Hasta La Ideas

(Photos: Raul J. Garcia)

For the past few years, we’ve been telling anyone who would listen about Denver’s imminent Clyfford Still Museum, designed by Brad Cloepfil and Allied Works Architecture. The frequent response: “Who’s Clyfford Still?” Exactly! On Friday, the museum opened its doors and commenced reacquainting the public with the life and work of the late artist (meanwhile, earlier this month at Sotheby’s, one of his canvases fetched $61.7 million, a record for the persnickety Abstract Expressionist). The majority of the museum’s approximately 2,400 paintings, drawings, prints, and sculptures—a mind-boggling 94% of Still’s total creative output—has never been on display, and the inaugural exhibition fills the nine second-floor galleries with 110 works (including the only three Still sculptures in existence). The show “aims to redefine our grasp of Still’s vision in both its scope and sustained intensity—highlighting his extraordinary use of color, draftsmanship, gesture, figuration, serial, procedures, and scale,” said adjunct curator David Anfam in a statement issued by the museum. Stay tuned for further reports on the cantilevered concrete marvel after we visit next month, and get a feel for the 28,500-square-foot museum in this virtual tour:

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Usually more heavily weighted toward the east, we have the good fortune today of having Philip Johnson news from both coasts. First, in Los Angeles, the legendary architect’s Crystal Cathedral, which he co-designed with John Burgee, has been sold to the Catholic Church. The LA Times reports that the televangelist-heavy ministries who had originally commissioned the building and had used it for the past 30 years (for things like the “Hour of Power” program) have gone bankrupt and were forced to give it up. On the other side of the country, if you’d like to see Johnson as an apparition, on Friday, December 2nd, starting at 7pm, the New York chapter of the American Institute of Architects will be hosting a reading of a new architecture-and-Johnson-related play by Bob Morris (though not the same one who has sculptures at Johnson’s New Canaan masterpiece), entitled “Glass House.” Here’s a description:

Anthony is an architect who idolizes mid-century modern design. When he and his wife, Abby, move into a glass house in the suburbs, Anthony’s obsession with order surfaces as his persona begins to shatter. The play features giants of design who comment on how style, substance and organization affect our daily lives. The great architect (and Nazi sympathizer) Philip Johnson makes a special ghostly appearance.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Workshops clad in timber batons sit atop this children’s centre outside Paris by French architects SOA.

Surrounded by houses and offices, the two-storey Gavroche centre for children provides an education centre at the heart of a local community.

Playrooms occupy the building’s white-rendered ground floor, including a games library, a water games room and a multipurpose hall that opens out to an enclosed playground.

Upstairs, the box-like timber volumes contain cooking and reading studios, as well as a staff room and another water games rooms.

Glass doors lead out from here onto three separate roof decks, which face west towards a neighbouring park.

We published another interesting community centre in France this year – see our earlier story about a spiralling centre in Lille.

Photography is by Clément Guillaume.

Here’s some more text from SOA:

Gavroche centre for children
Multi care centre for children and games library

The Gavroche centre for children is a cultural and educational facility situated in the heart of the Victor Hugo development. The latter is part of a large urban renewal scheme consisting principally of housing, offices and commercial buildings organised around the Victor Hugo Garden.

The complex triangular plot is located within a heterogeneous built fabric: the park to the West, old town houses to the North and several new 5 storey buildings to the South.

The depth of the site provides the building with three different orientations. The workshops and games rooms are therefore turned towards the garden, most of the spaces benefiting from an unobstructed view out onto greenery.

The entrance space, with its forecourt set back from the street, acts as an urban connection with the rue Arago. The building slots into this complex site, preserving, as much as possible, a certain continuity with the existing urban fabric as well as with the layout of the Victor Hugo Garden.

The children’s centre stands out as a public facility. The scheme demonstrates cultural, educational and civic intentions with a strong social integration objective. The centre is a place for educational leisure, where children and adolescents are able to develop their own individuality through collective games and workshops.

The building’s functional organisation evolves around the central hall, focal point of the centre, entirely open to the public. Firstly, the scheme rests on a plinth consisting of horizontal lines echoing the configuration of the park. This base supports a number of timber boxes, which appear to be light structures with varied panelling, set out in a fragmented way.

