Solterrassen

https://www.skanska.se/om-skanska/press/nyheter/skanskas-boklok-och-nya-hem-far-pris-for-att-ha-sveriges-nojdaste-kunder/

I’m always interested by architecture which is identified with the sun. Here’s a new example in an unexpected place.

Solterrassen—“The Sun Terrace”—is a multifamily housing project in Umeå, Sweden. It was named the Best Housing Project of 2018 by a Swedish construction industry group, which based its rankings on customer satisfaction. It was built by the giant construction firm Skanska. The architect is credited as Moa Öster of Tyréns. There are 42 units.

Now, Umeå is not a solar paradise; it’s above 63°N latitude, a few hours’ drive from the Arctic Circle! (Map below.) In December Umeå residents get less than 5 hours of sunlight each day, and almost no insolation (link). The building is oriented so that the terraces face Southwest.

Like most Swedish housing, the project is serviced by district heating (centrally-produced hot water), with spaces heated by radiators or heated floors. The project was certified under Svanen Miljömärkt, the “Nordic Swan Ecolabel” for housing, which requires the building use 85% of the energy benchmark in Sweden’s already-strict code.

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More: Solterrassen information brochure (pdf)

A Question of Balance

In the 1970s Buckminster Fuller liked to ask architects “How much does your building weigh?” He advocated for using the minimum amount of material to fulfill the purpose. In other words he held an ideological position about materials, the ideology of maximum efficiency. Fuller’s Montreal Biosphere is shown above; it is about the lightest structure you can imagine. Ultimately Fuller was concerned with sustainability.

Today—also in the name of sustainability—some architects are advocating the opposite, for buildings to be as heavy as possible. This is because encapsulating timber in buildings is seen as a form of carbon sequestration (though this is in question). Mass Timber construction, using Cross-Laminated Timber (CLT), does not aim for material efficiency; there’s a lot more wood than needed in the image above. This too is an ideological position. 20 or 30 years ago the ideology about timber was quite the opposite.

So should your building be super-light or super-heavy? In the framework above, it depends on the material. But more broadly, it depends on your goals and all kinds of contingent factors. On a question such as building mass, a rigid ideological position, maximum or minimum, simply is not useful. For instance, even when building in steel, it might be sensible to ‘overstructure’ the building in the name of sustainability so that it will have greater potential to be changed in the future and have a longer lifespan. When building in timber, you might wish to build with less material as a basic matter of frugality and economy. In my view most architectural decisions should be situational rather than ideological, and most often it will be a question of balance.

Finally, an additional paradox: ideological buildings tend to seem historically significant in retrospect, I think, while buildings that represent situational ethics have a harder time entering the canon, as they are more difficult to understand and interpret. (Please comment if you disagree!)

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Image credits:
Left: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8c/Biosph%C3%A8re_Montr%C3%A9al.jpg
Right: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/timber-future-wood-construction-180960455/

Coal Drops Yard

All photos © Anthony Denzer

Coal Drops Yard is a fascinating new structure set to be completed any day now. The project is part of the King’s Cross redevelopment in central London. The architects are Heatherwick Studio and the Structural Engineers are Ove Arup & Partners.

The project was a highlight of our Study Abroad trip with Wyoming architectural engineering students. (We spent the month of June in London, Brussels, Paris, and Barcelona; some photos here). My colleague Jon Gardzelewski arranged for Coal Drops Yard’s design team to meet with us, both on-site and later in Heatherwick’s office.

Pictured above:
Left: Alfonso Monedero, BIM Manager, Heatherwick
Center: Ed Clark, Director and Structural Engineer, Arup
Right: Stuart Chambers, Senior Structural Engineer, Arup 
Pictured below:
Pablo Zamorano, Head of Geometry and Computational Design, Heatherwick

What an amazing experience for our students! As the team explained, the existing brick structures—Grade II listed—date from the 1850s and 1870s, but had been empty and neglected for several decades. (The site represents “ambitious Victorian infrastructure”; more about its history here.)

As seen in the model below, Heatherwick’s design concept took the two inward-facing roof planes and treated them like billowing ribbons, which span across the open space and touch lightly at the center of the site. It’s a striking and memorable form, expressive of advanced parametric working methods, certain to become a London landmark.

As Ed Clark and Stuart Chambers explained to our students, the form required a great deal of creative structural engineering. Each of the roof planes is supported by a ‘ribbon truss’, and the structure is tied across at the center by a ‘giraffe girder’—apparently Arup’s invention—which includes a large tension rod in the plane of the floor. The floor structure is suspended from the ribbon trusses. The glass, arranged in a saw-tooth pattern, is frameless and self-supporting. The Arup engineers used the sketch below to explain the design.

Normally I am critical of projects where an unusual form is given to structural engineers who must figure out how it can be built. However, as Ed Clark explained to us, the Heatherwick architects asked the Arup structural engineers to have a seat at the table during the form-making process so that the structure would be as rational and economic as possible. I wouldn’t quite call it Integrated Design, but it certainly resulted in a design of creative integrity in my opinion.

Coal Drops Yard includes some inventive and tactile elevator buttons designed by Heatherwick (see below). And you can have fun in Heatherwick’s Spun Chair, as our students did. (It’s surprisingly comfortable, and it’s stable if you sit still.)

In June the project was nearly complete; the shops and restaurants occupying the brick wings were all open for business. The ‘featured’ space above was still being finished; it will be the flagship store for Samsung (an answer to the architecture/branding success of the Apple Stores). I hope the Samsung signage won’t be too intrusive.

In all, I find the project to be a successful case of rehabilitation, an intervention which uses contemporary architecture to accommodate new activities, while preserving heritage. I believe there is a bit of ‘false history’ in the construction of some new brick archways.

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The surrounding King’s Cross development is said to be “one of the biggest urban regeneration projects in Europe.” Nearby the Google headquarters building, by Heatherwick and Bjarke Ingels Group, is under construction (see below; renderings here). It will be as long as The Shard is tall.

Notre-Dame du Raincy

Earlier this week I visited—for the first time—Notre-Dame du Raincy, the church built in 1922–23 by brothers Auguste and Gustave Perret. It is a seminal early example of reinforced concrete construction, with membrane-like walls of stained-glass framed in concrete. I found it to be a truly significant structure, a fascinating reinterpretation of the tradition of French religious architecture. What an experience; the space feels monumental, simple and direct in its physicality, and yet transcendent. I am thinking about it like a William Carlos Williams poem, minimalist, realist, but also magical.

But here’s the headline: at nearly 100 years old, the building is experiencing some degradation. Rebar is visible and corroding in several places. A display inside the church says it is “a monument in danger.” Donations are sought.

The Borohus Virkesmagasin

Earlier this Spring, in Landsbro, Sweden, I visited a truly remarkable structure: a drying shed for timber which locals call Arken or Noah’s Ark. I believe it is properly called the Borohus Virkesmagasin. Borohus was one of Sweden’s biggest house factories in the 1930s–80s, and virkesmagasin means warehouse. You might think of it as a cathedral of lumber; it certainly had that feeling. What a powerful space.

Hilding Brosenius, a structural engineer, designed the building and he seems to have invented this type of nailed timber beam. I estimate these are about 20-feet deep! The structure was built in 1946–47. With a footprint of 38 x 165 meters, it is said to be Europe’s largest timber building.

Here is a 1940 article (in Swedish) by Brosenius describing the method, which he called HB-balkar.

Here’s a similar but apparently smaller structure by Brosenius dated 1953.

Brosenius wrote a book in 1999 entitled En Uppfinnare Minns (An Inventor Remembers).