From the architect. The Houthaven in the Amsterdam western harbour area is the final piece of the long-term development of the southern side of the river IJ in the Dutch capital. The completion of blok0 (block 0) yields the first phase of developing the Houthaven. As part of blok0 the project IJ4you covers the final plots 8 and 9, the southern end part of this ‘superblock’. The complex consists of a 9-layered building with apartments at the Haparandaweg and a 4 to 5-layered building part with apartments to the quay of the future Houthavenkade. In developing this project, the future residents have maximum impact on the layout and the final elaboration of the houses. Each apartment is tailored differently and individually designed for its residents.
The building encloses a double layered parking garage with a collective roof garden on top. Because of the wide and open surroundings of the location at the IJ and the industrial character of the port area, the choice was made for a robust materializing of the façades and a restrained detailing. The corner block is designed in an industrially manufactured brick with a clear brick grid of vertical and horizontal layers with an apparent depth. The block attached is designed in a natural limestone with horizontal cantilevered edges. On the city side façade, floor-to-ceiling aluminium sliding window frames and wide balconies give a terrific view over the city and the river IJ.
The quay apartments include a private roof terrace and are directly orientated towards the street because of floor-to-ceiling folding window frames on the ground floor level. The roof garden is accomodated with a wide variety of trees, such as the ‘Prunus dulcis’. This communal inner court is accessible from the attached apartments, as well as from the Houthavenkade by a broad stairway. The inner court is a representation of the inner courts with the connected traditional neighbourhood of the adjecent Spaarndammerbuurt, famous for its monumental Amsterdam School social housing complexes.
Sketchfab has announced the release of Virtual Reality apps for Oculus, HTC Vive, Gear VR, and the company’s own Cardboard, as well as initial WebVR support. Making Sketchfab available on more headsets will initially allow viewers to access a curated showcase of models, eventually expanding to the company’s entire VR collection. Additionally, users will now have the option to view any of their own models in VR, just by uploading to Sketchfab.
Implementing WebVR support means that all Sketchfab models can now be viewed in VR, not just with Cardboard, but with any headset. All one has to do is navigate to Sketchfab models and click on the “View in VR” icon in the lower-right side of any window. Positional tracking is now also available on any platforms that support it (Oculus and Vive).
Adding user support to VR, without going through game engines, is a milestone for Sketchfab and the virtual reality ecosystem. Until now, most VR content was gamer-oriented and studio-made, but with today’s announcement, the bulk of VR content will be created by users. The volumetric format will allow users to create environments and then inhabit them with 6 degrees of movement for ultimate freedom.
Sketchfab is the largest community of 3D creators, and with more than 750K 3D files, the implementation of VR support gives Sketchfab the largest library of user generated VR content. “It’s about places, things, objects, people. It’s about discovery. It’s about learning,” says the company. “Ever dreamed of teleporting yourself to Rome, inspecting a beating heart, or walking along dinosaurs? You can do all these things in Sketchfab VR.”
From the architect. Is a Project that looks to respond in a synthetic and continent way to the challenges and approaches that have been asked by the users, looking for an economy of material and human resources that allowed to build it in only one phase. It’s located on a 10x30m (300m2) site between sidewalls, nearby houses are also 300m2. The street front looks up to the east doing able to develop a long “H” shaped scheme in the longer axis of the site, having more aperture on common spaces like the living room and the south and west rooms, where Aguascalientes City has the best solar incidence
From the street, the two car garage is covered just by the main room volume, sharing a walk path with its front to side access the house’s main vestibule guided by the corrugated steel plate. The entrance hall is protected by a floating wooden wall that generates the necessary privacy at the houses inside. The spatial continuity to the lower floor, that contains the social and services zone, could be decided from the vestibule having the access to the upper floor by a double height stair nucleus where the private rooms are.
