Hasta La Ideas

News: Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron have revealed designs for the first eight buildings of their 35-hectare masterplan for La Confluence, an extension of the city centre in Lyon, France (+ slideshow).

Herzog & de Meuron are overseeing phase two of the La Confluence regeneration plan, an initiative started by the Greater Lyon authority in 1998 to revitalise a stretch of land at the junction of the Rhône and Saône rivers that before now accommodated little besides industrial warehouses, a wholesale market and a prison.

Lot A3 will be the first completed block of the mixed-use masterplan and comprises a total of eight new buildings, including a 17-storey tower by Herzog & de Meuron and smaller buildings by architects including Christian Kerez and Tatiana Bilbao.

Located within the area dubbed the Market Quarter, the buildings are due to be completed by 2017 and will include a mixture of residences, offices, shops and other public amenities.

“[It] is a pilot project that aims to invent a way of living that is characteristic of the new quartier du marché,” said the architects. “With its remarkable location, the ambition of Ilot A3 is to link different parts of the existing and future city.”

French landscape architect Michel Desvigne is working alongside Herzog & de Meuron on the project.

Scroll down for an overview of the masterplan from Herzog & de Meuron:

Lyon: Nature and the city

The Confluence of the rivers Rhône and Saône are Lyon’s very “raison d’être”. As early as the first century BC the Romans built fortifications at the precise point where the Saône crosses the chain of hills to the west of the city before flowing into the Rhône. Lyon then spread to the east as it developed. Initially on the peninsula bracketed by the two rivers and, once this area was completely occupied, beyond the Rhône and out on to the eastern plain.

Not only did the development of the city follow the logic of the natural environment, but its building types were a reaction to the local topography. The constructions on the hillsides are distinctly different from those at the waterside, and those bordering on the Rhône are different again from those on the Saône. Lyon’s identity is thus founded in this direct relationship between architecture and nature. It was not until the 20th century, when the city was beginning to spread to the plains – with no natural constraints – that generic urban architecture, interchangeable with that of any other city, began to appear.

Urban development of the southern tip of the peninsula therefore offers a major opportunity to write a significant chapter in Lyon’s history, in which urban development is inseparable from the natural environment.

The Confluence: From Marshland to city centre

Apart from a few port infrastructures, the Confluence remained undisturbed for many years, because the river courses were unpredictable and the land unworkable. It was only after the banks were consolidated that the peninsula became stable ground and land with potential for the city, a space for utopias.

It all comes down to the same question, should the island tip be a space for nature or should it be built up? Should it embellish the city, like the naturalist park projects of the 19th century? Should it be glorified by the addition of a monument, as Tony Garnier suggested in his Cineplex proposal in 1924? Should it be gradually covered over by the spreading city, devoured like the north of the peninsula?

None of these radical visions ever came to pass. Instead, the district had the time to develop almost unnoticed. The marché de gros, the gendarmerie, the SNCF, a circus, a prison and prostitution, all based activities here – activities generally relegated to the edges of cities. In recent years, two town planning competitions have been organised and a new bit of the city, La Confluence Phase 1, is now on the point of being built. This includes a hub combining leisure facilities and retail outlets interspersed with generously proportioned green spaces leading to a wide embankment running along the Saône.

The theme of the present project is based on the offering of a new vision on the La Confluence Phase 2 site at the location of the former marché de gros. The fundamental question must therefore be raised once more, can the development of the southern tip of the peninsula, the last reservation within the city, transform Lyon’s image?

Lyon’s image: A city between two rivers

Lyon is characterised essentially by a dense urban fabric along its riverbanks joined by numerous bridges. Both riverfront and types of construction are highly diverse. Along the Saône, the addition of buildings of varying heights creates an expressive frontage underscored by the curving path of the river. A monumental ladder dominates the banks of the Rhône. Colossal solitary edifices like the Hôtel-Dieu or a more recent municipal swimming pool reflect the river’s width. Historical engravings illustrate the importance of water in the life of the city and show how segments of river bracketed by the bridges are like great public squares.

The peninsula itself is characterised by great homogeneity. A single major artery runs through it along which the main monuments and squares lie: Lyon’s town hall and opera, the place Bellecour, the complex infrastructure of Lyon Perrache station, plus a large number of little squares and churches. This axis is the city’s backbone.

