*비트라 캠퍼스 [ SANAA ] Vitra Campus

SANAA가 설계한 비트라 캠퍼스는 비트라에서 생산하는 제품의 창고와 물류를 담당하는 물류시설로 30,000m2 가 넘는 거대한 규모-축구장 2개 이상의 크기-로 건축되었다. 재미있는 점은 이러한 거대한 시설이 일반적인 기능공간이 갖는 스퀘어볼륨 형태가 아닌 그 크기를 가늠하기 힘든 곡선 원형의 평면으로 설계되었다는 점이다. 그럼에도 불구하고 내부공간은 기능에 충실하도록 구분, 분리되어 제품의 적재, 보관과 제품의 출하동선이 혼선되지 않는다. 이러한 건축행위는 비트라가 추구하는 디자인의 지향점과 SANAA가 추구하는 건축의 지향점이 같은 선상에서 만나 미학, 기능, 구조가 단일화된 건축으로 발현된다. 내부의 기능적 분리는 제품의 종류와 보관기한에 따라 구분된 중앙 적재소를 기준으로 방사형태로 배치된 도크와 출하장의 구분으로 정의된다. -건축의 지향점은 주위 맥락을 흡수, 투영하는 거대한 단일 볼륨으로 비트라의 상징적인 랜드마크를 위해 제안된 디자인 이다.-

reviewed by SJ

It doesn’t happen often that a building with a total floor area of over 30,000 square metres hides its enormous dimensions in plain view. But standing in front of the new industrial building designed by SANAA on the Vitra Campus in Weil am Rhein, it is impossible to imagine either its exact form or size. To pull off the trick of concealing a building that covers more than three football fields, Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa of SANAA did not make use of a square plan, going against what appears to be the global norm for industrial factories and high-bay warehouses. Instead, they chose to design the structure with a circular form, and the fact that it’s also a slightly distorted circle makes it even more difficult to imagine the building’s layout without seeing a plan of it.

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SANAA: Vitra Factory Building
Design Architects: Kazuyo Sejima + Ryue Nishizawa / SA NAA , in collaboration with nkbak
Design Team SANAA: Marieke Kums (ex-staff), Takayuki Hasegawa
Design Team nkbak: Nicole Kerstin Berganski, Andreas Krawczyk
Local Architect: Mayer Bährle Freie
Structural Engineering: Bollinger und Grohmann GmbH, SAPS – Sasaki and Partners (consultant)
Engineering: Henne & Walter (HVAC), IB Schwarz (ELT), IB Horstmann + Berger (BP), Transsolar (energy & climate), Baumgartner GmbH (MCR), IBB Grefrath (fire), IB Roth (landscaping)
Building contractor: Moser GmbH & Co. KG
Façade: Strabag
Site area: 47,000 square metres
Building footprint: 20,445 square metres
Total floor area: 30,535 square metres
Building height: 11,4 metres
Design phase: 2006–2007
Construction phase: 2007–2012

With the Vitra warehouse and logistics building, SANAA has turned the design of an industrial structure into an exercise in architectural sublimity. Externally it plays down its dimensions and gives no indication as to its interior functions. Inside it surprises with its brightness and lucidity. The general impression of elegance is not an end in itself, but a clear response to the functional parameters and the human need for a serene and dignified workplace. The only thing that perhaps seems to be missing, however, is a clue to help maintain one’s sense of orientation. With its overall whiteness inside, and with few visible openings to the exterior besides the skylights in the roof, after a while it seems almost impossible to imagine one’s physical position in this vast, indeterminate space.

SANAA’s factory building appears to have one extra quality that can only be appreciated in the context of its immediate surroundings on the Vitra Campus. Many of the buildings here are small but iconic architectural objects that also have a strong visual impact when seen in two-dimensional photographs. Over almost two decades now, thanks to a variety of commissions to famous or famous-to-be architects, this campus has developed into something of an architectural zoo.

It started off in 1989 with Frank Gehry’s Vitra Design Museum, his first building in Europe, which in this neighbourhood at the time looked more like a white elephant. The zoo gained a really wild tiger with the addition of Zaha Hadid’s Vitra Fire Station in 1993, and more recently, in 2010, Herzog & de Meuron contributed another spectacular, acrobatic and iconic building with the VitraHaus, conceived as a stacked house of houses. SANAA’s factory building seems revolutionary in this milieu because it opens up a completely different direction. It almost camouflages itself on the outside, preferring not to create a spectacular image despite its sheer size. Is this attitude a result of modesty, or is it an immediate response to the spirit of our time that turns against architectural icons? Maybe it is both. Andres Lepik, professor of Architectural History at Technische Universität München

from  domusweb