外露骨骼與懸吊樓板的結構詩學，BAUKUNST 與 BRUTHER 在布魯塞爾聯手打造 Frame 大樓
外露骨骼與懸吊樓板的結構詩學，BAUKUNST 與 BRUTHER 在布魯塞爾聯手打造 Frame 大樓
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位於比利時布魯塞爾東部、主幹道與高速公路交會處的「Frame」，是當地全新媒體園區（Media Park）的旗艦建築計畫；此案由比利時建築事務所 BAUKUNST 與法國建築團隊 BRUTHER 於 2017 年的競圖中脫穎而出並聯手設計。
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有別於傳統封閉的辦公大樓，Frame 旨在容納地方電視台 BX1、影像機構與多媒體新創公司，設計團隊將之視為一座極具彈性與適應力的「都市基礎設施」。
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建築的結構與設備被完全外置於立面上，藉此換取內部約8,500平方公尺（91,500 平方英尺）完全無柱的開放空間，北側立面以每 7.62 公尺（25 英尺）排列的混凝土柱列構成；面向廣場的主立面南側，則以高達約30.5公尺（100 英尺）的巨型鋼構網格作為外骨骼。
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透過複雜的金屬拉桿，鋼構網格將居中的樓板層層懸吊，展現出強烈的力學美感，機電系統與包含樓梯、電梯的混凝土核心筒皆配置於建築外部，徹底實踐了結構、皮層與機電系統完全分離的設計策略。
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南向的巨型鋼構不僅作為支撐，更宛如一面都市廣告看板。設計團隊別出心裁地將農業用的防風網布固定在鋼構上作為遮陽濾光層；西側主入口則透過玻璃立面退縮創造出迎賓門廊。
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從地下停車場到雙層挑高的頂樓電視台攝影棚，Frame 展現出宛如龐畢度中心般的外露 High Tech 美學，同時賦予了未來租戶高度自由的空間再造潛力。
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#Brussels #BAUKUNST #BRUTHER
#比利時建築 #結構外露
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攝影：Séverin Malaud / Maxime Delvaux
#FrameBrussels #BAUKUNST #BRUTHER #BrusselsArchitecture #BelgiumArchitecture
#MediaPark #HighTechArchitecture #Exoskeleton #FlexibleWorkspace #ArchitectureDesign
#Frame大樓 #布魯塞爾 #比利時建築 #高科技建築 #外骨骼結構 #無柱空間 #媒體園區 #基礎設施 #建築美學 #建築設計
布魯塞爾出現了一座超硬核的「外骨骼」媒體大樓！這座名為「Frame」的建築由 BAUKUNST 與 BRUTHER 聯手設計，是布魯塞爾全新媒體園區的旗艦大樓。為了把內部空間完全淨空給電視台跟新創公司使用，建築師把所有柱子、樓梯跟機電管線通通丟到了建築外面！
正面那片高達 100 英尺的巨大鋼骨網格，不只看起來像超大廣告看板，它還利用複雜的金屬拉桿把中間的樓板「懸吊」起來！更有趣的是，他們還拿農業用的防風網布綁在鋼架上當作遮陽簾。
整座大樓看起來超像一台精密運作的機器，直接向 70 年代的龐畢度中心致敬，完美示範了什麼叫做把「結構」變成最帥的建築語言！
Location：Belgium - Bruxelles
Designers：BAUKUNST, BRUTHER
Located on the eastern edge of Brussels, at the crossroads between one of the main freeways leading out of the city and one of the major boulevards, this new building serves as the spearhead of a larger urban development. The project participates to reconfigure the existing media district, currently centered around Belgium’s national television and radio stations.
The building hosts a diverse mix of media-related start-ups and operators, including regional television recording and broadcasting studios, media hubs, and institutions that support and promote filmmaking in Brussels. The need for cohabitation among a diverse group of partners led to a design based on spatial adaptability and rational planning. Flexibility was achieved through structural design, distributing activities across open-plan floors that allow for numerous spatial configurations. The peripheral positioning of the structural elements, as well as the vertical distribution of the main services, resulted in totally free floors. The building is designed with distinct constructive systems, each adaptable to its own lifespan and future requirements.
Structure, envelope, and finishing elements function as separate layers, allowing for independent maintenance and evolution over time. The building’s structural concept adapts to each orientation based on its specific surroundings. The southern façade, designed as an urban screen with solar protection, responds to the larger scale of the neighborhood and surrounding infrastructure. In contrast, the more closed northern façade faces nearby existing buildings. On the east side, the main entrance is positioned to accommodate a shift in urban alignment, creating a broad forecourt that connects the building to the boulevard.
