Editorial

This is Europe

I think it was the American art historian George Kubler who once explained that it was common practice in his discipline to group archeological finds around a notional ideal constructed from the shared characteristics of all unearthed artefacts. In other words, first an ideal amphora is created based on all known amphora, after which all genuine amphorae can be classified according to the degree to which they resemble this ideal amphora.
My own perception that a pure European architecture exists only as an ideal, has been underscored by what I have observed all over Europe in recent years when the conversation has turned to architecture. Whether it was England, Sweden, Portugal or Croatia, locals nearly always had the idea that Europe was somewhere else. Time and time again people confided their sense of not really belonging, of standing on the fringes of what they supposed to be the real Europe. Sometimes gleefully, but usually with a tinge of regret. According to a deep-rooted misconception among the English, for example, Europe lies to their east, on the Continent. From a Swedish perspective, Europe lies in western Europe. Southern Europeans are of the opinion that what is usually called Europe lies to their north. And for those countries which remain, willingly or unwillingly, outside the European Union, Europe lies on the other side of the border. In effect, there are always arguments to be found for the idea that the real Europe – and real European architecture – is not here but somewhere else.
In the background, two unmistakable arguments are at play here. One is a variation on the seemingly irrepressible notion that the grass is greener on the other side of the fence, which leads in this case to the assumption that the other is nearly always more European. The other is a tendency to deny the incontrovertible fact that everyone in Europe is inevitably part of it and one way or another contributes to it, if only by persisting in their refusal to be seen as European. (Hans Ibelings)

Inhalt

On the spot
News and observations

• Oslo's new opera building by Snøhetta (NO)
• Tirana's main plaza in need of a makeover (AL)
• Cor-ten canoeing centre by Sarah Wigglesworth in Chelsea, West-London (UK)
• Update: Latvia
• Reality check: Levent Loft in Istanbul (TR)
• and more...

Start
New projects

• Health centre, Kiev (UA) by Bpdgroupe6
• Pavilion, Meudon (FR) by EZCT
• Civil registry office, Madrid (ES) by Angel Borrego
• Residential and retail development, Druskininkai (LT) by seven
• leading Lithuanian architects
• Conference centre, Cracow (PL) by Ingarden & Ewy

Interview
Enric Ruiz-Geli

Enric Ruiz-Geli, one of the founders of Barcelona-based office Cloud9, studied architecture, stage design and scenography. As such he is not just an architect, but rather a visual artist who seeks to dissolve the boundaries between constructing, re-creating and experimenting with space or treating it as a theoretical adventure. Since his early projects, nature has always been present in some way or other, producing particularly attractive images and configurations.

Ready
New buildings

• Museum of Architecture, Oslo (NO) by Sverre Fehn
• RATP bus and adminitrative centre, Thiais (FR) by Emmanuel Combarel and Dominic Marrec
• Community centre, Mannheim-Neuhermsheim (DE) by netzwerkarchitekten
• House, Majorca (ES) by Ábalos&Herreros
• Rotermann business and residential complex, Tallinn (EE) by Kosmos
• Hirzenbach school extension, Zurich (CH) by Roger Boltshauser Architects
• Science building, Nicosia (CY) by Zenon and Christina Sherepeklis
• New Royal Danish Theatre, Copenhagen (DK) by Lundgaard & Tranberg
• Laranjeiras student residences, Azores (PT) by a.S*
• Residential and commercial building, Belgrade (CS) by Branimir Popovic
• Conversion of a warehouse, Rotterdam (NL) by Mei Architecten

Section
Inserting interiors

The world of the interior is not that of the exterior. The primary purpose of buildings is to provide a climatological barrier between inside and outside by means of facades and a roof. Outside, wind and weather enjoy free play. Inside it is sheltered from the elements, dry and warm or, conversely, cool, depending on the geographical location. And although architects have long aspired to dissolve the boundary between inside and outside, it will never completely disappear, even if it consists of no more than a millimetre of glass.

Eurovision
Focusing on European countries, cities and regions

• Xavier Gonzalez maps France’s contemporary architectural production according to a clear and concise classification, but ends by concluding that certain current French architecture eludes all categorization
• For most Dutch people, the southern province of North-Brabant evokes images of rural life and of Catholic towns and villages where Carnival is celebrated every year in February. An image that Brabant’s cities are keen to refute, with a united effort and ambitious architecture
• Office: Claus en Kaan's orderly office building in IJburg, Amsterdam (NL)

Out of Obscurity
Buildings from the margins of modern history

Vesna Vucinic reflects one of the principal monuments of New Belgrade and Yugoslavia: the Palace of Federation (Vladimir Potocnjak, Anton Ulrich, Zlatko Najman and Dragica Perak, 1947-1959). Once a symbol of national unity, it is almost empty today, waiting for a new life.

Community centre

Netzwerk have created a successful interplay of architecture and town planning.

