Located in Vienna’s second district, the Vienna University of Economics and Business (Wirtschaftsuniversität Wien) is the largest University focusing on business and economics in Europe, and the new site will accommodate 23,000 students and 1,500 staff.
Open 24 hours a day, the Library and Learning Centre by Zaha Hadid Architects is one of seven buildings that make up the new campus.
The 28,000-square-metre building houses a library, auditorium, workspaces, classrooms, offices, learning support services, book shop, event spaces and cafe.
The animation by Neutral first shows how the volumes of the design are generated, then begins a tour through the spaces.
“The straight lines of the building’s exterior separate as they move inward, becoming curvilinear and fluid to generate a free-formed interior canyon that serves as the central public plaza of the centre,” said the architects.
“All the other facilities are housed within a since column that also divides, becoming two separate ribbons that wind around each other to enclose this glazed gathering space.”
“Searching for a balance between abstract, conceptual narrative and much-expected photorealism, we blend soundscapes with evocative camera movements and traces of inhabitation – revealing time-based architectural design ideas which otherwise wouldn’t be apparent,” Christian Grou of Neutral told Dezeen.
Zaha Hadid Architects won the competition to design the building in 2008 – read more in our earlier story.
In this movie by film studio Stephenson/Bishop, Japanese architect Sou Fujimoto explains how he tried to combine nature and architecture when designing this year’s Serpentine Gallery Pavilion, which is open for three more weeks in London’s Kensington Gardens.
Built on the lawn outside the Serpentine Gallery, Sou Fujimoto‘s cloud-like pavilion comprises a grid of white poles that ascend upwards to form layered terraces with circles of transparent polycarbonate inserted to shelter from rain and reflect sunlight.
“From the beginning I didn’t think ‘I’d like to make a cloud’,” says Fujimoto, explaining how he tried to design a structure that would fit in with its surroundings. “I was impressed by the beautiful surroundings of Kensington Garden, the beautiful green, so I tried to create something that was melting into the green.”
“Of course the structure should be artificial so I tried to create something between architecture and nature; that kind of concept has been a big interest in my career so it is really natural to push forward with that concept for the future,” he adds.
Fujimoto also speaks about how he wanted to combine inside and outside space within the structure. “The transparency is quite important for me because you can feel the nature, the weather and the different climates, even from inside the pavilion,” he says.
Fujimoto is the youngest architect to design a Serpentine Gallery Pavilion. “It is kind of a dream for younger architects to be selected so I was excited, but at the same time it was kind of a big pressure ,” he said. “But I started to enjoy the whole situation and the whole challenge and for me, it was was a nice experience for the project to be abroad in a different situation than Japan.”
In this movie by film studio Stephenson/Bishop, architect Carl Turner describes the importance of flexibility in the London house he designed for himself and his partner, which last night was awarded the RIBA Manser Medal 2013 for the best new house in the UK.
Located in Brixton, south London, Slip House is a three-storey residence with walls made from planks of translucent glass and staggered upper floors that cantilever towards the street.
The house features a spacious ground floor that is currently used by Carl Turner as a studio for his architectural practice.
“The house is really flexible,” he explains. “We’ve got this amazing space on the ground floor that we’re currently using as our office and studio space, but the idea is that if we move out of there, we can use the whole space as a house again.”
The first floor accommodates an open-plan living and dining space, but Turner says this space could be easily converted into bedrooms if the ground floor was turned back into a living room.
“It’s a kind of frame structure and that allows us these open floor spaces that mean we can then have really flexible uses,” he adds.
Slip House was awarded the RIBA Manser Medal 2013 last night in a ceremony that also saw an addition to a twelfth-century castle in Warwickshire win the Stirling Prize. It was praised for sustainable features that include rooftop solar panels, a rain-water-harvesting system, a ground-sourced heat pump and a wildflower roof.
“Slip House demonstrates an admirable commitment to the creation of an exemplary low-energy house, with a suite of sustainable enhancements that are integrated effectively into the building design,” said the judges. “However, at no point do the sustainable ambitions of the project crowd out or dominate the refined quality of the spaces that are created.”
An eery town of kiosks for temporary street markets by Brut Deluxe is used as the set for this short horror movie by ImagenSubliminal.
