Hasta La Ideas

Danish architects BIG have won a competition to renovate and extend an art centre in Utah with proposals that will be built from reclaimed railway sleepers.

The new five-storey-high wing of the Kimball Art Centre will provide exhibition galleries both at basement level and upstairs, connected to each another and to a restaurant between by a winding staircase.

A rooftop terrace will overlook the existing building, which the architects intend to convert into an educational centre.

Visitors will enter both buildings though a double-height reception lobby where openings will provide peeping views to the galleries below.

The project is due to start on site next year, for completion in 2015.

BIG won the competition ahead of four other shortlisted firms – you can see the proposals of Californian architects Brooks + Scarpa here.

Here’s a statement from the Kimball Art Centre:

Kimball Art Center Announces BIG-Bjarke Ingels Group as the Winner of Architectural Design Competition for Its Renovation and Expansion

BIG’s Design for Kimball Art Center Projected for Completion by Mid-2015

Park City, UT—The Kimball Art Center announces that BIG-Bjarke Ingels Group (New York, NY, and Copenhagen, Denmark) has been selected by a jury as the winning firm in its architectural design competition for its renovation and expansion project. The project comprises an interior renovation of the existing Kimball Art Center (KAC), located on the corner of Park Avenue and Main Street in Park City, Utah, and the construction of a new building directly adjacent to the original. This phased project is expected to begin in mid-2013, and be completed in mid-2015.

BIG-Bjarke Ingels Group proposed a new Kimball Art Center made of massive stacked timber elements reclaimed from train track piles from the Great Salt Lake—just one of many green solutions in the innovative plan—enclosing a spiral staircase, exhibition spaces, a restaurant, and topped by a terrace.

For the historic Kimball Art Center building, BIG proposed that it be renovated into an educational hub with a rooftop sculpture garden. BIG will partner with local firm, Architectural Nexus (Salt Lake City, UT), which has a proven record of designing and building in mountain areas similar to that of Park City. Other local consultants include Dunn Associates, Van Boerum & Frank Associates, Envision Engineering, and Big D Construction.

In addition to BIG, the five finalists in the competition included Brooks + Scarpa Architects (Los Angeles, CA), Sparano + Mooney Architecture (Salt Lake City, UT), Will Bruder + Partners Ltd. (Phoenix, AZ), and Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects (New York, NY).

Robin Marrouche, Executive Director, Kimball Art Center, explains, “BIG built the strongest case for the continuity of Park City’s history—a bold, poetic new landmark to resurrect the spirit of the Coalition Mine Building that burned down in the 1980s. The design concept supports our mission to present engaging exhibitions, education, and events, and enhances the natural flow between the three in a uniquely free-form way. As the Kimball Art Center expands in scope and reputation, embracing both the local community and a growing group of international visitors and art collectors, BIG’s design sets a course for the future.”

BIG Founder & Partner Bjarke Ingels, comments, “The raw charm of Park City and the Kimball Art Center is rooted in a culture of appropriating the structures of past industry to accommodate spaces for cultural life and leisure. With our design for the new Kimball Art Center, we seek to continue this tradition by using the construction technique of the old mines and the railroad trestles that have marinated for decades in the Great Salt Lake to create a raw spacious framework for the art and artists of Park City—a traditional material and technique deployed to produce a highly contemporary expression.”

The determination of the winning architect by the jury involved a rigorous evaluation of the designs, including how the architect would partner with the Kimball Art Center in moving the project to reality. Explains jury member Maurice Cox, “It was hard for the jury to choose between the five excellent finalists. BIG won the competition by proposing an iconic building that honors the spirit of Park City’s past and looks ahead into the 21st century. BIG’s design boldly reinterprets the Kimball Art Center’s place in the city skyline with this amazing new structure for the arts.”

Existing Kimball Art Center

In addition to the jury vote, visitors to the Kimball Art Center—including those who recently attended the two-week Sundance Film Festival in January—were invited to look at models and designs of the five proposed buildings, and weigh in on their favorites via an online poll at http://www.kimballartcenter.org/transformation-project, where links to the Facebook and Twitter discussion pages are accessible. Comments could also be sent to feedback@kimballartcenter.org, or tweeted with hashtag #kimballtransformationproject. These comments were shared with the jury.

