Barents Secretariat Tower / Reiulf Ramstad Architects
Reiulf Ramstad Architects have high hopes for Norway. The firm has designed a 16-17 storey tall wooden cultural center in Kirkenes, Norway that will surpass the current tallest wooden structure which stands 144 feet tall in Arkhangelsk, Russia. The Norwegian Barents Secretariat hopes their tower will ”serve as a physical symbol of their important role in the High North – a lighthouse of sorts and a beacon of knowledge and development.”
More about the tower after the break.
Community Center in Zimmern / Ecker Architekten
Architects: Ecker Architekten
Location: Zimmern, Germany
Client: Gemeinde Seckach
Construction Area: 1,100 sqm
Project year: 2004-2005
Photographs: Constantin Mayer, Köln
55 Blair Road / Ong & Ong
Architects: Ong & Ong Pte Ltd
Location: 55 Blair Road, Singapore
Design Team: Diego Molina and Maria Arango. Camilo Pelaez.
Project Team: Diego Molina and Maria Arango. Camilo Pelaez. Ryan Manuel, Linda Qing
Interior design: YPS
Project Year: 2009
Photographs: Derek Swalwell
Biochemistry Center / Hawkins Brown
Oxford University’s science center was way behind the times. Although the center was equipped with state of the art technology and some of the brightest minds, its fragmented and independent research areas made any attempt at interaction between scientists impossible. Working off academic J Rogers Hollingsworth’s theory that when scientists can frequently converse and exchange ideas, major breakthroughs are bound to happen, Hawkins Brown‘s new biochemistry building is a step in the right direction for Oxford.
More about the new Biochemistry facility after the break.
Sandhills Road House / Fearon Hay Architects
Architect: Fearon Hay Architects
Location: Great Barrier Island, New Zealand
Constructed Area: 250 sqm
Project Year: 2007-2008
Photographs: Patrick Reynolds
House on the Water / Le 2 Workshop
Our friends from Le 2 Workshop sent us House on the Water, a self-sufficient house for nomadic life offshore. Designed as a rental house for people who want to be independent it’s available only through water. It is located by Navagio beach, NW coast of the Greek Zante island.
The orientation was developed to maximize the use of solar energy. Strong decisions and consequence in driving its proportions guarantee the uniqueness of (formo)design. Dynamic and simple form are the result of the yach architecture interpretation. The core, made of concrete, is combined with steel cantilever structures. Foundation for the house is a concrete counterweight foot stabilizet with the sea bed pile system.The floating deck, which rises with the water level thanks to the railing installed in the core structure, leads you to the stairway. The top deck is available for the residents as well.
Eco-friendly features like the water desalination, energy accumulation, ventilation methods, water recycling, heat and energy consumption, tidal and solar energy systems are all there. HotW was designed to be sustainable. It is not only the installations, but it’s form and orientation. Vertical lines on the facade are the rails for computer driven shading system.
More images after the break.
Zaragoza World Expo’s Austrian Pavilion / Strauss-Solid-Ritter
The Austria Pavilion designed by Strauss-Solid-Ritter for the Expo Zaragoza 2008 was an extension of the popular 19th-century “cyclorama” art form. The viewer platform in the center of the panorama and the plastically designed historic panorama architecture in the foreground merge into a white landscape marked by contour lines, which will serve as the pavilion’s exhibition space. This abstracted landscape (i.e., exhibition space) forms the center of the various “panorama spaces” that result from the changing projections, while its abstracted form ensures that the landscape is also an integral part of each projected panorama. For example, when surrounded by images of mountain tops, the landscape transforms into a mountain crest; and when the images change to trees, the landscape becomes a green forest clearing.
Tic-Tac House / Forte, Gimenes & Marcondes Ferraz Arquitetos
For the Tic-Tac House, FGMF based their work on a simple everyday object, the clock. “It expresses the constant need for change: nobody acts the same way in the morning, afternoon or evening. No one even reacts the same way to different seasons… so why should our houses be always the same?” they explain. The building is a light pre-fab structure, made up of five modules. The central module acts as the kitchen and bathroom core of the house, while the remaining four rotate and can be reconfigured independently to suit the owner’s mood and the demands of the weather.
Take a look at all the model images and some renders after the break.
Dunraven’s Sports Hall / Scabal
The idea of using recycled shipping containers is becoming a growing trend as the crates are strong, efficient and inexpensive materials. We’ve featured a few cargo projects in the past for retail designs like LOT-EK’s Puma City, office spaces such as the first in Seattle by HyBrid Architecture + Assembly, plus the artist residences for Pier 57 in New York, all featured previously on AD. Now, the use of containers has spread to the education sector as Scabal has completed a sports hall for Dunraven secondary school in Streatham, London. Working with a limited budget and the pressing demand of the clients to produce a “new building of architectural distinction”, Scabal decided that using shipping containers would fulfill both requests.
