Sticking with woodland hideaways, the architects of these structures aimed to “recreate the fantasy of tree houses”, by designing spaces that sit amongst the tree branches.
Each structure snakes out between the trees of a park in northern Portugal and offers accommodation for one or two inhabitants.
What lover of Modernism wouldn’t be excited at the chance to spend a night in the world-famous Bauhaus?
We reported in October that the former German Modernist design school had opened its doors to paying guests who can sleep in the former school’s dormitories.
A hotel on stilts was added to the picturesque Fogo Island in Canada last October.
The protruding ends of the building are supported by dozens of narrow columns to minimise the impact on the rocks, lichens and plants that make up the surrounding coastal landscape.
Named Fogo Island Inn, the building is the latest edition to an ongoing arts residency programme being established on the Newfoundland isle.
A mat that can be folded into a two-seat sofa by California designer Yumi Yoshida was inspired by the ancient Japanese art of paper-folding (+ slideshow).
The Origami Sofa by Yumi Yoshida comprises a series of upholstery panels sandwiched between two layers of fabric. Each piece is separated by a fold allowing the segments to be manipulated into a self-supporting seat.
The concept uses different colours to highlight the duality of the Origami Sofa’s function as a mat and sofa, and also to mimic the traditional origami paper that lends the concept its name.
“The two different colours resemble the sides on a sheet of origami paper and emphasise the change in both function and form as it folds from a flat rug into a couch,” said the Austrian-born furniture designer.
To convert the mat into a sofa, one end is folded into a pair of right-angled triangular boxes while the other is pinched into the beginnings of a box shape that will become the seat section.
The triangular boxes are then folded inward to create the back and armrests that will form the upper section.
The seat is then rolled into the centre to create a supporting structure shaped like a trapezium.
To complete the sofa, the back section is stacked on top of the seat. The completed piece of furniture retains a few flashes of orange to serve as a reminder of the seat’s dual use.
We’ve recently reported on a number of designers and architects inspired by the ancient Japanese art of paper folding.
Books, records, plant pots and even shoes can be turned into musical instruments thanks to British designer Nick Brennan’s Sound Pegs device (+ slideshow).
Camberwell College of Arts graduate Nick Brennan created a device that features a series of enlarged wooden pegs, two speakers and a converter that changes the vibrations into a digital signal.
When the pegs are attached to any object, sensors inside the jaws can detect when the object is struck. The vibrations are then then passed to the converter, which feeds the signal to a laptop running Apple’s Garageband music software. The software triggers a sound, which is transmitted through the accompanying wood speakers.
“I work a lot with electronics and also natural materials,” explained Brennan. “I like to provide tactile experiences through my work.”
Objects can be used to create drums, pianos, guitars or any instrument stored in the software.
In a video demonstration, Brennan’s Sound Pegs are connected to shoes, books and old vinyl records that when struck sound like high hats, snares and kick drums.
“I use Garageband, but it can be used with any music generation software,” he said.
Brennan admits that some experimentation is required to discover which objects can provide the best platforms for sound: “Flat objects work better, as they’re easier for the pegs to grab onto.”
British architect Richard Overs has converted a deserted bakery in Cambridge, England, into a modern home for his family (+ slideshow).
Overs, a director at NRAP Architects, renovated both the bakery and a small accompanying house to create the two-storey residence called The Nook, then tied the two buildings together by adding a black-painted timber structure in between.
The architect said the two separate structures lent themselves perfectly to the arrangement of a home: “The large space within the bakery provides flexible living space, whilst the smaller rooms within the baker’s house are ideally suited to bedrooms.”
Accessed via a private lane, the house’s facade is a wall made from a combination of light and dark bricks. An entrance leads through the wall into the new wooden structure, which contains a lobby and staircase.
The hallway leads through to the large room formerly used as bakery. With high ceilings and white-painted wooden trusses, the space creates a flexible living, dining and kitchen space.
