Foster and Partners in collaboration with d’Unienville and Associates Architects have designed a discreet and environmentally friendly masterplan for a series of residences in Corniche Bay, Mauritius. The main concept was to create a contemporary architecture that blends harmoniously with the lush landscape. Fingers of tropical vegetation are inserted into the buildings that respond to the contours of the landscape and recedes into the green totality. Read the rest of this entry »
Ecofriendly Residences in Corniche Bay, Mauritius / Foster and Partners
Beethoven Hall in Bonn / Zaha Hadid
A central priority in Zaha Hadid Architect’s urban design concept for a new Beethoven Festival Hall is linking the city of Bonn to the Rhine River promenade and leveraging that idea’s potential to enrich public life on the river’s edge.
Learning from the missed opportunities during the planning of the existing building in the 1950’s, Zaha Hadid Architect’ proposal not only incorporates a high degree of porosity in its site plan, but intensifies the connection by introducing a transparent “Rhine Foyer” into the building mass; a dramatic atrium that stretches from the City to the Rhine. With two main façades, the building presents itself in an open and inviting manner to the River and the City, allowing for deep visual links through its crystalline mass. The light Rhine Foyer will make audiences and performers feel comfortable and relaxed but simultaneously excited by the anticipation of a unique experience. Read the rest of this entry »
PUMA Mopion Bike / KiBiSi
Joining creative forces once again, KiBiSi, PUMA and Biomega extending the PUMA Bike portfolio to include a fashionable cargo bike, accommodating true urban lifestyle. Mopion lets you cruise the streets in style, while transporting your daily groceries or bigger loads. The smooth steering provides you with easy maneuvering around the city just like a commuter. Mopion is a unique lightweight and highly practical cargo bike with a fashionable twist that will make heads spin.
PUMA Mopion is rock steady for the daily grind. It mixes city bike features, and cargo bike features, making it a sturdy companion. It comes with a super-size innovative front carrier for heavy duty transport of your groceries or other needs. Developed for city dwellers, Mopion features a light aluminum frame, making it a one-of-a-kind lightweight cargo bike weighing only 22 kilos. The geometry holds the body in a slightly inclined, but still heads-up position for navigational ease and exceptional balancing.
The name Mopion derives from an island in the Atlantic Ocean, symbolizing the new Trans-Atlantic approach and balancing PUMA’s European heritage with American popular culture. Mopion will be available in white, black and in the bold color combination magenta/blue/lime. The colors are likewise inspired by vibrant island colors. Mopion defies the expected. Read the rest of this entry »
FC Barcelona’s Camp Nou Stadium / Foster and Partners
FC Barcelona’s Camp Nou Stadium, one of the world’s greatest football venues, is to be extensively remodelled by Foster and Partners. The stadium, already the largest in Europe, will be enlarged to accommodate over 106,000 fans, together with extensive new facilities including hospitality and public areas. A new roof will also be created to shelter the fans. The stadium will be enclosed by a brightly coloured mosaic outer skin that wraps around the building and continues over a new roof. The multi-coloured enclosure comprises overlapping translucent tiles in the club colours. The myriad of tiles can be seen as symbolising the loyalty and devotion of FC Barcelona’s fans worldwide.
The remodelled stadium retains the essential elements of the original Camp Nou, designed by architects Francesc Mitjans-Miró, García Barbon and Soteras Mauri, which was inaugurated in 1957. On match nights, the stadium will glow, providing a new architectural icon for the city. In the same way that FC Barcelona is ‘more than a club’, the new Camp Nou will be much more than a stadium.
Torre Espiral in Barcelona / Zaha Hadid
Zaha Hadid’s design for the Edifici Campus confirms the role of the 22@ area at the very forefront of Barcelona’s changing water edge. The tower’s striking design creates a new presence in a territory of transition.The spiralling tower stitches the border of the municipalities of Barcelona and Besòs, creating a new infrastructure that is a joint-venture of the two cities and two clients: El Consorci, Zona Franca de Barcelona y b –TEC, Consorci del Campus Interuniversitari del Besòs.
The design articulates the transition between the forum and the campus, between the new equipments and parks water-front area, in Barcelona, and the requalification of the delta of the river Besòs area, in Sant Adriá del Besòs. The formal theme of the spiral actively binds the two together with an encompassing movement, stimulating the seamless integration of the city fabric, connecting in a dynamic way, the different surrounding areas. Read the rest of this entry »
Sports Park in Datong, China / Populous
Architecture studio Populous has been selected to design a new sports park in the historic city of Datong, in the northern Shanxi Province, near Beijing, China. This is the second major sports hub for Populous in China.
The sports park which includes a 30,000 seat stadium, an 8,000 seat arena, a 1500 seat natatorium and a multiuse training hall, is part of a larger plan by the Datong Mayor to regenerate the historic old city and create a new city centre with other development including a city hall, museum, convention centre.
Inspiration for the new Datong Sports Park has come from both its impressive cultural heritage and the stunning rugged beauty of the surrounding landscape outside the city. The rich valleys, escarpments and weathered mountain faces surrounding the Loess Plateau outside Datong City rival the brutally etched Judean desert as it stretches towards the Dead Sea. The colour and texture of the mountain ranges are comparable to the landscape of the Grand Canyon in America.
