Give us some background on you and your work (studies, past experience, highlights of your career, prizes, recent competitions, etc.).
Pir II was established in 1994 and has since then had a focus on local materials and identity, experimental approaches to sustainability, as well as blending high-tech and low-tech solutions in a wide range of building typologies. Pir II has received WAN awards for ‘Wood in Architecture’ 2013 (NINA office) and ‘Hotel of the Year’ 2011 (Hotel SUB), and has been nominated for Mies van der Rohe Award in 2000 (Kvernhuset school). Work by Pir II has also regularly been shortlisted for and has received several national prizes in Norway, including prizes for environmentally ambitious buildings.
Alise has joined our team in 2015 and has since been actively involved in most of our projects with focus on sustainability.
Tell us briefly on your approach to sustainability / sustainable design and how it manifests it in your work (you are welcome to present a specific project).
Sustainability in our architectural practice is not a universal approach, but rather a professional and experimental drive that aims at using the full potential and stretching the limits of each specific project.
There are several ongoing projects that have a very specific take on sustainability and what it is we aim to sustain or make more sustainable – the environment, certain lifestyles or cultural landscapes, among others.
Bygda 2.0 or Village 2.0 (ongoing) – is a project located in Stokkøya, an island in Middle Norway, that aims at using urban competence and creativity as a tool for reversing urban exodus from countryside. Our task was to define and design the new ‘rurban’ fabric that today includes both living and mixed-use facilites like office-hotell, workshop/ maker-space, microbrewery and soon also microbakery. The plot for the completed mixed-use space ‘Bygdeboks’ and further planned buildings is a part of a no-man’s-land excavated when a bridge was built in the vicinity. The building combines low-budget solutions of reused windows and façade cladding with more advanced technologies like heat pump and balanced ventilation. The place is intended as a full-scale laboratory for different disciplines like architecture, energy- ad environmental technologies, food and farming, ocean research and social anthropology. Today 8 people live in Bygda 2.0.
Evjen school (under construction) – is a 1800 sqm addition to an existing school in Orkanger, a small town of under 8 000 inhabitants in Middle Norway. Pir II won a design competition where local material use with low environmental footprint and energy efficiency where the premises set by a sustainability enthusiast in the local municipality. The new school is completely built in cross laminated timber elements, and uses wood for both internal and external cladding. To reduce the need for maintenance untreated local dense spruce cladding and charred wood cladding is used for the exterior cladding of the building. The building also complies with passive house standard, which means very low heating demand during the long heating season in Norway. The school building will become a learning tool about sustainability both for the local pupils and their parents through ‘learning by using’.
Ramsjøhytta or Ramsjø cabin (in planning phase) – is a tourist cabin in Sylan mountain range that can only be reached on foot and is run by the local tourist association. Every year Sami people cross the area with their reindeer herds. The tourist association wished for a place where visitors could reflect on their role within a vulnerable environment and develop respect for nature, climate and animal life.
The cabin with efficiently designed sleeping and cooking facilities for 40 people is to be built in wooden construction, all dimensions limited to what a helicopter can bring and manpower on ground can erect. The external untreated wooden cladding and zinc roofing is intended to age with time and grow more and more into nature and its colours. The cabin provides basic amenities and has a relatively low energy demand that can be covered by solar energy to avoid running diesel generator. Wind generators, though more efficient, were considered problematic for the reindeer.
What attracted you to join ECOWEEK? Have you participated to ECOWEEK workshops in the past? Would you consider joining ECOWEEK workshops again in the future?
Pir II was invited to participate in ECOWEEK in Thessaloniki in 2012 and it was a very enriching experience. We are very much looking forward to ECOWEEK Middle East for more professional debates about sustainability, hands-on design and inspiring learning across cultures.
What is sustainable design and sustainable interventions in public space for you? How do you intend to apply it to your workshop?
Sustainable interventions in public space should ideally give a space, occasion or simply an impulse for public and/or private action with a sustainable goal. Although some aspects of sustainability might seem rather universal (energy, food, waste, etc), it is their local variations and how they combine with local practices that can make the intervention relevant and effective. Involving local residents early on is crucial to pinpoint un-sustainable aspects of the site and local practices (social, environmental, etc) that will form the basis for the intervention.
Please share link(s) to your work / website / social media.
Alise Plavina of award-winning practice PIR2 (Norway) joins Israeli architect Ohad Yehieli for an ECOWEEK 2017 design workshop on Mesilat Yesharim street at Shapira Neighborhood in Tel Aviv in collaboration and with the support of the Municipality of Tel Aviv. Alise joins ECOWEEK as a speaker and workshop leader - thanks to the support of the Embassy of Norway. "Although some aspects of sustainability might seem rather universal (like energy, food, and waste), it is their local variations that can make the intervention relevant and effective. Involving local residents is crucial to pinpoint the basis for the intervention" says Alise. Join Alise at ECOWEEK - Early registration open: http://ecoweek.co.il/