Architect Alison Brooks talks about how residents come together in the streets of her firm’s Be housing project in Essex, UK, in this movie produced by Living Projects.
Alison Brooks Architects designed 85 homes in a variety of typologies as part of Newhall masterplan on the eastern edge of the Essex town of Harlow.
Nominated for the 2013 RIBA Stirling Prize and announced overall winner at this year’s Housing Design Awards, the houses at the development, formerly named South Chase, reference the traditional local architecture.
“We were able to achieve narrower urban blocks, because they’re back to back and they’re terraced, and a denser overall masterplan,” Brooks says.
Keeping to the original masterplan, terraces create east-west streets and detached dwellings line north-south avenues, with apartment blocks at the corners of the site.
For the terraced houses, the firm cut courtyards and front gardens into each square plan. “We were able to develop a T-shaped plan, which means you enter the house at the centre and that central hole is the hub of the house,” says Brooks.
She also explains that the apartment blocks connect the scheme together: “They help the masterplan turn the corners in a slightly softer, more organic manner.”
Finally, she comments on how residents use the outdoor spaces to socialise. “They use the streets for street parties in the summer,” Brooks says. “Everybody opens up their kitchens on to their front courtyard… the street itself becomes a big party room, and that I think is a big achievement.” Read more about the project in our earlier post.
In this movie by producers Living Projects, architects David Mikhail and Annalie Riches explain how their Church Walk housing project created four compact but light and airy homes on the small awkward site of a former junkyard in north London.
The terraced brick building contains three houses spilt over different levels and one apartment, each with access to outdoor space.
In the movie, Mikhail talks about the issues of building on a tight plot: “The proximity of the site to our neighbours meant that the building stepped down to be only two metres high.”
He also explains how the zig-zagging geometry of the plan prevents overlooking from a nearby building that sits at a 45-degree angle to the site.
Riches discusses how they maximised the amount of accommodation on the small area of land by varying ceiling heights. “Whilst there are some low spaces where you sit down like living rooms and bedrooms, those are contrasted with having spaces like kitchens and dining rooms with very tall ceilings.”
“The scheme is about trying to grab light and views where you can find them,” she adds. “Small tight sites are where architects can really add value because we do have the skills to make the most of whatever assets are there. I don’t see any reason why the principles here – the use of light, building up to the street edge – couldn’t apply to lots of brownfield sites.”
In our second exclusive video interview with Richard Rogers, the British architect reveals that key elements of the Centre Pompidou in Paris, which he designed together with Italian architect Renzo Piano, were strongly influenced by the radical thinking of the 1960s.
The Centre Pompidou was born out of a competition launched by the French government in 1970 and was completed in 1977. However, Rogers cites the political unrest in Paris in the previous decade, when protesting students and workers came close to overthrowing the government in 1968, as a key influence.
“That moment nearly changed history, certainly for Europe,” Rogers says. “It looked as though there would be a revolution. In fact, it didn’t happen. But we captured some of it in the building.”
He adds: “It was a highly active period of politics, and you could argue that it was a part of the concept [for the building]. This was a dynamic period, a period of change, but we wanted to catch what was going on at the moment.”
The Centre Pompidou, Paris. Photo copyright: Philippe Migeat
The Centre Pompidou is also linked to 1968 by its name. Originally called the Centre Beaubourg, the building was renamed when Georges Pompidou, who was prime minister of France when the protests kicked off and became president after Charles de Gaulle was forced to resign, died during construction of the building.
“It is said in France that Pompidou had a plane revving up because he thought he would lose the war against the students, the intellectuals, and the workers,” Rogers says.
The original competition model of the Centre Pompidou, currently on show at The Royal Academy of Arts in London
In Roger’s and Piano’s original design, the main facade of the building featured a large screen, which would have displayed information from other arts and cultural institutions around the world. But this was scrapped after Pompidou’s death for political reasons.
“The facade on the building, if you look more carefully, was very much about the riots and very much about Vietnam,” Rogers says. “We had it all going very well until Pompidou died and Giscard [the subsequent president of France] came in and sunk it with no hands. He said: ‘It is a political weapon, I don’t want it.’ So that died.”
Model showing the external structure and services of the Centre Pompidou
Rogers says that the idea of the putting all the structure and services on the outside of the building to maximise the flexibility of the internal space also has its roots in the volatility of this period of history.
“We wanted to make a building that was clearly of our period, which caught the zeitgeist of the now,” he says.
