Building Across Worlds

Building Across Worlds International Projects by Architects von Gerkan, Marg and Partners

Building Across Worlds

Building Across Worlds International Projects by Architects von Gerkan, Marg and Partners

Editor Christian Schittich Authors Wojciech Czaja, Oliver G. Hamm, Falk Jaeger, Katharina Matzig, Nina Rappaport, ­Jürgen Tietz Editorial team Cornelia Hellstern (project ­management), Cosima Frohnmaier, Florian Köhler, Anne Krins, Kai Meyer, Natalie Muhr, Nina Müller; Sandra Leitte (copy editing German version) Translation into English Susanne Hauger, New York Copy editing Emma Jones, Zurich Design concept Cornelia Hellstern Drawings Ralph Donhauser Production /DTP Simone Soesters Reproduction ludwig:media, Zell am See

© 2016, first edition DETAIL – Institut für internationale ArchitekturDokumentation GmbH & Co. KG, Munich www.detail.de ISBN 978-3-95553-319-9 (Print) ISBN 978-3-95553-320-5 (E-Book) ISBN 978-3-95553-321-2 (Bundle) This work is subject to copyright. All rights reserved, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, re-use of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in other ways, and storage in databases. For any kind of use, permission of the copyright owner must be obtained.

Bibliographical information published by the ­German National Library. The German National Library lists this publication in the Deutsche Natio­ nalbibliografie; detailed bibliographical data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de.

Printing and binding Grafisches Centrum Cuno

GmbH & Co. KG, Calbe The FSC-certified paper used for this book is ­manufactured from fibres proved to originate from environmentally and socially compatible sources.

Cover Estádio Nacional Mané Garrincha Brasília Page 7 National Stadium Warsaw

Content

Christian Schittich Katharina Matzig

Falk Jaeger

Wojciech Czaja

Oliver G. Hamm

Falk Jaeger

Jürgen Tietz

Nina Rappaport

From Simplicity and Structural Order

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Raising the Curtain on Building Culture Tianjin Grand Theatre • Culture Palace Dresden

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The Fourth and Fifth Quality of Building Universiade Sports Center Shenzhen • Bao’an Stadium Shenzhen • Shanghai Oriental Sports Center

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Arvo Pärt’s Game of Dice and the Kings at the Lake Christ Pavilion Expo 2000 / Kloster Volkenroda • Holiday Houses “Apfelhof” on the Fleesensee

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Feng Shui, Interrelationships and Parametric Design Wanxiang Plaza Shanghai • SOHO 2 Beijing • 3Cubes Shanghai

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The Stadium as a Stage for the Choreography of the Masses Olympic Stadium Kiev • National Stadium Warsaw • Arena da Amazônia Manaus • Estádio Nacional Mané Garrincha Brasília • Estádio Santiago Bernabéu Madrid

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From Here to There Berlin Brandenburg Willy Brandt Airport BER • Tianjin West Railway Station

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New Public Dialogues Hanoi Museum • Kunsthalle Mannheim

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Project Credits 154 About the Office 158 Authors 159 Picture Credits 160

From Simplicity and Structural Order

On the international stage, the Hamburgbased architects von Gerkan Marg und Partner, known as gmp, are without a doubt one of the best-known German architecture firms. With projects such as the Berlin ­Olympic Stadium, the Tianjin Grand Theatre, the Vietnamese National Assembly Building in Hanoi, and the new football stadium in Cape Town, they have reshaped the image of many cities and created impressive landmarks all over the world.

The firm is represented in just about every important building category: airports and railways stations, concert halls and exhibition spaces. The building of stadiums, ­however, has garnered gmp some of their greatest international recognition. In each of the most recent World Cups – in Germany, South Africa, and two years ago in Brazil – they were responsible for at least three large new construction or refurbishment projects. The stadiums have come to serve as especially clear displays of the firm’s essential design principles.

In their work, the architects of gmp task themselves with designing buildings that keep functional circumstances as well as the special characteristics of each individual site in mind. They are as unlikely to engage in formal excesses as they are to adopt the passing trends of the day. Simplicity and structural order are paramount,

6

Preface

in the outlines of the overall concept as well as in the support structure. Attention to detail and carefully executed, well thoughtout construction processes are among the firm’s key strengths. Attention seeking is avoided. At gmp, in accordance with their very clear philosophy, form follows logic and therefore also the fundamental imperatives. This approach holds not only for large transportation buildings, cultural buildings, and office buildings, but especially also for smaller, meditative houses, a fact impressively illustrated in two examples featured in this book. One of these is the Christ Pavilion. Designed at its outset to be easily dismantled, it first turned heads at the Expo 2000 in Hanover before being transported and reassembled in the Thuringian village of Volkenroda to complete a monastery. ­Visitors can still experience its contemplative atmosphere, which the architects were able to create despite the standardisation and prefabrication that its construction necessitated.

This publication illustrates mostly contemporary projects by gmp, some of which are still in the process of completion. Whereas most typical retrospectives of renowned architects present projects in chronological order, the arrangement here is different. Prominent technical authors compare and contrast two or more buildings to one

another on the basis of a specific topic or a particular typology. In this way, the Kunsthalle in the German city of Mann­ heim is compared to the National Museum in Hanoi; the new international airport in Berlin Brandenburg is set opposite the West Railway Station in the Chinese city of Tianjin. And the refurbishment of the National Stadium in Brasília, as well as other new international arenas by gmp, are elucidated alongside the modernisation of the Estádio Santiago Bernabéu in Madrid, which is currently in its design stage.

With this approach, the authors point out the similarities and differences between buildings, but also examine lines of devel-

opment, distinctive features of the given country or place, and questions regarding appropriate scale and cultural differences.

In addition, they frequently address the working relationship between gmp and building clients or specialist planners. Lastly, they include a discussion of the political and societal aspects as well as the urban development context of each project. Their analyses reflect the architects’ own preference of dealing with every phase of a new project, starting with the master plan and ending with the interior design. This generalist approach occupies centre stage.

