Tri-Shed

Tri-Shed at the studio during autumn 2016

Anders Berensson has designed a small pedagogical/learn to build/practical structure for Full Scale Studio. A Tri-shed a much needed tool shed that is one bigger unit at school but can be divide into three smaller tool-sheds when being out on town building projects for clients.

Third of the Tri-shed on a building site during spring 2017

Since the house is built by students, the building process of the factory is a crash course in common Swedish construction methods. Every moment in erecting the building is designed as a lesson in construction and how to use common hand tools. A critical part of the design was to keep 28 students occupied at the same time and make sure that each group of students had to go through all building methods and techniques to succeed with their assignment, techniques that are crucial to know for their forth coming projects. Every cut is designed for various cutting tools such as circle saws, jig saws and hand saws. The house is also assembled with several different assembly methods such as nailing, screwing and so on.

Two day workshop outside the architecture school assembling the sheds.

To the left transporting one third of the Tri-shed to the right assembling the roof

Since the house should be able to move back an forth from the Studio space at KTH the house is designing to exactly fit into the school elevator standing on a hand pallet truck when taking of the roof. Due to the studio has a low budget the shed is designed with as lite material use as possible 

Overview drawing and material order

Cutting drawings to reduce material waste

Sections

Facades

Hideaway

Anders Berensson Architects has designed the interior for a single room apartment in central Stockholm. The design is based on making use of a big void bellow half of the apartment’s floor in combination with manifesting the client’s penchant for a French "bobo" life style. The apartment is divided into a kitchen area in the higher part of the flat that sits on top of the void and a social zone in the lower part. The void beneath the kitchen floor serves as the apartment’s storage. It stores the bed when not used and several other necessities. The kitchen floor also host a series of hatches with glass lids to store things that are practical to see and fun to show such as a shoe hatch, herb hatch, good looking iron hatch and the entrance hatch to the void. To make the kitchen area feel more French we painted the already white floor in a checkerboard pattern. The pattern is also covering the glass lids creating a raster effect especially at night when the hatches are lit. The social zone in the lower part of the flat consist of a sofa covering three sides of the space. The forth side is a custom made book shelf covering the four meter high wall. The bookshelf has an integrated workstation and half of the shelf is adapted in depth to host the clients collection of 11 cm deep French white paperback novels. At night the social zone transforms into a giant bed by sliding out a bed from under the kitchen floor that fills the gap between the sofas. Most of the apartment was design during dinner sessions with the client. These sessions often led to the refinement of small personal fun details such as a iron board, a wine cooler bench, a folding kitchen table etc. During one session the client also gave us free hands to design some of the details in a subtle way to manifest his mating preferences. Small details that should raise the question is it or is it not a ...?

Social part turned into a bed

Main drawing

Picture from kitchen 

Book shelf

Picture from social part

Big hatch in use during party

Good looking iron hatch

Entrance hatch

Shoe hatch

Kitchen herb hatch

Custom made table closed

Custom made table opened 

Kitchen table pattern named " Is it or is it not...Art Nouveau?" laser engraved into the birch wood surface. 

Back in Full Scale

After a parental leave from my duties at KTH School of Architecture I am glad to be back running KTH's Full Scale Studio alongside Anders Berensson Architects . I will try to keep you posted of some future events that the studio is undertaking. Meanwhile you can always visit the studio home page or get a sneak peak of our recent adventures below.

Material harvesting
This year the studio try to keep a low budget and a low carbon footprint by tearing down old houses and reuse its timber instead of buying new timber from the wood-shop.

Tearing down and old summer house outside Stockholm

Proud to be almost done

Mission completed 

Lots of new timber to be reused for new Studio projects

Tri-Shed

This year we go mobile by building a movable tool-shed that is one bigger unit at School and divided into three smaller parts when out on the town doing projects.

Building the Tri-Shed

Tri-Shed Drawing and material list

Drawing of cuts

Elevations

Tri-Shed Section

Tri-Shed inside KTH School of Architecture

Book release! Full Scale Studio Second Year

As a co-founder and director of the KTH School of architecture, Full Scale Studio. Anders Berensson is proud to present the book "Full Scale Studio Second Year 2015-2016" containing the amazing work that has been produced during the second year of the studio. 

