Henrik Rothe
Ole Scheeren
Architectural Association
School of Architecture
The only city hall. . . . © Henrik Rothe and Ole Scheeren.
Jury
Kathryn Firth
Larry Oltmanns (Chair)
The City Hall for London project clearly recognizes the relationship between city-wide political and legislative changes and their effect at a local scale. It cleverly exploits the split representational and operational roles of the mayor in order to generate the alternative institution and space of the City Hall. It is this subtle link between institution and space that creates the active relationship between the physical and social interventions that allow the City Hall to be flexible enough to simultaneously interact with the individual and the city as a whole.
Carlos Villanueva Brandt
Manifesto: a series of terms describing phenomena of media space and physical space are introduced to identify social, territorial, and economical value systems.
Split Mayor: the separation of the representational and operational roles of the mayor is far more efficient than their uncontrolled overlap. Liberated from the need to be popularist, mayor and experts can act in a focused and targeted way to execute the necessary steps to maintain and improve the city structure.
Vocs [eye-level]: representational systems are developed to fully exploit the power of the image. Strategic media implementations, as hybrids between everyday life functions and city government information, form a system of virtual manifestations and tools of communication.
Fixpoints [u-level]: excavated from the ground of the city, seven urban arenas create spaces without precise determination, public assembly points, spaces of transience, and the return and departure points of the MexT.
Fixpoints [ad-level]: communication screens at these locations provide large-scale information on the city government and finance, and because of its commercial value the lease of the GLA’s accommodation.
Fixpoints [sky-level]: empty office space in London’s seven tallest structures is allocated to the GLA and gives the public access to the sky-level of London.
MexT [free negotiable level]: urban negotiators, the mayor's expert team, establish lines of relationships and connections between people, institutions, and the multiple spatial conditions of the city. The lines and trajectories are in constant flux, gradually covering the entire terrain of Greater London.
Mayor [super professional level]: moving between the different locations, the mayor crosses all territories, mediating and connecting the heterogeneous particles of the system.
Split Citizen: the integration of the citizen as private persona and public actor into the governmental process confronts the administrative structure with the scale of the individual.
London levels. © Henrik Rothe and Ole Scheeren.
Bowl. © Henrik Rothe and Ole Scheeren.
Efficiency. © Henrik Rothe and Ole Scheeren.
Henrik Rothe
Architectural Association
School of Architecture
Ole Scheeren
Architectural Association
School of Architecture
Henrik Rothe
is an accomplished architect with considerable expertise, having worked in thirty-five countries in airport planning, terminal design, and urbanism for Vienna Airport, Gazprom Bank, Zurich Airport, and SEA Milano, among others. In 2014, Rothe conceived the Urban Turbine research project, pioneering work that expands the possibilities of design innovation. His MexT project in collaboration with Ole Scheeren for a new London City Hall was awarded The Presidents Medal of the Royal Institute of British Architects.
Ole Scheeren
is a German-born architect and principal of Büro Ole Scheeren. His landmark projects shape the way we interact with our cities and generate new social narratives through a bold vision of architecture as highly connective and integrative environments. He has lived and worked across Europe, the United States, and Asia. Scheeren was educated at the universities of Karlsruhe and Lausanne and completed his studies at London’s Architectural Association. He was awarded the RIBA Silver Medal—the most prestigious European prize in architecture education.