The forthcoming (i.e. next) post will retroactively serve as an otherwise arbitrary excuse for posting this project, one of my favorites of the last few years, a kind of castellated prosthetic elevator on the island of Malta by Architecture Project.
The twenty-story outdoor elevator "required a certain rigour to resolve the dichotomy between the strong historic nature of the site and the demands for better access placed upon it by cultural and economic considerations," resulting in the choice of blunt industrial materials and stylized perforations.
As the architects describe it:The geometric qualities of the plan echo the angular forms of the bastion walls, and the corrugated edges of the aluminium skin help modulate light as it hits the structure, emphasizing its verticality. The mesh masks the glazed lift carriages, recalling the forms of the original cage lifts, whilst providing shade and protection to passengers as they travel between the city of Valletta and the Mediterranean Sea.
Personally, I love the idea of what is, in effect, a kind of bolt-on castle, combining the language of one era—the Plug-In Cities of Archigram, say—with the aesthetics of the Knights of Malta.
In fact, it's almost tempting to write a design brief explicitly calling for new hybridizations of these approaches: modular, prefab construction... combined with Romanesque fortification.
An emergency stairwell spirals down between the two parallel elevator shafts, which "also reduces the visual weight of the lift structure itself and accentuates the vertical proportions of the structure," the architects suggest and contributes to perforating the outside surface beyond merely the presence of chainlink.
2 Comments
Close this window Jump to comment formStockholm has the Katarinahissen (actually a photo of an architectural model):
http://www.pbase.com/edhahn/image/31353808
November 21, 2015 8:25 AM
Also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hammetschwand_Elevator
Not to mention the lift on The Wall, in Game of Thrones ;)
November 28, 2015 4:28 PM