Forrest Fulton Architecture has created an 85,000 sqm 'living hill' for a proposal of a new development for Yerevan, Armenia.
Lace Hill stitches the adjacent city and landscape together to support a holistic, green lifestyle, somewhere between rural hillside living and dense cultured urbanity.
To create a new, firmly rooted architecture-urbanism-landscape, the project morphs the common urban element of Yerevan, the superblock, to the site, a truncated hill along the natural amphitheater of Yerevan. This act extends the amphitheater and completes the hill, creating more capacity or 'seats for the viewing of Yerevan and Mt. Ararat.
Native plants irrigated with recycled greywater cover the hill. Intricate perforations recalling traditional Armenian lace needlework provide terraced exterior space, natural ventilation and views for the promenade, hotel rooms, residences and office space.
Tower-voids act as dramatic cooling towers in Yerevan’s semi-arid climate. With the feel of a cathedral or basilica in size and light, pools and tree-topped hills fill these flowing-nodal public spaces, which are carved from the hill like the ancient Armenian Monastery of Gerhard.
Lace Hill not only conserves its own resources within, but also gives back to Yerevan, passively cooling portions of Yerevan during the summer. As north breezes pass over the tower-voids’ ponds, the project acts as a giant evaporative cooling mechanism for the semi-arid city below.
Window walls set deep within the terraces shade summer sun. Planted surfaces absorb solar heat, filter air and water-borne toxins and supports insect and animal life. Geothermal wells and radiant floors efficiently heat and cool spaces.
The lace perforated surface ventilates the hill. The major structure is found in the perforated concrete exterior surfaces, allowing for columnless and beamless flexible spaces. All living spaces are along the long, meandering south face of the hill, maximising direct sun, terraces and views.
Offices, which need indirect light and where views are less valuable, are along the north face of the hill. A narrow office floor plate stepping down toward the south provides adequate, diffuse daylight. Retail, restaurants, exhibition halls, a cinema, and a health center line the promenade at the first level.
Vehicular traffic is completely separated and 100 per cent of parking is underground. The adjacent road winds into a tunnel at the western base of the hill, leading to an expansive parking space and entrance to the building above.
Written by Forrest Fulton.
