Portfolio Book & Conditions Magazine

Some of the work of visiondivision is featured in the 8000 gram heavy Korean book "Portfolio".

We are also a proud contributor to the Scandinavian Conditions Magazine's latest issue "The politics of quality management" where a flamboyant illustration from the team is featured.

Damdi's Portfolio

Conditions Magazine

Dedication

visiondivision in Residence

Residence, the best-selling home style magazine in Sweden, includes an article about visiondivision in their September issue where the magazine proclaims that the young team "is on their way to become the most exciting architecture office in Sweden".

The talents was photographed inside Hill Hut and talked about architecture, their projects and how they got started. A pleasant read.

Noah's House overflow warning system

The final detail of Noah's House is finally finished; an overflow warning system designed as a totem pole changing its mood with the water level.
This is a capture of the final testing performed in the bathroom at the office.
The much anticipated images of Noah’s House will be published later this autumn.

Hollow

Inside the sukkah

Competition entry for Sukkah City, where one where asked to design a modern sukkah.
A sukkah is a temporary hut created for an annual jewish harvest festival.
A large number of design constraints where implied in the competition, for example the sukkah had to have a roof made out of branches, but they couldn't be in bundles, there of our construction technique, using compression.

As this sukkah is erected in one of the most populated and dense places on Earth filled with built structures and a stressful ambience it changes its function from its initial protection purpose from sandy winds and a blazing sun to a shelter from building mass, infrastructure, scale, city pace and constant movement.
The intention is to build something that differs in scale and pace from the rest of the city. When entering the sukkah, you automatically slow your pace and behaviour and switches to a resting position due to the physical restrictions that makes up the space.
An undulated ceiling, never higher than a man’s length, changes the conditions for social interaction and behaviour.
You are no longer able to perform as you are used to under normal circumstances, your strength and speed is reduced and you are no longer a potential physical threat to your surroundings. The different heights and thickness of the roof sets the atmosphere.
The hollow reed changes its light and visible permeability by how thick it is.

The space itself comprises of two interlinked rooms; a social area for dining and interactions and a more closed space for sleeping and star gazing.


The pavillion in Union Square, New York City


Inside the pavillion


Night time aerial


Model

Building manual;

1. Material needed;
Hollow reeds, saw, lopper, wooden planks


2 The planks are cut up so they will form an interlocking adjustable frame which will hold the reeds in place.


3. The reeds are kept in an upright position with one of the planks and are adjusted back as the amount of reed is added.

4. The construction is watered with a mix of potato starch and water, making the reed swell and the wood frame expand a bit, thus making the construction more stable.
The potato starch makes the reed a bit more sticky and holds everything together better.

5. The trimming of the reed can begin.
Space is cut out according to the plan and the light intake can be adjustable by cutting the reeds shorter on top of the structure.

Plan

Roof plan

Section

Cancer City

Cancer City on dry land before putting it in the river

A country gentlemen once bought 10000 crayfishes in the 90’s to plant in a stream running through his land. In the autumn he would capture about a hundred of them to eat at the annual Swedish crayfish parties. The crayfishes however slowly started to emigrate to another nearby lake outside the patron’s estate. Desperate of seeing his neighbors feast on his crayfishes, he contacted visiondivision to solve his problem.
Visiondivision decided to help the patron by building him a refugee where the crayfishes could imigrate back. By investigating the condition of the stream we soon found out that it was the lack of stones, hiding places and the lack of calcite that probably had made the crayfishes emigrate. The city planning would focus on solving these issues.

The design became an undulated concrete landscape where the crayfish live inside the hills. The hills are equipped with lids so the gentleman can walk on top of the landscape, capturing his yearly crayfish quota. A white path runs on the construction so the hunter can hunt at night time when the crayfish are as most active. Water proof LED lights are attached inside the hills that attract the crayfish and make them visible for the hunter. The hills have several escape holes and underground safe zones so the hunting won’t be too easy which would be unjust to the crayfishes.




Cancer City in the stream


Crayfish in their new home town


Crayfish picking


Cancer City close up


Crayfish peeking out

The choice of material was crucial for the success of the project. The construction obviously should be water resistance, the city should be strong enough to carry some full grown persons or animals walking on it, the city should also provide shelter to the crayfishes and the construction should not be too heavy since it should be moved to a remote place where no machines can go. The choice of material became "Butong"; a lightweight slightly transparent concrete invented by the firm with the same name.
Butong is only two centimeters in depth without any metal reinforcement that can rust and the mould could be bendable after casting which enabled us to make an undulated landscape of concrete without having to build time consuming casting forms. Another attribute with Butong is that it includes calcite; a substance that attracts crayfishes.

The exquisite concrete endeavour is now resting in the stream waiting for its inhabitants to arrive. Walking on the flawless craftsmanship just one week after inauguration we met one of the first inhabitants staring at us from its new nest.


Emigration/imigration diagram


Plan/diagram


Section


Drawings explaining the building process

Breaking News

Hill Hut is once again in the eye of the media hurricane, now on the front page of Dagens Nyheter, the biggest newspaper in Sweden reaching millions of people every day.
If you can't get a hold of a paper, you can see the article here.

Superblog under construction

As you see we are implementing our main flash page into this blog, making it a superblog. Please have patience if it is not working properly in the next few days.
/The management

Svartvit

This is a competition entry for a municipality building in Täby, a suburb outside Stockholm.

A municipality building is both a general work space that constantly changes and evolves and a representative house for democracy.
These different functions in one single building can give a rather messy impression and be hard to read and therefore unable to communicate its important content to its citizens.
With our proposal have we tried to separate the different functions by layering them on each other and give them a different appearance depending on function.
This clear idea is also stated in the interior of the building where the different parts are designed according to its function.
The lower part of the building is the institutional and also the public.
This part is designed as open and as accessible as possible. A grand stair goes from the main square to a smaller square that is shared with the adjacent library where outdoor meetings and other events can be arranged.
An acrylic dome that holds the assembly hall pierces the main square from where you can look down on the meetings and also hear them with earphones; one of many democratic gestures that is typical for the lower part of the building to show the transparency in the politics.
The upper part of the building is the non-public one where the officials can work in privacy. This part with general and highly effective offices is raised from the public sector thus creating a roof for the square.


Exterior view of the municipality building facing the new public square


The assembly hall


Exterior view from the library square


Aerial view showing the two seperate functions of the building


Perspective section



Siteplan and plans

Cauldron Claw

Visiondivision has made a flaming bathtub for an old man in the very north of Sweden.

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.
The stream under the tub gives the fire a steady flow of air through the perforations.
A steel plate regulates the flow of the water from the creek and has medicinal plants growing on it, to give the bath a soothing experience for aching bodies as the water trickles through this pharmacy of nature and in to the cauldron.
The first phase of 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.
When the winter finally subdued and turned the landscape around the Cauldron Claw into a lush and paradisesque environment, we went back to pick the medicinal plants and constructed the steel aqueduct and witnessed the old man take his premiere bath.

See the movie of the building process here or the premiere bath here.

More Classics in the Archives

We have uploaded more classic projects from the old days in our blog archive.
Browse the Project list and you will see projects like;
Noble Savage, Pit Stop, Picnic City, Coca-Cola Housing, VD Saves the world, Våga, Propyard and more.