This large, multi-functional structure is located on the waterfront in Aurland, down the valley from the Aurland Lookout on a site that overlooks the expanse of the Aurland Fjord, a World Heritage Site. The brief was for a competence center for the local environmental think tank, including business and conference space, publicly accessible areas, as well as an exhibition area for the UNESCO World Heritage Sites. As a result, Saunders’ building represents a departure from the residential scale that had hitherto been the focus of the office, especially with regards to the extremely varied program.
The resulting design has been governed by five key elements, beginning with the need to give something back to the local community. The building had to be wooden yet also anchored in contemporary architecture; it had to relate closely to the local architectural style; it had to contain inspirational office spaces; and it had to be a welcoming public space. To this end it is not just a standalone building, but an object that knits the community together.
As part of the design, a nearby traffic roundabout will be removed and replaced with a new park and promenade. In addition, the building plays with the notion of a “fifth facade,” with a fully accessible roof that doubles as an extension of the public realm. Saunders traces his interest in functional roofspaces back to a visit to Agra, India, where the multi-functional domestic roof acts as “a whole new surface for the town.” The three-story Center is clad in wood, with staircases “cut” into the plank-clad roof slope to form a path that is threaded up from ground level to a terrace. This path lifts and turns as one ascends, culminating in a rooftop landscape that places one at the heart of the wider landscape (and even reveals the Aurland Lookout in the far distance).
Self-consciously designed without “an ugly side,” the Center must address the water’s edge as well as the row of traditional fishermen’s houses that make up the water frontage. It is intended as a piece of large-scale sculpture perched on the edge of this very small town. The surrounding park helps integrate the design even further, with a set of small-scale jetties reaching out over the water to provide spots where fishermen can catch the rich mix of sea trout and salmon common in these waters.
The MUCAB complex (Museum, Music School and Center for Local Development for Women and Youth, Daycare/Child Assistance Center), located in the town of Blanca, was designed to be a core for local representation, where a new kind of urban tension is created to foster activity in the environs of the Segura River.
PROJECT TEAM, collaborators: Juan García Carrillo. (architect), Francisco Pérez. (technical architecture),Manuel Gil de Pareja. (technical architecture), Mar Melgarejo, Arancha Fernández. (architects), Julián lloret.
PTW and LAVA have combined nature and technology in an organically-shaped display suite marketing the Sydney Greenland Centre on Sydney’s old Water Board site.
The lobby of the 1960s Water Board building has been transformed with freeform furniture and curvy walls and ceilings to take the visitor through a journey of the new building.
The project includes the renovation of a former print shop and loading dock that is part of the Administration Building and an addition to the building to house the Harriet and Kenneth Kupferberg Holocaust Resource Center and Archive on the campus of the Queensborough Community College in Queens County, NY.
Weeksville Heritage Center is a unique urban design project in which a modern architectural syntax of simple forms, strip windows, and glass passageways is impacted by repeated African riffs. The riffs are variations that provide a visual counterpoint. The riffs are embedded in construction, in structural elements, such as the joints in paving and stone, in the choice of colors and materials, and in the details like the fence posts and the frit in the sunshading glass. The modern syntax and African riffs, although independent from each other, harmonize when experienced as an entirety.
Clients: David Burney, FAIA, NYC Department of Design & Construction, Victor Metoyer, NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, Pamela Green, Weeksville Heritage Center
Sub-consultants: Alma Smith, Construction Manager, Hill International, Seamus McNabb, General Contractor, Brickens, Construction, Benjamin Alper, Structural Engineer, Severud Associates, Hazern Huss, MEP Engineer, Loring Consulting Engineers, Andrew Ciancia, Civil & Geotechnical Engineer, Langan Engineering, John Rhyner, Geothermal Engineer, P.W. Grosser Consulting, Jeffrey Berg, Lighting Design, Berg-Howland Associates, Elizabeth Kennedy, Landscape Architect, Elizabeth Kennedy Landscape Architects, Greg Dimech, Cost Estimating, Faithful + Gould, Fred Shen, Acoustics & Audio Visual, Shen Milsom + Wilke, Francesca Bettridge, Theatrical Lighting, Cline Bettridge Bernstein Lighting Design, Frank Fortino, Building Department, Metropolis, Barbara Heller, FAIA, Specifications, Heller + Metzger PC, Gordon Smith, Curtainwall, Gordon Smith Construction, Carmel Bowron, Sustainable Design & Commissioning, Viridian, Jeffrey Venter, Security, Ducibella Venter & Santore, David Dial, Museum Programming, Dial Associates
Commissioned by The Greenbrook Nature Sanctuary, exhibitions within this visitors’ center building primarily focus on the human and geological history of the New Jersey Palisades region, and follow a linear, chronological arrangement. The building was constructed of natural, maintenance-free materials found on site, while natural light is the primary source of illumination. The construction cost was $275,000, and is an early example of sustainable design in a ground-up building.
The Canadian Language Learning College is a National English Language Institute offering instruction to international students and recent immigrants. Focused on providing a modern approach to learning and fostering a unique introduction to Canadian culture, the directors sought C& Partners to renovate an existing two story brown brick office building at Avenue Road and Lawrence Avenue into a three story flagship building for their Toronto operations.
The Dominican monastery in Ptuj boasts more than 800 years of history, which is, in various degrees of apparentness, expressed in its building structure. The Dominicans came to Ptuj in the early 13th century, when they were given a plot within the city walls, at the very edge of the west corner. Alongside the existing Romanesque buildings, they began the construction of the monastery and the church, whose transformation of its Romanesque configuration to the current Baroque form had several interim Gothic phases. The rest of the monastery complex shares a similar fate also; however, much more of the Mediaeval, Gothic structure is preserved there.
The architectural idea is to take the entire site, which determines the surface of intervention. We identified two predominate grids emanating from the historic context of the site. The meeting and the convergence of these two geometries materialises in a deformation, a zone of turbulence, the future presence of the FRAC Centre.
email
Facebook
Twitter
RSS Feed
