Hasta La Ideas

A people-driven architect rebuilding communities one project at a time

New York-based architect Andrew Burdick may not produce work with the flashy curves of a Gehry or distinguish himself with an iconic style like Meier’s glassy minimalism. Instead, Burdick lets the nature of each specific challenge dictate the project’s eventual form, harnessing the unique set of issues into beautifully-functional outcomes.

One elegant example, a sports complex, increases the amount of usable space by simply elevating one end of the park. A subterranean soccer field and swimming pool tucked under this ingenious wedge doubles the amount of usable space. “For me, the substance doesn’t come from the style,” Burdick explains. “The image of what the building should be comes from the process of solving a specific problem in a contextually driven method of design.”

In spite of his user-driven approach, once you become familiar with Burdic’s work, it’s impossible to mistake it for anything else. From the clean lines of his economical and ecological athletic lights to open spaces in a residential apartment, Burdick draws on what he refers to as “a simple gesture” to revolutionize how we move through the rooms in which we live. In a Brooklyn Heights home, a family of four wanted to eliminate closed-off compartments and doors. “Essentially, [we] created a beltway and opened all the doors so their four-year-old could run and ride around,” he said, explaining, “They live in the entire apartment as a result of one gesture, instead of just living in the living room or kitchen.”

Another common theme throughout the designer’s work is architecture as an act
of civic engagement. “At every level, [architecture’s] impacts are incredible. Space
can make a difference in your day. And we’re doing something that’s going to last for
awhile,” he emphasizes. Burdick, who worked as a director with the New York chapter of
Architecture for Humanity, in 2004 founded The Studio Collaborative, a project which
pairs architects and designers with community members.

When local organizations had difficulty raising the profile of a mission to restore the High Bridge, one of the oldest walkways in NYC connecting Manhattan and the Bronx, Burdick worked with community leaders to create images of what the community had in mind. Those images kickstarted the fundraising process, eventually leading to a $50 million cash infusion from Mayor Bloomberg’s PlaNYC project. “It’s amazing what a very simple gesture can do to move a project forward,” Burdick notes.

Another clever approach to a civic problem, Burdick set his sights on the U.S. housing problem. Where most vast, featureless tracts of suburbia tend to be ignored by architects, Burdick sees potential. In a study with The Studio Collaborative
called “Opportunities of Foreclosure”—what he refers to as “skinny houses and other cool ways to live”—he illustrates how a huge suburban lot might be divided up into smaller residences for couples or singles. This division would help struggling homeowners cut their losses, while those who don’t need or want 2,000 square-feet could get their foot in the door.

“I started thinking about this in my thesis at the University of Virginia years ago, but
when the foreclosure crisis hit, I took a very different stance on it,” said Burdick. “Half
of America is sitting on a potential asset. What if we stopped thinking of suburban real
estate as the scale of a lot, but on an urban scale of a square foot? What if we changed
one component of zoning laws to allow these owners to sell a piece of their lot?”

Tapping into the enormous prospects that architecture has for changing daily life in a positive way, Burdick’s stands to have a real impact in shaping the future of our overburdened cities and beyond. “Architecture is about both catalyzing and transcending immediate needs,” Burdick states. “A building’s success is ultimately measured by the pleasure it brings to those who live, work, eat, and play in it.”

The Audi Icons series, inspired by the all-new Audi A7, showcases 16 leading figures united by their dedication to innovation and design.

Japanese architects Atelier Tekuto have created a house in Hayama, Japan, by wrapping two 100 year-old wooden warehouses in a new faceted skin.

Glazed doors at one corner slide back to join the open-plan interior to a terrace, exposing one wooden column of the original structure.

New wooden furring strips and composite boards are laid over the old beams and supports of the two warehouses, which can still be seen inside.

Flooring removed from the lower storey of The Yachiyo house was re-used upstairs, while the ground floor is now covered in reclaimed bricks.

The house also contains a temporary shop.

More Japanese Houses on Dezeen »

The following is from the architects:

YACHIYO

Although Atelier Tekuto’s «Relocation» project has been underway since 2007, Yachiyo is the first «Re-location» building completed in Japan. The building is situated 100 meters from the ocean in Hayama, Kanagawa prefecture. This is used as a secondary residence and temporary shop.

PURPOSE

To make 100 year old materials last for another 100 years. To fuse old and new material, juxtaposing the regional and cultural differences in a parallel arrangement.

We treat sunlight as a material. A material that can be captured only for an instant. It has the ability to fuse the juxtaposing elements or emphasize their differences. It exists both within and outside the human concept of time.

Sunlight turns the interior space inside out. It highlights the dramatic structure as it permeates the building, accentuating the marriage between traditional and contemporary values. At night, custom handmade light fixtures let Yachiyo float into sight like a constellation fireflies.

