The rural Lo Barnechea commune in the north-eastern area of Santiago city is the setting for this small oak-clad house by architectural firm emA (+ slideshow).
The 76-square-metre rustic home was designed by emA founders Orlando Etcheberrigaray and Klaus Matuschka for a farm keeper who looks after the 500 hectare site, which features a public mountain biking park.
Photograph by Marcelo Cáceres
“Access to the area is public, but controlled,” Etcheberrigaray told Dezeen. “It is only open for biking or jogging as this is an area of ecological preservation.”
Photograph by Marcelo Cáceres
The Hijuela El Durazno Caretaker’s House is intended to blend naturally into the surrounding environment. A dark vertical roof made of a metal structure and covered in asphalt shingles incorporates eaves, vents and a chimney system that prevent overheating. Thermal insulation in the drop ceiling retains heat during colder weather.
Oak wood cladding on the exterior walls is 70 millimetres thick, offering the house further thermal resistance. “This is important because the land is located in a pre-mountainous area,” Orlando told Dezeen.
Built by construction company Nautilus, the house sits on metallic stilts making it less invasive on the surrounding ground.
Hijuela El Durazno Caretaker’s House Lo Barnechea, Santiago-Chile
The assignment was to build a small house for the keeper of a farm which corresponds to an ecological reserve in the urban limit of the city of Santiago. This place, despite being private property, was to have free access to practice mountain biking.
Photograph by Marcelo Cáceres
The rural condition of the place, the weather and the idea of creating a point of access and control to the place, led the architectural typology of the house. This worked on two concepts: dark vertical roof and natural coloured wood walls. These conditions, in addition to the black coloured windows, allow the house to be a neutral building in the natural environment. The red access door contrasts with the rest of the house. The location of the house was chosen to meet project requirements and to optimise the sunlight.
Section
The roof protects from water and snow in winter and high summer insolation. This was supported by the use of eaves, to which were incorporated vents. These vents work together with the upper chimney to generate a flow of air in between the ceiling, helping to prevent overheating in the warmer months. For the colder months, we worked with thermal insulation in the drop ceiling, allowing the temperature to keep warm inside.
East elevation
The oak wood cladding of the exterior walls is 70 millimeters thick. The faces of the wooden parts were placed without brushing and were ordered regularly. This result is external walls of high thermal resistance with a regularly ordered composition and great texture.
First floor plan
In the inner development, the program is divided into two areas, according to privacy requirements. Oriented towards the north-east are the bedrooms and bathrooms. Oriented towards the north-west are the living room and kitchen. In front of the house, we generated a covered outdoor space, which serves as access and porch.
Site plan
The construction of the house was done mostly with metallic structures and wooden plates which allowed a quick installation. The house is supported on metallic stilts allowing it to be less invasive with the ground surface. Thermal insulation is incorporated inside the walls, in ceilings and floor slab.
Music manuscripts and recordings of the late British composer Benjamin Britten are held within a temperature-controlled concrete chamber at this archive building in Suffolk, England by architecture firm Stanton Williams (+ slideshow).
The Britten-Pears Archive is located in the grounds of the house formerly shared by Britten and tenor Peter Pears – the composer’s personal and professional partner – and it offers a comprehensive archive of the music, photographs and letters of both musicians.
Stanton Williams developed the structure using the concept of “an egg in a box”. The archive is housed within a highly-insulated concrete enclosure, while a red-brick facade encases this volume along with the other rooms of the building.
This arrangement effectively creates an intermediate space between the archive and the outside environment, making it easy to moderate the temperature and relative humidity. The archive is also raised off the ground to prevent the risk of flooding.
Staff offices, support spaces and a study room are positioned inside the southern wing of the building and feature exposed concrete ceilings and a variety of wooden surfaces.
Brick piers surround two of the facades to create nine floor-to-ceiling windows, giving staff views out across the gardens.
Architect Alan Stanton said: “The new building will play an important part in preserving Britten’s legacy and serve as a research centre for future generations of musicians and music lovers.”
Here’s a project description from Stanton Williams:
Britten-Pears Archive
The Britten Pears Archive, Stanton Williams’ new passive archive building for the Britten–Pears Foundation (BPF), houses the extensive collection of music manuscripts, letters, photographs and recordings of the composer Benjamin Britten and tenor Peter Pears. Originally assembled by Britten and Pears as a working library of their own collections of books, manuscripts and printed scores and recordings, the archive has now grown into one of the country’s most important centres for music research and scholarship. In 2005 the collection was officially given Designated status in recognition of its significance.