Richard Rogers with Renzo Piano
“The one thing we knew about this age is it’s all about change, if there’s one constant, it’s change. So we said that we’d make massive floors, which were the size of two football pitches with no vertical interruptions, structure on the outside, mechanical service on the outside, people’s movement on the outside and theoretically you can do anything you want on those floors.”
“We didn’t say where the museum should go, where the library should go, and of course, the library changed radically because when we started there were books and by the time we finished it books were almost finished because of I.T. So again that’s about change.”
Section from the original competition entry for the Centre Pompidou
The radical design of the building was initially met with hostility, Rogers claims.
“It was vilified whilst we were designing it from the first day onwards,” he says. “Nobody said one kind word until it opened and when people started to queue up.”
He reflects: “I remember once standing outside on a rainy day and there was a small woman with an umbrella who offered me shelter. We started talking, as one does in the rain, and she asked: ‘what do you think of this building?'”
“Stupidly, I said that I designed it and she hit me on the head with her umbrella. That was just typical of the general reaction of the people, especially during the design and construction stage. [People thought we were] destroying their beautiful Paris.'”
However, Rogers believes that shock-factor is a mark of good architecture.
“All good architecture is modern in its time,” he says. “Gothic was a fantastic shock; the Renaissance was another shock to all the little medieval buildings.The shock of the new is always rather difficult to get over.”
External escalator on the facade of the Centre Pompidou. Photo courtesy of Shutterstock
Despite the initial reaction, Rogers says that the French public warmed to the building over time and maintains that the project as a whole was always designed “for the people.”
“When we did our first studies, it showed that there was no public space nearby,” he says. “So we created this big piazza. There were, I think, 681 entries [to the original design competition] and strangely enough there were no others with a big piazza. That is really critical to the workings of the Pompidou.”
Piazza in front of the Centre Pompidou. Photo courtesy of Shutterstock
“We said that we will put the building not in the middle of the piazza, but actually on one side because that will give people a place to meet,” he continues. “The idea was that you had a public space, and you’d go up the facade of the of the building in streets in the air with escalators floating across it, so the whole thing became very dynamic. People come to see people as well as to see art; people come to meet people. So we wanted to practice that as theatre.”
Rogers concludes: “The whole idea of Pompidou was that it is a place for the meeting of all people. And the success of it was that the French took it over and it became the most visited building in Europe.”
The Centre Pompidou. Photo copyright: Georges Meguerditchian
Rogers was speaking to Dezeen to mark the opening of an exhibition called Richard Rogers RA: Inside Out at the Royal Academy of Arts in London. The movie contains rare archive material provided by Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners to coincide with the show.
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.
In the first of a series of exclusive video interviews with Richard Rogers, who celebrated his 80th birthday yesterday, the British architect discusses the themes of his current Royal Academy of Arts retrospective and explains why he believes that a building should not just be designed for a specific client, but society as a whole.
“The Royal Academy asked whether I would like to do an exhibition about my life, not specifically about my work,” he says. “[It is] more about the thinking and also a section through 80 years of life.”
The key theme of the exhibition, Rogers explains, is social responsibility.
“We’ve decided to call the exhibition Inside Out, partly because I often put structure and ducts on the outside of buildings,” he says.
“But the real title is Ethos. The idea is that we have a responsibility to society. And that gives us a role as architects that is more than just answering the client but also to answer the passerby and society as a whole.”
Greeting visitors in large letters on the wall of the first room in the exhibition is a quotation that reads: “A place for all people, the young and the old, the poor and the rich.”
Rogers explains that this was the first paragraph that he wrote with Italian architect Renzo Piano when they were preparing their competition entry for the Centre Pompidou in Paris, which would go on to become one of Rogers’ most famous buildings.
“It shows the heart of this exhibition because that gave us the way of handling the Pompidou not just as a building, but also as a place, which I’m much more interested in,” Rogers says.
Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano
In this room there is also a video projected on the wall, in which Rogers explains his concept of “ethos”.
“It’s based funnily enough on my mother’s watch, which I always wear,” Rogers says.”It is a Bulova, which has beautiful workings in it. It’s some 50 years old now, and [the video] sort of explains my work through that watch.”
On the wall of the exhibition’s final room is another quotation, a translation of an oath that young men of ancient Athens had to swear before becoming full citizens: “I shall leave this city not less but more beautiful than I found it”.
“It is an oath which I would like to think we are all trying to do,” says Rogers. “Using beauty in that very broad, shall we say Greek way: democratic and intellectual, not just purely aesthetic.”
Rogers goes on to explain that he believes that good architecture is the result of teamwork, rather than one person’s vision.
