A big steel-clad dice encloses the Dance Home in Helsinki, which native structure studios JKMM and ILO architects have created by changing and lengthening a part of a former cable manufacturing facility.
Offering over 7,000 sq. metres of area, the Dance Home kinds a part of a wider redevelopment of the outdated industrial constructing that was acquired by the town in 1991 to create the Kaapelitehdas, or Cable Manufacturing unit, which is Helsinki’s largest cultural centre.
JKMM and ILO architects have been tasked with reconfiguring a part of the present construction whereas including new areas to its jap finish, housed inside a steel-clad cuboid knowledgeable by the “gravity, lightness and weight” of dance.
“The Dance Home provides a hanging up to date layer to the historical past of the previous manufacturing facility and its environment,” stated JKMM.
“The brand new and outdated are positioned in distinction, but in addition in dialogue with one another. Collectively, the Dance Home and the Cable Manufacturing unit create a significant vacation spot and a revived neighbourhood,” JKMM continued.
Inside are two black-box dance studios. Considered one of them is housed within the Cable Manufacturing unit’s redesigned Pannu Corridor, which now seats as much as 400 individuals, and the second is the brand new 1,000-seat Erkko Corridor – the most important dance efficiency area within the Nordic nations.
These two efficiency areas sit on both aspect of an entrance foyer, which connects to an enclosed street-like area between two present facades, described by JKMM as a “glass courtyard”.
An underground membership, cloakroom amenities, restaurant, rehearsal and back-of-house areas are organised throughout the constructing’s 5 ranges, with all the circulation areas designed to have the potential for use for efficiency.
“All the general public areas within the Dance Home have been designed with efficiency in thoughts,” defined JKMM’s venture architect Harri Lindberg.
“It’s attainable for dance to take over, for instance, the complete Cable Manufacturing unit at some stage in a efficiency,” he continued.
Massive metal panels, one among them extremely reflective and one weathered, type the facade of the extension, hung barely above the bottom and at completely different ranges to offer the impact of them shifting away from each other.
On the constructing’s north elevation dealing with a close-by park, the stacked ranges have been coated in tons of of small aluminium discs, designed to create an “summary rhythm” towards the sky.
“Dance offers with gravity, lightness, and the load of the human physique,” defined JKMM.
“The ‘floating’ metallic facades have been customized through the use of laser welding expertise, to create bespoke sandwich panels with the most important attainable floor,” it continued.
“Dance performers additionally create illusions. The sunshine, satin-like metal floor may be reworked with gentle, turning into a part of the surroundings of dance occasions.”
Inside, strong supplies comparable to uncooked metal and concrete have been chosen to enrich the present construction of the previous manufacturing facility.
JKKM just lately integrated heritage buildings into one other of its designs within the Finnish capital, making a new dwelling for the College of Arts Helsinki that partially occupies an outdated cleaning soap manufacturing facility and silo constructing.
The images is by Peter Vuorenrinne except acknowledged in any other case.