WUXI – ARTS SCHOOL CAMPUS

WUXI – ARTS SCHOOL CAMPUS

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Invited competition.
PURCHASE PRIZE
Masterplan for a school campus.
Program: Five school buildings for cultural and arts studies, experimental theatre, cultural centre, offices, student housing and cultural facilities.
Total area: 7 ha.
Location: Wuxi, China.
Design: 2012-2013.

The design of the schools district and the related public space starts from the reinterpretation of the traditional courtyard house. The 4 sides of the house are exploded, becoming each one an autonomous building. They transform the traditional private courtyard into a collective semi-private space, reserved to the students’ activities. The 4 school buildings are as well supplied with intenal courtyards, bringing the urban concept back to its traditional architectural scale.
Sustainability in a fast urbanization calls for simplicity, sobriety, pragmatism, elegance. The most efficient way to emerge in a screaming parade is silence. The project locates in Wuxi, Jiangsu province, Changjiang River Delta. Wuxi is strategically located in an area equally distant 100 km from Shanghai, Huangzhou and Suzhou. This offers the city a leading role in the regional development. The Wuxi Art School campus is located in the majour Outang University campus. The total site area amounts to approximately 7.3 ha, developing linearly in direction NW-SE.
This project has the ambition to explore a sustainable model to develop a educational campus, which could guarantee a long-term payback for the investors in terms of economy, social and environmental development.

 

获邀请竞赛,
购买奖,无锡校园规划
范围: 教学楼,宿舍,实验剧场,文化中心,办公楼及文化设施
总面积:7公顷
地点:中国无锡
时间:2012 年 – 2013 年

中国地区观赏影片请点 http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XOTE0MjU4OTA4.html

该项目的学校区及相关公共空间的设计始于对传统四合院的重新诠释。房子从四个方向分开,成为四个建筑单体。设计将传统的私人庭院转变成了集体的半私密空间,用于学生活动。 四个单体校舍以及用内置式庭院,使得现代都市重新回到了传统建筑观念的尺度。

“可持续性”在快速城市化的环境中意味着“简约,清爽,务实,优雅”。正如在喧闹的游行中最有效的凸显方式就是保持安静。

本项目位于江苏省无锡市,一个距离上海,杭州,南京均有约100多公里的城市,这使得无锡在区域发展中显得出类拔萃。无锡文化艺术学校位于藕塘职教文化园区内,总占地面积约7.3公顷,基地为东南-西北方向条形。

本方案尝试探索在教育型校园中使用“可持续”的模型,以保证投资获得长期的社会经济及环境发展的效益。

HELSINKI – HUMAN NATURE

| CN | FR | IT | NL |

International architecture competition.
Helsinki Public Library.
Total floor area: 11.900 sqm.
Budget: N/A
Location: Helsinki, Finland.
Design: 2012.

Our proposal for the new central library of Helsinki transports the visitors into an ideal travel to rediscover the real essence of Finland: nature.
“Human Nature” brings the visitors to their original mental state. The landmark is not achieved through an architectural/formal operation but rather through the ‘transparency of the institution’, the representation of a democratic access to knowledge as natural as the forest that sur¬rounds the building.
Our project proposes to educate and entertain in the middle of the open landscape, yet in the heart of the metropolis.
We propose, besides the building itself, a new urban setting, a green urban lung that would ideally bring people into a rural context.
It is for this reason that we define our project “Human”, because humans are Nature.

ROME – ACILIA DRAGONA AUDITORIUM

International architecture competition.
Program: 8.685 sqm auditorium and accessory spaces, parking.
Client: Municipality of Acilia.
Budget: € 4.375.000.
Location: Acilia, Rome, Italy.
Year: 2011.

Simple, intelligent and efficient are the qualities that define our proposal for the Acilia Auditorium in Rome. An almost industrial shelter that has no aim to become an icon within the public space but rather support it and become part of its structure.
The building hosts the primary functions for a small audirorium, positioning it in the very heart of the public gallery. Like a jewel in a box, the auditorium offers the best acoustic quality for every possible performance and the possibility to disapper and leave space to public events, fairs, exhibitions, parties. Thanks to the double protection offered by the service functions concentrated on the petimetre, as well as the internal double glass walls, the auditorium offers the best comfort for every performance. The walls slide vertically with a mechanical system. The same happens to the rows of seats that can assume different configurations till being allineated with the foyer level, transforming the whole structure in a ‘hangar’ kind of space, completely open and in continuity with the surrounding park. This system makes the internal spaces an extensión of the external park. The lateral ramps system gives continuity to the public space and the green even during the closing hours of the auditorium. In fact, the park is extended on the roof of the building, with an unexpected water pond that, as well as assuming a landscape role, becomes a collector of rain water, re-used for the internal toilets and the irrigation of the park.

