AD Round Up: Museums Part II

Since we started with AD, many interestings museums have been published. That’s why one of our first Round Ups featured our first museums previously featured on AD. Today, we bring you Part II.

Neue National Gallery in Berlin / Mies van der Rohe
his building is from 1968, and it´s a jump from the traditional museum idea of a closed building with exhibition rooms, into an open-plan flexible space. The building is 64.8m long, with only 2 steel columns on each side, which free the corners giving the building a lightweight look. A very “Mies” building, with a clear and radical idea put on a very minimal, yet detailed structure (read more…)

The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art / Steven Holl Architects
The expansion of The Nelson Atkins Museum of Art fuses architecture with landscape to create an experiential architecture that unfolds for visitors as it is perceived through each individual’s movement through space and time. The new addition, named the Bloch Building, engages the existing sculpture garden, transforming the entire Museum site into the precinct of the visitor’s experience (read more…)

Extension and renovation of the Ljubljana City Museum / OFIS arhitekti
The project involves the renovation and extending of the Auersperg Palace, which is located in the heart of the protected historical city centre. The palace and the plot have a very rich history dating from the prehistoric period to Roman and medieval times. Each era added something to the building. During the course of history the purpose of the palace changed several times (read more…)

Kunsthaus Art House Extension / ssm Architekten
The project proposal aims at a holistic view of the Kunsthaus entity, but equally taking its near as well as its extended urban architectural surrounding into consideration. The proposal looks in particular at the fact that the existing Kunsthaus plays an important role on a prime location between the southern train station and the pedestrian path leading from the train station towards the central area (read more…)

Museum Liaunig / Querkraft
The museum liaunig projects out on two sides over steep-sided ground, high up in the landscape. A cut through the hill marks a precise intervention in nature. Planted into the site the new museum emerges more like a work of landart. Only a small part of the outstretched museum building is visible. Cut through the hill, the main body of the museum slices through a densely-wooded, steep-sided embankment (read more…)

AD Round Up: Dorte Mandrup

Dorte Mandrup Arkitekter is a Denmark-based architecture firm with a tremendous variety in their projects. From a day care centre, to a summerhouse, a water tower, and a sports centre, we bring you previously featured projects by .

Day Care Centre
The Day-Care Centre is located in a residential neighborhood which was parceled out in 1857-72. The territory is a green oasis in the densely built quarter of Copenhagen. The residential neighborhood of Italian inspiration is of high architectural quality. The neighborhood was built for rich inhabitants of the city of Copenhagen including a number of acknowledged artists of the time. The site is narrow and rather long (read more…)

Read-Nest
Measuring only 10 m2, Read-Nest is a small pre-manufactured structure that is designed to sit in the landscape like an architectural folly. Being flexible in both situation and use, the owner can place Read-Nest where he or she feels would best suit their needs, whether for study, relaxation or both. The exterior is clad in vertically striated natural oiled wood (thuja) slats that are designed to interact (read more…)

Summerhouse in Jørlunde
Sitting in the midst of an expanding landscape, the summerhouse is an open-plan dwelling allowing the inhabitants and its visitors to experience a continual interior/exterior natural environment. Raised above the ground by concrete pillars, the house extends over the sloping terrain with interior spaces and terraces filtered from the outer landscape by movable fabric screens stretching along the perimeter (read more…)

Jaegersborg Water tower
Dorte Mandrup Arkitekter ApS won in 2004 the competition to convert Jægersborg Water Tower in Copenhagen, Denmark, into a mixed-use building. On the upper floors, student units mark the perimeter of the existing structure. Each unit is expressed by a protruding crystal-like add-on that brings daylight into the apartment, and offers unobstructed views to the surrounding landscape (read more…)

Sports & Culture Centre
The schemes most pronounced feature is a large translucent membrane that stretches between the sports and culture centre arena, and the four characteristic end walls of the neighbouring public housing scheme. The building´s structure is composed of steel and timber covered with opalescent polycarbonate panels with a low U-value. This translucent cover offers excellent daylight conditions (read more…)

AD Round Up: Pool Houses Part I

I guess there’s nothing better to sit back and relax after a long week than a . Fun and refreshing, houses are just great. So now, we bring you our Round Up of previously featured houses on ArchDaily.

House at Jardin del Sol / Corona y P. Amaral Arquitectos
The basic idea of the project consists in the location of a monolithic concrete and glass volume over a timber platform located at the edge of a cliff in order to enjoy the amazing view of the 300m cliff, a 1000m long black sand beach, mount Teide and all the north coast of Tenerife island. Bedroom and service areas are located in a one storie rectangular volume which enters into a double high volume containing the living-room (read more…)

Ocho al Cubo House / Sebastian Irarrazaval
Sebastian Irarrazaval sent us this concrete house, located on a complex in the chilean country side next to the beach, featuring houses from the best chilean architects called 8 al Cubo.The house is to be inhabited during weekends; special occasions when persons, on the one hand, inhabit space during long periods of time and on the other hand, inhabit space in an informal and more distracted way (read more…)

Osler House / Marcio Kogan
In front of the entrance of the Osler House, located in Brasilia, there is a panel of tiles by the artist Athos Bulcão, designed especially for this wall. Dozens of buildings in Brasilia have panels by Athos, among them are: Planalto Palace, Itamaraty and the National Theater, all by Niemeyer. The artist’s modular tiles are an outstanding feature incorporated into the modern architecture of the modern city (read more…)

Rota House / Manuel Ocaña Arquitectos
This project contemplates the refurbishment of an old house, on which the client wanted a swimming pool. The result is amazing, with a vertical space bringing daylight to the inner spaces, ending on a pool on the first level. A well-known ‘Dame of the Theater’, single, 65 years of age, whose dream was to have a swimming pool at home, commissions us the refurbishment of a dark dwelling (read more…)

Couran Point house / Arkhefield
The core drivers behind the build were maximising space and privacy, sheltering from the predominant south-easterly wind/weather front and creating a simple, low maintenance, sustainable living volume which could be enjoyed all year round. The isolation of the site and the harsh climatic conditions on the island are evident in the simplicity of the structure, the choice of basic, low maintenance materials (read more…)

AD Round Up: Latin American Houses Part I

Last week we featured a Round Up of houses from the United States. So for you to start comparing different architecture at different places, we bring you our first Round Up of previously featured houses from Latin America.