Christian Schittich

From Simplicity and Structural Order

7

The Fourth and Fifth Quality of Building Universiade Sports Center Shenzhen • Bao’an Stadium Shenzhen • Shanghai Oriental Sports Center

Boom Time is Construction Time It was the time of double-digit growth rates in the Chinese economy. Rising megacities competed with one another, outdoing themselves in the construction of new city administrative buildings, sports complexes, opera houses and the like, spurred on by the huge projects for the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing and the state television network CCTV. Administrators of the provincial cities, functionaries sent from Beijing, made every effort to use their five years in office to produce results and to make their marks, especially architectural marks. The pointless prestige projects and exotic technical excrescences resulting from this unbridled competition finally prompted the Central Committee to put on the brakes in 2015.

Large buildings of bizarre “un-Chinese” form would no longer be tolerated. Since foreign star architects were deemed to be the authors of these creations, Chinese architects would henceforth be given preference in the design of public structures – though they were often themselves responsible for many of the bizarre buildings.

Future developments in this arena should be interesting to watch.

Up until this point, gmp had successfully competed in design competitions in one of their core competencies: the construction

34

Sport Complexes

of sports centres and stadiums, both in Shanghai, where the World Swimming Championships were to be hosted, and in Shenzhen, the booming economic powerhouse in Hong Kong’s sphere of influence, where the Universiade 2011 (the international student games and world’s secondlargest sporting event) was to take place.

Two dozen new sports facilities were to be pulled out of a hat for these events. The architects of gmp won the invited competitions for the Universiade Sports Center as well as the Bao’an Stadium in 2006, and were able to realise these projects in the ­following years without significant changes.

Universiade Sports Center, Shenzhen (CN).

Design: Meinhard von Gerkan and Stephan Schütz with Nicolas Pomränke • Construction period: 2007– 2011 • Seats: 60,000 ­(Stadium), 18,000 ­(Multi-function hall), 3,000 (Swimming hall) Bao’an Stadium, Universiade 2011, Shen­ zhen-Bao‘an (CN).

Design: Meinhard von Gerkan with Stephan

Schütz and David Schenke • Construction period: 2009–2011 • Seats: 40,050 Shanghai Oriental Sports Center, Shanghai (CN) • Design: Meinhard von Gerkan and Nikolaus Goetze with Magdalene Weiss • Construction period: 2009–2011 • Seats: 18,000 (­ Hall ­stadium), 5,000 (Natatorium), 5,000 (Outdoor swimming pool)

Olympic buildings Tokyo Kenzo Tange, 1964 (above) • Olympic Stadium ­Munich Behnisch & Partner with Frei Otto, 1972 (left)

The Concept of the Building Family As in historical Chinese gardens, where buildings resemble one another because they share the same construction style and thus form a sort of architectural kinship, the idea of a building family assumes a ­significant role here. What Kenzo Tange attempted in a rudimentary fashion in Tokyo in 1964 with his Olympic buildings, and

what Behnisch & Partner resoundingly ­succeeded at in Munich in 1972 with a canopy that linked an entire complex together, became a goal for the Universiade complex in Shenzhen and shortly thereafter for the Shanghai Oriental Sports Center (SOSC) as well: namely, the unification of different sports facilities into a family by means of structural and design similarities.

The Fourth and Fifth Quality of Building

35

architects of gmp and the engineers of schlaich bergermann partner decided to depart somewhat from their usual position. Normally they develop structures for stadiums, halls, bridges and other large buildings whose designs are expressions of their functions: columns for which the loads can be guessed, broad beams that reveal their forceful effects, cables whose enormous tension is palpable – in short, structures for which functional task and appearance are apparent. The designers’ goal is not to demonstratively turn loads

50

Sport Complexes

and bearings into a design motif in their own right, which was the intention of the High-tech architecture of the 1980s, but a natural and matter-of-fact manifestation of functional form. This stance leads almost automatically to beautiful, impressive structures, as is evidenced in all the buildings in which the two firms collaborated. Almost: because a little ésprit, and lately a certain design-added value, are also essential factors in success.

In the case of the SOSC the principle of self-explanatory construction was aban-

Shanghai Oriental Sports Center Framework construction on the building site (above) • Construction site of the Natatorium (below) • Design sketches of the arrangement of the cantilever elements (facing page)

doned. The steel frames disappeared behind a covering, a chassis that generates its own stylistic value. It no longer showcases the structure itself, but instead acts as its corrective, idealised, and if you like, beautified reflection. The reason for this ­paradigm shift was the limited time avail­ able for planning and construction. To develop a visible framework requires a lot of detailed work such as the design of joints and hinges, the finishing of surfaces, corrosion protection and such. There was no time for this. Large pieces of the steel structure were created quickly and without built-in planning redundancies, in part on the basis of crucial decisions taken on the construction site itself. Since these conditions precluded the realisation of an exposed structure, a covered building was built instead.

An additional complication arose from the licensing procedures in China, which differ from those in Europe. For special construction of large-scale buildings, so-called Overcode Meetings are held in which commissions of experts, in this case renowned structural engineers from various Chinese universities, evaluate and approve the designs. Because of the time constraints it was absolutely imperative that the SOSC project overcome this hurdle on the first

attempt. The experiences of schlaich bergermann partner in China led them to believe that the high-level plans of the advanced material- and cost-saving construction would face considerable obstacles in garnering the confidence of such a commission. The procedure did lead to some changes in the execution, in that additional anchoring of the base of the framework was required, rendering them bulkier than originally designed – “combining a belt with braces” for safety reasons, as the engineers put it.

Now, however, the advantage of separating the structure and cladding became apparent, because the shell, which was formed from biaxially curved aluminium sheets, could be rapidly modified using the parametric BIM planning system. Initially, the designers had considered utilising prefabricated concrete sections for the cladding, but then rejected this plan because of time constraints. With CNC tools, aluminium sheets can be manufactured more quickly and flexibly.

Each support is an independent static ­system, which simplified the assembly. The doubly curved surfaces in the spherical sections contribute to stability and signifi-

The Fourth and Fifth Quality of Building

51

Shanghai Oriental Sports Center Event in the Outdoor swimming pool complex (left) • Natatorium steel beams clad with aluminium panels (facing page)

The ice sports arena, conceived as a multifunctional hall, is the venue for sports and music events of all kinds, as well as shows.

Shops and restaurants catering to the needs of large numbers of recreation-seeking visitors have been built along the slopes of the open areas as well as on the outside of the stadium.

The Universiade Stadium in Bao’an is likewise not a “White Elephant,” since it is regularly used for league football games. It has become the favourite venue of the Chinese National Team because they succeeded in winning the occasional home game there.

