Studio Gang has designed a new home for the Academy for Global Citizenship (AGC), a Chicago Public Charter School in the Garfield Ridge neighborhood. Established eight years ago with the operating philosophy that a more sustainable world begins at school, the proposed campus is an urban farm and educational institution wrapped into one.
Courtesy of Studio Gang
According to the Studio, “[the design] reimagines the concept of ‘school’ as a place that embraces the innate curiosity of children, the natural systems of the world, and a responsibility to make positive change, instilling in students a mindset of sustainability and wellness.” In creating a design that focuses on the school’s distinct character and goals, Studio Gang believes the institution can be a model for global change.
Courtesy of Studio Gang
Currently AGC operates out of two buildings separated by a busy road. The school partnered with Studio Gang in 2015 to design a new purpose-built 21st-century learning campus. The proposed design is a series of indoor and outdoor learning environments around a central courtyard. Students and teachers from different grade levels are placed in collaborative environments, aiding the school’s inquiry-based approach to learning. The different areas of the school are thought of as “neighborhoods” and are connected by a “Wonder Path” that unites the school’s indoor and outdoor environments, hands-on laboratories, and learning stations.
Courtesy of Studio Gang
Through the use of solar energy, greenhouses, seasonal gardens, stormwater management, natural ventilation, and geothermal systems, the school reduces its energy load and improves the definition of wellness for its students. One part of this is the urban farm, which not only allows students to participate in agriculture, food preparation, and animal care, but will also supply produce for meals. The school also believes that this process aids in the development of patience, self-confidence, empathy, an open mind to new and healthy foods, and an interest in becoming better global and local citizen.
Courtesy of Studio Gang
In addition, the building’s orientation is meant to provide peak solar access for outdoor learning spaces and greenhouses, while also maximizing photovoltaic energy collection, and providing the most natural light for indoor classrooms and spaces with clerestory windows. The school also hopes to achieve net-positive status, producing more energy than it consumes through solar and geothermal sources. With sustainability and wellness as guiding principles, the school seeks to demonstrate a position of environmental stewardship that it hopes to impart on the students.
A two storey house, for a couple and their son, is structured within a square volume of 9 by 9mts. Inside intersects another volume at a higher level, which is rotated 45 degrees in relation to the floor plan, allowing double heights and the arrangement of spaces in the first floor.
The program is ordered in a simple way, at the first floor a single space for the living room, dining room and kitchen and on the back a sleeping area and the stairs to the second floor.
Plan
Elevation
Plan
Then, to the side and facing north, the terrace partly enclosed, allowing the users to go outside during days of extreme wind.
Finally, in the diagonal volume or second floor, the room and the bathroom. Three defined sectors as the result of the orientation to the panoramic views of the landscape: the isle, the beach and the forest in front of the ocean.
Growing out of the success of coworking, the latest big phenomenon in the world of property is coliving. Like its predecessor, coliving is predicated upon the idea that sharing space can bring benefits to users in terms of cost and community. And, like its predecessor, there are already many variations on the idea with numerous different ventures appearing in the past year, each tweaking the basic concept to find a niche.
There are a lot of existing accommodation types that are “a bit like” coliving—depending on who you ask, coliving might be described as either a halfway point between apartments and hotels, “dorms for adults” or “glorified hostels.” And yet, despite these similarities to recognizable paradigms, countless recent articles have proclaimed that coliving could “change our thinking on property and ownership,” “change the way we work and travel,” or perhaps even “solve the housing crisis.” How can coliving be so familiar and yet so groundbreaking at the same time? To find out, I spent a week at a soon-to-open property in Miami run by Roam, a company which has taken a uniquely international approach to the coliving formula.
Roam’s central concept is this: for a monthly subscription of $1800 USD, members can live in any Roam property around the world, and move between them whenever they choose (rooms are also available for a week at a time at $500 a week, but Roam gives priority to those who sign up for the long-term). Members may choose to hold a Roam subscription in addition to their own rented home, or they may choose to replace their existing apartment entirely. In return, residents get a room with an en-suite bathroom, a shared kitchen and laundry room, and a coworking space with a rock-solid wifi connection, alongside other shared amenities such as pools and relaxation spaces which vary depending on the property. With properties in Bali, Miami, and Madrid, more on the way in London and Buenos Aires, and ambitions to expand into dozens of cities worldwide, Roam hopes to offer its members a way to travel the world while holding down a job, all without sacrificing on the quality of their accommodation. The system may seem simple enough, but the cultural shifts which have made it possible—and the changes it may yet inspire—go much deeper.