Chile – Wall house / FAR frohn&rojas
Wall house innovates on house design, through a sustainable soft skin. This house was awarded the 2007 AR Emerging Awards and selected as one of the 2008 Record Houses by Architectural Record. With a limited budget, our office was asked to design a residence for a retired couple in one of the suburban areas that stretch out from the center of Santiago de Chile along the Pan-American Highway (read more…)

Brazil – Vila Romana Residence / MMBB Arquitetos
The design of the Espirito Santo Residence is derived from the twin imperatives of topography and usage. It is situated on a corner plot with views of the town’s principal valley, with a drop of 10 meters from one side of the plot to the other. The first question to be tackled was that of creating an artificial terrain that would allow for easy transit around the external areas and their use for day-to-day activities (read more…)

Mexico – Aquino House / Augusto Fernández Mas (K+A Diseño)
This single-family residence is located on a steeped lot in front of federal government lands and aside a river; it entailed a series of building and environmental restrictions. The sloped terrain made retaining walls necessary, as well as a drainage system to channel large amounts of rainwater. The house is configured by orthogonal shapes and materials such as wood, stone and metal without artificial claddings (read more…)

Ecuador – Pentimento House / Jose María Sáez & David Barragán
A garden and a client without fear. An architecture to be naked to connect with their surroundings. Built with a single piece of concrete, which can be placed in four different ways (assembly) which solves structure, wall, furniture, ladders, even a garden facade that is the origin of the project. Outside is a neutral grid that is camouflaged like a fence or hedge. Inside, each wall is different (read more…)

Colombia – Ecological Shelters at Finca El Retorno / G Ateliers
The project is located in Guatapé- Antioquia, a place with natural potential for ecological tourism development just two hours from Medellín. The design acknowledges the natural beauty of the site to create 8 ecological shelters that care to minimize the impact on the site and achieve a delicate fusion of architecture and place. These shelters emerge from the topography and enhance the surrounding nature without competing with it (read more…)

AD Round Up: ORDOS 100 Part I

ORDOS 100 is a development in Inner Mongolia that you might have heard of. It consist of one hundred 1000sqm villas designed by 100 hip architects in 100 days, selected by Herzog & de Meuron over a master plan developed and curated by Ai Wei Wei (FAKE Design). So now we bring you our first Round Up of the first ORDOS project’s featured on ArchDaily.

#1: Alejandro Aravena Architects
We are going to feature the projected villas each week, and hopefully we manage to document all #100. We have contacted several offices already, but if you are part of ORDOS 100 and we haven´t got in touch with you, please use the contact form. We start with the villa by Alejandro Aravena (). No project description, but you can understand some of the concept design from the sketches (read more…)

ORDOS 100 #2: Luca Selva Architects
The design-operation was to transform specific landscape beneath the plot in architecture, little lakes and ponds will be transformed into courtyards, dunes into spaces, topography into stores. This design-strategy points out a specific building closely related to the site. A specific villa with a specific shape, specific spaces and a specific shell in bricks. The villa is landscape transformed into architecture (read more…)

ORDOS 100 #3: nArchitects
Conceived as an Inner House within an Outer House, our villa combines two distinct spatial and thermal conditions. The Inner House is designed as a compact, essential house, containing 60% of the project’s total volume and 75% of its area. Outer House provides a protective enclosure, and a unique series of interconnected, voluminous, sky-lit spaces. This layered strategy responds (read more…)

ORDOS 100 #4: Rafi Segal
The building responds to the intersection of these economies by articulating a variable relation between private and public or “privacy and publicity.” The building alternates between a state of radical interiority providing an introvert retreat that gives away no image; and a state of total exhibitionism that publicly exposes its interiors. A series of pathways and spaces are carved out (read more…)

ORDOS 100 #5: HHF
The physical context for the Ordos 100 project is limited to climatical conditions and some few regulations by the master plan done by FAKE Design. Within Ordos 100, this project is simply the HHF house. It’s making an issue out of the fact that 99 other architects are simultaneously and independently planning 99 houses with an identical program within the same master plan (read more…)

AD Round Up: Shanghai Pavillions Part I

The 2010 World Expo will without a doubt be a huge event. Countries from all around the world will show what they have to offer in gigantic pavillions built specially for the occasion. So we bring your our first Round Up of previously featured Pavillions on ArchDaily.

Denmark Pavillion / BIG
The pavilion is a big loop on which visitors ride around on one of the 1,500 bikes available at the entrance, a chance to experience the Danish urban way. At the center there’s a big with water from Copenhagen’s harbor, on which visitors can even swim. At the center of the you will find The Little Mermaid, a statue that has become a symbol for Denmark. And this time, it will be moved temporarily to China (read more…)

Macau Pavillion / Carlos Marreiros
The Macau Pavilion will take the shape of a jade rabbit lantern. Designed by Chinese firm Carlos Marreiros Architects the pavilion will be wrapped with a double-layer glass membrane and feature fluorescent screens on its outer walls. Balloons will serve as the head and tail of the ‘rabbit’, which can be moved up and down to attract visitors. The building will be constructed with recyclable materials (read more…)

UAE Pavillion / Foster + Partners
Foster + partners decided to base on a sand dune for their UAE Pavillion design. The pavillion is a reference to the symbolic feature of the desert landscape shared by all seven emirates. The peak rises to 20 meters in height and it is entered via a glazed lip at the pavillions base. Light penetrates the building’s business center and VIP area through glazed vertical strips which illuminate the pavillion from within by night (read more…)

