simone costa
portfolio
i n s ta g r a m .c o m / s _ c o s t /
simone costa architecture portfolio
born 11/05/1990 - v e n a r i a r e a l e ( T O ) italian
a
+31 6 17 06 82 60 costa.simone@live.it
education september 2013 - october 2015
master degree in Architecture at Tu Delft (The Netherlands) - cum laude september 2009 - february 2013
Born in Venaria Reale, I grew up shuttling with Turin, where I first attended C. Cattaneo Scientific High School and afterwards joined the Ist Faculty of Architecture at the Polytechnic School. I successfully completed the bachelor in Science of Architecture, with a thesis over the possible relation between the creative design of the public space and the sustainability policies of contemporary endangered cities, appreciated with a cum laude evaluation. Subsequently moving to the Netherland in search of more challenging experiences, I started the Master program at the Technology University of Delft. The Master granted me the possibility to experience and participate in workshops in Chandigarh over the topic of Global Housing and in Chicago with the gentrification of Pilsen neighbourhood. I finally completed with profit my studies in October 2015 with a research project over the rising typologies of post-crisis workspaces. I believe Architecture is all about challenges. A tangible tension between the “it is”, “it was” or the “could be”. A perspective based on the observation and the very understanding of the relations, the dynamics and the layers that define an “urban/non-urban artefact”. A call that i face with all my energies, perseverance and dedication. I would like to show you, then, a bit of myself.
Bachelor degree in Archirecture Science at Polytechic University of Turin (italy)- 110/110 cum laude september 2004 - june 2009
high school diploma in scientific studies at carlo cattaneo, turin (italy)
workshops 15 october 2015
DElft (the netherlands) - the matrix reloaded 24 - 28 february 2014
chandigarh (india) - Typologies and Housing figures in the global world and modernist city 12 - 19 october 2014
chicago (u.s.a.) - Reviving pilseN
skills microsoft & mac os
autocad, rhino, Adobe illustrator, photoshop, indesign, after effects, microsoft office critical thinking, writing
architecture writer for 3nta
language italian (native), english (professional) , French (intermediate)
01
index
04 03
02
01 02
the Urban LAb Chicago, U.S.A.
living within the grid Chandigarh, India
03 04
Industrial recondition Torino, Italy
overHoeks boomerang Amsterdam, The Netherlands
01 chicago urban lab
Technische Universiteit Delft
Tutors: O. Caso - H. van der Meer
MSc3-4 Project
Chicago, U.S.A.
West Side struggles to be despite the shrinking dynamics of the eastern rich Downtown and the western wealthy Suburbs: reduced to nothing more than a border between these two realms, the possibility to carve in this leftover space a third strong urban fragment, as opposed and evolution of the two aforementioned, raise as a strong, solid challenge. A chance to reframe the role of the post-industrial periphery, the segregated ghetto, the desolate reflux of the urban sprawl. A process that performs a multiscale intervention and pervasive interactions with economy and society in order to disentangle the complexity of the American city and let be evident the solution: the shift towards the Green Society, as a dominium governed by the principles of the green economy and reign of the Collective. A projection into the Different, in the yet-to-come, yet-to-be-defined, an experimentation triggered by alternative sustainable, efficient economies and socio-dynamics. Assumed the cogent criticalities of the current era and the quest for new model, the design aims to explore the differentiation from the conventional, in an evolution of the traditional workspace towards the digital infrastructure of services, connections, relations.
site city country program
4348 W Lake St, West Garfield Park
Chicago Illinois, U.S.A.
Hybrid
(Co-working/ Living / Start up incubator)
area
12.000 m 2
theme
Complex Project
Chicago Il, U.S.A.
Triggering a radical societal change
Defying the urban american sprawl
Fostering collective dynamics / economies
Site top view
site
01
Garfield Park is the core of all the tensions that West Side is experiencing, and that are believed to be experienced in the incoming years. For the moment, despite its central position and its strategic setting, it stays as a symbol of segregation and decadence, legacy of the racial policies that affected the city in the last hundred years. The recent de-industrialization process brought abandonment over the diffuse decay, with the dismission of the bordering industrial corridors and the related smaller services. Garfield Park today is an abandoned ghettoneighborhood, with almost all the infrastructure of a potential DownTown district.
