Wissioming2

Located in Glen Echo, Maryland, just outside of Washington, DC this new house is sited on a sloping, wooded lot with distant views of the Potomac River.  The house is positioned to preserve a majority of mature trees and is oriented toward the river views and south facing slope. The house is organized into two volumes connected with glass bridges that span a reflecting pool which separates the volumes.  Secondary volumes intersect and overlap the two larger structures rendering the composition more dynamic.  Material changes in the various elements intensify the relationships.  Expanses of glass open to a terrace organized around a swimming pool with two “infinity” edges reinforcing the connectivity to the wooded landscape.

The interiors are painted with light. Walls constructed with slender, steel window frames composed in “Mondrian” inspired patterns combine with translucent panels, wenge and white oak millwork and Pompeii Scarpaletto stone to define interior spaces. White terrazzo flooring juxtaposes the black window frames and unifies the volumes on the main floor. 

This house is designed to provide spaces which are organized to integrate its inherently picturesque site in a way that the architecture becomes subservient to the landscape that surrounds it.

Sofitel Vienna Stephansdom Stilwerk

Architecture is the art of taming constraints ; of poetizing contradictions ; of looking differently at common and trivial things in order to reveal their singularity. Architecture is an opportunity, in a city marked by history, to continue games begun by others years or centuries ago. It is a clever game of chance and intention ; an occasion to modify, to deepen, or to change the meaning of a context. Architecture is about making apparitions. In Vienna architecture is all that, but here the resonance is particularly savory and dangerous, so great is the temptation to invent and to pervert what is so elegant.

So just imagine that starting with these curious constructible prisms, their planes begin to slide ; intersections are created ; one plane begins to tilt under the magnetic deviance of HH while another decides to light the city from a ceiling made of furtive images. Imagine that the other planes begin to vibrate with a thousand lines of variable orientation and reflectivity, that gray sometimes melts into gray squares on a gray background. It is not surprising then to find that the oblique plan of the roof becomes hatched, weaving a tight, random pattern of parallelograms and lozenges, that the planes to the North take the form of granited glass for transparence ; that the planes to the West cloak themselves in variations of black to display their shadows. At the limit between building and sky there is another, flat plane that reveals the appearance-disappearance of changing faces, an evocation of the multiple faces forever linked to the depth of imagery born of this city.

Warsaw National Stadium

In 2012, Poland and Ukraine will be hosting the UEFA European Football Championship. For the occasion, a new national stadium will be built in Warsaw on the existing but crumbling rubble-built Dziesieciolecia Stadium abandoned for sports uses in 1988. The stadium is in Skaryszewski Park east of the city center on the bank of the Vistula, and will form the heart of a new sports park. The construction of the stadium is divided systematically into two. The stand consists of prefabricated concrete parts. Above this is a steel wire net roof with a textile membrane hung on freestanding steel supports with inclined tie rods. The interior roof consists of a mobile membrane sail that folds together above the pitch. The video cube with four screens giving optimal sightlines from all seats is also in the middle of the pitch. The top tier is accessed via twelve archshaped, single-flight staircases. The exterior façade consists of anodized expanded metal that provides another transparent envelope for the actual thermal shell of the interior areas and access steps. The stadium with its exterior façade in the national colors of Poland will stand out in the park as a landmark visible from afar.

Sport Hote

The new Vogtland Arena not only catapulted Klingenthal back into the league of the finest ski jumping facilities in the world but also rejuvenated its elite sport school. The pupil numbers have subsequently doubled and the Governor launched a design competition to extend the school’s overnight stay capacity. m2r was declared the winner out of an anonymous design competition. The project started on site in spring 2010 and was completed in July 2011.

Solar architecture and sustainable construction methods were the main priorities for our concept. Aim was the perfect symbiosis of modern architecture, forward-looking building systems and the use of ecological construction principles. The location of the building is very exposed. It will form the final component of an ensemble but also be the main focus when arriving out of the city. The pitched roofs are typical for the region. Large glazed openings and a building shape, which follows the cycle of the sun, are deliberately chosen to maximise solar gains.