Austrian Pavillion / SPAN and Zeytinoglu Architects
The main driving force behind the design of the Austrian Pavilion for the Shanghai 2010 Expo can be described as acoustic forces, or more accurately as music. Music as a concept that reflects continuity in terms of architectural articulation that seamlessly connects the various spaces within the program. The embodiment of the sonic conditions within the space manifest the architecture of the pavilion (read more…)

Korean Pavillion / Mass Studies
The Korean Pavillion is situated in Zone A, directly neighboring the Japan Pavillion and the Saudi Arabia Pavillion, and in close proximity to the China Pavilion. The site is around 6000m2, and it is one of the largest lots within the expo compound. Located on the perimeter of the zone, the site takes advantage of the views out towards the Huangpu River and the Shanghai skyline in the distance (read more…)

AD Round Up: Houses in USA Part I

Architecture can tell us a lot about the places in which the projects are located. So to start comparing different architecture in different countries, we bring you previously featured houses in . Next week, houses in .

Openhouse / XTEN Architecture
The Openhouse is embedded into a narrow and sharply sloping property in the Hollywood Hills, a challenging site that led to the creation of a house that is both integrated into the landscape and open to the city below. Retaining walls are configured to extend the first floor living level into the hillside and to create a garden terrace for the second level. Steel beams set into the retaining walls perpendicular to the hillside are (read more…)

Monte Silo / Gigaplex Architects
Our charge was to design a house for a newly single man with two grown daughters from whom he expects multiple grandchildren. Earl, the client, is foremost a sound engineer, but also a screenwriter (of course), director and producer in the film business, with many big Hollywood pictures to his credit, and hence he has to be on the road for lengthy periods of time. He requested a home both cozy in scale (read more…)

Hill House / Johnston Marklee & Associates
Completed in October 2004, the Hill House was designed under challenging conditions generated by modern problems of building on a hillside. Located in Pacific Palisades, California, while the site for the house offers panoramic views from Rustic and Sullivan Canyons to Santa Monica Bay, the irregularly shaped lot is situated on an uneven, downhill slope. With the canonical Eames House nearby, the 3300 square foot (read more…)

Mount Baker Residense / Pb Elemental Architecture
Located in the Mount Baker neighborhood of Seattle, this dramatic home is perched on a hill, high above the street. The design captures the territorial views of the surrounding rooftops with floor to ceiling glass and roof top deck. The 3,600 sqft home includes four bedrooms, two and a half baths, and a large open living floor with ten foot-tall ceilings and a two car garage with a 400 sqft roof deck above (read more…)

EB1 Home / Replinger Hossner Architects
This contemporary modern house by Replinger Hossner Architects is up for sale in Seattle, WA. Amazing views and good interior spaces. I just got this on my mail and I thought any of our readers could be interested. More pictures here (read more…)

AD Round Up: Wooden Houses Part I

can be a very good material when designing your future house. It can be cheap, energy efficient, and of course, look good. So to finish this week’s Round Up, we bring you previously featured wooden houses.

Herringbone Houses / Alison Brooks Architects
The Herringbone Houses are two 400sqm houses and integrated landscape located in a wooded back land site overlooking the South London Bowls Club for private developer Lyford Investments. Each open-plan house is composed of two continuous planes of herringbone timber and graphite render surfaces that form walls, floors, external decking and fences. These planes interlock and fold inward at the centre of the house (read more…)

CO2 Saver House / Peter Kuczia
Using untreated larch wood and black fibre cement panels to optimise solar energy gain, this lake house in Poland is a pretty good example of how to be sustainable and respectful with the environment. This sustainable house – like a chameleon – blends with its surrounding area on Laka Lake in south of Poland. Colourful planks within the timber façade reflect the tones of the rural landscape (read more…)

Holiday House on the Rigi / AFGH
Holiday house on the Rigi, Scheidegg. The building was arranged on the periphery of the property so that the distance to the neighbouring houses was as large as posssible and so that the option of constructing another building could be left open. The concrete cellar anchors the building in the sloping terrain and houses the entrance area and the technical servicing on top of which is the wooden volume (read more…)

Experimental home in Ijburg / FARO architecten bv
On the Steigereiland, near Amsterdam, Netherlands, Pieter Weijnen built his own experimental wooden home. The house is painted a vibrant blue, referring to the traditional dike houses of nearby Durgerdam. Spaciousness is the keyword in this design. The ground floor consists of a roomy live-in kitchen. Entering the home, the first thing you notice is the lounge hanging from the ceiling like a floating island (read more…)

Casa Kike / Gianni Botsford Architects
A few months ago i spotted this house with an amazing private library in Domus magazine, on an issue dedicated to contemporary libraries. It has a very detalied wood work. I love the bookshelves between the structure. the text from the architect, more pictures and drawings after the break. By coupling indigenous techniques GBA has created this intimate double pavilion for a writer in Costa Rica (read more…)

AD Round Up: OMA Part I

Rem Koolhas founded the Office for Metropolitan Architecture in 1975 together with Elia and Zoe Zenghelis and Madelon Vriesendorp. Winners of the Pritzker Prize in 2000, employs a staff of almost 300 of more than 35 nationalities. So for today’s Round Up, we bring you previously featured projects by OMA.

