RTMK

Marko	Conevski	Skopje	MAKEDONIJA	4		RTMK
Angela	Cuckova	Skopje	MAKEDONIJA	2		RTMK
VIktor	Konjanovski	Skopje	MAKEDONIJA	3		RTMK
Pavel	Veljanoski	Skopje	MAKEDONIJA	4		RTMK

Faculty of Economics and Menagement

Mecanoo Architecten / Utrecht

CITY: Utrecht

BUILDING: Faculty of Economics and Menagement

AUTHOR : Mecanoo Architecten

Client : Stichting F.E.H.U

Year of construction : 1955

Area : 23,000m2

Budget : /

Concept :

The University of Utrecht in the Netherlands commissioned an urban master plan by the Office of Metropolitan Architecture (Art Zaayer) in the eighties, and has since invited several well known Dutch architects to contribute to the University campus "De Uithof". Previously the FEM was accommodated in seven buildings at five different locations scattered around the city. The six departments of the faculty sought to define a new single identity while at the same time preserving a sense of independence. The identity of the faculty as a whole is determined by its collective spaces; entrance lobby, library, mediatheque, restaurants and lecture halls for up to 400 people.

The building is designed as one continuous space, enclosed by glass, in which four volumes of different shape and material rest on concrete columns. The square ground plan, with four connecting parts separated by three patios, ensures a free circulation to each corner of the building.

The ‘Jungle’ patio has a dynamic ambience, influenced by the varieties of bamboo that are interspersed throughout the walkways, and open steel footbridges that connect the patio to the first floor and incorporate it into the interior circulation system.

The design for the ‘Zen’ patio is inspired by Japanese meditation gardens with gravel and boulders, and is the most static of the three patios. The walls of the Zen patio are covered with grids of Western red cedar that act as sun shields.

The ‘Water’ patio, the narrowest of the three, has a glass footbridge with views to the open landscape at the rear of the building. The water symbolises the calm nature of the building.

These spaces provide a visual focus for orientation and are perceived to be the heart of the building. The more specific educational functions, such as classrooms and staff facilities are located at the rear of the building. Each department centers on a "study square", where students can meet for informal study purposes. The building program forms several groups that are expressed by distinct architectonic typology and materialization. The ground floor provides the main orientation area for the building from which the other floors are easily accessible. Internal circulation routes are spacious to cater for the large numbers of students. They each have a different character to aid orientation.

Around the patios are the corridors that can be likened to blood circulating through the three storeys of the building: they form the core of faculty life. The corridors, halls and patios are framed by the classrooms and offices. Large amounts of people can move fluently by way of ramps, stairs and bridges from one side of the building to the other.

Ambient :

Usage 

The new building, with a floor area of 25,000 square metres, will accommodate 5,000 students and 400 employees. The main entrance, the multimedia centre and the restaurant are on the ground floor. The lecture rooms are closed boxes that seem to float within an elongated transparent volume parallel to the street. Between the lecture rooms are a series of balconies on different levels that, just as the corridors and intermediate levels, can be used for casual meetings, make contact or just sit and do nothing.

Authors’ comment :

The building, which has a rectangular basic form, is a system of constantly converging or connecting spaces. Groups of students can walk around the building with ease. The corridors and passages are framed by the classrooms and offices. The entrance area is the assembly area or congress zone. It consists of a large open space in which the lecture rooms appear to hang. The balconies between these closed boxes, the staggered layers and connecting links are places for the students to meet casually or enjoy a moment of leisure. Focal points such as the multimedia centre and the restaurant are located on the ground floor. Light enters the building via three large patios with different layouts. In the largest patio luxuriant bamboo suggests a jungle, while the other two are more calm – a Zen garden and a ‘water’ patio provide a glimpse of the charming landscapes.

Construction / Facade ;

The bare skeleton of the building is veiled and exposed in a refined manner. Outer walls of sheet cement are hidden by panels of steel grids, sometimes behind stylised wooden lattices in what appears to be an arbitrary gris pattern. On other places the skin is built up of futuristic moveable aluminium lamellas covering the concrete and glass like enormous Venetian blinds.

The facade has various forms – sometimes exposed and sometimes with a veil or skin. Facades of cement slabs are concealed behind steel grids and wooden lattices in seemingly random trellis patterns. Other parts of the facade have their entire breadth covered with gigantic blinds, a series of moveable aluminium lamellas.

