Architecture Lab

Via Studio Banana

Studio Banana TV features Gas Natural Tower in Barcelona with explanations by its author, Italian architect Benedetta Tagliabue.

The new building shows a clear desire to be compatible with its urban surroundings: the small scale of the neighborhood of La Barceloneta…the nearby houses and the park…the new tall buildings of Barcelona.

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“It has the verticality of an office tower, and the fragmentation of a series of constructions of different scales which in the end form a single unified volume… but respond to different scales, and a clear relationship with the apartment buildings…
It gives rise to a great projecting overhang, forming a great doorway which allows the opening up of the neighborhood of La Barceloneta…
It forms a singular public space that lower the construction to the ground, until it forms an urban landscape of different dimensions…

The treatment of the façades followed a similar criterion…

A series of large windows create interest from close up… while an undifferentiated volumetric treatment protects the building from the sun and the noise and shows a series of abstract volumes that blend in with the other constructions along the periphery. And a singular public space that lower the construction to the ground, until it forms an urban landscape of different dimensions…

The treatment of the façades followed a similar criterion…

A series of large windows create interest from close up… while an undifferentiated volumetric treatment protects the building from the sun and the noise and shows a series of abstract volumes that blend in with the other constructions along the periphery.

Text by Enric Miralles, 1999
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ENRIC MIRALLES MOYA Barcelona, 1955/ Sant Feliu de Codines, 2000.

Studied architecture at the Barcelona School of Architecture (ETSAB). Graduated in 1978. Set up his own practice in 1984, shared with Benedetta Tagliabue from 1991 onwards. Fulbright Visiting Scholar to Columbia University, New York, 1980-81. PhD Things seen from left and right, 1983. Senior lecturer at ETSAB from 1985. Professor at ETSAB from 1996 Master Class director and lecturer at Städelschule, Frankfurt am Main, from 1990. Kenzo Tange Chair lecturer at Harvard University from 1992. Guest lecturer and speaker at many universities and schools of architecture in the USA, South America and Europe (Columbia University, 1988 1989. Princeton University -J. Labatut Chair- 1993-1994. R.I.B.A., A. A., architecture schools of Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, Rosario, Mexico City, Berlage Institute, Mackintosh School). Honorary Member of the Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland. Gold Medal, Col.legi d’Arquitectes de Catalunya in July 2002.

BENEDETTA TAGLIABUE Milan, 1963.

Has lived and studied in Venice and New York. Graduate from IUAV (Istituto Universitario di Architettura di Venezia) in 1989. In 2004, awarded an Honorary Doctorate by the Arts and Social Science Faculty of Napier University, Edinburgh, Scotland. En 1991 formed a partnership with Enric Miralles and founded Miralles Tagliabue EMBT. Visiting lecturer at ETSAB since 2000. Visiting lecturer at l’École Spéciale d’Architecture (ESA), Paris in 2007, and the Architecture Faculty, Università IUAV di Venècia in 2008. Speaker at many architecture schools, universities and colleges of architects in the USA, South America, Europe and Asia, (Columbia University, University of Southern California, Central University of Venezuela, Zhejiang University, China, R.I.B.A (The Royal Institute of British Architects), A.A. (Architectural Association), London, Mackintosh School, Glasgow). Honorary Member of the Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland.
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Via OMA

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At the 12th International Architecture Exhibition in Venice today, Rem Koolhaas was awarded the Golden Lion for lifetime achievement by Biennale director Kazuyo Sejima. Koolhaas commented: “It is a really wonderful moment to get a lifetime achievement award in the middle of my career. I will certainly treat it as an encouragement for further action. Thank you.”
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Via Studio Banana Tv

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Studio Banana TV interviews Belzunce-Mauriño-García Millán, authors of the hill-crawling social housing complex in Mina del Morro, Bilbao.

The initial needs program, proposed for the Europan 4 competition, called for the construction of 356 dwellings on a plot of land of 29,500 m2. These housing units were complemented by 8,700 m2 for commercial use, 16,100 m2 for services, and 4,400 m2 for social infrastructures. Of course, solutions were also needed for the street network and parking areas, as well as providing the lot with green areas and outdoor public areas.
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“The plot was situated on the edge of the neighborhood of Sagarminaga —a heterogeneous collection of apartment buildings for the lower income classes—, erected in the fifties and sixties with a high building density and low urban quality. The land was steeply sloped and had previously been occupied by a mining operation, now in disuse, which had dug numerous tunnels in the subsoil. From the very start we were interested by the frontier nature of the place, a no man’s land between the old city center and the outskirts, between the Nervión river and the surrounding hills, between nature and the city… The project explored this ambiguous status. Therefore, one of the operations investigated in the project was to manipulate building density in order to address the different conditions that were to emerge after the initial indeterminacy of the site, whose mixed nature it was always attempted to preserve.