Bryghusgrunden mixed use, Copenhagen
Realdania is a strategic foundation that initiates and supports built projects that improve the quality of life in Denmark. They are involved in aprox. 54 flagship projects, and now they are starting a mixed use building in Bryghusgrunden, one of the few undeveloped remaining areas of Copenhagen, Denmark with the potential to link the city to the waterfront. And guess who they choose for this project: OMA. But what´s interesting in this project is the mixed of use (read more…)

Coolsingel mixed use building and construction at The Hague
There’s nothing more exciting for an architect than to shape the form of his own city with a new building. And that’s what Rem Koolhaas is about to do in Rotterdam with a large scale mixed use building. Also, a project developed for The Hague, also in the Netherlands, will start construction as of next year. Site visits will be closer to the central OMA headquarters this time. First, we’ve got a 120.000m2 (30.000m2 for , 70.000m2 for office, residential, culture and leisure) (read more…)

OMA unveils design for their first residential tower in NY
Located at at 23 East 22nd St, the 335 ft (107 m) tall mid-rise tower -which you can see on the second plane behind One Madison Park at the rendering- features an innovative design when it comes to towers, an evolution of the OMA studies on new high rise designs. The building cantilevers 30 feet over its neighbor, a form that “provides a number of unexpected moments that appear at each step – balconies at the upper part of the building and floor windows at the lower part (read more…)

OMA wins competition for the Taipei Performing Arts Centre
The project, led by Rem Koolhaas and Ole Scheeren, is based on 3 theaters (1 x 1,500 seats – the round one, 2 x 800 seats – cubes) which are plugged into a central cube cladded with corrugated glass. This scheme puts all the stage accommodations of the 3 theaters into the central cube, allowing for more flexibility as theaters can be used independently or combined, expanding the possibilities for experimental performances – an art which is very strong on the country (read more…)

Seattle Central Library (with LMN)
The Seattle Central Library redefines the library as an institution no longer exclusively dedicated to the book, but as an information store where all potent forms of media-new and old-are presented equally and legibly. In an age where information can be accessed anywhere, it is the simultaneity of all media and, more importantly, the curatorship of their content that will make the library vital. Flexibility in contemporary libraries is conceived as the creation of generic floors (read more…)

AD Round Up: Skyscrapers Part I

Probably the most impressive thing for someone who visits for the first time cities like New York, Shanghai or Dubai is the ridiculous size of it’s buildings. So to finish this week of Round Up, we bring you previously featured skyscraper on ArchDaily.

Tour La Signal at La Defense, Paris / Ateliers Jean Nouve
The La Defense is a 160 ha business district in the west of Paris, currently under a renewal plan to strengthen its place among the great international business districts. The renewal includes several high rise sustainable towers. One of this towers, the Tour Signal, entered an international closed competition for teams of architects/investors/developers, on which EPAD didn’t impose a site. The Tour Signal will thus endow the business district with a new landmark in 2013. The finalists for this project were (read more…)

Burj Dubai, tallest building in the world
The Burj Dubai (set to be the tallest tower in the world, while the tallest structure as of now), is almost finished. Located in Dubai, it´s the centerpise of a mixed-use development that will include 30,000 homes, 9 hotels, 3 ha of parks, 19 residential towers, a man and a 12ha artificial lake. I decided to Google about the Burj Dubai a little, and i found an interesting interview at Wired with SOM´s structural engineer Bill Baker, telling the story behind the design, the structure and construction (read more…)

56 Leonard Street, New York / Herzog & de Meuron
This 57-story residential in the Tribeca area will house 145 residences, each one with its own unique floor plan and private outdoor space. This typology makes the building look like a stack of houses, away from the traditional skyscraper form. I wonder how the concrete structure works on this building, which was done by consultant firm WSP Cantor Seinuk (who also worked on the Freedom Tower). With this height, it will surely impact the city skyline as you can see on the panoramic above (read more…)

Michael Schumacher World Champion Tower in Dubai / L-A-V-A
LAVA (Laboratory for Visionary Architecture) unveiled the design of the Michael Schumacher World Champion Tower in Dubai, the first project of a series of branded towers, a new concept by PNYG:COMPANY, a company focused on branding. I´ve heard about branded towers such at the Porsche Towers by , but it´s the first time i hear about a building branded after a Formula 1 champion. The design of the 59 storey luxury tower is abstracted from the geometric laws of snowflakes and Formula 1 aerodynamics (read more…)

Jumeirah Gardens / SOM & Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture
The master plan for this project was designed by SOM Chicago, and consists of a mixed-use development that incorporates low, medium, and high-density zones for business, residences, , leisure, and recreation – a city within a city, with an estimated cost of US$95 billion. The three main towers were comissioned to Chicago based architects AS+GG (Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill), The most impressive one -and the third tallest tower in the UAE- is 1 Dubai (read more…)

AD Round Up: Zaha Hadid

Zaha Hadid has been awarded on several ocations, including the Pritzker Prize, becoming the first woman to win the prize. So to start this week of Round Up, we bring you previously featured projects of Zaha Hadid (and an interview).

Zaha Hadid´s project rejected due to heat
Zaha Hadid´s extension proposal for the Middle East Centre in St Antony´s College in Oxford has been denied approval by the the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE). The comission wrote in their report “it appears unfortunate to position the archive and reading room behind the large south facing window; we wonder whether full sunlight and overheating could potentially compromise the usability of this space” (read more…)

Regium Waterfront Project by Zaha Hadid
Zaha Hadid is working on her latest project in Italy, in the Mediterranean city of Reggio Calabria. The project includes a museum and a performing arts centre on a sea strait that separates continental Italy from the island of Sicily. The centre will be visible from the Sicilian coast. See the latest images revealed by , here (read more…)

Dorobanti Tower, Bucharest / Zaha Hadid Architects
Dorobanti tower, a new project by Zaha Hadid Architects in Bucharest moves away from the works we have been seen lately, with a very expressive structure. The 200m tall iconic tower will be located in the heart of the capital city of Romania, at junction of Calea Dorobanti and St. Mihail Eminescu, with over 100,000 sqm for mixed-use development which include a 5-star hotel (with restaurants and convention centre), luxury apartments and space at street level (read more…)

Designs for Burnham Plan Centennial by Zaha Hadid and Ben Van Berkel
The architects’ rendering of the two recyclable pavilions were released by the Alderman, the Burnham Committee, the City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs, the Art Institute of Chicago and Friends of Downtown. Both pavilions-one designed by London-based Zaha Hadid and the other by Amsterdam-based Ben van Berkel of UNStudio-emphasize the importance of boldly imagining a better future for all, as Daniel Burnham and Edward Bennett did in 1909 in their Plan of Chicago (read more…)

Zaha Hadid Interview
The Guardian just feautured an interview with Zaha Hadid. She talks about the aquatics centre for the 2012 Olympics, rebuilding Baghdad and the usual controversy she creates. “Your work is quite divisive. Do you set out to cause controversy? No. But because it’s not familiar at the beginning, people shy away from it.” Read the complete interview, here.

