Pentagram Architects

Described as ‘a piece of urban architecture as much as a building’ by a Harley-Davidson Museum spokeswoman, the 12 000 m2 site containing three buildings has been designed by Pentagram New York partner and architect Jim Biber.

HDM will house a retail space, an annex and a rally urban space which will enable bikers to ride through the grounds. Visitors to the museum will see installations designed by Pentagram partner Abbott Miller, such as a parade of bikes at the museum’s entrance which showcases the best designs from the Harley collection.

The color palette inside uses the Harley colors of black, silver and orange, while the museum will use a variety of media including photographs, Harley-branded apparel and documents to engage visitors with the brand. On show will be a 1956 Model KH motorcycle owned by Elvis Presley and a replica of the Captain America choppers ridden by Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper in the film Easy Rider. The building itself is made from a selection of materials including galvanized steel, black brick and orange corrugated metal which are intended to reflect the toughness of the motorbikes.
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Press released by Pentagram:

“The museum sits on a twenty-acre reclaimed industrial site directly across the Menomonee River from downtown Milwaukee and has been conceived as an urban factory ready-made for spontaneous motorcycle rallies. The three-building campus includes space for permanent and temporary exhibitions, the company’s archives, a restaurant and café, and a retail shop, as well as a generous amount of event and waterfront recreational space. The museum’s indoor and outdoor components were inspired by the spirit of Harley rallies in towns like Sturgis and Laconia, where thousands of riders congregate every year.

Creating a museum for an icon is an enormous challenge, and Pentagram conducted a massive amount of research to gain a thorough understanding of the complex cultural phenomena that revolve around the company. We even became Harley riders ourselves.

View from the south at the intersection of 5th and Canal: the museum and bridge to the retail building.
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The museum is directly across from downtown Milwaukee and surrounded on three sides by the Menomonee River.
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Harley-Davidson was founded in Milwaukee in 1903, and the company has a pride of place and history within the community that made the museum’s location key. Sitting on a peninsula surrounded by water, the chosen site is one of the oldest remaining industrial areas in Milwaukee and has the advantage of being directly connected to downtown via the pair of newly constructed Sixth Street bridges. Addressing the site’s design, we began with a few basic goals: integrate the site back into the city; respect and reflect the site’s history; make the water an important recreational element and plan for future development. From these objectives, we developed an urban design that essentially restored the area’s lost street grid and, by doing this, connected the site to the surrounding city by giving it a scale and “grain” that felt like a neighborhood within the city.

Rendering of a bird’s eye view of the museum site and its relation to the city.
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Site plan showing the restored street grid that connects the peninsula to the city.
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Early drawing by Biber showing the site’s basic circulation pattern.
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At the same time, we believed that the Harley-Davidson Museum should create its own street-level rally atmosphere, attracting the community of Harley riders at their most enthusiastic. Rally participants cruise the streets, ogle the parked bikes and enjoy the party atmosphere. These gatherings are unique in that they concentrate a great many riders in a small network of streets creating an enormous outdoor happening. It is as if the streets filled with motorcycles create a level of social interaction that exists nowhere else. These rallies are such an essential part of the Harley-Davidson experience that we felt it was essential to create a place that captured their spirit, but where those who are new to Harley-Davidson would feel welcome. Therefore, we proposed the museum should have an outdoor and an indoor component. We called the outdoor component the “Museum on the Street” and it became the counterpart to the formal museum.
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The combination of site features and the idea of the Museum on the Street helped us to define the museum as not a single building, but as a group of three buildings that line both sides of Canal and Fifth Streets creating a real urban context. This notion of a group of buildings is not new; it appears in architectural compositions as diverse as factories and college campuses, but here we used the buildings to create an urban experience while letting the streets become truly special places for social interaction.

The idea of the factory, a place defined by one basic style and with a single purpose, seemed especially appropriate as riders refer to the Milwaukee headquarters of the Harley-Davidson Motor Company as “the factory” and in acknowledgment of the site’s industrial history. When looking for images to inspire the look of the museum, we leaned heavily on the history of factories, rather than the history of museums or of Milwaukee’s cultural architecture. While we were looking at these images, we were also thinking about how the museum should function.

The photography of Bernd and Hilla Becher was a source of inspiration.
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Rendering of the museum’s form.
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We developed an interior layout for the museum building that was organized like a factory; that is a large open space (the factory floor) lined with mezzanines (the factory office) and featuring a kind of processing silos (the towers). This model made sense for a number of reasons: it resonated with the sense of Harley-Davidson as the factory; the contrast of large open areas and more defined rooms was good for big and small exhibition spaces; it embodied a sense of straightforward design; and it seemed honest and even a bit modest compared to some other possibilities. In the end, the factory model prevailed.

