Circular economy | Temporal pavilion | Sep 2019

Design for disassembly

“Nothing is created, nothing is lost; everything is transformed”

In my exchange semester i studies at École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland. During the studie we had an excursion to a tram depot station in Bern, where the existing structure was about to be demolished. Through a 3-day workshop we discovered a lot of the qualities of this building like its steel structure, the brick envelope, the windows, roof etc. Instead of demolishing this building, the company Losinger Marazzi (the owners) wants to deconstruct it and replace it with apartment housing.

It was then proposed, to repurpose the structure in a flexible multipurpose building in Thun, 30km away from Bern. The site in Thun is also owned by Losinger Marazzi and are part of a developing site, where a new office building will be built on the same plot in 10 years. But in the meantime, this structure could be used to pre-activate the area. Losinger Marazzi gave us some requirements of what they envisioned could happen inside the building. We ordered these in 4 groups: art & culture, sports, shopping and gastronomy.

Context

We started by analysing the site surroundings and quickly discovered, that the city center and the western suburb are greatly divided by the industrial area. Only one long, wide and fast road connects them together and is primarily flanked by a repetition of enclosed volumes behind fences. This is a hostile, unpersonal area and we decided to make it our mission to create a “rasthoff” a pitstop between the two where recreation could emerge. To emphasize this, we wanted to steer away form the enclosed volume and instead make an open, rhythmic colonnade. This created a sudden break, a pause and then a shining monument, something different and interest, worth investigating!

Imposing circular economy

The core concept of our project derives from circular economy, because we truly think that the Tram depot has some real value. Not just material value, but also intrinsic value. It is a structure with a story and we wanted to transport that to Thun. It is not however possible to move an entire building at once and we therefore choose to introduce a new system, a new order. An idea where we are thinking disassembly rather than demolition. A system with is transportable, flexible, reusable and adaptable. This is both a subtractive and a transformative process. A so called “upstream reuse on a system level” Here we are taking the build apart meticulously and loading it into containers. We are also taking the otherwise discarded bricks and doing a “component upcycle” by filling them into a metal frame and tightening it up to make it a single element. This labour is unskilled and can therefore also be thought of as socially sustainable.

For the new system we also introduce a new element: high durability tarp. This material is preferable due to its low cost and CO2 footprint, translucency and flexibility in use. We are also using this as our building character defining element.

New aesthetic

With a new order we also get a new aesthetic. But even more so a new philosophy about buildings. Cause instead of seeing the building as a linear lifecycle that start in construction and ends in demolition, we can now perceive it as a looping lifecycle that starts in assembly and ends in disassembly. A loop which is starting to imitate the motion of a mobius loop. A practical illusion where the insides of the object becomes the outside of the object through the turning of time. A little bit the same way that our building get stored in the shipping envelop and the expands anew to become the new envelope on site – sheltering the previous shipping containers.

This notion of boxes inside of boxes is a great metaphor, but our system however holds more properties then just that. Because this system is constructed of wall panels, we can choose to arrange them however we like and adapt them to a completely new situation in the future. It can actually become 7 different façades by just iterating the way it is installed on site. They all have different ways of interacting with light/ shadow, open/closed.

Architectural composition

For the site in Thun we choose to compose 2 very different building, that would inevitably contradict each other. One being an introvert, monumental exhibition space and the other an extrovert, inviting social space. These buildings have different ambient atmospheres and therefore also facilitates different functions. Common for them both however is the two opposing linear axes’ in which the flow of people and functions inscribe. The one creating circulation under the rhythmic colonnades and the other providing movement to the functions on reused rails. These moveable, repurposed shipping containers, can slide in an out of the building volumes and provide functions and actions for both the inside and the outside areas.

The project was made in collaboration with Simon Fischer. [GER]