Hasta La Ideas

A collective of Colombian architects have designed a memorial museum for Medellín, Colombia, to commemorate victims of conflict.

Architects on the project include Juan David Botero, Maria Fernanda Vasco, Carla Cristina Gil, Jorge Adrian Gaviria, Catalina Jaramillo, Daniel Santiago Herrera, Elías José Gomez, Víctor Hugo Rodriguez, Alejandro Naranjo and Oscar Santana.

Separated into three floors, the building’s main exhibition spaces will be located at ground level, with archives on the first floor and an auditorium, cafe, workshop spaces and offices in the basement.

The building will be supported internally by portico and concrete slabs, with an outer metallic skeleton supporting the facades and roof.

The roof lights will allow indirect natural light to enter the top-level archive space.

The museum will form part of a larger park commissioned to commemorate the country’s 200th year of independence.

Centred on the Santa Elena Stream around which the city developed, new leisure facilities will include an open theatre and an interactive cascade of water.

The scheme has been commissioned by EDU, the Urban Development Corporation of Medellin.

Construction of the museum is due to start next year.

The following text is from EDU:

In commemoration of Colombia’s 200 years of independence, rises a proposal to develop an urban project with aims to generate a social and environmental impact in a city’s sector which through the years has been deteriorating by housing invasion and the constant misuse of natural resources.

The project makes part of a master plan called Central-PUI, and it is located in Boston’s neighbourhood, in the 10th district of Medellín, Colombia; between the 39th and 36th Carrera, and the 54th and 51st street.

The design criteria for this project responds to the need to restore a historical and natural element such as the Santa Elena Stream, an important water source for the collective memory of the inhabitants of the city.

Along this stream the first settlements where originated, which later led to the development of the city as known today.

This element intends to be the main and guiding axis of the project by the recovery of its historical meaning.

The Project intervention develops 21,620 m2 of new public space, through which it seeks a physical and environmental recovery of the Santa Elena Stream.

As said before, this project will trigger the environmental and spatial recovery of the stream, with the streams borders as the structure and primary target for public space generation.

This will be done by a considerable amount of native flora planting, landscape design, strengthening of the sector as a new area of recreation with leisure facilities, including an open theatre with natural grass and an interactive digital display of water.

Within this proposal, a cultural facility of 3,619 m2 called “Museo Casa de la Memoria” is included, which seeks to assign a special place for the remembrance of victims of the violent conflict in Colombia and all around the world.

Promoted in its enclosures are spaces and exhibits to recreate historical events, with the aim of transforming violent acts into social learning.

The museum is another good excuse to find a place in the city where people meet to review our history and be able to assimilate the transition from the darkness of the death that swept our streets for decades, into the light of hope of living in a city less violent and with more public spaces for social interaction.

Starting from this premise, the building is like a tunnel, looking torevive a descending journey, pretending with this, to recreate sensations of the so called transition from darkness to light, supported by itinerant or permanent educational scripts, which will tell stories of our conflict that has been present for over 40 years.

The building’s program is divided into three levels. The intermediate level is the museum’s principal access, where we can find the ticket office and two large exposition rooms. The exposition rooms can be divided depending the museum’s need of space for each exhibit.

A higher level houses the Documentation Centre, an adequate space for files and documentation to be consulted by the community.

The building will use two different structural methods. Porticos and concrete slabs will hold the inside program, meanwhile a metallic skeleton structure will surround and sustain the building facades and inside roofing.

And finally at a lower level it is establish de following: an educational workshops, an auditorium for 270 people, administrative offices, a children’s gallery, the 3rd Gallery or exit, the Reflection Chamber , the restaurant, a small shop and technical areas.

This last structure is like a big folded double skin, which will act as an air chamber for thermal control, adequate for natural ventilation and for hot air evacuation.

It will also have deep bays available to prevent direct incidence of sunrays and skylights designed with the same geometry as of the building for an excellent and efficient indirect natural lighting.

The park is in its first phase of construction with work on the museum beginning in early January 2011.

See also:

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7 July Memorial by Carmody Groarke	National Museum of African American History and Culture by Freelon Adjaye Bond/SmithGroup	Lille Métropole Musée extension by Manuelle Gautrand

If you thought it all ended with cupcakes replacing hot dogs and vendors being shoved away from the Met, know that the three-way battle between New York City, food vendors and museums still rages on. This time, in a surprising turn, it was a museum losing the struggle, with the news that the city’s Landmark Preservation Commission denied the Guggenheim‘s request (PDF) to build “a free standing kiosk” in front of their building, one that was to serve food to visitors and passersby, but perhaps more specifically, to drive away the vendors who camp out there, and make a few bucks for themselves in the process. The Commission turned down the Guggenheim’s request at a public hearing, saying that hoisting up a new structure in front of their Frank Lloyd Wright-designed building would damage the view of the iconic museum. As reported by WNYC, those who came out to protest the museum’s proposal also wanted to add, essentially, “Get over yourselves.”

Nadezhda Williams, director of preservation and research for the Historic Districts Council, spoke at the hearing against the application. “There’s already a restaurant and a cafe in the museum, and as has been pointed out, food carts are no stranger to the stretch of museum mile,” Williams said. “This isn’t going to change the situation of the sidewalk. It will just add more clutter, but in a very permanent way.”

