ICE wins prize for VNTA Headquarter

It has been a while ago since we won an award for our entry to the international invited competition for the new VNTA Headquarter in Hanoi, Vietnam. VNTA is the telecommunication authority of Vietnam. We were invited last year to participate in this competition with international large scale firms with us remaining one of the last three finalists. In the attached picture our model is to the right (downloaded from the internet, not really representing the model in its details).

After seeing the final judging results we realized that the client had a choice between two very similar schemes (ours was one of them). Yet our muscles are limited compared to the muscles of one of the largest architectural practice in the world which won the project.

What this competition revealed to us is that we either compete on that level in terms of investment beyond the project and design or we shift to boutique style small scale projects. As the later decision would defeat the purpose of the setup of our company in the first place. Hence we are currently struggling about which way to go further with dignity and integrity. It is a long way to go still...

Team ICE: Ulrich Kirchhoff, Louise Low, Minh Le Van, Claudia Wigger, Matteo Biasiolo, Jorge Gil
Environmental: Cundall
Local Architect: Trinity
Renderings: Lifang

© 2013, ice - ideas for contemporary environments

Revisited: DC6

We are torn over this project. It has been a fascinating invited competition for us in 2010, which we won but then didn't win end ended up second on the judging of the master plan but first on the judging of architecture - Unfortunately, this was a master plan competition! Left frustrated being so close to the commission of a 300,000 sqm development, we decided to shelf this project and move on by not participating in competitions any longer for more than a year. Until we won early this year Lobby +.

About DC6: Being the entrance to the city, it would mark a landmark development and represent the wealth and prosperity of this place: An old and famous weekend resort for the habitants of Ho Chi Minh City and home to the headquarters of all relevant oil companies of Vietnam.

The project is a perfect contradiction: The client asked for a super high density resort at the sea front of Vung Tau: Resort+High Density?

Our goal was to work with the contradictions and solve them by using a simple design strategy to maximize the distance between the buildings yet maintain full views to the surrounding for all units. To achieve this, we had to create a linear super building which combines different apartment typologies in a snake-like organism, that twists and turns to generate the least 'density' within the high density of the development.

There have been a good review on this project on ecofriend:

http://www.ecofriend.com/entry/ice-s-dc6-scales-greater-heights-in-vietnam/

Team: Ulrich Kirchhoff, Claudia Wigger, Louise Low, Minh Le Van, Tim Mao Yiqing

Local Architect: Trinity

Model Maker: RJ Models

© 2010, ice - ideas for contemporary environments

ICE wins Asia Pacific Property Award 2011 for Best Mixed Use Architecture

Sometimes the strangest situations occur: I was sitting alone on a mountain top in Hong Kong, taking an afternoon off office, wondering if it was a wise idea to join this game of architecture business, where every young student has more design skill to offer than us, every MBA has more cunning and business mind, when I received a call that we won this year's Asia Pacific Property Award for the best mixed use architecture, beating heavy weights of the industry in that category.

We are not doing architecture for awards, but for the good of the user. In that sense, it doesn't actually mean that much, but this is still an encouragement to all of us for all the hard work and effort everybody has put into office and projects to make this place an exciting spot on the map to work in. We are very grateful for that opportunity to be named one of the best practices in Asia Pacific.

Team: Ulrich Kirchhoff, Louise Low, Claudia Wigger, Minh Le Van, Arthur Bel, Keith Chung, Hugo Ma, Tim Mao, Christopher Tan

Local Architect: Trinity

© 2011, ice - ideas for contemporary environments

Ocean Heights

We have recently submitted a master plan proposal for Ocean Heights to the government for approval. The project is a beach resort development, 150 km east of Ho Chi Minh City. The site offered only a small strip of beachfront with a wider stretch of hinterland. Resorts usually are of low density (PR 0.1-0.2), yet the developer wanted to achieve a higher density (PR 0,6). As space and privacy is vital to the success of a resort, the project aims to achieve those qualities by employing a formal strategy, which allows privacy, closeness to nature and space.

