MVRDV with co-architects morePlatz have won a competition to design the masterplan of the Hamburg Innovation Port, a new 70,000 square meter waterfront development that will add to the high-tech hub of Channel Hamburg in Hanse City, Hamburg. The plan for the mixed-use development uses a fusion of existing port typologies and dynamic architectural interventions to create a network of buildings containing hotels, laboratories, research facilities, offices for start-ups and a conference center.
.jpg?1473780126 "A total surface of 70,000m2 will transform the waterways of the Channel Hamburg development, the southern high-tech hub of Germany’s northern metropolis.. Image Courtesy of MVRDV")
.jpg?1473780195 "The roofs of some buildings are partly green and partly used for terraces and solar cells.. Image Courtesy of MVRDV")
After the Bolsheviks secured power in Russia in the late 1910s and eventually created the Soviet Union in 1922, one of the first orders of business was a new campaign, Novyi bit (new everyday life), which sought to advance many of the most hallowed causes of their newly minted socialism. The initiative’s great success came from the bold designs of Constructivist artists such as Alexander Rodchenko, Vladimir Mayakovsky, and Lyubov Popova. Using a high-contrast visual language and a combination of words and symbols, the graphics were arresting and comprehensible in a post-tsarist country that was largely illiterate, and became some of the most recognizable examples of twentieth century graphics and political propaganda.
It's hard not to see the connection between the styles of the Constructivists and the unusual graphics created by NL Architects in association with BeL (Bernhardt und Leeser) Sozietät für Architektur BDA for their competition-winning proposal for Hamburg’s St. Pauli neighborhood, consisting of an urban plan of housing and other amenities at the former site of Esso Häuser on the Spielbudenplatz. And, while this stylistic connection may not have been intentionally drawn by the architects - the inspiration for the graphics is not mentioned in the four-page project description - it is oddly appropriate for this particular development.
Together with his partners, Meinhard von Gerkan has written architectural history over the past 50 years: the practice started life with a drum roll, with the Berlin-Tegel Airport being the first project; today, over 380 projects have been completed.
To this day, von Gerkan develops his designs with the help of sketches. On the occasion of the 50-year anniversary of gmp – Architects von Gerkan, Marg and Partners and von Gerkan’s 80th birthday, the "Lines of Thoughts" exhibition in the newly built Architecture Pavilion at Elbchaussee presents selected projects from his archive, which includes well over 3,000 architectural sketches, in order to illustrate how his projects develop.
