Karen Cilento
fORaLLtHEcOWs / CTRLZ architectures
Working with the idea of “creating a society that is based on quality not quantity, on cooperation and not competition,” CTRLZ architectures have rethought a new model for, not just a building, but rather for society. Due to the on-going “cultural revolution” we are experiencing, the way we approach solving the problems of the world have changed, and architecture along with it. Now, the architect must not merely respond to designing spaces, but to other factors, such as society, energy, the internet, and politics, as well. “We believe that architecture is not anymore about form and/or/…function, but that it is about relations. The development of network systems shows us that the power resides in links and connections.”
More about the model and more images after the break.
Green Roof / Samoo Architects & Engineers
Samoo Architects and Engineers’ green roof design for Seoul covers a massive 131 acres. The project gives an “eco-upgrade” to the run-down Garak Wholesale Market by inserting an extensive public garden into the newly restored commercial center. The roof becomes a large public park that “mitigates rainwater runoff, insulates the interior spaces, and infuses Seoul’s city center with a breath of fresh air.” The design also includes three market pavilions which contain “eco-tubes”, channels that slice through the entire structure allowing daylight and ventilation to reach lower levels.
More images after the break.
Shuffle Haugerud Center / Eriksen Skajaa Architects
Eriksen Skajaa Architects shared with us their awarded proposal for Europan 10 with their design of the Haugerud Center, entitled Shuffle. Haugerud, originally an area born from the utopian ideals of the Modern Movement, now struggles to a have a clear sense of what it stands for. Shuffle aims to rediscover Haugerud’s lost identity by exploring low rise/high density urban planning. The buildings create a village-like atmosphere with multi-functional structures that can be used for housing as well as public functions.
More images and more about the project after the break.
Shifting Sands / Work AC
Work AC‘s design for a utilitarian industrial building for the Brooklyn navy yard becomes an opportunity to explore the efficiencies of scale through possibilities of long-span structures. A two-story truss rests on four columns at the ground level, allowing the upper floor to cantilever out past the entrance, creating a dynamic entry point and a new shared entrance plaza. The stripped facade is comprised of low-cost standing seam metal panels in a variety of colors. The color palette is taken from the varied hues of the surrounding buildings as a way to tie this contemporary structure with the existing context. The form, a long rectangle with the top level shifted off center, allows space for a shared green terrace on the back side of the building while the protruding side makes the protected entry condition. The top floors are also lifted and clerestory windows inserted to provide extra natural light for the lower floors. The building’s placement on the site was studied using the assumed 23,333 sqf footprint as well as acknowledging the fact that buried 138 KV electric lines still had to be accessible.
More images and diagrams after the break.
Le Temps des Environment / Nicolas Dorval Bory Architect
Nicolas Dorval Bory Architect designed an extension artist residency for the International Art & Landscape Center on the island of Vassivière. Situated in the middle of an artificial hydro-electric lake, the project explores the concept of ”de-spatialization” and “blurred architecture” by breaking the building components down into fragments, lines and dots. The building gradually begins to dissolve allowing “its temporal dimension to be experienced as its geometrical dimensions disappear into architecture and landscape.” The team studied time progression to invent a new kind of space and organization based on their conceptual ideas.
More images after the break.
Terminus / On Office
On Office’s Grand Terminus Hotel in Bergen, Norway is situated next to an exisiting traditional “Heritage” building. For the modern extension, the architects focused on maintaining a relationship with the existing hotel, while also working with sun exposure levels. The triangulated form morphs off the end of existing to become an unique entity that is still tied to its context. The geometric form provides dynamic interior spaces that aim to “establish an intimate relation with the existing small houses in the surroundings.”
More images after the break.
4 Houses / On Office
On Office (Joao Vieira Costa, Leon Rost, Ricardo Guedes, Francesco Moncada) designed a housing project located right outside Oslo. Since the existing neighborhood presents the same architectural atmosphere, where nature and landscape dominate the land between houses, for this project, the architects wanted to preserve that natural and built relationship. Working within the confines of a small site, the design of the stacked villas creates separate private gardens for each of the homes. And, their orientation toward the river provides great views to the users. Inside, the layout is simple and efficient, shaped to meet the landscape of the exterior.
More images after the break.
Sumaré House / Isay Weinfeld
Isay Weinfeld Arquitecto designed the Sumaré house, in São Paulo, for a graphic designer who desired a “spacious house, where she could work, exercise, entertain friends and, of course, live in.”
More images and more about the house after the break.
Edible Schoolyard / Work AC
Work AC, in collaboration with Edible Schoolyard NY and the Alice Waters’ Chez Panisse Foundation, is designing a new schoolyard for PS216 that will offer the young New Yorkers a different learning experience. The Edible Schoolyard is designed as a series of interlinked sustainable systems where the building will produce energy and heat, collect rainwater, process compost and sort waste with an off-grid infrastructure.
More images and more about the school after the break.
Biennale Pavilion / Shigeru Ban Architects
The HZ SZ Bi-City Biennale is in full swing (we just featured the Bug Pavilion a few days ago) and the festival’s catchy “‘Bring Your Own Biennale” (BYOB) slogan aims to stimulate “our collective role in the creation of an innovative Bi-City Biennale between Hong Kong and Shenzhen.” Conversations around the area are focusing on how Hong Kong’s society can make an active imprint on their city’s future. The BYOB is “at once contextual but also reflective, a unique opportunity to speculate on what our impact on the metropolis could be.” For the Biennale’s main pavilion, designed by Shiegeru Ban Architects, a paper tube structure provides a semi-open space for events such as forums, workshops and events.
More about the main pavilion after the break.