The archive building complements the site of The Red House in Aldeburgh, Suffolk, the Grade II listed former home of Britten and his partner Pears and has been completed in time for Britten’s Centenary celebrations at the Aldeburgh music festival in June 2013.
Stanton Williams’ design roots the building firmly in its context and is appropriate to the listed house and garden, providing optimum environmental conditions for preservation of the significant collection through pioneering low-energy means, achieving a passive archive environment.
The building is expressed as two interlocking forms, reflecting the internal functions. The concept is that of an ‘egg in a box’: thick, well insulated walls enclose the main storage room, surrounded by a buffer space which helps moderate the temperature and relative humidity between the outside environment and the material within.
The volume to the north contains the staff offices, support spaces and a study room, with generous windows on the west and north façades allowing views out to The Red House gardens, giving a sense of connection with the site. The southern volume houses the archive collection, raised from the ground to protect it from flood risk. This functional and efficient concept is based on a tradition of building treasure houses, granary stores and shrines and gives form to the ‘precious’ nature of the collection.
The outer building walls are constructed entirely from solid brick. The bricks connect the building visually with the rest of the site and provides thermal mass to help moderate the conditions within the building. This is essential for passive control ensuring low-energy and high environmental standards for the building.
A green sedum roof on staff areas helps blend the building with the landscape, encouraging biodiversity.
Internally, the materials are limited to fairfaced concrete soffits and columns (providing thermal mass and cooling) and timber wall linings, floors and windows to provide warmth and texture.
The new archive brings together this internationally important collection in one central place for the first time in the very place where Britten created his music, improving staff workspace, access and security.
Re-housing the archive created opportunities to free up space within the existing buildings on the site, most importantly, the composition studio in which Britten worked from 1958 to 1970, and where masterpieces such as War Requiem were written, has been re-created for visitors to experience.
Construction value: £2.0 million Completion Date: June 2013 Date of Occupation: June 2013 Construction phase: Nov 2011 – June 2013 Postal Address: Golf Lane, Aldeburgh, IP15 5PZ Gross Internal Area: 520m2
Client: Britten-Pears Foundation Architect: Stanton Williams Building Services Engineer: Max Fordham Civil and Structural Engineer: Barton Engineers Project Manager: David Langdon Main Contractor: R G Carter Ltd Cost Consultant: Davis Langdon Arboriculturalist: Ian Keen Ltd
A staircase doubles up as a bookcase inside this renovated apartment in Barcelona by Croatian architect Eva Cotman (+ slideshow).
Eva Cotman, who is based in Barcelona, re-planned the interior to accommodate a young couple, who requested a more open-plan layout.
“The project objective is to try to maximise the functionality of the space,” said Cotman, “but at the same time to not lose the identity of the neighbourhood and materiality of the existing building.”
The architect began by removing all non-loadbearing walls to create a large living and dining room along one side of the space, then added a new bedroom, bathroom and walk-in wardrobe at the back.
An old suspended ceiling was removed and then every surface was painted white – including the exposed brick walls and timber ceiling joists – to create a blank canvas for the new occupants.
The combined staircase and bookshelf is at the centre of the plan and leads up a new mezzanine guest room and storage area. This staircase also functions as an informal seating area.
For lighting, the architect used bright red cables to string bulbs around the ceiling joists.
This project sets out to alter and improve an apartment situated in Raval, the Ciutat Vella district of Barcelona. An area used to be known for its nightlife as well as the insecurity, El Raval has changed significantly in recent years, and has become one of the touristic attractions in the centre of the city. Today it is home to many bars, restaurants, museums and art galleries, making it a popular neighbourhood among young professionals and students alike.
The clients are a young couple with a very active social life, enjoying fully all the cultural activities that Raval offers. In defining the new use of space, in accordance with the client’s needs, much attention has been given to maximise the entering of daylight and the visual interrelationships between the different parts of the house, each with its own identity. The aim was to give the occupant various possibilities to move from one space to another, to create diversity inside the apartment as well as to enable the clients to enjoy the diversity of the neighbourhood where they live.
The project objective is to try to maximise the functionality of the space for the new and contemporary use by the owner, but at the same time not to lose the identity of the neighbourhood and materiality of the existing building. The economic aspect was an important part of the project – it had to be a low-cost project done in a relatively short-time execution.