More about the sports hall after the break.
Two competitions in Chicago announced
Chicago Architecture Today announced two competitions currently initiated and concluding in April 2010. The first is student-based Mock Firms International Skyscraper Challenge which focuses on a studio brief for Mexico City. More details here.
The second is a professional competition called The 2010 Chicago Initiative. It has 2 components with one challenging designers to create affordable, sustainable transitional housing in select Western European countries where unsuccessful immigration assimilation has contributed to civic unrest. More details here.
Spur Lane House / SPG Architects
Architect: SPG Architects
Location: Kechum, Idaho, USA
Partner in Charge: Caroline N. Sidnam
Project Team: Sandra Aranguren-Langston & William Petrone
Contractor: Englemann Inc.
Structural Engineering: Purdy & Associates
Constructed Area: 558 sqm
Project Year: 2005
Photographs: Tim Brown
Architecture Office / bad architects group
Architects: bad architects group
Location: Innsbruck, Austria
Project team: Paul Burgstaller, Ursula Faix, Andreas Kuen, Karin Wörgötter
Building Physiscs: Mayr
Electrical Planning: Eidelpes
Photographs: Günter Richard Wett & bad architects group
AD Round Up: Hotels Part II
Today, we bring you our second Round Up of previously featured hotels around the world. This time, you can enjoy from an hotel in the middle of the Atacama Desert in Chile to a hotel and spa in Switzerland designed by last Pritzker Prize Peter Zumthor. Enjoy!
Explora Hotel in Atacama / German del Sol
Travel opens up new perspectives, to see life with new eyes. This Hotel invites travelers to stop wondering, and make a fruitful pause. Life, dispersed in Atacama’s vastness, is somehow present at the hotel, inviting visitors to go out and experience first hand its natural and cultural richness, and return every evening back to comfort, free of the sheer tasks of survival (read more…)
Juvet Landscape Hotel / JSA
One of the local residents at Gudbrandsjuvet, Knut Slinning, is building a landscape hotel. The idea emerged at another site, Aurland, but was not realized there. Basically each room is a detached small independent house with one, or sometimes two of the walls constructed in glass. The landscape in which these rooms are placed is by most people considered spectacularly beautiful (read more…)
Hotel Strata / PLASMA Studio
Located on a steep hillside in the Italian Dolomites this new-built hotel has been developed as the interweaving of the free-flowing topography- indexed and organized by series of timber strips- and the serial sequence of appartment units perpendicular to it. Since the overall shape was developed from the local planning guidelines, the linear distribution of units and the views and sun directions (read more…)
The Therme Vals / Peter Zumthor
Built over the only thermal springs in the Graubunden Canton in Switzerland, The Therme Vals is a hotel and spa in one which combines a complete sensory experience designed by Peter Zumthor. Peter Zumthor designed the spa/baths which opened in 1996 to pre date the existing hotel complex. The idea was to create a form of cave or quarry like structure (read more…)
Habita Hotel / TEN Arquitectos
Mexican architects BGP Arquitectura designed this stylish hotel located in Lamartine 201, Colonia Polando, Mexico City. The glass skin acts as a buffer to the busy outside, while converting into a lamp during night. It also has a really cool pool on the roof top. With 2,500 m2, the construction was complete in 2000 (read more…)
Muted House / Aboday Architects
Architect: Aboday Architects
Location: Jakarta, Indonesia
Main Contractor: PT. Batu Kali
Site area: 260 sqm
Built up Area: 300 sqm
Photography: Happy Lim
AD Interview: Phil Bernstein
During the past AIA Convention we sat down with John Bacus from Google Sketchup to discuss how this tool can help architects on their workflows, with a tool that is easy to use, fast and extensible.
We also had the chance to talk with Phil Bernstein, faculty at Yale and currently the Vice President of AEC Industry and Relations for Autodesk. Given his background and current position, I immediately scheduled an interview with him as I wanted an architect on the industry to tell us more on how BIM is helping out architects in several ways.
Phil was very clear and precise on this, and the idea of this interview is to help our readers to make a decision on adopting BIM solutions, and also to help architecture students to see how learning to use a BIM software can help them in their future job seek.