In the case of the SOSC, the architects and the building client were especially concerned with ensuring sustained usability. Today, five years after the 2011 FINA World Swimming Championships, it is apparent that the complex on the east bank of the Huangpu River has proven its functional longevity, its ongoing potential and its ability to merge successfully into the urban structure. Gradually the brownfield areas south and north of the SOSC, extending all the way to the former exhibition site of the EXPO 2010, are being preponderantly built up with residential flats. A new district is emerging; soon the fences will fall, and the SOSC grounds will become a public city park.

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Sport Complexes

The Responsibility of the Architect Many architects in China, both foreign and native, set their sights on creating large buildings that are as spectacular as possible, to enhance the fame of the building client (as well as their own).

The architects of gmp also make a point of considering the social responsibilities of an architect, who after all uses national wealth to build for the people, and whose interventions in nature and the environment have potentially serious consequences. This is why urban con­ nectedness and social function are so important to them. Large projects are ­constituent parts of the city; they must be fully integrated structurally and func­ tionally and they must serve the people; both occasional visitors as well as the directly impacted residents. And they must – more importantly now than ever – be sustainable in construction, upkeep and function. Besides function, construction and design, urban interconnectedness and sustainability (in both operation and continued use) constitute the fourth and fifth qualities of building. The architects of gmp want to know that these standards are being applied to their large sports facil­ ities in China as well.

The Fourth and Fifth Quality of Building

55

Arvo Pärt’s Game of Dice and the Kings at the Lake Christ Pavilion Expo 2000 / Kloster Volkenroda • Holiday Houses “Apfelhof” on the Fleesensee

The Christ Pavilion in the medieval town of Volkenroda and the Apfelhof König holiday houses owned by the König (“King”) family in Nossentin on the Fleesensee could hardly be more different. Yet both buildings have more in common than first meets the eye. This is a novella about light, peace, cows, caffeine – and little surprises from a large firm.

“My apologies, but this is taking longer than expected. I will be a little late.” The road gets progressively narrower, the path more convoluted, the map whiter.

The way to Volkenroda, a small monastery village at the intersection of the axes between the city pairs of Göttingen / Erfurt and Leipzig / Kassel, forces the widely ­travelled journalist to go unusually slowly.

After hours in the car dealing with detours and various errors in navigation, one begins to question European Christendom and flirt instead with Buddhism, according to which the journey itself is the objective.

But when one finally arrives, somewhere in the middle of Thuringia, one must acknowledge that the destination is the objective after all.

Jutting right out of the medieval town structure of Volkenroda is a white, opaquely ­glistening cube. At first glance, the blocky building looks like the inside-out backdrop

56

Small Buildings

of the low-budget horror movie classic Cube – many squares, many black lines, many lightly shimmering surfaces that appear to hang in the sky like a weightless tablecloth. On this cloudy day, against the backdrop of a pale, washed-out sky, white becomes lost in white. Unlike Cube, however, this story does not end here, but rather begins. Because this is not Hollywood – it is a church.

“My apologies, but this is taking longer than expected. I will be a little late.” You would think one might have learned from experience, but the opposite is true. What was a 30-minute delay in Thuringia grows into a full hour in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, where the picturesque Mecklenburg Lake District around Rostock and Schwerin seems even more splendid, and time seems to tick even

Christ Pavilion, Expo 2000 / Kloster Volkenroda, Hanover (D) / Volkenroda (D). ­Design: Meinhard von Gerkan and ­Joachim Zais • Con­ struction period: 1999 – 2001 • GFA: 2,004 m2 • Volume (total): 18,548 m3

Holiday Houses “Apfel­ hof” on the Fleesen­ see, Nossentin (D).

Design: Volkwin Marg and Joachim Zais • Construction period: 2010 –2012 • GFA: 445 m2 • Living area: 160 m2 (House 1), 107 m2 (House 2) • Volume (total): 1,330 m3

Apfelhof Nossentin Royal view onto the Fleesensee in ­Nossentin (above) • Christ Pavilon as ex­­ pansion of the monas­ tery in the Thuringian town of Volkenroda (left)

Arvo Pärt’s Game of Dice and the Kings at the Lake

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church would not be built with its original contours, as he had first hoped, “but that instead they would set down an eighteenmetre-high cube. What had initially disappointed me somewhat, to tell the truth (the winning competition design by gmp had by no means been my favourite), matured within me over time and became a house of great joy,” says Wolf. “It’s a really great thing. And I must admit: the Christ Pavilion works at an Expo just as well as it works here, where the fox and the hare say goodnight to one another. Perhaps even better in fox-and-hare country.”

Consensus between Cows and Kings A rabbit hops across the picture. The woolly Charolais cow seems unperturbed by this, chomping her way through the wildflower meadow and chewing, and chewing, and chewing some more. For years, Gina and Volker König, accompanied by their four sons and a giant poodle on a leash, searched for the perfect lakeside property where they could anchor their passion for the Mecklenburg Lake District, which they had discovered after German reunification, to a part-time home. “I cannot put it any other way; but sitting here and looking out onto the water, and

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Small Buildings

Apfelhof Nossentin Floor plan, scale 1:250 • Lounge pavilion with synchronously mov­ able louvered facade (left) • Southern facade of the parents’ house (top right) • View of the neighbours from the terrace: The new own­ ers have granted the Charolais cattle lifetime visitors’ rights to the Apfelhof green space (far right).

seeing the cranes, wild geese, and ospreys – it makes me deeply, utterly happy.”

The Königs drove out to Mecklenburg-­ Vorpommern about fifty times to scour the real estate agencies for announcements, to ask farmers and the whole world where a property might be available; they wandered hither and yon, combing the landscape for wooden signs rammed into the earth, until finally, after more than ten years, an opportunity presented itself to strike a deal and give their fascination with East German nature and culture its head. “On that day we sent our sons a text message,” the artist remembers. “‘Boys, we’ve bought a cow pasture in Meckpomm!’”

