Hasta La Ideas

Renzo Piano has become the latest high-profile architect to add a building to the Vitra Campus in Weil am Rhein, Germany, by completing a tiny wooden cabin with room for just a single inhabitant.

The one-room hut is named Diogene, after a Greek philosopher who rejected luxury and chose to live in a barrel, and is intended as a self-sufficient hideaway that can be used as a workplace or as a weekend home.

Renzo Piano first presented his idea for the minimal home in a 2009 edition of architectural magaine Abitare, proposing a living space of around two by two metres, with enough space for a bed, a chair and a small table. Following the publication, Piano was commissioned by Rolf Fehlbaum, chairman of furniture brand Vitra, to develop the project.

“This little house is the final result of a long, long journey partially driven by desires and dreams, but also by technicality and a scientific approach,” says Piano.

The completed cabin is presented as an experimental concept rather than a finished product. Its exterior is clad with aluminium panels to protect it from the elements and it uses solar panels, rainwater collection and a biological toilet to satisfy the usual requirements for electricity and water.

A pull-out sofa is fitted on one side of the space, while a folding table is slotted beneath the window and a shower, toilet and kitchen are also included. All together, the cabin is no wider than three metres and could easily fit inside a lorry.

“Diogene is not an emergency accommodation, but a voluntary place of retreat,” adds Vitra.

The building opens this week at the Vitra Campus, where architects such as Herzog & de Meuron, Zaha Hadid and SANAA have all previously completed buildings. Hadid also recently returned to the campus to add an angular installation outside her Fire Station.

Other recent projects by Italian architect Renzo Piano include a flat-pack auditorium in Italy and London skyscraper The Shard.

See more architecture by Renzo Piano »
See more architecture at the Vitra Campus »

Here’s a more detailed description from Vitra:

Diogene, a cabin designed by Renzo Piano and RPBW for Vitra

In June 2013, a further element will be introduced on the Vitra Campus. On a hill between the VitraHaus and the Dome, the Italian architect Renzo Piano and the Renzo Piano Building Workshop (RPBW) has developed Diogene, which to date is Vitra’s smallest building ― but largest product.

The development of Diogene

In an interview with Renzo Piano, the architect explains that the ideal of minimalist housing is something which he has been considering since his student days. It is a kind of obsession, but a good one. A living space of two by two by two metres – just enough space for a bed, a chair and a small table – is a dream many architecture students share. Back then, he was unable to realise the idea. At the end of the 1960s, however, when Piano was teaching at the Architectural Association in London, he joined forces with his students to build mini houses on Bedford Square. The architect has also designed boats, cars and, a few years ago, cells for the nuns of the Poor Clare nunnery of Ronchamp. There too, it was about minimising the spatial environment of these people, not for reasons of economic efficiency, but for self-moderation. The minimalist house is an idea that continues to fascinate Piano, particularly in an era in which his office is dealing with big projects, for instance what was Europe’s tallest high-rise at the time of its completion in 2012 – The Shard in London.

About ten years ago, of his own volition and without a specific client, Renzo Piano began developing a minimalist house. Various prototypes were developed in Genoa – from plywood, concrete and, finally, from wood. The final version of the project which Piano dubbed Diogene was published in autumn 2009 in the monograph booklet Being Renzo Piano by the Italian magazine Abitare: a wooden saddle-roofed house with a 2.4 x 2.4-metre surface area, a ridge height of 2.3 metres and a weight of 1.2 tonnes. Piano presented his vision to the public in the magazine, but noted in a comment that he needed a client in order to continue developing Diogene.

The Italian architect found his partner in Rolf Fehlbaum, chairman of the Vitra AG. Fehlbaum had read the issue of Abitare and immediately felt attracted to Renzo Piano’s ideas, as Vitra does not regard itself as a manufacturer of individual design objects, but defines furniture as an essential part of the human environment. If we look back at the history of furniture design, it was Diogene, a cabin designed by Renzo Piano and RPBW for Vitra always about requalifying people’s living space; the living landscapes of the 1960s and 1970s are just one case in point.

At the end of June 2010, there was a meeting between Renzo Piano and Rolf Fehlbaum, who at that time were still members of the Pritzker Prize jury. During this meeting, they agreed to continue the Diogene project together. After three years of development work, a new Diogene prototype is being presented at the Vitra Campus on the lawn opposite the VitraHaus on the occasion of the Art Basel 2013. It is not a finished project, but an experimental arrangement enabling Vitra to test the potential of the minimalist house. Vitra is thus breaking new ground: While usually only products which are ready for series production are presented to the public, it was decided to let the public take part in the testing of Diogene due to the complexity of Renzo Piano’s project. The further development of the project and whether it will go into series production will be decided on at a later date.

