Khunsthaus Bregenz design exploration

GRACE BRIDGES

Architecture Design Workshop 2 Professor Nilou Vakil & teaching assistant Claire Ryan Fall 2015

My name is Grace Bridges, and I am currently a student in my second year of the B.A.- M.Arch program at the University of Kansas. I enjoy studying architecture because of it’s incorporation of art, design, math, and science to create physical and functional solutions. I recognize the power architect’s have in changing their communities for the better, and I hope to use my education to work towards bettering the world in which we live to the best of my ability.

Front and Back cover images: http://dustmagazine.com/blog/?p=13379

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Research Project

1

Kunsthaus Bregenz

2

Massing Model

3

Sketching

4

Digital bay model Physical bay model Diagramming

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RESEARCH PROJECT

Over the summer I had the opportunity to visit Los Angeles where I was able to spend an evening at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), home of the Resnick Pavilion addition designed by Renzo Piano. Upon returning to school and being

“Parametric designs don’t have to be corner-less, futuristic and meaningless.”

-excerpt from research paper

LA. Specifically, this research project focused on analyzing the architect’s use of parametric design throughout their careers, and my partner and I found that Piano followed a trend towards the incorporation of more organic, rounded, fluid, parametric design as his career progressed into the 2000’s. However,

tasked with researching an architect, my mind

we noted that he has moved away from these

immediately jumped to Piano and his work in

forms and is instead incorporating complex angles and planes that are made possible using digital tools, but stray from our notion of parametricism being organic and fluid. The Resnick Pavilion, completed from 2006-2010, is an example of this shift from organic back to complex,

ABOVE: Renzo Piano’s Resnick Pavilion at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. BACKGROUND: Urban Light, the large-scale assemblage sculpture by Chris Burden located at the Wilshire Boulevard entrance to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

KUNSTHAUS BREGENZ

Situated on the banks of Lake Constance in Bregenz, Austria, the Kunsthaus Bregenz museum illuminates it’s landscape. The museum complex includes the museum itself as well as an adjacent administrative building that also houses a cafe and shop.

The museum, designed by Peter Zumthor and completed in 1997, incorporates an open floor plan to allow artists to manipulate their gallery spaces to best display their works. A complex light filtering system through a series of glass panels allows natural light to enter the space without the risk of direct sunlight hitting the works of art. Peter Zumthor describes his project by stating; “The art museum stands in the light of Lake Constance. It is made of glass and steel and a cast concrete stone mass which endows the interior of the building with texture and spatial composition.

ABOVE: Renderings of Kunsthaus Bregenz museum and adjacent administrative building.

BELOW: Site map of Kunsthaus Bregenz museum in relation to surrounding structures.

From the outside, the building looks like a lamp. It absorbs the changing light of the sky, the haze of the lake, it reflects light and colour and gives an intimation of its inner life according to the angle of vision, the daylight and the weather.”

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/f2/29/0c/ f2290ca599befb1063657b5ec31768ce.jpg

2

MASSING MODEL

This assignment was the first time I had ever attempted to use the program SketchUp. At first it was very frustrating and reminded me of when I first started learning how to use the Adobe software a few years ago. I struggled with placing objects within the correct planes, as I would place something and after rotating the view see that I had placed it nowhere near the structure I was working on. As I practiced it got easier and more intuitive to use this tool, and I started taking advantage of features like the ability to make components and change the materiality of structures.

I really enjoyed this type of research in that it was interesting to explore the area surrounding the Kunsthaus Bregenz museum using Google Earth in order to roughly replicate the adjacent structures. Once the program became easier to use I started to take more pride in my completion of this portion of the project because I could see that I could be successful in replicating these structures.

ABOVE: Various scene stills of massing model.

3

SKETCHING

This stage of the project was most similar to the type of work I was doing last year during introductory studios.

I like sketching because it gives you a chance to work more naturally with your hands, away from a computer screen.

