Envisioning the next masterplanning phase of the Vitra Campus in Weil am Rhein, Germany, the Alvaro Siza Factory Building is no longer strictly designated for private, industrial functions, but is partially opened up to the public for other uses, shifting the once fenced-up border of the campus across the main public circulatory axis. Via careful intervention and minimal incisions atop the existing Siza’s building, an adaptive reuse project emerged where an appropriate density of programs is introduced to the campus to assimilate the flat industrial landscape into the urban and residential fabric of Weil am Rhein just across its campus fences.
With a core focus on housing, a mat configuration of a housing commune is structurally hung atop the existing factory building, adding no additional footprint to the vast, horizontal expanse of the campus. The gable roof structure of the resulting housing modules, as it hangs on the triangular truss, is repeated and modified to hold other various adjacent programs, including greenhouses, communal kitchens, and public promenades. These adjacencies follow a serial arrangement informed by the structural order of the existing Siza building, thus creating a gradation of private, semi-private, public, and vice versa order of spaces across the mat.
The public “follies” above the mat structure hold public programs that create a disjunct from the more private and intimate scales of the apartments below. They mirror the proto-architecture currently displayed on the fields of the Vitra campus that are non-contextual and seemingly misplaced, yet provide interesting points of interaction across the otherwise flat landscape. These public “follies” provide contextual viewpoints across the campus, creating visual connections from the Siza building to other critical sites around the vast campus - and beyond.