Dezeen and MINI Frontiers: developing “living architecture” could help humanity survive, claims senior University of Greenwich lecturer Rachel Armstrong, who is investigating how we could grow a city in space.
Visualisation of living architecture by Dan Tassell
“The world in which our cities are situated is lively,” says Armstrong. “A living city could confer survival strategies and some form of adaptation to our buildings.”
Living buildings could “absorb pollutants and carbon dioxide,” she claims, and even offer better protection against natural disasters.
“In an age when we’re faced with repeated flooding, tornadoes, hurricanes and earthquakes, I think that to design for instability is a really powerful thing.”
Illustration of what the starship Persephone might look like by Phil Watson & Jon Morris
Armstrong, who is also a senior TED fellow and founder of research group Black Sky Thinking, is currently investigating how we would grow cities from soils as part of a project called Persephone. Led by the Icarus Interstellar foundation, the ambition of the project is to achieve interstellar space travel by the year 2100.
Illustration of what the starship Persephone might look like
“Persephone is the design and engineering of the living interior of a starship,” Armstrong explains. “This is a world ship. It contains human inhabitants and therefore the interior of this space needs to support these peoples for the duration of their journey, and that could be hundreds, potentially thousands of years.”
Visualisation of synthetic soil on the starship Pershephone
She continues: “The architectures within this space will be grown from the bottom up, using the soils. The soils themselves will not be made inert like they are on earth – like bricks. In Persephone the culture would be to keep the liveliness of everything. So we will be extruding structures from soils. In some ways I can think of them being like the caves in Cappadocia in Turkey.”
Cappadocia caves, Turkey
While Armstrong admits the realisation of such a “world ship” is far off, she believes research into biological buildings and construction methods is important for life on earth.
“This might seem quite esoteric and ‘out there’,” she says. “But Persephone is essential for us because it asks us questions about what survivability and sustainability is on our planet right now.”
Rachel Armstrong
The music featured in the movie is a track called Everything Everywhere Once Was by UK producer 800xL. You can listen to more original music on Dezeen Music Project.
A year after establishing their architectural practice, Canadian architects David and Susan Scott have created a timber-lined studio for themselves in a converted butcher and grocery shop in Vancouver (+ movie).
The husband-and-wife team co-founded Scott & Scott Architects at the start of 2013 but until now have been without a dedicated studio, so they set about creating one in the former shop premises below their home – a building dating back to 1911.
The architects stripped back the interior of the 70-square-metre space to create a simple rectangular studio at the front, a workshop at the back and a wall of concealed storage in between.
Douglas fir planks were sourced from a local sawmill to line the walls, floor and ceiling of the main room. These were treated with a traditional beeswax, mixed with a solvent of Canadian Whiskey to produce a gleaming surface.
The former shopfront was fully glazed, helping to bring as much light as possible into the space, but also allowing neighbours to see what’s going on inside.
“The priorities were to maximise the use of natural light, enhance the connection to the neighbourhood, use regional materials which have a known providence and acknowledge the lumber-based building culture of the Pacific Northwest,” explained David Scott.
The couple enlisted the help of local carpenters to help them build the space themselves. Wooden cupboards were constructed from plywood and stained in black, creating a contrast with the lighter wood elsewhere.
The space is completed by glass pendant lights and a series of bespoke desks, which the architects designed and made with galvanised steel frames and hand-stitched leather surfaces.
Movie is by Odette Visual, with a score by Joel RL Phelps. Photography is by the architects.
Here’s a project description from Scott & Scott Studio:
Scott & Scott Studio
A year after the launch of their practice architects Susan and David Scott have completed the refurbishment of the historic commercial space in their 1911 East Vancouver residence. Once a butcher shop and a long running grocery store, the space has been stripped back to a simple volume lined with Douglas fir boards and completed with black stained fir plywood millwork.
Using familiar materials from their region, the architects built the space themselves with a couple of carpenters. The fir was supplied from a sawyer on Vancouver Island with whom they have worked for several years. Three fir logs were selected, milled and cut to suit the width and height of the space. The work was completed in a manner rooted in traditional methodology while utilising the availability of modern tooling. The unsalvageable south-facing storefront had been infilled by a previous owner and was restored to an area of glass consistent with the original size using a single high performance unit.
