four boxes gallery, krabbesholm højskole, skive, denmark 2009.
architects: atelier bow-wow, yoshiharu tsukamoto and momoyo kaijima, tokyo.
the 'four boxes' gallery by atelier bow-wow looks like a tribute to utzon's bagsværd church and to the culture it grew out of, making it an obvious place to end the latest line of projects and buildings here. for such a celebration to arrive from abroad came was no surprise - the Danish architecture scene is currently occupied elsewhere - but no-one could have predicted its authors.
no expert on atelier bow-wow, I have nevertheless enjoyed their work from a distance. from the observations of their early books, true bestiaries of the strange buildings that thrive under extreme conditions in tokyo, through their unique drawings, to their quirky houses, they have shown an uncanny ability to make the traditional disciplines of architecture come alive. and despite the formal diversity of their buildings, bordering at times on the whimsical, everything they do appears connected through their unique understanding of the city they live and work in.
yes, the bow-wows are contextualists, but their careful and idiosyncratic readings of places and use have allowed them a great freedom from mimicry so far. and true to the ethics of their approach, none of the charm and quirkiness of their tokyo work is present in the gallery in skive, skive not really being famous for either. but neither is Danish architecture in general, with its historical focus on classicism and typological studies, and its modernist translation of those into prefabrication and system thinking. it does not sound charming when you say it and frankly, it rarely looks charming either. it does however allow for some intellectually exciting architecture with a hidden structure of game-like rules.
the four boxes gallery is just such a building, and its hidden rules are the rules of prefabricated concrete elements, sandwich elements more specifically, meaning fully insulated elements with a concrete finish on both interior and exterior sides. sandwich elements are the work horse of construction in denmark and deal with sound transmission, fire, load and finish all in one piece, and at a good price. only problem being, as an architect, you can hardly do anything with them.
complex geometry is out of the question, the elements are flat. height is limited to about one floor or you couldn't move the pieces under a bridge; as in all prefabrication, the demands made by transportation are the most decisive. you can make the elements long, trucks are long after all. the logic is simple, the resulting buildings tend to be simplistic. yet strict limitations like these attract architects of a certain mindset. utzon was such an architect and so, surprisingly, are the bow-wows. if cheap sandwich elements only let you build boxes, we shall build boxes, they seem to say, and proceed to build the architectural equivalent of a russian matryoshka doll, a box inside a box inside a box inside a box!
while budget was clearly a decisive factor, there is nothing cynical about bow-wow's application of prefab. in the facade, the elements have been turned on the side, and rather than stacking floors, single elements express the changing height of the building like a graph or the LED display on your 1980's HIFI equalizer. the same elements with different reinforcements act as beams and daylight reflectors in the suspended boxes inside, displaying the kind of terse thinking one would have expected from utzon or korshagen back in the day.
the fourth, outer box is a courtyard, a spatial typology central to both Japanese and Danish traditional architecture, and one of the similarities between the two that meant so much to Danish architects working in the 1960's. the bow-wows are contextualists alright, but they acknowledge that reading context is every bit as personal as reading a book - in skive, their reading has produced a house so Danish, it could only have come from japan.
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if possible, please name photographer "SEIER+SEIER". if not, don't.
more words, yada, yada, yada.
Tags: atelier bow-wow atelier bow-wow yoshiharu tsukamoto momoyo kaijima four boxes gallery skive denmark architecture prefab prefabricated concrete beton seier+seier creative commons CC
bighouse or 8-tallet, housing and offices, ørestad, copenhagen, denmark.
architects: BIG, bjarke ingels group, 2006-2010.
ørestad represents some of the worst planning in northern europe since the fall of authoritarian communism. everything in it was wrong: the huge houses, the crane track urban spaces, the separation of functions. and yet every local architect played along and built their own version of the acontextual big box.
bjarke ingels even built three, but he and his offices BIG and PLOT have in all three projects engaged critically with the deadening surroundings by turning the urbanism inward and each time creating a complex weave of functions and spaces within the perimeter of their site.
but I repeat myself.
