurne was getting to be too much for the employees. This centralising structure has been located next to the existing corporate buildings in Kortrijk, close to the E17. The new campus’s crowning jewel is ‘The Circle’, Barco’s new headquarters. With a diameter of 75 metres and a height of 25 metres, this monumental building can be seen from far and wide.
‘The Circle’ will house offices, research and development spaces, demonstration spaces, an auditorium and a company restaurant. The building’s main purpose is to serve as a space for Barco’s employees and visitors to interact. This was achieved through the centralised layout of the site, in which corridors link the building with The Lab (a research lab), The Pulse (an additional office building), and The Engine (an expansion of the existing production units).
“The interior design also contributes to the social function,” explains John Eyers, CEO at Jaspers-Eyers. “The unique rounded shapes and the internal connections ensure that employees bump into each other more often and create an active ambiance. The oval-shaped ‘meeting decks’ stand out, appearing to float in the space. Passerelles to the fixed cores of the building balance the structure and ensure a constant level of activity.”
‘The Circle’ gets the maximum amount of daylight and transparency thanks to the completely glass façade. The clear glass contrasts beautifully with the inset ramp, that adds relief and depth to the building. Three horizontal rows of coffering run along the other sides to provide protection from the sun. In addition to this, the extensive cooling system provides pleasant temperatures within the glass circle.
The outer parts of the inner volumes are finished with a taut banner, which creates a sleek, even surface with lovely curves. “In the future, Barco will be able to project images on these surfaces using its own technology. This is how the company wants to turn the new building into the standard-bearer for its own high-tech products,” says Bruno Poelman, project leader at Jaspers-Eyers.
Courtesy of OMA, Photograph by Delfino Sisto Legnani and Marco Cappelletti
OMA’s long-awaited conversion of the 16th century Fondaco dei Tedeschi as a department store is finally complete in Venice. The project was commissioned by Edizione S.r.l., the Benetton family’s holding company, in 2009, and will bring comprehensive changes to one of the city’s largest and most recognizable buildings. The Fondaco was first begun in 1228 and is located at the foot of the Rialto Bridge, across from the fish market. With many past lives, it was first used as a trading post for German merchants, later as a customs house under Napoleon, and in the twentieth century, as a post office under Mussolini. Despite numerous and radical structural changes, the building was listed as a ‘Monument’ in 1987, restricting further alterations.
Il Fondaco dei Tedeschi, location next to the Rialto Bridge on the Grand Canal. Image Courtesy of OMA
The project’s renovation scheme, lead by Rem Koolhaas, Ippolito Pestellini Laparelli, and Silvia Sandor, is comprised of a finite number of interventions and vertical distribution devices. The augmentations including a new steel and glass floor over the building’s central pavilion, new entrances, and a wooden terrace on the building’s roof, among other smaller changes. According to the architects, “both subtle and ambitious, [the design] continues the Fondaco’s tradition of vitality and adaptation, its preservation [being] yet another chapter of the building’s illustrious and multi-layered history. It avoids nostalgic reconstructions of the past and it demystifies the ‘sacred’ image of a historical building.”
Il Fondaco dei Tedeschi, ground floor circulation diagram. Image Courtesy of OMA
OMA has been on a streak of widely praised preservation projects and interventions, including the Fondazione Prada in Milan, the Garage Center for Contemporary Art in Moscow, or the old Commonwealth Institute being at the center of Holland Green, and the new home of London’s Design Museum. To further discuss preservation tactics and how they specifically applied at the Fondaco dei Tedeschi, what follows is a brief interview with Ippolito Pestellini Laparelli.
Courtesy of OMA, Photograph by Delfino Sisto Legnani and Marco Cappelletti
Courtesy of OMA, Photograph by Delfino Sisto Legnani and Marco Cappelletti
Courtesy of OMA, Photograph by Delfino Sisto Legnani and Marco Cappelletti
Courtesy of OMA, Photograph by Delfino Sisto Legnani and Marco Cappelletti
Vladimir Gintoff (VG): For a building that was supposedly barred from changes after 1987, and with the photographs showing what appear to be some major interior renovations, I’m wondering if you could explain the procedure to implement the alterations? Are all of OMA’s interventions things that can be removed and undone?
