When we think of earth as a construction material, we often picture thick, load-bearing walls with small openings. This architectural form is shaped mainly by the material’s physical properties and the traditional building techniques developed to create habitable spaces that met basic needs—shelter and some thermal comfort.
We want to thank this young team of architects for their generosity in sharing this really interesting and innovative project with us.
Seeking for the new massivity we were talking about in the study "Closed joints claddings"
For more information about the case take a look to that video
Here is a really interesting concrete solution.
As HEARING indicates on their own website "they used triangular fillets as profiled shuttering and were thus able to cause the grain to protrude evenly from the surface after surface treatment, washing in this case, thus providing the desired structure."
Applying colour only to a superficial layer of concrete stone aggregate allows the opening to be highlighted with this separate, nearly white enclosing element.
Rain screen façades solved with thin claddings are a good solution in terms of watertightness and sun radiation protection. In addition, they permit a wide range of image variations and so are supposed to be a gift for most architects. However, for some, all those open joint claddings somehow give a sense of insufficient robustness; the wall is just a veneer, a veil.
From a constructional point of view, this façade solution is quite similar to the one which the same architects have used in the office building in 22@. We just want to highlight the effectiveness that these mouldings may have if we compare them to those used in the building mentioned previously.
The term “conventional” is really poor when we refer it to such an exceptional façade. However, considering the taxonomical criteria we are using on this platform: the material form of the façade supporting element is amorphous, and the watertightness mechanism is by material barrier. Besides, the watertightness function and the supporting one are solved over the same element so the classification is clear.
There are lots of things to say of each of the buildings we publish in this website. However, from the beginning we decided to focus just in one aspect or curiosity for each of them.
The façade of San Telmo museum manages to extract all possible design potential from the succession of layers. The surprising thing in this case is that the architects are not limited to the façade layers. In their proposal, they consider as layers the planes that follow one another when a transversal cut is made into the building. So the built volume and its limits, the façade and the mountain all merge.
In this building by Stump & Schibli Architekten we want to highlight the wisdom of solving the blind area with continuous horizontal stripes along the façades, while the treatment of the openings is adapted to varying conditions in the courtyard façades and the more urban ones.