AD Round Up: Libraries Part IV
I love how different these five libraries are. From Poland, The Netherlands, Germany, Finland and Turkey, each one has its own unique design. Check them all after the break. Which one’s your favorite?
University of Poznan Library / Consultor + APA Bulat + Neostudio Architects
Polish and Classical Philology Faculty Library of Adam Mickiewicz University is located in the heart of Poznan – in the close proximity to historical buildings from the beginning of twentieth century, in the immediate vicinity of the Poznan Opera House and the Prussian Imperial Castle. It was designed as an extension of the Collegium Maius – the former building of “Hakata” – the Royal Prussian Colonization Commission. The parcel is hidden at three sides by the Collegium Maius and by the building of Regional Government Office (read more…)
Ninth International Design Contest Trieste Contemporanea
Pocket luck is pleased to announce that it is now possible to participate in the ninth edition of the International Design Contest Trieste Contemporanea which is promoted by the Trieste Contemporanea Committee under the patronage of the C.E.I. (Central European Initiative).
The competition deadline is August 31st, 2010. The entry is free. Designers from 23 Central Eastern European countries are called to submit a project for a new pocket lucky charm/talisman. You can read more about the provided prizes and check the competition notice on www.triestecontemporanea.it.
Flattened Field / Konyk Architecture
We are loving the fact that as Field Operations and DS+R’s High Line keeps developing, new residential and commercial entities are following suite, popping up adjacent to the tracks, over the tracks, and even under the tracks. And now, Konyk Architecture will join in the urban renewal which is unfolding in the Meat-Packing District with their new event space that will rest underneath the High Line adjacent to Neil Denari’s HL23 Condominium (previously featured on AD).
More about the winning event space after the break.
AD Classics: Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library / Skidmore, Owings, & Merrill
Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library is the largest building in the world dedicated to the containment and preservation of rare books, manuscripts, and documents. It was designed by Gordon Bunshaft of Skidmore, Owings, & Merrill and is located in New Haven, Connecticut. Prior to the completion of this project, Yale University placed its rare books on special shelving in Dwight Hall, which was the Old Library in the late 19th century. In 1930 these special books were relocated to Rare Book Room collection in the Sterling Memorial Library. The Beinecke library was a gift from the Beinecke family, and since 1963 has accomodated six major collections in its rare and marvelous structure that coincides with the literary gems it stores, including those from the Rare Book Room. The major collections are the General Collection, which are divided into the General Collection of Early Books and Manuscripts and the General Collection of Modern Books and Manuscripts, the Collection of American Literature, the Collection of German Literature, the Collection of Western Americana, and the Osborn Collection of British Literary and Historical Manuscripts.
More information and images of the library after the break.
Public Lecture / Triskelion: The Presidio Habitats Exhibition Pavilion
Presidio Habitats is a site-based art exhibition celebrating the wild Presidio. It began with an invitation to an international group of artists, architects, and designers to submit a proposal for a temporary habitat sculpture serving a Presidio “animal client.”
San Francisco Architects Zoe Prillinger and Luke Ogrydziak (Ogrydziak Prillinger Architects), known for their progressive, modern designs that include new media technologies, discuss their creation of the Presidio Habitats Exhibit Pavilion from repurposed shipping containers arranged at 120 degree angles around a central atrium.
The public lecture will be held next Thursday, July 8, 7-8 pm at The Log Cabin, San Francisco Presidio (get directions here). For more on the Log Cabin Lecture Series click here.
Give Me More / EPFL+ ECAL Lab
The DMY International Design Festival Berlin Award annually highlights the most exceptional works in contemporary product design, with strong consideration of the teams’ approaches, rather than just their final results. This year, a facet of the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne - EPFL + ECAL Lab – was named one of the winners for their exhibition ‘Give Me More’. Eight installations depicted augmented reality scenarios, combining analogue materials and digital applications to “turn technology into a new medium.”
More about the winning exhibit after the break.
Social Housing / Chartier – Corbasson
Architects: Chartier – Corbasson
Location: 74 rue Saint Antoine, Paris, France
Client: SIEMP
Net surface: 900 m² SHON
Budget: 2,1 M€
Year: 2009
Photographs: Yves Marchand & Romain Meffre
Automobile Museum in Nanjing / 3Gatti Architecture Studio
“The house is a machine for living in.”
