New Castles

Workplace New Castles

The Spectacular Factory

Today’s most notable factories are testaments to the brands they’ve helped build. From flashy auto production facilities in Germany to sleek manufacturing plants in Kuwait, the “spectacular” modern factory is proving to be just as representative of a company’s brand as it is productive.

By NINA RAPPAPORT

Contribute at the Work Style project: “From Castle to Headquarters.”

Throughout architectural history, the factory has been a place of design innovation for engineers and architects, a typology that provided freedom to explore new materials of glass and steel and spatial organization of production flow. Today, factory architecture has come to reflect the speed of capitalism and the new economy. The factory as such has evolved into a place for branding opportunities, just as the corporate headquarters has become where the production becomes an event and the factory a place showcase.

A TOURIST ATTRACTION

Following the tradition of tourism pilgrimages to engineering feats of the early 20th century, the factory has become a tourist attraction. Many industry leaders have realized that they can forge a relationship between their consumers and their products if they expose how things are made. Breaking from the norm of hiding the dirty work of assembly lines, or locating the plant in an industrial zone away from residential developments, production itself has become the visible locus of sales. Guy Debord’s idea of the “spectacle” informs one of three categories of contemporary urban factory design that I’ve identified in my project Vertical Urban Factory; the second being the “sustainable”; and the third, the “flexible,” which dominates the urban landscape today. In particular, the automotive industry has embraced the “spectacle” in its production with showroom factories for the likes of BMW, Mercedes, Maserati, Ferrari and VW, which integrate production into design, displaying the once-foreboding mechanization as transformed to mesmerizing robotics that mimic human motion.

CAR TRADITION

Greeting a newly-minted car at the factory has been a tradition at many European manufacturers. Noise and confusion has given way to quiet, clean rooms and computer-operated machines, a cathedral of commerce to attract capital, and watch capital being produced. Taken to its ultimate at VW in Dresden, you can toast your car’s completion with a glass of champagne in a pristine, “transparent factory” designed by German architect Gunter Henn. The three-story factory features a glass curtain wall system and a series of separate spherical volumes that punctuate the rectilinear production spaces. A designated tramline delivers heavy auto parts to the assembly, so that work begins at the basement level, proceeding upward as the car is completed and shifted to the 15-story cylindrical glass storage tower. Watching the white-suited technicians guide the cars off the “assembly line,” consumers are seduced and entertained. The highly

Morphosis Looks Into the Future to Design for the Present

By BRADLEY WHEELER

A prominent Los Angeles- and New York City-based architecture firm, Morphosis, won the ENI EXPLORATION & PRODUCTION BUSINESS CENTER COMPETITION. The new project, rooted in transparency and sustainability, will be completed by 2015, in time for the Universal Expo in Milan. Thriving, high-energy Milan is the perfect backdrop for the awe-inspiring architecture, Eni Exploration & Production Business Center, that will be constructed for one of Europe’s leading energy companies by a leading American architecture firm. The design proper is the fruit of an international competition with 50 architectural firms participating from around the world. The top ten finalists were recently presented to the public in an exhibit entitled “Un Nuovo Segno,” or, “A New Signal.” The winner of the competition was the globally recognized firm Morphosis Architects, led by 2005 Pritzker Prize recipient architect and design director Thom Mayne, along with Nemesi & Partners, Setec TPI, Setec Batiment and Pasodoble.

ENI + MORPHOSIS COMBINED

Founded in 1972 with offices in Los Angeles and New York, Morphosis is the parent company of a group of companies, composed of Setec TPI (structures designer), Setec Batiment (plants designer), Pasodoble (landscape architect), and Nemesi Partners, (architectural design partner). The design brief was to create a sustainable, green and transparent

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choreographed assembly process, displayed through the glass façade, not only shows off craftsmanship, but is a source of civic pride as it’s integrated into the heart of the city. BMW Leipzig is known for its economic boost to the city, where they held an architecture competition to design the spine linking various production modules to the offices, R&D and communal areas. Zaha Hadid won the commission, creating a zigzag zipper between sheds, inserting the assembly line on tracks above the workspace so that the process is a spectacle. Machinists and executives enter the building together through a formal entrance, obliterating the normal company hierarchy. The engineer, R&D and worker are adjacent to production daily, inspiring creativity and pride. Visitors are exposed to the factory as it is; production isn’t halted

01 A cubist approach to factory design at the Breathing Factory, a Takashi Yamaguchi & Associates project, 2009. 02 The colorful and contemporary exterior of the Inotera headquarters and factory, designed by Tec Architects, Taipei, Taiwan, 2004. Photo by Hisao Suzuki. 03 Clean, imposing lines at the Vasheron Constantin headquarters and factory, created by Bernard Tschumi Architects, in Plan-les Quates, Switzerland, 2004. Photo by Christian Richters. 04 The prominent steely exterior of the Vitra Campus, a factory designed by Nicholas Grimshaw Architects, 1986. Courtesy of Vitra.