Informed by a desire to create work which is fundamental in its architecture and supportive of a variety of uses over time, the priorities were to maximise the use of natural light, enhance the connection to the neighbourhood, use regional materials which have a known providence, and acknowledge the lumber-based building culture of the Pacific Northwest.
Floor plan
The architects favour materials and approaches that wear in and appreciate over time, taking on warmth with maintenance. The interior fir boards are finished with a variant of a warm applied 19th century beeswax floor finish with the solvent replaced with Canadian Whiskey.
The tables (a first of their self-produced furniture designs) are hand-stitched finished leather tops on blackened galvanised steel bases.
Architect Anupama Kundoo discusses the power of craft and working with traditional stone masons, in the second of our series of movies from BE OPEN’s Made In… India Samskara exhibition in New Delhi.
Architect Anupama Kundoo, who designed the exhibition
For architect Anupama Kundoo, being surrounded by work made using hand-crafted techniques is a reminder that there is an alternative to the “standardised industrial products”, people have become used to.
“We are all different, we are all unique, and it’s very strange that we have to be adjusting ourselves continually to standard products.” she says. “We have just accepted and surrendered ourselves to this future: it doesn’t have to be like that.”
The granite slabs rise up from the floor to create plinths to support the exhibits
She describes her installation as an undulating landscape, made from three principle elements: ferrocement slabs, pools of water and modular slabs of hand-levelled granite. This landscape hosts the homeware, lighting, clothes and furniture on display.
The granite slabs were hand-levelled in Tamil Nadu
Kundoo teamed up with stone-cutters from Tamil Nadu in the south of India to produce the slabs that dip and rise throughout the space. These long granite strips make up both the floor of the space and the surfaces for displaying the exhibits.
Detail of the granite slabs, here supporting a terracotta speaker
“These heavy slabs flow through the space like ribbons,” says Kundoo. “They frame the space and the undulations come out [of] the function: to raise the slab to the level required to display a particular object.”
Exhibits raised on plinths above one of the pools in the exhibition
“The actual elements are modular. The pieces rest on a sand bed and they can be reassembled in a wide range of ways and it can all be directly reused,” she says.
View of the entrance to the exhibition, showing the granite floor in the foreground, the ferrocement to the rear of the image
It took the masons six week to level the granite used in the exhibition, through a painstaking process of hand-levelling, a technique normally used to make stones for grinding masala paste, says Kundoo.
The exhibition contained two pools of water
Seeing the exhibition design, with these familiar techniques used in unexpected ways, had a dramatic effect on the craftsmen, said Kundoo.
“They’ve been making stone slabs for generations. But when they see [them], in this kind of composition, they realise that that they can make anything.” she says.
Three pieces by designer Gunjan Gupta on a ferrocement plinth
Kundoo works between Spain and India. In 2012 she exhibited her Wall House project at the Venice Architecture Biennale. This project also used the skills of Indian craftsmen — she brought a team to Italy to construct a full-size replica of a house inside the Arsenale.
Samskara, which ran from 10 to 28 February at the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts in New Delhi, launched BE OPEN’s Made In… programme, a two-year-long project focussing on the future of craft in design.
The music featured in the movie is a track called Bonjour by Kartick & Gotam on Indian record label EarthSync.
Bold orange windows punctuate the wooden facades of this angular apartment block that French studio Vous Êtes Ici Architectes has slotted between the existing buildings of a south Paris neighbourhood (+ movie).
The six-storey building was designed by Vous Êtes Ici Architectes to provide 11 social housing units beside a school in the 5th Arrondissement of the French capital, on a site previously occupied by a low-rise warehouse.
Rather than building across the entire site, the architects developed an irregularly shaped block that follows the rhythms of the surrounding architecture and frames a pair of gardens at the north and south-east edges.
These gardens also line up with the main road and pedestrian pathway that frame two edges of the site, helping to the reduce the visual impact of the structure.