- Le Corbusier
With this statement, Le Corbusier acknowledges the relation between technology/mass production and the new ways of living that the modern movement tried to materialize. For him the house was a static car, a designed functional object that could be mass produced. When the Villa Savoye was completed in 1929, 5.3 million cars were produced in Detroit.
From this point forward, architecture and car started a long lasting relation, with examples such as Albert Kahn’s buildings for Ford, Giacomo Matte-Trucco’s FIat Factory in Turin, Archigram’s Drive-In House concept, the Mecedes Benz Museum by UN Studio and the recent Lincoln Rd 1111 parking by Herzog & de Meuron.
Along this line we find the new Nanjing Automobile Museum by 3Gatti Architecture Studio, which was awarded with the first prize on an international invited competition. The project not only shows the car in an unusual way, but it also lets you to experience the museum by car:
SCALE: furniture/architecture/society / Breadtruck Films
Shot by architect turned filmmaker Jeffrey Durkin, this introspective piece on designer/architect/professor Miki Iwasaki explores how “the small objects in our life shape the big picture of how we live.” What began as a video aimed to capture the essence of Iwasaki’s furniture design quickly transformed into a short piece which addresses larger issues of society and the ramifications of design and consumerism.
More about the video after the break.
Gallery Yeh / Unsangdong Architects
Architects: Unsangdong Architects
Location: SinsaDong, GangNam, Seoul, Republic of Korea
Design Team: Jang Yoon Gyoo, Shin Chang Hoon
Construction: GuJin Industrial Development Co.Ltd
Client: Lee Sook Young
Site area: 567.5m2
Gross floor area: 1,995.14m2
Photography: Courtesy of Unsangdong Architects
Brick-Weave House / Studio Gang Architects
Architects: Studio Gang Architects
Location: Chicago, USA
Completion Date: November 2008
Size: 3,250 sf
Photography: Steve Hall – © Hedrich Blessing
The Cornerstone / JAJA Architects ApS
In our latest AD Futures, we introduced JAJA Architects, an up-and-coming Danish firm. The backgrounds of the firm’s three principals (Norwegian, Danish, Japanese, Thai and Swiss) form an interesting design aesthetic, as their influences fuse together to make a strong statement. The young firm recently won a competition for a mix-use building in Denmark with their proposal entitled the Cornerstone – an office building that gives Vanløse a new visual anchor point and a place where people can meet to see the urban life unfold.
More about the winning design after the break.
Maribor Art Gallery competition entry / Stan Allen Architect
Stan Allen Architect have shared with us their entry for the New Maribor Art Gallery in Slovenia (you can see the winners on our previous feature). The program mandates a clear institutional identity: A singular architectural complex, a progressive curatorial agenda, and a new place of public assembly in the city.
More images, a video and complete architect’s description after the break.
EC*-Cocoon / Cyril-Emmanuel Issanchou
Not so long ago, we featured Cyril-Emmanuel Issanchou’s Maison Eco-rce, a timber residence, and today, we share his EC*-Cocoon, a low energy house. Designed for the competition BETWIN, the low energy houses are prefabricated modules that are installed upon a set of walls and plinths made from locally gathered stones.
More about the design after the break.
In Progress: Shenzhen Stock Exchange by OMA tops out
We first heard about the new Shenzhen Stock Exchange (SSE) building by OMA during the peak of the new chinese construction revolution. Then we saw Rem Koolhaas breaking ground together with the Chinese government, and capitalism in China started to have a tangible representation.
The new building for the NASDAQ equivalent (730 high tech companies & startups, moving over US$500 billion) has now topped out at 246m.
“For millennia, the solid building stands on a solid base; it is an image that has survived modernity. Typically, the base anchors a structure and connects it emphatically to the ground. The essence of the stock market is speculation: it is based on capital, not gravity. In the case of Shenzhen’s almost virtual stock market, the role of symbolism exceeds that of the program – it is a building that has to represent the stock market, more than physically accommodate it. It is not a trading arena with offices, but an office with virtual organs that suggest and illustrate the process of the market.”
