“We feel awe at strong power. Sometimes fear. Imagine a scene with a huge rock that is pressing down hard on the earth. In this scene, the rock is actually not you are seeing. Strictly speaking, what you are looking at is the “gravity” fighting hard against the earth.
The site is surrounded by the nature – the heavy nature. The scenery of the steep hills and basins overawe the site. Furthermore, one side of the site meets a straight expressway. Hundreds of trucks pass by the site all the time beating down the road noisily.
Some structures show off its power by standing heavily. And some structures adopt themselves by following circumferential power. As such, the structure makes the topography of the power by standing still. The ‘ground wall’ chose to show off its power rather than to adopt itself to its surroundings. We chose not to be daunted by the gaze of its surrounding nature; we intended the structure to be seen as rough and heavy as possible.
Every material has its own character by the name. For instance, the name ‘concrete’ contains characters that represent ‘hardness’, ‘roughness’ and ‘heaviness’. And the name of ‘steel’ contains characters that represent ‘coldness’ and ‘straightness’. The name of material contains countless days of human progress in construction. In other words, it can be said that the name of each material contains one’s power in it – its historical power.
The ‘power’ we intended to show in this structure is not only the shape of the building, but also the original way of construction using each material’s properties. Even in the case of a trifle part of structure, we tried not to betray the historic power of the name. We tried to find right ways to construct that respect each material’s property.
The power of architecture must not be shown through the shapes only. It must be felt through the reality of the materials and the efforts that were devoted to realization.”
The ground wall is consisted of four difference uses. – Café, Restaurant, residence, fermentation cellar. Passing by the fermentation cellar on ground floor and restaurant at 2nd floor we can meet café and residence at 3rd floor. Following private problems by complex uses could be solved by one massive core on behind of the building. Dividing and combining, the core conducts the building from public to private.
Section a-a
The characterful concrete blocks on the wall used to be mentioned as the most impressing point in this building. Not only for shape, that block was born by the special need of client- “wants to keep seeing in private room.” The blocks were designed possible for control quantity of lights by arrangement, and all blocks are made by everyday manual labor.
Project Team: Mark Kranz, Design Principal; Jay Rambo, Principal in Charge, Carrie Perrone, Randall Daniel, Kenda Draper, Steve Hackman, Roger Boskus, Mark Bradley
From the architect. Funded primarily by the University’s athletics department, Champions Hall is located on the southern edge of the University’s historic academic core. The building fills a deficit in classrooms and laboratory environments while serving as an interactive hub and student destination that energizes the surrounding campus neighborhood.
Students have opportunities to engage with the building utilizing the large open lounges and exterior terraces as social and interactive learning environments. The project is primarily and undergraduate classroom and class-lab building that combines two core curriculum, Math and Science. As the building’s hub, the Math Resource and Testing Center (MRTC) connects students in the earliest phases of their education to their peers and faculty. Inside the MRTC, the student centered/directed environment allows students to engage in learning at their own pace with faculty support.
The design also includes a wide variety of types and sizes of student collaboration and interaction spaces. Outdoor terraces and interior spaces of varied sizes expand the learning environments beyond the classroom or lab.
Integrating a complementary material palette to the adjacent brick and metal clad structures, Champions Hall elegantly interweaves this language into a simple and understated campus building. With the majority of neighboring buildings being taller, the roof becomes the building’s ‘fifth elevation’ with an economical standing seam room that folds down to become wall and student portal.
Section 2
The project embraces the challenges of the site’s steep topography, welcoming students at level three at Dixon Street (front) with a one story portal, and a grand stair that ushers students to level four classrooms. The building strategically steps down the site with a ‘side front’ entry at level two, revealing four full stories at the building’s south entry.
An entry plaza aims to re-create the pre-developed Oak Ridge, while an elevated roof terrace surprises students and creates a secluded oasis for study and gathering. Light monitors pull daylight through the compact floor plates to bring daylight to lower level laboratories that are submerged by the grade.
As BD Online reports, the proposal is expected to “conserve and enhance the architectural style of the town as a historic public realm and provide a sense of arrival and place,” as well as improve landscape and transport connections.
The site, currently being occupied by a car park, calls for a new 300-seat theater, gallery, hotel and six restaurants.
From the architect. The house is completely covered in white Estremoz marble and its horizontal character is emphasised by concrete slabs which mark out the floors on the sides of the building. The stairs featured on the eastern façade take on an almost sculptural importance.
