Urban Fade

Competition entry for Koivusaari Idea Competition, to create a new city district on a small island just outside Helsinki, Finland.


View from the archipelago


Urban plan


The new district

In Koivusaari you will experience a great urban diversity on a
relatively small island; a dense city core that gradually fades
to smaller premises and that eventually becomes archipelago.
The island becomes a distillation of the best qualities
that each one of the urban typologies has to offer; the intense
city center with offi ces, shops and services close to the bus
and subway station, the medium sized town with more green
areas, restaurants and residential units, the small town that
lies almost in a park situation and fi nally the archipelago with
public piers and pavilions with good life activities.
By keeping it dense, the distances between the new districts
parts is kept short and you don’t have to do so much fi llings
around the island to get a lively city area. This is good for both
the environment and from a economical point of view.


Overlooking the island

Almost every residential unit has a sea view and they also have
a glass room that cantilevers from the façade, creating a new
typology, a deluxe room where you have a panorama over the
ocean and where you can enjoy the cityscape to the fullest.
The city grid is highly effi cient and has many advantages; it
creates lines of views, it has many options of moving around
in the district and it makes the variation in the building scales
even more dramatic, an optical illusion that enhances the
archipelago backdrop.
Koivusaari is planned to accommodate around 5000 people
and have 2500 working places. The island will have about
200 000 m2 residential space, 75000 m2 office space and
45000m2 business premises that makes a total built floor
space area of 320 000 m2.
The land area is a little bit more than 175000 m2.


Street view


Housing prototypes


Plexi model, partly made on the boat to Helsinki

The jury divided the different proposals into four categories; "Upper Class", "Middle Class", "Lower Middle Class" and "Lower Class".
Apparently we were placed in the "Lower Middle Class" category.

Here is the winner and an Upper Class project according to the Finnish elite thinkers;


Kuunari by Ilja Svärd, the winner and one of the "Upper Class" projects.
Congratulations wishes all of us at the lower middle class office visiondivision.
Hopefully we will one day be as good as you! Inshallah

Sahara Field Trip

Visiondivision goes to Sahara to research the phenomenon of dew.

Dew is water droplets that are created when hot humid air is cooled down during the night.
The cool air cannot maintain the entire moisture, and some of the humidity condenses into droplets. These droplets appear on exposed and thin objects, like an umbrella for example. The glossy material makes the droplets slide down into its center before it can evaporate when the sun rises. Lets see how the vd team used this knowledge in the field

Noah's House – a report from the building site

The design

A client wanted help to build a small summer house inside of an old shed. The shed is just next to the Baltic Sea and has been exposed to overflows every tenth year or so. Knowing that the house probably will be exposed to another overflow forced a specific design.
To build a totally waterproof house would be to expensive, so this house is constructed as a lizards tail. If one part of the building gets exposed to water that particular part can easily be replaced without affecting the rest of the building.
The whole building is constructed by spruce boards and spruce pillars and with no synthetic materials what so ever. The horizontal spruce boards can be taken away when exposed to water to dry and later be put back or be replaced by a new one. The insulation can easily be taken out and be replaced too.


plan


Section

A report from the building site

AB (Anders Berensson) worked as a carpenter on this project that turned out to be more like an architectural jam between AB and the client. The program and the building materials constantly changed with the clients daily mood swings and discoveries of cheap building materials. Sometimes the ideas turned out too be quite genius and fun; like putting a wire through the house to be able to drag the boat to its winter position with the clients jeep. Other times ideas had to be rejected such as building a huge hill in front of the house to protect it from huge waves.
Living on this remote island during the winter months while building the house could also be quite harsh, the house AB lived in had heating problems and a constant smell of manure. Despite some harsh condition, we are confident that the result of the design will be successful in the end.
In a couple of months we will know for sure.

The project started out with two days of cleaning. Big things that could not be removed by man power like a container for chemicals where pulled out from the house with the Jeep. This technique was later on refined to take up the boat.

The cleaned out shed

Inner walls and insulation completed

Inner materials almost done

Mass in the Tio chapel

An unique documentation of an ancient sacrificial ritual in the visiondivision designed chapel in Potosi, Bolivia. See http://thegoldbrain.blogspot.com/2008/06/capilla-para-el-tio.html for more information.