Trätoppen

Anders Berensson Architects was commissioned by the Stockholm Center Party to design a skyscraper to replace an old car park in the city center of Stockholm. The result became a slender wood scraper "Trätoppen" (the tree top) that stands inside the car park leaving the existing car parks facade intact.

If  we want to reduce the amount of cars in the city center of Stockholm and at the same time make space for more housing without building on green areas, then replacing car parks with housing, shops and restaurants feels obvious. If the car park is as central located as the one on Regeringsgatan 47 it also make sense to build a high building that can fit a lot of people, shops and restaurants.

The existing car park, “Parkaden”, is perhaps Sweden's most famous one designed by Hans Asplund. The most characteristic feature of the house is a pattern with numbers on the facade which shows what floor you are on. Another thing that distinguishes this car park is the early use of a system of sloped floors. Retaining the sloping floor is hard due to the buildings low ceiling height, however it is possible to maintain the facade if the new building don’t use the whole footprint of the existing car park.

Picture from an apartment 

The skyscraper is retracted six meters from the existing car parks facade in order not to interfere too much with the expression of the car park . The Skyscraper is considerably smaller in foot print than the car park which enables space for a large public terrace on the seventh floor. The retraction also makes it possible to use the existing building at the lower floors after an extensive reconstruction.

The new building will be 40 stories high and built out of cross laminated timber “CLT”. In the 33 floors that protrude above the existing car park 31 floors will be residential and 2 floors will be public terraces. The seven floors inside the existing car park is best suited for shopping and restaurants due to the depth of the house. The CLT facade of the new skyscraper is a continuation of the pattern with numbers that Hans Asplund designed. From the outside, one can count the floors by reading the facade and from the inside you will be reminded what floor you are on just like in the parking garage. This is a useful feature given that the skyscraper will be the highest in the city center of Stockholm. The facade also has some practical benefits and acts like a sun screen, which keeps the building cool and energy efficient.

Picture to the left: The building seen from Hamngatan. Picture to the right: The building seen from the intersection between Regeringsgatan and Mäster Samuelsgatan

Facts:

Height: 133 m

Width: 35 m

Depth: 18 m

Number of floors: 40

Number of floors above the existing car park: 33

Number of apartments per floor: 8 pcs. A 50 m2

Total number of apartments: 250

Area per floor in the new building: 630m2

Floor programing:

Floor 40: Audience terrace

Floor 8-39: Apartments

Friend 7: Public terrace

Floor 0-6: Shopping & Restaurants

Shadow diagram 

Paper fold model

Trätoppen Sketch

85% says build it!

During the last month our project Klarastaden has gone viral and has been featured in webpages, magazines and tabloids like Techinsider, Citylab, Dezeen, Inhabitat, SVT (Swedish State Television), The Guardian, The Huffington Post, Clarion, Metro, Architectural Digest to just mention a few. One of the news that made us extra happy and surprised is a local voting at the webpage lajkat.aftonbladet.se. 85% of more than 5000 voters says build it! We are uttermost proud to be crowd pleasers!

Klarastaden

Anders Berensson Architects has designed a new city area in central Stockholm .The firm was commissioned by “Stockholm Centre Party” to make a dense and green city on top of the train track area next to Stockholm Central Station. Stockholm is growing and to accommodate population growth the city needs to build more houses. One of the most sustainable way of doing this is to densify the existing neighborhoods and take advantage of existing infrastructure. The train track area in the West part of Stockholm City is one of Stockholm's most central locations with a high attraction value. Given the cost of covering the existing train tracks and the area's central location, the new proposal aims to build a tight and high city area in order to make room for as many people as possible in central Stockholm.

In order to build denser the firm has designed a new type of city block for Stockholm. The proposed city blocks exist out of thin towers which can be varied in height to accommodate more people but also adapt to light conditions and views. The proposal is apartment buildings scaled down to its smallest component, one stairwell surrounded by apartments to get the smallest footprint possible. With these smaller volumes, the design can be more flexible and adapt to parameters such as views, sight lines and light conditions and still get more living space. The design also makes larger parts of the area accessible to the public since both courtyards and roof terraces is crossed by public paths. The sky walk on the roof terraces will be one of the longest parks in Stockholm with best view in town. The proposal also makes the waterfront accessible for people in Stockholm. To control views and light conditions for the new houses zoning regulations for building heights is a major part of the proposal. Every other row of houses is low, max 4 floors with a courtyard and every other row of houses is high 7 to 30 floors. About 90% of all apartments will receive a lake view and the sun will shine through the lower parts of the blocks to reach down to street level during the afternoon. The new city area will host about approximately 5800 apartments, 8000 work places and about 300 shops. 

