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Architects: Pedevilla Architects
- Year: 2013










Led by Will Alsop, aLL Design’s funky apartment tower will soon add a whole lot of interest to London’s south bank. The tubular building, which tapers at the bottom and top, will rise above an existing four-storey building on purple stilts and be adorned with corten steel cladding, brightly colored balconies, and irregular rounded windows. Each apartment will include two balconies overlooking the River Thames and the neighboring heliport – bringing about the name “Heliport Heights.” To learn more about the lively design, keep reading after the break.

As one architectural scholar described it, Luigi Moretti’s 1950 Casa “Il Girasole” is “a bit of madness on the solidity of Roman walls.” [1] Yet, this clever apartment building in the heart of Rome is far from the work of a madman. Its subtle historical allusions and deliberately ambiguous composition betray the genius of the architect’s creative and analytical mind. Moretti, whose notable commissions include Villa La Saracena (1957), Montreal’s Stock Exchange Tower (1964), and the Watergate Complex (1971), achieves a complexity of form and materiality in “Il Girasole” that distinguishes the project from its mid-century contemporaries and has earned it recognition as one of the earliest forerunners of postmodern design.
