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Pierre de Meuron
Design Critic Department of Architecture |
Courses
| Independent Thesis Project: Nairobi
Nairobi After Metrobasel, the Canary Islands, Napoli and Paris, though first and foremost with the publication and our studies on Switzerland as a thoroughly urbanized country, we continue this series of international urban portraits with the study of Nairobi. In our past research, Studio Basel has developed a set of tools as well as identified a number of themes and agendas that are central to its study of cities in transformation. Instead of understanding the city as a system composed of binary opposites, such as formal and informal parts, the study attempts to unfold the very complex simultaneity and dependencies of these parameters, by carefully tracing the basic human activities within their spaces that they unfold in. Instead of an approach centered around the perceived grand dichotomies, we would like to focus on the activities on the local scale. The research methods that have been developed in the past, such as precise observation and mapping tools, obtain an urgency and a (political) pivotal significance in an environment where facts are often intransparent and space is the medium where debates, negotiations of power and conflict is played out. Independent Thesis Project: Metro Basel MetroBasel is the region around the core city of Basel, including its suburbs, the urbanized agglomeration in the valleys to the south and the north as well as more rural areas in its sphere of influence. It spans from the Jura in the south to the hills of the Schwarzwald in the northeast and the flatlands of the Alsace in the northwest. MetroBasel is the identity, forming a unit of the trinational metropolitan region of Basel.
The city and its thoroughly urbanized surrounding area of altogether 800.000 inhabitants, stands for a hub of international acclaim, being one of the global leaders in the fields of art, the chemical industry and life sciences. In spite of its comparably small size, Basel has achieved a worldwide prominence and recognition. On the other hand, spanning over three countries, spread over 9 cantons or administrative regions and consisting of more than 200 communities, each having their own regulations, planning guidelines and, at times conflicting, development aims, any coordinated effort for a regional plan and a concerted urban development seems futile and is quickly dissolved in an intricate web of administrative obstacles and organizational incompatibilities. In spite of the geographical location and the international character of the region, urban masterplans are still developed in a traditional fashion with little coordination of neighboring communities, triggering few, if any, cross border visions of how the region should develop. While the planning department of the Kanton Basel-Stadt is currently working on formulating a new Zonenplan – the first major revision in more than thirty years of the city’s primary master plan – Studio Basel takes this as an opportunity to develop an alternative proposal and to suggest a different methodology of how the city should develop in the future. The research is coordinated with ETH STUDIO BASEL, Contemporary City Institute.
Independent Thesis Project: Canary Islands Our first steps on the Canary Islands were accompanied by prejudices and doubts whether there would be something interesting to see there, except the usual phenomena of the distasteful development of mass tourism. Whether somewhat could be found, which could illuminate the complex topic of urbanisation in the 21st Century. We do not want to place explicitly the topic of tourism into the foreground, rather its concrete, structural effects on the rapidly progressing ur- banisation of the seven Canary Islands. The driving economic force of this urbanisation process is tourism, which not only reconfigures and displaces the preceding territorial structures – based on intensified agriculture– but which also causes a new social and spatial differentiation on the islands.
As a preliminary outline of our research, we can sketch the following theses: the Canarian territory was always casted by monocultures, which were forced upon to the islands from outside. These monocultures shaped economies, society and urbanisation of the islands. After centuries of agricultural monocultures, being them cultures for the production of dye material, or vineyards, or banana plantations, today it is the tourism industry from Europe which reshapes the territory of the islands at a large rate. There is a new spatial/social and economic fragmentation and allocation of the territory: tourist cities and support cities in the south, and the local cities in the north of the main islands Tenerife and Gran Canaria: the capitals with their agglomerations and a set of smaller cities and urbanized zones. These northern towns were once touristically or agriculturally successful, but today they are confronted with growing identification and economic problems. The touristic urban centers try increasingly to emulate the local "genuine" city by means of simulation of historical architecture, "local" style or public space. In reverse, the “local cities” are adopting models and leisure infrastructures from the “tourist city” and integrating them into the public space: as in the case of the transformation of industrial harbours into Marinas and parks, as well as the construction of important cultural facilities. Independent Thesis
Project
Every city grows and takes shape with relation to its own specific scenario of menace, which has emerged in the course of its history and coerced it into an unmistakable and inescapable pattern. Cities are specific because they are confronted with specific threats and show a concrete, physical response to these threats. Cities are unfathomable, a trait that explains their distinctiveness and distinguishability. It also explains the difficulty of describing cities, of making plans for them or confining them to theories. The investigation is focused on urban regions that are twofold, that are both under the pressure of globalisation and wrought by specific threats. Places that maintain a spin, that are connected to international energy flows, while they persist in evolving their individual inscribed patterns of change. These investigations are based on the assumption that contemporary cities do not develop towards a common vanishing point becoming generic: rather, they consolidate, transform or adapt their specific traits, organisation procedures, technical infrastructures and material physiognomy. The focus of the study is on Napoli and its landlocked development, Paris and the problematics rising from an over-centralised urban culture and the possibilities of transformation of its perfect urban structure, St Petersburg and the unrealised hierarchical urban structures of Russia, and San Francisco and the relation between the pragmatic continuous adaptation of the gridded urban patterns and the shifting settings of the bay area. The research is coordinated with ETH STUDIO BASEL, Contemporary City Institute.