Munich and Madrid-based Brut Deluxe‘s m.poli metal kiosks are designed to look like basic archetypal houses, each with four sides and a pitched roof.
The City of Madrid ordered 275 units for events, but when the huts are not in use they are stored together in rows and form a small deserted town – the backdrop for the scary film.
In the movie a frightened female character is seen running through alleyways between the homogenous metal houses.
She is chased into a clearing by a man dressed in black running over the roofs, to be confronted by a figure wielding an axe.
Directed by architect and photographer Miguel de Guzmán of ImagenSubliminal, the black and white Hitchcock-esque film was made with the kiosk designers as a promotional tool.
The kiosks can be made in a range of steel finishes including Corten and stainless, and are textured with a scattering of small bumps.
A section of wall swings upwards to create a serving windows under a shelter, which can be covered with the stall’s branding.
Inside they are lined with bright coloured panels and are entered through an inconspicuous door next to the window.
The kiosk is designed to be used for temporary street markets or handicraft fairs. It isn’t thought of as an individual object, but as part of a whole that builds up a small village, a little world of its own fitted into the city. The design is based on archetypical images: town, house, chimney. When closed, the kiosk is a volume covered by a pitched roof, a house in its uttermost minimal expression. The scale and the shape are so basic that at first glance it might even be a toy, a Monopoly house.
Upon opening, the kiosk transforms. A part of its façade rotates upon the roof and the kiosk acquires a more vertical and striking proportion: that of a house with an oversized chimney. The chimney works as a great advertising board and is back-lit at night. With the transformation the kiosk reveals its inside, a house full of surprises, each one different and randomly coloured.
The base and the structure are made from structural profiles and tubing of galvanised steel, while the interior flooring is from anti-slip sheet aluminium on MDF boarding. The kiosk’s opening hatch is opaque and has three changeable positions: at 0 degrees closing the kiosk, at 90 degrees sheltering the counter from rain and sun, and at 180 degrees when the kiosk is fully open.
On the inside of the hatch, there are back lit panels for advertising the individual kiosk, which becomes visible at positions from 90 degrees to 180 degrees. One can access the kiosk through a door in the front facade next to the commerce hatch. The façade on the sides and back have no openings, damp-proofed with plates of pre-galvanised lacquered steel sheeting and covered with Corten Steel plate. The pitched roof also uses the same construction.
The kiosk m.poli has been made with four different types of steel facade: naturally rusted Corten steel, polished stainless steel, matt stainless steel, steel with black lacquer finish. Throughout its development it was important that it would be an autonomous structure with everything that it needs to function independently, and to install a unit into a square does not need precise civil engineering, just a lorry, and fork-lift truck.
The kiosk moves and is transportable as a single block. In a single movement a crane can offload the kiosk from the truck and place it in its final position. Just the same, if for some reason a unit needs to be moved or changed position, it can be done quickly and easily with just a fork lift truck, or even a hand operated hydraulic jack.
More than 95% of the weight of the kiosk is from steel, in various types and forms. These materials are made from 43% recycled metals, and in terms of re-use of materials, the kiosk renders almost completely recyclable.
This house in Alabama folds open to provide seating for an open-air performance space (+ movie).
Sections of the house-shaped structure designed by artist Matthew Mazzotta are hinged and unfold to reveal rows of seating inside the walls and under the roof.
Community organisation Coleman Center for the Arts and local residents teamed up with Mazzotta to demolish a derelict house in the centre of York, Alabama, and repurpose its materials and site for new public space – an amenity lacking in the town.
“Public space is an important element for the social and political health of a community,” Mazzotta told Dezeen. “If there is nowhere for people to come together and talk, except for the grocery store, then the conversations about the town are much less dynamic and inclusive.”
The original abandoned building
The team took the abandoned dwelling apart by hand to salvage timber boards, window frames and anything else reusable. The fire department then levelled the remaining debris using a controlled blaze.
The new structure sits on the same plot as the original house and is built on top of reclaimed railway sleeper foundations. The project was completed seven months after the idea was initiated.
The fire department burn down the remains of the original building
Opening along the top ridge in five sections on each side. Hinges are located along the ground and seams halfway down the sides of the roof.
