AIR SQUARE is a transportable venue that activates underused urban spaces by bringing them purpose and a vibrant public life. It responds to the need to alleviate climate change issues by tackling overexposed heat islands and lack of green and livable public spaces.
Studio:
Design: KOGAA
Producer: Kubíček Visionair
Website:
www.kogaa.eu
www.kubicekvisionair.com
Design team: Tomáš Kozelský, Alexandra Georgescu, Viktor Odstrčilík, Kateřina Baťková, Marcello Coldani, Maria Fonseca, Oleksandr Voropai
Project location: variable
Project year: 2019-2022
Client: KOGAA + Kubíček Visionair
Completion year: 2022
Photographer: Josema Cutillas, Javier Antón, Marcia Davis, KUBÍČEK.STUDIO, Mangoshake
Collaborator: Graphic design and branding: Veronika Fullerová
AIR SQUARE is a transportable venue that activates underused urban spaces by bringing them purpose and a vibrant public life. It responds to the need to alleviate climate change issues by tackling overexposed heat islands and lack of green and livable public spaces. The upper ring is designed as a large shading system that mitigates, cools, and delivers refuge from heat. At night it provides illumination to dark and less safe urban corners.
It is a placemaker improving the quality of the urban environment in a punctuated manner and contributes to building a resilient blue-green city, consequently bringing spatial quality, living environment, health, biodiversity, and property value. Finally, it raises awareness of climate change adaptation, facilitating and accelerating the further implementation of lengthy climate adaptation measures, such as changes in spatial development, infrastructure, construction, services, public space, and residents’ safety.
INCLUSIVE: Built for diversity and equality, ensures barrier-free access and permeability within the city flow.
MODULAR, DURABLE, REUSABLE: Made of CNC cut plywood planks with minimum waste in cut-outs, the foundation is designed as a modular system composed of vertical legs and horizontal benches. Components are bolted together to form a circular load bearing structure providing stability to the body.
ADAPTABLE: Positionable benches enable for multiple functions and programs such as public functions, performances, farmers markets, or serving as an all-in-one public furniture with seating, lighting, and shading in one AIR SQUARE creates a space that boosts the quality of life in our cities and ensure more fulfilling ways of living together.
Materials
The body combines two main parts: a structural foundation at the base, and an inflatable component at the top, measuring altogether 14 mt in diameter and 6 mt in height. Separate components are packed and ready to go, together with most hardware and assembly instructions to assist the construction process.
Made of cnc cut plywood planks with the minimum waste in cut-outs, the foundation is designed as a modular system composed of one vertical leg element and one horizontal arm. Those two components interlock together to build the circular load bearing structure of the ring, which provides stability to the body. The circular shape was chosen because of its intrinsic ability to regulate contrary forces within itself and therefore making it the most self-stabilising of the elementary geometric shapes. The dynamicity of the continuous circle can withstand any load and therefore only needs one contra-force to reinforce it, which is provided through the textile belt cross.
Also, the base functions as the anchor between the upper ring and the ground, through a fastening system that makes it attached during wind flutters. Lastly, it is raised at a height for people to pass through it, making it accessible and permeable within the city flow.
The upper ring is designed as a shading system for public spaces. In response to the issue of overheating cities around the globe, the ring generates a large surface to hide from the sun, cooling down urban areas. The vertical and open shader avoids issues related with having a roof (underblow, heat accumulation, structural issues), and in order to create a large urban surface to shade, a light material was used that can be easy to build and unbuild, its light, it can resist strong weather conditions. Also, the circular shape allows for a bigger reach of shading compared to a straight wall, making it a sun-protected space. Through the dark hours the inflatable switches function and become a light diffuser, providing illumination to dark areas of the city which often feel unsafe to walk through. This generates a sense of care and belonging to the space, leading to improved security on the location.
About studio
Founded in 2015 by Tomas Kozelsky, Alexandra Georgescu, and Viktor Odstrčilík, KOGAA has offices in Prague and Brno, Czech Republic.
KOGAA is a DESIGN VANGUARD 2021 Winner and awarded the Czech Architecture Award 2021 by the Ministry of Industry and Trade for the DADA Distrikt reconstruction project. In 2020 it was longlisted the Emerging Practice by DEZEEN AWARDS and represented the Czech Republic at the Concentrico architecture festival in Logroño, Spain. In 2019, KOGAA participated the Guerilla Tactics conference at RIBA as a lecturer, on the topic of alternative approaches to development. The same year KOGAA’s Distillery project won the BIG SEE main award for the workspace design and was listed TOP 10 emerging architecture practices by the Archipreneur magazine.
In 2022 KOGAA leads the summer semester of the architecture laboratory at the Technical University of Liberec.
KOGAA creates substance for the built environment, committing to projects with a positive impact on users, communities, and the local context. Through their projects, the practice tackles the issue of inactive structures and their adaptation into substitute functions. The Distillery, KUMST, and DADA Distrikt projects are representative examples of how vacant properties can become vibrant locations, playing an active role in the urban and economic transformation of the surrounding neighborhood and life of the city.
Based on a strong belief that the more the architect is involved in the whole process, the more efficient, coherent, and sustainable the building is, KOGAA takes pride in leading projects throughout the whole process from the strategy and business plan, through concept and feasibility studies, to technical documentation and getting the permissions, all the way to construction administration, and the strategy to generate attraction.
