Type: Visitor Center for Al Whatba Flamingo Center

Location: Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

Year: 2020, Competition, Shortlisted

Team: Sabine Aoun, Andrea Jimenez

Flamingos by definition are gracious birds that move through nature with a lot of poise and balance. While they are social species that live and travel in flamboyance, they can also have moments of solitude alone or in pairs.

Fluttering landscapes, from the first encounter, transports the visitors to that flamingo world. An ephemeral feel to a present structure carried on a light transparent base standing with poise on a mirror of water. While always present, this structure is full of movement embodied through a play in arches and rounded forms inspired by the flamingo anatomy but also, the fluttering of their wings. Yet, what adds to it is, the light that filters in and changes the visitor centre through the day but also through the seasons. Moving in the centre, similar to the wetlands, the spaces flow inside from open spaces framing views to tighter spaces that create a sort of tension building up excitement through a movement of transportation towards the next space.

Yet the building works in a very sustainable way, using cost effective and lasting materials from the site, sheltering the visitors from the sun, keeping a cool space inside but also using natural cross-ventilation to help especially in the rough months of the summer.

And so, similarly to how the flamingos came to Al Whatba Wetlands and made of it their home, fluttering landscapes takes part of this home, blending in its landscape and creating a respite for visitors to feel home even for a little while... immersed in nature but also in the beautiful sounds of the surrounding very specific to this land.

Type: Urban Intervention

Location:   Brooklyn, US

Year: 2014

Team: Andrea Jimenez, Sabine Aoun

The Brooklyn Navy Yard reads as an island, archipelago, understood through its outer enclosure on a first level, and its inner ones on another level.  It is completely disconnected from the rest of Brooklyn city, as a result, the people not working in the BNY only see it through one lens, its enclosure, failing to understand it, its scale, its proximity to water, its essence. On the other hand, the people on the inside see it as a series of nested objects, protected functions.

How to bring the public into the Navy Yard, without it losing its identity? 

Understanding the navy yard on a closer level revealed islands that are identified through their functions and their identities. Also, it exposed left spaces, rich in history, catalyst of public functions. Further observations into these islands shaped new relationships between them affecting the BNY as a whole. As a result, enhancing the systems of each island with respect to their respective functions and identity fostered an island of islands allowing the existence of two parallel systems, overlapping, coexisting, and complementing each other without contradiction. The void between the islands automatically starts reading as a series of experiences taking the form of ‘poché’ spaces simply resulting from the void created between each two distinctive islands. The understanding of the Navy Yard however only becomes complete once understood as a whole, not only horizontally, but also vertically. And so a series of vertical elements in strategic points of the BNY, some already existing others injected, create visual connections, to democratize the holistic understanding of the ‘islands of islands’.
 

Type: Mediatheque

Location: Brooklyn, US

Year: 2015

Team: Andrea Jimenez, Sabine Aoun

Nowadays technology allows us to get in contact with different ranges and types of media from a book to interactive interfaces. Yet, in the age of the media, the mediatheque, a type that has emerged not long ago, is already being re-positioned by the evolving portable technology; suggesting, similar to the Sendai Mediatheque, the fading of the architecture at the expanse of a technology that no longer needs it.
But looking closer, these different types of media not only suggest different behaviors of the users with the platforms but also different types of interactions between the users.
Hence, the In-Between proposes a project that constantly positions and repositions the visitor vis-à-vis the media. As a result, the architecture doesn’t disappear. On the contrary it is where the information is anchored, but the role of this public space shifts emphasis from a need to serve the individuals, to social collective uses, collections of individuals that use media in parallel either for leisure or to study or for work.
 

Type: Walls

Location: Undetermined

Year: 2016

Team: Andrea Jimenez, Sabine Aoun

Status: Constructed

Type: Health Clinic

Year: 2015-2017

Location:  Raghorgarh, India

Low cost and innovational models of care delivery are crucial to supporting the health and well-being of populations in remote areas of India; some of the residents have never seen a physician before. A pilot project has been built with the intention of setting cogent precedents for the expansion of healthcare facilities in remote regions of India. Optimize Health Clinic is the first facility designed for this project.