“I work very much with colleagues, with friends,” he says. “Architecture is about teams. The idea that you suddenly wake up and do a sketch is not true. The only time I do that, I usually wake up with a hangover the next morning.”
He continues: “Like any work, whether film or book, [architecture] has its own inertia, it changes direction. And also the scale changes. The scale in your mind, the scale in models slowly gets more and more attuned to what you’re actually doing. You can’t imagine a building as complete any more than you can imagine 500 pages [of a book].”
The exhibition also features a number of personal items, including a report card from Rogers’ fourth year as a student at the Architectural Association School of Architecture, which doubts his ability to succeed as an architect.
Rogers’ report card from the Architectural Association School of Architecture
“Rogers’ late entry into the 4th Year was not successful,” reads the report. “He has a genuine interest in and a feeling for architecture, but sorely lacks the intellectual equipment to translate these feelings into sound building.”
“I was an appalling student, all my life,” admits Rogers, who was later diagnosed as suffering from dyslexia. “In fact, I enjoyed myself much more in the last third of my life than I did in my first third.”
“Everybody said I was stupid and then I found out that actually I had learning difficulties. So those gave me a lot of problems for the first thirty years. But the last 30 years of my life have been fantastic.”
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.
Take a tour through the spaces of Zaha Hadid’s Galaxy Soho complex in Beijing, China, in this movie by architectural photographer Dan Chung.
Completed at the end of 2012, the 330,000-square-metre complex accommodates shops, offices and leisure facilities within a cluster of four striated domes. Courtyards and pathways weave between the buildings, while bridges and platforms form connections on the upper levels.
“The design responds to the varied contextual relationships and dynamic conditions of Beijing,” said Zaha Hadid at the opening. “We have created a variety of public spaces that directly engage with the city, reinterpreting the traditional urban fabric and contemporary living patterns into a seamless urban landscape inspired by nature.”
We take a tour through the staircases, gyms and study areas of Steven Holl’s Campbell Sports Centre at Columbia University in the second of two movies by architectural filmmakers Spirit of Space.
Steven Holl Architects designed the building as a combined athletics and study facility for students. The movie shows activity both inside and outside, from football games on the sports pitches to conversations in the stairwells.
The film begins with the building’s busy setting on the corner of West 218th Street and Broadway, where the five-storey structure climbs up a sloping site and forms a new entrance to several existing sports tracks.
It also traces routes through the building, including on the staircases and balconies that zigzag across the facade.
Architect Steven Holl describes how the design for his new athletics centre at Columbia University was based on a diagram for a football strategy, in the first of two movies by architectural filmmakers Spirit of Space.
Completed earlier this year, the Campbell Sports Centre is a five-storey building that is partly raised up on stilts, providing both a student facility and a new entrance to the existing sports tracks of the Baker Athletics Complex.
Steven Holl explains the original concept for “points on the ground and lines in space”, like a game strategy. “Those point foundations of the building [are] where it becomes a gateway and the idea of the outer exits is as lines in spaces moving on the building,” he says.
The building features an exposed concrete and steel structure, as well as a series of exterior balconies and staircases. “Those big heads of the [nearby] Broadway Lift Bridge were, in a way, inspirations for this sort of grey steel structural shape,” adds Holl.
The interior of the building is divided into three zones, with physical exercise zones located on the lower levels and student study areas at the top. “This has to do with the aim of the scholar athlete, that you develop both the body and the mind together,” adds architect Chris McVoy.
Holl concludes by talking about how the building comes alive after dark, forming a “chunk of architecture that equally gives a feeling of light and brightness,” alongside the glowing lights of the sports pitch. “The building has a kind of life that it gives to that site at night,” he says.
This woven rattan tunnel by Dominican designers Natalia Ortega Gámez and Jose Thén offered a secluded hangout at Caribbean music festival Bacanalia (+ movie).
Gámez and Thén worked with a group of local artisans to build the temporary tunnels at the Bacanalia festival site in Santo Domingo.
Using a traditional basket-weaving technique, the team wound the rattan over a staggered series of curved metal frames, creating two structures that wound across the grass.
Installation took around six weeks and was completed by the addition of a wooden floor, low-level lighting and a few plants.
Spanish architect Miguel de Guzmán has completed a house with translucent plastic walls in Spain’s Sierra de Madrid mountain range and produced a movie showing Little Red Riding Hood as one of the residents.
Surrounded by pines trees, the two-storey house features cellular polycarbonate exterior walls, chunky chipboard interiors and a rooftop lawn.
Steel wires criss-cross over the facade to encourage climbing plants and vines to grow up around the house.