Detail of the Surrounding
Detail of the Surrounding
Analysed the tension, given a possible evolution, how to carry the hypothesised transormation now? How to preserve at the same time the positive former memory in the tabula rasa of tomorrow? Preservation, then, would be the answer, through the identification of the possible monument, something that carries a value, and that is going to be loaded with much more meaning. The Sloan Valve Company Building stands here. A three-story factory, built at the beginning of the XXth century with brick facades and decorations, elegant expression of the Chicagoan architectural School, but abandoned for almost more than 20 years. A space indeed suitable to host “educational program” or “loft offices”. Maybe a factory again, to produce that cultural sensitiveness and social dynamics needed for the MidCity that shall come.
The Sloane Valve Factory Building, unique local landmark from the first years of the XXth century
01
urban strategy
Catalyst
Open Spaces
Circulation
In order to achieve the goal of a different American Urbanity, West Side should not be conceived as a new Downtown or an umpteenth middle-class suburb: it has to express a new, completely different, sustainable, participated scenario. Thus, according to a detailed analysis of the current criticalities, the strategy becomes the stratification of four specific counter tactics, based on the resulting topics of the in situ survey: Urban Organization, Circulation, Land Management, Sustainable and Efficient Urban Environment. In order to be effective, the restablishment of the collective dimension is assumed as key for success. The organization of the masterplan works alongside a strategy that aims to reconcile a society torn apart by the economic crisis, and through the idea of sharing strive to introduce a new way, more participative, more active, sustainable to live the city and appropriate the urban realm.
Organization
Analysis layering
urban organization
circulation
land management
sustainability & efficiency
M E T R A U p -w
the urban lab Gr een L ine/ a irp o rt e x press tr a nsi t stat i o n
c ta g r e e n l i n e
t h e m o u n ta i n
Masterplan The new asset is the stratified outcome of four layered stategies: I. Urban Organization; II. Circulation; III. Land management; IV. Sustainability and Efficiency
n e w h e a lt h c a r e district center
The design strives to create and enhance bottom-up opportunities, constituting a structured environment of organised services and facilities where individuals, creative and professionals get advantage of the provided tools and eventually gather together, developing ideas, forming start-ups, starting a major business.
PRODUCTION SPACE
Therefore, the design aims for a second goal within the frame of a shared facilities hub: to promote connection, enhance cooperation, trigger new networks of social relations. Only the combination of the two aforementioned elements could led to a successful prosperous intervention.
LIVING
GATHERING SPACE
SHARED FACILITIES
COLLECTIVE DIMENSION encouraging social encounters
Constitutive elements Catalogue
d.
A.I
+ A.II C.
A.III
A.I
0. A.III Research Center A.IV Business Dep B. Circulation Device
0. Sloane Valve Building A.I Start-Up Incubator A.II Learning Core
C. D.
Lofts Solar Roof
terrace
start-up
retail
media lab prototype shop elevator
start-up
retail
B. Start-up hallway
workshop
studio
research
lab
Start-up hallway
lecturer room
start-up retail
research
media lab
lab
prototype
Start-up hallway
shop
media lab
start-up
coworking
retail
area
elevator
coworking
area
Start-up hallway coworking
area
coworking
area
panoramic bridge
Start-up hallway
workshop
studio
conference Start-up hallway
hall
lecturer room
prototype
shop
Start-up hallway prototype
shop
coworking
prototype
area
elevator
shop
+ coworking
area
coworking
area
coworking
area
panoramic bridge
Movement and social interaction scheme
A.IV
The Coworking Principle lack of econ omic res ources
n o s pace s uitable to work / produce
a bsen c e o f c o n n ec ti o n s / n etwo rk internet access
shared technologies
desk / meeting rooms
collaborative connected network
comforts
View of the Southern Courtyard. The in-between space acts as a separating layer denouncing the pre-existing building on the left from the over time additions, focusing and directing the viewer into the glazed corridoy and its Spine.
