Dønning Community Building / JVA

Architects: Jarmund/Vigsnæs AS Architects MNAL
Location: Kleppstad, Norway
Client: Dønning Youth Society
Start Date: July 2005
Completion Date: July 2006
Design Team: Einar Jarmund, Håkon Vigsnæs, Alessandra Kosberg, Stian Schjeldrup, Nikolaj Zamecznik
Site Area: 2,500 sqm
Constructed Area: 400 sqm
Photographs: Jarmund / Vigsnæs AS, John Stenersen


The old building for the Dønning Youth Society, an independent and local community organization, burnt down December 13th 2004. The new building combines rest facilities and a café for tourists in the tourist season with a community building for the rest of the year.

The site slopes towards the water. The vegetation is low, indicating the harsh local climatic conditions. The building stands on its own, not unlike the big rocks you find scattering the Norwegian landscapes left from glacial activities.
The building is relatively closed, with the central communal space surrounded by supporting functions. The entrance is made visible almost as a big mouth, a clear cut, which reveals the interior. The large glass opening also gives contact with the midnight sun.

The structure is resolved as simple and cost efficient as possible. The exterior is covered in corrugated fiber cement boards. The large openings are covered in wooden paneling, painted brightly red.
The building is completed within a very limited budget defined by a preliminary design by a local builder. Both design and construction was done within one year, and the building was completed as a cooperative effort among the members of the youth society.

Switch Building / nArchitects

Architect: nArchitects
Location: New York, USA
Project Year: 2004-2007
Design Team: Eric Bunge, Mimi Hoang (Partners); Daniela Zimmer (Project Architect), Jorge Pereira, Takuya Shinoda
Client: 109 Norfolk, LLC
Constructed Area: 1,328 sqm
Program: Art gallery on Ground & Cellar Floors & 5 condo apartments
Photographs: Frank Oudeman & nArchitects


Switch Building is a 7 storey apartment and art gallery building at 109 Norfolk Street in the Lower East Side, New York City. The building consists of four floor-through apartments, a duplex penthouse, and a double height art gallery on the ground and cellar levels. nARCHITECTS provided full architectural services for the project, including all interior design.

The project’s design emerges from a creative interpretation of some of the narrow constraints imposed by zoning and the developer’s needs. The “switching” concept opportunistically maximizes difference while maintaining the efficiencies of repetition. In a reinterpretation of a traditional New York bay window, an angled front facade switches back and forth, allowing each floor-through apartment unique views up and down Norfolk Street and creating subtle variations in shadows and reflections. From the inside, the bay windows provide deep window seats surrounded by warm hardwood.
At the rear of each apartment, the living space extends out to large 7′x12′-6″ balconies - the largest allowed by zoning, which also shift side to side, creating double-height spaces between balconies to maximize afternoon light and neighborly interactions. While the apartment plans are identical, these variations allow each unit to be unique in its light qualities and views to the city.

While amenities and services such as bay windows, air conditioners and balconies often retain their identity as prefabricated products that are added onto normative facades, Switch Building incorporates them into the cladding. The building’s standard through-wall Packaged Thermal AC units (PTACS) are disguised with custom grilles situated between the Galvalume panels that alternate in direction from floor to floor. The grilles appear as modulations of the cladding, somewhat similar to fish gills: the panels narrow incrementally and pivot outward as they pass over the mechanical units. The underside of the balconies are clad in the same galvalume panels, and the cladding of the bay window continuous in plan to cover adjacent areas without projections. These normally separate entities are therefore redistributed as primary attributes of the building’s form.

The new nonprofit Switch Gallery expands its boundaries with the street via a black hot-rolled steel and glass storefront and canopy that open completely to the sidewalk. At the rear of the gallery, visitors descend into a double-height volume illuminated by a large skylight. The gallery’s plan maximizes wall space in a fluid spatial continuity, while working around the obstacles of the residential core and lobby with which it shares its footprint. The gallery introduces a larger scale into the Lower East Side’s burgeoning art scene, which has been primarily inserting cultural programs into former tenement buildings.

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facade cladding diagram

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Extension and renovation of the Ljubljana City Museum / OFIS arhitekti

Architect: OFIS arhitekti
Location: Ljubljana, Slovenia
Design Year: 1998-2000
Construction Year: 2000-2004
Project leaders: Rok Oman & Špela Videčnik
Design Team: Rok Oman, Špela Videčnik, Rok Gerbec, Josip Konstantinovič, Karla Murovec, Damjan Bradač
Competition Design Team: Rok Oman, Špela Videčnik, Lidija Dragišič, Marko Coloni
Client: Mestni muzej Ljubljana
Constructed Area: 2,650 sqm (existing building) / 790 sqm (extension)
Structural Engineering: ELEA IC d. o. o
Budget: 6,71M Euro (US $10,6M)
Photographs: Tomaz Gregoric

The project involves the renovation and extending of the Auersperg Palace, which is located in the heart of the protected historical city centre. The palace and the plot have a very rich history dating from the prehistoric period to Roman and medieval times. Each era added something to the building.
During the course of history the purpose of the palace changed several times, such that the existing organization of the floor plan was not suitable for hosting a museum programme. The spaces were labyrinthine and disconnected.

The competition entry suggested a spiral itinerary for the visitor through the exhibition spaces and proposed an added element to connect the wings of the palace.

The first spiral. The walk starts underground at -3 m, where the ground level of Ljubljana was situated in prehistory. Since the city’s ground level rose over the years the walkway ascends through the era of Rome, represented by an original Roman road, then medieval and baroque Ljubljana, where the museum bar is located, before returning to the ground-floor lobby. The archaeology is preserved in situ - no stone has been relocated.
The courtyard floor bifurcates and rises parallel to this path and the location of the Roman road; it forms a roof above the stepped archaeology.

The second spiral functions as a roof over the archaeology from level -3 m to level zero, rising above the courtyard and becoming a level balcony, thus affording different views of the courtyard and the palace.

The third spiral continues inside the palace on level +4 m as a balcony overlooking the main hall. Ascending up the old staircase, the spiral becomes a suspended ceiling (at +7.5 m), containing the whole service infrastructure: climate control, diffuse lighting, the sound and fire protection system. The suspended spiral continues through the rooms, taking the visitor through the exhibition.

The same situation is repeated on the next floor (at +12.5 m).

The existing palace was renovated using necessary, minimal elements like frameless windows and doors and neutral materials. The exhibition spaces are preserved at their original size, as per the conservation programme. Furniture in the palace is integrated within the existing walls. The oak used is local oak, and the colours of the glazed surfaces arise from those used by archaeologists to define different historical eras.
At the time of the competition it was thought that there would more archaeological remains on the site but it was not known where these might be and what importance they would have. This part of the project had to be flexible and adaptable, therefore. The proposed solution was an open-plan basement with an adaptable structural system. The structural plans were drawn as a 3D-computer module that was adapted in relation to the suggestions of the archaeologists.