The large sections are lowered down in two stages and each requires a few people to move them at a time.
Once fully unfolded, five rows of seating in three lines face an open area that can be used for film screenings, musical performances and town meetings.
“People that sit together can dream together and have a moment to collectively see their town from a new perspective, and have a moment to express that to one another,” Mazzotta said.
Present at the opening event, Mazzotta noticed that everyone made themselves at home in the outdoor theatre straight away:
“People took right to it and started dancing and having a good time,” he said. “When we showed the movie, all the kids sat and laid all over it like it was their living room.”
“Overall there is just a real positive attitude towards the project since it cleaned up such an eyesore and now provides such an enjoyable experience, both through the events and the design,” said Mazzotta.
Read on for more information from the project organisers:
Open House by Matthew Mazzotta
202 Main Street, York, Alabama – between the town post office and the main grocery store.
What happens when an artist is invited to use the resources of a small town to help transform its identity? Artist Matthew Mazzotta, the Coleman Center for the Arts, and the people of York Alabama have teamed up to transform one of York’s most iconic blighted properties into a new public space. Open House is a house with a secret, it physically transforms from the shape of a house into an open air theater that seats one hundred people by having its walls and roof fold down.
Performers at the opening event
On June 15 of this year, a ribbon cutting by the Mayor of York, Gena Robbins, inaugurated Open House. The symbolic gesture was followed with an invocation prayer to bless the project by Reverend Willie, performances by a gospel choir and the local R&B funk band Time Zone, as well as an outdoor film screening of Dr. Suess’s The Lorax. For the town of York, this is the beginning of a series of free public events programed by the Coleman Center for the Arts. A screening of the film Madagascar 3 was shown this past weekend – August 10th at 7:30pm. The theatre is free and open to the public.
How Open House came to be?
In January 2011, artist Matthew Mazzotta was invited by the Coleman Center For The Arts to organise an artwork with the people of York. During Matthew’s initial visit to York, the artist asked people from the community to bring something from their living room so that they could recreate a living room outdoors in the middle of the street as a way to provoke discussion about what were on peoples minds and to generate ideas about what direction they might go in. From this conversation, they developed a project that uses the materials of an abandoned house as well as the land it sits on to build the transforming structure on the footprint of the old house.
How it works?
The metamorphosis of Open House is designed to require cooperation. It takes four people one and a half hours to unfold the structure. The foundation is made of used railroad ties which anchor the custom fabricated industrial hinges to five rows of stadium seating. The rows of seats fold down with the aid of a hand winch and enough manpower to counter balance the hefty, but agile structure.
Critical Impact
Through the project, the artist hopes to directly address the lack of public space in York, AL by providing a physical location that becomes a common ground for community dialogue and activities. The new structure carries the weight of the past through the materials that were salvaged and repurposed from the old structure, most visibly the original pink siding. When Open House is fully unfolded, it provides an opportunity for people to come together and experience the community from a new perspective. When it folds back up, it resembles the original abandoned house, reminding people of the history of what was there before.
Support for Open House provided, in part, by the National Endowment for the Arts, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the Visual Artists Network, York Drug, the City of York, the City of York Fire Department and countless individual supporters of the Coleman Center for the Arts and Matthew Mazzotta. A special thanks to Jegan Vincent De Paul, Cory Vineyard, Curtis Oliveira, James Marshall, Elouise Finch, Brenda Carole and Lerene Johnson, Alpha Kappa Alpha of the University of West Alabama, John’s Welding of Meridian, MS, Beany Green, Pam Dorr and CCA employees and Board of Directors.
The roof of this house in Paraguay can be lifted open like the lid of a box (+ movie).
Located in the countryside outside capital city Asunción, the house was designed by Paraguayan architect Javier Corvalán as the holiday home of a film-maker.
The owners are often away for long periods of time, so Corvalán was asked to create a building that could transform between a comfortable residence and a hermetically sealed box.
The base of the two-storey house is surrounded by walls of locally sourced sandstone, which support the concrete floor slab and galvanised-steel structure of the level above.
To raise the roof of the house residents simple wind a manual winch, causing the rectilinear structure to tilt open and reveal the kitchen and living room housed inside.