Courtesy of OMA, Photograph by Delfino Sisto Legnani and Marco Cappelletti
Ippolito Pestellini Laparelli (IPL): Any preservation project implies long negotiations with local authorities and the accumulation of extensive knowledge about the architecture artifact. It is inevitably the outcome of a complex process of dialogue and compromise, that unfolds on the slippery territory of interpretation of preservation norms.
In Venice we faced the challenge of transforming a former 16th century German trading warehouse (which became an 18th century customs office, then a 1930s post office) into a contemporary department store. Almost entirely reconstructed with modern concrete technology during the fascist regime, il Fondaco dei Tedeschi is in fact a historical palimpsest of modern substance, its preservation spanning five centuries of construction techniques.
Regardless of the history of its adaptations and the objective lack of authenticity of its structure, its legal status of “monument” placed it under a severe regime of preservation, forbidding almost any change. Dealing with it meant facing this paradox. Dealing with this paradox meant engaging in an intense dialogue with the city, proving at every stage the actual modernity of the building and the coherence of our intervention.
After years of creative negotiation with local authorities, national heritage institutions and local citizens, the project has now materialized. It is based on a finite number of permanent interventions and vertical distribution devices culminating in a new roof terrace. Each intervention is conceived as a brutal excavation through the existing mass, liberating new perspectives and unveiling the real substance of the building to its visitors. With an almost forensic attitude, each new component serves as a way to show the stratification of materials and construction techniques. The preservation of the Fondaco dei Tedeschi is the history of its change.
VG: Quoting from Svetlana Boym in the press materials – “nostalgia is a rebellion against the modern idea of time, the time of history and progress” – does OMA see this project as being nostalgic? Personally it seems the opposite, both in the material choices and the idea of continuing to intervene on a historic building, it appears intent on future perspectives as an antithesis to stagnation.
Courtesy of OMA, Photograph by Delfino Sisto Legnani and Marco Cappelletti
IPL: The project is the opposite of nostalgic. It actually resists the idea of nostalgia as described by Svetlana Boym in two complementary ways: by introducing clear modern inserts through the building and by using the same inserts to unveil the history of brutal transformations of the Fondaco – an accumulation of construction techniques from different épochs, typical of many historical buildings in Venice, proving that our fascination with the past is a relatively recent cultural deviation.
Our intervention in Venice relates to the architecture tradition of a dynamic relationship with history, that in Italy had its peaks of expression in the ‘70s with the works of Ignazio Gardella, Franco Albini, Carlo Scarpa and others.
VG: In projects like the Fondaco dei Tedesch and others that preserve existing structures, could you explain how OMA’s views on preservation have been shaped? When elements of past functions coexist with present programmatic mandates, are users expected to consider these heterogenous narratives in their engagement with the space, or are historic facets preserved out of necessity and convenience?
Courtesy of OMA, Photograph by Delfino Sisto Legnani and Marco Cappelletti
IPL: At the Venice Architectural Biennale of 2010, our office presented a body of work focused on our persistent preoccupation with preservation and with the past. The exhibition was symbolically named Cronocaos and in general it showed the implications in the current cultural moment of a nostalgic surrender to the past as opposed to a proactive relationship to history. For our practice such implications are potentially devastating: a growing resistance in accepting change and modernization as an inevitable evolution; philological restorations focused on a literal reconstruction of the past; preemptive norms forcing new projects to look like old ones, generating an undefined soup of past and present “authenticities.”
In different ways and in different contexts our recent projects are a response to this tendency: in each the presence of the past is part of a larger spatial and historical narrative, while maintaining a functional role. At the Garage Center for Contemporary Art in Moscow, for the transformation of a modern generic building, we adopted a process more similar to the preservation of decay than actual restoration, by encapsulating a modern concrete ruin – intentionally left bruised and exposed – within a new technical façade; in Milan the curatorial needs of contemporary art foundation were the reason for the addition of 3 new architectures to the already rich repertoire of existing spaces; together old and new work as a continuous sequence of indoor/outdoor spaces, where old and new meet dynamically, hanging in balance but never really colliding; in Venice the entire building works as device to read through the history of transformations of the building – and more in general of the entire city – demystifying the sacrality of the historical monument.