The interior layout of the ground floor favours open spaces with maximum transparency, adapted to natural lighting requirements, as well as acoustic conditions. The rigorous organisation of the different entities allows for a great legibility of the various uses, while facilitating the children and visitor’s orientation throughout the building. This is also achieved with the use of a colorimetric language and appropriate signage.

Location: 50 rue arago, Zac Victor Hugo, Saint-Ouen, France
Client: City of Saint-Ouen
Project management: SOA (commissioned architect), Starck (feasibility consultants and economists), GA (acousticians)
Budget: 2.49 m€ht net floor area 851m²
Environmental aspects and performance standards: HQE environmental approach, THPE certification
Contract: full contract
Schedule studies: 40 weeks, site work 70 weeks
Completed: in 2011

This extension to a north London home comprises three shed-like blocks clad in unfinished larch.

British architect Neil Dusheiko designed the single-storey structure for clients who wanted to add an extra living room and bedroom onto the rear of their house.

Oak-framed doors fold away from the rear timber wall to open both rooms out to the garden beyond.

A new staircase connects the landing of the house’s existing stairs to the garden, also creating a shortened route from the extra bedroom to the upstairs bathroom.

Narrow recesses in the ceiling around the stairs house fluorescent tube lights.

Some other memorable London extensions we’ve featured include one with a flower-covered roof and another that is half timber, half frameless glass.

Photography is by Daryl Dusheiko.

Here’s a description of the project from Dusheiko:

Timber Fin House, Walthamstow

The project began one afternoon while sitting with the client on their existing terrace discussing ideas about how to create more space for the family in the tiny terrace house. We thought it would be interesting if the existing central staircase in the double fronted house, somehow continued up and over into the garden from the mid landing, and so the idea of extending the house came about.

The clients wanted a house built entirely out of timber. The concept was to create a series of different volumes to accommodate the various functions in an informal stack of boxes placed next to each other like packing creates. The extension exists as three timber containers sitting next to and on top of one another with a singular nature borne out of using one material.

The west façade sits in its sub-urban context, visible to the street and announces its presence with a rhythm of vertical cladding, which in turn reflects the neighbourhoods use of closed board fencing and timber sheds.

The north façade, facing the garden, has an asymmetrical geometry, with its two planes cranked to catch the evening sun and to hold the space in the garden. A rhythm of projecting fins reveals a subtle layering of the façade, which comes to life as the sun projects shadows across the façade.

The material used for the floor was birch plywood and the structure is oak framed, clad in Siberian larch. The larch was is from sustainable sources and supplied by Vastern Timber.

The larch was mounted onto battens fixed to Panelvent sheathing boards, which have a high racking strength but also allow for a water vapour open construction. Panelvent itself is made from wood chips and forest thinings, utilising a unique Masonite defibration system to combine low formaldehyde emissions in use and low embodied energy in manufacture.

The oak timber frame is made up of lattice structures which were so beautiful that during the build it was tempting to leave parts of the frame exposed on the inside of the extension. However, we decided to stay true to the concept of a wrapped timber box.

The folding sliding doors and windows where constructed out of oak and are top hung. The doors are easy to open and fold away entirely to allow the garden to become part of the living space.

The floor was constructed out of a hard wearing birch plywood which was sealed with an acrylic coating which is both easy to clean and protects the surface from any moisture ingress.

Existing openings inside the structure are framed in MDF, painted white to blend in with existing brickwork, also painted white, to reflect as much light as possible into the interior. A low step made of thermowood decking links the house to the garden and provides a low bench for seating.

A new staircase constructed from birch plywood connects to the mid landing of the existing staircase, giving the up and over feel, which provided the original inspiration for the extension.

Products used:
Structure: oak framing for walls and roof
Floor: birch plywood with acrylic sealant
Staircase: birch plywood painted
Decking: Thermowood decking
Timber cladding: untreated Siberian larch mounted on double battens on panelvent boards

Danish architects BIG and Paris studio OFF have won a competition to design a research centre for Sorbonne Université Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris. 

The tilted glass facade reflects the famous Notre Dame Cathedral and surrounding Parisian skyline down into the surrounding square.

