Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
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ALBERTO
CAMPO
BAEZA
Admired: Boutade
The diagrams made by the masters express clear ideas with simple pencil
strokes. Miess diagrams, tense, elegant and serene, are the prelude to his
impeccable architecture. Le Corbusiers diagrams, categorical, strong and
forceful, speak of the universality of his works.
And Alvar Aaltos diagrams, lyrical, organic and fluid, put forward the
emotion of his spaces. But if I had to choose one diagram, I would choose
the drawing Le Corbusier made of Villa Stein in Garches as a bare box
at the side of which he wrote trs difficile (satisfaction de lesprit).
Satisfaction of the spirit, what is that if not architecture?
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MASSIMILIANO
FUKSAS
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location plan
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3
4
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The museum complex in St Louis
depressed cityscape. Allied Works
new building (left) joins Andos
museum on the right.
3
Concrete walls wrapped in stainlesssteel mesh are beautifully smooth,
impassive surfaces.
4
Expansive windows open up views.
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entrance lobby
gallery spaces
education studio
performance space
courtyard
caf
loading
line of Ando building
administrative offices
resource centre
classroom
cross section
cross section
10
11
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5
The internal courtyard.
6
Detail of mesh-wrapped walls.
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arts projects in New York, Dallas, and Seattle, all of which are
characterized by a cool minimalism and sensitivity to aesthetic needs.
As he explains: In making space for contemporary art, the architecture
must first serve the artist; not by attempting to render a background
for the art, but by providing the artist with a specific spatial presence,
an intentional vacancy that achieves meaning through the art itself. He
also spoke of creating a fusion of the city and the arts.
Cloepfil has pushed the building out to a curved corner that
gives it a distinctive prow, and has restored the original street line
in contrast to the Pulitzer, which is pulled back. The contents of the
building are revealed though window walls, so that its role as an art
centre is immediately apparent. Concrete walls are sandblasted to
dematerialize the surface and distinguish it from Andos small
modules. The mesh is set 100-150mm from the walls, unifying the
facade and shading the office and classroom windows. Its a concept
that the architect has developed and taken further in the
translucent membrane he proposes to wrap around the former
Huntington Hartford Gallery in New York, a marble-clad Venetian
pastiche by Edward Durrell Stone, to provide a new home for the
Museum of Contemporary Arts and Design.
Double glass doors open onto the lobby from a setback in the
north facade, and steps lead down from this introductory space to
the galleries. Cloepfil has played with space and light as though they
were liquids, containing and releasing them, allowing visitors to feel
they are swimming through galleries that open up to each other and
to outdoor areas that are tightly enclosed by the two buildings. There
are two levels of wall: 4m high sections at ground level, and a 6m high
band that wraps around the upper level in serpentine fashion, tying
the spaces together. The steel mesh is carried inside in places to add
another layer and a contrasting texture to the white painted
sheetrock on the display walls. Ceiling planes float at different levels,
admitting light from clerestories and blocking direct sun. The effect is
one of interlocking boxes cut away to leave only a few defining edges.
Paul Ha, the new director of St Louis CAM, made his reputation at
White Columns, New Yorks most adventurous alternative art
space. It changes ones perception of art to see it in a different
setting, he observes, and artists welcome the challenge of
responding to the energy of place. For Cloepfil, the task was to
make spaces that serve the arts and artists, while allowing for a
subtle emotional response from the individual. It was imperative to
create a physical environment that visitors would feel comfortable
returning to again and again. MICHAEL WEBB
8
9 10
Architect
Allied Works, Portland, USA
Photographs
Hlne Binet
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7
Looking through the courtyard.
8
After the compression of the
outdoor areas, galleries are tall, airy,
luminous spaces.
9, 10
The building is conceived as a
flexible shell for experimentation.
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Above: Friday Mosque, Djenn, Mali biggest mud building in the world and defining image of West
African architecture. Foundations are more than 500 years old, though building has often been rebuilt.
Right: mosque, Yebe, Mali. Stick-studded mosques of Niger delta region define the unique aesthetic of
Western Sudan. Though wooden posts have practical functions as scaffold for re-rendering, structural
support, and assisting in expelling moisture from heart of the wall the most striking impact is visual.
GLORIOUS MUD
place
Building with mud is one of the oldest architectural traditions and is still practised with remarkable results in parts of West Africa, though there are fears that
such skills will eventually be lost for ever. Here, James Morris presents a photographic survey of some astonishing examples of religious and domestic buildings.
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MALCOLM ANDREWS
Origins of the term landscape seem to lie in northern Europe: the
Dutch, Belgian, German terms, Lantschap, Lantskip, Landschaft
respectively. Sometimes it was used to designate land in the immediate
environs of a town or city, not just natural scenery. When eventually
used in terms of art, it designates the area of a religious painting that
forms the setting for the central drama and its protagonists. Thomas
Blounts Glossographia (1670) gives a definition that might have applied
to the term through much of the early modern period:
Landtskip (Belg) Parergon, Paisage, or By-work, which is an
expressing the Land, by Hills, Woods, Castles, valleys, Rivers, Cities
&c as far as may be shewed in our Horizon. All that which in a Picture
is not of the body or argument thereof is Landskip, Parergon, or by-work.
As in the Table of our Saviors passion, the picture of Christ upon the
Rood (which is the proper English word for Cross) the two theeves, the
blessed Virgin Mary, and St John, are the argument: But the City,
Jerusalem, the Country about, the clouds, and the like, are Landskip. It is
the outdoor setting for the principal dramatic action, and includes
towns and settlements as well as countryside scenes. However, it was
during the Enlightenment that Landscape became more emphatically
associated with natural, non-urban scenery. Romanticisms worship of
Nature and of the Sublime in Nature, and its recoil from early
industrialization and rapid urbanization pushed Landscape into
remoter retreat from signs of developed civilization. We have inherited
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Trench 10 (2000) from The Segsbury Project: Callerys plasterwork, which captures the whole length of a Bronze Age ditch at Alfreds Castle.
SIMON CALLERY
Working alongside archaeologists gave Simon Callery an opportunity
to see how a painter of the urban landscape from Londons East End
would respond to a paradigm of the English landscape. In July 1996
in association with the photographer Andrew Watson, Callery
documented a 20m x 40m trench at the chalk excavation at the Iron
Age Segsbury Camp in Oxfordshire with 378 black and white images
taken from a height of 2.5m. Invited back for the excavation of
Alfreds Castle in 2000, he was eager to make a work that utilized the
actual surface material of the excavation. This resulted in a
plasterwork, poured in 1m x 2m sections, across a 20m x 2m Bronze
Age trench, that captured the entire chalk surface rather than just
taking its negative form. He discusses his work with Jeremy Melvin.
with ideas about how and why we respond to landscape (this includes
the urban landscape) on a sensual level and not in depicting its visual
appearance. With the trappings of representation obliterated, the
paintings offer a lean and stripped down physicality defined by
specific proportion, luminosity and surface quality. They are intended
to provide a slowed down, drawn out and extended perceptual
experience. This experience is dependent solely on a response to the
material nature of the work. This way of looking, or better, this way of
sensing, leads to an experience in which the viewer is no longer the
passive recipient of the visual information contained in an artists
production. The dynamic is altered and the viewer is active in an
equation that is a reversal of the traditional flow between artwork and
audience. The expressive end of this encounter is that the viewer,
rather than the artwork or artist, becomes the subject of their
perceptual process.
JM
One aspect of your engagement with landscape seems to be a reverse
of the traditional reasons for painting nature. Traditionally landscape
painting was a way of suggesting depth and distance beyond the
individual, of externalizing feelings, and of setting up hierarchies
according to distance from the viewer/painter. Your work seems to
draw everything to the surface as if it were mirroring these sensations
back to the individual, of focusing inwards rather than outwards.
JM
Another difference lies in the treatment of architecture. In Poussin or
Claude, architecture has quite specific and defined roles (though often
highly complex and allegorical), it is about objects set in a larger
picture. In your work, architecture helps to define a way of looking:
an example would be the way you use entasis on the frames of your
paintings to help structure the way of looking.
SC
I think the point where I begin a painting is the point where
traditional landscape painting leaves off. I am interested in working
SC
I do not want to depict architecture or expect it to play a role in an
unfolding narrative. I want the paintings to be architectural in
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SC
One of the most striking aspects of working on an excavation was a
heightened awareness of time quite unlike the urban experience.
Time as an element and a constituent of place was tangible on site.
This sensation was not immediate but was generated by a developing
understanding of the particular characteristics of the landscape.
There is also the principle of stratigraphy in excavation that defines
the relationship of objects to one another in time. Objects that are
found on the same horizontal plane can be considered contemporary
to one another, while objects that are found at a greater vertical depth
can be considered older. I began to feel that this axis of two lines was
an expressive way of understanding time and could be fed into the
way I use line in painting.
It follows that we could grade the landscape and the city in terms of
their horizontality and verticality and draw conclusions on the extent
to which an emphasis on the axis influences how we respond.
JM
Does this sense of time seem to demand such an intimate and precise
record (thinking of photography) of what you found there, in a way
that the more familiar urban environment would not?
SC
The desire that a sense of time defines the experience of the finished
work is only really possible if a perceptual route to this end is
established. In the case of a work called The Segsbury Project (378 largescale black and white prints that record the surface of a 20m x 40m
site at 2:1 housed in seven plan chests), the detail of the photographic
prints sets up a visual encounter with an archaeological surface. In
this work, detail and intimacy of the prints was necessary to bring
about a questioning of the surface.
Intimacy depends on sensory knowledge and the work must
communicate this, whether it is the familiar urban environment or an
excavation in the rural landscape.
JM
Given that there are differences between cities and landscapes, does
architecture in cities have a compatible role with archaeology in the
landscape?
SC
It is not unreasonable to suggest that the reasons why archaeologists
are drawn to certain sites tells us as much about our current interests
as it does about our distant past. We seem to visit and revisit places for
the reasons the original inhabitants settled there. This reflects the
extent to which the quality of place defines what kind of architecture
is built and the role architecture plays in defining the quality of a
place.
The first excavation I was involved in was an Iron Age hill fort
settlement and the second an Iron Age hill fort with the remains of a
Romano-British villa at its centre. The work I made was a record of
the traces of early forms of architecture and a testing ground for
examining the validity of landscape as a subject for contemporary art.
84 | 1
Trench 10 surface detail: plaster acquires loose chalk interaction with historical surface.
Photographs of the installation at the Officers Mess, Dover Castle: John Riddy. The Segsbury Project is a
collaboration between the Henry Moore Foundation Contemporary Projects, English Heritage and
the Laboratory at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art.
PATRICK KEILLER
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JUNIPER
A GUIDED AND SHERPA ASSISTED CLIMB TO
THE SUMMIT PLATEAU OF CHO OYU AT 8175M
VIA THE CLASSIC ROUTE WITHOUT
SUPPLEMENTARY OXYGEN TIBET AUTUMN
2000
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Unbuilt project for Novartis in Basel physic gardens related to lungs for the body of car parking.
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ANDRO LINKLATER
Measuring America argues that America came to be what it is through
the way it defined its landscape. Anyone who has flown across the US
sees the worlds largest human-made construct, though its significance
is almost invisible unless you know what to look for straight lines. In
Californias Great Central Valley they show up in the chequerboard
arrangement of orchards; flying over the Sierras they appear in the
rectangular farms deep in valley bottoms; crossing any big city,
Phoenix, Arizona or Salt Lake City, or Chicago itself, theyre revealed
in the graph-paper grid of streets; all across the Midwest they can be
found in the great squared-off pattern of corn and soya fields. Around
this framework, a particular kind of democracy and a particular kind
of capitalism and a particular kind of spirit developed.
These lines all derive from the US Public Land Survey which began
on 30 September 1785 when Thomas Hutchins, first Geographer of
the United States, unrolled a 22 yard Gunters chain on the west bank
of the Ohio river. The US needed to raise money, and the only asset
that it possessed was land beyond the Appalachians. A few explorers
had penetrated beyond the mountains and brought back wonderful
reports of this mouth-watering land. Hutchins job was to measure it
out and map it on a surveyors plat. It was a kind of magic
unmeasured it was wilderness, measured it became real estate.
But he did it in a very particular way. Congress required him to lay
out lines running due east-west and six miles apart, and these were to
be cut at right angles by other lines running due north-south, and also
six miles apart. This created a grid of squares, known as townships,
each measuring 36 square miles. The townships divided into 36 onemile-square sections, which would be sold at auction. This pattern of
squares was Thomas Jeffersons idea. Squares could be easily
measured, easily subdivided, easily bought and sold. Squares would
put land into the hands of the people. From the start, therefore, the
survey was expected not simply to raise money, but to shape a society.
The surveyors equipment was basic: a compass through which the
surveyor took a sighting on a distant mark to find due west on his
compass, and a 22 yard chain to measure the distance. Once the
surveyor had the direction, a team of axemen would be sent to hack
out a path or vista through the trees. Finally, the foreman took the
front end of the chain and marched towards the mark; when the
chain was fully stretched he cried Tally!, stuck in a tally pin, and
waited for the hindman to join him, gathering up the chain. So they
moved across the country like caterpillars, hunching up and stretching
out, through forests, over swamps, up mountains, and down ravines,
but always travelling in straight lines.
By the end of the nineteenth century, most of the continent had
been squared off into townships, and sections. Each township section
is a square mile or 640 acres, a number easily subdivided into smaller
The great United States
grid: not just a means of
turning wilderness into
real estate, but an
armature for capitalist
society.
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Roland Halbe
fig c
fig a
fig d
fig b
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STEFAN
BEHNISCH
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1
The original Higgins
Hall, before fire
destroyed the middle
section.
2
Clad in a translucent
skin, Holls new building
re-consolidates the
composition.
ARTFUL ADDITION
This new insertion balances sensitivity to
history with a formal and civic boldness.
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3
Studios at the
topmost level.
4
A ramp forms
an extended
promenade and
reconciles floor
level differences.
5
Entrance hall with
stairs curving down
to a lower level
lecture hall.
14
first floor
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
lower lobby
classroom
lecture hall
multimedia
ofces
copy room
storage
studio
entrance court
lobby
reception
gallery
sculpture terrace
ramp
13
12
12
11
10
12
2
2
ANNETTE LECUYER
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Architect
Steven Holl Architects, New York
Photographs
All photographs by Andy Ryan except no 1
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U NIVERSITY CAMPUS ,
G LOUCESTER , E NGLAND
ARCHITECT
F EILDEN C LEGG B RADLEY
A RCHITECTS
1
With its lofty atrium and generous
glazed link, Feilden Clegg Bradleys
new facilities building gives
Gloucesters new campus stature
and presence.
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1
2
3
4
5
6
7
U NIVERSITY CAMPUS ,
G LOUCESTER , E NGLAND
ARCHITECT
F EILDEN C LEGG B RADLEY
A RCHITECTS
masterplan concept
reception
learning resources centre
lecture theatre
refectory
sports hall
staff offices
teaching rooms
A
B
C
D
E
learning centre
sport sciences building
common room and bar
student housing
landscaped pool
4
D
B
1
A
3
6
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2
From the south-west approach, this modest
collection of buildings creates an impressive
flagship campus for the University of
Gloucestershire.
3
Louvres on the southerly facade eliminate direct
sunlight from the principal teaching rooms.
4
With the first of five student accommodation
blocks behind, the student bar and common room
help create a defined campus gateway.
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6
7
U NIVERSITY CAMPUS ,
G LOUCESTER , E NGLAND
ARCHITECT
F EILDEN C LEGG B RADLEY
A RCHITECTS
5
The campuss distinctive razorback
northlights support the colleges
490m 2 photovoltaic array.
6
Even during the winter months, the
cafs sheltered terrace provides a
welcome place of rest ...
7
... from the physical exertion of
serious play ...
8
... and the mental stimulation of sport
sciences work.
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section through lecture theatre, seminar rooms, atrium and learning resources (scale approx 1:250), see key p70
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1, 2
The new extension is an object
building in the landscape, starkly
different from its neighbours,
but it also strives to connect with
its surroundings and create a
sense of place.
3
Detail of Western red cedar skin.
ACADEMIC DEBATE
This extension to UCDs microbiology department is a
rational cube that reworks the campus object building.
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site plan
4
7
long section
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
main department
link
entrance
circulation core
laboratory
canteen
offices
4
cross section
2
3
cross section
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4
The crisp cube. Horizontal and
vertical cedar strips will weather in
slightly different ways.
5
Internal Japanese-style garden and
link to the main department (left).
6
The coloured circulation core.
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1
A statue of
Saint Augustine
presides over
the remodelled
former Cloister
of the Novices.
2
The new wing
adjoins the
nineteenthcentury Casa
del Capitn.
MUNICIPAL OFFICES ,
JEREZ , S PAIN
ARCHITECT
ANTONIO MARTNEZ
GARCA & JUAN LUIS
TRILLO DE LEYVA
1
RELIGIOUS
CONVERSION
The latest phase in the evolution of this
historic monastery in Jerez transforms it
into an archive and civic offices.
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8
A
B
C
D
E
E
A
B
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
entrance to complex
patio
ofce entrance
vertical circulation spine
Casa del Capitn
cloister/exhibition space
ofces
library and archive
post room
audio-visual suite
first floor
roof plan
8
6
3
Patio between the new wing
(right) and the refurbished
Casa del Capitn.
4
Patio in the remodelled
cloister brings in light.
5
New parts wrap around and
over the cloister.
6
Library and archive spaces,
spread over two floors.
Architect
Antonio Martnez Garca & Juan Luis Trillo
de Leyva, Seville
Photographs
Duccio Malagamba
10
site plan
4
3
2
1
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second floor
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view
VOTE FOR ARCHITECTURE
To understand recent changes to Britains
Parliamentary arrangements, it is important
to remember the backgrounds of the leading
Labour politicians of the last 30 years. For
example, the Labour Party (which ruled for
the rst three and last 10) has had as its leaders
James Callaghan (Welsh); Michael Foot (Welsh);
Neil Kinnock (Welsh); John Smith (Scottish); and
Tony Blair (English but Scottish-educated). His
heir-apparent is Gordon Brown (Scottish).
Given this parade of the non-English
succeeding in national politics via Westminster,
why should they have supported devolution and
parliamentary buildings in Scotland and Wales?
The answer was partly to do with counteracting
Scottish and Welsh nationalism; it appears that
the creation of a Scottish Parliament, with
its extraordinary building designed by Enric
Miralles (AR November 2004), and now the
Richard Rogers Partnership National Assembly
for Wales, have put those genies back in the
bottle, at least for the time being.
Instead, Gordon Brown recently made an
extraordinary speech in which he called on the
British to start ying the national ag, the Union
Jack, in the American way, and start behaving
more patriotically. This hypocritical drivel
was greeted with the loud raspberry it surely
deserved; the British only wave ags on very
special occasions for example a visit by the
Queen. She will be going to Cardiff on St Davids
Day (1 March) to open the RRP building.
Happily, the architects and their client have
avoided the temptation to turn the Assembly
building into a Disney-esque representation of
all that is Welsh. While many of the materials
used are of Welsh origin, their selection has been
part of an environmental programme aimed at
minimising journey times for materials. (Other
key programme elements included a design life
of 100 years, and accessible and inclusive design
for people of all ages and abilities.)
