Last year we posted about studiometrico‘s involvement in the Operation Fornebu with bkark, 6a and jcla. Long time has passed by and unfortunately we haven’t got that competition. Nevertheless we had great time, intense design sessions with fantastic people and – we believe – a very strong proposal.
Find out more after the break.

Satellite view

The Site

Placed in the middle of the Fornebu peninsula, the project area measured 70.000 sqm and used to host several airport facilities. Some huge hangars and storage buildings had been placed on a large concrete slab ‘strong enough to carry the weight of an aircraft’. The huge ‘table’ was also an efficient solution to provide a generous horizontal surface and a large underground area on a rocky and discontinuous terrain. As the City airport moved to a new location in Gardermoen the area experienced a quick adaptive reuse: most of the hangars became storage buildings serving the Oslo ships, another one was turned into a quite surreal indoor golf court, then the developers understood the site had more potential… The 6 invited teams were asked to design a masterplan for the area organizing 575 new dwellings and a large surrounding green environment. Architects were allowed to clear the site from existing buildings, while the concrete platform with its solid bearing structure and generous underground space, had to be preserved as an available tabula rasa to support new constructions.

Oslo Fjord seen from Fornebu

Eastern access under the platform

The Mothership

The Hangar on the Western corner

Eastern access under the platform

Cocrete column

Approaching the site from South West

Existing airport facilities

Existing airport facilities

Existing airport facilities

Containers above the platform

Team members on the cherry picker

The masterplan

The orography of the Oslo Fjord on a large territorial scale has been the main inspiration to conceive and develop our landscape strategy. The uniform orientation of hills, rocks and small islands appears as the generative factor of the main direction of the project area. The lines observed on the territory becomes ‘landscape strips’, large portion of landscaped terrain available for different program and diverse vegetation. One strip features orchards, another hosts allotments for residents, a strip presents playgrounds for kids while another has denser patches of trees. A strip in the middle of the site is left empty, exposes the existing asphalt and stands at a lower level, it resembles a runway and works as main public space to connect different parts of the site.

Orography orientation and landscape strategy

Masterplan (click to open, then right-click to zoom)

Sunny orchards and shadow gardens

Landscaping the concrete platform

Landscape (click to open)

The (oversized) Villas

To respond to the fairly high density requested by the client, to comply with the regulations that set a maximum height of 5 storeys and to preserve a good balance between buildings and landscape, we propose an unconventional type of construction that is neither a villa nor a condominium. Fornebu is close enough to Oslo to be a desirable place to live for Oslo citizens and has direct access to the beautiful outskirts of  Oslo Fjord. For these reasons is an attractive neighbourhood for young families, but the high number of dwellings requested doesn’t really allow to satisfy the dreamed lifestyle of many couples with kids: to have an independent villa with a private garden. Our oversized villas are 4 or 5 storeys buildings with 4 corner apartments on each floor. There aren’t private gardens but each house stands in the middle of a public intimate green environment.

Landscape

Indoor living

Outdoor living

Bedroom

3d model

Planometric view (click to open)

Perspective view

Perspective view

The Apartments

Each house has a central core with staircase and elevator and a wide corridor that provides access to the different apartments. The living room is the most generous space and benefits from the best exposure to the sun and the best view toward the landscape. Each apartment features 2 or 3 bedrooms and a continuous 2.5m wide balcony, an extension of the living room that can be particularly enjoyable during the never ending Scandinavian summer evening. The deep covered balcony also allows natural light into the apartment in the winter when the sun rays stretch horizontally and natural light is desirable. To respond to the problem of the cold bridges that suspended balconies imply, the building is split in two: the ‘scaffold like’ outer structure of the balconies is propped against the solid and fully insulated inner volume of the building bu remains separated and independent. While the balcony structure is a discontinuous solid wood construction, the interior slabs of the floors are made of in situ cast concrete.

