Earth House in China

From the architect. Earth House is a house of the sky. It is a house built in honor of Yoon Dong-joo, a Korean poet, who wrote beautiful poems about the sky, the Earth, and the stars. It is a house which focuses on the primal relationship between nature and humans. It is built with careful consideration of constructional efficiency and our somatic senses. The 14m x 17m concrete box is buried in the ground and contains 6, 1-pyeong, rooms and two earth filled courtyards. The ‘small house’ is open to the courtyard which is open to the sky. The one pyeong rooms originated from the size of one kan (6x6 ja; 1 ja = approx. 30cm) which are just large enough for an adult to lie down straight. The house has a small kitchen, a study, two resting rooms, a bathroom with a wooden tub and toilet, and a wash room. The rooms are all adjacent to each other and open directly to the earth filled courtyard. Connecting rooms can be joined to create a bigger room. The house doors are small, entering the house requires making your body into a smaller shape. The lateral pressure from the earth on four sides is resisted by thick concrete retaining wall and a flat roof and base plate. There is also a hidden steel column in the center wall that reinforced the structural plates. Rammed Earth walls provide all the interior spatial divisions and the walls facing both courtyards. The earth used for the walls is from the site excavation. Even though the viscosity of the existing earth was low, only minimal white cement and lime was used so the earth walls can return to the soil later. Four gutters are placed in the corners of the courtyard for drainage. The house uses a geothermal cooling system with a radiant floor heating system under the rammed clay and concrete floor. Off-peak electricity is used at night to heat the small gravel under the floor. A combination of passive cooling and geothermal tubes which are buried in the earth around the buildings keep the temperature cool in summer and warm in winter. A pine tree which was cut down from the site, was sliced into 80mm thick discs and was cast into the concrete walls of the courtyard so as it decays, it will host small plants and new life will arise with time. The wooden canopy protecting the entrance into the small house uses 39mm tensile wires. Recycled lumber was cut into 30mm x 50mm wide pieces and joined with flat steel bar, keeping the material to a minimum. All of the interior furniture and closets are also recycled wood from old Korean gates.

Kunsthal Rotterdam

From the architect. Arguably one of the most spatially innovative architects in the world, Rem Koolhaas, and his firm OMA, designed a cultural staple in the city of Rotterdam. Completed in 1992, the Kunsthal, in the Museumpark neighborhood of Rotterdam, is more of a cultural center that it is a museum. Dubbed as a collection-less museum, the Kunsthal is a compilation of several galleries and halls that allow for maximum flexibility and accommodate a multitude of exhibitions and activities that can coexist singularly or collectively. Situated along Maasboulevard, an expressway on top of one of Rotterdam’s largest dikes, the 3,300 square meter museum serves as a bridge between the busy expressway and the museum park to the north. The museum sits as a subdivided volume of four autonomous parts that are created by two intersections that are extensions of the surround city. The first intersection is a road that runs east/west across the site, while the other is a wide pedestrian ramp that slopes down from the southern end of the site to the northern part, which provides a gentile transition between the elevated dike and the lower level park behind the museum. These intersections reinforce the conceptual framework for the spaces throughout the building, as being separate, yet unified. The intersections also express the museums design as a volumetric study rather than a planometric or sectional design strategy. The volumetric design creates more of a compositional effect that is read as almost a kit of parts or a series of spaces becoming one cohesive system through the spatial juxtapositions and orientation of each space. This spatial unification through separation heightens the dynamic qualities of each gallery and hall. Even though, the volumes are divided and autonomous, Koolhaas was able to create a continuous spiraling circuit that connects the spaces through a series of ramps and interchanges that happen both above and below ground. The spiraling circuit is created by the interstitial space that mends the different experiences of each space. Each moment of interchange transitions from one space to another as one fluid system, which is siginificant especially since the museum is understood to be collection-less and at any point in time the museum can be showing old art, new art, architecture exhibitions, sculpture, or photography displays. These intersections are not only modes of circulation through the site, nor are they just conceptual urban flows that subdivide the larger volume of the building, rather they provide new spatial conditions for programmatic placement, visual connections, and entry. One example of this would be the main entrance to the Kunsthal museum where the pedestrian ramp that runs north/south through the site meets the sloping ramp of the auditorium. As the two ramps meet at the lowest central point a new point of entry is established. Also, as the slope of the ramp for the auditorium seating begins to separate from the circulation ramp that runs parallel to the auditorium seating one can see into the restaurant that is placed underneath the auditoriums sloping surface. The Kunsthal is a series of spatial conditions and juxtapositions that even though programmatically different and separate begin to reveal themselves to one another to create a seemingly unified system. As the spaces are inherently different, so is the structural system of each of the volumes that make up the Kunsthal. In collaboration with Cecil Balmond, the structure of the Kunsthal is just as dynamic as the spaces that it supports, but at the same time the Kunsthal is composed of structural devices that Balmond differentiates as structure and architectural intent. As with most projects there are columns, beams, maybe some tension/compression cables, and lateral bracing, however, there are moments where structure appears where common perception and traditional rationalism would state otherwise. The structure of the Kunsthal is not a means to an end, but as a way to enrich the spatial dynamism of the galleries and halls. In one of the galleries on the east side of the building, there is a series of red tubes that weave in between the roof trusses and connect to create a semi-circular lattice. Most visitors think that it is a sculpture that’s integrated into the structure, but it is Cecil Balmond’s take on a non-linear lateral bracing system that has intent to add to the spatial efficacy of the gallery rather than a system that acts passively and is unseen. "The detailing in the Kunsthal is a mode of detailing that frees the attention for other aspects such as the way the ground is read, the sensing of abstractions, of transparency and translucency, of concrete and of the conditions themselves. The sensing of a whole instead of all that fixation on the joins and the encounters." - Rem Koolhaas

Jewish Museum Berlin

The Jewish Museum Berlin, which opened to the public in 2001, exhibits the social, political and cultural history of the Jews in Germany from the fourth century to the present, explicitly presenting and integrating, for the first time in postwar Germany, the repercussions of the Holocaust. The new building is housed next to the site of the original Prussian Court of Justice building which was completed in 1735 now serves as the entrance to the new building. Daniel Libeskind’s design, which was created a year before the Berlin Wall came down, was based on three insights: it is impossible to understand the history of Berlin without understanding the enormous contributions made by its Jewish citizens; the meaning of the Holocaust must be integrated into the consciousness and memory of the city of Berlin; and, finally, for its future, the City of Berlin and the country of Germany must acknowledge the erasure of Jewish life in its history. The visitor enters the Baroque Kollegienhaus and then descends by stairway through the dramatic Entry Void, into the underground. The existing building is tied to the new extension, through the underground, thus preserving the contradictory autonomy of both the old and new structures on the surface. The descent leads to three underground axial routes, each of which tells a different story. The first leads to a dead end – the Holocaust Tower. The second leads out of the building and into the Garden of Exile and Emigration, remembering those who were forced to leave Berlin The third and longest, traces a path leading to the Stair of Continuity, then up to the exhibition spaces of the museum, emphasizing the continuum of history. A Void cuts through the zigzagging plan of the new building and creates a space that embodies absence. It is a straight line whose impenetrability becomes the central focus around which exhibitions are organized. In order to move from one side of the museum to the other, visitors must cross one of the 60 bridges that open onto this void.