Zeitschrift
A10
new European architecture #16
Optimism
Like many things in this world, architecture magazines tend to fall into one of two categories. Most of them deliver good news. They feature outstanding architecture and draw attention to interesting new developments. A small minority of magazines focus on bad news, berating the profession, and the purveyors of good news, with everything that is amiss. The first category reports what is happening, the second finds fault with what is happening and occasionally indicates how it could be done better. However useful the latter may be, A10 belongs resolutely to the first category. And not simply for the sake of disseminating good news. This magazine springs from the hopeful and consoling notion that architecture is a sign of optimism. Shelter is a basic human need and architecture is but a refined version of that elemental form of protection something that not everyone and not every society can afford. Europe enjoys a privileged position in this respect given that so many of the four hundred million inhabitants of this continent can permit themselves the luxury of architecture, or are at any rate not excluded from it. They can experience it, if not as owners, then as users of buildings and the urban space.
The construction of a building demonstrates faith in the future, if only because of the willingness to invest durably in the future that is manifested in such an act. A well-designed and well-maintained built environment in short, architecture is moreover a sign of a society’s worth. Those who can afford it, owe it to their position to serve the collective interest, and although architecture is often intended for the greater honour and glory and for the pleasure of the individual who commissions it, in the best cases it is also, and above all, a social act. Generally speaking, architecture serves a
collective interest.
In many European countries there is fertile ground for such architecture. And in many European countries this kind of architecture does indeed flourish. Two major determining factors in the emergence of such architecture are the level of prosperity and the degree of openness of the society concerned.
In most European countries the level of prosperity is good or at least improving, notwithstanding numerous pockets of poverty, including in generally wealthy countries like the United Kingdom.
But openness is another matter, even in the democratically governed European Union. Which makes it all the more remarkable that even in countries where the current political climate is bleak, where corruption, xenophobia, discrimination and narrow-minded nationalism hold sway, that even in places where the guarantee of shelter does not extend to all citizens, the optimism of architecture lives on.
On the spot
News and observations
• The opposite of the typical white beach lounge: Thomas Heatherwick’s East Beach Cafe in Littlehampton (UK) is a rough and rusty steel shell
• Zaha Hadid’s design for Eleftheria square in Nicosia (CY) is cause for a political debate
• Book review: „Superuse“, on constructing new architecture by shortcutting material flows
• 14 new bar-pavilions by T2a in a former harbour area by the Danube river in Budapest (HU)
• Before & after: The Dutch embassy in Rome (IT) by Cepezed
• Reality check: VS architects’ „Nice Living“ housing scheme in Bratislava (SK)
• and more...
Start
New projects
• ALA’s remarkable „strange birds“ in Helsinki (FI) provide a challenge for Finnish contractloon professionals
• Christian Kerez has won the competition for the new Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw (PL)
• Urbanoffice and Bauart create space for dialogue with their Haus der Religionen in Bern (CH)
• Mehmet Kutukcuoglu and Ertug Ucar solve the spatial needs of Istanbul Maritime museum in Istanbul (TR) in a clever and pragmatic way
• As-if and raumzeit have designed a swimming pool in Montafon (AT) that looks like an artifical landscape
• A futuristic info tower by Kusus & Kusus will hopefully inspire similar plans elsewhere around Berlin’s Schonefeld airport (DE)
Interview
Manuelle Gautrand
Manuelle Gautrand does not believe there is such a thing as a feminine architecture. „I have been interviewed more as a woman than about my architecture. By now, I’d like to be seen not as a woman but as an architect“
Ready
New buildings
• Through their poetic pragmatism 3LHD have managed to insert a large building into the sensitive context of pitcturesque Bale (HR)
• Reinhard Angelis extended an old warehouse for the new Plagiarius museum in Solingen (DE), which is dedicated to copies, fakes and other froms of product piracy
• dRMM show the way in the English programme for „Building Schools for the Future“ with their renovation and extension to Kingsdale School in London (UK)
• Although LGLS’s canteen is the smallest building on the University Campus of Coimbra (PT), it has great social significance
• Emlépont, a museum about the communist past in Hódmezovásárhely (HU) got a futuristic building designed by Attila F. Kovacs
• JKMM has given Turku (FI) yet another architectural work it can be proud of
• Alver Trummal Architects’ 4 Ravala Avenue expresses Tallinn’s desire to build a new city (EE)
• Carl-Viggo Holmebakk designer a simple and clear entrance building for the estate of Sigrid Undset in Lillehammer (NO)
• Ulrike Mayer and Urs Hüssy made a 200-year-old house and barn in Schellenberg (Liechtenstein) look brand new
• NEO_arhitekti’s answer to a very constrained context for a commercial building in Uzice (CS) was to expand inwards
• The Tetris school in Genolier (CH) by IPAS looks like a playful fortress
• In Waidhofen/Ybbs (AT), a small medieval town, Hertl.Architekten cause a sensation with a modern rooftop superstructure
• Jasinski Kruszewski Architects have found an elegant solution for a brewery theme park in the town of Warka (PL)
Section
Metal
As from the Bronze and Iron age, metals have played a fundamental role in the development of human civilization. Nowadays, thanks to the diversity of available metals, the ever-growing number of alloys and new processing techniques, metals offer architects virtually unlimited design freedom
Materia
The Internet has opened up a new world for many people, not least architects.