Neuhermsheim near Mannheim, a town with a population of 300,000, is a cheerless expanse of urban sprawl. A modest heart has now been implanted into this architectural no-man’s-land in the form of a new protestant community centre. At the transition between detached houses from the 1960s and medi­ocre multi-storey housing from the 1990s, St. Thomas’s Church owned a piece of land that became the site for the single-storey, flat-roofed building. In 2003, netzwerk architects from Darmstadt won a two-stage competition against 440 other entries. netzwerk (German for network) live up to their name: the six partners are all in their early forties, all come from the Darmstadt area, and set up a joint office in 1997. Since then they have worked alongside one another, boldly realizing a string of unconventional projects.

In this case, they won with a design that is immediately recognizable in the built result, having remained almost unchanged. In Germany, with a heterogeneous decision-making group including the pastor, representatives of the congregation and members of the town council, this amounts to a small miracle. All the more surprising since the snow-white outer shell with its curvy shapes is an unusual sight – resistance to the unfamiliar would not have come as a surprise.

Surrounded by a row of upright supports that recall plants, the community centre attracts passers-by, offering views of the interior and what lies beyond. It is set around a semi-public garden courtyard; rather than shutting itself off from its mundane surroundings, the structure of meeting hall, meeting rooms and youth centre seeks contact. The eye-catching, load-bearing outer shell consists of two basic modules: prefabricated unclad concrete components that could be installed either way up, and an all-round glass facade. The perfectly moulded concrete parts with their sophisticated geometry called for experienced and extraordinarily precise production, supplied by a manufacturer located some 200 km away.

Inside, this glaringly bright atmosphere continues. Of course, a cosy, solid atmosphere with plenty of wood and coloured walls was discussed with the community, but the architects were able to persuade all involved of the potential benefits of a white, apparently high-maintenance interior. The generously proportioned space can also be used for a range of purposes, thanks to conventional partition walls and full-length white curtains running along serpentine rails set into the ceiling. The items required for church services – organ, font, etc. – are on wheels, allowing the room to be structured and furnished differently as needed.

In this ambience of variegated white, one is easily reminded how thin the line can be between the religious and the clinical – the light of Germany’s southwest supports this balancing act. The extravagant formal idiom marks the community centre out as something special and creates a feeling of being in a town centre that is, for once, not occupied by commerce. A successful interplay, then, of architecture and town planning.

A10, Mi., 2008.04.16

16. April 2008 Ursula Baus


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Gemeindezentrum der evangelischen Thomasgemeinde

Hirzenbach School extension

Roger Boltshauser employs „precision adjustments“ in his extension to a 1950s school building.

Built between 1955 and 1965, the dormitory suburb of Zurich-Hirzenbach features point and slab high-rises and few low public buildings. At the time, the development was hailed by the city of Zurich for its exemplary architecture; today it is a social hot spot. The school in its midst was built by Charles Steinmann in 1959. Its buildings and grounds were badly in need of renovation and a competition was held for a new kindergarten and day care centre as well as a double gym and additional classrooms.

Although most people have trouble feeling any sympathy for the functionalist architecture of this suburban development and school, Roger Boltshauser managed to do so – and won the competition. His two annexes, north and south of the existing school building, pick up the strictly orthogonal alignment of the suburb and submit to its logic with their low forms. It is not through their height that these carefully calibrated public buildings stand out from the residential blocks, but through the very opposite: their horizontal spread.

The annexes took their cue not only from the suburban development but also from the architectural grammar of the existing school building. In the new buildings the concrete structural grid extends into the third dimension: deep concrete frames protruding slightly above ground level provide permanent sun protection and create a spatial transition between indoors and the unstructured outdoor space. Thanks to these storey-high brise-soleils, the building volumes appear almost to float.

A fond homage to the modernist district is also apparent in the large, box-shaped skylights which enlarge the rooms in a similar way to the brise-soleils and mould the incident light. They also shape the buildings’ flat exteriors, lending them a sculptural force and appearing to repeat the surrounding development in miniature on both rooftops. Thus the new architecture’s most striking elements – concrete grid and skylight boxes – echo the existing architecture and in so doing turn the deficiencies of functionalist planning into good architectural quality.

The aforementioned light management, the extension of space outwards and upwards together with the well-judged spatial proportions, give the interiors of these buildings their unexcited matter-of-factness. A wide variety of educational situations becomes possible in the kindergarten building, for instance, through the group rooms that can be added by means of sliding doors or through the fully usable hallways. The kindergarten’s small courtyard flows into a roofed-over play and entrance area which provides access to the kindergarten on the left and the day care centre on the right.
The entrance and the courtyard can be separated from one other by a sliding lattice gate. The use of such an ordinary grille at this most public part of the institution and not – as is customary nowadays – a CNC lasered, organoid, pixelated something-or-other, is typical of the overall architectural approach. The chief materials are exposed concrete and glass blocks, which are used both for the kindergarten building’s longitudinal facades and for internal walls. The other materials and their subdued palette of colours are also geared to a robust, everyday world: warm grey linoleum in the classrooms, reddish-brown asphalt tiles in the halls, dark grey synthetic stone sinks, greenish glass mosaics and an olive shade for the surfaces of cupboards and shelves enlivened by the merest traces of pale turquoise. Rather than anticipating the children’s presumably colourful everyday experience, these sober colours serve as a background for it.