The apartment was previously ‘cleaned’: the walls were cleaned from cast, the cast ceiling was removed and all non-loadbearing walls were removed. The apartment wooden ceilings, as well as brick walls, are painted white to be a blank base for the activities of its future occupants.
The heart of the house is around the library, which separates the dining room from the built-in closet and, at the same time, joins the kitchen, dining room and the living room; it is an all-in-one element: staircase, bookshelf, closet and bench. The staircase leads to the small gallery located on the top of the closet, and is a space with a guest bed. This gallery also helps to access the storage, which is located above the kitchen and the entrance area. It is a compact apartment with multifunctional elements to provide flexibility and adaptability to different needs, in other words, a ‘mini-space’ with a ‘maxi-functionality’.
This primary school and kindergarten in Zaragoza was conceived by Spanish studio Magén Arquitectos as a village of classrooms with stripy cladding and pyramid-shaped rooftops (+ slideshow).
The three buildings wrap around a large shared playground and are united by a low-level canopy that runs along the facade of each block.
“From a distant vision, the grouping of classroom ‘houses’ around the courtyard garden refers to the idea of a village or town, as a set of independent living units that colonise a place,” said the architects.
A modular concrete construction guided the layout of the building, creating rows of classrooms with angled ceilings.
“These prefabricated elements, topped with a skylight, function as lighting and sound absorption domes, providing a more uniform distribution of light across the surface of the classroom and significantly reducing noise inside,” said the architects.
Each classroom faces towards the playground, but windows can be screened using colourful louvres in shades of red, orange and purple.
Precast concrete staircases rise up through the three-storey building, plus the facades are selectively clad with timber panels.
The new school complex, which holds different educational levels from three to twelve years, is located in a residential area on the outskirts, southwest of Zaragoza. The absence of urban references, given the isolated location of the plot, makes to conceive the project from the inside out, based in their own internal requirements. From the educational point of view, the focus is on the pedagogical value of teaching spaces and the school is seen as a significant experience in spatial terms, related to the child’s creative world. In this sense, the project meets the sensorial relationship between children and architecture, using geometry, space, light, materiality and colour.
From the logic of the project, the proposed architecture develops the concept of unity and multiplicity, associated with the fragmentation of the program in classrooms and diverse sets of unique elements, “additive houses”, which are related by porches and patios, streets and squares, interiors and exterior. This approach also addresses the relationship between the domestic scale accompanying the child and the community dimension of public facilities in a new residential neighborhood. The study of the circulations, natural lighting and acoustics were other key factors in the development of the project.
The project fits in with the urbanistic rules of the plot and the necessary differentiation between different educational cycles without losing its unitary condition. The centre has a total of 18 elementary classrooms, 9 children, six supportings classrooms, a multipurpose room, a library, a music room, a computer room, an arts classroom, gym, kitchen, staff rooms and administrative areas. The extensive program is divided into three smaller-scale buildings, as a result also of the need to build in phases. The layout of the main volumes (kindergarten, primary school, dining hall and gym) responds to the preferred orientation to the south of the teaching spaces, a different set of common outdoor areas to access, play and relationship, and prevent volumes cast shadows on these spaces.
A continuous porch links the three buildings, connecting their different accesses, which allow the differentiation of cycles and allow the use of some areas independently. An access for students to the kindergarten, one for elementary students, one for parents and teachers and a restricted one to the office, in the dining hall. The project is adjusted to the topography by two horizontal platforms with a height of 1.70 m. between them, coinciding with the different levels of access from the street. Given the relationship between interior and exterior spaces, all the spaces takes place mainly on the ground floor, except the elementary classrooms, a longitudinal prism whose three stacked floors remain the clearly horizontal configuration of the set.
At the level between three and six years, the school contributes to the playful atmosphere that the child needs at this crucial stage for learning and skills development. The planning of the kindergarten, on the south side of the plot, is based in some ideas about setting up an environment specifically designed for the child, as the first level of socialisation, advanced by Maria Montessori in the early twentieth century, in their first “Case dei Bambini” (Children’s House). This idea of the classroom as a home that protects and shelters, refers to the anthropological origins of the room -the cabin- and is manifested in truncated-pyramidal pitched roofs over square classrooms. Each group of children inhabit a classroom-or “house” -. All are equal in elementary geometry, while different, by their position, orientation, location of the skylight, colour and relationship to the rest.