Innovations in industries that were formerly a closed book to most architects, are suddenly accessible, thanks to the Internet. More than ever before, techniques and materials derived from, among others, aviation, shipping, mould-making, the medical and technical textile industries, can be transposed to architecture
Eurovision
Focusing on European countries, cities and regions
• Germany’s reconstruction debate comes to a head: Frankfurt’s Old Town is to be rebuilt
• A tour Antwerp and Brussels’ „Beacons of Renaissance“ (BE)
• Profile: Philippe Rahm’s experimental buildings illustrate his idea that „architecture follows climate“ (CH)
• Home: Pieter Weijnen’s blue house in IJburg, Amsterdam (NL)
Out of obscurity
Buildings from the margins of modern history
Jean-Philippe Hugron goes back to the Front de Seine in Paris (FR), which started as a modernist project, but became infiltrated with postmodernism in the form of the Totem tower
Like many things in this world, architecture magazines tend to fall into one of two categories. Most of them deliver good news. They feature outstanding architecture and draw attention to interesting new developments. A small minority of magazines focus on bad news, berating the profession, and the purveyors of good news, with everything that is amiss. The first category reports what is happening, the second finds fault with what is happening and occasionally indicates how it could be done better. However useful the latter may be, A10 belongs resolutely to the first category. And not simply for the sake of disseminating good news. This magazine springs from the hopeful and consoling notion that architecture is a sign of optimism. Shelter is a basic human need and architecture is but a refined version of that elemental form of protection something that not everyone and not every society can afford. Europe enjoys a privileged position in this respect given that so many of the four hundred million inhabitants of this continent can permit themselves the luxury of architecture, or are at any rate not excluded from it. They can experience it, if not as owners, then as users of buildings and the urban space.
The construction of a building demonstrates faith in the future, if only because of the willingness to invest durably in the future that is manifested in such an act. A well-designed and well-maintained built environment in short, architecture is moreover a sign of a society’s worth. Those who can afford it, owe it to their position to serve the collective interest, and although architecture is often intended for the greater honour and glory and for the pleasure of the individual who commissions it, in the best cases it is also, and above all, a social act. Generally speaking, architecture serves a
collective interest.
In many European countries there is fertile ground for such architecture. And in many European countries this kind of architecture does indeed flourish. Two major determining factors in the emergence of such architecture are the level of prosperity and the degree of openness of the society concerned.
In most European countries the level of prosperity is good or at least improving, notwithstanding numerous pockets of poverty, including in generally wealthy countries like the United Kingdom.
But openness is another matter, even in the democratically governed European Union. Which makes it all the more remarkable that even in countries where the current political climate is bleak, where corruption, xenophobia, discrimination and narrow-minded nationalism hold sway, that even in places where the guarantee of shelter does not extend to all citizens, the optimism of architecture lives on.
