The building is located in one of the “prestigious” living districts of Tbilisi, Vake, approximately 150 meters from the Vake Park. The economic and political crises caused by the fall of the USSR in 90-ties had a strong impact on the urban tissue of the city.
The assignment consists of the design of three tram traction stations and was commissioned by De Lijn, the public transport company of Belgium. The three electrical cabins provide power to the new tram line in the north of Antwerp. The three different locations take part of a larger whole:
In the year 2014 burned down the 1385 consecrated Church St. Martha Kirche in Nuremberg for unexplained reasons. It was also lost the original historical roof truss over the Church interior. It was the construction task, to rebuild the Church in its formerly outer contour. The interior otherwise could be reshaped with contemporary constructions.
The short history of the building. In the middle of the 19th century, it was a place, where one of the most disciplined Jewish religious movements was born and developed. During the Nazi occupation in 1941-1944 the synagogue in Uzupis was ravaged, and after that came Soviet occupation during which this desolated prayer house was remodelled into living apartments. When Lithuania regained independence, it took almost 20 years, that someone would notice this Jewish heritage object and do something about it.
Skatepark and parkour ground are located in Mziuri Park - one of the central green areas of Tbilisi. “Mziuri - the city of children” is the original name of the theme park built in the 1980s. The park was based on the stories of a Georgian writer Nodar Dumbadze, who once went to Disneyland, got inspired, and decided to build a park for Georgian kids. The park is located between two neighbour districts so it also functions as a passage between them. This is the place where kids bond, make new friends and grow; it’s a “ghetto Disneyland” on a post-soviet land.
Ivanja Reka Primary School is located in area where Zagreb's urban tissue meets the suburban one, in the conflict zone between the urban sprawl and large-scale metropolitan infrastructures (shopping malls, industrial warehouses and traffic mega structures). Built on Sava's old river bed, plagued by potential flooding and unstable soil.
ANA Architecten designed a flexible three dimensional housing structure with a maximum freedom of the individual layout. The buyers of the apartments in The SketchBlock were able to fill in the dwellings freely in size, position, layout and finishing. The Sketchblock has been chosen as Best Building of the Year 2019 in the category ‘private living experience’. The building is part of an ensemble of three new residential all-sided buildings in a park-like car-free setting. Access to the three buildings is from a central green space. The residents of the three buildings determined the layout of the park in a special collaboration with the municipality. The residents of the three buildings are collectively responsible for the maintenance of the park.
In between. The newly built structure is complex, establishes and forms its own world, equal and self-sufficient. The interior is unexpected, closed and open, it belongs to both the street and the house. A density has been created that allows programs and functions to exist in space and time experiencing various daily changes.
Gyermely Town Center. The project encompasses the revitalization process of an aging and increasingly impoverished Hungarian small town. Far from the bustling metropolitan areas, the agriculture based rural lifestyle is slowly disappearing. Poverty, aging communities due to the migration of young residents and depopulation are common tendencies, yet over the last decades, the community of Gyermely has successfully implemented projects to reverse this process. Long-term and systematic thinking is a prolonged, small budget process, resulting in interim milestones such as the development of a new town center.
Design pylon Bog Fox
The high voltage design pylon Bog Fox is a unique piece of infrastructural architecture. Combining local folklore, architectural design and infrastructural engineering, the Bog Fox has become a landmark for a holistic view on our living environment in Estonia.
Leaning on the rock of the mountain, adapted to thelandscape and built with natural materials, this residence has an elongated shape, protected from the north and views onto the sea on the south. The project succeeds adapting the building in the environment, use of local materials, exploitation of the view and protection from the weather conditions. Vacation residence in Crete, on Livadia, 1-hour road from Chania.
These works consider the collection of artifacts and spaces in the Butter Museum. Reanimating a distinct historic urban field, they heighten the awareness of the socio-cultural roles of butter making in Ireland. The design erodes existing boundaries and alters spatial limits - encouraging new juxtapositions and readings between objects and viewers.
By engaging all senses to define the experience and stories of space, a unique project was being established. The urban solution approach, for the public square and contemporary designed modular kiosks in the Baroque historic city in Varaždin, ought to emphasize and preserve the identity on-site, and at the same time promote sustainability and local craftsman production. The project aims to highlight a new design, for an existing public square in the historical fabric of the city; while formating a functional and inspiring gathering point for tourists and strengthening the educational character. Over the years, this area has undergone a transformation and has become an important craftsman location. In order to emphasize its purpose and attractiveness, the newly designed solution offers a sensitive approach that would nurture and preserve the current spatial identity. And, still offering new possibilities, better presentation space for the local craftsmen, and public space that is flexible and adaptive to various occasions and events.
The Concrete House @ Paniotis is a bespoke single family house located in the fairly dense suburban area of Paniotis in Limassol and stands in stark contrast to its adjoining properties. The linear plot afforded a longitudinal placement of the project; perpendicular to the narrower street façade. Although the plot is surrounded from pre-existing properties in close proximity, the project achieves organic fluidity between inside-outside, spatial permeability and the perception of openness. The arrangement of the house in the plot manipulates visual relationships with the adjoining properties and strategically hides and reveals parts.
Geometric operation. The task of adding a new pavilion requires to be both attentive to its architectural qualities, and prospective about its potential. The new building is neither an ode nor a critic towards the existing center. It tries, above all, to find rich complementary interrelations with the existing environment and to charge the space in and around it with new possibilities. The designed pavilion acts as a Machikado. This Japanese word refers to a city-corner and is similar to a French Passage. Like a crossroads it concentrates and diffuses at the same time, encouraging equally interaction and isolation. The different dispersed spaces – such as the printmaking studio, where artists can concentrate on their work or the exhibition hall where visitors can wander around the displayed work – cross paths at the center of the new building.
SAAHA’s winning competition design for a Visitor Center at Mt. Fløyen in Bergen, aims to facilitate the use of this popular mountain landscape for children, youth, hikers and tourists. With its undulating movement, the pavilion leads the visitor from the gravel road around the lake to the walkways through the surrounding mountains.
The Marquês de Abrantes Palace, wedged between two railway lines, on Rua de Marvila, is a public building that served since the XX Century as popular housing and, nowadays, serves as headquarters of one of the city's oldest collectivities - Musical Society 3 d'Agosto de 1885. It has been in an expectant territory for several years: while it has the so-called social neighbourhoods to the North, to the South it finds the river and its speculative and gentrifying real estate projects. The project is linked to this dual reality, trying to ensure that through a process of collective questioning and decision-making, we can go against the logic of eviction of the working class allowing, on the contrary, their fixation.
The importance of the vertical development of cities. The vertical development of cities is one of the foundations of future urbanism for the sake of preserving the natural and agricultural territories. The verticality is the result of common sense but the livability of vertical housing remains, as its architecture, to be elaborated in order to give rise to a community of inhabitants. For decades, Philippe Samyn conceived proposals in this direction (see, for example, his essay "The Vertical City" published by the Royal Academy of Belgium in September 2014).