View of the museum’s ground floor and the Motorcycle Gallery: ‘bridge’ exhibit to the right.
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The three-story annex, across the street from the museum, contains ground-level temporary exhibition space with large glass garage doors that allow the building to open to the street. In this way, the building acts like a covered open-air market at times, while at others it houses exhibits or events. Meanwhile, the top two floors contain the company’s immense archive of historical artifacts as well as restoration and conservation areas. Both floors are hidden within a solid box that protects the artifacts from light while it conceals the workings within. In a motif used throughout the site, this box is “slipped off” the building’s one story base and the resulting overhangs create covered areas for special events. The retail building is a similar “box-on-frame” structure that overlooks the river and contains the museum shop, the restaurant and café, and space for special events.

The annex designed to protect artifacts from sunlight and hid mechanical components.
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The retail building, the top mass of which is “slipped off” its one-story base.
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The site design required interior connections between the various buildings, and so glass-enclosed bridges were also designed to allow the facilities to act as one while they provide sheltered connections and terrific views. Like the buildings, the bridges reveal their structure on the outside, holding the glass to the interior. Their industrial quality is not added on, but is part of the real support mechanism.

Two glass-enclosed bridges link the buildings.
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Rather than find a decorative skin for the buildings, we turned to the motorcycles themselves for inspiration, and we found it in the Harley-Davidson motorcycle. The parts are not concealed behind plastic or metal, but are simply and honestly expressed as structure, function and, most significantly, as a jewel of an engine within the frame of the bike. Form follows function in Harley-Davidson’s iconic designs. With this inspiration, we developed an expressed structure, an exoskeleton of exposed supports in a frame of galvanized steel. Both the inside and outside of the structure is simple and honest utilizing I-beams and columns, exposed gusset plates and cross-bracing to stiffen the frame. The hot-dipped galvanized steel is not a perfect, painted finish, but an honest expression of an industrial process and the structures are weatherproofed and permanent, not shrouded or concealed.

Exoskeleton on the museum building’s louvered towers.
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The infill materials are tough, and traditional finishes in a simple palette are used on all the buildings in black, white, silver and orange, the colors of Harley-Davidson. Infill materials include polished and stained concrete for the floors in black and grey; white double-layered insulated polycarbonate sheet for diffused light; glazed black brick for solid areas of important volumes; grey corrugated and enameled steel for secondary areas; orange corrugated and enameled steel for entry areas and stair/elevator towers; and galvanized and blackened steel for counters, trim, railings and other elements. By carefully selecting the materials and using each for a clearly expressed and consistent purpose, we wove the buildings together into a larger whole.

The iconic moment of the museum’s design is the four-sided Bar & Shield tower suggested by Willie G. Davidson, chief styling officer and grandson of one of the company’s founders. Willie G. arrived at the museum offices one day with a solid steel, four-sided logo model to suspend in the open tower of the museum. He said, “the engine is the jewel in the frame of a Harley-Davidson motorcycle” and this piece of signage is prescribed as the jewel in the frame of the museum.

Bar & Shield tower with four-sided logo designed by Willie G. Davidson.
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Also creating a gracious sense of entry are a series of framed and covered spaces that line the walks that connect the buildings offering protection from the elements and adding a sense of depth in the buildings. The street side of the museum itself, meanwhile, is lined with a monumental colonnade of supporting columns.

Covered space leading from the museum to the retail building.
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The identity of the museum at the street level had to be unique, yet also had to blend into the surroundings enough to be a “neighborhood” within the broader context of Milwaukee. Landscape architects Oslund and Associates helped us to achieve this delicate balance. We have all been in neighborhoods that feel a bit too themed or contrived, but here, the site feels genuine and uniquely Harley-Davidson. To maintain this balance, elements of the street furniture and site were carefully designed including special district light fixtures, planter boxes and site benches all made from steel I-Beams. Guardrails, transformer enclosures, dumpsters and other various elements utilize the same galvanized finish and standard pieces as the building structure.

For the landscape, Oslund and Associates took our basic site outline and developed it within the grid established by our urban design. Site areas were adapted to act as shaded gathering areas; flexible event spaces; a continuous river walk that meanders along the water’s edge; street termini were carefully designed; and trees and plantings to act as sculptural elements.