Floor Plans
After continuing by the central hallway, just after the massive concrete double height wall, the dining-living space area is discovered having big north and east apertures to maximize its spatial conditions, allowing the familiar garden to the south being articulated with the interior and connected to a contemplation patio in the north. This spatial communication allows cross ventilation and a visual relation between the upper level sunlight shadow play that the lattice wall mezzanine generates and the living area double height, having aperture but protection and privacy sense too. At the end of the lower hall the kitchen opens to a little terrace, having a new exterior scheme, but the rest of the service areas like the pantry and the laundry room hide at the site corner.
The bridge that crosses the upper floor double height serves as an articulation between the living room and the twin bedrooms that share a bathroom, meanwhile at the other extreme the main room is located, having a bigger bathroom and a southeast looking balcony to have control with the exterior and the garden.
Diagram
The volumetry and materiality of the house looks to have a proper personality answering in a continent and clear way to its relation with the context, with orientations, with an optimized functionality and with a necessary contemporarily understand as the meaning to its execution. The materials unveils themselves making them honest in a combination of in cast concrete, stucco, latticework, wood, metal and glass.
John Puttick Associates‘ competition-winning scheme for the Youth Zone neighboring the Preston Bus Station has undergone a major design change, opting for a standalone structure instead of one that directly connects to the station building. “The [Youth Zone] combines the lightness of a pavilion-like design with the gravitas required of any building with a significant community role constructed adjacent to the powerful forms of the Bus Station,” say the architects.
The station building, designed by BDP and completed in 1969, is now a Grade II listed structure. The new design of the Youth Zone seeks to preserve original BDP strategy, creating a spatial unity with satellite structures, what the architects call “a sequence of sculptural objects adjacent to the main [station] building.” The 2,600 square meter (28,000 square foot) Youth Zone will provide sports, arts, and performance spaces to young people in Preston.
Courtesy of John Puttick Associates
“One of our key objectives has been to design a building maximizing available public space in and around the Bus Station, to create a major new square for Preston, says John Puttick. “This supports the civic quality of the project. It has also been important to respond to the proudly utilitarian quality of Preston Bus Station by designing a new neighbour that shares and celebrates this robustness.”
Courtesy of John Puttick Associates
The revised design of John Puttick Associates is a terraced building meant to create a unity between the Youth Zone and the Bus Station, along with the new public space to which they are both facing. By creating a standalone structure, the Youth Zone also preserves the oblique long views of the Station facade and the dramatic concrete curvatures of the extending floor plates. The Youth Zone will further distinguish itself through a rectilinear facade of glazed surfaces, allowing for the public to view the activities occurring within. The new plan is also less technically complex and more affordable than the original design put forth by John Puttick Associates.
The office will also be responsible for the refurbishment of the Bus Station, which is in good condition. The main objective of this portion of the project will be reducing visual clutter in the station, restoring the building’s original color palette, and reintroducing the Helvetica typeface for signage. A consolidation of station entry points will add emphasis to the building’s main hall and will improve the sense of orientation and flow within the building. Given the historic significance of the project, John Puttick Associates has worked with Historic England and The Twentieth Century Society.
From the architect. The property is located on the edge of the center of Oedelem. The spot is marked by far-views over the Flemish polders. Given the location of the plot and the purpose achieved an optimal living experience was the greatest possible contact between the house and its surroundings. The openness of the polders was extended in the plan of the house. To achieve this was left of a central volume, around which the house is organized. The volume contains all the technical and practical features such as stora- ge, kitchen, toilet and stairs.
The ground floor was as follows: the kitchen was facing east, the dining area and the lounge were implanted respectively in the south and west and the entrance is on the north side. On the floor, the bathroom is the central point around which organized the bedroom. As a result, the life follows the position of the sun throughout the day, the people experiencing the daylight time and again in a different way. The design of the volume ensures that the kitchen, dining and living room are not one room but a succession of sequences.