The win for Populous, which has its Asian base in Queensland, comes as its first sports park in Nanjing celebrates five years of successful operation. Populous won an IOC/IAKS Gold Award for the design of Nanjing, built for the 2005 China National Games, and the catalyst for a major city centre development. Read the rest of this entry »
Ocean Pavilion for the 2012 Yeosu World Expo / SOMA
Architectural studio SOMA has finished the design of the thematic pavilion for the 2012 Yeosu World Expo. The project was selected in late 2009 and is expected to begin construction during the next couple of months.
As a major and permanent facility the thematic pavilion embodies the expo’s theme ‘the living ocean and coast’ in manifold ways. The ocean is experienced in two ways, as an endless surface and in an immersed perspective as depth. The plain duality of the ocean motivates the building’s spatial and organisational concept. Continuous surfaces twist from vertical to horizontal orientation and define all significant interior spaces. The vertical cones induce the visitor to immerse into the thematic exhibition. They evolve into horizontal levels that cover the foyer and become a flexible stage for the best practice area. Continuous transitions between contrasting experiences also form the outer appearance of the pavilion. Towards the sea the conglomeration of solid vertical cones define a new meandering coast line, a soft edge that is in constant negotiation between water and land. Opposite side the pavilion develops out of the ground into an artificial roof landscape with gardens and scenic paths. The topographic lines of the roof turn into lamellas of the kinetic media facade that faces the expo’s entrance and the ‘digital gallery’. Read the rest of this entry »
Observation Tower Built with Logs Opens in Reusel, Netherlands / Ateliereen Architecten
Ateliereen Architecten just completed a 25 meters high viewing tower in Ruesel, Netherlands. The project is composed by six wooden boxes made out of half logs (from the park) supported by a steel skeleton.
Project description by Ateliereen Architecten:
In the Netherlands over 50 spots are marked on the map as starting points for recreational use of the rural landscape. People are encouraged to park their cars at these locations instead of at other, more preserved, areas. From here they can explore nature by foot, mountain bike, horse etc.
In the small town Reusel, the nomination motivated a local sports merchant to found an outdoor sports park. A tower, 25 meters high, with sport facilities like climbing and abseiling is the main attraction. It consists of six cubes, hanging on a core of steel columns. Straight flight staircases raise in between and cross the cubes several times in different positions.
Two of the six cubes are accessible. The third one is the start platform for a rope slide and a high rope track. In the top box people can enjoy a panorama view of the surrounding landscape and there is a starting platform for abseiling. The athletes on the 13 meters high climbing wall are observed by visitors of the adjacent bistro. Read the rest of this entry »
Taastrup Theatre Completed / Cobe
The renovation of the Taastrup Theatre in Copenhagen by Cobe has just been completed and the building has already gained praise by critics. The project has been shortlisted and will comete for the “Old-New” award at the World Architecture Festival in Barcelona.
Cobe’s description of the project:
The project for the extension and renovation of Taastrup Theatre seeks to improve the communication of the building with its environment – a social housing neighborhood. Formally we were commissioned to improve the energy consumption of the 1970s local community theatre in the Copenhagen neighborhood of Taastrup. Yet, we use this opportunity to improve the general appeal and functionality of the building by introducing a second (isolating) theatre curtain around the rough concrete structure.
By adding this new layer in front of the existing rough concrete structure, the building is extended and opened as wide as possible towards Kjeld Abels Plads north. The new translucent facade subtly reminds us of a theatre curtain about to open when the play starts. In fact, when the tickets are outsold or the show is on, red lights underneath the facade broadcast the special atmosphere of this magic moment towards the square. This new composition underlines the unity of the old building and its extension as one piece of architecture. Read the rest of this entry »
Erick van Egeraat builds Corporate University for Sberbank Russia
The board of Sberbank, the leading bank of Russia, signed a contract with the Dutch Architect Erick van Egeraat for the realization of their new Corporate University, west of Moscow, close to the Novorizhkoye highway.
Sberbank is Russia’s largest and oldest state run bank with over 250.000 employees and 20.000 branch offices in the country. The new Sberbank University will provide education, seminars and team building programs to the company’s top professionals, to continuously improve their performance within the corporate standards. The most prominent Russian bank implies the highest standards for its employees and therefore it aimed for the most ambitious educational project in terms of design and quality. Erick van Egeraat’s design for the 32,000-m2 Corporate University was chosen from 4 other proposals including David Adjaye’s entry.
The site is located in a suburban, almost rural setting, bordered by woods on its southern side, and the Istra river embankment on the northern side. The University will consist of education and conference spaces, dormitories, guest teacher quarters, teacher housing, a club building and sports facilities.
The spacious and picturesque setting allows for a campus model; the program’s distribution on site creates comfortably scaled public spaces that intensifies interaction with the natural surroundings. Education, lodging and sports functions are each clustered in orthogonally defined volumes. Taking into account the climate, all building elements except the teachers’ housing are connected with an elegant and climate controlled colonnade. This colonnade is programmed with recreational, bar, relaxation functions and serves as an identifying backbone of the entire complex. Read the rest of this entry »