With a total length of 2 km, our design aims to maximize direct pedestrian access to the beach by creating a central park, that links the back of the site with the seafront. Circulation systems are separated into car circulation along the perimeter of the site and pedestrian circulation in the center along a park like connection to the waterfront.

To overcome the density and to reduce the sealed surfaces on the site, we investigated cul de sac road systems, as they use less road surface, are more able to cluster and provide a front lot with circulation and a backlot with green.

The site then is organized in four zones:

Zone 1 - Seafront Resort

The seafront resort is connected via a pedestrian bridge to the main site. As a visual icon for the site along the beachfront, a box floats above a landscaped roof, creating vistas on several levels towards the ocean. Towards the beach, there are restaurants, bars a spa and gym with an endless pool and a pier, leading into the water. The building acts as a backdrop for larger events on the beach, such as weddings etc.

Zone 2 - Luxury Villas

The Luxury Villas are located closest to the waterfront. They enjoy open seaview with most of the rooms facing the ocean. To maximize the element of luxury, an additional roof deck allows for another outdoor experience, while a jacuzzi pool and a waterfall in front of the dining room creates another feature for the garden.

Zone 3 - Cluster Villas

The Cluster Villas are located in the central part of the master plan. As the land is rather flat, the villas are designed to maximize ocean view by orientation and by shape of the buildings: The master bedroom as well as the living rooms always face the sea: the roofscape is a dropped pitch roof and therefor allows the adjacent building to have 2 alternative views to the sea over its roof. With the tropical climate, shading is provided in form of a the upper floor being a large cantilevered volume over the more open and ventilated ground.

Zone 4 - Sky Villas

The Sky Villas are located at the western edge of the site. They frame the site and act as an iconic gate to the approach from the East. To maximize the undisturbed ocean view as well as providing optimum outdoor terraces, the towers are curved in plan as well as slanting in section. The entrance podium is a covered landscape, which acts as a hollow landfill, raising the ground for the towers as well as for the adjacent villas.

The master plan strategy tries to overcome the relatively high density for a resort of P.R. 0.6 by maximizing the viewing direction for each villas and by using the cul-de sac strategy to create a green back lot for each villa with private access to the central green spine.

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

Local Architect: Trinity

© 2010, ice - ideas for contemporary environments

Revisited: DK2 - West Lake Luxury Service Apartments

DK2 is our awarded entry (3rd prize) for an invited international competition for luxury service apartments at the West Lake, Hanoi. As Hanoi is a low rise high density city fabric, the project's 65 floors mark a revolution for the urban typologies of the city, challenging both social as well as volumetric characteristics. With such a unique height (which automatically will dominate the city skyline), our starting point was to ignore to go down the road to an iconic building. Instead the design was evolving inside out, focussing on the performance of the space on human scale and on the precise definition of the functional value of each component of such a project: The housing approach was aiming to translate the 'traditional' Hanoian approach to housing in form of courtyard buildings into a vertical structure, making use of double volume courts, to improve cross-ventilation in such for a high rise compact structure.

The podium transformed from an extruded, fortress-like alien block into a landscaped topography, enabling to soften the boundary to the context. The resulting space enables a landscaped roof and a more poetic experience of that landscape from below (e.g. in terms of a corridor under the pool).

The vertical courtyard concept allowed us to introduce three dimensional cavities, which create shaded, but ventilated exterior spaces, that can be used all year around, as they are protected from the direct tropical sun.

Unfortunately, the jury was looking for an easy to understand icon, so that our efforts to create a residential environment, which aimed to elevate the spatial qualities of a high density development, were irrelevant in the final judging and only good enough for a third prize.

Team: Ulrich Kirchhoff, Claudia Wigger, Louise Low, Tim Mao Yiqing, Roberto Requejo, Amy Wang

© 2009, ice - ideas for contemporary environments

Can You Do Classical?