“The building is set back from the street, allowing the sunlight to reach the school courtyard set across the street,” explained studio founders Alexandre Becker, Paul Pflughaupt and Julien Paulré. “This setup allows respiration and gives space back to the pedestrian passage.”
While some of the building’s walls are clad with timber planks, others are covered with pre-weathered zinc. At ground level, there are also walls of dark brickwork, which demarcate entrances.
Windows with orange frames add colour to the elevations. This feature is echoed in the building’s stairwells and corridors, where walls, floors and railings are uniformly painted in the same hue.
No more than three apartments are located on each floor and the angular shapes of the building give each home a non-standard shape.
“The created volumes allow different typologies for the apartments as well as creating views for all,” said the architects.
South-facing loggias allow apartments to benefit from sunlight during the peak of the day.
Graphic logos adorn doors to direct residents to bicycle storage and bin stores, while a grassy terrace is located on the roof.
Located in the Mouffetard area, Latin Quarter of Paris, our project aims to de-densify the heart of the city block in which it is located.
The building is set back from the street allowing the sunlight to reach the school courtyard set across the street. This setup allows respiration and gives space back to the pedestrian passage. The roof line is continuous and guaranties the continuity of the facades over the street. The set up on the plot is effective, the street is no longer only functional it has become sumptuous.
The construction is a unique volume that has been hollowed out. The recesses generate a course. They punctuate and follow our movements. The created volumes allow different typologies for the apartments as well as creating views for all. The project is more an architectural device than a sculpture.
The primary concrete structure supports wooden based facades. The envelope is of pre-aged zinc and wooden openwork cladding. The hall, stairs and landings are set up in a unique volume that has no partitions; the different levels are visually linked. Perambulation is naturally illuminated in the common spaces. Apartments have from two to three orientations. Hollow construction elements were refused. The apartments are luxurious.
A compact building, a well-insulated wooden structure, solar panels, double glazing windows, a planted roof terrace and loggias with a southern exposure allow us to respect the requirements of Paris’s Climate Plan and to reduce the ecological impact of the building. It is architecture of an efficient nature.
Developer: ELOGIE Architects: Vous Êtes Ici Architectes (A. Becker, J. Paulré, P. Pflughaupt) General contractor: Fayolle & Fils Technical engineering: FACEA Economist: BMA Environment engineering: ICADE
News:Zaha Hadid Architects has unveiled images of a 40-storey hotel with an exposed exoskeleton that is under construction in Macau, China (+ movie).
The 780-room hotel was designed by Zaha Hadid Architects for property developer and casino specialist Melco Crown Entertainment. It will be located at the company’s flagship City of Dreams resort in Cotai, an area that takes its visual cues from the Las Vegas Strip.
Conceived as a monolithic block with a series of voids carved through its centre, the hotel will be encased behind a latticed structure.
It will contain 150,000 square metres of floor space, and will also contain meeting and event facilities, restaurants, a spa and an elevated swimming pool.
“The design combines dramatic public spaces and generous guest rooms with innovative engineering and formal cohesion,” said the architects in a statement.
The building will be Melco Crown’s fifth hotel in Macau which, like Hong Kong, is a Special Administrative Region of China.
Construction started on the building in 2013 and is set to be completed by 2017.
Here are some more details from Zaha Hadid Architects:
The Fifth Hotel of City of Dreams Macau
Melco Crown Entertainment, a developer and owner of casino gaming and entertainment resort facilities in Asia, has unveiled the project details and design of the fifth hotel tower at City of Dreams, the company’s flagship property in Cotai, Macau.
With 40 floors and a gross floor area of 150,000 square metres, the tower houses approximately 780 guestrooms, suites and sky villas. The hotel also includes a variety of meeting and event facilities, gaming rooms, lobby atrium, restaurants, spa, and sky pool. Including extensive back of house areas and supporting ancillary facilities, the tower’s design resolves the many complex programs for the hotel within a single cohesive envelope.
The design combines dramatic public spaces and generous guest rooms with innovative engineering and formal cohesion. The rectangular outline of the site is extruded as a monolithic block with a series of voids which carve through the its centre of the tower, merging traditional architectural elements of roof, wall and ceiling to create a sculptural form that defines many of the hotel’s internal public spaces.