The idea of the minimalist house

The simple, archaic house situated in nature, which – based on the antique concepts of theoretical architect Vitruv – marks the beginning of technology and architecture, aroused renewed interest at the end of the 18th century, as is particularly evident from the copperplate engraving of the original Vitruv hut, which was included in the 1755 2nd edition of Marc-Antoine Laugier’s Essai sur l’Architecture. Since then, the idea of the minimalist house has repeatedly fascinated architects. Sometimes the focus was placed on the formal aspects, and sometimes on social considerations, such as the “subsistence level apartment”, which was a topic of discussion in the 1920s and 1930s. In the 1960s, which were defined by structuralism, the minimalist cells were combined into clusters. In the recent past, the discussion revolved around mobile living structures for use in natural catastrophes or in war-torn areas of the world.

Diogene is not an emergency accommodation, but a voluntary place of retreat. It is supposed to function in various climate conditions, independent of the existing infrastructure, i.e. as a self-sufficient system. The required water is collected by the house itself, cleaned and reused. The house supplies its own power and the necessary platform is minimised.

We live in an age in which the demand for sustainability forces us to minimise our ecological footprint. This postulate is paired with the desire to concentrate and reduce the direct living environment to the truly essential things. Diogene might remind one of Henry D. Thoreau, who wrote the following in his book Walden/Life in the Woods in 1854: “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach.” It is no coincidence that Piano also regards his project as “quite romantic” and emphasises the aspect of “spiritual silence” which it conveys: “Diogene provides you with what you really need and no more.”

As architectural references, Renzo Piano lists the Cabanon, which Le Corbusier constructed at the beginning of the 1950s in Cap-Martin in the Côte d’Azur, the prefabricated house structures of Charlotte Perriand, and the Nakagin Capsule Tower, which Kisho Kurokawa erected in Tokyo in 1972. The late 1960s and early 1970s in London were very formative years for Piano: In the interview, he mentions one particularly important influence during this era as being Cedric Price with his Fun Palace and the hippie movement.

Diogene and its equipment

Diogene, named after the antique philosopher Diogenes who is said to have lived in a barrel because he considered worldly luxuries to be superfluous, is a minimalist living unit which functions completely autonomously as a self-contained system and is thus independent of its environment. With a surface area of 2.5 x 3 metres when fully assembled and furnished, it can be loaded onto a lorry and transported anywhere. Whereas Diogene’s exterior corresponds to the image of a simple house, it is in truth a highly complex technical structure, equipped with various installations and technical systems that are necessary to guarantee its self-sufficiency and independence from the local infrastructure: Photovoltaic cells and solar modules, a rainwater tank, a biological toilet, natural ventilation, triple glazing. To optimise the house’s energy, Renzo Piano is working with Matthias Schuler from the renowned company Transsolar, while Maurizio Milan is responsible for static equilibrium. Diogene is equipped with everything you need for living. The front part serves as a living room: On one side, there is a pull-out sofa; on the other, a folding table under the window. Behind a partition, there are a shower and toilet as well as a kitchen, which has also been reduced to the necessary.

The house and furnishings form a single unit. It is constructed from wood with a warm character, which also defines the interior. For the purpose of weather protection, the exterior is coated with aluminium paneling.

The overall shape and saddle roof resemble the archetype of a house, but its rounded-off corners and the all-over façade materials also give the impression of a contemporary product. It is no simple hut, but instead a technically perfect and aesthetically attractive refuge. The great challenge lies in planning the complex product so that it is suitable for industrial series production. “This little house is the final result of a long, long journey partially driven by desires and dreams, but also by technicality and a scientific approach,” explains Renzo Piano.

Diogene has many possible uses: It can serve as a little weekend house, as a “studiolo”, as a small office. It can be placed freely in nature, but also right next to one’s workplace, or even as a simplified version in the middle of an open space office. However, it is also conceivable to erect groups of houses, e.g. as an informal hotel or guest house. Diogene is so small that it functions as the ideal retreat, but purposely does not cater for all needs to the same extent. Communication, for instance, will take place elsewhere – and thus Diogene also invites you to redefine the relationship between the individual and society.

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at Vitra Campus appeared first on Dezeen.

Japanese studio SANAA has completed a circular production hall with rippled acrylic walls for furniture brand Vitra, making it the latest addition to the firm’s campus of buildings by famous architects in Weil am Rhein, Germany (+ slideshow).

Architects Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa of SANAA were asked to replace an old factory hall with a larger facility to accommodate production and distribution for Vitra’s shop-fitting company Vitrashop.