One of the biggest nightmares for a contemporary architect is a client, who, after seeing your work, asks: Interesting work, but we have a big project here and we need it to be more in European Classical Style. Can you do it?

After the first shock, we usually start feeling deeply insulted, because we have spend so much time, explaining why we do design the way it is, in order to end up with a simple stylistic question. Then we weigh the balance of economic situation of the office (which obviously is always bad) and the interest in the project from a the perspective of a challenge (which is obviously always great). In that case, the client likes our contemporary designs ad has hired us several times already, but the government, who posed this question to both of us, leaving us shattered in ruins with a beautiful design, we have worked on for two months.

To start with, the site was located in Hue, the old imperial city and a UNESCO world heritage site. The Perfume River divides the city into two parts. North of its banks lies the huge palace and the old town, while south of it lies our site. It should have become a hotel with an urban village below. We put a lot of effort into programming the site, relating it to the context, in order to avoid a hermetically sealed podium, which only serves itself. Yet we had the vision to design an open structure, which incorporates patios, courtyards, lanes and other public spaces. The hotel should not act as a divider between, but as an integrator from above.

After having nailed a satisfactory sketch, we approached the government for some pre discussions on approval. Unfortunately, they did not care for public space or program, but only for the image of the cityscape and then they posed the dangerous question: Can you give us a (European) classical building? Having invested so much time and effort already, we agreed to give it one more try, not understanding what classical means and even less so, what european classical means in the context of a country, which has kicked out all of its invaders since the Chinese in 1300.

Back in the office, we tried to find excitement over the new task, evaluating if we should just hire a draftsman, who should be skilled to give us a classical facade or looking for another way, trying to understand first, why we do not like to design classical:

The difference between classical design and contemporary design lies in a different understanding of the design strategies. Classical design is about the elements of a building (window, door, column, beam) and its relationship to each other through the understanding of construction and material behavior (joints, etc.). With the introduction of casting concrete, all this was not needed anymore and we entered the contemporary phase of architecture. Modernism was still based on construction and technology. Yet with the introduction of virtual tools and the reduction of the role of the architect (from master of the entire building to just designer of the building), construction disappeared in our architect's mindset and technology is reduced to what the computer can do for me. We have entered the phase of operational design: Buildings are boolean operations, gradients, twists and everything, Rhino, Cinema4D or Maya can offer. All poured in concrete means, all is possible.

Was there a way to combine the two principles? Can we do a classical contemporary without faking one or the other? We were in search of the combination of elemental and operational strategies:

To our surprise, we actually liked what we saw. Not that we favor stylistic architecture, yet it seemed to please the client and suit the need of the city's representatives. Unfortunately, soon after, the government took the site away from the client, due to the long construction delay...

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

© 2010, ice - ideas for contemporary environments

High Density Resort?

We recently won the bid for a 144 ha time share resort planning in Vietnam. After reviewing the brief, we discovered to our surprise, that the client was targeting a rather (sub)urban density of 0.6, while maintaining the resort character (which usually has a density 2-3 times less than the proposed). So how do you plan a high density luxury resort, without creating a great pile of houses? Always confronted with the question of maximizing the plot, we have accepted the challenge for the urban areas, but the image of luxury holiday and density did not come together yet. The great challenge in the beginning turned out to be a great potential for an exciting investigation in urban planning. As we started our research, we found an increase willingness to buy a house in a cul-de-sac (not the best word for the kind of quality it creates: Anybody who has a better word is welcome to contribute). People are paying a premium of 30% due to the exclusivity and privacy of the lot location.

Researching on the distribution of housing, we found that the planning parameters drastically favor the cul-de sac planning pattern, compared to a standard row/grid planning, with an increase of green surface and a decrease of road surface. It seems to be a win-win situation for both developer as well as buyer, as the buyer maintains a maximum of exclusivity, while the developer will have less construction cost.

As we are now in the process of finalizing the concept stage, please see below our first layout studies, creating a master plan, which we in such way would have not suspected.

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