JAEN – FOUR ROOMS

International architecture competition.
Renovation and extension of two historical buildings.
Program: Museum: permanent and temporary exhibition space; multi-purpose hall; cafeteria and auditorium.
Total floor area: 2.550 sqm.
Location: Jaen, Spain
Design: 2010.

The new museum looks like a rural villa, luxuriously located in the landscape.The complex is a very logical result of the extrusion of the two existing buildings. The simple circulation scheme becomes the general strategy to gain a functional flexibility that generates multiple exciting spaces and experiences.

LECCE – CITY OF MUSIC

City of music and arts.
International architecture competition.
FINALIST – SEVENTH PRIZE.
Data: 33.000 sqm new construction; small and big auditorium, rehearsal rooms, library, exhibition space. Design of a park for the quarries.
Quarries landscape intervention: 55.000 sqm.
Budget: € 13.650.000.
Location: Lecce, Italy.
Year: 2010

Team:
Maurizio Scarciglia
Giovanna Caló
Claudio Colaci
Celeste de Caro
Patrizia Gatto
Giuseppe Cofano
Mohhamed Hasan Jamil

Structure:
Amedeo Vitone (Vitone associati)
Fabrizio Palmisano (Vitone associati)
Giuseppe Sindoni ( SAIER Europe)

MANDURIA – URBAN PUZZLE

“Sustainable city for kids” competition.
SECOND PRIZE
Participated design with school pupils.
Program: Public spaces supplied with sport field, nursery, botanic promenade, climbing wall, running path and pedagogic multifunctional pavilion.
Total area: 2.500 sqm.
Location: Manduria (Taranto), Italy.
Design: 2009.

Urban Puzzle is a participated project with the pupils of the local schools of the municipality of Manduria. By drawing in team scenarios of use for this public space, we witnessed the switch of values in the young generations that now follow more complex cultural models.TV shows, internet and new media make kids very exigent. This project becomes an answer to their multiple requests, while becoming a strategy of implementation of the project for the municipality that can partially or completely build the pieces of the puzzle according to a flexible budget.

BEIRUT – HOUSE OF ARTS

International architecture competition.
Program: Performance and conference hall, exhibition spaces, workshops, documentation centre, national cinematheque, movie theatre, café-restaurant, commercial spaces.
Total floor area: 16.000 sqm.
Location: Beirut, Lebanon.
Design: 2009.

The design for the House of Arts is a mix of tradition, of the hedonism and luxury that shines through the amazing beauties of middle east and Mediterranean architecture. Rough, yet gentle, the building becomes a case with secret happenings that can be discovered only by exploring it.

DELFT – PANGEA

International architecture competition.
Design for a new  building for the Faculty of Architecture in Delft.
Data: 32.000 sqm of educational spaces, halls, exhibition and offices.
Location: Delft, The Netherlands
Design: 2008

 

PANGEA

Bouwkunde since ever has been representing a symbol of excellence and progress in Europe.
This faculty has been able to dialog on the same lever with major institutions like MIT, IIT, AA London, Columbia University and other well known architecture schools. Bouwkunde has been the “nest” for many generations of extremely talented architects that, as a matter of fact, have been incrementing the historical debate on architecture and can by right find a location into the history of this discipline.But most of all, Bouwkunde represented and still represents, an epicenter, a place where every student or architect eager of this discipline, wanted to be. A place capable to spread optimism and passion for our discipline. And this is why the fire on the faculty has moved emotionally an entire professional community;
because Bouwkunde represented a place and a symbol for growth, ambition, competition, interest, curiosity, passion.

We, architects are like truffle dogs: we hunt, smell, observe, we have an ever ending radar always pulsating like a hart, looking for new contents and development of society, because we shape the environment. Bouwkunde doesn’t need an icon, but cannot either loose its symbolic role. A place of alarm, where this word is not meant in its negative diction. Bouwkunde is like a fire station, a stock exchange, where every movement and happening in the world becomes debate and reason to question, where all issues coming from the outer world become arguments and consideration at the base of our environment. We are not static, we are in eternal movement. We need to move, to absorb. And we need to team up, because we need to fight, to discuss, to compete for ideals, to research better ways. Bouwkunde should be not only a place giving knowledge buy mostly PRODUCING knowledge.

In 1992 the 6th International Architecture Biennale of Venice, directed by Hans Hollein and entitled “The architect as a Seismograph”, touched the substance of this issue in a very effective way. We react to the cultural movements of our society, and for this reason, we need to introduce the same awareness and feeling into the student chrysalis, open and receptive, full of expectations toward the future profession.

For this reason the keyword for this process is CENTRALIZATION.
TU Delft can change the course of education not barely through a technological progress but maximizing a philosophy that so far has made this institution an international leader. The fire of the faculty was a disaster but we can look at it as an opportunity. Reformulating the potential gives us the responsibility to make even more powerful the main thing that Bouwkunde has always represented: OPTIMISM.