“How can structure create a language?” asks Adrien Verschuere, founder of Brussels-based architecture firm Baukunst. He is referring to Frame, the flagship building of a new media park that the Société d’Aménagement Urbain (a publicly owned development company) is constructing in the Belgian capital. Invited by the Brussels bouwmeester (city architects for government projects) to take part in the 2017 design competition, Baukunst teamed up with French practice Bruther (a 2017 Design Vanguard, headed by Stéphanie Bru and Alexandre Thériot), beating proposals by the likes of Office Kersten Geers David Van Severen, Xaveer De Geyter, and 51N4E. Two main principles guided their approach: responding to the visually prominent site, and achieving maximum flexibility to accommodate an evolving list of occupants.
Located in eastern Brussels, the media park is in fact a redevelopment, involving demolition and reconstruction of some buildings and preservation of others. Frame, the first new structure to be completed, occupies a former parking lot and greets visitors as they exit the local metro. Rising 100 feet, like the 1990s glass office buildings next door, it stands perpendicular to the boulevard Auguste Reyers, a major traffic artery, and faces a grassy plaza. The building is entered from its narrow western boulevard elevation, while the southern facade, overlooking the plaza, constitutes its main public face. In contrast, the northern and eastern elevations are very much backstage, a difference reflected in the project’s structural engineering.
The interiors are column free. Photo © Séverin Malaud, courtesy Bruther
“Frame is more like a piece of infrastructure than a classic building with four walls and windows,” says Bru of the 91,500-square-foot edifice. To achieve entirely column-free floors, the architects turned to the principle of the exoskeleton but gave it very different expression at the front, in comparison to the rear. While full-height concrete piers, set 25 feet apart, give a cadence to the northern elevation, the southern facade features a giant steel frame that stands on stumpy concrete columns and comprises 25-by-25-foot squares. Spider ties connect the frame to every other floor, with each of those in between being suspended from the one above.
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Short concrete piers support the structural steel frame and form an arcade. Photos © Séverin Malaud, courtesy Bruther (1), Maxime Delvaux, courtesy Baukunst (2)
Mechanical systems are also externalized, snaking up the northern facade and onto the roof, while external concrete cores, placed to the east and northwest, contain stairs, elevators, and restrooms, and help to stiffen the structure against the wind.
“We imagined the southern facade as a giant billboard, visible from your car as you drive down the boulevard,” says Bru. It is also a screen, in both the metaphorical and literal sense, since strapped to it are sheets of agricultural windbreak, a tough, inexpensive fabric mesh the architects repurposed as sunlight filters. Floor-to-ceiling glazing units make up the building envelope, in line with the client’s request for maximum daylight penetration; on the western elevation, a reflective coating mitigates the hot afternoon sun, while on the ground floor the envelope pulls back to create an entrance porch to the west and a covered colonnade to the south. In this architecture of assemblage and tectonics, articulations and forces are all made visible, as demonstrated inside at the top level, which was engineered as an “inhabited beam,” or outside in the different diameters of the spider-tie rods, those in compression being noticeably thicker than those in tension.
Frame’s interior is divided into seven levels: a basement parking garage, a tall ground floor, four standard floors, and a double-height top level, which has been fitted out as TV and radio studios for the local news station, BX1. A bistro will soon occupy the ground floor, audiovisual archives and coworking spaces are programmed for part of the building, while the remainder has yet to find tenants. The building’s dimensions, Verschuere explains, were based on a module of 5 feet, which is half of the minimum width required for a workspace. Measuring 50 feet by 220 feet, each floor is rented entirely empty, with cellular beams and ceiling tech left deliberately exposed. “We provided a toolbox for tenants, explaining how to fit the spaces out,” says Verschuere.
Frame’s construction involved a high degree of prefabrication, in both concrete and metal. Assembling all the different components was a complex operation, during which the floors were supported on scaffolding poles; only once everything was in place could they be removed and the building set in tension. “It was a little nerve-racking, like launching a ship,” says Verschuere. Indeed, given the challenges posed by Frame’s complex engineering, not to mention the project’s ballooning costs as Covid and the war in Ukraine took their toll—slated at €16 million ($18.7 million), it finally came in at around €20 million ($23.3 million)—he wonders whether it would still be possible to build such a structure today.
As for the language Frame speaks, it is clearly High Tech, the idiom pioneered by architects such as Renzo Piano, Su Rogers, and Richard Rogers at the Centre Pompidou (1971–77) or Foster + Partners at the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank (1979–86). Though evidently adept at exploiting its aesthetic possibilities, Baukunst and Bruther are far more interested in its functional potential than in its machine-age glamour: they would be more than happy to see Frame’s systems stripped away and its glazing changed in order to allow natural ventilation, something that Belgium’s construction code currently prohibits.