Two new galleries

Don Stastny, Competition Advisor, comments, “The Kimball Art Center and Park City have begun a great journey together, one that has engaged both the local community and its many visitors through a thoughtful process that was transparent and interactive. The New Kimball will invite exploration, reward discovery, and deliver inspiration.”

Street gallery

Details of BIG’s Design:

The building footprint and lower gallery face Main Street and the city grid, and as the building rises, it turns to greet visitors entering the city via Heber Ave. It will be an iconic yet contextual building at the city’s doorstep. Referencing Park City’s mining heritage, the façade of the building is constructed of massive stacked timber elements.

Sky gallery

The twisting façade encloses a continuous spiral staircase that leads visitors from the ground floor to the roof terrace. In between two galleries is a restaurant, which spills out onto a sculpture garden on the rooftop of the existing, historic Kimball Art Center building. That building is converted into an educational hub. At its heart is a flexible, double-height auditorium. The roof of the existing building is equipped with solar thermal panels concealed by indigenous plants. An outdoor sculpture garden loops around the perimeter of the roof.

Unified twist

The new Kimball Art Center takes advantage of Park City’s climate, with an objective to meet a LEED platinum rating by harnessing sources of natural heat, using natural daylight, maximizing ventilation, and recycling rainwater. Generous skylights and large ribbon windows flood the building with diffused natural light, greatly reducing energy costs for lighting.

Program

Operable skylights trigger natural stack ventilation. A ground-coupled heat exchanger is drilled deep into the ground in non-built areas. The heat pumps either extract heat from the circulating water (heating mode) in the winter, or reject heat (cooling mode) in the summer.

Japanese architect Masayoshi Takahashi of High Land Design has completed a house in Tokyo with a squared spiral staircase at its centre.

Constructed from concrete beside a main road, the three-storey House in Aoto has a black-painted facade that screens a terrace on the rooftop.

Rectangular windows pierce the exterior in a seemingly random arrangement to let light filter into workrooms on the ground floor, living rooms on the first floor and three bedrooms on the top floor.

Softwood boards cover the floors of each room as well as the risers and treads of the faceted staircase, while walls and ceilings are painted white throughout.

Other Japanese houses with focal staircases include one behind slanted walls and peepholes, plus another that spirals around a wall.

Photography is by Toshiyuki Yano.

Here’s some more text from Masayoshi Takahashi:

This house is located in a heavily trafficked road on the north side.

We thought that is important to be connected the scene of life continuously while moved up and down about this project.

We placed each space like spiral around the stairs. So that it is possible to move around each space without feeling the difficulty moving up and down.

The first floor is garage and work spaces, the second floor is a living and dining space on sunny south side, the third floor is a private room and master bedroom.

And we have placed closed spaces (such as toilet ,storage, sanitary) on the north side. So we were able to get a quiet and sunny living environment.

Location: Katsushika Tokyo
Architects: Masayoshi Takahashi/High Land Design
Structural engineers: A.S.Associates

Structure: Reinforced concrete
Frame: 3stories+Roof Teracce

Site area: 78.81m2
Built area: 50.21m2

Total floor area: 144.50m2
Completion date:2011.12

French architects Agence Search have won a competition to design a Paris shopping mall with proposals involving giant elliptical lattices.

The five-storey-high, egg-shaped structures will define two atriums located at opposite ends of the shopping centre.

Escalators and footbridges will pierce holes through the suspended structures.

The architects drew inspiration for the project from the conceptual cenotaph that architect Étienne-Louis Boullée designed for scientist Isaac Newton over 200 years ago.

Another shopping centre we’ve featured in recent months features a rippled stone facade – see it here.

Here’s some more text from Agence Search:

Agence Search Win the restricted competition for the interior design of the future New Beaugrenelle Shopping Mall

In today’s increasingly competitive environment, the architecture of shopping malls has come to play a fundamental role in their commercial success. Architecture can distinguish the shopping environment to create a sense of specificity, of differentiation. Space can become a brand. The New Beaugrenelle Shopping Mall program set the stakes to develop an existing space by transforming two atriums into a site with “Wow Effect.”

Atrium entrance sequence

The entrance sequence is spectacular. The visitor is taken in by the volume, by a spatial configuration that is at once singular and majestic. The lattice work structure that inhabits the central volume is visible from the building’s façade. It attracts the shopper, and once inside draws his or her eyes up to the light and shops above, and down to the event space below. The visitor’s first perception goes beyond the scale of the building, to encompass its referential universe, its status, and its identity.