The green hills to the west, the Balmes, occupied by scattered buildings, overlook the city and its two rivers. These idyllic hillsides also form part of Lyon’s general image. They provide a picturesque backdrop, a silhouette crowned by the basilica. Most of the bird’s-eye views created during the city’s history were drawn from this vantage point.

The 40 million drivers who pass through the natural space of the Confluence every year on the motorway bridge are confronted with a radically different image. When asked about their memory of Lyon, they answer: a long tunnel. Lyon is perceived as a place of transit. Where every European passes through it at one time or another on the way to the French Riviera.

And since the fundamental question must come back to the fore, we are convinced that the answer is “Yes, some enterprise needs to be undertaken here to change the perception of the city as a whole entity”. The handful of seconds travellers spend on the outskirts of Lyon must stick in their memories. Going beyond the development of a new city district, the aim must be to offer a vision for the Confluence that can redefine Lyon’s image. A new chapter in the natural and urban history of Lyon needs to be written.

Completing the confluence

The development project for the second phase of the Confluence includes two radically different but mutually complementary areas. On the one hand there is the quartier du Marché, a dense city district, supplementing the urban fabric of Lyon on the peninsula and, on the other, the champ, a predominantly green space which itself forms part of the history of the Confluence like an “event”, the meeting up of the Rhône and Saône rivers. The transversale, a series of bridges and boulevards, connects the Confluence with the rest of Lyon beyond the twin rivers.

The quartier du marché

This is a dense but permeable district comprised of a variety of housing, offices and shops, replacing the former marché de gros.

A network of streets and courtyards has been laid down on the basis of the clear, linear, repetitive structure of the old market. Some of the existing covered market structures have been retained, contributing their deeply industrial character to the identity of the new city district while at the same time providing space at moderate prices available in the short term for very specific developments.

The new buildings present a variety of scales and character – low-rise housing closely linked to the ground level and the remaining halls of the covered market, medium-rise construction containing housing units or offices and some residential buildings, higher in certain cases, offering panoramic views while at the same time freeing open space at ground level.

The identity of the quartier du Marché stems from two quite different free spaces: the relatively narrow streets occasionally widening out, and courtyard gardens forming a continuous, tranquil, semi-public space for pedestrians and environmentally friendly transport modes.

The place Centrale, an almost conventional square with its tall trees, is a grand extension to the place Nautique and provides a venue for public events in front of the Hôtel de Région and the new public service building in the east.

The champ

The southern tip of the Confluence is the green counterpart to the densely built-up quartier du Marché. It offers a type of natural environment that is a genuine novelty in Lyon, and we have named it the champ. Activities in the cultural domain, innovative services, higher education and research are suggested as possible occupants for the champ.

We propose that some of the existing warehouses should be retained, since these would facilitate the implementation of developments of this kind, plus the option of defining a series of plots for new buildings in the vicinity.

The division of the overall area is underscored by tongues of vegetation reminiscent of the marshland conditions previously prevailing in the Confluence. Densely planted trees and a selection of plant species provide ground coverage and create the feeling of a public park on what is largely private land. An expansive network of paths for “environmentally friendly” travel runs alongside the planted areas bordering the individual plots.

The first high-rise buildings for mixed use in Lyon will also be located in the champ – twin, finely proportioned high-rise blocks define the termination of the city’s main artery. From a more distant perspective, they underscore the “natural event” of the Confluence, that is the convergence of two great rivers which were, originally, the city’s very “raison d’être”.

The transversale and the Rhône riverfront

A boulevard and two bridges form what we have termed the transversale, the last crossing point over the two rivers and the peninsula, so typical of Lyon. The new transversale, laid diagonally across a squared-off urban fabric, thus faces the Greater Rhône south of the Confluence.

Ultimately, it is planned to reclassify the A7 motorway and to convert it into a city boulevard connecting the Confluence directly to the city’s historic centre. A new jetty on the quai du Rhône will enhance access to the river for a whole range of leisure activities. The pont des Girondins will be the main artery connecting up Gerland and neighbouring districts on the Rhône’s left bank. In the future, the reduction of the area occupied by the railways will free up still more land for the creation of a continuous green space between the Rhône and the Saône on the Confluence.

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The two parts of this house near Oslo by Schjelderup Trondahl Architects are joined at an angle, with their gabled roofs meeting to form a distorted M-shape (+ slideshow).