New Central Library for Shantou University Shantou University has ambitious plans to grow in quality (not in quantity) to become one of the foremost educational hubs in China. The tropical vegetation offers unique possibilities to use both architecture and landscape in order to produce an ideal context for students, staff and visitors. The new library has to be conceived as a gate building for the campus of Shantou University. The campus is currently under redevelopment, based on a master plan by Herzog & de Meuron. The client brief for the building asks for a net floor area of 220’000 sq ft to accommodate the library above ground. Studio:
Multi-purpose Cultural Building and Plaza in Barcelona,
Spain This studio proposed the design of a Multi-purpose Cultural Center as a new landmark building at the end of the characteristic “Avenida diagonal” in Barcelona. The site and program for this proposal are topics of current interest for the city: the Barcelona 2004 Universal Forum of Cultures is an international fair established by the Barcelona City Council in collaboration with the Spanish and Catalan Governments. The assigned site for this Forum 2004—at the very end of “Avenida diagonal” and “Rambla Prima” facing the Mediterranean Sea—is currently being developed. A large Plaza in the center of the future Forum 2004 site will become a neuralgic platform also providing access to the Multi-purpose Cultural Building as its new centerpiece. In addition the Plaza will allow for a variety of open-air activities. Below ground it will accommodate a parking lot, a public transportation stop, and a thruway for the major coast ring freeway system. The Multi-purpose Cultural Building will include a very large auditorium, a multi-functional performing space, exhibition spaces, meeting rooms, and a restaurant and foyer, in addition to technical services, loading docks, storage spaces, and car parking on two levels. The building will be conceived as an emblematic and singular landmark design articulating the guidelines of the Forum 2004. As such, it will be part of the ICCB—the official International Convention Center Barcelona—consisting of two closely connected buildings: the Multi-purpose Cultural Building and the new Convention Center. Again, the information for these two buildings is based on a real project. In the studio, groups of students studied different solutions using the site information provided. They investigated all options for the existing site and the conditions between the city and the sea. Following this initial phase a detailed proposal was then developed.
Prada Headquarters, Tokyo
Our design proposal for the Spring 2000 semester was the new headquarters of Prada Japan. Prada is a traditional Italian label that has become one of the leading companies in the fashion world in the last decade, combining good-quality materials and fabrication with sophisticated contemporary design. The site for the project is Omotesando Avenue in the Aoyama area, Tokyo’s most famous fashion district. The site is located only 500 meters from the Omotesando subway station, in a favorable location with high public presence and easy access. The building will include a new Prada store, showrooms, and offices. All of the retail Prada goods—clothes, shoes, and leather articles—will be displayed in the store covering a surface of approximately 1,000 square meters. No doubt the complex has the potential to become one of the most attractive commercial buildings in Tokyo, giving tremendous impact to the development of fashion circles in Japan. The site and program for this project are real, and it is currently being developed in our Basel offices. Six groups of two students each studied different solutions. The students were provided with three-dimensional models showing the zoning regulations. Each group then investigated the possibilities of the given site, the relationships to its immediate context, and the larger urban fabric. All groups then developed their proposals in detail.
The New Link Quay in Santa Cruz de Tenerife The new Link Quay in Santa Cruz de Tenerife will be restructured and transformed in the coming years based on a competition-winning design entry by Herzog & de Meuron. This 1998 urban design project is currently being developed and refined by H&deM in collaboration with the Port Authority, the government of the island, and the Mayor of Santa Cruz de Tenerife. The new Link Quay scheme, called "Embracing Enclosure" by H&deM, includes a new marina, an aquarium, a shopping mall, restaurants, and bars. It also includes the design of a new public plaza, which we call Plaza Arena, as well as two inclined pedestrian boulevards and the repositioning of both the Port Service Road and the Avenida Maritima. Two groups of 3-4 students each focused on the marina, the aquarium, and the other commerical facilities; two other groups of 3-4 students each worked on the design of the new plazas and the streets. Our competition scheme, Embracing Enclosure, provided the basis and starting point for the students' projects. All together the four project groups covered the whole area between the border of the city and the Atlantic Ocean.
Tate Gallery of Modern Art at Bankside, London: Phase
II The new TGMA opened in the year 2000. It is one of the foremost art museums for modern and contemporary art in the world, comparable only to the MOMA in New York and the Centre Pompidou in Paris. The new galleries are installed in a disused power station -- a large brick building erected in a combination of Art Deco and Neo-Gothic styles in 1956. The boiler house and the turbine hall which were emptied and transformed into spaces for art and for the public. In a Phase II program after 2000 the switch house, formaz a third building layer, and the fascinating subterranean spaces of the former oil tanks are converted into museum spaces as well. The switch house and the oil tanks provide spaces to exhibit and show art, video, and films as well as architecture exhibitions. The landscape in front of the switch house and above the oil tanks needs to be reconsidered and transformed into a pleasant public space for visitors and for neighbors.
A Winery in Yountville/Napa Valley
The site is Napanook vineyard in Yountville, which is one of the oldest vineyards in the Napa Valley. Napanook is a 124-acre estate where DOMINUS -- one of the most prestigious Californian red wines -- is produced. The vineyard is very gently sloped and offers spectacular views in all directions, namely to the famous Mount St. Helena, a former volcano in the north of the valley. The richness and variety of the soil is one of the reasons for the success of DOMINUS. Three different geological strata divide the vineyard in three different zones where the owner -- a renowned French winemaker from Bordeaux --is cultivating different grapes: Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Merlot and Petit Verdot according to the specific qualities of the site. The project for a winery on the Napanook vineyard follows the brief for the construction of the DOMINUS winery, a project realized by Herzog & de Meuron from 1995 to 1997. |
