The Roofless Garden, working models

fragment 1

fragment 2

fragment 3

Working models from the roof of the Roofless Garden project. Exhibited at the Biennale di Venezia. September 2008. By DRAFTWORKS!ARCHITECTS

portfolio 08

Get your own - Open publication

A selection of projects by draftworks!architects added in the form of a portfolio in issuu. Some of the projects in collaboration with other architects [Europark-Nicosia with Dafne Kokkini, Katerina Lolou, Spiros Nasainas / Elefhterias' Square, Nicosia with Katerina Lolou]

New Zidonians, Honorable mention, MIT competition

The New Zidonians
Christos Papastergiou, Christiana Ioannou (Architects, The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL)
The modern story of Jerusalem is a story of borders. In this submission, borders are investigated not as a division, but as a spatial structure of negotiation. This project proposes borders that would not divide space into two distinct and sovereign states, but rather would have to connect, to bring together two different communities in a single homeland. As Michael Sorkin describes:
‘Such a condominium would form a ‘third state’ defined as the territory of cooperation between Israel and Palestine‘
This ‘Third State,’ which lays at the heart of the narrative offered in this entry, is what we need to project in architectural projects and visions. But few have tried to formulate its basic dimensions.. What would the spatial characteristics of a `Third State be? What forms would its public spaces take? How it would realize a status of a coexistence of singularities in space? This entry answers these questions.The ‘New Zidonians’ is a narrative and a project of a Jerusalem’s imagined future. This future forms neither a vision nor a nightmare. It rather tries to imagine a future of a Jerusalem that has accepted its differential character and permit a space were the differences would coexist in an immanent relationship.

New Zidonians, M.I.T. competition, honorable mention

Get your own - Open publication

The New Zidonians is an architectural story. A fictional narrative involving the palestian-israeli conflict as an architectural category and speculations about its future. The narrator is Rajiya a little girl trapped in an inbetween condition in the conflict. Rajiya narrates the story of her childhood and her people the New Zidonians who have established their own peculiar state on the complicated land leftover by the conflicting parts. The project was submitted by draftworks!architects to the international competition Just Jerusalem organized in 2007 by M.I.T. and was awarded an honorable mention

Alikes, InfoPoint, Larnaca

Phtographs of a working model of the Alikes porject. draftworks!architects

Europan 2007, Differential Suburbanity, Document

You can see more at www.draftworks.eu

Get your own - Open publication

The document as it was submitted at the competition. Explaining the three levels of intervention: in a local, urban and regional level.
draftworks!architects

Europan 2007, Differential Suburbanity

You can see more at www.draftworks.eu


General Plan of Graz with major points and the area of intervention



Plan of the area of intervention. The built parts of housing and administrative uses float into the plane of infratructures and public-free space of unspecified use.




Focus on specific areas of public-administrative-cultural use (left) and housing (right)


Submission to Europan 2007 competition for the site of Graz, Austria

Torino InfoPoint

Birdseye view. draftworksarchitects

The pavilion is devided into parts which host different parts of the programme. The parts are moved and its relationship reconfigured by the use of portable cranes.

Venice Biennale, PaperMachines: Alegory of the Cave

Installation by draftworks architects

'[Socrates is speaking with Glaucon]
[Socrates:] And now, I said, let me show in a figure how far our nature is enlightened or unenlightened: --Behold! human beings living in a underground den, which has a mouth open towards the light and reaching all along the den; here they have been from their childhood, and have their legs and necks chained so that they cannot move, and can only see before them, being prevented by the chains from turning round their heads. Above and behind them a fire is blazing at a distance, and between the fire and the prisoners there is a raised way; and you will see, if you look, a low wall built along the way, like the screen which marionette players have in front of them, over which they show the puppets'.

[...]

'This entire allegory, I said, you may now append, dear Glaucon, to the previous argument; the prison-house is the world of sight, the light of the fire is the sun, and you will not misapprehend me if you interpret the journey upwards to be the ascent of the soul into the intellectual world according to my poor belief, which, at your desire, I have expressed whether rightly or wrongly God knows. But, whether true or false, my opinion is that in the world of knowledge the idea of good appears last of all, and is seen only with an effort; and, when seen, is also inferred to be the universal author of all things beautiful and right, parent of light and of the lord of light in this visible world, and the immediate source of reason and truth in the intellectual; and that this is the power upon which he who would act rationally, either in public or private life must have his eye fixed'.

