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96
Projects
SANAA
Zollverein School
Christian Richters
1
Zollverein School of
Management and Design It was difficult to speak softly in a monumental turn to a sobriety of signs, to measure, to con-
features reinforced cement setting like that of the coal mines of Zollverein structive rigor. The project is inspired by an
perimeter walls cut by many near Essen in Germany, where Japanese ar- idea that is as clear as it is simple, of building
square openings of different
sizes in a seemingly incidental
chitects Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa “a pure volume of air and of unusual light”.
arrangement (founders of the SANAA firm) have faced the The construction may be described, in a nut-
2 challenge of designing the homonymous art shell, as an almost cubical mass in just one
The cubic building, made of a and design school. The task was complex be- material and just one color, on whose facades
single material and color, was
designed by the SANAA studio
cause the project, the first realized outside the 150 windows, square and of variable dimen-
in Essen, Germany national borders, became the testing ground of sions, are arranged, close together in some
3 the validity and communicative characters of points and far apart from one another in oth-
The school is in the industrial a way to design that is usual – or that has per- ers, depending on orientation and functional
context of the Zollverein coal
mine, which was classified
haps become unfashionable – because it re- requirements . Analogously to other projects
as an Unesco World Cultural sorts to a minimal vocabulary to express con- by Sejima & Nishizawa, also in the school of
Heritage Site in 2001 cepts of disarming clarity. Completed in 2006, Essen the formal synthesis is foiled by a re-
4 the building, with its “intense presence”, has fined spatial effect created by daylight which
Soft natural lighting spreads
evenly in fluid, continuous
shown an international public the coherence projects, on the internal surfaces, the geomet-
spaces, underscoring the of a research on essentiality commenced by ric outlines, illuminated and distorted, of the
interiors’ sophisticated spatial the SANAA firm in 1995, and the many suc- different measures of the openings. “I always
design cessive projects bear witness to a need to re- try to make different types of borders – Sejima
100
points out in the interview – not strong borders
but connection(...)”. In this sense the cubical
building, with its unitary and synthetic image,
marks the border between the city outskirts
and a site of industrial archaeology, and at
the same time it acts as demarcation, as en-
trance gate to an area that according to the
master plan designed by OMA will become the
European center of architecture, art and de-
sign. The architectural over-size effect, which
by formal synthesis and dimensions seems to
turn this building into an abstract, almost im-
material object, finally succeeds in establish-
ing a dialectic relationship with the chimneys,
the bridge cranes, the washing plants and the
industrial buildings in the area. Pursing a logic
based on an interpretation of the relations be-
tween the parts, the cubical building designed
by SANAA appears weightless, without matter
and plastic consistency. It looks like an empty
box, filled with light, a rarefied shell which To
accomplish this the architects have focused on
Projects Zollverein school
.
hanno lati di tre diverse
dimensioni: 280cm, 180cm
o 140cm
6 7 10
11
7 7 10
8
9 11
102 4
10 10
8 10
7 8
5, 6, 7, 8
megapixels, is possible thanks to the reduction izing the library on the third floor (h5.00) and
The floor plans of the
school’s four stacked levels of the permanent loads – by means of floors the more intimate atmosphere of the offices on
correspond to four major with two-directional web and the elimina- the fourth (h3.15m); finally, the roof garden,
uses: public spaces on the tion of layers of insulating materials, replaced partially covered by a roof at a height of 7.30m,
ground floor; teaching
by the introduction of a grid of pipes in the dedicated to events, is characterized by a feel-
spaces on the first floor; the
library on the second floor; walls, in which water at a temperature of about ing of vastness.
and the administrative area 27°C, channeled from a nearby underground According to a logic of “perceptive transpar-
on the third: 1. reception; source, circulates. The internal distribution ency” produced by the configuration of the
2. cafeteria; 3. auditorium;
reflects the functional program: 4 main cat- interiors rather than by the materials as such,
4. exhibition space;
5. working space; 6. lounge; egories corresponding to the 4 superimposed the structure is reduced to the essential. Three
Projects Zollverein school
7. Seminar rooms; 8. library; floors in which the school is organized. The hollow nuclei in untreated reinforced con-
9. conference room; volumetric simplicity and clarity of the system crete – which contain the vertical connections,
10. patio; 11. office
is made slightly more complicated by the dif- bathrooms and accessory facilities – and two
9
Distorted geometric forms ferent heights of the intermediate floors that slender steel columns, varnished in white, are
of natural light from the create very different sensations in the super- placed freely within the perimeter of the build-
different sized windows imposition of the identical floors (measuring ing. These volumes, like autonomous objects,
are thrown on the interior
35x35m). The sober atmosphere of the com- interrupt the floors to reduce the structural
surfaces
10 munal areas on the ground floor (h4.40m) span, without interfering with the fluidity of
The building’s elevations, contrasts with the solemn air of the the edu- the space. Finally, it is the study of the bor-
facing east, north, west and cational spaces and exchange of ideas on the ders between the different areas that makes
south, respectively. The
second floor, appropriate for the area with the it possible for the light to enter evenly and
square windows have sides
with three different sizes: highest ceilings (h9.80) ; this interior is very cancel the spatial hierarchy. The areas of the
280cm, 180cm or 140cm different from the sense of measure character- entrance, reception, café and the exhibition
10
0
2
5m
104
t=
11
Projects Zollverein school
space on the ground floor; the areas dedicated like three autonomous “boxes”, white and ab-
to teaching, dialogue and rest on the first floor; stract, arranged on the third floor; and finally
the storage and reading rooms on the third, the way the offices and meeting rooms on
are divided by ephemeral, faint limits, only just the fourth floor, connected by an “interstitial
suggested by the arrangement of the furniture. space” a interstitial space that goes around
The distribution appears as an indication, as the perimeter, become more dense, to form a
one possible way to use the space among many chessboard pattern that is freely interrupted
other, possible solutions. Borders, continuity by five patios that form five “squares of sky”,
and relations between the parts have inspired once again shifting the borders between the
many other aspects of this project, as the way compact work areas and the empty space of
the auditorium is treated like a glass prism, the light. envelops and withholds a portion of
isolated and “sunk” into the ground floor; the the “atmosphere” of Zollverein, dedicating it
way in which the seminary halls are designed to teaching, study and research.
Christian Richters
12
11
The section highlights the
different heights of the
space between floors
12
Image of the partially
covered roof-garden
13
Interior view of fourth
floor administration area.
The offices and meeting
rooms are organized in
a tight checkerboard
pattern, coming out into an
“interstitial space” along
the perimeter, lit by five
patios
14
A construction stage of the
floor slabs patented system
by Cobiax
15
Construction detail of floor
slabs with a two-directional
composition plan for large
structural spans, reducing
Christian Richters
permanent loads by
approximately 30%
16
Night image of cubic
volume dematerialized by
the many windows, looking
like lighted megapixels 13
106
14
Projects Zollverein school
15
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