Julien Kisa Portfolio
Julien Kisa
Architect USI AAM Oderstraße 28, 12049 Berlin +49 (0)1 52 12 93 55 37 julien.kisa@gmail.com
Education
2011-2013 - Master in Sciences of Architecture, USI, Accademia di Architettura, Mendrisio, CH.
Studied under Jonathan Sergison, Manuel & Francisco Aires Mateus, Go Hasegawa, Antonio Jiménez Torrecillas, Michel Desvignes, Christoph Frank, Martin Boesch, Giorgio Agamben among others.
2007-2011 - Bachelor Studies USI AAM, Mendrisio. Studied under Valentin Bearth, Gabriele Cappellato, Mario Botta, Bruno Reichlin, Stanislaus von Moos among others.
2002-2007 - Collège Voltaire, Geneva
Gradueted with honours and the Rotary Prize. Professional experience
2012-2014 - Collaboration with Label-Vie, Geneva. Drawing of wooden carousels and their mounting details.
2011-2013 - Co-foundor and photographer of OSA.
Mendrisio Accademy Students Association, Involved in the organisation of conferences and various events.
2009-2010 - Internship at ATBA office, Geneva
Involved in different competitions in Geneva, in the design of housing and different enerically efficient details. Others
2013-2014 - Civil Service, CIC, Geneva Red Cross. Involved in many different activities with migrants people and refugees, visits to asylum seekers & detention centers, giving french lessons, etc.
Language skills
French Italian English German
Mother tongue Proficient knowledge Good skills both written and oral Still learning
Academic work
Building El Raval | Barcelona Diploma project, Jonathan Sergison Atelier.
The project is set in El Raval, an historical central district of Barcelona. Despite being known for its social difficulties, its streets offer both the economic and the social richness of a village within the city. In recent decades the city of Barcelona has carried out a few but often successful interventions to operate a turning point in the neighborhood’s evolution. The site of this project deals therefore with two very different realities: it takes a entire city block inside a very dense and characteristic tissue and faces the open gash of an iconic intervention which is the Rambla del Raval. The project seeks to affirm itself into the scale of those interventions, while taking care to respect the lively one of the street. The building reveals therefore without complex its true dimensions through stark simplicity of form, but retreated in its back side, it also gives itself up to a less obvious reality. The volume offers thus two main facades instead of one and introduce a welcome public space, bridging the gap between two scales that used to seem opposites. In keeping with the characteristic local activity, small commercial spaces occupy the ground floor of the main facades, whereas entrances leading to the apartments and to a (presently) existing formation center are on the sides. The latter occupies the whole of the first floor and opens onto the exterior piazas, while the upper floors are dedicated to housing. The form of the courtyard, which is accessible at ground floor level from the formation center, lends unity to the building and provides the inhabitants with a strong sense of intimacy. Precast concrete elements on the facades constitute the structure of the building and allows for great freedom of layout of the apartments. Particular attention was paid to the outdoor spaces: every dwelling enjoys generous integrated terraces and floor-to-ceiling windows that open onto 40-60cm deep balconies. These features nurture a subtile relationship between the interior spaces and the courtyard or the street, thereby re-interpreting a central theme in Mediterranean architecture. The strong simple grid design of the elevation confers unity to the building while allowing for personalization and appropriation by its inhabitants. The project seeks the difficult marriage between a very sensitive approach that considers the existing fabric as an asset to strengthen, and the affirmation of the scale in which the intervention is set. The building strives to build El Raval at a urban point of view as it does at a human one, in an unique reconciliation.
Homogeneous typology of facades along the Rambla del Raval (and their economic activities).
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Longitudinal facade
Ground floor
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USOC
Unio sindacal Obrera de Catalunya
USOC
Unio sindacal Obrera de Catalunya
USOC
Longitudinal section
PRODUCED BY AN AUTODESK EDUCATIONAL PRODUCT
PRODUCED BY AN AUTODESK EDUCATIONAL PRODUCT
First floor
PRODUCED BY AN AUTODESK EDUCATIONAL PRODUCT
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PRODUCED BY AN AUTODESK EDUCATIONAL PRODUCT
1. Typical floor plan 2. View of the courtyard from a terrace, with the T and overturned-U precast elements.
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1. Facade detail 2. View of the building on the Rambla del Raval
Low rise, high density | London Project made in collaboration with Zeno Cattani, Jonathan Sergison Atelier.