The classrooms are oriented to the south to ensure natural lighting and are grouped around the common outdoor space for games and outdoor activities. A cantilever, which runs around the perimeter of this space, protects from the sun and rain. From a distant vision, the grouping of classrooms, “houses” around the courtyard garden refers to the idea of village or town, as a set of independent living units that colonise a place.
From the inside, these prefabricated elements, topped with a skylight, function as lighting and sound absorption domes, providing a more uniform distribution of light across the surface of the classroom and significantly reducing noise inside. The increased height also improves thermal conditions in summer, while the underfloor heating system ensures comfort in winter. The child classroom setting, a key element in a building of this type, provides a direct correlation between this essential use and an identifiable form, such as spatial unit, structural and constructive. The building is based on a space module of 7.20 x 7.20 x 3.60 m., which matches the dimensions of the room and define its structure, functional organisation and its formal configuration. The other school spaces are configured through the subdivision and/or addition of these modules, creating airy and flexible interiors that would allow future expansion or reform actions. The modular skylight covered-up makes an identifiable profile, a fifth facade, visible from near residential buildings.
The configuration of dining hall and gym building is based on the clear distinction between the two main rooms of different surface and height although both airy and covered with skylights, and their respective service areas: toilets, kitchen, and facilities in the case of dining, locker rooms, toilets and stores, in the gym.
The attention to scale and volumetric fragmentation is also present in the linear building intended for elementary education. In this case, the project focused teaching areas in a volume of three floors, while the rest of the program (lobby, auditorium, library) are situated on the ground floor, linked to access. This arrangement allows the independent use of these spaces outside school hours. Given the organisation of classrooms, largely dictated by the economic logic of such projects, stairs are proposed as unique spaces in contrast to the regulatory route. The position and configuration of the three cores makes them transition spaces of relationship with the outside as lookouts that provide lighting and distant views from different levels indoors.
Both the haste in construction times of the phases and budget constraints conditioned building solutions and materials, advising to choose a standardised modulation system to facilitate its implementation. The use of composite panels with natural wood siding responds to reconcile the idea of industrialisation and speed of execution with a nice finish for the child. Within a rigorous modulation, the variable arrangement of the panels, horizontal or vertical, colour and finish in places, provides certain resonances of play, appropriate to the character of the project. Latticed aluminum slats protect classrooms and sieved solar radiation outside the presence in the classroom. In contrast to the chromatic treatment abroad, the interiors are characterised by neutral and uniform finishes; the surfaces in contact with the child, floors and walls, are finished to a certain height in continuity material in each space, and those out of reach in white with sound absorbing materials. The result is a school built entirely with industrial techniques that have enabled significantly lowering costs and deadlines.
Product news:one coloured glass bubble sits within another to form these lanterns by Norwegian designer Kristine Five Melvær (+ slideshow).
Kristine Five Melvær‘s candle holders comprise a more opaque smaller inner bubble that holds the tea light, with a transparent outer layer that disperses the candle glow. Pairs of colours create a third hue where the layers overlap.
During the lighter summer months the glassware can be used as vases for flowers.
The lantern Multi consists of two glass bubbles, one of them outside the other. The opaque inner bubble gives the light source an organic shape. The transparent outer bubble captures and exhibits the light. The two intersecting colors creates a new, more complex hue. Multi can also be used as a vase or as a light sculpture that interprets sunlight as color on the table. Multi’s function changes during the year. In the dark months the object glows. In the bright months the object displays the sunlight and flowers.
Multi is exhibited for the first time as part of the exhibition On Time at the Norwegian Centre for Design and Architecture from the 21st of June to the 25th of August 2013. The exhibition is curated by Klubben (Norwegian Designers Union). It is an exhibition about time, situations and objects. Nineteen Norwegian designers interprets 17 moments within 24 hours through 17 brand new objects.
Kristine Five Melvær developed the Multi lantern in cooperation with Magnor Glassverk, a Norwegian glass company. Multi will be developed further and launched as part of their collection.
Spanish office Taller Básico de Arquitectura designed the facade of this university complex in Zaragoza as a layer of overlapping white scales (+ slideshow).
