Architecture News: The Latest Architecture and News

Back in 2006, the Torrevieja Relaxation Park in Spain was built to be a landmark in the City and a referent in contemporary architecture, but its actual state is just the opposite.

A new hospital typology has been designed by the team of Hord Coplan Macht + Spevco that eliminates the need for a standard hospital. In their design, 58 trailers provide a fully operational, fully mobile 48-bed hospital. The trailers include every aspect of a hospital – from waiting gift shops, to surgical suites with 4 O.R.s, pharmacies and labs. The design is the future of how westernized health care will travel abroad. It is a system that effectively transforms health care for entire regions and countries over time, letting the hospital and care come to the patient.

More about the mobile idea after the break.

“In the profession of Architecture today women currently make up about 50% of Graduate students. However, in the profession itself, licensed women practitioners make up only about 15%. Why do you think we see such drastic percentage drops? Why don’t we, women, make it to the end?”

Organized by MoMA and PS 1 Contemporary Art Center, the Rising Currents exhibit cannot be missed by architects, ecologists, or green enthusiasts…let alone any New Yorker. The exhibit is a cohesive showcase of five projects which tackle the lingering truth that within a few years, the waterfront of the New York harbor will drastically change. Dealing with large scale issues of climate change, the architects delve into a specific scale that we can recognize and relate to. The projects are not meant to be viewed as a master plan, but rather each individual zone serves as a test site for the team to experiment. The projects demonstrate the architects’ abilities to look passed the idea of climate change as a problem, and move on to see the opportunities it presents. Barry Bergdoll, the Philip Johnson Chief Curator of Architecture and Design at MoMA, explained, “Your mission is to come up with images that are so compelling they can’t be forgotten and so realistic that they can’t be dismissed.”

More about each zone after the break.

French architect Jean Nouvel has been selected to design this years Serpentine Gallery Pavilion.

Since 2010, the Serpentine Gallery has commissioned world’s most renowned architects to design a temporary structure to host summer events. The list includes Zaha Hadid, Frank Ghery, Rem Koolhaas, Toyo Ito, Daniel Libeskind, Oscar Niemeyer, Alvaro Siza + Souto de Moura, SANAA (previously featured at AD), danish artist Olafur Eliasson, and several collaborations with Cecil Balmond and ARUP.

Nouvel proposes a vivid red metal structure, which trough the reflection of its materials (steel, glass, fabric, polycarbonate) remind of classic british icons, such as the phone box or the London buses, while contrasting with the green of the park. A free standing 12m tall wall marks the presence of the pavilion.

More images after the break.

RISCO Architects‘ new 5-star Altis Belém Hotel contains 50 rooms and a number of facilities intended to support water sports. The hotel is designed in a way as to not constitute a visual obstacle along the axis between the Belém Tower and the Monument to the Discoveries. The hotel is a very narrow structure composed of a rectangular platform and “pockets” that hold different entities, such as a restaurant, to provide privacy. Above this platform, a larger green space opens for the guests to enjoy. On the exterior of the hotel, what appears to be an elaborate surface is actually a system of shutters that guests can open or close to reveal their larger balconies.

In an interesting article from the New York Times this week, different families completed not so typical renovations. A few years ago, the Sleeper family moved from their crowded Missouri ranch house when they saw an eBay offering for three acres with an empty sandstone cave in Festus, Missouri. The initial idea to build a larger home on the land was soon abandoned as the family realized the potential the former quarry offered. With 15,000 feet of naturally insulated space, the Sleeper family took up a new residence – inside the cave. The older family members helped add more “home” touches to the cave and since the cave’s bare walls shed sand, the Sleepers placed interior roofs or umbrellas over areas like the kitchen that need to stay sand-free. Other than that, the family truly enjoys the natural feel of the space and have created a comfortable home. “The inside of the house feels like you’re outdoors without the discomfort of hot or cold,” Mrs. Sleeper states.

More images after the break.

