Objets-Types, Besoins-Vip
Francisco Ferreira

A room is still a room
Even though there’s nothing there but gloom
But a room is not a house
And a house is not a home
When the two of us are far apart
And one of us has a broken heart.

Dionne Warwick, A House is not a Home, in Make Way For Dionne Warwick, Scepter Records, 1964

The Modern Movement’s promise of an architecture for all, which simultaneously established itself as a landscape – physical, social and political – and as a dwelling – first as an emancipated object, then as a constituent and generative part of a much wider territory – would die, according to Charles Jencks, with the demolition of Pruitt-Igoe in 1972, in the city of St. Louis, in the United States of America. In its more radical and literal physical configuration, the architecture of this Movement promoted the immediate articulation between interior and exterior, stating its continuity from the transversality provided by the judicious composition of materials holding a light and ethereal appearance and nature. While, on the one hand, steel threatened to reduce form to its structural condition, glass would otherwise assume the paradoxical condition of an immaterial boundary. The modern curtain wall thus superimposed a real need – that of defining a limit – onto the will of its dissimulation – of the limit, but mainly of its necessity. For the erosion of boundaries was not only a spatial or perceptual proposition, but above all an ideological statement, in the sense that architecture would unify people, would put them into a state of confrontation transformed into a meeting. The need to destroy boundaries was thus the need to construct a seamless social and physical territory, an urban support where nature and
artifice would exist together as an organic whole. The modernist cell would thus conceive the existenz minium as an expanded field, at the same time that, from its conception, the city would compose itself not as a surrounding but as an inevitable consequence.

The Vipp Shelter, an architectural object produced by the Danish company Vipp, is proposed as a shelter, a necessity – or as a response to a need – when in fact it presents itself as an exclusive piece that avoids any kind of confrontation, rather looking to hide itself, to escape… there is no ideology here, of course, but a technical statement, a kind of neo-modernist exaltation, devoid of any generative idea – a deviation which, it should be recognised, has always followed, particularly in the post-war period, the modern project. The Vipp Shelter is thus an end in itself, a type-object, which, contrary to what Le Corbusier wrote in his 1925 text Besoins-Types, Meubles-Types, does not really correspond to a logic of productive rationalisation that reacts to an emergency, but to the capacity – rather to the possibility – of individual detachement, to the technical capacity for promoting such a disconnection and for endowing its inhabitants with a kind of existential lethargy. Long gone is the anguish that, in 1956, the House of the Future from architects Alison and Peter Smithson advocated, no longer a cell but a capsule, no longer part but fragment, which, by reversing the experiences of the early modern, looked inwards and upwards, as if the only existing territory was the one developing within it – that surviving and imperfect garden, a landscape evocating other myths, surrounded by an opaque, neutral shell, a radical assurance of physical survival in the face of the external vacuum.

The standard character of the House of the Future thus set in motion a melancholy disguised as novelty and embodied a drifting movement rather than a place. Blatantly mixed with the epithet of pop product, this house would, about nine years later, lead to a conclusion, as ironic as critical and projective, proposed by Reiner Banham in A Home is not a House, where architecture, almost being re-founded as anti-matter,
finally cemented its status – to the sound of Dionne Warwick – no longer as a building, but as atmosphere.

The statement included in the presentation
catalogue that the Vipp Shelter adapts to any type of landscape or natural condition seems to characterize its existence as a matter of resistance and protection – indeed, of shelter;  its definition as a total object further emphasises this condition, reinforced by the rough, darkened appearance of the steel structure and its riveted panels, by the external staircase that seems to invite us to a privileged and vigilant space on the rooftop, by its twelve basement supports adaptable to more or less shapeless terrains. But here the issues of resistance and protection are framed in an all different way and destined only for some, those perhaps exasperated by the urban chaos and craving for nature, apparently understood by the creators of this object as a peaceful and orderly image…

The Vipp Shelter, a product that presents itself, after all, as something exquisite – nothing here is pop – and complementary – nothing here constitutes a basic necessity – is then assumed to be not a vehicle for the most elementary resilience, but an invitation to a state of über-survival, to a greater and privileged state of existence. It is in this sense that its material and referential ambiguity – somewhere between the hermetic character of a Nautilus and the panoramic domain of its eventual
external context – is configured.

