Caruso St John's Veemgebouw building is reviewed in the Architects Journal's Climate Crisis issue. Rob Wilson explores the project's respectful and flexible retrofit of the listed 1940s warehouse, part of the former Philips factory complex. The building now provides a mix of housing above a range of public and commercial spaces.
Photo © Filip Dujardin.
Related news
Marco Biagi explores the approach of international practices to decommissioned industrial buildings. Citing a range of recently completed projects, including Caruso St John's Veemgebouw, he discusses the rise of adaptive reuse. Biagi explains through our urgent environmental crisis, the reuse of industrial plants and depots is more necessary than ever, offering a new challenging creative outlet for contemporary architects.
Construction has completed on Caruso St John's redevelopment of the Veemgebouw, a former Philips factory building on Strijp S in Eindhoven. The monumental industrial site in the Brainport region of the city is now the centre of a lively urban environment.
The design repurposed the existing floors to create a varied mixed-use structure; including workspaces on the upper floors, a car-park and a food-hall on the ground floor. The project also included the addition of 38 rooftop studios and maisonettes.
The mast has been craned into place on top of the Veemgebouw. The design features integrated LED lighting, continuing the local tradition for night time illuminations across the city's skyline. It echoes the mast that stood on top of the building in its previous incarnation as a factory for the Philips electrical company.
The landscape and interiors of Caruso St John's Veemgebouw Strijp S are now taking shape. The top floor of new construction contains 40 apartments, arranged around a landscaped courtyard, with external facades of curving brickwork that form a new dramatic top to the building.
Lecture
Reuse, Recycle
Lessons in Sustainable Architecture
Eindhoven, The Netherlands
10th February 2022
Peter St John is taking part in TU Eindhoven's lecture series, Lessons in Sustainable Architecture. His talk, Reuse, Recycle will discuss the practice's renovation projects with a focus on their sustainability and design process.
Owen Hatherley takes an in-depth look at the first two volumes of Caruso St John's Collected Works for Sidecar, the blog of the New Left Review, charting the practice's origins in 1990s London and its 'principled refusal' of the tenets of the so-called starchitects that rose to prominence during that decade.
A+U magazine has published a second issue dedicated to the work of Caruso St John. The publication covers projects undertaken since 2015, with a particular focus on the practice's work with existing structures.
This second volume in Caruso St John’s Collected Works is published this month by MACK. The publication traces an interlacing set of themes through the practice’s work over the first twelve years of the twenty-first century. Its unique approach to history is revealed as a rejection of the myth of relentless novelty in favour of an understanding of the past as present and an interest in working with the existing. The influences of Milan, Chicago, and Rome on understandings of the city are explored, as well as the use of ornament and the place of Switzerland in shaping the practice’s evolving trajectory. Throughout these contexts, collaborations with contemporary artists including Thomas Demand and Damien Hirst continue to shape the practice's relations to the materiality and drama of space.
Published by Mack Books, The Triple Folly presents an account of the collaboration between Thomas Demand, Caruso St John, and textile manufacturers Kvadrat, which led to the construction of the new pavilion at Kvadrat's headquarters in Ebeltoft, Denmark.
Publication
Mount Royal
Adam Caruso
In a publication presented by ETH Studio Jan De Vylder, Adam Caruso reflects on his experiences growing up in Montreal and family visits Mount Royal, the mountain located directly west of downtown and one of the city’s largest green spaces.
The Swiss Life Arena is featured in Casabella 944. Federico Tranfa introduces the project and discusses its key references – the ruins of an ancient mosque in Syria and the 18th century Guards Tent in the gardens of the summer palace at Drottingholm in Stockholm.
The Swiss Life Arena is reviewed in the March edition of Werk, Bauen Wohnen. Benjamin Muschg takes in the atmosphere at a sold-out game, as the ZSC Lions triumph over HC Davos, and describes the building's unconventional organisation and approach to minimizing energy consumption in use.