This is the rst pavilion building by the Richard
Rogers Partnership, and a relatively small project
for the practice (Madrid Airport opens shortly,
for example). However, it punches well above its
weight in creating architectural presence in the
1
The dramatic
front elevation and
oversailing roof
address Cardiff Bay.
2
Neighbours include
the Pierhead
building, now a linked
educational facility,
and the Millennium
Centre beyond.
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29 | 2
view
view
context of the Millennium Centre next door,
the adjacent Pierhead building being used as an
educational facility, and of Cardiff Bay itself,
a large expanse of water behind the barrage
designed by Will Alsop.
The extended overhanging roof, with its
undulating red cedar slatted timber soft, is a
visual complement to the rippling water in the
bay beyond. It gives a real sense of importance
and occasion as you arrive, at plinth level
(magnicently built in Welsh slate, cleaved and
pillared to show off the quality of the material).
You enter an offset security zone and then arrive
in the main living room space, a huge volume
where you can sit, attend informal meetings or
presentations, and watch whatever is happening
in the assembly chamber on one of the many
screens available (all the IT in the buildings is
top-grade). Within the volume you can go to the
upper level caf and sit round the magnicent
timber-clad bell that acts as a light source
and ventilation exit for the assembly chamber
at lower ground level, which includes meeting
rooms and three double-height, glazed-wall
committee chambers. Glass bridges link to an
adjacent existing ofce building where members
and staff have permanent facilities, but most of
the circulation in the building is open to all.
Natural ventilation is the norm, with the
help of 27 boreholes 100m deep, connected
to heat exchangers to provide a temperature
range control, there is some mechanical and
air-conditioning assistance if required, plus
underoor heating. It feels very clement.
3
Upper level of the public space; the
caf is next to the Bell structure
which hovers over the debating
chamber below. Furniture, by Arne
Jacobsen, was selected after appraising
the condition of what he used for St
Catherines College, Oxford.
4
The plinth level arrival space and
information desk.
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31 | 2
view
view
Natural ventilation is
available to vir tually all areas
though there is mixed mode
assistance for extreme
conditions. A wood-fuelled
boiler provides renewable
heating while a rainwater
harvesting system supplies
all (except potable) water.
Daylight is maximised. The
overall design achieved an
excellent BREEAM rating
and exceeds best practice
guidelines. Automatic
controls monitor internal and
external environments and
adjust passive elements (eg,
windows) and active systems
(eg, heating).
Performance monitoring is
carried out through sensors in
the building structure.
5
Triple-height slots run
either side of the debating
chamber.
6
The public views the
Assembly at work through
unintrusive security glazing.
7
Upward view of the bell/
funnel allowing in light,
taking out air.
6
ground condition heat exchangers and apertures create an integrated environmental approach
Architect
Richard Rogers
Partnership, London
Structural engineer
Arup
Environmental/ME
services engineer
BDSP
Acoustic consultant
SRL
Landscape architect
Gillespies
Photographs
Richard Bryant/Arcaid
32 | 2
mid level; visitors can observe the Assembly and committees at work
roof plan; glazed bridge links connect to the existing administration block
33 | 2
delight
Those who thought the Winter Olympics were all about slithering rapidly
across ice or snow wearing a condom or sequins, might be reassured by
the more culturally rened caperings of this years Snow Show staged
in the Italian alpine resort of Sestriere, as an adjunct to (and possibly
distraction from) the Games. Curated by New York-based Lance Fung,
the show reprises the successful formula of previous years, staged in the
more refrigerated climes of Finland (AR March 2004), in which teams of
architects and artists collaborate to create temporary structures out of
ice and snow. Within certain practical limits, imagination can take ight
with extraordinary results. This time, the Torino Olympic Committee
provided funding with Regione Piedmont and Londons Albion Gallery.
Though the photographs here convey an appropriate sense of artistic
serenity, actually bringing to life the vision of people such as Daniel Buren,
Yoko Ono, Norman Foster and Arata Isozaki was fraught with difculties.
Fungs construction team of students working and local contractors was
confronted with yo-yoing temperatures, varying weather conditions (lack
82 | 3
of snow, too much snow) and a cast iron deadline. One days sun could
melt three feet of snow, wiping out a days work.
Ultimately human endeavour overcame nature to make a dramatic
mark on the winter landscape. Lebbeus Woods, working with Kiki Smith,
designed Looking Glass (main picture), a frozen pond with bre optic
cables which emit swirling trails of light, like the tracks of phantom
skaters. Slide Meeting (bottom left) by Williams & Tsien and Carsten
Holler is a geometric bunker penetrated by chutes for high speed
sledging. Norman Fosters personal passion for cross-country skiing
inspires Where Are You (middle), a sculpted snow dial with the global
co-ordinates for his London ofce designed in collaboration with Spanish
artist Jaume Plensa. By contrast,Yoko Onos Penal Colony (far right)
produced with fellow Japanese Arata Isozaki is an austere and oppressive
grey labyrinth. From fantasy to nightmare, the Snow Show (www.
thesnowshow.com) celebrates the creative potential of the white stuff and
perks up the winter scene. It runs until 19 March. C. S.
TREADING LIGHTLY
A
B
C
D
redwood grove
road
creek
house
site plan
52 | 3
HOUSE , B IG SUR ,
CALIFORNIA , USA
ARCHITECT
ANNE FOUGERON
1
Screened by a veil of cedar
battens, the house is cradled
in a deep canyon.
2
Volumes are slightly
elevated to protect from
flooding.
3
Roof oversails to enclose
tall, veranda-like spaces.
4
Detail of cedar screen.
53 | 3
5
Upper level spaces are
connected by a walkway.
6
Sitting lightly in nature
the Big Sur life.
7
The focal inglenook.
8
Detail of upper level library
and roof structure.
MICHAEL WEBB
Architect
Fougeron Architecture, San Francisco
Photographs
Richard Barnes
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
10
entrance
car port
bedroom
bathroom
kitchen
living/dining
sleeping loft
library
deck
void
10
10
cross section
first floor
3
2
long section
4
1
ground floor plan (scale approx 1:200)
54 | 3
HOUSE , B IG SUR ,
CALIFORNIA , USA
ARCHITECT
ANNE FOUGERON
55 | 3
process
Constructing a one-off residence is a costly, messy, and time-consuming
process, which is why, for the past ninety years, progressive architects
have dreamed of standardised modern houses built on a production
line like cars and aircraft. Le Corbusiers 1914 Citrohan house was an
early sketch. Buckminster Fuller dedicated twenty years to rening his
cylindrical aluminium Dymaxion house, only to abandon the project in
1946, just as production in a Kansas aircraft plant was about to begin.
Jean Prouv manufactured two prototypes of a tropical house that were
air-shipped to French West Africa in 1951 (AR December 2005), but
he, too, was soon out of business.
Prefabrication is commonplace in the building industries of Sweden,
Japan, and the US but the product is usually an ersatz historicism.
Only the humble trailer home has enjoyed commercial success as an
unadorned steel module. However, the goal of making good design
more affordable by rationalising construction has always remained in
view, and there has been a surge of activity in the US over the past
three years. Consumer magazines have hosted design competitions,
promoted prize-winning models, and found rms to produce them.
In San Francisco, Michelle Kaufmann could barely afford to build a
simple house on-site for herself and her husband, but is now producing
two factory-built versions of that one-off structure. In LA, Jennifer
Siegals Ofce of Mobile Design is developing innovative solutions and
the partnership of Linda Taalman and Alan Koch has just completed
64 | 3
1
The prototypical Desert
House, designed for Leo
Marmol and his wife, that
shows prospective buyers
what to expect.
2
Elegantly minimal, but
entirely prefabricated.
3
Desert
House under
construction.
4
Trucking
in the
prefabricated
modules.
5
The Desert
House
extends
Californias
modern
house lineage.
6
Luxe living,
achieved
through
intelligent
economy of
design and
construction.
An entry hall separates the master bedroom from the kitchen-diningliving area, which opens onto a covered terrace and pool. A walkway
leads to the guest bedroom and a detached studio, which are set at
an angle to the main house. In its lightness and fusion of indoors and
outdoors, it evokes Neutras sixty-year-old Kaufman house, which the
rm restored in the mid 1990s.
In planning their prefab menu of four basic models, ranging in
size from 61 to 242sqm plus extensive deck areas, Marmol Radziner
tried to avoid the mistakes that have bedevilled other attempts at
standardisation. By creating modules rather than a kit of posts and
panels, they can undertake ninety per cent of the fabrication in their
factory. The recycled steel frames assure rigidity and minimise the
need for solid walls. The size of the modules (17m long and about 4m
square), is the largest volume allowed on California highways without
costly waivers. Wiring, plumbing and cabinetry are built in, and the web
site (www.marmolradzinerprefab.com) allows buyers to upgrade the standard
offerings of equipment, ooring, and colours. They can build their own
foundations, secure permits and pick up the modules at the factory door,
or turn everything over to the architects for a comprehensive service.
Cost for full assembly is around $2700 per sqm, which comes in at the
midpoint between the least expensive prefab offerings and the groundup houses this rm builds.
For the customer, this system of prefabrication is like ordering a car,
selecting colours and options, then coming back a few months later
and driving it away. Thats a big saving in time, hassle and cost, and
the nal price is set in advance. The best of the prefabricated houses
are environmentally friendly, save on the waste of materials and site
trafc, and minimise the inconvenience of construction to neighbours.
But their impact on the housebuilding market is likely to be minimal
until a major developer decides to embrace this intelligent, economical
alternative to current archaic practices. MICHAEL WEBB
66 | 3
5/4/04
12:17 PM
Page 62
1
2
STEPPING
STONES
62 | 3
WC
Besprechung
Garderobe
WC
Teekche
WC
Foyer
Foyer Saal
long section
1
Glazed office block seems to float above
more massive, stone-clad volumes.
2
Entrance courtyard.
3
New building addresses busy
motorway, forming beacon for
industrial campus beyond.
63 | 3
5/4/04
12:17 PM
Page 64
Architect
Barkow Leibinger Architekten, Berlin
Structural engineers
Conzett, Bronzoni, Gartmann;
Boll & Partner
Mechanical engineers
Transsolar; Henne & Walter, Reutlingen
Landscape consultant
Gabi Kiefer
Photographs
Margherita Spiluttini
4
Parallel office blocks linked by stairs.
5, 7
A metal relief, cut using Trumpf
machinery, animates the entrance
hall on ground floor.
6
Interiors are calm, light and
workmanlike.
8
Offices are a triumph of functional
economy.
first floor
1
2
3
4
main entrance
entrance hall
auditorium
offices
64 | 3
site plan
65 | 10
5/4/04
12:10 PM
Page 54
1
Downtown Los Angeles has never
looked so good. Curved surfaces
reflect light and sky, and lead to
new vistas.
C ONCERT HALL ,
L OS A NGELES , USA
ARCHITECT
G EHRY P ARTNERS
5/4/04
12:10 PM
Page 56
From the first solo notes of The Star-Spangled Banner, sung by jazz
vocalist Dianne Reeves in spotlight at centre stage, to the final
crescendo of the entire LA Philharmonic expressing the energy and
shock of Stravinskys Rite of Spring, the inaugural performance at the
Walt Disney Concert Hall was a calibrated workout for both music
and architecture. This is a hall where music in its various iterations
seems remarkably at home with an audience sometimes gathered
vertiginously in the round.
For a building instantaneously acclaimed as a vanguard masterpiece,
the Walt Disney Concert Hall is surprisingly traditional. True, its
giant external petals of stainless-steel cladding are wonderful amid
the isolated towers of Downtown. From afar, they glisten and reflect
the sky, then taunt like the cape of some ingenious
sculptor/matador and swoop away when viewed up-close. Thrilling
to drive past, the Halls cladding plays a sophisticated game of
concave and convex surfaces that, unlike the mostly opaque walls of
the Baroque, contain reflections of light and sky and lead the eye out
to newly framed aspects of adjacent buildings. Downtown Los
Angeles has never looked so good.
Being LA, concertgoers inevitably arrive by car, leaving the garage
by a red escalator lobby topped by one of many fractured skylights.
As with Hans Holleins concoction, and that of Stirling and Wilford in
the original competition back in 1988, Gehrys building takes
advantage of its slightly raised site to play with metaphors of Greek
Acropolis and German stadtkrone. (Fourth invitee Gottfried Bhms
proposal, also stadtkrone-like, was more akin to a Wagnerian
gasworks.) Surrounded by heavily trafficked streets, the orthogonal
site dips from an easterly corner the formal and photogenic entry
court to the west, where a steel ribbon canopy signals entry to
REDCAT, the Roy and Edna Disney CalArts Theater, a
supplementary arts space accommodated within the parking
structure as it rises above street level.
In the 1980s, the acropolis of eclectic elements was characteristic
of such playful urban works as Stirlings Neue Staatsgalerie in
Stuttgart (AR December 1984), Holleins Abteiberg Museum in
Mnchengladbach (AR December 1982), and Gehrys own Loyola
University Law School on a flat site just west of Downtown LA.
Nevertheless, Gehrys virtuosity and experimentation allowed for his
inclusion, alongside a younger generation, in the New York
Deconstructivist Architecture exhibition (also 1988), with its ambitions
to forge a hyper-Modernist avant-garde. Seldom prone to theorizing,
Gehrys office further developed in the 1990s away from shards and
violent fragmentation to a volumetric architecture of dynamic
surfaces engendered (as with the Bilbao Guggenheim, AR December
1997) by evolving computer technology.
Perhaps because of this long gestation period, the Walt Disney
Concert Hall in particular the auditorium and the office blocks
exposed on the plinth retains Gehrys earlier concern with a
Cubistic assemblage of objects together with an emerging ability to
drape space with complexly shaped membranes. Although a large
public greenhouse has been lost, auditorium massing still shifts from
the axial coordinates of the urban block, setting up a tension that is
partially held in check by orthogonal, stone-clad office
accommodation to south and west.
C ONCERT HALL , L OS
A NGELES , USA
A RCHITECT
G EHRY P ARTNERS
long section
56 | 3
cross section
2
Organic forms poised on
orthogonal masonry base that
responds to urban grid.
3, 4
The gardens and paths lifted above
street level offer a whole new public
realm of complexity and delight.
57 | 3
5/4/04
12:10 PM
Page 58
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
future caf
drop off
platform pits
REDCAT theatre
plant
future restaurant
Philharmonic store
concert hall
lobby
choral hall
pre-concert
founders room
dressing rooms
offices
gardens
open-air stage
east atrium
west atrium
C ONCERT HALL ,
L OS A NGELES , USA
ARCHITECT
G EHRY P ARTNERS
5
The great formal entrance at
street level is relatively little used
because most opera-goers arrive
by car and park underground.
58 | 3
5/4/04
12:10 PM
Page 60
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
future caf
drop off
platform pits
REDCAT theatre
plant
future restaurant
Philharmonic store
concert hall
lobby
choral hall
pre-concert
founders room
dressing rooms
offices
gardens
open-air stage
east atrium
west atrium
C ONCERT HALL ,
L OS A NGELES , USA
ARCHITECT
G EHRY P ARTNERS
6
Each landing or corridor is
intended to be a viewing terrace,
like the ones in Scharouns
Philharmonie.
60 | 3
61 | 10
5/4/04
12:10 PM
Page 62
62 | 3
Architect
Gehry Partners, Los Angeles
Principal project team
Frank Gehry, James Glymph, Craig Webb, Terry Bell,
David Pakshong, William Childers, David Hardie,
Kristin Woehl
Structural engineer
John A. Martin & Associates
Electrical engineer
Frederick Russell Brown
Mechanical engineer
Levine/Seegel Associates
Acoustic consultant
Nagata Acoustics
Lighting design
Lobservatoire International
Landscape design
Lawrence Reed Moline; Melinda Taylor Landscape Design
Theatre consultants
Theatre Projects
Photographs
John E. Linden/Arcaid except
7 and 8 by Hufton + Crow/VIEW
C ONCERT HALL ,
L OS A NGELES , USA
ARCHITECT
G EHRY P ARTNERS
7, 8
The great timber box, with its
dramatic views of the sky.
RAYMUND RYAN
24/5/04
12:10 pm
Page 59
LUMINOUS PARADIGM
The Genzyme Center brings transforming imagination to US
office design, adding environmental and human dimensions.
1
Externally, the Genzyme Center
conforms to a rigorous masterplan and
does not seem revolutionary.
2
Glazed curtain walls have tracts of
openable windows and deep cavities
with various blinds and curtains.
59 | 4
24/5/04
12:11 pm
Page 60
3
Foyer with Behnisch trademark grand stair.
Light enters from top and sides and is
reflected by chandeliers and pools.
60 | 4
site plan
61 | 10
24/5/04
12:11 pm
Page 62
first floor
62 | 4
11th floor
4th floor
63 | 10
24/5/04
12:12 pm
Page 64
64 | 4
Architect
Behnisch, Behnisch & Partner
Project team
Stefan Behnisch, Christof Jantzen,
Gnther Schaller, Martin Werminghausen,
Maik Neumann
Executive architects
House & Robertson, Los Angeles: Douglas
Robertson, Nick Gillock, Patricia Schneider
Next Phase Studios, Boston: Richard Ames,
Scott Payette
Masterplanning
Ken Greenberg
Environmental consultancy, structural
and M/E/P/engineers
Buro Happold
Green building consultant
Natural Logic: Bill Reid
Planting interior gardens
Log ID
Natural and artificial lighting
Bartenbach Lichtlabor
Workspace design
DEGW: Frank Duffy
Photographs
Roland Halbe
5, 6
Trays and terraces of office
accommodation linked by open stairs
are intended to foster feelings of a
community of small groups.
5/4/04
12:53 PM
Page 48
1
In a nondescript suburb of Rome, the
church is a glowing beacon composed
of overlapping, shell-like forms.
2
Main east entrance. The concrete
shells are anchored by a spine wall.
INSTRUMENT OF LIGHT
Richard Meiers long awaited church in Rome is
a beautifully honed giver and receiver of light.
48 | 4
site plan
49 | 4
5/4/04
12:54 PM
Page 50
longitudinal section
cross section
50 | 4
basement
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
meeting room
courtyard
community centre
main (east) entrance
campanile
nave
altar
side chapel
confessionals
organ loft
priests offices
pastoral residence
kitchen
bedrooms
second floor
first floor
3
The calm, luminous interior. The
limited palette of materials (white
concrete, travertine and timber) and
studied absence of ornamentation
enhances the air of serenity.
51 | 4
5/4/04
12:54 PM
Page 52
4
Detail of organ loft.
5
Both literally and metaphorically,
the church is a giver and receiver
of light.
IVOR RICHARDS
Architect
Richard Meier & Partners, New York
Structural engineers
Ove Arup and Partners, Italcementi
Mechanical engineers
Ove Arup and Partners, Luigi DellAquila
Lighting consultants
FMRS, Erco
Photographs
Edmund Sumner/VIEW
52 | 4
axonometric projection
53 | 4
COTTBUS
KALEIDOSCOPE
This library enlivens both the campus and civic realm of
a former industrial centre striving to reinvent itself.
Cottbus, a banal industrial
city near the Polish border, is
worth a fast hours drive on the
autobahn from Berlin for its
quirky Jugendstil theatre, and as
an incentive to continue on to
Wroclaw (the former Breslau),
a repository of classic modern
buildings. Head south, and you
can stay overnight at Lobau in
Hans Scharouns 1933 Haus
Schminke. Herzog & de Meurons
new university library deserves
its place in this pantheon, as
an example of how the Swiss
partnership fuse rigorous analysis
with poetic beauty.