To solve the needs of the near, we proposed a rather introverted neighborhood cluster, low in height and surrounded by a higher level perimeter concentrating the commercial and service areas and infrastructures, which would be closely linked to the neighborhood. The existing densely built-up neighborhood was thinned out by preserving for public use two large open spaces, well sunlit and offering distant views, and the free spaces between the towers were conceived as urban viewpoints. In the heart of the cluster, the buildings rise over a tapestry of green areas, the street network is resolved by an inner ring road, while the parking lots are concentrated in the perimetral buildings.

In addition to treasuring this potential-laden indeterminacy, the site could become a urban façade toward the entrance from the Bilbao highway. To respond to the requirements of the far, we proposed a new image for the area by means of a line of several towers which would act as a visual filter of urban environment lying behind them, introducing the qualities of order and repetition.

After modifying the proposal as a result of winning the competition, we were commissioned the construction of one of the resulting lots, lot number 4. The remaining lots were commissioned to other architects, obviously with uneven results.

This lot is one of the two making up the central area of the complex. It is composed of six dwelling units that are strewn on the slope with river basin randomness, unsubordinated to parallel alignments but controlled by a rational geometry. Developing the design concept of “elongated-staggered-broken”, the layout of the blocks leaves pulsating exterior openings that widen or narrow to produce an intermediate scale of common spaces.

The blocks have a mixed typology between the volume of single-family row houses and the functioning of a public housing building with entrances through a corridor. Each dwelling is entered from the exterior, with the independence of the individual, but they piled one on top of the other, with the logic of the collective. The orientation of the buildings necessarily implied that the entrance passageways, onto which open the entrance halls, kitchens, drying areas and bathrooms, were placed on the northern side of the buildings, while on the southern side, open to the sunlight and views, the bedrooms and living rooms were located.

The floors are organized by a succession of bands of different uses and characteristics: exterior entrance passageway, utility duct, bay for service rooms and bay for other rooms. The sections are established as a stacking of habitable strata separated by continuous floor slabs. The broken staggered geometry of the buildings causes a displacement of the dwellings within the horizontal strata, such that there is vertical continuity of the different functional bands but not of the dwellings, which slide horizontally one over the other.

The construction is quite simple. The horizontal sliding of the dwellings determined that the structure had to function as a system of parallel planes, the only geometric element that ensured continuity. As a result, brick load-bearing walls were used, supported by one-way concrete joist floor slabs. The low height of the central blocks implied a small transmission of loads to the ground, whose delivery was resolved by continuous superficial foundations. However, a very conservative geotechnical survey required the use of piles driven to a depth calculated only at the tip to avoid the stratum hollowed out by the mining tunnels. Thus, the blocks, as if they were “caterpillars”, ended up growing abundant very long feet until reaching the bedrock below —which were micropiles up to 30 meters in depth and only 16 cm in diameter—. Sometimes we would like the ground to be transparent…

Interview by Studio Banana TV. Translation by Remy Arroyo.”
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Via 0300TV

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0300 TV released the trailer of Pauo Mendes da Rocha Interview.
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Aim@OMA is an iphone app that uses GPS functionality in order to organize OMA’s amazing buildings by distance based on the userʼs current location. If you find yourself enjoying your holidays and suddenly feel an urge to visit a Rem Koolhaas building, all you have to do is fire the app and get the distance and directions to the closest building. Aim@OMA keeps track of the projects you have visited, so in a way you can ʻcollectʼ OMA buildings by visiting them.
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Software and architecture – interview with Rui Guerra

Q. What is Aim@OMA?
Aim@OMA is a free application for the iphone and ipod touch that documents all existing buildings designed by OMA. The app uses GPS functionality in order to organize the projects by distance based on the userʼs current location. If you find yourself enjoying your
holidays and suddenly feel an urge to visit a Rem Koolhaas building, all you have to do is fire the app and get the distance and directions to the closest building. Aim@OMA keeps track of the projects you have visited, so in a way you can ʻcollectʼ OMA buildings by visiting them.