Deceptively removed and in tune with the
cosmos, the would-be inhabitants of this fantastic place will therefore have all the conditions to idealise the world…

Architecture of the see-through
Luis Miguel Lus Arana

Sitting in its privileged location in Valle de Bravo, Mexico, House EH, “La Lagartija”, stands as the distillation of a certain type of modernity, or at least, of the way in which the international style has been absorbed and translated in Latin America since the 1940s. When approached during daytime, the main façade offers a convincingly opaque impression. However, upon entering, or at night, when the inner lighting dissolves the solid brise-soleil of the upper floors, the building reveals its true nature as a tenuous, ambiguous barrier between the front access and the private space of the back courtyard. With its simple, yet effective use of a few key elements of Latin American modernity – pergolas, brise-soleils, excavated porches – the house succeeds in diluting the transition between inside and outside by means of intermediate spaces with varying degrees of permeability and light exposure.

In this sense, the project is firmly rooted in a very Latin American tradition that takes us back to Francisco Artigas’ “Casa del Risco” in El Pedregal, the house that Antonio Bonet designed for Gabriel Berlingieri in Punta Ballena, Uruguay, or the brise-soleil-ridden Milton Guper residence built by Rino Levi and Roberto Cerqueira Cesar in Sao Paulo. Meanwhile, the curving walls of the basement access immediately bring to mind other seminal works of the Spanish-speaking single-family housing tradition such as Juan Antonio Coderch’s Ugalde Residence, with its sinuous shapes retaining the mountain slope and guiding visitors towards the threshold that marks the entrance to the house. And of course, they take us back to a whole other branch of Latin American modernity better represented by the works of Oscar Niemeyer, especially his own house in Gávea, Rio de Janeiro.

With all these houses, but especially with the former ones, the EH residence shares the naturalness with which certain Latin American countries integrated the paradigm shift that emanated from Europe and the United States into their vocabulary. If, in the case of Brazil, it was the raw concrete buildings produced by Le Corbusier that would mark the agenda – even if tarnished by a local tendency to sensuality – Mexico preferred to look northwards, importing the rigorous lightness of the Case Study House program, with Richard Neutra, Craig Ellwood, and Ralph Rapson as its standard bearers. In the absence of a generation which, like Peter Behrens or H.P. Berlage in Europe, represented the transition between beaux arts and modernity, Latin America in general, and Mexico in particular, adopted the tropes and motifs of the international style without their heroic shortcomings. Certainly, the EH House also includes some contemporary styleme, such as the continuous band of concrete/stone that runs through the façade, echoing the remnants of a broken single-surface, or the glass railings. However, beyond these few incidental features, it is seamlessly interwoven into a modern tradition that has been developing, almost unchangingly, since the second post-war period: an architecture whose proven efficiency relies on a pragmatic gestural economy.

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Villa NHV
Diogo Matos

In May 2012, we at PanoramAH! were consulted to budget for the window frames for the project of an architectural firm in Geneva, DLA. This involved a house with three floors, located in Vandoeuvres, in the vicinity of Geneva. The back of the house was delimited by a stand of trees, and given its iconic presence in the plot, the desire was to keep it visible from all of the land’s ground level.

The first floor, underground, contains the more technical functions of the house. The third, a box, placed on Piloti supports, which floats over the land, houses the bedrooms. Between these two floors, on the ground level, is a space as open to the outside as possible, to allow for maximum visual permeability between the house’s reception area facing the street and the back part, which contains the house’s common spaces.

Thus, the ground level is sought to be made visually open to the outside, closed only by a glass membrane that is as invisible as possible. The technical solution would have to necessarily involve minimalist window frames, at the risk of compromising the concept of the project itself. This unique feature was obviously a constraint that we are used to dealing with. The great difficulty of the project was the large dimensions of the triple pane glass panels, which reached areas of 13 m². The PH38 system that we had in 2012 allowed us to only reach dimensions of around 6 to 7 m² of triple pane glass panel. This limit was due to the maximum glass thickness of 38 mm allowed by the system.