AD Round Up: Stone Houses Part I

Choosing the main material for your house may be quite a problem. ? Steel? Or ? So to finish this week’s Round Up, we bring you previoulsy featured stone houses on ArchDaily.

Pirihueico House / Alejandro Aravena
A volcanic site, 4.000 mm of rain every year, strong winds from the north and east, views towards the lake (east) and the forest (west), considerations of the difficulty of bringing materials to this remote place, erasure of any a priori architectural language (be it old or contemporary) were the ingredients of this unknown dish, that should have the capacity to sound familiar once developed. eing the weather condition very extreme, we started taking as less risk as possible; that’s why we began from the double sloped conventional roof (read more…)

Refuge in the Countryside / Juan Herreros Arquitectos
The project converts an existing vernacular structure that formerly served as a refuge into a small residence. The approach consisted of replicating the original volume symmetrically to conserve the original conditions and technical function of an apparently innocent construction that was designed intelligently where its orientation, ventilation and water collection facilities, etc. were concerned. A dry-constructed outer wall stimulates an open and voluntary dialogue with the different aspects of the local climate (read more…)

Binimelis House / Polidura + Talhouk Arquitectos
The terrain presented three conditions that determined the actions taken that would finally define the project. Because of the lot being of triangular shape located in a corner, the legal edification lines left the constructible area in the center, a steep incline of 40%, and finally, sun exposure and views towards the valley. The operation consists in separating the architecture program into two overlapping volumes parallel to the terrain lines, so when seen in section both volumes relate to the landscape (read more…)

Brione House / Wespi de Meuron
The new building is located in a privileged but sprawled urban area above Locarno, with an overwhelming view on the city, the surrounding mountains and the lake. Two simple steaning cubes are emerging from the hill – fragmentarily – more associated to the landscape than to the other existing buildings – more alike a wall than a house – and time less.Habitable interiors are generated through cavities. Two similar big openings, with wooden grids serving as moveable gates, are providing access and view (read more…)

DL House / Camilo Restrepo
The house swims through the lot, generating its own space between the trees – without cutting down any. The geometry of the house adapts to the geometry of the space between the trees. The space is generated after a series of variable sections. This sections are configurated on the following incremental rule: If there´s a tree, the roof folds. This way, it generates several living spaces. The materials: “San Buenaventura” black stone and “Pino Patula inmunizado” wood transfer the properties of the surrounding trunks into the material configuration of the house (read more…)

AD Round Up: Mixed Use Part I

Mixed Use buildings can provide different types of activities and programs in just one place. So to start this week of roundups, we bring you our first selection of previously featured Mixed Use projects on ArchDaily.

Coolsingel Mixed Use /
First, we’ve got a 120.000m2 (30.000m2 for , 70.000m2 for office, residential, culture and leisure) mixed use building in the Rotterdam’s shopping district, the Coolsingel. This district is actually the true centre of Rotterdam, where the most important streets in Rotterdam merge (Coolsingel, Lijbaan, Binnenweg and Beurstraverse). This design doesn’t compete for height, but aims to change the identity of the city centre by inserting the pure form of a cube into existing buildings (read more…)

Jumeirah Gardens / SOM & Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture
The master plan for this project was designed by SOM Chicago, and consists of a mixed-use development that incorporates low, medium, and high-density zones for business, residences, retail, leisure, and recreation – a city within a city, with an estimated cost of US$95 billion. The three main towers were comissioned to Chicago based architects AS+GG (Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill), The most impressive one -and the third tallest tower in the UAE- is 1 Dubai, pictured above (read more…)

World Trade Center Iguala / b720
Located in Igualada, Spain, the complex consist of 4 buildings with a total area of 53.000 sqm, including 530 underground parking spaces. This project will hold offices, retail spaces. Retail space is located on the lower and first level of the first 3 buildings, as a base to the office space above it as you can see on the rendering. The upper levels are wider than this retail base, creating a covered space for pedestrians. Between the volumes, several spaces will allow for future occupation (read more…)

Sky Village in Rødovre / MVRDV
A 116m tall mixed use tower, based on a 60sqm module arranged around the central core of the building. It´s interesting to see the structural approach for this new typology, as you can see on another render below: the inner core -actually 3 cores to access the different program segments- is made out of concrete, with the units wrapping it around on a steel structure. Something interesting in times like this, is that the building allows for different configurations responding to unstable markets (read more…)

Museum Plaza / REX
Museum Plaza is -in my opinion- one of the most amazing mixed-use project of our time. It makes all the variables (economical regulations, community, local authorities) fit together, on an pure volume – with a Mies-ian look. Museum Plaza rethinks conventional attitudes towards property development. It begins with a vision to construct a contemporary art institute and concludes with a business pro forma that supports this commitment. Culture is placed physically and spiritually at the project’s center (read more…)

AD Round Up: Prefabricated projects Part I

Green construction is a huge deal nowadays. With more and more architects designing sustainable buildings, anything you can do to make your house more eco-friendly is more than welcome. One of those things, is prefabrication. So to end this week’s Round Up, we bring you previoulsy featured projects.

