HOT TO COLD: AN ODYSSEY OF ARCHITECTURAL ADAPTATION / BIG

Architecture never happens in the clinical conditions of a lab. It is always responding to a series of existing conditions – the context, the culture, the landscape, the climate. Our climate is the one thing we can’t escape – the one condition we always have to respond to. HOT TO COLD: an odyssey of architectural adaptation is conceived as a colorful exploration of how architecture evolves in response to its context and climate and as an artistic contemplation of how life in return reacts to the framework created by the architecture.

 

More than 60 architectural models, mock-ups and prototypes are suspended at the second-floor balconies of the museum’s historic Great Hall, turning the architecture of the National Building Museum into the architecture of the exhibition.

 

As the visitors move through the exhibition, they learn about the harsh demands of climatic extremes, where architecture becomes more about shading from the heat or sheltering from the cold. The milder or more temperate environments often leave more room for other factors, such as culture, program, politics and legislation to shape the buildings.  

 

While the journey through the Museum atrium focuses on the forces that shape our buildings and the information that informs our design decisions, a gallery on the museum’s second floor is dedicated to the afterlife of the buildings. Films by Ila Bêka and Louise Lemoine, Kaspar Astrup Schroder, WAAITT and Squint/Opera document the life that emerges once the cranes have left and the buildings are complete. The accompanying catalog by Taschen is designed in collaboration with Grammy Award-winning graphic artist Stefan Sagmeister.

 

 

PROJECT DATA

 

Name: HOT TO COLD: AN ODYSSEY OF ARCHITECTURAL ADAPTATION

Code: H2C

Date: 24/01/2015

Program: Media

Status: Completed

Size in m2: 800

Project type: Commission

Client: National Building Museum

Collaborators: SAGMEISTER & WALSH, IWAN BAAN, KASPAR ASTRUP SCHRODER, BEKA PARTNERS, SQUINTOPERA, MARTIN DE THURAH, WAAITT, HIGHWIRE, BIG IDEAS

Location Text: Washington D.C

PROJECT TEAM

 

Partners in Charge: Bjarke Ingels, Kai-Uwe Bergmann

Project Leader: Iannis Kandyliaris

Co-Project Leader: Alana Goldweit

BIG Team NYC: Chi-Chi Lin, Julien Beauchamp-Roy, Natalie Kwee, Aiden Bowman, Daria Pahhota, Daeho Lee, John Hilmes, Sarah Habib, Sarkis Sarkisyan, Tammy Teng, Thomas Christoffersen, Haochen Yu, Emily Watts, Eva Maria Mikkelsen, Maureen Rahman, Mateusz Rek, Wells Barber, Armen Menendian, Wojciech Swarowski, Daniel Kidd, Nicholas Coffee, Anna Katrina Lockwood, Karen Shiue, Iben Falconer, Martin Voelkle, David Spittler, Otilia Pupezeanu, Terry Lallak, Ahsan Akbar, Ken Matthews, Ali Chen, Alvaro Velosa, Everett Hollander, Juan Ramirez