When closed, a pinhole allows the windowless space to function as a camera obscura, projecting an upside-down image of the surroundings onto the MDF panels that line the interior walls.
The bottom floor houses a bedroom and bathroom. Mezzanine glazing wraps around the edges of this space, creating a visual separation between the two floors.
Concrete tiles cover the floor, while the staircase leading upstairs is constructed from cantilevered stone blocks.
Je Ahn of London-based Studio Weave discusses how a series of design and build workshops are reintroducing architects to working on site in this movie by Stephenson/Bishop and Andy Matthews.
Studio Weave co-founder Ahn led this year’s Studio in the Woods summer workshop programme for students, architects and designers, first initiated by architect Piers Taylor of Invisible Studio to encourage a more hands-on approach to design.
“It started when a collective of architects came together as friends with the desire to make things with their own hands in the landscape,” says Ahn.
Participants use teamwork and communication to design and build as they go rather than drawing and planning off site.
“As architects we are getting pushed further away from what’s happening on site and the real world,” Ahn says. “You imagine things through your drawings and students are exactly the same, doing hypothetical projects that look beautiful… but how they’re actually built and realised is another matter.”
Sixty students, practising architects, furniture designers and sculptors spent five days creating timber structures amongst the woodland while camping on site last month.
Designers led five teams to build small shelters hidden in the trees, weave planks between tree trunks and create seating that skirts the edge of the woods.
The workshops take place in a different rural location each year. This year’s site was in Stanton Park, near Swindon in Wiltshire.
Swindon Borough Council acted like a client for the permanent structures, the first occasion this has happened in the programme’s seven-year history.
“This is the first time that we have a lifespan of these structures, which changed the dynamic of the design quite considerably,” says Ahn.
The designs were responses to a narrative about an imaginary community of industrious folk living around the site, created as part of a wider project that Studio Weave has been working on with the council.
“The Studio in the Woods workshop changed the way we practice and how we see things,” Ahn concludes.
Now in its seventh year, the people behind Studio in the Woods have taken the summer building workshop to public land for the first time. Located within ancient woodland just outside Swindon, the design and construction of five large timber structures was led by a group of award-winning architects, engineers, and furniture makers, with 60 participants who camp on-site for five days.
Studio in the Woods is an ongoing educational programme promoting the exchange of architectural knowledge and skills through experimentation and direct building experience. It was initiated by Piers Taylor in 2006 and continues to offer the opportunity to “learn by doing” in a reaction against the seeming disparity between designing a building and how it is realised; increasingly architects must imagine the making process through drawing. Studio in the Woods offers the chance to learn from the makers and work collectively.
Evening talks by invited speakers are organised for each evening once tools are put down for the day and before a group dinner. Participants include architecture students, practicing architects and a wider audience with an interest in sculpture, landscape and building with materials to hand.
This year’s workshop forms part of a wider project at Stanton Park and the adjacent Stratton Woods, to the north-east of Swindon. Over the last eight months, architecture practice Studio Weave has been working with Swindon Borough Council and the Woodland Trust on reinterpreting the two neighbouring woodlands and how the public perceives, uses and navigates them.
Set with the challenge to tie the sites together through one engaging narrative, Studio Weave have written a story surrounding a community of industrious woodland folk called the Indlekith, who live at a much slower pace to humans – a pace more akin to that of nature. The Indlekith are difficult to spot but clues of their existence lie in the smells, sounds, and textures of the woods. All five structures illustrate this narrative in a different way by responding to various characteristics of the woodland and how our senses interact with these.
Studio in the Woods 2013 was made possible by the generous support of Swindon Borough Council – the landowner of Stanton Park – making it the first time the workshop has had a client. This meant that health and safety has played an important role in designing for construction and lifetime use with the structures required to have a life span of five years, which has changed the dynamic of the designs from previous years.
Je Ahn, director at Studio Weave, says “Studio in the Woods provides an interesting solution to this problem of how to experience the parks. This is a design and build workshop where participants turn up without a design or knowing the site. They spend only a few days designing and building at the same time, responding very closely to the immediate context. There is minimal drawing but lots of communication and a strong emphasis on building the team.”