1
The sinuous volume of
the library is wrapped
in a double layer of
glass silk screened
with letters that form
a visual babble.
2
Like a monumental
Aalto vase, the library
commands its campus
site, formerly a
university sports field.
3
Main entrance and
detail of shimmering,
alphabetic cladding.
64 | 4
65 | 4
cross section
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
4
Entrance hall and
main reception. Pink
predominates.
5
Typical doubleheight reading area,
penetrated by the pink
and green corkscrew
staircase.
6
Coruscating hues
animate the interior.
7
The vortex becomes a
place of interaction.
Architect
Herzog & de Meuron, Basel
Photographs
Monika Nikolic
main entrance
entrance hall
caf
reading rooms
book stacks
ofces
study carrels
void
4
8
8
2
location plan
3
4
4
66 | 4
first floor
second floor
67 | 4
CATHEDRAL OF COMMERCE
This new department store is a monumental
shop window with wider urban ambitions.
60 | 4
DEPARTMENT STORE ,
COLOGNE , G ERMANY
ARCHITECT
RENZO PIANO BUILDING
WORKSHOP
1
The bulbous
prow of the new
store has quickly
become a new
Cologne landmark.
2
God and Mammon
the store lies
opposite the late
Gothic church of
St Antoniterkirche.
3
The great glass
frontage surges
and swells around a
more conventional
orthogonal block.
61 | 4
4
The sweep of the glass
wall defines a new square
in front of the church.
5
Soaring timber ribs are
anchored by a secondary
steel structure.
6
Inside the bulbous prow.
7
Colognes historic
cathedral seen from its
new temple of commerce.
62 | 4
site plan
DEPARTMENT STORE ,
COLOGNE , G ERMANY
ARCHITECT
RENZO PIANO BUILDING
WORKSHOP
Architect
Renzo Piano Building Workshop, Genoa
Structural engineer
Knippers & Helbig
Facade
Bro Mosbacher
Photographs
Michel Denanc
63 | 4
Dwelling
ERICK VAN
EGERAAT
84 | 4
HOUSING , C OPENHAGEN ,
DENMARK
From urban housing to rural houses, residential projects are a source of experimentation.
Won in competition in 2003 and due for completion in 2009, Erick van Egeraats Kryers Plads housing is located on a waterfront site in
Copenhagens harbour district. Here, close to the sea, the scale changes and horizons widen. The competition design was inspired by the rich,
almost fairytale-like atmosphere of the Danish capital, with its narrow intimate streets, cobbled squares, dark roofs, traditional materials and
intense colours conspiring to suggest that anything (and everything) could happen.
Van Egeraats starting point for the 16 000sqm housing complex was the contextual Danish tradition of simple, pitch-roofed buildings. Yet
in his provocative way, he gives tradition a sharp and timely twist. New and exaggeratedly angular forms are created by stretching, morphing
and distorting in three dimensions. To maximise views towards the sea and the harbour, towers are rotated and apartments fully glazed, but
the glazing is wrapped in a protective cladding system of louvres and grilles that provides both sun protection and visual privacy. Materials and
colours allude to the earth: copper red, terracotta and natural slate are set against more lightweight stainless steel and glass. With a random
pattern of open and closed surfaces, the ensemble of blocks creates an intriguing contrast between the infinite expanse of the water and the
more closed, hermetic and intimate volumes of the housing complex.
To give them more prominence when seen from the water, blocks are arranged on a tilted concrete platform. Beneath the undulating
platform are parades of shops, adding an element of civic animation to the surroundings. The small bay to the south-east of the site may also
be incorporated as a marina for the waterfront residents. Though van Egeraats whimsical warpings of form are far removed from the more
reticent and sober traditions of Danish architecture, this promises to be an intriguing urban set-piece. C. S.
85 | 4
site plan
HAWKINS BROWN
HOUSING REFURBISHMENT , S HEFFIELD , UK
86 | 4
WILL BRUDER
HOUSE , R ENO , N EVADA , USA
0 1
10M
NORTH ELEVATION
SEAN
GODSELL
HOUSE , V ICTORIA , A USTRALIA
87 | 4
UN STUDIO
HOUSE , N EW Y ORK STATE ,
USA
TADAO ANDO
HOUSE , S AN FRANCISCO , USA
88 | 4
OFIS
APARTMENT BLOCK , I ZOLA , S LOVENIA
Ofis are a young Slovenian practice who were premiated in last years Emerging Architecture Awards for their imaginative addition to
Ljubljanas City Museum (AR December 2004). Formerly part of Yugoslavia, Slovenia managed to stay out of the toxic disintegration of the
Balkans and is now part of the EU. As exposure to external influences grows, Slovenian architectural culture is becoming increasingly lively
and sophisticated, looking northwards across the Alps to Austria and Germany for sources of inspiration.
Ofis are currently working on a number of housing projects, including this one in Izola, a town on the Slovenian coast. The brief is for a
block of 30 affordable apartments aimed at young couples and families, so budget and space standards are far from generous. Despite these
constraints and a site on the industrial edge of town, Ofis manage to create a lively and eye-catching block, its facades
animated by a series of angular, pod-like loggias. Sun and privacy shading is provided by textile screens which
add to the general gaiety and variety of the composition. Now on site, the project is due to be
completed later this year. C. S.
89 | 4
1957
1970
1980
1994
1984
PROPOSED
EXTENSION
1994
KETTLES YARD
Kettles Yard is one of Cambridges most popular cultural venues. Established by Jim Ede in 1957, its collection displays
an extensive range of modern art. Likewise its buildings are an eclectic mix of old and new, with Leslie Martins
celebrated extensions. This year Jamie Fobert has been appointed as the architect for the next phase.
73 | 5
74 | 5
new links with old with a series of descending levels and increasing volumes
1957
1970
1980
1994
1984
PROPOSED
EXTENSION
1994
75 | 5
The search for an architect for the next phase of development began
in January this year when Michael Harrison, Kettles Yard director
since 1992, was advised by management committee member Eric
Parry to run an RIBA design competition. New education facilities
were required to provide space for the annual programme of 375
education sessions currently accommodated in a rather cramped
education room at the centre of the plan that could only hold half
a class at a time. Having reprocessed the two remaining shop fronts
from tenants, sufficient space was made available to also include
a new environmentally stable archive for its painting collection
(that in the spirit of Ede is still offered on long loans to University
students to take home), a caf (to attract new visitors and give
regulars a place to inhabit), and a more formal seminar space (for
life long learning, lectures and so on).
Having invited 16 or so practices to submit examples of their work,
Jamie Fobert was chosen from a high calibre shortlist that included
De Rijke Marsh Morgan, Caruso St John, Stanton Williams, Ushida
Findlay and 5th Studio. (A success that was shortly followed by his
appointment to design the new extension at Tate St Ives.) Having
spent nine years with David Chipperfield before establishing
his own practice nine years ago, Jamie Fobert is emerging as an
architect of distinction. By focusing on the essence of architectural
space and the practicality of process led detailing, he avoids the
superfluous gestures that distract so many others. As demonstrated
in the Anderson House (AR April 2004), and as qualified by his
admiration for the work of Morandi and Hammershoi, Foberts work
returns our attention to the potency of simple forms and volumes,
and when shaping interior spaces reminds us of the importance
of making decent rooms. As such, Harrison recalls how Fobert,
without making any detailed proposals, had particularly impressed
the jury with his reading of Kettles Yard, its art and the evolution
of its architecture. In displaying and sharing its collection, daylight
is the keynote of Kettles Yard a place of physical and spiritual
76 | 5
77 | 5
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
basement archive
accessible lavatory
new stair
education room
store
caf
multi-purpose seminar room
1
2
4
78 | 5
79 | 5
80 | 5
24/5/04
C IVIC OFFICES ,
D OORADOYLE , I RELAND
ARCHITECT
B UCHOLZ M C E VOY
A RCHITECTS
12:53 pm
Page 58
1
A huge timber brise-soleil is the dramatic
formal and functional signature of Limericks
new civic offices.
2
The council chamber is contained in a
terracotta tiled drum.
3
The building is set back from the road with
parking concealed among a topography of
earth berms, which will eventually mature into
green mounds.
CIVIC DIGNITY
58 | 410
59 | 5
24/5/04
12:53 pm
Page 60
second floor
cross section
first floor
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
60 | 5
council chamber
meeting room
offices
public gallery
main entrance
reception
atrium
kitchen
servery
staff restaurant
location plan
4
The timber lattice is made up of
trusses suspended between horizontal
transfer beam and steel roof structure.
5
Office spaces overlook the long atrium.
6
Projecting light shelves on the more
hermetic east elevation bring daylight
into the interior.
7
Angled truss members optimize
shading without moving parts.
61 | 5
24/5/04
12:54 pm
Page 62
62 | 5
10
8
Light, airy interiors are simply but
handsomely detailed.
9
Typical office space.
10
Council chamber is contained in the
semi-detached drum.
11
The soaring nave-like atrium forms the
buildings set-piece space.
11
24/5/04
12:46 pm
Page 44
1
The new Dutch Embassy, the latest
addition to Berlins rapidly evolving
skyline, occupies a site on the edge of
the river Spree.
2
After dark, the snaking trajectory
around the building is revealed.
THE CABINET OF
DR KOOLHAAS
Gently subverting Berlins urban matrix, the new Dutch Embassy is
an Expressionist labyrinth with a surprisingly informal interior realm.
44 | 5
D UTCH E MBASSY ,
B ERLIN , G ERMANY
ARCHITECT
OMA
site plan
45 | 5
24/5/04
12:46 pm
Page 46
D UTCH E MBASSY ,
B ERLIN , G ERMANY
ARCHITECT
OMA
46 | 5
3
Slim wings are linked to the main cube
by stacked bridges.
4
Entrance to the embassy compound.
5
Inside the cantilevered volume of the
conference room.
6
The adjacent wings meet the local
planning requirement to build on all
four corners of the site
7
but the main focus of attention is the
cube, an impressively object building,
but modest in scale when compared
with other current Koolhaas projects.
24/5/04
12:46 pm
Page 48
9
9
14
10
first level
fourth level
seventh level
cross section
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
car park
offices
reception
multipurpose hall
maintenance
press and culture
foreign office
transportation
apartment
agriculture
post
archive
ambassador
politics
economics
fitness suite
cafe
17
13
third level
sixth level
ninth level
9
9
11
15
2
7
16
12
48 | 5
second level
fifth level
eighth level
49 | 5
24/5/04
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Page 50
D UTCH E MBASSY ,
B ERLIN , G ERMANY
ARCHITECT
OMA
8
The fashionably glum interior is
dominated by the presence of
the trajectory.
9
Ramps, stairs and corridors wind
around the building, connecting the
principal spaces.
9
CAFE
PRESS
POLITICS
FITNESS
CONFERENCE
RECEPTION
INTERNET
ADMIN
TRAFFIC
POST
POST
CONFERENCE
MULTIPURPOSE
HALL
ROOF
TERRACE
AMBASSADORS
QUARTERS
50 | 5
51 | 5
24/5/04
12:46 pm
Page 52
D UTCH E MBASSY ,
B ERLIN , G ERMANY
ARCHITECT
OMA
low ceiling in the trajectory on level five, which compels tall visitors,
such as Koolhaas, to instinctively lower their heads.
Because of the deliberate spatial complexity, there is little
coordination between interior and exterior. Here, Koolhaas pays the
price for his structural manoeuvring, as he is obliged to rely on a
loadbearing double facade. Where the internal zigzagging of the
trajectory feigns freedom or even anarchy, the straight steel columns
that run down the full height of the building indicate a necessary and
more simplistic rigour. Despite the spectacular feat of one conference
room cantilevering 5m out from the facade and the trajectorys handful
of timidly projecting features, the external envelope is actually a
dreaded Cartesian cage. Evidently the spectacular cost (35 million
euros) and extraordinary planning and construction time (five years)
could not assuage this fundamental stylistic defect. Did the regimented
marching order of Berlins facades finally catch up with the master
of the informal?
Still, Koolhaas embassy is undoubtedly a cunning retort to dogmatic
planning laws as well as being another free gift to the city of Berlin. It
even frames the outlandish Alexanderplatz television tower, a symbolic
relic from the era of perceived Communist superiority over the West.
From the core of the embassy cube there is an unobstructed view
(through a gigantic opening in the apartment wing) of the towers
Sputnik-like top. It is a powerful (yet also possibly partly ironic) gesture
of reverence from Koolhaas to a city that once upon a time publicly
denounced him and his views on modern architecture.
10
CHRISTIAN BRENSING
11
12
52 | 5
13
Architect
OMA, Rotterdam
Structural engineers
Royal Haskoning, Arup Berlin
Services engineers
Huygen Elwako, Arup Berlin
Photographs
Christian Richters
10
The staircase is articulated on the
facade as a diagonal slash of glazing.
11
Green glass panels unexpectedly
dematerialise the floor plane.
12
A typical office on the upper floors.
13
A meeting room adorned with
contemporary art.
14
The multipurpose hall on the first floor.
14
53 | 5
product review
WALTER KNOLL
Circle is an innovative new seating system
by Ben van Berkel of UN Studio for Walter Knoll.
Inspired by the design of the new Mercedes-Benz Museum
in Stuttgart, the basic circular form can be broken down
and reconfigured to create a range of seating options.
Enquiry 500 www.arplus.com/enq.html
BELLA MILANO
MAGIS
This years Milan Furniture Fair was the last to be held on the familiar Fiera
site before it decamps to a superscale new trade fair complex designed by
Massimiliano Fuksas. Furniture design, like fashion, thrives on a sense of
gratuitous novelty, but among the plethora of stands and showrooms, here
are some of the things that caught Catherine Slessors eye.
KARTELL
Mademoiselle chair
by Philippe Starck
for Kartell. The clear
polyurethane frame is
upholstered in fabrics
designed by Rosita
Missoni for the Casa
Missoni collection.
Enquiry 502 www.
arplus.com/enq.html
MOROSO
Supernatural stackable chair, with solid or
perforated back, by Ross Lovegrove for Moroso.
Enquiry 503 www.arplus.com/enq.html
Crystall chair by Zaha Hadid for Sawaya & Moroni, displaying a talent
for futuristic furniture to match her futuristic architecture.
Enquiry 504 www.arplus.com/enq.html
LA PALMA
Sleek, spare and Scandinavian:
Elica folding chair by Gudmundur
Ludvik for La Palma.
Enquiry 505 www.arplus.com/enq.html
90 | 5
milan
DRIADE STORE
MOROSO
Dutch wunderkind
Tord Boontje presents
Oval, a table with an
elaborately patterned
top, inspired by the
cascades and whirls of
vegetation and nature.
Enquiry 507 www.
arplus.com/enq.html
CASSINA
VITRA
KRISTALIA
Cute CU coffee table by
Monica Graffeo for Kristalia.
Enquiry 511 www.arplus.com/enq.html
91 | 5
product review
EDRA
The crazy Campana brothers are at it again Fernando and Humberto present
Jenette, an injection moulded polyurethane seat with a brush-like backrest made
from around 1000 long, thin stalks of flexible PVC. Available in a range of searing
primary colours, Jenette marries the Brazilian brothers quirkiness and flair with
modern techniques of mass-production.
Enquiry 513 www.arplus.com/enq.html
B & B ITALIA
Shelf X bookcase in white
Corian by Naoto Fukasawa
for B & B Italia.
Enquiry 514 www.arplus.
com/enq.html
LAMMHULTS
Imprint chair made from Cellupress, a new pressed wood fibre material specially
developed by Danish designers Johannes Foersom and Peter Hiort-Lorenzen. By
using waste products and applying sustainable criteria to production and life cycle,
the aim is to create a range of ecologically enlightened furniture.
Enquiry 512 www.arplus.com/enq.html
VITRA
Vitra have reissued the Standard chair, originally designed in 1934 by Jean
Prouv. Combining a metal frame with a moulded plywood seat, the Standard
inventively exploited early techniques of prefabrication. An expanded colour
palette brings this robust design classic up to date.
Enquiry 515 www.arplus.com/enq.html
KLLEMO
Origami stacking
chair by Sigurdur
Gustafsson for
Kllemo. A crisply
elegant natural or
lacquered birch
seat is supported
by a thin chromed
steel frame.
Enquiry 516 www.
arplus.com/enq.html
92 | 5
VALDICHIENTI
Trilounge armchair
(with integral pouf) by
American designer Todd
Bracher for Valdichienti.
Enquiry 517 www.arplus.
com/enq.html
DIPLOMATIC RELATIONS
1
The long, low bar
of the chancellery
emerges from the
forested landscape.
2
A gatehouse in the
colours of the Dutch flag
signposts the embassy
complex off a busy main
road on the southern
outskirts of Addis Ababa.
3
Ethiopias remarkable
Coptic churches, which
are literally hewn from
rock, were a powerful
source of inspiration.
4, 5
The long roof overshoots
to mark the main public
entrance, at the buildings
east end.
6
The ambassadors private
residence is housed in the
west end.
A
B
C
D
E
F
gatehouse
approach road
chancellery
deputy ambassadors residence
staff houses
school building
56 | 5
site plan
57 | 5
7
Walls of deep ochre pigmented
concrete retain the marks and
scores of their making.
8
The roof is carved with shallow
channels to catch water.
9
The pattern of the channels
evokes Dutch wetlands.
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
main entrance
central hall
spinal corridor
reception
library
ambassadors ofces
administration
patio
technical/storage
approach road
salon
ambassadors private quarters
roof plan
first floor
58 | 5
59 | 5
long section
10
A grandly-scaled
staircase leads up to
the roof.
11
The spinal corridor
gently rises through the
building.
12
The ambassadors
private quarters give on
to a terrace.
13
Dividable salon for
formal entertaining.
14
Patios cut into building
bring light into the
cave-like interior.
11
12
13
14
long section
Architect
Dick van Gameren and Bjarne
Mastenbroek, Amsterdam
Associate architects
Abba Architects, Addis Ababa
Structural engineers
Ove Arup & Partners,
Messele Haile Engineering
Photographs
Christian Richters except nos 3 & 9
60 | 5
10
61 | 5
house
1
Box with
a view. An
elevated
structure
saves on
foundations.
Bijou box
This prototype for an easily transportable and
economical house shows that small can be beautiful.
PROTOTYPE HOUSE ,
MUNICH , G ERMANY
ARCHITECTS
HORDEN CHERRY LEE /
HAACK + HPFNER
79 | 5
2
The ultra compact
design is inspired by
the elegant economy
of aviation and
automobile design.
3
Living/dining
quarters, with
sleeping bunk above.
The sunken area
can also be used as
an extra sleeping
space. Large areas of
glazing help to dispel
claustrophobia.
CATHERINE SLESSOR
Architects
Horden Cherry Lee, London;
Haack + Hpfner, Munich
Photographs
Sascha Kletzsch
PROTOTYPE HOUSE ,
MUNICH , G ERMANY
ARCHITECTS
HORDEN CHERRY LEE /
HAACK + HPFNER
3
1 deck
2 entrance
3 galley kitchen
4 dining/living area with
sleeping bunk above
5 wc/bathroom
1
2
80 | 5
81 | 5
COMMUNITY CENTRE ,
LOS A NGELES , USA
ARCHITECT
FERNANDO V AZQUEZ
13
14
15
17
3
16
11
12
10
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
reception
games room
ofces
lounge
computer games room
sports library
wc
loading dock
kitchen
dance studio
exercise studio
boxing & weightlifting
mens locker room
womens locker room
accounting
void
storage
first floor
6
7
7
9
1
4
8
2
3
cross section
COLOUR FIELD
A former warehouse is boldly
revitalised to provide a community
and urban focus.