The tower’s exposed exoskeleton reinforces the dynamism of the design. Expressive and powerful, this external structure optimises the interior layouts and envelops the building, further defining its formal composition and establishing relationships with the new Cotai strip.
Development of the new hotel at City of Dreams commenced in 2013. The project is expected to open in early 2017.
This movie by Mexican film agency Nation tours the school of art, design and architecture that Japanese architect Tadao Ando completed last year at the University of Monterrey in Mexico.
The Centro Roberto Garza Sada, also known as the Gate of Creation, is a chunky concrete block designed by Tadao Ando with triangular slices across its two sides to create the appearance of a twisted structure.
Rectangular voids at each end expose stairwells and an open-air amphitheatre, while entrances are located beneath the shelter of the building’s raised underside.
The six-storey interior is organised so that each floor accommodates different departments, encompassing digital facilities, visual arts, textiles, photography, model-making and fashion. Overall, the building accommodates studios and teaching rooms for 300 students.
Amongst the bustling 24-hour shopping district of South Korea‘s capital city, Zaha Hadid has completed a 38,000-square-metre cultural complex with a twinkling aluminium facade (+ movie).
Inaugurated on Friday, the Dongdaemun Design Plaza (DDP) by Zaha Hadid Architects provides Seoul with a hub for art, design and technology, plus a landscaped park that serves as a much-needed green oasis, and a public plaza linking the two.
The building features a shapely facade made up of 45,000 aluminium panels of varying sizes and curvatures. This was achieved using advanced 3-dimensional digital construction services, making DDP the first public building in Korea to utilise the technology.
Described by the designers as “a field of pixilation and perforation patterns”, the backlit facade is speckled with minute perforations that allow the building to transform from a solid entity by day into an animated light show by night.
“The design integrates the park and plaza seamlessly as one, blurring the boundary between architecture and nature in a continuous, fluid landscape,” said Zaha Hadid Architects in a statement.
The complex is made up of eight storeys, of which four sit above ground level and four are set below the plaza. Facilities include exhibition galleries, convention and seminar rooms, a design museum, and a library and education centre.
Voids puncturing the surface of the park offer a look down into the spaces below, and also allow daylight to permeate the building.
The building opened on 21 March to mark the start of Korean Fashion Week, but is also hosting five art and design exhibitions, alongside a collection of Korean art from the Kansong Art Museum.
Here’s the project description from Zaha Hadid Architects:
Dongdaemun Design Plaza (DDP)
The DDP has been designed as a cultural hub at the centre of Dongdaemun, a historic district of Seoul that is now renowned for its 24-hour shopping and cafes. DDP is a place for people of all ages; a catalyst for the instigation and exchange of ideas and for new technologies and media to be explored. The variety of public spaces within DDP include Exhibition Halls, Convention Halls, Design Museum, Library, Lab and Archives, Children’s Education Centre, Media Centre, Seminar Rooms and Sky Lounge; enabling DDP to present the widest diversity of exhibitions and events that feed the cultural vitality of the city.
The DDP is an architectural landscape that revolves around the ancient city wall and cultural artefacts discovered during archaeological excavations preceding DDP’s construction. These historic features form the central element of DDP’s composition; linking the park, plaza and city together.
The design is the very specific result of how the context, local culture, programmatic requirements and innovative engineering come together – allowing the architecture, city and landscape to combine in both form and spatial experience – creating a whole new civic space for the city.
The DDP Park is a place for leisure, relaxation and refuge – a new green oasis within the busy urban surroundings of Dongdaemun. The design integrates the park and plaza seamlessly as one, blurring the boundary between architecture and nature in a continuous, fluid landscape. Voids in the park’s surface give visitors glimpses into the innovative world of design below, making the DDP an important link between the city’s contemporary culture, emerging nature and history.
The 30,000 square metre park reinterprets the spatial concepts of traditional Korean garden design: layering, horizontality, blurring the relationship between the interior and the exterior – with no single feature dominating the perspective. This approach is further informed by historic local painting traditions that depict grand visions of the ever-changing aspects of nature.