The building is divided into two different parts. The strongly shaped front part accommodates the communal zones and lecture rooms. The more rhythmical part of the back accommodates the actual rooms of residence. All rooms are not just comfortably equipped with the latest broad band internet; they have also sufficient daylight and can be naturally ventilated.

The landscape design was kept deliberately simple since all sports facilities are within the neighbouring school complex. The location is chosen so that the building can be extended in the future with an additional 30 rooms.

Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts

The opportunity to design a major new performing arts center was precipitated by two significant decisions: the selection of an extraordinary site crowning the escarpment overlooking the historic warehouse district and the new entertainment district, affording a 180° view of the horizon; and the decision to construct two dedicated halls for symphony, ballet, opera, and theater.

Downtown Kansas City, set upon a plateau, extends southwards towards an escarpment from where it descends, opening to an expansive view, which is further accentuated by the flat prairie landscape. To the north, one sees the drama of the downtown skyline with its grid of streets framing the property and the Kansas City Convention Center. 

I am a believer that the site of a project always holds the secret for its design concept. Walking around, I was compelled by the dramatic view to the south. Thus, I placed the two performance halls to face south, integrated and connected by a single great lobby—an expansive glazed porch contained by a glass tent-like structure. The drop in the land towards the south allowed us to include a new road that serves as the drop-off point and leads to a large underground parking garage on top of which sits a park. From the garage and the drop-off levels, the public ascends the grand stair to the great hall, with public gathering areas and the individual theaters on each side. Recognizing the significance of downtown as an additional access point, the North Entrance was aligned on the axis of Central Street, penetrating through the building into the theater lobbies.

Each hall reads as a distinct volume; metaphorically evoking a musical instrument and visible through the glass shell. As the natural light changes, so does the building’s transparency, reflecting the structure’s surroundings and, at the same time, hinting at its interior. At night, the entire building becomes inverted, displaying all of its interior activities to the community outside. 

The halls are served by a series of access balconies fronting on the great hall, forming two conical stacked rings of white plaster. The thousands of people mingling before and after performances and intermissions are theatrically visible to one another. Thus, the great hall with its surrounding balconies is a counterpoint to the theaters within; the theater of the public realm, where the celebrating public are visible to the southern sweep of the city.

If the site generates the design of a complex as a whole, then the acoustic strategy is the generator of the design of Helzberg Hall. Working with Yasuhisa Toyota of Nagata Acoustics, a volumetric and geometric concept for the hall evolved. From the outset, we wanted a hall that was intimate and in which the public is engaged with the musicians in a feeling of embrace. Rather than the traditional frontal relationship of stage and audience, we surrounded the music makers with the public. With the 1,600 seat count, which makes great intimacy possible, we strove to have each and every person experience the music without a balcony or ceiling above them. We also wanted the spatial experience within the hall to evoke the exterior design of the building. Thus, the fanning geometry of the northern façade is echoed within the interior, supporting the sculptural arrangement of the organ within it; as it reaches towards the ceiling it branches apart, forming skylights that allow the daylight and sun to penetrate and reflect upon the organ.

In counterpoint to the warm intimacy of Helzberg Hall, the Muriel Kauffman Theater is festive and exuberant. The three balconies envelop the hall in a horseshoe-like enclosure. Each balcony is broken down into a series of steps cascading from the center rear balcony to the individual boxes on either side of the stage. The stepping enhances sightlines and provides for a sense of intimacy and connection with the action on the stage. 

The balcony balustrades are a contemporary reinterpretation of the gilded, glittering, candle-lit balconies of 18th and 19th century theaters. The lights reflect through the glass-like enclosure to form an ever-changing chandelier-like surface. The hall’s acoustic enclosure is composed of undulating walls, shaped like vertical stacked barrels and designed by Toyota for optimal sound reflection. To integrate these shapes into the whole, a series of slats provide a screen-like enclosure. A series of murals, conceived and designed by the students of the Kansas City Art Institute, are painted and illuminated directly on the acoustical structures. The overall effect is of a dynamic mural, rich in reds, greens, blues and yellows, fused into the geometry of the room.