Yachiyo – Japanese word meaning «a long time».

RELOCATION

Two abandoned warehouses built 100 and 120 years ago were chosen. In order to reinforce the structure, the two warehouses were wrapped with furring strips that also function as thin columns. Enhanced high-pressure wood wool cement boards which act as insulation were attached. This provided structural reinforcement, humidity control and thermal insulation all in one system.

The wrapping material was reduced to a thickness of 95mm in order to provide more interior space. Also, the preexisting material was treated in order to prevent infestation and provide resistance against the salty environment. The first floor is composed of eighty year old bricks made in Shanghai. The material of the previous first floor was then refinished and applied to the 2nd floor. In effect, disused materials were transported from distant locations and given new life.

Re-configuring Values

“Re-configuring Values” is a concept that will permeate the 21st Century. The following concepts are essential to this discussion:

Ecology: the conservation of the global environment – the most significant theme for this century – ought to be examined from a new standpoint, through new developments and re-configurations.

Cross-Culture: adopting specific local and regional characteristics in order to achieve not just simple integration between different architectural styles and cultures, but to create culture on an entirely new dimension.

Reconsideration of Time: a re-examination of the past in order to predict the future. An increased awareness of time as a phenomenon that can preserve local and regional differences in material and character.

It is essential to achieve a greater understanding of when to preserve, when to eliminate or when to maintain.

Based on these three approaches, we are working to “re-configure values” by recycling, reducing and relocating Japan’s traditional Minka houses in order to give them new life.

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Slit House by EASTERN Design Office	Tohma House by Hiroshi Horio Architects	House by Yoshio Oono Architect & Associates

This farmhouse in Hokkaido by Japanese studio Hiroshi Horio Architects has a pointed observation deck where residents dry herbs.

In a rural location surrounded by arable fields, Tohma House has a large kitchen, living area and basement where various crops are prepared and stored during harvest seasons.

Rooms are divided across split-levels, connected to one another by both ladders and stairs.

The cast-concrete and timber structure of the house is left exposed on the interior, with a wood-burning stove located in one corner.

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The following information is from the architects:

Tohma House

There exists the family life running harmoniously along the time of nature.

Dreamt of creating a new home for the family where their lives would nestle deep in nature, step by step we weave precious matters into our design.

Living in harmony with nature

The site is located on the rural outskirts of Tohma, Hokkaido.

The father works as a mountain guide, the mother paints with watercolors, and the son attends primary school and they live, work and farm together.

The family had been renting the farm house left behind by the farmer’s retirement.

However they welcomed the opportunity of having the grandmother, who had been living by herself, to start designing their new house.

After living in the area for some time, the family was longing to have a firewood stove could run through the night.

They normally have to get up in the middle of the night to add more firewood in order to beat the early morning cold.

This experience has taught them that fire wood is one of the most economical heat resources, regardless of the effort it takes to keep the stove running.

The lowest temperature during the midwinter in Tohma could go as low as minus 25 degrees Celsius, which reiterates the fundamental functions of houses to provide a well-insulated enclosure for families.

Family life revolves around the changing seasons.

At the end of winter, seedlings are planted.

The land is cultivated with the melting of the snow and various crops are nurtured until they are ready to be harvested in the fall.

The harvested crops are used for family meals, and they are also processed to be made into snacks or preserved food, to be sold as part of their family business.

We were very moved by the way the family coexisted with nature’s severity, when we first heard the story about their everyday life throughout the year, probably because we felt their life is running along the course of nature, spontaneously.

Space Composition

Through the large window in the lower level hall furnished with the firewood stove, you can enjoy the scenic view over rice fields and the Daisetsuzan Volcanic Group.

The interior spaces are filled with the natural light filtering through the FRP grating observation deck of the loft where the family dry herbs.

In plan, the central open living space, the kitchen and the basement storage are laid out in a functional manner to manage plentiful harvests.

The tower like composition of such spaces forms multiple layers one on top of the other as if the natural light from the top was its core.

The interior space with these continuous layers has the atmosphere of a barn attic.

Each individual can have their personal space, and still feel intimate with each other.

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House by Kazunori Fujimoto Architect & Associates	Tsumuji+Hako by UID Architects	House by Yutaka Yoshida Architect & Associates

Landscape architects James Corner Field Operations, architects Diller Scofidio + Renfro and planting designer Piet Oudolf have completed Section 2 of the High Line, a 1.5 mile-long elevated park on an abandoned railway in New York.

The project spans 22 blocks through the west side of Manhattan and is split into three equal stages, with Section 2 bringing the completed length up to one mile.