Plato, Book VII of 'The Republic', The Allegory of the Cave
from: http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/platoscave.html

Torino InfoPoint, Configurations Diagram

DRAFTWORKS!architects

Torino InfoPoint

DRAFTWORKS!architects

Torino InfoPoint

DRAFTWORKS!architects

Our Proposal:

A/VOID CONFIGURATIONS

Void becomes the main constitutive element and the factor of coherence of the programme. It incorporates the activity of public space as an essential part of space. The programme is broken into programmatic fragments. The relationship of the parts is interpreted by the intervention of the void of the public space, through the unpredictable character of public activity.
These fragments can be moved and rearranged by the use of a portable crane: the configuration of the whole can be differentiated by time and by the needs of use. In this mode the public space that intermediates between the fragments becomes the main constitutive element of the pavilion.
The crane itself becomes an aesthetic and practical element of the project and also transmits the idea of a structure that is incomplete, that is ‘in process’ of transformation, that calls for the intervention of the users in the configuration of its parts.
The materials used are: Birch plywood and polycarbonate sheets (recyclable materials) for the lining, and iron plates for the structure. The sheets are adjusted into stripes that form a modular structure, flexible and adjustable to different situations, as well as easy to dismantle and move.
The horizontality of the pavilion gives significance to the activity and permits the view of the surrounding buildings and the important sites.
The construction of the pavilion can be kept at low cost, with a budget of 5.000 euros with the use of cheap and ‘easy to find’ materials.

01. WC and storage 02. Lounge area and multimedia 03. Info point and Information screen 04. Radio and equipment 05. Exhibition, Meeting room, Press

Torino InfoPoint, Competition

picture: Carlo Brogi (1850-1925) - "Torino - Piazza Castello square seen from the Royal Palace (crowded image)". Catalogue # 8141.


Piazza Castello is the principal square of Turin, at the historical centre of the city. Designed in 1584 by the Italian architect Ascanio Vittozzi.
http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piazza_Castello_(Torino)



A pavilion for the XXIII UIA World Congress of Architecture TORINO 2008

The organizers of the Congress called for an ideas competition whose result would be the design of a pavilion to represent the Congress and to be placed on a corner of the Piazza Castello.


‘This ideas competition, in a single stage, is organised in the framework of the UIA Congress Turin 2008, illustrating the theme: transmitting architecture.
The aim is to create a UIA information point in the city of Turin, a place, dedicated to urban democracy where people can meet, relax.
To be designed as a public house for architecture, info point will be usable both day and night, when open and closed. Of a maximum surface of 100 M2, it will be built of recyclable eco-friendly materials and be equipped with communication technologies’.
http://www.infopoint.uia2008torino.org/

Torino InfoPoint, Competition

‘Turin (Italian: Torino; Piedmontese: Turin; pronounced [tyɾ'iɳ]) is a major city as well as a business and cultural centre in northern Italy, capital of the Piedmont region, located mainly on the left bank of the Po River surrounded by the Alpine arch. The population of the city of Turin is 910,437 (June 2008); its agglomeration totals 1.7 million inhabitants, ranking fourth in Italy, while its metropolitan area has a population of 2.2 million inhabitants [2]. It is ranked third, after Rome and Milan, for economic strength[3]’.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torino

By the end of the 19th century Torino had become a major industrial centre of the Italina North.

‘In 1861, Turin became the capital of the newly proclaimed United Italy. In 1865 the capital was moved to Florence. (Since 8 July 1871, the capital has been Rome.) Turin reacted to the loss of importance by beginning a rapid industrialisation: in 1899 Fiat was founded and Lancia in 1906. The Universal Exposition held in Turin in 1902 is often considered the pinnacle of Art Nouveau design, and the city hosted the Exposition again in 1911. By this time, Turin had grown to 430,000 inhabitants’.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torino

At the same time, as an industrial centre it became also a vivid centre of the Italina working class:

‘After World War I, conflicts between workers and industrialists began. The first strikes took place and in 1920 the Lingotto factory was occupied’
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torino

Giovanni Agnelli (founder of Fiat) and Vincenzo Lancia (founder of Fiat) were famous natives of the city. As well as Antonio Gramsci, the political theorist and famous founder of the Communist Party of Italy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonio_Gramsci

Building The Model

Building the model in the small room of the Bartlett building. Summer 2008

PaperMachines1, Details

The model was made out of foamboard and its parts were put together with simple metallic joints, screws and washers.