66 | 5
1
The buildings revitalised
and searingly colourful
facade proclaims its mission
of social improvement.
2
The original warehouse.
3, 4
Skylights and clerestories
bring daylight into the deep
industrial plan.
67 | 5
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B
C
D
E
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museum
museum square
workshops
administration
sculpture court
site plan
CRYSTAL CASE
The Rhineland Regional Museum in Bonn is a model
of its kind in both urban and cultural terms.
The Rhineland Regional Museum started as long ago as the 1820s, and
has accumulated a distinguished collection ranging from the 40 000
year old skeleton of Neanderthal man to contemporary artworks. The
original purpose-made museum building was set up in the 1890s on a
site stretching north-south between two streets just south of the main
railway station. An extension was added in 1909.
During the Second World War, the main building was bombed, leaving
the 1909 extension at the north end intact, and a boxy new museum
building in sub-Mies vocabulary was made to replace it in 1967. By the
late 1990s, this had become technically unsatisfactory, submitting its
valuable contents to unacceptable variations in temperature and
humidity, quite apart from the sheer unattractiveness of the uninspired
and ageing fabric. At first, the museum authorities intended to rework
and update the thirty year old structure, but this promised to be an
expensive task, hardly less than renewing the whole. Having just lost the
status of capital, Bonn was being handed generous cultural money, so a
new building to the highest technical standards was possible. A
competition was held and won by Architektengruppe Stuttgart, who
decided to make a new block to the south, its main entrance fronting a
shallow square, while preserving and internally converting the 1909
1
The layered facade ...
2
... which, on the south side, contains a
caf and some exhibits in the transition
space.
54 | 6
55 | 6
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12:14 pm
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extension to the north. Rather than working directly with the exhibits,
the architects were asked to produce a range of exhibition rooms
flexible in character, allowing for changes of interpretation. The
exhibition design was placed in other hands as a separate operation.
Most remarkable in the new museum is the layered treatment of the
south facade, which flips between transparent and reflective as your
viewpoint changes. A single-glazed outer screen-wall serving as
rainscreen and climatic buffer stands some 4m forward of the timber
inner facade surmounted by a completely glazed roof. This glass case is
not just an empty symbol for a museum, but also a transition space. It
provides a protected outdoor area for the caf enjoying the afternoon
sun, and it also houses a couple of exhibits which belong outside but
require protection from frost and acid rain: a Roman arcade and a
Gothic cross. The naked wooden inner facade behind is presented in
contrast like a series of display cases or open drawers shallowly angled
to project from the facade plane. The twist in its components makes
the facade more three-dimensional, brings down the scale, and
exaggerates the degree of openness. In fact it is largely solid, though
there are narrow windows between the boxes framing views to southeast. The timber treatment continues inside, its texture enhanced by
the sidelight, so the visitor easily makes the connection.
The organization of the new museum is commendably clear and
makes a virtue of the marriage of the buildings, for nowhere does it
seem a strain. The ground floor central entrance introduces the main
axis along which the complex is deployed. It leads on through a glass
wall to a visually open but fully controlled layer housing ticket hall and
caf, and near-central stairs in a large well lead down to cloakrooms.
Entrance to the museum involves passage through another glass wall
which brings one to a well with stairs to one side and numerous other
flights and ramps passing overhead. This atrium is the heart of the
building, mediating between the shallower floor heights of the new part
and the more generous old ones in the 1909 part. It is a clear reference
point for reorientation and is spatially the most interesting volume, but
so little daylight is admitted by the clerestories of the rooflight that it
second floor
3, 4
Like a display case or open drawers.
5
The atrium, which is the heart of the
building, relating the disparate floor
heights of old and new elements.
first floor
56 | 6
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
entrance
lobby
restaurant
shop
atrium
school lunch
classrooms
reading room
library
administration
void
temporary exhibition
plant
long section
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58 | 6
encouraged the architects to provide regular views out, but the phobia
against daylight has for the most part won the day, for even key viewing
windows are toned down by screens, and side-lighting in old rooms is
filtered by solid if translucent blinds. Strong light can of course damage
many kinds of materials, and museum objects are meant to last for
ever, so the caution of curators is understandable. At the same time,
exhibition designers most easily achieve control by applying artificial
lamps of their own, and have made this their automatic habit. But many
of us prefer to see objects by daylight if at all possible, and its variability
the very thing that puts curators and exhibition designers off is also
its virtue. It changes at different times of day and year, and helps locate
us in time. It is possible to calculate an objects speed of destruction in
variable light and put it in darkness when it is not being seen. It is also
possible to filter and control daylight and sunlight so that they are not
excessive. But this requires close collaboration between architects,
designers and curators rather than the assumption that exhibition
areas are essentially black boxes. PETER BLUNDELL JONES
6, 7
Climax of museum: central hall bathed
in daylight from translucent ceiling.
Architect
Architektengruppe Stuttgart
Knut Lohrer, Uli Pfeil, Dieter Herrmann,
Gerhard Bosch, Dieter K. Keck
Job architects
Cathrin Dietz, Verena Wortelkamp
Assistants
Ulrich Hanselmann, Achim Buhse, Karin
Koschmieder, Monika Krnke, Bernd Remili,
Nicola Sibiller, Walter Ulrich, Jrg Wenzel,
Andrea Wiedmaier
Photographs
All by Roland Halbe except no 6 by author
arJune04chipperfield
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1
1
Shed or studio? With its rendered
facade, Gormleys new studio is
robust and maintenance-free.
QUANTUM LEAP
S TUDIO , L ONDON , UK
ARCHITECT
D AVID C HIPPERFIELD
65 | 6
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S TUDIO , L ONDON , UK
ARCHITECT
D AVID C HIPPERFIELD
66 | 5
location plan
2
Gormleys principal studio space is
lofty and spacious with bright,
generous rooflights ...
3
... providing space in which to work,
with access to workshop and storage
areas beyond.
67 | 6
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4
Transfuser suspended beneath
rooflight.
5
Gormleys workshop, with views
through to principal studio beyond.
6
View from office, through principal
studio, to Gormleys study beyond.
7
Resources/meeting room.
8
Vicken Parsons studio.
9
View from studio office with
common room beyond.
S TUDIO , L ONDON , UK
ARCHITECT
D AVID C HIPPERFIELD
long section
3
6
1
2
16
68 | 6
14 15
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
main studio
workshop
studio managers office
plaster room
changing rooms
photography studio
deliveries/storage
private studio 1
private studio II
common room
office
resources/meeting
dark room
storage
lavatories
courtyard
12
8
13
9
11
10
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TUNED INSTRUMENT
Pianos arts museum in Dallas rivals Kahns in neighbouring
Fort Worth in lucidity and the subtle use of limpid light.
S CULPTURE MUSEUM ,
D ALLAS , T EXAS , USA
ARCHITECT
R ENZO P IANO
B UILDING W ORKSHOP
Since the 1960s, real-estate developer Raymond Nasher and his late
wife, Patsy, amassed an outstanding collection of modern art,
concentrated mainly on sculpture. Now totalling some 350 works,
these were displayed in their house and garden and some, so the
public might encounter and enjoy them, in Nashers North Park
shopping centre. The sculpture centre now allows the public to view
these works displayed on a rotating basis, which, along with visiting
exhibitions and other events, should encourage regular revisits in a
contemplative verdant oasis on the edge of the city centre. Nasher,
having met Renzo Piano at the Beyeler opening, entrusted design of
the museum to him and the garden to Peter Walker.
The 2.4-acre city-block site is in Dallas Arts District, across the
street from the Dallas Museum of Art and a block away from
I. M. Peis Meyerson Symphony Center, between the sleek, skystriving towers of downtown and a sunken motorway. The design
challenge was to create a modestly scaled building that could belong
to such a site, bereft of history and consistent contextual cues,
overlooked by behemoths and edged by massive metropolitan-scaled
infrastructure. Pianos initial instinctual response, poetic rather than
rational, was to neither compete with nor conform to this context.
Instead the new gallery is quiet and low, and subtly emphasizes the
1
The whole is ordered by the rhythmic
stone-faced walls, from which the roofs
are suspended.
47 | 6
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2, 3
Peter Walker did the magnificent
garden, which resonates gently and
quietly with Pianos building.
4
Bay ends are all glazed, easier in a
gallery devoted to sculpture than one
that shows mainly paintings.
5, 6
Beautifully cut Travertine limestone,
the material from which Classical
Rome was built, adds solidity to the
myth of the mass.
4
5
48 | 6
site plan
49 | 6
arjun04pianodone
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Page 50
7
Being the lowest part of its
surroundings, the Nasher
8
drinks in light from the sky through
a most carefully gradated and
orientated system of filters.
9
Lightness and transparency are
Pianos driving intentions.
9
26
28
27
27
26
26
26
26
10
23
24
22
north-west/south-east section
20
21
26
19
18
26
16
13
29
17
26
50 | 6
cross sections
26
25
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
main entrance
entrance vestibule
entrance hall
art gallery
caf
multipurpose space
secondary entrance
security
servery
goods lift
gift shop
boardroom
passenger lift
cloakroom
offices
classroom
auditorium
open-plan offices
general store
art store
conservation store
workshop
stage area
kitchen
staff break
mechanical
loading
truck lift
terraced garden
7
5
10
8
13 14
12
15
11
51 | 6
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52 | 6
10
11
10
From inside, it is difficult to
comprehend ...
11
... the elaborate egg-crate
construction of the north-seeking
aluminium castings on the roof.
12
A building that offers itself in a
gesture of welcome.
Architect
Renzo Piano Building Workshop, Genoa
Project team
R. Piano, E. Baglietto, B.Terpeluk, S. Ishida,
B. Bauer, L. Pelleriti, S. Scarabicchi,
A. Symietz, E. Trezzani, G. Langasco,
Y. Kashiwagi, F. Cappellini, S. Rossi
Associate architects
Beck Architecture, Dallas;
Interloop A/D, Houston
Structural engineer
Ove Arup & Partners
Landscape consultant
Peter Walker and Partners
Photographs
John E. Linden
12
1 2
WORLD SERVICE
BMWs sales and events centre in Munich reflects an increasing urge for spectacle.
The hyper competitive world
of the European car industry is
forcing manufacturing companies
to devise ever more elaborate
events, spectacles and locations
in order to sell their products.
Next to Formula One racing,
architecture has become a
favourite means of promoting
the right image. Over the last few
70 | 6
1
The new building in its Munich context
with the existing BMW headquarters
bottom left.
2, 3
Different elements are united by a
great cloud-like glass roof that billows
upwards from a double cone structure.
71 | 6
4
Interior of model.
5
A new Munich landmark.
72 | 6
long section
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
Hall
Forum
VIP car delivery
brieng centre
bistro
exhibition space
BMW Individual
shops
Double Cone
(event space)
Premiere
(car delivery)
childrens area
lounge
restaurant
third floor
exploded axonometric
first floor
location plan
73 | 6
46 | 6
1
A three-storey pavilion to
the west provides a new
centralised point of entry
from Madison Avenue ...
2
... which leads visitors into
the heart of the precinct;
a lofty and bright internal
piazza.
REQUIRED READING
With extensive new accommodation, above
and below ground, Renzo Piano brings unity
and order to the Morgan Library.
47 | 6
48 | 6
3
Looking north toward
the new office suite ...
4
... east toward garden
and annex ...
5
... and south toward the
new Thaw Gallery, the
piazza is an excellent
point of lateral
orientation.
6
The 15m high glazed
volume also rationalises
vertical circulation.
49 | 6
14
7
13
12
11
8
10
15
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
18
18
18
19
16
17
18
50 | 6
7
The Madison Avenue
view, before Pianos
intervention.
8, 9
In contrast with the
ornate detail of the
existing buildings, the
Thaw Gallery has a
restrained and stripped
back level of articulation,
inside and out.
51 | 6
52 | 6
north/south section looking west (staggered through Thaw Gallery and auditorium)
10
53 | 6
The lucidity of this plan, which grew organically from Pianos concept
sketch, is matched by the lightness and precision of the architecture,
and the strength and honesty of the materials. The steel panels and
thin mouldings are painted white with an almost imperceptible rose
tone that picks up on the Tennessee pink marble of the library and
annex. Piano likens the high-transparency, low-iron glass to crystal. As
in all his buildings, natural light is ltered by louvres that are oriented
to the north, motorised blinds, and white scrim in the Thaw Gallery,
whose proportions were inspired by those of a Renaissance studiolo.
The hierarchy and interpenetration of spaces, plus the glimpses of
trafc and greenery (a public park to the south, a bamboo screen to
block an apartment tower to the east) distil the energy and richness
of New York. Each of the new structures is separated by glass
from the old buildings, which have been meticulously restored. The
planar roof of the atrium is linked to the cornice of the library by a
neoprene seal. As project architect Giorgio Bianchi notes, they kiss
but dont disturb.
A glazed lift and open stairwell pull natural light from above into
the service areas and subterranean theatre lobby. The steeply-raked
280-seat auditorium is panelled in cherry, with curved bafes above
and on either side to achieve optimum acoustics for chamber music,
though the hall will also host lectures and movies. The old entrance
and reading room on 36th Street have been recongured to serve
as a suite of three intimate galleries, with drawings and manuscripts
anking the former lobby, where Middle Eastern cylinder seals up
to 5500 years old are displayed to brilliant effect. Theres a new,
third-level reading room and four new galleries. The caf occupies a
side of the courtyard, and a new restaurant and museum store are
comfortably accommodated on the ground oor of the brownstone.
The contrast in style between the period furnishings of the library
and Morgans study, with their scarlet brocade, velvet drapes, and
softly glowing Renaissance paintings, and the cool white volumes
beyond, is as bracing as a leap from a sauna into an icy lake. In its
harmony of scale and renement of detail, the new respects the old
without mimicry. Each strengthens your appreciation of the other a
lesson that is badly needed in New York, where a former neglect of
heritage has now given way to an obsessive protectionism.
Robert Stern, the Quinlan Terry of American architecture,
predictably found the Morgan plan too radical. Forty blocks up
Madison, neighbours of the Whitney Museum successfully fought to
save the skin of an unremarkable brownstone house with nothing
behind it, preferring this Potemkin gesture to the elegant new
entrance proposed by Piano as part of his recent remodelling scheme.
There was a prolonged and anguished appeal to save Edward Durrell
Stones dysfunctional and abandoned museum at Columbus Circle,
with its Venetian wallpaper facade, though reason nally triumphed
and the building is now being transformed by Allied Works. Even
as other major architects, including Frank Gehry, Norman Foster,
Kazuyo Sejima, Jean Nouvel and Enrique Norten, are adding to the
citys legacy after a long drought, the retro spirit is strong. As an
Italian, Piano is a veteran of these wars, and a master at nding an
appropriate balance of history and invention. MICHAEL WEBB
54 | 6
Architect
Renzo Piano Building Workshop, Genoa
Executive architect
Beyer Blinder Belle
Structural engineer
Robert Silman Associates
Services engineer
Cosentini Associates
Thermal and electrical engineer
Ove Arup & Partners
Landscape architect
H. M. White
Photographs
Paul Raftery/VIEW
11, 12, 13
The librarys three
generations, with the original
central hall, the opulent
galleried annex, and the
calm restraint of Pianos new
reading room.
14
Seen from within the
original library, the new
atrium provides a bright and
airy place for circulation,
orientation, and quiet
contemplation.
11
12
13
14
55 | 6
READING
HISTORY
This new library in a provincial
Portuguese town makes resonant
connections with history.
LIBRARY , LHAVO ,
PORTUGAL
ARCHITECT
ARX PORTUGAL
1
80 | 6
1
The librarys crisp, white
rendered volumes are
contemporary abstractions of
Iberian vernacular.
2
Main entrance signposted by
a shimmering wall of glass.
3
The elemental simplicity and
abstraction recall the work
of Siza.
81 | 6
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
entrance hall
multi-purpose room
reception
storage
wc
childrens section
storytelling
bar
technical spaces
auditorium
archive
loading dock
staff room
chapel
patio garden
meeting room
adult reading room
administration ofces
16
18
16
18
17
17
9
13
Architect
ARX Portugal, Lisbon
Photographs
Fernando Guerra
first floor
LIBRARY , LHAVO ,
PORTUGAL
ARCHITECT
ARX PORTUGAL
2
4
6
14
13
7
10
1
7
9
11
5
8
12
cross section through foyer and adult reading room looking south-west
82 | 6
4
The former family chapel
and the remains of the
old mansion house are
integrated in the complex.
5
Main adult reading room, lit
by clerestory glazing.
6
Patio adjoining the
entrance hall, overlooked
by a protruding window
treated as an element of
sculpture.
7
Entrance hall with staircase
leading up to the main
reading room.
83 | 6
HOUSE , K ETCHUM ,
IDAHO , USA
ARCHITECT
MARWAN A L-SAYED
Private Idaho
house
84 | 6
Nestling in a spectacular
mountain site on the edge of the
town of Ketchum, this house by
Marwan Al-Sayed is a highly
perceptive engagement with
topography, light and the local
vernacular. Though clearly
contemporary built for a
sportif couple with a young child
who enjoy running, skiing and
biking the project attempts to
connect with deeper,
immemorial resonances between
man and nature. Baghdad-born
and Columbia educated, AlSayed, who worked for Tod
Williams and Billie Tsien, is now
based in Phoenix. His work taps
into the uninhibited wellspring
of the Southwest school as
channelled by Will Bruder, Rick
Joy and Wendell Burnette, all
modern architectural
frontiersmen tackling nature
head on.
In this case the geography
shifts north to Idaho, but the
concerns of how to set
architecture in stupendous
landscape are similar. Idaho
straddles the Rocky Mountains
and is a popular destination for
skiing and hiking, yet laissez-faire
land use policies encouraging
piecemeal development often
conspire to take the edge off
that wilderness moment.
Commanding ravishing views of
the bleached, high desert
landscape, the steeply sloping
site is cradled and defined by a
pair of mountain peaks.
Al-Sayeds response to this
challenging topography is to
partially embed the house in the
hillside, so that the upper level
seems to float free from its
earthly, concrete moorings.
Riffing on an updated notion of
the log cabin, this L-shaped
volume is clad in a skin of
extremely thin horizontal strips
of white Atlantic cedar,
perforated by large picture
windows. For nearly half the
year the site is blanketed in
snow, and the silvery wood,
milkily translucent glass and light
grey concrete merge house with
mountainside.
1
Commanding ravishing
views, the house locks into
its steeply sloping site.
85 | 6
upper level
site plan
HOUSE , K ETCHUM ,
IDAHO , USA
ARCHITECT
MARWAN A L-SAYED
2
86 | 6
cross section
intermediate level
Architect
Marwan Al-Sayed Architects, Phoenix
Photographs
Bill Timmerman
2, 4
The patio at the heart of
the house a rare flat spot
in the hilly terrain.
3
The house in context. An
L-shaped volume containing
living spaces is anchored by
a concrete base.
5
Room with a view.
6, 7
Interiors have a finesse that
belies the rustic locale.
87 | 6
ar house
Double Bass
This coastal retreat on the Bass Strait poetically responds to climate and views.
