24.4.2014 – Issue 12 - Earth – Sauter Florian, Mateo Josep Lluís, Obiol Cecilia , Steinemann Ramias, Jakob Michael – Reviews, Studio

INTERPRETATION CENTER: THE SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE OF THE PHYSICAL AND CULTURAL LANDSCAPE

by Josep Lluis Mateo, Cecilia Obiol, Florian Sauter & Ramias Steinemann

Isabelle Ramseier
The project derives from the typology of the ruins. A ruin generally keep contact to the earth. The more distant part as the roof disappears and the walls slowly go down. The result is this initial moment of contact to the earth. The poetics of Isabelle’s project is the reinterpretation of the argument: She produced a complete project with roof and walls offering at the same time qualities of being a partially abandoned space.

Pierre Jean Holl
The project of Pierre-Jean is dealing with the problem of excavating in a topographical way. He developed the project like an open ended quarry. Due to it’s logic this very exciting topographical approach was difficult to transform into a building.

Gabriel Wulf
Gabriel works with the layered condition of the site. Being completely underground, the building tries to minimize its impact on the place, appearing only as holes on the rockwall.

Making tunnels, penetrating the earth is a human activity connected to architecture in the archaic times. Nowadays it’s more connected to the infrastructural engineering activities. This project also explained in an architectural way the limits of building in an excavating way.

Alexander Ladda
This is another type of concept dealing with the mountain and the rock. This project is an artistic intervention, cutting into the earth. Very powerful as a sculpture and but also very difficult in translating into real architecture.

Nathanel Weiss
The design of Nathanel is completely underground, it’s placed on the edge, cutting from side to side. It is a mixture of incision and excavation, with the advantage of pragmatic dimension allowing the possibility of looking out from a space with two sides.

Claudia Müntener
She understood the task in a totally different way: instead of connecting to the rock to the geology, the project search for a relation to the biology. The question were the trees and the forest, and not the rocks. This produced a building more generic in a way, but on the other hand a more easy and less brutal project.