Park Place Wuhan / 5+design

By:  | September - 22 - 2014

Spanning over 20 acres in Wuhan, China, 5+design‘s Park Place is a large mix use development which just broke ground. It merges high end retail, residential and commercial spaces with an agrarian program. The 164k sq. meter retail space is tiered from the street front and allows pedestrians full access through the vegetated rooftops. The shopping center is anchored with a large atrium and sky bridge. The open terraced floor plan, greenscape, and farming component counters the cosmopolitan venue thus creating a diverse and dense set of experiences. Read the rest of this entry »

Seattle’s burgeoning waterfront, home to the world class Olympic Sculpture Park, will get a new residential mid rise inspired by the park’s wedged paths. The stepped tower is designed by Perkins+Will to create a dynamic but sensitive relationship with the park as a public and aesthetic resource. Aiming for a LEED Platinum certification the design is intended to be environmentally astute and regionally adapted. The folded veil facade is a core design gesture to facilitate multiple relationships both internally and externally. The diverging planes of the southern facade breaks the massing into more discrete elements, verticalizing the Z shaped topography of the park. Read the rest of this entry »

Greenmark Platinum,Singapore Hospital, natural ventilation, green hospital, natural cooling, vegetated tower,

 

The Ng Teng Fong General Hospital, now under construction in Singapore, is a collaboration of Melbourne based studio505 with CPG Singapore and HOK San Francisco. The project is in fact two hospitals by virtue of the program split between a government subsidized section and a private section. The distinction of separate program is apparent by the use of air conditioning used in the private wing but not in the subsidized ward. The climate controlled wing utilizes a more traditional compact form to reduce surface area. The opposing eccentric floor plate is the result of improving the efficiency of medical stations, patient distribution, and natural ventilation. The architects took the bold initiative to develop a completely naturally ventilated tower to control energy cost and improve patient and staff comfort in the tropical climate.

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A cross between a vending machine, PEZ dispenser, and automated parking structure the Zipcar Dispenser inserts architecture into the implementation of high density shared automobile technologies. Conceived by Moskow Linn Architects, and touted recently by Build a Better Burb as part of their research into contemporary parking design, the core design principles of the proposal are to make Zipcars more fashionable and accessible while reclaiming urban lots along eastern seaboard communities. Read the rest of this entry »

Plasma Studio was invited to contribute to a radical new design concept centered on the question of what would a hotel, where each floor was designed by a different firm, look like? Their answer is the fourth floor of the Hotel Puerta America in Madrid, Spain where the fragmentation of space evolves as guests move through it.

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A massive inflated balloon erected inside the Gasometer Oberhausen, Germany is purported to be the largest inflated envelope suspended without a skeleton. Designed and installed by artists team Christo and the late Jeanne-Claude, Big Air Package is a radical play of both space and light, pushing the limits of scale for a temporary installation. Read the rest of this entry »

Tucked into the coastal hillside near Kavarna, Bulgaria the newly completed Equinox House by Ignatov Architects explores a novel approach to achieving passive house energy performance. The home’s celestial name sake is well deserved for the careful consideration of solar orientation of the large, super efficient windows, angled to shed summer heat but absorb the fleeting winter energy. Extremely airtight construction testing at 50% better than passive house standards and super-insulation provides a 90% reduction in heating needs. Read the rest of this entry »

SOL Grotto, an installation completed in the Berkeley Botanical Garden by Rael San Frattello Architects, is a sensory oriented space using the discards of the infamous collapse of solar energy company Solyndra. The specialized glass tubes originally created for housing solar cells is repurposed to great spatial and tonal effect by placing them through a wall and connecting the outside within.

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With urban housing needs increasingly growing and competing with other resources such as green spaces Zoka Zola Architects designed a clever urban topography that makes room for both. To be completed at the end of 2013 on the outskirts of Rijeka, Croatia INTERPOLATION will consist of 80 condominiums among four buildings. Each building sits a story above the virgin landscape and at a distance from each other creating a continuous band of untouched green belts boarding on a forest. Read the rest of this entry »

Testing the next evolution in commercial building skins the CJ Cheiljedang Research and Development Center’s unique responsive facade controls solar gain over a significant range of exposure. Yazdani Studio of Cannon Design was tasked to create a marquee office and research center in Seoul, South Korea. Their solution was to create three tear drop shaped towers radiating from a glass atrium shrouded in a kinetic shade. Read the rest of this entry »