Roam Bali. Image Courtesy of Roam
The End of “The End of Work”
In 1930, celebrated economist John Maynard Keynes made a prediction: by the turn of the millennium, the efficiencies offered by modern technology would be enough that the entire population would work, on average, 15 hours a week. Needless to say, this didn’t happen. Automation and other forms of efficiency did indeed become commonplace, and as a result far fewer people are now employed in the manual labor and production roles that were the norm in the early 20th century. Yet at the same time, late capitalism made sure that it was always necessary for people to hold down jobs. This gave way to the rise of what, in 2013, were described as “Bullshit Jobs” by the anthropologist David Graeber, administration and service positions which seem to be “pointless jobs just for the sake of keeping us all working.”
But even as Graeber was outlining this phenomenon, another trend was emerging to take its place: people are now inventing their own jobs, and finding ingenious ways to earn money doing almost anything they want. Whether we’re talking about something as time-honored as chasing a freelance writing career or something as new and ill-defined as becoming an Instagram celebrity, the internet has made it easier than ever for people to reject the world of bullshit jobs and instead create a more fulfilling career from the ground up. And, as more and more people are choosing exactly how they earn their money, more people are choosing to do so in a way that doesn’t tie them to a single location, giving them the freedom to travel and work simultaneously.
Roam Miami. Image Courtesy of Roam
Such people might commonly be referred to as “digital nomads,” but Roam prefers the term “location independent” to reflect the growth of the trend: “There’s that type of crowd who are using geo-arbitrage to travel the world and they usually get classified under ‘digital nomad’—but that’s just one section of location independence, whereas location independence is the larger umbrella,” says Dane Andrews, Roam’s VP of Sales. “[Roam] caters to people who have always wanted to be location independent but haven’t been able to.” Similarly, the company’s founder Bruno Haid explains that what we are seeing now might be thought of as the “second generation” of digital nomads; people who want the opportunity to travel the world and hold down a career simultaneously, but don’t have the tolerance for (or even love of) inconvenience that characterizes the earlier generation of digital nomads.
For the modern location independent worker, there’s a lot about our current systems of accommodation that no longer make any sense. A standard rental, while easy and reliable, ties you to a specific location; hostels are a great way to see new places and meet new people, but they usually offer lower quality accommodation to people for whom work is not a priority; and hotels might provide a nice place to stay, but they usually prioritize privacy over making friends, and are often prohibitively expensive besides. Roam is an attempt to combine the best elements of all of these into a single package that suits the emergent lifestyle of the 21st century.
Roam Bali. Image Courtesy of Roam
The End of City Premiums
Perhaps the most intriguing traditional structure that Roam is fighting against is the idea that certain global cities should be necessarily more expensive to live in than their smaller counterparts. This idea has always been tied to the allure of cities—in a place with more opportunities, more ideas to exchange, and more people to meet, a higher price can be charged for accommodation and subsequently for land. But this economic fact also makes little sense for the location independent worker. In a world where countless websites can help to connect people to work opportunities, where meetings can be conducted via Skype or Google Hangouts, and where Whatsapp, Slack and Facebook Messenger keep us connected to our colleagues at all times, what is the benefit of breaking the bank to live in somewhere as expensive as Manhattan?
Roam’s flat rate of $1800 per month across all properties, regardless of the city they are located in, is an attempt to prove that for their customer base location is no longer tied to the logic of global capitalism—and that ultimately, the economic dimension of space itself is beginning to flatten out.
Roam Bali. Image Courtesy of Roam
Of course, at this early stage of that process, there are more than a few kinks to be worked out; for example, the company is currently fielding massive interest for its forthcoming London property from existing Londoners for whom $1800 a month is a no-brainer financially. Such a financial proposition is key for other companies like the WeWork offshoot WeLive, whose first coliving property on Wall Street attempts to provide a cheaper option for living in Manhattan—but applied to Roam’s global ambitions it seems to miss the point somewhat.
Roam Madrid. Image Courtesy of Roam
Concretizing the Global Village
Though the economic benefits of city life may not hold as much weight as they once did, there are other aspects of urban living that Roam clearly wishes to preserve. A key part of their mission is to foster social ties that span the globe, connecting residents in all properties in a single community. Central to this plan will be a kind of in-built social media platform, which is currently in development, which will allow “Roamers” to connect with and keep in touch with other members, even when they aren’t living on the same property as each other.