An institution representing progress and research has the delicate responsibility to preserve a certain range of “neutrality”, stay a sort of open field of experimentation, a permanent workshop that could leave freedom to each personality to develop an autonomous way of looking at design. But the architecture faculty represents at the same time a symbol for ideology and creativity. It is somehow “unfair” to neglect the visionary role of the architect, which by designing the future Bouwkunde, will unavoidably give an ideological message.

Bouwkunde needs to refine its educational tools, consolidate a farseeing philosophy, catch up alliances, maximize its openness and cultural emancipation, spread optimism and positive thinking toward architectural progress and experimentation. Bouwkunde will be the mirror of changes, but it will always stay the mirror of personality in architecture. Flexibility and neutrality have an effective role as long as they do not mortify our imagination; and all that Bouwkunde needs and will never stop needing, is effusing and feeding subjective imagination.

 

LOCATION

Since the origin of the university institution and of schools of superior education, art and architecture have been playing a very peculiar role within the planned buildings. Architecture has been always ling in between art, philosophy and science. Either as part of a technology campus or an institution offering studies in multiple fields, architecture, because of its duality, has played a peculiar urban role in the city. Cities with an older tradition in arts, where the historical city centre since a longer time has been the activity core of the city, the school of art and architecture has usually played a role in the centre of the city, keeping the cultural debate and the students, as much as possible in direct contact with the historical and architectural heritage. It is the case of old University Institutions like Cambridge, Vienna, Venice, Rome.

Often the faculty of architecture has been hosted in prestigious historical buildings, sometimes not even originally designed for that function.
In another relevant number of cases the faculty of architecture has been displaced from the campus, being localized in the right proximity of the centre within autonomous buildings which always contributed to make the location and function easy to identify (Madrid, Barcelona, Toronto, Berkley) . Another similar urban method has been applied by autonomous private schools, which try to keep their address as much as possible in the centre of the city, in order to link it to the cultural scene, make it easy to reach, and improve its promotional role (AA London, Barlet London, Berlage Institute Rotterdam). Finally, several Universities organize the different disciplines in buildings grouped in a masterplan. The “Campus” became the urban typology that activates a portion of the city by centralizing all the research and educational activities in one single area.

From the main American Universities, like MIT and Harvard in Boston, Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh, IIT in Chicago and the University of California, to several European Universities like Helsinki, Porto, Lausanne, and TU Delft, till Asian Universities like Beijing, Tokyo and Singapore, the faculty of architecture finds its location in the proximity of the other technical faculties. The campus becomes a field on interaction and centralization of different professionals, contributing to knowledge sharing and the growth of collaboration and consultancy.

The old Bouwkunde building represented a real destination, being located at the end of the campus. We can find the reason of its peripheral location into the attractive and cultural power of architecture, a sort of catalyst between the disciplines, therefore capable to activate even the farthest portion of the campus. It is for this reason that, instead of spreading or relocating the building in another site, we propose to confirm its location and operate a reformulation of its role by relating it to the park and the whole surroundings. The building type itself wills to make the difference in enacting the symbolic role of this faculty within the campus.

Bouwkunde has the biggest number of students among the faculties of TU Delft. The fire event and the loose of that building stigmatize its epicenter role. We do not want to commemorate a site but to explore its potential, confident that, even without proposing a flag building, this place will be a cultural institution so powerful that it will even influence the flows and life of the whole campus park. The building destination melts into the park and becomes a cultural pivot, by fully opening the “opportunity forum” to the outside.

YORKSHIRE – TIME MACHINE

International architecture competition.
Program: Pavilion with flexible space for conferences, exhibitions, events.
Total floor area: 300 sqm.
Materialisation: Mixed structure plywood and float glass.
Location: Yorkshire, United Kingdom.
Design: 2008.

The Time Machine hosts simultaneously two spaces: two different happenings, two atmospheres, where the history and tradition of the region can meet the ambitions and innovation on the future. Two rooms for different opportunities, where young and older generations can meet, where past and new economies can share the same will to grow, where tradition can be preserved and become power.

SUNDSVALL – ARTS CENTRE AND THEATRE

International competition.
Program: Art and theatre complex, including three performing halls, studios, exhibition space and offices.
Total floor area: 12,000 sqm.
Location: Sundsvall, Sweden.
Design: 2008.

 

桑德维尔剧院和艺术中心 | SUNDSVALL – ARTS CENTRE AND THEATRE

公共建筑
总建筑面积12.000平方米的剧院艺术中心综合体, 包括三个表演大厅,工作室,展览空间和办公。
Sundsvall,瑞典,2008
国际竞赛。