A wall of glazing opens the kitchen out to a secluded courtyard located behind the facade, while a series of glass doors also lead out to a second courtyard at the rear.
Skylights bring additional daylight into the living space, while floors are covered with painted plywood boards. The kitchen worktops are salvaged from the architect’s previous kitchen.
“Our attitude to the fabric of the building was quite relaxed; elements of value were retained, others were removed,” explained Overs.
The hallway features a wall of exposed clay bricks, revealing the former facade of the small detached house, which contains a pair of bedrooms on each floor.
Here’s a project description from architect Richard Owers:
From Bakehouse to our House
Richard Owers, director of NRAP Architects, describes the process of converting a disused bakery in Cambridge into a home for his family.
The Nook …….. is where the hearth is!
“Converting The Nook was an important moment in my architectural career, the significance of which was increased by the death of my father the previous year. He had inspired me at a very early age to become an architect and throughout my career suggested it was important to live in ones own creation. Finally firing up the hearth at The Nook was therefore rather poignant.”
Rescue Operation
“An often overlooked challenge for architects interested in sustainability is how to adapt existing buildings in a creative and cost effective manner. This project demonstrates how a building with little apparent architectural value can be rescued through good design. It also illustrates that demanding physical and budgetary constraints require creative solutions, and that calculated risk-taking can overcome the difficulties of a cautious mortgage market.”
Dereliction
In October 2010 Richard Owers of NRAP Architects spotted a ramshackle bakery and detached house in south Cambridge. The bakery, more recently used as a launderette, was disused and boarded up. The baker’s house had been privately rented and was in very poor condition. The two buildings were stranded behind a parade of shops, within a sea of car parking, at the end of a tarmac drive. As a place to live it had little going for it – or that was the general perception.
The existing two-up-two-down house was entered off a forecourt, directly into a central room that doubled as entrance hall and dining room. A living room and kitchen were accessed off opposing corners of the dining room. The same pattern was repeated at first floor, with entry to the bathroom via a bedroom.
The Solution
A walled garden in front of the bakery provides privacy to the living spaces and definition to the forecourt. A black-stained, timber-clad structure was added to the house to link it to the bakery and provide a new entrance hall and staircase. The existing staircase was removed to provide storage space in bedrooms. A right of way, passing along the north edge of the bakery, presented a privacy and security problem that was overcome by blocking-up all but one of the existing openings on the north façade. In the remaining opening translucent glass replaces a timber door. Large windows in the south facade were introduced to re-orientate the living spaces to the back garden.
Expanding Space
In a tight urban context the balance between privacy, light, and views is hard won. An increased sense of space, achieved through large openings with strong connections to the outside, is often at odds with privacy requirements. The following images show how this was achieved.
Image showing the original bakery and detached house
Inside Outside
The walled garden has the feeling of a living room, carpeted in white pebbles with a planted edge and a Tibetan Cherry tree for shade. A large sliding-folding door allows the living spaces to extend into the garden, and the garden to extend into the living space.
Views through the building and of external spaces are carefully controlled. The walled garden is first glimpsed from the front doormat and again at the foot of the staircase. It is not until one enters the living space that uninterrupted views of both front and back gardens are possible. Natural light plays on the different materials and surfaces to create an ethereal atmosphere that changes throughout the day and with the seasons.
The space within the entrance hall expands vertically up to the first floor as you penetrate the building. A roof light above brings natural light into the heart of the space.
A compelling architectural diagram for contemporary living combines a compact arrangement of bedrooms with open-plan living spaces. The contrasting form and geometries of the two existing buildings lent itself perfectly to this arrangement. The large space within the bakery provides flexible living space, divided by free-standing storage and island units, whilst the smaller rooms within the baker’s house are ideally suited to bedrooms.
The staircase is an exciting place to stop. In recognition of this we created an extended landing at the top, overlooking the entrance hall. The landing is large enough for a writing desk and chair.