“One of the things we’re working on on the digital platform right now is, can you say ‘we are all designers, shouldn’t we just all meet in Barcelona in August?’” explains Bruno Haid. “The question is how can you not only unbundle the lease from specific locations but also how can you make those social dynamics more transient?”
This international, interconnected community might be thought of as a physical microcosm of Marshall McLuhan’s metaphorical “Global Village”; in much the same way as JG Ballard claimed that the global network of airports might be considered the city of the 21st century, Roam is creating a kind of 21st century village—with a single community spread out across the globe but living in pockets of 20-50 people, all connected via the internet to form a functional village unit.
Roam Miami. Image Courtesy of Roam
The Architecture of a Global Community
So what role does architecture play in this global village? Firstly, community is predictably a focus when it comes to architecture too. “One of the things we always look for is—since we are very much about the community—is that sense of community when you’re there,” explains Andrews. “We don’t look for places that have dark and narrow hallways, something that you walk out of your room and don’t feel like you’re a part of anything.”
Much of this sense of community is also fostered in the details. In the kitchens, for example, the cabinets have glass fronts so that residents can see what food their neighbors have, and thus what might be available to borrow if they simply ask. The rooms also don’t have desks, in order to encourage residents to make use of the coworking space and other communal areas.
In fact, a lot of Roam’s rethinking of living revolves around what can be taken away, rather than what could be added. Along with desks, bedrooms are stripped of closets, for example, to remind residents that they’re no longer permanently tied to a space. “We’re in between a hotel and an apartment, so we want people to still feel transient, but also still feel at home—which I think you can get by not necessarily having a closet,” says Kate Huentelman, Roam’s Head of Experience. Haid adds that “it’s part of the idea of… I don’t want to say ‘new minimalism’ [Huentelman offers instead the term ‘essentialism’] but you can go anywhere you want and have everything you need there. For example we have universal power outlets, so it doesn’t matter if you’ve got UK or US or European plugs. These are all small details that enable you to travel with fewer and fewer possessions.”
Roam Madrid. Image Courtesy of Roam
But by far the most important architectural aspect of the Roam properties is what Haid and Andrews describe as “telling unique stories.” While many of the finer details might be copied across all of the company’s properties, Roam has no desire to be the MacDonald’s of coliving by using the same design features in all its properties for the sake of brand consistency. Instead, their properties to date are all character-filled reflections of their location. In Bali, the company converted a contemporary hotel, featuring a pool in the courtyard and a rooftop coworking space; in Miami, they took on the oldest continuously-operating hotel in the city, a 1908 boarding house comprising four brightly-colored timber houses arranged around a lush courtyard; their forthcoming Madrid property was built in the 1870s for the Marquess of Villamagna.
Taking a looking at coliving’s precursor, it’s clear that one of coworking’s most valuable strengths is the way it makes facilities available to freelancers and small companies that those people could otherwise never afford; it’s not just about having a desk and a solid wifi connection, but about getting top-of-the-range video conferencing facilities, climate control you can adjust with your smartphone and a foosball table in the corner. With coworking, next-level functionality became part of the value proposition.
In Roam’s vision of coliving, the value proposition is much the same—the only difference being that when it comes to living spaces, “next-level functionality” simply means a home that is a nice place to be, and that means next-level architecture. In a normal living setup, your home might be the nicest place you can afford, and the city is a necessary system of support that you rely on for work; in Roam’s coliving vision, your home is one of the nicest places in the city, and the city itself is free to become the vibrant backdrop for your life experiences—with another architecturally exquisite home and city just a plane ticket away.
Architecture Team: Omar Gandhi Architect Inc. in collaboration with Design Base 8; Omar Gandhi (Principal), Peter Braithwaite (Intern Architect), Peter Kolodziej (Intern Architect), Maxwell Schnutgen (Intern Architect), Elizabeth Powell (Intern Architect), Jeff Shaw (Intern Architect)
Design Team: Design Base 8 in collaboration with Omar Gandhi Architect Inc.; Garrett Helm, Jon Siani, and Jon Wilson
Client: Kevin and Stephanie Briody
Consulting Team: Design Base 8, Omar Gandhi Architect Inc, Andrea Doncaster Engineering, Joseph ‘MacGee’ MacFarlane
From the architect. Lawrence MacIsaac recalls stories of his great grandfather using the property to teach his sons how to snare rabbits, while his great grandmother commonly used the ‘laundry stone’ at the bottom of a small waterfall to wash clothing. With the extremely steep sides of the gorge it was difficult to do anything with the land, including the harvesting of trees, so it was left to grow wild.
