A-A Collective

Project name: Warsaw Central Square

Project Type: Restricted Competition Entry

Location: Warsaw, Poland

Client: Municipality of Warsaw

Status: 1st place, Ongoing

Team: A-A Collective

The idea for the reconstruction of the Central Square is based on a multi-layered reading of the past, present and future of Warsaw.

We will remind modern users how this city once looked, what were the proportions of streets and the outlines of the buildings that created it.

The drawing of the flooring emerges form a cartographic study that takes in consideration precise maps of the prewar Warsaw as well as old maps from the  archives of the city.

Vegetation will be introduced, as a binding material to connect the diverse layers of history and as a characteristic feature of the public space of this city.

At the same time the use of  nature will give a new character to the square that remembers the past but enables also new contemporary uses.

To be able to show this dialogue between past and present we decided to design a new flooring that mixes the existing granite pebbles with the new ones.

Some of the existing elements of the communist past are going to be reinterpreted, their meaning is going to be sabotaged trough little interventions.

The final aim is to give the square back to the citizens of Warsaw. 

Project name: An Arch for Sønderjylland

Project Type: Open Competition

Location: Christiansfeld, Denmark

Client: Municipality of Kolding

Status: 1st place, Ongoing

Image ©: A-A Collective + Frank Cilius

Team: A-A Collective +

Engineer: ISC Rådgivende Ingeniører A/S

Manufacturer: Tora + Sjøllund

A Triumphal Arch:

This monument will be built to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the historic reunification of the region of Southern Jutland to Denmark through a referendum vote after the First World War.

The airy and powerful expression of our portal must be seen as a physical manifestation of a memory of the original gate and the event that took place 100 years ago. The Arch is designed as a sequence of steel modules inspired by the arches that were installed in sequence to decorate the street were the king was passing to celebrate the reunification. The powerful motif of the structure is constantly changing depending on where you see the work from. As a dream that cannot be fully grasped, the portal changes and can appear both massive and porous at the same time. It’s a physical monument, but it celebrates something fragile and precarious.

Life after celebration:

It’s fundamental to think the life of the monument into a larger cycle. A monument that celebrates values that should survives in everyone consciousness can not be thought to be ephemeral and disposed after the celebration day.

An important part of the concept study was planning together with the municipality of Kolding the transportation and installation of the monument to the Reunification and Border Museum. Here, over time, the plants and nature will take over the monument until it will age into the realm of ruins.

Project name: THE DEATH OF A BUILDING / Part of the exhibition OTHERNITY at the The Hungarian Pavilion at the 2021 Venice Biennale

Project Type: Exhibition Contribution / Research

Location: The Hungarian Pavilion ,Venice Biennale

National commissioner: Julia Fabényi

Curator: Dániel Kovács

Curatorial team: Attila Róbert Csóka, Szabolcs Molnár, Dávid Smiló

Organisation: Ludwig Museum – Museum of Contemporary Art

Status: Realized

Acknowledgment: Project supported by the Polish Institute, Budapest + the Danish Arts Foundation

Image ©: Dániel Dömölky + Daniel Vegel

All Participants:

A-A Collective (Poland / Denmark / Switzerland), Architecture Uncomfortable Workshop (Hungary), b210 (Estonia), BUDCUD (Poland), KONNTRA (Slovenia / North-Macedonia / Croatia) , LLRRLLRR (Estonia / United Kingdom), MADA (Serbia), MNPL Workshop (Ukraine), Paradigma Ariadné (Hungary), PLURAL (Slovakia), Vojtěch Rada (Czech Republic), Studio Act (Romania)

The project of the Hungarian Pavilion, Othernity – Reconditioning our Modern Heritage is looking for an answer to the following question: what possibilities does the often disputed and in many ways obsolete heritage of the modern architecture hold for the architects of the future? The curatorial team asked 12 architecture practices from Central and Eastern Europe to recondition 12 iconic modern buildings of Budapest, offering a possible way to reconcile past and future architecture.

The exhibition is divided into two spaces: the LAB section documents the historical conditions of the 12 buildings, while the SHOWROOM section presents the 12 contemporary architectural reflections. The structure of the two sections is built up by mirroring the parameters of the objects on display: the two narratives are inseparable from one another and can be understood only in the context of the other.

Contribution by A-A Collective:

The building: National Power Dispatch Centre [built: 1974-1979, architect: Csaba Virág (1933–2015),moffice: Corporation for Residential and CommunalnDesign (LAKÓTERV)

To say goodbye: Not everything is meant for eternity. When we found the former building of the National Power Dispatch Centre in Budapest, we encountered a structure in poor condition, not properly maintained and abandoned for years. Inside, a demolition team was already in place to remove toxic materials and prepare the building for pull down. This building, at one time a monument of high-tech Brutalism, was now suffering a very slow and low-tech death.