The landscape architecture offers a generous amount of green space.
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Finally, to further emphasize the rally atmosphere created by the intersection of Fifth and Canal Streets, Oslund created a broad, orange “crossroads” that extends into each of the four central site blocks. The orange concrete identifies the “Sturgis-style” parking that will make riders feel immediately at home, while letting everyone know that there is something unique about this neighborhood.

View of the public rally space from one of the connecting bridges.
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One of the most significant references to the industrial past of the site is the preservation and repositioning of the giant orange hoppers within the landscape. Oslund placed them at the north and south ends of the reconstituted Fifth Street axis to anchor the site and provided aesthetic interest. In a coincidence almost too good to be true, the hoppers were previously painted orange and their weathered finish has been kept in its original condition.

Orange street hoppers original to the site, left with their weathered finish. Photo: Tom Lynn/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
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Throughout the design process, we worked with a remarkable set of collaborators. On the one side are all the Harley-Davidson folks who, though they had never before produced a building purely for the public, helped us refine the design to reflect the company they love. We worked with Museum leadership and the Museum Advisory Board throughout the design and construction process. We also met regularly with Willie G. Davidson who, as a designer and icon in Harley-Davidson culture, helped keep us true to the best ways to make the buildings a part of the Motor Company family. He had a number of small and large observations that made the buildings better, truer and smarter.” Pentagram
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More photos of the project below:

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Popularity: 2% [?]

brasil arquitetura

” The Colognese Mill dates from the beginning of the last century. It was built by an immigrant family coming from the Veneto region in Northern Italy, employing pine wood (Araucária angustifolia) from the surrounding forest. When the miller died at the end of the 1990’s, the mill was abandoned.

It fell into decay until the Association of the Friends of the Mills of Alto Taquari was founded in 2004, the old mill and the land was bought and the project for the Ilópolis Mill came into being, aided by sponsorship of Nestlé Brasil. It was first extensively restored (organization by IILA - Istituto Ítalo Latino Americano) and put to work again.


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The two new volumes, housing the small Bread Museum and the Confectioners´ School, establish a renewed context for the mill and attest its status as an architectural, technical and cultural document of the past. The old mill served as a serene reference for the new project: its architecture, its materials, its equipments, production, transformation.
With this union of tradition and invention, museography and architecture emerge simultaneously. The first exhibits of this new museum: the old Colognese Mill, which functions again, the museum and the school, “contaminated” by the physical and symbolic presence of the centenary construction. Everything contributes to the exhibition: the structure of the buildings, the way the light enters, the materials used, the timber walkways, the supports for the exhibits, the pieces on exhibition (old kitchen utensils, historic documents and photographs from the region).
After this spontaneous initiative, the project gained new impulse with the aim to valorise the cultural and historic richness of the region and extending its circuit: the neighbouring small towns of Arvorezinha, Anta Gorda, and Putinga shall be “infected” and in conjunction form the “Route of the Mills”.

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Projects Details:

Architects: Francisco Fanucci, Marcelo Ferraz, Anselmo Turazzi, Anne Dieterich, Cícero Ferraz Cruz, Luciana Dornellas, Fabiana Fernandes Paiva, João Grinspum Ferraz, Bruno Levy, Carol Silva Moreira, Gabriel Rodrigues Grinspum, Pedro Del Guerra, Victor Gurgel, Vinícius Spira

Date of project: 2005
Date of construction: 2007
Gross floor area: 1011m², construction area: 330m² (new construction), 200m² (Restoration)
Location: Ilópolis, RS
Photos: Nelson Kon

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Popularity: 2% [?]

Hotel Lone in Rovinj, Croatia planned to be opened in summer 2009 is listed in the prestigious international selection Design Hotel AG. This is the first Croatian hotel to be part of the world renowned brand. 3LHD architects collaborated with numerous acclaimed young Croatian designers and artists in developing the project.