The new single-storey building features a circular plan that can be subdivided to allow separate operations to take place simultaneously. The main section of the production hall is used for product assembly, while the northern side provides a stockroom for materials and the southern end is used for the storage of finished products.

The undulating plastic cladding encases the entire facade, concealing the building’s prefabricated concrete and steel structure. Each acrylic component comprises a transparent exterior and an opaque white inner layer, and was vacuum-moulded to create the wavy shape.

Loading bays are distributed around the perimeter and can be converted into offices if necessary. There are also a few windows positioned along the tops of the walls, plus skylights help to bring more natural light in through the roof.

The SANAA-designed Factory Building joins structures by a host of internationally renowned architects on the site, including Herzog & de Meuron’s VitraHaus showroom, the Vitra Design Museum by Frank Gehry, a conference hall by Tadao Ando and a fire station by Zaha Hadid.

First established in the 1980s, the Vitra Campus has become well-known as an unofficial museum of contemporary architecture. The next building proposed for the site is a children’s art workshop by Chilean architect Ale­jan­dro Ar­ave­na.

See more buildings at the Vitra Campus, or see a selection of furniture produced by Vitra.

Photography is by Julien Lanoo, apart from where otherwise stated.

Here’s a more detailed project description from Vitra:

Development of the Vitra Campus

After 1993 – the year in which Tadao Ando’s Conference Pavilion and the Fire Station by Zaha Hadid were completed, followed by the dedication of Álvaro Siza’s factory hall one year later – no new buildings were constructed on the Vitra Campus in Weil am Rhein for more than a decade. A new expansion phase began in 2006 with commissions assigned to Herzog & de Meuron and the Japanese architectural team SANAA. The Basel-based architects were entrusted with the VitraHaus project on a site outside of the actual production compound in the northern corner of the Campus. The VitraHaus, which opened in early 2010, serves as a presentation venue for the Vitra Home Collection and marks the entrance to the company premises together with Frank Gehry’s Vitra Design Museum. SANAA began to plan a production facility for Vitrashop – a shop fitting company within the Vitra Group – on the south side of the Campus. The completion of these two new buildings also achieved a partial restructuring of the Campus grounds by separating operational logistics from public visitor traffic. The central axis leading to the Hadid Fire Station is now mainly used by visitors, while deliveries and dispatches are primarily routed through the access road that lies on the eastern side of the premises.

A production facility without a role model

Almost all of the major projects that SANAA has completed up until now have been buildings for cultural institutions or universities. In Weil am Rhein – with the first industrial facility to be designed by SANAA – the idea was to apply a similar approach to the construction of a production hall.

The plan for the new structure was initiated by the desire of Vitra’s management to replace an old factory building near the southern corner of the premises that had survived the great fire in 1981 with only minor damage. The extant building was not only showing its age, but was also too small for current demands. The new facility was to provide 20,000 square metres of floor area – compared to 12,000 square metres in the old structure.

The architectural brief presented to SANAA by the company management specified a division of the total space into four separate areas that could operate independently from one another, but would also provide optimal conditions for operations that required use of the entire space. After making a detailed analysis of the brief, SANAA suggested that the preliminary decisions be revised, replacing the four orthogonal volumes that were correlated to the existing grid of the Campus with a single circular building. This proposal, which at first seemed unusual, was based on the realization that logistics and production methods no longer adhere to strictly hierarchical principles, but require flexibility. This was especially true in the case of the future occupants of the new facility, the shop fitting company Vitrashop. Although Vitrashop primarily utilizes standard components in the interiors that it creates for retail and commercial customers, the elements are customized to suit the specifications and desires of the individual clients. This contradicts a strictly linear flow of goods and fabrication methods. Consequently, the interior of the hall is divided into different zones: the northern section provides high rack storage for delivered materials and semi-finished goods; the central zone is reserved for assembly operations; and the southern section contains the storage area for finished products prior to shipping. The circular footprint of the building permits the delivery and loading of goods in completely different locations, so that the flow of traffic inside the hall is reduced, optimized and simplified. The assembly zone in the middle of the building can also be variably configured to meet new requirements based on current orders.

A circular footprint is unusual for a factory building, but all of the conditions in Weil favoured this solution, so that SANAA was able to convince the client to accept their proposal. Another ideal feature of the circular structure is the proportional relationship of the façade’s surface area to the volume of the interior space.