Presented during Belgrade Design Week 2013, Zaha Hadid’s designs show how the curving buildings will integrate with the riverside neighbourhood of the city’s historic Dorcol quarter.
Image by Stereograph
The 94,000 square-metre complex will replace an unused and inaccessible site with a five-star hotel, art galleries, a conference centre, a department store and shops, as well as residential accommodation and offices, just 500 metres from the city centre.
Image by Stereograph
Speaking at the presentation, Zaha Hadid Architects’ Christos Passas said: “All of our projects are unique and every time a project is proposed to us we know we have to create something new, to design something that is distinctive and adapted to the task, to the client, to local context.”
He continued: “This one should not only fit in, but also have a positive impact on the environment in which it is located, and of course, the integration between nature and architecture is also very important. New architecture, in terms of vision, should not be constrained by old forms. Architecture operates on many levels, it should include a particular location and context, and the building can also absorb the context in various ways, which makes the entire complex functional.”
“This project is very sensitive of the environment, but at the same time it can be a symbol of a new era for Serbia,” he concluded.
Construction of the Beko Masterplan will commence next year as part of a €200 million regeneration project that also includes a waterfront public space by Japanese architect Sou Fujimoto and a new bridge across the Sava River.
In our next movie focussing on the work of Richard Rogers, the British architect talks exclusively to Dezeen about the challenges of designing an interesting office building and explains how the new Leadenhall building in London, dubbed “the Cheesegrater”, got its distinctive shape.
The Leadenhall building is a new 225-metre skyscraper by Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners in the City of London, which topped out in June and is due to be completed in 2014.
Positioned opposite Richard Rogers’ famous Lloyd’s building, the 50-storey office building features a glazed body that is tapered on one side – hence its popular nickname.
Render showing Leadenhall building as it will look when completed in 2014
Office buildings, Rogers admits, “tend to be very boring”. The key to creating the Leadenhall building’s distinctive angular form, he says, was creatively working with the constraints of the site.
“One of the arts of architecture is to use constraints, turn them upside down and see whether they can help you to design the building,” he explains.
The Leadenhall building’s tapered shape is designed to preserve views of St Paul’s Cathedral
“The main constraint on Leadenhall was the view to St Paul’s [Cathedral]. London is unique in being partly controlled by views; you have to leave certain views open to St Paul’s and we were on one of those views. So we made use of this and we cut it back at an angle and that gave us that prominent section and profile, [which can be seen] from all over London.”
Leadenhall building under construction. Photograph by Dan Lowe
The Leadenhall building’s criss-crossing steel frame will be displayed prominently through the external glazing. Rogers claims that this has an important role to play in giving the building scale.
“The building itself expresses its system of construction because it’s one of the things in which we get scale,” he says. “Scale is critical. Height and length have limited use. You can make a building immensely large and overbearing, which is basically a single storey, or you can make a building which is very light and it’s got fifty storeys. How you break it down is critical.”
Leadenhall building under construction. Photograph by Paul Raftery
Rogers claims that many of the ideas that informed his earlier buildings, such as placing the mechanical services on the outside of the building, are also present in the Leadenhall building. However, the nature of changing technology means that they are implemented in different ways.
“The elements which we’ve got to know well we’re using here,” he says, pointing out the banks of elevators located on the back of the building. “We are using a lot of flexibility obviously. So we’re using that but in a way that, more or less forty years after Pompidou, is very much machine-made.”
Leadenhall building under construction. Photograph by Paul Raftery
He adds: “We thought Lloyd’s was the absolute ultimate in the art of technology. When I look at it now, it’s handmade practically. We had [a few] pieces [built] off-site. Leadenhall is all built off-site.”
Rogers says he enjoys the contrast between the two buildings, which stand in such close proximity to each other but were built nearly 30 years apart.
Render showing how the banks of elevators at the rear of the building will look
“It’s very exciting to see the dialogue between these two, and actually, I think it’s really exciting to see the dialogue between Lloyds of London, Leadenhall and the dome of St Paul’s in the background, of a totally different period,” he says.
