During hot summer days, the sealed environment of a city raises the temperature. Especially asphalt-paved areas reinforce that effect. In Montreal, the Arcadia Studio designed “La Vague”, a project which converts five parking lots into a refreshing public space for relaxing and socialising. 74 wooden frames are arranged around the urban hideout, creating the illusion of a wave hitting the pavement.
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Temporarily “Placottoir”
The designers were inspired by two sources: The first one is the invention of the Parklet in San Francisco. A very small park, which usually turns expendable parking lots into places with seating and planting. The parklets improve the sojourn quality of its urban environment and encourages socialisation and relaxation between the people. In Montreal, these areas are known as “Placottoir” – a place to chat. The second inspiration came from Europe and has not yet established itself on the American continent: Misters. This device consists of small nozzles, which release steam, cooling down the surrounding air by approximately five degrees Celsius.
Energizing Passage
“La Vague”, the French word for “Wave”, is 22 metres long and two and a half metres wide. The 74 wooden frames are placed around the passage and are offset in a three-degree interval. Together with its turquoise painting, the twisted arrangement is a reminiscent of a wave. 45 nozzles are attached to the frames and release the refreshing steam into the sculpture. Within the wave, people can sit on benches and enjoy their time between planted anchors. “La Vague” adds a playful and social component to the dreary environment of a grey streetscape and generates an action-reaction effect on pedestrians.
„Make sense“ is the name of the exhibition about the Swedish architectural company White Arkitekter with double meaning: the achitects want their work to be understood in a sensual and meaningful way. A collection of their work can be seen in the Munich Architectural Gallery until 19th of May. White Arkitekter motivate to deal with the use of sustainable materials, the effects of northern light and not least with the human in space.
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Interdisciplinary teams create sustainable solutions
White Arkitekter is one of the largest European planing office with over 900 employees. Founded in 1951 by Sid White, the Swedish office has been working on international projects for more than six decades with the basic philosophy: architecture can improve society. As an employee-owned company their work is characterized by a strong personal initiative.
Their work spectrum includes many areas such as urban planning, landscape design, different typologies of buildings as well as sport and leisure facilities. Equally multifaceted is their team: architects work side by side with anthropologists, urbanists next to artists, sustainability experts together with researchers. They have a very strong relationship to nature and especially to forests. Wood has become one of the most important materials for White Arkitekter due to the large forest stock in Scandinavia and as a renewable resource.
Therefore we can learn a lot from the Scandinavians: close interdisciplinary cooperation supports future-oriented thinking approaches and generates sustainable projects that „make sense“.
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