Heartfelt, thought-provoking and at times hilariously funny, the 2008 documentary film “Koolhaas Houselife” made Ila Beka and Louise Lemoine cult figures in the European architecture world. A look at the difficulties of living with an architectural masterpiece — one that was designed by Rem Koolhaas for Ms. Lemoine’s paraplegic father — it touched a nerve with those who have always been suspicious of the gap between the idealism of many architects and the realities of everyday life.

Since that success, the two have gone on to make three more films that explore similar issues, including one on Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, and another on Richard Meier’s Jubilee Church in suburban Rome. None of them are quite as revealing — or as funny — as the first.

But all four films, which are each about 20 minutes long and are on view at the Storefront for Art and Architecture on the Lower East Side through Feb. 27, feel like fresh takes on architecture, avoiding the clichés about architects as pretentious eggheads oblivious to their clients’ needs (although there is a scene about a leaky roof). They represent an unusually earnest, and long overdue, effort to explore a fascinating question: What is it like to live or work inside a piece of art?

The Lemoine home was especially fraught in this regard. A three-story house in Bordeaux, France, with a vast, glass-enclosed living area sandwiched between two concrete-clad slabs, it is centered on a mechanical platform that moves up and down, from the wine cellar and TV room to the living space to the upstairs bedrooms. It was designed to be big enough to accommodate not only Ms. Lemoine’s father, who had used a wheelchair since a car accident in 1991, but his desk as well — and thereby to help the house “reassert the position of the French male within the family,” as Mr. Koolhaas once said.

When the father died, in 2001, the platform also became a constant reminder of his absence. When it moves up to the bedroom level, it leaves a gaping void in the middle of the living room floor.

This material would seem to be irresistible for any filmmaker, and at first, if you know the story, you wonder why it was left out of “Koolhaas Houselife.” But one of the strengths of the film is that it never plunges into cheap melodrama; the father is never discussed, nor is the fact that Ms. Lemoine once lived there. Instead the opening scene shows the family maid with a mop in her hand, silently standing on the platform as it rises through the house’s various levels. With a somewhat bemused air, she steps off and begins her daily chores, shaking out the curtains, scrubbing floors, vacuuming the staircase and in the process transforming the house from an act of poetic imagination to a seemingly straightforward series of practical problems.

At one point a gardener carefully arranges a hose into a loose coil, its form echoing the spiral of the house’s main driveway. At another a caretaker pokes the base of a window looking for the source of a leak. Water suddenly starts to pour down the face of a concrete wall, spilling over a television set and onto the floor. Everyone scurries around, looking for buckets.

From there, the film transforms into a kind of mechanical ballet. Once again the platform rises slowly, this time carrying an empty chair and desk. As it clicks into place, its rails drop down until they are flush with the floor. Somewhere else a porthole window pops open, then bounces rhythmically up and down. Two burned pieces of toast pop out of a toaster. (In case you don’t get the point, a clip from one of Jacques Tati’s comic sendups of rumpled middle-aged Frenchmen unable to cope with modern life flickers across a television screen.)

The most charming sequence in the film, it goes to the heart of the filmmakers’ point: to demonstrate that architecture’s real meaning exists in small details, in the little victories and defeats that make up everyday life. In the process, they humanize the work itself. Reduced to a series of mechanical operations, the building is nonetheless as alive as the people inside it, with whom it is locked in an awkward dance.

Some of the later films are more uneven, partly because the filmmakers could not get the same degree of access, partly because the narratives — which generally move from big architectural ideas down to the nitty-gritty of daily life — start to feel predictable. The films are at their weakest, interestingly, when the architecture drifts too far into the background, and humans take up all the space.

The film on the Bilbao museum includes a beautiful series of shots of window washers as they rappel up and down the structure’s undulating glass-and-titanium surfaces. Suspended from ropes, one of them says he met his wife while she was a tourist visiting the museum, and he was working. “People find us more interesting than the art,” he says.

But the camera quickly moves outside, where the museum becomes a kind of stage set for tourists and street performers. A young bride is captured in front of the building, tossing a bouquet into the air. Not far away, a group of tourists sits on a low stone barrier trying to make origami sculptures out of crumpled tinfoil, an apparent reference to the building’s titanium skin. What you never see are the actual galleries, which are treated as if they were irrelevant to the whole museum experience.