DDP encourages many contributions and innovations to feed into each other; engaging the community and allowing talents and ideas to flourish. In combination with the city’s exciting public cultural programs, DDP is an investment in the education and inspiration of future generations.
DDP’s design and construction sets many new standards of innovation. DDP is the first public project in Korea to implement advanced 3-dimensional digital construction services that ensure the highest quality and cost controls. These include 3-dimensional Building Information Modelling (BIM) for construction management and engineering coordination, enabling the design process to adapt with the evolving client brief and integrate all engineering requirements.
These innovations have enabled the team building DDP to control the construction with much greater precision than conventional processes and improve efficiencies. Implementing such construction technologies make DDP one of Korea’s most innovative and technological advanced constructions to date.
DDP opens to the public on 21 March 2014 by hosting Korean Fashion Week. DDP will also host five separate design and art exhibitions featuring works by modern designers as well as the prized collection of traditional Korean art of the Kansong Art Museum.
New York architect Steven Holl has released two movies about the Sifang Art Museum in Nanjing, China, a building designed to recreate the “parallel perspectives” that are characteristic of Chinese landscape paintings.
The first of the two movies depicts a typical day at the museum, which is located at the entrance to an architectural complex within the Laoshan National Forest Park. The second is a guided tour from Steven Holl that explains how he and collaborating Chinese architect Li Hu came up with the design.
According to Holl, the building was designed as a sequence of walls that angle in different directions to confuse a visitor’s sense of perspective.
“It gives you a feeling of mystery about the space. It’s not really clear what’s parallel to what,” he says. “This had to be worked out on the site. We had to actually position these walls while standing and manipulating the space on the site, that was the only way it could be done.”
The concept to create “parallel perspectives” around the building was inspired by the Chinese artists who rejected the single-point-perspective approach of Western painters in favour of images that allow the viewer to travel between vistas.
“The first drawings were about the courtyard,” says Holl. “You can see the way the landscape is organised in these parallel perspective walls, creating conditions where there’s not really the sense of a vanishing point but there’s a kind of a sense of warping the space.”
The base of the building is a black concrete volume surrounded by walls imprinted with the texture of bamboo, while the upper section is an illuminated glass tunnel raised up on columns. It is surrounded by a landscape of fields and pools.
“This landscape comes down to an edge, but the edge isn’t quite yet the building because there’s this edge of bamboo against a freestanding wall which also creates an ante space before you get to the condition of the parallel perspective,” says Holl.
Galleries are located on all three floors of the building, creating places for displaying contemporary art and sculpture. “The condition of space isn’t exactly box-like, but it is more or less orthogonal and that gives a good background for the art,” added the architect.
Movies were produced by Spirit of Space. Photography is by Xia Zhi.
Here’s some extra information from Steven Holl Architects:
Steven Holl Architects presents two films on the Sifang Art Museum
Steven Holl Architects in collaboration with Spirit of Space has created two short films on the Sifang Art Museum, which opened in November 2013 in Nanjing, China.
The film series explores the changing perspectives as visitors move through the new Sifang Art Museum, from the lush green landscape of the Pearl Spring near Nanjing, through the Museum’s entry court and lower gallery, to its floating upper gallery. The film, A Conversation with Steven Holl, presents Steven Holl on site, as he explains the design concept for the new building.
Designed by Steven Holl with Li Hu, the Sifang Art Museum explores the shifting viewpoints, layers of space, and expanses of mist and water, which characterise the deep alternating spatial mysteries of the composition of Chinese painting. The museum is formed by a “field” of parallel perspective spaces and garden walls in black bamboo-formed concrete over which a light “figure” hovers. The straight passages on the ground level gradually turn into the winding passage of the gallery above. Suspended high in the air, the upper gallery unwraps in a clockwise turning sequence and culminates at “in-position” viewing of the city of Nanjing in the distance. This visual axis creates a link back to the great Ming Dynasty capital city.