Unlike Section one, which was completed in 2009, this second phase includes a stretch of lawn.

A new platform elevated 2.5 metres above the main High Line overlooks a canopy of trees and plants below.

Photographs are by Iwan Baan, apart from where otherwise stated.

See our earlier story on Section 1 of the High Line »

More projects by Diller Scofidio + Renfro on Dezeen »

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The following information is from Diller Scofidio + Renfro:

The High Line (Phase II)
Public Park: New York, NY 2011

The High Line, in collaboration with Field Operations, is a new 1.5-mile long public park built on an abandoned elevated railroad stretching from the Meatpacking District to the Hudson Rail Yards in Manhattan.

Above photograph is by Barry Munger.

Inspired by the melancholic, unruly beauty of this postindustrial ruin, where nature has reclaimed a once vital piece of urban infrastructure, the new park interprets its inheritance.

It translates the biodiversity that took root after it fell into ruin in a string of site-specific urban microclimates along the stretch of railway that include sunny, shady, wet, dry, windy, and sheltered spaces.

Through a strategy of agri-tecture—part agriculture, part architecture—the High Line surface is digitized into discrete units of paving and planting which are assembled along the 1.5 miles into a variety of gradients from 100% paving to 100% soft, richly vegetated biotopes.

The paving system consists of individual pre-cast concrete planks with open joints to encourage emergent growth like wild grass through cracks in the sidewalk. The long paving units have tapered ends that comb into planting beds creating a textured, “pathless” landscape where the public can meander in unscripted ways.

The park accommodates the wild, the cultivated, the intimate, and the social. Access points are durational experiences designed to prolong the transition from the frenetic pace of city streets to the slow otherworldly landscape above.

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The High Line by Diller Scofidio + Renfro	Image and Sound Museum by Diller Scofidio + Renfro	The Broad by Diller Scofidio + Renfro

The auditorium of this Madrid cultural centre by Spanish studio Fündc is contained in a bulky concrete cantilever.

Located at the heart of a public square, the cast concrete New Cultural Centre (NCC) also contains flexible exhibition rooms and a cafe.

Integrated benches and planters fill the surrounding square, with three floors of underground parking beneath.

Above: photograph by Anna Pericas

More projects in Spain on Dezeen »

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Photography is by César García Guerra, apart from where stated.

Here are a few more details from the architects:

Fündc designs a ‘New Historical Centre’ in Madrid

Car and pedestrian. Vegetation and hard square. Modern and classic. This new urban concept bets for all of the above.

Fündc, Spanish architecture and urban planning office, just finalized the largest urban intervention of the last decades made on Pozuelo de Alarcón, Madrid: the New Cultural Center (NCC) and the new pedestrian area on and around Padre Vallet Square. It establishes itself as the origin of the new network of pedestrian spaces.

Above: photograph by P. Gil

The project has a couple of unprecedented design solutions such as ‘mega-tree-pots’ and a transformable hall.

The pots allow for the growth of medium-large trees above an underground parking, making possible green areas where usually just hard squares are found.

The hall allows for an use modification on the cultural building program, as it can switch between exhibition promenade and auditorium mode through the manipulation of movable floor decks.

The built size of the intervention, both under and above ground comes near to 20.000 m2 (65.000 sq. ft.). It consists on the urbanisation through a new uninterrupted stone pavement, fountains and ‘mega-tree-pots’ around a new cultural center building. The latter is composed of two different architectural typologies, old and new, which work on a symbiotic manner providing traditional and transformable spaces.

Under these areas and building a double-deck parking absorbs the vehicle impact working together with underground roads and bus stops, freeing the upper square spaces to pedestrians and bikes.

“This intervention changes the traditional way of understanding new pedestrian areas on built environment as it does not choose between pedestrians or cars but accepts both, re-positioning them.” As explained by architect Cesar Garcia co-author and partner together with Paz Martin of Fündc, office originally established in the Netherlands and relocated to Spain. “No need for road restrictions when you can reposition them underground. No need for lack of parking places as you can multiply them on levels. No need for flat hard public squares when you can grow large trees, necessary for urban comfort on this climate.”

The authors also mention that they would not choose between architectures of the past or the future but accept both. they do not position themselves on an extreme but respect the collective memory and presence of existing buildings in combination with the spatial advantages that more futuristic shapes can provide. A new hybrid typology is thus generated on which each part conforms a symbiotic whole on present time. “We believe necessary to unify opinions, or at least start a discussion, with the NCC, in between the figures of final user and architect”

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Barceló Temporary Market by Nieto Sobejano Arquitectos	Centro Niemeyer by Oscar Niemeyer	El Claustro Cultural Center by Eneseis Arquitectura