As we left after our first visit, we noticed something seemingly banal - some shrubbery that had overgrown the facade.

To be loyal to the process of time and decay: The former National Power Dispatch Centre is located on the historical area of the Castle Hill. What struck our attention was the presence, in such an area full of monuments, of a building that through its state of decay was affirming the opposite: it takes work to make things stay the same. A building left alone is as dynamic as nature: it goes through youth, old age and death. So we asked ourselves: wouldn’t it be better, instead of keeping the “status quo”, to use the Dispatch Centre as an opportunity to introduce dynamics through an unorthodox restoration process?

To let go: We asked ourselves a fundamental question: What if we start designing the decay of this building, instead of a renovation or even transformation? What if we accept and even accelerate the process of nature taking over?

With our design we intend to manage and support the process of nature taking over, with the goal of giving a green space to this area of the city. At the same time, we think that such a building deserves a funeral. Demolition would obliterate a part of history in a manner unbefitting Castle Hill, a place where history is celebrated.

To Accept death: We strip the building of its toxic materials and get rid of everything but the constructing elements and infrastructural cores. During the day, this new city oasis will be open to visitors and function as a public park ensconced within the remains of a building that “once was”. The project will act as an experimental way to deal with Brutalist heritage by pointing towards a more symbiotic and nature driven future.

“All go to the same place; all come from dust, and to dust all return.” Ecclesiastes 3:20

Project name: Arena Design in Poznan

Project Type: Direct commission

Location: Poznan, Poland

Client: Targi Poznanskie

Status: Built

Team: A-A Collective

Image ©: Jedrzej Sokołowski

Project name: PIVOT

Project Type: Open Competition

Location: Steckborn, Switzerland

Client: Schulstiftung Glarisegg

Status: 1st place, Ongoing

Team: A-A Collective + Magdalena Stadler

The existing ensemble had a strong history and a powerful character: a sixteenth century tower-house flanked by a long and low building along the lake; an ensemble of small heterogeneous constructions came later; there’s a peer, a huge garden with Alpacas, the views to the lake.

The place was looking almost perfect, but the school was bursting at the seams. The question now was: how to find a solution to the need for more space and the high requirements for functionality of the school, without compromising the pedagogic and historical value of the existing? In order to keep the balance between built substance and natural elements, the decision was to keep the qualities and replace the objects.

The “long building along the lake” became a “new long building along the lake” that keeps the same beautiful tension between horizontality and verticality as the old couple.

A “shed” that was closing the southern flank of the big courtyard was replaced by a school building that keeps the same horizontality and directness towards the outside. The same happens on the side to the park, where the new “mehrzweckhalle” is defining the new-old border. All the functions are grouped around a central schoolyard, the heart of the ensemble. The light and filigrane constructions blur the lines between inside and outside. The school becomes a campus.

Project name: Summer house N.

Project Type: Private commission

Location: North-Eastern Poland

Client: Private

Status: Conceptual phase

Team: A-A Collective + Agnieszka Suchocka

Year: 2018 -

Project Name: A pavilion along a path

Project Type: MMA, Closed Competition

Location: Aarhus, Denmark

Client: Municipality of Aarhus

Status: 2nd Place

Team: A-A Collective + Raphael Kadid

Epilogue: Years after the competition entry we were approached by Videncenter for Håndværk, Design & Arkitektur and asked if we wanted to realize a mock-up of the project in collaboration with the institution NEXT. NEXT educates carpenters among other craft professions and we agreed to lead the workshop under one condition: The students would be the experts. We needed their inputs, idea’s and drive in order for this project to move from a sketch to a mock-up. The result was secondary, the conversation and process the end goal.

Image ©: Palle Demant, NEXT + A-A Collective

Mockup Workshop: A-A Collective + NEXT, organized by Videnscenter for Håndværk - Design & Arkitektur

Team: A-A Collective

Project name: New School in San Vittore

Project Type: Restricted Competition Entry

Location: Graubünden, Switzerland

Client: Comune di San Vittore

Status: Unbuilt

Team: A-A Collective

Project name: St. Gallen Textilemuseum

Project Type: Open Competition Entry

Location: St. Gallen, Switzerland

Client: Stiftung Textilemuseum St. Gallen

Status: Unbuilt

Team: A-A Collective x Studio PNEUMA

Project: 4 Sculptures for Microsoft Development Center Copenhagen

Project Type: Public Artwork, Sculptures

Location: Lyngby, Denmark

Client: Microsoft

Status: Built

Image ©: Studio Pneuma + Lars Just + Microsoft.

