The Vitra campus is the most famous of the "collections" of eminent architects. We wrote about his recent “acquisitions” - the VitraHaus showroom by Herzog & de Meuron (2010) and the Vitrashop SANAA factory building (2012), but now two more new objects have appeared there.
The campus is home to the Zaha Hadid Fire Department (1993), an architectural icon that serves as a venue for special exhibitions and events. From the very beginning, the direct route to this building ran through the closed production area of the campus. This was inconvenient, and therefore the idea arose of a pedestrian zone that would connect the Hadid building and the VitraHaus located at the entrance to the campus directly, bypassing the industrial zone. After the opening of VitraHaus, most visitors arrive at the campus through its parking lot. Therefore, it was decided to lay a special footpath from there to the fire station along the western zone of the campus and around the workshop built by Alvaro Siza in 1994. At the same time, Siza developed projects for two parking lots, and even footpaths connecting the workshop with the surroundings: all of them are elements of his integrated approach to the organization of space.
Alvaro Siza Promenade
The length of this special zone is 500 meters: it is a walking route with architectural "inserts". The Siza promenade is an asphalt path, separated from the rest of the space by a hedge of 2-meter beech trees. On some sections of the path, the fence is solid, on others - gaps appear in it through which the environment is visible. Siza chose a hedge as a fence to showcase the changing seasons. The fence is supplemented with materials that were used in the architect's early projects: Dutch brick and Portuguese granite.
The pedestrian path is supplemented with special "inserts", thanks to which the perception of space becomes brighter and more interesting. On the first leg of the route, such an "insert" was an S-shaped common zone formed by a hedge, as well as Karsten Höller's Vitra Slide Tower and an "archaic" structure made of brick and granite. Traveling along this pedestrianized area is like a pilgrimage trail with many stops, and the general atmosphere is reminiscent of English landscaped gardens with their pavilions and artificial ruins. Siza embodied the romantic idea of the elusive interpenetration of nature and architecture: landscapes and the geometry of architectural elements live according to their own laws, but (which is typical for the works of Alvaro Siza in general) acquire harmony at a higher level of interaction.
The Alvaro Siza Promenade starts from a small asphalted area at the western corner of the VitraHaus complex; the granite blocks that delimit this space also serve as benches. The walkway then runs parallel to the parking lot, which is surrounded by a 2-meter hedgerow, while the other side offers scenic views: at this point, it borders the campus lawn and leads past a miniature
the house "Diogenes", which was created by Renzo Piano.
In front of the factory building, which was built by Alvaro Siza in 1994, visitors can relax in an S-shaped area with granite benches. Further, the path leads past the Karsten Höller hill tower to a space bounded on three sides by a high wall, which serves as the key link of the entire promenade.
Through a narrow passage in the southern corner of this wall, visitors enter the area surrounded by two granite walls and follow the last strip of granite outlined with strips of granite, the width of which ranges from 3 to 10 meters. In this part, the promenade runs parallel to the west side of the Alvaro Siza workshop - directly to the Zaha Hadid fire station. The path ends with a small platform separated from the campus by granite blocks and connected to its central axis.
Karsten Höller's slide tower
The second new facility on campus is the Vitra Slide Tower, topped with a huge clock, by Belgian artist Carsten Höller. This is not only a work of art, it has a function: it is an observation deck, arranged at a height of 17 m (the height of the entire structure is 30 m), from which anyone can slide, like from a children's slide.
Höller is a biologist by training, so he uses a scientific approach in his work, investigating the phenomenon of happiness. His works allow people to experience the sensation of flight, see the world upside down, "trick" their senses. At the Vitra Slide Tower, the artist invites visitors to experience the 38 m long descent “a cross between excitement and fury”.
The clock at the top of the building is visible from afar, but there are no numbers on its 6-meter-diameter dial: they do not show the time, but illustrate the very idea of time.