1
The project comprises a two-level
house, courtyard and pavilion.
1 master bedroom
2 ensuite bathroom
3 kitchen
4 dining room
5 living room
6 courtyard
7 studio
8 bedroom
9 laundry
2
The rectangular structures of house
and studio twist in section, producing a
roofline that follows the land to meet
local planning requirements.
3, 4, 5
Interior views of living space, show
internal timber cubes.
6
From studio looking back to house.
5M
86 | 6
3
4 6
PARADISE FOUND
This tourist resort in Mozambique aims to minimise its impact on the local ecology.
Tourism is now the worlds
biggest industry and one of
the most rapacious in terms of
development, particularly along
coastlines. For many of the worlds
poorer coastal areas, tourism
represents a crucial impulse
for economic development,
but often at immense cost
to the environment and local
communities. If we really cared
about the planet we wouldnt go
anywhere, but in our First World
hunger for new experiences, few
places are off limits.
As one of the worlds poorest
countries and still recovering
from a devastating civil war,
Mozambique is not an obvious
tourist destination. But its
74 | 7
1, 2
Timber-framed communal buildings
touch the ground lightly.
3
Vernacular archetypes are sensitively
reinterpreted.
4
Lavatory unit.
5, 6
Construction details.
75 | 7
B
C
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
J
K
L
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
beach
guest bandas
dining area
diving centre
reception
tower
amenity building
stores
entrance courtyard
staff area
staff bandas
D
H
K
F
G
bedroom
mosquito net around bed
cupboard
desk
verandah
seat
courtyard
lathe screen
compost lavatory
shower
6
8
2
7
10
10
76 | 7
TOURIST RESORT ,
CABO DELGADO , M OZAMBIQUE
ARCHITECT
CULLUM AND NIGHTINGALE
1
5
The young French partnership of Florence Lipsky and Pascal Rollet has
a reputation for formally sparse but technically and materially inventive
buildings that make the most of limited programmes and budgets. Though
the pair favour the aesthetic edginess and functional economy of raw or
industrial materials, they generally play it straight with modular Miesian
structures and disciplined spatial arrangements. Their latest building is a
science library for the University of Orleans. Founded in 1961 and now
with some 5000 students, the university occupies a peripheral campus
sward at some remove from the city centre, linked by a tram line that
runs on a north-south axis across town. The site for the library is next to
the tram line, in front of one of the four stations that serves the campus.
Emerging from a boskily pastoral setting, the building is a strong, almost
graphic presence in the landscape. The taut orthogonality of its form, a
long, three-storey box terminated by a full-height colonnade, suggests
a scientic triumph of the rational over the romantic, but it has a more
quixotic side in its appropriation of materials, handling of light and
approach to energy use and environmental control.
The tall concrete colonnade, like a scaled down version of Fosters
Carr dArt museum, Nmes (AR July 1993), is a welcoming gesture that
celebrates and civilises arrival, while emphasising a route to the lake. A
small glass box, which also acts as an informal exhibition space, forms
a decompression zone between the blare of the outside world and the
SCIENCE LESSON
Veiled in a polycarbonate skin, this
science library exploits site, light
and materials in the quiet pursuit of
passive environmental control.
1
The translucent volume of the new
library emerges from its wooded
campus setting.
2
A tall colonnade creates a space for
social interaction.
UNIVERSITY LIBRARY ,
O RLEANS , F RANCE
ARCHITECT
LIPSKY + ROLLET
64 | 7
65 | 7
site plan
3
cross section
3
The colonnade marks the entrance.
4
The site lies next to a tram line linking
the campus with Orleans city centre.
5
Windows puncture the translucent
polycarbonate skin; glare control is
provided by vertical brise soleil.
UNIVERSITY LIBRARY ,
O RLEANS , F RANCE
ARCHITECT
LIPSKY + ROLLET
long section
first floor
66 | 7
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
colonnade
entrance hall
exhibition space
reception
reading room
book box
study zones
ofces
group work spaces
multimedia workshop
computer room
kitchen
research room
roof plan
second floor
3
67 | 7
UNIVERSITY LIBRARY ,
O RLEANS , F RANCE
ARCHITECT
LIPSKY + ROLLET
silent inner sanctum of the reading room. Areas of clear glazing are
punched apparently at random into the translucent polycarbonate skin
frame and dene views of the landscape from inside at study table height,
so students can drift off in contemplative reveries.
In operational terms, the modern university library is less concerned
with the inducement of reverie and more with the efcient storage and
retrieval of information, in both paper and digital formats.Yet the process
of information withdrawal, consultation and return continues to underpin
and structure the library as a building type. Lipksy + Rollet articulate this
process through a central book box, a dense core of books surrounded
by more uid study zones arranged round the periphery. The main
reading room is a dramatic triple-height space, overlooked and surveyed
by perimeter study zones on the oor above, so users can inhabit a more
intimate enclave, yet be aware of wider goings on.
The monumental book box is clad in Fincof panels (more commonly
employed for concrete formwork), a type of Finnish birch plywood
stained with dark phenolic resin. The panels evoke the warm leather of
traditional bookbinding and study armchairs but this is faux luxury. The
budget necessitated an imaginatively frugal approach to materials, as
manifest by the double skin of polycarbonate used to clad the building
which combines good insulation levels with light diffusing qualities, so
the reading room seems wrapped in a rice paper screen, with readers
silhouetted against its translucent walls. South and east facades have
vertical, manually operable white polycarbonate louvres to provide
additional glare control. Depending on the sun angle and building users,
the vertical brise soleil create a changing pattern on the facades.
Though France is not as advanced as Germany in legislating for
efcient energy use, the need to keep capital and running costs down
proved an important incentive, giving rise to an integrated system of low
key, passive environmental control techniques that minimise mechanical
systems. The building is naturally ventilated, with fresh air warming and
rising up through the main reading room through the stack effect and
expelled through vents in the roof. In winter, the main gas-red heating
system of water pipes in the ground oor slab is supplemented by a
network of local radiators for smaller cellular spaces. All this is achieved
in an undemonstrative yet thoughtful way that chimes with the wider
architectural intentions. Without succumbing entirely to the lure of
scientic rationalism, Lipsky + Rollet manage to make complex things
look elegantly simple and obvious. This is science with soul. C. S.
7
6
Study zones on the perimeter.
7
The monumental book box at the heart
of the library clad in plywood panels
stained with phenolic resin.
8
Light diffuses softly through the
polycarbonate skin while panels of clear
glazing frame external views at study
table height.
68 | 7
Architect
Lipksy + Rollet, Paris
Photographs
Paul Raftery/VIEW
69 | 7
TUBULAR TROGLODYTES
1
The concrete
tubes are
equipped with a
sleeping platform.
Guests pay
what they think
is appropriate
and use nearby
washing and dining
facilities.
2
The tubular trio.
Cylinders are
standard industrial
grade; the concrete
keeps the interior
cool in summer.
3
Happy campers.
66 | 7
BUDGET HOTEL ,
LINZ , A USTRIA
ARCHITECT
ANDREAS STRAUSS
67 | 7
Solar umbrella
Lawrence Scarpas own family house in Venice Beach is an imaginative
and ecologically aware response to the balmy Californian climate.
84 | 7
ar house
BOCCACCIO
BOCCACCIOAVENUE
AVENUE
BOCCACCIO AVENUE
WOODLAWN
WOODLAWNAVENUE
AVENUE
WOODLAWN AVENUE
site plan
20
20
NN
PISANI PLACE
PISANIPLACE
PLACE
PISANI
20
85 | 7
cross section
16
4
14
15
86 | 7
roof plan
DN
13
14
DN
11
12
UP
UP
UP
4
6
2
1
DN
3
UP
UP
UP
10
UP
DN
DN
DN
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
living room
dining
kitchen
bedroom
study
bathroom
closet
pond
bamboo planter
laundry
master bedroom
master bathroom
terrace
skylight
photovoltaic roof panels
roof
4
Master bedroom.
5
Dining area. Interiors are characterised
by spatial fluidity and an animated
collage of textures and tones.
6
Living room.
7
Vertiginous steel mesh staircase.
8
Roof terrace.
87 | 7
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34 | 7
35 | 7
AIRPORT TERMINAL ,
MADRID , S PAIN
ARCHITECT
RICHARD ROGERS
PARTNERSHIP
36 | 7
To this woefully short list can now be added Richard Rogers new
terminal at Barajas airport in Madrid. In terms of physical size and
political ambition, the new terminal is a very heavy hitter designed to
increase Barajas current annual capacity of 25 million passengers to
70 million. This will make it Europes second busiest airport and also,
crucially, one capable of accommodating the new A380 Airbus, the
next generation of 800 seat super jumbos. Madrid is a natural locus of
exchange between Europe and Latin America and this latest tranche
of airport development, which includes two new runways, aims to
strengthen the historic umbilicus between Old and New Worlds. After
years of playing second ddle to Barcelona, Madrid is feeling expansive
again, with a revitalised Barajas seen as a key aspect of civic and economic
image making.
Such a highly charged agenda has helped to give an almost unbelievable
impetus to an exceedingly large and complex project. Construction
drawings, for instance, were completed in a mere ve months.
Comparisons with Heathrows Terminal 5, Rogers other major airport
project, are sadly instructive. Even at twice the size of T5 and begun
eight years after it, Barajas is now complete, and its development (unlike
T5s which was mired in a planning and bureaucratic morass), seems
like a model of clarity and vision. From the rst enlightened move of
hiring a British architect (this is Rogers rst Iberian job but his project
team worked closely with local rm Estudio Lamela), Barajas has been
underpinned by political will, a responsive client in AENA, the Spanish
airports authority, plus the room and the resources1 to build.
Circumstances were in place for Rogers to deliver and he and project
director Ivan Harbour have done so resoundingly. Barajas civilises the
numbing experience of air travel, humanising the ows and processes of
airport life and using them to congure a building of power and presence.
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
G
C
F
E
F
2
The rippling roof
unifies the volumes
of concourse and
boarding pier. Car
drop off is on the
far right.
site plan
37 | 7
3
The landscaped roof of the
parking structure minimises
its bulk.
4
Welcome to Madrid. Vehicle
drop off and pick up under the
ultimate porte cochre.
5
Check-in hall. The roof plane
is liberated from the clutter
of service; sculptural freestanding funnels, for instance,
are used for air handling.
38 | 7
AIRPORT TERMINAL ,
MADRID , S PAIN
ARCHITECT
RICHARD ROGERS
PARTNERSHIP
cross section through main terminal building showing departures in red, arrivals in blue
39 | 7
AIRPORT TERMINAL ,
MADRID , S PAIN
ARCHITECT
RICHARD ROGERS
PARTNERSHIP
1
2
3
4
5
6
level 2
level 1
level 1
ground level
ground level
level -2
level -2
40 | 7
main terminal
satellite building
6
The great nave of the boarding
pier, with its kaleidoscopic
columns. Arriving passengers cross
by bridges to the upper level.
41 | 7
7
Baggage reclaim hall with
distinctive wok light ttings.
8
Canyon in baggage reclaim hall.
Departing passengers cross over
bridges at upper level. Light is
ltered down into the depths
through xed louvres in the oculi.
42 | 7
AIRPORT TERMINAL ,
MADRID , S PAIN
ARCHITECT
RICHARD ROGERS
PARTNERSHIP
43 | 7
AIRPORT TERMINAL ,
MADRID , S PAIN
ARCHITECT
RICHARD ROGERS
PARTNERSHIP
baggage reclaim hall, the canyons at land and airside are lled with
the panoply of vertical circulation. Long banks of escalators and stairs
bestride the chasms, and curious glass lifts that might have sprung from
the imagination of Heath Robinson scuttle busily up and down. The
airside canyon is also lled with the inevitable monstrous regiment of
shops, but by setting clear protocols for t-outs, Rogers has tried to
contain the dismaying effects of commercial intrusion.
The 38 boarding gates are contained in a soaring treble-height pier,
with a further 26 docked on to the satellite building (a sort of minime version of the terminal), which is linked to the main complex by
underground shuttle. At three quarters of a mile long, the pier seems
innite, an elegantly elongated nave articulated by the repetitive march
of its arboreal structure. Along its length, the signature Rogers yellow
is amplied by the full range of the colour spectrum. This apparently
whimsical touch is partly an aesthetic decision, but it also assists with
orientation, the colour coding of the structure matching the signage for
boarding gates. As departing passengers head for the red, orange, blue
or green columns, this is the end of the line; beyond are the planes, the
runway and the sky. Arriving travellers make the journey in reverse,
docking into and across the boarding pier nave, communing with the
baggage reclaim oor at lower level and nally emerging into the
brilliance and bustle of the landside canyon. The new terminal is devoted
to Iberia, British Airways and their smaller commercial partners, with
budget airlines kept at some remove in the existing terminals.
The romance of Barajas belies the technical feat of its realisation. It
might all look effortless, but below stairs and behind the scenes is a
seething netherworld of operational spaces such as the vast subterranean
baggage-handling facility. Nothing stands still in this building for long,
and the continuous, relentless choreography of people, planes and stuff
shapes and animates the architecture. That there can also be scope in
this huge, impersonal machine to create humanely scaled, dignied and
even sensuous experiences is the buildings remarkable trump card. With
Barajas, the airport as a type nally seems to have reached an important
benchmark in its short and unsatisfactory evolution, the grubby
caterpillar nally transformed into a buttery. Is it too much to hope that
the civilising mission of Rogers Spanish soft machine can help set the
agenda for the next generation of airports? CATHERINE SLESSOR
The budget for the main terminal, satellite and car park was 1238 million. The total Barajas
development budget was 6000 million.
2
The proposed train link from the new terminal to central Madrid is still under construction; it should be
completed next year.
3
Total built area, including parking and access roads, is approx 1 100 000sqm. The main terminal is
470 000sqm and the satellite 290 000sqm.
1
44 | 7
10
9
Waiting and shopping boarding
gates with retail units. Rogers
has attempted to minimise the
impact of commerce.
10
Airside canyon for arrivals,
animated by the panoply of
vertical circulation.
11
Connection with the exterior
makes passengers feel as though
they are somewhere.
Architect
Richard Rogers Partnership, London
Associate architect
Estudio Lamela
Structural & services engineers
INITEC Tarmac Professional
Services
Structural design
Anthony Hunt Associates
Facade design
ARUP Facades
Lighting consultant
Jonathan Speirs
Photographs
Duccio Malagamba
11
45 | 7
HOUSE , C LONAKILTY ,
COUNTY CORK , I RELAND
ARCHITECT
NIALL MCLAUGHLIN
View point
Niall McLaughlins house conversion and addition
respect and enrich their coastal environment.
82 | 8
1
Long elevation borders a
courtyard space.
2
The wind protected site.
3
Light was a key design prompt.
ar house
83 | 8
4
View sharing dining space.
5
The cottage contains master
bedroom and bathroom.
6
Cottage interior.
7
The area looking back to the kitchen.
8
Separation of function avoids a
picture window clich.
Architect
Niall McLaughlin
Structural engineer
Packman Lucas
Photographs
Niall McLaughlin and Nicholas Kane
8
9
6
8
HOUSE , C LONAKILTY ,
COUNTY CORK , I RELAND
ARCHITECT
NIALL MCLAUGHLIN
10
0
10m
5m
entrance
living room
dining
kitchen
lavatory
master bedroom
ensuite
guest bedroom
guest bathroom
slipway
0
0
84 | 8
5m
10m
5m
10m
85 | 8
MONUMENT
FOR A MINIATURIST
A new museum dedicated to Paul Klee swells seductively into the Swiss landscape.
1
The rollercoaster profile of
the arched steel members
forms the defining image of
the new museum.
of spaces that are linked at the front by a 150m long glazed concourse
containing the caf, ticketing, shop, and reference area. Extended opening
hours encourage visitors to come early or linger in this protected piazza.
A changing selection from the permanent collection is displayed in the
central pavilion, with a temporary exhibition gallery below. To the north,
meeting and restoration areas lead out of the concourse, with a creative
workshop for children below, and a subterranean auditorium behind. The
south pavilion contains the administrative ofces, archives, and seminar
rooms, all on the main level.
The 4.2km of steel girders were cut and shaped by computercontrolled machines but then, because each section has a different
conguration, the 40km of seams were hand-welded. The arches are
slightly inclined at different angles, braced by compression struts, and
tied to the roof plate and oor slabs. In contrast to this assembly of
unique parts, the concrete oors were constructed as a single structure,
without settlement joints. The glass facade is divided into upper and
lower sections, which are joined at the 4m roof level of the concourse,
and are suspended from girders to avert stress from thermal expansion
in the steel roof. The glass is shaded by exterior mesh blinds that extend
automatically in response to the intensity of the light, and the high level
of insulation minimizes energy consumption.
All of these measures pay off in the galleries and archives, where
temperature and humidity must be maintained at constant levels, even
though they are seamlessly linked to the busy public concourse. The
permanent collection is displayed beneath the curved vault in a 1700sqm
room that is divided by suspended ats into a benign labyrinth of
interconnecting spaces. Each white screen hovers a couple of centimetres
above the oak oor as do the peripheral walls. To achieve the low lighting
level required by these sensitive works, illumination is indirect and
ltered. Spots cast their beams on the white-boarded ceiling vault, and
this glow is diffused by suspended square scrims.
3
A serpentine path
leads up to the main
entrance.
3
2
2
The trio of
topographic bumps
mimics the gentle
undulations of
the surrounding
landscape.
32 | 8
4
To the rear, the vaults merge
into the ground. Planting
will gradually be established
between the ridges to make the
transition more seamless.
5
5
The tapering profile of the vaults.
6
Detail of main facade and inclined
steel arches.
site plan
cross section
34 | 8
7
Caf and information area in the
soaring public concourse that
unites that trio of vaults and
runs along the main facade.
11
11
9
10
12
10
8
6
15
4
5
13
1
14
2
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
north pavilion
central pavilion
south pavilion
main entrance
concourse
information
caf
servery
cinema
AV rooms
restoration workshops
permanent collection
shop
reference section
ofces and administration
temporary galleries
auditorium
childrens workshop
17
16
18
36 | 8
Its easy to see in the open geometry of the plan a reference to some
of Klees compositions, and the skein of slender cables supporting walls,
lights, and scrims evokes his spidery penmanship. Pianos greatest feat is
to give these tiny, intense works the space they need to breathe. Such a
concentration of invention could easily overwhelm the viewer; here, each
work seems to oat in its own white void, bathed in a cloud of soft light,
achieving an emotional as well as a formal resonance. Works are grouped,
not chronologically, but by afnity, so that you can explore the innite
variety of ways in which this master employed line, colour, gurative and
abstract imagery; always enigmatic and never repetitive. Toplit stairs and
a piston-operated lift that is a work of art in itself carry you down to
a room of similar size that presently houses the 366 sketches Klee did
in his last fertile year. Here, the works are arranged on a peripheral and
inner wall that trace the rectangle dened by slender structural columns.
Scattered around both galleries on oak plinths are 40 hand puppets
that Klee made around 1920 to amuse his family. Fabricated from the
commonplace materials and crudely painted, they have a compelling
talismanic quality, revealing the inner child in the artist and in all who
connect with his work.