Q. Why are you aiming at OMA?
At INTK software, the company that developed Aim@OMA, we often collaborate with professionals of diverse disciplines, such as designers, architects, researchers, media artists, philosophers, etc. During these inter-disciplinary projects we have developed an
interest in a broader approach to software that tackles projects in their cultural and social political context. We believe that OMA (with its research counterpart AMO) is a great example of an organization that uses a inter-disciplinary approach to their projects and by doing so has pushed the boundaries of architecture. Our aim is to learn from their example. Typically software companies ask themselves questions like: “How would Steve Jobs design this software?” or “How would Microsoft develop this project?” We wonder
about what would be the outcome if software companies would ask questions like: “How would Rem Koolhaas design this software?” or “What are the social-political implications of the software we are developing?”

Q. So you aim at developing software using similar methodologies to those deployed by some architects?
Well, we believe that there is a mutual beneficial exchange still to happen between architecture and software but we have to be careful with extrapolations between these two fields. Computer science is a recent study (approximately 60 years old). There has been a continuous search for appropriate methodologies. We are convinced that computer science and specially software development can learn from architecture but it does not mean that methods used by architecture can be successfully applied on software development. Currently, software and architecture are very different specially in respect to speed. Typically, architecture projects can take several years if not decades to develop. In software, we often talk about months not years. The development of a software project cannot last decades until it is first released to the public. After a decade, the technology would have changed so radically that the project would no longer make sense. Sure, a project can last several years, but its initial release has to happen within the first months and subsequent development occurs while the software is being used, sometimes by thousands of people. Speed is one of the main characteristics that keeps software and architecture apart.
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Q. The differences between software and architecture are probably innumerable.
But what would be a fertile common ground between software and architecture? Architecture has always accompanied technological developments. This relationship has been celebrated in the media and in science fiction novels. Just think about all the plans
about smart houses or cities. However, we are not interested (yet) in intelligent buildings or science fiction scenarios. Instead, we focus on modest scenarios. Let me describe a simple but powerful example: V2_, is an international institute based in Rotterdam that
deals with electronic art. They have a space open to the public where exhibitions and conferences are organized and a website where most of their information is openly accessible. In the last years, their website has grown a central role and currently it has a
much larger audience than its physical counterpart. We are interested exactly in this relation between online and onsite, between virtual and physical. Typically, the strategy for the physical space is defined by architects and the online project is often developed by a software company. These two projects are usually born separated and the connection between the two is often inexistent. Let’s try an entertaining experiment and put side-toside some of the OMA projects and the online counterpart, as you can see bellow:

Q. Actually, the buildings appear to be technologically more advanced than the websites. What do you think about that?
There is no relation between the buildings and the websites. The aesthetic differences is the aspect that strikes you first. We believe that this can be simply solved by improving the websites. There is however a more relevant story to this comparison. How often have you visited the website of an organization or institution prior to visit their physical space? Have you noticed the difference between the online experience and the onsite experience? It is not so much that we are interested in a smooth transition between online and onsite. We are concerned with the fact that these two ʻplatformsʼ seem to be growing apart. We are interested in developing strategies that take into account both platforms. A possible strategy would be to open up communication channels between the online and the onsite ʻplatformʼ, allowing the physical space to influence the virtual space and vice versa. There has been pioneer attempts to this approach where NOX office from Lars Spuybroek is an example very close to us. The D-Tower, developed in 2004 by NOX, consists of a physical structure installed in the center of Rotterdam that changes color according to interaction that happens in a website. We think that projects like D-Tower are important but shy experiments. We are looking for something more structural. We believe that such structural changes can only happen in a close cooperation between architecture and software.

Q. Is your app Aim@OMA an example of such cooperation?
No. Aim@OMA is an attempt to get involved with architecture and more specifically with the works of OMA. We have previously developed projects that deal with public space.
One of the projects we developed, consist of a website where you could see in real time a physical space open to the public. Basically, is a website with a live stream, the difference is that online visitors can influence the physical space by uploading text, images or video directly to the walls of the physical space. The reactions of the onsite visitors can be seen online via the live stream. Again, this is another example of a shy experiment but we hope to further develop it in collaboration with architects into something more structural.
Currently, there is plenty of interest in this topic so future collaborations will lead to a deeper relationship between architecture and software.

