The possibility of re-envision for the Vitra Design Museum would incorporate a glazed ceiling. I find the unique design and complicated figure of the Vitra Design Museum to be extremely daunting therefore incorporating some kind of additional external views could be liberating. This concept also contributes to the additional source of natural internal lighting which is essential in a museum.
For architecture to be completely processed and appreciated does not only rely on the first physical appearance of the building. It relies on two aspects, the in depth concepts and purposes of the buildings function and the buildings surroundings. I found for the Vitra Design Museum a dessert environment consisting of Baron white sand would be the most effect to reflect on these concepts. There would be some what of an illusion of where the buildings white walls stop and the ground starts. The lack of other objects could also enhance and exaggerate the Vitra Design Museums intense figures. Finally the quality of dessert sunlight would be exceptional for natural lighting of the museum.
Lead-coated copper sheathes the central cruciform structure housing the living and dining rooms, library, kitchen, family room, and two bedrooms. The garage, topped by stucco-walled staff quarters, is at the front of the site. The upper garden includes a guest apartment, a lap pool, and an office/bedroom crowned with a copper sphere. The master bedroom pavilion sits on the edge of a shallow lake at the bottom of the two-level garden. When you say the word ‘deconstruction’ and you look at this house, you think the term fits. But it is just an opportunistic interpretation, because it was never done intentionally. The Schnabel House relates to Romanesque churches. From the outside it looks California vernacular.
Reference- William J. R. Curtis Modern Architecture Since 1900 Chapter 35, Technology, Abstraction and Ideas of Nature: page 663
Gehry's later buildings gained part of their ambiguity from their break with normal conventions, from their fractured geometry, from their acceptance of banal features in the surroundings, and from their resemblance to abstract sculptures. With most of Gehry’s work forced efforts were made at historical and civic references, but the real interest of the project still lay in its collision of disparate pieces and scales. The VitraDesignMuseum had the mood of a psychic projection of disturbing dream fragments. Gehry’s work relied upon the dynamic interpretation of walls, floors, ceilings and skylights as well as the explosion of convex and concave planes. These floating facets, which were sometimes clad in stainless steel, were capable of evoking multiple associations, musical and nautical, but they also extended spatial researches. Gehry’s architecture was personal and inimitable, and was without a social or ideological program, yet it still caught the mood of a widespread uncertainty in which public frameworks and supports were falling away, leaving the individual in a state of suspension.
Reference-
William J. R. Curtis Modern Architecture Since 1900 Chapter 35, Technology, Abstraction and Ideas of Nature: page 663
ANZ today announced it would develop Australia’s largest office building on the Yarra River in Melbourne’s extended Collins Street, Docklands to provide high-quality accommodation for 5,500 ANZ staff. The new world-class building, which will be purchased by ANZ, will provide 87,000 square metres of modern office accommodation with retail facilities. ANZ will partner with Lend Lease to develop the $478 million project. This major building will become a new focal point for Melbourne and the Docklands precinct, and for ANZ’s growing businesses in Australia, New Zealand and the Asia Pacific. Total construction costs are $377 million.The project is due to be completed in the second half of 2009. The high specification building will have a minimum 5-star Green Star rating, one of only a handful of commercial office buildings in Australia to have the low environmental footprint rating. Environmentally-efficient features will include rainwater collection, greater use of fresh air and natural light, a landscaped roof and improved energy efficiency to reduce greenhouse impacts. The building is specifically designed to align with ANZ’s progressive culture and values, and will include dedicated facilities for ANZ staff including a crèche, gymnasium, car and bicycle parking and a variety of retail and food outlets.
Harry & Penelope Seidler House
Killara, Sydney, 400 sq m, White reinforced masonry walls, concrete floors and roof, rubble stone retaining walls and fireplace. Wilkinson Award, RAIA, 1967. Although this house is located in an established suburb it is secluded in a steep valley adjacent to a natural bush reserve which assures privacy. Outlook is onto unspoilt nature and a creek running along the bottom of the site, which turns into a gushing waterfall during rainy periods. The garage is at the top, directly off the street, cantilevered over a rock ledge. Approach to the house is across an entry bridge which leads into the topmost of four half levels which follow the slope of the land down. The top level accommodates kitchen, dining and library. The second level the living space and main bedroom, the third the children's rooms and playroom, level with the garden and the bottom a studio, utility and guest suite. The visual aim of the design is to extend the horizontal freedom of space vertically by opening the various levels into each other and creating a two-and-a-half storey high open shaft between them. The house has been lived-in for thirty years without any change. A swimming pool was built below the house some years after it was completed.
The possibility of re-envision for the Vitra Design Museum would incorporate a glazed ceiling. I find the unique design and complicated figure of the Vitra Design Museum to be extremely daunting therefore incorporating some kind of additional external views could be liberating. This concept also contributes to the additional source of natural internal lighting which is essential in a museum.
For architecture to be completely processed and appreciated does not only rely on the first physical appearance of the building. It relies on two aspects, the in depth concepts and purposes of the buildings function and the buildings surroundings. I found for the Vitra Design Museum a dessert environment consisting of Baron white sand would be the most effect to reflect on these concepts. There would be some what of an illusion of where the buildings white walls stop and the ground starts. The lack of other objects could also enhance and exaggerate the Vitra Design Museums intense figures. Finally the quality of dessert sunlight would be exceptional for natural lighting of the museum.