PROJECT DATA
Project start date: Sep 2006
Location: Croatia, Rovinj, Monte Mulini
Site area: 22.157m2
Gross floor area: 29.407m2
Footprint: 6.147m2
Client: Maistra, Rovinj
Author: 3LHD

Project team: Sasa Begovic, Marko Dabrovic, Tatjana Grozdanic Begovic, Silvije Novak, Ljiljana Dordevic, Krunoslav Szoersen, Ines Vlahovic

Project team collaborators: Koraljka Brebric, Nives Krsnik Rister, Margareta Spajic, Ljerka Vucic, Ana Deg, Dijana Vandekar

Collaborators: NUMEN/For Use, interior design; Milan Crnogorac, structural engineering; Freya, 3D visuals; Ines Hrdalo, landscape architect; Apin, special consultant; Termoinzenjering, HVAC; Inspekting, fire protection; Dekode, kitchen technology; Ivica Turcic, model
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Information by 3LHD Architects:

“The future Lone Hotel is situated in the attractive tourist area of Monte Mulini, the green oasis of the town of Rovinj, Croatia. The hotel is located in a park, on a specific terrain with significant height differences within the site, in immediate vicinity of the Eden Hotel, the “star” hotel in the ‘70’s, with aesthetic characteristics of the time when it was constructed. The ground plan in the shape of the letter Y has been defined by the size of the building (250 rooms), the surrounding wood and terrain elevations, while the height differences in the interior provided for creating a vertical central lobby, the main axis around which all the facilities are centred. All levels are multi functional, thus improving the dynamics of daily use. The design objective was to create a powerful visual identity ranging from the external design of the building to the interior planning of the facilities. ”

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Popularity: 3% [?]

from Wallpaper

” Designed by Chenchow Little Architects, this semi-detached house conceals its historical origins and suburban situation. Initially built at the end of the 19th Century, one of the few original remaining features are the sandstone walls at ground level. ‘Simply remodeling the house wouldn’t have given our clients what they wanted,’ says architect Tony Chenchow, a director of the practice.

The site, in Sydney’s beachside suburb of Bronte, slopes down dramatically towards the Pacific Ocean. ‘We wanted to embrace the view, but the original Arts & Crafts style home wouldn’t have allowed us to achieve this,’ says Chenchow. A contemporary first floor addition was ‘grafted’ to the house. Constructed in steel, glass, fibro-cement and encased with aluminium louvers, the first floor cantilevers above the original sandstone walls.

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The ground floor of the Bronte house was restored and reconfigured by the architects. Three bedrooms occupy the original structure, while a new main bedroom, ensuite and deck were added to the rear. As the first floor is entirely new, the architects were able to design around a view. ‘You’re not aware of the ocean as you cross the bridge (leading from the garage to the front door). It’s only when you enter that you see the entire vista,’ says Chenchow. As the street is on the high side, one enters at the first floor.

Chenchow Little’s design features a series of verandas, decks and courtyards. A long corridor, linking the kitchen and living areas, is more akin to a ‘breezeway’ with external aluminium louvers. ‘It’s not supposed to be clear what is inside and what is outside,’ says Chenchow, who worked closely with co-director Stephanie Little. ‘The louvers are fundamental to the design. We wanted to protect the house from the harsh light. We also wanted to ensure privacy from the neighbouring home,’ he adds.

The first floor spaces are loosely defined from the courtyard and decks. The front room, used as a family room and office, has a large sliding door leading from the breezeway. The dining and living areas at the rear of the home are also flexible. Glass sliding doors frame this space on three sides, one of which leads to a covered deck, the other being roofless. ‘The wind can get fairly strong so we wanted to ensure the outdoor areas could be used for most of the year,’ says Chenchow. The architects were also keen to ensure views to the ocean could be seen from the central courtyard and kitchen.

The house has many features associated more with an inner-city warehouse rather than a house near the beach, including a sense of boundless space. ‘When you’re inside, you’re not aware of neighbours,’ Chenchow explains, ‘so the focus is directly towards the water as soon as you get past the front door’.”

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Popularity: 4% [?]

” The house had to disappear from the view of the Hotel during the winter. The interiors should be completely open to the view of the Inca Lagoon and the Tres Hermanos mountains to the north. The structure had to resist 6mts. of snow and ice on top of it.

The interior of the house should be comfortable to receive the tired bodies of lifetime skiers.
Two floors: bedrooms on top. 1 open space for the gathering of the family below.
Extreme weather, open landscape, comfortable space: a silent architecture to combine them.” _dRN Architects

Popularity: 3% [?]

from Triptyque

” The figure of the sun visor - element traditional of tropical architecture - is in the center of this project. Located in an old district in radical change, on an avenue with the intense traffic, directed full sun, it building wants to be the powerful and organic incarnation urban and natural “aggressions” of the subtropical emergent city.

The project takes the party to nourish interaction of two “aggressions”: Noise and sunning. The noise level of the traffic of the street becomes a powerful atonal symphony with the “helicopter-quartet” of Stockhausen. It carves the frontage of the building: a membrane of sun visor, organics, fluid - which - as under the effect of the waves of sound waves becomes deformed - creating internment of the tablecloths of luminous intensity, and of the different temperatures.