Before there was a site, there was an idea of a cabin in nature. As the Northeastern seaboard urbanized, the client longed for an escape to a wilder land. Arriving in Cape Breton, they found a culture and remoteness no longer common to the United States.
To leverage the surrounding landscape, the home would put the outdoor environment on display and encourage the occupants to get out and explore the terrain. On a trip to Nova Scotia, Kevin Briody and Design Base 8 became fascinated with the built typologies of the region.
Plan
After working closely with the client through numerous design iterations, Design Base 8, a design collective based in NYC, reached out to Omar Gandhi Architect of Halifax to collaborate on the final design, detailing, and construction process.
The cabin at Rabbit Snare Gorge is the result. It is the first of three small creature-like structures hidden in the mysterious landscape.
Section
The cabin is the primary dwelling on a 46 acre parcel of land found on the rugged wooded coastline of rural Cape Breton. The cabin is a gently adapted gabled tower which allows it to reach above the forest canopy with two major viewing platforms, one oriented directly towards the ocean and the other along the length of the convergent brook valley.
The landscape of Rabbit Snare Gorge is defined by the steep slopes of the Cape Breton Highlands, Acadian forest, deep gorges cut by a babbling brook, and the rocky cliffs of the Northumberland Strait. The elevated position of the site allows for a long, wide view of the entire property including the head of the gorge leading towards the ocean. The procession from this rough landscape into the cabin begins with the entry and bedrooms on the ground floor, a double height kitchen and dining room on the second floor, and lastly the living space on the third floor with the final lookout view of the entire property.
The structure is linked to the local vernacular by a number of formal elements. The archetypal gable and shed forms of the cabin are combined to open views and follow the path of the sun, emphasize the major interior spaces, and accentuate the verticality of the tower, while efficiently shedding snow and rain. Traditional, local wood board cladding is used on the exterior of the cabin. The cabin’s steel entry hoop takes its shape from the entry windbreaks unique to the Cape Breton and Newfoundland coastal communities.
The client, an avid outdoorsman and hobby arborist, has a sincere respect for the natural landscape. Therefore, sensitivity to site and ecological preservation was an early and major design parameter. The tower typology of the cabin offers elevated views and ample programming within a minimal footprint. However, the exposure of the sloped site means it endures the full brunt of heavy Atlantic rainstorms, winter Nor’easters, corrosive salt-spray from crashing swell, and strong suetes winds—local south-easterlies which accelerate down the Highland escarpment to reach speeds of over 200km/h.
The strong, local suetes demand a robust structural system to withstand major lateral and uplift loads. The tall cabin combats these high winds through redundant sheathing—every solid plane, including the interior partition wall, contribute as shear walls, diaphragms and stacked compression rings. The windbreak, constructed out of welded weathering steel, is then hung from the framing.
As part of their mission to foster debate about architecture and the city within a broader social context, the Fundación Arquitectura y Sociedad will carry out the 4th edition of their International Architecture Congress from June 29-July 1st in Pamplona. Titled “Architecture: Change of Climate,” the latest event echoes themes from the previous years, which were related to the crisis affecting Spain and its architects. This year the debate seeks to emphasize the need for change in architectural practices in order to improve our environment.
The title of this year’s congress refers as much to the change of climate taking place in architecture, which the crisis has put at an economic and ethical crossroads, as to the importance of architecture and planning when facing the challenges posed by climate change, perhaps the most pressing matter of our time.
Read on after the break for the full program and text from Luis Fernández-Galiano, Director of the IV International Architecture Congress, which introduces the paradigms that architects like Rem Koolhaas, Bjarke Ingels, Winy Maas, Pierre de Meuron, Iñaki Ábalos and Jean-Philippe Vassal will examine at this event.