Aim@OMA is available for download at the iTunes Store: http://itunes.apple.com/nl/app/aim-oma/id380877802?mt=8
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Via Artforum

Few individuals have so radically altered the vocabulary of architecture as REM KOOLHAAS, whose theoretical writings (Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan [1978]; S, M, L, XL [1995]) and groundbreaking structures (the IIT McCormick Tribune Campus Center in Chicago, 2003; CCTV headquarters in Beijing, 2010) largely gave form to our turn-of-the-millennium understanding of the metropolitan landscape and its cultures. As part of this nearly four-decade-long program, Koolhaas and the Office for Metropolitan Architecture have often engaged with questions of art, proposing buildings for institutions such as Tate Modern in London and the Museum of Modern Art in New York; and, in fact, much of the analysis surrounding those projects was on display at the 2005 Venice Biennale, where the architect’s installation Expansion—Neglect presented vast amounts of information about the changing demands for contemporary art under the sign of globalization. Today, Koolhaas is immersed in his Hermitage 2014 Masterplan, a comprehensive reconsideration of the encyclopedic Saint Petersburg museum’s structure and function, slated for completion on the institution’s 250th anniversary. Artforum editor Tim Griffin sat down with Koolhaas this spring to discuss the architect’s plans for the site in light of his previous research.

Here A Part of the Interview:
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TIM GRIFFIN: What’s been your relationship to the idea of the museum, and how do you see the status of the museum today?

REM KOOLHAAS: Well, I’m in the position of someone who, through competitions, has thought a lot about museums but has built relatively few. Through the late 1990s, museums started to expand in direct proportion to the rise of the stock market, and during this period we realized at a certain point that we had designed more than thirty-four soccer fields’ worth of museum space. The Hermitage, I should note, is an important counterpoint to both this trend and our participation in it, but collectively all this work enabled me to document the nature of the new, enlarged museum and its relationship to the art displayed in it.

Tate Modern—specifically, the Turbine Hall—is perhaps the ultimate example. I remember so well [Tate director] Nicholas Serota warning us architects at the beginning of the competition for it that, although he didn’t necessarily share this opinion (as he carefully pointed out), the “artists” did not care for strong forms and felt that former industrial space was more sympathetic to their work. Such space appealed to artists, one might suppose, for the reason that they could finally feel alone and triumphant in their own world, without interference.

But I think it has actually become a fantastically fascinating trap, this oversize incubator, in which nobody has ever said, “OK, I’m not going to be intimidated. I’ll just do a show there.” Rather, everyone has reached for the big statement. And if you look at these statements, they all seem to bear an apocalyptic message—Miroslaw Balka’s box of darkness, Doris Salcedo’s sinister crack, Carsten Höller’s existential leaps, Bruce Nauman’s alienated whispers, Anish Kapoor’s overstretched foreskin, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster’s postdisaster camp, and so on. From the cumulative Unilever Series, you would think the end is nigh—and maybe in a certain way it is. You really begin to wonder why the space is so susceptible to these apocalyptic kinds of projects, and I have a feeling that, like radioactive matter, there might be a half-life for the relevance of certain types of space and the art they promote. So here, the equating of industrial space, with its inherent nostalgia, with the contemporary sublime of Minimalism may be nearing exhaustion. Maybe we’re witnessing a moment where these massive nonspaces, once backed by Wall Street’s steep ascent, are actually reaching their ultimate impotence, sustaining and containing only the announcement of the end—a moment, interestingly, where it perhaps becomes relevant again for space to push back, to be more confrontational, more oppositional, more heretical, and more editorial.

TG: I have found it impossible not to think along these lines when looking at shows such as Marina Abramović’s recent retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York—where there’s a different public aspect to her work, because the terms are so radically changed by the space. In her ongoing performance there, to what extent is she actually in the same space as yours? Is it really a performance, or is it a representation? That setting for The Artist Is Present [2010] is so incredible, because it’s staged—I mean, it takes place on a set. There are cameras everywhere, and she doesn’t account for the effects of that.

RK: This is exactly my point: It’s not a stage but an atrium. The museum is so big that its spatial conditions don’t allow intimacy; they’ve become just too monumental.