A second filter, on the internal wall in glass, equalizes these differences by plays opaque tablecloths of heat screen printed, exact negative deformation of the breeze. This frontage-membrane is perforated by one “plug” - a concrete framework - connection between the external medium and the interior of the building. The basic frontage, like a partition musical binary - pacified - opens on tropical garden. The three stages are structured by a vertical element extremely: a concrete staircase. Its geometry in plans folded car park with the solarium - connects and form spaces.”

Popularity: 5% [?]

MacGabhann Architects

Private House on Lough Swilly, Co. Donegal, 2006-2007. Winner of: Royal Institute of Architects of Ireland, Public Choice Award and Best house 2008 Royal Institute of Architects of Ireland, Irish Architecture Awards 2008.

From RIA Press Release:

Best House & Public Choice Award: MacGabhann Architects for Tuath na Mara, Portsalon, Portsalon, Letterkenny

” This is an example of a one-off house in the countryside that sits lightly in its setting and yet has a strong presence. The house has dark elements, just as the surrounding land does, and yet respects and provides a platform for the beauty of the scenery by letting it shine through the building. Tread softly for you tread upon our Donegal.”

Popularity: 7% [?]

Witherford Watson Mann (WWM)

“Bankside Urban Park
Bankside, London | Urban Framework | 2007

The Bankside Urban Forest framework aims to highlight the relationship between the less intensively developed urban interior and its active, increasingly corporate, edges. By recognising the capacity of the public realm to be shared by each, the framework identifies improvements to open spaces and connecting routes, to support interaction between residents, workers, visitors, local institutions and organisations. Existing projects are drawn together with our proposed ones to help to negotiate, informally influence and direct emerging projects and to secure additional funding for enhancing the public realm.”
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Project Design Case:(you can also download the full study at the end of this entry)

Summary

Bankside Urban Forest is a co-ordinated and strongly characterised urban design framework for the public realm within the area extending from the river edge down to the Elephant and Castle, bordered by Blackfriars Road and Borough High Street. The work has been commissioned by Better Bankside in collaboration with a broad group that comprises the London Borough of Southwark, Tate Modern, The Architecture Foundation, Transport for London, Land Securities, Cross River Partnership and Native Land.
Centuries of overlapping development patterns have created a pronounced ‘urban interior’ within the Bankside and Borough area that is less intensively developed and used than the more active edges - Blackfriars Road, Borough High Street and the river edge. The construction of the viaducts and Southwark Street have further served to isolate this urban interior from more diverse uses and activities. This quieter interior area is characterised by its scattered small open spaces and strong local identity, and it acts as a counterbalance to the increasingly international, corporate, large-scale developments that are being constructed and planned around its edges.

Bankside Urban Forest responds to these conditions with five principal proposals;
1. Increasing the opportunities for ‘sharing’ - that the existing social and physical relationships between the local ‘urban interior’, and the rapidly developing edges within Bankside and Borough, are supported and reinforced through significant improvements to the public realm and local amenities, and by increasing the opportunities for social engagement.
2. That the Urban Forest is the characterisation of this distinctive area of London, based upon the existing spatial qualities that underpin the area’s identity; meandering streets, multiple routes, clearings, clusters of vaulted and canopied spaces.
3. That evolutionary change takes place in a coordinated (not piecemeal) way, meshing existing projects and initiatives with new opportunities. Bankside Urban Forest must engage and sustain the commitment of the diverse individuals and groups in the area to take ownership of the projects over the long term.
4. That an ecological approach to urban regeneration based on networking, self- sufficiency, and ‘economies of small-scale’ will create a new sense of urban equilibrium between contrasting economic, social and cultural groups.
5. A collective project based on shared principles - that the Bankside Urban Forest establishes a new model for regenerating the public realm in London to attract significant public and private partners and investment.
We have identified a number of existing places which bring different people who use the area into contact with each other - ‘places of exchange’. These places and the activities that they support suggest sociable uses of the public realm. The framework supports these sociable places by drawing together many existing initiatives by Bankside Open Spaces Trust (BOST), LB Southwark, Transport for London, the Peabody Trust and private developers. We have proposed several projects that incorporate new trees, vertical planting, public art, hard landscaping and lighting in order to illustrate how the Bankside ‘forest’ could be realised.
It is intended that the Bankside Urban Forest framework can shape a common imagination between the many different interest groups in the area.
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the urban interior