The Urban Lab starting core consists in the appropriation of the former Sloan Valve Company Builfing, and its renovation in a co-working space thourgh the shared spaces and facilities. In order to foster the efficiency of the concept, the mobility is no longer considered as a matter of stairs and hallways, as a wasted unprogrammed transitional space, but assumes its own architectural dignity as a proper coherent, complete, indipendent Value. So the Spine shall be defined: an architectural element with its own quality, a device structuring and connecting, therefore instrumental to let people meet and thourgh the services or the activities offered, create relations, sharing time and ideas. A living district is provided in order to deliver a place where to stay in the perspective of fostering the relation within the co-workers, and thus create reinforced networks. All the element are finally combined in a unique, single identity, in order to fullfil that continuous, intrinsic relationality: a solar roof, a full-equipped energetic device is added on top, gluing all the blocks under the same shelter.
Floorplans - 3rd level
design
01
The Spine acts as a real, effective social device, offering to people multiple opportunities to gather: therefore the whole element is coinceved as a puzzle of differentiated triggering modules, where dimensions and uses are translated in eterogeneous types and functions, in a progressive and rational sequence of programs fostering always different experiences.
The Urban Spine
I. Corridor
II. Passage
III. Platform
IV. Island
Atlas of the Spine spaces
The Urban Workspace
A. Coworking Tables
B. Customizable Pods
C. Team Space
Atlas of the Workspaces
The complex tries to share a unique architectural language, adapting a different materialization for the pre-existing and new intervention, in order to focus the tension between the historical monument and the functional contemporay additions, while rythm and spans are essential to achieve an overall sense of harmony. The lofts quarters are something else than this dualistic contrast: in the transparency of the curtain wall facade and homogenized by the metalic mesh shaders, they will become a top dynamic element capable to change and give a different perception of building during day/night and time.
Longitudinal Section
Southern Facade
Northern Facade facades and section scale 1:200
Main entrance, view of the Spine. The wooden system of stairways and platform act as a pervasive, porous dynamic device for mobility and social encounters.
Western view of the Spine. The wooden system of stairways and platform act as a pervasive, porous dynamic device for mobility and social encounters.
Scheme of the structural components
technology
01
Due to the differentiations of the progressive interventions, the complex is solved with a structural renovation of the existing block through the reinforcement of the steel structure, while the side additions reveal in a more direct way the structural rhythm of the whole building with the ordered series of concrete pillars and prefabricated modular elements. The in-between system of stairs is based on a mostly independent steel frame structure, occasionally anchored on both the side facades when landing from the stairs is required.
Winter situation
Summer situation Scheme of the climatic concept
-
-
-
-
Technological detailing 1:20
truss supporing structure with service for rood solar installations
lightweight soil 100 mm draining layer with root barrier
-
waterproof membrane 120 mm extruded expanded p o lys t y r e n e pa n e l
-
reinforced vapour barrier 300 mm reinforced concrete ceiling
window with 8 mm float glass + 14 mm cavity + 6 mm heat-streghtned prestressed glass + 14 mm cavity + 6 mm safety glass in aluminium profile anodyzed aluminium sheet
cladding in precast concrete unit with hydrophobicised surface
-
120 mm mineral fibre insulation
-
waterproof layer
-
300 mm reinforced concrete parapet
-
vertical section 1:20
dark polish aluminium sheet c o m p o s i t e p o ly m e r t r a n s o m s
90 mm screed underfloor heating/cooling system
-
inpact sound insulation layer
-
300 mm reinforced concrete floor
3 0 m m e x pa n d e d p o lys t y r e n e insulation
horizontal section 1:20
cross section - III scale 1:20
The urban Lab Complex Project Chicago - P5 Simone Costa
-
dark polish aluminium sheet c o m p o s i t e p o ly m e r t r a n s o m s space frame supporing structure with service for rood solar installations
-
gravel layer
-
double bitumen sheating, external slide slated
-
120 mm extruded expanded p o lys t y r e n e pa n e l
-
EXTERNAL METALLIC MESH IN STAINLESS STEEL
-
VAPOUR BARRIER
-
SUPPORTING STEEL FRAME
INCLINATION SCREED PREFAB SLAB CEILING
-
curtain wall
-
window with limited opening range and 8 mm float glass + 14 mm cavity + 6 mm heatstreghtned prestressed glass + 14 mm cavity + 6 mm safety glass in aluminium profile
-
shader
-
EXTERNAL METALLIC MESH IN STAINLESS STEEL
-
sliding system
wood flooring 7 mm screed, ground smooth underfloor heating system with integrated separating layer wood elevating substructure, with rockwool insulation (200 mm) and integrated sound barrier prefab hollow core concrete slab with cca
vertical section 1:20
horizontal section 1:20
cross section - II scale 1:20
The urban Lab Complex Project Chicago - P5 Simone Costa
View from the Northern Entrance. The Spine appears in the gaps between the volumes, appearing as a continuous, infastructural, social backbone of the whole complex.