Oslo firm Schjelderup Trondahl Architects designed the family home for a site overlooking the city of Holmestrand and the adjacent fjords.

The house’s two wings are angled at 22 degrees to one another, creating a concave facade facing the access road and opening up on the other side to provide different views of the landscape.

“The challenge in sites like this is usually to refine the views rather than exposing everything everywhere, switching between distant and close views, glimpses and different sources of light and reflections,” said the architects.

“Because of its complex form, cantilevered roofs, shifting facades and intersecting spaces, the house offers a spacial experience, a number of different views and randomly occurring reflections” they added.

The topography of the plot influenced the layout of the plan, which rises over a rocky outcrop and is nestled among existing trees.

The exterior of the ground floor is clad in brick and juxtaposed against the angular wooden box above, which cantilevers outwards to create sheltered porches and balconies.

Heartwood fir boards that cover the walls of the upper storey, as well as the roofs, are burnt and brushed in a process that protects them and will cause them to fade to a pale, silvery grey.

Spaces inside the home correspond to the complex angles of the exterior, with gabled ceilings in several of the first floor rooms, and a kink in the wall of the staircase clearly showing where the two wings of the house are joined.

The same brick used for the exterior of the ground floor covers some of the internal walls and forms a breakfast bar in the kitchen.

Walls and ceilings are covered in oiled poplar plywood, with white ash floor boards helping to maintain a bright and airy feeling inside the house.

Windows with chunky oak frames look out on the surrounding forest and across the fjord, while internal glass partitions provide views between some of the rooms.

Photography is by Jonas Adolfsen.

Here’s some more information from the architects:

House Off/Ramberg – Holmestrand, Norway

Location

The city of Holmestrand is divided by a characteristic 120m vertical cliff, separating urban functions at the lower sea side from the housing estate on the upper level. Holmestrand is under constant transformation being a part of suburban Oslo and important for commuting and regional business. The Norwegian State Railways are currently building new tracks to the city with a new elevator shaft between upper and lower levels, thereby improving the connection further.

The single family house is situated on the edge of this prominent cliff edge overlooking Holmestrand and the fjords. The site has a spectacular 180 degree view towards the sea to the east and an open cultural landscape to the west. The challenge in sites like this is usually to refine the views rather than exposing everything everywhere, switching between distant and close views, glimpses and different sources of light and reflections.

Adapting to site

The house was planned merged with the terrain with the least possible intervention, based on extensive analysis of program, strict municipal regulation, landscape characteristics, views (both distant and close) and the vegetation/location. The site was measured down to 10cm accuracy allowing untouched terrain and existing trees to be planned right up next to the building.

The volume has a distinct duality with its compact, west façade facing towards the access road and the more extroverted and fragmented façade opening up to the great eastern view. The two main wings are bent 22 degrees relative to each other to adapt to the terrain and capture different views. Because of its complex form, cantilevered roofs, shifting facades and intersecting spaces the house offers a spacial experience, a number of different views and randomly occurring reflections.

House specifics

The ground floor body is made from site-typical colored tile stone diaphragm walls (two sided) and light concrete floors. The upper part of the house is a wooden box climbing and cantilevering over the heavy base. The walls, external ceilings and roofs are covered with burnt and brushed heartwood fir to make them maintenancefree for generations – a Norwegian style of the Japanese method Shou-Sugi-Ban. The patination process will continue. With time the soft parts of the surface will stay burnt and the harder winter grain will have become silvery gray resulting in a rough but refined expression.

The interior wooden walls and ceilings are clad with white oiled poplar plywood boards and white ash floor boards are used introducing a light softness to the interior. The internal geometry represents necessary constructions for the cantilevered roofs in addition to defining spaces. Integrated furnishings are made on site from white fiber cement boards or bronze colored Glimmerdesign lacquered MDF depending on their placement and function. All windows and doors are made from massive oak.

Location: Holmestrand, Norway
Building type: Single family house
Constructor: Larsen Bygg AS/Lars Arnulf Finden
Consultant: Frederiksen AS / Håkon Bergsrud
Size: 273m2 (gross)
Architect: Schjelderup Trondahl Architects AS
Primary Architects: Stian Schjelderup, Øystein Trondahl, Katrine Skavlan

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fjord by Schjelderup Trondahl Architects appeared first on Dezeen.

