· Madrid based blog collecting documents of architecture, design and arts · edited by @xi.arquigraph · arquigraph.com
Prototype
ICC Berlin · Schüler & Witte
A kind of spaceship lay down in the west end side of Berlin. This is the International Congress Center Berlin (abbreviated ICC Berlin) it was designed by Ralf Schüler and Ursulina Schüler-Witte and build in the 70s.
They won the competition for the construction of a multifunctional hall in 1965, after several changes in the specifications, began its construction period between 1965 to 1979.
ICC Berlin is one of the most important buildings of the post-war period, and probably the most expensive building in West Berlin. 40 years since then the actual owners (the state of Berlin, operator Messe Berlin GmbH) consider this building “technically worn”. In April 2014 it was closed in order to remove asbestos contamination, but now it remains closed.
It was one of the largest convention centers in the world. Indeed, the 313-meter-long, 89-meter-wide and almost 40-meter-high support this statement. ICC Berlin is a very unique and special building.
State of Berlin, DOCOMOMO Germany and DOCOMOMO International please, consider to give ICC Berlin other uses. As a multifunctional building it has been demostrated ICC Berlin could handle other uses, don’t let this building remains abandoned.
If you are in Berlin or you have planned to travel there try to visit their surroundings.
Wikipedia`s friend told us the actual state of this building, thanks to them:
“..For years, the future of the building has been discussed in Berlin.
Messe Berlin has no interest in continuing operation as the operating costs exceed the income from events. Even a demolition was brought into conversation, this is rejected by large parts of Berlin’s policy, however. The last public event in the building was on March 9, 2014, and after the Daimler Annual General Meeting on April 9, 2014, it was closed. So far, it is unclear whether and when the ICC will be rehabilitated and who bears the costs. Sustainable concepts for further use after a renovation are not yet available.
In the wake of the refugee crisis in Europe in 2015, the ICC has been used since December 2015 as emergency shelter for initially more than 500 residents. In June 2017, about 260 people still lived there. From May 2016 to June 2017, the building was also used as one of Berlin’s first port of call for refugees. Up to 1,400 asylum seekers were processed daily here…”
images:
1- Instructional plan. Drawing Illustration by Robinson. Domus v.557
2-7-8 Arquigraph
3-5-6 aerial view. wikipedia
4- facade detail. Alexander Stumm
5- ICC Berlin Illustration by Robinson,1978
The different forms, the use of color on facades, the transparency and the natural light through the interior suggest uniqueness in its function, this is a project designed for Autonomous Artisan’s Houses by Steven Holl in the early 1980s.
This was
Frank Lloyd Wright’s last dream: the “city of the future” on Ellis
Island, designed in 1959, where a former immigration center was dismantled in
the second half of the 1950s.
Edoardo Gellner and Carlo Scarpa: La chiesa di Corte de Cadore
Here is how two architects in the 50′s collaborate in the design of a church. Edoardo Gellner and Carlo Scarpa designed ‘La chiesa di Corte de Cadore’. The evolution of drawings from the general plan to the details are a good example to realize the importance of a collaborative design process, where a graphic dialogue evolves from a plot of ideas to the progressive definition of a structural system by studying its sections, details and views with accurate.
These gorgeous drawings came from the idea, however through measure they got the detail for its construction.
Carlo Scarpa, Studi per l’altare maggiore. 1956
Edoardo Gellner, Lampada del Santissimo. Prospetto, vista dal basso e assonometria. 1958
Graphic Dialogue
Edoardo Gellner and Carlo Scarpa
Between 50s and 60s Gellner & Scarpa made a fantastic collaborative design for La chiesa di Corte de Cadore. Check it out.
Villa Girasole is still considered unusual, extraordinary and pioneer on sustainable design. You must know such envisioned design, built by its owner, engineer Angelo Invernizzi between 1929 and 1935, in Verona.
As an artificial sunflower, he created his own dream house which would rotate to ”maximize the health properties of the sun by rotating to follow it” and is basically mounted over a revolving system.
The Residência José da Silva Neto, designed by the Brazilian architect João da Gama Filgueiras Lima (Lelé), is an impressive concrete skeleton standing on only four massive supporting pillars from which the ceiling of the living space is suspended. In 2019, the architect Lutero Leme and his Studio Arquitécnika took the challenge to revitalize the aging villa and brought it up to date with the latest technologies.
