Gallery Space

Gallery Space

This topic may not related to the columbarium design but when I was looking for an idea of portrait photography, I also needed to look at the space that containing this art pieces.
Gallery is the space to display art works. the space usually be the empty hall with the display walls. But the interesting point of designing gallery is how to control space and lighting. Space circulation in the hall must lead the direction of people to each exhibit hall step by step. Lighting control is also important, designers must know the basic theory of using light for the gallery space and which type of lights are the most appropriate to the art works.

For the architecture, gallery space can be from the small room to the huge art museum. I was looking on the specific design that might be related to my design and only to study on how do they work on the exhibition space to be my inspiration for my own project.

 

Kukje Gallery, South Korea by SO-IL










The architectural proposal resolves a perceived disjunction between the dynamism and boldness of Kukje Gallery’s organization and artist roster, and the fragile historic fabric saturated by materials and details that surrounds the site. Studies led to a soft and ambiguous building that gently nestles itself into the site. Circulation—entries, vestibules, elevators and stairs—has been pushed out of the orthogonal gallery space to maximize its height and maintain a clear interior volume. Considering the diagrammatic box geometry too rigid within the historic fabric, SO–IL enveloped the building in a mesh veil, creating a nebulous exterior that changes appearance as visitors move through the site. A custom stainless steel mesh produces a layer of diffusion around the structure, through a combination of reflections, openness, and moiré patterns produced through the interplay of its shadows. The mesh, made out of 510.000 individually welded rings, is strong yet pliable as it wraps around the building’s irregular geometries. The result is an abstract ‘fuzzy’ object that accommodates a multiplicity of readings.

Daeyoung Gallery and House by Steven Holl













The basic geometry of the building is inspired by a 1967 sketch for a music score by the composer Istvan Anhalt, “Symphony of Modules,” which was discovered in a book by John Cage titled “Notations.”

Sacred Space and lighting

Sacred Space and Lighting

"Sacred architecture reflects a society's awareness of its relationship with the divine -and is thus a powerful expression of the human quest for spirituality"

Although, my columbarium design project is not to create the particular space for any religions, but for somehow the end of life places are always related to the them. The sacred architectures is the symbolic of people's faith. The sacred spaces are including the chapel, mosque, temple, crematorium, mausoleum, and etc. in many different religious. They are usually be the place for people to pray, worship, and any religious rituals. There are various types of sacred space depend on their purposes.

Lighting in sacred architecture is  very important and impressive. As can be seen in many religious architecture, Architects are more concerning about natural lighting in this kind of architecture. Lighting usually be an image of impressive, peaceful and adorable.

Light Matters: Sacred space

Chapel in Villeaceron, Spain. Architect: Sancho-Madridejos Architecture Office. Image © Hisao Suzuki

The use of light can lead to very diverse feelings: a ray of sunlight calls attention; glare overpowers; the nocturnal sky fascinates, while a dense dark forest arouses fear. Religions have made use of these experiences to convey the mystic aspects of their respective deities — accordingly, so too do their erected buildings.

After the break, an exploration of the different approaches for using light as a vehicle of symbolic meaning and spiritual experience in religious spaces.

Neviges Mariendom, Germany. Architect: Gottfried Böhm. Image © Yuri Palmin

Gottfried Böhm’s Mariendom in Neviges, Germany, encloses the contemplative visitor in a dark environment to focus his attention away from the material world and towards inner enlightenment. The daylight, which enters through small rooflights, only slightly highlights the altar. The concept deliberately plays with adaptation, where the eye slowly adjusts from a bright exterior to darker interior, giving the impression that the environment turns slightly brighter over several minutes.

Bruder Klaus Field Chapel, Germany. Architect: Peter Zumthor. Image © Thomas Mayer
Peter Zumthor further developed this concept of the dark shelter in the Bruder Klaus Field Chapel, Germany, where the cavity is made from a charred black wooden frame. As a counterpoint, small bottle glass portholes add points of light. Zumthor bases the sensual experience on an intense contrast between daylight and darkness that surprises the visitor. The pilgrims are led from a timid darkness to poetic twinkling stars.



Al-Irsyad Mosque, Indonesia. Architects: PT. Urbane Indonesia. Image © Emilio Photoimagination

The Al-Irsyad Mosque in Indonesia, designed by Urbane, welcomes believers with a generous reflecting pool in front of the open facade that reflects light in a very vivid form, offering the believer a transcendent entrance.


Church of Light, Japan. Architect: Tadao Ando. Image © Buou
In the Church of Light by Tadao Ando, the conventional pictorial depiction of the Christian cross, which would have normally received a light accent, has been substituted by an architectural solution made of pure light. This reduces the luminous surface in the front wall to two crossing lines, thereby intensifying the brightness contrast and placing worshippers in the luminous presence of their deity.

source: Archdaily.com

Roof Garden

Roof Garden

Once I have known that the site of my project was located inside the Wollaton park in Nottingham. I started to research on site context and found out that the whole area of this location are surrounded by by green area. Therefore, I was thinking how to preserved the surrounding green area by not to put a strange architecture in the middle of green space. Roof garden architecture is the most interesting choice to be used for my design project.

Designing green space inside the larger green, concerning about surrounding nature and transforming the architecture to become part of nature, these ideas are the main direction for designing my columbarium or memorial space inside the heart of Wollaton park. My design is needed to avoid to change the nature context and keeping the scenery of green area. Garden on the roof top of architecture is to create the green space to architecture to reduce the solidity of concrete architecture or making the soft contrast to surrounding context.