In the newest film, on an addition to a winery in Pomerol, France, by the Swiss firm Herzog & de Meuron, the architecture virtually disappears. The owner’s son gives us a tour of the various rooms, earnestly mapping out the architects’ vision, but the camera stays in tight on him, and you never get a real feel for the spaces they designed. Toward the end, a large group of workers dressed as cowboys roasts marshmallows at a party in the new dining hall; it’s a colorful moment, but they could be anywhere.

Mr. Meier’s church gets a fairer shake in its film. After a few overhead shots of the building, the camera settles on the priest, who offers appealing interpretations of its curved walls: They remind him of an oyster, with the congregation as the pearl, or they could symbolize enormous sails, pulling the Roman Catholic Church into the future. We meet a guard whom the church has posted at the door to prevent services from being overrun by architecture pilgrims. Eventually, the congregation, which is there for Christmas Mass, spills out into the plaza in front of the church, and the magic of the building’s delicate forms is driven home.

All these films strive to place everyday people back at the center of the story, where they belong. And when the balance is right, as it is here, you begin to imagine a silent dialogue between the architects and those who inhabit their creations, as if they are struggling to understand one another across differences in time, space and perspective.

Architect: Elding Oscarson
Location: Stockholm, Sweden
Structural Engineer: Konkret
Builder: Nils Bengtsson Bygg / Storskog Bygg & Montage
Floor Area: 160 sqm
Project Year: 2009
Photographer: Åke E:son Lindman

This design bureau for magazines and web is housed in an old textile manufacturing hall in the very center of Stockholm. They loved the naked, lofty and bright spaces, but needed to alter it drastically to make it operable for their business. There was a mezzanine in the space, with a windowless meeting room underneath and an country style kitchen sprawling along the walls, all arranged in what appeared to be an L-shaped space. Our client liked the uninterrupted row of windows, and wanted to keep it that way. Yet a bigger meeting room with windows, an atelier table for informal meetings, and more workstations was on the wish list, along with an entrance lobby and a small kitchen with a dining table.

floor plan

Dividing the space with a wall gives a very bright and large meeting room, as well as a clean rectangular room for the rest of the program. This large space is softly divided with a box containing service functions and a kitchen. By compressing the contents of the box and positioning it very carefully, the program effortlessly falls into place without breaking the impression of a single large room. The purposefully magnetic cladding of galvanized steel picks up the colors of the surroundings in a hazy reflection and further defines the box as an inserted element.

By finding the right balance between a very large pane of glass in the wall and a construction method for the wall that makes it feel both temporary and solid, the spatial atmosphere of an uninterrupted row of windows is kept while the rectangular geometries of the rooms are clearly defined. Besides having a literal relevance to the client’s business, the wall made of stacked bundles of magazines is not only a natural conversation piece in its mere irrationality, but also works as an acoustical absorbent.

The lighting solution and interior project, which to a large extent uses our own furniture designs mixed with vintage pieces and staples already in the client’s possession, aim at highlighting the nakedness of the space. Largely, the raw, untreated space was kept untouched after demolition. By adding only two clearly defined architectural elements, the client’s wish list could be met while keeping the beauty of an industrial atmosphere.

The Rolex Learning Center, a university study centre by Japanese architects SANAA, opens in Lausanne, Switzerland next week.

The centre is located on the campus of science and technology university EPFL (Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne), and will be open to both students and the public.

See all our stories about SANAA in our special category.

Here’s some text from EPFL:

Built on the campus of EPFL Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, The Rolex Learning Center designed by the internationally acclaimed Japanese architectural practice, SANAA, will open on 22 February 2010.

The Rolex Learning Center will function as a laboratory for learning, a library with 500,000 volumes and an international cultural hub for EPFL, open to both students and the public. Spread over one single fluid space of 20,000 sq metres, it provides a seamless network of services, libraries, information gathering, social spaces, spaces to study, restaurants, cafes and beautiful outdoor spaces. It is a highly innovative building, with gentle slopes and terraces, undulating around a series of internal ‘patios’, with almost invisible supports for its complex curving roof, which required completely new methods of construction.