The process of generating ideas for the eventual style and form of the Apfelhof took many months, and could indeed merit its own world exhibition. Project architect Joachim Zais developed about 30 different designs and design variations before a consensus was reached that was compatible with both cows and Königs. “I did not know anything about building,” the owner says of her first experience. “We wanted way too many beds, a room for table tennis, a mudroom and of course a boat dock into the Fleesensee. And Mr Zais remained friendly

Arvo Pärt’s Game of Dice and the Kings at the Lake

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1 composite element marble 10 mm casting resin 3 mm + toughened glass 12 mm 2 250 / 80 / 10 mm steel flat 3 point fixing, stainless steel 4 500 / 500 / 50 mm concrete slab

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Small Buildings

5 skylight: toughened glass 10 mm, inner surface printed + 14 mm cavity + laminated safety glass 2≈ 8 mm 6 60 mm diameter steel tube 7 2≈ steel flat 40 mm

Christ Pavilion Struc­ ture of the church framework (below) • Vertical section, scale 1:50 (above)

Christ Pavilion Cloister window filled with lighters (above) • Cloister, Horizontal and vertical sections, scale 1:10 (right) 1 150 / 150 / 10 mm steel angle 2 150 / 129 / 2 mm steel channel 3 150 / 50 / 4 mm steel flat 4 Toughened glass 8 mm + filling 16 – 63 mm + tough­ ened glass 8 mm 5 15 / 50 mm com­ pression member, stainless steel 6 170 / 6 mm steel frame 7 10 / 20 mm steel 8 180 / 90 / 10 mm steel angle 9 50 mm oak planks

hubbub of family and friends, Meinhard von Gerkan’s timeless motto is on full display: “Building is art in its social application.” Or, as client Volker König, real estate agent by trade, would have it: “This place really gives you joy. And it’s not the pure visual joy you get from a piece of jewellery that you’re almost afraid to touch. It’s the joy you get out of the purpose of a thing, the fact that this project is something that we can use, complete with all of its traces of age and wear and tear. Every single scratch in the surface, every single chipped edge has its own story. I think these marks of time are beautiful and valuable.”

While the lower storey of both houses serves as a communal living and recreation area, with the free-standing kitchen island acting as the centre, an oak staircase winds up step by step into the private spaces. A lot of white, a lot of quiet, here and there an old rustic chair and yes, a stuffed moose as well. Thanks to the steeply rising monopitch roof, the bedrooms feature additional sleeping lofts, enclosed in sailcloth and accessible via leaning ladders, above the beds. Here, only a few metres from the Fleesensee, it is more than just the building elements that remind you of sailboats and Sylt. The rough plywood walls with their knotholes, varnished white after installation, lend the Apfelhof a maritime flair even here on dry land. The ingenious lee and windward perspectives of upstairs and down, of the grip holes cut into the closet walls, of the wonderfully playful narrow doors that ­fulfil many functions at once and that facilitate completely new spatial flow depending on how they are positioned, are often remin­ iscent of a ship’s cabin on the high seas.

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Sixteen Seconds of Reverberation and Much More Four hundred kilometres to the south, deep in the heartland of Germany, the waves have died down. The Christ Pavilion lies serenely at anchor among the medieval

Arvo Pärt’s Game of Dice and the Kings at the Lake

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Glossary of Similarities What is the same? What is similar? A twelvepoint comparison of the discovered commonalities.

The In-Between “Sometimes I come to Nossentin, make myself a cup of tea, and just sit on the steps for the first half hour, looking at the Fleesensee and the white Charolais cattle.

I always call that Nature TV. It really fills me with peace.” Volker König, real estate broker from Hamburg, declares the edge of the terrace to be his favourite spot.

“This wooden open space between the two houses and the covered patio is almost a room in itself. It connects the buildings and at the same time creates a respectful distance that is good for all of us.” In the Christ Pavilion in Volkenroda, the area between the interior and exterior spaces also plays an important role. “We hold church services in the pavilion,” says Bernward Paulick, architect of the Bauhütte Volkenroda. At the same time, people going for a stroll through the village with their dogs can walk through the cloister and use their own discretion to decide how closely they want to approach the pavilion. “This empty buffer zone is as important as rests are in music... a sort of mysterious invitation.”

The Fulcrum The function of a door does not necessarily have to be immediately obvious, a fact that Le Corbusier was well aware of. In his secu-

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Small Buildings

lar and religious buildings, the Swiss architect often moved the hinge of the doors from the edge toward the centre, so that the radius of curvature is reduced and the open door remains like a vertical slab within the opening. The principle is timeless.

In the cloister of the Christ Pavilion, the square doors follow the precept of the inward shift of the hinge. When the building is open, it looks as though it owes its porosity to a series of louvres. According to project architect Joachim Zais, this was intended in part to help visitors overcome their reluctance to enter. This modern trick makes an appearance at the Apfelhof in Nossentin as well: In the open lounge pavilion between the two houses, the side walls can be opened individually. A flat steel bar attached to the lower edges of the five verti-

Apfelhof Nossentin View of the Fleesensee to the east with grazing Charolais cattle (top left) • Christ Pavilion Cloister with “enclaves“ protruding into the church space – the ­little rooms of peace (top right) • Apfelhof Nossentin North- and south sides of the 65 m2 garden pavilion can be louvered open (bottom left) • Christ Pavilion Three steel lattice gates point the way to the three portals into the church (bottom right)

cal wooden wall panels connects them to one another. A single hand motion allows the panels to rotate inward and outward in synchrony.

Christ Pavilion Layered materials behind glass and pressure bars (bottom left) • Apfel­ hof Nossentin Stacked firewood, framed in black steel (bottom center) • Christ Pavilion In Volkenroda a square basin shifted slightly off-axis; its area corre­ sponds to the foot­ print of the church (top right) • Apfelhof Nossentin Larchwoodpanelled wall of the garden pavilion with the property’s name­ sake (bottom right)

The Filling The whole world is reflected in the cloister of the Christ Pavilion. The spaces within the nano-coated composite windows, which measure 1.7 ≈ 1.7 metres and are up to 10 centimetres thick, have been filled with objects from industry and nature: Flowers, bamboo, tree slices, coal, twigs, matches, gears, toothbrushes, tea strainers, light bulbs, rubber rings, thermometers, feathers, poppy seed pods, and medical syringes.

“At first this idea was not really taken seriously, and many people even made fun of it,” explains architect Meinhard von Gerkan.

“But now it’s apparent that these windows have become paintings, as it were. The incoming light creates pictures of aesthetic appeal and artistic quality.” All in all, sixty different materials were used as filling. The final selection was based on aesthetic as well as technical perspectives. And then, when standing in Nossentin looking at the wood storage next to the terrace, one sees… black steel frames, filled to the top with perfectly layered firewood. Coincidence?