The social and physical characteristics of Bankside and Borough reflect the area’s historical location in relation to the City of London. The foot of London Bridge was a place of great intensity, but no formal structure, being a meeting place for travellers and pilgrims upon leaving or entering the City. St Saviour’s offered a place of sanctuary (earlier St Mary Overie and later to become Southwark Cathedral) and the monastery, St Thomas’s, developed into a hospital. The market that originally occupied London Bridge was relocated to the ‘Triangle’, once the churchyard of St Margaret’s. Development in the area was not based on any formal models and was broadly linear, following the approach to London Bridge and the river edge. In 1769 the completion of Blackfriars Bridge led to a more formal urban model of tenement blocks and squares. The middle ground or ‘urban interior’ remained free from any identifiable structure or development, being ‘loosely’ occupied by tenter grounds and vinegar yards.

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The marginal use of the urban interior and its separation from the river edge was cemented by the construction of the viaducts and Southwark Street. This physical disconnection was reinforced by the change of use along the river edge through the 1980’s and 90’s. Large scale commercial, institutional and leisure uses rapidly replaced the grain of the wharfs. This pattern of development has continued with increasing intensity and is evident in the latest planning applications for large scale, high-rise office, residential and cultural buildings.
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pedestrian movement

Pedestrian movement is not always a reflection of the most direct route between places. It reveals complex, often sub-conscious, decisions; where other people are, things of interest, noise levels, presence of vehicles, what can be seen ahead and so forth. A few hours spent in Bankside and Borough demonstrates that for local residents and workers many of the quieter or less trafficked roads are favoured.
Visitors’ experience of moving around Bankside and Borough however, reflects the distinct change between the busy activity around the edges and the more secluded urban interior. Truncated views, reduced activity at ground level, narrow pavements and the dark viaducts that criss-cross the area give the sense of having moved ‘off track’, raising feelings of anxiety and fear that prevents many people from exploring the area’s rich heritage and open spaces.

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Understanding and supporting people’s natural wayfinding is therefore more than an issue of signage. It is how the layout of the streets and spaces affect what people see when exploring the street network, as well as the buildings and spaces that they see during their journey and which attract them along specific routes. Visibility analysis is a measure of how much space pedestrians can see as they move around at ground level.
For Bankside, the visual field open to pedestrians as they move around the street network has been measured using a computer programme. This calculates the visual field available to pedestrians for wayfinding at every step of any possible journey within the network, creating an overall measure of visibility of pedestrian space for the entire centre. A map of visibility in the study area is shown on this page. The visibility of the individual pavements is shown as a spectrum, where the areas in red have the longest views and the areas shown in dark blue are the most secluded.
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dominant land use

Bankside and Borough’s urban interior remains notably distant from the activity that characterises its edges. The severance caused by Southwark Street and the railway viaducts serves to isolate the interior from colonisation by external uses. This interior is mostly occupied by businesses. The lack of more diverse activities over different times of the day adds to the sense of it being concealed or ‘buried’. The meandering road layouts and larger plot sizes within the interior present an inherent resistance to comprehensive redevelopment and formal urban planning. This resistance to larger-scale change has however resulted in some noticeably beneficial conditions, particularly in that it has supported a strong sense of local identity through the community’s long-standing commitment to the area. This is reflected directly in the high proportion of residents that have lived here for all, or most, of their lives and the number of local initiatives that to some degree characterise this area.

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The above diagram includes some of the recent planning applications that have either been granted or submitted, where this will significantly affect land-use. It is therefore assumed that either these schemes, or alternatives with similar land-uses to them, will be constructed.
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institutional players

The area and its urban interior must serve a number of primary functions to ensure its long-term endurance and identity within competing London districts. The railway stations, Guy’s Hospital, Borough market, Southwark Cathedral, London South Bank University, Tate Modern and the Globe Theatre represent a diverse range of cultural and business interests. Between them, these ‘institutional players’ have the potential to support an active public realm over long periods of the day and week, a necessity not just in social and economic terms, but also in contributing significantly to the passive surveillance and use of small open spaces. It is important to resist seeing these highly specific and self-interested institutions as autonomous, and to understand how they can each contribute to a ‘common’ programme for the public realm and social engagement.