“To me that’s what architecture is all about. It’s not about fitting in, it’s setting up these dialogues. The enjoyment of St Paul’s was that it was seen against a very low and rather poor medieval background. That was a flourish. It’s exactly the same with any form of architecture. It’s a dialogue, it’s a beauty that comes from contrast.”
Render showing Leadenhall building as it will look when completed in 2014
In our next movie focussing on key projects by Richard Rogers, the British architect talks exclusively to Dezeen about his radical Lloyd’s building in London and explains why he is not completely comfortable with the “high-tech” label that is often applied to his work.
Completed in 1986 for insurance company Lloyd’s of London, Lloyd’s building comprises three main towers, each with an accompanying service tower, which surround a central rectangular atrium housing the main trading floor.
Lloyd’s building in London. Photo courtesy of Shutterstock
Often cited as a pioneering example of high-tech architecture, Lloyd’s building was considered radical because, like Rogers‘ preceding Centre Pompidou in Paris, all of its services, including staircases, lifts and water pipes, are on display on the outside of the building.
“We were able to convince Lloyd’s that we would put the mechanical services on the outside because mechanical services have a short life,” Rogers explains.
Central atrium of Lloyd’s building. Photo copyright: Richard Bryant / Arcaid.co.uk
As with the Centre Pompidou, the idea was to make the central spaces as open and flexible as possible. “[We] kept the floors clear because Lloyd’s said they wanted two things,” Rogers says.
“They wanted a building that would last into the next century – we met that one – and they wanted a building that could meet their changing needs.”
Central atrium of Lloyd’s building. Photo copyright: Richard Bryant / Arcaid.co.uk
However, Rogers says that he does not completely agree with the use of the term “high-tech” to describe the building.
“I have no great love for high-tech,” he says. “One would like to think one uses the appropriate materials, but of course appropriate materials are shaped by the time you live in. So we use the technology of today – and the technology of yesterday where appropriate – to build the buildings of today.”
He continues: “We thought Lloyd’s was the absolute ultimate in the art of technology. When I look at it now, it’s practically hand made. People say, ‘well, it’s technology and therefore it’s a high-tech building.’ It’s a bit too easy.”
A 200 year-old City of London institution at the time, Lloyd’s seemed an unlikely client for such a bold building.
“It was very traditional,” Rogers says. “The only bit of technology when we went to see the [previous] Lloyd’s building inside was a Xerox machine and some people were still writing with feathers and ink.”
However, Rogers says that the company was actually very forward-looking. “It was backwards only in the process,” he says. “Of course, it was the most famous insurance firm in the world and obviously contained a very cutting-edge element within that.”
He continues: “We were again extremely fortunate, in the same way as we were with the Pompidou. The real critical thing in architecture is having a good client. A good client is not somebody who just says ‘yes’, it’s a client that is engaged in the evolution of the building, who responds.”
While Rogers worked closely with Lloyd’s on the functional aspects of the building, he says he had more freedom over the aesthetics. “We were dealing with people who knew about change, knew about risk, but hadn’t a clue about art,” he explains. “The ducts, the pieces on the outside, allowed us to play a game with light and shadow.”
Despite enjoying a productive relationship with Lloyd’s initially, there were still challenges to overcome to get the building built.
“A year before the end of building, there was an investigation by the Bank of England into Lloyd’s and the chairman and everyone had to resign,” Rogers says. “The next chairman hated us, so we had a very tough last year.”
Rogers says that the general reaction to the building once it was completed was also hostile, although opinion changed over time. Lloyd’s building was Grade I listed in 2011, just 25 years after it was built, and Rogers sees parallels between it and Christopher Wren’s iconic St Paul’s Cathedral.
“Wren was in his seventies when he at last got St Paul’s built,” he says, recounting a story that the dean of St Paul’s Cathedral told him at the opening of Lloyd’s building. “He’d started thirty years beforehand and was so tired of having his building attacked and turned down, by the time he got to building it he put a twenty foot fence all around the site so that nobody could see it.”
“So even St Paul’s was a shock of the new. We think its been there forever – certainly Prince Charles thinks it has been there forever – but it hasn’t. It was a risky building to build in those times, which is why it is great.”
The London home designed by Rogers for his parents, and which influenced his later design for the Pompidou Centre, was recently put on the market for the first time since it was built in 1968.
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