I feel like when I work on the computer I get too focused on small details, but when I sketch I approach the drawing more as a whole work. I placed the sun in my massing model in SketchUp before printing my images so I would have a guide as to where to place shade and shadows in the sketches, which I think is the technique that made my sketches most successful. I also was more artistic in my hand drawn representation of the facade, as I decided not to draw out every detailed line of the glass rain screen surrounding the Kunsthaus Bregenz museum. My favorite part of this stage was adding the entourage, like the people and surrounding hillside, because they really pulled the drawing together and gave it more context than was present in my SketchUp model.

ABOVE: Sketches traced from correlating massing model stills.

4

DIGITAL BAY MODEL

Even though my abilities and knowledge of

based on my own interpretation of images

using SketchUp had improved greatly by this

of the structure rather than on concrete

point, the program still gave me some trouble

data I found about dimensions. The ability

when completing my digital bay model. It was

to collaborate with my peers who were also

at this point that making components really

modeling the Kunsthaus Bregenz museum

came in handy, and they saved me a lot of

was really helpful because we shared a lot of

time I would have otherwise spent remodeling our best research materials during this stage, each detailed aspect of the building, like

and believe this aspect of teamwork definitely

the L brackets that support the panes of the

improved my final submission. I learned the

glass rain screen. It was this stage in the

most about the structure of the

project that required the most research, and

Kunsthaus Bregenz during

even then a lot of the decisions I made were

this stage of the semester.

ABOVE: Modeling of L-Brackets used to support glass panels of rain screen facade.

BELOW: Close up of facade support structure interacting with interior wall slab structures and ceiling.

5

PHYSICAL BAY MODEL

ALL: Photos taken during the process of building the physical bay model.

7

The task of completing a physical bay model was

different materials to use for the construction of this

the most intimidating to approach during this entire

project, but ultimately I decided that chipboard would

process because I had never built a physical model of

be the most successful material to use. It mimicked

a building before. To start, I cut down from my digital

the materiality of the concrete structure more than

bay model to make it more manageable in size, and I

basswood or balsa, and it allowed me to use the laser

also cut away parts of the original digital bay structure

cutter to cut out the framework and slab pieces. This

so that it would have a relatively flat plane to rest on

made the incorporation of the tiny L-brackets much

the base. I enjoyed shopping around and exploring

easier than if I had cut them by hand, which I think saved me a lot of time and frustration. It also meant that I had to plan out how I would construct the model before I could start laser cutting pieces, and I think this initial development of a plan made the construction process much more successful. I used plastic sheets that had a protective film on either side for the rain screen and the ceiling panels, and left some of the protective film on to mimic the frosted glass used throughout the Kunsthaus Bregenz museum.

8

DIAGRAMMING THERMAL DIAGRAM

In my research of how the Kunsthaus Bregenz structure

cool the building. Fresh air entering the building passes

transfers heat, I discovered that the museum houses

through a slurry wall system that integrates water from

a complex heating and cooling system. I chose to

the nearby lake and uses the water’s constant cool

illustrate how the building acts thermally on a July

temperatures to cool the air entering the structure. This

afternoon, because the way the building reacts to it’s

air enters the gallery spaces through vents in the floors,

climate changes throughout the year. In this example,

and as stale air rises through the spaces between

the glass rain screen creates a thermal buffer that

the glass ceiling panels it is absorbed radiantly into

insulates the building. The reflectivity of the glass rain

the thermally active slab concrete and also removed

screen deflects heat from direct solar radiation to help

through an exhaust air duct.

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LIGHT DIAGRAM

The way in which the structure filters light is similarly

glass ceiling panels above the gallery spaces. The light

complex. Sunlight first interacts with the structure

that finally enters the gallery space is therefore very

through the exterior glass rain screen. This is the first

soft and diffused as to protect the works housed in

level of diffusement, as the light enters a buffer zone

these spaces. This is a very sophisticated system that

between the rain screen and the interior slab walls of

solves a common problem seen throughout the world’s

the building. This buffer zone then allows light to enter

museums, but which doesn’t rely on any mechanical

the space between the slab flooring and the glass

elements to control the level of light allowed into the

ceilings of each floor. Light is further diffused in this

space.

space, and from here it must pass through the frosted

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