The house is accessed from the east, freeing up the western side for the swimming pool and patio areas.
The construction is composed of a two-storey main structure (ground floor and first floor), which is west-facing and perpendicular to the street. A second structure completes the ensemble to the north, comprising only the ground floor (and part of the basement).
Plan 1
In the main body of the house there are living and dining rooms, a play room with an attached bathroom which means it can also function as a guest room, and moving to the lower structure there is a kitchen and utility room.
The east-facing hallway accompanies the stairs which stretch along the building ́s side and which have the detail of being transparent under the steps. As a result, there is a surprising play of light in the house ́s interior.
All bedrooms are west-facing and open onto a continuous veranda, which equally ensures some shaded areas for the living and dining rooms located on the ground floor.
C.F. Møller Landscape‘s Nordhavn Islands project has won the international competition for an innovative learning, activity and water landscape in the harbor basin in front of the new Copenhagen International School in Nordhavn, Copenhagen. The new Nordhavn district is taking shape fast, and, having won the international Nordhavn Islands project competition, C.F. Møller Landscape will now create one of the first and most unique projects in, on and under the water in the quarter.
The Nordhavn Islands will lie in close contact with C.F. Møller’s Copenhagen International School, connecting the school with the quarter and the quarter with the rest of Copenhagen. The Nordhavn Islands are an urban park on the water, an ocean of activities and recreational spaces at one with the water, the weather and nature – a new and different urban space for Nordhavn.
The activities on the Nordhavn Islands are spread out over three different islands, each with its own characteristics: “The Reef”, a multifunctional platform for aqua learning and events in extension of the quayside; “The Lagoon”, a floating arena for activities such as kayak polo and other water sports, and “The Sun Bath”, an actual harbour bath with a sauna and protected areas for swimming training. As an extension of the school’s interior space, not only can the functions be included directly in the teaching, but they can also be used by external visitors, as can the school’s facilities, which are intended to function as a “community centre” by the Orient Pier.
In order to provide Copenhagen International School and all the other users with a new and different aquatic environment that stands out from all the other excellent water-related activities in the city, the Nordhavn Islands are deliberately rugged in character, embracing the “Nordhavn nature”. This is done by incorporating the “grown” environment in a design that directly encourages activity in all weathers, rain or sun, waves or glassy water.
The weather, climate and nature are important resources for movement, recreation and learning – in, around and even under the water. The round islands are therefore surrounded by a band of free-growing, organic vegetation, contrasting with the urban environment and staging the natural environment and the aquatic environment as a learning landscape at eye level. At the same time, this band of vegetation functions as a natural safety zone around the three islands, allowing young children to explore the Nordhavn Islands and the water safely.
Also designed by C.F. Møller, the new Copenhagen International School will become the largest school in Copenhagen, covering an area of 25,000 m² and accommodating 1,200 pupils. The unusual school building will be clad with 12,000 solar cells and consist of four sections adapted to the different age levels, with a communal base featuring a canteen, library and sports facilities, which will also benefit the surrounding city.
The Property Fund for Copenhagen International School is behind the Nordhavn Islands, which are expected to be ready in summer 2017, coinciding with the opening of the school. In the competition, C.F. Møller Landscape was up against proposals submitted by Norwegian architectural practice Snøhetta and the Danish firm MLRP.
Located in the Baptist College neighborhood, in Belo Horizonte, MG, Zider is a project of critical response to demand from depleting the constructive potential in a lot of non-usual proportions.
Because of the fragmentation of large tracts of land, most of the lots in the city has 360 m2 and a rectangle 12 meters tested by 30 long. On the one hand this geometry creates a desirable relationship between the design possibilities within a batch and a number of lots to be filled – in every street – the urban infrastructure, on the other, the existence of any number of lots with dimensions identical previous open to the repetition of types of multi-family residential buildings, whose projects do not always have a desired architectural quality. Thus, a lot to present a variation in the dimensions mentioned is not always valued.
Diagram
Lot Zider has 10 meters tested by 40 long. Your building potential is 680 m2, considering the multiplication of its area by 1.7. This amount of net area that can be built led to the creation of eight units. Considering the increase in spatial quality provided by terraces adjacent to the apartments, the units accessed at ground level are designed as two-level studio, with the first located the social area and services, and in the second room. Thus, it enables the creation of a larger number of units in the projection of the building with four studios, all with private area. Above, there is a deck with two units, and finally, two duplexes with cover. Thus, the eight residential apartments, six have a private area.