With a diameter of more than 160 metres, the round production hall – which in fact does not circumscribe an exact circle – covers a greater surface area than any other building on the Vitra Campus. Measuring 11.4 metres in height, the hall contains a basement storey in the southeastern half with a spacious underground parking garage and several auxiliary rooms. The building was erected in two stages in order to minimize interference with daily operations. The first semi-circular structure was erected next to the old factory, which was subsequently demolished to make room for the corresponding second half that completed the plan. The façade and the diameter wall that separates the two halves of the building are made of prefabricated concrete elements. Positioned as upright rectangles, the double- walled concrete elements were filled on site, thereby connecting them with one another. Due to the enormous dimensions of the perimeter, it was unnecessary for the individual elements to be curved. Together with the central wall, the round shape creates a perfect, rigid structure, which contains an orthogonal steel framework in its interior. The roof construction is supported by 9.5 metre-high steel columns positioned in a grid based on units of 17.5 x 22.8 metres. Since the exterior concrete walls brace the structure, it was possible to minimize the dimensions of the interior columns.

One of the major challenges for the architects was to find a solution for the installation of complex building technology – electronics, ventilation, roof drainage, fire sprinklers etc., which are distributed in different configurations throughout the interior space – that was compatible with the filigree components of the hall’s support structure. This problem was solved with astonishing precision, resulting in an interior that is clearly different from typical factory spaces. The architects did not treat this interior as a multifunctional, flexible empty space within the shell of a façade, but as a central aspect of the architectural task. Every detail, right down to the screws in the high rack storage shelving, reveals the design intentions of the architects, who left nothing to chance. Excellent lighting conditions contribute to the pleasant work atmosphere in the hall, provided by the close rhythm of parallel rooflights in the ceiling. They are augmented by individual windows in the upper part of the façade. Another essential element of the interior’s atmospheric quality is the radically reductive use of colour. Various shades of grey and white define the interior space, while the signal colours so common to typical industrial interiors are completely absent.

The shelving system, which is positioned in parallel rows that follow the structural grid of the interior – along with the central wall and sparingly distributed windows – provides a means of orientation in a building with enormous dimensions. The high rack storage system can be removed or reconfigured as needed. The loading bays are arranged on both sides of the building in a space along the façade that also contains offices. The radial arrangement of the partition walls is almost imperceptible due to the huge diameter of the hall. Depending on future needs, loading bays can be transformed into offices or vice versa. A workshop for emission- intensive or high-decibel activities is the only other enclosed room on the eastern side of the hall; the open upper deck serves as a lounge area.

Curtain façade

The design of the façade, whose elements are suspended in front of the exterior insulation on the concrete walls and encompass the entire building volume, presented a great challenge. The façade elements are made of acrylic glass with an undulating surface, measuring 1.8 metres in width by 11 metres in height – equal to the height of the building. The outer layer of acrylic is completely transparent, while the inner layer is an opaque white colour. The individual panels were first cast in flat sheets, then heated to 60 degrees Celsius and vacuum moulded to create the wave structure. Since no manufacturer could be found who was capable of moulding such large pieces, an oven had to be specially constructed for the purpose.

One of the architects’ main concerns was to avoid obvious visual repetition. For this reason, three different elements with varying wave patterns of narrower and wider folds were developed. Since the hanging panels – whose mounting hardware is concealed – can be rotated 180 degrees and mounted on either end, this resulted in a series of six distinct types. The aim was to arrange them in a way that avoided a recognizably repetitive pattern and that also conformed perfectly to the openings in the façade (windows, loading bays, doors).

Presenting a homogenous appearance from a distance, with an almost surreal aura due to its luminous white surface, the façade gains vivacity and depth the closer one approaches. Since it is only possible to see just a part of the entire volume, the building appears to be much smaller than it actually is. It gives an impression of lightness and transparency, even though it allows no views into the interior. On the contrary: the building remains an enigma, revealing almost nothing about its function. The almost immaterial character of the factory hall is emphasized by the fact that, from the outside, only the skin of the façade – suggestive of a textile covering – is visible, while the exterior walls, roof and structural framework remain concealed.

Viewed from the outside, one does not recognize – or even suspect – that the geometry of the floor plan deviates from a perfect circle; yet perhaps this unconformity is unconsciously perceptible. Just as SANAA avoids the use of classical symmetry in their architecture, they frequently employ slightly distorted geometric figures. This may recall the aesthetic concept of wabi sabi, the Japanese notion that imperfection and aesthetic consummation are not necessarily contradictory. The subtle shape of the ‘Alessi Tea Set’ (2004) by SANAA points in this direction. In reference to their project for Vitra, Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa also spoke about transferring some of the liveliness inherent in freehand drawing, which always stands at the beginning of their design process, to the reality of computer calculations. Or in their own words: ‘My impression is that the circle, the perfect circle, is a bit too rigid.’

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by SANAA appeared first on Dezeen.