Cultural Complex Luz, Sao Paulo, 2012
In 2011 Martin Boles joined Herzog & de Meuron in Basel, Pritzker Prize Laureates from 2001, as a Junior Architect. He has been part of a team working on a project of Cultural Complex in São Paulo. As part of a smaller group, he worked on a design of performance spaces.
Partners: Jacques Herzog, Pierre de Meuron, Ascan Mergenthaler, Markus Widmer
Responsible: Tomislav Dushanov (Associate), Iva Smrke (Associate), Kentaro Ishida (Associate), Marcelo Bernardi
Project Team: Duarte Lobo Antunes, Marta Brandão, Caetano De Bragança, Amparo Casani, Ufuk Celik, Jonathan Davies, Anna Ferrari, Colin Jeffrey, Christopher Lunde, Hania Michalska, Franca Miretti, Carmo Montalvão, Felipe Pecegueiro, Pedro Peña Jurardo, Malgorzata Radwanska, Dulcineia Santos, Katrin Schwarz, Francesco Valente-Gorjup
Sources:
www.designboom.com
www.herzogdemeuron.com
GSD Harvard Lecture on youtube
As the home for the São Paulo Dance Company and the 2000-student Tom Jobim Music School, the complex will include a 1750-seat Dance Theater, a 500-seat Recital Hall, and a flexible Experimental Theater with up to 400 seats. To enhance the planned uses and mix of uses, and create greater variation of spaces, the building consists of interwoven horizontal bands which cross at split levels. These wide, linear bands act like city streets to allow for dynamic and diverse exchanges.
The main entrance is provided by the Grand Ramp, which is simply one of the slabs projecting out and sloping down into the grounds. It enters directly in the heart of the Complex, and is the main orientation and distribution device in the building.
The landscape of water and green plants creates tropical planting forms a dense green carpet, grows around the slabs.