This dimensional barrier had already led to the loss of several projects between 2011 and 2012, and it was imperative to confront the technical requirements of Villa NHV, not as a problem, but as an opportunity to develop a new product, basing it on a model project.

The architectural team was informed of our intention to participate in the project, and the constraints resulting from executing it with a prototype product. The challenge was accepted by all the parties involved and the development process that would give origin to the PH54 series three months later was initiated.

More than a transition product or a timely solution for a specific project, the PH54 would become our most awarded minimalist system: Red dot design award 2014 “best of the best”; Architects Darling 2014 “gold for best product innovation”, and others. The certification of PanoramAH! in 2014 under the Minergie module, assigned to windows with high energy efficiency, further represented the achievement of a new technological level. The 54 series is today used in 90% of projects executed in Swiss territory.

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Lycée Français International de Porto
Pedro Castro Cruz

In the grounds of the Serralves estate there is a sense of descent. Both the House and the Museum (1)1. Casa de Serralves, a modern work by Marques da Silva and Serralves Museum, a contemporary work by Siza Vieira. are located at the upper level of Avenida Marechal Gomes da Costa and the gardens, the lake, the woods and the agricultural areas spread out across the land that heads downwards to the east.

The Lycée Français, which occupies the land adjacent to Serralves, provides a similar experience, starting and ending with two buildings by Nuno Valentim and Frederico Eça – from the Reception Pavilion at the entrance’s high level, to the New Primary School, which sinks down at the extreme eastern end of the property.

Jofebar was involved in both. In the small 2010 pavilion, there are some thirty square metres of window frames, but the latest intervention, in 2012, to which this file relates, now includes 530m² of glazed surfaces.

Between the two works there are earlier architectural structures which make them interventions in the built heritage: the 1963 building, that lies between the main body near the street and the classroom blocks that follow the slope of the land, all connected by an external gallery, and the expansion of 1995, which established a discreet new entrance from the street but created a new volume that has considerable impact on the playground. (2)2. The first building, from 1963, is by Manuel Marques de Aguiar,  Carlos Carvalho Dias and Luiz Cunha; the 1995 extension is by Jean Pierre Porcher, Margarida Oliveira and Albino Freitas (ToposAtelier)

The two works of Nuno Valentim and Frederico Eça show perfectly the spatial wealth and the control of scale, both in the small and the large interventions.

In the small triangular pavilion, each facing concrete elevation displays an asymmetrical square window, generating a centripetal movement when the volume is penetrated by one of them, discovering a gap that bridges the slope on which the building is balanced.

In the large school, the complexity is no less interesting; but let us see. The ease with which the original building clings to the sloping land comes not only from the geometry of the siting and the use of materials, but also from the sloping roof that reinforces the direction of the topography. The sloping roof, close to the heart of the regionalists of the 1960s in their reinterpretation of modernity, is the formal element that stands out in Nuno Valentim and Frederico Eça’s new building. The presence of the construction is almost reduced to the slope that rises from the ground and is finally discovered as a (partly) useable roof because it is converted into an athletics track. On arrival, this impression of a raised floor is underlined by the glazed facade which emphasises the slash and restores, as a reflection, the modern construction and the nature that lies beyond the Serralves walls.

The intervention is bigger than it looks, having managed to double (3)3. The built area of the New Primary School is approximately 4000m2. the built area to date, through the strategy of sinking the mass. The entrance is via a grand ramped staircase that dives into the ground and leads to the discovery of links to the lower level, namely the sunken courtyard within high concrete walls which extends a multipurpose room, defined by two glass walls with large sliding panels, reconciling the interior and the exterior by means of “space density”.

