Building without land ?
Working Space © LAST | EPFL | Olivier Wavre
Prof. Emmanuel Rey was invited to write the editorial for the AS Architecture's latest issue, a leading Swiss magazine published four times a year in German and French since 1972. Entitled "Building without land?", his remarks focused on the challenges and potentials related to the vertical extension of existing buildings. This issue also presented the Working Space project as the result of a partnership between the State of Vaud and the Laboratory of Architecture and Sustainable Technologies (LAST).
In the context of the densification of urban territories, the theme of vertical extension constitutes an architectural issue of growing importance. By integrating the concepts of architectural quality, functional adaptability, and resource management from the very first steps of the design process, this type of approach can meet sustainability challenges on several scales.
At the city scale, it promotes urban intensity in the vicinity of public transport. At the building scale, it offers new typologies, which complement the existing offer in terms of living or activity spaces. At the scale of constructive detail, it can integrate renewable energy devices, vegetated surfaces, and materials with favorable eco-balance.
However, each vertical extension remains a unique and complex architectural challenge. The expressive relationships with the existing building - between continuity, hybridization or contrast - require an inventive exploration to tend, patiently, subtly, and elegantly, towards delicate alchemy sought.