talking about the vitrahaus (first picture), designed by herzog et de meuron i bet we all had that moment during architecture school admiring the shape and how graceful it looked on the luscious printed book in sharp photographs taken at night with all the lighting that makes it look extra lovely. that time it felt like it's a dreamy building located somewhere far far away, only existed on books and the internet. so when i finally stepped my feet out of the bus and saw this building right in front of my face, i was totally stunned. somehow it felt like something that previously only existed as an imagination finally came true.
and once i stepped inside, i have to say that for me it is a little piece of heaven on earth. it has all the interior design things which i had been working on for the past four years. every pieces of furniture, how the rooms were set, all the materials, every smallest details, how the accessories were displayed, i completely felt like a kid on her dream playground with all the things she wants. the building itself, architecturally is an exquisite work with all the nice details and neat construction work. to my surprise, despite the shape that looks irregular from outside, inside the building the circulation works really nice and it's easy to navigate. it's a complete different feeling with i experienced in zaha hadid's maxxi in rome, with ugly details, messy contruction works, and a very inefficient circulation for a museum.
in this vitra campus complex i also got to visit zaha hadid's fire station (second picture from the last), which used to be one of my favorite architectural precedent with the striking unlikely shapes, nice material palette, and of course because of the amazing paintings of earlier hadid's works. we didn't get to go inside the building because it no longer functions as a fire station, but from the outside somehow it wasn't that impressive to me. on the contrary i found it rather disturbing, the striking shapes. i don't know whether it's because i have long lost interest to most of hadid's works or simply because i'm no longer fascinated by crazy architecture trying hard to impress. i'm more into decent and poetic architecture that is closer to treating people's senses as human being.
in the complex we could also found buildings by all this star architects, like gehry, sanaa, siza, and ando. but the most memorable was of course the moment i got to finally touch ando's concrete (last picture). there's something about the sensation of seeing and touching something you've known so well for years and finally got to feel it yourself. haha.
