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Cover images: (front) © Andrés Lejona (Luxexpo South Entry); (back) © Andrés Lejona (City of Luxembourg Headquarters)

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LEADING ARCHITECTS

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PACZOWSKI & FRITSCH ARCHITECTS

Over nearly three decades, Paczowski and Fritsch Architects has established itself as an impressive studio that spectacularly fuses the complex mysteries of the art of building with technological rationality, contemporary culture, and the expressive requirements of the project’s image. It has been consolidating its experience in the sectors of public buildings, service buildings, as well as collective and individual housing; it also specializes in logistics and transport, supermarkets, and high-end retail. The office has played an important role in carrying out important urban planning studies, and excels in the fields of sustainable development and BIM (Building Information Modeling). This beautifully presented book serves to highlight the incredible output of this world-leader in architecture and design. Internationally renowned architectural writer Philip Jodidio writes an insightful essay on the variety and intelligence that these architects bring to their work. Jodidio engages with the directorship directly, illuminating on their visionary practice, their unique ethos, and the plans for the future under the new generation at the helm.

PACZOWSKI & FRITSCH ARCHITECTS

GOOD ARCHITECTURE STILL EXISTS In contemporary architecture, as in many other fields, originality seems to have taken the upper hand. In very reasonable terms, the sculptor Richard Serra stated that the “difference between architecture and art is that architecture serves a purpose.” But while a museum or a library can still serve a purpose, today its forms may bring it closer to art than to architecture. The expression of a personal style, a nearly unbridled experiment in originality and novelty sometimes prevails over the regard for users or context. What then is ‘good’ architecture? Although this question can lead to endless debate, it cannot be denied that a building that serves its intended purpose does a good deal to approach the goal. Numerous other criteria can be considered. Is it efficient, in terms of cost, or the use of energy in the broadest sense? How does a building fit into its site? Is it in contradiction with its environment or does it succeed in creating a sense of place without tearing at the fabric of a city, for example? The best buildings survive the test of time. Even beyond the purpose for which they were built, some structures obviously possess in their proportions and design something that makes them worth preserving. Nor are these qualities in inevitable contradiction with the modern world. Good architecture still exists. From Three to One Bohdan Paczowski was born in 1930 in Warsaw, Poland. He studied at Cracow University of Technology (Politechnika Krakowska, 1949–55) where he received his Masters degree in architecture in 1956. Between 1954 and1960 he was a teaching assistant at the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow. In 1968 he obtained a diploma from the Milan Polytechnic (Politecnico di Milano). He has been an Italian citizen since 1972, and worked with Luigi Carlo Daneri and Benedetto Resio in Genoa for the

first time in 1960. In 1973, he created the firm Uniarch in Milan, and designed the Jean Monnet Building of the European Commission in Luxembourg. In 1982 he established the Atelier d’Architecture Bellon-PaczowskiSobotta in Paris with Jean-François Bellon and Piotr Sobotta. The firm won competitions for the General Hospital in Aubervilliers, the General Services and INSERM Laboratories of the Cochin Hospital, both in Paris, and the General Hospital in Compiègne, France. Paczowski published essays on the history and theory of architecture in L'Architecture d'Aujourd'hui, Archi-Crée, and the Architectural Review among other magazines. He was also co-founder of the Fondation de l'Architecture et de l'Ingénierie de Luxembourg. After 12 years of occasional collaboration with Paul Fritsch, they established the Atelier d'Architecture Paczowski et Fritsch in 1989. Paul Fritsch was born in Luxembourg in 1943. He studied architecture at the ISA St-Luc (Brussels, 1964–70) receiving his diploma there in 1970. He worked in the office of René Stapels (Brussels, 1971) before creating the firm Architecture et Environnement, in 1972, with his colleagues from St-Luc, Jean Herr and Gilbert Huyberechts. In 1976, they won first prize for 20-unit housing project in Luxembourg in an area that had been destroyed by a gas explosion. In 1989 Paul Fritsch received the Prix HELIOS (Handicapped People in the European Community Living Independently in an Open Society) for a Home for Partially Sighted Persons. His son Mathias Fritsch was born in 1972 in Luxembourg and also studied architecture at the ISA St-Luc (Brussels, 1993–95), as well as the ISAI Victor Horta (Brussels, 1995–98). He worked in the office of Dominique Perrault in Paris (1998–2001) before joining Paczowski et Fritsch as an architect in 2001. He became the third partner in the firm