“The Rolex Learning Center,” Patrick Aebischer, President of EPFL, said, “exemplifies our university as a place where traditional boundaries between disciplines are broken down, where mathematicians and engineers meet with neuroscientists and microtechnicians to envision new technologies that improve lives. We invite the public into this space to convey the message that working in science is working for the advancement of society.”

EPFL is one of the world’s leading universities in technology and science, renowned for its innovations in research and learning. It is currently ranked number one in Europe alongside Cambridge in the fields of Engineering Technology and Computer Sciences. The campus, on a site overlooking Lake Geneva and the Alps, brings together over 4,000 researchers, and 7,000 students, who work in a highly collaborative environment with international experts in engineering, science and industry.

The Rolex Learning Center has been financed by the Swiss government and major Swiss businesses. Rolex’s participation in the project is the fruit of a long-standing relationship with EPFL in research into materials science and microtechnology for watch design, and its deep rooted tradition of philanthropy in the arts, science and culture through the Rolex Awards for Enterprise and the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative.  Logitech made the initial contribution that launched the architectural competition. Losinger, member of Bouygues Construction Group and sponsor, was the principle contractor for the building. Credit Suisse, another financial partner for the project, will have a Future Banking Laboratory in the building. Further internationally active Swiss partners who contributed to the finance, research, and innovation of the building are Nestlé, Novartis, and SICPA.

Las tecnologías creativas que podemos hallar en las múltiples manifestaciones de la fiesta —eventos globales, acontecimientos extraordinarios, festividades cíclicas, celebraciones cotidianas,…— nos ayudan a entender los entornos que habitamos y nos ofrecen sugerencias para operar sobre ellos desde la arquitectura. Este número aborda estas cuestiones a través de varias líneas de trabajo entrelazadas: la problemática de la construcción de soportes para la fiesta, a veces efímeros, a veces con vocación de permanencia; las transformaciones urbanas asociadas a los grandes eventos; las diversas escalas de la celebración, sus relaciones y formas de interacción con la ciudad, en particular, entre el ámbito de lo público y lo doméstico; y la incorporación de lo lúdico al proyecto arquitectónico.

Publicado por: Ntres (editores y directores: Paula Álvarez, Vincent Morales y Juan Antonio Sánchez)

Idioma / ISNN: Español-Inglés [1138-1507]

Fotografía de Jorge Yeregui.

Design: 2007-2008

Construction: 2008.04 – 2008.11

Location: Qing Cheng Shan, Sichuan, China

Related Links:
Studio Pei-Zhu
Yue Minjun

Art Museum of Yue Minjun

On one hand, there are fantastic landscapes for Qingcheng Mountain, with continuous brooks and wreathed mist…

On the other hand, there are private art galleries, with extremely personal art attitudes and contemporary features…

When tracing back to ancient times and dreaming of future, we find two contrary propositions that meet and collide in Qingcheng Mountain.

What type of architecture language can be used to tell such incompatible and interesting encounter?

Not far away, Dujiang Weir, with more than 2000 years of history, has been witnessing the thought of “complying with nature and combining human and nature” and also fostering a special natural and cultural environment for this area. In this project, we try to talk with nature in an inheritance way and try to create a medium to overlap reality and imagination, nature and technology, tradition and future which seem to be contrary.

The art museum, located by the Shimeng River, is designed into an organic form full of smoothness and diversity, reflecting a cobblestone taken from the river. A light metal coating is applied to this ancient natural form, mildly reflects surrounding scenes and melts into nature, which is like a piece of concealed clothes and full of sense of future, making the building suspend over the ground and be like a flying body from the future. Therefore, we present an art museum which features artists’ direct and affirmed personal attitudes, participating in nature in a “lost” way and starts a secret dialogue with ancient times through a language of future.

Project Team
Architect: Pei Zhu, Tong Wu
Associates in Charge: Zeng Xiaoming
Design Team: He Fan, Jiao Chongxia, Li Yongquan, Jiao Chongxia, Fan Xuelan
Structural Consultant: Rory McGowan(Arup)
Photographer: Fang Zhenning

Studio Pei-Zhu
Studio Pei-Zhu is a young practice of under 20 employees based in Beijing. For us, the challenge of design is to provide practical solutions while reflecting a strong and innovative conceptual thinking and a critical outlook.

