Design:  3XN architects

No waste
The Green Solution House conference center on the Danish island of Bornholm is designed and developed in accordance with the principles of Cradle 2 Cradle®. This means that all materials used in the building are either fully recyclable or biodegradable. Hence, the building design takes on the ambition to eliminate the concept of waste.

The project is managed by Kasper Guldager Jørgensen, head of 3XN’s innovation unit, GXN: In Denmark, the construction industry alone is responsible for 30% of all waste generated. Waste that puts an enormous burden on the environment, but with Green Solution House we demonstrate that this is a problem, which we can actually solve.

Eliminating waste means that everything must be part of a circulation. Thus, the building is designed for disassembly and constructed of defined recyclable materials. Solar energy produces the energy consumed in the building, rain water is collected and water used is biologically cleaned and reused. Integrated green houses produce organic fruits and vegetables for the hotel restaurant. Further, the daily material flows from running the center is either recycled or composted.

High ambitions
For Kasper Guldager Jørgensen it is part of his everyday work to investigate how fungus can be used as isolation material or how algae can be used in solar screening. This is why he is excited that the Green Solution house is a building in continuous development. It will be a dynamic building, a showroom that we will keep enhancing in order to demonstrate the most cutting edge solutions within sustainable building, and it will give the guests an inspirational and unusual experience.

The Island of Bornholm is already a popular travel destination and surveys made among professional conference organizers show that the Green Solution House will attract even more visitors to the small scenic island. Bornholm has a clear vision to become one of the most ambitious European communities within sustainable living and the Green Solution House is a core element of this vision.

Architects: Studio Ricatti – Pierpaolo Ricatti
Location: Breganze, Italy
Collaborators: Marco Chilese (Project Manager), Laura Canazza, Giulia Gallo, Anna Griggio, Paolo Omodei Salè, Diego Rossi, Marco Saterini
Engineering: Jacobs Italia SpA
Project area: 87,000 sqm
Photographs: Daniele Domenicali, Aerodata (aerial views)

The new Diesel Headquarters is located in an area previously occupied by a mechanical industrial plant. The project can be defined a low-rise hybrid building which keeps together different functional programs: offices, warehouses, exhibition spaces, an auditorium, a kindergarten, a canteen, a fitness center in addition to covered parking car and technological plants.
The result is a small creative town whose community shares working spaces but also common ones, those where emerge the effective sense of working together and sharing different skills.
This led us to conceive the intervention as a real urban project, crossed by streets and articulated into several squares: the result is a state of exceptional functional density within the scattered sprawl that characterizes the entire region.

This makes it immediately recognizable without using any formal complication. For this reason we wanted to create nor a landmark neither an icon-building. We have been working, instead, on the concept of  “locus” in order to make clear the role of this island into a regional scale, into the larger metropolitan archipelago.

Architects: Tomas Garcia Piriz (CUAC.arquitectura), Jose Luis Muñoz Muñoz
Location: Loja, Spain
Completion: January 2011
Colaborators: Alvaro Castellano Pulido, architectural student; Ana Delgado, architectural student; Marta Reguera Gútiez, architectural student; Daniel Usero Guerrero, architectural student; Luis Miguel Ruizaviles, architect; Fernando Alvarez DeCienfuegos Montes, Graphic Designer
Promotor: Ayuntamiento da Loja
Constructor: Construccions Mellado Romero S.L
Cost: 425.297,73 €
Built Surface: 430,40 sqm
Photographs: Javier Callejas Sevilla

“Architecture and landscape joined together in the shade of a great pre-existing tree”.
The building is located on the outskirts of Loja town in marked agricultural character. This project relates to a beautiful plot of cultivated land served by an irrigation ditch and a leafy mass. This building is thought to be very suitable for a new program based on consciousness, protection and publicity of the agricultural beliefs in Loja.

The Bio Diversity Centre is involved in cultivation. It has an education program for farmers, high schools and investigators. In the main office area there is a zone for the treatment of seeds which are characteristic of the area. The project aims to minimize its presence by becoming as natural to its surroundings as possible by opening out and absorbing an open patio of the ancient house from where you will find the pre-existing tree.

The old ruin generates the traces of the new project, redrawing the past in the shade of the tree. The location of the building also appreciates the presence of the arboreal mass along the river and the main façades. The strong conditions for topology, the encounter of the main slopes (up to 5m) will be solved by the building, performing similar to a hinge between the three different platforms of the terrain. The main access to be cultivated area and buildings is compromised due to having only one access point.

AR Innovators – Renzo Piano from The Architectural Review on Vimeo.