The red brick with recessed joint and the wooden joinery out afromosia block frames create a special texture on the facade. It gives the solitary volume in the polders a quirky sturdiness. The solitary made two holes, one on the ground level with the en- trance, the other on the floor as a terrace off the master bedroom and multipurpose room that overlooks the polders gives direction Beernem. The interior of the house is also built from natural materials. The main volume consists of spruce plywood oiled. Authenticity is key, rather than striking elements or complex color palette, honest ma- terials that are what they are: wood, concrete, brick …
Can architects have a truly active role in pressing social problems? Malkit Shoshan, the curator of the Dutch Pavilion at the 2016 Venice Biennale, thinks so. Her career is evidence of this: advocating for the incorporation of a fourth ‘D’ in the criteria of the UN (Defence, Diplomacy and Development) in its peacekeeping missions around the world, Shoshan has sat at the same table as military engineers and policy makers to analyze the urban impact peacekeepers have left around the world.
For the Dutch Pavilion, Shoshan has focused on the case of the joint mission of the Netherlands and the UN in Gao (Mali). In 2012, Gao was declared capital of the Independent State of Azawad, a nation not recognized by the international authorities, following Mali’s Tuareg rebellion. “Although [these peacekeeping missions] occupy large plots of land in hundreds of different cities around the world, it is rarely discussed or addressed by our profession,” says Soshan in the following interview.
We spoke with the curator of the Dutch pavilion after her recent visit to Mali to discuss the principles of the Netherlands in the next Venice Biennale; the impact of military drones in public spaces and why, according Shoshan, there is a close relationship between architecture, public policy and ideology. “[With design,] we can make resources available to communities that are exhausted by militarized conflicts, long periods of drought, famine and disease,” she says.
Nico Valencia: What will we see in the Dutch Pavilion at the 2016 Venice Biennale? What will the message be?
Malkit Shoshan: The Dutch Pavilion will examine the emerging landscape of UN peacekeeping missions – its challenges and opportunities. We will present both research and a design intervention which addresses policy on a global level.
After the end of the Cold War and increasingly after the “War on Terror,” the war moved to the city, together with the entire security apparatus including the peacekeepers and all their infrastructure. The city therefore became a shared ground for the instruments of war and peace.
Our focus on UN peacekeeping missions had to do with the scope of the scale of these missions. Confronted with a new context of war, the UN have adopted a three dimensional approach to indicate a collaborative process between Defence, Diplomacy, and Development. This new approach is difficult to implement as the different agencies work in parallel to one another, each portraying a 20th century mind set, and the spaces produced by these new types of missions give tribute to defense only – producing islands that are fenced off from the local. In this conversation, I proposed adding a fourth ‘D’: design. For me, comprehensive design thinking can mitigate between different scales, scopes and agencies.
Although this landscape occupies large plots of land in hundreds of different cities around the world, it is rarely discussed or addressed by our profession (architects). Our claim is that since UN missions moved to operate within cities, the spaces they produce should be considered as urban projects rather than a self-sustained islands. The resources and knowledge that they contain should be shared with the local population – especially in regions that are devastated by war, climate change, famine, and disease.
The built environment is the very embodiment of complexity, and highlights the urgencies that we need to address as both a society and as professionals. There are about 170 cities in the Sahel, a place exhausted by catastrophes and in desperate need for resources. Within these cities there are UN compounds with international and global capacity. If invested well, these resources can be shared and the local population can be empowered. But how to do that in one of the most cynical environments? A friend who used to work in the Sahel for many years described it very well saying, this place is “a graveyard of good intentions.” That was the context for the project of the Dutch Pavilion. The intersection between the UN, the Dutch approach, and the local context.
In past years, I have initiated conversations with different professionals, economists, policy makers, military engineers, anthropologists, and economists. Together we have tried to develop alternative models that can help opening up the UN compound. We have challenged the notion of the temporary by prescribing an explicit time frame for change from the beginning of a mission to post mission. In each phase the international community can attribute something back to the city.
This conversation is highly relevant to the current state of global policy. The structures of the 20th century are open for change and modification. Dutch policy makers and military engineers are known for their pro-active approach. They are now working in Mali, and they offered to develop to use Camp Castor—the Dutch/UN base in Gao—as a case study for the new approach.
