RTMK 3 / MAND

Nevena	Cvetanova	Skopje	MAKEDONIJA	2	+	RTMK 3
Marija	Gjorgieva	Skopje	MAKEDONIJA	2		RTMK 3
Dijana	Jakimovska	Skopje	MAKEDONIJA	2		RTMK 3
Ana Marija	Jovanovska	Skopje	MAKEDONIJA	2		RTMK 3

University Library

UBU, Wiel Arets

CITY: Amsterdam

BUILDING: University Library

AUTHOR: UBU, Wiel Arets Architects

Client: Utrecht University

Year of construction: 1636 - 2004

Surface: 36.250m2

Budget: -

Conceptual description:

The Utrecht University Library is located on the Uithof campus, situated a short distance from the city center. It is comprised of the library itself and an adjacent parking garage with multiple voids–between which is a courtyard garden and a café named for ‪Johannes Gutenberg‬–and the fenestration of both is fritted with an abstracted image of fossilized papyrus. The relief of this image is imprinted on concrete panels, which are equal in size to the fritted glass panels; together they compose the building’s façade, and the concrete panels return within the interior.

Ambient Quality:

                                                     

Uses:

The library provides the group and independent studies of students, with 1.300 seats, 500 parking spaces, 560 student workstations, 300 librarian workstations and an auditorium. It is more than a place where people can consult books; it is a place where they can work in a concentrated fashion, but also one where they can meet other people without the need of any other stimulation except the atmosphere that the building radiates.

Personal opinion of the author:

“It’s intended purpose was to serve as the ‘living room’ area of the university and to create an urban space for the social encounters and exchanges between friends and colleagues. Furthermore, the UBU library was also intended to function as a communal space where people congregated, as an identifiable space where individuals would be involved with each other, to interact or to associate.”

De Citadel –

Christian de Portzamparc – Netherlands/Almere 2000 > 2006

 

CITY: Almere

BUILDING: De Citadel

AUTHOR: Christian de Portzamparc

Client : Ontwikkelings Combinate Chappij – Almere Hart CV

Year of construction : 2000 > 2006

Surface: 45,000 sq.m. (shops : 35,000 sq.m. / apartment buildings : 10,000 sq.m.)

Conceptual description:

This building has two central urban blocks, commercial and housing. From an OMA mass plan based on respecting the Dutch city scale. The beginning idea of the plan of OMA for the Almere centre, 1994, was based on the superposition of uses, with an emphasis on pedestrians and the buildings. A score written by Rem Koolhaas and performed by Christian de Portzamparc, Almere, Holland, is a new city built forty years ago in the polders (a piece of low-lying land reclaimed from the sea or a river and protected by dikes). Laid out on a grid of streets, the center was left in reserve. Rem Koolhaas was asked to produce a plan for the town center. Situated above a level dedicated to vehicles, pedestrian shopping streets form a very long convex plate linked to the natural ground.

Ambient quality:

    

  

Uses :

This block, which is home to the main commercial centre is paradigmatic regarding its variety of uses, from the car park and the underground infrastructures up to the inhabited green covering.

Block one, a small block in the heart of this large district, crosses two segments of shopping streets. A level of townhouses was placed on top of the block, covering the suspended slab, which the architect organized around a meadow. The habitation level resembles a flying carpet.

Block two is a shopping area that crosses the whole vertically, starting from the vehicle level and ending in a hill in the meadow.

However, this is an example of how the uses of urban centres can be combined in many different ways.

Main problems:

Portzamparc's development of the Master Plan guidelines has a few changes and the deck is, after all, not a public space, but a bonus for the residents of the terraced houses and the tower.

Personal view:

Our personal view is that the architect Portzamparc  found inspiration in the medieval citadel and created a modern version consisting of four quadrants circulation routes. They slice through the volume, prevent a massive, wall-like appearance. They widen at their intersection, forming a plaza that is marked by a small 10-floor tower on stilts. The design of the Citadel originates from the idea that the centre of a new city needs historical references without engaging in mere architectural historicism. Shops are located at ground level, topped by a concrete edge that refers to the geological layers of the earth below. Behind the edge there is a quiet residential area built around a large green field, that amazed us .

Other:

Enterior and  examples of floor plans