Lattice

The lattice work structure materializes an envelope that defines the central space, and transforms it into an inhabited volume. It enables the interior design to refrain from modifying the existing architecture, while all the while entering into a dialogue with it on a large scale. The wooden lattice invokes warmth, sobriety and elegance.

E-commerce

The interiors project for the New Beaugrenelle Shopping Mall takes into account the transformations affecting our contemporary shopping experience. Facing the development of e-commerce, the shopping mall must affirm its singularity and specificity to maintain and improve its dynamic status. According to the “fun shopping” movement, we know that stores today must seduce buyers by transforming their commercial space into zones of conviviality and entertainment. The addition of footbridges that pierce the lattice structure and span the atrium creates novel spaces where multimedia and other recreational programs can develop.

« Wow Effect »

The two atriums of the Beaugrennelle shopping mall create a “Wow Effect.” In keeping with the client’s desires, they constitute an extraordinary spatial experience. Surprised and seduced by these singular architectural objects, the visitor is transported, becoming one with the volume.

The triangular roof above the cafe-bar at Warwick University’s renovated student union features a tessellated underside of polished copper.

London studio MJP Architects refurbished the building at the campus in Coventry, England, in 2009.

The building provides multipurpose rooms, mezzanine and balcony bars, a nightclub and performance venues, accessed through a central, double-height atrium.

Timber louvers control the levels of daylight that enter this atrium through a glazed roof above.

The cafe and bar are contained within an extension, where the shiny copper roof provides both a ceiling inside the building and a shelter over the decked balconies outside.

If you’re a fan of shiny copper surfaces, check out our earlier stories about a boutique with a polished wall and a copper-clad beauty parlour.

Photography is by Peter Durant.

Here’s some more explanation from MJP Architects:

Student Union, University of Warwick, Coventry UK

Creative Re-use:

The Student Union is the main provider and organiser of non-academic activity on the University campus and its success has a significant impact on the student experience at the University of Warwick. The scale and reputation of its Student Union is a major factor in prospective students’ choice of any Higher Education Institution. Matthew Dodds, Warwick Boar (the student newspaper) says: “The new building hits all the right notes for me. The Union as it stands now is exactly the right blend of old and new, evoking both a feeling of nostalgia and refreshing promise”

The building was originally designed as a multi-purpose administrative building whose brief was changed to a Student Union whilst under construction in the early 1970’s. By the time MJP were commissioned, it had become even less suitable for today’s needs, having neither the flexibility nor the environmental performance to accommodate the range of activities expected of a modern Student Union building. A bespoke brief for the remodelling of the building was needed, and this was created through careful consultation between the University, the end user and the architect.

Claire Horton, General Manager at the Student Union says: “The building is truly phenomenal and exactly as envisioned… and will deliver student and commercial services like never before”

Sculpting the Existing Fabric:

MJP’s new design was generated from the most striking features of the existing building: the arrangement of interiors based on a sixty degree planning grid and the distinctive triangular concrete coffered soffits. The new cafe extension is the most obvious example of this approach. Its interiors are based on the triangular plan and the floating roof’s polished copper underside provides a striking backdrop to the Student Union Plaza outside, and a clear entrance to the building.

Materiality:

The highly rational structure of the old building and the rough and heavy expression of the concrete slabs and walls provided inspiration for the redesign. Exposing or hiding the original fabric and using materials that contrasted or blended with it were the basic strategies in the interior design. Large surfaces of shiny copper, light and translucent polycarbonate, soft and warm timber and rough and cold ‘asphalt terrazzo’ were set-off against the in-situ concrete and concrete blocks, to highlight the peculiar qualities of the original structure and hide the inevitable areas of lower quality.

A Platform for Talent:

The strategy for the new Student Union was to create a series of spaces with different scales and characters: performance spaces, balcony bars, multi-purpose venues, an atrium pub, a club and dancefloors.

The existing building was quite literally opened-up to create two and three storey high spaces, to reveal internal vistas, let light in and give views out. Joe Wrigley, Project Architect at MJP Architects says: “What I really like is that the building is just about perfect for all sizes and genres of music. ‘The Copper Rooms’ is the main venue, and it has quickly become a great platform for new and unsigned talent, as well as acclaimed bands… the Wild Beasts and Wombats are playing gigs this month.”