The Health Sciences Faculty joins two existing faculty buildings at San Jorge University‘s Villanueva de Gállego, several miles outside the city centre, and accommodates the school’s pharmacy, nursing and physiotherapy degrees.
Taller Básico de Arquitectura divided the facility into three L-shaped blocks that surround an informal courtyard. A gap between two of the structures leads through to this central space, where all three entrances are located.
“This faculty offers a new landscape of white scales breathing light on the outside, and it offers a big room opened to the sky on the inside,” say the architects.
The overlapping facade panels run along the outer edges of each two-storey block. Windows are positioned underneath every “scale” and are orientated to bring in daylight from the south and east.
Classrooms and laboratories are arranged in rows behind the outer facades, while connecting corridors run along behind the court-facing elevations, which feature exposed concrete surfaces.
A conference room, a cafe and a multi-purpose area are also included, shared out between the smaller wings of each block.
Here’s a project description from Taller Básico de Arquitectura:
Health Faculty
The new Health Faculty of San Jorge University is located on a campus on the outskirts of Zaragoza city. Although it is a rural campus, the nature in it is scarce. The forest along the campus is the result of a man created operation. The surrounding buildings, the Rectory and Communications Faculty, respond to a contemporaneous architecture that lives besides that nature.
The Health Faculty joins the development of that little nature to reinforce the place where the existing buildings rest and where new buildings will do. The new faculty is not only another building; it becomes part of the new place. Architecture is thought as part of a new nature.
The building program is organised in three concave lines. These white and scaled lines unfold on the campus as part of its landscape. Inside, on two floors, classrooms and laboratories are organised for teaching and research. Each scale catches the light needed for each room. The dimensions and shape of rooms allow a big variability of use. Consequently, it is possible an academic reorganisation in an easy way. Light coming through scales can be controlled, so digital technologies can be used inside rooms. The minor creases of each line contain the most public rooms of the new faculty: cafeteria, conference room and multipurpose rooms.
The three lines enclose a big room open to the sky. All the access corridors to laboratories and classrooms face this big room. The square gives access to the three lines. Lines look at each other through the square, which discovers the inside of this mineral complex. The inside and outside relation of the faculty gets inverted. The concave outside happens to be the most interior room, and the convex inside becomes the most exterior place.
The mineral nature of this faculty in San Jorge University offers a new landscape of white scales breathing light on the outside, and it offers a big room opened to the sky on the inside.
Location: San Jorge University Campus. Highway A-23 Zaragoza-Huesca Km 299. Cp 50830 Villanueva De Gállego (Zaragoza)
Authors: Taller Básico De Arquitectura, Javier Pérez-Herreras, Fco. Javier Quintana De Uña Collaborating architects: Edurne Pérez Díaz De Arcaya, David Santamaria Ozcoidi, Leire Zaldua Amundarain, Daniel Ruiz De Gordejuela Telleche, Irene Ajubita Díaz, Developer: Universidad San Jorge Foundatoin Building company: San Jorge Ute Building engineer: Carlos Munilla Orera
Project: December 2009 Construction start date: 15/02/2010 Construction end date: 28/06/2012 Area: 8.853 sqm
Product news: this collection of office furniture by Japanese design studio Nendo can be screwed together with a coin rather than tools (+ slideshow).
The two parts of each coin joint lie flush in the flat-pack panels when not in use, but with the push of a finger the screw component springs out to be loosened using small change.
Nendo designed the flexible Ofon range for office furniture brand Kokuyo to be used by companies who are constantly rearranging their workplaces.
Different desks and shelves can be attached by fixing the joints on the top, bottom and side panels.
Small shelving units double as legs for desks or stack on top of each other and side by side to create larger storage solutions.
Pastel-coloured fabric panels fit over the cubby holes to conceal their contents, hinged along the top edges.
Black, white and wood veneer options for each variation can be ordered.
An office furniture collection designed for small workspaces.
Quick change is important for small offices. They need to be able to modify the office layout to respond to frequent moves, and to employee numbers expanding and contracting flexibly based on the organisation’s growth and the scale of each new project. We wanted our office furniture to be easily expandable and multi-functional, too.
We developed a ‘coin joint’ that can be screwed and unscrewed with a single coin, rather than requiring tools.
Assembling the furniture is almost as easy as pushing a button. The two parts of the joint lie flat when the furniture is not in use, then spring out with the touch of a finger to be screwed together with the coin.
We used this joint to assemble box-type shelves. Shelves not in use can serve as legs for cabinet-type desks.
The upholstered panels that function as cupboard doors also function as partitions between the desks; placed together, they can also partition the office space. The result: a highly functional design that allows workers to focus and relax within the same small space, and offers the physical flexibility required for easy changes to the office layout.
Since the design gives workers both ‘on’ and ‘off’ space and maximizes users’ ability to attach and detach the parts, ‘ofon’ was the perfect name for the collection.
Peeling plasterwork exposes brick walls inside this small renovated house in Melbourne by Australian studio Edwards Moore.
The Dolls House is a former worker’s cottage in Fitzroy. Edwards Moore sought to simplify the layout by dividing the building into three main rooms and slotting little courtyards in spaces between.
An extension at the rear of the house creates a large en suite bedroom, while a combined kitchen and dining room occupies the central space and a living room is positioned at the front.
Unfinished walls feature in each of the spaces and the architects built plywood bookshelves and worktops. They also added mirrored golden panels to a selection of surfaces.
“We left fragments of the building as a visual memory of the existing worker’s cottage,” architect Ben Edwards told Dezeen.
The two courtyards sit within newly created alcoves on the southern elevation, where they benefit from long hours of sunlight.
Other details include an original fireplace, pale wooden floors, a sculptural pendant lamp and a ladder leading up to an original loft.
The smallest house on the street, a renovation of a workers cottage in Fitzroy, Melbourne.
Retaining the existing street frontage and primary living areas whilst fragmenting the building addition beyond. Creating courtyards which serve to separate yet connect the functions for living.
A collection of raw and untreated finishes create a grit that compliments the owner’s desire for an uncomplicated living arrangement.
Echoes of the home’s history are reflected in discreetly choreographed gold panels located throughout the space. An abundance of natural light refracting off the all-white interiors creates a sense of the ethereal, an otherworldly environment hidden amongst the urban grain.
Spanish studio Langarita-Navarro Arquitectos has created an arts centre in Madrid by installing a flexible structure behind the concrete walls of an old industrial building (+ slideshow).
The renovated building functions as a research laboratory and exhibition space for Medialab-Prado, a city-funded organisation exploring the production and dissemination of art and digital culture.
Photograph by Luis diaz diaz
La Serrería Belga, or The Belgian Sawmill, was built in the early twentieth century. For the renovation, architects María Langarita and Víctor Navarro decided to leave the facade of the old building intact and insert a more flexible structure inside, which they nicknamed La Cosa, or The Thing.
Photograph by Luis Diaz Diaz
“[It is] a light and articulated structure with a certain pre-technological air that, infiltrated in the building, enables a large potential for transformation,” they explain.
Photograph by Miguel de Guzmán
The architects used lightweight and durable materials that can easily be taken apart and repurposed to facilitiate the changing needs of the organisation.
Photograph by Miguel de Guzmán
“Any duplication or incorporation of elements or solutions that had already been contributed by the Serrería building was avoided,” they say.
Photograph by Miguel de Guzmán
A three-storey volume was inserted into a void at the centre of the building and features translucent walls that can be illuminated with different neon colours.
A series of wooden boxes provides an entrance and smaller rooms elsewhere in the building. There are also new staircases, wooden furniture and blinds that function as projection screens.
Here’s some more information from Langarita-Navarro Arquitectos:
Medialab-Prado Madrid, Spain
Perhaps more than anything else, it is the very strangeness of the diverging intentions found in the La Serrería Belga adaptation project for the Medialab-Prado that makes it possible for them to coexist, though not without a certain measure of irony.
Photograph by Luis Diaz Diaz
The first of these caustic coexistences stems from a certain institutional schizophrenia. While the ‘Paseo del Arte’ was transformed into Madrid City Hall’s banner to attract international tourism, an architectural competition was simultaneously promoted in the same area, which would end up serving an institution that sponsored debates that were deeply critical of this model.
Photograph by Miguel de Guzmán
Medialab defines itself as “a space for the production, research and dissemination of digital culture and the confluence between art, science, technology and society”, and, in contrast to the traditional exhibition model, it promotes production as a permeable process, supplanting the figure of the spectator with that of the actor, or the figure of the mediator as a facilitator of connections.
Photograph by Luis Diaz Diaz
La Serrería vs La Cosa is another pattern of coexistence that, like a conflicting dialect, facilitated the occupation of the intermediate space existing between both rivals, beyond the conventional concept of restoration.
