Hasta La Ideas

Italian architect Andrea Dragoni has extended a cemetery in an ancient Italian town by adding rows of monumental travertine walls with public plazas and artworks slotted in between (+ slideshow).

Andrea Dragoni was tasked with adding a new tract to the historic Gubbio necropolis, which is located just outside the town at the base of Mount Ingino in the Apennines.

The towering stone walls are laid out in sequence, intended by the architect to reflect the linear arrangement of the old town and its surrounding landscape.

“The contrast between void and solid resumes the rhythms found in the medieval town of Gubbio,” Dragoni told Dezeen. “The voids in this composition, as in many of my projects, play a central role. They become architecture with a strong poetic and spiritual reaction.”

Four equally sized courtyards are positioned at intervals between the walls. Italian artists Sauro Cardinali and Nicola Renzi created large site-specific artworks to occupy each one, plus large square skylights were added to frame views up to the sky.

“These spaces were inspired by James Turrell’s Skyspaces and are designed to be enjoyable public areas, independent from the cemetery, offering an opportunity to pause and reflect,” said the architect.

“The sky thus framed opens the mind to the reign of the invisible, allowing sight and thought to abandon Mother Earth’s gravity and acquire a more aerial and spiritual dimension,” he added.

Walls and floors are made from travertine – a form of limestone typically used in Italian architecture – and contrast with the brick structures of the original complex that can be spotted through one of the central corridors.

“Travertine was used by the Etruscans for all the most important public buildings of the Renaissance,” said Dragoni. “It is a tribute to this tradition that I wanted to reinterpret the material to emphasise the gravity of the volumes of the cemetery and their strong abstraction.”

Photography is by Alessandra Chemollo, apart from where otherwise stated.

Read on for a project description from Andrea Dragoni:

Extension of Gubbio Cemetery

The enlargement of the Gubbio cemetery is the result of studies of a new model of public building. On the one hand, it has developed the latest phase of growth of the monumental cemetery in Gubbio, one of Italy’s most important medieval cities. On the other hand, it intends to redefine its meaning and centrality within the structure of the city.

The plan is in an urban structure consisting of linear stereometric blocks arranged in such a way as to reflect the rural layouts that characterise the surrounding landscape and the historic city.

This concept of urban settlement is emphasised by the inclusion of large square enclosures designed to be open spaces that provide the structure with spatial rhythm.

These spaces were inspired by James Turrell’s Skyspaces and are designed to be enjoyable public areas, independently from the cemetery, offering an opportunity to pause and reflect. These are cubic “squares of silence” having open ceilings that evoke windows open to the sky. The sky thus framed opens the mind to the reign of the invisible, allowing sight and thought to abandon Mother Earth’s gravity and acquire a more aerial and spiritual dimension.

This relationship with the sky intends to define space that is also time, in such a way that you can find yourself again, a space that thrusts the horizon upwards like a metaphor of the boundaries of heaven, the last horizon of our life in a modern city.

At the same time, opening to the sky, it re-interprets Leon Battista Alberti’s window, a window that is like a threshold, imagined by the great Renaissance architect as the only architectural artifice able to “instil the peacefulness” evoked by the celestial void that, descending from above, takes us back to the imperturbable state of the soul without which overcoming the adversities of life is impossible.

The atmosphere of these “squares of silence” is made more suggestive by a series of permanent site-specific artistic installations that capture the changing effects of light and shadow from dawn to dusk. These installations were created by two important Italian artists (Sauro Cardinali and Nicola Renzi), with whom collaboration began during the initial stage of the project.

This contribution, strongly linked with architecture, helps to define a new space for silence and meditation within the city.

William Richard Lethaby said that human beings cannot understand the world as a whole. They must first move away from it, and only after having achieved this detachment can they achieve understanding.

In this sense a building can be seen as a model of the world; it represents an order we cannot directly experience in the world, but at the same time it makes perceptible, within the limits of a building, that which exists in the world.

Project: Andrea Dragoni, with Francesco Pes
Collaborators: Andrea Moscetti Castellani, Giorgio Bettelli, Michela Donini, Raul Cambiotti, Antonio Ragnacci, Cristian Cretaro, Matteo Scoccia
Client: Comune di Gubbio
Site-specific art work: Sauro Cardinali, Nicola Renzi
Structural design: Giuseppe Artegiani, Marco Bacchi
Plants Design: Italprogetti (Moreno Dorillo, Elvisio Regni)
Safety coordination: Claudio Pannacci
Director of works: Francesco Pes, Paolo Bottegoni
Maquette: Giuseppe Fioroni

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public plazas and site-specific artworks appeared first on Dezeen.