Video: Renzo Piano is the subject of this month’s Innovators interview from the top of The Shard in London, produced in partnership with Hunter Douglas

Rob Gregory Thank you for giving us some time here on the 14^thfloor of the Shard in London, for our latest Innovators interview. Before we talk about innovation in more detail, I wonder if you could talk about what architecture means to you generally. We have spoken before and we discussed the idea of it being the noble act of building, and the responsibility that comes with that…

Renzo Piano Architecture is a dangerous discipline because if you are wrong, you are wrong for a long time. If someone writes a bad book, you don’t read it, but architecture is more lasting and profound. This is the reason why, in the case of the Shard, I thought it was right to go through a complicated process of approval and public enquiries. It made me as a designer more sure of what I was doing, adding value to the building in terms of the public realm, in terms of sustainability, in terms of all the possible criticisms. And this debate is only useful when it is irritating. It doesn’t work when it is polite. It only works when people apply pressure, and that is what we did here. It is true for any kind of project, even small, because it is about relationships. You build relationships. You build things that have a long life, so you have to be absolutely sure that what you do is correct, otherwise it is wrong for a long time.

RG You have talked about buildings having good stories and bad stories in the past, mentioning your experience with the Pompidou with some bad stories that emerged at that time.

RP There is always a good story and a bad story. When we designed the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the bad story going around was that the building was going to kill culture in France because it was siphoning all the energy and money from the government in the centre of Paris to make a monument to culture. The true story was that the building actually changed the relationship between a cultural building and the public. It became a place for people and began to show that culture could be non-intimidating and can actually switch on curiosity in people. Accessibility to culture was and still is very important.

RG So what were the bad stories and the good stories in relation to the Shard?

RP The good story is that Ken Livingstone (then Mayor of London) wanted to intensify life in Southwark without increasing traffic. He wanted to show that you can make a big building without car parks, which is what we have done here with only 48 car spaces. And he wanted to create a building that will become public, because you mix functions.

This building is like a little vertical city. You go from transportation on the ground floor, then some commercial activity, but not too much. Then you have offices. Then restaurants and public spaces. Then you have hotels. Then you have living spaces. Then you have the viewing gallery. And this makes the building accessible, to be used and loved by the city. The good story is to show that cities may be intensified in a sustainable way, not by building out in the green belt, not by explosion, but by implosion, by building on brownfield sites, by intensifying the use of land. So this fundamental to the issue that cities should grow, but only in a sustainable way and not by creating a new periphery. The good story is also that you can make buildings that create a dense mix of life, 24 hours a day. This is why many towers are not loved, because they are mysterious and selfish, because they close down at 6pm and are completely separated from the city. It’s about intensifying cities.

If you look at the bad story, of course you can see this as a gigantic building. You can see it as the outcome of power and money. But in terms of what is going to last? I think what is going to last here is proof that you can make an interesting building that is an intense place of exchange, that also doesn’t dominate the skyline in an aggressive or arrogant way. Because the Shard will have a light, sharp, crystalline presence, like a spire. It will play with the humour of the weather, reflecting the sky, changing over time.

RG And as a type of city, does the building have a special place for you? Is there one place within the building that will be particularly special?

RP I think the great quality of this building is its luminosity. Before I was talking about the views from outside, reflecting the sky, but it is also luminous from inside. Natural light penetrates right into the interior because of the glazing system.  If you ask me where the most spatially interesting place will be, I think of course the public viewing gallery. You will be able to go up and become part of the building. Buildings are loved if they are accessible. Buildings are not loved if they are selfish and cut off from life. We think we will have something like one million visitors per year. London is an interesting city when seen from above; you see how organic it is. It is the mirror of millions of lives.

RG In the past you have said in relation to innovation you love the word impossible – when a client says ‘that’s impossible’ to you, it’s a challenge you grasp. I wonder if there were any impossible moments in relation to this building?

RP The word impossible is the one you can hear all the time. Usually people use it as technical blackmail, to say that something is impossible. But the game is not to make things that are impossible, possible. But to make things that are possible, but difficult. The point is not just to do new things. But to do new things that make sense. And sometimes you have to break the rules. In this building I think energy saving is part of that. Apparently the first reaction is that a tall or big building is the opposite of sustainable, because it is big and consumes a lot of energy. Yes – but it also creates a lot of space. So this is one point.

Another point is functional, to prove that you can make a vertical city where there is life 24 hours a day and you can reach by public transport. The greatness of city depends on this. So multifaceted, so complex, so rich, so kaleidoscopic –  that was a challenge. The other challenge is more poetic, about expression. Making a tall building like this in a city like London is not a joke. It is a very important responsibility. When you are at ground level on St Thomas Street, the building is almost invisible, which is poetic. I heard the word ‘impossible’ mentioned in relation to this building in many different languages and applied to many different things; technological, constructional and social. But this is what challenged me.