Hua Qiang Bei Road / Work AC
WORKac‘s design for a 1-kilometer section of Hua Qiang Bei Road in Shenzhen was awarded first prize. The design responds to the area’s growing commercial character which has unfortunately created traffic problems. For the proposal, the road becomes a series of “strategic interventions” where “five iconic lanterns”, (twisting bands of required program) create unique, visible destinations through a process of “urban acupuncture”.
More images and more about the design after the break.
Bungoma Housing Project / Samantha Kollmeyer + Kit Kollmeyer
Construction for Change, a non-profit in the United States, focuses on building the necessary infrastructure to sustain impoverished communities’ needs. Kit and Samantha Kollmeyer were asked by the CFC to design housing for the One Acre Fund in Bungoma, Kenya to provide a new facility for the growing organization. The One Acre Fund hopes to expand the number of families they provide aid to, from 12,000 families to 33,000 families in the next two years, so this husband and wife team was brought in to design a new headquarters consisting of office and classroom space, and two-bedroom housing units for in-country volunteers.
More about the Kollmeyer’s project after the break.
Passive Houses / Kjellgren Kaminsky
In the spring of this year, Malmo will receive a series of passive houses designed by Kjellgren Kaminsky in collaboration with the local builder Hölleviksnäs förvaltning. The winning proposal included 4 apartments where the units could be combined with a small store or office, a public micro park or roof top greenery. “Architecturally we aim to create a small scale and diverse formal language, in harmony with both the surrounding houses and the future tenants,” explained the architects.
More about the homes after the break.
Korea Center / SAMOO
SAMOO Architecture, the New York studio of SAMOO Architects and Engineers based in Seoul, Korea, was awarded first prize in an international competition for the design of The New York Korea Center. Set to begin construction at the end of this year, the 8 story, 33,000 square foot facility will provide space for exhibitions, performances, lectures, and administration. The design is said to “embody the modern Korean sensibility of innovation in harmony with tradition.”
More images and more about the design after the break.
Bug Dome / the WEAK!
Inspired by insects, the Bug Dome is a small sheltered area used during the SZHK Biennale for underground bands, poetry reading, and discussions, and after the Biennale as an un-official gathering place for illegal workers from the Chinese countryside. Built on a wasteland of a ruined building site in-between the Shenzhen City Hall and an illegal workers camp, the structure is intended to reveal the connection we share with nature: ”In large scale, if we learn to understand the connection what the hundreds of millions of hands that are now migrating from the rural China to the modern cities might bring along them, we might be able to ruin the industrial city. We might be able to make the city to be part of nature.”
More about the dome after the break.
Helping Haiti
It has been reported that 3 million people (about a third of Haiti’s population) have been affected by the recent earthquake. With that number expected to climb as the days progress, the number of casualties will be somewhere nearing 50,000. Many countries are supplying immediate help as millions of dollars, and tons of food, water and medical supplies are rapidly being delivered to the small country.
It is important that as the weeks and the months pass, we continue to think about how we can get involved and help. Organizations such as Architecture for Humanity have already brainstormed ideas and developed a timeline which outlines their relief strategy. There is little doubt that Habitat for Humanity will be bringing teams of volunteers to help rebuild.
As architects, but also as people, we have the power to drastically improve the situation. Our thoughts will continue to be with Haiti during these times and we should try to supply any kind of assistance in the next few days, weeks, months and years.
Hill Hut / Visiondivision
Visiondivision‘s latest project, a residential extension for two children in Stockholm, utilizes a landscape surface that is enhanced by elements around and inside the house. The young children will be spending most of their day enjoying the outdoors, so Visiondivision “wanted to give the two new citizens a safe base where they can explore their new surroundings and be able to appreciate it to the fullest.” By deliberately choosing inexpensive building components, such as windows and façade materials, the architects saved a bigger part of the budget to create as many playful elements as they could.
More about the Hill House after the break.
Kolelinia / Martin Angelov
Martin Angelov shared his funky concept for a new urban way of transportation dubbed “Kolelinia” with us . Kolelinia proposes that we ride our bicycles on a steel wire as a new type of bicycle lane. The idea was awarded first for the international “Line of Site” competition.
More about Kolelinia after the break.
Dove of Peace / Sunlay Design
Beijing Sunlay Design Office designed a Protestant Church in Inner Mongolia that takes its inspiration from the land’s topography. Set on top of a hill of Ordos, the scheme, entitled “Dove of Peace” gives its metaphor and poetry to the church by re-interpreting a contemporary and abstract silhouette of the bird carrying an olive branch. Made of concrete and with the facades finished in white crepi, the church’s form follows the adjacent curved road that crosses the site. “The dialogue between the outside and the inside space is emphasized by the play of shadows and light that creates complexity and depth in the reading of the space.” Delicate streams of light reflect harmony and tranquility, providing the perfect atmosphere for prayer and contemplation.
More images after the break.
University Library / njiric+ arhitekti
For njiric + arhitekti‘s library in Zadar, Croatia, the team worked with interpreting the local context as a “conflict of two matrices – the urban and suburban in the east to the west.” The new library emerges at the crossroads of these two different zones. With emphasis on the erosion of public space and an explosion of new technologies, the library becomes a series of environments with access to different activities. In this way, the library becomes a host for different purposes, for instance, “the library = market = hotel = shopping. ” The Mediterranean variant for the library is based on the density and the interdependencies between the university building, student hostels, major public buildings, and the diverse landscape structure.
More images after the break.
Fine Arts School / ROW Studio
ROW Studio shared with us their new Fine Arts School design for the Universidad Autonoma Benito Juarez de Oaxaca. Their proposal in posed as an alternative to contrast the actual project for the state school, which is already under construction. For ROW’s proposal, the school aims to create all the necessary spaces for the teaching the varying techniques and fields of artistic study, while preserving the green areas of the campus.
More about the school and more images after the break.