Rescuing a dilapidated building is an intrinsically sustainable thing to do. Our attitude to the fabric of the building was quite relaxed; elements of value were retained, others were removed. The lintel over the original front door for example was reused above the fire place as a focus to the living space.
Brickwork to the original external wall of the house is exposed in the hallway, in contrast with the smooth plaster used elsewhere. Painted plywood, usually used as a sub-floor, has been laid directly on rigid insulation over the original concrete floor. Low energy florescent lights are discretely hidden behind a timber pelmet, and kitchen worktops and units were salvaged from my previous kitchen.
As soon as our offer on the property was accepted I commenced the design to enable a planning application to be lodged immediately after ‘exchange’ of contracts. A period of six weeks between exchange and completion was agreed, to parallel the statutory planning period and allow just enough time to prepare construction information. Unfortunately the council took three weeks to merely validate the application, so construction was commenced, at some risk, prior to receiving planning permission. The pressure of paying two mortgages made it essential to compress the construction program. A contract was negotiated with a local builder prepared to wait until we had re-mortgaged to get the majority of his money. Construction was completed in three months and the property re-mortgaged immediately after.
News: work is nearing completion on an upgraded first floor for the Eiffel Tower that will offer visitors the opportunity to walk over a glass floor or host events and conferences 57 metres above the ground.
The first floor is currently the most spacious but least visited storey of the iconic Parisian structure, but this reconstruction by French studio Moatti-Rivière Architects – the first in 30 years – is set to transform it into an attractive destination filled with restaurants, shops and event spaces.
The architects conceived the 5000-square-metre floor as “a real urban space with its streets, its buildings and its central space, 57 metres above ground”, and are replacing existing pavilions with a series of new self-contained structures boasting modern facilities and impressive views.
An educational pathway will reveal the history of the building, while a glass floor will wrap the outside of the towers’s central opening to offer visitors a vertiginous experience.
The reconstruction will enable disabled access, which before now has been severely restricted. It also introduces sustainable technologies, such as solar power, rainwater harvesting and wind power and low-energy LED lighting.
Here’s a project description from Moatti-Rivière Architects:
The Eiffel Tower’s 1st floor is going to have a face-lift
New buildings and entirely redeveloped public spaces to make the Tower’s 1st floor once again one of Paris’ most spectacular and attractive locations, 57 meters above the city
Since the last transformation of the 1st floor 30 years ago, the Tower has welcomed more visitors than during its first century of existence! The pavilions and public spaces of the 1980s are obsolete and not adapted to the number of visitors, the visitors’ expectations and technical standards.
The floor reorganisation project includes: rebuilding the reception and conference rooms to turn it into one of Paris’ most attractive event spaces; rebuilding the pavilion dedicated to visitor services, particularly restaurants and shops; creating an entertaining and educational museographic path; and finally, creating two spectacular attractions: discovering space on the monument and its esplanade thanks to glass flooring and balustrades and an “immersion” film promising strong emotions.
Important goals linked to the sustainable development policy implemented at the Eiffel Tower: accessibility and reducing its carbon footprint.
Today, disabled people are unable to access most of the 1st floor of the Tower. With this reorganisation all visitors, regardless of their disability, will be able to enjoy the whole space and all its services and contents.
New building standards, solar energy for heating, wind energy, hydraulic energy, rainwater recovery, LED lighting: various techniques will be implemented to help improve the Tower’s energy performance.
An “influenced” architecture, designed entirely in diagonals and transparency by the architects Moatti-Rivière, providing an improved experience of the Tower and Paris and respect for the monument and its history.
The new pavilions are influenced by the pillars designed by Gustave Eiffel. They hug the Tower’s slant. The volumes are incorporated in the depths and curves of the pillars. Service areas are placed next to the gables to preserve the central transparency.
