Firm: El Dorado, Kansas City
Team: Josh Shelton, with Chris Burk, Brandon Froelich and Steve Salzer
To expand this brewery, which required new production facilities to make hops beer, El Dorado had to design a home for eight 12.2-metre-tall fermentation tanks in a century-old building. It needed to be accessible at all hours so staff could check on the ales. The solution: a steel-framed glass box perched on top of the original building and shaded by a perforated screen of corrugated aluminum. Besides accommodating the increased output, it acts as a light funnel, ushering daylight into the brewing area below.
Location: Samedan, Switzerland
Firm: Gredig Walser, Chur, Switzerland
Team: Joos Gredig and Peter Walser, with Lea Condrau
From the outside, it may look like a modern museum, but this bold rectilinear building in rural Switzerland is in fact a kindergarten. In contrast to the white concrete exterior, made with locally quarried gravel, the interior walls, rafters and change benches are crafted out of golden-hued Swiss stone pine. The architects selected this material as a homage to the homes in the surrounding Engadin Valley, whose interiors are warmed up by this knotty species with a calming scent. The natural aroma is also meant to foster warm memories in the children who learn their ABC’s in the three classrooms.
Location: Kansas City, Missouri
Firm: El Dorado, Kansas City
Team: Douglas Stockman, with Sean Slattery
A new pair of peaked-roof volumes nestles graciously into the milieu of Camp Prairie Schooner, on the bluffs of Little Blue River, 30 kilometres from downtown Kansas City. While the 670-square-metre corrugated metal buildings, which house bunkhouses and washrooms, seem as grown-up as can be, they also exude playfulness, as seen in their translucent polycarbonate glazing, with bursts of orange and green, and their vibrant custom furnishings.