Architecture and the design of the built environment needs to address these complex conditions. It is part of our life. We are not living in an hermetic environment where we can say that war is in one side and peace is on another. These systems are increasingly interrelated and we need to bring back values of civility to the conversation. We can help mitigating between need and resource by design.
For example, a hospital that is constructed for use by the UN troops can be shared with the locals. A waste treatment plant or a sewage system can be shared. It will reduce disease and hunger it can elevate the lives of millions. We can help rethinking the “island-mindset” typologies. We can challenge the system to open them up and modify them by examples.
The exhibition itself is a surprise. We are trying to foreground different perspectives and mindsets.
The contributors to the exhibition are from different backgrounds: journalists, diplomats, military engineers, economists, novelists etc. I am very excited about BLUE.
NV: We as architects tend to overstate the weight we have in resolving key issues in our society. In the current condition of increasing inequity, financial crisis, migration crisis, urban armed conflicts, can we contribute something to the discourse?
MS: I think we can. We are trained to read and understand the built environment grid, materiality, culture, programs and with our designs we need to deal with complexity, scale, clients, budgets, urgencies of all sorts, zoning and environmental laws, physics and engineerings as well as visions and big ideas.
All of these are very resourceful tools. They can help us mitigate between crisis and design alternatives. Although architects are not all-powerful, we can ask questions and we can challenge the system toward paradigm shift.
BLUE was exhibited at the United Nations Headquarters in New York City in January of thisa year, and I was asked to address a meeting for peacekeeping alliances and the African Union. The significance of spatial, territorial and design alternatives was clearly recognized. My conversation with the Dutch mission to the UN expanded to other contingency and to the UN itself. We have something very important to add to these conversations.
Migration is also housing, climate change and militarized conflict has to do also with spatial organization, how you store food and water. How can you create with low tech mean affordable dwellings. How can you mitigate between different structures – global and local scale through space and program. Architects should be part of these conversation and engage in this complexity. This is our responsibility as human beings, and as professionals.
NV: In your speech as a finalist of the Wheelwright Prize 2015, you explained the origin of the “Atlas of Conflict,” and said that the work made you “realize the strong relation between architecture, politics, and ideology, and the impact of war and armed conflicts on people’s livelihood.” Could you elaborate on this position?
MS: In the context of Israel, the civic space and other considerations such as ideology, politics and conflict are intertwined. 97% of the lands under Israel’s sovereignty are state lands. Land is managed and controlled very carefully. Masterplans for new cities, roads, industrialization and development many time coincide with demographic considerations.
As a student, for instance, I researched the region of Ara. It is an area dominated by Palestinian demography. It’s on the North east part of the Green Line (the border with the Occupied Territories of the West Bank). In early 70s the Israel planning authority initiated a new masterplan called the “Seven Stars.” The scope of that plan was to change the demographic balance in the region. The consequence of this decision was the issuing of thousands of demolition orders for Palestinian homes and the design of seven new Israeli localities, employment centers and a highway that links them all.
Moreover, the Atlas of Conflict portrays a comprehensive view of the evolution of the Israeli landscape, linking issues of territory and borders to settlements, demography, landscaping, archeological preservations and so on. It shows how it all interlinked and weaved into each other. It makes visible the motivations and patterns behind the design of space.
Cover of "Atlas of the Conflict."
NV: As the United Nations itself talks in terms of Defence, Diplomacy, and Development, you propose adding a fourth ‘D’ for Design. What’s the idea behind that particular ambition?
MS: The integrated approach is a new way of working for the UN and for all its contingencies. The move of the war to the civic space requires to deal with an unprecedented level of complexity. It forces collaboration between disciplines and institutions. Nevertheless, these institutions are highly bureaucratic and are trained to practice in isolation. The “3D” is very difficult for them to implement.