The clinic design focused on establishing a modular, efficient and flexible building that could easily be expanded in the future. It was important to incorporate the culture of the community; local artists’ murals were featured on both interior and exterior walls, generating a sense of pride and ownership in a building that needs to provide the welcome and comfort of a “community center.” A community room and outdoor play area can be accessed for outreach and awareness programs even when the clinic is closed.

Essentially, Optimize Health Clinic represents a sign of India’s advancement towards community based healthcare and will eventually lead to better health in the country on all levels.

Year: 2015-2017

Team: HDR, Sabine Aoun

Collaboration: Design for Others with Construction for Change

Type: Re-imagining Johannesburg, the urban

Location: Johannesburg, South Africa

Year: 2014

Team: Andrea Jimenez, Sabine Aoun

Despite the end of apartheid in 1994, its traces still remain very present today, yet covertly. An emotional and tacit segregation hovers around people and accompany them in their daily lives.

 As a result, in search for a sense of belonging and motivated by an urge to redefine social classes, people are triggered to reinvent and reimagine themselves through outward projections. One major way of projecting a new image is by resorting to fashion. As a result, public spaces, such as malls, start to act as magnets attracting people into them.

Sandton city and Mandela Square have become the primary destination that is constantly drawing people into their spaces. Arriving from different areas of Johannesburg, once in the mall, origins are dropped, people are scrambled. However, the hope for a change is the reason for these flows, the hope for the transmission of a revelation, the projection of a temporal identity to the eyes of a compatriot.

The behavior of the visitors implies a play of seeing and being seen, in search of that gaze that will, for a fraction of a second, give them the sense of a new identity in public spaces that become synonymous to catwalk runways.

The advance of technology will cause this scrambling to change form. With time, the malls will gradually turn into virtual malls. A transformation in the goods system will occur as well, the goods will directly arrive to the houses according to the orders requested in the stores without passing by the mall.

Further in time, affected by extreme globalization and responding to a wish for immediacy, the goods will no longer be physical goods but they will change in nature. While the people are scrambled through dense and complex flows, the movement of the bodies themselves engenders even more compound flows on daily basis, around the second. Projection of images today is generated through the adaptation of a temporary exterior cover, yet, the complex body movement backed with the human motivations and needs will generate a responsive temporal second skin that envelopes the body, caters for the body, enhances the body functions and richness. This second skin is plugged into the human body, reading it and responding to it, but also feeding from the environment and reacting to it. This skin is provided equally to all residents by the government at birth. Going into a common facility, everyone is scrambled, genomes are registered and skins are given. However, the flow of movement of people will be enhanced through energy sources that adopt the quantum levitation technology and the renewal of natural resources to create magnetic fields. People will be able to travel with their skins in these magnetic fields and lock themselves if they wish to expand their cells turning them into livable spaces, using power from the sources. Thus, power will become the new currency on which the projection of new identities relies on; the more power one buys the more his cell can expand, glow and be colorful.

The functioning of this skin isn’t complete without a symbiosis between it and the urban setting, through which they enter into a play of constant redefinition. The image of the city will be a fleeting ephemeral image that is continuously being reshaped as the result of the movement of the people inhabiting it.

Type: Museum Extension

Location:  Lima, Peru

Year: 2016

Team: Rodrigo Escardo, Andrea Jimenez, Luciana Cuneo, Luis Pedro Diaz, Sabine Aoun, Gladys Migita, Gonzalo Li, Tania Hanono