João da Gama Filgueiras Lima (Lelé): Residência José da Silva Neto, Brasília, Brazil, 1973–1976
Paolo Portoghesi + Victor Gigliotti: Papanice House. 1966-1970.
This is Paolo Portoghesi and Victor Gigliotti’ s Papanice House designed by architect Paolo Portoghesi and engineer Victor Gigliotti in early 70s. A Magnificent manor house with great Baroque influence, with art deco and secessionist touches, enveloping elegance and rhythm.
As you can see on the diagram “The Matrix of Composition” you can see how curved lines flows beyond the building with a very unique language of composition.
This is a very atypical house with three levels, with one room per floor and a small attic. Portoghesi’s concept stands on his influence of Baroque style, it could be seen on the systematic use of the curved line on the modeling of the interior space but also in facades. The curvature of the perimeter walls which alternate between concave and convex formally characterizes the composition, the rythim of the entire skin flows with elegance also the interiors have strong art-deco reminiscences from color details to furniture.
Would like to see how this house got old through years. Certainly curved lines as strategy of design becomes a coherent aesthetic compromise between nature and culture inherited into history.
Image1,8. Geometric Diagram.The Matrix of Composition.
Papanice House. Portoghesi and Gigliotti. Von Meiss, Pierre.,1989, Elements of Architecture: From Form to Place, Van Nostrand Reinhold, N.Y., figure21.
images 2-7. Roof plan, Cross Section, Main Floor Plan, Second Floor Plan, aerial view, facade view.: ROSSI, Piero Ostilio. Roma. Guida all'architettura moderna 1909-2011. Roma: Laterza, 2012. also NORBERG-SCHULZ, Christian. Paolo Portoghesi architetto. Milano: Skira, 2001
Paolo Portoghesi + Victor Gigliotti: Casa Papanice. 1966-1970.
From plenty beauty to decadence.
Sometime ago i was wondering how Casa Papanice will evolve as a manor house, does it will remains the same with different uses? does it has taking a good preservation process? so, i have news and facts about.. and the answer are sadly negative.
This is an attempt to show you how the importance of architecture’s preservation and maintainance of singular houses are. This is Casa Papanice, a very unique 70s Italian House designed by Paolo Portoghesi, as you can see in the image above Casa Papanice is actually in a deplorable state of conservation and essential elements of its facade where substituted.
The main problem propably right now Papanice House is actually another country legally, in this house lays the Jordan Embassy. But that fact should not exempt its inhabitants from the duty to keep the house.
We hope DOCOMOMO Italy and other Architectural Preservation Associations around the world could spread, help and save from decadence this unique architectural pearl.
If you need more info, here’s an article written by Paolo Boccacci at Republica Newspaper (IT) +
We’ll be observing how this case evolve, while time runs you can follow @Casapapanice at RRSS +
The Civilia project is a visionary and utopian ideal of what Britain’s settlements could be through the eyes of Ivor de Wolfe (
Hubert de Cronin Hastings’ pseudonym. First published as a June special edition of the Architectural Review in 1971, and later than year expanded into a book, the project presented as an attack on the concept of suburbia and “the uglification of the countryside”
Muchos hogares están experimentando cierta
intensificación de usos en un mismo espacio, redescubriendo otros y flexibilizando
los espacios infrautilizados mientras trabajan y conviven en cuarentena.
Para comprobar cómo se están adaptando las
personas a esta forma de trabajo desde sus casas, hemos realizado una encuesta durante la
primera quincena de abril a través de las redes sociales. En esta infografía
desvelamos parte de los resultados con aspectos que nos llevan a entender la
resiliencia de las personas ante la experiencia de trabajar desde casa.
El concepto parte de una sección del covid-19 adaptada a la resiliencia frente a la situación de
confinamiento.
Si deseas que elaboremos una infografía como
ésta basada en datos que estés recopilando escríbenos aquí
_____
Are you working on quarantine?
Many households
are experiencing some intensification of uses in the same rooms, rediscovering spaces like terraces and courtyards in house and making underutilized rooms more flexible while working and living in quarantine.
To analize how
people are adapting to this way of work from home we have conducted a survey during the first
fortnight of April through social networks, through this infographic we reveal the aspects
that lead us to understand people’s resilience through the experience of working
from home.