in 2003. Subsequent to the death of Bohdan Paczowski and the decision of his father to concentrate on his projects in Switzerland, Mathias Fritsch became the sole partner in charge of the office in 2017. Despite differences in age and origin, the three associates of Paczowski et Fritsch established themselves as noted architects with such significant projects as the Luxembourg Findel Airport (Terminal A, 2003–08) or the European Court of Justice (1996/2009), of which the last phase was carried out in collaboration with Dominique Perrault. They placed an emphasis on competitions, winning the Luxembourg Pavilion for Expo ’92 in Seville (Spain); the competition for the for the conversion of the former Submarine Base in Lorient (France): the New International Railway Station (Cessange, Luxembourg, 2009), over Norman Foster and Christian de Portzamparc, or the Museum of History of Poland in Warsaw, against more than 300 competitors. With its area of just 998 square miles (2586 square kilometers) and a population of approximately half a million people, Luxembourg has the world’s highest GDP per capita, and is the seat of numerous European Union agencies and an important banking center. Modern architecture, particularly in the Kirchberg area, co-exists peacefully with the history and traditions of the country. In short, Luxembourg is not a bad place to be for architects, even in times of economic stress elsewhere in Europe. Paczowski et Fritsch moved into a modern, 8610-squarefoot (800-square-meter) office building in Val Sainte-Croix, not far from the city center and the Kirchberg in 2010. All three partners acquired the habit of working together at a single large table. Paul Fritsch states, “What I like here is that there is essentially a single space. The levels and the working areas are varied, however. Everybody does

not work on the same plane, but we are all together. We used to work in two old houses on different floors which was much more complicated.”1The architects insist that their working methods vary according to the projects concerned. “When we participate in a competition, which we do quite often,” explains Mathias Fritsch, “we always decided together to do so.”2 Within this framework, each architect proceeded in a slightly different manner. Bohdan Paczowski worked out his ideas by sketching, while Mathias Fritsch prefers to develop physical models. With a typical note of humor, Paul Fritsch concludes, “I’m the thinker, Bohdan made drawings, and Mathias does models.” In 2015, the office moved to a former threestory carpentry shop located at 26 Rue des Gaulois in Bonnevoie in the southeastern area of the city. A Point of Departure Referring to one of their early projects, Paczowski stated, “Where the Seville Pavilion was concerned for example, Paul and I worked on his idea of a ramp, a spiral. When you enter a meeting there is a white sheet of paper and if you don’t start drawing there is no point of departure. Of course you have to know the client, the site, and the program, but the drawing is the point of departure that gets things going. That is the philosophy I have used my whole life.”3 Paczowski et Fritsch won the 1990 open, national competition to design their country’s pavilion for Expo ’92. The client in this instance was the Ministry of Economy of Luxembourg. The three basic elements of the design were a ramp system visible from outside, a visible steel structure, and parabolic antennae on the roof. Symbolically, these three features were intended to represent the country’s rising of economic development curve and its steel and telecommunications industries. The interior of the Pavilion was created in collaboration

PACZOWSKI & FRITSCH ARCHITECTS

GOOD ARCHITECTURE STILL EXISTS

with Yolande Bacot and Christian Gay Bellile of the Grande Halle de la Villette in Paris. Its large central sphere, a globe surrounded by rings, was the work of the noted Belgian cartoon artist François Schuiten, working with Yves Maréchal and Dominique Briand from the Paris agency Bleu Lumière. “We had a very small site to work with,” recalls Paul Fritsch. “I was obsessed by the idea that if we made something flat there, nobody would see it, so we had to do something to lift it up.” Another of the emblematic projects of the office is the Luxembourg Findel Airport. The architects conceived this 462,850-square-foot (43,000-square-meter), €162 million airport as a ‘gateway’ to Luxembourg. The task was complicated by the need to keep the existing airport operating during construction. They state that they saw their task as “conceiving the airport as a flexible space, capable of insuring evolving activity…and giving the new Findel Airport a recognizable identity and image that would of course meet functional, security, and economic requirements will expressing the cultural and technological capacities of the country.” The project included a terminal for medium-sized and large aircraft, shops, restaurants, and other necessary infrastructure. Their own explanation begins to make their working method clear and also highlights their conception of what makes ‘good’ architecture. Bohdan Paczowski stated, “We hesitated greatly over the project for the Airport. I started with the concept of the ‘non-place’ (non-lieu), developed by Marc Augé.4 The non-place as he defines it, is related to the infrastructure required for travel, such as railway stations or airports, as well as the cars, trains, and planes themselves. The non-place is by definition the opposite of a residence, or more precisely it is not a place. We attempted to contradict the thinking that condemns every airport to be