Our projects, therefore, are an exploration of methods to connect process to product.

The framework for this investigation and the experimental nature of our work is formed by the context in which it takes place – Urban China. The recent rapid development of the country has created new urban environments that can certainly be described as modern but lack the vitality and soul of older districts. One of our main concerns in design is to reconnect modern urban china to its roots, reinterpreting the vernacular in a contemporary context to create architectural devices capable of energizing urban activities. In this way we hope to contribute to a regional variance of contemporary architecture appropriate to its local context.

Awards 2007 Design Vanguard, Architectural Record
2006 China Award, Architectural Record
2004 WA China Architectural Prize
2003 China Architectural Arts Award
1989 Award of Special Merit from UNESCO

Exhibition 2008 Solo exhibition RISD, University of Rhode Island, N.Y.
2008 China Construction, Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, N.Y.
2008 Exhibition of Chinese Contemporary Architecture, Paris
2008 Exhibition of Chinese Contemporary Architecture, Barcelona
2007 China Production, Austria
2008 China Design Now, Victoria and Albert Museum, UK
2007 Xisi Bei International Invitation Exhibition, China
2006 1st Biennale of the Architecture and Art of the Canary Islands, Spain?participated together with Rem Koolhaas and MVRDV?
2006 Chinese contemporary architecture, Rotterdam, Netherlands Architecture Institute

Projects & competitions 2007 Guggenheim museum Beijing, for Guggenheim Foundation
2007 Guggenheim Art Pavilion Abu Dhabi, for Guggenheim Foundation
2007 Courtyard House Renovation for artist Cai Guoqiang
2004 Digital Beijing, an Olympic project for 2008, Beijing, won the first prize in national design competition

[via archinect]

DATOS CARACTERÍSTICOS DEL NUEVO ESTADIO DEL VALENCIA CF

EQUIPO DE DISEÑO

• Arquitectos principales:

Reid Fenwick Asociados – Madrid, Londres

Arquitectos Socios:

Mark Fenwick

Javier Iribarren Guerrero

Director del proyecto:

Salvador Alonso

• Arquitectos Deportivos:

Arup Sport – Londres

Director:

J. Parrish

Asociados:

Eugene Uys

Martin Simpson

Arquitectos de proyecto:

Chris Dite

Kate McDougal

• Ingeniería de Estructuras:

Arup – Madrid

Ingeniero Principal:

Tudor Salusbury

Ingenieros de Proyecto:

José de la Peña

David Castro

• Ingeniería de Instalaciones:

PGI Grup – Girona

Ingeniero Principal:

Josep Juliol

Ingenieros de Proyecto:

David Tusset

Joan Moret

María del Mar Moreno

CARACTERÍSTICAS PRINCIPALES DEL PROYECTO

Parámetros generales de diseño

Mejor estadio de fútbol del mundo y nuevo modelo para el siglo XXI.
Implementación de criterios medioambientales y ecológicos.
Implementación de criterios de accesibilidad de minusválidos.

Características técnicas

Estadio 5 estrellas UEFA

Capacidad bruta: 75.000 espectadores

Localidades cubiertas: 100%

Terreno de juego 68×105 m separación mínima a gradas 6 y 7.5 m

Posibilidad de adaptación a competiciones de Atletismo

Número de graderíos 3;

- Grada baja 22.000 espectadores

- Grada media 18.000 espectadores

- Grada alta 35.000 espectadores

Parking 3100 plazas cubiertas en total:

- 2600 plazas público general

- 330 plazas VIP

- 130 Plazas VIP PREMIUM

- 30 plazas para jugadores y cuerpo técnico

- 15 plazas de autobuses y camiones de prensa

Circulación vertical:

- 24 escaleras perimetrales

- 10 núcleos de circulación segura y sistema antiincendios

- 22 ascensores y montacargas

- 8 escaleras mecánicas a zona VIP

Zona VIP y Autoridades:

- Palco de honor, 150 personas, 400 metros cuadrados accesos directos

- 18 palcos Platino

- 22 Palcos Oro

- 24 palcos Plata

- grada bronce 1.500 espectadores

- 1.200 metros cuadrados áreas de recepción y espera

Restauración, 75 puntos de venta distribuidos de la siguiente manera:

