Dim Sum Towers – Heatherwick Studio’s Learning Hub in Singapore
Outside of the sealed rooms, the inner meeting and circulatory spaces - deliberately designed not to funnel students from one place to the next - are all open to the elements, though there is a glass roof over the atrium. The emergency stairwells have been integrated into the building rather that being an afterthought. Large steel doors, with glass-reinforced concrete panels, held open on electromagnets (ready to close at the hint of a fire) lead to the staircases, which are enclosed with mesh, to help keep out Singapore's frequent drizzly rain. In turn these give a variety to the rhythm of the exterior, softening the towers of concrete baskets.
These are some of the moulds that were used for the internal concrete panels, which used pigment to give them a terracotta-like hue. Photo: Hufton and Crow
The building sits on a site that rises through 3.5m allowing you to enter directly at two different ground levels. There are 12 entrances in total, including three walkways on three different levels that connect it to the adjacent structure. This is, as Heatherwick puts it, 'a very porous building'.
One of the tutorial rooms. In the original scheme these didn't have glass-walled entrances and were open to the atrium. Photo: Hufton and Crow
The facade has a bulbous uniformity about it, presenting a similar face from every angle, deliberately avoiding any front or back hierarchy. To an extent, some of the facade's uniformity also comes from the solution to the brief that required a great deal of off-site prefabrication to allow for fast on-site construction (one of the Green Mark requirements is to have a low level of on-site man hours).
Each dim sum steamer, on each level of each of the 12 stacks (in effect the backs of the curved rooms) is made up of 13 - 16 panels, all of which are unique. There are 1,050 panels in total and, despite the variations, they were made using one ingenious (can a Heatherwick story ever be written without that word?) mould. Parametrics were involved and for manageability the panels were honed down to 10 different radii (though each has a different pattern, hence the uniqueness).
Some 700 abstract ink drawings by Sara Fenelli were applied to the panels in such a way as to avoid the eye noticing any repeat. Photo: Hufton and Crow
Inside the building, 12 stacks scallop out into the internal space to form the dramatic and defining atrium, that puts you in mind of a high-end hotel. This will also feature planting from rails, which will see greenery cascading down through the space. One dominating element in the atrium is the log-like curving, structural, concrete columns. Although they appear to curve, each one of the separate 62 columns is in fact straight between each floor.
As well as appearing to curve, each column's surface ripples organically: 'We're so used to the circular, cylindrical column -- it's the default in young offenders' institutes, in hospitals, in luxury apartments, in art galleries. We just wondered whether we could have a slight effect on that concrete and we realised that there was one inch of love that we could give that concrete without affecting the core cost of the column itself,' says Heatherwick.
For cooling, piped-in chilled water passes through the panels at the top of the wall; convection does the rest. Photo: Hufton and Crow
'We developed these moulds where they tried to maximise that one inch of manipulable surface before you'd have to change the shape of the reinforcing bars in the middle of the columns. That allows us to have these columns that have undulations on them the size of a human belly, so that the inner pervert in all of us can give it a little stroke.'
This is all part of a push by Heatherwick Studio to humanise the building. The exterior concrete panels are warmed up with a touch of red/black pigment. Inside, the concrete wall panels received more red pigment, making them look like terracotta. The use of off-site, prefabricated, concrete panels in the first place is pragmatic, addressing the project costs, the Green Mark requirements (no need for painting or plastering time on site) and the building's longevity. 'The challenge became how could we give love to concrete that can feel quite loveless in European projects, and also try to not put paint all over it, which is the default. By having the raw columns, the raw structure, the raw floors, if we come back in 20 or 30 years, there should be nothing that needs to be replaced,' says Heatherwick.
The studio brought in Italian illustrator Sara Fenelli who set to work creating 700 ink illustrations of a 'deliberately ambiguous' (apart from the word 'amor') biological/ astronomical nature. These were in turn mixed and matched into various panels to avoid the eye seeing any repeat, and then silicon moulds were used for casting. As well as the pattern, the surface - as with the columns - clearly features the air-bubble pockmarks from the moulding process, which Heatherwick believes adds to the individualisation, taking it away from anally, super-smooth euro-concrete. The studio knew from the outset that constraints on time, cost and local talent meant 'smooth' would never be an option anyway.
The curvaceous, organic form stands out against its rectilinear neighbours. Photo: Hufton And Crow
And the attention to materials and exploring their properties and abilities doesn't end there, as you'd expect from Heatherwick. Elsewhere, the project features hardwood handrails on balconies, phospher bronze on lifts (though Heatherwick hopes the students will use the stairs) and railings. Even here, costs meant that 10 per cent of the railings would have to be mild steel, so the studio spent a long time placing the steel among the brass, to create the right rhythm, and make a feature out of a constraint.
The overall outcome, Heatherwick decides, is that this big concrete building 'has a handmade feel'. He adds that it's 'a response to the sterility that we perceived in much of UK post-war architecture that seemed to be very cold... how do you somehow give a soulfulness to a new building so that it doesn't have to wait a hundred years to have some character?'
Although there was a token group of students on display working in one of the rooms when I visited, this building is crying out for people to come and bring it to life. Its spaces are unlike anything in the rest of the campus and it's not difficult to envisage that the students will quickly colonise it, right down to the most intimate spaces...
Continue for Thomas Heatherwick's one-on-one with Blueprint editor, Johnny Tucker
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