site
Sub City Center,
Sector 34
city country program
Chandigarh Punjab, India
area
Residential and commercial 9.500 m 2
dwellers
250 inhabitants
theme
Global Hosuing
CHANDIGARH India
Rehousing the urban poors
Densifying the grid
Coping with the Modernism
02 living within the grid Sector 34, the Capital Sub City Center. A scaled problematic synthesis of the intended Rigidity of the modernist town planning practice led by Le Corbusier. An inspiring mix of challenges for the formulation of effective reactions to extricate the sector, and in a broader scale the very city, from the nowadays Modernist impasse. The design hypothesis intends to cope with the contemporary weakness of the former Modernist plan offering a strategy informed by the very qualities of the City itself. Working on counter spaces, leftovers of the modernist envision, it’s possible to elaborate a strategy capable to achieve new scenarios for the growing city of Chandigarh, within the quest for spaces of appropriation and expression of a strong, local but modern identity. A design approach that focuses on the re-elaboration of Chandigarh’s innate logics of permeability and porosity and modernist ideals of Hierarchy and Function, but now switching the attention to the informal use of the Grid instead then the Formal boundaries defined within it. A scheme which, respecting the Grid, working on the Grid, will re-establish a connection between the modernist Plan and the fullness and harmony required by contemporary urban life in the Hindi culture.
Technische Universiteit Delft
Tutors: Nelson Mota - Tom Avermaete
MSc2 Project
Chandigarh, India
02
site
Sector 34, or Sub-City Center: a mere glimpes of the economic core of the City, Distric 17, with its ordered composition of offices, shops and markets. Sector 34 is an uncompleted mosaic of scattered commercial units in the dry pattern of the modernist open space: a noman land, a monument to the ambiguous Indefinited, the ode to the displaced Vernacular. But the voids between those giants concrete pieces could be filled, should be filled. As the city grows, and its hunger for spaces is heading out of the urban boundaries, touching the surrounding primitive villages, dislocating the organised urban spontaneous settlements, the yet pristine forests. Sector 34 must be completed. Sector 34 must diverge from its original, unachieved, anachronistic purpose. Sector 34 must end the Modernist conceptualization of the planned City, introducing Chandigarh in the era of the Hybrid. A chance for the former residents, a space for the displaced temporary colonies dwellers. And a new typology that will pervade the Sector, merging the past and the present in a new, continuous pattern.
Detail of the Surrounding
Detail od the Slum - II
Site top view
02
urban strategy
HOTSPOTS
Movement
Circulation
Open spaces
Buildings
Grid
Overlaying the Informal use and the appropriations pattern of the Formal space, it’s possible to draw a basic structure capable to develop new scenarios based on the logic of the pre-existing modernist axes, but metabolizing the seeds of spontaneous movement and of borders appropriation, direct expression of logics of Permeability and Porosity based on the genuine way the people live the territory. The Cartesian cross becomes nothing more than an instrument to allow this process to sprout all over the Sector. But in itself it’s not enough: to overcome the Functionalist Drama, the figure of the Hybrid is introduce. The gradual passage from one function to another, the combination of uses and users defines new hierarchies of spaces and diversification of the built environment. The result, a scheme made of crosses around which the Hybrids is grafted, is a place where formal/informal commercial areas enclose and define open spaces in succession of Public, Collective, Private, allowing all the realms to coexist while being Permeable.
Analysis layering
A.
B.
C.
D.
E.
F.