NeoStudio Architekci shared their completed design for a residence in Garby near Poznan, Poland. Located on a sunken site, the building rests on a steep southern slope. With the client’s desire for a double height, two-level living room, the home takes its form around that central room. The back of the home has been fitted to the existing slope and makes the form read as ”soaking into the surroundings” as an attempt to make the form dissolve into nature. The house also includes the standard amenities for a family of four, such as a kitchen, dining area and bedrooms.

More images after the break.

The Dutch submission to the 2010 World Expo in Shanghai is an exceptional one. This time around, it will not be the classic pavilion with long lines of visitors waiting outside and a presentation inside. The Netherlands is making its appearance at China’s world exposition along an entire street. The submission, entitled “Happy Street”, is the response by designer John Kormeling to the Chinese Expo theme “Better City, Better Life” and the sub-themes:

- Urban cultural diversity - Urban economic growth and prosperity - Innovation in science and technology in urban contexts - Remodelling urban communities - Interaction between urban and rural areas.

Find out more about Holland’s pavilion right here. More images and a video after the break.

Land used by the former Bethlehem Steel Corporation in Pennsylvania is now being transformed into a dynamic arts, culture and education campus known as SteelStacks. Anchoring the 4.5 acres campus will be Spillman Farmer Architects’ ArtsQuest Center, a four-storey glass and steel structure with 68,000 sq ft of distinctive venues to showcase the arts.

More about the ArtsQuest Center after the break.

Our friends from Abitare recently published their 500 issue!

MONU – magazine on urbanism is a unique bi-annual international forum for artists, writers and designers that are working on topics of urban culture, development and politics.

Each issue collects essays, projects and photographs from contributors from all over the world to a given topic. Thus MONU examines topics that are important to the future of our cities and urban regions from a variety of perspectives.

They have just released their latest issue on the topic of “Real Urbanism”. You can see more about the articles on their official website. Also, you can browse the entire issue YouTube (video after the break).

During 2009 the Guggenheim Museum celebrated its 50th anniversary. The museum commissioned nearly 200 artists, architects and designers to imagine their dream interventions on the most significative space of Frank Lloyd Wright’s building, the central void.

Comte Vollenweider Architects shared their winning design for the extension of Cannes airport with us. The airport’s elegant construction focused on the functional side of improving the services offers concerning business aircraft, for both welcoming the crews and performances concerning plane’s maintenance. The structure is an open volume, allowing the space to be maximized, which offers complete freedom to the planes and their to maneuver.

Our friends from Abitare shared this cool noodle shop designed by ISSHO Architects with us. Located in central Tokyo, the ‘soba’ noodle shop has Machiya-style wooden louvers, invoking a traditional Japanese townhouse. The varying depth of each louver creates a textured sensation across the facade. Regionally different patterns of light spill through the façade from the interior, allowing a gradual change of character at dawn, especially as viewed from the main street. The facade aesthetic is modified on the interior’s ceiling as white curved panels contrast the concrete and wood dinning areas to soften the space. A minimalistic residential apartment for the owner sits above the noodle shop.

More images after the break.

As we reported earlier, an 8.8 earthquake hit Chile last Saturday.

Here’s a kind of project we don’t frequently see a lot of…a public bathroom facility. Shuichiro Yoshida, a Tokyo based architect, designed lavatories housed on less than 9m2 of ground space in Chikusei City. The site is a historic storage building, (one of the few still standing after the WWII), and a volunteer group obtained the ownership of the building to use as their activity base for “discovering the region-specific historical and cultural heritages.” Yoshia was asked to add lavatories for visitors and staff (as there are none within the building). Faced with such a small area of land to provide facilities for both men and women, the bathrooms are, in fact, an elegant addition to the main building. Due to the small footprint, the bathrooms maintain an open feeling because they are open to a high ceiling with exposed timber supports. The lavatories are seen as a way to not only preserve the region-specific landscape but also to create new landscape for the future. The exterior is clad in elastic plasterer finish while the interior walls are finished in a white material known as “Shikkui” which has humid conditioning and fire prevention.

More images after the break.

You can now pre-order 49 Cities, by WORKac. For this second edition, the book includes a new interview with Michael Webb (Archigram) and an essay by Sam Jacob (FAT).