Restoration

The Cassina Innovation House is the newest digital technology center in Brazil and the inaugural landmark of the Manaus Digital Pole now under development in Manaus Historical Center. With 1,586 m² spread over 4 floors, the Cassina is composed of several types of spaces to foster creativity and formal/informal meetings for the development of this new economy: multifunctional areas, lounges, meeting rooms, laboratories, training rooms, as well as a cafe / restaurant on the top floor with privileged views of the Historic Center and the Rio Negro.

A new dance school, events space, and artists’ studios have been carved out of dilapidated and disused historic outbuildings. This work is the first phase of a 6- year masterplan, developed by the practice to support this well-loved and popular cultural campus to grow and become sustainable and self-sufficient. 

In the year 2014 burned down the 1385 consecrated Church St. Martha Kirche in Nuremberg for unexplained reasons. It was also lost the original historical roof truss over the Church interior. It was the construction task, to rebuild the Church in its formerly outer contour. The interior otherwise could be reshaped with contemporary constructions.

The short history of the building. In the middle of the 19th century, it was a place, where one of the most disciplined Jewish religious movements was born and developed. During the Nazi occupation in 1941-1944 the synagogue in Uzupis was ravaged, and after that came Soviet occupation during which this desolated prayer house was remodelled into living apartments. When Lithuania regained independence, it took almost 20 years, that someone would notice this Jewish heritage object and do something about it.

The soviet modernist building is part of the Alexandrivska Hospital complex. The Octo Tower occupies the communication building which was built but never used by its original function, which was to ensure the movement of patients to the upper levels of the landscape where the main hospital activities are situated from the city downtown level.

Palacio Pereira, a heritage building under the Ministry of Culture, Arts and Heritage, will be the headquarters for the operation of the commissions and services of the Constituent Convention, while the former National Congress will be the main headquarters where the body will function and the plenaries will be held. Palacio Pereira is currently in its final phase of habilitation after an emblematic 10-year recovery and restoration process, which represents a milestone in the field of management and protection of national heritage. The use for the commissions and services of the Constituent Convention will be temporary, so the original plans for this building are maintained, to house part of the teams and offices of the Ministry of Cultures, Arts and Heritage.

The tension between old and new find its realization in the pleonastic stairway – object hanging in the balance within the space.  What is pleonastic is not strictly necessary. The stairway wasn’t necessary in the first place; neither was the strut supporting the stairway. The invention that the stairway brings about is its independence from the slab and the walls. The self-supporting stairway does not touch the beauty and the fragility of the wooden slab and the load-bearing walls. That’s how the stairway from being pleonastic becomes fantastic.