業(yè)主：曼德爾集團

建筑面積：88 600 平方英尺

項目類型：攀巖體育館及住宅

竣工時間：2018 年

攝影：約翰·J·麥考利

Client: Mandel Group

Building Area: 88 600 sf

Program: Rock Climbing Gym and Housing

Completion Year: 2018

Photography: John J.Macaulay

攀巖體育館及公寓綜合體是位于密爾沃基市中心北部邊緣的一個多功能開發(fā)項目，該建筑外形保守，包括一個18 000 平方英尺的室內(nèi)攀巖體育館和46 個小公寓單元。該項目位于一個被稱為“洪堡庭院”的城市擴建場地，直到20 世紀70 年代初，“密爾沃基路”鐵路的修理廠就設(shè)在這里，現(xiàn)已不復存在。在閑置了幾十年之后，洪堡庭院近年來出現(xiàn)了零星的建設(shè)活動，以緩解該市快速增長的市中心人口壓力。

相比慢慢滲透到這一地區(qū)典型的開發(fā)商風格——毫無創(chuàng)意、千篇一律的建筑，每一幢建筑都涂上了無數(shù)的覆層材料——攀巖體育館及公寓綜合體被認為是一個有意建造的堅固的龐大建筑，一個大膽的原生態(tài)建筑，旨在反映真實的規(guī)模和樸實無華的工業(yè)建筑肌理，這些建筑用來定義洪堡庭院的肌理。

建筑的外立面——耐候鋼，輔以纖維混凝土板、鋁和玻璃進行加強——反映了場地的內(nèi)在矛盾，它深刻地塑造了密爾沃基作為“世界工廠”的歷史角色，同時也反映了一個快速轉(zhuǎn)變的城市吸引了白領(lǐng)工作的愿望，和對迷人的城市環(huán)境感興趣的年輕人。緩慢變化的氧化波紋鋼板幾乎覆蓋了整個建筑體量，其風化表皮經(jīng)過精心改造，與鋁型材和混凝土面板清晰、精確的線條呼應。

混合建筑方案被組織成一個簡單的四層矩形體。在這棟建筑的南側(cè)和東側(cè)，模塊化的公寓利用了鄰近社區(qū)綠地的開闊視野，進入了最近重新歸化的密爾沃基河流域。60 英尺高、大跨度的體育館空間本身向北延伸，以容納建筑末端的兩堵垂直玻璃墻——高高的開口，向北大道上的行人展示并有效地宣傳室內(nèi)的攀巖活動。北大道是一條繁忙的東西走向的大道，連接著密歇根湖和密爾沃基西郊。體育館的北墻沒有窗戶，最大限度地利用了內(nèi)部的攀巖面，它變成了一個高度鉸接的、有節(jié)奏的平面，由一系列傾斜的鋁制翅片組成。翅片逐漸變化創(chuàng)造了一個動態(tài)的垂直紋理，根據(jù)光線條件和觀看角度的不同而變化，這是對內(nèi)部起伏的攀巖表面的抽象呼應。橫向光條將翅片隔開，綠色的丙烯酸有機玻璃透鏡為墻壁增添了意想不到的色彩，在黑暗后可進一步活化墻壁。在頂部，北墻折疊成一個水平屋頂平面，漂浮在主建筑體量上方五英尺的地方，以容納一個連續(xù)的長廊，為健身房全天提供充足的自然光。夜晚，長廊賦予建筑一種標志性的存在感使其成為一個柔和發(fā)光的社區(qū)燈塔，照亮了洪堡廣場陰郁的城市天空。

Belay MKE is a mixed-use development at the northern edge of downtown Milwaukee, a formally restrained building that combines an 18,000-square-foot indoor rock-climbing gym with 46 small apartment units. The project occupies an urban brownfield site known as Humboldt Yards, where the repair shops of the now-defunct “Milwaukee Road” Railway were located until the early 1970s. After sitting idle for decades, Humboldt Yard has seen sporadic construction activity in recent years to absorb some of the pressure from the city’s rapidly growing downtown population.

Contrasting the typical developer fare slowly pervading the area – uninspired, bromidic buildings, each plastered with a myriad of cladding materials – Belay MKE was conceived as an intentionally solid,monolithic block, a defiantly raw building designed to reverberate the physical scale and muscular presence of the unpretentious industrial structures that used to define the fabric of Humboldt Yards.

The building’s restrained exterior palette – weathering steel, accentuated by fiber concrete panels,aluminum, and glass – reflects the inherent contradiction between a site profoundly shaped by Milwaukee’s historic role as the “Workshop of the World” and the aspirations of a swiftly transforming city attracting white-collar jobs and young people interested in an engaging urban environment: A slowly transforming skin of oxidizing corrugated steel panels wraps almost the entire building volume,its weathering skin in a carefully edited dialogue with the crisp, precise lines of aluminum extrusions and concrete panels.

The hybrid building program was organized as a simple 4-story rectangular volume. Lining the south and east edges of the building, the modular apartments take advantage of expansive views of the adjacent community greenspace and into the recently re-naturalized Milwaukee River basin. The 60-foot high long-span gym space itself projects out to the north to accommodate a pair of vertical glass walls at the end of the building – tall apertures that expose and effectively advertise the climbing activities on the inside to the passers-by on North Avenue, a busy east-west thoroughfare connecting Lake Michigan to Milwaukee’s western suburbs.

The gym’s north wall, required to be windowless to maximize the usable climbing surface inside,transforms into a highly articulated, cadenced plane organized by a series of oblique aluminum fins.The fins’ gradually shifting shapes create an animated vertical texture that changes depending on light conditions and the angle from which they are viewed, an abstract echo of the undulating climbing surfaces inside. The fins are spaced by horizontal light strips, their green acrylic lenses adding an unexpected splash of color that further activates the wall after darkness. As it reaches the top, the north wall folds into a horizontal roof plane floating five feet above the top of the main building volume to accommodate a continuous clerestory that provides the gym with an abundance of natural light throughout the day. At night, the clerestory gives the building an iconic presence, transforming it into a softly glowing neighborhood beacon illuminating Humboldt Yard’s somber urban sky.