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‘Any primary use whatever, is by itself relatively ineffectual as a creator of city diversity. If it is combined with another primary use that brings people in and out and puts them on the street at the same time, nothing has been accomplished. In practical terms, we cannot even call these differing primary uses. However, when a primary use is combined, effectively, with another that put people on the street at different times, then the effect can be economically stimulating: a fertile environment for secondary diversity.’
Jane Jacobs The Death and Life of American Cities
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hidden places

The columned canopy of Borough Market, flickering lights of the trains, ruins at All Hallows, golden deer, Cross Bones Graveyard, long shadows from latticed bridge structures, shrine of the Most Precious Blood, hanging vegetation in Playhouse Court, Clink skeletons and deep viaduct arches all contribute to the sense of ‘losing oneself in the city’.

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The scattered ‘special places’ or clearings make manifest the long history of informal development in an area beyond the laws of the City; an incremental series of individual aspirations and isolated opportunities. The presence of this condition is so strong within Bankside that it is reasonable to say that it is characteristic of the area. It forms part of Bankside’s identity.
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places of exchange

supporting and extending existing places of exchange
There are a number of existing places within Bankside and Borough which in differing ways have the capacity to bring people who do not know each other into contact, places which ‘suggest’ social engagement between different racial, ethnic and class communities, where people can express differences of opinions and find mutual support, where civility can flourish – Places of Exchange.

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There is a significant opportunity to create a completely new ‘place of exchange’ on the south side of Tate Modern. The necessity for a place that has this capacity to bring people in contact with one another is particularly important here as this area is going to be shared by both the existing community and a significant number of new residents and workers.
Places of Exchange are often supported by, and indeed support, the scattered network of small open spaces, parks and gardens. The public realm must therefore contribute further to underpinning these more diverse and sociable places by improving the connections between them to form a more coherent and pedestrian orientated ground.
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the seeds of the framework

existing clearings and special places intensified
The columned canopy of the market, flickering lights of the trains, ruins at All Hallows, golden deer, Cross Bones Graveyard, long shadows from latticed bridge structures, shrine of the Most Precious Blood, hanging vegetation in playhouse court, Clink skeletons and deep viaduct arches all contribute to the sense of ‘losing oneself in the city’. The nature of this labyrinthine terrain establishes the roots the Forest. The scattered ‘special places’ or clearings are buried deep within the network of East-West rides and long meandering North-South streams. The framework weaves these fragments of the forest into a co-ordinated but loose structure.

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spreading roots

the existing spaces and new projects begin to connect

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maturing of the framework

active edges and urban interior are meshed

As the forest begins to mature as an idea, significant new areas and spaces are ‘unlocked’ and brought into life, for example, Tate Modern playground, Cross Bones Graveyard, a quarter of a million square feet of viaduct arches, Mint Street Park and London South Bank University Square. The roots and social influence of the key players begin to extend and embed themselves into the urban interior of the forest. The thresholds suggest exploration, the rich history and local identity are embedded and intertwined, streams and rides improve access to new facilities, jobs, clubs and spaces. The intertwining of the roots serves to make a robust and resilient quarter of the city.
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the planted arch

One of the main East-West pedestrian and cycle routes into the area runs from The Cut into Union Street. This is directly opposite Southwark Underground and runs alongside the Palestra Building. The first viaduct arch marks a very important threshold to the forest and sits just off an important crossing with Great Suffolk Street. The space is occupied by a café built into the viaduct wall, the Union Jack pub and the emerging night-time economy in and around the viaducts as far as the White Hart Pub. …

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flat iron square
The small traffic island, where Union Street crosses Southwark Bridge Road, occupies an important position within the framework. As well as the Island Cafe there is a thriving row of small shops and cafes and, opposite, the refurbished community centre and training school at 56 Southwark Bridge Road….

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redcross way
The Cathedral School of St Saviour and St Mary Overie, St Joseph’s School, Redcross Garden and Little Dorrit Park cluster around Redcross Way and provide a local ‘place of exchange’ for parents and children…..

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tate modern playground
Tate Modern presents a rare opportunity to create a significant new public space within the framework. It could also be the kind of place that London has not seen before, a place of exchange that weaves together something innocent and everyday with something more profound….

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viaducts

The viaduct that extends between Borough Market (Southwark Street) and Southwark Underground Station (Blackfriars Road) has contributed to the segregation of the urban interior at Bankside from the active river edge. This section of arches, which totals approximately 250,000ft2, is mostly closed off from the public, occupied by car parking and storage, both of which are likely to be placed under increasing economic pressure to survive as the congestion charging extends.

