Deep Ground
2008-
Groundlab Collective

Chinese project

Hotel Puerta America, Madrid Hotel building, Spain
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Spanish Hotel building

House, Innichen, San Candido, Italy
2008

Strata Hotel, Sesto, Italy
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Italian hotel

More projects online soon



English Architecture

Practice based in the English capital

Founded by Eva Castro & Holger Kehne in London, 1999

Next Generation 2008 Winner:

This is the fourth year of Next Generation Architects, launched in 2004 by Pipers and The Architecture Foundation. This catalogue presents a range of exceptional architects who can bring new thinking to the design of commercial buildings. The jury selected one practice, Plasma Studio, for the Pipers Award for exceptional work.

2008 Winner: Plasma Studio
2007 Winner: Jamie Fobert Architects
2006 Winner: Fashion Architecture Taste (FAT)
2005 Winner: dRMM

Pipers Award Winner - Plasma Studio

Plasma Studio is the kind of practice for which the phrase ‘cutting edge’ could have been invented. Founded by Argentinean-born Eva Castro and German-born Holger Kehne, even the practice name suggests it may be beyond the reach of anyone other than the most adventurous clients. But the Next Generation Award jury took very little convincing.

After setting up in London in 1999, Plasma Studio gained a reputation for small, innovative residential and commercial refurbishment projects which are informed by working at the very limits of current computer aided design tools and academic research at the AA.

Despite winning the prestigious Building Design ‘Young Architect of the Year Award’ in 2002, they have yet to complete a building in the UK. It could be that such originality scares rather than encourages clients.

Experimental, their use of architectural form to create surfaces that shift and fold, and elastic, viscous spaces, makes their work extraordinarily challenging, yet their built work also has a subtlety and assurance that the jury felt made it clear they were ready for big stuff.

The practice joined Zaha Hadid, Norman Foster and Jean Nouvel in designing one of the floors of Madrid’s Hotel Puerta America. The stainless steel clad tunnel, off which are the bedrooms the practice also designed, has been described as if you are walking straight onto the set of ‘’The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.’’ The walls and ceiling, clad in splintered fragments of polished metal, appears to bulge like fractured glass, reported The New York Times.

Plasma Studio has now expanded into Europe with a second office in Sesto near Bolzano, Italy, where it recently completed a four star apartment hotel. While in London its multicultural staff is immersed in a fast-moving, diverse and urban culture, in Bolzano – an area of outstanding natural beauty and strong local crafts tradition - the work is developed from engaging with nature, the landscape and local materials. This can be seen most clearly in the new build Strata Hotel in the Italian Dolomites completed last year. It may be hard to see how the hotel’s extraordinary architecture which almost seems to weave its way into the topography of the hillside, could be translated into the more staid office market.

As Jon Emery from Hammerson and one of the Next Generation judges pointed out, it will require the right kind of client to know how to extract the potential from this kind of architecture. Nonetheless it was felt that Plasma Studio had enough of a track record to be worth this risk.

What the jury says: “We already knew that Plasma were strong and adventurous architects. Recently completed projects, supported by enthusiastic client references, demonstrate that they can realise their ideas in substantial buildings, while working to demanding briefs.”



2008 Jury Rowan Moore (Chair), Director, The Architecture Foundation
Amanda Baillieu, Editor, Building Design
Jon Emery, Managing Director UK Development, Hammerson
Jeremy Gardner, Director City Invest, Jones Lang LaSalle
Nick McKeogh, Director, Pipers
Ian Simpson, Ian Simpson Architects

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Comments / photos for the Plasma Studio Architects page welcome:
info@e-architect.co.uk

Plasma Studio Architects buildings - page : adrian welch / isabelle lomholt

Website: www.plasmastudio.com