- Restaurante Premium 3000 metros cuadrados con vistas al campo

- 2 restaurantes modelo Gran boulevard con servicio de catering en el descanso

- 8 Cofee Corners

- Concesiones comerciales distribuidas homogéneamente en todo el edificio

- Sistema integrado de abastecimiento y cocinas de preparación de catering

Equipamiento a los deportistas, 4.400 metros cuadrados en total:

- Vestuarios principales completamente simétricos 450 metros cuadrados

- Vestuarios secundarios 250 metros cuadrados

- Estancias técnicas con últimos criterios de la UEFA 750 metros cuadrados

- Sistema de doble túnel de acceso directo desde parking

Prensa, más de 1000 metros cuadrados de superficies distribuidas en:

- 575 metros cuadrados de Sala de prensa

- Zona de restauración propias

- Auditorio de conferencias de prensa para 200 personas

- 4 vomitorios directos a la zona reservada de grada

- Equipamiento de ayuda a fotografía

- Zona mixta 250 metros cuadrados con accesos directos a la sala de prensa

- 5 mini estudios de entrevistas

La experiencia valencianista:

Una serie de servicios externos al edificio que toman en su conjunto una experiencia única tematizada sobre el Valencia CF:

- Oficinas del club

- Museo del Valencia

- Palacio de congresos

- Tour por el edificio

- Tiendas tematizadas

- Ocio y deporte

- Restauración tematizada

- Encuentros con peñas

- Eventos familiares para socios

[via Reid Fenwick Asociados, valencia fc, Architettura effimerA, Catedrais Desportivas y Superdeporte]

The million square metre mixed-use development features two sixty-story towers and is part of the Malaysian government’s plans to boost economic growth in the area.

It was unveiled in Penang last week by Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi last week.

Image credit: Asymptote: Hani Rashid + Lise Anne Couture. Here is Asymptote’s press release:

–

ASYMPTOTE ARCHITECTURE
PENANG GLOBAL CITY CENTER (PGCC)

PGCC – Design Concept

Asymptote’s design for the PGCC complex is centered on the idea of creating a new and powerful image for the city of Penang and the new initatives associated with the development of the Northern Corridor of Malaysia. The design achieves its elegance and stature through the simultaneous embrace of natural landscapes and contemporary urbanism. The PGCC will become a vital new precinct that complements and enhances the unique characteristics that typify Penang as a remarkable island metropolis. The design of the iconic towers in particular draws inspiration from not only the lushness and drama of the surrounding mountains and seascapes, but also from the rich and diverse cultural heritage that makes up the Malaysian nation and Penang in particular.

The forms of the two towers are comprised of both horizontal and vertical elements: sculpted horizontal components move across the plinth, rise up and transform into articulated vertical structures. Set against the backdrop of the nature reserve of Penang Hill, the twisting, glass façades of the towers “perform” various surface effects—reflecting, refracting and distorting views of Penang, the surrounding landscape and the seascape beyond. The vast, cascading plinth, which functions as a public plaza with multiple gathering spaces, are venues for the performing arts center, convention center and various facilities for residential, office and urban life.

PGCC – Program

The PGCC project is remarkable for its monumental proportions and programmatic diversity as well as its innovative design. The main components of the program include:

Retail Complex: 400,000 sq. m.
Convention Center: 100,000 sq. m.
Penang Performing Arts Center (PenPAC): 75,000 sq. m.
Condominiums: 70,000 sq. m.
Hotel and Service Apartments: 50,000 sq. m.
Offices: 25,000 sq. m.
Observatory: 1,500 sq. m.
Parking: 190,000 sq. m.

Many aspects of the PGCC incorporate the latest in sustainable design and engineering technologies including building-integrated wind turbines; high-performance façade engineering and design with integrated, thin-film photovoltaics; high-efficiency central mechanical systems utilizing trigeneration; comprehensive storm water management and water recycling. The incorporation of these site-wide strategies into Asymptote’s design represents the highest commitment to the creation of energy-efficient and environmentally conscious architecture.

[via dezeen, worldarchitecturenews y designophy]