Caruso St John Architects Progetto Flaminio, Rome February 2015 Practice Profile

Adam Caruso and Peter St John established their practice in 1990, and have gained an international reputation for excellence in designing contemporary projects in the public realm. The practice came to public attention with the New Art Gallery in Walsall, a commission won in an international competition in 1995. From these origins in the visual arts, where a sensitivity to experience and context is required, the practice has extended its expertise and now works on a broad range of projects in the public and private realms. Current clients include the City of Lille, Bremer Landesbank and the the housing developer Bayerisches Hausbau. Recently the practice won the international competition to renovate and extend Gunnar Asplund’s Stockholm City Library. Caruso St John aims to have a wide range of work at a variety of scales and want to resist the trend of increased size and specialisation that dominates contemporary architecture.

The practice is interested in the emotional potential and physical qualities of construction. This attitude has developed out of a fascination for materials, backed up with an involvement in academic and office based research. Built projects incorporate this research and respond to their physical context and brief in unexpected ways. The projects stand out by resisting off the peg construction. Both the New Art Gallery, Walsall (2000) and the Brick House, London (2006) have been short listed for the Stirling Prize, the UK’s most prestigious architecture award, in recognition of this ambition. The practice is increasingly involved in urban-scale commissions, and is currently working on urban projects in Zurich, Munich and Hamburg.

Adam Caruso and Peter St John are closely involved in the design of all projects, with one of the partners attending client meetings and leading the project together with an architect project leader. The practice is international in its outlook and in its make up, with many of the staff, including the partners, involved in teaching in schools of architecture. The office of approximately 25 work in an open studio in a 1930s factory building in East London which the practice converted to studio use for themselves. In 2010 a second office was opened by the practice in Zurich.

Caruso St John Architects Company Information

Biographies

Adam Caruso studied architecture at McGill University in Montreal. He worked for Florian Beigel and Arup Associates before establishing his own practice with Peter St John in 1990.

He taught at the University of North London from 1990-2000, and was Professor of Architecture at the University of Bath from 2002-2005. He has been Visiting Professor at the Academy of Architecture in Mendrisio, the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University, the ETH Zurich, and on the Cities Programme at the London School of Economics. In 2011 Adam Caruso was appointed Professor of Architecture and Construction at the ETH Zurich.

Peter St John studied at the Bartlett School of Architecture, and the Architectural Association. He worked for Richard Rogers, Florian Beigel, Dixon Jones, and Arup Associates prior to establishing his own practice with Adam Caruso.

He taught at the University of North London from 1990-2000, and has been Visiting Professor at the Academy of Architecture in Mendrisio, the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University, and at the ETH Zurich. He is currently a visiting professor at London Metropolitan University.

Professional Registrations

Adam Caruso: ARB Registration 057487B, RIBA Membership No. 5056513

Peter St John: ARB Registration 055027B, RIBA Membership No. 4766677

Contact Person

Adam Caruso +44 20 7613 3161 [email protected]

Offices

Caruso St John Architects LLP 1 Coate Street London E2 9AG +44 20 7613 3161 [email protected]

Partners: Rod Heyes, Bernd Schmutz Staff: 17 registered architects, 7 architectural assistants, 2 administrative staff

Caruso St John Architects Räffelstrasse 32 8045 Zürich +41 44 454 80 90 [email protected]

Directors: Michael Schneider, Florian Zierer Staff: 11 registered architects, 2 architectural assistants, 1 administrator

Caruso St John Architects City and Sustainibility

Lycée Hotelier de Lille France 2011-2016

Stockholms Stadsbibliotek Sweden 2012-2020

Falconplein Zeemanshuis Antwerp, Belgium 2014-2017

ZSC Lions Ice Hockey Arena Zurich, Switzerland 2012 - 2020

Caruso St John Architects began in London, a famously complex and unplanned city where ancient fragments sit alongside new development. From these origins our practice developed an interest in the reality of places, in contingency and adjacency, and in the unexpected vitality of diverse programmes and uses. In this sense we are anti-utopian with a belief that the existing city provides a rich and surprising basis for new ideas. Our projects begin with an interpretation of the existing context and an ambition to intensify existing qualities. We are frequently asked to work on sites with special significance or where other architects have failed to make convincing proposals that participate in the existing life of the city. Sometimes we have exported this sensibility to other places in Europe. We are currently working on projects in Stockholm, Lille, Antwerp, Eindhoven, Zurich, Bremen and Munich. We have previously worked in Paris, Rome, Kalmar and Basel.

