It’s possible that a crack doesn’t mean anything at all.
If a crack in a facade symbolizes disintegration, collapse, conflict, or is just an acknowledgement of vulnerability, then Building 10 gives every one of its residents the self-image we all want to avoid. If, on the other hand, it’s a signal for irony, drama, self-assurance, and openness, then that crack becomes a form of communication, expressing everything residents want to be associated with, especially those whose lives are about making connections. A third possibility is that this sort of interpretation should end at the surface of the facade—that the split is an ornament that has nothing to do with anything other than design—that it doesn’t mean anything.
In the 1970s and 80s, artist James Wines and the SITE (Sculpture in the Environment) group designed a series of facades for the American big-box retailer Best. The Peeling Project was the first of a total of nine in which SITE manipulated the conventional shed building by giving it brick facades in various states of apparent decline. In the Peeling Project, the facade curled away from the building at the corners, giving it the appearance of a veneer—which it actually is. The sculptural stunt challenged the average American’s concept of stability, of the relationship between art and architecture, of the established order and all those suburban big boxes in general. It was spectacular, but also superficial. Did those unhinged facades mean anything?
Our preconceptions are always the basis for how we understand the world around us. Preconceptions offer an ideal subject for an architect who wants to provoke feelings in us—to challenge, or for that matter to confirm, the way we see the world. The red cut through Building 10 transforms the entire building into a body, which makes the building and its lesion a reflection of our own vulnerability, or our fear of injury. These are surely some of the strongest feelings we have. They are universal, existential. Building 10 is not an image of a company; it’s an image of all of us.
All architecture, like all art in general, must have something to tell us about what it means to be human. A building or an environment that lacks this dimension never achieves the level at which relationships arise between people and the work. Buildings that do nothing more than filling their functional assignment become replaceable. It’s easy to measure their value in terms of money, but nothing more. Buildings that also have the ability to tell us something about ourselves—about our expectations, our desires, our vanity, or our faith for that matter—can be invaluable.
Building 10 is fundamentally an extremely rational office building of just over 29,000 square meters and nearly 1500 workstations. A variable-air-volume heating and air-conditioning system with occupancy sensors and lighting controls that respond to daylight levels make it an extremely low-energy building that meets the demands of the European GreenBuilding Programme. Green architecture can look like just about anything and comes in every color.
By placing both the auditorium and the vertical mechanical services in a tower in the courtyard that adds qualities to the space, the building became simultaneously both more and less rational—more because this was a practical arrangement, less because it counters the structure of the office building. This principle recurs at a smaller scale in the facade, where the glass panels’ printed stripes mask the joints in the concrete elements behind them.
It’s been built for the property company Vasakronan and was elected as “best building in Stockholm” 2010 in a public poll last year.
1. White glass façade in two parts: a) Curtain wall construction: one-story tall elements, façade for each floor is affixed and hung from floor slab above it b) White opaque filling: white-stripes screen printed on glass mounted at a distance from a white metal cassette All glass is stepped and without covers (structural glazing), affixed on project-adapted façade element profiles
2. Glazed colored openings Structural glazing on aluminum profiles, type Schüco FW50 + SG, mounted at a distance and fixed to the floor slab construction Glass with laminated Vanceva film, in different combinations of red and green