Following the first congress, which took place in June 2010 under the motto ‘Architecture: More for Less,’ the second, held in June 2012 under the theme ‘Architecture: the Common,’ and the third, celebrated in June 2014 under the title ‘Necessary Architecture,’ always at the Baluarte Center of Pamplona, the fourth congress of the Fundación Arquitectura y Sociedad has been convened in the Navarrese capital to address the ‘Change of Climate’ in architecture, a field undergoing a deep transformation as the urgencies posed by climate change call for a rethinking of how to make buildings and cities: architecture changes to change the world.
The initial congress was attended by Renzo Piano, Jacques Herzog, and Glenn Murcutt, three holders of the Pritzker, architecture’s Nobel, along with Harvard’s and Columbia’s architecture school deans, the philosopher SlavojZizek, and others from five continents. The second encounter brought in three other Pritzker laureates – Norman Foster to open the symposium and two Iberian masters, Rafael Moneo and Eduardo Souto de Moura, to close it – to head a distinguished cast of international architects. The third, like its precedessors, put veteran figures like Dominique Perrault side by side with architects with shorter but equally brilliant careers, and ended with the presence of the first Iberian ever to receive the Pritzker, Álvaro Siza.
The first three congresses proposed tools for dealing with our lingering crisis; the fourth endeavors to throw light on the need for change in architectural attitudes if our environment and the lives of people are to improve. To this end we again bring together world architects and figures of different countries known to combine professional excellence with attention to sustainability and architecture’s social dimension. The title of this year’s congress refers as much to the change of climate taking place in architecture, which the crisis has put at an economic and ethical crossroads, as to the importance of architecture and planning when facing the challenges posed by climate change, perhaps the most pressing matter of our time.
If the first congress (‘More for Less’) advocated austerity, the second (‘The Common’) called for solidarity based on what we share, and the third (‘Necessary Architecture’) denounced the superfluous in favor of the indispensable – “The necessary, but no less than the necessary” –, this fourth congress seeks to examine the current situation of architecture by simultaneously addressing the ongoing transformation of its academic and professional base, which perhaps signals a change of paradigm in how it is understood and practiced, and the relevant role that construction and the city play in climate change, given that most of the energy we consume and most of the carbon dioxide we release in the burning of fossil fuels ultimately comes from the way buildings are conceived and territories are occupied: architecture needs a change of climate, and climate change needs to be tackled from the angle of architecture.
PROGRAM
June 29 – July 1, 2016 Pamplona, Palacio Baluarte
June 29th
June 29th, morning Introduction: Climate Change Rem Koolhaas (OMA), Rotterdam Pierre de Meuron (Herzog & de Meuron), Basel Relator: Richard Ingersoll, Florence
June 29th, afternoon Strategies of the Essential Kjetil Traedal Thorsen (Snøhetta), Oslo and New York Jean-Philippe Vassal (Lacaton & Vassal), Paris Relator: Llàtzer Moix, Barcelona Awards presentation
June 30th, morning Aesthetics of Energy I. Ábalos y R. Sentkiewicz (AS+), Cambridge and Madrid Louisa Hutton (Sauerbruch Hutton), Berliin Relator: Antonio Lucas, Madrid Awards presentation
June 30th, afternoon Sustainable Experiences and closing Dietmar Eberle (Baumschlager Eberle), Lustenau Winy Maas (MVRDV), Rotterdam Bjarke Ingels (BIG), Copenhagen and New York Relators: Peter Buchanan, London Vicente Verdú, Madrid
The Fundación Arquitectura y Sociedad is a private non-profit cultural endeavor with a public national and international reach. It was created in 2008 thanks to the initiative of the architect Francisco Mangado and his interest in promoting architecture as a field indissolubly linked to life and society.
The Foundation goes by the conviction that architecture is called upon to address the problems that afflict the complex social fabric, and provide solutions by interacting with other disciplines. It understands architecture as a service that should bind together, condition, and facilitate the life of citizens. Hence, the Foundation seeks to bring together the knowledge and know-how of all fields concerned with the great challenges of our times.
Courtesy of The Museum of Architecture and Design (MAO)
The Museum of Architecture and Design (MAO) in Ljubljana, Slovenia has announced that the project, Home at Arsenale, will be presented in the Slovenia Pavilion at the 15th International Biennale in Venice.
The project, curated by Aljosa Dekleva and Tina Gregoric, responds to the Biennale’s title, Reporting From the Front, by creating a “curated library” that addresses topics of home and dwelling as social and environmental issues.