Phasing schemes: A) Indivituation of the Grid B) Construction of the Cross Structure C) Definition of the predetermined plots D) Construction of the first Units E) Additions F) Final Layout
Unit schemes / Functional Combos (C= Commercial / R=Residential)
R
R
R R/
R/
C
Case A
C
Case B
Case C
Combo I
C R
Combo I
C R R
Combo I
C R
Combo II
R R
Combo II
R R R
Combo II
R R
View of the Collective Square, from the Ground level, with attention to the passage towards the inner courtyards and the accesses to the second layer of dwellings .
design
02
A sense of integration is achieved following the direction suggested by the context. A first layer of commercial defines the boundaries of the cluster, harmoniously suggesting a continuity with the surrounding shopping galleries, but the variation in the typology of spaces is occasion to achieve diversification of activities, becoming a more structured opportunity for appropriation for the formal and informal seller. From each side of the new organism a system of stairs and platform gradually lead the inhabitants furthermore into the core of the cluster, developed on the top of the first layer of commercial stores. Ramps leads to the first level at 2 mt of height, where the presence of hybrid units gives the opportunity to open workshop or workroom connected with the apartment while the location produce attractiveness and stimulate movement. A second courtyard is accessible from here, 1 mt higher, where only dwelling are located and all of them are facing a square which dimensions and materialization give a feeling of collectiveness and protection. The dwellings are set around the Cartesian Crosses, physical, structural, tangible core of the whole project: suggesting the Shakti, a propitious symbol in the Hindi culture, the units spread outwards defining the boundaries of the networked courtyards. Each one is the carved out leftover of the counterpart. A second layer of dwelling, on top of the first floor, is accessible with an open gallery, covered with a pergola to create shadows, and even if higher than the bottom level, these apartments are closely connected with both the surrounding public and the collective realm.
Floorplan - Ist level
The most valuable part of the scheme, the intimate correlation between the built environment and the circulation system. An ambitious interconnected pattern of hybrids units, dwellings and courtyards, a hierarchical progression of public streets and private squares, more susceptible to processes of spontaneous appropriation, intended to guarantee passage through one collective space and another, from one side of the cluster to the other, from a psychological indoor to a physical outdoor. The permeability between these dimensions is thus ensured through steps, stairways, galleries or ramps, in a meandering flow of movement that carves out in the leftover space between the units a differentiated, heterogene-ous landscape of recognizable spaces. The bordering, layered dwellings, are therefore intentionally closely connected with both the public and the collective realm, as a means to trigger the germination of a sociality as genuine expression of the vitality of the Hindi community, while the direct link, the promiscuous border between the private and the shared forces the future dweller not only in the engagement with the space, but also in its maintenance, in its preservation.
Built elements / dwelling units
unbuilt area / network of collective squares
Hierarchy of spaces scheme
Northern Facade
Longitudinal Section
Southern Facade
View of the Gallery towards the Collective Square. The clusted view is focused on the differentiated landscaped created by the second layer of dwellings and their addition.
02
technology Each Units follows a basic scheme. Starting from the Cartesian Cross, where installations and structural support is rationally delivered to the units to be settled, a plot is determined for each one of the four de-fined sector. Two enclosed courtyards are offered within the basic layout, but the flexibility of the scheme allows the owners to extend their own Hybrid, getting rid of a portion of function or courtyard, in order to upgrade the unit with new space, more rooms, mixing uses. A growth process which is allowed horizontally or vertically due to the very organization of the Core Cross.
HYBRID Commercial + Residential Level 0
Phase I
Phase II
Phase III
Phase IV
Phase V
Phase VI
Level I
DWELLING - I One-storey apartment
Phase I
Phase II
Phase I
Phase II
Phase III
DWELLING - II Duplex apartment
Level 0
Phase III
Phase IV
Structural / Services Cross
External view of the Cluster from the Public Street. The portico ground level, with its shops, constitutes the elevated basis for the perimetric dwellings that enclose the inner Collective Square.
03 industrial recondition
The struggling transformation of a former industrial city, lost in the grid of regulations and prescriptions, aiming towards a sensational, striking novelty while regretting the progressively lost identity of a past forever gone. An intangible tension, permeating the old working neighbourhood, where the glorious factories of the last century flounder in the degrading, non-sense speculation of the ‘70s and ‘90s. A frozen puzzle of unconsidered qualities and overwhelming uselessness. A challenge to restore dignity. Identity.
