Muzeum of Polish Aviation by Pysall Ruge Architekten

The idea of flying, the spirit of place, the structure of the historic airfield - the new Museum of Aviation in Krakow takes up these references intellectually and synthesises them into a volumn formed by these distinctive elements.

Muzeum Lotnictwa- Museum of Aviation
Design Team: Pysall Ruge Architekten, Bartlomiej Kisielewski
Location: Krakow, Poland
Cost: €13 Million
When to visit: Completion 2010

The idea of flying, the spirit of place, the structure of the historic airfield - the new Museum of Aviation in Krakow takes up these references intellectually and synthesises them into a volumn formed by these distinctive elements.

The old hangars of the former airport Rakowice-Czyzyny set the modular scale for the footprint and the height of the new building. Developed from this basic shape, as if cut out and folded like a paper airplane, a large structure has been generated, with triangular wings made of concrete and yet as light as a wind-vane propeller.

The wings are generously glazed and open in all directions. Their form and arrangement depend on the interior uses. In the floor plans of the wings, the three offset floor layers generate a spatial continuum of varying insights and outlooks, to focal points within the building and to exhibition areas outside.

Block of the building has been broken down into three elements. Two of them reserved for the exposure, the spaces have a height of 10 meters, allowing the suspended objects flying at them and turning a "living exhibition" on several levels. The west wing has 3 floors with height of 3.5 meters each. The three wings meet at a central point where stand the main building hub- the most public functions: on the ground floor an entrance hall, multifunctional hall foyer and a restaurant on the first floor. On the top floor, office space is planned.




The unusual architecture of the building, realised in architectural concrete, required strict cooperation between all disciplines. To achieve the effect of light, ‘transparent’ structure made of large areas without support and of glazed facades, two different structural systems cooperating together were adopted. The walls and the core of the office wing are designed with reinforced concrete, but the roof is a steel semi-space structure covered by reinforced concrete panels. All internal services are located within the limited area of the raised floors and vertical shafts.

The design of the new aviation park links the eight buildings of the museum and the open-air exhibition areas in a joint historical experience. Former view axes and paths are respected, old alleys are completed and spaces towards the airfield and taxiway are defined. Each building exhibits one topic or episode of aviation, with a large base platform extending around it giving spaces for open-air exhibition of the particular themes. The museum contains more than 150 planes, engines, aviation artefacts, sets of technical construction documents and historical pictures. A special feature is the collection of aircraft from the beginning of aviation, such as the Jatho 1903, the Grade 1909, a Wright Brothers’ model from 1909, and the Etrich Taube from 1911.






via Muzeum Lotnictwa | Pysall Ruge Architekten

St. Henry's Ecumenical Art Chapel by Sanaksenaho Architects

‘The idea came during a fishing trip in Lapland. The fish shape harks back to the symbol used by the early Christians, who adopted the Greek word Ikthus (‘fish’) as sign of recognition. The boat is also an important symbol for the project, expressing the idea of community travelling towards the same goal’

St. Henry's Ecumenical Art Chapel
Design Team: Matti Sanaksenaho of Sanaksenaho Architects
Location: Turku, Finland
Cost: € 600000
When to visit: Monday to Friday: 11 - 16; Thursday: 11 - 18.30; Saturday and Sunday: 12 - 15

St. Henry's Ecumenical Art Chapel is placed in the landscape like religious buildings traditionally were. Outside the city of Turku, it stands upon a hillock amidst pines and spruces on the island of Hirvensalo, an area characterised by open fields and wooded hillocks. The shape of the building follows the contours of the site. The gradually forming green patina of the copper cladding blends in with the colour of the pine trees. Amidst the buildings of an activity centre, the chapel resembles an old village church.

The entrance to the east-west oriented church is from the western end. The permeating idea is that of a quiet journey towards the east, the altar. The lighting, too, confirms this idea. One walks from darkness towards light from a hidden source. The elongated nave is organised in two parts, the chapel in the front part and the gallery at the back. The visitor can study the works of art during the service. The arrangement is familiar from Renaissance churches.