Italian office Studio Galantini has upgraded the wooden structure of a 1970s chapel in north-west Italy so that it can be used for summer services, music recitals and theatrical performances.

The Cappella Sant’Anna, or Saint Anna’s Chapel, was first built in 1973 in the Italian hamlet of Torre del Lago, but had been out of use since 2010 after parts of the structure were declared unsafe.

In the summer of 2013 Studio Galantini took up the task of repairing the structure. “We were captured by the structural purity and by the formal simplicity of the chapel, qualities that totally integrate it into nature,” explained architect Marco Biondi.

With help from structural engineer Renato Terziani, the architects replaced around half of the building’s framework, which comprises three triangular frames and a series of supporting crossbeams. They also repaired the old steel fixings.

The original moss-covered roof was retained, revealing the building’s true age. “The substitution of the overlay with new elements would have permanently damaged the harmony with the landscape, created by time going by,” said Biondi.

The two ends of the chapel remain open to expose the interior to the elements – a feature of the original design by engineer Vardemaro Barbetta. Barbetta named the chapel Sant’Anna, after the mother of the Virgin Mary, but also after the name of his own mother who initiated the project.

Photography is by Paolo Del Freo.

Here’s some extra information from Studio Galantini:

Galantini’s Firm: Sant’Anna’s Chapel recovery

Galantini’s Firm in Pisa, with the support of Renato Terziani as structural engineer, was involved in the recovery project of the Sant’Anna Chapel. The work was shaped around the full philological and compositional rightness and sensitivity, paying particular attention to the usage of technology and careful intervention techniques.

The chapel arises in the Lagomare residential complex that is located at Torre del Lago, Viareggio’s hamlet (LU). It stands inside the “Parco Naturale di Migliarino San Rossore Massaciuccoli” area, very close to the sea.

The Church, consecrated to Sant’Anna, was built on the engineer Vardemaro Barbetta’s project in 1973, following the engineer’s mother will whose name was Anna. The architectural work is highly characterised by the structural work: three gantries are settled by two balks that statically frame a three hinges portal. The hinges are made of steel and they are placed at the foot and at the top of the structure, resolving the work architecturally and structurally.

Because of the ageing of the wood in 2010 the structure was considered unsafe and declared not accessible, notwithstanding an offhand and structurally decontextualised past recovery action. A support for the balks, made by steel sections and welded batten plates, set up a mixed load-bearing structure.

The recovery work began in April 2013 and finished the 8th of August. The work was designed with no compromises: the technical complexity of the work was accepted to preserve the compositional integrity of the structure and the physics of the materials. The landscaped value of the overlay was preserved too, because of its integration with the surrounding pinewood.

This accomplishment was reached recreating the wooden parts and recovering the mechanical essentiality of the steel hinges. To accomplish that project, the work was realised suspending the structure using a scaffolding specifically designed for that aim; moreover the scaffolding was able to bear the efforts and the load transmitted during the substitution of the ground bases and of the degraded wooden parts.

Project: recovery of Cappella Sant’Anna

Designer: Studio Galantini

Engineer: Renato Terziani

Constructor: Antica Toscana

Client: Parrocchia di San Giuseppe

Location: Torre del Lago, Viareggio, Lucca

Completed: 2013

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of small Italian chapel appeared first on Dezeen.

News: here are the first photographs of Denton Corker Marshall’s visitor centre at Stonehenge – a prehistoric stone circle in England – which finally opens to the public tomorrow (+ slideshow).

After years of negotiations and a string of failed proposals, Denton Corker Marshall‘s Stonehenge Visitor Centre is now complete on a site 1.5 miles west of the stone circle, within the World Heritage Site but out of site of the ancient monument.

The building comprises three enclosures, all finished with different materials, which are sheltered beneath a undulating steel canopy and surrounded by a forest of over 200 angular steel columns.

The largest block is clad with sweet chestnut wood and houses the museum’s exhibition gallery. Another features glass walls and houses an education centre, cafe and shop, while a smaller zinc-clad structure is sandwiched between and functions as a ticket office.

The underside of the steel canopy is clad with zinc panels and features an elaborate pattern of square-shaped perforations. It oversails all three blocks, creating sheltered seating areas around the perimeters.

“The design of the centre is based on the idea that it is a prelude to the stones, and its architectural form and character should in no way diminish their visual impact, sense of timeless strength and powerful sculptural composition,” said Denton Corker Marshall’s Barrie Marshall.