The floor is designed as a real urban space with its streets, its buildings and its central space, 57 meters above ground. It gives a close view of the city and of the Tower itself. It is a knowledge space where the inside of the “Tower object” can be explored.
The project offers an improved experience of the Tower and Paris, an entertaining sensory experience, a journey of the senses and knowledge.
The redevelopment has been designed and carried out by the architects Moatti-Rivière architects, in consortium with Bateg for the construction. The latter won the design-construction contract in October 2010.
Laces are threaded through the uppers of these shoes by Japanese designers Nendo for Spanish shoe company Camper, creating patterns across the whole surface (+ slideshow).
Nendo set out to create a lighter, more water-resistant version of Camper‘s bestselling Peu Ideal shoe, which features a stretchy lace secured with a knot at each end.
“We lit upon the idea of working with Camper’s iconic stretchable shoelaces and knots,” explained Nendo.
Available in four colours, the Beetle uses elastic laces to perforate the shoe across the entire upper, tied in knots at three points to keep them in place.
“In our design, shoelaces interlaced across the shoe’s upper provide comfort and wearability, at the same time as they take on a starring role, bringing new function and visual style alike,” the designers added.
Making the shoes from a combination of nylon and polyurethane, Nendo has added further waterproofing and made the shoe lighter than the original.
The sole also features thermal insulation and is inscribed with the words “Human Energy”.
The studio plans to exhibit the shoes in Milan next month during the Salone Internazionale del Mobile, which runs from 8 to 13 April. The shoes are also available on Camper’s website.
This isn’t the first time the two companies have collaborated together: last year Nendo designed the brand’s flagship New York store featuring more than a thousand ghostly white shoes protruding from the walls.
This reflective metal-clad box containing a restaurant rises like a periscope above a small shopping complex in São Paulo by French-Brazilian architecture office Triptyque (+ slideshow).
Triptyque was asked to create a building that incorporates three shops, a bar, an art gallery and a restaurant with a VIP room, and decided to locate the latter inside a cantilevered metal box called the Observatory.
“Located in a street where the buildings are next to each other, the Observatory is not a stage in addition, it is a building on a building, the city on the city,” said the architects. “It opens a new dimension of growth straddling the shopping complex and overlooking the Oscar Freire neighbourhood of São Paulo.”
The reflective top-floor structure appears to hover above the rest of the three-storey building and is supported by a series of columns that reach to the ground level.
Stainless steel panels covering the exterior of the Observatory create distorted reflections of the surrounding streetscape, which can be seen up close from the open terrace on the storey below.
At street level, customers enter three shops contained in narrow units arranged in a staggered formation that step back from the pavement of the Rua Oscar Freire.
The restaurant’s main space is housed on the first floor, with the kitchens above and a lift providing access to the VIP room at the top of the building. A ramp leads from the street down to the basement level, which houses parking and services for the building.
Triptyque based the multi-storey arrangement of the complex on the Spatial City theory developed in 1959 by Hungarian-born French architect Yona Friedman, who imagined inhabitable structures raised on piles to free up space below.
“It is an artificial topography composed of megacities above ground responding to the problem of rapid population growth in large urban areas in the world,” said the architects.
The architecture agency Triptyque was commissioned to design a complex in São Paulo with three shops, a restaurant, a bar and an art gallery. The shops should have access to the city while the restaurant had to be housed in the upper floors.
The complex was designed as a binary metal structure: a “ground” level that receives the shops, and a “space” level called “the Observatory” which houses the restaurant where the group of Franco- Brazilian restaurateurs Chez Group has created its new meeting place: Chez Oscar.
Located on a street where the buildings are next to each other, the observatory is not a stage in addition, it is a building on a building, the city on the city. It opens a new dimension of growth spanning the shopping complex and overlooking the Oscar Freire neighbourhood of São Paulo.
