Creative hub Jim Clemes Associates
In 2014 a fierce fire devastated the Jim Clemes Associates headquarter office and heavily damaged the building. As a result, the entire team consisting of just over 70 collaborators had to be relocated to a villa a few meters away. Given the lengthy reconstruction process, Jim Clemes Associates had to build an additional temporary workspace, the Pavillion. According to the briefing the new structure had to provide an optimal physical and psychological work environment, striking an appropriate balance between initial and operating costs and remain consistent with the needs. One of the project’s great challenges, was to develop an inventive design and construction solution on the fly. True to the model, Recycle, reuse and rethink functional spaces – the aim was to recognize and develop the energies and potentials of the existing. The solution was to build a temporary, modular and multi-functional open structure – open in terms of design but also open to different usages, such as workspace, educational spaces, exhibition space, living. The Pavillion resembles a “white box – black box”, and consists of simple and very few materials, with no composites, and is easily built up and dismantled.
2017 – the year when the Pavillion was built – also marked Jim Clemes Associate’s 33rd anniversary. To mark this milestone, a temporary exhibition was organized in the Pavillion, showcasing the sum of the office’s collaborative and participatory experience and evolution. The creative conversion and re-purposing of existing structure. The Pavillion is only temporary in its usage, the structure can easily be dismantled and set-up in another location. The visible technical aspects stress the potential to reuse.
Re-cycle – recycled materials can have a fascinating history and often a more tactile quality, but there are many other ‘new’ materials that also have recycled content.
Re-use – if possible, it is more sustainable to reuse the existing building. Renovate, rearrange, alter, upgrade, extend or improve.
Re-think – rethinking the life of buildings, within a cradle-to-cradle philosophy. If the materials and components can’t be recycled at the end of the building’s life, they can instead be returned to the earth.
The Pavillon represents a holistic temporary design that deals with fundamental questions of how we might live, work and play more harmoniously together. The structure may appear and disappear but is however designed to embed itself.
