The theme of the current Biennale, tied around the problem of mass housing, discouraged many at first. And curator Bart Goldhorn himself, in his own words, heard from colleagues that in the field of social housing an architect has nothing to do. It is boring and uninteresting from an architectural point of view. However, the curator himself is convinced that the opposite is true.
Andreas Pedersen from the Danish bureau BIG Architects showed at yesterday's lecture how this problem can be solved in an innovative and creative way. The lecture turned out to be the most spectacular of all, the rest were more theoretical, showing diagrams, graphs, numbers, and Andreas Pedersen showed stunning visualizations and original buildings. He spoke, however, not only about housing, the lecture also included a short report on a number of public buildings, most of which were built in Denmark and nearby Sweden, and something in the Arab East.
Copenhagen, like any other large city, has its own housing problems, in connection with which the mayor of the city, according to Andreas Pedersen, has promised to build 5,000 affordable houses for residents. And BIG Architects had to design a huge residential complex The Clover Block - about 3 thousand apartments. For obvious economic reasons, social housing is usually built on the outskirts, but in this case, a small green field was set aside for development, located almost near the city center. Previously, there was a Copenhagen airport here, during the war it was built up with barracks for refugees, and now there are training fields for football clubs. All this is surrounded by industrial enterprises, so I did not want to take this green island away from the residents. Here's what BIG Architects came up with.
Andreas Pedersen:
“We decided that it was political suicide to build up such an important green zone for the city. We thought - if we buy out a strip of land 20 meters wide, bypass the building of all existing buildings, then it would be a good way out. We could play with the height, as the skyline of the city itself does with houses of different typologies. And in the end, we got a 3-kilometer strip building, which houses 3,000 new apartments in the city center. And as in the "Danish version" of the Chinese Wall, the whole building could be bypassed on the roof. Moreover, the building did not close, leaving the territory of the fields available inside. When we voiced our idea, a huge squabble in the press began between supporters and opponents of this project. Protest actions unfolded, and we decided, in turn, to organize our own counter-protest in defense of the building, opened a page on the Internet, and statistics showed that the majority of residents were still for us. Generally speaking, I am a supporter of such an active position of architects who themselves defend and promote their project, and do not wait for the end of the discussions."
Another project in the central part of Copenhagen - Lego Towers, was initially limited to being located directly in the historical environment. Naturally, BIG Architects did not intend to build in a standard high-rise, they came up with a composition of different heights of streamlined "towers" resembling sand castles in silhouette, which with their peaks repeat the numerous towers and turrets of historical Copenhagen.
Andreas Pedersen:
- “Our site is a former industrial zone. We needed to build a large residential complex with parking here. We decided to make a modular development of the territory. And to compensate with the help of different heights of our building the already existing high building density here. Usually in residential buildings, the most popular are corner apartments. With a similar solution to the volume, all apartments here are corner ones. We have found a way to get away from the typical accusation that tall buildings do not correspond to the scale of a person, breaking our building into components, each of which is quite perceived at the right small scale. The lines of the building, its peaks are absolutely in line with the skyline and buildings of old Copenhagen. We even made a model of it from a children's Lego set, and now it is on display in an exhibition in London."
BIG Architects recently began work on their largest residential building in Copenhagen, The Big House. In terms of size, it is already a whole city block. The idea of the project is based on the original concept of functional zoning - "layers" that form an extended rectangular volume, and then it deforms, this shape seems to intersect, like a figure eight. Andreas Pedersen showed how it all happens and commented on the video.
Andreas Pedersen:
- “We did not divide the building into pieces based on different functions, but found a“layer-by-layer”solution: one layer - office, the next - housing, etc. And then, when we put them on top of each other, we began to shift this shape, varying the height, the slopes of the roof. In the final version, a promenade or a promenade gallery is formed from the roof, where you can even ride a bicycle."
Andreas Pedersen showed several more residential buildings in Copenhagen, each of which was made according to an individual project. For example, VM Houses, a house of two buildings, in terms of reminiscent of the Latin V and M. The visual image of the house is formed by the sharp "noses" of metal triangular balconies emerging from the glass wall like boats. Andreas Pedersen compared them for some reason to the noses of "convertibles". Or - another residential building not far from the previous one is a combination of a multi-storey parking lot, which, due to the height of almost 40 m, the architects call nothing else but the "cathedral of automotive culture", with 70 apartments. Its highlight is the design of the facade, on which the architects placed a high-frequency image of the Himalayan mountains, taken by a Japanese photographer.
