Architecture

Sausage Bausage aims to bring to life the topic of modern architecture for young readers, introducing them to modern landmark buildings.

The first place that Sausage Bausage visits on his incredible adventure is the Dancing House in Prague, in the Czech Republic, Europe.

Key Facts

Architect: Frank Gehry and Vlado Milunić

Dates: designed 1992, completed 1996

Style: Deconstructivism

Use: Commercial, offices, hotel, bar, restaurant

Client: IMG

Floor area: 3,796 m2

Description

Named after Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, this building looks like a pair of dancers. The stone tower (with a metal head) is Fred and the glass tower is Ginger.

The glass tower narrows around the waist and is supported by curved pillars, whilst the stone tower runs parallel to the river, and has undulating, projecting windows, like paintings. The interior was designed by architect Eva Jiřičná and has a nautical theme.

The contrasting towers also symbolise the Velvet Revolution and the transition from communist Czechoslovakia to a democratic Czech Republic. Václav Havel, the first president of the Czech Republic, had lived next to the site.

Sausage Bausage also visits the Heydar Aliyev Cultural Centre in Baku, in Azerbaijan, Eurasia.

Key Facts

Architect: Zaha Hadid, Patrik Schumacher and Saffet Kaya Bekiroglu

Dates: designed 2007, completed 2013

Style: Hypermodernism

Use: Auditorium, exhibition and museum

Client: DIA Holding

Floor area: 57,500 m2

Description

The Heydar Aliyev Cultural Centre is the home of Azerbaijan’s cultural programmes and is named after Heydar Aliyev, the former first secretary of soviet Azerbaijan and former president of the Azerbaijan Republic.

The building emerges from the landscape and rises to connect the exterior public space of the plaza with an equally public architectural interior. It has a fluid, undulating form, like a Mobius strip, without start or end. The building’s functions are represented by folds in a single continuous surface, like a sheet of paper, cutting and bending. It suspends gravity and has been described as a handkerchief billowing in free fall.

With three identifiable parts, each for one of three institutions, the building is formed around a central atrium and courtyard. It is built from a concrete structure combined with a space frame system, so as to achieve large spans and uninterrupted open spaces, accentuating the fluidity of the interior. The building is clad in Glass Fibre Reinforced Concrete and Glass Fibre Reinforced Polyester, and vertical structural elements fuse into the envelope and curtain wall system.

A bank of glass doors at the entrance open into a hall of whiteness, welcoming, embracing and directing visitors through different levels of the interior. As it folds inside, the skin of the building erodes away to become an element of the interior landscape. Floors turn into ramps and walls, curving seamlessly into ceilings, which then turn and move out of sight, forming white infinite expanses as the building eases back into the ground.