The Spirit of the Place The black granite basin did not yet exist at the time of the Expo, and was built specially for Volkenroda. The reflecting surface is the visual centrepiece of the monastery grounds. Seen from the north of the inner courtyard – from the place where the nave of the old monastery church once stood – the Christ Pavilion and its reflection form a single large image. “In a certain sense, the contoured cloister with its varied fillings is a novel interpretation of the neighbouring halftimbered houses,” says architect Bernward Paulick, “as though the pavilion had been created exclusively so that it could take up a dialogue with the dark half-timbering and its filling of clay and white-washed brick.”

It is the sensitivity to the place that makes this project look so beautiful. In Nossentin, the neighbour woman who takes care of the Apfelhof when the Königs are not there asks, “Did you notice the old barn doors that you can see everywhere here in and around Nossentin? And do you see this larch facade? It’s like they’re linked. Isn’t that amazing?“

Arvo Pärt’s Game of Dice and the Kings at the Lake

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Taking Possession “When I finish a project, I put an end to it mentally as well”, says Joachim Zais. Part of this process means that one day there might suddenly be racks of antlers hanging on the walls which are at odds with the calm simplicity of the architecture. “The Apfelhof now belongs to the owners. Architecture should be sufficiently robust so that such things can happen without ruining the concept.” The Christ Brotherhood of Volkenroda asked the firm gmp to manage the entire historical complex beyond the construction of the Christ Pavilion. “We absolutely did not want to do it,” says the project architect. “A ­village like this needs life and diversity and therefore input from many different hands.”

One contribution will be added now that, after fifteen years, the fillings in the windows have lost their appeal. “Now our task is to assert ownership of the pavilion once again and to change what is old and proven,” says monastery director Jens Wolf. Where light bulbs, tea strainers, and poppy seed pods once held sway, it is now up to young people and creative artists to make their move.

The Joint The specifications for the construction of the Christ Pavilion at the Hanover Expo called for simple and rapid building and dismantling, since, after all, its disassembly and transportation to Volkenroda were part of the concept from the outset. Since welding work and complex screw connections at great heights were unachievable within the economic constraints, Ewald Rüter’s Sigma Joint, patented in 1997, was employed for the first time. The plug connections consist of a base and a slip-on element that are simply plugged into one another. Slightly slanted, minutely milled side surfaces ensure that the solid steel elements form a customfit rigid unit under the effects of gravity and their own weight. The joint proves to be almost as inconspicuous in the roof structure of the two houses in Nossentin. Primary and secondary beams are connected with simple, commercially available slotted panels. And no, you can’t see the screws. They were painted white along with the entire wall and roof construction.

The East One looks east, directly toward the lake.

Waking up at the Apfelhof is very pleasant, as one can well imagine. “Yes, the East plays an important role in this project,” says building client Gina König. “After Germany’s reunification, we drove out to Mecklenburg-

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Small Buildings

Apfelhof Nossentin The König’s royal living space decor (top left) • Christ Pavilion Decora­ tion of the window panes with local mate­ rials of Volkenroda (top right) • Axonometry of the patented Sigma Joint as a rigid plug connection (bottom left) • Apfelhof Nossen­ tin Slotted metal panel connection of the ceil­ ing frame in the living room (bottom right)

Monastery Volkenroda Founded in 1131, it is today the oldest exist­ ing Cistercian monas­ tery church in Germany (top left) • Apfelhof Nossentin Gnarled birches line the roads around Nossentin (top right) • Framed view over the seating group and out of the loungepavilion (bottom left) • Christ Pavilion Medita­ tive stroll through the cloister kaleidoscope (bottom right)

Vorpommern over and over to go camping, swimming, paddling. It is beautiful, untouched nature. For us West Germans from Hamburg, it was an adventure. We fell in love with this countryside and with the life stories of the people who live here. It was clear that we wanted to settle down here.”

During GDR times, the monastery property of Volkenroda was used as the estate and seat of the Agricultural Production Cooperative (LPG). Only after the fall of the Wall did the Holy Ghost move back into the place.

“When the pavilion was built fifteen years ago, it was a blessing,” architect Bernward Paulick remembers. “Such a purist building in former East Germany, not to mention in such a rural area... it was quite a sensation!”

not be taken too literally here, since the house is so popular with friends and acquaintances that the Königs are rarely alone. The sons, too, frequently bring their friends. On one occasion, thirty-five people spent the night simultaneously. Rather than in noise volume, the Nossentin peace manifests itself in the celebration of being in the country, in its view out onto the Fleesensee, and in the meditative observation of the grazing Charolais cattle. “It was really astonishing to see how quickly visitors calmed down as soon as they entered our pavilion,” recalls Jens Wolf. “Like all world exhibitions, the Expo in Hanover was a ­vanity fair, but despite the endless crowds, when people took their first step into the cube, one could see these very specific, relaxed expressions on their faces.”

The Eye of the Storm “Every time we come to Nossentin, a kind of peace sneaks into us within a few minutes,” says Volker König. The word ‘peace’ should

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Feng Shui, Interrelationships and Parametric Design Wanxiang Plaza Shanghai • SOHO 2 Beijing • 3Cubes Shanghai

Few types of construction are considered less “sexy” than office buildings. After all, religious, cultural, and sporting buildings all offer more manifold possibilities for allowing artistic expression free rein. Administrative buildings on the other hand are widely regarded as mere collections of interchangeable offices in which only the foyers and the facades offer opportunities for creativity in design. Yet numerous iconic examples taken from the history of architecture contradict this commonly held dim view of office buildings, and illustrate the potential for consummate structural design solutions in such projects – the Chrysler Building in New York (1930), the Dreischeibenhaus in Düsseldorf (1960), the BMW “Four-Cylinder” in Munich (1972) or the Umweltbundesamt in Dessau (2005), to name but a few.

The firm gmp boasts a great deal of experience in the planning of administrative buildings, as well as a broad spectrum of design solutions. In five decades the architecture firm has built about six dozen office buildings, including the Headquarters of Shell AG in Hamburg (1974), the European Patent Office in Munich (1980), the Oberpostdirektion (Post Office Building) in Brunswick (1990), the German-Japanese Centre in Hamburg (1995), as well as the Dresdner Bank (1997) and the Jakob-Kaiser House (2001) in Berlin.