Caruso St John Architects Stortorget In Kalmar in southern Sweden we refurbished the existing Stortorget with the artist Eva Lofdhal. Kalmar, Sweden By stripping away layers of twentieth century change we revealed the original eighteenth century 1999-2003 design for the town square and focussed on restoring the quality of the existing ground. We made Veemgebouw a new setting for the baroque cathedral but also a tough working surface for a market six days a Eindhoven, Netherlands week. A field of new lighting masts and subterranean fountains contribute to the atmosphere of the 2007-2016 Stortorget making a memorable communal space with a contemporary liveliness. The project won the Siena prize for public space and received a special mention in the European Prize for Public Space.

For several years we have been working with the Dutch developer Trudo on proposals to refurbish and transform the former Phillips manufacturing site in Eindhoven. The existing urban grid is studded with inter-war manufacturing and warehouse buildings which are no longer required for electronics. This project is concerned both with imaginative ways to refurbish buildings designed for specific programmes, and with a mix of uses and that can invigorate this city quarter over a number of years. We are introducing some provisional uses including designer furniture outlets, car parking, food markets etc. which will alter the perception of this part of the city and prefigure the introduction of substantial residential and offices uses.

Caruso St John Architects Europaallee Baufeld E Zurich, Switzerland 2007-2013

Paulaner Housing Munich, Germany 2012-2018

Caruso St John recently completed a mixed use building in Europallee, Zurich. The project completes an avenue of new buildings on former railway lands close to the central station. Our building creates a new public space at one end of the site – held under the building and sheltered from the generous scale of the street and demanding openness of the remaining railway tracks. By mixing office accommodation and residential towers the building is active throughout the day. The facades make a monumental architecture that provides a cohesive identity for a big shopping street. Pieced together from massive precast concrete components, the building envelope combines contemporary environmental performance with an archaic trabeation.

Our latest project is for two major city blocks in Munich. We are developing proposals for 40,000m2 of apartments that enclose public courtyard gardens. The urban plan restructures the former Paulaner brewery site and responds to the prevailing scale of Munich with consistent eaves heights and strong, repetitive facades. On the courtyard side the elevations are softened by wide curved balconies that result in a billowing surface. The buildings reinterpret familiar apartment typologies with frequent staircases and generous double aspect flats. By stepping back at the head of the site the building creates a small square that gives the block an identity and an address. Restaurants, a kindergarten, a nursery and different dwelling types occupy the ground floor. The scheme contains a significant component of social housing which is integrated without differentiation. Caruso St John Architects Tate Britain, Millbank Project Caruso St John’s particular interest in the city results in a resistance to wholesale demolition and London, United Kingdom a preference to retain existing structures that can be reintegrated into a new urban whole. In our 2006-2013 proposal for Maxxi in Rome we put forward a range of spaces for art that re-used some of the existing factory buildings on the site and invented new forms that reacted to the industrial context to make galleries on a big scale. Reusing historic fabric reduces the need for new materials and the environmental costs associated with extraction and processing. Construction sites are energy intensive places and generate high levels of waste. While these processes can be actively managed, a presumption that existing buildings can be re-used makes best use of embodied energy and is less likely to adversely affect biodiversity. This attitude goes beyond simplistic ideas of sustainability that focus only on short-term technological solutions.

Caruso St John have become expert in working with existing fabric in sensitive places to deliver projects where sustainability is a high priority. In 2013 we finished work on the refurbishment of Tate Britain where we introduced entirely new systems of environmental control to listed construction from the 1890s. By enormously improving insulation and efficiency we reduced annual energy consumption by 187,000 kWh while meeting the client’s expectations for temperature and humidity control. We are currently working on a new mixed use building in Antwerp which is designed to reach BREEAM Outstanding. We are excited about the opportunity to extend this expertise to larger sites and a whole city quarter.

Caruso St John Architects Grosser Burstah Hamburg, Germany 2014 - 2018

Cities are increasingly diverse - public organisations, commercial spaces, and civic space overlap in new and complex ways. Caruso St John work to combine buildings and city space with imagination. Twentieth century urbanism suggests that landscape could influence city design so that health, quality of life and openness are more important than highways, fixed institutions and social hierarchies. We have acted with city authorities all over Europe to advocate for projects and balance commercial needs, architectural ambitions and the feeling of the city.

In Hamburg we have just won a competition for a new city building at a key junction. The architecture exploits the triangular site to make valuable office space with a very flexible plan. But it also responds to Hamburg’s architectural inheritance drawing on projects by Fritz Hoger whose bold Expressionist brick buildings gave Hamburg a new identity in the 1920s and reinforced connections with Chicago and New York.

Caruso St John are interested in ways of curating the city – of marshalling new and existing buildings, spaces and atmospheres and creating new places as an amalgum. This way of seeing the city reduces the short-termism and tabula rasa urbanism that are no longer sustainable. The problem for Europe is how to process the historic city and foster more contemporary ways of living.

