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Rem Koolhaas Professor in Practice Department of Architecture |
Projects 2000
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The Distributed House, Bahamas, Harbour Island
As the endless boom flourished and with the Hamptons as a test-bed, the American Home inflated to reach morbid proportions where any relationship with anything — nature, or even the suburb — became delusional. On a delicate site of small dunes, hills, and valleys, covered by a semi accessible jungle on Harbor Island in the Bahamas, all the separate elements of a house are distributed so that each captures a particular feature of the landscape. The dining room dominates the center like a mini acropolis; the master bedroom is poised on the dunes like a Temple of Venus; the guesthouse is relentlessly focused on the ocean; the kids inhabit an Atelier van Lieshout (AVL) container assembly; the pool is a connector, and the servants discreetly guard the entrance. Breda Chassé Parking, Netherlands
This building marks the end of parking structures, as we have known them. It seeks to provide a service for its clients from door to door. The main design criteria was an overall sense of being led into a light, open space in which one feels welcome and most important: safe. There are no dark corners, walls or slabs that can hide assailants. Daylight pours in through 13 very large patios. Every element in the design has been weighed over and over against the client’s brief, which was to surpass any existing quality benchmark in parking edifices design. Parking
Technical The space is laid out as a single 18.500 m2 large space. Large 2,50 long pressure-ventilation units push smoke and air toward one of extraction unit located at the three extremes of the structure. In order to compartmentalize the space in the regulatory 5000 m2 fire compartments, the pressurized ventilation system was developed with the aid of a CFD simulation to compartmentalize the space in three separate smoke compartments.
In order to get light in the building, and to keep filth and unwanted visitors out, the patios are covered with two giant metal hatches of 8 by 1.50 meters each. These are driven by 24V engines and open on signal from either the attendants or on of the central safety systems. Finishes
The walls are completely clad in corrugated/ perforated/galvanised steel plating. 4000 extra lights were placed behind the steel panelling to backlight the wall, in order to ensure that there are no dark corners. All the patios and the Mezzanine level are completely constructed out of steel and glass in order to let daylight in, but also to eliminate any obstruction to a clear view for safety purposes. The two main pedestrian access points are fitted out with glass elevators. The parking garage is manned 24 hours a day. The quarters of the attendants are completely clad in wood, the floors a soft gymnasium floor. In the direct vicinity of the parking attendants there are sumptuous toilets for the guest of the garage, beverage vending machines, information points and special parking places which provide electric current for electric vehicles. The building is designed to make the guest come back. Time and time again. Breda Chassé Campus, Netherlands
The design takes the model of the university campus as point of departure. Reason for this is the position of the Chassé site in Breda: an empty spot in the compact citycenter but also part of a green lob which leans to the city center and is defined by the three parcs: Sport parc, Wilhelmina parc and Brabant parc. On and around the site one sees a series of buildings not connected to the citytissue and which can be incorporated as objects in the plan: jail, cultural center "Turfschip", bowling-hal, municipal office, Chassé theatre, "Kloosterkazerne" a former monastry turned into barracks. The campus model combines an urban atmosphere with openess. Old and new buildings of different scale and typology will be placed next to and in front of each other on an underlayment of urban green. The masterplan will re-use as much as possible the existing buildings; often they get a new function, but also they play a new role because of their new interaction with the new buildings and the public space.
The basic elements of the plan are: - a green urban space with a dense planting of oak trees which give the site its coherence; two square-like spaces are kept open: one as the continuation of the Oude Vest and the Molenstraat in the direction of the watertower and on top of the public parking garage, and one orthogonal square in front of the museum of Breda. These will be part of the series of open spaces in the city center. - existing groups of trees will be part of the new tree scheme. - green fingers give a maximal connection to the citycenter. The different buildings are each autonomous and react together to the surrounding city and to each other by setting different directions, remove obstacles or by making compositions of the isolated objects. They are positioned so that there is a maximal perspective in the campus from the different points of access. Important in the plan is the large variety in housing types in the different categories: patio houses, ground-bound houses, appartments, gallery houses. Sometimes these categories are combined in one building. The Chassé campus will have an informal network of paths for pedestrians and bicycles. Apart from this informal network a number of streets give access to the private parkinggarages under the houses. The only access to the public parking garage is situated between the Chassé-theatre and the Municipal Offices. Breda Carré Building, Netherlands
The Carré was designed as a relatively compact block made up of a series of densely stacked blocks. The building floor plate sits on a pedestal containing a parking garage for the inhabitants of the building. Circulation of the building is arranged by three staircases / elevator tracts which can be reached through the courtyard. The footprint of the building is 110 by 80 meters; the Carré reaches up to 10 stories high. The internal courtyard is designed as a quiet place in the Chassé terrain. On the side of the main entrance a 2 story high gate is cut out along the width of the side of the courtyard, providing a view of the monumental army convent / barracks and the old part of the city.