This project was part of a study undertaken by the Sergison Studio that considers strategies for the growth of European cities through low rise densification. The studio was interested in exploring how cities can absorb a growing population, meet contemporary housing requirements, and contain growth within existing boundaries rather than spread outward. The project proposes one approach to extending and consolidating the existing urban fabric. The site occupies a major portion of a long Oxford Street block in the heart of the Fitzrovia district. At a urban point of view, the project considers the urban characteristics of the existing built environment of the block as a logic and seeks to carry them through to completion. Drawing loosely on the block’s existing layout, the complex consists of four parallel elements grouped in pairs separated by a walkway. Higher buildings on the perimeter form a crown that faces onto the busy surrounding streets, while the buildings in the center of the block are lower. Their continuity is interrupted in two locations to enhance the existing pedestrian permeability and to introduce different moments of breathing within the stark geometry. The ground floor and part of the first floor are both entirely dedicated to commercial activities. A continuous gallery traverses this area and extends as far as the central walkway, which in turn becomes the focal point of the block’s network of passages. The sobriety of this very practical and readable project does not preclude subtle attention to detail in the facades. Jutting vertical elements punctuate the length of the building, ordering a window arrangement that evolves as it rises through the elevation. A similar matrix is used for the courtyard facades, through flatter and more residential in feeling.
Ground floor plan Ground floor plan
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Typical p
Typical floor plan Typical plan
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Construction section
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Renovation and reuse of a warehouse | Hamburg Project made in collaboration with Lorenzo Donati, Martin Boesch Atelier.
This project involves the restoration of a warehouse and its conversion into a school of architecture. The existing building design remains very readable despite a variety of local destructions, modifications and reconstructions suffered over time (WW2, etc). That its integrity stayed so well preserved can be attributed to the simplicity and the clarity of its initial conception. The original building was designed as a continuous longitudinal structure along the river, made supported by a forest of pillars. For direct access to the warehouse by boats on one side and by trucks on the other, big metallic doors on every floor signal the presence of invisible alleys that cross the building transversally, and conclude the logic of its very practical and elegant organization. The project consisted in using elements of the building’s identity as starting points. This allowed us to preserve and underline its integrity and its past function while adapting it to our own purposes. We sought therefore to imagine how the school could invest the existing space, reducing the interventions to the necessary. In our proposal, the circulation system is created within the existing alleys, while services are confined to small units along the facades in the center of the building. The different functions that required an enclosed space are delimited by glass partitions without disturbing the space continuity or freedom of circulation. To enhance the legibility of the building’s overall layout - which had been raised in its central part - a whole third floor is added. Three patios of different depths are set into the three distinct grids of the building to bring in light and create welcome outdoor spaces.
The building in its actual state.
Ground floor
Basement
Second floor
First floor
Architecture of Time | Milan Housing project, Go Hasegawa Atelier.
This project is situated in the heart of Milan, close to its famous Duomo and Galleria. The very conceptual theme, architecture of time, lent itself to free interpretation. The project takes city time as a starting point and imagines what it means to leave in the uninterrupted frenzy of a metropolitan central area. I was interested in designing a building which could possibly bring about a different and maybe opposite experience of time in this particular location. The project therefore is an attempt to offer a quality which could seem in contradiction with the nature of its location. Each apartment is organized on two 2.2m high floors around a double height central space facing the green courtyard. This focal area plays with the ambiguity of its nature, as it is at once the very center of an interior world and, by its architecture, an exterior one. It therefore comes across as a protected private courtyard inside the dwelling and affects the way in which the courtyard itself is perceived. Indeed, the latter becomes the main exterior reality, while the city, on the other side, appears to be secondary even though it is widely observable from large windows. In addition to this inversion, this experimental project aims to suggest different qualities and questions about time. The activities that unfold around the focal space inside each apartment - somewhat as in a theater - offer a clear reading of domestic time. Since this open room is both the center of an intimate domain and an exterior space, it also can welcome any type of appropriation with ease. Its undefined character leads its inhabitants to physically experience the passing of time simply through the varied ways in which the room is set up throughout the seasons. Life here can therefore organize itself freely as a function of a sense of time that is unlike the hectic, homogeneous flow one expects to experience in the center of a metropolis.
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1. Third floor 2. Fourth floor
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1. Section trough Via Giuseppe Mazzini 2. Section trough Via Falcone
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A house in the cantine | Mendrisio, CH Antonio JimĂŠnez Torrecillas Atelier
This small project is situated in a topographically unique area at the foot of Monte Generoso, just outside the town of Mendrisio. The cantine are a succession of private leisure cellars which are enjoyed by its inhabitants during the summer season. These structures lie at the precise point in which the ground becomes too steep to be built, forming a strong geographical frontier between the unspoiled forest and the built environment. The project occupies a gap in this continuous line, and takes as a starting point the powerful orientation imposed by the ground morphology and the existing built environment, leaning against the mountain and looking down towards the valley. The house can be described as two different parts that open onto the opposites realities the site encounters. Two continuous walls, one of which already exists in part, define the different spaces in a very clear and simple gesture without separating them into interior and exterior, but welcoming the outside situations to conclude themselves into the house. The warm areas echo this principle and their presence is delineated only horizontally by the concrete floor and ceiling. As the main protagonists of the project are actually at what the different spaces are aimed, the physical start and end of the building become ambiguous. The forest as well as the valley are paradoxically fully part of the domestic spaces - an ambiguity which allows those to be characterized by a blend of deep intimacy and wide opening.
