Sunken Fountain by Horst Hoheisel

The sunken fountain is not the memorial at all. It is only history turned into a pedestal, an invitation to passers-by who stand upon it to search for the memorial in their own heads. For only there is the memorial to be found.                                                   Horst Hoheisel

The Sunken Fountain in Kassel, Germany is one of the examples of counter memorials. Counter Memorials are Structures that defy the concept of the memorial, these project aim at returning the memory back to the user, instead of relying on an object/structure to bring forward the memory, the people have to look for the memory within themselves.

 

Original Fountain 1930's

The Original Fountain was a gift from a Jewish Businessman to the city of Kassel in 1908. In 1939 the Nazis destroyed it and by the 80’s on one could actually remember what had happened to the fountain. This project came as a response to the town’s  local amnesia.

Hoheisel proposed creating a hollow concrete replica of the fountain, he displayed next to the original site for a short period and then buried it upside down. To him the fountain could never be constructed  as it was originally. The inverted fountain was then covered by glass and grate ; the only thing the passerby would see is the hollowness of the fountain, as a metaphor for the feeling of emptiness and disquiet one would feel when thinking about what had happened to the Jews in Germany. The sound of the falling water  isolated from the outside world and the only thing you can focus on is that hidden fountain underneath.

Horst Hoheisel left open the option that the fountain might some day be dug up and placed in its original orientation again above ground. That could only happen, he felt, after the German people had achieved a new understanding about the meaning of the Holocaust.

Replica of the Fountain

Burying the fountain upside down

The Fountain today

The Cube

 “The aim is to create an experience that surprises and inspires with fantastic tastes, gastronomic hints and tips from some of the world’s greatest chefs and never-before-seen views, ultimately stimulating guests to explore their own creative boundaries next time they entertain friends or family at home.”

Electrolux has created a restaurant that travels to different locations and lands on different buildings and landmarks. At each location, local chefs will cook traditional and local recipes using ingredients from their own country. It is a traveling kitchen  that adapts to different cultures and cuisines. The chef and his cooking will be on display for the guests to see & interact with the maker of the recipes. When the food is done and ready to be served the dinning table will drop from the ceiling to seat the guests.

Bridging Tea House

 

An ambitious master plan was designed for the construction of a multipurpose modern city in Jinhua. In the spirit of this plan, the local government commissioned a teahouse to be built beside a pond in a park next to the river that runs through the city. The concept was reworked formally to create a structure that also serves as a mirror—the lower part reflects the upper part, thus producing an effect of continuous space. Our first concept was totally open and functioned as a mask in relation to the neighboring pavilions. Working in collaboration with local engineers, a structure was suggested in which different platforms would be constructed for diverse uses. The translation of this suggestion gave birth to a building that contains a series of spaces on diverse levels that create privacy and intimacy, micro-atmospheres that generate distinct visual experiences for the teahouse’s visitors. The final sculptural object resulted from the unification, within a single contemporary form, of two traditional typologies derived from the gardens of ancient China: the bridge and the teahouse.

Fernando Romero

A striking Red color and a deconstruction of planes and spaces bridge two lands together in  Jinhau, China. The bridge, designed by Fernando Romero, explores the relation between the traditional chinese tea house and the concept of the bridge. The design looks like a sculpture standing tall in front of the landscape. The architecture of the space allows for different private/public platforms. It is a bridge but at the same time it is a space where you can sip a cup of tea with a friend privately while enjoying the view. Everything is red, the color unifies all the spaces introducing them to the eye as one large object.

 

 

Container Guest House

The container guest house stands as the first successful reuse and adaptation of the shipping containers. It is designed by  Poteet Architects who are known for their sustainable & adaptive reuse of existing buildings. The design serves as a guest house, the space is small yet well designed perfect for family/friends who are visiting. The main problem with reusing containers as living spaces was that it traps heat, but Poteet Architects were able to solve this problem through installing a green garden on op of the roof that acts as insulator & and a cooler at the same time. The interior walls of the container are covered by spray foam and bamboo plywood. The architects were committed to sustainability all the way; the container itself stands on a foundation of recycled telephone poles. The deck is made of recycled soda bottles (HVAC equipment pads). The exterior light fis=xtures are blades from the tractor disc plow. The roof garden is fed from the waste water of the shower in the bathroom. Sustainability all the way.

 

Vitra-Haus: Herzog & De Meuron

Build me a house! When someone asks you this question, probably the first thing that comes to your mind, is the typical house you used to draw when you were a kid. The rectangular volume with the triangle on top of it. We scrabbled this form so many times on sketch papers and showed it to our parents proudly. Herzog & de Meuron were asked by Vitra to build a space that would house their furniture designs.  The Architects started with the Pitched House contour, they extruded & came out with the space. So simple yet so captivating. The space was left hollow from the inside, the only thing kept was this contour. The design of the volume challenges our way of perceiving the typical pitched roof houses. The design is stripped from its functional purpose and the form was used as it is. The same shape is stacked on top of each other to create the Vitra house, the volume interlinks with each other and create a chaotic relation between each other. The volumes are unifies by both their shape and their color, however together they meet randomly and open up to different areas of the vitra campus. The interior of the volumes offer a continuous flow of vision; the walls are white to make the displayed items stand out.