I still have my doubts about the size of the thing. why should the hard-won lessons of late modernism not apply to BIG? yet, even if this house looks like nothing you've ever seen before, moving around its ramps and stairs offers all the excitement of great architecture. we spent hours there.
our final descent revealed how much bjarke and his crew have made of the edge condition. the open land in front of the house is protected and the view south continues all the way to the northern coast of germany.
what is more, the route we had traversed which so radically opens up the housing block is the best medicin I have seen so far against the medieval closing off of new buildings and institutions, against the world of gated communities, walls and moats being offered by other architects. instead, bjarke ingels gives us optimism and a novel take on nordic humanism. in ørestad, everyone is waiting to see if he will succeed. if you have the opportunity, get out there now and make up your own mind.
this photo was uploaded with a CC license and may be used free of charge and in any way you see fit.
if possible, please name photographer "SEIER+SEIER". if not, don't.
other BIG projects.
Tags: bjarke ingels group BIG bighouse 8-tallet ottetallet building site architecture arkitektur modern modernism modernist denmark megastructure housing ørestad orestad architektur Arquitectura arquitetura Architectuur Architettura gebäude haus gebouw bouw batiment maison edificio huis casa copenhagen københavn seier+seier creative commons CC
going up the ramp inside the first courtyard, this great kubrick moment arose as a local symmetry briefly revealed itself.
I ignored the warning in the instruction manual, that the camera might combust if pointed at the sun. I would have taken it more seriously if it wasn't right next to the warning that operating the dials while shooting could lead to poking yourself in the eye with a finger...
bighouse or 8-tallet, housing and offices, ørestad, copenhagen, denmark.
architects: BIG, bjarke ingels group, 2006-2010.
this photo was uploaded with a CC license and may be used free of charge and in any way you see fit.
if possible, please name photographer "SEIER+SEIER". if not, don't.
more new photos coming. other BIG projects.
Tags: bjarke ingels group BIG bighouse 8-tallet ottetallet kubrick 2001 københavn copenhagen kopenhagen köpenhamn building site architecture arkitektur modern modernism modernist denmark megastructure housing ørestad orestad architektur Arquitectura arquitetura Architectuur Architettura gebäude haus gebouw bouw batiment maison edificio huis casa seier+seier creative commons CC
musikstudio, raketenstation hombroich, neuss, germany (under construction).
architect: raimund abraham, 1933-2010
a menacing presence.
[edit 05.03.2010] news from ben, raimund abraham died today in a car crash in LA. it seems to me that younger, related talents have been spoiled by commercial ambition - think of what became of libeskind, think of what became of everyone during the last boom - but here was a man seemingly without compromise. must have been a real pain...but clearly, that is to be prefered.
this photo was uploaded with a CC license and may be used free of charge and in any way you see fit.
if possible, please name photographer "SEIER+SEIER". if not, don't.
the raimund abraham set
Tags: raimund abraham raimund abraham architect architekt musikstudio music studio raketenstation hombroich rocket station neuss germany architecture architektur building house haus concrete beton deutschland modern modernist modernism or postmodern postmodernist postmodernism seier+seier creative commons CC
institut für architektur, raketenstation hombroich, neuss, germany (under construction).
architect: alvaro siza, b. 1933.
where did all the expansion joints go? siza setting us all straight on the use of recycled bricks with the most beautiful walls in the hombroich complex.
this photo was uploaded with a CC license and may be used free of charge and in any way you see fit.
if possible, please name photographer "SEIER+SEIER". if not, don't.
Tags: alvaro siza raketenstation hombroich rocket station neuss germany deutschland architecture architektur arquitectura arquitetura Architectuur Architettura building haus recycled brick modern modernist modernism wall texture seier+seier creative commons CC