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Sino-German Collaboration Since 2005, gmp has completed numerous office buildings in China. These are essentially the fruits of a Sino-German collaborative effort, since in that country foreign architecture firms are legally required to work together with a Chinese partner firm.

These joint ventures relieve gmp of responsibility for certain aspects of the project (particularly the preparation of construction packages and the administration of the tender process) that the firm would normally handle itself in Germany, for example. In addition – as is the case for any architecture firm in China, including Chinese firms – gmp has only a very limited say in the interior

Wanxiang Plaza, Office building Shanghai-Pudong (CN).

Design: Meinhard von Gerkan and Nikolaus Goetze with Volkmar Sievers • Construction period: 2007– 2010 • GFA: 42,000 m2 SOHO China Group, Beijing (CN). Design: Meinhard von Gerkan and Stephan Schütz with Stephan Rewolle • Construction period:

2009 – 2015 • GFA: 103,000 m2 3Cubes Office Building at the Caohejing Business Park in Shanghai, Shanghai (CN). Design: ­Meinhard von Gerkan and Nikolaus Goetze with Magdalene Weiss • Construction period: 2011– 2015 • GFA: 90,650 m2 (58,200 m2 above ground / 32,450 m2 below ground)

Wangxiang Plaza Shanghai View from the Bund, the riverside promenade of Shanghai, across the Huangpu River

design of individual floors in Chinese office buildings. In China, the buyer of an office building or the lessee of an individual floor traditionally assumes full responsibility for the interior design. As a consequence, the architects responsible for a building’s design must limit their specifications for interiors to the lobby, and to some structural preparations for any finishes to be installed by tenants.

With its office buildings, as with buildings of other typologies, gmp has contributed to the breathtaking transformation of Chinese

cities, frequently in particularly prominent urban spaces. Three examples in Shanghai and Beijing provide insight into the complex demands and stylistic solutions of each very specific design task, and simultaneously shed light on the backgrounds of the individual building clients.

An Eye-Catcher in the Skyline of Pudong After building the German School (2000) and the Xinzhao Residential Area (2002 – 2004) in Beijing, as well as the International Convention and Exhibition Centers

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SOHO 2 Beijing Diagonal view from the east (left) • Section showing neighbouring building to the north and shadow lines (bottom left) • Maximum building volume with shadow cross section (below right) • Thermal impacts on the buildings to the north (at the bottom right) • Facade section with fins, scale 1:10 (facing page above) • View of the facade with fins (facing page below)

structures resemble eroded boulders in a river current. Gentle changes in the orientation of the facades at the rounded “corners” of the buildings provide continuously varied views and perspectives; they create the ­picture of a dynamic urban landscape without making a distinction between the front and back sides of each individual structure.

Full height window panes with attached ­vertical aluminium fins, designed to control light influx, characterise the overall design uniformity of the tower facades.

By sloping the roof planes from south to north, additional facade surfaces are created that are likewise outfitted with aluminium fins – in this case horizontally. The ­uniform angle of the rooftops stems from the municipal overshadowing guidelines

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as well as from the specific demands of the occupants of the apartment buildings to the immediate north for unimpeded light during certain times of the day and the year. The softly undulating appearance of the aluminium fins is reminiscent of a curtain stirring in the wind. This motif is concretely visualised in the two-storey lobbies of the five towers, where a drape-like cladding over green, backlit glass walls is effectively stage-lit by illumination from above. A dynamically curved white reception counter opposite the lift access constitutes the only piece of furniture in this special reception area. Its dark stone floor is a continuation – albeit smoothly polished – of the walkway surface outside.

The two lower storeys and the first basement level were originally earmarked as a shopping arcade, and designs by gmp to that effect had been carried out in some detail. These were organised around two large voids dispensing light from above and providing spatial orientation. The white-clad galleries and the pale stone floors distribute the natural daylight, along with the subtly added artificial illumination, into the whole expanse. While numerous shops with full glass fronts were originally meant to form a

1 Raised flooring system with 70 mm steel timbering, 150 mm reinforced concrete slab 2 Insulated glazing with low-E coating ESG 10 + SZR 12 + VSG 8 mm 3 Aluminium fin 350 / 60 mm 4 35 mm diameter steel-toothed shaft 5 Steel square tube bracket 600 / 60 / 30 mm 6 Steel post-and-beam construction, post 165 / 70 mm, beam 165 / 170 mm

3

2 1 5

4 6

sort of transparent cityscape in the “canyon” of the building complex, the area was instead retro-fitted to accommodate shortterm-lease office spaces and a library.

The architects had no direct influence on the interior design of the offices in the upper floors, since the lessees commissioned these separately. In any case, a key decision to keep the ceilings free of suspended cladding and to specify linear ceiling lighting guarantees that the 3.6-metre-high office storeys present a uniform outward appearance.

A Suspenseful Interplay Between Adaptation and Individuality Since the 1990s the Shanghai Caohejing ­Hi-Tech Park Development Corporation, a large public development company, has been developing large areas of Shanghai predominantly for industrial construction.

Because of the very rapid growth of the city some of their once peripheral industrial zones have now become integrated with urban areas. They are increasingly being freed up for new uses and redeveloped with a view to a denser development of the land with higher-yield buildings. An example of this is the Caohejing Business Park,

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The Stadium as a Stage for the Choreography of the Masses Olympic Stadium Kiev • National Stadium Warsaw • Arena da Amazônia Manaus • Estádio Nacional Mané Garrincha Brasília • Estádio Santiago Bernabéu Madrid

Building for the Pride of the Nation and for the Soul of the Club Sports buildings, particularly stadiums for team sports, are primarily functional facilities that serve large numbers of people – much like train stations, where thousands arrive and depart on a daily basis. But where the train station usually individualises people (you jump out of a taxi, hasten to the ticket machine, look up your train compartment), the stadium is the site for manifold interactions: some individual, but most collective.

This topic has engaged Volkwin Marg again and again over the course of his work on two dozen stadium designs. “Choreography of the Masses” is the title of an exhibition he initiated, which illuminated the historico-cultural phenomenon of the sports audience.

A person will act differently in a crowd than in an individual situation. How and with what consequences this occurs is naturally relevant when building places in which tens of thousands of spectators will congregate.