The chapel is constructed like an upturned boat. Another layer of recollection is that of a herringbone. The loadbearing structure consists of tapering ribs made of glued-lasminated pine. Rising at two-meters intervals, they give the building a natural, organic form. Between the ribs there is a curved interior lining of ten-centimeters wide, untreated pine boarding. In the course of time, natural light will turn the tone of the timber to a reddish color. The floor boards, twenty-centimeters wide and five-centimeters thick pine planks have been nailed to the joists and run parallel to the space. The floor is waxed and makes a clicking sound like the floors of old churches when you walk inside. The vestry furniture, vestibule benches and hat rack are made of solid, edge-laminated common alder.

Since the client was a union of several different churches - Lutheran, Catholic and Orthodox,the symbolic fish form serves to unite all the various churches involved in the chapel while the interior has powerful references to the Bible tale of Jonah in the whale’s belly. Even the exterior of the chapel covered with glimmering copper plates applied in a pattern suggesting fish scales are supporting the overall impression of that creature.





While the impressive fish volume appears rather compact and enclosed from the outside, the experience changes radically while entering the entrance at the western gable. A magnificent high pointed interior composed of laminated pine beams are meeting dramatically in a ridge almost ten times the height of a human. At the bottom of the mayor space the aisle is spatially separated from the nave of the church by secondary spaces hid in two wooden boxes intersected by a rampart moving upwards. Along the sides of the rampart restrooms, an office as well as a staircase leading up to the choir balcony are hiding.



Sanaksenaho has restrained the wooden cross at the altar so it almost appears camouflaged since he didn’t want the religious symbols to be too intrusive. Instead he provided a naked interior for quiet speak in order to allow greater space for the visitors’ own reflections.

The chapel's patinated altar is the last public work of academician and sculptor Kain Tapper. In the altar window is a work by artist Hannu Konola, and light filters through it onto the altar wall.






Photo credits: Ettubrute | Jussi Tiainen
via Rockwool | Museum of Architecture | Sanaksenaho Architects

WWF Netherlands by RAU

Decision was made to ‘reanimate’ a former agricultural laboratory dating from 1954: to maintain the frame of the building, to reuse the rubble and to add a warm, pulsating heart in the middle, while simultaneously returning the grounds to nature.

WWF Netherlands by RAU
Design Team: Thomas Rau of RAU
Location: Driebergseweg (Zeist), Netherlands
Cost: € 4005000
When to visit: During office hours the reception and shop in the central entrance hall are open for public.

Completed in October 2006 the headquarters of the Netherlands chapter of the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) is nothing if not a striking building. It also happens to be one of the single most sustainable building created in recent years.

The building's form is quite clearly inspired by organic forms and the desire to reflect the WWF's work in the natural realm. More than that, though, it seems to draw inspiration from the ideas of anthroposophy – something also seen in the past work of the project's architects, RAU, notably with the ING Bank offices in Amsterdam which also happens, like the WWF headquarters, to be an autonomous building. The central 'blob' – yes that is what it's called – houses the building's entrance concourse and meeting room area while, externally, softening the modernist-inspired lines that run outward from it.

Nevertheless, the building's claim to sustainability does not come from aping nature in its form, but rather from a deep and thoughtful commitment to thinking about how a building is used, who its users are and what its impact will be.

Claimed to be the world's first zero carbon building, the WWF headquarters is not only naturally ventilated but also obtains its heat requirements from staff and equipment in the office while solar arrays provide electricity and hot water. A backup biomass system is also in place.




In the moisture-balancing mud ceilings, continuous circulation of water through little glass tubes takes care of the spreading of human and mechanical warmth, and – even more importantly – of cooling. Through horizontal wooden blinds, a maximum of useful light enters. All materials are screened for environment friendliness as well as child labour. And of course space is made for wildlife: ‘bird-friendly roofing tiles’ and ‘bat basements’.

That the building is actually a renovation is most surprising, given the strong commitment not only to sustainability but to the creation of an aesthetic form which marries the purpose of the organisation that inhabits the building.

In fact, renovating existing buildings rather than demolishing them is very much in line with the thinking of RAU.





via RAU | Wienerberger

Dalki Theme Park by Slade Architecture

Dalki Theme Park is a place where imaginary creatures interact with human visitors in a real physical setting. Small children have not established boundaries for the real & unreal. They easily enter and occupy the imaginary world.