I saw an early performance of her Imponderabilia at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam in 1977, and, unlike now, where basically the experience is of having to choose between turning your back to a man or to a woman, what was gripping in that original performance, which of course she did with Ulay, was that not only did you feel you were invading private space—and were forced to be brutal about it—but you also felt you were interrupting a relationship, literally standing between two lovers. It was a perfect thing, in a perfect space. The Stedelijk Museum was this nineteenth-century classical building that had been completely whitewashed by [Willem] Sandberg [director of the Stedelijk Museum, 1945–63]. Its walls had a thickness that allowed the performance to exist entirely within the threshold, and they were covered in whitewashed burlap, whose roughness stood in total contrast to the artists’ naked skin. It was a combination you would never achieve today: the advantages of classicism, symmetry, monumentality, etc., with the advantages of “white space” and experiment.

In 2000, I was enlisted in Thomas Krens’s effort to create a fifth Guggenheim, in Las Vegas—the project that initiated our relationship with the Hermitage. He proposed inserting a large Guggenheim into the complex footprint of the Venetian resort, between the parking garage and the hotel, and, as part of the Venetian’s facade, a smaller entity dedicated to the Hermitage. I was aware I could not compete with Frank Gehry in terms of the spectacular, so I resurrected a model of the museum that had been imprinted on me by the experimental shows at the Stedelijk: the museum not as a holy place but as an accessible factory of the new. We produced a big, factory-like, almost theater-like space for the Guggenheim, and a more jewel-like condition for the Hermitage. We imagined a museum without form, but a museum that was able to perform…..

Read the rest of the Interview here
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Via 0300TV

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“Composed of two planes which fold to accommodate a range of distinct programs, including an outdoor plaza, two lecture halls, cafeteria and a testing facility. Planes interlock to create a single trajectory in which the entire university experience – socialization, learning, examination – is encapsulated…..” OMA
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Trailer Video by 0300 TV:

Trailer / OMA / Educatorium from 0300TV on Vimeo.

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VIA OMA

OMA partner Reinier der Graaf presents OMA’s masterplan for White City, and discusses creativity in London generally at the Creative London conference, 21 June at the BBC’s White City Conference Centre.

Video Part I:

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Video Part II:

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0300 TV released the trailer of Winy Maas Interview.

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The New Yooxer

The New Yooxer meets Zaha Hadid in Rome, during the opening of Maxxi, the National Museum of Arts from the 21st Century. After ten years of expectations, art and architecture creatively blend into each other in this experimental area, fluid and light.
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Check the exclusive interview on The New Yooxer
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Ellen Dunham-Jones takes you through retrofitted suburbia, transforming dead malls into buzzing downtown centers.

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About TedxAtlanta:
“In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self- organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x=independently organized TED event. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized.”
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0300 TV

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0300 TV released the trailer of The Why Factory by MVRDV.

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Total project area: 55,000-square feet
Site area: 61 acres
Location: Las Vegas – United States

Architects: Gehry Partners, LLP
Partner in charge: Frank O.Gehry
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Via Studio Banana

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Studio Banana TV interviews architects Cristina Díaz Moreno and Efrén García Grinda AMID (cero9), a prominent young duo of Spanish architects. They are teachers of Architecture at ETSAM, Escuela Superior de Arquitectura -UEM in Madrid since 1998 and also Diploma Unit 5 Masters at the Architectural Association School of Architecture, London. Their office AMID (cero9) was established in 1997 as cero9 and change into AMID in 2003.
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“Their projects and writing have been collected in books as “from cero9 to AMID” or “Breathable”. They are regular contributors to El Croquis and their works and articles have been extensively published in many books, magazines, catalogues and specialized publications.

They have won more than thirty prizes in national and international competitions. Amongst their award-winning projects are the competition for Jerte Valley, 2008; Giner de los Ríos Foundations Headquarters in Madrid, 2005; Intermediae-Prado Art Center in Madrid, 2006, Made-Endesa Offices in Medina del Campo, 2002 or Europan 6 Housing in Jyväskylá, Finland, 2001.

AMID (cero9) has also been published and exhibited widely and compiled for presentation at monographic exhibitions organised by the Spanish Public Works Ministry in 1999 and the Modern Memory exhibition in Budapest, 2003. They have been guest teachers and lecturers at many universities and institutes, both in Spain and in the international arena.”

Interview realised with the sponsorship of the European University of Madrid.

Interview and translation by Studio Banana TV.
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