Massive and cubic volume, the observatory is balanced on an asymmetric structure which imparts kinetic and operates a disruption between the street level and spatial scale effect. Completely covered with stainless steel, reflections are distorted and blurred over time and tropical storms.
In this design, the architects of the agency Triptych were strongly inspired by the concept of the space city of Yona Friedman created in 1959. It is an artificial topography composed of mega cities aboveground responding to the problem of rapid population growth in large urban areas in the world. It draws a three-dimensional city that multiplies the original surface of the city with elevated planes, and thus created a new map of the territory.
The building The Observatory Oscar Freire grasps architecture as a dynamic form, between materiality and potentiality, open to users interaction as well as environmental conditions. It was inaugurated in October 2013.
Project : Freud/Oscar Freire Localisation : R. Oscar Freire 1128, 1134, 1138 e 1142, Jardins São Paulo Start of project (year): 2010 Delivery (year): 2012 Surface: 675 sqm Built surface: 1400 sqm
Dutch firm Studio Makkink & Bey has created a collection of furniture for a nomadic future including a backpack that becomes a sofa bed, a carrycot that becomes a table and a walking cane that turns into an illuminated screen (+ slideshow).
Conceptroom Huisraad by Makkink & Bey is a range of objects that examines the concept of domestic interiors that are no longer attached to any one physical space.
The items form part of Living Spaces, an exhibition exploring textiles in Dutch interiors at the TextielMuseum in Tilburg, the Netherlands. The pieces “depict a future scenario in which the individual travels light and stays comfortable,” said the team.
As part of the display, Makkink & Bey created three objects that utilise natural materials and animal fibres combined with multiple uses.
WarmteWeefsels, meaning “heat tissues”, is a carrycot that turns into a table. In its former state, the cot comes with a pair of adjustable handles and blanket.
To convert it into a table, users remove the blanket, slide the handles to their widest setting and flip the whole thing upside down. The blanket can then be used as either a rug or table cloth.
VouwPlaats, or “fold place”, is a knitted mattress and chair you can carry around as you would a backpack.
The user wears a woollen jacket attached to the frame to carry the VouwPlaats around.
By placing it on the floor, the rolled up mattress acts as a seat and the frame acts as a backrest.
To convert the piece into a bed, the user simply unclasps the two straps holding it together and rolls out the mattress.
The VensterLicht, or “window light”, is a portable room divider and a cane. When closed, the VensterLicht is a chunky walking stick. Inside however, is a four-legged stand and strip-light with a piece of silk cloth attached. When unravelled, it creates a full-length screen.
Each piece provides individuals with, “expandable, foldable and lightweight furniture to travel with, as they traverse boundless interiors – our shrinking world,” said the designers.
This isn’t the first time Studio Makkink & Bey has created multifunctional furniture; last year they created SideSeat, a mash-up of a desk, shelves and swivel chair in one.
Living Spaces continues at the TextielMuseum until 11 May.
Photography is by Rene van der Hulst, commissioned by the TextielMuseum.
This steel and glass elevator shaft designed by Spanish architecture firm Ah Asociados rises out of a hillside on the outskirts of Pamplona in Spain to connect a suburb with the city (+ slideshow).
Ah Asociados, which has offices in Spain and Qatar, designed the Urban Elevator to create a more direct link between the Echavacoiz Norte neighbourhood on the hill and the city below.
Commissioned by the city council, the architects were asked to investigate three possible sites in the city that had all experienced problems with accessibility.
The team settled on the Echavacoiz Norte neighbourhood. Previously, the two parts were connected by a pedestrian ramp and stairs, but city planners felt this could be improved.
The result is an extended steel clad walkway jutting out from the top of the hill in a dog-leg that connects to an elevator shaft offering panoramic views of Pamplona and the hills beyond.
“This made it possible to introduce new pedestrian and cyclist roads between the two urban levels and implement an architectural element that turned the panoramic footbridge and the panoramic tower into one,” explained a spokesperson from the studio.