anonymous, or ultimately, meaningless. We were inspired instead by the brief stays, the goodbyes and greetings that occur in an airport, People do not only dwell in their own homes; they also live in public spaces. When you cross the bridge inside the airport to go to the restaurant or to look at the airplanes, you approach the idea of place, as opposed to non-place.” With the increasing traffic flow at the airport, the firm was completing a renovation and passage between this terminal and an older structure as this book went to press in 2017. A Sense of Place Paczowski applied his reasoning about the non-lieu to the specific example of the airport, explaining how he and his partner achieved their goal. “Designing for life, creating places, places to live in is an essential characteristic of our work,” he said. “Some airports, like that of Munich for example, are agreeable places, whereas others, like Frankfurt are not—there is a distinction that can be made. In the better case, you choose to spend a moment of your life there, in the worst, you hope to escape as quickly as possible. In Frankfurt, space becomes confusing and you have no sense of orientation. We did not want to create an airport where arrows indicating directions are the main feature—we wanted to create spaces, where you know where you are and where you are going. You have a good deal of natural daylight, with views to the exterior almost everywhere. You are never in a closed space. There are also materials like wood that are used. The ceilings are pastel green that evokes an aquatic environment and contrasts with the warmth of the wood. Few people analyze this kind of thing, but they do feel at ease.”5 There is indeed a timeless simplicity, but also a lightness, in the many senses of the term, that imbue the Airport by Paczowski et Fritsch. Mathias Fritsch explains, “I think what

makes the Luxembourg Airport agreeable is its architectural coherence, its order.” Paul Fritsch concludes, “You always know where you are. You are not in a hostile space.” This thinking, in various forms, is present in other significant projects in which the firm has been involved, with perhaps the most visible example being the European Court of Justice 1979/1994 (1996/2009). The European Court of Justice, established in 1951 through the Treaty of Paris, is a central institution of the European Union. Its permanent headquarters is on the Kirchberg plateau above the city of Luxembourg. The basic structure, which made use of Corten steel, was completed in 1974 by the architects Conzemius, Jamagne, and Van der Elst, and was one of the first significant buildings on the Kirchberg Plateau. At the time, the European Community included only six member states. The Court of Justice had to be extended in 1988, 1993, and 1994. The extensions carried out between 1985 and 1996 were the work of Paczowski et Fritsch associated with Jean Herr, Gilbert Huyberechts, and Isabelle Van Driessche, working with Paul Wurth and Hochtief Luxembourg for the project management. “The idea,” according to the late Bohdan Paczowski, “was to give to the main building in light Corten architecture a solid base in stone made of Rose de la Clarté granite from Brittany.” The architect compared the stone base to “the lower city” and the higher cube of the structure, dubbed “the castle” to an outpost of the Court and the Kirchberg Plateau facing the Red Bridge and the city enter. This volume contains the great courtroom. Recent additions to the project (2004–08) were made in collaboration with Dominique Perrault and m3 architectes. This €500 million project was won by the architects in a 1996 international consultation. Perrault notably added

twin 24-story, 342-foot (107-meter) high towers to the complex. Paczowski continued, “With the shape of these additions, the choice of materials he selected and the whole chromatic scale, Dominique Perrault integrated the former extensions, creating a coherent, harmonious whole, evoking the way in which, by superimposed, successive layers, European cities developed.” Solid and Well-Proportioned Other work of note by the firm includes the Aerogolf Center (1997–2000) located across from the Airport, and next to the Aerogolf-Sheraton Hotel. This 146,390-squarefoot (13,600-square-meter) building contains offices, meeting rooms, and underground parking lots. The logical, articulated grid design appears rigorous from every angle with an emphasis on long horizontal lines and doublesize openings in the grid near the main entrance. A stone façade is turned toward the airport, while the building itself, facing a park, has a metallic, glazed structure. Stone and marble, refined wood, and stainless steel are used for the interiors. The plans offer a variety of office spaces ranging in size from 2690 to 134,550 square feet (250 to 12,500 square meters) in area. The offices are service by four groups of elevators, as well as stairways. The building uses triple-glazing for energy reasons. Flexibility and efficiency are clearly the hallmarks of this design. Another intentionally flexible building is the Laccolith (Gasperich-Cloche d’Or, Luxembourg, 1998–2002). Located in an industrial zone the project, sought to “give a recognizable character to an administrative building destined to several ‘anonymous’ renters.” As the architects state, the simple volumes of the building “were designed with an insistence on functional clarity.”