RG There was an exhibition in 1969 at the Architectural Association that you presented called Architectural Experiments, and Monica Pigeon made the observation that your work was often to do with lots of little pieces. She called her review Piece by Piece, and she said that one day perhaps your architecture would see those things coming together. Your buildings do seem to be less now about single components and I wonder if you could talk about how that may have shifted over the years.

RP Monica Pigeon was so seminal in this city for a long time. And she made a good remark – it is true. I always built architecture piece by piece. But of course the logic was a bit oversimplified. But it is true that I started a bit like a builder. I was a builder and my job was to make good buildings for human beings. And you do this piece by piece because you try to break down the building into pieces so that you can take the piece and design and manipulate it and then put the pieces together. When you grow up you start to understand that architecture is not only about construction but also about society about people, culture and community. So you start complicating things and you still make it piece by piece, because this is the way you build up your experience and then of course you also understand – probably you always understood in some way – that architecture is about a sense of lightness, about expression, language and poetry.

This building is made by pieces, with the most important being the window. The piece disappears into the organism. In the beginning it was an oversimplification, which I enjoyed. Now of course I understand that architecture is more complicated, in relation to overall shape, presence in the sky and relationship with the city, where context become important. But still, I love the idea of breaking the building into pieces. Because if you make pieces and the pieces make the building, that piece you can test, mock up, make a model, a prototype. Architecture is dangerous because if you are wrong, you don’t realise you are wrong until it is done. So by breaking down the building into pieces you can take the piece and study it, like industrial design, to produce a little masterpiece of precision. You test the piece, you design and you build the piece, then your imagination can go from the piece to the whole.

RG So has there been an incremental increase in confidence, to not rely on the assembly of pieces for the language, but deriving a unified language in itself?

RP The problem with architecture is that you learn over a long time. You have to learn how to play with all those different angles to attack architecture, as a builder, as a poet, as a militant. An architect should live for a long time, because for the first 50 or 60 years you have to learn. It’s not true that you start like a builder and end like a poet; you mix all those things together all of the time. So it’s about complexity, it’s about not being happy with just one result, but by continuing to search.

RG Perhaps we can finish by discussing the two different facades you have made in London and maybe your attitude to colour and your attitude to sustainability. Central St Giles recalls the colour and the flamboyance of the Pompidou Centre. This building is far quieter, but perhaps has a more technical facade?

RP They are completely different, because St Giles for me is in the middle of an old part of the city with a complicated shape. I always thought that London is full of colour, even though some people love to say that London is grey. The Shard is different because the context is the sky. Somebody asked how this building can be sustainable? It is sustainable, because the glass is a double skin, with single glazing outside, double glazing inside and a blind in between, so solar radiation penetration is minimal, because when the sun shows up, the blinds come down. Also, light comes deep into the building, saving on artificial lighting and air conditioning. That is why the building is so efficient, as we invested a lot in the skin. And this is what I call modernity, the idea of putting emerging technology into the design in such a way that you can perform a miracle. We put in almost two years of designing, re-designing, testing, making prototypes.

Of course, beyond this there is a pragmatic concern about the consumption of energy, as well as a poetic concern about how the building is in dialogue with the city. But the two things come together. So in some way I like the idea that you accept that logic and you understand that the earth is fragile and that you have to save energy, but in poetic terms, you actually celebrate this fragility by making buildings that add a sense of lightness and a sense of belonging to the natural environment.  -   www.architectural-review.com

The project consists of five pieces of architecture lying in a forest that is extremely rich and active from a biological perspective. After visiting the site we concluded that the best strategy is to occupy the forest without exceeding the height of the trees, turning the architecture into another species that respects, protects and shows the value of the forest. It creates a new and balanced system where the building and the trees share both rights and obligations.

It can be deduced from the programme that two of these assemblies (offices and cafeteria) and the parking facilities, are large enough to require a committed and sensible strategy of implantation if we want to build them without altering the conditions in the host ecosystem thus creating an architecture that establishes a symbiotic relationship with its microclimate and density. To reach our principle, we refuse to clear away large areas to create unnatural glades that break the continuity of the natural cycles, and we propose linear buildings with an optimum and constant width that occupy corridors from which only the minimum amount of trees have been removed, ensuring that the outer walls of the buildings are as close as possible to the rest of the trees. The density of the original forest will be present and the architecture will appear to be filtered by the foliage.