That spirit carries over into the childrens museum, aptly named
Creaviva for its emphasis on creative play in a succession of workshops
that are open to all ages. The steeply-raked 300-seat auditorium that
burrows into the ground behind is a black box lined with curved
sound bafes in the same orange hue as the Venetian plaster walls of
the outer lobby. Regular performances of chamber music (Klee was an
accomplished violinist), dance, and theatre will be interspersed with
lectures and readings. All will reect the versatility of the artist and his
friends over four turbulent decades and their enduring legacy.
MICHAEL WEBB
10
Architect
Renzo Piano Building Workshop, Genoa
Associate architect
ARB Architects, Berne
Structural engineers
Ove Arup & Partners, B + S Ingenieure
Services engineers
Ove Arup & Partners, Luco, Enerconom, Bering
Photographs
Paul Raftery/VIEW
38 | 8
8
The curve of the arch runs through
the glazed link between volumes.
9
Main gallery for the permanent
Klee collection.
10
Main gallery is an airy labyrinth
of suspended flat panels that
subdivide the space. In places, light
is diffused by horizontal scrims.
11
Part of the childrens workshop at
11
Shingle church in Krsmki by Anssi Lassila: a log-built core encased by a black, tarred shingle clad cloak.
GOOD WOOD
The exhibition From Wood to Architecture
at The Museum of Finnish Architecture
presents 17 recent buildings in Finland,
many by young Finnish architects unknown
in the international architectural arena.
103 | 8
1
The long bar-like volume
of the house bar appears
to float in the landscape.
2
Rough, oxidised metal
mesh cladding envelops
the long flanks in a light
and heat diffottusing veil.
3
The undercroft.
SHORE PATROL
This beach house explores traditional
vernacular means of tempering climate.
61 | 8
north elevation
Architect
Sean Godsell Architects, Melbourne
Photographs
All photographs by Earl Carter apart from
nos 3 & 7 which are by Hayley Franklin
roof plan
3
1 car port
2 store
3 deck
4 kitchen
5 living
6 study
7 bedroom
8 bathroom/laundry
9 bathroom
first floor
62 | 8
site plan
4
Rooms are linked by a
promenade deck.
5
Main living/dining space.
6
Sliding glass doors enclose
the inner realm, but
moving around the house
always involves negotiating
this interstitial space.
7
Room with a view.
63 | 8
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Page 58
1
Tomb speaks through light, space
and materials. In foreground is onyx
slab covering coffin entrance.
DIGNITY IN DEATH
Imaginative understanding of materials makes this tomb a fitting set for rites of passage.
M AUSOLEUM , M URCIA ,
S PAIN
ARCHITECT
M ANUEL C LAVEL R OJO
ar_aug_2004 _ROJO_REVISED
20/9/04
12:35 pm
Page 60
2
Visitors entrance is at lower level
with huge translucent panel above.
3
Travertine podium is an altar for
burial rites. In foreground coffin
entrance, beyond pool slot.
4
Chamber with light from onyx slab.
5
Cross with pool behind.
1 niches
2 coffin entrance above
3 pool above
1
3
1
1
60 | 8
M AUSOLEUM , M URCIA ,
S PAIN
ARCHITECT
M ANUEL C LAVEL R OJO
axonometric section
61 | 7
ar_aug_04_tezuka_done
20/9/04
12:09 pm
Page 40
M USEUM OF N ATURAL
H ISTORY , M ATSUNOYAMA ,
N IIGATA , J APAN
ARCHITECT
T EZUKA A RCHITECTS
site plan
SNOW BOUND
In the high backbone of Japan, rusted steel superstrong skin resists winter loads and thermal stresses.
The Niigata Prefecture is to the east of Japans big island Honshu, and
runs from the sea to the high central backbone of the country. In the
mountains, up to five and a half metres of winter snow can settle,
literally submerging buildings and the even young trees of the
magnificent, scented evergreen forests. To allow the public to
interpret and investigate the natural world, the Matsunoyama
Natural History Museum has been set up on the edge of the forest
overlooking mountains and meadow.
Takaharu & Yui Tezuka have made a building that wriggles, snake-like
east-west through the landscape in a brown, almost smooth rusted
steel skin. Entered from the south, the snake encloses an exhibition
gallery showing natural and artificial worlds, a reception hall,
administration, a lecture theatre and, as the snakes head twists round
from east to west, a posh cafeteria called the culinary arts experience.
A rusted steel observation tower terminates the tail to the east, and is
climbed by energetic visitors to obtain magnificent views over forests
to the mountains. At key moments in the plan, notably where the snake
changes direction, great transparent panels are inserted in the skin,
offering marvellous views into the forests surrounding the site. The
mullionless transparent expanses are so big that they cannot possibly
be called windows; they are almost invisible thresholds between
interior and the outside. They reinforce a feeling of heightened reality,
enhanced by the strange perspective tricks of the route.
1, 2
Like a deserted industrial site or a
strange animal, the museum snakes
through its clearing between forest
and rice field.
41 | 8
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Page 42
3
Tadashi Kawamatas paths and deck
relate interior and nature
4
... as do the huge thick acrylic panels.
20
M USEUM OF N ATURAL
H ISTORY , M ATSUNOYAMA ,
N IIGATA , J APAN
ARCHITECT
T EZUKA A RCHITECTS
80
eaves detail
75
40
P
e
k
f
k{
V
T
O
125
3
4
206
f
k}
O
320
30
foot detail
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
entrance porch
hall
reception
exhibition
special (butterfly) gallery
office
lavatories
laboratory
store
Kyororo hall
culinary arts
stair to offices and staff rest
6
3
12 7
8
9
10
11
42 | 8
43 | 7
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Page 44
M USEUM OF N ATURAL
H ISTORY , M ATSUNOYAMA ,
N IIGATA , J APAN
ARCHITECT
T EZUKA A RCHITECTS
8
9
VERONICA PEASE
Architect
Tezuka Architects:
Takaharu Tezuka + Yui Tezuka
Associate architect
Masahiro Ikeda/MIAS
Project team
Takaharu Tezuka, Yui Tezuka, Miyoko Fujita,
Masafumi Harada, Masahiro Ikeda,
Ryuya Maio, Mayumi Miura, Taro Suwa,
Takahiro Nakano, Toshio Nishi,
Hirofumi Ono, Tomohiro Sato,
Makoto Takei, Hiroshi Tomikawa
Mechanical engineer
Eiji Sato, Kisakatsu Hemmi/ES Associates
Landscape
Shunsuke Hirose/Fudo Keisei Jimusho
Photographs
Katsuhisa Kida
44 | 8
5
Special collection.
6
Museum is intended to interpret
local ecology.
7
Snow building up.
8, 9
Cranked plan causes perspectival
illusions of exploding and shrinking
space.
45 | 10
20/9/04
12:44 pm
Page 77
ar house
ar_august_2004_endo_done
site plan
Curvaceous corrugated
Endo continues his exploration of bent corrugated metal in a domestic application.
1
From pool with kitchen/dining room in
foreground. Endo manages to achieve a
wide variety of space in a tight site.
77 | 10
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Page 78
2
North terrace.
3
Compressed kitchen/dining room.
4
Garage and entrance with metal
terrace left. Colour and texture of
galvanized steel relate to traditional
grey tiles on neighbouring houses.
5
Junctions of flowing steel and more
orthodox elements are not always
easy.
section A-A
4
5
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
entrance
garage
metal terrace
gallery
north terrace
rest room
bedroom
bath
kitchen/dining
pool
lawn
11
10
5
2
Architect
Shuhei Endo
Photographs
Yoshiharu Matsumura
78 | 8
79 | 10
HOUSE , T OKYO
ARCHITECT
JUN A OKI
ATTIC LIGHT
Through the careful distortion
of familiar forms, Jun Aokis
latest Tokyo house makes the
ordinary extraordinary.
1
Jun Aokis G House comprises a
timber-framed attic set above a
concrete plinth.
2
Internally the attic has a complex
arrangement of interlocking
spaces, lit by an irregular
arrangement of skylights.
63 | 9
closet
3
The central atrium
connects living
rooms with the
mezzanine study,
from where the
uppermost loftlike bedroom is
accessed via stair.
Direct and reflected
light plays on the
attics angular
surfaces.
2
3
8
west elevation (street entrance)
long section
HOUSE , T OKYO
ARCHITECT
JUN A OKI
south elevation
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
short section
parking
kitchen
living/dining
childs bedroom
study
bedroom
bath
cellar
north elevation
3
6
7
64 | 9
bath
4
The uppermost
bedroom sits at
the apex of the
attic.
5
Where timber
meets concrete,
an interstitial
void is expressed
as a continuous
datum.
6
Oblique views
from the
mezzanine study
connect spaces
via the atrium
screen.
7
With the
double-height
atrium and
mezzanine
adjacent to one
another, the full
height of the
lofty attic form
is exploited to
maximum effect.
HOUSE , T OKYO
ARCHITECT
JUN A OKI
66 | 9
ar house
88 | 9
H OUSE , S YDNEY ,
A USTRALIA
ARCHITECT
W ALTERS & C OHEN
1
80m above the South Pacific
2
surrounded by Sydneys
suburban brick boxes
3
Walters & Cohens new house
is entered through a walled
courtyard.
4
Once inside, breathtaking views
are revealed from within the
clerestoried living room
5
and across the rooftop pool.
89 | 9
2
1
6
7
9
11
11
10
90 | 9
11
10
10
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
paved forecourt
double garage
rear entrance
laundry
pool plant room/garden store
dressing room
external courtyard
internal circulation area
main entrance
bedroom
bathroom
guest wc
kitchen
upper garden
bridge link
study
informal living area
formal living area
upper deck area
pool
11
13
14
10
12
15
7
8
19
16
18
20
17
HOUSE , T OKYO
ARCHITECT
JOHN PAWSON
site plan
N
BOXING CLEVER
Site Plan400
1:
86 | 9
1
The plot of land in
front of the house will
eventually be built on,
so Pawsons approach
is one of tactical
hermeticism.
2
The pristine box poised
in typically dissolute
urban surroundings.
1 entrance
2 kitchen
3 dining
4 living
5 tea ceremony room
6 courtyard
7 bedroom
8 dressing area
9 terrace
10 bathroom
HOUSE , T OKYO
ARCHITECT
JOHN PAWSON
Section C 200
1:
3
88 | 9
3
A single flight of stairs
links the two floors.
4
The living area dissolves
into the courtyard.
5
Characteristic domestic
asceticism from Pawson.
6
Bathroom overlooking the
focal courtyard.
Section B
1:200
9
7
8
10
first floor
5
Site area 195.23sqm Built area 97.50sqm
Floor area 181.17sqm
Architect
John Pawson, London
Photographs
Edmund Sumner/VIEW
8: Dressing
9: Bedroom
10: Terrace
11: Bathroom
12: Sky Shower
LAUNCH PAD
Standing defiantly on a suburban
hilltop, the Y House declares
war on conventionality.
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
entrance
living/dining
kitchen
study/bedroom 2
bathroom
lavatory
bedroom 1
B2 Plan S=1:100
3m
0m
0m
Section1 S=1:100
3m
0m
GF Plan S=1:100
3m
70 | 9
0m
Section2 S=1:100
3m
2
Defying convention and gravity,
behind the modest street facade,
forms become more expressive.
3
The main living space is at the
centre of the spatial composition.
4
Concrete blinkers provide privacy.
5
The entrance level studio/bedroom overlooks the living space
to the left, the garden to the right,
and gives (assisted) access to an
upper terrace.
0m
CITIES, ARCHITECTURE
AND SOCIETY
Urban constellations the earth from space at night. Image by Craig Mayhew and Robert Simmon, NASA.
35 | 9
36 | 9
with small-scale projects around transport hubs (or taxi ranks) that are
designed to re-humanise the public realm of the city otherwise hidden
behind security fences and inside gated communities.
There is a growing awareness that the urban agenda is a global
agenda. The environmental impacts of cities are enormous, due both
to their increasing demographic weight and to the amount of natural
resources that they consume. Every aspect of urban living has signicant
implications for the planet from the billions of people driving cars
along metropolitan highways to the energy required to either heat or
cool buildings and to bring in food, often from the opposite corner
of the world. In the developed economies, it is estimated that over
50 per cent of energy is consumed by buildings and 25 per cent by
transport. So, a slight change to this energy equation in cities will have
a massive impact on the global stage. It has been argued that the degree
of dispersion of urban forms can be related to consumption of nonrenewable resources and emissions.
A generation of urban leaders is rising to meet these challenges. In
Europe, for example, many big-city mayors are implementing important
urban reforms that will enable their cities to be more competitive in the
global economy and smarter producers of knowledge and culture. These
cities are responding to contemporary social challenges, in some cases
accommodating the large-scale inux of new residents and in others
managing demographic decline without imploding irreversibly.
they are to harness their economic potential and at the same time become
more socially-equitable and ecologically sound.
We could simplify our understanding of the situation by arguing that the
basic task at hand is how to accommodate the masses of newcomers in
dense conditions and with constrained resources. Yet this straightforward
phrasing would mask the complex intersection of economic, social
and environmental dimensions that must be tackled and the range of
mutually-reinforcing interventions that need to be devised. Providing
affordable and dignied shelter in areas well-connected with their
surrounding urban fabric; creating safe, beautiful and well-designed
public spaces conducive to social integration; generating employment
with liveable wages and sound workplace conditions that stimulate
creativity, virtuous circles of skills generation and synergetic team work;
securing cheap, fast and reliable mobility for all of the citys residents with
integrated public transport networks; in sum, designing the constituent
pieces of a contemporary, sustainable city. These are some of the elements
of our global urban era which demand multidisciplinary analysis and
intervention. Rather than proclaim a one-size-ts-all manifesto, we intend
that the comparative social and spatial data, marshalled for the purposes
of the 10th International Architecture Exhibition but also with wider
scope, will reach architects as a call-to-action for the creation of innovative
morphological practices, honed to suit the unique challenges and assets of
each city system, and above all, its citizens. RICHARD BURDETT
37 | 9
comment
1. Architecture:
Lincoln Cathedral, as
featured in Pevsners
The Buildings of
England, Lincolnshire,
1964.
2. Building: An iconic
bikeshed? Design by
Chun Yeug Cheng and
Ka Fai Lee, University
of Hong Kong.
(See more at www.
reinventingthe
bikeshed.com)
30 | 9
Monumental change
Consider the decline of the monument, something that sets in with the
rise of modernisation and the constant upheavals of the marketplace.
When whole areas of the city, as Marx described them, melt into air
because of development, when the names of squares and districts
change overnight, what is the meaning of a monument? It can signify
anything, and often today that might be an embarrassing change in
sentiment. This can be seen clearly in places of revolutionary change
or military conict. Vietnam and Iraq have witnessed the constant
toppling of monuments and renaming of squares. But the shift was
already apparent in eighteenth-century France.
In the space of about fty years, the major public square in Paris
next to the Tuilleries was re-named and restyled ve times. First, in its
creation, what was christened the Place Louis XV had a facelift and
a new monumental setting for the new monument to the King, an
equestrian statue based on that of Marcus Aurelius in Rome. Then,
like Saddam Husseins statues, this was toppled in a revolution, and the
square was named after the event, in 1789. Then, after the guillotine
had done its work on Danton, Robespierre, Mme Roland, and countless
others, the Place de la Revolution was re-styled as the Place de la
Concorde for twenty years. Predictably, with the restoration it was rechristened Place Louis XV and then, on schedule at the appropriate
moment, Place Louis XVI. Finally, because of an overwhelming
desire to please the people, King Louis-Philippe re-minted the old coin
for the area, calling it the Place de la Concorde. More honestly it might
have been Discorde. What was the monumental strategy of LouisPhilippe? Where the guillotine was, he erected a large, granite obelisk,
borrowed handily from Luxor and, underlining the point of the images
and hieroglyphs carved into its surface, pronounced the great lesson for
France: It would not recall a single political event. Fantastique!
Here is the rst icon of calculated ambiguity, call it an icon without
a clear iconography, or as I term it, an enigmatic signier.Ever since
Louis-Philippe, artists, architects and now the general public have
learned to enjoy, or suffer, their perplexing situation. The monument
has been toppled as much by commercial society as by revolutions, by
branding as by conscious iconoclasm. Its true the World Trade Center
was destroyed as a symbol of American hegemony, as an icon of a
foreign policy that was hated; but it is untrue to think that Americans ever
liked the building very much, or thought of it as a venerable monument
worth worshipping. That is, until it was brought down, repeatedly, on
TV. At that point, the media gave the ruins and the previous image
an enduring religious presence. An icon always has a trace of sanctity
about it; it is an object to be worshipped, however tfully.
Spiritual ination
And this leads to the second reason that the iconic building has replaced
the monument. In our time in the West, as Chestertons adage has it,
when men stop believing in God, they dont believe in nothing, they
believe in anything. This epigram nicely states the problem for society
and the architect. Today, anything can be an icon. The philosopher,
Arthur Danto, has drawn the same conclusion in the post-Warhol
world of the marketplace: Anything can be a work of art. A Brillo box
was Warhols contribution to this truth, a ridiculously banal object, as
unimportant as he could nd. Yet with his nomination of the throwaway package, one supported by Leo Castelli and then the larger art
world, this ephemeral box became expensive art. Marcel Duchamp,
originator of the ready-made fty years earlier, was piqued; at least
his objets-trouvs had a sculptural and industrial presence, a surreal
charge, a convulsive beauty. Yet Duchamps ire had no more effect than
other attacks on Pop Art. Along with many other contemporary art
movements, the politics of the counter culture ushered in the period of
pluralism and relativity, the era of post-modernism.
The implications were not terribly pressing in the conservative
world of architecture, at least for thirty years. Then Frank Gehrys
Guggenheim and the so-named Bilbao Effect did their work. At that
point, developers and mayors could see the economic logic of the
sculptural gesture (with its many enigmatic signiers), and the same
method was applied to any and every building type. This presented a
semantic problem, inverting notions of appropriateness and decorum.
Lincoln Cathedral, Nikolaus Pevsner had famously pronounced,
is architecture, while a bicycle shed is building. Architecture versus
mere building, everyone carries around this historical distinction
and it tells them when to ornament the building, or make it a whole
sculptural ornament. So, what happens when this difference is eroded,
or even reversed; when a bicycle shed becomes not only architecture,
but an icon?
That is the question raised today in an age when anything can be
believed. Consider some of the more famous recent iconic buildings,
the ones that receive media saturation from New York to Beijing.
The Prada headquarters buildings in New York and Tokyo by Rem
Koolhaas and Herzog and De Meuron; the LVMH Tower in New York
by Christian de Portzamparc (AR May 2000); Philip Johnsons AT&T
Building; Toyo Itos TOD building in Tokyo, for shoes; or convention
centres by Peter Eisenman and Santiago Calatrava; and, perhaps most
symbolically, Future Systems building for Selfridges in Birmingham
(AR October 2003). I have selected only commercial exemplars to
bring out the fact that relatively banal building tasks have usurped the
expressive role of more elevated ones demonstrating the relativity
of post-modernism. But the poignant truth about the last mentioned
structure is that it has appropriated the position of the church, both
literally and metaphorically. Here, an all-over skin of glistening discs
bumps and grinds its way to the edges of a big site, sprawling like a
garrulous matron at a cocktail party, determined to strut her stuff
while all the time, squashed low in the background, are the darkened
bones of an unloved church dirty, miserable and in the shade. As
in Thurbers world, the womans bloom brings on the mans cringe.
Selfridges, as its architects grant, is meant to be sexy and remind one of
a Paco Rabanne dress, body-hugging clothes, sparkling sequins, tits and
bums and, on the inside, yet more intimate parts.