Courtesy of The Museum of Architecture and Design (MAO)
“The curators conceived a site-specific inhabitable spatial wooden structure, an abstract compact home performing as a curated library that operates as a platform for exploring the concepts of home and dwelling during the exhibition and beyond,” states a press release.
Courtesy of The Museum of Architecture and Design (MAO)
Architects, artists, critics, and curators from various backgrounds will contribute to the library with ten books addressing the ideas of home and dwelling from their perspectives. Ultimately, however, the installation—with around 300 books—will relocate to the Museum of Architecture and Design in Ljubljana.
Courtesy of The Museum of Architecture and Design (MAO)
Courtesy of The Museum of Architecture and Design (MAO)
The project additionally includes a series of lectures, talks, and performances to be held during the Biennale.
From the architect. The GPO, located on Dublin’s O’Connell Street, has iconic status in terms of Irish modern history. It served as the headquarters of Ireland’s 1916 uprising for independence. As the site of the struggle, the building is a reminder of the seminal conflict that changed the course of Ireland’s history. The site and the building represent both the colonial and republican aspects of Ireland’s history while continuing to serve its civic function as originally intended. Despite its historic, social and architectural importance the building held a very minimal level of public engagement.
Site Plan
A 1,550 sq.m interpretive exhibition centre, designed by Kavanagh Tuite Architects, has been sensitively spliced into the existing protected structure. Composed over two floors the new structure is a finely detailed, minimalist object constructed from raw material; exposed concrete, honed and hammered granite, black-oat parquet, and bronzed anodised aluminium.
Accommodation for two distinct exhibition spaces, a ticket hall, café and shop has been provided. Visitors arrive to the interpretive centre via the north entrance lobby on O’Connell Street through the grand hall of the public post office. The entrance descends from the ticket office, past the exposed outer brick of the existing main hall and down the granite clad stair to the interactive exhibition displays. Emerging from this exhibition you rise up to a more tranquil gallery overlooking the internal courtyard. Here visitors can gather, in the surrounds of the GPO, allowing a new vista onto the building that was not experienced before.
A pivotal design decision was to raise the courtyard by one storey, towards street level. This seamlessly integrated the interactive exhibition underneath. The strategy provides a granite paved courtyard space, via the daylight gallery café.
Detail and protracted sampling of contemporary materials have resulted in the use of bronzed anodised aluminium being used to clad the contemporary elements of the intervention. Tones of existing brick work and existing bronzed framed windows provided a baseline for new material additions.
Completed on time for Ireland’s significant 1916 Centenary commemorations, the project has enabled the life and the history of the GPO to live and grow. This contemporary adaptation has reinforced the GPO’s role in history and strengthened its future in Irish culture and society.
Collaborators: José Juan Aguilar Ramos, Attenya Campos de Armas, Carhel Chaves, Michel Correa Dos Ramos, Raquel Guanche García, María Elena Lacruz Alvira, Juan Luis Marichal Hernández, Vanessa Mayato Antón, José Luis Novo Gómez, Laura Pérez Rodríguez, Michela Pestoni, Alessandro Preda, Rubén Servando Carrillo, Gabriel Walti
Technical Team: Luis Darias Martín (Asat), Héctor González Niebla (Asat), Juan Luis Marichal Hernández, José Ángel Yanes Tuña, Miriam Hernández Pérez
Consultants: Fhecor Ingenieros Consultores, Gpi Ingenieros, Servicio de Ingeniería del Terreno (ULPGC), Poa Jardinería
Client: Universidad de La Laguna
Model: Katarzyna Billik, José Luis González Doña, Andrzej Gwizdala
From the architect. The new Faculty of Fine Arts is located in a heterogeneous area, adjacent to the island highway and on the periphery of the University Campus.
Our main challenge was to create a link between the new faculty building and its surroundings by working with the open public spaces and to increase the synergies between the academic complex and its urban context.
The new building presents itself as an extension of the Campus’s public space, while creating an autonomous interior landscape of its own. A skin of suspended concrete slats adopts a curved shape which develops on the different levels protecting and wrapping the open space of the building.
Campus circulation is collected and guided by a public plaza that extends through the building’s main entrance and is transformed into a spacious terrace overlooking the inner courtyard. From the main entrance, circulation is continuous, following half-open, undulating corridors.
