X‐Initiative presents the premiere of Pool Noodle Rooftop by Jeffrey Inaba’s Los Angeles‐based practice, INABA. The rooftop space, which will be used for film screenings and special events, will be open to the public daily during selected visiting hours throughout the summer. Four separate seating areas cluster around a ‘X’ shaped carpet that covers the entire rooftop surface.

The furniture, which is also X‐shaped in plan, has been constructed from pool noodles - the long and cylindrical, foam water flotation toys. The pool noodles have been cut and bunched vertically into chaise lounge and ottoman units of varying heights that accommodate up to 150 people. When viewed from above, the arrangement of buoyant seating material spells out the word, ‘bububluooopppp’ - the sound of something either rising or sinking.

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Architects: Jarmund/Vigsnæs AS Architects MNAL
Location: Nordmarka, Norway
Client: Private
Project Architects: Einar Jarmund, Håkon Vigsnæs, Roar Lund-Johnsen
Textiles: Linda Knoph Vigsnæs
Consultant: Walter Jacobsen
Project Year: 2004
Constructed Area: 120 sqm
Photographs: Nils Petter Dale

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Architectural Record recently published their Top 250 architecture firms. Companies are ranked according to revenue for architectural services performed in 2008 in $ millions.

Firms engaged in the business of architectural design that responded to Engineering News-Record’s annual Top 500 Design Firms survey submitted these revenue figures. Number 1 was for AECOM Technology Corporation (in the picture), an engineer-architect firm from Los Angeles, California.

The firms classify themselves by:
A=Architect
AE=Architects-Engineer
AEC=Architect-Engineer-Contractor
EA=Engineer-Architect

You can see the top 25, after the break. read more »

CNN’s Talk Asia just featured an interesting interview with Rem Koolhaas. At the beginning of the video we see the Prada Transformer in action.

Highlights of this interview are Dubai, which lead to Koolhaas talking about the public sector and the stimulus, and his views on the Generic City.

When talking about influence (Rem was on the 100 most influential people list by Time magazine in 2008) and “star architects”, Koolhaas sentences the term to death:

“I think it’s a name that is actually degrading to the vast majority of people it is applied to. And it really is a kind of political term that for certain clients is important because they use star architects. My hope is that through the current complexity that title will exit discretely and disappear”.

Architect: Sebastian Mariscal Studio
Location: Valle de Guadalupe, Baja California, Mexico
Designer & Builder: Sebastian Mariscal Studio
Design Team: Dominique Houriet & Sebastian Mariscal
Structural Engineering: Omar Mobayed
Area: 278 sqm
Project year: 2007
Photographs: Hisao Suzuki

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Architects: Wallflower Architecture + Design
Location: 6 Ramsgate Road, Singapore
Architect in Charge: Robin Tan
Design Team: Robin Tan, Cecil Chee & Sean Zheng
Site Area: 1200 sqm
Built-In Area: 855 sqm
Completed: 2009
Photographer: Albert Lim

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The international competition Designing in Teheran seeks to modernize the Iranian city by fusing the existing cultural area with a more contemporary environment.  Such an environment will include influence from the fashion world through the introduction of new retail areas.  This competition is comprised of the design for two towers, Tower A and Tower B, which will provide retail space for the popular clothing store the United Colors of Benetton.  The jury has selected three winners for each tower, and soon will narrow the selection to one winner per tower. The proposal by the team formed by Grzegorz Witold Woronowicz,  Jakub Piotr Kalinowski, Piotr Kus and Krzysztof Rewski   was selected as a winner for Tower A, attempting to create a new kind of shopping experience for users within the complex.

More sketches and more information about the winning proposal after the break. read more »

The Big Dig is the most expensive highway project in the history of the US. The project included rerouting the Central Artery into a tunnel under the heart of Boston, requiring a tremendous engineering work due to underlaying metro lines and pipes and utility lines that would have to be replaced or moved. Tunnel workers encountered many unexpected geological and archaeological barriers, ranging from glacial debris to foundations of buried houses and a number of sunken ships lying within the reclaimed land.