These are some interesting case studies for Green roof architecture to be studied on:    

Brooklyn Botanic garden visitor center

“Brooklyn Botanic Garden is an extraordinary oasis in the city and a living museum with a collection in constant flux,” stated Marion Weiss and Michael Manfredi, principals at Weiss/Manfredi. “We envisioned the Visitor Center as a living interface that creates an invitation from the city into the Garden—a demonstration of the compelling reciprocity between architecture and landscape. Just as the Garden inspires wandering, we designed the center so that it is never seen in its entirety but is experienced cinematically as an unfolding place of discovery.”









This building has been designed to be a part of botanic garden, planting over the top will be changed through out the year following the season change. 

VanDusen Botanical Garden visitor center 

"Perkins+Will‘s VanDusen Botanical Garden Visitor Centre in Vancouver, BC is designed to meet the Living Building Challenge, the most rigorous set of requirements of sustainability.  Formally and functionally, it encompasses the goals of environmentally and socially conscious design.  The building is an undulating landscape of interior and exterior spaces rising from ground to roof level and providing a vast surface area on which vegetation could grow, thus reoccupying the land on which the building sits with the landscape.  The building also features numerous passive and active systems that reuse the site’s renewable resources and the building’s own waste"








After I was looking at these project I was also thinking of how to push the visitor to become part of the architecture. In these 2 case studies, the visitor are not allowed to walk over the roof, but it would be interesting if the visitors were able to walk and observing the surrounding environment from the top view.

Space of Death

Space of death

At the end of people life, all people in this small world will end up with death. None of us is immortal, then do not be afraid of death. The only things to be left to remember are the name and good memories of each person.
Columbarium is the place to collect these memories into a particular space. Sometimes, the columbarium, cemetery, memorial and mausoleum are believed that they were places for sadness and scary. In contrast, these places should be the place for good memories that these dead people have done when they were alive. When I have visited these places, I was thinking how to change the attitude of people to this scary image of columbarium. Therefore, I looked at some of interesting memorial places in the world to be my case study for my design.

As burial field, Netherland









"Cemeteries have always been, and still are, reflections of society: they provide an insight into the relationship between the collective and the individual, the social environment of the time, the overall natural scene, the funerary culture and developments in the field of design and landscape architecture"


This project has changed the image of the cemetery and columbarium in my mind. It has been designed in a modern style architecture. the architect Karres en Brands has designed a good combination between natural context and aluminium facade columbarium. 

Los Angeles Museum of Holocaust











"From the architect, Belzberg Architect, The new building for the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust (LAMOTH) is located within a public park, adjacent to the existing Los Angeles Holocaust Memorial.  Paramount to the design strategy is the integration of the building into the surrounding open, park landscape. The museum is submerged into the ground allowing the park’s landscape to continue over the roof of the structure.  Existing park pathways are used as connective elements to integrate the pedestrian flow of the park with the new circulation for museum visitors."

This project is quite similar to my idea to create arhitecture in the park with roof garden on top, this makes the building to become part of surrounding environment. Although this is not a cemetery or columbarium but in this place also exhibit and represent the story of dead people.

Peter Zumthor

Peter Zumthor is an architect who consider more than just the visual aspects of a project. For him, it is not only important how a floor, stair, wall, room or façade look, but also how they feel when one touches them with his or her finger tips, how they smell, how they resonate and sound, and what kind of associations, mental images, expectations and memories they evoke. His buildings always revolve around the relationship between the human body and its environment, and the way the individual subject experiences very specific situations.

According to my Columbarium design project, I have been study on some of his projects and like his idea. His idea of creating the architectural concept inspired me to observe everything around me and using experience from my life not only about architecture but everything to create my own imagination and style.

These are some of his works that may related to my design project.

Steilneset Memorial, Norway







Zumthor simply describes his collaboration with Bourgeois in an interview with ArtInfo as the following, “I had my idea, I sent it to her, she liked it, and she came up with her idea, reacted to my idea, then I offered to abandon my idea and to do only hers, and she said, ‘No, please stay.’ So, the result is really about two things — there is a line, which is mine, and a dot, which is hers… Louise’s installation is more about the burning and the aggression, and my installation is more about the life and the emotions [of the victims].”

Bruder Klaus Field Chapel, Genmany

He describes, “To me, buildings can have a beautiful silence that I associate with attributes such as composure, self-evidence, durability, presence, and integrity, and with warmth and sensuousness as well; a building that is being itself, being a building, not representing anything, just being.”

Concrete Architecture

Why Concrete is so appealing to architects today?

Concrete is the most popular material that has been used in many famous architectures around the world this present day. Many architects, from Le Corbusier, Louis Khan to Tadao Ando have chosen this material in their several projects. What is make concrete become an interesting in architectural design?.

Concrete is a strong material. It can combine the tensile strength of steel with the compressive strength of stone. It usually has been used for structural engineering to form the structure of any architectures. Cast concrete has been developed to building material since early 20th century, now it has been popular material in architecture with its interesting texture, colour, toughness, lasting long and can create various form of architectures.


Le Corbusier was the early architect to use concrete to be material of his design project as can be seen in many famous project. His works also became the master of concrete architecture to be learned in many architecture school in the present.

 






In the post modern period, Tadao Ando,the Japanese architect who has concrete using style as his image. His design character is unique with combination of Japanese style and sense of using concrete material in his every project.




As I was looking at Concrete architecture that related to my columbarium or memorial project, I found an interesting using concrete material to create memorial space with interesting form of architecture. This project, the architect has understand the structure and characteristic of concrete really well then he developed to his design.






Canada Holocaust Monument design competition by David Ajaye and Ron Arad