Pentimento House / Jose María Sáez & David Barragán
An architecture to be naked to connect with their surroundings. Built with a single piece of prefabricated concrete, which can be placed in four different ways (assembly) which solves structure, wall, furniture, ladders, even a garden facade that is the origin of the project. Outside is a neutral grid that is camouflaged like a fence or hedge. Inside, each wall is different and it fits its scale needs, function, position, etc. A concrete platform serves as its foundation and adapts to the topography bypassing the trees or incorporating them (read more…)

House Müller Gritsch / AFGH
House Müller Gritsch in Lenzburg. The artist couple Barbara Müller and Stefan Gritsch lived for 25 years in the former carpenter’s workshop shed of Barbara Müller’s father. The sale of the building offered the couple the possibility to construct a new house in the yard of the building complex, on condition that the building costs did not exceed the funds raised from the sale. The only feasible way to realise the substantial spatial program involved at the set price of CHF. 580,000 was to design the house in prefabricated wooden elements (read more…)

La Reserva House / Sebastian Irarrazaval
It is a low-cost , 140 m2, to be sold and repeated in many places as concerned people exist. In this regard it relates to the idea of the container since it has no place. With the purpose of reducing construction time, geometry is simple and the construction system is on prefabricated basis. Its arrangement is a cross shaped where, in order to embrace the nearby landscape, public areas are placed in second level in a 4 meters high cube. This severe volume is covered with steel plates that create a double facade (read more…)

Amalia House / GRID Architects
Located on top of a hill in Styria, overlooking the valley of Kirchbach Amalia offers space for up to six people, without having to spare any comfort. Organised in 2 levels, one of them split, she lets the landscape float in and gives view to her surrounding from everywhere within.To give tribute to the nature around her and maximize the interchange between inside and outside, the house is completely covered with artificial grass -with only the windows left out. Amalia is the first artificial grass camouflage building in Austria (read more…)

Rubi Offices / Bailo Rull ADD+ Arquitectura
The project has been planned understanding the closer environment and the relation between the city and the landscape. The project is situated on a place where the urban conditions are loosing the density and the compactness in front of one river of the city. The location of the project invites to focus the views to the landscape, and propose to choose those green views from every part of the offices. The constructive solution consists to use a precast concrete for all the building (read more…)

AD Round Up: Industrial Architecture Part I

Big buildings mean big works. Designing an industrial building may be a huge challenge for an architect, and the result is usually a gigantic structure that can produce admiration or rejection. So for this Round Up, we bring you previously featured Industrial Architecture works.

Productive Services, Morande Winery / Martin Hurtado Arquitectos Asociados
This project started as a Competition Masterplan’s first place, which involved territorial planning on a 1000 Há land of ravines, water reservoirs, hills and vineyards. The objective was to accomplish a coherent order to all actions that are to be considered in a wine-producing project for a leading winery in . More than a form, we established a structural criterion that would be similar to all constructions to be built in this land. The Project considers vineyard’s entry, roads and paths, different planting fields and water reservoirs’ locations (read more…)

Glass bottling Plant Cristalchile / Guillermo Hevia
Architect Guillermo Hevia has been doing nice industrial works, focusing on sustainability. This glass bottling plant features passive ventilation and a daylight use strategy that reduces the energy consumption of the building. Check the sections for more info about that. An undulating mantle making an analogy with the geographical area placed in favor of the predominant winds. The use of multiple maintainable technologies creates the suitable environment for working ands production of glass bottling (read more…)

Kulturfabrik Kofmehl / ssm Architekten
When the critic, already while leafing through the programme on the website, begins to feel like snow white in the forest – mesmerised, but also without a clue and any orientation -, then the makers of the Kofmehl deserve the credit of a subculture that the youth culture intends to be. “The Koofmäu” (with a neutral connotation – it – such as for the “Konsum” which gives a notion of familiarity and intimacy of the local village life) represents as an institution a coherent system of social and cultural codes, that on first glance has little to do with contemporary architecture (read more…)

Paykar Bonyan Panel Factory / ARAD
The project is a factory that contains a building system production plant plus an office & ancillary building. The site location is an industrial city for non-pollution factories, 35 kilometer away from Tehran/ Iran. The Client Goal is to change the traditional construction system to an industrial building system which can fulfill the enormous demand of construction in Iran. The client, therefore, wanted the factory to be indicative of this goal in terms of architectural quality in industrial building system with no resemblance to traditional factories in Iran (read more…)

Inapal Metal / Menos é mais
Photographer Joao Morgado shared with us this industrial building by portuguese architects Menos é Mais (Less is More). It´s nice to see this type of buildings, as most of the times industrial projects don´t offer much in terms of fresh architecture (read more…)

AD Round Up: Housing Part I

may come in different ways, different forms, and different places. So to start this week of Round Up, we bring you previously featured “Housing” works on ArchDaily.

Carabanchel Housing / Foreign Office Architects
The site is a 100×45 parallelogram oriented north-south and limiting on the west with a new urban park and on the north, east and south with similar housing blocks, located in the south of Madrid. The regulation sets the number and type of units, that have to meet certain percentages of larger and smaller areas, and have a maximum height, but not the alignment within the rectangular plot. The units become a sort of 13,40m long “tubes” that connect both façades and avoid any type of structure in the partitions between apartments (read more…)

De Rokade / Arons en Gelauff Architecten
In 2003, Groningen municipal council launched a project “The Intense City” to keep the city compact by increasing the building density of districts around the Centre. The Rokade Residential Tower Block is situated on one of the first increased density locations, and marks the corner of the Corpus den Hoorn Laan and the Sportlaan, the avenue providing access to the Hoornse Meer district. De Rokade is immediately adjacent to the nursing and care home, Maartenshof, which has been extensively renovated (read more…)

VM Houses / PLOT = BIG + JDS
The VM Houses, located in Copenhagen, Denmark,  are two residential blocks formed as the letters V and M. The blocks are formed as such to allow for daylight, privacy and views. The vis-à-vis with the neighbour is eliminated by pushing the slab in its centre, ensuring diagonal views to the vast and open, surrounding fields. All apartments have a double-height space to the north and wide panoramic views to the south. The logic of the diagonal slab utilized in the V house is broken down in smaller portions for the M house (read more…)