Polytechnic School of Turin
Tutor: Armando Baietto
BSc3 Project
Torino, Italy
The project is an exploration into the industrial heritage of the city and an experimentation over the architectural expressions of a rediscovered genius loci, framed by the solid coherency of a concerted transformation. Within the border defined by the city land zoning and prescriptions, the design aims to raise the survived factories as standing, renovated, integrated living monuments, and acknowledge in the “industrial” the language of a consequential conceptual genesis. Thus, freed the Remnants from the abandonment of a lethargic awareness, the Factory becomes once again inspiration for the architecture of the Neighbourhood, the Block, the Building.
site
Via Amalfi 3,
Borgo Aurora
city country
Torino Italy
program
Residential and cultural 3.000 m 2
area dwellings theme
56 apartments Architecture and Technology
Italy TORINO
Housing in the XXI century
Mastering the urban block
Exploiting an industrial heritage
03
site
Site top view
Detail of the surrounding
Aurora is a cemetery of a past industrial glory. Here stand abandoned hundreds of empty shells, rusted cathedrals, decaying mills of a former laborious, incessant, loud activities. And now, this legacy, this city heritage, slightly starts to disappears. Part of a process started 30 years ago with the settlement and the conversion to social housing and offices, the new speculative wave is tearing down what is left of this past, in order to make room for the umpteenth soulless residential development. Identity must be preserved.
The Factory, the only industrial remnant in the designed block
03 I.
urban strategy
II.
A first, needed step: clearing the way out of the disturbing additions and impositions of the past four decades. Only the former Factory is intentionally saved in a process of transformation encoded by the Municipality itself. Two areas, private residential on one side, collective, public functions on the other, plus a buffer zone and height regulations. Volumes are thus automatically defined by the land zoning register. In such a tense but needed net of rules, the need arises for new propositions. What if the given, static volumes are only “suggested”… Transparency as a conceptual key, frame for the block, base for its architecture. A structured web for the whole area, with “openness” as counteracted omission against the enclosing wall, where the former identifies a public space, a collective dimension, and the latter a private domain. Mass and voids become therefore tools for the designer to carve out a meaning.
Design Concept I. Definition of the Values II. Prescription and Land Use III. Definition Mass and Voids IV. View cuts and urban reconnections
III.
IV.
Street view of the Perimeter Buildings. The renovated factory building on the right informs the structural rhytm and the architectural expression of the new buildings on the sides, while the metallic frame connects everything as a unique whole.
03
design
The City imposed the volumes, the project had to design and articulate them. It starts from the definition of the backbone: a steel homogeneous frame pervades all the planned plots, and therefore bridges and connections are made in order to achieve a sense of continuity, of a whole, unique structure, of a coherent, solid organism. From the basic gesture, then, the project envisions two possible architectural actions: to enclose spaces, or to let the structure to be the space. A unique element is assumed as functional infrastructure for different creative processes. The possibility to define a specific, bounded dimension, as dwellings or civic spaces with the addition of a “coating� and partitioning walls, when even inaction would contribute in the achievement of defining a space through the elementary positioning of temporary modular grid and fences. Thus, inside the net, two dimensions face each other, as part of the same organism, differentiated expression, alternative stages of an original intention.
Assembling scheme
III. Finishing
II. Envelop
I. Flooring
0. Platforms & Stairs
STAGE A
STAGE B
Steel infrastructure Open door vertical park
Steel structure Bounded finished building
Lofts and apartment building in the private investor, Vertical Park and Cultural Centre for the public sector. A duality defined in terms of property, program and typology. With a constant concept, as a design key: the radicalization of the theme, the involvement taken to its extreme. If the Lofts in the former Factory building represents a new generation of apartments and dwelling experience in the urban scenario of Turin, the public spaces undergoes the same climax. The collective novelty is exploited by the vertical organism of the Steel Garden, but the peak is reached by the symbiotic Centre. Imagined as a continuum system with the macestructured park, it represents its “indoor area�, a protected environment for those activities needing a shelter or proper installations. Therefore, its interior keeps an open configuration, with green island, paths and glades, becoming more a natural garden then the Park itself, and where huts are displaced with the instruments belonging to the designed target or destination. It’s meant to be a covered park of tiny happenings, a cultural Factory of daily intellectual actions.
Floorplan - 2nd level
South-Eastern Facade
North-Western Longitudinal Section
North-Western Facade
View of the Courtyard from the Steel Platofrms. The metallic frame articulates the inner area of the block, suggesting the volumetries of the former urban fabric, as a transparent structure for the new public function.