At the heart of a newly interconnected Metropolitan Lima, etched into its soil and connected to a new transport system, MALI ConTEMPO emerges as a public space at the underground level seeking to accentuate and complement the existing historic MALI pavilion. Its permeable surfaces encourage commuters to immerse themselves in contemporary art through several cultural corridors at different depths. It connects the historic surface at street level with the modern subterranean beneath, metaphorically reclaiming time and space allowing citizens to embed their culture into everyday lives. MALI ConTEMPO is an inclusive public building that shares values of coexistence, tolerance and vibrancy.
The project channels the flow of future underground metro commuters into a gateway to cultural parks. An open public space acts as its main facade, featuring topographical architectural buffers with smooth elevations and depressions that revert current site conditions (noise, pollution, traffic). The open public space also features Coffee Shops, Kiosks, Humidity Collectors and an Exterior Exhibition Area orthogonally mirroring the rhythm of MALI´s western facade.
Its main entrance faces south and the smoothness of its carved nature is inviting, pulling one into the underground. In peaceful coexistence with the main entrance to the historic MALI pavilion it welcomes the natural flow of people crossing diagonally towards the vibrant corner of Av. Garcilaso de la Vega and Av. Paseo Colón.
At the north of the site, a big depression reveals an underground layer showcasing the flow of people towards an alternate entrance to the underground station. At street level the view of this underground piazza encourages passers-by to dive into a new dimension that blends private, public, semi-public and semi-private spaces. The senses of everyday commuters are stimulated with a sneak peak into MALI’s world of art featuring a stage where students can share performances learned in the neighboring classrooms or welcome performances of street music and other spontaneous forms of art that irradiate contemporary culture.
Three underground levels accommodate the program aiming to create a new spatial connection between culture and transport. A large circular staircase serves as a vertical spine bringing natural light into the lower levels while 4 skylights filter natural light into the main exhibition room generating visual contact between the surface and beneath. The first level holds the main entrance that welcomes commuters into the underground station´s alternate entrance through the classroom access corridor. The second level contains storage rooms, a library, a multipurpose space and a coffee shop. The third floor is home for the permanent exhibition gallery and the video projection, photography and paper exhibition rooms.
Through its layout, the project emerges as land architecture that mutates with the new transport system of Lima generating permeability between public life and art -for the increased pedestrian flow-. New buses and metro lines being implemented in Lima as part of the transport strategy will replace the existing Combis -an emblem of informality, traffic, pollution and disorder. MALI ConTEMPO seeks to create a new sense of place common to all Limeños, a new time-space relationship, that improves quality of life through the synergies between transport and culture, promoting a safe, clean and green environment, embracing an urban context that is full of history with a thriving sense of a possible future to come.

Type: Rehabilitation and Long-Term Care Hospital

Location: Al Ahsa, Saudi Arabia

Year: ongoing

Team: HDR, Sabine Aoun

The New Rehabilitation and Long-Term Care Hospital for Al-Moosa Specialist Hospital Group is designed as a micro village embracing nature and healing, reflecting the highest level of international medical and architectural design. The two interconnected buildings—a three-storey rehabilitation center and a 16-storey inpatient tower—foster healing through its connection to nature and the surrounding natural oasis landform.

Tiered green steps originating on the ground level, rise to meet the rehabilitation center which contains a rehab gym and therapy pool. The center is topped with an expansive green roof, which can be viewed from the inpatient tower. The 24-bed (per floor) inpatient tower is efficient and functional, setting the framework for a universal model of care. Each room is acuity adaptable, allowing the facility to flex and accommodate change.

An enclosed garden within the main resort-style lobby, supplemented by personalized gardens and rehabilitative green spaces at every inpatient floor of the bed tower, assures that everyone has access to nature, irrespective of their mobility. The most striking component of the design is the protective enclosure created by the seamless and continuous solar screen, which wraps both the taller inpatient bed tower, as well as the lower rehab gym and pool. Expressing the human instinct to care for our most vulnerable, the sinuous screen follows an undulating pattern, and is designed to parametrically change from facade to facade to compensate for the solar heat gain of its specific location and function. On the inpatient tower, the screen opens up to the multilevel hanging gardens at the corners of each triangular floor plate. This sinuous ribbon, reflecting the commitment to a continuum of care, will leave a lasting impression as a landmark for both the Al-Moosa Hospital brand as well as a gateway to Al-Ahsa.

Type: Mountain Chalets

Location:   Faraya, Lebanon

Year: 2013

Team: Fouad Samara, Jad Abi Fadel, Sabine Aoun

Located at the topmost edge of the development on a cliff like site under a dramatic shear below the Chabrouh monastery, the buildings are fragmented into four identical reinforced concrete shells, inserted into the slope of the mountain, treated as part of the landscape, pivoting slightly to address views and reconcile their relationship to contours. Within these shells, the sections of the vertically staked chalets are manipulated and cranked, offering double height living space, mezzanine like master bedrooms with walls that open up to the double height space in a theatrical motion and unobstructed views from all rooms.

In this, architecture becomes a medium materializing a poetic way of life,' a place of therapy". Inhabiting it becomes the purpose and a desire instead of a basic need for shelter. In this manner, architecture moves beyond the simple fact of being a play of forms into an architecture of emotion.

