Hasta La Ideas

Mies van der Rohe designed this golf clubhouse in 1930 for the countryside surrounding Krefeld, Germany, but it’s only just been constructed (+ slideshow).

Built by Belgian studio Robbrecht en Daem to a series of sketched plans and perspectives discovered in the Mies van der Rohe Archive of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the pavilion respects the original design for the clubhouse that, due to the Great Depression, was never built.

Architects Paul Robbrecht and Hilde Daem conceived the structure as a full-size model rather than a building. “It is a life-size model revealing the essence of Mies’s architecture through its abstraction,” they explain.

The pavilion is located on the site it was originally planned for near Krefeld, where Mies van der Rohe also completed the residences Haus Esters and Haus Lange. “The pavilion is temporarily enriching the architectural heritage of a city that is known for being home to two of Mies’s other remarkable buildings,” say the architects.

The structure primarily comprises an open-plan space that is loosely partitioned by timber screens and stainless-steel columns. Offices, changing rooms and staff rooms are positioned along the eastern side of the plan, alongside a canopy that projects out towards the landscape.

1:1 Modell Golfclubhaus opens to the public this weekend and will remain in place until the end of October.

German-American architect Mies van der Rohe is commonly regarded as one of the masters of Modernist architecture. Two apartment towers by the architect were recently restored in Chicago, while his famous Barcelona Pavilion was filled with junk for an exhibition earlier this year. See more stories about Mies van der Rohe.

Robbrecht en Daem also recently received critical acclaim, after the firm’s market hall in Ghent was one of the five finalists for the Mies van der Rohe Award 2013.

Photography is by Marc De Blieck.

Here’s some more information from Robbrecht en Daem:

Mies van der Rohe – 1:1 Modell Golfclubhaus

Robbrecht en Daem architecten are building a life-size model to a 1930 design by Mies van der Rohe.

In the rolling landscape around the former industrial German city of Krefeld, Robbrecht en Daem architecten realized a striking temporary pavilion based on a design for a golf course clubhouse by Mies van der Rohe dating from 1930, which was never built. Christiane Lange, art historian and curator for Projekt MIK, invited the Belgian architectural firm of Robbrecht en Daem architecten to create a temporary objet d’architecture using the series of historical sketches of the project that were discovered during research into the Mies van der Rohe Archive at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City. The temporary installation by Robbrecht en Daem architecten is open for viewing from 27 May to 31 October 2013 at the original location of the project. The installation of 84 by 87 m is built primarily of wood. It is being conceived as a life-size model whose abstraction brings out the essence of Mies’s architecture and spatial concepts. Along with the two other famous Mies projects in Krefeld – Haus Esters and Haus Lange, characterised by their brick volumetries and classical plan – the pavilion serves as a lovely illustration of the evolution that Mies brought to Modernism.

Krefeld, an industrial city on the edge of the Ruhr area, already housed two masterpieces from the early European career of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe: the twin project consisting of Haus Esters and Haus Lange, which date from 1927-1930. Those two projects, along with a handful of other project from Mies’s hand, an extensive collection of furniture, several exhibition scenographies and the corporate building Verseidag bear witness to the good contacts that Mies had with the textile industry in Krefeld in the inter-bellum period.

Art historian Christiane Lange – granddaughter of textile manufacturer Hermann Lange, for whom Mies built Haus Lange – has been heading up a research and art project into the creations that Mies did for Krefeld.

The research project ‘Mies in Krefeld (Projekt MIK)’ has already seen two publications, an exhibitions and a documentary film around the theme. During research into the Mies van der Rohe Archive at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City, Lange stumbled upon a series of sketches that Mies had made in 1930 for a pavilion at the golf course close to Krefeld, that had never been built.

The unique archive material for the clubhouse includes sketched plans and perspectives that, in spite of being only few in number, manage to give a good impression of Mies’s ambitions for the project. The design was to be part of a series of experiments into the spatial principles of the plan libre. The sketches show a spacious roof surface on slender columns, combined with a strongly rhythmical floor design and a few well positioned dividing walls that encapsulate the space. Along with the Esters villa and the Lange villa, known for their brick volumes and their open, yet classical plan, the clubhouse would have served as the perfect illustration for the evolution that Mies brought to Modernism.

For Christiane Lange, the unique archive material was the inspiration to curate an artistic project linking her historical interest in the persistent relation of Mies with the Krefeld based silk industry and its protagonists, with the broader question into the significance of Mies’s architecture for contemporary architectural practice. She challenged the Belgian Robbrecht en Daem architecten to develop a new interpretation of Mies’s design and to create an objet d’architecture to scale at the original site of the project.

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by Robbrecht en Daem appeared first on Dezeen.

This family house in Mexico City by local architect Paul Cremoux conceals a three-storey wall of plants behind its slate-clad facade.

Concerned about the lack of sustainable construction in the country, Paul Cremoux Studio designed a building that uses plants to moderate its own internal temperature, whilst giving residents an indoor garden.

