Hverfjall Kaffihús

HONORABLE MENTION: ICELAND COFFEE SHOP 2022

2022


Appearing through the mist shroud of Hverfjall's ethereal field is a landscape of harsh volcanic geology and low Nordic light. A coffee shop becomes visible on the lower slopes of the hiking track, gradually approached by the senses through the aroma of freshly brewed coffee.

The elongated rectilinear form reinterprets the Icelandic longhouse Skäli through contemporary and low-carbon construction. Defined by roof volumes that house distinctive activities, a dark earth plinth ties the building to the landscape it inhabits, creating a recessive presence amid the open fields.

Upon entering, visitors and locals are greeted by the visitor centre, volcanic exhibition, and coffee shop beyond. Transitioning between interior spaces, they experience an interplay of light and warm hues filtering from each room. While various glazed openings between the solid rammed earth walls offer glimpses of the surrounding volcanic field. The flexible, free-form plan accommodates small lectures, markets, and theatre events, providing local and visitor experiences.

Occupants of the coffee shop enjoy views of the sublime landscape beyond, making their much-needed coffee break all the more enjoyable.

Place-making through form:
an inquiry into
ARCHITECTURAL
OBJECT, EMBODIED OCCUPATION
AND PLACE

2017

Thesis Supervisor: Dr. Simon Twose | Performance Stream
VUW School of Architecture


Featured on KooZA/rch, Newport Works
Awarded - MArch (prof) Distinction

ABSTRACT

This proposal is an architectural enquiry into how intertwined formal qualities of surface, volume and geometry affect occupation at different scales. The intention is to design performances that promote a shared agency between the volumetric spatiality of the architectural object and its occupant. The research aims to experiment with this through a meshing of formal tests and spatial perception, which together act as an apparatus to activate the research questioning. The results of this research will contribute to understanding how form influences a sense of place.

Globalisation reduces our sense of belonging through repeatable spatial formulas, returning to an identity of place is significant in activating essences of the city. Avoiding the ever-increasing presence of the term Rem Koolhaas calls the ‘generic city’, and allowing for interconnecting of small and public scale architectural conditions for people. Using Scaling as a device to reinterpret architecture and the urban spatial condition of place, the DNA of past and present architectural objects are distilled and extracted from the Copenhagen context then projected back into the drawings. Through the enmeshing of structure, material, light, colour, geometry and spatial perception – derived through the manipulation of the Copenhagen formal context - this research expands on notions of place and how it is understood.

This research operates as a series of iterative experiments through the design of three projects: an installation, a mid-scale building, and a public building. Focusing upon collections, typologies and curation in order to create episodic, surreal, kaleidoscopic spaces and landscapes. The final design research situated in an urban context, the port area of Copenhagen, and specific elements of the site chosen for their opportunities in testing form, occupation and place.

01

INSTALLATION

SURFACES, GEOMETRY, KALEIDOSCOPE

The installation phase experiments with performance conditions of phenomenology - testing surface materiality and volumetric manipulation through tectonics, to discover possibly research trajectories of form-making towards architectural objects and embodiment. The final Kaleidoscope design aimed to link these characteristics, proposing an installation that evokes the users’ experience of place through a fragmented visual field of their current surroundings.

02

MID-SCALE

OBSERVATORY DWELLING

Location   Lake Tekapo, New Zealand

This design inquiry examines the formal qualities of architectural objects and landscape through the intertwining of scalar. Located on the singular island within Lake Tekapo in the idyllic Mackenzie Basin, the mid-scale assembles an observatory dwelling distilled of architectural and territorial context and resonating with the local topography. A structure from which to observe the landscape, the design shares an agency between the volumetric spatiality of architectural objects and its research occupants.

03

PUBLIC SCALE

KØBENHAVN TRACES

Location   Copenhagen, Denmark

This speculative design portrays København through the projective lenses of object, memory and infrastructure. Situated in an urban context, a redundant harbour site of the city, with specific elements of the site chosen for the opportunities in testing form, occupation and place. The aim was to operate within the previous methodology of object extraction at a public-scale, through the formal context of København. In the project, selected objects of architecture are mapped and rescaled within the present site - as a place of converging urban and industrial spaces.The design applies the architectural medium of archipelago mapping, a technique to observe and study the city’s existing architectural and urban condition. Particular built objects are extracted from context then projected back into drawings, stored in a catalogue collection. Then fragmented into an assemblage of distilled elements which are duplicated, transformed, and boolean into parts, interacted with one another and rescaled on to the harbour site through a series of iterations and processes of ‘formgiving’. The work shifted between digital and physical modelling, photography, digital collage and drawing. Emerging towards a final diorama model - a repository tableau to visualise the surreal public urban-scheme of collective memories.

Archipelago Mapping
The archipelago of København objects are extracted from their original contect and collected within an urban catalogue. Acting as architectural ‘friends’ similar to John Hejduk projects within the Mask of Medusa, though these are København friends - they work as critical objects for interpreting the urban fabric of the cities typological make-up. An array of object scaling from chair’ towards city-size fortifications. These architectural objects have a shared agency with the ideas of place-making, through the operation of social memory and formal language. Towards a process of manipulating this stored repository of artefacts for the means of design form-making.

Infrastructural Island
The redundant district within København municipality is reimagined as an urban-port landscape layered with transposed architectural language and spaces -  with preservation towards the historical maritime traces of the harbour and infrastructural landscape. Protecting the martime heritage and cultural idenity of the harbour edge, a distinctive recreational and social value within the city. To create a tapestry of disjunctions and layering of memory set into the building fabric.

Tūāhu

TOP 5 FINALIST: BRICK BAY FOLLY 2020

2020

collaborated with Jason Tan, Tyler Harlen and Callum Leslie

Featured on ArchitectureNow and Architecture New Zealand, September 2020 (issue 5)

Jury Comments
Enclosure of a different kind is proposed in Tūāhu; we are invited into a series of blue-painted conic forms composed of plywood skins perforated by repetitive shapes derived from Gordon Walters’ koru-based abstractions. The result is a more-centred interior space enlivened by the light and deconstructed landscape glimpsed through the perforations.


Tūāhu
The tūāhu emerges from the sloping hillside as a collection of interconnected sculptural vessels. An ambiguous object, and delicately adorned with an ornamental language of waka hoe (paddles). Deep vivid tones of Pūkeko blue expresses the distinctive silhouette and moiré of patterns which intersect the empty landscape.

Entering the Shrine
Exploring a tectonic expression of foreground and background - the viewer entering the sculpture is enclosed within the tūāhu, as the landscape interplay weaves a negative void and the positive object above forms an immaterial internal space.

The tūāhu looks to anchor the site through the shifting of scales and casting of fragmented shadows. An other-worldly condition of space, the viewer looks up towards the oculus and can observe a series of shifting colours and scales; apertures which frame the sky above and place below.

Derived from the aesthetic qualities of Gordon Walters visual language of abstraction, abundant articulated repetition through a limited range of geometric forms has inspired the visual expression of Tūāhu.

JURY CITATION
Enclosure of a different kind is proposed in Tūāhu; we are invited into a series of blue-painted conic forms composed of plywood skins perforated by repetitive shapes derived from Gordon Walters’ koru-based abstractions. The result is a more-centred interior space enlivened by the light and deconstructed landscape glimpsed through the perforations.