Money on Wheels

It is said that Singapore has one of the most impressive skylines in the world, rivaling those of New York or Hong Kong. While I came to completely agree with this after a stroll through the financial district, I wondered whether there was another reason for building high.
I first noticed this skyscraper because I had never seen one with its windows open. Any air-conditioning inside was probably rendered useless (with an average 29 degrees Celsius and 80% humidity in summer, this is not a good idea), but the resulting pattern that broke the facade certainly looked liberating. Furthermore, in one of the top windows, someone had illegally hung some laundry outside to dry. Maybe after all, one does feel more free the closer one gets to the sky.

This post comes late - but hopefully not too late, especially for those who are desperately looking out for signs that housing in and around London might become affordable in the foreseeable future.
There is hope and this hope manifests itself in an exhibition at the Architecture Foundation’s Yard Gallery in Old Street, East London.

On show is a complete prototype section of a house which pushes the terminology “Prefabricated” to new limits. This impressive section has been built by FACIT, a company which derived from the logical conclusion that in order to get the best possible design implemented, a building process needs to be found which works much more effective and precise than any other building process currently available.

Conceived by the architects Bell Travers Willson, the key factor to this new process is digitalisation. The 3d Model of the building project gets translated in various different structural and non structural modules. All these modules consist of assembled elements of engineered timber which get cut out by a CNC Router (Computerized Numerical Control) on demand and, at best, on site. The various modules get assembled on site in the order they are needed and are slotted in place. This way much faster realisation times can be achieved and since engineered timber is used the CO2 footprint of the building is dramatically reduced.

The show is unfortunately only running until the 20th of March – so you home owners to be: rush – and have a look at your truly digital house.

The pictures were all taken on the opening of the show on the 7th of March 2007

When the arrival and departure become a narrative in themselves: Berlin, Tegel Airport
Often strong design statements, using new forms or structures are in the end just statements valued only by critics and other architects. That same value is not often experienced by those using the buildings. At Tegel the very structure forms the experience, and in turn experience is very specific to the building and very memorable for the traveller.

Tegel in the North West of Berlin is built like a hollow hexagon. Just a hollow hexagon, with buses, taxis, cars running around the inside, planes lining the outside. Passengers, arriving and departing make their way across, constantly feeding both flows.

The architects von Gerkan Marg and Partners completed the airport in 1974. Their solution to the problem of passenger and plane flow was to become the defining feature for the whole building. Geometric forms, cellular patterns and tesselations form the central concept of the structure and are echoed in smaller and subtler forms throughout the buildings.

Despite the architects focus on flow and efficiency, travelling through the airport you never get the possibily overwhelming sense that you are just one of 30,000 passengers passing through that day or one of 11 million passing through that year. There are in general no winding queues of people and there are certainly no tunnels, nor travellators, lifts, escalators nor passenger movers.

And although the airport is big, its scale is small. Instead of its travellers and all their luggage are not all herded from one central characterless location to another, the shape of the airport optimises the surface area so each gate has its own waiting room, each baggage claim too.

The lack of centralisation, and emphasis on detail and specificness of the design can also be seen in the wealth of design details through out the building. And it is this, I guess, that is bringing me back for a cup of tea, or coffee or both. Its not just the tessellating tiling on the floor nor the geometric light patterns on the ceiling or The hexagonal columns that support the pyramidical celigin structure and echo the hexagonal staircases on each corner. Nor is it just the beautiful signage which is echoed through the curved desks and window frames.

It is all of this put together that gives the airport such character, and is so difficult to find yet enjoy today. Looking around Tegel people are deep in conversations in the cafes that line gates, their coats are even hung up. These people don’t look like they are just passing through or just waiting, they look like they are enjoying the moment, for them it looks like the arrival and departure are not just annoying transitions before another journey, they are part of a narrative themselves.