This tower, the tallest on the Anatolian side of Istanbul, makes a memorable presence for the headquarters of a dynamic construction and development company. Occupying an “edge-city” context at the intersection of two major highways, the tower is completely freestanding and seen in the round. Functioning like an obelisk, it marks the end of long vistas and announces the entrance to the city from the east.

This tower marries sculptural massing rooted in locale, a solar responsive skin with allusions to Islamic tradition, and the incorporation of green spaces throughout. Rooted in the particular spirit of Istanbul, it offers an antidote to the universal application of conventions that has regrettably become the norm for many international practices.

Architects: Ventura Trindade Architects
Location: Jurmala, Latvia
Team: João Maria Ventura Trindade, Marcelo Moreira e Silva, João de Melo Veiga, Filipe Tuna Araújo, Filipe Carvalho, Filipe Ribeiro Nunes, Nuno Marcos
Structure: PRPC Engineers, ltd./ João Paulo Silva Cardoso
Plot Area: 15.000 m2
Gross Area: 9.500 m2
Number of Rooms: 120 (1ªphase) + 50(2ªphase)
Number of Floors: 10
Room Types: 18 family rooms, 84 standart rooms, 12 business rooms, 6 junior suites, 1 presidential suite
Hotel Spaces: reception, lobby, lobby bar, interior swimming pool, spa and sauna, exterior solarium, gym, restaurant 300 places, exterior bar, conference center, events plaza, parking, service areas, gardens

Solid Objectives – Idenburg Liu (SO – IL), the New York-based firm of Florian Idenburg and Jing Liu, won the second prize in an invited competition for the new Province Hall of Antwerp, Belgium. SO – IL was one of five finalists for this important governmental project organized by the Flemish Government Architect. Their proposal reshapes the modernist typology of ‘tower on plinth’ into a supple building volume that combines autonomy with connectivity. More images and project description after the break.

The new Province Hall will house the headquarters and administrative bodies of the Antwerp provincial government. The complex is located along the Queen Elisabeth Lei, within a nineteenth century residential area between the historic city center and the ring road of Antwerp. While the tower creates a strong figure as it gently rises up till 50 meters in the center of the city block, the meandering plinth firmly embeds the building within the urban morphology and defines specific realms – both interior and exterior.

The 16 meter wide tower houses the provincial departments whereas the 9-meter high, double-story, plinth contains two large auditoriums, lobby and exhibition spaces, a restaurant, a library and logistic areas. The building contains 37000 m2 and would cost around 65 million euro. The super structure is envisioned in concrete with an expressive façade of travertine and glass. The building adheres to strict environmental requirements, as prescribed by the brief.

Architects: Tabanlıoğlu Mimarlık / Melkan Gürsel & Murat Tabanlıoğlu
Location: Ankara, Turkey
Project Team: Murat Cengiz , Çağrı Akay, Ozan Öztepe, Ali Eray
Interior Design: Tabanlıoğlu Architects
Client: Ortadoğu Otomotiv ve Tic.A.Ş
Structural Engineering: Altıneller
Mechanical Engineering: Elmak
Electrical Engineering: Öneren Proje Mühendislik
Facade: Emmer Pfenninger Partner AG
Architectural Lighting: Studio Dinnebier
Main Contractor: D – Yapı / Ataman İnşaat
Landscape Consultant: Esin Kılınç
Site Area: 4,299 sqm
Construction Area: 11,475 sqm
Project Year: 2006–2007
Construction Year: 2007–2008
Photographs: Thomas Mayer, Cemal Emden

On Ankara-Eskişehir road, Doğan Medya Center is a distinctive media figure in the Capital city, housing Ankara studios of Dogan Media Group and its newspapers’ regional editorial offices, creating the basis of interaction between the brands of the group and providing a common source. Conceptually, the Doğan Media Centre is a simple glazed cube in response to an orthogonal site.

Configured within a basic planning module of a 4m x 4m x 4m cube and a structural module of 8m x 8m x 8m, the purist form has subsequently been remodeled, with the extrusion and attachment of smaller cubes, and simultaneously eroded by the subtraction of other cubic volumes. The building is consequently perceived as a sculptural grouping of related boxes of the same genus but with a variety of sizes, starting on the surface. The concrete structure reaches up to 7 stories by feasible use of galleries so that extra operative space created by mezzanines, whereas the standard is 4-4 ½ floors. The story height is 4 meters, every two floors a cube is formed; the modular structure provides a flexible basis for planning. Intermediate floors are supported on secondary steel columns and beams.