The Big Dig House by Single Speed Design reutilizes materials from the Big Dig. In that aspect, it´s a remarkable example of recycling in architecture. Project description by the architects after the break.

Architects: Single Speed Design
Location： Lexington, MA, USA
Programme： Private House
Completion year： 2008
Site Area： 1,784 sqm
Constructed Area： 353 sqm
Photographs: Single Speed Design

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UPDATE: Thanks to your comments, BIG sent us the drawings and diagrams of the project. Check them out in the gallery!

An international idea competition was held for Tallinn’s new City Hall in Estonia and the best concept was presented by the Bjarke Ingels Group from Denmark together with Adams Kara Taylor of the UK.

The purpose of the international idea contest was to find the best architectural solution for the new administrative building of the city government that will be situated on a 35,000 m2 plot near the Linnahall building. The contest for the new city was met with a great interest, 81 architects and their teams were willing to present an entry. Of those, the international jury chose the best 9 to shortlist as finalists into the second phase of the competition. By May 15 the finalists handed in their final solutions. The international jury’s decision to award BIG’s entry first place in the competition was unanimous and was presided by the vice mayor Taavi Aas.

More images after the break. read more »

Ginseng Chicken Architecture, a promising new firm, has proposed a design for the National Wildflower Center in Liverpool.  The science center, which provides a variety of activities such as plant production areas and facilities for seed processing, “will inspire people to visit the center to learn about the relationship between nature, mathematics and physics…it will provide an operational hub for creative conservation, learning and innovation,” explained the architects.

More diagrams, images and information after the break. read more »

International architectural company RMJM has revealed details of the luxurious new Hyatt Regency Danang Resort and Spa in Vietnam, which it is designing on behalf of developers Indochina Land. Hyatt Regency Danang Resort and Spa is located on China Beach, in Danang, which was named by Forbes magazine as one of the top 10 most beautiful beaches in the world.

The resort includes a range of luxury residences and a five-star resort hotel, the 200-room Hyatt Regency Danang Resort and Spa. It is designed to resemble a traditional Vietnamese townscape, with the various buildings arranged in clusters, taking particular inspiration from the historic town of Hue, located just six miles away.

Construction has just started on the beach resort and the planned luxury residences have now been opened for sale. As well as the hotel and spa, the village resort includes 174 luxury condominiums and 27 oceanfront pool villas, covering 50 acres of land stretching along a half-mile of China Beach. The master planning has been designed by RMJM so that each villa and condominium offers maximum views of the scenic Marble Mountain and the South China Sea.

More images after the break. read more »

Architect: René van Zuuk Architekten
Location: Roosendaal, the Netherlands
Client: Gemeente Roosendaal / NL
Design Team: René van Zuuk, Jorrit Spel, Chimo Villa Belda
Program: Pavillion - shops/lunchroom/office / entrance for parking area
Project Year: 2005-2009
Constructed Area: 620 sqm
Photographs: Christian Richters

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Architects: za bor architects / Arseniy Borisenko, Peter Zaitsev
Location: Moscow, Russia
Principal Use: Residence
Engineer: za bor architects
Structure material: Concrete
Constructed Area: 560 sqm
Project year: 2004-2006
Photographs: Zinur Razutdinov & Peter Zaitsev

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The Re:Vision Dallas competition attracted hundreds of entries from the world’s top architecture firms from twenty six countries. ”The quality of the thought and effort of the design teams is astounding.  It was very clear that a lot of people had put their hearts and souls into this competition,” said CDC Executive Director John Greenan.   The latest proposal shared with us comes from DB +P/Fletcher Studio entitled XERO Project.  This winning proposal, along with the other two winning proposals (Little and Atelier Data + MOOV previously featured on AD) has the opportunity to be selected for construction by the competition’s development partners.

