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Editorial 6–ANSWER: What’s an Object?
CLUE: This is NESS 3, the web version. Like in the iconic US quiz show Jeopardy!, giving answers in the form of questions is a way of going beyond common sense, cheating facts, or serious categories. It changes perspective and opens the game of NESS 3, this time in the context of algorithms, interfaces, and scrolls. As an augmented version our printed issue, this editorial explores the many-faceted sides of objects as they change shapes and dialogues throughout 2020 but also from print to digital. In the issue we included a quote by the new media theorist Wendy Hui Kyong Chun that says “New media live and die by the update: the end of the update, the end of the object,” but what traces of the object remain as we move online? Join us as we explore this question, more questions and architectures, and reveal glimpses of the publication thought for this online format.
In NESS 3, we compiled an eclectic list of quotes about objects and this is its continuation.
We decided to keep our playful theoretical spirit and reverse the rhetoric of the iconic quiz show Jeopardy by making the answer “What’s an Object?” as the title of this issue’s Dossier.
The regulations of this corner lot prompted the construction of a house that develops vertically, taking off from the two short sides and stacking two simple prisms. The first floor is freed for the garage and the domestic program is distributed from the second floor.
Using the existing main house and a rental building composition, Yo Shimada designed this new house for a family that requested “to be able to feel the presence of each other regardless of where they are in the house”. The result is a fluid, continuous, interior open space that connects the different uses and levels of the dwelling.
Located near downtown Healdsburg, in the heart of Russian River Valley, and originally built as a winery in the mid-70s, the facilities on this 13.5-acre estate had deteriorated and become outdated. This transformation combine landscape and architecture to provide a quiet refuge, a place to celebrate community and friends through the experience of wine.
This project is a collaboration between Swiss Architecture office HHF and Chicago-based practice Kwong Von Glinow: the new Swiss Consulate Chicago, located at the Hancock Tower, was inspired by the Swiss-born Architect Otto Kolb.
Located near Charlevoix on the shores of Lake Michigan, Camp MINOH, designed by William Kaven, embodies the rugged ethos of Midwestern life.
To adapt this house to the new requirements of the family, a renovation was carried out based on a simple strategy: the location of the vertical circulation in the party wall, allowing the creation of more flexible, better ventilated, and illuminated spaces.
Excavated into the face of a hillside, this private wine cave, design by Clayton Korte, offers a unique spatial experience in Texas, United States.
This concrete house composed of two offset regular prisms is perforated at precise points, allowing the surrounding green scenery to invade the monochromatic interior.
Angular, shimmering brick veneer facades in green, yellow, aubergine, and red gives a strong identity to HHF Architects’ winning entry for part of the new master plan Parc du Simplon in Renens, Lausanne.
Mexican office, PRODUCTORA, designed an experimental co-housing pilot project in Denver for individuals or couples. It provides centrally located, low-cost housing for small households, while integrating within the morphology of the surrounding suburban context.
The goal for this social and urban activator building, designed by Skylab in Portland, was to provide a noble stage for community activity and future public-private uses. Creating a series of comfortable and inspiring spaces simply framed with a palette of masonry, wood, glass, and concrete.
This house stands in a new residential district in the mountains. Its apparently traditional architecture, a rectangular prism with a gable roof, is interrupted by a cut in plan and section that introduces light and air through a greenhouse-style space.
Thanks to the resulting partnership between the municipality, the client and the architect, it was possible to realize a building that offers added value for the site and the community at large.
David Telerman built a pavilion in Southern Arizona: an inverted pyramid of reinforced concrete cast-in-place, sunk in the middle of the desert. It is a piece that blurs the boundary between art, landscape infrastructure, space and building.
The renovation of this small apartment, located in the city of Rosario, Argentina, includes the addition of an unusual staircase that connects the two levels of the project and the design of large pieces of furniture that define the uses of spaces in a hyper-flexible manner.
The newly completed Carrer de la Diputació residential urban infill engage with the city’s rich architectural and cultural sphere, all-the-while responding to its dense urban environment.
