folly : Transparent Factory, Dresden, Germany by Gunter Henn (2002)
photo thanks to : volkswagen
photos thanks to : idesignarch
to : BMW Welt, Munich, Germany by Coop Himmelb(l)au (2007)
photo thanks to : panoramio
photos thanks to : e-architect
attention : Porsche Museum, Stuttgart, Germany by Delugan Meissl Architects (2009)
photo thanks to : east coast architecture review
photo thanks to : designfactory
feature : Fiat Lingotto Factory, Torino, Italy (1923)
Designed by engineer Giacomo Mattè-Trucco, the Fiat Lingotto Factory in Torino, Italy took seven years to build, finally opening in 1923 and instantly becoming Europe’s largest automobile factory, second only in the World to Ford’s River Rouge Complex, Michigan, USA.
Raw materials would go in on ground floor level, pass through 5 floors along a unique upward spiralling assembly line, finally emerging as finished cars onto the rooftop test track.
The building itself was one of the first reinforced concrete ever constructed.
Le Corbusier famously called it “one of the most impressive sights in industry”, and “a guideline for town planning”. For over 50 years Lingotto was the birthplace of many classic models such as the Fiat 124 sport spyder and the 1936 Topolino.
Sadly the car-building technology inside this landmark building became outdated and the plant finally closed in 1982, as Fiat moved production elsewhere. Thankfully architecture won the day and the building was saved by massive public demand. Renzo Piano won a competition to redesign the factory, turning the 16 million square feet of shop-floor into a shopping centre, theatre, concert halls and a hotel, completed in 1989. In 2002 Renzo added Lo Scrigno, a modern art gallery perched on the top floor with its 16,000 piece floating roof.
The rooftop test track has been preserved as a tourist attraction, but the only laps these days are done by the jogging hotel guests.
by Darren Maddison
photos thanks to : areadeescape
Lo Scrigno art gallery
photos thanks to : skyscrapercity
photo thanks to : andrewFI
feature : Neues Museum, Berlin
It’s not often that an architect gets an opportunity to make his mark on a bomb site without demolishing what’s left standing and then designing a new building. But David Chipperfield has not only made his mark, he’s also created stunning spaces that chime perfectly with the Neues Museum’s multi-millennia-old exhibits.
Obviously with such a project the restoration presented just as big a challenge as the architecture, and with the Neues Chipperfield was expertly supported by one of the best, Julian Harrap. Together the two men have created something quite breath-taking, irrespective of the fact that much of what confronts visitors is still bomb-damaged.
Render and plaster are often still missing. Where whole sections of wall were lost, just brick replaces them. But not any old brick, or any old mortar. The new sections blend perfectly with the old, it often being hard to tell where one ends and the other begins.
As for the architecture, well even Chipperfield was surprised at the quality of surface his German suppliers achieved when mixing his chosen marble chippings with cement. The surface is sublime, something to be gloried in.
The staircases, an echo of those destroyed, offer an architectural experience like no other. The polished concrete with it’s marble chippings positively coruscates against its exposed brick background, making ascending to the upper floors an almost ethereal experience.
When you arrive at the uppermost of these floors you encounter a completely different material. Beautiful dark oak planking runs beneath doors of the most wonderful walnut, all possessing a quality it would be hard to better.
After an absence of almost 70 years Berlin’s pride, its 3,300 year old bust of the beautiful Queen Nefertiti, has been joyously returned to its plinth in the midst of Chipperfield’s brilliantly reborn Neues.
by Richard Woollen, guest author
all photos by Richard Woollen
folly : Continuous Monument by Superstudio (1969)
image thanks to : pichaus
image thanks to : starwarsmodern
to : Prague National Library by Future Systems (2007)
image thanks to : 100percentdesign
image thanks to : designbuild
image thanks to : designboom
feature : Visionary Architecture
image thanks to : bldgblog
In the search for original architecture architects have often begun with the most fantastic of schemes, most of which are either practically impossible to build or impossible to live in. In many cases this is quite deliberate as there is no intent to actually build it. The ideas remain as paper architecture, some depicting visions of the future (good and bad) & some reflecting escapism to an ideal, Utopian world. All of them graphically represent the imaginary buildings and places that exist in the minds of the authors. Theirs is the world of the unbuilt environment.
Over the years, many have dreamed up grands projets. Often credited as being the forefathers of visionary architectural thinking, Étienne-Louis Boullée (1728-99) and Antonio Sant’Elia (1888-1916) may have set the ball rolling, but in my opinion were simply imagining the massive up-scaling of traditional building methods.
1919 proved to be a prolific year and the beginning of when more abstract & imaginative ideas came to the fore. German expressionist Hermann Finsterlin (1887-1973) imagined living within organic forms, whilst the Russians Vladimir Tatlin (1885-1953) and Iakov Chernikhov (1889-1951) produced “Monument to the Third International” and “Architectural Fantasies ” respectively, including dynamic structural images of large volumes carried in the air by “impossibly” thin legs.
Whilst dreaming continued through the war years, the next significant unbuilt works were in the midst of 1964 pop culture. Archigram, notably otherwise financed, demonstrated a glamourous future machine age and a direct refusal to be shackled by the past. Hugely influenced by Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983 - not mentioned in detail here because he actually built his designs !) and the concept of survival, they had lit the touch paper for many other architects to think out of the box, namely Italians Superstudio and Archizoom, who famously produced designs that were arguably often more art than architecture. In particular it was Rem Koolhaas (OMA), Jan Kaplicky (Future Systems 1937-2009) and Zaha Hadid, whose graphically powerful drawings would become their signature and eventually lay the path for each to become highly successful.
However, it is Lebbeus Woods (b. 1940) who is possibly the most devoted of experimental architects. Influenced by the real-world threat of earthquakes and war, Woods’ early ground-breaking work depicts a mechanical, apocalyptic age. One of his pieces “Neomechanical Tower (Upper) Chamber” (1987), was famously copied (without permission) and used in a sci-fi film scene in Terry Gilliam’s “12 Monkeys”. His anarchic style paints a very gloomy picture of the world ahead of us. Visionary or realist ? Only time will tell.
by Darren Maddison
Cenotaph for Sir Isaac Newton by Étienne-Louis Boullée (1728-99)
image thanks to : rosswolfe
by Antonio Sant’Elia (1888-1916)
image thanks to : lebbeuswoods
Casa de Vetro II by Hermann Finsterlin (1887-1973)
image thanks to : nickkahler
Monument to the Third International by Vladimir Tatlin (1885-1953)
photo thanks to : dieselpunks
Architectural Fantasies by Iakov Chernikhov (1889-1951)
image thanks to : guntherstephan
Walking City in New York by Ron Herron, Archigram (1964)
image thanks to : lagraphicdesign
Neomechanical Tower (Upper) Chamber by Lebbeus Woods (1987)
image thanks to : curetheblind