In addition to the brise-soleils and the skylight boxes, there is one other design element that not only underscores the massiveness of the buildings but also has an impact on the atmosphere of the indoor spaces: the curtains by the artist Alex Herter. With their broad horizontal stripes in green/white, red/white or yellow/black they function as sunshades, screens or tent-like rooms within rooms. Depending on the colour combination, they suggest connections or create interesting spatial tensions.

On the three window facades of the gym – one-third of which is below ground level so that it appears to only two storeys high – curtains were dispensed with. In the concrete grid on the front of this building the windows bulge slightly outward, angling at the point where the casements and glazing meet. The glass mosaic-covered side walls of the brise-soleils are also slightly bevelled. The aim of such barely perceivable shifts, which the architect calls „precision adjustments“, is to make the attached concrete grid look as if it is an integral part of the building. And thus we gradually become aware of the source of these low buildings’ forceful appearance – not Hirzenbach after all, but works of architecture a few hundred years older.

A10, Mi., 2008.04.16

16. April 2008 Axel Simon


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Schulanlage Hirzenbach - Erweiterung

University residences of Laranjeiras

Responding to a desire for freedom in built space, a.S* built a family of blocks with different personalities.

Looking back at recent history, we could say 1998 was a good year for Portugal. Lisbon Expo98 was a successful model for a world exhibition in combination with urban renewal. Saramago won the Nobel Prize for Literature, demonstrating the quality of Portuguese literature to the world. Economic growth was strong and EU funds were proving a blessing for a still emerging economy. There were also many architectural competitions around this time and, to top it all off, the Oporto School graduated a clutch of unusually innovative architects. Between 1997 and 1999 this group of young, unknown architects won four competitions in a row in the Azores, making a generational statement about a new approach to architectural design in Portugal.

1998 was a good year for a.S*. Their Laranjeiras University Residence Complex is one of the projects that brought optimism to Portuguese architecture, then dominated by boring „critical regionalism“. Its mixture of Dutch-style interdisciplinary design and a pop culture-inspired method became a turning point in architectural design in Portugal.

The site of this project which would „turn out to be an opportunity to create an urban structure that could be a guide for future interventions“ was on the outskirts of Ponta Delgada in S.Miguel, Azores, between an old industrial zone and a former agricultural area turned homogeneous suburb. The brief called for accommodation for 300 students. The architects began with a playful confrontation between the buildings and the landscape, developing a variety of abstract typologies that eventually matured into a set of buildings with distinct personalities.

Landscape became the central element of the design strategy, acquiring its public dimension between the blocks. The various functions were grouped according to their relative importance in the overall project and their potential as a stage for public activities. The „Car Parking Strip“ and „Urban Stroll Strip“ are located parallel to the road as connectors for inhabitants and passers-by, while the „Green Strip“ establishes the visual interface with the interior of the complex. The „Central Park Strip“ organizes circulation within the complex and connects buildings, while the „Events Strip“ contains supporting functions such as an orange grove, playing field, garden and lovers’ labyrinth, bicycle park and, at the end, the „Canada“ (a rural path) and „Meadow Strip“, an enormous multi-purpose green field.

The complex consists of four separate longitudinal blocks laid parallel between the landscape strips and perpendicular to the main access to Ponta Delgada. A fifth block acts as the main entrance to the complex and contains a cafetaria and canteen, a belvedere and a solarium and the students’ common room. This last building is in fact an extension of the landscape and public space. The blocks develop as variations on the minimum unit, a double room. On the south side there are full-height windows opening on to the rooms’ outdoor space; access to the units is from the north side. The room interiors are also organized in parallel zones: entrance, study, bathroom, bedroom. The bathroom zone contains a bookshelf and a closet the doors of which can be used to divide the space and to provide a measure of privacy to the sleeping area.

The four buildings are obviously related but also different as a result of slight variations – the addition of verandas, different floor levels, et cetera – and their relationship to the surrounding landscape. The southern block is the „Fearless Building“ because it faces all the people coming from the city centre. The second one is simply „Building 2“ while the block closest to the sports area is the „Sporting Building“ and the largest block is the „Solid Building“. The aptly named „Central Building“ is in the centre of the residential blocks and the landscape strips. Inside the blocks, circulation, whether vertical, horizontal or oblique, is on the north side. Students are allowed to choose the block (=personality) and the room (=view) they want to live in.

As the architects said in a recent interview, „There is a desire for freedom that evidences itself in both the work pro­cess and in the built space. It’s not only about use, but also, maybe even more, about behaviour.“ It is precisely their innovation, creativity and professional behaviour that makes a.S* a reference point for young architects in Portugal.

A10, Mi., 2008.04.16

16. April 2008 Carlos Sant’Ana


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University Residences of Laranjeiras

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