Signalhuset / NOBEL
The Signal House has a central location in Ørestad City, oriented directly towards the curved canal along Arne Jacobsens Allé. The building is elevated on a number of concrete elements lifting the 288 housing units hover above the ground. The building facades are composed of an external transparent screen of galvanised stretch metal frames that define the building’s outer shape. Together with the external screen, the coloured facade areas create a lively, varied structure that adds presence and identity to the building (read more…)

House for architects and artists / AFGH
The task was to create reasonably-priced residential space with high standards of living comfort for four differently sized parties. In the processs, each party was to profit as much as possible on the one hand from the 3,000 m2 south-facing environs, and on the other from the north-facing view of the city. This determined an unconventional and complex internal organisation of the building. All four apartments are accessible via a two-storey entrance hall, each of them having their own internal staircase of one or two floors (read more…)

AD Round Up: Leisure Part I

After a week of hard work, nothing’s better than a perfect place to relax. So for this Friday’s Round Up, we bring you our previously featured leisure works. So relax, and enjoy.

Las Palmas de Leyda Spa / Cristobal Valenzuela
The project is organized through the barbecue area, main space, where most of the activity takes place. Other areas like the , hot tub and fire place, are connected to the main space, allowing several different ambiences, all of them visually connected. All these areas wrapped as one big space, by the wooden skin, made up from 1×3 inches Ulmo planks, gives the interior-exterior feeling that we wanted to achieve. The gym, massage room, and steam bath, are connected with the rest of the program, but where conceived as much more private spaces (read more…)

Dellis Cay: Starchitects in the Turks & Caicos archipielago
Super star architects arrive to the Caribbean, specifically to Dellis Cay, a 560-acre island at the Turks & Caicos archipielago. The project, set to be completed by 2010, will feature works by Shigeru Ban, David Chipperfield, Carl Ettensperger, Zaha Hadid, Kengo Kuma, Piero Lissoni, and Chad Oppenheim. In addition to the 124 villas and 154 residences, the island will have a 30,000 sq ft Spa operated by the Mandarin Oriental, a five star luxury hotel, a signature restaurant and numerous casual dining experiences (read more…)

Geometric Hot Springs / German del Sol
It’s located in the middle of native forests of the Villarrica National Park, in the 13,5 km of the road that crosses the Park between Coñaripe and Pucón. To bath with pleasure, in the midst of nature, 17 pools were carved along 450 meters, with red wooden paths and ramp without steps that drive the visitors into the pools and lets them walk through the project to pick a pool to bath in. Thanks to the candlelight, you won’t trip. Neither would you slip on ice or snow because the path is heated with the thermal water that runs under it before being distributed to the pools (read more…)

Gleichenberg Thermal Bath / JSA
The project is situated in a protected park and consist of a treatment area with about 50 different rooms for medical treatments, a four star hotel with several different restaurants and cafes, and a public thermal bath for the patients and other guests. The waiting areas in the middle of the treatment rooms for the patients are shaped around courtyards allowing sun and views to the trees, as to give the patients the impression of waiting in the park itself. A full treatment might last for several days (read more…)

RELAXX sport and leisure center / AK2
Einsteinova Road is probably the most frequented artery in Bratislava, situated misfortunately, like a big cut through Petržalka town quarter. But some architects show us it is possible to refine such a busy enviroment. The new RELAXX Sport Centre enters the rush locality, harmonizes and directs the noise and chaos. This house is like a sculpture symbolizing the beauty of restlessness and the poetics of velocity. The tension to produce a piece of contemporary architecture was strong also due to the fact the adjacent Atrium building was a building of the year in local architectural competitions (read more…)

Learning from the slums (2/2): the rediscovery

The model #1: Napoli, quartieri Spagnoli (image: flickr)

If the mainstream view on the slums describes them as places to escape from and as to destroy as soon as possible, more and more people look at slums in a different way.

The first glances at slums were from some of the architects involved in urban renewal projects, who started to integrate in their projects some elements of the slums. Some of the recurrent features are:

  • narrow courtyards and alleys
  • division of the building into small blocks
  • use of different colors and materials within the same building.

(part 1/2)

(more…)

AD Round Up: Kindergardens Part I

Our first step in educational backgrounds. It’s where we cry during our first day and probably where we make our very first best friend. Maybe, one of the most important places in our eary years. So to start this week of Round Up, we bring you our previoulsy featured Kindergardens.

Skanderborggade Day Care Centre / Dorte Mandrup
The client wanted a three unit daycare institution/nursery school, holding the potential for conversion into kindergarten units, composed of three rooms for three respective daycare/nursery groups, each with an accompanying changing room, a common room, cloakroom, kitchen, administration and secondary rooms. The district zoning plan mandated institutional buildings of no more than one storey. To maintain a fire partition, all of the facades on the property line facing the courtyard must be windowless (read more…)

Kindergartens / 70ºN Arkitektur
The kindergarten is organized in a number of longitudinal zones from the exterior playground, the roofed outdoor terraces that gives a good micro climate (very important in our rough climate), ‘the indoor street’ with water-play areas and a winter garden feel to it, the bases and to the innermost reading nooks and mezzanines. These zones contribute to make a soft transition from the exterior to the interior spaces – from the exposed wide landscape to the intimate zones. The ‘rough’ wardrobes, the kitchen and the playing rooms are peeking out of the facade (read more…)

Day Care, Kindergarten and primary school / Jordi Badia
This elementary school is divided into two parts: The classrooms on one level and a lower section the cafeteria and the Gym. It was built in two stages so that classes could proceed in the old building, which is on the same site. In the first phase the classrooms were built on the ground floor and on two upper floors, aligned to one of the corridors. The dining hall and the gym were built in the second phase, when the pupils had moved to the new classrooms. The classrooms are on a strip, aligned to the street, between common walls (read more…)