After reading Elias Canetti’s “Crowds and Power”, Volkwin Marg became conscious of the ambivalence of his actions in designing large sports facilities. He came to understand that, “as in music, some architectural compositions will encourage one, in the ­figurative sense, to march, while to others

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one dances the waltz.” This is definitively demonstrated in the contrast between the “power-conscious” Olympic Stadium of ­Berlin in 1936 and the “cheerful” Olympic Stadium of Munich in 1972 – two projects shown in the exhibition.

Reflections on the phenomenon of crowds in stadiums leads to the realisation that there are ways for organisers and law enforcement agencies to influence and guide these crowds, but they also yield insights into the way in which the architectural framework should be conceptualised.

In Warsaw, for example, the design succeeded in expressing the powerful national feelings associated with the stadium in a

Olympic Stadium Kiev, Kiev (UA).

Design: Volkwin Marg with Christian Hoffmann and Marek Nowak • Construction period: 2008 – 2011 • Seats: 68,000 National­ Stadium, ­Warsaw (PL). Design: Volkwin Marg and Hubert Nienhoff with Markus Pfisterer • Construction period:

2008 – 2011 • Seats: 55,000 Arena da Amazônia, Manaus (BR). Design: Volkwin Marg and Hubert Nienhoff with Martin Glass • Construction period: 2010 – 2014 • Seats: approx. 44,400 National Stadium Mané Garrincha, Brasília (BR).

Design: Volkwin Marg

and Hubert Nienhoff with Knut Göppert • Construction period: 2010 – 2013 • Seats: approx. 72,800 Modernisation of the Estadio Santiago Bernabéu, Madrid (ES). Design: Volkwin Marg and Hubert Nienhoff with Markus Pfisterer • Under ­construction • Seats: approx. 90,000

Olympic Stadium ­Munich Behnisch & Partner with Frei Otto, 1972 (above) • Olympic Stadium Berlin original building by Werner March, 1936 and modernisation by gmp, 2004 (left)

sympathetic way, as will be illustrated below. Many architects would have used a similar opportunity to fall back on pomp and pathos.

In all their stadium designs the architects of gmp seek to influence the choreography of the masses through a great variety of other means. This involves preventing frustration by providing simple, unhindered orientation and intuitive navigation for the visitor. It involves conveniently designed spaces that communicate care for the individual; uncluttered, clearly arranged layouts; sanitary facilities and kiosks that can handle

large numbers. It involves the size of the spectator blocks, smooth departures and speedy evacuations. It involves countering the chaos in some visitors’ heads with the serenity and order of the surroundings.

When a crowd becomes a mob, the transition is often triggered by some trifling thing.

Then, the frustration stemming from a lost game can bubble over into aggression directed at the “adversary” wearing the wrong-coloured scarf, or at the world at large. Preventing frustration is therefore an important strategy for organisers as well as for the architects who set the stage.

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New Public Dialogues Hanoi Museum • Kunsthalle Mannheim

With the rise of cultural engagement, museums worldwide have seen an increase in attendance, beginning with the days of blockbuster exhibitions such as Picasso: A Retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1980, where art lovers circled around the block to gain entrance.

The term “Bilbao effect” was coined to describe the surge in visitors that occurred after Frank Gehry was hired to design a Guggenheim branch museum in 1997 as a tourist attraction in Bilbao, a city off the beaten track. Museums are magnets that decentralise culture from urban cores; examples include the Louvre Lens by SANAA that opened in 2012; the cultural district developed from scratch in Abu Dhabi; or the move of the Barnes Foundation in 2014 from the suburbs to downtown Philadelphia, into a new building designed

by Tod Williams and Billie Tsien to attract a larger audience. In many ways, museums have become an emblem of a city’s success and an industry unto themselves.

Museums are international, thanks to broadening funding and curators in global demand, exporting and importing ideas.

Many corporations provide financial backing, such as VW for the MoMA or BMW for the Guggenheim, alongside the private

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individuals who, throughout history, have had their names grace an entrance, a ­gallery, or a pavilion in return for their sponsorship. Art is a commodity.1 The space in which it is displayed is its shrine, and often that shrine is as much a sculptural art object as the works inside.

But museums have also been shifting their engagement with their community, with their public and with the definition of art, which demands continuous expansion and re-evaluation. Thus, attention has been given to the essential redesign of existing museums with additions and/or renovations, or the building of new museums to adapt to these changing circumstances. During the twentieth century, museum design evolved from private salons like that of Mrs Whitney in New York (The Whitney Museum of Amer-

Hanoi Museum, Hanoi (VN). Design: Meinhard von Gerkan and Nikolaus Goetze with Klaus Lenz • Construction period: 2007–2010 • GFA: 30,000 m2 • Exhibition area: 1,130 m2 • Event area: 818 m2

Kunsthalle Mannheim, Mannheim (D). Design: Meinhard von Gerkan and Nikolaus Goetze with Volkmar Sievers • Construction period: 2013 – 2017 (Opening May 2018) • GFA: 15,600 m2 • Exhibition area: 3,600 m2 • Event area: 190 m2

Kunsthalle Mannheim Competition entry ­perspective, view from Friedrichsplatz toward the main entrance

1 This discussion of ­corporations and museum is a point of debate amongst many cultural theorists including Stephen Zacks, Architects Newspaper, November 8, 2011. http://archpaper. com/2011/11/culturaloutlets

ican Art), to large introverted and daunting spaces like the Louvre in Paris or the Alte Museum in Berlin, to modernist reciprocal spaces for the public to gather, exchange and engage with art, as in the Museum of Modern Art in New York, which was founded by the Rockefellers. Perhaps one of the foremost examples of these more public museums is the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris by Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano, completed in 1977, with its grand entry plaza, vast public lobby and movable gallery walls. This novel concept for a semi-public art space embracing a new kind of public creates more extroverted museums that provide education and programming for all, not just for the elite, the salon-goers, and the people visiting extrava­ gant palaces (although much of the art displayed was and still is commissioned by clients who own those palaces).

The older museums, which now seem oldfashioned both in their grandiose physical presence and in their lack of engagement, have recently undergone or are currently undergoing renovations, as has, for example, David Chipperfield’s Neues Museum in Berlin. In some cases, former industrial buildings have been converted into contemporary art spaces, such as the Tate

Modern in London by Herzog & De Meuron.

One major physical transformation common to these projects is the entrance, which rather than comprising a series of fore­ boding stairs has become a more wel­ coming multi-functional gathering space.