“Making sustainable eco-effective design in Mexico is pretty hard. Many clients do not yet realise the importance of changing the design strategy,” says architect Paul Cremoux.

He explains: “We would like to think about vegetation not only as a practical temperature-humidity comfort control device, or as a beautiful energetic view, but also as an element that acts like a light curtain.”

The green wall flanks a courtyard terrace, which occupies the middle floor and is open to the sky on one side. Meanwhile, most the rooms of the house are positioned on the levels above and below.

A driveway for two cars is located beneath the terrace and leads through to the dining and kitchen areas. A living room and three bedrooms occupy the second floor and can be accessed via a staircase tucked away in the corner.

The dark slate panels that clad the exterior also line some of the walls around the courtyard, contrasting with the light wood finishes applied elsewhere.

Other houses we’ve featured with indoor green walls include a residence in the Netherlands inside a timber-clad box and a house in Brazil clad with perforated golden metal. See more green walls on Dezeen.

Photography is by Héctor Armanado Herrera and PCW.

Here’s a project description from Paul Cremoux studio:

Casa CorManca

On a 12 metres by 13 metres (39ft by 42ft) plot of land, a monolithic volume is transformed in order to attain luminous indoor spaces. Slate stone at the exterior facades is contrasted with the soft beech-like wood finish, achieving great definition and space discovery.

Built in a small plot of land 176 m2, (1894 sqft), the construction rises looking south to the vertical vegetation garden wall. It is a three-storey-high assembly where the main terrace is to be found at the second level, follow by a small lecture studio.

This area is intent to transform radically the notion of “open patio garden” since there is not really space to ensure a ground courtyard, the main terrace plays a social definitive roll.

Recyclable content materials, VOC paint, cross ventilations highly used and passive energy-temperature control strategies are bound into the core design. Three heat exhaustion chimney work as main devices to control hot temperature at bedrooms areas.

Vertical garden is a mayor air quality and humidity creator, where before there was any plant, now we have planted over 4000.

Design Architect: Paul Cremoux W.
Project Team: Anna Giribets Martin
Structural Engineering: Arch. Ricardo Camacho
Equipment Engineering, Sustainability Consultant and vertical garden: Ing. José Antonio Lino Mina, DIA
General Contractor: Fermín Espinosa, Alfredo Galván, Factor Eficiencia

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Paul Cremoux Studio appeared first on Dezeen.

This rural house in Switzerland by local studio Architetti Pedrozzi e Diaz Saravia is raised off the hillside on a pair of gigantic concrete columns (+ slideshow).

The single-storey House in Sonvico is constructed on a 20-metre long concrete slab, which is elevated above the ground on one side to line up with the highest level of the site.

“We and the clients both wanted to create a single-storey house,” architect Martino Pedrozzi told Dezeen. “Because of the slope, we invented a level section.”

Rather than create an entrance at the point where the building meets the ground, Architetti Pedrozzi e Diaz Saravia designed the house with a hollow centre so that residents climb up from underneath to enter. This arrangement also creates a terrace beneath the building with a swimming pool alongside.

Timber-framed windows sit within the houses’s chunky concrete frame. White ceramic tiles clad any walls between and feature a mixture of polished and matte finishes.

The rooms of the house are arranged in sequence around the perimeter, while a corridor runs around the inside. There are also circular rooms inside the columns and one contains a staircases so it can double up as a second entrance.

Other houses completed recently in Switzerland include a family home with a corner missing from its roof and a house with vertical seams. See more Swiss houses on Dezeen.

Photography is by Pino Brioschi.

Here’s a project description from Architetti Pedrozzi e Diaz Saravia:

House in Sonvico

A one storey house on a quite steep slope. That was the challenge imposed by topography and client. A most welcome challenge of course: to us one storey architecture is the best condition for good architecture. Its solution stays in the section of the project: a big horizontal prestressed slab of fifteen by twenty metres sitting on the natural land on one hand and laying on two gigantic round pillars on the opposite site. Above twenty pillars sustain the roof. Under a main space is created for outdoor living.

The house structure is external and integrally made in concrete. None of its parts penetrate the internal insulated spaces that are organised around a central void, between slab and roof. Ceramic white tiles, shiny and opaque defining a graphic pattern, contrast with concrete and enclose the indoor living spaces.

Where the house lays on the ground, there is the access. Descending upstream the slope a big porch introduces the house main door. Inside, the square-shaped ground floor is divided between public and private spaces. Public spaces like entrance hall, living room, dining room and studio are placed in the middle of the sides. Private spaces like bedrooms and kitchen find their place in the corners and when it is necessary can be isolated from the rest.

The central void makes the connection between indoor and outdoor living spaces. A staircase leads down to a paved and partially covered surface integrating a swimming pool, a laying and a dining area, surrounded by an impressive natural environment.

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Architetti Pedrozzi e Diaz Saravia appeared first on Dezeen.