Capilla para el Tio was by far the most physically challenging project we ever done so far.
The project took five days to complete and was extremely demanding and dangerous.
We couldn’t work while the miners were inside of the mountain because we couldn’t be an obstruction for them in the narrow passages, and at some periods of the building process we definitely would have annoyed them if we would have been there at the same time. When we detonated our dynamite for example or spray painted the cave with highly toxic paint, which was the only alternative in this remote and underdeveloped part of the world.
The only time when the mine was empty was at night time, so we had to cope with extreme cold which in combination with the altitude on 4200 meters makes you uncomfortable. Luckily we had the coca leaves, hard liquor and a great companion in our Bolivian guide and dynamite specialist.
Half of the time we spend in the mines was to give our respect to the older Tio inside of the mine.
We had to offer him great amounts of coca leaves, cigarettes, liquor, and we also had to drink to his name.
Inhaling all that toxic paint inside of a mine is of course not good for you, especially if your only protection is a coffee filter for your mouth. We both got very sick after this project but we are proud and happy that we built it.
We came in contact with a professional sculptor that were supposed to do the Tio, but something came up and he couldn’t deliver it in time, we therefore contracted a local woman who at first didn’t want to do the Tio because she thought it was an inappropriate motive, but after some raise in her salary, she accepted.
To sit next to the hardworking miners on the opening party of the chapel and see how they gave offerings to the new Tio and thanked us for the project, was a great reward after all our efforts put into this project.
Some people haven’t fully understood this project, rejecting it as something trashy, and not belonging to the stylish family of architecture perhaps. We can clearly see that it is hard in a western world to fully take it in if you are not aware of the circumstances.
But sitting in this highest located chapel in the world with your fellow miners, imbedded in a spellbinding red color that glitters in the light of the headlamps, as a contrast to all the blackness and misery in the cave, is a profound experience that you almost cannot feel in the developed world nowadays.

Rejected Wikipedia submission

The modern Swedish Architect (Architectus boringus)

Living: The Swedish architect lives and breeds on the island Södermalm in Stockholm.
You can easily spot the modern architect by wearing a black turtleneck and trendy glasses, often with a characteristic fragile walk to enhance their appearance of being an emotional human being.

Behavior: Swedish architects tend to group in big formations whenever there are free food and drinks around. Architectural wise they follow interior programs on TV or old Swiss trends from the mid90s.

To get a positive interaction with a Swedish modern architect you should name drop different Herzog & deMeuron projects and complain about the shallowness of Frank O Gehry.
Overall the Swedish modern architect has a strong flock behavior, having the advantage that they are easily replaced at work.

Unfortunately this leads to a monotone architecture production with no highs and no lows in it what so ever.


Architectus boringus

Ultra Cheap Guesthouse

An old vd project is finally finished, a scrubby storage that has been transformed into a guest-/weaving house.
The house can accommodate four to eight guests depending on comfort.
Due to the lack of money, new inventions had to be made, as well as material purchases from Blocket, a Swedish second hand site.

Plexiglas door "Sigurd Lewerentz style”.

Interior with multifunctional beam, notice that the door is closed.

Magic shelf detail.

Because this is a summer residence, the need for insulation are not vital, so all the new windows are made in plexiglas, a much cheaper material than glass, and it is also possible to make the appearance more slick.

Shelves can also be drilled right through the plexi for that patented vd look.

Loft with custom made bed

Exterior

Plan and section

Burn

The architecture school of Delft was burned to the ground after some misfortunes with a microwave, and a competition for a new school was held. Visiondivision reused one thing from the former school for their new design; the fire itself.
Click on the images to magnify them and to read the story about a naive youngster with architecture ambitions and his journey to a greater understanding of Architecture.

Superhero Ambition

Visiondivision are involved in the design of a garage for a private client.
The client wants to do a tunnel 40 meter inside of a mountain to be able to park his car there and take an elevator six floors up to his private house.
The ambition alone demands a design for a superhero.
We cannot tell you more about this project right now, but we can give you a sneak peek of a possible outcome.

Cauldron Claw - The Movie

Visiondivision makes a flaming bathtub for an old man.

An old welder wanted a bath in his childhood creek in the deep forests of Northern Sweden.
Old metal scrap was welded together and fused as legs to a bath tub from the WWI.
Custom made metal hooks carry a perforated steel plate that hangs over the creek, where you put logs to heat the water inside the tub.
A metal sheet regulates the flow of water from the creek to the tub.
The project was carried out during winter time so that we could transport the heavy structure on the hard snow all the way to the site.
The old welder will take a bath in his cauldron claw as soon as the snow melts away.
Drawings and additional images will come soon.

The visiondivision game

We have made you a Christmas gift; a game where you must fight pointless architecture that threatens to ruin our planet.

To play the game, go to www.visiondivision.com click on the extra button and then you will eventually see the game icon.

Happy holidays dear friends!

The visiondivision team