BIG Architects are also working on the design of public spaces in the city, one of which is, for example, a park in the middle of the Copenhagen port.
BIG also designs large public buildings, which the architect also talked about in his lecture, although this went beyond the scope of the Biennale's theme. Andreas Pedersen gave an interesting example of using an idea that was not accepted by one customer for another (subject to minor changes, of course). The Ren building, a hotel with a conference room, was first designed for Denmark and later transferred to China. It's like two buildings merged into one. They embody, on the one hand, the body, and on the other, the spirit. The first of them grows right out of the water - this is the water sports palace, the second from the ground, where the conference center is located. Both buildings "meet" and merge in the hotel tower. When BIG Architects first showed the project at the exhibition, the Danish client felt that it was more typical for Asia than Denmark and the jury agreed with him. But then it turned out that the shape of the building is similar to the Chinese character for the word "people", in connection with which the Shanghai authorities became interested in the project. As Andreas Pedersen said, in the end they decided to "raise the building 200 meters and offer it for the Shanghai EXPO 2010".
In a project called SCA in Copenhagen, BIG Architects redefined the shaping principles of a traditional high-rise building in order to fit as much as possible into the historic city center. The tower smoothly grows out of the base, twisting in such a way as if the shape was molded from soft plasticine. Its structure is three-part - at the bottom is the library, above it are offices, the hotel is even higher, and at the very top is a vast public area.
Andreas Pedersen:
“You can't build anything high in our center, but the towers are characteristic of the Copenhagen skyline. Therefore, we took as a basis the idea of the Copenhagen tower, which has a base tied to the scale of the surrounding buildings, and the slender tower itself, which becomes part of the skyline. In our project, both of these parts are fused together in a spiral shape with a cascade of steps leading to the plaza and an open public square at the top, from where a beautiful view of the city opens. This is how we found a way to combine a modern building with an old building."
At the end of the lecture, Andreas Pedersen showed two projects of the BIG bureau abroad. The first was commissioned by the Swedish government, this is a hotel and conference center for Arlanda Airport. To move away from the standard inverted T layout, with a conference room at the base and a hotel above it, BIG Architects decided to play with this typology by flipping it upside down.
Andreas Pedersen:
“We decided to move all public functions upstairs to provide a beautiful view, and place the hotel below them. The problem was that the buses could get upstairs. We did it in one big ramp. It turned out like a Roman villa, which is located on the top of a hill. But the client did not like the idea, which we called "the bridge on the battleship". He wanted a standard option - a conference room downstairs, a hotel upstairs. Then we decided to rethink the facade. Having slightly changed the classic grid of window frames, we created a building with a portrait of Princess Victoria, and on a different facade - a portrait of her younger sister Madeleine. Inside this triangular building is an atrium with conference room structures hanging right above you.”
The solution turned out to be so effective that after a while the architects were asked to make a similar building in the Persian Gulf zone, only with portraits of Sheikhs Muhammad and Khalifa. According to Andreas Pedersen, the modern buildings currently under construction in this region “are what was already done in the United States in the early 1970s. This type of architecture in the local climate becomes unreliable due to the huge mass of air conditioners, while the traditional architecture of these places functions without electricity at all. So when BIG Architects started working on one major Asian project, they decided to create some kind of traditional architecture. It is based on 5 inverted towers resembling stalactites, under which there is a free space for traffic. Under the building, as under a canopy, BIG Architects made a small turret - a mosque.
Andreas Pedersen:
“So we went back to the original T-shaped building diagram for the Swedish government and redesigned it for the climate factor. This is a typical American skyscraper, turned upside down. The public area is hidden underground. The upper rooms offer great views and there is no direct sun exposure. The interior atriums act like natural ventilation pipes."
BIG Architects build, as Andreas Pedersen showed, in a different architectural environment, a different climate and even a different culture. And everywhere they manage to find some non-standard solutions, to play with shaping. Aside from the expensive public building projects, even what they are doing in Copenhagen's residential area is worthy of close attention, and here the architects just have something to think about.