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

While firms like Foster & Partners might be struggling to have an upbeat week across the pond, for those of us in the States, if you’d want to cautiously open a cautious bottle of inexpensive champagne to kinda sorta celebrate, this would be the time for it. For the first time since January of 2008, the American Institute of Architects‘ Architecture Billings Index has finally crossed the 50 point threshold, meaning there is currently, or at least at the time of the survey, an increase in billings across the industry. We’ve watched over the start of last year as it inched ever-so-slowly toward that magic number, only to be handed a big dip back in June that left everyone rattled. But for the last three months, things had risen again, ultimately winding up where they are now, at a lovely 50.4. What’s more, the report’s new projects inquiry also rose substantially, up to 62.3 from 54.6. Positive news for an industry plagued by more than two full years of what’s seemed like an endless series of downers, from big project cutbacks to massive layoffs and unemployment. Though while we said champagne might finally be in order, make sure you heed the always-sane Mr. Baker’s cool and collected advice:

“This is certainly encouraging news, but we will need to see consistent improvement over the next few months in order to feel comfortable about the state of the design and construction industry,” said AIA Chief Economist Kermit Baker, PhD, Hon. AIA. “While there has been increasing demand for design services, it is happening at a slow rate and there continue to be other obstacles that are preventing a more accelerated recovery. Still, the strong upturn in design activity in the commercial and industrial sector certainly suggests that this upturn can possibly be sustained.”

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Apparently, not all is the quiet joy of building automobile replicas in Norman Foster‘s life. The architect, who appeared earlier this year in the Times‘ annual “Rich List,” could soon see his firm, Foster & Partners, dealt a financial blow. The private equity group, 3i, is looking into exit strategies to unload its 40 percent stake in Foster’s practice. After buying into the firm three years ago, Foster has suffered through the financial troubles that have plagued the industry, with several high-profile projects suddenly dropped, which resulted in a number of layoffs of hundreds of employees since last year. The British business daily, City A.M./, reports that Foster & Partners “had amassed a debt burden of £340m by the year ending April 2009″ but had managed to turn things around a bit by April of this year, though still operating a loss of several million dollars, which explains 3i’s desire to step away after having invested during the boom and sitting through the past three years of financial trouble across the whole of architecture. As the deal is not yet locked down and we weren’t business majors, we can’t speak to how this will affect the firm. We’ll have to wait and see.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Zaha Hadid Architects have completed this school that bridges a running track in Brixton, south London.

Designed for ARK Education, The Evelyn Grace Academy is organised into four smaller schools that share outdoor spaces and facilities.

The building zig-zags across the site with sports fields tucked between it and the roads on both sides.

Classrooms are organised along wide corridors with occasional double-height halls.

Photographs are by Luke Hayes.

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The following text is from Zaha Hadid Architects:

The Evelyn Grace Academy in Brixton, London Borough of Lambeth, broadens not only the educational diversity of this active and historical part of London but also augments the built environment in a predominantly residential area.

This Academy presents itself as an open, transparent and welcoming addition to the community’s local urban regeneration process.

The strategic location of the site within two main residential arteries naturally lends the built form to be coherent in formation.

The building assumes a strong urban character and identity which is legible to both the local and neighbouring zones.

It offers a learning environment that is spatially reassuring thereby being able to engage the students actively.

The design of the building proffers that, which contemporary architecture can, to create a healthy atmosphere as a milieu for progressive teaching routines.

In keeping with the educational ideology of ‘schools-within-schools’ the design is to creates natural segregation patterns nested within highly functional spaces which give each of the four smaller schools a distinct identity, both internally and externally.

These spaces present generous environs with maximum levels of natural light, ventilation and understated but durable textures.

The collective spaces – shared by all the schools – are planned to encourage social communication within a distinct hierarchy of natural aggregation nodes which weave together the extensive accommodation schedule.

Similarly, the external shared spaces, in order to generate a setting that encourages interaction, are treated in a manner of layering creating informal social and teaching spaces at various levels based on the convergence of multiple functions.

PROGRAM:

Secondary school for 1200 pupils
Building area: 10,745 m

CLIENT:
School trust: ARK Education
Government: DCSF

ARCHITECT:
Zaha Hadid Architects
Design: Zaha Hadid with Patrik Schumacher
Project: DirectorLars Teichmann
Project Architect: Matthew Hardcastle

Project Team: Lars Teichmann, Matthew Hardcastle, Bidisha Sinha, Henning Hansen, Lisamarie Villegas Ambia, Judith Wahle, Enrico Kleinke, Christine Chow, Guy Taylor, Patrick Bedarf, Sang Hilliges, Hoda Nobakhti

Project Manager: Capita Symonds
Engineers: Arup
Quantity Surveyors: Davis Langdon
Landscape: Gross Max
Acoustic Consultant: Sandy Brown Associates
Main Contractor (Design & Build): Mace Plus
Main Contractor’s Architects: Bamber & Reddan

CDM Co-ord: Arup
FF&E: Favourite Cat
Planning consultants: DTZ
Employer’s Agent: EC Harris
Catering Consultant: Winton Nightingale

Above: main elevations. Click above for larger image

Above: sections. Click above for larger image

Above: ground floor. Click above for larger image

Above: first floor. Click above for larger image

Above: second floor. Click above for larger image

Above: third floor. Click above for larger image

Above: depot layout. Click above for larger image

Above: site plan. Click above for larger image

See also:

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West Buckland School by Rundell Associates	Pestalozzi School by SOMAA	The Langley Academy by Foster + Partners