Renovation

1956: Raymond ‘Mondse’ Wollaert was a well-known and beloved citizen of Merelbeke. With his wife Germaine Willems, Raymond owned a butchery and a café. In the fifties he built the film theatre adjacent to it.
This cinema was thereupon transformed into the famous banquet hall. The name REGI is actually composed from the first names of the Wollaert family: R (Raymond), E(Etienne, son-in-law) and GI for Germaine and Gisèle (daughter).
The cinema was opened in February with a big dance party. The next day, chairs were speedily put in place for the first film Daddy Long Legs with Fred Astaire and Leslie Caron in the leading roles.

At the foot of the Harz Mountains, in the Schierke district belonging to Wernigerode, a historic and listed ice stadium has been renovated. In 2013, GRAFT won the European architecture tendering for the reactivation of the former natural ice stadium and convinced the jury with their unique roof construction. The task of the competition was to transform the stadium area into a multi-functional arena. Cultural as well as sport events should be possible throughout the year- independent of weather conditions. The existing natural stone terraces and the listed wooden referee tower were asked to be retained and included into the new design. Sanitary facilities, technical services, administration, and changing rooms as well as the gastronomy should find its place in two functional buildings completing the arena.

The factory
Comparing to those iconic big factory buildings with Bauhaus style in 798 zone, this factory is not so special and obvious. Its history is impossible to trace back, and tenants afterwards also made a lot of add-on in both interior and exterior space. It also reduced the original form of massing which is more and more ambiguous. The plan is almost a C shape, with an enclosed courtyard. The interior space is naturally split to 3 independent rectangular rooms for different tenants.

This plan is to renovate a house, built in 1974, into a two-family house. Its’ current figure is a result of going through extensions and reconstructions twice. Housings such as these which are called “Deformed Roof” houses, can be seen often in Hokkaido, but is difficult to call them beautiful, and cannot be seen out of Hokkaido. It could be said as a vernacular and anonymous kind of design.

Overview
Shenyao Art Center is transformed from an old factory to an innovation art park displaying ceramic art works. In the second phase of this project, our main strategy is to renovate existing structure of the south dormitory building while adding volumes to the north. New volumes are inserted but flexibly placed inside the factory to reconfigure the internal space, satisfying the needs of programs while at the same time enriching the playfulness of the space. On the perspective of aesthetic interpretation, the series curved spaces soften the original order.

The question of adapting traditional mountain constructions to the wishes of owners who wish to rehabilitate them into holiday homes poses an often difficult equation between conservation and the modification of the use. The cottages were built in 1956, had characteristic interior typologies to the cottages of the Giffre Valley.