The residential project is based, as stated, to refute the logic of the real estate market development apartment-type, separating the ratio of each unit of its space potential across the project proposal, as the increase in the level of the number of apartments ground to own private area. Thus, it creates a project with the following units:
Studio 01 – duplex with private area, double height in the social area and three bedrooms;
Studio 02 – duplex with private area and two bedrooms (two suites);
Studio 03 – duplex with private area and two bedrooms (two suites);
Studio 04 – duplex more private area, double height in the social area and three bedrooms;
Apartment 05 – unit with three bedrooms;
Apartment 06 – unit with three bedrooms;
Apartment 07 – unit with private area, double height in the social area, three bedrooms and an extra room;
Apartment 08 – unit with private area, double height in the social area, three bedrooms and an extra room.
Axonometric Projection
Although there is no standard apartments, this project condition does not cause the adopted solution is more costly, financially. Considering that the building is designed to be built in self-supporting masonry walls of different floors are the same, despite the creation of various internal spatial relationships. Furthermore, rooms that require health infrastructure have been leased adjacent to one of the walls, allowing the creation of power and depletion of plumb.
Another point to note refers to the image of the building. In terms of coating, applied externally was ecogranito in light gray color, showing the portion of the building that are rented studios and the other in graphite color, with apartments of a pavement. By way of crowning the building, the upper side gables will be painted in yellow gold color.
Schmidt Hammer Lassen Architects is part of the winning SPARK consortium to design the new educational facility for the University of Applied Sciences Utrecht in the Netherlands. The new educational facility completes the existing ‘Kasbah’ master plan and will provide space for over 6,500 students, staff and visitors, as well as house seven institutes.
“It forms a strong and clear mark on the site, where it will activate and support the dynamic life on the campus,” says the architects.
From the architects: The new educational facility will offer two large 200+ seat auditoriums, two smaller auditoriums, TV / radio studios, a knowledge centre, classrooms, café, food shops and parking for more than 1,200 bicycles.
The project will create a new inner courtyard facing the neighboring student housing block from where the volume steps up towards the east façade allowing it to connect with the existing buildings. This creates a building that is activated from all sides.
“We have created a strong and clear gable motif that forms the final end of the Kasbah masterplan. The building yields to the adjacent buildings with a series of green terraces and roof gardens. Coherence with the surrounding campus is achieved by the use of a similar floor-tiling outside and inside on the building’s ground floor, which acts as a large open piazza with cafes, conference center, amphitheater and lecture halls,” explains Kristian Ahlmark, Senior Partner at Schmidt Hammer Lassen.
The facade is clad in light concave and convex panels of anodized aluminum in seven warm colors, with each color representing an institute. The major functions of the building show in the facade with large color fields.
With all general functions situated on the ground floor, the seven different institutes are spread over the other seven floors, most with direct access to outdoor spaces, which will be used for learning and interaction. The institutes connects via a spectacular atrium which forms the heart of the plan. On each floor, “academic “bookshelves” containing smaller meeting rooms and study cells serve as gateways to the individual institutes, from which there is access to classrooms and offices via a walkway.
“We’ve tried to create a place that encourages the chance encounter. By activating the heart of the building, the atrium becomes the primary function of logistics where the school’s flow distributes via kaleidoscopic stairs, bridges and escalators. Thus, the atrium becomes the building’s meeting place where paths cross, experiences are shared and insight into other institutes is gained,” concludes Kristian Ahlmark.
The scheme targets the BREEAM Excellent sustainability standard.
The consortium SPARK won the bid to design, build and maintain the new premises for 15 years. The new educational facility is planned to open in December 2017.
From the architect. That is what architect Liesbeth van der Pol had in mind for the new ‘Lex van Deldenbrug’ bridge across the Boele Canal (Boelegracht), Amsterdam. ‘I have been inspired by the Torensluis bridge across the Singel,’ she says. ‘That bridge is magnificent, much more than just a bridge, it is a square. I wanted to achieve something similar at the Zuidas District.’
The Lex van Delden Bridge not only connects the Boelelaan with the Gershwinplein but more-over the city centre to the suburb. ‘That is why it is not just a means to cross on foot or by bike, but also offers the opportunity to give a moment’s thought to all that is happening in the city.