Balcony structure and insulated core

Square – 3 beds (click to open, then right-click to zoom)

Square – 2 beds (click to open, then right-click to zoom)

Octagon – 2 beds (click to open, then right-click to zoom)

Circle – 2 beds (click to open, then right-click to zoom)

Indoor living room

Outdoor living room

Unité d’aviation

In our design proposal the industrial character of the site is perceived as a positive value and a significant aspect and some of the traces of the past are therefore kept and enhanced. One of the hangar, a massive concrete structure organized on different storeys with a rectangular plan shows the potential to be refurbished and transformed into a very special housing block: the ‘Mothership’. Norwegian vernacular architecture is used as reference to conceive and develop a variety of new wooden house types that can be inserted into the concrete skeleton and organized on different levels as an articulated fragment of the urban fabric of a Norwegian historical city. The space of the existing hangar is not completely occupied by the new inserted units, an interior public space, private patios and light wells are left open. The renovated building is an opportunity to suggest different (and more urban) lifestyles within the new housing development, bypasses the uncomfortable ’5 storeys rule’ and claims the right to be kept and preserved as an unique piece of industrial archaeology.

Conceptual drawing

The Mothership ‘as found’

Structure

Maquette

Maquette

Maquette

Mothership unit (click to open, then right-click to zoom)

N-S section (click to open)

E-W section (click to open)

Perspective view (click to open)

studiometrico team:

Lorenzo Bini
Alberto Clerici
Simone De Iacobis
Gloria Ferrari

previous posts about this project:

Operation Fornebu

Last June we published a first post about this project for the transformation of an industrial building into offices to rent in Milan. Then we have been silent… but not idle.

Last fall we have been busy with the tender, in October Cometal S.p.A. has been appointed by the client as the main contractor and  in December the project eventually went on site! We are now able to publish some pictures showing the result of the main demolition phase and we hope to keep on posting as the works progress through the whole year.

Design Team:

Lorenzo Bini
Claudia Brunelli

Design Consultant:

Gennaro Postiglione

Structures:

Marco Clozza (Atelier LC)

previous posts about this project:

ZUM – 1

SEA – the company that runs Italian Airports – launched a 2 phases competition for the ‘new gate’ of the Airport of Malpensa. The brief, addressed to teams composed by architects and artists, defined a site between terminal and train station, a budget and some programmatic ambitions. The ‘Gate’ had to be conceived both as transit and pause space, function as infrastructure, be perceived as a landmark and behave as an exhibition space. Together with Massimo Bartolini and VudafieriSaverino we developed our (losing) proposal…

Premise

Novalis noted that “The curve is the triumph of the freedom on the rule”, and Oscar Niemeyer keeps on explaining: “I am attracted by the free and sensual curve.The curve I encounter in the mountains and in the rivers of my Country, in the clouds of the sky, in the waves of the ocean, in the body of the favourite woman. The universe is made of curves, the curved universe of Einstein.”

A gate for Milan

Our proposal is a permeable and autonomous space, defined and circumscribed by a curve with constant radius: a circle. The curve is strong in this context because is completely unusual among the surrounding infrastructures. The curve introduces a dynamic and relaxing ‘field strength’ that becomes the focus of its environment. The ‘perfect’ shape of the circle gains another significance at the architectural scale. The 2-dimensional perimeter carved on the territory is extruded into the flat volume of a 44 m wide and 5 m tall cylinder. The interior become organized space and, therefore, architecture: a circular room with a 30 m diameter flanked by two curved corridors that meet were the space opens to the terminal on one side an to the train station on the other.

Revolving door

This circular space is occupied by a revolving door tied to a structural pillar and constituted by 5 wings, each wing is 14 m long and features few colored glass panels. The revolving door is the metaphor of a transition, and of the world. It’s an open boundary and recalls the image of hotels, theaters, public spaces, meetings and travels… but it’s also the alias of a compass tracing a profile on a sheet of paper, of a radar scanning the sky and monitoring the airplanes traffic.

Fast curves

The curved corridors around the central room work – paradoxically – as fast connections. The outer boundary is composed by a bearing structure combined with colored glass panels. A screen saver is constantly projected onto the boundary of the central room: landscapes, movies, fragments and memories of Milan and the Milanese territory. The shadows of the passengers melt in this images as in a magic lantern.

5:PM

When the mechanical movement of the revolving door stops, 5 rooms materialize and become available spaces for art exhibitions, the ‘kaleidoscope-like’ space become background, the transit turns into pause. 5:PM is the name of our proposal for the ‘New Gate’ of Milan, it’s a revolving door with 5 wings, it’s the time when labor ends a leisure starts, it’s when computers are shut down and people goes out, it’s the right time for departures… and arrivals.

