Build March Issue

Build Magazine 26 ive years ago, back in April 2011, after 16 years of successful architectural collaboration, Farshid Moussavi and Alejandro Zaera-Polo parted ways, causing the cessation of their joint firm Foreign Office Architects (FOA). The firm was set up in 1995 by Zaera-Polo and his, then wife, Moussavi, who met while both were working at Koolhaa’s Office for Metropolitan Architecture. Over the 14 years of operation by the company, which was based in the Shoreditch area of London, they went on to win a number of RIBA prizes and the Venice Architecture Biennale Award in 2004. Additionally the firm was lauded for their many projects such as the Yokohama International Ferry Terminal in Japan which was noted for its use of dramatic form, innovative materials, and fascination with the interplay of architecture, landscape and nature. This structure was credited by the Design Museum as ‘a design sensation alive with bustling urbanity and seaside tranquillity.’ Another project of note by the pairing, prior to the firm’s dissolution, was the Meydan retail complex in Istanbul. The architects themselves described the aims of this development as being ‘to perform not just as a proficient retail complex but as a true urban centre for the future development of one of the fastest growing areas in Istambul. The building anticipates through its geometry and circulation strategy its subsequent integration into a dense inner city context aiming to formulate an alternative prototype to the usual out-of-town retail box development. The provision of underground car parking is a major part of this strategy, liberating substantial amount of ground floor space to be used for landscaped areas and a new urban square in the centre of the scheme. The roof is fitted also with roof lights that provide daylight and ventilation to the inner spaces. All the surfaces of the project that are not planted with greenery, both elevations and floor surfaces, are clad or paved with the same material: earth-coloured ceramic tiles that incorporate various degrees of perforation depending on functions and uses behind. The Carabanchel social housing complex in Madrid also managed to impress, especially when one considers the limitations the architects faced when crafting their designs for the structure. The firm at the time described the project as, ‘operating within a severely limited budget, the Carabanchel Social Housing project was 100 social housing units on the outskirts of Madrid. The development, within a regeneration area, bounded by a new urban park on the west and on the north, east and south with similar housing blocks. Regulations set the number of units and the percentages of every size. The maximum height was also a constraint, but not the alignment within the rectangular plot. Given the adjacency to the future urban park and the North-South orientation of the site, the firm proposed to compact the volume within the given height to provide a private garden for the units on the eastern side and to produce double aspect units facing both gardens. In order to achieve this, the units became elongated “tubes” that connect both facades. Thanks to the compactness of the block, they succeeded in providing fully glazed façades for all the exterior surfaces. The facades have been lined with a 1.5m wide terrace which provides a semi-exterior buffer space enclosed with bamboo screens mounted on folding frames. The screens protect the glazed surfaces from the strong East-West solar exposure, and are able to open to the side gardens when desired. The target to provide the maximum amount of space, flexibility and quality to the residences, erasing the visibility of the units and their differences into a single volume with a homogeneous skin, able to incorporate a gradation of possibilities was accomplished. In the words of the architects themselves, ‘the primary architectural effect of the building is not dependent on the architect’s vision, but as an effect of the inhabitants choice, as if the facade was a register at any given moment of a cumulative effect of individuals’ choices.’ Despite the firm’s success however, personal issues between the couple led to the aforementioned closure of the firm. However, this did not mean that the world would be deprived of their architectural prowess. Like the hydra who sprouts two limbs when one is sundered, where there was one firm, now there are two. Farshid Moussavi started her eponymously named, London-based international architectural practice FMA later in 2011. Among its completed projects are, the acclaimed Cleveland Museum of Contemporary Art in Ohio, designed to serve as a catalyst for creativity and growth in a cosmopolitan Cleveland neighbourhood home to one of the country’s largest concentrations of cultural, educational and medical institutions, completed in 2012. FMA also was invited to exhibit at the 13th Venice Architecture Biennale with their ‘Architecture and its Affects’ installation. The firm described their installation as identifying ‘the common ground across built forms by organising them not through original motives, intended meanings, historical ideas or their author, but simply based on their actual existence in the world; their affects. The installation aimed to show that in order to generate different experiences within everyday life and culture, architecture must accept common ground. ‘ The Victoria Beckham Flagship Store in London brought the firm back to its adopted shores of the UK. FMA is currently working on a range of prestigious international projects including an office complex in the City of London, a department store in Paris and a residential complex in the La Défense area of the Architects of theMonth F