The new city area will be the highest and densest in Stockholm. Because of the areas location the firm believes it is a suitable area for higher buildings given that in the present situation there is very few apartments next to the area that will be negatively affected from shading or blocked views. When the new area meets a residential district the building heights are lower. The highest part of the area is towards Stockholm Central Station where there are good communications and where many people want to live.  

Explanatory diagram showing the advantages of a new typology of blocks compared to the typical block structure used in Stockholm.

Swedish Text:

Stockholm växer och för att tillmötesgå befolkningstillväxten måste det byggas fler bostäder. Det mest hållbara sättet att göra detta på är att förtäta redan befintliga stadsdelar och dra nytta av redan existerande infrastruktur. Spårområdet i Västra City är ett av Stockholms mest centrala lägen med ett högt attraktionsvärde. Med tanke på kostnaden för överdäckningen och områdets centrala läge precis intill Stockholm Centralstation bör det nya området byggas så tätt och högt som möjligt för att kunna göra plats för så många personer som möjligt centralt i Stockholm. De tidigare förslagen för området följer Stockholms kvarterstruktur och kopplar på ett självklart sätt an till befintliga gator och leder dessa vidare ner till vattnet. Denna grundstruktur finns det ingen anledning att förändra. De föreslagna åtta våningsbyggnaderna i kvartersform har dock betydande brister i densitet, variation, ljus, sjöutsikt och tillgänglighet.Kvarterens långa horisontala utsträckning blir stora och slutna för allmänheten och dess höjd skuggar gatorna förutom under sommarmånaderna. Denna struktur går inte heller att göra högre då den redan är brutal i sin skala, även om den har formen av något igenkännbart i Stockholm. Skulle dessa hus bli högre skulle all sol försvinna i området.

En ny form av kvartersstad.

För att kunna bygga tätare behövs en annan typologi av hus. Därför föreslår vi en mindre och flexiblare typologi som kan varieras i höjd för att rymma fler människor men också anpassa sig till ljusförhållanden och utsikt. Vårt förslag går ut på att flerbostadshusen skalas ned till sin minsta beståndsdel -ett trapphus med lägenheter och hiss för att få en så liten horisontell utbredning som möjligt, det vill säga en variation på punkthuset men anpassat till en urban struktur. Med denna volym kan stadsbilden bli betydligt mer flexibel och anpassas till parametrar som utsikt, siktlinjer och ljusförhållanden och ändå få in mer bostadsyta samt tillgängligöra betydligt större delar av området för allmänheten då innergårdarna genomkorsas av publika stråk. Förutom att öppna upp innergårdarna föreslår vi också att alla hus bör förses med takterrasser som är gemensamma för de boende i huset alternativt är semioffentliga platser med restauranger och annan publik verksamhet. För att reglera utsikt och ljus skapas zoneringsregler i höjdled. Varannan husrad blir låg, 4 våningar med en park emellan sig och varannan husrad blir hög från 7 till 30 våningar. Ca 90 % av alla lägenheter får då sjöutsikt och solen kommer att silas genom de lägre delarna ner på gatunivå. Samtidigt kommer den byggda ytan i området öka. Generellt sett är Klarastaden en lämplig plats för inslag av högre bebyggelse med tanke på att det i dagsläget ligger få bostäder i direkt anslutning som kommer att påverkas sol- och utsiktsmässigt. Men där så finns, exempelvis i Atlasområdet, vill vi ha en omfattande boendedialog för att integrera ny bebyggelse på ett sätt som berikar existerande områden. Vi vill även dela upp varje kvarter på olika byggherrar för att öka variationen i området. Då öppnas möjligheter för en mer varierad stadsbild och fler typer av boendeformer.