Photographer Edmund Sumner has revealed initial images of the filigree-clad Museum of European and Mediterranean Civilisations (MuCEM) by architect Rudy Ricciotti, which is set to open next month on Marseille’s waterfront (+ slideshow).

Tying in with the French city’s designation as European Capital of Culture 2013, MuCEM is one of several civic buildings set to open there this year and will be dedicated to the history and cultures of the Mediterranean region.

Ornamental concrete shrouds the glazed exterior of the museum like a lacy veil, moderating light through to the building’s two exhibition floors. Meanwhile, an inclined walkway bridges out from the roof the building to meet Fort Saint-Jean – a seventeenth-century stronghold that will also house museum exhibitions – before continuing on towards the Eglise Saint-Laurent church nearby.

Rudy Ricciotti describes the building as a “vertical casbah”, referring to its arrangement on the harbour. “Open to the sea, it draws a horizon where the two shores of the Mediterranean can meet,” he says.

Other projects to open in Marseille this year include a polished steel pavilion by Foster + Partners and a contemporary art space on the rooftop of Le Corbusier’s Cité Radieuse housing block. See more architecture in Marseille.

See more photography by Edmund Sumner on Dezeen, or on his website.

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photographed by Edmund Sumner appeared first on Dezeen.

London firm Tony Fretton has sandwiched two rows of brick houses between a pair of canals in the town of Den Helder in the Netherlands (+ slideshow).

Tony Fretton Architects collaborated with Dutch firm Geurst en Schulze Architecten to design 16 houses for the Molenplein site, as part of a wider masterplan by West 8 that centres around the redevelopment of the town’s former navy base.

Three-storey houses stretch along the front of the site, facing out across the dockyard, while a row of smaller two-storey residences run along behind and are separated by private gardens.

Drawing inspiration from canal houses of the early twentieth century, the houses feature a mixture of linear and gabled profiles, and present both exposed and painted brickwork facades.

Bright yellow doors and ornamental marble panels mark the entrances to each house, plus the windows come with chunky wooden frames.

Each of the 16 houses has one of four standard layouts. There are few internal partitions and finishes, as the architects wanted to give residents the opportunity to design their own interiors.

Tony Fretton Architects is led by Fretton alongside partner James McKinney. Past projects by the firm include a Stirling Prize-nominated museum of fine art in Denmark and the Vassall Road housing project in south London. See more architecture by Tony Fretton Architects.

Photography is by Christian Richters.

Read on for more information from Tony Fretton Architects:

Houses in Molenplein, Den Helder, the Netherlands

Tony Fretton Architects has completed a new development of houses in the Dutch town of Den Helder.

Commissioned by Dutch developer Proper-Stok the development comprises 2 and 3 storey houses designed by Tony Fretton Architects and Dutch practice Geurst en Schulze Architecten configured within a masterplan designed by West 8.

Molenplein occupies a long site between two canals, the Helderskanaal and Werfkanaal, where it looks out onto Den Helder’s former Napoleonic naval yard. The development is part of a regeneration strategy by the municipality to attract middle-income people to the area following the relocation of the Dutch navy base. The Napoleonic dockyard has also been redeveloped, providing places for business and culture.

West 8’s masterplan for Molenplein preserves the character, scale and diversity of the city fabric along each canal; the plan comprises large three-storey houses facing the dockyard and compact two-storey houses to the rear, with private gardens in between, and intersperses designs by Tony Fretton Architects with those of Geurst en Schulze Architecten.

Houses designed by Tony Fretton Architects are distinguished by a simple profile and generously proportioned windows and entrance doors. The designs are abstracted versions of typical canal front and back houses and aim to reproduce the generosity of scale and abstraction seen in Dutch architecture from the Golden Age and early Dutch modernism. Materials comprise wooden window frames in facades of white painted brick or rose coloured brick with white pointing. A measure of ornament is given through the use of discreet panels of Belgian marble at eye level. In contrast the Geurst en Schulze houses have finely elaborated detail and provide punctuation in the terrace.

Inspired by the openness and energy that the practice observed in an earlier development they designed – De Prinsendam in Overhoeks, Amsterdam – where owners radically personalised their interiors, the houses are presented with unplanned interiors and carefully positioned service risers, fenestration and staircases that support a wide range of possible internal configurations.

Location: Den Helder, The Netherlands
Client: Proper-Stok
Gross external area: 2,300 sq m approx
Internal area: 3,200 sq m approx

Architects: Tony Fretton Architects
Design team: Tony Fretton, James McKinney, David Owen, Chris Snow, Chris Neve
Project Associate: David Owen
Project Architect: Chris Snow
Executive Architects: Geurst en Schulze Architecten
Masterplan & landscaping: West 8
Structural Engineers: Ingenieursbureau Dijkhuis bv
Services Engineers: Wolf Dikken adviseurs
Main Contractor: Tuin Den Helder bv

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Tony Fretton Architects appeared first on Dezeen.