DEFINITE & INFINITE
PAM DLS 03 : Between Definite & Infinite by Charlie Sutherland, | PAM Public Lectures | Wednesday, 15 March 2017
Charlie Sutherland studied Architecture at the Mackintosh School in Glasgow. Upon graduating he joined the office of the late Sir James Stirling and worked on a number of international commissions and competitions including the Tokyo Forum, The Paris Library and the Temasek Polytechnic, Singapore. Following the untimely death of Stirling, He continued in the office as an Associate with Michael Wilford and Partners and was responsible for the competition design for the New British Embassy Berlin and the Sto K in Weizen Germany both of which were short listed for the Stirling prize.
From this talk, we can see that he love to develop an architectural interpretation of the ideas of the organisation, the local culture, the variety and range of that. That's what i love about how he contribute his work into the architecture in term of the creativity and how he design with the strategies and approaches while he got a lots of project that fall on difference country which related to contextual study.
For example,
This project CHENGDU MUSEUM is located at Chengdu, Sichuan, CHINA.
In 2007 Sutherland Hussey Architects, in collaboration with Beijing-based Pansolution, won first prize in the international competition for the design of the new City Museum for Chengdu, Sichuan, China.
The client’s focus was visual impact and the creation of a landmark. This is not unusual in Chinese projects, but it challenged SHH’s design ethos, which is based on ‘a manifestation of a set of functional requirements’. Not only did they need to create a building with real presence, but also creatively fill the space with a non-specified programme – while ensuring the building functioned as a physical manifestation of the city’s pride.
The new museum sits along the full extent of the west edge of Tian Fu Square to form one complete edge of the most important public space in the City. The singular facade helps to create a cohesive edge to an otherwise disjointed square, forming a datum in relation to the adjacent Museum of Science & Technology.
The long narrow site is exploited using all the public areas to maximise a dramatic relationship with the new square, the remaining façades consequently enclose the largely hermetic exhibition halls, these are represented as a giant crafted artefact in the city cloaked in a precious skin of copper alloy rigorously profiled to play with light, shade and texture whilst accommodating all the technical requirements for ventilation grilles.
The proposal includes a new undercover outdoor space - a monumental opening through the building offering a large covered outdoor space where people can gather, cultural events can take place and the market stalls can extend beyond the street located to the rear of the building.
CONCLUSION,
The creativity, professional expertise and devotion impressed us and other parties who had been involved in this project. The design of Chengdu Museum has received very high compliment and appreciation from the government, the client and people. Chengdu Museum has quickly become one of the most popular cultural venues of the City. Within three months after opening, the visitors summed up to more than 600,000.
Therefore, I think it's a very successful building in order of creating an icon building to Chengdu yet considering the surrounding of the site in term of the organisation, local culture and the variety of it.