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architecture that would be emblematic of Eni’s core values and vision of social and environmental sustainability, and in harmony with its existing facilities in their company town of Metanopoli. The construction area is in the ex-industrial complex, the first Eni facility to be built in San Donato Milanese, situated between Viale De Gasperi to the northwest, Via Ravenna on the northeast, Via Correggio on the southeast, and Via Vannucchi on the southwest. The Center will have an area of 65,000m2 including 60,000m2 for offices and 5,000m2 for services, with a capacity of 3,500 people.

THE THREE CONCEPTS

In architectural terms, the winning project brings together three concepts: the piazza, which is the symbolic and functional heart of the new headquarters and an indication of the centrality of people and the community; democracy and integration, in the shift from the overall architecture to the landscape architecture with the loss of self-referential towers and the creation of an essentially horizontal and democratic architecture; research and innovation for a new sustainability through a metamorphic architecture exemplified as a fluid and dynamic continuum symbolic of the transformation of material into energy. The massing is a futuristic ensemble of anamorphic shapes reminiscent of Picasso-esque cubistic profiles found in nature (think birds, fish and large mammals) when viewed from different angles (from both above and below). The viewer can enjoy the “trunks,” “tails,” “wings,” and “fins” that molecularly combine together to delineate connected entities whose solids and voids at once create form and frame views of nearby composition as well as distant terminus points. These subliminal images of familiar shapes unwittingly suggest a kinder and gentler Morphosis architecture, one that

05 View from Hidden Island in lower courtyard. Credit: Morphosis Architects. 06 View from restaurant in upper courtyard. 07, 08 An aerial view from Via Ravenna. Credit: Morphosis Architects.

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09 Inside the elaborate but elegant VW Transparent Factory, created by Henn Architects, in Dresden, Germany, 2001. Courtesy of Henn Architects. 10 An outside shot of the VW Transparent Factory, created by Henn Architects, in Dresden, Germany, 2001. Courtesy of Henn Architects. 11 An all-encompassing aerial view of the BMW Factory addition, designed by Zaha Hadid Architects, in Leipzig, Germany, 2005. 12 A nighttime exterior shot of the illuminated BMW Factory addition in Leipzig, Germany.

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as they peer down into the robotic assembly line. Furniture and product design industries have embraced factory designs as an essential brand component. Vitra in Weil am Rhein is an example as their “museum of architecture,” comprised of factories designed in the late 1980s by Alvaro Siza, Zaha Hadid, Nicholas Grimshaw and SANAA (soon to be finished), allows for designers and customers to recognize a holistic vision of the company and brand. The physical relationship between administration, development and manufacturing allows for designs to be tweaked as they are prototyped and tested throughout the process.

THE TICKING INDUSTRY

Watch companies are other candidates for the spectacle. In 2004 architect Bernard Tschumi designed the headquarters and factory for Vacheron near Geneva with a glass and steel skin wrapping the two functions smoothly functioning as the assembly line. The administration volume rises five stories with a curtain wall façade at the northern entrance. As the curvilinear skin rolls off the administration volume it continues over the more horizontal shed-like manufacturing space curving at the ends to unite the whole. Plenty of light illuminates the workspaces for the precision work of the craftsmen. In the urban landscape the spectacle attracts daily attention while providing prominence to a place. Takashi Yamaguchi and Associates designed the Breathing Factory in Osaka for high-tech manufacturing and medical equipment testing. The architects cloaked the building in an aluminum louvered system to both disguise and offer access to the necessary piping on the outside of the building while letting sunlight enter the work spaces. Directed by randomized mathematical rules, the louvers reflect the sky, clouds, and the street so that the facades are never monotonous. Indoor courtyards on the upper floors of the building offer a place for relaxation with glass screens that allow the outside in. The design was an experiment in atmospheric impact reducing the potential of an intimidating volume on the neighborhood.