The teaching areas are distributed along a continuous band accompanying the open corridors and dispose of mobile dividing walls that allow for creating classrooms of different sizes or even opening up the whole floor, depending on the needs. Adding to this flexibility in use are multiple spaces like the patio-gardens and open ramps, the covered galleries and the entrance terrace, conceived as open exhibition and teaching areas and places for social exchange.
We like to see the new Faculty of Fine Arts as a building that offers ground-breaking, innovative spaces for experimental and creative education of future students of visual arts.
Located in the northern slope of Phoenix Mountain, Zhuantang Town, Hangzhou City, Phoenix Creative Building covers an area of 4.1 hectares. It’s near the mountain and by the river. In its north, China Academy of Art radiates the circle of art and creation. In its south, there is Phoenix Creative Industry Park (through transformation of the old cement plant) which begins to take shape.
As creative industry differs from other types of cultural projects, its architecture should boast corresponding creative culture and connotations and echo each other with the industry, providing the industry with favorable environment and influence. Therefore, the project design tries to integrate creative ideas with design of commercial buildings.
Plan
Section
As the extension of Zhijiang Creative Park, Phoenix Creative Building integrates the functions of office, conferences, hotels, shopping and exhibition etc. In the design, block-type places share views with layers at different levels. Open blocks on the first floor of main office part and exhibition space on both sides make up the whole, combing the sunken plaza, platform lawns and space on the water etc. These attempts offer infinite possibilities to actions incurring here and make artistic experience a part of the space.
For the south side of the original site is Phoenix Mountain with luxuriant plants, the project design attempts to take it as the primary entry point of the general form layout. The form space of Phoenix Building matches with the flowing curve of mountains and waters, and it expands along the continuous urban interface formed through roads in the west and north of the site. As a result, the Park is like embracing the green mountains, forming a landscape scroll painting which “is suitable for appreciation, living and sightseeing”.
The design of the whole Park is the half-enclosed type which is low in the south and high in the north. The northern entrance of the Park is designed as an open visual corridor so that the landscape of mountains can go through the Park and encounter the city. For the southern exhibition buildings, they are designed to be low and even with scattered slopes and plants. Therefore, people wandering in the Park can walk on them casually and appreciate the unexpected beautiful mountain scenery closely.
Diagram
Diagram
The colors are extracted from four seasons in Jiangnan. With diligent allocation, the facade glass curtain wall of Phoenix Building adopts various kinds of light and dark greyish-green color-glazed glass which corresponds with the colors of plants in the four seasons i.e. bright yellow of spring, dark green of summer, greyish-green of autumn and ocher of winter. The architectural form which integrates into the mountain shape and plants of Phoenix Mountain show the detail quality of architecture.
Correlated with the general design concept, interior design of Phoenix Creative Building also keeps the simple, lively and refreshing style. The background of solid color blocks provide workers in creative industry with inspiring work environment.
From the architect. As the Asian arts market expands rapidly, the need for a commercial art gallery has become increasingly imminent. In the past, commercial art galleries in Bangkok were mostly situated in converted shophouses where the rent is affordable and the space is adaptable with limitations.
Bangkok CityCity Gallery is one of a few purposely built commercial art galleries in Bangkok. It is situated in the heart of a commercial area of Bangkok, in one of a few rare open spaces in this dense capital. Conceived as a blank canvas both inside and out, the gallery is designed to stand out of its contextual environment, at the same time maintaining the interaction with the passer-by by unveiling some of its content through a large opening at the pedestrian’s eyes level, inviting them to come in and explore its exhibition.
Diagram
The purpose of the design is to create a space of Nature and Simplicity. Natural light is allowed to come inside the main gallery from the top via the skylights, from the bottom via the linear openings at floor level and from the side via the surroundings around the entrance door. Depending on the artist’s intention, these openings can be opened and closed to let the light in to suit the needs of different exhibitions.
The idea was conceived from modern interpretations on traditional Thai architecture – a cluster of buildings are connected by a patio with a courtyard that is elevated above the ground. The gallery complex is divided into two sections. The main gallery is designed to house large-scale installations, while the small gallery serves as both a reception area and a teaser gallery for the exhibition inside the main gallery. Steps in the small gallery functions as a casual seating area. The outdoor patio connects the two galleries and also leads to the courtyard, which is designed for outdoor performances.
Diagram
The building also expresses the simplicity on the exterior to encourage the artists to engage the arts with the architecture.
Sig Nordal 