PACZOWSKI & FRITSCH ARCHITECTS

CESSANGE TGV TRAIN STATION

PACZOWSKI & FRITSCH ARCHITECTS

CESSANGE TGV TRAIN STATION

PACZOWSKI & FRITSCH ARCHITECTS

MUSEUM OF POLISH HISTORY The location chosen for Warsaw’s Museum of Polish History is next to the 17th-century Ujazdowski Castle in an area of extensive woodland. Defined by a dominant landmark—the castle—in a landscape featuring ancient trees, the site calls for a design of immense expressive restraint so as not to disturb the harmony of the natural and historic ensemble.

Location Warsaw, Poland Date 2009 Gross area 258,335 ft2 (24,000 m2) Photography Courtesy of the architect

However, the continuity of this green area and its promenades to the north and south was disrupted in the 1970s with the construction of an urban expressway running from east to west. The competition rules stipulated that the museum building should span this highway, restoring the continuity of former times. This is the background that inspired the idea of a bridge building, its structure of steel trusses joining the park’s north and south sections, reconnecting the ends of roads that are currently dead ends. Crossing the interior of this bridge museum, from its south main entrance to its far end at the north, is an internal avenue, 39 feet (12 meters) wide: a forum, as required in the project brief, incorporating infrastructures for the people strolling through. On the walkway’s eastern side are the museum facilities (permanent and temporary exhibitions, education area, cafeteria); to the west are service areas (auditorium, retail units, and two research laboratories on the upper level, with open planted patios). The museum’s forecourt adjoins the esplanade of Ujazdowski Castle, which houses the Center for Contemporary Art. This creates an ensemble of autonomous but neighboring cultural institutions, where remembrance of the past sits alongside the present. The roof of the museum section housing exhibitions is designed with sloping lights, allowing lighting conditions to be adapted to the needs of different exhibits. The outer roof surfaces, facing south, are covered with 32,290 square feet (3000 square meters) of solar panels. The façades of the exhibition areas are insulated with triple-glazing, comprising an outer layer of security glass and an inner silkscreened layer, which reduces solar gain. The façades are fitted with double internal roller blinds in two separate layers—a flexible system permitting complete control of the building’s natural lighting. The project won an international competition in 2009.

SITE PLAN

10 9

8 5

7 2

4 1

GROUND-FLOOR PLAN 1 2 3 4

Permanent exhibition Higher gallery Lower gallery Temporary exhibition

5 6 7 8

Cafeteria Reception Lobby Main entrance hall

9 10 11 12

Reception hall Foyer Audience hall Education and seminar zone

6 16

13 Public forum zone 14 Supplementary function zone

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4 3

6 7

2 1

FIRST-FLOOR PLAN 1 2 3 4

Permanent exhibition Higher gallery Lower gallery Temporary exhibition

5 6 7 8

Education zone Restrooms Lift Passageways

9 10 11 12

Lobby Technical zone Archives Research

13 14 15 16

Laboratory Management Administration Patio

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LACCOLITH

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PACZOWSKI & FRITSCH ARCHITECTS

HOLLENFELS SCHOOL The new building for the village school is an extension of the existing school built in traditional 1960s style. Rather than expanding the old building it was decided to locate the extension in such a way as to create a ‘playground’ between the two blocks. Architecturally, the aim was to forge a visual link between the ancient château further along the same street and the new school, which features a tower with an ‘open-air classroom’ at the top. Plans include two classrooms with several computer workstations between them, a staff room—or extra classroom—on the first floor, as well as cloakrooms and underground parking and storage space. The new extension is build from natural materials: stone for the tower, wood and clear glass for the picture windows and zinc for the curved roof of the classrooms. A flight of steps with a ramp for wheelchair access leads up to the building from the playground, which can also be used as an amphitheater. The steps are wide enough and deep enough to provide seating for spectators.

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Location Hollenfels, Luxembourg Date 2001 Gross area 8775 ft2 (815 m2) Photography Andrés Lejona

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PACZOWSKI & FRITSCH ARCHITECTS