Giovannini, Joseph
River building at Grace Farms in Connecticut, USA, by SANAA - 7 March 2016 - London EMAP Publishing Limited 2016
In its brief to Japanese architects SANAA for an 8,000m2, $67 million community centre, Grace Farms Foundation didn’t specify that it wanted a building that looks like a river. It didn’t even suggest the metaphor for the 80 acres of rolling hills in New Canaan, Connecticut, a bucolic suburb of New York City. Charged with keeping the land open and protected for the benefit of the larger community and the local Grace Community Church, the Foundation presented a programme for a building based on its mission – a place where visitors and congregants could ‘experience nature, encounter the arts, pursue justice, foster community and explore faith’.
Local citizens of New Canaan had rescued the former equestrian centre from subdivision into residential lots and, in keeping with their idealistic programme, they aspired to an ecologically sensitive building with a light footprint, hiring Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa (SANAA) in 2010 after an architectural search that started with 20 teams. ‘Sejima was the only architect who lit up when we said we wanted a building that would disappear into the landscape,’ says Sharon Prince, president of the Foundation’s Board of Directors. ‘SANAA’s design was a reaction to what we asked for.’
ARCHITECTURE GENERAL (AR-GEN)
River building at Grace Farms in Connecticut, USA, by SANAA - 7 March 2016 - London EMAP Publishing Limited 2016
In its brief to Japanese architects SANAA for an 8,000m2, $67 million community centre, Grace Farms Foundation didn’t specify that it wanted a building that looks like a river. It didn’t even suggest the metaphor for the 80 acres of rolling hills in New Canaan, Connecticut, a bucolic suburb of New York City. Charged with keeping the land open and protected for the benefit of the larger community and the local Grace Community Church, the Foundation presented a programme for a building based on its mission – a place where visitors and congregants could ‘experience nature, encounter the arts, pursue justice, foster community and explore faith’.
Local citizens of New Canaan had rescued the former equestrian centre from subdivision into residential lots and, in keeping with their idealistic programme, they aspired to an ecologically sensitive building with a light footprint, hiring Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa (SANAA) in 2010 after an architectural search that started with 20 teams. ‘Sejima was the only architect who lit up when we said we wanted a building that would disappear into the landscape,’ says Sharon Prince, president of the Foundation’s Board of Directors. ‘SANAA’s design was a reaction to what we asked for.’
ARCHITECTURE GENERAL (AR-GEN)