The building is perceived from afar and in diverse prospects at various angles, due to perforated shield resembling Braille alphabet at range of sizes, symbolizing “communications for all”. The metal panels filter the sunlight entering the building into shifting patterns of dappled shade. The panels’ perforations are echoed in the suspended ceilings, where circular cut outs house connections for camera equipment and lighting.

The emblematic use of façade creates a visually legible dynamic ambiance with reference to today’s fast moving and assertive image of the media. In accordance with topographic directions, the modules on the entrance elevation are slightly angled to enhance the dynamic appearance. The finishes in the interior draw on the same muted palette of calming colours that is applied to the exterior: dark grey, black and shades of brown.

The projecting boxes are each dedicated to a specific TV channel or newspaper so that the various units within the Doğan conglomerate can be readily identified from afar. Intermediate floors are supported on secondary steel columns and beams. There is a layering of views through the building, both horizontally, across the open-plan offices and out into the city, and vertically, in the way the different levels open onto the internal atrium. The floors are framed by parapet walls topped with glazing. Here, the transparency is complete. The parapets consist of frameless glass supported by a stainless steel handrail; above the rail, there is only air.

Separate sections like studios and offices of press people preserve their exclusivity and each segment is accentuated in the integral form of the re-assembled blocks of cube. The assemblage of smaller cubes within the structure of the large box can be read as a metaphor for the diversity of the company’s operations and a high degree of transparency serve to reinforce the separate brand images.

The top of the building contains a VIP lounge and terrace with teak decking. The floors below are segregated according to their specialty – newspaper or TV – but everyone comes together in the canteen in the ground-floor atrium. There is an open car park in a L-form parallel to the building besides two underground levels reserved for parking. The first basement is saved for technical facilities and storage requirements are solved in basement floors. The first basement level contains large studios as well as support facilities such as a hairdresser and make-up rooms. The two floors below contain M & E equipment and parking, along with cisterns that allow the landscaped gardens to be irrigated with greywater. Technological facilities and healthy infrastructure makes the building user-friendly and provides easy maintenance.

DMC Ankara is a genuine building in terms of transparency; strong in-out correlation enables a well-defined description before getting in the building; and on the other hand, transparency provides the panoramic views of the city for all offices. Composed harmoniously with the environment; it is open to the cityscape. There is a strong relationship between the interior of the building and the public realm.

Project: LILLE Office Building
Program: Construction of an office building and retails
Location: Euralille, Block 4.1-A, Lille, France
Date: 2010
Client: Sogeprom / Projectim
Size: 3,475 m²
Cost: € 6M excl. VAT
Timetable: 2010–13
3D Rendering: IDA+
Team: LAN Architecture
HEQ Consultant: Act Environnement
All-Trades Engineers: IOSIS

The plot’s strategic position, at a major crossroads in an urban district, directed us towards a “multiform” architecture whose geometry could provide a specific response to problems linked to the project’s scale, geography and demands.

We realised that the building’s location enables it to articulate different urban scales, both near and far. Its verticality can act as a visual axis and marker, whilst finding a just and respectful relationship with its immediate context.

The purpose of this architecture is to construct a new urban space combining the private and public, the vertical and horizontal. The building’s envelope is conceived as an apparatus for the city’s constant visual reinvention.

The windows break with the modularity of office buildings, creating a more domestic image and ensuring the transition between a residential and a business district. The result is a kinetic architecture constantly changing with different viewpoints.

To increase this visual richness, the design of each façade was generated by its orientation, use and thermal considerations. This creates successions and superimpositions of glazed areas, windows on the city, and different, fixed or mobile systems of wooden cladding, enabling constant change in function of the building’s daily life.

Materiality of the facades: networks and wood

The design of the facades and the building’s interior spaces is structured by a 1.35 metre grid composed of a U-shaped metallic element running the entire height of the building, to which the envelope’s various components are fixed.

This vertical grid is interrupted three times by horizontal wooden bands, running around the building and ending at the acroter.

Secondary horizontal and vertical grids regulate the design of the fixed or mobile wooden elements.

We chose red wood for the cladding of the facades, using it in different configurations depending on their purpose, and alternating this with larges windows looking out over the city. Wood is used as a fixed cladding in the opaque or semi-glazed parts of the façade, but also, depending on the orientation, in the form of pivoting openwork shutters, enabling precise control of light penetration. But is also used as a fixed sunscreen.

The project’s conception provides residents and office users with a public space based on horizontality, circulation and social interaction on a human scale. Unable to build right to the plot’s limits, we opted for a form of portico, a walkway providing shelter from the weather, a lively exterior space in which passers-by and shop customers can intermingle.