Why not? This emporium markets the body image, so why cant
the whole building be an icon to taking off and putting on clothes,
to narcissism? If sexuality pervades the media and the arts, why cant
architecture reect it too? If people no longer go to church, only follow
31 | 9
6. Marilyn Monroes
uttering skirts and
legs are actually
Gehrys real Disney
Hall, Los Angeles,
2003, collaged
without distortion in
Photoshop (Madelon
Vriesendorp, back
cover of The Iconic
Building The Power
of Enigma, 2005).
7
7. Rem Koolhaas Casa da Musica, Porto, 2005, opaque milky quartz,
a seven-sided polygon, made in cream-white concrete.The interior
spatial dynamics are a consequence of wrapping the exterior planes
across shifted volumes as Philip Johnson called it, architecture as the
high art of waste space. Here it is entirely convincing.
8. Metaphors drawings by Madelon Vriesendorp.
route to the top in Brit Art and for their American counterparts. Peter
Eisenman has said no architect can hope to place a building in The
New York Times without a press agent, indeed only one of the best
agents, because these column-inches are the rarest commodity. When
artists and architects see their branding departments as essential to
their work (and Damien Hirst has said it is the most important thing
for an artist) the information world has nally exacted its revenge.
However, one should not therefore underestimate the desire of the
public for good iconic buildings. They still make people leave home.
32 | 9
Calculated outrage
In this light, it is easier to understand the negative logic of the
outrageous iconic building, the way it seeks to provoke a paranoid
reaction, especially among journalists. Since the scarce resource of
a celebrity culture is column inches, these structures have to grab
attention with an unusual image that annoys just as it inspires. This
ironic message can be carefully double-coded. With one gesture
it says who wants to defer to the outmoded symbols of St Pauls,
especially in an age of celebrity? Here it follows the logic of the art
world, one adopted by the successful exhibits Sensation and Apocalypse
at the Royal Academy: shock and awe against symbols of conformity.
If an iconic building isnt hated enough, as the Eiffel Tower was
at its inception, it will never inspire enough negative energy to be
noticed, and then go on to be debated and defended.
Here we touch one of the deep and complicated truths of the
genre. How does the successful iconic building inspire paranoia, fear,
even initial loathing, and then go on to win over a more permanent
response? How does the architect steer between the Scylla of the
one-liner and the Charybdis of mere provocation? The Costa del
Icon is a real cautionary tale; horrors outnumber Cinderellas.
Obviously there is no simple strategy of design and, as in all things
creative, risk and failure stalk every move. Yet there are several basic
guidelines, if not rules, for dealing with the iconic building.
Cosmic and multiple
In my recent book The Iconic Building The Power of Enigma, 2005, I
argue that architects, through their recent practice, have shown a few
successful strategies of design. If an iconic building must have a new
and provocative image, but cannot directly call on the iconography
that underlay traditional or religious architecture (because that is no
longer believed), then it must produce enigmatic signiers that allude
Casa da Musica in Porto, Portugal (AR August 2005). They also lend
support to the theory. The three are obvious icons meant to put their
city on the map, glorify their interior functions and canoodle the public
with their rhetoric. The three adopt unusual, sometimes awkward
geometries, to package their overall volumes, none of which is directly
iconic of a single meaning but all of which allude to nature.
The Welsh Performing Arts Centre suggests a geological metaphor
of banded courses as if it were a sedimentary stack of different
slates laid down over millennia in layers of purple, grey, blue and
green stone. The Egyptian library sinks a circular disc partly in the
ground and raises a larger section towards the heavens, an allusion
to solar symbolism and solar gain, and with the angled gesture of
cosmic observatory. The third example, a more sophisticated work of
architecture, was originally perceived in the local Portuguese press as
the diamond that fell from the sky, because the crystalline facets were
transparent in the competition model. As built opaque it is now known
as the meteorite from heaven, a white-cream polygon made from
rectangles plus oblique triangles. Because of its seven-sided geometry
and repetitive rhomboids, it is more like milky quartz than a meteor or
diamond, but the point of such metaphors is not, primarily, denotation.
It is the overall, natural connotations that matter, ones that are fresh
here, slightly hostile and severe as nature can be and, importantly, ones
that are transformed throughout the building.
I am not arguing that the cosmic references in such buildings act as
precisely as the Christian iconography in a medieval cathedral. The
point of the enigmatic signier in an agnostic age is to be carefully
suggestive, a distinct trace rather than a conventional denotation, an
allusion rather than a clear sign. But I stick to my hypothesis that this
trace is usual and, to a degree, inevitable in the emergent genre. If one
is going to spend a fortune on a prominent and uncanny landmark, it is
likely to have some iconography with cosmic overtones because these
remain basic patterns and affecting images.
Whether the successful iconic buildings, in a decadent age, make up
for the many failures is a matter of opinion, but the attempt to quash
them with building codes and committees will not be fruitful. Creativity
and pluralism are too strong for the architectural police. Rather, the
policy might be to demand more thought on the iconography behind
the buildings, more coherence in the use of metaphors, and the careful
interweaving of many codes to neutralise those embarrassing mistakes
that come with any high-risk venture. CHARLES JENCKS
33 | 9
1
Shock of the
new.
2
The cramped
corner site.
3
Cor-ten panels
are only 4mm
thick.
4
The new block
thrives on
contrast.
THE JOY
OF RUST
Clad in a coarse carapace of
rusted steel, this housing block
is a startling urban presence.
70 | 10
71 | 10
2
1
3
10
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
street entrance
communal staircase
shop
at entrance
living
dining
kitchen
internal staircase
bedroom
sleeping loft
second floor
fourth floor
72 | 10
site plan
Architect
Mario Garzaniti, Liege
Photographs
Alain Janssens
first floor
third floor
5
Facade detail.
6
Light filters through the
perforated shutters.
7
Duplex apartments are quite
generously proportioned.
8
Sleeping loft.
73 | 10
HOUSE EXTENSION ,
LONDON
ARCHITECT
ALISON B ROOKS
ASSOCIATES
1
The new glass and
patinated brass
pavilion tactfully
extends an existing
Victorian house.
Brass origami
94 | 10
ar house
2
The pavilion is conceived as a
series of thin folded planes.
3
Pared down architectural
language does not attempt to
compete with original house.
4
Views through to garden are
framed and defined.
5
Mounted on a slim steel substructure, the brass planes are
only 60mm thick.
2
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
cross section
entrance
hall
wc
dining room
living room
kitchen
dining pavilion
terrace
magnolia tree
long section
3
9
1
2
site plan
96 | 10
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SHAW PRODUCTION
A sensitive addition, carefully knitted to a distinguished theatre, provides
new facilities and civilized spaces for staff and public alike.
1
Upper foyer looks over pool and
court towards old building.
2
New entrance, left, with box of big
rehearsal hall behind.
3
Looking from court towards upper
foyer with rehearsal hall behind.
63 | 10
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Page 64
4
Large rehearsal hall can be made
light-tight with adjustable fabric
baffles between columns.
5
New staff restaurant and greenroom is much less daunting in use.
6
Upper level of foyer, from which
7
light pours down to lower level.
4
2
12
8
10
section
19
17
11
8
18
10
18
2
12
16
14
15
8
8
8
8
13
8
8
8
8
8
8
8
5
4
8
9
8
8
8
8
9
64 | 10
8
10
1 existing Festival
Theatre
2 upper rehearsal hall
3 lower rehearsal halls
4 green-room
5 lower lobby
6 recording suite
7 box office call centre
8 office
9 dressing room
10 sunken courtyard
11 south terrace
12 patrons lounge/
upper lobby
13 receiving
14 library/multimedia
room
15 new theatre entrance
16 Shaw shop
17 wardrobe cutting
and fitting
18 set/lighting design
19 lobby extension
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66 | 10
Page 66
Architect
Lett/Smith Architects, Toronto
Project team
Peter Smith, Bill Lett Jr, Chris Lyons
Structural engineer
Chris Turner Associates
Mechanical engineer
TMP Niagara
Landscape
Janet Rosenberg + Associates
Acoustics
Aercoustics Engineering
Theatre
Theater Consulting Group
Photographs
Ben Rahn
8
Looking back at new building from
old at dusk. Walkway is illuminated
by light from corridor below shining
up through glass blocks.
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Page 58
1
Building follows existing path
between maple forest (left) and
spruce (right).
2
Undulating roof takes form
from land and bed of existing
stream. Cast in-situ and lifted
onto rusted steel columns.
site plan
58 | 10
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60 | 10
Page 60
3, 4
Concrete roof is clad in lead-coated
copper and provides shelter for display
cabinets.
5
Ramp to lower level.
6
Exhibits in display cases elegantly
emphasize importance of the land to
aboriginal peoples.
7
Shop is above museum workspaces and
screened with lashed tree branches.
ground floor
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
bridge
boutique
storage
open to below
exterior exhibits
meeting area
washroom
courtyard
interior exhibits
offices
kitchen
ramp
61 | 10
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SHIM FIT
11
1
The new residence is clad with a
cement board rainscreen articulated
by a single chimney and corner
windows to the bedroom ...
2
... and the living room.
10
9
6
4
7
80 | 10
81 | 10
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11
10
5
7
B. C./A. W. L.
Architect
Shim-Sutcliffe Architects, Toronto
Project team
Brigitte Shim, Howard Sutcliffe, Donald
Chong, Jason Emery Groen, John OConnor,
Min Wang, James Song
Photographs
James Dow
82 | 10
3, 4
Each building has its own primary
circulation space: the house a
fir-lined lightwell; the restaurant
a toplit ramp.
6
8
3
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
66 | 10
DIVINE LIGHT
This chapel in Turku draws on a long tradition
of remarkable Finnish churches in which religion,
nature and light come together.
1
The wide windows at the
front of the chapel light up
the altar. The copper cladding
will take on a green patina
in time.
67 | 10
Architect
Sanaksenaho Architects, Helsinki
Project architect
Matti Sanaksenaho
Photographs
Jussi Tiainen
ST HENRY S ECUMENICAL A RT
CHAPEL , T URKU , F INLAND
ARCHITECT
SANAKSENAHO A RCHITECTS
2
The chapel, rising from its hillock,
is reminiscent of an upturned
hull, or, more prosaically, an
upright iron.
3
Looking towards the simple altar,
illuminated by natural light from
side windows.
68 | 10
cross section
plan
long section
69 | 10
HISTORY
AND
MEMORY
One of Berlins great
cultural institutions
has been imaginatively
remodelled to connect
with the life of the city.
60 | 11
1
The great
glazed facade
of the new
Akademie der
Knste speaks
of a welcoming
sociability,
binding the life
of surrounding
Pariser Platz
to the life of
the institution.
61 | 11
62 | 11
The Akademie der Knste is a bit like the British Royal Academy except
that it involves a larger spectrum of arts, including literature, theatre,
lm and dance as well as painting, sculpture and architecture, and that it
draws its membership currently 370 persons from an international
eld. Founded in 1696 under royal patronage, it had various homes
until 1907, when it took over the former Arnim Palace at the corner of
Pariser Platz. In this central location, on Berlins east-west axis between
Unter den Linden and the Brandenburg Gate, it grew and ourished until
1937, when the arts were ousted in favour of Albert Speers ofce for the
replanning of Germania. By the end of the War much of the building had
been destroyed, and as Pariser Platz lay close to the Wall of 1961 on the
Eastern side, it was reduced to a station for border guards.
Meanwhile, revived academies grew up in new homes separately in
the East and West sectors of the city, the Western one in a building by
Dttmann in the Hansaviertel. Only after reunication in 1989 could a
return to the original home be entertained, and only through combining
the East and West academies could it be achieved. The members
overcame their differences and accepted the necessary reduction in
numbers, so by 1993 a decision had been made to return to the old site.
State funding was promised, a brief was drawn up, and a limited
competition was opened to the internationally distinguished architect
members, 18 of whom took part. Gnter Behnisch stood aside from
the rst stage, but after an indecisive outcome he decided to take
part in the second, and in 1994 an architectural jury led by Gabriel
Epstein was unanimous in declaring the Behnisch design the winner and
recommending its construction. Their choice was supported in style and
intention by representatives from all the other arts, seeming to point
the way to a happy future, but support from the city was less consistent.
Delays over permissions and struggles over funding were compounded
by contractual difculties which is why we have had to wait until 2005 to
see the completion and opening of Behnischs building.
Pariser Platz originated as part of the new western suburb of Berlin
laid out on a rectangular grid for Friedrich Wilhelm the First of Prussia in
1733. It was part of a processional route used for victory parades, and
the name Pariser Platz commemorated victory over Napoleon in 1814.
The west side, as main gate, was always the most formal and symmetrical,
and the Brandenburg Gate as we know it today was added in 1789.
The rest of the square, when rst laid out in the 1730s, was fronted
by noblemens palaces in two grand stories with Classical orders and
mansards, though irregularly grouped and with varying plot widths. Long
deep sites left room for generous gardens behind.
As the city grew in the nineteenth century, the peripheral position
became central, and the buildings exchanged their domestic roles for
institutional ones. Density of accommodation increased, provoking
expansion upwards and rearwards into gardens. The Akademie was
typical: it used the existing three-storey Arnim Palace for ofces and
meeting rooms, then lled the garden to the back with a large block of
top-lit exhibition halls, leaving only a narrow open space next to each
party wall. After the destruction of 1945 and subsequent clearing of
debris, these exhibition halls protected by anking rooms added by
Speer were the only remains of the former square apart from the gate.
To maintain historical continuity and memory of the institution it was
desirable to keep at least some of these exhibition rooms, and now that
art often consists of installations and performances rather than painting,
artists seem to prefer a dialogue with an existing place rather than being
framed inescapably by the white room of the architect. But retention of
the old chain of rooms was not easy. Taking more than half the length
of the site, they ran down the middle, and their roof lights required
void overhead. With its many departments, meeting spaces, ofces, and
archives, the Akademie constituted quite a large programme, constrained
by party walls each side, building lines to front and rear, and a height limit
respecting the Brandenburg Gate. The site could have been lled with
articially lit and air-conditioned oors like a huge open-plan ofce, but
to meet the accommodation requirements in a civilised way, giving people
daylight, views, air and visible spatial progressions, demanded ingenious
exploitation of every opportunity for transparency.
Accepting the central string of galleries, Behnisch chose to make a
relatively open block fronting the square for the ceremonial and public
parts, and a more solid south block to rear for the archives. These set up
a fruitful contrast, for while the archive block was to be a straightforward
piece of rational modern building with solid and repetitive oors, ofces
to the facade, and storage within, the front block varied in storey height
and took diagonal slices across the plan, varying from one level to the
next. This allowed a series of stairs to develop irregularly in the well
behind, setting up a rotation in the space. The ascent from level to
level was to be a drama and a discovery, with ever-changing views into
the spaces behind as well as back through to the Pariser Platz, and a
generous open terrace in the middle. Its oors would carry the principal
elements of the Akademie: on the ground, foyer and book sales; on rst,
the reading room for archive material; on second, main lecture hall; and
on third, presidential ofces. The fourth rooftop level with glass roof and
open terrace with views of Reichstag and Brandenburg Gate has become
the members bar. In plans of the developing design, the specic features
of each oor varied, but the contrast between oors in shape, height and
layout was retained, and the stairwell with its many diagonals remained
the vertical visual link.
Having determined the destiny of back and front, there remained
the question of the sides. The solid party wall to the west backing onto
Frank Gehrys DG Bank (AR August 2001) could take a single row of
ofces at three upper levels, looking out over the galleries and fed by
2
Hemmed in between the
Adlon Hotel (left) and Frank
Gehrys DG Bank (right),
Behnischs controversial
glazed skin is a rare moment
of lightness amid Pariser
Platzs po-faced historicism.
3
To the rear, the building
becomes more expressive.
4
The glazed winter gardenstyle passage linking the
Akademies front and rear
departments. At ground
level, this is a public space.
63 | 11
5
Networks of stairs, terraces
and landings provide points
for informal interaction.
6
Entrance hall, with flying
bridges and staircases.
7
The convivial members bar
at top floor level, with views
over Pariser Platz.
8
One of the original core of
gallery spaces.
9
9
16
15
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
15
14
11
12
9
12
17
10
18
first floor
fourth floor
5
7
9
4
6
4
15
8
8
6
14
12
2
12
13
64 | 11
second floor
65 | 11
66 | 11
Eventually Behnisch won his case, but building was delayed three years,
and the nancial situation became in consequence more difcult.
Fearing that it would run out of money, the Berlin Senate decided
to sell off the part of the site intended for the archive block, moving
the archives instead to a deep basement under the front. This policy
backred, for difcult ground conditions meant cost increases, reducing
the value of the sale. Further delays and cost increases were caused
when the general contractor appointed by the Senate went bust. The
intended archive block has been built to Behnischs general plan, but by
other architects and for other uses, compromising the Behrenstrasse
facade and removing the main justication of the pier-like link. Also lost
is the continuity through layers from street to street and the intended
contrast between the ordinary back and more dramatic front.
Fortunately little sense of the delays and struggles persists into the
completed building. As the only public building in the square and as a
primary representative institution for the arts in Berlin, it seems apt
that the Akademie be open and inviting. Its penetrability, declared in
the through-street and friendly top-lit caf, give new life to a rather
po-faced square that desperately needs it. Events taking place within
can be witnessed from without, especially at night, binding the life of
the square to the life of the institution. All would have been hopelessly
constrained by a stone mask. The feeling in the plenary chamber or in
the members bar of being on the square would also have disappeared.
The constraint of the facades only teaches us, once again, that
aesthetic quality cannot be assured by decree and is not achieved
through materials and regulating lines, even if plot lines and height
restrictions are essential. Memory of cities, institutions, and buildings
matters, but is always subject to selection and interpretation, and a
good architect is needed for a creative dialogue. Behnischs choice to
concentrate on the old exhibition halls as the heart of the institution
was a more profound act of memory than facade rules read into
historical evidence by modern bureaucrats. PETER BLUNDELL JONES
*The story of the struggle over the buildings style is recorded in the book Berlin Pariser Platz by
Gnter Behnisch and Werner Durth, published for the Akademie by Jovis, Berlin 2005 (German with
English summaries).
Architect
Behnisch & Partner, Stuttgart,
with Werner Durth
Photographs
Werner Huthmacher/artur except nos
1 & 4 by Jrgen Henkelman/artur
9
Deck leading out to the
sculpture garden beyond. Light
cascades through the kinked
atrium space that unites the
various floors and activities.
67 | 11
COLLEGE EXTENSION ,
O XFORD , E NGLAND
ARCHITECT
MAC CORMAC JAMIESON
& PRICHARD
LUNCH BOX
This addition to an Oxford College elegantly
extends the historic continuum.
54 | 11
1
The new extension
is a simple glazed
box housed within
an external screen
of oak shutters.
55 | 11
2
Detail of the layered facade.
3
The new sitting room overlooks a narrow garden.
4
Linking stair between sitting
and lunch rooms.
5
The generous, luminous new
lunch room, which can seat
an extra 36 places.
COLLEGE EXTENSION ,
OXFORD , E NGLAND
ARCHITECT
MAC CORMAC JAMIESON
& PRICHARD
2
diagram of historical evolution
4 5
second floor
1
2
3
4
5
6
sitting room
kitchen
servery
lunch room
terrace
existing rooms
56 | 11
location plan
first floor
57 | 11
6
Shutters and glazing
filter the light.