“Where the stones are exposed, massive and purposefully positioned, the centre is sheltered, lightweight and informal. And where the stones seem embedded into the earth, the centre rests on its surface,” he added.

Visitors can walk from the centre to the monument via a winding pathway, or can choose to take a ten-minute shuttle ride.

Photography is by Peter Cook.

Here’s the full press release from Denton Corker Marshall:

New Stonehenge Visitor Centre Opens

Denton Corker Marshall’s new Stonehenge Visitor Centre opens its doors on 18th December, inviting more than one million visitors every year to experience the transformed ancient site.

Located 1.5 miles to the west of the stone circle at Airman’s Corner, just within the World Heritage Site but out of sight of the monument, the new visitor centre is designed with a light touch on the landscape – a low key building sensitive to its environment.

Sited within the rolling landforms of Salisbury Plain, the design consists of a subtle group of simple enclosures resting on a limestone platform, all sheltered by a fine, perforated, undulating canopy.

Barrie Marshall, director at Denton Corker Marshall, said: “The design of the centre is based on the idea that it is a prelude to the stones, and its architectural form and character should in no way diminish their visual impact, sense of timeless strength and powerful sculptural composition. Where the stones are exposed, massive and purposefully positioned, the centre is sheltered, lightweight and informal. And where the stones seem embedded into the earth, the centre rests on its surface.”

Three pods, finished in different materials, provide the principal accommodation. The largest, clad in sweet chestnut timber, houses the museum displays and service facilities. The second largest, clad in glass, houses the educational base, a stylish café and retail facilities. Located between these is the third, by far the smallest and clad in zinc, which provides ticketing and guide facilities.

Oversailing them all, and resting on 211 irregularly placed sloping columns, is a steel canopy clad on the underside with zinc metal panels and shaped with a complex geometry reflecting the local landforms.

Local, recyclable and renewable materials have been used wherever possible. The material palette includes locally grown sweet chestnut timber cladding and Salisbury limestone.

Stephen Quinlan, partner at Denton Corker Marshall, said: “Various strategies have been adopted in the design to ensure that the centre is environmentally sensitive and uses natural resources in a responsible way. These range from the natural sun shading qualities of the canopy which promotes natural ventilation and reduces the need for cooling in the pods, through to more technical solutions such as heat pumps and high efficiency insulation.”

The new building allows Stonehenge to have dedicated facilities on site for education and interpretation for the first time, with museum-quality exhibits that tell the story of the 5,000 year- old monument.

From the new centre, visitors can either walk to the monument or take a ten-minute shuttle ride. During the trip the henge emerges slowly over the horizon to the East.

Dr Simon Thurley, chief executive of English Heritage, said: “For too long, people’s appreciation of Stonehenge is this mysterious, impressive but anonymous monument. The Neolithic period itself is pretty much a murky expanse of time, shrouded by many outdated notions. We want people to come here and take away a fresh view.”

There will also be an outdoor gallery including the reconstruction of three early Neolithic houses, based on rare forensic evidence found near Stonehenge. These houses will be built by skilled volunteers and are due to be complete by Easter 2014.

Sustainable Design

The building is sensitively designed to sit lightly in the landscape. Reversibility – the ability to return the site to its current state – was a fundamental design concept. The building will last as long as it needs to but could, if necessary, be removed leaving little permanent impact on the landscape.

This is achieved by constructing it on a concrete raft which in turn sits on an area of ‘fill’ with minimal cutting into the soil. The modern construction, using slender steel columns and lightweight framed walls, and semi-external spaces allow the depth of foundations to be minimised.

Other green features include:

» An open loop ground source heating system that pumps underground water through a unit to extract/inject heat energy. This enables the building to be heated and provides some cooling without the need for fossil fuels.

» Fully insulated cavity walls – the timber pod is constructed of structurally insulated panels (SIPS), which enables efficiencies in construction whilst minimising material waste and ensuring the building is well insulated.

» Mixed mode ventilation – the building will be naturally ventilated whenever external conditions allow, switching to an efficient mechanical ventilation system that enables the heat energy in the exhaust air to be ‘recovered’ and transferred to the supply air, thereby reducing the load on the heating plant and saving energy.

» “Grey water”, including rainwater collected from the roof of the building, will be used for the bulk of water required at the visitor centre, e.g. for flushing toilets. Other water – e.g. for drinking – will be drawn from the aquifer, a local and renewable resource.

» The facilities will use on-site water treatment for sustainability and to avoid intrusive trenching for connections to water and sewer mains.

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Corker Marshall opens tomorrow appeared first on Dezeen.