As Nikolaus Goetze of gmp emphasises, “museums need to be more extroverted so that they attract more people, because people truly are interested in art.” Another issue is that museums have now become hybrid buildings, because they cannot rely solely on ticket sales, but have to offer more diverse education programmes, events, parties, and rental spaces in order to increase their revenue.

Architects von Gerkan, Marg und Partner recognise these cultural and spatial relationships and reflect them in their two recent museum projects: one in a city in the developing country of Vietnam, where the state controls new building development, and the other in Germany, where a publicprivate venture is propelling a well-established art museum into the twenty-first century. While these museums inhabit vastly different contexts, and have completely different collections and operations, they not only share an architecture firm, but they are also representative of the transformations

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Hanoi Museum The museum in its urban context (above; top right) • Set in a park landscape, the Convention Center occupies the middle; on its left is the Hanoi Museum and on the right the National Exhibition Construction Center (bottom right)

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discussed above that are occurring in museums in general – the shifting from the private to the public sphere. This essay discusses the designs of the Hanoi Museum [Bảo tàng Hà Nội] and the Kunst­ halle Mannheim, with a common thread in the architects’ approach to design woven through the narrative. It will address the dialogue between the broader urban context and the specific museum site; the architects’ design inspirations; the buildings’ engagement with art; the layers that reveal the deeper content; an integration of structure and form; and cultural exchange and transformation.

Context and Project Development For both the Hanoi Museum and the Kunsthalle Mannheim, the urban site relates to the projects’ development in terms of both the competition briefs and the interaction with their public. While one is located in a peripheral sector of Hanoi in an open park complex, the other is set within a dense historical context. Both engage with their surroundings to create a direct experience with the building, as well as with the artworks.

buildings in the typical monumental setting so desired by many governmental agencies in Vietnam.

Off Pham Hung Street, a large landscaped plaza leads to gmp’s Hanoi Museum, which opened in 2010, just in time for the major festivities in celebration of the 1,000-year Anniversary of Hanoi. The museum’s rectilinear form sets up a dialogue with the adjacent curvilinear Convention Centre. The 30,000-square-metre museum contains ancient artefacts of stone, textiles, ceramics, paintings and sculptures from the city’s one-thousand-year-old history. One collection on display includes objects as diverse as historic storage vessels, 1950s typewriters and bicycles belonging to political party members, as well as letters written by prisoners of the American-Vietnamese War. Sometimes the museum organises temporary exhibits that feature objects such as the

Outside the heart of Hanoi, new residential and business towers rise out of former rice paddies, creating a new skyline that forms a sharp contrast to the vibrancy of the lowerrise, textured, historical urban fabric. There, where the new peripheral CT2D highway crosses the main Nguyen Chi Thanh Boulevard, four large buildings spread out over a new 64-hectare landscaped park: the Convention Center, designed by gmp in 2010; the National Exhibition Construction Center, designed by local partners VNCC / CDC, with a hall boasting a giant model of Vietnam and its future development; the JW Marriott Hotel cantilevering over a pond, after a design concept by Carlos Zapata Architects; and, of course, the Hanoi Museum. These buildings create an ensemble of large-scale public and semi-public

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moments of activity and moments of respite.

These come both from other museum goers and the viewing of artworks. From the entrance, the visitor can choose one of two circulation routes: one via the elevator which lies on an axis with the entrance, and the other, more experiential, via the main staircase along the west side of the atrium. This stair resembles the ramp in the Hanoi Museum in the way it provides an open flow to the galleries on the upper floors. The pathway visually connects the visitor back through and across the other spaces for ease of orientation. At each of the three floors, open corridors designed as bridges overlooking the atrium link the cubic volumes, interiorising the building blocks of the cityscape. The atrium is offset from the connecting space to the historic building, which allows for an interplay between new and old.

Continuing on to the second floor, the ­visitor discovers a special viewing gallery where a Manet painting is displayed alone, a series of three galleries housing the permanent collection of the early twentieth ­century, as well as a young artists’ lab.

The third floor features contemporary art as well as a long-term loan of Anselm Kiefer’s works, multimedia rooms, and a serene sculpture garden open to the sky.

There are also conservation rooms and administrative offices. The materials cladding the interior are reduced to their essences, with concrete floors in the corridors, wood floors in the galleries, and white walls in the public spaces. The rectilinear gallery volumes are expressed on their exterior through varying grades and densities of metal mesh cladding.

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Ausstellung Vermittlung Exhibition Museumshop/ Reception Restaurant Museum shop / Dachgarten/ Restaurant Veranstaltung Roof garden / Verwaltung Events Restaurierung/ Administration Werkstatt Restoration / Anlieferung Workshop Deliveries

Visitors exhibitions Visitors reception

Visitors events Staff

Kunsthalle Mannheim Layout of the different sections of the museum (top left) • Example of circulation routes in the museum taken from the first floor, scale 1:1,000 (bottom left) • Central atrium with bridges, which provide visitors with a general overview and connect the different cubes with one another, in the shell construction (right) and in the design rendering (below).

Dialogue Between Structure and Form When structure is well integrated with a building’s design and the architects and engineers work together from the outset of a project, design concepts can develop in a cohesive way, in synergy with form and structure. In museum design, curators emphasise the importance of column-free spaces so that they can display large contemporary works of art, and so they can have the flexibility to move walls to adapt to the works on display. Two diverse solutions in Hanoi and Mannheim provide for structural systems that support the collections as well as the buildings.

with foundations on deep, 1.2-metre-diameter piles that are sunk 45 metres into the soft and wet ground of the former rice paddies.

In the cores are the staircases constructed as concrete tubes, with 150-millimetre-deep, 6-metre-long concrete beams that create a frame structure in two directions. This, ­together with the horizontal bracing of each floor, creates the best conditions for withstanding earthquakes. Inside the core, a simple framework of steel supports the roof structure, from which the lower floors are suspended. The roof is then cantilevered from the same cores. The structure works in tension rather than compression, and all of the columns guide the forces upward.

In an innovative structural system for Vietnam, German-based engineers Inros Lackner accomplished a complex engineering feat for the museum. Because of the museum’s need for open floors, the idea was to reduce the numbers of columns and their spacing – not a simple task, because standard columns in Vietnam are 800 ≈ 800 millimetres thick, a great deal thicker than in Europe. Beginning with the core structure, the engineers, working with the architects to maximise the floor area, designed four cores at each corner

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