03
technology
The Frame is the essence: it’s the anchoring element that ties the new urban fragment with the existing memory, it’s the reduction of the new volumes, it’s the organised base of a new space. Steel columns and beams therefore define the backbone of the entire block, as core structure of the main buildings, rough system for balconies and synthetic gates, raw, open “cage” to be filled with enclosing static walls or open dynamic platforms. As the sustainability becomes more and more important in the city policy, both the dwellings and the cultural centre are provided with sets of sliding vertical photovoltaic panels and shading modules, running on different, separated rails on the southern exposed facades. The rooftops too are landscaped in order to collect and store the storm water and host solar thermal systems.
Scheme of the structural components
The pre-existing Factory undergoes a substantial inner transformation, with the installation of internal insulating finishing and partitioning walls, in order to prepare the building for its new purpose. The exterior express this process with the restoration of the facades, freed from outdated, alien addition and brought back to their original appearance. The positioning of a Corten coating all over the base gives a contemporary feeling while protecting the lower level of the building from the daily urban wear and tear. The intervention is finally completed with the creation of a green roof and a solar pergola aimed to collect, store and reuse rainwater plus electric and thermal energy.
Technological detailing 1:20
View of the Courtyard from the Main Passage. The metallic frame acts as a continuous infrastructure for the block, unifying the buildings and public park.
site
Overhoeksplein,
city country
Amsterdam The Netherlands
area program
15.200 m 2 Residential and commercial
Overhoeks
dwellings theme
92 apartments Dutch Housing
AMSTERDAM The Netherlands
Housing the young professionals
Challenging densities
Creating a landmark
Alternatives and Icons. Could the stop imposed by economic crisis be an occasion to rethink the first decade of urban transformations in the emerging new millennium? May it be the proper momentum to inquire the idea of Monument, in a metropolis that is itself a uniform, massive, pervasive cenotaph of a past Golden Age, a condition perceived as something to be preserved, to be protected, to be left untouched? Overhoeks district was conceived with the innocent ambition of the wannabe, traditional Icon, but the lack of daring investors put a stop to the transformation of an area strictly linked with the historic city centre, in terms of physical proximity and urban dignity. Thus the opportunities, and the roots, of a project that tries to redistribute values and priorities, in order to steadily emerge as a solid alternative for an already planned scenario. The design assumes the Iconicity as key value, and the Overhoeks as a whole, coherent organism capable to fit the ambiguous concept. Under the supervision of Jacob van Rijs and the MVRDV studio, the project, part of a larger, shared strategy, exerts the quality of a Possibly Different, the Amsterdammer next Monument. The experience of combining Post-Modernism with a Historical landscape, the Contemporary Urbanity with the Dutch Housing.
04 overhoeks boomerangs
Technische Universiteit Delft
Tutors: Pepijn Bakker - Jacob van Rijs (MVRDV)
MSc1 Project
Amsterdam, The Netherlands
04
site
Overhoeks represent the future of the city. Norhern bank of the Ij river, historical Shell district, hosting the company headquarters and laboratories until the relocation of the activities. Only few buildings of this era are left, the A’dam Tower and the recently settled A-Lab. The surrounding is stuck in the transformation started decades ago. Even with the completition of the Eye Museum, the new city landmark along the river, the development process is frozen with the construction of few apartment buildings and huge portions of land still requiring substantial recovery from pollution and refinery contaminant. The construction of the Strip, a planned high-rise intervention right behind the A’dam Tower and intended new icon for the city of Amsterdam, seems far to be even started.
Aerial view of the project site: the three city icons in the Overhoeks
Site top view
Detail of the surrounding-
A-Lab is today the only survivor of this decennal transformation. Former Laboratory for the Shell Company, it has been converted in a multipurpose space, an opportunity for talented people to meet, a creative laboratory for “the best in their field” to get together and create an enviroment to come forward. It’s a media and technology center, it’s a services providing facility, it’s a coworking space. In this flexibility and innovativity the whole destiny of this area is expressed, as something new, something imaginative, something unexperienced before. A-Lab is in itself a silent Icon of the past, restored to accomodate the fuctions of tomorrow. And it stands, with its rhythmic geometry, waiting for what is next.