Danish architects COBE and Transform have completed an aluminium-clad museum of maritime history in Norway with a zigzagging profile modelled on the shapes of local wooden buildings (+ slideshow).

Located south-west of Oslo in the harbourside town of Porsgrunn, the Maritime Museum and Exploratorium was designed by COBE and Transform to relate to the scale of its surroundings, which include a number of small wooden residences and warehouses.

The architects broke the volume of the building down into eleven blocks, with asymmetric roofs that pitch in different directions. Combined, these shapes give a zigzagging roofline to each elevation.

“We wanted to understand the area’s characteristics and then we wanted to strengthen it but at the same time create something new and contrasting,” said COBE founder and director Dan Stubbergaard. “The abrupt building structure of downscaled building volumes and the expressive roof profile are, for example, clear references to the area’s historic small wooden buildings, which all have their own particular roof profiles.”

“This interpretation of the area’s pitched roofs and small wooden building entities sets the final frame for a unique and characteristic contemporary building,” he added.

Aluminium shingles give a scaly surface to the outer walls and roof of the museum, and pick up reflections from the river that runs alongside.

Opening today, the museum’s exhibition galleries chart the town’s maritime history and tell the story of its dockyard industry.

A grand staircase leads visitors up to a large exhibition hall on the first floor, while smaller galleries and events rooms are housed on the ground floor.

Transform principal Lars Bendrup said he hopes that the building will help to revitalise the formerly industrial section of the town.

“Our general vision was to turn a backside into a frontside,” he said. “With the new museum, the town will now orientate itself towards the beautiful river that for much too long has been Porsgrunn’s industrial backside.”

Photography is by Adam Mørk, apart from where otherwise stated.

Here’s a project description from COBE and Transform:

Porsgrunn Maritime Museum and Exploratorium

Today is the grand opening of a new spectacular Maritime Museum and Exploratorium in the Norwegian town Porsgrunn. The building is designed by the Danish architects COBE and TRANSFORM, and has already, before the opening, become an architectural landmark of the town.

From backside to frontside

Porsgrunn Maritime Museum and Exploratorium is situated in the Norwegian town of Porsgrunn, 100 km south west of Oslo. The new museum will tell the story of the town’s dock yard industry and its maritime history, which has employed thousands of people from the whole region. In addition, the attractive location of the museum right on the riverside opens up an important process for the city concerning the future extensive urban renewal of the entire Porsgrunn Harbour area.

“Porsgrunn is an industrial town, which is reflected clearly in the museum’s surrounding context. It consists of small to medium sized industries in the shape of small characteristic wooden buildings. It was important to create a museum with a high level of sensitivity towards these surroundings, yet at the same time for the new Maritime Museum and Exploratorium to stand out as a spectacular contemporary building and become a landmark of Porsgrunn,” Lars Bendrup explains, owner of TRANSFORM, and continues: “Our general vision was to turn a backside into a frontside. With the new museum the town will now orientate itself towards the beautiful river, which for much too long has been Porsgrunn’s industrial backside.”

New meets old

The new Maritime Museum and Exploratorium is composed of eleven smaller square volumes, together amounting to almost 2,000 m2. Each volume has a different roof slant that assembled make up a varied roof structure. A characteristic aluminium facade, locally produced in Porsgrunn, not only holds the dynamic building structure together, but at the same time it reflects light and colours from the surrounding Norwegian mountain landscape.

Dan Stubbergaard, founder and creative director of COBE, elaborates: “It is a sensitive art adding new to old in a historic area. First of all we wanted to understand the area’s characteristics and then we wanted to strengthen it but at the same time create something new and contrasting. The abrupt building structure of downscaled building volumes and the expressive roof profile are for example clear references to the area’s historic small wooden buildings, which all have their own particular roof profiles. This interpretation of the area’s pitched roofs and small wooden building entities sets the final frame for a unique and characteristic contemporary building.”

He continues: “The goal was to create a house that not only understands and shows consideration for its surroundings, but also contributes with something radically new and different.”

Porsgrunn Maritime Museum and Exploratorium
Porsgrunn, Norway
Client: Telemark Museum
Architects: COBE and TRANSFORM
Engineers: Sweco
Gross area: 2.000 m2
Construction period: 2011-2013
Total construction costs: 34 mio.

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Porsgrunn Maritime Museum appeared first on Dezeen.

Paris architects Lacaton & Vassal have designed a translucent structure to house an international art collection that is a mirror image of the adjoining former shipbuilding workshop (+ slideshow).

Lacaton & Vassal won a competition organised by FRAC (France’s regional contemporary art fund) to transform the derelict workshop in the port area of Dunkirk into a new home for the archives and exhibition spaces of the Nord-Pas de Calais region.