To the Zuidas, that is ever-expanding, to the Boelelaan, which is much greener that people seem to realise, and to the water below you, which is flowing through all of Amsterdam.’ A bridge should not only be beautiful but also practical, according to Liesbeth van der Pol. ‘Soon, large numbers of cyclists will cross this bridge, particularly during peak hours. This makes safety very important. The cycle path is, therefore, well-connected to the Boelelaan. Safety at night was also a consideration. The lighting, incorporated into the specially designed high edges of the bridge, is not only attractive, but also clear. ‘The led lights in the pavement also show the way. ‘It is a special place.
Detail
The bridge allows traffic to cross and at the same time it offers a stopping place, where one can comfortably sit down and have a good look around. Tables, chairs, and residents enjoying a glass of wine in the evening sun. That is the way I envisage this.‘
From the architect. The commission consisted of a simple program: a space for various public activities in the house: living, working, and eating, in addition to integrating an exhibition area for pre-Columbian artworks, with an independent kitchen, bedrooms and bathrooms.
Plan 2
The main difficulty was to achieve a quality space for the owner, who was used to living in large areas, and was building a detached house for a new period of life.
The site was an old plot with houses and existing park, subdivided among the children, leaving a remnant where the new house would be located, with access and parking for the entire site, disrupting as minimum as possible the trees and vegetation.
These conditions combined with the views and sunlight, define clear relations with the outside, which were conditioned and defined. The south and west facades should be closed, the former due to regulations and the latter due to the parking area.
To continue to maintain the visual relationship with the park, we opted for a second level connected through a ramp, which seeks to predict an uncertain future and allows easy access to the library wall.
Section 1
The house is configures as 2 rectangles turned on the first and second floors. Looking for the best visual and sunlight orientations, these are connected through a double height and the ramp-library. This turn generates intermediate spaces, which on one side give privacy to the various uses, exposing the pre-Columbian figures, concentrating in one space the entire public space required. Outside, through these walls and turns, 5 courtyards of different qualities are built, creating openings and closings that condition the relationship with the outside and the existing landscape.
Three were originally invited to draw up plans for a ‘Nordic’ pavilion: the Finnish partnership Reima and Raili Pietilä, Sverre Fehn from Norway, and the Swede, Klas Anshelm. Following the selection of Fehn’s proposal in 1959, Gotthard Johansson wrote in the Svenska Dagbladet of the project’s “stunning simplicity […], without too many architectural overtones”[1] – a proposal for a space able to unite a triumvirate of nations under one (exceptional) roof.
Over five decades later the ‘Nordic Pavilion’—as it would later become known—has come to reflect, consolidate and embody Nordic architectural traditions. Look a little deeper, however, and it becomes clear that Fehn actually sought to invert them entirely. In place of heavy timber beams Fehn chose slender concrete lamellae, pigmented to glow (reflecting, for one common metaphor, sunlight falling on a quilt of snow). Rather than create a closed space to shut the elements out—a typical vernacular in Norway—he completely removed two of the building’s four boundary walls. In designing the roof to be essentially open to the skies, Fehn was able to specifically control how the rain would fall into the space. In this sense, it is a building in possession of the world around it – accepting its direct context while tentatively suggesting another, distant world.
Plan / NMK.2008.0734.016.012 / Fotolisens: Fri ikke-kommersiell bruk
Fehn did not seek to mimic a Nordic vernacular – the Pavilion is not an act of mimesis in the conventional sense. He sought to rewrite (as opposed to translate) something hitherto indescribable: the sense of a ‘Nordic’ architecture for the Venetian climate and situated in the uninhabited, uniquely fragmented context of the giardini of la Biennale di Venezia. Just as Walter Benjamin described the act of translation as a “mode” rather than an act,[2] Fehn recognised that the orchestration of space by assemblage is different to that of contextually grafting—and thereby crafting from, and into—a new environment.[3]
Distilling Fehn’s architectural moves into a collection of articulated elements—roof, ground, wall, stair and beam—belies its complexity as a consolidated spatial gesture. Just as the Palazzo Ducale (a ten minute journey away by water) should only be read as one part of a “metamorphosis” (in the words of Giulia Foscari[4]) between surface, object and space that comprise Piazza (and, by extension, Piazzetta) San Marco, the Nordic Pavilion is more than an assemblage of parts. It is the culmination of an orchestration of spatial ideas and atmospheric intentions between wall, ground, step, ‘roof’, landscape, light, and ‘interstitiality’ – all framed by its relationship to the topography of the site.
