Coming soon!

In Transition – A Local Metropolis

The site, characterized by highly heterogeneous areas, has led to a project which can adapt in time and scale to different conditions.

New developments shall be implemented process-related, reaching from short term, informal interventions to a long term urbanism based on a combination of small and big scale buildings. Small scale buildings establish a vivid permeable ground floor, 100% public and equipped with multiple functions and urban spaces adapted to human scale. This ground floor can integrate existing structures  and sets up a common ground for high-rise buildings, being visible from afar and offering great perspectives on the Parisian cityscape. The simultaneousness of small and big, local and metropolitan scale shall create a unique vision of a contemporary city.

Links:

Europan Europe

Europan France

Fabian Wallmüller

Yewo Landscapes

]]> http://www.coarch.org/?feed=rss2&p=638 0 http://www.coarch.org/?p=94 http://www.coarch.org/?p=94#comments Tue, 28 May 2013 13:37:57 +0000 admin http://www.coarch.org/?p=94 Honorable mention in overall competition- 3rd Price in Designer’s Choice Award  – In cooperation with Fabian Wallmueller [2012]

The city development of Detroit started by the river, but ended with the car.

Detroit has passed through years of deep transformation, where the car as the city’s status symbol lost its uniqueness. Detroit needs to re-orientate, but where to go?

It would be the right moment to bring Detroit back to its roots, to focus again on the riverfront by creating there a public space as a new urban center. But this new urban center is not meant to be a formal and rigid place, but above all a place gathering different layers of activities for all kind of people. With those alternate activities the new central plaza should change the spirit and its image.

Accordingly the design of the new central plaza, situated on the Detroit riverfront should not be static, but dynamic and altering from one appearance to another. To achieve the above described design intention, the existing Hart Plaza would need to vanish and yield the space to a huge water basin as a fluid screen for new scenarios. The created void is ready to be filled up with the physical and functional elements for a new vibrant urban plaza.The key element, which will program the water basin, is a new prototype of a pontoon. This pontoon of 600m² is the container for different functions classified into five main groups: 01_sports/leisure, 02_building facilities, 03_stage/event, 04_ garden/park, 05_monument/art.

The pontoon as a floating element can build up any pattern for a new Central Plaza by creating diverse functional combinations. In theory Hart Plaza could change its constellation several times a year. It could be compact or set up to a huge stage, even build up a bridge to Canada or disperse as dozens of small elements floating along the waterfront and docking to places where they are needed.

Now it is not anymore the car being the symbol of Detroit, but it is the Detroit Plaza Pontoon, the inhabitants identify with.

Local factories and dockyards produce the pontoon, which will be a prototype for all around the world. The functional pattern for Hart Plaza is conceived in a special lab gathering ideas from inhabitants, who want to participate. The assembling of the pontoon elements is accompanied by a big event and every year people are welcoming and celebrating their unique central Plaza of Detroit.

See also official competition website

Team: Christina Kimmerle, Fabian Wallmüller

An Opportunity for Revitalization in Detroit

Young entrepreneurs gravitate to places where they can become the founders of a revitalized culture; where land is cheap and available, and innovation is uninhibited by a status quo.  Detroit, Michigan has become one of those places. The media gives us a portrayal of a wasteland, a post apocalyptic landscape of dilapidated homes and infrastructure, but there is plenty opportunity for start-ups to redefine Detroit’s future. That it why young innovators and risk-takers are needed to bring new energy and awaken new markets within the city.  A recent article by Chuck Salter for Fast Company identifies six entrepreneurs who have started businesses in Detroit.  They vary from grassroots campaigns to inform people of opportunities within the city to small scale enterprises that bring retail and infrastructure to the downtown area and surrounding neighborhoods.

More under that link

Courtesy of Flickr User DandeLuca, licensed via Creative Commons

A project for Valverde, El Hierro, Spain

The project aimes for the integration of natural and cultural ressources into a man made land culminating in the very specific functioning of an architectural typology. As the smallest unit and basis of a bigger entity this typology will reflect the complex processes of the whole settlement.