More about the XERO Project after the break. read more »

Architecture is also present is perhaps one of the most ancient and traditional subjects in history: Religion. So to start this week’s Round Up, we bring you previously featured religious architecture.

Tautra Monastery / JSA
The project is situated on Tautra island in Trondheimsfjorden. It is a new monastery for 18 nuns, complete with a small church and all the facilities needed to make a living, as areas for production and so on. The original programme has been reduced with around 30% by eliminating almost all the corridors in the project (read more…)

Tanatorio Municipal de Leon / BAAS
The building is conceived as a tomb of tombs. A completely buried construction, it eludes its volume and its signification in order to camouflage itself in the interstices of a too-close residential area. A sheet of water by way of a roof constitutes the single facade, reflecting León’s sky like an allegory of death. All that emerges from the water (read more…)

The Church of the Holy Cross / KHR
The church of the holy cross was conceived as part of the landscape around Jyllinge. With its glass façade facing the fjord and a “fishing net” dividing the space of the church, the design clearly takes the history of the place seriously. The place has an emotional power with its spatial topography that seems to make time stand still (read more…)

Temporary chapel for the Deaconesses of St-Loup / Localarchitecture
In the summer of 2007, Localarchitecture and architect Danilo Mondada were awarded the contract to renovate the mother house of the Deaconess Community of St-Loup. The commission involves the complete renovation of a historic building (read more…)

The Prayer Chapel / debartolo architects
The PRAYER PAVILION OF LIGHT is part of a 58-acre church campus in Phoenix, USA. Sited along the edge of a desert preserve, a series of inclined, landscaped planes are incised by a 600 foot-long processional walk, progressively revealing the chapel as one gradually ascends the 28 vertical feet between the chapel mount and garden entrance (read more…)

Architects: Architekton
Location: Phoenix, AZ, USA
Collaborators: EDAW Inc. (landscape designers for the park)
Engineering: Rudow + Berry Structural Engineers
Contractor: Foresite Inc.
Project year: 2009
Photography: Matt Winquist, John Kane, Eric Vollmer

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Spanish firm Moho Architects are currently in the schematic design phase of a mixed use tower for San Jose, Costa Rica.  The tower, whose programmatic elements will range from commercial and retail spaces to offices and hotels, aims to create a strong model of sustainability for the region that will promote eco-friendliness.

More images and more about the tower after the break. read more »

Architect: Vicens & Ramos / Ignacio Vicens y Hualde, José Antonio Ramos Abengózar
Location: Rivas-Vaciamadrid, Madrid, Spain
Client: Obispado de Alcalá de Henares
Collaborators: Fernando Gil, Agustín Toledano, Roberto Rodríguez-Paraja, Jesús Gómez, Desirée González, Pablo Gutiérrez, Romina Barbieri, Raúl Rodríguez, Tibor Martín, Patricia de Elena
Photographs: Pablo Vicens y Hualde & Ricardo Santonja

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The “Cardboard Cloud”, an exhibit design by Fantastic Norway, opened this weekend in Oslo to the public.  The exhibit was designed for the Center for Design and Architecture (DogA, previously featured on AD) and will display the works of Norwegian design students.

More information about the cloud and more images after the break. read more »

Architects: Diamond and Schmitt Architects & Provencher Roy + Associés Architectes
Location: Montreal, Canada
Principals in Charge: A.J. Diamond & Claude Provencher
Associate Architect: Caroline Spigelski
Project team: John Featherstone, Breck McFarlane, Jesse Waese (Diamond and Schmitt) & Marie-Claude Lambert (Provencher Roy + Associés)
Structural Consultant: Saia Deslauriers Kadanoff
Mechanical & Electrical Consultant: Pageau Morel et associes inc
Landscape: Claude Cormier Architectes Paysagistes
Contractor: Pomerleau Construction
Photographs: Tom Arban

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