From contemplation to culinary experimentation. AIR, Circular Campus and Cooking Club by OMA
07/03/2024.
[Singapore]
metalocus, MINERVA GARCÍA DE CASTRO
metalocus, MINERVA GARCÍA DE CASTRO
Project description by OMA
How do we transform fine dining from an exclusive, passive consumption experience into an active and shared journey? Can fine dining go beyond pleasure and inspire broader thinking about food and the environment, on topics such as responsible ingredient sourcing and food waste? OMA was tasked to design the dining and cooking space for AIR in Singapore – where these questions are addressed.
AIR is located on Dempsey Hill. Now a frequented art and lifestyle quarter, it was a nutmeg plantation in the mid-nineteenth century, and a barrack complex between the 1860s and 1990s. The site of AIR is defined by its 4,000 sqm green space, and the modernist CSC Dempsey Clubhouse – built in the 1970s for the sports and leisure activities of the civil servants. Here, nature is prominent and precious: all the trees with girths over one meter must be conserved according to the local authority. The CSC Dempsey Clubhouse – considered to have no specific historical value – can be freely reconfigured. This contrast prompted us to ask: Should we only preserve what is deemed significant and change everything else? Can architectural interventions articulate the cherished nature and the insignificant building into equally valuable elements? In the course, minimal changes can be made to the building to minimize construction waste.
In our design, the existing nature and the CSC Dempsey Clubhouse are the main components. A key architectural intervention is the 100-meter walkway – a new footpath between the clubhouse and one of Dempsey Hill’s main parking lots. This footpath replaces the originally narrow and hidden route that made the clubhouse inaccessible. Organic in form, it evokes the natural topography, while loosely defining the expansive green space into two zones: the garden on one side and the lawn on the other. From the walkway, the visitors can go directly into the clubhouse, which has now been transformed into the home to AIR. The visitors can also detour into the meandering paths of the garden – AIR’s farm where the visitors can learn about how food grows and taste the harvest. Alternatively, they can wander into the lawn, where picnics and a variety of events take place. Along the walkway are patios that become sitting-out areas complementing the lawn.
AIR, Circular Campus and Cooking Club by OMA / David Gianotten and Shinji Takagi. Photograph by Kris Provoost
The clubhouse is a modernist double floor building defined by ribbon windows. On the first floor, the walkway extends into the interior to define the circulation space. The main dining space faces the lawn. Through an operable front façade, the originally enclosed first floor becomes a semi-outdoor dining space with extended terraces connected to the lawn for meals in a causal atmosphere. At the rear is the open kitchen, where the processes of making dishes become transparent to everyone. On the second level, glass replaces the original façade to create an indoor area overlooking the lawn. The visitors find here a more intimate dining area, and the research space for experimentations on ingredients – sometimes unsuspected. The cooking school at the rear of this level allows all the visitors to share cooking skills and knowledge on the ingredients from the garden.
Another intervention to the building is the cylinder. It consolidates the front-of-house and back- of-house programs, including the staircases for the guests and the staff, a bar, a kitchen, and a machine room. Positioned at the rear – away from the front façade – the newly installed cylinder indicates the coexistence of the old and the new.
Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) is an international practice operating within the traditional boundaries of architecture and urbanism. AMO, a research and design studio, applies architectural thinking to domains beyond. OMA is led by eight partners – Rem Koolhaas, Reinier de Graaf, Ellen van Loon, Shohei Shigematsu, Iyad Alsaka, Chris van Duijn, Jason Long, and Managing Partner-Architect David Gianotten – and maintains offices in Rotterdam, New York, Hong Kong, Doha, and Australia. OMA-designed buildings currently under construction are the renovation of Kaufhaus des Westens (KaDeWe) in Berlin, The Factory in Manchester, Hangzhou Prism, the CMG Times Center in Shenzhen and the Simone Veil Bridge in Bordeaux.
OMA’s completed projects include Taipei Performing Arts Centre (2022), Audrey Irmas Pavilion in Los Angeles (2020), Norra Tornen in Stockholm (2020), Axel Springer Campus in Berlin (2020), MEETT Toulouse Exhibition and Convention Centre (2020), Galleria in Gwanggyo (2020), WA Museum Boola Bardip (2020), nhow RAI Hotel in Amsterdam (2020), a new building for Brighton College (2020), and Potato Head Studios in Bali (2020). Earlier buildings include Fondazione Prada in Milan (2018), Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in Moscow (2015), De Rotterdam (2013), CCTV Headquarters in Beijing (2012), Casa da Música in Porto (2005), and the Seattle Central Library (2004).
AMO often works in parallel with OMA's clients to fertilize architecture with intelligence from this array of disciplines. This is the case with Prada: AMO's research into identity, in-store technology, and new possibilities of content-production in fashion helped generate OMA's architectural designs for new Prada epicenter stores in New York and Los Angeles. In 2004, AMO was commissioned by the European Union to study its visual communication, and designed a colored "barcode" flag, combining the flags of all member states, which was used during the Austrian presidency of the EU. AMO has worked with Universal Studios, Amsterdam's Schiphol airport, Heineken, Ikea, Condé Nast, Harvard University and the Hermitage. It has produced Countryside: The Future, a research exhibited at Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York; exhibitions at the Venice Architecture Biennale, including Public Works (2012), Cronocaos (2010), and The Gulf (2006); and for Fondazione Prada, including When Attitudes Become Form (2012) and Serial and Portable Classics (2015). AMO, with Harvard University, was responsible for the research and curation of the 14th Venice Architecture Biennale and its publication Elements. Other notable projects are Roadmap 2050, a plan for a Europe-wide renewable energy grid; Project Japan, a 720-page book on the Metabolism architecture movement (Taschen, 2010); and the educational program of Strelka Institute in Moscow.