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urban strategy
The Strip awaits. Dominated by the A’dam Tower, adorned with the brand new Eye Museum, the area is frozen in the ineluctable impasse of an existing plan and the lack of money or either interested investors. So, the possibility and the audacity to propose something different. The landmarks are taken as regulating modules for the new layout, in a sequence that suggests the sequential alternance of the surrounding. The volumes are then broken in multiple, stacked layers, where the gap becomes the excuse for a slight rotation of the upper bodies, granting visual continuity and balance in proximity. The configured Snake is therefore levelled down, in order to deliver better sights for everyone.
Analysis layering
Siteplan
City Icons
Infrastructure
Grid Research
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Design Concept A) References and Grid B) Modules and Plot C) Volumes D) Layered Break E) Orientation and Views F) Cuts and Sunlight
Street view from the Block I courtyard. The project established an immediate relation with the existing A-Lab building, enclosing its backyard, defining a northern perimeter while reinterpretating in a dynamic way the geometries and the rhythm of the pre-existance.
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design
The project itself is narrowed to the architectural definition of the Block II, the second imaginary development plot of the new parade of volumes established with the Snake Masterplan. A project that starts with two plain parallelepipeds: the lower paralleling the road and the surrounding, the higher rotating of 30 degrees, catching better sight condition and daylight orientation while increasing the visual distance with the third block. High-rise, high density, narrow spaces. How to create an iconic complex just trying to achieve the absence of obstructions and obstacles from the sight of the future dwellers. Second in line, the building is only thirteen floors high. Directly facing and neighbouring the A-Lab Building and the A’dam Tower, the design is strictly influenced by the stylistic expressions of the aforementioned valued monuments. Progressive integration, contemporary growth and completion, in an overall architectural climax that penetrates, not overtake the surrounding, the new building proposes linear, geometric facades, where the module of the window, persistent in the Tower and in the Lab, is taken, combined, shifted, in order to achieve a composed dynamism, an elegant evolution of the past.
North-Eastern Facade
Sout-Eastern Facade
Here it is where the Boomerang arise. The necessity to fight the unpleasant condition given by the neighbouring lower blocks, the sense of constriction, the proximity and immediacy of the visual relation. And therefore, the need of “deviating”, of naturally “redirecting”. The apartment runs through the whole depth of the building, granting with the double facing equal, better light conditions despite their collocation in the building: in a conceptual chronology, its linear, parallelepiped shape is successively bent to resemble a “boomerang”, according to its orientation, in order to let the partition walls to create spontaneous, visual corridors towards clear spots. A simple rotation of 30 degrees for both the side is sufficient to achieve this task. Each unit in both the blocks is granted with a second level for programmatic versatility: as buffered access, as a studio space for young independent professionals or co-workers, new couples’ living room. If the layout allows flexibility in the target destination, in every possibility the polyvalent level constitutes the first sequential space of each dwelling. Staggered hallways connect then each duplex to the main access core, and a side escape route in case of emergencies.
Floorplan - 4th level
Floorplan - 8th floor
Apartment scheme - Type II UPPER BLOCK
Apartment scheme - Type I LOWER BLOCK
Floorplan - Groundfloor
Floorplan - 4th floor
The dwellings responds to the Dutch tradition of joint, double level apartments, in order to deliver for every unit a south facing view. In the lower block, constricted by the neighbouring buildings, the dwellings are bent to orientate the sight towards the clear spots.
Street view from the Strip Park. The stacked blocks start the sequence of buildings of the Snake Masterplan. The rotation of the upper body provides more distance with the neighbouring buildings, providing better conditions in terms of daylight and privacy.
Scheme of the structural components
technology
The building mechanics are solved within the local tendency of working with structural walls. Parallel concrete walls bears all the solicitations, and are strengthened by a central, main core and two peripheral staircases blocks that enclose the building and its hallways on its sides. The concept is applied for both the body of the complex. The real challenge is defined by the passage from the lower body to the upper one, and the resulting parts hanging on the void created by its rotation of 30째. Two parallel truss walls, anchored to the main Core, allow creating a solid cantilever which become the base for the second layer of the building. A transfer deck is thus suggested in order to reorganize the structural grid and the management of the installations. A thickness of one meter in the slab is considered enough to properly manage the new overlaying structure.
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references Nelson mota
architect and teacher, tu delft
n.j.a.mota@tudelft.nl
olindo caso
architect and teacher, tu delft
o.caso@tudelft.nl
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