MILSTEIN HALL BY OMA

Occupying four distinct buildings at the northern periphery of Cornell's Arts Quad, the College for Architecture, Art and Planning (AAP) was a fragmented area, dislocated from the energy of university life.

The new Milstein Hall - a 14,000m2 complex containing much-needed studio, exhibition and crit space, an auditorium and a new Fine Arts Library - is conceived not as a symbolic, isolated addition to the campus but as a connecting structure: a large elevated horizontal plate that links the second levels of Sibley and Rand Halls and cantilevers over University Avenue, reaching towards the Foundry building.

Where a car park once stood between Sibley and Rand, a contiguous, multi-layer system of buildings and plazas unites the disparate elements of the AAP, creating a public space adjacent to the campus's most beautiful feature, just to the north - the Fall Creek Gorge.

The four existing buildings of the AAP - Rand, Sibley, the Foundry and Tjaden Hall - exhibit varying architectural styles but share a single typology: linear, corridor-based buildings that segregate the AAP's disciplines in closed rooms behind a labyrinth of entrances, security codes and dead ends.

Milstein Hall provides a type of space currently absent from the campus: a wide-open expanse that stimulates the interaction of programs, and allows flexibility over time.

Within Milstein Hall's upper plate, which has access to Rand and Sibley, areas are defined not by walls but by subtle manipulations of the section that trigger particular uses: a sunken area for the library, raised areas for crit spaces, and open spaces for studios - all suffused with light from floor-to-ceiling windows and a grid of skylights.

The roof of the upper plate, visible from the third floor of Sibley, Rand and Baker Lab, is an open platform with views of the gorge and the surrounding campus, and is gridded with vegetation that becomes denser in the direction of the gorge.

Milstein Hall is intended as a building with hidden depths: the floor of the upper plate is punctured by the bulging ceiling of the lower plate, opening a route to the lower levels.

This bump continues to slope downwards on both sides, dissecting the lower plate into three areas with varying heights and depths: the lobby (on the Rand side of the building); the basement, with computer labs and meeting areas (in the middle); and a 282-seat auditorium that gradually rises to a double-height space (on the Sibley side).

Like the upper plate, the auditorium has floor-to-ceiling windows, granting views both into the lecture theatre for passersby and out of it for students. Outside the auditorium, a sunken garden, exhibition space and plaza extends to the central, domed portion of Sibley Hall, reinforcing its importance and creating, for the first time, a coherent entry sequence from the north into AAP.

Milstein Hall's sheltering cantilevers, both to the north and the south east, similarly define new areas of public space and encourage new ways to navigate the interlinked AAP.

 

Location: Ithaca, New York, USA

Architects: OMA

Project Area: 47,000 sqf addition to the College of Architecture, Art and Planning – Studios, Crit spaces, Auditorium, Exhibition, Exterior Workspace and Plaza.

Project Year: 2009-2011

Client: Cornell University, College of Architecture, Art and Planning (AAP)

Photographs: Matthew Carbone

MAGGIE’S CENTRE BY OMA

The Maggie's Centre in Glasgow has been named Scotland's best building at the nation's annual “architectural Oscars”, held in the Scottish Parliament.

“The aim of a Maggie's centre is to provide an environment of practical and emotional support for people with cancer, their families and friends. Since the opening of the first Maggie's in Edinburgh in 1996, the Maggie's Cancer Caring Centres foundation has grown substantially, commissioning and developing a series of innovative buildings designed by world class architects.

While contemporary architecture has a reputation, deservedly or not, for being at times cold or alienating, the goal of each Maggie's Centre – whether in Glasgow, London, or Hong Kong – is to provide a space where people feel at home and cared for, a space that is warm, receptive, and welcoming.

Maggie's Centres rely on the fundamental precept, often overlooked, that exceptional architecture and innovative spaces can make people feel better – thereby kindling the curiosity and imagination fundamental to feeling alive.

Grand in their ambitions, but designed on a small scale, Maggie's Centres provide a welcome respite from typical institutional hospital architecture. Their spaces are more than merely functional; they serve as a haven for those receiving treatment.

In creating a place to connect and learn from others who are going through similar experiences, Maggie's help patients to develop their sense of confidence and resourcefulness. In 2007, Maggie's approached OMA to design a new centre on the grounds of Gartnavel hospital in Glasgow, close to the Beatson West of Scotland Cancer Centre. OMA designed a single-level building in the form of a ring of interlocking rooms surrounding an internal landscaped courtyard.

Seemingly haphazardly arranged, the building is actually a careful composition of spaces responding to the needs of a Maggie's Centre and providing a refuge for those coping with cancer. Instead of a series isolated rooms, the building is designed as a sequence of interconnected L-shaped figures in plan that create clearly distinguished areas – an arrangement that minimises the need for corridors and hallways and allows the rooms to flow.

The plan has been organized for the spaces to feel casual, almost carefree, allowing one to feel at ease and at home, part of an empathetic community of people. At the same time the design also provides spaces for more personal moments – either in the intimate setting of the counselling rooms, or in smaller nooks and private spaces.

Located in a natural setting, like a pavilion in the woods, the building is both introverted and extroverted: each space has a relationship either to the internal courtyard or to the surrounding woodland and greenery, while certain moments provide views of Glasgow beyond.