Lisbon office Gonçalo Byrne Arquitectos has designed a Jewish cultural centre in the historic heart of Trancoso, Portugal, with a sharp corner that bisects two narrow cobbled streets (+ slideshow).

Gonçalo Byrne Arquitectos teamed up with Oficina Ideias em linha to develop the Center for Interpretation of Jewish Culture Isaac Cardoso on a derelict corner plot in the heart of the city’s densely packed medieval streets, which were once known as Trancoso’s Jewish quarter.

“Starting from a ruined allotment, the aim was to re-erect a building that reinforces the corner geometry, still displaying an acute angle on the intersection of two narrow streets, and establishing a symbolic gesture in the context of Jewish urban culture,” said the architects.

The building’s outer surfaces are covered in a seemingly haphazard arrangement of granite slabs, with narrow windows allowing restricted views of the interior and adding to a feeling of solidity that echoes the construction of its traditional neighbours.

An entrance on the building’s west facade leads to a lobby and a narrow corridor that encircles a central room called the Master Pit.

“The massive character of the building is also reflected on the interior design and ‘excavated’ spaces, like a sequence of voids sculpted from within a large stone monolith,” the architects explained.

The double-height room at the building’s core acts as the main religious space and is influenced by historic Jewish synagogues. It contains a raised platform with a lectern for readings and a nave with wooden shutters.

A long aperture high up on one wall allows people on the upper storey to look down into the worship space.

A geometric pattern of boxy skylights channel daylight into the central room, which is completely clad in panels of wooden strips that give the space a warm tone.

The wooden cladding features relief decoration that accentuates the height of the space and is also used on the nave to create the appearance of columns and an arch.

The pointed corner of the centre contains an exhibition room with a large, low window facing the street.

A projection room is tucked away at the rear of the building, while the upper storey is used as a women’s room and additional exhibition space. Bathrooms and technical facilities are contained in the basement.

Photography is by Fernando Guerra.

The architects sent us this project description:

Center for Interpretation of Jewish Culture Isaac Cardoso

Object

The Interpretation Center was plotted in the dense urban fabric of a medieval fortified village, in an area once referred as the Jewish quarter of Trancoso. Starting from a ruined allotment, the aim was to re-erect a building that reinforces the corner geometry, still displaying an acute angle on the intersection of two narrow streets, and establishing a symbolic gesture in the context of Jewish urban culture.

Materials

Altogether, the irregular granite slab stereotomy and tiny fenestrations define the elevation towards the two confining streets. The massive character of the building is also reflected on the interior design and “excavated” spaces, like a sequence of voids sculpted from within a large stone monolith. For the exception on this sense of mass, the building is provided with the existence of a large glazing which allows visibility over the Master Pit, a core that enhances all the Jewish culture symbolism with the presence of water.

The excavated granite mass, where the openings are also crafted with a special plastic approach, prevents overall perception of interior space from the outside, also controlling lighting, recreating and reinterpreting some of the most expressive features of Jewish Architecture in Beira Interior region.

The main room, which refers to the sacred space of the Sephardic Synagogue and the Synagogue of Tomar (also in Portugal) has the most obvious inspiration, rising in the stony mass of the building on all its height, filtering the sunlight to the inside through a ceiling where the complex geometry veils and shapes the perception of all sacred space. This area differs from the others not only for its size, but also for the lining of the vertical strained panelling in glazed wood, providing an inner atmosphere bathed in golden light. The religious space is dominated by the texture and the sense of rising by the wood cladding of the walls, giving it a temperature and a particular colour and smell.

Structure

Given the small size of the building, unique geometry and privileged location within the urban medieval tissue of Trancoso, the option pointed towards one outer shell is insulated and coated with granite slabs providing a ventilated façade solution. The structure of reinforced concrete column / slab, with walls filled with brick masonry is fully lined, on the inside, with walls and ceilings of acoustic control plasterboard.

Environment

Outside paving and coatings have the same nature, made with regional granite slabs, keeping the colours and textures of the urban environment inside the fortified village and castle guard.

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News: Russian socialite and gallerist Dasha Zukhova has sparked a racism row after a photograph of her sitting on a chair in the form of an inverted semi-naked black woman appeared alongside an interview on a Russian website.

The photograph, which originally appeared on Buro247, was later cropped by the publication to remove the chair but not before it had circulated widely, sparking furore.

FashionBombDaily editor Claire Sulmers, who broke the story, described the image as an example of “white dominance and superiority, articulated in a seemingly serene yet overtly degrading way.”

