We would like to introduce you to a new weekly series we will be featuring here on ArchDaily. This exciting new set of posts will pull projects from our ArchDaily archives, highlighting projects that were featured this week but in previous years.
Today’s selection includes an unconventional museum design in Germany, an educational recycling concrete center in Korea, three well-crafted projects from Finland that pay careful attention to material choices, and a re-imagined 1950s German “Siedlungshaus”. We hope you enjoy taking a look at these projects that deserve a revisit!
Mercedes Benz Museum
The geometric clover shaped museum, designed by dutch architects UN Studio, is situated just ten kilometers south from the Porsch Museum designed by Delugan Meissl. This museum provides visitors with a unique circulation experience immediately transporting them upon their arrival by elevator to the top floor of the building. Visitors then descend through the 35,000sqm building via two helical ascending ramps that connect the spaces and are situated around a central atrium.
According to Ben van Berkel, joint founder and director of UNStudio “The Mercedes‑Benz Museum sets up an interface for a series of radical spatial principles in order to create a completely new typology”.
Villa Mecklin
This house situated within the rocky island terrain of Naantali, Finland enhances a simplistic form with an acute attention to material selection and detailing. While the crisp interior hosts a small living space, the prominent terrace is truly the focal point of the design. The terrace extends dramatically toward the water and the sloping sides define the great view in a non-constrictive way. A sunken fireplace, accessed via a hatch in the decking, sits in the middle.
Hanil Visitors Center & Guest House
The concrete visitors center’s primary focus is to educate its patrons about the potential for recycling concrete. In sticking with this principle the Information Center is a complete example of how to re-use Korea’s primary building material in Korea. The recycled concrete was used in different types of construction including re-casting techniques and translucent and opaque tiles, to name a few.
Kuokkala Church
The predominantly wooden church in Finland combined the client’s desires to build ‘a church that looks like a church’ and the architects proposal of a simple sculptural form. Wooden materials used include locally sourced spruce, which was used throughout the church from its bearing structures to its interior surfaces and fixtures, ashwood for the church hall furnishings, and limewood, a species used historically for the carving of wooden icons, for the altar furniture. Roofed and clad in overlapping slate tiles, with wood and copper details around the entrances supplement the overall visual aspect, the church is flanked by a granite stairway and walls which, together with the bell tower on the square, usher visitors towards the main entrance.
WISA Wooden Design Hotel
This wooden hotel is situated in the maritime heart of Helsinki, capital of Finland. Surrounded by 200 years of architectural history the WISA Wooden Design Hotel is an outstanding example of wood’s versatility, which can be seen both as a load-bearing structure and decor in walls, ceilings and floors. The building is a composition of Finnish pine, spruce and birch, and a testimonial to their special characteristics.
House +
This seemingly common German two-story detached “Siedlungshaus” house, built in 1957, was renovated and transformed into a home that negotiates between the opposite architectural aspirations of the clients by forming an interesting contrast between Old and New. It has a unique, yet strangely familiar form that is generated by the light-hearted sensitivity to materiality and sense of place.