This viaduct now provides the opportunity to connect the urban interior into the broader area, in the way that the Westway has come to support the knitting together of the area around Ladbroke Grove. This type of ‘knitting together’ goes much further than providing improved pedestrian access through previously closed or poor quality areas, more importantly, it supports the intense occupation of them…

Witherford Watson Mann - Download the full study here
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About WWM

“Stephen Witherford, Christopher Watson and William Mann studied together at the University of Cambridge. They started collaborating in 1997, with weekly walks through London’s former and current periphery, and on their winning Europan 5 competition entry. They established Witherford Watson Mann Architects Ltd in 2001 after winning Europan 6. These early projects cemented their approach, based on careful observation, recognising the often surprising relation of city and landscape, and the mutual dependence of public buildings, collective space and everyday activities. The practice now has a staff of ten.”

Website: http://www.wwmarchitects.co.uk

Popularity: 8% [?]

Public

” A small one story bungalow sat on a substandard lot between two nondescript condominiums. Within that small house lived a growing family with a modern aesthetic who wanted to take advantage of the ocean views their site offered while adding square footage. The house has a concrete base that rises out of the ground with a minimal amount of openings until the second story, where it turns into a steel frame with a glass window wall that offers a panoramic view out to the Pacific Ocean.”

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About the Architects:

” In striving to create an architecture of the senses, it becomes necessary to confront and engage multiple boundaries within the study and practice of architecture. Of critical importance is the process of ‘making’. With our own hands, we put physical shape to our model and paper designs. Without the hand of the designer shaping the piece, the practice of architecture becomes mere direction, with the architect only suggesting a vague possibility, not ‘making’ a conceptual and physical connection.

We view and practice architecture with both the methodology of the designer/builder and the spirit of the inventor. By considering the practice of what is normally and jealously regarded as ‘art’ or ‘craft’ to be architecture, we open up the creative world for ourselves, and for our clients. Our work involves not only the process of architectural conceptualization and implementation, but the study and practice of public art as well.

The architect must participate in, and hold some roots in, the arts, in order to maintain the cross-stimulation that spurs on growth in other directions. As artists (an arbitrary designation), we have competed for, and won, and built several public art pieces. Public art, with its inherent responsibilities and commentaries, records the pulse of public sentiment and expectation, and provides a dialogue for us between social and personal explorations.

The process of furniture and object-making represent another form of exploration for us. The relatively small scale allows a great deal of extension of budding concepts. We create prototype designs as well as mass produceable fixtures and furnishings. We maintain a presence in gallery exhibitions and education.The wood and metal shops that we operate out of our office in San Diego are just as important to us as the design and drafting tables nearby.

James Brown and James Gates”

Public - Website: http://www.publicdigital.com/

Popularity: 9% [?]

By Leon van Schaik - Architectural Record

” Eighty percent of Australians live within 80 miles of the sea; 50 percent of the country’s houses sit less than 8 miles from a beach. When Sean Godsell Architects began its latest experiment with an ecofriendly, rectangular residential form, the Glenburn House, it naturally built a first prototype on the coast. The precursor to this scheme, the St. Andrews Beach House, located on a peninsula south of Melbourne, is raised up on stilts above the dunes, oriented at right angles to the sea, and acts as a telescope to the horizon, where sky and ocean meet.

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At Glenburn, a rural area 90 minutes northeast of Melbourne, the relationship between the house and the water is reinterpreted. The box is presented as a ship slicing through swells of earth. Instead of facing water, here the house’s long, northeastern flank provides views from the living areas and the guest room to the distant heights of Australia’s Great Dividing Range—the mountains that separate the populated eastern littoral from the desert interior of the island continent.

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In contrast to the house’s straightforward shape, a looping, picturesque arrival route from the Melba Highway (named for a 19th-century opera star from Melbourne, Dame Nellie Melba) leads you to the building through a valley to the northeast of the site. Viewed from a distance, the rust-red steel box looks huge as it breasts the slopes. The winding road, however, leads to high ground behind the house, where, down a long gully, you see the volume’s midsection opening to the southwest. Parking the car, the house has remarkably shrunk to the size of a two-car garage.

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You can enter the house through the garage via a mudroom, or stride along the northeastern front to the formal entry placed midway along the box. This entrance cuts through the plan along a central axis and leads to another opening, which allows access to that long gully earlier glimpsed. Inside, the program of the residence should be simple—the living, dining, sleeping, and bathing areas are meted out within a rectangle—and yet, much as the procession to the house plays with your perception, the interior is equally surprising.”  Architectural Record

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SEAN GODSELL ARCHITECTS - Website: http://www.seangodsell.com/

Popularity: 10% [