The courtyard is paved in recycled Old Hutong bricks from the destroyed courtyards in the centre of Nanjing. Limiting the colours of the museum to black and white connects it to ancient Chinese paintings, but also gives a background to feature the colours and textures of the artwork and architecture exhibited within. Bamboo, previously growing on the site, has been used in bamboo-formed concrete, with a black penetrating stain. The museum is heated and cooled by geothermal wells, and features a storm water recycling system.
This raw concretechurch by Nameless Architecture presents a cross-shaped elevation to a road junction in Byeollae, a new district under development outside Seoul, South Korea (+ movie).
Nameless Architecture, which has offices in Seoul and New York, used concrete for both the structure and exterior finish of RW Concrete Church, creating an austere building intended to embody religious values.
“Concrete reveals its solidity as a metaphor for religious values that are not easily changed in an era of unpredictability,” said the architects.
The introduction of a bell tower and a cantilevered second-floor lobby give the church its cross-shaped profile. Additional cross motifs can also be spotted at the top of the tower and within the lobby window.
“The cross as a religious symbol substitutes for an enormous bell tower and is integrated with the physical property of the building,” explained the architects. “The minimised symbol implies the internal tension of the space.”
A large sheltered terrace takes up most of the ground floor of the site, creating a space that can be used for various community activities.
An entrance leads into the church via a ground-floor lobby, from which a staircase ascends towards the chapel on the second floor. Visitors have to pass through the cantilevered lobby before entering the space.
“This cantilevered space is a physical as well as spiritual transition that connects daily life with religion,” added the architects.
A gently sloping floor helps to frame the seating around the pulpit, while clerestory windows help to natural light to filter across the entire room.
Photography is by Rohspace.
Here’s more information from Nameless Architecture:
RW Concrete Church
RW Concrete Church is located in Byeollae, a newly developed district near northeast Seoul, Korea. It evokes a feeling, not of a city already completed, but a building on a new landscape somewhere between nature and artificiality, or between creation and extinction. The church, which will be a part of the new urban fabric, is concretised through a flow of consecutive spaces based on simple shape, single physical properties and programs.
The use of simple volumes and a single material adapted to the site collects a range of desires created in the newly developed district. Concrete, which is a structure as well as a basic finishing material for the building, indicates a property that penetrates the entire church, and at the same time, a firm substance that grasps the gravity of the ground it stands on, which is contrary in concept from abstraction.
Concrete reveals its solidity as a metaphor for religious values that are not easily changed in an era of unpredictability. Moreover, the cross as a religious symbol substitutes for an enormous bell tower and is integrated with the physical property of the building through the empty space at the upper part of the staircase. The minimised symbol implies the internal tension of the space.
The first thing encountered upon entering the building is the empty concrete yard on the ground floor. This is a flexible space that acts as a venue for interaction with the community while also accommodating varying religious programs. By the time you become accustomed to the dark as you walk past this empty yard, and climb the three storeys of closed stairs, you come face to face with a space full of light.
This interior space has a cantilever structure protruding 6.9m, and you must pass through this hall before entering the chapel. This cantilevered space is a physical as well as spiritual transition that connects daily life with religion.
The chapel creates a sense of peace with a single space, using a slope that is not so steep, evoking the feeling of attending a worship service on a low hill. The subdued light gleaming through the long and narrow clerestory embraces the entire chapel and lends vigour to the static space.
Project: RW Concrete Church Architect: NAMELESS Architecture Architects In Charge: Unchung Na, Sorae Yoo Location: Byeollae, South Korea Area: 3,095.5 sqm / 33,319.7sqft
Collaborating Architect: Jplus (Jungtaek Lim, Hwataek Jung) Structural consultant: Mido Structural Consultants Mechanical consultant: One Engineering Client: RockWon Church
Design strategy collective Urban-Think Tank has designed and built a prototypical house as part of an initiative to improve housing conditions for slum dwellers in some of the 2700 informal settlements across South Africa (+ movie).
Working under the title Empower Shack, the team organised a design-and-build workshop in Khayelitsha, a township in Cape Town that is one of the largest in South Africa, and developed a design for a low-cost two-storey shack for local resident Phumezo Tsibanto and his family.
