29-05-18 // BOARD CONTRIBUTES TO 3-VOLUME PUBLICATION “ARCHITECTURAL ELEMENT”

Covers of the 3 volumes

BOARD contributed to the 3-volume publication “Architectural Element” published by the South Korean Publishing House DAMDI. Each volume includes interviews and projects from architecture offices from all around the world. The three elements that are explored are: ENTRANCE, STAIRS and ROOF.

According to the Amsterdam-based Idea Books the three volumes deal with “architecture as a mixture of individual elements. Some have been around for thousands of years, while others are much more recent, emerging from today’s cutting-edge technologies. To explore the elements of architecture in depth, DAMDI offers a sweeping, three-part survey of contemporary case studies from around the world. The first volume deals with the “Entrance”, the second looks at “Stairs”, and the third examines the “Roof”. Through models, photographs, technical drawings, and sketches, hundreds of featured works represent the spectrum of architectural elements today. The books include interviews with NL Architects, Moussafir Architectes, Stefano Corbo Studio, BOARD, and more.”

Pages 121-122 of Volume 1 on the entrance

Together with some of BOARD’s projects the following interview with Bernd Upmeyer on architectural elements appears in the publication:

Stairs

What is the favourite stair you have designed and why?
Bernd Upmeyer: One of my favourite stairs we designed was for the New Building for the Estonian Academy of Arts in the city of Tallinn. There, we clustered the entire public programme of the building that contained all the auditoriums and galleries of the academy and created a huge stair out of it, which we called the “public section”. It cuts through the entire building but, thanks to acoustic curtains that separate the different units, remains functional even during lectures, performances, or events. Without any event going on, the stair functions as an extension of the foyer of the academy located on the ground floor.

Estonian Academy of Arts on pages 10-11 of Volume 2 on stairs

What is the least favourite stair you have designed and why?
BU: When recently we worked on a design for a new office and administration building for the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation in Berlin, we proposed six large escalators that bring the visitors from the foyer to the top floor and a roof terrace that allows a view of the city and the TV tower on the Alexanderplatz. It is not that I disliked these escalators, I like them a lot. However, after our project was not selected during the competition in which we took part, I was wondering whether the use of escalators, to a certain extent the symbols of commercialization and capitalism, for the stairs in the building might have appeared a bit too provocative and controversial for a foundation with strong ties to Marxist philosophy and Marxist theory…

Rosa Luxemburg Foundation on pages 48-49 of Volume 2 on stairs

… the entire interview can be read in Writings.