The concept
is part of a section of covid-19 adapted to our resilience due to the confinement
situation.
If you want
us to develop an infographic like this based on data, write us.
Assembly Hall Block. (aka The Pentagon Building) Chamberlin, Powell & Bon. 1958-60
This Assembly hall block was one of the three main buildings of a new school for girls built in late 50s at South London. And who would not like to study on a place like this? Even its main use as an assembly hall it also has classrooms and room-offices inside. Let’s go.
The aerial view of the Assembly hall block shows up a pentagonal shape plan, and in fact it is organized through five sided covered with a hyperbolic paraboloid roof. Mostly known as the Pentagon Building, was concibed to be part of Geoffrey Chaucer (formerly Trinity/Two Saints) School now demolished.
Its hyperbolic paraboloid concrete shell roof was the first built in Britain and it remains one of the few built examples of that type.
Built between 1958 and 1960 by
Chamberlin, Powell & Bon
Architectural practice which helped to shape the educational zeitgeist of postwar era and were responsible for designing the Barbican Estate in London. Many of their works are now listed buildings and they were recognized as one of the best architectural firms in post-war England.
It organizes on five classrooms each one covered with individual hyperbolic paraboloid roofs separated by glazing from top to botton and from inside by sliding doors, connecting the structure only at their common peripheral supports. Each roof covered one ‘year room’ on the first floor.
But the most impressive is inside, the roof design shape which allowed a futuristic interior, with sliding shutters to block of the room areas and huge venetian blinds to cover the triangular windows and shape the interior of the assembly hall, amazing way to get a multifunctional hall, well prepared to assemblies, concerts and meetings.
As you’ll see in the video Alan Whicker introduces as “an unusual and exciting Assembly hall ..where you can imagine how delighted school children might been in together way from dingy victorianism into sight bright modernity” and sure it was and still does, but there are certain details puppils didn’t find practical for them, the real users.
This interview + introduces the importance of User Experience (UX) when designing spaces. Sometimes designers and architects do not percibe little ill-conceived details and probably this are not seen over the sketch nor infographics rather when they are executed.
Did you have any surprising experience on how your clients use the places in which you have contributed to make it real?
Although the school was listed on status at Grade II as a building of special architectural interest in 1993, it was demolished in 2007 when the site was reorganized as the Globe Academy. Then, a new school was built and completed in 2010 by Amanda Levete Architects, but fortunately only the original and spectacular five sided assembly hall, covered with a hyperbolic paraboloid roof and known as the Pentagon Building was preserved and restored.
The Ark Globe Academy is an all-through school that replaced the Joseph Lancaster Primary School and the Geoffrey Chaucer Technology College on its site at Harper Road, off New Kent Road, Southwark, London.There you’ll see kindly places full of light and colour environments creating a positive experience for all those involved in the learning process.
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image1, 6 images from a video interview from BBC archive.Alan Whicker introduces Geoffrey Chaucer School. The Pentagon hall. Chamberlin, Powell and Bon.
+
image 2. Aerial view.
Geoffrey Chaucer School. The Pentagon hall. Chamberlin, Powell and Bon. Gmaps
image3. Front View. Geoffrey Chaucer School. The pentagon hall as seen in 1962. Photo taken by John Maltby
image 4.
General view of exterior.Geoffrey Chaucer School. The Pentagon hall. Chamberlin, Powell and Bon. Photo taken by Steve Cadman on a Twentieth Century Society tour of the Elephant and Castle.
image5. Interior detail view of roof, Geoffrey Chaucer School. The Pentagon hall. Chamberlin, Powell and Bon. Photo taken by Steve Cadman on a Twentieth Century Society tour of the Elephant and Castle.
image7:
Aerial view.
Ark Globe Academy. Gmaps
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worth read:
+ Children, Childhood and Cultural Heritage. Kate Darian-Smith, Carla Pascoe, Carla Pascoe Leahy. Routledge, 2013
+ Geoffrey Chaucer School faces demolition, article written by Jon Wright, 2007
Design plan for modular houses that grows with your needs. From a self-sufficient “starter” hex to a complete home system when you tack on new hexes for entertaining and sleeping. It also works with stages. Smart design through geometry.
Designed as a Leisure home in 1976 by Home Building Plan Service (HBPS) in cooperation with Western wood products.
Images from an article published from Popular Science magazine, 1976 and written by Al Less