The footbridge is supported by a single horizontal steel beam, with a pavement made from sheet steel plates laid over the top. The plate continues on one side of the footbridge to shelter pedestrians from prevailing winds. The other side features a rail and steel fencing low enough for unspoiled views of the city and surrounding hills.
The elevator shaft is clad in the same sheet steel to give the two separate elements visual continuity.
“The project enhances the simplicity of each element, avoiding any excess of constructive formalism,” said the Ah Asociados spokesperson.
Pedestrians approaching the tower from the lower levels cross a small footbridge before ascending up through the transparent elevator shaft. In addition to giving access to the Echavacoiz Norte neighbourhood, the Urban Elevator provides more direct access to a nearby cycleway and park.
Here’s some text from the architects:
Urban Elevator in Echavacoiz (Pamplona)
This project emerge from an R+D+I study on Pedestrian Mobility in “Echavacoiz Norte”, commissioned by the City Council of Pamplona to the Innovation Department of ah asociados. In this research, three critical areas with historical accessibility and urban integration problems were detected and could be solved by implementing mechanical systems.
One of these three critical areas was to resolve the precarious pedestrian ramp access and stairs which overcome thirty meters height difference between levels. These accesses were also used by neighbours of “Urdanoz Group” to reach the elevated area where there was a perimeter walkway and the neighbourhood of “Echavacoiz Norte”.
This project was intended to solve current accessibility problems through two footbridges and a lift, which turned into an urban reference of the integration of Echavacoiz into the city and into an object sensible to its own urban landscape. This has been possible by linking the upper pathway with the river park and with the future neighbourhood of the AVE.
The pathway along the Elorz River and the one to the neighbourhood encountered in the bridge. This made it possible to introduce new pedestrian and cyclist roads between the two urban levels and implement an architectural element that turned the panoramic footbridge and the panoramic tower into one.
The project enhances the simplicity of each element, avoiding any excess of constructive formalism. The great structural effort of the uneven footbridge has been solved by a robust section that extends between its bases and creates an image of an arcade opened to the new neighbourhood.
The basic shape of the footbridge is formed by a continued beam from which the supports of the footbridge pavement are born. This pavement has been made of sheet metal plates. The exterior of the beam and the lateral levels of the tower are also covered by a folded steel plate to get visual continuity to enhance the urban character of an element that emerges from the hill and is supported by the head of the footbridge.
The horizontal part of the bridge turns into vertical where it meets the tower, in such a way that the format of steel structure element and steel skin is repeated. The asymmetry of the footbridge protects the pedestrians of wind and let them see a new territory whilst the vertical element is robust and strong in its lateral levels. The landings opened to the landscape with the minimum expression of materials.
The two main features of this project are formal simplicity and clear structure. These two define an element that is converted into a reference, a gate and a connection between two urban realities that are no longer separated by a topography that caused marginalization and now union.
American architect Steven Holl has completed his new building for the Glasgow School of Art in Scotland, where its geometric matte-glass exterior stands in contrast to the decorative sandstone facade of Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s masterpiece across the street (+ slideshow).
Steven Holl‘s Reid Building provides modern studios for the Glasgow School of Art and was designed to forge “a symbiotic relationship” with the historic campus building completed by Scottish architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh a decade century earlier.
The new five-storey-high building replaces the school’s Newbery Tower and Foulis Building, but wraps around the three-storey stone Assembly Building, which houses the school’s popular student union.
One of the main aims of the design was to bring as much natural light as possible into the building, so Holl created three cylindrical shafts of light that he calls “Driven Voids”, which stretch right down from the roof to the basement.
Spaces inside the building were also arranged with respect to their lighting requirements, so the majority of studios and workshops are positioned along the northern edge of the plan, where they will receive more consistent levels of daylight.
A central network of staircases and ramps extends around, beside and across the three lightwells, helping students to orientate themselves within the building.