Plan (click to open, then right-click to zoom)

Competition panel (1.272MB)

The Competition Team

Massimo Bartolini
Lorenzo Bini
Claudia Brunelli
Roberta Rizzi

Norwegian friends Brendeland & Kristoffersen arkitekter have invited  6a architects, JCLA and studiometrico to team up and join a challenging urban design competition in Oslo, Norway.

A 70.000 sqm area – part of the dismissed Fornebu airport – will be transformed to host 575 new dwellings. IT Fornebu – a Norwegian developer – has first launched the competition and then short-listed 6 teams to compete and produce a design proposal by the end of January. Here the complete list of the competitors:

• April Arkitekter (NO), Helinco Architects (FI), Marjamaa Landskap (NO)
• Brendeland & Kristoffersen Arkitekter AS (NO), 6a architects Ltd (UK), studiometrico (IT), Jonathan Cook Landscape Architects (UK)
• Code Arkitektur AS (NO), Aurora Landskap AS (NO)
• Arkitektkontoret GASA AS (NO), Askim/Lantto Arkitekter AS (NO), Grindaker AS Landskapsarkitekter (NO), Erichsen & Horgen AS (NO)
• MVRDV (NL), Tupelo Arkitektur AS (NO), Bjørbekk & Lindheim Landskapsarkitekter (NO), Sweco
• Arkitektfirmaet C.F. Møller (DK)

On the 19^th of November the five teams that will compete for the 2^nd phase of the Architecture Competition for the new Piazza G. Verdi in La Spezia (Italy) were announced. studiometrico and artist Massimo Bartolini had developed a design proposal that was not short-listed by the Jury…

The Project

The competition challenge to organize a new urban square without giving up cars has been undertaken with a visionary proposal that consisted in the realization of a 200 m long infrastructural building able to manage traffic in a flexible way and to become a powerful and iconic element for the city. The superimposition of a new square on the existing one on ground level would have provoked – in the vision of the designers – a variety of uses and situations.

aerial view of the new square

the lower square

the upper square

the new square

the new building

The Competition Panel

download pdf [3.120 KB]

The Competition Team

Artist
Massimo Bartolini

studiometrico

Lorenzo Bini
Francesca Murialdo

Erica Borsa
Claudia Brunelli
Corinne Gallotti
Roberta Rizzi

Since 2005 we have been working and posting on this project. Once it was completed, our clients announced they were not interested in publishing on magazines and expressed big concern about their privacy. The gardens we designed and the farmhouse (refurbished by Vudafieri Saverino Partners) host numerous artworks from the collection of the owners, so we were asked to maintain our absolute discretion.
We understood and even learned to appreciate this attitude… In the end it dismissed us from those usual efforts to document and photograph properly our work.
Later we realized that a project – to a certain extent – always belongs to the designer and decided that, as long as we wouldn’t have crossed ‘that boundary’, we could still be free to disclose our work. So we made an attempt…

1. Rammed earth

Taking inspiration from the nearby mountain pathways we used rammed earth to pave two long stripes that provide occasional access to cars and tractors around the house.

2. Larch wood

The main access to the house is a small area paved with larch wood bricks of standard size laid directly on the soil according to a simple geometrical pattern.

Larch wood planks were used for this small deck connected with the kitchen of the guest house.

To retain the slightly sloping terrain with steps and to define edges between different areas we used thicker larch wood planks and wooden pegs.

3. Resin-bound gravel

The road that leads from the entrance to the underground garage was paved with a layer of resin-bound gravel adapt to endure the cold winters of the area.

4. Porphyry stones

An area adjacent to the house and the garage has been conceived as a small piazza and paved with local porphyry stones laid according to the tradition by expert hands.

5. Reinforced soil

We borrowed this system of reinforcing the soil on the sloping edges of highways and railways to mould the terrain and define a small living area near the house.

6. Weathering steel

Numerous elements like kerbs, steps, poles and profiles have been realized in weathering steel to match the color and the feel of other natural materials.

The main gate to the property has been designed as a solid and massive element that provides privacy and embeds the entry phone, the counter and the gas meters.

7. Steel wire mesh

To blend into the surrounding landscape of apple tree rows, the boundary fences of the property have been realized in steel wire mesh and concrete poles.

Few vegetable gardens have been inserted into the terrain and enclosed, according to the local tradition, with rusted hexagonal wire mesh and T profile vertical elements.

A Lace Fence Pergola has been designed by Joep Verhoeven from  Demakersvan, built in Bangalore, transported on site and previously described here.