On the spot
News and observations
• The opposite of the typical white beach lounge: Thomas Heatherwick’s East Beach Cafe in Littlehampton (UK) is a rough and rusty steel shell
• Zaha Hadid’s design for Eleftheria square in Nicosia (CY) is cause for a political debate
• Book review: „Superuse“, on constructing new architecture by shortcutting material flows
• 14 new bar-pavilions by T2a in a former harbour area by the Danube river in Budapest (HU)
• Before & after: The Dutch embassy in Rome (IT) by Cepezed
• Reality check: VS architects’ „Nice Living“ housing scheme in Bratislava (SK)
• and more...
Start
New projects
• ALA’s remarkable „strange birds“ in Helsinki (FI) provide a challenge for Finnish contractloon professionals
• Christian Kerez has won the competition for the new Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw (PL)
• Urbanoffice and Bauart create space for dialogue with their Haus der Religionen in Bern (CH)
• Mehmet Kutukcuoglu and Ertug Ucar solve the spatial needs of Istanbul Maritime museum in Istanbul (TR) in a clever and pragmatic way
• As-if and raumzeit have designed a swimming pool in Montafon (AT) that looks like an artifical landscape
• A futuristic info tower by Kusus & Kusus will hopefully inspire similar plans elsewhere around Berlin’s Schonefeld airport (DE)
Interview
Manuelle Gautrand
Manuelle Gautrand does not believe there is such a thing as a feminine architecture. „I have been interviewed more as a woman than about my architecture. By now, I’d like to be seen not as a woman but as an architect“
Ready
New buildings
• Through their poetic pragmatism 3LHD have managed to insert a large building into the sensitive context of pitcturesque Bale (HR)
• Reinhard Angelis extended an old warehouse for the new Plagiarius museum in Solingen (DE), which is dedicated to copies, fakes and other froms of product piracy
• dRMM show the way in the English programme for „Building Schools for the Future“ with their renovation and extension to Kingsdale School in London (UK)
• Although LGLS’s canteen is the smallest building on the University Campus of Coimbra (PT), it has great social significance
• Emlépont, a museum about the communist past in Hódmezovásárhely (HU) got a futuristic building designed by Attila F. Kovacs
• JKMM has given Turku (FI) yet another architectural work it can be proud of
• Alver Trummal Architects’ 4 Ravala Avenue expresses Tallinn’s desire to build a new city (EE)
• Carl-Viggo Holmebakk designer a simple and clear entrance building for the estate of Sigrid Undset in Lillehammer (NO)
• Ulrike Mayer and Urs Hüssy made a 200-year-old house and barn in Schellenberg (Liechtenstein) look brand new
• NEO_arhitekti’s answer to a very constrained context for a commercial building in Uzice (CS) was to expand inwards
• The Tetris school in Genolier (CH) by IPAS looks like a playful fortress
• In Waidhofen/Ybbs (AT), a small medieval town, Hertl.Architekten cause a sensation with a modern rooftop superstructure
• Jasinski Kruszewski Architects have found an elegant solution for a brewery theme park in the town of Warka (PL)
Section
Metal
As from the Bronze and Iron age, metals have played a fundamental role in the development of human civilization. Nowadays, thanks to the diversity of available metals, the ever-growing number of alloys and new processing techniques, metals offer architects virtually unlimited design freedom
Materia
The Internet has opened up a new world for many people, not least architects.
Innovations in industries that were formerly a closed book to most architects, are suddenly accessible, thanks to the Internet. More than ever before, techniques and materials derived from, among others, aviation, shipping, mould-making, the medical and technical textile industries, can be transposed to architecture
Eurovision
Focusing on European countries, cities and regions
• Germany’s reconstruction debate comes to a head: Frankfurt’s Old Town is to be rebuilt
• A tour Antwerp and Brussels’ „Beacons of Renaissance“ (BE)
• Profile: Philippe Rahm’s experimental buildings illustrate his idea that „architecture follows climate“ (CH)
• Home: Pieter Weijnen’s blue house in IJburg, Amsterdam (NL)
Out of obscurity
Buildings from the margins of modern history
Jean-Philippe Hugron goes back to the Front de Seine in Paris (FR), which started as a modernist project, but became infiltrated with postmodernism in the form of the Totem tower
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