Chris Carter, who runs the venue says: “Copper Rooms 1 is an outstanding gig venue for live music. It’s the first time the Union has looked like an academy-style venue that I can remember – the stage looks incredible… the PA also sounds absolutely beautiful. It’s the best sound I’ve ever heard in a venue of this type”

Client: University of Warwick

Architect: MJP Architects

Quantity Surveyor: Northcroft

M&E Consultants: Couch Perry Wilkes

Structural Engineer: Arup

Acoustic Engineer: Bickerdike Allen Partners

Fire Consultant: Arup Fire

Main Contractor: Moss Construction

A fabric cloak stretched across the glass facade of this golf ball-shaped office and showroom shades it from direct sunlight.

Sandwiched between two highways, the building provides headquarters for lighting brand iGuzzini and was designed by Spanish architect Josep Miàs of MiAS Architects.

A dark underground floor surrounded by concrete houses the lighting showroom, along with a storage warehouse, auditorium, conference room and car park.

Offices fill the five floors of the steel-framed dome, which has a hollow centre surrounded by glass.

After dark, lighting installed behind the mesh exterior glows in different colours.

We’ve also featured a glazed market hall by MiAS Architects on Dezeen – see it here.

Photography is by Adrià Goula.

Here’s some more text from MiAS Architects:

iGuzzini Illuminazione España SA Headquarters – Il cielo iGuzzini

The new iGuzzini Illuminazione España S.A. headquarters is located between AP-7 and C-16 highways (Barcelona metropolitan roads).

The building has two parts, each with a different function: one is low, extensive and underground, with no natural light and built in concrete; the other is spherical and with a glass shell, floating over the landscape.

Taking profit of the slopes of the ground, the platform contains the logistic warehouse, the parking, the showroom, the auditorium, the light theatre, a conference room and climate and system mechanics. All these spaces need darkness, so as to show the characteristics of artificial light.

The surface of the platform is, in fact, a completely equipped outdoor raised floor, covered with different panels which offer the needed flexibility to set up various displays for the outdoor showroom.

Over the platform, with an uncertain dynamic equilibrium, stands the more representative area of the complex, a slightly distorted sphere. In this volume, general and management offices are found as well as investigation areas.

Actually, the offices are built around a light patio, where the structure is developed: a single pillar formed by five metallic masts. The end of these masts is joined with cables to other ten vertical elements which fix the exterior limit of the slabs. Therefore, the whole building remains hanged only from the central pillar. The offices’ façade, covering the external volume and the inner façade of the patio, is a great glass shell. Thus, from the offices, a complete 360º panoramic can be seen.

The glass façade is covered over the sunniest surfaces with a solar protector made of a three-dimensional metallic structure, where a special solar fabric is tightened. This textile façade is capable of reflecting the radiation while allowing a great visual permeability. Thanks to its flexible geometry, the solar protection can be very well adapted to the shape and volume of the building.

During the day, from the outside, the building appears like an opaque volume, which reflects the sky on the northern part, and is profiled as a pointed spherical volume on the southern. From the inside, however, the perception is completely different, since the space has no interruption between interior and exterior.

During the night, all these qualities are inverted. Thanks to light, the sphere turns to be almost like a lighthouse, showing its interior in a complete transparency from every corner of the roads which surround the plot.

Architect: Josep Miàs
Collaborators: MiAS ARCHITECTS [Silvia Brandi (project leader), Carles Bou ( technical advisor) Pablo Varesi, Adriana Porta, Fausto Raposo, Hélène Barbot, Andrés Dejanon, Mario Blanco, Horacio Arias, Anna Mañosa, Janine Woitoshek, Stefania Carboni, Margherita Corbetta, Mannick Eigenheer, Isabelle Glenz, Diogo Henriques, Silvia Lai, Pier Francesco Lisci, Roberta Luna, Francisca Marzotto, Ines Reis, Diego Romero, Emanuela Scano, María Tapias]

Click above for larger image

Consultors: Structures (BOMA, Agustí Obiol and Josep Ramón Solé), systems (PGI Grup, Josep Juliol), construction systems (Dep. Construccions Arquitectòniques UPC, Josep Maria González and Jaume Avellaneda)

Click above for larger image

Type: office building, showroom and logistic warehouse
Completion: 2011
Location: Sant Cugat del Vallès – Barcelona, Spain
Client: Private – iGuzzini Illuminazione España SA
Size: 9.000 m2
Budget: