ImaginativePRO Blog

MVRDV COMPLETES 'THE COUCH', A CLUBHOUSE WITH A ROOFTOP GRANDSTAND FOR AMSTERDAM’S IJBURG TENNIS CLUB

THE ROTTERDAM-BASED ARCHITECTURE FIRM HAS TURNED THE ROOF OF A TENNIS CLUB INTO SPECTATOR SEATING

MVRDV, the Rotterdam-based architecture firm known for its bold, futuristic designs including everything from small town community centers to South Korean Skygardens to dazzling skyscrapers that look like Twizzlers, is now jumping into the sporting arena. Its latest design is just as much furniture as it architecture though: a comfy red tennis clubhouse that doubles as a seating area for over 200 spectators.

Click Image To Enlarge

Click Image To Enlarge

The new building is simply called the Couch, because of course it is. Located in IJburg, near Amsterdam, and built for the appropriately named Tennisclub IJburg, first founded in 2008. The tennis club already has a number of facilities, including 10 clay courts and a tennis school. But with the addition of the Couch, Tennisclub IJburg finally has not just a place to relax between games, but a place to watch them.

Click Image To Enlarge

Click Image To Enlarge

MVRDV co-founder and architect Winy Maas says.

"With the Couch, we have integrated sport into society By turning the roof of the club-house into a tribune, a Centre Court is created. Here we celebrate the talent of the amateur players who are challenged to excel in front of the public. By covering the entire building in red polyurethane the club gains visibility: an advert for sports and movement. The essence of the building is the stimulation of fitness and the fight against obesity and inactivity."

Click Image To Enlarge

MVRDV developed the clubhouse together with a co-architect, Studio Bouwkunde. In execution, the building is reminiscent of Bjarke Ingels's work on Copenhagen's Gammel Hellerup School. For that project, Ingels used the roof of an undulating rec center and the school's new arts building as common spaces for lounging around, eating meals, and watching sports. MVRDV's take, though, looks warm and accommodating, like a pillow a giant sat on after deciding to sit and watch a tennis match for a spell.

Click Image To Enlarge

Click Image To Enlarge

COMMENTARY:   I am a huge architectural design buff, and just love architecture that is on the leading edge of architectural design and is both multi-functional and energy efficient.  MVRDV has really blown me away with The Couch.  

The Tennis Club IJburg club house is a 36-metre long open volume with services on either end such as dressing rooms, a kitchen, storage and toilets. The main space is multifunctional, so it can be used for the club’s many events. The roof dips down towards the south side and is raised towards the north up to a height of seven metres, creating an informal tribune for the club with terraced seating. This ‘Couch’ can seat up to 200 spectators comfortably. The wide glass front to the north side allows extensive natural lighting and provides a view out over the waters of the IJ-lake.

Inside the club house, the in-situ concrete structure is clad with FSC-certified wood, while the outside is fully sealed with an EDSM polymer hotspray in the same colour and texture as the clay tennis courts. The reduced glass surface to the south helps to cool the building. The thermal mass of the building, characteristic of its materialisation in concrete and wood, are used to reach a high degree of energy efficiency. It clubhouse will be heated by a district heating system made efficient by a heat exchanger. In summer there will be natural ventilation, adding to the ambitious sustainability profile of the structure.     

Tennis club IJburg is located on a manmade island in the East of Amsterdam and opened in 2008. The tennis club, currently with 2000 members, has 10 clay courts and a tennis school. The new club house is not the centre of the club's activities.

MVRDV developed the clubhouse together with co-architect Studio Bouwkunde and structural engineer ABT. Contractor Romijn Bouw realised the building, which is MVRDV's eighth project to be built in Amsterdam.

Courtesy of an article dated October 16, 2015 appearing in Fast Company Design and an article dated October 14, 2015 appearing in MVRDV

Follow Me:   Twitter: turk5555    Facebook: 797743955    LinkedIn: turk5555 

Subscribe To My Blog Newfeed

 

HOW DISNEY PLANS TO MAKE RFID-BASED MAGICBANDS A $1 BILLION PROJECT TO REMAKE THE DISNEY WORLD EXPERIENCE

DISNEY HAS A NEW PLAN FOR HOW USERS CAN PAY FOR EXPERIENCES IN THEIR PARKS--NO CASH OR CREDIT CARDS REQUIRED.

I’ll never forget going to Disney World as a child. As we stood in line to enter the park, a simple cash register--one like I’d see at the local donut shop or gas station--rang up a bill close to $1,000. While my parents were no doubt prepped for the sticker shock--or just very cool about the whole thing--I felt a blow of guilt right in my gut. I was just a kid, but I knew that was a whole lot of money being spent just for me to feel like a kid.

Click Image To Enlarge

It’s just one of many reasons that Disney’s MagicBands are a great idea. They’re RFID wristbands that are at the heart of a collection of services Disney is dubbing MyMagic+. It’s all part of an estimated $1 billion makeover for the parks, aimed at making the experience of being at Disney a bit more magical.

Click Image To Enlarge

A family of four can put MagicBands on after registering for the cloud-based service, then instead of digging through cash or (the unmaxed) credit cards, they can use their wrists to enter the park, buy lunch, and even unlock their hotel room. A skeptic would point out that such an interaction will disassociate people with spending money, and that’s entirely true: Families will be able to enjoy Disney without the constant reminder that the magic comes at a price.

Click Image To Enlarge

But the cashflow aspect is only one aspect of Disney’s new service. When you begin to consider the potential of wearing a wireless ID around your wrist, all sorts of natural, customized interactions will become possible. Imagine a child meeting Mickey Mouse, and after sharing a warm hug, Mickey actually wishing them a happy birthday by name. There’s a digital handshake going on here, of course, but it’s totally imperceptible. All a child is left wondering is, “How did Mickey know me … and that it was my birthday?!?” Animatronics will see a similar personalization, so the otherwise obtuse talking robots can specifically acknowledge the people standing in front of them.

Click Image To Enlarge

At the same time, MagicBands enable a deeper level of data collection for Disney. They’ll be able to track someone through the entire park--to see their kingdom as a complex interaction model--finding trends in preferences and habits that can no doubt be monetized. Do people who meet Cinderella buy more princess apparel? Do those who eat the cheese fries for lunch go back to the hotel to take naps?

Click Image To Enlarge

There will be some level of privacy options, especially for children, whose parents can do things like opt out of characters knowing their names. No personal data is kept on the band itself, and any purchase over $50 will require the user to also enter a PIN (which is actually a buzzkill that destroys the illusion at work--I hope users can opt out of that, too). 

The question becomes, how deeply will Disney integrate their mobile phone app into this model? Because MyMagic+ will enable users to delve deeper into reservations, getting text message updates when a ride is open, and reserving specific seats for the parade. This much information will require some level of feedback that the wristband can’t provide. Hopefully, Disney has some other tricks up its sleeve for tackling these logistics without fueling our smartphone obsession. Because however much profit lurks underneath the surface, MagicBands are a brilliant ploy to get us all looking at the world around us again.

COMMENTARY:   Radio frequency identification or RFID technology has been around for years, but it has never caught on like many experts had predicted.  In fact, many technology experts had all but written off RFID in favor of barcodes, NFC and other technologies.  Disney's $1 billion investment in MagicBands demonstrates a strong commitment to RFID technology, and I can definitely see a lot of financial, operational and marketing benefits.  The personalization of the Disney World experience is a huge benefit.  The ability to know who you are when you board a Disney ride or enter a Disney store, and be able to market something to that individual is obvious.  Knowing where your kids are anywhere in Disney World will bring peace of mind to parents.  I thought how something similar could be done with an NFC app, but not everybody owns a smartphone, and many cellphone users don't like being tracked.  It would be hit-and-miss if Disney had decided to use an app with near field commuications (NFC) technology, and you would not accrue the benefits of using a universal wrist worn MagicBand.  I am planning a trip to Florida and look forward to visiting Disney World and experiencing MagicBand firsthand.

Courtesy of an article dated January 11, 2013 appearing in Fast Company Design 

 

"CHOP STICKS," A TREEHOUSE AND PLAYGROUND FOR KIDS MADE FROM THE NATURAL TRUNK OF A 100-FOOT TREE

Chop Stick is a building constructed almost entirely of one tree (the same tree you see sticking right through its center) - Click Image To Enlarge

THIS KIOSK IS MADE FROM PARTS OF A SINGLE TREE, A SINGLE TREE THAT STAYED MOSTLY INTACT.

Just about every building is made, at least in part, from trees. But Chop Stick, by Visiondivision, won’t let you forget that fact. It’s a “treehouse” made almost entirely from a single yellow poplar tree for 100 Acres park in Indiana. For an additional twist, every bit of the tree that wasn’t used served as an epic cross beam for the structure. So to the onlooker, there’s basically a whole tree sticking straight through a wooden kiosk.

Everything about the construction required extremely careful planning and modeling, as bits from the tree had to be removed without challenging its structural integrity (Click Image To Enlarge)

The project is meant to remind us that natural materials are sacrificed for everything we build (Click Image To Enlarge)

The team tells me. 

“Normally, we don’t think about where things are coming from in our daily life, and we really wanted to make it obvious.  Paper, bricks, mobile phones, whatever they might be, don’t just pop up by themselves … our idea is that we should really show this raw material in a pedagogic way, to see where things are coming from, and to also make a pretty awesome building.”

The project required an incredible amount of patient ingenuity.  Once the actual tree had been selected, all of its bark was removed and treated to serve as shingles (shingles that are maintenance free for 80 years, I might add). For the remainder of the project, the team had to closely analyze the shape of the tree itself to see which chunks could be removed without destroying its structural integrity.

But Chop Stick’s tone is positive, or playful even--you can even purchase the tree’s sweet sap from the snack counter (Click Image To Enlarge)

Youngsters along with their parents have fun on the Chop Stick swing (Click Image To Enlarge)

The team explains.

“We had to calculate each board that was required for the kiosk and also say exactly where this piece of wood was coming from.”

The team labels this process the most difficult part of the project.  Of course, these cuts gave the tree a newly balanced weight, meaning new mathematical simulations were run frequently, leading to the inverted jigsaw puzzle that was ultimately built.

In its new life, the tree will provide a beautiful swingset for kids in the park, and it will also serve refreshments. On the menu? Yellow poplar syrup that was extracted from the tree’s bark. As the team put it best, “you could actually eat a part of the building.”

COMMENTARY:  I just love how Visiondivison has carefully crafted into the construction of the Chop Sticks treehouse and playground the natural beauty of nature.  Regular steel swings are so boring after seeing the Chop Sticks treehouse and playground.  Chop Sticks is not just a playground, but a community watering hole where parents and children congregate, play and socialize. It's an outing and a celebration of nature's beauty.  

Courtesy of an article dated December 5, 2012 appearing in Fast Company Design