INCHIOSTRO - In the Heart of the Haus

INCHIOSTRO

IN THE HEART OF THE HAUS OF HERZOG & DE MEURON.

Marco Atzori - Originally published in C3 n°308 1004

The work of Herzog & de Meuron has entered some time ago an extraordinary field, away from conventional terms. It is a research that is focused on the production of iconic and singular objects with a powerful visual impact.
In this second phase of their carrier, in which they seem to be inverting some paradigms that channeled their work where the personal expression, the language and style are focused on the research of the material characteristic and on the way in which materials are manifested in construction. A number of projects belong to this phase, such as the De Young Museum in San Francisco, the headquarters of the Caixa Forum in Madrid and recently the Vitra Haus in the Vitra Campus in Weil am Rheim.

Aimed at hosting the Vitra Home Collection, the building of Herzog & de Meuron holds iconographic force of their latest works obtained through the superimposition and rotation of a pure volume in space of which is the archetype of the individual dwelling. The conceptual construction of the Vitra Haus can consequently be read as a process of different stages in which a first level is defined by the abstraction of a building type, the individual dwelling, which is in turn “represented”, transferred to a symbolic level. A second level is obtained from the materialization of a new spatial unit obtained from the manipulation of the primary element. The two levels are inescapably related to the perception of the two scales; the “domestic” scale that is intimately related to the representation of the individual dwelling and the public scale that is embodied in the overall final outcome. A picturesque and an ambiguous expositive landscape is obtained from their overlap where the meanings that the work of Herzog & de Meuron would like to assume is founded whether in the relationship to their context, their host, or to the function for which they are designated. The overall structure turns into a new landmark for the Vitra Campus and to this the more public role is associated among the Campus buildings, whereas its interior is immediately brought back to the mise-en-scène of the domestic realm, as a spatial support to the exposition of the Vitra Home Collection. To this reading the links between the inside and the outside could be referred throughout the transparent facades. Also the facades can contribute to the construction of an interior domestic space, to the view from the dwelling window, while from the outside they are perceived as transparencies capable of triggering public relationships among the various building levels.

The dual reading is better read in the choice of surfaces treatment, where the external skin is dark while the inner one are tinted in white. The color and the material of the external skin reinforce the relations with the outside while the white inside creates the spatial background that is most appropriate to the exposition of objects and at the same time amplifies the abstraction process of the domestic space.

The overall perceptions, the superimposition of scales and dimensions would not have been as effective as they are had not Herzog & de Meuron organized the internal spatial development vertically instead of horizontally. The ambiguous choice of verticality seems to belong rather to the urban dimension, to the optimization of land use, where it fails elsewhere, unlike the low density of such as in the Vitra Campus. This decision is fundamentally revealed in the construction of the space because it allows the multiplication of the relations among the various building parts and produces internal spatial sequences rich with suggestions in which the intersection among volumes generates significant patches, out of the refined and unusual geometries. A secret and organic world, as the architects themselves define it, within which the visitor moves and observes a possible program of the domestic space which is defined by the objects produced by Vitra in the course of time.

The philosophy and the great attention that Vitra dedicated to the relationship between design and architecture allowed Herzog & de Meuron to design and construct a significant piece of work which in the coming years will become the referential foundation in the conception of the exhibition space.
Marco Atzori.