Sloping plots often present themselves as major challenges and therefore become a determining factor of the project by enabling various forms of approach, overlapping the ground, respecting its slope or even burying itself in it. To illustrate all these alternatives, we selected fifteen projects that present different solutions in dealing with landscape.
As a starting point for architectural projects, the terrain and its topography point out the directions that the distribution of the program can follow. Among them, one solution stands out for the continuity between topography and architecture: lowering the level of construction and advancing the land over the roof. From this roof garden created with the same characteristics as the surroundings, the result gives the impression of an almost non-existent intervention.
The incorporation of the land as an architectural element takes up, in a certain way, the concept of caves, reinforcing an idea of shelter and reception from a hybrid between the initial and natural configuration and the architectural intervention.
One of the great challenges that architects have to face every day when designing begins with the conditions of the site where the architectural project is to be implemented. This involves the analysis and study of a series of factors ranging from sunlight, topography, surrounding vegetation, context, and others, all variables that are capable of guiding and/or defining the direction of the architecture to be developed.
In architecture, one of the challenges faced by professionals is the design with sloping terrain. The steep slopes make it possible to think of an architecture that faces this context, being an opportunity to work in contact with the place, the spatiality, the visuals and the different heights.
Peru in the western and central part of South America, with its multiple geographical conditions in its three large regions -coast, andean and jungle-, has an architecture that is particularly committed to its landscape. The range of varied solutions has a unique and contextual architecture. The following list shows 10 residential projects in Peru, which reveal diverse architectural approaches.
Henning Larsen has been creating projects that address cross-cultural design, tackle diverse climatic zones, and try to achieve ambitious sustainability objectives. All of this wouldn’t be possible without the use of technology and specially crafted digital and generative design tools that allow architects to treat any element as a parameter in design.
In a special interview with ArchDaily, Jakob Strømann-Andersen, Partner and Director of Henning Larsen’s Innovation and Sustainability Department talks about digital tools and their incorporation in the design process. Focusing specifically in this conversation on Sandworm, a new modeling program that uses sandboxes, Anderson explains how they have achieved to scan and directly transfer manipulated landscapes into a 3D model.
Global design firm Sasaki has announced the launch of Density Atlas, a new online platform for planners, urban designers, developers, and students immersed in the public realm, to have a better understanding about density. The platform explores the limitations of density and defines a more standardized set of metrics for understanding and comparing density across different global contexts, such as in urban centers, college campuses, or community under development.
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Created by Argentinian photographer and visual artist Federico Winer, Ultradistancia, the fine art project based on high-resolution satellite images, has released its latest series “Monsters of Mine”. Showcasing pictures of large mines from all over the world, "Monsters of Mine" reveals a fascinating carved out topography.
The 2016 Venice Biennale has highlighted that dealing with natural disasters may become one of the main preoccupations of architecture in the future. But nature has its destructive ways, and volcanic eruptions are among the most extreme case in point. On the Island of Fogo (Cape Verde), the Natural Park Venue designed by OTO – and elected Best Building of the Year 2015 by Archdaily readers – was destroyed by molten lava flow only one year after its opening in 2013. The building, which combined a cultural center and administrative activities, helped to activate the economy in the island’s most remote area. Following the disaster, Adrian Kasperski, a student at Krakow University, devoted his master’s thesis to the redevelopment of this area, by proposing the expansion of the existing roads and hiking trails and designing facilities to improve alternative tourism offerings.
.jpg?1590654629 "ALUMBRERA (Catamarca, Argentina). Image © Ultradistancia")
.jpg?1590656051 "BODDINGTON (Western Australia, Australia). Image © Ultradistancia")
.jpg?1590745217 "SOSSEGO (Pará, Brazil). Image © Ultradistancia")
.jpg?1590658783 "HULL RUST MAHONING (Minnesota, USA). Image © Ultradistancia")
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