They then worked together to replace Tsibanto’s existing single-storey dwelling with the new two-storey structure, giving the family a new home with a watertight exterior and its own electricity.
The designers are now exploring different configurations of the prototype that will allow it to adapt to the needs of different residents, extending up to three storeys when necessary.
This in turn becomes part of a wider strategy for rationalising the layout of the entire community, known as blocking out. This involves creating access routes for emergency vehicles and providing basic services such as sanitation and water.
Phumezo Tsibanto’s original home
“Our work on the Empower Shack project is not the result of the usual architectural pursuit for a new housing typology,” said Urban-Think Tank co-founder Alfredo Brillembourg. “While we are absolutely trying to innovate upon the design and technology of low-cost housing, we’re more concerned with the general ‘system’ that surrounds housing in the context of informal South African settlements.”
Construction of the timber frame
He continued: “This includes the infrastructure that makes housing decent, such as power and sanitation, along with the urban configuration of homes. The Empower Shack project seeks to address these larger challenges, and in doing so, hopefully changes not just the built landscape of places like Khayelitsha, but also the social, political and economic structures that shape residents’ lives.”
Installing the cladding
Brillembourg and partner Hubert Klumpner are now showing their findings from the two-year research in an exhibition at the Eva Presenhuber Gallery in Zurich.
The completed shack
Here’s a project description from Urban-Think Tank:
Empower Shack
Can art and architecture lend a voice to segments of the population that go unheard? Empower Shack is a new exhibition presenting an ETH Zürich and Urban-Think Tank project on South Africa, supported by Swisspearl (Schweiz) AG. A collaboration between the Brillembourg & Klumpner Chair of Architecture and Urban Design, South African NGO Ikhayalami (‘My Home’), Transsolar, Brillembourg Ochoa Foundation, Meyer Burger, the BLOCK ETH ITA Research Group, and videocompany, the Empower Shack team was established as a response to conventional approaches in dealing with urban informality, which are unsustainable and painstakingly slow in meeting the immediate needs of the vast majority of South Africa’s urban poor.
Aerial view of Khayelitsha
With its roots in a research, design and build workshop aimed at developing an innovative, replicable, affordable and sustainable shack prototype for Cape Town’s Khayelitsha (the third largest township in South Africa), the exhibition uses film, photography, drawings, painting and large-scale architectural installations to explore the complexity of living conditions in informal settlements, and the social role of architects in helping to address the economic, ecological and security challenges faced by residents.
Empower Shack exhibition at the Eva Presenhuber Gallery
With a population of over 50 million and the continent’s largest economy, South Africa is often seen as a source of relative stability and prosperity in the region. Yet economic inequality remains high. Around 1.5 million households (approximately 7.5 million people) live in 2,700 informal settlements scattered across the country, which faces an overall shortage of 2.5 million houses.
Shack installation at the Empower Shack exhibition
While the government’s record on housing delivery is laudable, the scale of need means informal settlements will remain for the foreseeable future. In response, authorities have slowly begun shifting the focus to incremental upgrading, including committing in 2010 to improve the quality of life of 400,000 households in well located informal settlements by 2014 through improved access to basic services and land tenure.
Empower Shack exhibition entrance
Alfredo Brillembourg and Hubert Klumpner, along with their research and design teams and collaborating partners are engaged in an ongoing project to develop and implement design innovations for rapid and incremental informal settlement upgrading.
The examples featured in the Empower Shack exhibition are intended to provide immediate strategies to alleviate a national crisis, while remaining embedded within community-driven processes around resource allocation.
With Empower Shack, Brillembourg and Klumpner reinforce their broader vision for practical, sustainable interventions in informal settlements around the world. They argue the future of urban development lies in collaboration among architects, artists, private enterprise, and the global population of slum-dwellers.
Brillembourg, Klumpner and their team frequently exhibit internationally in venues such as Kassel (2004), MoMA (2010) and the 13th Venice Biennale of Architecture, where they were awarded the Golden Lion in 2012. Through artistic and didactic presentations, they issue a call to arms to their fellow architects to see in the informal settlements of the world a potential for innovation and experimentation, with the goal of putting design in the service of a more equitable and sustainable future.
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