8. Exposed concrete

To host an artwork by Danish artist Jeppe Hein we have built a concrete pavillion with a concrete door that provides access to a supporting engine room.

9. Chestnut wood

Together with the wise local peasant we designed a chestnut wood Pergola to support a beautiful old vine that survived the site works and flanks the main entrance to the house.

When the Pergola was completed, the eperienced team could undertake the challenge to design Green Monsters…

Previous posts about this project:

Gardens between apple trees

Gardens between apple trees – 2

Gardens between apple trees – 3

How to ‘build’ Green Monsters

Are we going commercial? Could be… Matter-of-factly last autumn we have started to work on this very pragmatic project for the transformation of a 2.000 sqm industrial building into offices to be let out next year on the Milanese market.

Overall Plan

To transform the existing building and to optimise the usable surface, all the existing structures of the courtyard will been demolished. The Main building (Block A) will be preserved and completely refurbished while a new smaller building (Block B) will be built from scratch. Block A sits on the corner of two urban streets and is characterised by a pitched roof and a regular clean facade. Block B stands on pilotis to enable car parking, has a flat green roof and will only be visible from the inner courtyard.

First floor plan (click to enlarge, then right click to zoom)

Second floor plan (click to enlarge, then right click to zoom)

To comply with the planning regulations, the overall volume of Block A will not been modified. A new mezzanine will be inserted above the top floor and suspended from a the new steel structure of the roof to exploit usable floor surface. To provide access and light to each office a new external corridor with a steel mesh and a suspended fire staircase will be added.

Sections (click to enlarge, then right click to zoom)

The project will employ mostly prefab elements and reasonably cheap materials, Block B bearing structure as well as Block A corridors and staircase structures will be in steel. The new facades of both buildings will be clad with prefab sandwich insulating panels with metallic outer layer.

View of the courtyard (click to enlarge)

Block A - corridors (click to enlarge)

Block A - office (click to enlarge)

The fact that we don’t know our final users (the offices will be let out after the refurbishment) determined the overall ‘mood’ of the interior office spaces. Colours have been basically avoided, bearing structures, partition walls and floor finishing have been deliberately distinguished and characterised with different (mostly black and white…) materials.

Block A - office (click to enlarge)

Block A - office (click to enlarge)

Block B - office (click to enlarge)

Block B - office (click to enlarge)

After some months of work the planning application has been submitted to the municipality and the few contractors invited to tender. The project should go on site after the summer, the refurbishment is supposed to be concluded before summer 2010.

Block A - existing situation

Block A - existing situation

Block A - existing situation

Block A - existing situation

Block A - existing situation

The courtyard - existing situation

Design Team:

Lorenzo Bini
Claudia Brunelli
Roberta Rizzi

Design Consultant:

Gennaro Postiglione

Structures:

Marco Clozza (Atelier LC)

After some months of silence, after the grapes harvest and the wine bottling, we have decided it was time to publish some updated photographs we have been shooting on the site of this house on the hills near Piacenza that we have designed for a couple of small wine producers.

As the construction process developed, we realized that our feeling of ‘ownership’ progressively decreased through a (sometimes painful) passage that will soon deliver the building from our hands to the ones of the inhabitants. In the same way, the decisions we now have to face are less and less related to the organization of space, light and… architecture, but rather dictated by clients taste, practical needs and… unexplainable obsessions. It is perhaps in this transition, and because this ‘suspension’, that is possible to find the right moments to shoot, look at and share our photographs without caring too much about things that are still too unfinished, or things that will soon be too defined and characterized…

Construction of boundary walls

Construction of the roof

Construction of the roof

Construction of the roof

Covering the roof

Cladding the boundary walls

Cladding the boundary walls

Cladding the boundary walls

Cladding the boundary walls

The Northern facade

The Northern facade

Looking South through the house

Looking South through the house

Interior view of the upper floor

Looking North through the house

Interior view of the ground floor

The Southern porch

The North-Eastern corner

Brickwork

Brickwork

previous posts about this project:

Bricks from scratch

The Harvest – Brick from scratch – 2

During the site works of the house with garden and caves, studiometrico was asked to think of possible ways of re-using the ruins of a small existing building that layed adjacent to the main house. The initial task was to insert a very small room for guests without completely filling the hollow volume. Some empty space should have been preserved to bring natural light into the caves below the house turning the ruins of the building into a patio. An early design proposal featured a hanging two storey prefab living unit of 2 by 4 meters. Although this seemed like a convincing solution and an exciting design challenge, a new discovery completely changed the project: another ‘secret’ room was found on the opposite side of the ‘patio’. After long negotiations the small room was purchased by the owner of the house for the given purpose…

Overall plan of the new scheme with the house on the right, the patio in the middle, and the newly discovered room on the left.

