M. Dragstiftet 6 Sida Wang
The ugly extension for existing office building has a function of a rest/coffee room, a conference room and a bathroom. It takes place on the original parking space and changed the entrance of the office building. In order to keep the function of parking, the ugly extension is only taking two third of the space. The original office building façade is covered with white corrugated metal sheet and blue window heads. In fact, the building is not considered ugly by itself because it looks like a villa on the beach. However, when putting it in the middle of industrial zone, it became ugly because it does not play well with the context. The ugly extension has the potential of extend the ugliness of the original. Therefore, it utilized the same color scheme and material selection to enhance the ugly effect. Moreover, the ugly extension adds another layer of ugliness which focused on the spatial organization of the programs. This type of ugliness is not reflected in visual experience but involved in through movement and more senses. The concept of ugliness embodies the idea of reading: “what is there but should not be” The interior space interrupts the user experience. The layout consists the program space which has covered each other, so that one could not enter the space without access another one. Each room has two doors which makes people even more confused about whether they entered the right place or not. This provides another level of inconvenience to the people who have to the space (people would avoid using them in general). And as time goes by, people will get annoyed by using the space and that is the goal of this ugliness. Adding another level of ugliness is to consider the detailing. The original office building is not well taken care of the detailing. For instance, the windows are not lined up. The spacing between windows seemed to be a mistake. And the shading structure of the window is only locating
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on the west side of the building which left the building looks unbalanced. In addition, the pipelines are off. Instead of hidden under the roof, they are exposed in the wall and above the window. Therefore, the extension decides to keep these “mistakes” of the original and reinforce the ugliness.