VG: In what one might call an architectural addendum, do you see materials as playing the key roles in the aforementioned projects as well as Fondaco, and if so, how were the materials chosen?
Courtesy of OMA, Photograph by Delfino Sisto Legnani and Marco Cappelletti
IPL: Materials always play a crucial role. The combination of new, old or restored surfaces generates different associations and meanings, contributing in different ways to the main ideas of each project and more in general to the notion of “historical layering.” In Moscow the new façade – a translucent layer of polycarbonate panels containing new technical arteries – acts as a veil around the concrete ruin; in Milan where old and new meet dynamically in a continuous sequence, identities of spaces and interventions are clearly defined by the contrast of materials, a collage of preservation techniques and forms of expression, ranging from generic grey plaster, to experimental aluminum foam, from a thin layer of gold coating to white concrete; in Venice the array of tectonic conditions and materials – scraped walls, diverse degrees of oxidized brass, restored ancient stones, exposed concrete, old/new marble patterns, new steel construction etc.. – serve as forensic evidences of the complex history of transformations of the building, from the XVI to its latest evolution.
VG: Calling these preservation projects “a radical shift from the egocentric and iconic to the invisible and contextual” does OMA believe that cities that have long-established identities should only have interventions of subtlety, or is this just another phase in the office’s development that could shift based on outside factors, economic, social, etc.?
Courtesy of OMA, Photograph by Delfino Sisto Legnani and Marco Cappelletti
IPL: Differently to new construction, preservation implies another mind-frame: one probably less concerned with form and design but more with history, program, systems, materials, technology, etc. There is no dogmatic answer to this question though. Preservation is one of the many domains to operate as an architect, and cities – both historical or more contemporary – need different degrees and types of interventions to generate rich and complex urban environments.
OMA’s interest in preservation is in any case not recent. Cronocaos at the Venice Biennale of 2010 featured 27 OMA projects never “presented before as a body of work concerned with time and history.” Spanning across more than 30 years of practice, they showed OMA’s latent yet undeclared interest in preservation, highlighting 27 architectural concepts of how OMA dealt with the existing, in different historical, cultural and environmental contexts around the world.
Preservation has been an intrinsic part of our office since the beginning of its history: from the 1979 project for the Dutch Parliament Extension, to the most recent completions.
Partners: Rem Koolhaas, Ippolito Pestellini Laparelli Project Architects: Francesco Moncada, Silvia Sandor
Concept
Associate: Ippolito Pestellini Laparelli
Team: Marco De Battista, Andrew Chau, Paul Feeney, Alice Grégoire, Ricardo Guedes, Andreas Kofler, Kayoko Ota, Pietro Pagliaro, Miriam Roure Parera, Carlos Pena, Ciprian Rasoiu, Agustín Pérez Torres
Design Development
Project Architects: Francesco Moncada, Silvia Sandor
Team: Giacomo Ardesio, Paul Feeney, Alice Grégoire, Ricardo Guedes, Giulio Margheri, Pietro Pagliaro, Cecilia del Pozo, Ciprian Rasoiu, Jan de Ruyver, Miguel Taborda
Construction
Project Architect: Silvia Sandor
Team: Aleksandar Joksimovic, Leonardos Katsaros, Francesco Moncada, Federico Pompignoli
Collaborators
Preservation Architect: TA Architettura S.r.l.
Structural Engineer: Tecnobrevetti S.r.l.
MEP Engineer: Politecnica Ingegneria e Architettura
Safety and Coordination Plan: Antonio Girello
Fire Safety Advisor: Sicurtecno
Cost Consultant Dd Phase: GAD
Contractor: SACAIM S.p.A.
Lighting: Viabizzuno
Photography: Delfino Sisto Legnani, Marco Cappelletti (Courtesy of OMA)
From the architect. Our clients wanted a four-bedroom house with large public spaces that would open onto a constrained suburban site near downtown Raleigh. The existing site was long north to south and sloped down to the street on the north side.
Diagram
A stream bisected the site near the street, and the associated floodplain precluded construction on the front half of the property.
A dramatic slope at the rear of the site prevented locating the house far back on the property. Our response to these constraints was a compact, two-story “L” that creates an private outdoor space between the house and the hillside.
Sig Nordal 