The anchoring stress to the ground is graciously lost to the east when the roof is seen no longer as a plane but as a high suspended slab front, snaking its way in a retracting and expanding play from the existing stone wall, which separates it from the Serralves woods, and setting back another glass façade. This façade is continuous from the refectory to the classrooms and is filled with mystery between the set back shade and the reflections of an almost ‘Romantic route’.

From the construction point of view, the work is compatible with the formal simplicity, with reinforced concrete walls for earth retention and for great spans which provide the stability required for the large sliding windows. The sliding window frames are in aluminium with slender profiles and the fixed and opening frames are in steel. The techniques are simple and therefore the constructive sophistication comes from rigorous detail rather than technological solutions.

The recreational areas are populated by precast concrete circles, rings that are presented as benches and tree pits, blocks that become meeting points or evoke giant games of pataca. (4)4. Pataca or Malha – traditional Portuguese targeting game This imagery conjures up the playgrounds of van Eyck (5)5. Playgrounds designed by Aldo van Eyck (The Netherlands, 1918-99) in Amsterdam between 1947 and 1978. as one realises that, more than these recreational elements, it is the spatial experience throughout the building that is designed for the Child. The school has a ludic character that one believes to be fundamental to the idea of teaching, leading the children into games of discovery, opposing movements, such us up and down, views from above and below, huddling together and scattering, ins and outs, windows and mirrors.

Beyond the limit or the Art of inhabiting the space “between”
Susana Lobo (Department of Architecture, University of Coimbra)

Invoking Walter Benjamin, in “A Topology of Thresholds”, Georges Teyssot states that “the threshold (die Schwelle) must be radically distinguished from the limit or border (die Grenze).”¹ The limit is a line. It has no “thickness”. It separates and defines an “inside” and an “outside”. The threshold, on the other hand, is an area. A “passage”. It is “in between”. It consists of space and time. The same idea is behind the “in-between realm” of Aldo van Eyck. “A home for twin phenomena and hence also […] a home for a reality which is thereby interiorized and rendered transparent”.² The Casa del Infinito (House of the Infinite) in Cádiz is centripetal and centrifugal. At once. It breathes. “Both in and out”.³

In one of the many residential holiday resorts which abound on the Iberian coast, the project by Alberto Campo Baeza explores the exceptional situation of the beachfront plot. Between the road and the sea, civilisation and nature, the house is designed as a podium from which the gaze extends as far as the horizon. This platform facing the Atlantic defines an outside-inside, contained by the body-wall-screen marking the formal entrance into the inhabited area, sheltering it from “others” and the wind. The property brings together quintessential holiday amenities in the form of a swimming pool, amphitheatre and barbecue. The house’s more conventional plan extends “downward” over two floors in a kind of Roman cryptoportico which stabilises and accompanies the declivity of the terrain. Access is gained via a stairway which descends into the travertine outer skin, leading us “inside” the building. A moment of transition, announcing an “interior”. This interior welcomes us – before presenting us once again with the sea view, exposing itself. An inside-outside in which the landscape is the house and the house itself becomes the landscape. This connection is reinforced by the minimalist expression of the frames surrounding the great recessed windows. The window, in its classical sense, disappears. There is no perceptible boundary between the “inside” and the “outside” – just a series of voids hewn into the rocky mass.

An essay on the topic of dwelling, the Casa del Infinito is a place in which opposites are reconciled: culture-nature, man-environment, inside-outside. An ambivalence upon which the concept of holidays also rests. And perhaps that is the true essence of the holiday home: the art of inhabiting the space “between”.

1. Teyssot, G. (2005). A Topology of Thresholds. Home Cultures: The Journal of Architecture, Design and Domestic Space, Vol. 2(1), pp. 89-116)

2. Eyck, A. van (2008). Writings (Vol. 1). The Child, the City and the Artist. Amsterdam: SUN, p. 124. (written in 1962)

3. Eyck, A. van (2008). Writings (Vol. 2). Collected Articles and Other Writings 1947-1998. Amsterdam: SUN, p. 200. (originally published as Eyck, A. van (1959). Verhaal van een Andere Gedachte (The Story of Another Idea). Forum, 7)

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