Caruso St John Architects Selected Projects & Competitions

Stockholms Stadsbibliotek Date: 2012-2020 Location: Stockholm Client: Stockholms Stad Budget: €50m Status: Competition, first prize; Ongoing project Major renovation and extension of Gunnar Asplund’s masterpiece

Paulaner Munich Date: 2012-2018 Location: Munich Client: Bayerische Hausbau Budget: €55m Status: Competition, first prize; Ongoing project 40,000sq m mixed use building on the site of the Paulaner Brewery

ZSC Lions Ice Hockey Arena Date: 2012-2020 Location: Zürich Client: ZSC Lions Budget: 180m CHF Status: Competition, first prize; Ongoing project A new ice hockey arena for the city of Zurich

Grosser Burstah 3 Date: 2014-2019 Location: Hamburg, Germany Client: Quantum Immobilien AG Budget: €40m Status: Competition, first prize; Ongoing project 12,000 sq m office building at a key junction in the city

Falconplein Zeemanshuis Date: 2014-2017 Location: Antwerp, Belgium Client: Construction & Investment Partners NV Budget: €8.4m Status: Competition, first prize; Ongoing project 9,600 sq m Residential building. Part of a masterplan by Rapp + Rapp

Bremer Landesbank, Bremen Date: 2011–2016 Location: Bremen, Germany Client: Bremer Landesbank Budget: €33m Status: Competition, first prize; Under construction A new bank headquarters on Bremen’s historic Domshof square

Lycée Hôtelier de Lille Date: 2011–2014 Location: Lille, France Client: Mairie de Lille et Région Nord-Pas de Calais Budget: €44m Status: Competition, first prize; Under construction The establishment of a Lycée Hôtelier within former factory structures.

Caruso St John Architects Veemgebouw, Strijp S Date: 2007-2015 Location: Eindhoven, Netherlands Client: Trudo Budget: €18m Status: Invited competition, first prize; Under construction Conversion of the former Philips factory to provide parking for 600 cars and the addition of two floors of apartments at roof level.

Tate Britain, Millbank Project Date: 2006-2013 Location: London Client: Tate Budget: £23m Status: Built Long term commission for the development of Tate’s Millbank site

Europaallee Baufeld E Date: 2007-2013 Location: Zurich Client: SBB Imobilium Budget: 100m CHF Status: Competition, first prize; Built 30,000 sq m of apartments and offices in a mixed use building

Zurich Oerlikon Date: 2013 Location: Zurich Client: SBB Imobilium Budget: 60m CHF Status: Competition, finalist 18,000sq m, 22 storey office tower

Zollstrasse Zurich Date: 2013 Location: Zurich Client: SBB Imobilium Budget: 60m CHF Status: Competition, second prize 15,000 sq m apartment buildings in Zurich West

St Gallen Wiesental Date: 2012 Location: St Gallen, Switzerland Client: HRS Real Estate AG Budget: 30m CHF Status: Competition, first prize; Ongoing project 8 storey mixed use building on a site west of central St Gallen

Oberes Kandergrien Date: 2011 Location: Spiez, Switzerland Client: Bayerische Hausbau Budget: N/A Status: Invited planning study 130,000 sq m masterplan for a lakeside housing development Caruso St John Architects Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts, Lausanne Date: 2011 Location: Lausanne, Switzerland Client: Canton de Vaud Budget: 75m CHF Status: Competition, second prize Conversion of the SBB locomotive halls into a 8,000 sq m art museum

Nottingham Contemporary Date: 2004–2009 Location: Nottingham, UK Client: Nottingham City Council Budget: £14m Status: Competition, first prize; Built 3,500 sq m centre for contemporary art and performance

Cultural and Tourist Centre, Ascona Date: 2004 Location: Ascona, Switzerland Client: Council of Ascona Budget: 60m CHF Status: Competition, first prize New building providing a 1200 seat concert hall and art museum

Stortorget, Kalmar Date: 1999-2003 Location: Kalmar, Sweden Client: Municipality of Kalmar Budget: £1m Status: Competition, first prize; Built Renovation of the Cathedral Square in the centre of Kalmar

Office Building, Kings Cross Central Date: 2003 Location: London Client: Argent Budget: £20m Status: Invited study Office building at the western side of Kings Cross railway station

New Art Galley Walsall Date: 1995-2000 Location: Walsall, UK Client: Walsall Metropolitan Borough Council Budget: £16m Status: Competition, first prize; Built A new 5,000m2 building to accommodate the Garman Ryan collection

Centre for Contemporary Art, Rome Date: 1999 Location: Rome Client: Centro per le Arti Contemporanee, Roma Status: Competition, finalist

Caruso St John Architects