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1. Plan 2. Transversal section
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Independent work
Learning from bamboo huts Study on rural burmese architecture
I had, and still have the strong impression that architecture suffers from many unexamined certitudes. Many architects or designers get noticed for questioning or provoking them, but I have not often been seduced by the proposals that can be seen today. The contemporary quest for innovation, however, and the unavoidable dismantling of customs that this leads to are subjects that fascinate me. I am excited by the incredible possibilities that characterize our time, but also concerned about the lack of meaning that can often be observed. I believe this research has to first and foremost examine what already exists with great care and humility, as without a deep understanding of the architectural culture and its provenance, turning a inherited habit away means losing a richness and an intelligence that will never be replaced by one’s invention. In the context of the internship year, I had the opportunity in 2010 to spend three months in Burma, with the intention of exploring vernacular rural constructions. My choice to do so in an isolated (and therefore also protected) built environment such as this reflected my need to refer to a very practical and universal understanding of architecture. In the context of a sobriety that is imposed by needs more than by will, the legibility of its raison d’être helps to define more clearly what constitutes the qualities and the sine qua non conditions of domestic architecture. I was impressed by the richness and the number of variations that can be created within a single typology. The simplicity of the building principles and the ephemeral character of the structures allow incredible freedom in dealing with every kind of situation. I first was interested in looking mainly at the intimate scale and organization of dwellings, but quickly realized that this freedom extends to the urban scale. The physical structure of a contained built environment often appears as an astonishing mirror of the social organization of its population.
1. Overwater village of Taunggyi and its floating crops, Shan State 2. Schematic representation of the alveolar-structured village of Min Nan Thu, Disctrict of Mandalay
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1. Man crafting a roof covering near Taunggyi, Shan State 2. Interior of a bamboo house, Nyaung Shwe, Shan State 3. House near Prome, district of Bago
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Association Label-Vie www.label-vie.ch
This non-profit association based in Geneva designs and produces carousels and urban furniture that are economically fair, ecologically sustainable and socially responsible. The wooden wheels shown on the next page are not an invention as they can be found in different forms around the world. Label-Vie took it as a starting point to imagine carousels that could be easily produced, transported, assembled and dismantled. As they can’t function without the help of human energy, they encourage collaboration and encounters. Thanks to the Swiss Civil Service, I had the opportunity to work with the association for a couple of months and I then voluntarily continued that collaboration until today. I drew the construction plans of different wooden wheels and participated in their improvement.
1. The “big wheel” in the Parc de la Grange, Geneva. 2. Axionometry of the most recent version of the same wheel. 3. First “small wheel” designed by Label-Vie.
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Existenzmaximum. Il necessario Winner of the laboratorio uno a uno call for pictures, Naples, 2013
As an echo to my Burmese interrogations, this competition was based on the paradoxical idea that existenzminimum, applied to the field of architecture, doesn’t entirely satisfy today’s concept of quality of life. Trough a photograph of a space and one of an object, the participants were asked to reconsider what absolutely necessary elements form the basis of an acceptable domestic architecture. The first picture was taken in Mendrisio, Switzerland. This exterior space, mainly undefined, was the one from which one could access all the actual rooms. The freedom created by its spaciousness and by its absence of function ran contrary to the standardized spaces that are created today in the field of housing. It rapidly became the main living space of the dwelling, evolving throughout the day from balcony to dining room, from working space to dance-floor, and even to bedroom. My intention was to challenge contemporary rigorous standards, which often forget the fact that inhabiting a space can take many different forms, as this same space can. The second picture was taken in the home of a middle-class kurdish family in KahramanmaraĹ&#x;, Turkey. The light sleeping mats, which serve to welcome family and friends on important occasions, represent half of the furniture present in the dwelling. I found it particularly interesting that in a situation in which existenzminimum coincides with daily life, the necessary reveals itself and appears as an evidence. www.laboratoriounoauno.it
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Julien Kisa
Architect USI AAM OderstraĂ&#x;e 28, 12049 Berlin +49 (0)1 52 12 93 55 37 julien.kisa@gmail.com