My proposal to use design is to use the way we organize space as a tool to mitigate between the different organizations. The security apparatus give tribute to defense only and so does the footprint and the physical manifestation of the UN structures that are occupying large plots of land in hundreds of cities. If we use a fourth “D,” design, to mitigate between the scopes of Defense, Diplomacy and Development we can make resources available to communities that are exhausted by militarized conflicts, long periods of drought, famine and disease.
For instance if you change the layout of the UN base, moving a UN hospital from the center of the base to its perimeter It can be used to treat the local population. By changing this design consideration the hospital becomes part of two systems, the local and the foreign. It becomes a step in demilitarization of the compound. This type of design process can introduce civic values to UN bases.
NV: Tell us about your experience gathering engineers and policymakers from the Ministry of Defense, Development Aide and Foreign Affairs for a footprint-focused design experiment on UN Peacekeeping operations. Once you said that it was the first time that engineers and policymakers actually talked with one another?
MS: The research and design process behind the project was full of surprises to both myself and to the participants. Many times I have the feeling that my role in this process is to ask questions, highlight possibilities, but moreover bringing people and disciplines together and blurring the institutional boundaries. My capacity however is limited. As an individual you can open a number of doors, but the world of UN Peacekeeping for instance is a construct of hermetic bubbles that don’t interact with one another. The engineers don’t communicate with policy makers. There is always a hierarchy and divisions of roles that is strict.
That was very clear and visible during my recent trip to Mali, where I have conducted a field research. I talked with many agencies that seem to be foreign to one another, even if physically they share the same ground.
NV: You often link civic urban spaces with war and warfare. Two years ago, you wrote an article titled “In the Name of Peace: Another Civic, An Other Law“, based on your ongoing long term research project “Drones and Honeycombs.” Your text aimed to show the urban, social impact of the unmanned COIN doctrine in civic spaces in countries where NATO or the US are involved…
Yes. The city as I mentioned earlier become the main theater of war, and of civility. The two realities overlap one another. While the wars of the 20th centuries were between nations and mostly fought along disputed borderlines, the wars of the 21st century are fought between global coalitions of forces and insurgent networks.
The city becomes a more and more complex system. It inhabits the entire complexity of society in an unprecedented way. Our role as architects and planners should adapt to these new conditions. We need to find new ways to analyze, understand and engage with the space around us and its complexity. We need to work hard to keep introducing moments and values of civility like privacy, communal lives, equality and prosperity. These are the challenges ahead of us, both as society and as practitioners.
From the architect. Punta Sirena Hotel is intended primarily for kitesurf water sport, as recreation. It is located on Curanipe beach in the Maule region.
The building is elevated to avoid excessive damage from a possible earthquake / tsunami. It works with the idea of a tree structure: large, very heavy foundations and slender pillars with the least resistance to water.
Plan 2
In the public area, we work with 100% glass surface so that the water does not encounter any resistance and breaks the glass without affecting the main structure. All this is in terms of future reconstruction in the case of a possible tsunami, but not in relation to the security people, who have to evacuate the building.
The commission consists of: 12 rooms en suite, 3 shared bedrooms, restaurant, kitchen, administrative area, yoga room, shop, service area, and storage for windsurf and kitesurf gear.
The layout is defined with the restaurant on the first floor of the central volume. It seeks to set up a central courtyard without wind (southern wind). This courtyard is set between the restaurant and the windsurf and kitesurf school volumes.
Upstairs there are 3 directions of views in the bay: the wave, to the south, the nearby bay to the north and the entire bay to the north (Curanipe). These views deform the geometry of the upper floor into 3 volumes with different directions. The vertical circulations and multipurpose (yoga) room are located where the 3 bodies converge. All circulations are exterior.
The hotel was designed with a pinewood module of 4.0 m x 4.0 m. The structure (pillars and beams) is exposed, treated with carbolineum primer (black). The facades are modulated at 1m, with the structural columns exposed. Among them we placed eucalyptus poles, giving a lamp aesthetic when turning on the lights at night.
The interior walls and ceiling are finished with 1×8 raw boards and pinewood floor.