The examination on a historical typology would be the inital point for the proposed project. The spirit of these houses was strongly defined by the sophisticated allocation of uses. This typology allows a reaction on changing familiy structures, a combination of living and working in a well-balanced way and also shows a clearly defined hierarchy of public and private spaces.

As a very specific regional element appears the additional space connected to the main building but differing in function and use (crop storage, livestock breeding, workshop) Although this is an ‚old’ system it seems, to fulfill more than ever what modern living calls for.

By developing a typology that is leaning on this historical model, the project “elective affinities” is trying to go for a reinterpretation of this additional space and transform it to an “Add-On” that brings in not only a socio-economic layer but also goes for the processing of local resources by absorbing local know-how and assisting key sectors as for example research on and application of renewable energy sources.

What – in the historic example – was maybe an elitist concept for a mainly bourgeois living on a manor will still work in a reduced way:  this typology can be transferred to a social dwelling project and also find an answer to the given questions. Our new dwelling tries not only to inhabit the given area but also – in the sense of the Latin ‘colere’ – to cultivate, frequent, practice, tend, guard and respect it.

Team: Christina Kimmerle, Elisabeth Koller, Tobias Brown

‘Maison Phénix’ is the biggest promoter for prefabricated individual houses in France. We were supposed to design a ‘Maison Phénix New Age’, which keeps the structural system of the original Phénix house, but provokes a new way of life.

The proposed design is based on a standard house, which will be transformed in a quite simple, but radical way. Half of each room is pushed outside the house.

In this way a supplementary garden room is created, while inside the plan has become more open and spacious. Every room has now its own garden and a private access.

The project has been selected for further studies by the Phénix Company.

In the pursuit of the most prized commodities of our time – energy and food, our proposal envisions the Lagoon archipelago as prototype for a future metropolitan regional system, adapting existing local knowledge and infrastructure. A new productive landscape, capable of supporting a regional community of small settlements is thought to establish an integrated and environmentally stable system that builds upon existing biodiversity and production.

Within this scenario, the Lagoon becomes a vast working resource in which eco-systems, energy cycles, and human activities energetically and environmentally are self-sustaining. Natural processes, human activity and technology interact, giving opportunity to restore, renew, and reconnect. Connecting to a traditional and locally cast mindset of environmental balance, the Venice lagoon becomes a network of concurrent influences, hence a prototypical “site of relatedness and dialogue“. (Cacciari)

Team: Prof. Klaus Loenhart, Andreas Goritschnig, Christoph Wiesmayr, Christina Kimmerle in cooperation with terrain:loenhart & mayr

The task for this invited competition was to design a five star grandhotel in Bad Gastein including several holiday residencies, a casino, an underground parking space and a thermal spa. The total constructive surface was about 30000m².

Bad Gastein is well known for a long tradition as a luxury thermal spa resort, which was affected after the 2^nd world war by a strong recession. Since now it hasn‘t recovered yet, although a certain mass tourism has established. The topography of the village impresses by its steep slopes, where huge hotels were built. Bad Gastein has rather an urban flair than a village like atmosphere.

The proposed design conceives a high density situation, which is the result of the program required by the client. All parts of the hotel complex should be connected, so one of the central design aspects is a canyon like sidewalk connecting the different entities.

Team: Peter Zinganel, Christina Kimmerle, Elisabeth Koller, Andreas Roschitz, Barbara Heier, Paul Lechner

Coming soon!

The cityscape of Berlin has always been marked by the urban and architectural traces history left behind. The first built witnesses of the all German capitalism are the abandoned buildings and construction sites as products of misguided planning in post-cold-war Berlin. The diploma thesis – Ruin under construction – deals with an existing example for an inheritance of wrong prospects: the abandoned construction site – Landsberger Allee 106 – in Berlin Lichtenberg, a project stagnating for more than ten years. Actually the building was planned by the Italian architect Aldo Rossi and should have been developed by private investors in the early 1990ies.

Ruin under construction follows up the matters leading to the failure linked to economical, architectural and urban issues. A vision for an alternative developing concept finally opens up the view on a new generation of planners dealing with such an architectural relict. The aim of the proposed strategy is to deliberate the blocked situation of the building floating in the vague state of decay and construction. This uncertain status of the structure is used as a trigger for a prosperous developing process.

Book: 239 pages – german