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fits nicely into the lush and well-manicured landscape of the entire parklike complex. Tying the various structures of the campus into a cohesive whole is the curvilinear roof-scape of joined elements. The unpredictable change in elevation and erratic degrees of inclination suggest the beauty, speed and control of a rollercoaster (Russian mountain). In addition, the continuous roof membrane secondarily brings to mind another large and iconographic northern Italian complex — the ex-Fiat manufacturing building and test track known as the Lingotto building located in the district of the same name, on the outskirts of Turin. Although the 1923 facility looks nothing like the 2012 Eni Exploration & Production Business Center Competition winner, the intellectual comparison between the smooth crowning and contoured Mobius strip-like element atop both buildings is not to be overlooked.

THE RACETRACK ANALOGY

The racetrack analogy cannot be one of mere coincidence due to the new Eni headquarters’ proximity to one of the world’s cathedrals of motor sport, the “Autodromo Nazionale di Monza.” The current version of the 90-year-old “circuito” runs for 5.8 kilometers (3.6 miles) through the thickly forested woodlands of the “Parco di Monza,” the national park of Monza, located outside Milan and not far from the future Eni complex. The track’s elegant meandering through the green of the park and Eni’s continued support of both two- and four-wheel motor racing make for a metaphorical connection to the Morphosis project’s form and siting. Comparing this newest endeavor to some of their previous efforts, the fluid massing is lighter and much less corpulent, when contrasted to their Caltrans Building in downtown Los Angeles or their San Francisco Federal Building campaign. In all of these cases, however, the economy of scale and

On the left: view of Chambord Castle, Loir-etCher Department, France.

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MEANWHILE IN KUWAIT CITY…

L.E.FT architects designed a printing plant in Kuwait City in 2010. Following the company’s bottom-up management style, the stock room and press floor are located in the basement, the post-press, on the ground, level, and the pre-press with management and design on the first floor (rather than on the top, as is often the case). A production department is tucked into the basement mezzanine, sandwiched between the press and the post-press so there is constant interaction. A meeting room with stepped seats and an open stairway snake through the space as a shortcut between management and production. Inspired by 19th century factories, L.E.FT uses the roof, typically cluttered with mechanical equipment, as a natural light source. To achieve this, equipment is instead stacked vertically along the rear and east façades, which are set back according to zoning code. A sawtooth roof with north-oriented monitors brings light into the top-floor offices and the ground-level post-press spaces. This “generic” and exaggerated rooftop synthesizes internal program and external site conditions, resulting in a new iconic design.

... AND AT INOTERA IN TAIPEI

High-tech silicon wafers manufacturing is combined with spectacular design at the Inotera Headquarters and Factory in Taipei by Swiss/LA firm Tec Architecture with local Taipei firm Fei & Cheng Associates. The façade of the 29,000-square-foot, 14-story office wing is wrapped with pieces of translucent low-E glass. Tinted in numerous colors and printed with drawings of tree branches and streams the fragmentation creates an effect of sunlight in nature in a visual metaphor. The high-tech production of this glass and automated sorting, parallels the integrated process of chip manufacturing. The 20,000 sq. meter fabrication wing, the largest built in the world at the time, is sheathed in a variegated composition of opaque blue glazed tiles, similar to traditional ceramic tiles of the region, breaking down the building’s large scale. The spectacle of these factories contribute to the return of production in cities with a renewed focus on their reinsertion into the city fabric, which could also combine manufacturing and retail, job training and working, and engaging the city with new vibrancy and vitality.•

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relatively slender floor plates are recognizable design moves characteristic of the bi-coastal (Los Angeles- and New York City-based) firm. The slim footprint allows natural light to penetrate more deeply into the interior of the project, and for the total area to be distributed more evenly throughout the site acreage, thereby exposing more square meters to the green of the exterior. This strategy is preferable to agglomerating the area requirements into one larger form that would have created a monolithic “mega” building, void of natural light and certainly deficient in creative opportunity.

PAYING HOMAGE TO PRECEDENT

This architecture pays homage to some precedents that may or may not seem obvious upon first blush. For example, some stretches of the opera recall a touch of Oscar Niemeyer, for its clean lines and bold yet simple shapes. (If one squints, aspects of the Brazilian maestro’s New York City United Nations building come to the fore.) A perhaps esoteric homage of the San Donato Milanese project is to the Florence, Italy-based Superstudio (1966-1978) founded by Adolfo Natalini and Cristiano Toraldo di Francia. Their collaboration celebrated unconventional thinking and left an indelible “imprimatur” on contemporary architectural thought particularly through images of their larger scale work. The Eni creation is most certainly influenced, albeit perhaps subconsciously, by concepts that harken back to the Florentine équipe. The Eni project is scheduled to be completed in time for the 2015 Universal Expo in Milan.