In the new design proposal the patio is kept almost untouched: a linear staircase leads up to the guest room which expands and overlook into the the patio through a 3-dimensional light-constructed window. The 12 sqm room has also an independent entrance on the opposite side and is conceived as an essential and compact piece of furniture with a bed, a desk, a cupboard and a small toilet. Two small existing windows look toward the panorama, the existing pitched roof profile is mantained. Although this is an extremely  small project, for the difficult accessibility to the site, for the poor conditions of the existing buildings and for the dangerous position just above unfriendly and steep cliffs, the transformation is going to be quite slow and adventurous. Site works should start next spring, and we’ll keep on posting…

Section through the guest room and the patio

Plan of the guest room and the patio

View from the patio toward the 3-dimensional window

The interior views of the guest room

See previous posts about this project:

House with garden and caves

House with garden and caves – 2

House with garden and caves – 3

During the weeks that followed ONLYWOOD, some attention was raised on COMVERT HQ. Curious people started to search, ask, talk and write about the project… This is a good thing for studiometrico, Bastard, Atelier LC and specially for Comvert, a fantastic company and an unforgettable client who’s kicking it hard in this ‘supposedly’ difficult moment. The web has been the most generous and reactive among all the media. If you want to know our opinion about the things that have been written…

archinfo.it has made the most complete and interesting article. Carlotta Eco, who’s an architect and a jurnalist, has been as serious as curious. She contacted us to collect all the necessary information, she came to visit, watched people skating and edited an article that we fully appreciate.

lospremiagrumi.com has probably been the quickest blog to ‘post’ us. A couple of days after the opening Tommaso Maggio had already published a short, but very nice article featuring pictures he had taken during the party and a good selection of the images we had made available.

It took a while before domusweb realized what we had done… but the article they have published is defenetly accurate and stylish. It features – perhaps is the first time for an architecture magazine – a real skateboarding photograph and it brought a lot of visits to our blog in the 48 hours we lasted on their hompage!

blogosfere deals with ‘style & fashion’ which is not really our cup of tea… but they were actually very nice, they came to the opening party and were even interested in interviewing us! Unfortunately our performance hasn’t been a memorable one.

internimagazine just published a nice photograph and wrote few words, but that’s basically what they usually do, so we are happy anyway…

la repubblica was the only newspaper that even printed something about us. The article actually focuses on skateboarding as a youth phenomenon and presents a photograph of Bastard bowl under construction, but doesn’t mention studiometrico at all. Anyway it was because their article that The Godfather came to knock on our door, so we are thankful.

kishirikiblog and inoda-sveje are japanese blogs, so we don’t have a clue what they’re saying… apparently they just talk about the party and forget to put even a small link to our blog, perhaps they just want to look cool in japan but… hello! we’d like that too…

blog.bastard.it is run by the guys at bastard and is about skateboarding and street culture. This blog is by far the biggest source of web visits for us. They support us, they never forget to give credits to people and they are our mates, we love them!

la voce is an independent newspaper that has given voice and credits to us. Unfortunately they didn’t seem too interested in the photographs, but they might be more into words, so what they wrote is accurate and precise.

Giuliano Berarducci, who’s a skateboarding photographer (and is shooting COMVERT HQ for us) has been interviewed on the affiliate skateboard company website. The article is very cool, Giuliano talks about his work in the U.S. and claims COMVERT HQ is ‘the hot thing right now in Milan’. We just have to believe him.

Current is a web tv. It’s  ‘about what’s going on in your world: all the things you and your friends are actually interested in that you won’t find on any other news site or cable TV channel.‘ Usethemind came to the COMVERT HQ grand opening party with his video camera, but found us all too drunk to give interviews… Therefore he showed up on a more sober afternoon and produced this small video that made our mothers very proud and happy…

Last (but not least) Abitare – the Italian Magazine that everyone (even not architect) has read once – found out about our project and turned its spotlights on us for a little while !