Kaohsiung Maritime Cultural & Popular Music Center International Competition

An acceleration of evolution of contemporary typologies has been taken place over the past years, particular in Asia and Middle East, and they have transformed our understanding of the city and the architecture within: Mixed-Use, Urban Theme Parks, Boutique Buildings have replaced the modernist notion of segregation and separation of programs and structures of the city and created an urban melange, which changes the scale and the content of the city.

The contemporary city is a more blurred and hybrid environment, where programming becomes the driving force for the architecture as well as the urbanism. Architecture as a craft of tectonics has become more and more irrelevant, instead serves as a spectacle and iconic expression of the urban skylines. Instead, the program and the programmatic mix is more vital to the feasibility of a project, that any design. As the scales of the projects have been increased to city-within-city size, the 'right mix' is determined by the right business plan, the right combination of program. Often, they result in a difficult to understand mix. One of those, which have potential to transform the understanding of how we use the city, was the Kaohsiung Maritime Cultural & Popular Music Center International Competition.

The project was aiming to combine various cultural programs with no obvious relation into an urban theme park. For us, the challenge lies in the question, how the city can benefit from a project like this. How can the place create an identity beyond the destination programs (pop music and museum) and how can it perform as a positive space, which uses the brief to create synergies with the context and creates new connections for the city.

Located at the edge of the city center, it is part of the neglected waterfront, which undergoes a rapid transformation from a shipping port to a leisure and entertainment zone for the city. As the port separated the city from the water, our intervention aims to use the brief to connect the city to the water, by offering an urbanized landscape, that introduces hollow landscapes with park above and program below it.

The only visual existence of an iconic structure is a rather 'technical' tower, that serves the outdoor pop music arena as lighting and media tower, sound and stage control room, VIP lounge as well as a pedestrian connection over the water.

Team: Ulrich Kirchhoff, Louise Low, Claudia Wigger, Keith Chung, Tim Mao, Christopher Tan

© 2010, ice - ideas for contemporary environments

Revisited: Y3+1 - International Business Center with an Intercontinental Hotel

Y3+1 is a mixed-use development of office, residential and an Intercontinental Hotel above the city of Yerevan, Armenia, opposite the Mount Ararat. With its pristine location, the project site offers open views over the city as well as the surrounding nature. The hill has been excluded from public use, so that the design aims to make it fully accessible and create an urban plateau, promenades and a public landscape. The architecture will only act as a shading device above the ground with only their public program and the circulation cores touching the ground. The building's upper floors are connected in order to allow another connected layer of programs on the upper floors.

Team: Ulrich Kirchhoff, Claudia Wigger, Louise Low, Keith Chung, Hugo Ma, Tim Mao Yiqing, Christopher Tan

© 2009, ice - ideas for contemporary environments

Back to EPFL

After having taught a Masters Studio in Lausanne last Winter Term, I am very excited to go back to Switzerland in March. Giving two lectures about contemporary typologies in architecture, one at the ETH Zurich and the other one at the EPFL Lausanne, I am also looking forward to visiting the completed Rolex Learning Center by SANAA (and maybe I will be lucky to give the lecture there).

The subject of the Masters Studio was: Sustainability and Density - Contemporary Typologies in Architecture. The design project was putting emphasis on dealing with complexity: The project was a high density mixed use development in Hanoi. The complexity was not only related to the amount of program but also the climatic difference and the completely new social and cultural environment - a tough but fruitful journey for the students...

The research has been focussing on two main aspects: How density will affect typologies and their transformation in such a compact spatial scenario. And about low-tech spatial strategies for sustainability.

The purpose of this studio is to bring back a more expansive view of Architecture, to refocus energy into the larger context of living, especially in the understanding of how others live and use spaces. To simultaneously create and be created by the forces of the context, architecture is no longer an object, but also a subject in the larger scheme of things. We want to design buildings, that are not just form, but perform.

With the building boom particularily in the emerging markets, there has been a run for high density mixed-use developments. Unable to bridge the scalar gap to the existing context, we have seen a lot of brilliant solutions of self referential projects, but the overall built environment is increasingly mismanaged: Ignorant to the environment, program and climatic parameters, high density developments pose quite often severe challenges to the city, such as canyon and heat island effect, social segregation, and economic pressure. With such development pressure of iconic high density structures, architecture is produced as an object of desire, rather than a space to be inhabited and used.

Team: Ulrich Kirchhoff, Louise Low

Students: Gedeon Abebe, Esteban Becerril Pellon, Olivier Genetelli, Pablo Gironda, Riccardo Grattacaso, Marta Lopez de Aisain Gamazo, Romain Lorenceau, Marta Lozano, Mansour Noverraz, Adrien Renoult, Julie Riedo, Erika Tillberg, Toru Wada

Y3+1

We recently participated in the 'Open International Competition on the Development of an Architectural Concept for an International Business Center with an Intercontinental Hotel in the City of Yerevan'. The brief was extremely blur. Yet we were fascinated by the strong civic urban spaces in Yerevan and how a contemporary intervention can communicate with them.

About the Site:

Yerevan is a city of strong civic spaces such as the Yerevan Cascade, which offer striking views over the city as well as to Mount Ararat. Their bold intervention create a dialogue with the natural beauty of the surrounding and act as urban navigators.

The site of Y3+1 is in proximity to the icons of the city, located at the eastern edge of the city. With the location, it acts as an interface between city and nature, forms a gateway between the two. With it’s prominent position on a plateau above the city, it has the potential to not only act as visual symbol to the city, but also as a civic destination, which will act as an urban boulevard on top of the city, creating striking views to Mount Ararat.

About the Program:

Y3+1 is aiming to be a development, which not only acts visually but performs on spatial as well as programmatic levels, and therefor could become a major civic space in the city of Yerevan. The result should be an environment, which is urban and programmatically and spatially diverse.In order to create a maximum of urban civic space, the building will be lifted above that zone, standing on three legs, which contain only the lobbies for the tower above. The plateau is a three dimensional space with above ground pavilions, sunken courts and an underground connection to the city level. The project consists of three main structures, which are raised above the plateau: A residential building, a hotel and an office building. They connect to the ground by three legs, which contain the entrance and the main public functions of the program. The legs are connected to the urban plateau above and below ground. The towers are designed to maximize the panoramic view over the city and its environment with a major emphasis on the direction towards the Mount Ararat.

Team: Ulrich Kirchhoff, Claudia Wigger, Louise Low, Hugo Ma, Tim Mao

© 2009, ice - ideas for contemporary environments