InfoPoint at Alikes Larnaca, Cyprus

We treated the Info-Centre for the salt-lake (Alikes) in Larnaca, Cyprus more like a landscape project and less like an enclosed, self-contained building. The challenge was to intervene into a site of distinct beauty with a structure that would diffuse gently the human presence in nature. The intervention should help the users to make their visit a unique experience through the nature of the Alikes. A nature, which at the specific site is not one dimensional but varies, from a picnic area with clearings and paths, to a small but dense forest, to the open landscape of the salt lake.

For this reason the intervention will consist both of enclosed spaces that host material and services for information, as well as of open-air routes along the paths, through the trees up to the fringe where the sand of the salt-lake starts. Both the indoor and the outdoor spaces form an entity that expands like a bunch of stripes from the south-end of the site to its north-end. Along this bunch of movements the visitor experiences an alternation of indoors and outdoors experience, a continuous alternation of direction, which translates into a mixed experience of both fragments of information and fragments of the real landscape. This structure also renders the visit a creative introduction to the peculiarity of the landscape. The landscape is not openly offered to the view from the start of the visit, but is rather discovered during the process, as the visit advances, and is fully perceived at the end, as a revelation, when the visitor reaches the north-end of the building.

A shell, which covers the whole ensemble, acts as a second skin that unifies the distinct parts of the building. The shell consists of a wooden lattice, which produces a variant pattern according to the side of the building that the shell protects. In this way, this second skin creates special conditions for the building, by taking advantage of the sun position and the direction of the wind. Such a second skin and the use of the lattice is inspired from examples of the local traditional architecture, mainly churches.

By DRAFTWORKS!architects

InfoPoint at Alikes

A general plan of our winning project. DRAFTWORKS!architects

PaperMachines1, Bartlett, summer 08

Last summer, and a couple of months before the inaguration of the Venice Biennale, we spent some time in the small room 319 -in the Bartlett building- preparing the model. Here is a photograph in the dark room with spotlights. DRAFTWORKS!architects

Venice Biennale, The Roofless Garden

Birds eye view of the canopy covering the archaelogical site. draftworks architects

Vennice Biennale 2008, Drawings

Drawings of the 'Roofless Garden', exhibited at the 11th Venice Biennale, as part of the Cyprus Pavillion. From the draftworks' installation 'PaperMachines I'

Venice Biennale, Papermachines I: The RoofLess garden

Draftworks!' installation in the space of the gallery of the Librearia Mondadori, San Marco.


CREDITS:

COMISSIONERPetros Dymiotis
CURATORSir Peter Cook
ASSOCIATE CURATORSMarios ChristodoulidesDickon Irwin
DEPUTY COMMISIONERAngela Skordi
WITH THE SUPPORT OFCyprus ministry of culture & educationCyprus architects associationCyprus civil engineers & architects association

Alikes, Larnaca | plan

When Snow Falls On Cities | London February 02

'The city without the child’s particular motion is a malignant paradox. The child discovers its identity against all odds, damaged and damaging in perpetual danger and incidental sunshine. Edged towards the periphery of attention, the child survives, an emotional and unproductive quantum. When snow falls on cities, the child, taking over for a while, is all at once Lord of the city. Now if the child, thus assisted, rediscovers the city, the city may still rediscover its children. If childhood is a journey, let us see that the child does not travel by night. Where there is some room, something more permanent than snow can still be provided as a modest correction. Something, unlike snow, the city can absorb; and not altogether unlike the many incidental things already there the child adapts anyhow to its own needs at its own hazard'.

Aldo Van Eyck (1956) Aldo Van Eyck’s Works, Compilation By Vincent Ligtelijn, Birkhauser Publishers, Basel, 1999