Photograph by Luis Diaz Diaz
La Serrería Belga (The Belgian Sawmill) was built in various stages starting in the 1920’s by the architect Manuel Álvarez Naya and it was one of the first architectural achievements in Madrid to employ reinforced concrete. For its part, La Cosa (The Thing), is the name that we have used to refer to the group of mechanisms, installations and facilities that, when assembled, made it possible to bring the building up to date with current requirements.
Photograph by Miguel de Guzmán
A light and articulated structure with a certain pre-technological air that, infiltrated in the building, enables a large potential for transformation. Ultimately, it is the coexistence of opposites that made it possible to think of the halfway point between these interlocutors not as a consummate product, but rather as an open, versatile process activated by its users.
Photograph by Luis Diaz Diaz
These forms of coexistence created the scope for some of the strategies used in this adaptation:
» The appropriation of the existing building, not only as a historic narration, but also as a container for latent energies that have joined the project as effective material. Any duplication or incorporation of elements or solutions that had already been contributed by the Serrería building was avoided.
Photograph by Miguel de Guzmán
» The non-specific treatment of the spaces. This condition resulted in a homogenous approach to material solutions and the uniform distribution of installations.
Photograph by Luis Diaz Diaz
» Thinking about the action as a stratification with different levels of change over time. Lightweight construction systems that can be disassembled were chosen, as were materials whose durability and adaptability will not condition future transformations.
Photograph by Luis Diaz Diaz
» Looking at each new intervention as an opportunity to incorporate support systems for creative actions and research. This included solutions such as the use of double blinds as projection screens, taking advantage of voids in the existing structure to create a retro-projected floor, the use of the dividing wall as a digital facade and the design of La Cosa as a mechanism for digital experimentation.
Photograph by Luis Diaz Diaz
Project: Adaptation of the Serrería Belga for the Centro Medialab-Prado location Location: Madrid Architects: María Langarita and Víctor Navarro Collaborators: Elena Castillo, Marta Colón, Javier González Galán, Roberto González, Juan Palencia, Guillermo Trapiello, Gonzalo Gutiérrez, Paula García-Masedo
Photograph by Luis Diaz Diaz
Surveyor: Santiago Hernán Martín Structures: Mecanismo Installations: Úrculo Ingenieros Landscaping: Lorena García Rodríguez Project date: January 2008 Client: Área de las Artes. Madrid City Hall Budget: 1600 euros/m2
Criss-crossing concrete columns surround this colourful multi-storey car park by Austrian studio Kleboth Lindinger Dollnig for the classical music venues of Erl, Austria (+ slideshow).
The steeply sloping site allowed the architects to design the building as an extension of the hillside, with a grass roof that visitors can walk over.
“We wanted to create a magic structure but not a typical house,” architect Gerhard Dollnig told Dezeen. “Visitors to the Festspiele Erl should have the feeling that the garage is something like the start ramp of the event.”
Drivers access each floor using entrances at different points along the hill, so there was no need to add an additional ramp inside the structure. This allowed room to fit more parking spaces in.
Gaps between the cross-bracing columns permit views inside the structure, plus a skin of steel mesh will encourage plants to grow around the facade.
“The steel net should be overgrown with special plants over the years to become a ‘sleeping beauty castle’ that changes its skin over the seasons,” said Dollnig.
To avoid adding lines on the floors, the architects used blocks of white and orange to show the boundaries of parking spaces.
“The colour scheme should not just be seen by the cars inside the building but also by those passing on the street,” added Dollnig. “Together with the lighting, the building glimmers in the night.”
Here are a few words from Kleboth Lindinger Dollnig:
Parking Garage Tyrolean Festival Erl
The new festival parking garage is the final component in the repositioning of the Tyrolean Festival Erl. Not far from the famous Passionsspielhaus and the spectacular new Winter Festival Hall, the new parking garage with 550 parking spaces is built. The garage develops a unique character. Seen from the south it is very carefully embedded in the landscape, from the north, however, it is clearly visible.
Here, the garage becomes a stage for the festival guests: When exiting the garage, visitors enter a gallery overlooking the Inn valley. Only gradually the festival houses come into view. A clean cut 150m long wall creates a clear separation between outer space and car parking area.
Optimal orientation is guaranteed by an innovative, cheerful colour scheme.
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