The centre will combine research and business with transparent walls between laboratories and offices, which will be visible from a public staircase leading to the rooftop terrace.

Light will filter to all floors through a central atrium containing informal meeting places.

BIG and OFF won the competition in collaboration with engineers Buro Happold, consultants Michel Forgue and environmental engineer Franck Boutte.

See all our stories about BIG here, more about Paris here and more about mirrors here.

Here are some more details from BIG:

BIG + OFF WIN THE COMPETITION TO DESIGN THE RESEARCH CENTRE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF JUSSIEU IN PARIS

BIG + Paris-based architects OFF, engineers Buro Happold, consultants Michel Forgue and environmental engineer Franck Boutte is the winning team to design the new 15.000 m2 research centre for Sorbonne’s Scientific university Université Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris.

The new multidisciplinary research centre, Paris PARC, located between Jean Nouvel’s Institut du Monde Arabe and the open green park of the Jussieu Campus will become a significant addition to the campus, strengthening the international appeal and openness of the leading French University for Science and Medicine.

The facility will bring together academic scholars and the busi­ness community, while re-connecting the university physically and visually with the city of Paris. The winning team was honored as the best design among proposals from MVRDV, Lipsky Rollet, Mario Cucinella and Peripherique.

Paris PARC is located in the visual axis of the Notre Dame Cathedral in a dense context of university buildings from different historical periods. BIG proposes a building geometry that adapts to the specific conditions of all adjoining sides, optimized for daylight, views and accessibility.

The three-dimensional envelope retracts from the neighboring facades, opens up towards the square of Institut du Monde Arabe and the park, and folds into a publicly accessible rooftop landscape, resulting in an adapted sculptural building volume situated between the emblematic architectural monuments of the university.

“As a form of urban experiment the Paris PARC is the imprint of the pressures of its urban context. Wedged into a super dense context – in terms of space, public flows and architectural history – the PARC is conceived as a chain of reactions to the various external and internal forces acting upon it. Inflated to allow daylight and air to enter into the heart of the facility, compressed to ensure daylight and views for the neighboring classrooms and dormitories, lifted and decompressed to allow the public to enter from both plaza and park and finally tilted to reflect the spectacular view of the Paris skyline and the Notre Dame to the Parisians.” Bjarke Ingels, Founder, BIG.

A central canyon provides daylight and a visual connection between laboratories and offices. In the atrium a cascade of informal meeting spaces lead to the public rooftop terrace and faculty club.

A public stair to the rooftop offers glimpses into the activities of the laboratories which are divided by transparent walls throughout the building to ensure visual connections between the working spaces.

The upper levels have panoramic views towards the Notre Dame and the skyline of Paris.

“We propose a building that creates the optimum conditions for encounters and exchange among the academics and visitors of Paris PARC.

Like a scientific incubator the new building will provide the physical environment for nurturing growth of cultures and sharing of ideas – through the internal mix of laboratories, research facilities and informal meeting spaces, and through a reunification with the public life of the city.” Andreas Klok Pedersen, Partner-in-Charge, BIG.

The Paris PARC becomes the interface between campus life and city life by reuniting the Jussieu Campus with the city of Paris.

The iconic view of the Notre Dame Cathedral is brought into the daily life of the building through the large panoramic windows while the façade towards the entrance square is slightly tilted, hence, a mirrored image of the Cathedral becomes visible at eyelevel on the square, connecting the building to its iconic location.

PARIS PARC FACTUAL INFORMATION
PROJECT: Paris PARC

TYPE: Competition

CLIENT: UPMC University

SIZE: 15.000 m2

LOCATION: Paris, France

STATUS: 1. Prize

BIG
Partners-in-Charge: Bjarke Ingels, Andreas Klok Pedersen
Project Leader: Daniel Sundlin

Architect: Gabrielle Nadeau
Team: Camille Crepin, Edouard Boisse, Tiina Liisa Juuti, Alexandre Carpentier

OFF
Partners-in-Charge: Manal Rachdi, Tanguy Vermet, Ute Rinnebach

Project Leader: Daniel Colin, Antonio Rovira
Team: Akram Rachdi, Olfa Kamoon