“We can’t help but be filled with anger and frustration over the onslaught of negative imagery, constant disregard and unabashed bigotry that continues to plague the fashion industry,” wrote Huffington Post’s Julee Wilson.

The timing of the interview, which was published on Martin Luther King Day, added to the furore.

Zukhova defended the image in a statement, saying: “This photograph, which has been published completely out of context, is of an art work intended specifically as a commentary on gender and racial politics. I utterly abhor racism, and would like to apologise to anyone who has been offended by this image.”

The chair – an example of forniphilia or human furniture – was created by Norwegian artist Bjarne Melgaard and is one of a series of interpretations of pieces originally created by British pop artist Allen Jones in 1969.

Jones created a series of three artworks called Hatstand, Table and Chair featuring white, female fibreglass mannequins. The first is standing with arms outstretched; the second crouching on all fours with a pane of glass on her back; and the third lying on the floor with her legs strapped to her chest and a cushion balanced on her thighs.

Last year, Melgaard presented Allen Jones Remake, an interpretation of Jones’ work featuring black mannequins, at an exhibition called Gang Bust at Venus Over Manhattan gallery in New York.

Jones’ pieces were also interpreted in Stanley Kubrick’s 1971 film A Clockwork Orange, where forniphilic tables and milk dispensers furnish the Korova Milk Bar. Jones allegedly turned down Kubrick’s offer to design the bar for free, forcing Kubrick to commission derivative designs.

Zukhova is girlfriend of Chelsea FC owner Roman Abramovic and owner of the Garage gallery in Moscow, which is being designed by Rem Koolhaas of OMA. Buro247 is owned by her friend Miroslava Duma.

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Movie: project director Paul Baker discusses Wilkinson Eyre‘s award-winning cooled conservatories at Gardens by the Bay in Singapore in this exclusive video produced by Dezeen. 

Gardens by the Bay is a large waterside park next to the Marina Reservoir in central Singapore. It features two huge glass houses designed by London architects Wilkinson Eyre, which won World Building of the Year at World Architecture Festival in 2012.

“The project was to develop two cooled conservatories to accommodate a really extraordinary collection of plants that would never be able to grow in Singapore without an artificial environment,” Baker explains.

One of the glass domes features a dry Mediterranean climate, while the other recreates the cold, moist environment of a cloud forest. Baker says that while they had to meet very strict requirements for the atmosphere inside the domes, there was very little brief for how they should look.

“The trick we explored was to get a really simple structure, a grid shell, as light as possible and stiffened by a series of ribs that stabilised the grid,” he explains. “That allowed us to have this totally clean internal view and externally it generated quite a strong form to both of the biomes.”

He continues: “One was pulled up to allow for a mountain to sit inside, the other was stretched out to allow for a flower field. The flower field being in the Mediterranean, the mountain being in the cloud forrest.”

A wooden canopy runs between the two freestanding domes. Baker explains that the design team wanted this to contrast with the steel and glass of the conservatories.

“The canopy is all about wood: it’s got a lot of colour in it; it’s got a lot of play in it,” he says. “It’s also deliberately quite dark so that the drama of entering the conservatories is amplified by the darker compressive space outside.”

Baker explains that the conservatories were designed to provide very different experiences.

“There is no set path,” he says of the flower dome. “It is your own adventure. It is all about you making your own route and understanding and exploring the building.”

In contrast, the cloud forest, which includes a 35-metre-high indoor waterfall, is “an entirely prescriptive route,” he says.

“As you enter, again you’re coming from a more compressed, darker environment and then you’re completely assaulted by the cold, the wet of the waterfall. You explore the base of the mountain and then take a lift to the top. That then allows you to do the descent in a really creative way.”

He continues: “We have a series of walkways that take you right out into the cloud forest with a whole range of different plants. At all the levels you get a different horticultural experience.”

Baker says that he takes the greatest satisfaction from seeing people enjoying the conservatories.

“This building has got a pretty strong educational remit,” he says. “It’s got nice messages [about protecting the environment], but it’s also an awful lot about fun.”

“The more travelled you are, the more complacent you get about those sorts of experiences. But being from Singapore, being very much in an urban society, I think the real drama of a strong – although artificial – environment is quite exciting.”

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Gardens by the Bay are “about having fun” appeared first on Dezeen.