A double-height greenhouse runs along the southern facade, while a ground-floor dining room and a first-floor living room are positioned alongside and can overlook the space through internal windows.
There are two bedrooms on each level and bookshelves line the staircases that zigzag between the floors.
Miguel de Guzmán specified cheap and lightweight materials for construction. “The use of semi-mechanised building techniques, steel frames, sandwich panels and polycarbonate can speed up work time, reduce costs and give the building greater flexibility to make changes in the future,” he explains.
De Guzmán also works as an architectural photographer and produced the fairytale movie that presents the house. “The background idea for the movie was to play with the ‘little house in the woods’ concept,” he told Dezeen.
He adds: “In the world of children’s’ tales there is always a house in the middle of the forest where magical and mysterious things happen. I chose some of the most univerally known characters: Little Red Riding Hood, The Three Bears and The Big Bad Wolf, of course.”
Here’s a project description written by the architect:
Espinar House is built in a small village at the north face of the Sierra de Madrid. The site enjoys a privileged location, on the edge of the town bordering the Natural Park Panera. This situation is the starting point of the project, with the goals of maximising the mountain and park views to the northwest; optimising natural light considering it is at the north face of the mountain, and respecting the existing large pines. The dwelling is located in the centre of the lot with a perimeter defined by urban legal conditions as well as the situation of the trees.
The facade consists of a triple skin: First there is a sandwich panel with OSB boards (which provide the interior finish), extruded polystyrene foam insulation and waterproof chipboard, surrounding the core of the house rooms and living spaces. The second skin is made of cellular polycarbonate, providing extra insulation and expanding the perimeter to wrap a south-facing greenhouse that collects heat during winter days and can be opened to the outside during the summer, defining semi-outdoor extension space for the house. Steel cables allow climbing plants to grow on three sides of the house, as a vegetal third skin.
The use of semi mechanised building techniques, steel frames, sandwich panels and polycarbonate, can speed up work time, reduce costs and give the building greater flexibility to make changes in the future. Water and electrical facilities are accesible, making easier to expand, change or perform repairs.
The top deck area is a garden that tries to restore the portion of ground garden occupied by the building and provides a leisure space at the level of the treetops with views of the mountains.
Ground floor planFirst floor planRoof planCross section oneCross section two
Royal College of Art graduate Chang-Yeob Lee has developed a concept to transform the BT Tower in London into a pollution-harvesting high rise (+ movie).
Entitled Synth[e]tech[e]cology, the project predicts the eventual redundancy of the 189-metre tower – currently used for telecommunications – and suggests repurposing it as an eco-skyscraper that collects airborne dirt particles and helps to reduce the level of respiratory illness in London.
The process would involve extracting the carbon from petrol fumes and using it to produce sustainable bio-fuel.
“The project is about a new infrastructure gathering resources from pollutants in the city atmosphere, which could be another valuable commodity in the age of depleting resources,” says Chang-Yeob Lee.
Lee describes his proposal as “a hybrid between a vertical oil field and laboratory for future resources”. The exterior of the tower would form a giant eco-catalytic converter, while the interior would house a research facility investigating methods of increasing air movement and maximising the efficiency of the structure.
Similar structures could also be fitted to other unused high rises to create a network of pollution-reducing architecture.
Referencing a quote from architect Buckminster Fuller, Lee says: “Pollution is nothing but the resources we are not harvesting. We allow them to disperse because we’ve been ignorant of their value.” He adds: “Pollution could be another economy”.
Prototype model
Synth[e]tech[e]cology is Lee’s diploma project from the architecture programme at the Royal College of Art in London and he was one of two winners of the Student Prize for Architecture at the Royal Academy of Arts‘ Summer Exhibition.
Synth[e]tech[e]cology _ Greenhouse Gas to Economic Asset
“Pollution is nothing but the resources we are not harvesting. We allow them to disperse because we’ve been ignorant of their value.” – R. Buckminster Fuller
Harnessing advancements of various particle-capturing technologies, this project envisions that air pollution as a valuable commodity in an age of depleting resources. The scheme utilises the Post Office Tower adjacent to Marylebone Road, one of London’s most polluted areas, as a hybrid between a vertical oil field and laboratory for future resources scrubbed from the atmosphere.
The project aims to show how hybrizided new infrastructure can gather pollutants, store, digest, and harvest them to dilute minerals and biofules, celebrating clean air process on the ground level. The ultimate ambition of the project is to be deployed as a retro-fitting strategy to tall unused or derelicy buildings in London, showing that alternative routes to ‘economic profit’ meaningfully engaged into pollution can be a provocative strategy for ‘sustainable ecology’.
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