- OMA
The project is based on pure volumes, a combination of a tower and a podium suspended 36m high. The podium is one of the biggest cantilevers in the world, an operation that liberates the ground to create a big public plaza which is visually connected (representing the new economic openness) to the lower part of the tower and the podium itself, the places were the stock exchange operations take place. Above the podium, there is a series of office space for internal operations of the SSE, totaling 200,000sqm for the entire building.
The tower’s structure is a robust exoskeletal grid overlayed with a patterned glass skin – the first time such glass has been used for an exterior at this scale. The patterned glass reveals the detail and complexity of construction while creating a mysterious crystalline effect as the tower responds to light: sparkling during bright sunshine, mute on an overcast day, enigmatic at dusk, glimmering during rain and glowing at night.
- OMA
The building is expected to be completed by August, 2011.
Renderings afte the break:
DG-House / GENETO
Architects: GENETO – Koji Yamanaka, Yuji Yamanaka, Asako Yamashita
Location: Tokyo, Japan
Structure engineer: Takashi Takamizawa
Client: Takao Deguchi
Floor area: 66.87sqm (total floor area:102.07sqm)
Date of completion: 2008 December
Photos: Takumi Ota
AD Classics: Eames House / Charles and Ray Eames
Originally known as Case Study House No. 8, the Eames House was such a spatially pleasant modern residence that it became the home of the architects themselves. Charles and Ray Eames began designing the house in 1945 for the Case Study House Program in Los Angeles’ Arts and Architecture Magazine published and built these case study homes that had to focus on the use of new materials and technologies developed during World War II. The intention was for the house to be made of prefabricated materials that would not interrupt the site, be easy to build, and exhibit a modern style.
Read more about the Eames House after the break.
Wallpaper* Magazine Architects Directory 2010
As every year, Wallpaper* Magazine have chosen their list of 30 emerging architects throughout the world, and 13 of them gathered for above’s picture at the Centre Pompidou Metz. The complete list is as follows:
sporaarchitects / Marchal Fürstenburger / Carson & Crushell / Rocha Tombal / Walker Architects / Ramdam / NArchitekTURA / Edgley Design / Suárez Santas / Scenario Architecture / Frei + Saarinen / Hein-Troy / OnOffice / 2-B-2 Architecture / Aas/Thaulow / Axelrod Architects / Claudio Vilarinho / Dieter Janssen / Johan Sundberg / Moto Designshop / Najjar & Najjar / Obra Architects / Owen and Vokes / Rory Hyde Projects / Takao Akiyama / Tennent + Brown Architects / X -Arquitectos / Zoka Zola Architects / Jose Ulloa Davet & Delphine Ding / Skourtis-Stavropoulou Architects
For more information click here.
Females Dominate SF Public Works
This year is looking positive for women in the architectural field in San Francisco. As The Architect’s Newspaper reported, the city just sent out an RFQ to firms for its “as-needed work” list, a procedure which happens every three years.
This year, for the first time, all the preselected firms have female principals. The four firms include two independent practices, Paulett Taggart Architects, Hamilton + Aitken, and two joint ventures with small firms, Tom Elliot Fisch with Knapp Architects and Mark Cavagnero Associates with Cary Bernstein Architect.
“With the slate of architects this time, it looks like they are looking more for good design rather than tons of experience in the public sector,” said Paulett Taggart, who made the list for the second time in a row.
This is not only inspiring news for women, but its also great new for the city. San Francisco will largely benefit from over $4 million in projects which will be divided among the firms. Congratulations to the firms – we are looking forward to seeing your future projects.
Pizza East / Michaelis Boyd
Architect: Michaelis Boyd Associates
Location: London
Contractor: Giles Contracts Management Ltd.
M&E Contractor: Link Projects Limited
Kitchen: Exclusive Ranges
Structural Engineer: Akera Engineers
Photographs: Richard Lewisohn
Acrovyn looks to change how plastics are designed and used in buildings
For more than 80 years, plastics have been improving the performance and durability of nearly everything we buy, and build, with their remarkable properties. Take, for example, this video we dug up on YouTube. Disney’s “Monsanto House of the Future”…