7
The elegant, legible
box adds to the
historic continuum of
the college.
cross section
58 | 3
Architect
MacCormac Jamieson & Prichard, London
Photographs
Peter Durant/arcblue
COLLEGE EXTENSION ,
OXFORD , E NGLAND
ARCHITECT
MAC CORMAC JAMIESON
& PRICHARD
1
2
86 | 11
ar house
site plan
1
The new part
wraps sinuously
around the base
of a nineteenthcentury villa on
the shores of
Lake Bled.
2
The glazed
addition coils
around to create
a forecourt.
87 | 11
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
forecourt
garages
entrance hall
kitchen
dining
living
study
staircase
master bedroom
childrens bedrooms
10
10
second floor
3
first floor
8
1
88 | 11
long section
cross section
3
A processional
staircase opens up
the interior.
4
The grand stair
winds up from
the living area at
ground floor level,
to two floors of
bedrooms above.
89 | 11
product review
Habitare, Finlands
largest furniture
and interior design
fair, formed part
of Helsinki Design
Week at the end of
September. The theme
of this years Habitare
design competition
was My music: the
development of spaces
for listening to music.
Of the 74 submissions,
Jasper Morrison
shortlisted four for
their diverse and
clever use of materials.
Julia Dawson reports.
Aisti (Sense) was in Jasper Morrisons opinion the most impressive scheme
as it is so cheerful, colourful and alive. By Inka Ahola and Karoliina Korhonen,
assisted by Richard Widerberg and Kimmo Modig, it was certainly the
funkiest, with tubular foam plastic tentacles stretching out from two parallel
walls, cushioning the space and affording strong absorption of secondary
sounds. The designers say the idea behind Aisti was to create spatial tension
between two existing walls with one material, creating space, enhancing the
music and providing a place for people.
90 | 11
91 | 11
1
The restored building
compact and crumbling,
but given new life.
2
Inserting the new structure.
3
New and old elements are
clearly legible.
Architect
Fischer Naumann Partnerschaft, Stuttgart
Project team
Stefanie Naumann, Martin Naumann
PRIZEWINNER
SHOWROOM , P FALZ ,
GERMANY
ARCHITECT
FNP A RCHITEKTEN
East Elevation
47 | 12
DIVIDED VIEWS
When is a room not a room?
The Jury is still out ...
T house by Sou Fujimoto
was a highly contested choice.
The house, which is essentially
a single volume space, provides
accommodation for a family of
four and also serves as a space
within which to display the
owners private collection of
contemporary art. Some Jury
members thought this was a
completely unworkable space
to inhabit, with the buildings
contorted spaces providing little
exibility. Assuming that the client
was party to the design process,
however, raises an equally
pertinent counter-assumption
that the space is exactly what
they wanted; a unique, bespoke,
albeit unorthodox series of tailormade spaces.
Recalling primitive housing
models that arranged private
areas around a central core, this
homes eight principal rooms
are ordered in a radial manner.
Rather than being organised
around a centralised hall, however,
each space is a sub-division of
the single volume, with no spatial
hierarchy. Held between a single
unied oor and ceiling, rooms
HONOURABLE MENTION
HOUSE , M AEBASHI
CITY , J APAN
ARCHITECT
SOU FUJIMOTO
ARCHITECTS
1, 2
By modelling the spaces, this
tailor-made home offers an
alternative to conventional
domestic planning.
3
From the street, the faceted
facade begins to express the
complexity of the internal
arrangement.
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
entrance
kitchen/living
master bedroom
study
piano room
Japanese-style room
childs bed
bathroom
childs bed 2
parking
3
4
6
5
2
1
7
9
8
86 | 12
10
1
Clad in Norwegian pine,
housing blocks have a formal
and material rigour.
2
External staircase doubles as
a terrace in summer.
3
Trondheim context.
4
Interior of studio flat in twostorey block.
5
Monastic rigour of top floor
bedroom in main block.
6
Communal living space in
main block.
Architect
Brendeland & Kristoffersen, Trondheim
Photographs
1, 2, Jeroen Musch; 4, 5, 6, Johan Fowelin;
3, Geir Brendeland
5
RADICAL CHIC
This imaginative new housing in Trondheim
attempts to build on a radical civic spirit.
COMMENDED
HOUSING , T RONDHEIM ,
NORWAY
ARCHITECT
BRENDELAND &
KRISTOFFERSEN
3
2
4
3
entrance
communal living space
bedroom
studio at
3
3
1
2
3
4
3
1
70 | 3
cross section
71 | 12
BALINESE BAMBOO
This hotel restaurant in a Bali tourist resort
explores vernacular forms and materials.
1
A lightweight,
bamboo-clad pavilion
hovers over a pool.
2
Bamboo walls filter
light and air.
3
Elongated volume of
the entrance lobby.
3
1 entrance lobby
2 reecting pool
3 restaurant pavilions
Architect
Budi Pradono Architects, Jakarta
Photographs
FX Bambang SN
3
2
3
84 | 12
HONOURABLE MENTION
RESTAURANT , B ALI , I NDONESIA
ARCHITECT
BUDI PRADONO A RCHITECTS
site plan
HIGHLY COMMENDED
BRIDGE , M AOSI , C HINA
ARCHITECT
DEPARTMENT OF
ARCHITECTURE , C HINESE
UNIVERSITY OF HONG KONG
2
1, 2
Bridge provides safe route to
school, meeting point and a
place for contemplation.
3
Made largely from local
materials, the bridge sits
comfortably in the landscape,
bearing on the river bed.
section
delight
HONOURABLE MENTION
URBAN INSTALLATION ,
VANCOUVER , C ANADA
ARCHITECT
SATOSHI MATSUOKA &
YUKI T AMURA
COMMENDED
HOUSE , C OLIUMO
PENINSULA , C HILE
ARCHITECT
PEZO VON
ELLRICHSHAUSEN
ARCHITECTS
1
3
4
2
roof plan
CLIFFTOP MONOLITH
Poised on a cliff, this simple concrete house boldly confronts nature and the elements.
72 | 3
1
2
3
4
5
living room
kitchen
dining room
bedroom
terrace
1
Cast by hand using the
most basic techniques,
the concrete house has a
primitive allure.
2
The raw concrete cube clings
precipitously to the hillside.
3, 4
The triple-height living room
spaces are at once quite
grand, yet domestic.
73 | 12
74 | 12
Architect
Shuhei Endo, Osaka
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
entrance
ofce
store
wc
rest space
workshop
car lift
showroom space
5
1,2
Within the ramshackle
context of Nagoya City, the
car showroom is a distinctive
composition.
3,4,5
The folded planes create
a variety of internal and
external spaces.
2
6
1
COMMENDED
CAR SHOWROOM , N AGOYA ,
AICHI PREFECTURE , J APAN
ARCHITECT
SHUHEI ENDO
75 | 12
HONOURABLE MENTION
TAMBABOX , T AMBACOUNDA ,
SENEGAL
ARCHITECT
EX . STUDIO
BOX FRESH
Architect
ex-studio, Barcelona
Project team
Patricia Meneses, Ivn Jurez
Photographs
Ivn Jurez
90 | 3
1
Out of the box Tambabox in
context, with visitors.
2
Brilliantly coloured fabric
panels are suffused with light.
3
Tambabox in after dark mode.
91 | 12
INFORMAL ORDER
With just three formal variables, this sinuous new settlement works with site and brief.
HIGHLY COMMENDED
RESIDENTIAL CARE UNIT ,
HOKKAIDO , J APAN
ARCHITECT
SOU FUJIMOTO A RCHITECTS
60 | 12
61 | 12
2
The buildings contorted plan
form gives westerly views
across the city, and into more
intimate external enclaves.
3
Places for casual meeting or
semi-public refuge.
4
In the westernmost
accommodation block,
three bedrooms provide
an alternative to standard
rectilinear spaces.
Architect
Sou Fujimoto Architects, Tokyo
Project team
Sou Fujimoto, Yumiko Nogiri, Koji Aoki
Photographs
1, 4, Dalci Ano
2, 3 Sou Fujimoto
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entrance
bedroom
alcove
living room
washing room
wc
bathroom
dining room
kitchen
ofce
roof terrace
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2
2
2
10
8
9
3
3
2
2
5
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3
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62 | 12
HIGHLY COMMENDED
RESIDENTIAL CARE UNIT ,
HOKKAIDO , J APAN
ARCHITECT
SOU FUJIMOTO A RCHITECTS
2 2
11
5
6
upper ground
long section
HIGHLY COMMENDED
ROLLING BRIDGE , P ADDINGTON , L ONDON
DESIGNER
THOMAS HEATHERWICK STUDIO
56 | 12
ROLL
WITH IT
A new footbridge
animates Paddingtons
still waters.
hate it? R. G.
Designer
Thomas Heatherwick Studio, London
1,2,3
States of play: the bridge
is stable in any position,
as hydraulic rams push
and pull.
57 | 3
HIGHLY COMMENDED
STADIUM CANOPY ,
HELSINKI , F INLAND
ARCHITECT
K2S A RCHITECTS
1
The new roof swells out
over the stadium.
2
The grandstand in action.
FLYING FINNS
5
2
Helsinkis Olympic
Stadium is dignified and
enhanced by a bold new
grandstand roof.
1
Architect
K2S Architects, Helsinki
Project team
Kimmo Lintula, Niko Sirola,
Mikko Summanen
Photographs
1, Johan Fowelin
2, Mikko Summanen
1 new roof
2 existing
grandstand
3 tower
4 running track
5 pitch
stadium plan (scale approx 1:2500)
65 | 12
HIGHLY COMMENDED
SCHOOL AND COMMUNITY
CENTRE , L IJIANG , C HINA
ARCHITECT
LI XIAODONG DESIGN STUDIO
52 | 12
ELEMENTARY EDUCATION
Li Xiaodong revisits established architectural typologies
when placing this contemporary group of buildings within
a sensitive UNESCO World Heritage site.
1
From the south,
the school
courtyard is set
beside a large
maple tree.
HIGHLY COMMENDED
SCHOOL AND COMMUNITY
CENTRE , L IJIANG , C HINA
ARCHITECT
LI XIAODONG DESIGN STUDIO
first floor
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
museum
classroom
exhibition area
community courtyard
reecting pool
school courtyard
staffroom
site plan
54 | 12
as a demonstration of how
local materials, technology
and spatial arrangements can
be transformed into a fresh
language. The challenge for
this generation, however,
with Li Xiaodong and many
contemporaries based in cities
like Beijing, will ultimately
come when they are given the
opportunity to raise their game,
and to tackle the problems
associated with large-scale
urban developments. R. G.
Architect
Li Xiaodong Design Studio, Beijing
Project team
Li Xiaodong, Yeo Kang Shua,
Chong Keng Hua, Stanley Lee Tse Chen
Photographs
Melvin H. J. Tan
2
From within the classroom,
nature and landscape remain
dominant and distracting.
3,4,5
Within the community
courtyard, the twisted
staircase forms a focus ...
a contemporary twist, in
an otherwise traditional
context.
6
The community courtyard,
reflecting pool and Snow
Mountain beyond.
HONOURABLE MENTION
RESTAURANT , N EW Y ORK ,
USA
ARCHITECT
LTL A RCHITECTS
1
Looking from the
kitchen toward
the street, Tides
Restaurant
features a new
type of suspended
ceiling.
SHIFTING
TIDES
The designers of this
New York restaurant
sought acoustic softness
and spatial intimacy.
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third floor
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15
16
1
13
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FIRST BLOOD
This blood collection centre, the
largest in India, aims to demystify
and humanise the process of
blood donation.
82 | 12
1
The slightly
hermetic concrete
exterior.
2
A soaring atrium
unites the various
volumes and
functions.
3
Blood donation
suite.
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HONOURABLE MENTION
BLOOD CENTRE ,
AHMEDABAD , I NDIA
ARCHITECT
MATHAROO A SSOCIATES
entrance
waiting area
atrium
reception
cross matching lab
blood group lab
virology lab
doctors surgery
refreshment room
donation suite
examination room
pool
WCs
auditorium
platelets room
cold rooms
conference room
canteen
ofces
records
first floor
6
3
11
10
5
4
13
12
cross section
long section
83 | 12
SPACE FRAMED
Sophisticated structural
design informed a
gymnasium building in
Tomochi, Japan, symbolising
its region.
42 | 11
PRIZEWINNER
FORESTRY HALL ,
TOMOCHI , J APAN
ARCHITECT
TAIRA NISHIZAWA
ARCHITECTS
1
The building sits on a
man-made hill in a
mountain context.
2, 3
Intersecting grids produce
differential heights for different
spaces.
1
2
3
4
entrance
gymnasium
council room
meeting room
2
detailed wall section: grids of steel and glulam support a glazed box
PRIZEWINNER
FORESTRY HALL ,
TOMOCHI , J APAN
ARCHITECT
TAIRA NISHIZAWA
ARCHITECTS
44 | 12
site plan
cross section
long section
1
Generous balconies
animate the stern
slate-clad facades.
2
Edge of town context.
SWISS ASSURANCE
This large-scale housing complex reinvigorates a dull building type.
88 | 12
cross section
location/site plan
HONOURABLE MENTION
HOUSING , Z URICH ,
SWITZERLAND
ARCHITECTS
POOL A RCHITEKTEN
89 | 12
HIGHLY COMMENDED
RESTAURANT , B RUFE , P ORTUGAL
ARCHITECTS
ANTNIO PORTUGAL & MANUEL
MARIA REIS
3
2
1
6
DINING TERRACE
This restaurant in Portugals rugged north
responds to and celebrates its wild setting.
2 |3
1
Embedded in hillside, roof
becomes viewing plateau.
2
Rough timber cladding
alludes to farm buildings.
3,4,5
The main terrace has
breathtaking vistas.
6
The new restaurant is poised
on granite terraces.
long section
1
2
3
4
5
6
terrace
restaurant dining room
servery
kitchen
external staircase
roof
cross section
59 | 12
site plan
COMMENDED
PAVILION , P ERRY COUNTY ,
ALABAMA , USA
ARCHITECT
RURAL STUDIO
ARBOREAL ARBOUR
3
2
76 | 12
1
Supported by arboreal
columns, the pavilion
blends into the forest.
2
A megaphone-shaped
roof encloses a platform.
3
The elevated platform
resists periodic flooding
from the nearby river.
long section
cross section
77 | 12
SHEPPARDS
DELIGHT
In the beautiful Cornish setting,
Sustrans mission to make the
landscape accessible is perfectly
served by a new bridge.
site plan
Architect
David Sheppard Architects, Devon
with Sustrans
Project team
David Sheppard, Colin Sanderson,
Simon Ballantine
Photographs
Joakim Born
68 | 3
HIGHLY COMMENDED
BRIDGE , S T A USTELL , C ORNWALL , UK
ARCHITECT
DAVID SHEPPARD A RCHITECTS
1
The Corten fins produce a
subtle moir effect when
seen by passing cyclists,
walkers and riders.
2
The bridge provides an
important link in the
Sustrans 15km Clay Trails.
69 | 12
1
Site context.
2
The oratory lies at the heart
of the campus.
3
The oratory cube, seen
through the glazed cloister.
4
Refined geometry and raw
materials give the structure
an elemental power. A cast
glass door heralds entry.
1
LIGHT SPIRIT
Fusing the secular and metaphysical, this oratory on
a campus is a modern response to the numinous.
PRIZEWINNER
CHURCH COMPLEX ,
LOUISIANA , USA
ARCHITECT
TRAHAN A RCHITECTS
48 | 12
5
Communing with the
numinous.
6
Interior has an almost
Japanese asceticism.
7
Light and materials convey
a sense of peace and
spirituality.
PRIZEWINNER
CHURCH COMPLEX ,
LOUISIANA , USA
ARCHITECT
TRAHAN A RCHITECTS
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Architect
Trahan Architects, Louisiana
Project team
Victor F. Trahan, Brad Davis, Kirk Edwards
Photographs
Timothy Hursley
administration
classroom
religious education
oratory
altar
pulpit
presiders chair
crucix
pews
2
4
1
3
50 | 12
site plan
cross section
HANGING
ABOUT
Portable refuge, or
portable prison? The
decision is yours
Architect
ex.studio, Barcelona
Project team
Ivn Jurez, Patricia Meneses
Photograph
Ivn Jurez
1
Trapped or tranquil?
Or simply a nice garden
ornament?
HONOURABLE MENTION
TREE HOUSE , H UESCA , S PAIN
ARCHITECT
EX . STUDIO
87 | 3
NORTHERN EXPOSURE
In Norways remote north, this research centre
responds to challenging conditions.
78 | 12
long section
COMMENDED
RESEARCH CENTRE ,
SVALBARD , N ORWAY
ARCHITECT
JARMUND V IGSNS
cross section
Architect
Jarmund Vigsns, Oslo
Photographs
Nils Petter Dale
79 | 12
COMMENDED
AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL TOWER ,
VIENNA , A USTRIA
ARCHITECT
ZECHNER & ZECHNER
11
10
23rd floor
7 8 8 8
5
3
Architect
Zechner & Zechner, Vienna
Project team
Martin Zechner, Bernhard Schunack
Photographs
Thilo Hrdtlein
2
19th floor
1
The towers tripartite form
reflects its various functions.
2
Membrane support structure.
3, 4
The membrane becomes a
backdrop for light projection.
16th floor
FLIGHT OF
IMAGINATION
3
3
3
3
3
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
foyer
patio garden
ofces
conference room
kitchen
computer suite
rest room
changing room
observation room
control booth
catwalk
3 5
second floor
3
5
4
2
1
78 | 12
cross section
design review
screened by an eyelid, an
openable veil studded with 4700
acrylic lenses, punched into the
surface in a swirling leaf pattern.
When the eyelid is closed,
scintillating pin-pricks of light
percolate through the lenses,
creating magical luminous
patterns and effects.
The moving eyelid/veil forms
an important part of the wedding
ritual. At the end of the wedding
ceremony, when the groom lifts
the brides veil, the veil of the
chapel also opens, revealing the
ravishing panorama of nature
beyond. After the ceremony,
as the congregation walks out
across the pond to a drinks
area, the veil slowly closes so
that the chapel can be reset for
the next wedding. This also
cannily ensures a regular
throughput of customers (not
surprisingly, the chapel has
proved immensely popular).
site plan
1
The chapel in use. It has proved
phenomenally popular.
2
The luminous interior with the
perforated veil lifted and views of
the framed landscape beyond.
3
Building and nature as one.
W EDDING CHAPEL ,
K OBUCHIZAWA , J APAN
ARCHITECT
K LEIN D YTHAM
Eye do
2
cross section
51 | 9
Stairway to heaven
Thomas Heatherwick stuns Manhattan with his new store for Longchamp.
74 | 8
1
The focus of the
remodelling is a seductively
cascading staircase.
2
Ribbon-like forms are
enclosed by the wispiest of
gossamer glass balustrades.
75 | 8
76 | 8
Designer
Heatherwick Studio, London
Architect
Atmosphere Design Group LLC
Structural engineer
Building Structural Engineering Services
MEP consultant
ODea Lynch Abbattista & Associates
Lighting Designer
HDLC Architectural Lighting Design
Photographs
Nikolas Koenig, 1, 2
Adrian Wilson, 3, 4
3
The remodelled building in
New Yorks Soho.
4
The main shop at first floor
level with ingenious slice
and peel ceiling.
77 | 8