Team: A-A Collective + Format Agency + Inpro + Rubin Stuk & Søn + Microsoft

How to make something invisible into a haptic experience?

A-A Collective was asked to engage in a discussion with the Microsoft Development Center about the “quantum computer project”

The result was a series of sculptures that had to represent the milestones of human technological discoveries. The themes chosen were: electricity, telecommunication, traditional computer technology and the quantum computer.

“The sculptures should be seen as a dialogue between art and science. We wanted to take this opportunity to investigate how to materialize a complex theory. How to make something invisible into a haptic experience? “

The sculptures are positioned in the public area of the “Microsoft Development Center, Copenhagen”, available for everybody to discover, see and touch.

Project name: Study for a Raiffeisen Bank

Project Type: Restricted Competition Entry

Location: Oberlunkhofen, Switzerland

Client: Raiffeisenbank Kelleramt-Albis

Status: Unbuilt

Team: A-A Collective x Buol & Zünd

We were asked to study how to develop the headquarters of a local bank and some housing units in a little Swiss village.

The Farmhouse with its big roof seemed to be the right typology to bring together multiple functions and, at the same time, fit the rural environment.

The expression of the building itself combines local elements with contemporary construction techniques.

The roof stripe that decorates the gable wall is a typical local decorativ motif.

The orientation of the roof eave towards the street follows a pattern that can be found analyzing how the farmhouses aggregate around the street in this area.

A concrete core that hosts the rappresentative rooms and the staircase has in the same time the function of stiffening the light wooden structure.

Joining the functions of bank and housing around the same roof and the same stair makes the building lively all over the year, communicating the image of a bank that is part of a community.

Project name: A new building for the University of Warsaw

Project Type: Restricted Competition Entry

Location: Warsaw, Poland

Client: University of Warsaw

Status: Unbuilt

Team: A-A Collective

Project Name: Antihouse

Project Type: Art / Research

Status: On Going

Team: A-A Collective

A Social Issue:

We are living in a society that is more and more nomadic. On the one side migration flows from wars and poverty, on the other side there is the mobility of people inside wealthy countries.

An average American is expected to move 11.4 times in his life. 4.5 million Syrians moved away from their hometown between 2015 and 2017. In the same time-span 2 million people moved to the wealthiest countries of the EU.

Where personal identity once used to be linked to one place, city or country this becomes now obsolete.

As a manifestation of this change in culture our proposal does not belong to a specific site, but instead is going to represent and depict a contemporary idea of identity through an architectural object. 

Project Name: A Side Table

Project Type: Prototype

Status: Built

Image ©: Zana Krujina

Team: A-A Collective + Studio Subtle

One sheet of material makes one side table. The material is laser cut and manually welded - the off cuts from the table top becoming the legs - 0% material waste

Project Name: A Baroque Scenery

Project Type: Open Competition

Location: Holte, Denmark

Client: Gl. Holtegård

Status: Among the 16 finalists

Team: A-A Collective x Mikael Stenstrøm

Mirroring The Baroque:

For Gl. Holtegård we want to transform the garden into a stage where the visitors become the actors of a theatre play.

 To do so we propose a labyrinth of curved mirrors that reflect and distort reality.

The garden becomes a doppelgänger of itself. People will be observing and being observed.

By looking at the existing shapes in the smaller and denser part of the baroque garden we will find the forms that are needed to create an organic and labyrinthic layout.

The clear lines and axes of the garden will be broken and the composition will no longer seem completed within its own order. The new liquid layout will break the perspective and the abstract will rule.

“All the world´s a stage, And all the men and women, merely Players;

They have their Exits and their Entrances,

And one man in his time plays many parts.”

As you like it.

William Shakespeare, 1623

Project name: A Bigger Splash - Warsaw

Project Type: Exhibition / Research

Location: ZODIAK PAVILION, Warsaw

Status: Realized

Team: A-A Collective

The proximity of the urbanized Praga housing district to the neglected natural environment along the Wystawowy channel creates a surreal and fascinating situation.

The whole area generates the possibility of happenings that could challenge the routine of the cityscape. We interpret this space as an opportunity to have a special place where wilderness meets leisure.

In order to achieve this, we decided to activate the site through a set of punctual interventions connected by a singular path and kept together by the idea of public bath.