Dalki Theme Park – "I Like Dalki"
Design Team: Slade Architecture in collaboration with Ga.A Architects and MASS STUDIES
Location: Heyri Art Valley,Kyungki Province, South Korea
When to visit: Weekday 1030-1900, weekend 1030-2000. Closed every Monday.

Dalki is a cartoon character invented to market clothes and other products for children and young adults. She is an imaginary girl who lives in a garden with her friends. Dalki Theme park is a building where these imaginary characters interact with human visitors in a real, physical setting. The space accommodates shopping, playing, eating and lounging as well as exhibits dealing with scale, nature and the Dalki characters.

Learned dichotomies (imaginary/ real, shopping / play, natural/ synthetic, site/ building, culture/ commerce) and different scales create a critical distance, “disbelief”, which potentially keeps users from fully engaging the realization of this imaginary world. Borrowing strategies for “suspension of disbelief” from literature, our project blurs these dichotomies and eases users into the “story” of Dalki with a fluid organization of space and program.




The building defines three zones vertically. The open ground level is a scaleless artificial garden. Different program areas spread throughout the raised interior level encourage mixing between programs and openness. A garden and lounge on the roof extend the natural landscape, referring to four lush surrounding hills. Rather than abstracting from nature, the building is a synthetic hyper-representation of nature (meta-real): mimicking while questioning the nature of nature. Merging these levels into each other and into the site creates a seamless transition between zones and between building and site.






Merging allows smooth transitions between zones, from interior to exterior, building to landscape and between programs. The vertical overlap allows another type of connection – the short circuit. Like hypertext in html, users can jump in a non-linear way from one space/program to another, bypassing the sequence. The combination of the smooth flowing spaces, mixed program distribution and short circuits allows users to choreograph their experience by choosing trajectories or spatial sequences.








via Slade Architecture | MASS STUDIES | Ga.A Architects | i like dalki

Badeschiff by AMP arquitectos

When temperatures plummeted to -20F, the Spree Bridge Badeschiff became the coolest place in Berlin to escape the harsh winter. The fresh water of the Badeschiff now enables the city’s inhabitants to figuratively swim in their river, which itself is too polluted.

Badeschiff/ Winter bathing ship
Design Team: Susanne Lorenz and AMP Arquitectos, Gil Wilk Architekten, Thomas Freiwald
Location: Spree Bridge, Berlin, Germany
When to visit: Winter-Daily from 1 pm till approx.1 am / Summer-8 am– 12 pm

In 2002, various international architects and artists were invited to deal with bridges in the context of connecting elements in cities. Instead of creating a bridge over the Spree, the Badeschiff team proposed a bridge to the Spree. Following a tradition of public bathing in the river at the turn of the century, the project encouraged a closer connection between the city and its river by floating a pool on it.

A 30 year old barge was modified in a nearby dockyard. It was reduced to its shell and filled with preheated and chlorinated water to form a 32m long pool complemented with a wooden bridge and a sun terrace. All technical installations are concealed in the edge profile and yet allow an unobstructed view across the river when swimming.




During the winter, a three-part membrane structure divides the three squares (bathing ship) and its jetty into three separate areas: a lounge, sauna and the pool ship itself. These areas are connected via additional boxes containing technical and service functions. A two-layered membrane is spanned over elliptical wooden trusses maintaining a combination of translucent and transparent surfaces.





The space between the membranes is filled with air to optimise insulation and guarantee a comfortable interior temperature of 25°C even when it is extremely cold outside.The first square, nearest to the bank, changes into a white lounge with chaises as seating and a bar. The pool is the only element which stays unchanged,apart from the roof. The covering of all three areas allows in places the visitor to enjoy the view of the exposed location in the harbor.







But the very best view awaits the brave, who dares to plunge into the pool and swim out into the unroofed water balcony. Simple joints, standard materials and easy manual assembly allow for the membrane structure to be dismantled and re erected without the use of a crane. These elements can then be stored during the summer or alternatively used as a pavilion on the shore.

The construction of a roof for the Badeschiff had to meet three challenges. First of all the static of bath ship originally wasn’t intended to carry a roof, so the construction had to be light in weight; secondly it had to be flexible, in order that it can be easily dismantled in the summer; and thirdly it had to correspond with the aesthetic idea of building a bridge, which connects the river with the urban dwellers.







via AMP Arquitectos | Thomas Freiwald | Arena-Berlin | Architonic