A project of dreams, industrial production and folies. Madness vs. reality, artificial and garden pavilion vs vs nature. These could be the ideas that best identifies this project.

The ‘Spirulina Fountain’, designed by Bureau A, is a project a halfway between folly pavilion and the intense production basins of blue-green algae, a hybrid, fusing with the idea on contemplative italian gardens of the 16th century. 

Description of the project by Bureau A

The Spirulina Fountain displaces the culture of landscape architecture and gardening towards contemporary issues of land and urban farming in restrained areas. The fountain constitutes a hybrid, fusing the production basins of the intense blue-green algae with contemplative Italian gardens of the 16th century. More specifically, the form and dimensions of the fountain quotes the water cascades of the Villa Aldobrandini built in 1550 in Frascati, 20 km southeast of Rome.

The Spirulina alga is a nutritional plant without equivalent. Usually developed and consumed as an alimentary complement, the “blue algae” – as it was anciently named - is industrially cultivated in many countries where agriculture is difficult and fertile lands are scarce. The cyanobacteria are composed of arthrospira bacteria and are one of the only vegetable protein source containing all amino acids as well as numerous vitamins and antioxidants.

In the culture of the picturesque and romanticism, the folly pavilions referred and sometimes quoted built and natural phenomena to compose their architecture. Scales and forms were deformed, adapted freely to articulate the views of specific landscape compositions. The Spirulina Fountain, similarly, is installed in a birch forest located in a public park of Geneva and dialogues with the context and historical references as a much as it generates food. It functions both as a garden folly and a spirulina production centre.

Text.- Bureau A

 

CREDITS. DATA SHEET.-

Project.- Bureau A.
Construction work.- Professional construction training center (CFPC), Ivan Denkinger, Luc Tissot, and students from atelier AFP (carpentry).
Plants (English / Latin).- Spirulina – Arthrospira platensis.

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BUREAU A. Founded in 2012 by the association of Leopold Banchini and Daniel Zamarbide. Architects by training BUREAU A is a multidisciplinary platform aiming to blur the boundaries of research and project making on architectural related subjects, whichever their nature and status.

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Leopold Banchini was born in Geneva in 1981 and is an architect graduated from the EPFL (Ecole Polytechinique Fédérale de Lausanne). He is also Master in Architecture from the University of Lausanne (2007) and graduate of the Glasgow School of Art (2004).

Is a visiting professor in the HEAD (Haute Ecole de Design et) in Geneva since 2010 and Assistant Professor at the EPFL since 2009. He has also been Archozoom project designer in 2009.

Has been placed in Lot / ek Architects (New York) between the years 2004/2005, as an assistant project Art Basel (Basel) in 2005, and as a project partner of the collective Atelier Van Lieshout (AVL) that same year in Rotterdam.

He has developed his work as an architect in b720 Arquitectos (Barcelona) during the years 2007 and 2008, and Group8 Architects (Geneva) in 2009.

In addition, since 2008 part of 1to100 Architects, and architectural collective based in Geneva. Its members have been active and decisive parts in projects such as the winning participation of Bahrain at the last Venice Biennale - RECLAIM Golden Lion 2011, exhibitions such as The Gulf - OMA-AMO's participation at the Venice Biennale 2007 and publications such as AMO-Rem Koolhaas's Al Manakh. Parallel to that, they conduce many different operations ranging from architecture, to journalism, until urban design. They have teaching positions at the EPFL and the University of Arts and Design in Geneva.

Its aim is to take position and initiate reflexions upon our contemporary environment.

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BUREAU, is the new project by Daniel Zamarbide. The practice hides under its generic name a variety of research activities. BUREAU makes things as an urge to react to the surrounding physical, cultural and social environment with a critical standpoint and with an immersive attitude. BUREAU is (in 2017) a furniture series, an editorial project, a design team, they are architects.

Daniel Zamarbide obtains his master degree at the Institut d’Architecture de l’Université de Genève (IAUG) in 1999. During his studies he followed the workshops of Christian Marclay, Philippe Parreno and Catherine Queloz at the École Supérieure des Beaux Arts in Geneva.

In the year 2000 he becomes one of the founding members of group8, an architectural practice that has acquired an important national and international recognition.


Daniel Zamarbide has developed through the years a particular interest in the protean aspects of his discipline and nourishes his work and research through other domains like philosophy, applied and visual arts as well as cinema.

As a guest lecturer and jury he has been invited at a diversity of international schools and institutions to present and discuss his work and research.

Since 2003 his interest in research and education has led him to be invited as an assistant in the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) and as a professor (2000-14) at the Haute École d’Art et de Design (HEAD) in Geneva. In 2014, he integrates the team of ALICE Lab (Dieter Dietz) at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) as a guest professor and research director.

In 2012, Daniel leaves group8 to start a new practice with Leopold Banchini, architect. Their practice, BUREAU A has explored during 5 years the possibilities of architectural making in a great variety of formats, opening the practice to work in the fields of art, garden and landscape architecture, exhibition design, temporary architecture and object making.

In 2017, following the dissolution of BUREAU A, Daniel Zamarbide pursues his more personal research interests under the name of BUREAU. This new entity produces architecture in the continuity of BUREAU A and incorporates to his already prolific activities furniture design (with a design brand of the same name) and an editorial project, which launches the first publication in June 2017.

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