Sketchbook: Morocco / NMK.2008.0734.124.029. Image Courtesy of Nasjonalmuseet Digital Archive
Sketchbook: Morocco / NMK.2008.0734.124.018. Image Courtesy of Nasjonalmuseet Digital Archive
Fehn indicated his realisation of this approach to building, following a trip to French Morocco:
You suddenly feel as if the walls are not simply to bear a roof or make a house, but at one moment made to provide shade from the sun, the next to be support for your back, in the autumn a rack to dry dates on and in the spring a blackboard for the children to draw on. It is the same with the roof and the floor. The different parts of the whole house are regarded as domestic furnishings.[5]
During his travels through Italy which followed, Fehn became acutely aware of the different characteristics which light can take. Upon his return to Norway he was “able to recognize the distinct nature of Nordic light” like never before.[6]
Sections / NMK.2008.0734.016.014 / Fotolisens: Fri ikke-kommersiell bruk
Elevations / NMK.2008.0734.016.017 / Fotolisens: Fri ikke-kommersiell bruk
Like any translator worth their salt, Fehn employed both original materials and those specific to the site—a concrete combination of white cement, white sand, and crushed white Italian marble—to sculpt a quality of light of incredible intensity, tranquility and, most importantly, steady homogeneity. He wanted to do nothing more than “construct a roof to protect the paintings and sculptures”—for the building’s first intended function was as a gallery—“from direct sunlight.”[7]
For the ‘roof,’ which would more accurately be described as a collection of light wells, Fehn designed two layers of concrete brise-soleil. These lamellae, each precisely one-metre tall and six-centimetres thin, blanket the internal space to create a plane of two-metre deep pockets set, by their width and height, at a ratio of 1:2. They stretch across the room in a single span, bracketing one another in intervals of 52.3 centimetres. Together they distil the heady, warm Mediterranean light into its ‘Nordic’ variation: at once shadeless, uniform and bright. It is a light that is “definite, but familiar”[8] and, in the words of Marco Mulazzani, provides a constant, homogenous sense of illumination.[9] In other words, a shadowless world.
The grid, which might otherwise appear monotonous in its rigidity, is interrupted by a series of openings through which the three remaining internal plane trees[10]—of which there were originally seven—erupt from the ground to punctuate vertically through, up and out of the space. The juxtaposition between the staticity of the structure and the twisting trunks which, to all intents and purposes do as they please, balances the room.
Beautiful his dwelling. Leaves on columns Burn and quiver. They stand in the wild, Rising among each other; above which Surges a second mass, The roofing of rock.
—Der Ister, Friederich Hölderlin (trans. Richard Sieburth)
Footnotes and References
[1] Marco Mullazzani, Guide to the Pavilions of the Venice Biennale since 1887 (Milan: Electa, 2014), pp.122-126 [2] Walter Benjamin, Harry Zorn trans., The Task of the Translator in Illuminations (London: Pimlico, 1999), pp.70-71 [3] In other words, just because wood, brick, mortar and concrete can be found or fabricated almost anywhere, does not mean that they should be used in the same way everywhere. [4] Guilia Foscari, Elements of Venice (Zürich: Lars Müller, 2014), pp.12-27 [5] Richard Kearney, On Stories (London: Routledge, 2002) p.140 (via Neveu, On Stories: Architecture and Identity) [6] Mark J. Neveu, On Stories: Architecture and Identity (Oslo: Arkitektur N, 02, 2008), accessed February 28, 2016, p.5 [7] Christian Norberg Schulz, Gennaro Postiglione, ed. Sverre Fehn: Samlede Arbeider, (Oslo: Orfeus Forlag, 1997) p.248 (via Neveu, On Stories: Architecture and Identity) [8] Neveu, On Stories: Architecture and Identity [9] Marco Mullazzani, Guide to the Pavilions of the Venice Biennale since 1887 (Milan: Electa, 2014), p.19 [10] According to Ole Gaudernack the three remaining trees within the pavilion are Celtis Australis, also known as the Mediterranean hackberry, the European Nettle Tree, or the Honeyberry).
Sig Nordal 