Settlement :

The new Faculty for Economics and Management is part of the ‘Casbah’ zone, a wide strip of low, high-density buildings, part of the master plan for university terrain ‘De Uithof’ by OMA/REM Koolhaas. Mecanoo’s interpretation of this traditional feature of North African cities resulted in a building with only three storeys, a neutral façade and an interior where patios, circulation and leisure spaces exude the atmosphere of a safe community.

Our comment :

In order of the incompact location, the building is settled on a specific way which answers correctly on its surrounding and the program that needs to be setteled. It reproduces the nature and its forms by creatting inner ambiental qualities. It brings the nature closely and the programe outside.

Živeli!

Souterrain Tram Tunnel

OMA-Rem Koolhas / Den Haag

Team: RT MK Souterrain Tram Tunnel
Veljanoski Pavel, Conevski Marko,      /Den Haag
Shukuroska Ivona, Cuckova Angela,
Konjanovski Viktor                                                    OMA-Rem Koolhas

CITY: Den Haag

BUILDING: Souterrain Tram Tunnel

AUTHOR: OMA-Rem Koolhas

Client: The City of The Hague

Year of construction: 2004

Area: 28000m2

Budget: 234m €

Concept:

The Hague in a certain sense is an imprisoned city, confined by the sea, the highway connecting Amsterdam and Rotterdam, and neighbouring cites. It is therefore the only city that for its growth relies on redefinition of sites within its boundaries. To grow, for this city, means to become more dense.

The Hague, the Dutch capital of conservatism and bureaucracy, has planned the completion of more than 30 projects in the centre - most of them much larger than any of the existing buildings, which will transform the character and scale of the existing fabric before the turn of the century radically. Surprisingly, the increase in density (+ 500.000 m2 of program) goes hand in hand with plans to minimize car traffic on street level. To achieve this, a so called parking-road is strung around the heart of the city, defining a 1.000.000 m2 'island' forbidden to all but local traffic. This loop-road will connect to a number of - largely underground - parking garages.

       Most existing and new parkings connect to the loop individually, each one of them isolated from the others. One of the new projects that is as much an element of infrastructure as it is a building, is the digging of a multi-storey tunnel ( a 1250 m long subway 'scoop', with 2 stations and a 375 car parking-garage). This tunnel-building is the necessary addition that makes all other buildings work. It acts like a spine connecting the separate 'organs', creating a body of underground connections that serve the city from underneath.

The city is turning into a kind of 'La Defense in reverse', the slumbering and existing are being reanimated by an 'underworld' of interconnecting spaces. Namely - parking garages, rails, tram stops and roads even; bringing everything that is necessary underground.

The main challenge of this project was to prove that architecture can have a positive effect when applied to the rigour of transport pragmatism. The building is a sandwich of a subway-line with 2 layers of parking on top and a station at either end. Its stretches out below the main shopping street, repeating its outlines, leaving a 'workspace' of 600 by 15m approximately.

To overcome the boredom of a 600 m long continuous section, and to provide an answer to the question of underground orientation/isolation, every opportunity has been taken to modify the height and the width of the space, to connect physically or visually to other parts of the tunnels program, to provide views of the outside - city or sky, to link the tunnel with surrounding shops.

Usually, built parkings are victims of technical and economical constraints, the full weight of all structural and mechanical difficulties imposed upon them. In this case, the linearity of the site turned out to be an escape from this prison of practice. Ventilation: the tunnel is the duct; structure: the tunnel is the walls, the beams and the slabs.

Usage:

The parking becomes a fluid space, making use of the slopes in the rail and exploiting one of the gives, its enormous length, as an unprecedented quality. Where parking and stations meet, partitioning walls have been kept transparent.

Architectural finishes are almost non-existing due to the surprising beauty of rock-like concrete walls, pored in the irregular coast soil of The Hague. Only light, daylight and electric, gives texture and clear readings of the fluid spaces underground.

Ambient:
       This whole compact compound, taking into consideration the fact that it is underground, a sense of enclosure and creates the effect of a cave. Seeking to reduce that feeling, architects within the interior used wooden materials in order to get a “warmer” feelings.

Construction:
The construction floor was leaking and damaged the surroundings. So the whole tunnel was entirely flooded to keep surrounding buildings form collapsing. It got several nicknames ‘tramtanic’ and ‘swimtunnel’. Construction could only be finished under high pressure air to prevent the water to enter.

Our comment:

With the small space to maneuver in the city and the lack of parking space, it was in great need to build a compact object below the surface. Developed on three floors below the ground, allowing space for two metro lines, serving the needed car-parking places and offering additional content, like shopping and museum, highlights the creativity and knowledge to build something in lack of space.

Živeli!