There are 144 apartments and 6 shop units for small businesses in the building. Unusually, 100 of the apartments are rent controlled, the other 44 were sold on the open market by the client/developer with considerable success. The building was carefully designed for retiring baby boomers, people who move to a smaller house because their children have moved out. Because of its proximity to the city centre and the high service level of the Chassé site the building on the Chassé are in considerable demand with this group of tenants. Finishes Prada In-Store Technology, USA, NY, LA, SF
The projects for the Italian fashion company Prada span from research on shopping and new concepts for Prada as a brand to the creation of three big stores in the United states. But beyond restructuring the built reality of the brand, Prada's virtual presence is simultaneously defined through extensive in-store technology projects and the creation of a website.
A series of experiential and service-oriented features enhances both functioning and aura of the stores. The dressing rooms are equipped with 'magic mirrors': A plasma screen invisibly built into the large mirror surface that allows customers to see themselves both from the front and the back at the same time. An integrated time delay can even capture and replay movements. The doors are made of Privalite glass that the customer can switch from transparent to translucent and control the privacy of the dressing room. Equipped with RFID [radio frequency identity] antennas, the 'garment closet' is able to register merchandize brought into the dressing room and display an inventory of icons on a touch screen. Here, the customer can request more specific information on the clothes, but also browse through alternative items of the collection.
On the web-site, the garment closet has its virtual counter-part, the 'web-closet', that contains a history of all pieces tried on. The customer can not only built up his personal history and selection of likes, but also order things he tried but didn`t buy in the store. A system of 'ubiquitous screens' performs a double function: submerged into the display systems of the store, the screens show aura-related content but can also be used as communication platforms for staff and customer. Suspended from a hangbar between suits, or built into some of the horizontal display cases, their imagery portrays the brand beyond the simple presence of fashion or catwalk shows. Clips from the Prada prototyping and production facilities in Italy, from their involvement with sports [America's Cup] and the arts [Fondazione Prada], are mixed with images from movies, scenes from world news, or the sales of Prada fakes across the world. When activated through a `staff device` - a control feature for the sales agents - the ubiquitous screens can become a tool for the staff to show specific information like alternative outfits matching the piece just selected or real-time information about what is readily available in the store. Prada San Francisco, USA
The new 10 storey building in downtown San Francisco [corner of Post Street and Grant Avenue] close to Union Square will be Prada`s Headquarters on the West Coast. Two floating cubes on top of each other contain on 39,000 sqft both store program and offices, along with showrooms, gallery spaces and a VIP penthouse at the top. A public viewing terrace and coffee bar separates both cubes on the 6th floor level. In architectural terms the building is a manifesto on the skyscraper: A series of floor plates with totally unique characters are stacked on top of each other and wrapped with a mysterious and neutral skin that reveals a sense of the inner diversity without giving it all away. This facade is made out of stainless steel panels that are perforated with about 10,000 round holes, windows ranging between 2.5-9 inches in diameter.
The size of the openings is designed according to the force flow in these structural steel plates, which are able to absorb all horizontal forces in case of earthquakes and guarantee the structural integrity of the building. What emerges is a quality totally new to the current condition of shopping: the presence of daylight. The facade is no longer blocking out all light but filters and distributes it through various translucent materials inside the space: polycarbonate, colored resin, exclusively developed porous-transparent polyurethane panels etc. Products are displayed against the light, in x-ray like conditions, or profit in a more classic arrangement from the evenly dispersed natural glow. In contrast to the notorious blindness of today`s malls and department stores, daylight reenters the territory of shopping. |