By purifying the water with the introduction of a specific aquatic vegetation and rising the water level, new activities will be available for the city. A sequence of bridges will provide new functions, from public gyms to spiritual retirements, that will be available also off season.

In our project, the bridges are not mere infrastructure but are seen as a place of gathering, a symbol of connection and unification.

Project name: Hortus Conclusus

Project Type: Competition

Location: Mexico City, Mexico

Client: MEXTRÓPOLI

Status: Unbuilt

Team: A-A Collective

 A garden is at the same time artificial and natural. Is an attempt to make nature a welcoming place for man. 

Therefore it is a man-made interpretation of nature, maybe also a simulation of reality. A garden in order to keep its status needs attention, otherwise, it turns very fast into wilderness or it dies. 

Our planet is more and more anthropic due to its rising population. Earth can be almost seen as a big garden that needs the care of man to survive. 

We propose to install an enclosed vertical garden around one of the fountains of the park. The plants are going to be kept in bags with no automatic water supply. During the 15 days of the fair visitors are asked to take care of the garden and water the plants with simple tools provided inside the pavilion. 

The pavilion aims to raise awareness towards the environment we inhabit and to induce the public to reflect on the fundamental importance of taking care of the common spaces.

At the same time: a long bench, the freshness of plants and of the water of the fountain are going to provide a pleasant place to rest during the fair days.

The building consists of a light wooden structure enveloped by an outer skin made out of the same polypropylene fabric used to cover agricultural fields. At first glance, the installation will attract the visitors’ attention with the act of censoring the Fuente de Mercurio. Once the public reaches the inner space the pavilion reveals its hidden garden where the greenery is hanged on the structure in common re-used polypropylene bags. The choice of species will be made to avoid overwatering and ensure that the plants will need water to stay green. When the pavilion get dismantelled the public is welcome to take the plants with them.

At night the lights will cast the shadows of the structure, plants and of the fountain on on the outer fabric. This will make the pavilion looking a public lantern.

Project Name: A Table

Project Type: Furniture

Client: Private

Status: Built

Team: A-A Collective

Project name: House of Distance

Project Type: Research

Location:Fictive town in Japan

Status: Unbuilt

Team: A-A Collective x Studio Vlora

We believe that the idea of dimension doesn’t have to relate directly to the word measure, it can go far beyond that. We were fascinated by the concept of making a house focusing on the distance between the spaces.How could be a house where the distance between people and spaces creates the house itself?The building has to become a device that constantly creates distance. Starting from the courtyard typology, where the distance is generated by a void, we designed a house where the distance is generated by a volume. This becomes the building’s core, defining the hierarchy of the distancesin the house. The house take a sort of a labyrinth concept, where the paths around the core create the distances and always the feeling of being inside a bigger organism.The bond between the central core and the outer walls become the potential of the project, generating a new perception that expands the sense of the living space.

Project: Chopin International Music Centre

Project Type: Restricted Competition entry

Location: Żelazowa Wola, Poland

Client: The Fryderyk Chopin Institute

Status: Unbuilt

Landscape: Stine Henten

Sustainability:  Diana Paoluzzi

Team: A-A Collective

The House: the most archaic and recognizable architectural symbol. What happens when you break this symbol into many elements? Multiply it, scatter it and reconnect it to show trough the repetition of the same shape the variety and richness of a large-scale program.

In this project we were challenged with the task to propose a big campus in the proximity of the Birth House of Fryderyk Chopin. One building that will host the various activities of the Chopin Institute.

We wanted to use the form of the house to tribute and remember the musician’s birth place.

We believe that the building should be intimate and unobtrusive, yet at the same time dignified and visible. We will achieve this not only through the reinterpretation of forms and symbols, but also through the use of local materials. Brick, an archaic, hand-laid material and a light white plaster as in the House of Fryderyk Chopin. What can be more rhythmical, sequential than a brick wall? What can be more visible than the lack of color in the middle of nature?

Inside the building one central backbone will connect all houses with each other. This path will act as both an extension of the park, but also like a traditional hallway that can be found in all Polish manor houses. Through holes of various sizes, cropped views of nature will look like paintings hung on the walls.

At the end of the path, we decided to have, as the apex of the promenade, the main concert hall waiting for us. This space is finished with elegant material and embroidered with beautiful wood. A modern way to enjoy the comfortable spaces of the intimate nineteenth-century salons, in which Fryderyk Chopin loved to play.

Project name: An exhibition for Fashion Revolution

Project Type: Invited Exhibition Participation

Location: Copenhagen, Denmark

Client: Fashion Revolution(NGO), Denmark

Status: Realized

Team: A-A Collective