Instead of overhauling the existing workshop, which was built in 1949 and is known as halle AP2, the architects chose to conduct minor renovations and leave it empty so it can be used to host events, exhibitions and house large-scale artworks. In addition, they proposed constructing an extension of identical dimensions alongside it.

“The halle AP2 is a singular and symbolic object. Its internal volume is immense, bright, impressive: its potential for uses is exceptional,” explained the architects. “The new building juxtaposes delicately without competing nor fading. The duplication is the attentive response to the identity of the halle.”

The new structure extends from the side of the renovated warehouse and provides an additional 9,357 square metres of floor space alongside the 1,953 square metres of usable space inside halle AP2.

A translucent skin of corrugated polycarbonate covers most of the new structure’s exterior and surrounds a solid concrete core in which a collection of over 1,500 artworks are stored in protective conditions.

“Under a light and bioclimatic envelope, a prefabricated and efficient structure determines free, flexible and evolutionary platforms, with few constraints, fit to the needs of the program,” said the architects. “The transparency of the skin allows to see the background vision of the opaque volume of the artworks reserves.”

Artworks are delivered to a loading bay and transit areas on the ground floor and then transferred using a lift at the centre of the building to archives on three further storeys. The ground floor also houses a reception and cafeteria that looks into the halle AP2, and the first of several exhibition spaces spread throughout the building.

Above the cafeteria, an internal street fills the void between the old and new structures, and there are plans to connect this space to an elevated walkway that would traverse the canal that currently separates the port from the adjacent beach. Exhibition halls, education facilities, administration and event spaces are accessed using lifts at the front of the building.

On top of the concrete core is an open event space that sits beneath the gabled steel framework, which is fitted with clear EFTE pillows to allow a view of the port and the nearby town.

Photography is by Philippe Ruault.

The following information is from the architects:

FRAC (Regional Contemporary Artwork Collection) of the North region

The FRAC houses regionally assembled public collections of contemporary art.

These collections are conserved, archived and presented to the public through on site exhibitions and by loans to both galleries and museums.

The North region FRAC is located on the site of Dunkerque port in an old boat warehouse called Halle AP2. The halle AP2 is a singular and symbolic object.

Its internal volume is immense, bright, impressive. Its potential for uses is exceptional.

To implant the FRAC, as a catalyst for the new area, and also to keep the halle in its entirety becomes the basic idea of our project.

To achieve this concept, the project creates a double of the halle, of the same dimension, attached to the existing building, on the side which faces the sea, and which contains the program of the FRAC.

The new building juxtaposes delicately without competing nor fading. The duplication is the attentavie response to the identity of the halle.

Under a light and bioclimatic envelope, a prefabricated and efficient structure determines free, flexible and evolutionary platforms, with few constraints, fit to the needs of the program.

The transparency of the skin allows to see the background vision of the opaque volume of the artworks reserves.

The public footbridge (previously planned along the facade) which crosses the building becomes a covered street entering the halle and the internal facade of the FRAC.

The halle AP2 will remain a completely available space, which can work either with the FRAC, in extension of its activities, (exceptional temporary exhibitions, creation of large scale works, particular handlings) or independently to welcome public events (concert, fairs, shows, circus, sport) and which enriches the possibilities of the area.

The functioning of each of the buildings is separated, or combined. The architecture of the halle and its current quality make sufficient minimal, targeted and limited interventions.

Thanks to the optimisation of the project, the budget allows the realisation of the FRAC and the setting up of conditions and equipment for public use of the halle AP2.

The project so creates an ambitious public resource, of flexible capacity, which allows work at several scales from everyday exhibitions to large-scale artistic events, of regional but also european and international resonance, which consolidates the redevelopment of the port of Dunkerque.

Site : Dunkerque, France
Date : competition 2009, design 2010,completiion scheduled in 2012 – 2013
Client : Communauté Urbaine de Dunkerque
Architects : Anne Lacaton & Jean Philippe Vassal with Florian de Pous, chief project, Camille Gravellier, Yuko Ohashi, Juan Azcona and for the competition, Sandrine Puech, David Pradel, Simon Durand
Engineers : Secotrap, structure, mechanical systems, CESMA, metal structure, Vincent Pourtau
Program : artwork reserves, exhibition rooms, education
Area : 11 129 m2 net :
– 9 157 m2 new building
– 1 972 m2 existing halle
Cost :12 M Euros net (2011)

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mirrors an old shipbuilding workshop appeared first on Dezeen.