Occupying the ground floor of the Casa Camper Berlin, Café Camaleón combines a hotel lobby, restaurant, and retail showcase in the same space. Using carefully selected material details, the design creates a color gradient that serves as a strong visual motif to organize the interior.
The reversal of the traditional arrangement of living spaces on the first floor and bedrooms on the upper floor, advocates for contemporary living, emphasizing common areas, interconnectivity, and flexible workspaces with plenty of natural light and engaging with the surrounding urban context of Chicago.
Timber construction company Lab15 gets a new workplace. An industrial building of wooden slope girders on a concrete column structure is pushed against the side plot boundary, encased in a U-shaped fire wall made of prefabricated concrete panels.
Swiss office Christ & Gantenbein completes interactive and multi-functional workspace building in Germany, a place to provide a generous, non-hierarchical space for Roche’s employees to meet and work.
The subtle extension on the south façade, which adds new interior spaces, made it possible to adapt this almost 300-year-old house in Sarnen, Switzerland, once again to today’s needs.
Located in the northern area of the city, close to its ancient core, the project represents the new gateway to the city, a focal point of the Priel area, hosting public facilities such as the Acquarena municipal swimming pool, and the Vertikale climbing wall.
Designed by DS+R—the firm responsible for the 2009 expansion of Juilliard’s iconic NY home—the Tianjin Juilliard School is a center for performance, practice, research, and interactive exhibitions, with communal spaces that are designed to welcome the public into the creative process and musical performances.
The project consists of a room that can also be used as a psychologist office. A wall, a roof and a gutter that gathers rainwater define the project.
The articulation of two construction systems, one industrial and one handcrafted, defines the character of this periurban dwelling by architect Fabrizio Pugliese, in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Cosmos is a small house placed nearby Puerto Escondido on the Pacific coast of the state of Oaxaca, Mexico.
Jon Lott / Para Project, completes the Brugge Diptych –a temporary pavilion for the 2021 Brugge Triennale, TraumA, Brugge, Belgium. The Diptych will serve as an event space for the Triennale’s programming, addressing issues in urban trauma, and is one of several international commissions open within the city through late Fall.
Ruby City is a 14,000-square-foot contemporary art center located in San Antonio, TX, and dedicated to providing a space for the city’s thriving creative community to experience works by both local and internationally-acclaimed artists.
The exhibition organized by Martino Stierli, Chief Curator of Architecture and Design, and Evangelos Kotsioris, Assistant Curator, Department of Architecture and Design highlights a new generation of Chinese architects and their commitment to social and environmental sustainability.
The Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin is an icon of twentieth-century architecture. Planned and built from 1963 to 1968, the steel and glass structure is the only building designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in Europe after his emigration to the USA. After almost fifty years of intensive use, the listed building required a comprehensive refurbishment.
The brief responds to the needs of four different families, 14 people in total, that decided to build a second home together. Therefore, multiple and divergent preferences of the different owners are congregated in one single volume.
With a simple but effectively organized floor plan, this cabin located in a privileged natural environment takes advantage of the views and blends in with its surroundings through a robust construction that contrasts the black cedar siding exterior with the white oak forms the interior carpentry.
By incorporating a single large lightweight roof in total contrast to the historic building on which it sits, PRODUCTORA created a new terrace space –in addition to protecting the three existing courtyards from the rain– at this cultural center located in Mexico City.
Seilerlinhart Architekten is an architecture studio based in Lucerne and Sarnen, and was commissioned by Küng Holzbau to design their offices. The four-story building combines tradition and innovation by using finely detailed works.
This home is an exercise of limited resources, in which the reduction of spatial, material and technological solutions allows the maximum flexibility of use.
On the shore of one of the largest lakes in South America, is located this vacation home, with a central courtyard, designed by Chilean architects Guillermo Hevia Garcia and Catalina Poblete.
Spanish office zigzag arquitectura, together with Rodrigo Delso, made the transformation of an old industrial building into the offices of an audiovisual production company in the city of Madrid.
Rotterdam-based architecture firm, studio AAAN, designed a patio house in a new neighborhood in their city
Re-House is the result of the reform of an agricultural house in the 80s for its conversion into a dual home for its owners, an older couple and their daughter.