As an example on the importance of BIM, I asked early this morning on Twitter what our readers think on adopting BIM and if arch students feel like they need to learn this before graduating. Here are some answers:
- eclosson @archdaily ; ive used REVIT 4 3yrs…valuable tool 4 small firms, wrkn on athletic complex in Romania w/ team of 6-8, only possible w/BIM
- roddimo @archdaily BIM is inevitable and you better get on the wagon if u want the next job. Clients are now asking for it
- cvandevere @archdaily BIM is a process. There are a number of tools/programs that can assist in that process and it’s implementation. #bim #revit
- ryansinger @archdaily I use it and like it. For simple projects line drawing works and you can use your hand instead of CAD
- berntstenberg @archdaily Re: BIM–not yet. Perhaps it’ll be standard someday, but I think only for big projects. We do res. remodels–still draw faste …
- archop @archdaily @ my firm economy put halt on moving to BIM, but it is inevitable. Also the community College I teach at will begin offering i
- DanielCon @archdaily I have never worked on a project where BIM made the process easier or smoother. I’m sure everyone will have to learn it but why?
- Numaru @archdaily I’m an architecture student in Korea. Even thought my class mates don’t know BIM well, we feel pressure of BIM.
- Winter_Street @archdaily we bite the bullet – here’s our recent blog post on the investment and rewards [of BIM] http://bit.ly/13u9NA
SCI-Arc Announces Fall 2009 Public Lectures and Exhibitions
The Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc), the downtown Los Angeles-based architecture school known for its progressive thinking and innovative design, is pleased to announce the fall 2009 schedule for lectures, talks and exhibitions. SCI-Arc hosts renowned architects and other practitioners in the fields of Architecture and Design from around the globe to discuss current theory and practice.
Guests include architects Toshiko Mori, Preston Scott Cohen, and Alejandro Zaera-Polo, landscape architect Laurie Olin, graphic designer April Greiman, and writer and theorist Eugene Thacker, among other notable figures. Exhibitions include deegan day design: Blow x Blow, investigating cinematic projection and architecture as installation, and Jean-Pierre Hébert: Drawings as Thoughts, conceptual digital drawings based on computer-driven language.
See the complete list of lectures and exhibitions, after the break.
InHolland University / Erick van Egeraat
Erick van Egeraat‘s extension of InHolland University in Rotterdam adds more than 15,000 square feet to the growing education center. van Egeraat designed the original building in 2001 and now has added a volumetric addition which includes study areas, classrooms, offices and space for commercial functions.
More about the extension after the break.
La Estancia Chapel / Bunker Arquitectura
Architects: Bunker Arquitectura
Location: La Estancia Gardens, Cuernavaca, Morelos, Mexico
Principals in charge: Esteban Suarez, Jorge Arteaga, Sebastian Suarez , Santiago Gitanjalli, Zaida Montañana
Collaborators: Paola Moire, Miguel Angel Martinez, Jimena Muhlia
Client: Promotora Amates
Main Contractor: ETASA
Mechanical & Electrical Engineer: Cien Acres
Civil & Structural Engineer: DAE
Site Area: 60,000 sqm
Constructed Area: 117 sqm
Project year: 2007
Photographs: Megs Inniss & Sebastian Suarez
National Tourist Route Trollstigen / Reiulf Ramstad Architects
Architects: Reiulf Ramstad Architects, Oslo Norway
Location: Romsdalen – Geiranger Fjord, Norway
Project team: Reiulf D Ramstad, Christian Fuglset, Anja Strandskogen, Christian Dahle, Nok Nimakorn
Client: Norwegian public roads administration
Structural Engineer: Dr Techn. Kristoffer Apeland AS, Oslo Norway
Mechanical Engineer: Erichsen & Horgen Engineering AS, Oslo Norway
Electrical Engineer: Norconsult, Norway
Contractor: Christie Opsahl AS, Norway
Landscape: Reiulf Ramstad Architects, Oslo Norway
Constructed Area: 200,000 sqm (the landscape area)
Design year: 2004-2010
Construction year: 2005-2010
Photographs: Reiulf Ramstad Architects, Oslo Norway
Lower East Side Hotel / Office for Design and Architecture
Located in the Bowery, the Lower East Side Hotel designed by the Office for Design and Architecture will feature minimalistic interiors to allow the “guests to use their personal aesthetic as an impromptu installation”. By designing tempered and laminated interior cylinders for the shower, toilet and closet, and using stark colors teamed with expansive city views, the small rooms seem larger than their dimensions.
More about the hotel after the break.
Beachclub / Spanjers Architect
Architect: Spanjers Architect
Location: Westkapelle, The Netherlands
Client: Fletcher Hotel Group
Footprint: 370 sqm
Project year: 2009
Photographs: Spanjers Architect