Type: Planning and Healthcare

Location:  Saudi Arabia

Year: Ongoing

Team: HDR, Sabine Aoun

Home to 60% of the Kingdom’s births, King Saud Medical City is the oldest medical city within the Gulf Cooperation Council. Just like many of the decades old planning of the city, King Saud Medical City (KSMC) was conceived as a singular hospital that catered to its resident and followed the typical norms of the urban fabric of a low rise urban sprawl of pavilions. Over the 6 decades, it became buildings of need without consideration of adjacencies of the multiple functions, Housing units were embedded between hospital zones and central refuse was not that far away from the Emergency Department or public entrances.

The new master-plan pealed back those layers and focused on creating a string of pearls of the multiple specialty hospitals pavilions. This enabled us to focus vehicular activities to the peripheral, which cleared way finding and circulation, and by the various alignment of the new towers, we were able to create constantly shaded zones, so that the public could traverse between the buildings in shade for the operational hours of the day.

By breaking up and rezoning the functions of the master plan, we were able to create a natural invisible demarcation line separating the public, staff and ultimately leading to private area for the female nurses housing units. All this was achieved, by elevating a new ‘Upper Ground Level’ that was wholly pedestrianized, that also acts as a central canopy to the energy building and logistical services that became the backbone support function of the multiple hospitals, mosque, housing and administrative towers.

This created an opportunity to create a self sustaining park, that used al the reclaimed condensate water to serve the gardens and water pools of the park, which could be enjoyed but staff and visitors alike. The source of water which is the source of life, springs forth from the rounded dome of a prayer building for all to reflect upon. This park setting and public functions enabled the community to reintegrate back to the land moving away from the concrete maze that they had to contend with for the last 60 years. Currently under construction, the master plan is on target for completion by 2022.

Type: Conception and Visualization

Location: Over a cliff

Year: 2014

Team: Andrea Jimenez, Sabine Aoun

Status: Competition - FINALIST

Type: Structure

Location:  Castello de Rosciano, Italy

Year: 2017

Team: Charles Hajj, Sabine Aoun

Constellation, with its pavilion modules, offers a poetic space, that is adaptable to all weather conditions, but also adaptable to whichever disposition, wedding sequence, experience the newlyweds wish for their fairy-tale. It can be assembled in a variety of ways, but by nature, it always starts with the union of two components. The pavilion can be as small as to shelter two guests, and as big as to shelter more than a hundred guests.

The structure by design imply a resemblance to nature in a celebratory move, as if it is embracing the newlyweds in a royal salute to their union. Situated in Castello de Rosciano, it acknowledges its beautiful surrounding, standing solemnly on the site, it embraces its majesty, offering it to the newlyweds.

A creature. Not a robot nor a machine, not an action nor a reaction, it is a mixture of events. It is triggered by human behavior, reacts to it, and translates it into an artistic physical piece.

Human beings have for a long time created tools to measure weight, distance, speed… Not only this, parabolas, diagrams, equations have been used on paper, to also calculate and visualize changes.

But what about energy? What if we could have spaces that respond to the amount of energy present, and can be modeled accordingly? And what if parabolas and diagrams became those spaces?

Enermeasure measures the energy present in a room and molds a space that corresponds to the need that beats out of it. The energy is detected with the help of sensors, absorbed by the machine that then measures it through a play in threads. The threads take the shape of parabolas, the heavier the energy measured is, the bigger the parabola will be.

The energy will manifest through a change in the 3D physical space. It is a give and take process, as much as you give it from your physical energy; it absorbs it, and gives you back accordingly a space.

Enermeasure is triggered by you, and reacts to how much u feed it, how much you love it, how much you give it.

Type: Wexner Medical Center

Location: Ohio, USA

Year: Ongoing

Team: HDR, Sabine Aoun

The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center has selected HDR as the architect to program and develop a concept for a new hospital tower. It is part of the university’s campus expansion plan, Framework 2.0, and includes surgical services, interventional radiology, emergency services, logistics and material management, and new parking facilities.

Sabine Aoun's work has been published in several books and magazines, mentioning: 'Island of Islands', 'Mutable Skin' and 'In-Between' in Abstract 2015, 'Music and Language' in Selected Papers: 12 Dialogical and Poetical Strategies.