Taka Tuka Land / Baupiloten
Within the scope of the refurbishment the Baupiloten created a completely new conceived world from the temporary structure of the kindergarten as imagined by the children. The results are interactive and communicative interior spaces as well as a multifunctional façade according to Astrid Lindgren’s story. The construction costs were extremely low due to the recycling of material and the economical renewal of the damaged building substance. Concept design started in 2005 and completion was in March 2007 (read more…)

Sansaburu Parking & / Vaumm
Settled down on north and west side, the building opens towards the south and south-east, the most open and furthest direction from the walls, batters and staircases that give shape to the park. The diagram of arrangement works out in both floors, the entrance from north face of site and from there, the different elements are organized in two arms, hugging the court. The classrooms are thought to catch the sunrise, within the timetable of the nursery school (read more…)

AD Round Up: Interviews Part I

Since we started with ArchDaily, we’ve tried to interview some of the most important and influential architects of the world. It’s really interesting to see what’s on the mind of the architects behind the amazing projects we’ve all seen. So now, we bring you our first Round Up of previously featured interviews. Enjoy!

Shohei Shigematsu / *AMO NY
Our first guest is Shohei Shigematsu (1973). He graduated from the Department of Architecture at Kyushu University in 1996, and then went to the Berlage Institute in Rotterdam. He started working at OMA in 1998, becoming an associate in 2004. He´s now the director of OMA*AMO NY, working on projects such as the CCTV Headquartes in Beijing, the design of the Whitney Museum extension in NY, the Millestain Hall at Cornell, the Stock Exchange at Shenzhen, the Torre Bicentenario in Mexico and a mixed use building in Jersey City (read more…)

Mark Foster Gage / Gage Clemenaceau
Gage / Clemenceau Architects is a NY based architectural firm that deals with a wide scale of projects, from product design, commercial & residential projects to exhibition design. We interviewed Mark Foster Gage (G/C partner, assistant professor at Yale), and discussed about education, media, networking role of architects in contemporary society, among other topics regarding the current state of architectural practice in our second issue of AD Interviews, in a very interesting and fluid talk (read more…)

Amale Andraos & Dan / Work AC
We visited Work AC in New York a few months ago, where we interviewed Amale Andraos and Dan Wood. This turned out to be a great interview, where they shared their thoughts on the current state of architectural practice, the role of architects in current society, humor, networking, media and something that really interested me: the importance of knowing how to manage the growth of your office. On their office we saw the amazing model for their Cadavre Exquis Lebanese, a proposal based on a series of interventions to re-create Downtown Beirut (read more…)

C-Lab / Jeffrey Inaba and Benedict Clouette
C-Lab, the Columbia Laboratory for Architectural Broadcasting, an experimental research unit devoted to the development of new forms of communication in architecture, set up as a semi-autonomous think and action tank at the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation of Columbia University, and important collaborators on Volume Magazine. We interviewed C-Lab´s director Jeffrey Inaba and Benedict Clouette, it was a great conversation since we shared some concerns about architecture and society (read more…)

SHoP Architects
SHoP Architects PC is a New York based practice we meet a few months ago. During our conversation, they told us something very important for current practices: how to manage the growth of your office, how to work in a multidisciplinary environment and how to get the most out of computer aided design technologies, not just in terms of design, but in streamlining the construction process and create new efficiencies and cost-savings. The practice has grown over the past ten years to an office of eigthy (read more…)

AD Round Up: Retail Part I

Designing a store may be challenging for an architect. Many times, it’s design has to be related to the product the store will sell. Also, a cool design may very well attract people that the product itself will not. So today, for our first Round Up of the week, we bring you previoulsy featured on AD.

Dolce & Gabbana Headquarters / Studio Piuarch
The new D&G headquarters in Milan, Italy,  contains the showrooms for the collections, offices, a restaurant and a series of image spaces, ina total area of 5.000 square meters. Two buildings dating back to the 1920s and the 1960s, facing three streets, are combined in a complex with five floors above ground and two basement levels. The project is based on an architectural principle of great rigor, with the use of natural materials like white Namibia , glass and unfinished steel sheet (read more…)

Armani Ginza Tower / Doriana e Massimiliano Fuksas
It is always difficult to crystallise the image of someone, particularly a person as well known as Giorgio Armani, one of the most famous figures in the world. It is not a coincidence that Andy Warhol portrayed him as a one of the icons of our age. For the Armani/Ginza Tower, it was considered essential to project not just his creativity as a designer but his special aura, recreating the atmosphere of the atelier of this Italian creative genius, as well as his aesthetic code and his personal image (read more…)

Meydan – Umraniye Retail Complex & Multiplex / FOA
The Umraniye retail development aims to perform not just as a proficient retail complex but as a true urban centre for the future development of one of the fastest growing areas in Istambul. The site will become in the near future a dense urban fabric built around the expanding retail complex located in the site. The building anticipates through its geometry and circulation strategy its subsequent integration into a dense inner city context aiming to formulate an alternative prototype to the usual out-of-town retail box development (read more…)

Volume B store / Marcio Kogan
This project is the retail furniture store Vitra located in São Paulo. The architect used the materials in their extreme condition, such as visible concrete executed without any concern about precision or finishing, or the skin of the back volume where he used various layers of a steel frame which is usually used on the inside of the concrete slabs and were found at the site. Likewise, the interior walls did not get any special finishing and still have the original chalk markings left by the workers during the construction, almost an archeological discovery (read more…)

DURAS ambient Funabashi / Sinato
This stores is located in Funabashi, Japan. The triangular walls divide the center of shop space. They stand as if they dance and make an “aperture of the space”. We can hang the clothes in the aperture. We can walk through the aperture. Materials of front side and back side of the triangular walls are different and it makes various expression of this space. The more people moving in this shop, the more various complicated view we can see. The experience of this space is like a moving image than a static image (read more…)