Looking at the Vitra house at night is intriguing. The only thing you see is the typical archetype house form lit, for a second it looks like a 2D yellow plane. It stands out in front of the dark outer walls finish. This relation is also obvious during daytime, where the white inner walls contrast with the dark outer ones.

Build me a house! Stack the houses on top! I do not care about the inner walls. To me they do not exist. The relation is now with the inner space and the outer skin, how does the two dialogue with each other? I think Herzog & de Meuron created the perfection relation. Although the skin contrasts with the inner space, yet the two seem to complement one another. At the first glance the project might seem a bit bulky, but then one can notice that the vision is continuous throughout the inner spaces, nothing cuts your sight, a delicacy the architects succeeded in achieving.

The Open Box House by A-cero

Description from A-cero:

A-cero presents Open box house, a new project in the outskirts of Madrid. It is a 750m2 house designed according to the A-cero sculptural philosophy. This is inspired in the “Oteiza” work, a very important Spanish sculptor. With a powerful look, Open box is notable for its façade in concrete granulated in some face and brandering in other faces. The house´s plot has is 2.600 m2. It has three storeys. The basement takes the garage and facilities and the ground floor has the living room, kitchen and servant’s quarter. In the first floor are the private rooms (4 bedrooms) and a library. The interior design includes furniture designed by A-cero and the Italian company Fendi. The landscaping has been designed by A-cero too. It is a Japanese garden As a conclusion, an A-cero work in which you can see its looking for the quality, comfort and design excellence.

Oteiza work

A look back: Villa Savoye 1929

‘The approach is by car and as one passes under the building (a demonstration of urban doctrine), and follows the curve of industrial glazing (of which the geometry was determined by the car’s turning circle), it becomes clear that one is to be drawn into a machine-age ritual. The plan of the building is square (one of the ‘ideal’ forms from Vers une architecture), curves, ramp and grid of structure providing the basic counterpoint to the perimeter. The section illustrates the basic divisions of a service and circulation zone below, a piano nobile above, and the celestial zone of the solarium on top: it’s the section-type of Le Corbusier’s ideal city but restated in microcosm. If the Villa Savoye had been a mere demonstration of formal virtuosity it would not have touched expressive depths. The tension of the building relies on the urgent expression of a utopian dream. Icons of the new age such as the ship and the concrete frame blend into forms born of Purist painting. The rituals of upper middle-class existence are translated into an allegory on the ideal modern life which even touches upon the Corbusian typologies for the city: separate levels for people and cars, terraces open to the sky, a ramp celebrating movement. The fantasy is translated into conventions that avoid arbitrariness and that reveal Le Corbusier’s ambition to make an equivalent to the logic, order an sense of truth he had intuited in the great styles of the past. Rationalism was a point of departure, but not the aim. He wished to re-inject the ideal content that relativism and materialism had destroyed.’                                                             William Curtis, Le Corbusier: Ideas and Forms, 1986

        designed by Swiss architects Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret

The villa is considered  as a representitive of the bases of modern architecture. It is also a demonstration of Le Corbusiers “Five Points” of a new architecture

1. Support of ground-level pilotis, elevating the building from the earth and allowed an extended continuity of the garden beneath.
2. Functional roof, serving as a garden and terrace, reclaiming for nature the land occupied by the building.
3. Free floor plan, relieved of load bearing walls, allowing walls to be placed freely and only where aesthetically needed.
4. Long horizontal windows, providing illumination and ventilation.
5. Freely-designed facades, serving as only as a skin of the wall and windows and unconstrained by load-bearing considerations.

Architecture in Words

Scotland-based artist Chris Labrooy experiments with his typography, using 3D modeling, to create fonts resembling iconic architectural projects. From Tadao Ando to Frank Gehry, he translates their architectural into their names. Each typography has a style that looks like the architecture of the person who built it. interesting, check his website for more interesting typographies and designs.

Zaha+Swarovski

Does the design ring a bell?

Yes those flowing fluid-like forms are yet another creation by Zaha Hadid. Zaha in collaboration with Swarovski used her 3D and Cad skills but this time to create Jewelry, not buildings. The designs resemble most of her architectural projects however the only difference is that you can wear them. They might not look attractive and appealing, however when wearing them, you get to say: ” i am wearing a Zaha Hadid design”.

Soviet Architecture

 “It was like finding an undiscovered monument – a Machu Picchu of your own.”      Frédéric Chaubin

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

” Frédéric Chaubin was wandering through a market in Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, in 2003 when an old book snared his eye. Although unable to read the words, the French photographer was mesmerised by the images it contained.  Chronicling 70 years of post-revolution architecture, the book featured an extraordinary collection of buildings that drew on an extraordinary collection of styles: as well as the Soviet schools of suprematism (a controlled explosion of geometric forms) and constructivism (wild projections, provocative angles), there was a strong western undercurrent, with echoes of everything from Alvar Aalto and Antoni Gaudí to Oscar Niemeyer. And running through all this was a thrilling element of Soviet over-reaching, a hint of sputniks, space rockets and flying saucers. Chaubin was hooked. And so began a seven-year odyssey to seek out and photograph some of the Soviet era’s most unusual architectural creations, many now under threat… ”  [The Guardian]