With a flat roof and floor levels that respond to the natural topography, the rooms vary in height, with the more intimate areas programmed for private uses such as counselling, and more open and spacious zones for communal use. More than any other space, the internal courtyard provides a place of sanctuary and respite.” Description from architects.

 

Location: Glasgow, Scotland

Architect: OMA

Partners in charge: Rem Koolhaas, Ellen van Loon

Associate In Charge: Richard Hollington Iii

Project Team: Atsuo Arii, Josh Beck, Alexander Giarlis, Stephen Hodgson, Takuya Hosokai, Maria-Chiara Piccinelli, Koen Stockbroekx

Implementation Architects: Keppie

Structure: Sinclair Knight Merz

Services: Kj Tait Engineers

Landscape: Lily Jencks

Fixed Shelves: Vincent De Rijk Year: Completed September 2011
Client: Maggie Keswick Jencks Cancer Caring Centres Trust

NATIONAL ART MUSEUM OF CHINA BY OMA

“In the past two decades, our museums have become larger and larger; they have now reached a scale at which they can no longer be understood as (large) buildings, but only as (small) cities.

Given the area that it covers, the vast number of artworks it will house, the numbers of visitors it will inevitably attract, the turnover of exhibitions it will have to accommodate, NAMOC can be the first museum in the world based on this new paradigm, the first museum conceived as a small city.

In this way, it can incorporate a significant number of breakthroughs, revolutionizing the way in which the museum works today. Like a city, it could mix sectors, 'official' and grassroots, it could have a centre and a periphery, a Chinese and an international district, modern and historical areas, commercial and 'government' neighbourhoods.

Like a city, individual sections need not be permanent; areas can be redefined, renovated, or even replaced, without compromising the whole. To plan NAMOC as a city does not mean that it cannot offer the intimacy that remains the essence of the museum experience: like any city, its individual parts can be small, humane…

But like a city, it will offer a degree of variety that will be unique for a single museum. Part of it will be public, other parts could be commercial. The architecture of the main plinth offers a range of classical, orthogonal museum spaces, to more contemporary, freer forms.

Like any city, circulation can be efficient and direct – for larger groups – or meandering and individual. The story of Chinese art can be told, or discovered. The main circulation of the city is based on a five-pointed star that leads from the multiple entry points on the periphery to the centre.

Here, the star connects to the 'lantern', a multistory stack of platforms, wrapped in a red skin, on which temporary exhibitions and events are arranged with the smooth efficiency of a convention centre. Although its internal organization is rational, the elastic skin stretched around the metallic frame makes it look like a mystery…

The Lantern is the three-dimensional emblem of NAMOC; a single tangential axis relates the Lantern to the Bird's Nest. In contrast to the intricacy of the city, the six main floors of the Lantern offer wide open spaces, so that the architecture does not interfere with the organization of the exhibitions or events.

In the thickness of the floors, offices, library, research and other services are accommodated; in the 'City' they are concentrated on the five arms of the star. Conceptually, the two halves of NAMOC – 'City' and Lantern – are complementary: like the city today, they offer radically different experiences: the small scale, intricate condition of the traditional urban fabric of China, and the contemporary era of radical modernization.” Description of OMA.

Location: Beijin, China

Architect: OMA

Partners in charge: Rem Koolhaas, Shohei Shigematsu, David Gianotten

Project Architect: Alessandro De Santis

Team: Jing Chen, Midori Hasuike, Martin Hejl, Jinman Jo, Anu Leinonen, Adrienne Lau, Kostya Miroshnychenko, Pietro Pagliaro, Ippolito Pestellini, Jue Qiu, Yanfei Shui, Espen Vatn, Yu Wang, James Westcott, Junjie Yan, Nurdan Yakup, Dongmei Yao, Haohao Zhu Animation art direction: Martin Hejl

Engineering: Arup

Site: 30,000m2

Client: National Art Museum of China

Status: Competition first phase: 2010/11

ÉCOLE CENTRALE ENGINEERING SCHOOL BY OMA

OMA has won the competition for the new École Centrale engineering school and its surrounding urban development in the research and innovation zone of Saclay, southwest of Paris.

With the concept of a "lab city," OMA was selected from four competing international architectural practices. The project is led by Clément Blanchet, director of OMA projects in France.

In contrast to the corridor / room linearity of the typical laboratory, OMA's design is a low level, glass-roofed superblock containing an open plan grid inside, where various activities can interact and be overlooked simultaneously.

The grid offers the freedom to generate a new typology for learning, cultivating collaboration while maintaining the stable conditions of the engineering school's primary pedagogical function.

Blanchet commented: "The design integrates urbanism with the school, supplanting the homogeneous experience of the campus. It's an attempt to define the actual esthetic of science."

A diagonal main street slices through the grid, connecting with a future metro station for Paris at one end, and the existing engineering school, Supelec, at the other. In the centre of the project, a forum rises above the grid, offering a focal point of activity for the school.

This platform accommodates a gym, administration center and classrooms for first year students, winding its way up through and above the field. This stack is conceived as a training machine offering a complementary condition to the small, intricate spaces in the horizontal field of "lab city."

The project was developed in collaboration with Bollinger and Grohman, Alto, DHV, DAL, and D'Ici Là.