Elgesetergate (Photo © Miguel de Guzmán)
Teknobyen student housing in Trondheim is the outcome of a winning entry of Europan 9. The building has been nominated to the Norwegian National Building Prize in 2012 and has won the Trondheim Kommune Energy Saving Prize.
"Teknobyen student housing is a tool for tolerance"
The project unifies situations of extreme intimacy with those of extroversion and collaboration. A room is a powerful mechanism that allows the expansion of the identity, self-recognition and reaffirmation, interchange and negotiation. One’s own space is a laboratory where to test abilities that later will be experienced in every act of social interaction. Teknobyen student's housing proposes the compression, transfer and conditioning of the relational capacities of urban space.
View from Elgeseter Gate (Photo © Miguel de Guzman)
View from Elgesetergate (Photo © Matthias Herzog)
Model
Volume development process
Main ideas and constraints
Assuming the existing urban conditions, the student housing detaches as much as possible from the surrounding buildings and shapes its volume in order to extract potential from the views and sun. Open-air terraces are spread around the building. Through them, students can experience outside conditions and relate with the city and the far views.
As a result of a special regulation that considers Elgesetergate as a road instead a street, no windows for rooms are allowed to be opened on that elevation. The front and the rear are thus conceived as thick containing membranes, while only corridors and lounge are able to look over the street.
The core of the building contains a multipurpose lounge with no hierarchy, or spatial definition, in which different ambiances are located. Room floors surround this lounge. The general layout is articulated by stripes occupying the space as they approach or distance the existing limits. Rooms mimic the building's internal scheme, structured in functional bands (storage, prefabricated bathroom and a bed).
Since the construction started, and more details about the building were made public, a vibrant debate arose among residents-to be in specialized blogs and social networks. Architecture has still a long path to explore collecting data and seeking ways of transferring feedback into the making, just as information architects or videogame designers would do.
The core of the building contains a multipurpose lounge with no hierarchy, or spatial definition, in which different ambiances are located. Room floors surround this lounge. The general layout is articulated by stripes occupying the space as they approach or distance the existing limits. Rooms mimic the building's internal scheme, structured in functional bands (storage, prefabricated bathroom and a bed).
"The core of the building contains a multipurpose lounge with no hierarchy or spatial definition, in which different ambiances are located"
Since the construction started, and more details about the building were made public, a vibrant debate arose among residents-to be in specialized blogs and social networks. Architecture has still a long path to explore collecting data and seeking ways of transferring feedback into the making, just as information architects or videogame designers would do.
Lifestyle innovation:
It is not easy to give a step forward, as modest as it can be, within the habitational typology.
When it comes to dwelling, innovation tends to locate in esthetical, technical and market values. Teknobyen student housing understands the program of necessities as a powerful design tool and key factor to improve the way we live and relate to each other.
"Although technically modest, it is performatively ambitious"
Thus, the building assumes a very tight budget, neglecting the use of sophisticated material solutions and embracing common and traditional technology, but appliying in a contemporary way. Although it is technically modest, it is performatively ambitious.Instead of an isolated and self-referential object, the result is an unassuming building that sets a dialogue with the city and its codes, focusing on the creation of a collective experience and in a sense of social responsibility.
View from back courtyard (Photo © Matthias Herzog)
View from courtyard (Photo © Matthias Herzog)
View from Klauvein Str. (Photo © Matthias Herzog)
In order to stress a local initiative that intends to promote Trondheim as a wood-friendly city, and also seeking new challenges about wood use in large buildings, the entire exterior volume of the building is cladded with fir (pine) wooden planks, displaying different treatments, compositions and layouts.
Social engagement:
In order to achieve a collective-driven atmosphere, students share a flexible lounge and a self-managed, ‘ultrakitchen’, designed as an experimental space for the use and simultaneous enjoyment of 116 students , like a 24/24 sort of social sustainability condenser. This way of structuring common space trough collective actions as a means to strengthen the bonds within the newly established community impell dwellers to come up with rules, responsibilities and unexpected ways of counterbalancing interests.The building can be looked upon as something that is unfinished, because it calls for permanent completion by its inhabitants in seek for a more satisfying community life.
"The building contains a parliament of 116 people, and the shared kitchen space is where common life is negotiated, through consistent self management, but also small everyday-based events like facebook meetings, late night pancake contests in the kitchen, cooking seminars by tv celebrities or site-specific building - olympics"
Students are free to creatively appropriate the collective space, an architectural environment that has been designed looking for functional openness. The building contains a parliament of 116 people, and the shared kitchen is where common life is negotiated, through consistent self management, but also small everyday-based events like facebook meetings, pancake contests in the kitchen, cooking seminars held by tv celebrities or site-specific building – olympics.
Beyond formal pervasiveness or image creation, Teknobyen student housing stresses the importance of social, financial and environmental innovation by creating an updated and dynamic way of life for students, a key social ecology for nowadays society, maximizing social bonds within modest yet committed architecture.
Corridor coworking (Photo © Miguel de Guzmán)
Big Kitchen (Photo © Miguel de Guzmán)
Access
Kitchen and Lounge
Level 5 - bedrooms and terrace
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Teknobyen Student Housing.
- Competition and Working Project: MEK [Murado & Elvira Enrique Krahe]
- Collaborators: Jesús Isla, Aranzazu Montero, Francisco Triviño, Javier de Paz, Leticia Rodríguez, Eugenia Concha
- Detailing: MEK + link Signatur
- Building site: MEK + link Signatur
- Contractors: NCC construction AS
- Engineering: Ramboll Norge AS
- Competition and Working Project: MEK [Murado & Elvira Enrique Krahe]
- Collaborators: Jesús Isla, Aranzazu Montero, Francisco Triviño, Javier de Paz, Leticia Rodríguez, Eugenia Concha
- Detailing: MEK + link Signatur
- Building site: MEK + link Signatur
- Contractors: NCC construction AS
- Engineering: Ramboll Norge AS
Construction timelapse