These link all of the floors, including the two basement levels, and lead up from the lobby, exhibition galleries and seminar rooms of the ground floor to workshops, studios, project rooms and a lecture room elsewhere in the building.
Artist and former Glasgow School of Art student Martin Boyce was commissioned by the architects to design a piece to mark the entrance to the new building, and his screen of painted steel and glass vines hangs down from the ceiling.
Describing the piece as “a flourish of coloured glass catching and projecting washes of light,” Holl explained: “We see this colour in positive contrast to the original colours of Mackintosh and an inspiration to students and the community.”
The architects are also planting a terrace outside the building, which is intended to resemble the grassy machair plains that are particular to parts of the British Isles.
Here’s some more information from the Glasgow School of Art:
The Reid Building Glasgow, United Kingdom (2009 – 2014)
Following an Estates Review that established, with the exception of the Mackintosh building, the School’s Garnethill estate of some nine separate buildings was no longer fit for purpose, a plan was developed with the aspiration to create a more focused campus of facilities to provide the GSA with world class spaces.
The core principle of Phase 1 of the campus plan was to create a new, purpose-built academic building housing a broad range of studios and teaching facilities for the School of Design, as well as workshops, lecture facilities, communal student areas and exhibition spaces for the School as a whole, and a new visitor centre.
Steven Holl Architects of New York, in association with Glasgow-based JM Architects and Arup Engineering, were selected in September 2009 to design and deliver the Phase 1 building, which will be called the Reid Building in honour of Dame Seona Reid who stood down as Director of the GSA in the summer of 2013, to sit fittingly opposite the category ‘A’ listed Mackintosh building.
The development (including costs incurred in the re-housing of the School of Design during the re-build) has been funded by a grant from the Scottish Funding Council. The development has been delivered on time and on budget.
The Design
The Reid Building, which replaces the Newbery Tower and Foulis Building, is in complementary contrast to Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s Glasgow School of Art (1899 – 1909) – forging a symbiotic relation in which each structure heightens the integral qualities of the other. A thin translucent materiality in considered contrast to the masonry of the Mackintosh building – volumes of light which express the school’s activity in the urban fabric embodying a forward-looking life for the arts.
This project’s unique interior and exterior forces on the design are the catalysts for creating a new 21st century model for the art school. Working simultaneously from the inside out – engaging the functional needs and psychological desires of the programme – and the outside in – making connections to the city campus and relating to the Mackintosh building opposite – the design embodies the school’s aspirations in the city’s fabric.
Mackintosh’s amazing manipulation of the building section for light in inventive ways has inspired our approach towards a plan of volumes in different light. The studio/workshop is the basic building block of the building. Spaces have been located not only to reflect their interdependent relationships but also their varying needs for natural light. Studios are positioned on the north facade with large inclined north facing glazing to maximise access to the desirable high quality diffuse north light. Spaces that do not have a requirement for the same quality of natural light, such as the refectory and offices, are located on the south facade where access to sunlight can be balanced with the occupants needs and the thermal performance of the space through application of shading.
“Driven Voids of light” allow for the integration of structure, spatial modulation and light. The “Driven Void” light shafts deliver natural light through the depth of the building providing direct connectivity with the outside world through the changing intensity and colour of the sky. In addition, they provide vertical circulation through the building, eliminating the need for air conditioning.
Along the south elevation, at the same height as the Mackintosh main studios, a landscape loggia in the form of a Machair gives the school an exterior social core open to the city. The natural vegetation with some stonework routes the water into a small recycling water pond which will reflect dappled sunlight onto the ceiling inside.
A “Circuit of Connection” throughout the new GSA encourages the ‘creative abrasion’ across and between departments that is central to the workings of the school. The open circuit of stepped ramps links all major spaces – lobby, exhibition space, project spaces, lecture theatre, seminar rooms, studios, workshops and green terraces for informal gatherings and exhibitions.
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