We use a simple materiality (wood, forest area) and (very cheap) local labor, allowing us to build without major inconveniences or sophisticated solutions.
Finsbury Leisure Centre Design Idea 3. Image Courtesy of Islington Council
The proposals include designs for the new Leisure Centre, council homes, facilities for the community, and a public space. The shortlisted designs have been kept anonymous and are on display at the Finsbury Library for residents to view and comment on.
Finsbury Leisure Centre Design Idea 2. Image Courtesy of Islington Council
Once a winner has been chosen, the community can further critique the design before a planning application is submitted.
Finsbury Leisure Centre Design Idea 5. Image Courtesy of Islington Council
“This is an exciting and ambitious project to build much-needed new council homes and a new leisure centre for local people. We’d like local residents to see the initial design ideas and give us their views. We welcome all comments, and there will be other chances for residents to help influence the final design at a later stage,” said Janet Burgess, Islington Council’s executive member for health and wellbeing, in a press release.
Finsbury Leisure Centre Design Idea 4. Image Courtesy of Islington Council
The five proposals are on display until May 23, 2016.
Kjellander + Sjöberg. Image Courtesy of Kjellander + Sjöberg
The Swedish exhibition, “The Forests of Venice,” has been selected as a Collateral Event for the 2016 Venice Biennale. Initiated by Kjellander + Sjöberg and Folkhem; and curated by Jan Åman, the exhibit highlights wood as a sustainable material, while looking at “the interaction between nature and the man-made human habitat in order to respond to climate change and limited resources.”
Ca' d'Ombre – The Palace of Shadows by In Praise of Shadows. Image Courtesy of Kjellander + Sjöberg
The exhibit examines Venice’s success as a hybrid between city and nature. As a geographically exposed coastal city, Venice demonstrates a unique symbiosis with nature. In a time when climate change and rising sea levels threaten coastal cities worldwide, the strategies of Venice – a city built on the foundations of ten million trees – are a key resource for solutions.
25 Trees by Arrhov Frick. Image Courtesy of Kjellander + Sjöberg
“The Forests of Venice” will be sited between the Venice Biennale’s two main exhibition venues – Giardini and Arsenale – in a greenhouse built in 1894. Exhibits will be located inside, and Kjellander + Sjöberg is creating an installation in solid timber in the adjacent garden.
Bottom-up by URBIO. Image Courtesy of Kjellander + Sjöberg
Some of Sweden’s most prominent architectural practices have come together to examine Venice’s relationship between the urban and the natural. The seven selected practices are: Architects without Borders Sweden; Arrhov Frick; DinellJohansson; Horn.Uggla; In Praise of Shadows; Carmen Izquierdo; and Urbio, as well as the installation by Kjellander + Sjöberg.
From the architect. This house is located in an early 50´s residential neighborhood, more precisely at the western edge, in an area surrounded buy terraced houses, near the Restelo shopping street.
The main area of intervention was the rear part of the house, which was completely redrawn. Searching for a contrast with the main façade, we envisioned a fascia, opened by a series of windows and shutters resembling a pattern of traditional Portuguese tiles. This pattern works like a skin that filters the sun light and also protects the house from intruders.
At the ground level we transformed the ground floor in one unique living area, joining together the entrance, the living room and the kitchen. A white volume coated with grate lines, disguises an area of a closet, social toilet and storage. This central core also performs a separation within spaces.
The staircase between the ground floor and the first floor are leaning on the left side of the entire volume. This was made in order to ensure an optimized living area and also a central passage to the first floor.
Section
Section
We planned for the first floor the private area, where the rooms are located, including a suite. To make this last request possible, with the areas we had, we placed a lavatory in the bed space that also worked as a sideboard. As for the shower cabin and the toilet, we merged them behind a glass wall, diluting the limits of the space, giving us a feeling of a much greater space.
For the attic we idealized the mansard roof to give us the possibility of more livable area. With great view to the garden, is a bed room, a toilet and an office.
Sig Nordal 