The proposal for “Piraeus Cultural Coast – Museum of Underwater Antiquities” in Piraeus, the ancient Greek port city right outside of Athens, is an outcome of another successful collaboration between PAR Architects and ARUP. Conceived as a landmark, this iconic, world class museum’s openness activates the Cultural Coast District – the aim was to engage unexploited urban potential. In its interaction with the surrounding, the Museum offers robust public space at the rooftop, as an addition to the other buildings in the district and a continuation of plazas and pedestrian pathways. This essential component of the design visually connects Cultural Coast to Piraeus and Athens.

This unique space experience facilitates diverse exhibitions in a continuous loop, forming a spiral, from the lobby to the upper levels of public space. This organization of the exhibition venues offers great flexibility and adaptability to different requirements, leaving open possibilities for generating various contrasting atmospheres:  interior and exterior, covered and open, dark and light, intimate and public. Due to the fact that the large public voids enable antiquities to be viewed from different points forces and encourages interaction between the user and the building. Read the rest of this entry »

Steven Holl Architects has been commissioned to design the Ecology and Planning Museum in Tianjin, China –30 percent constructed, the new Eco City is a cooperation between governments of China and Singapore and is planned the to be the home to population of 500,000, when complete in 2020.

60,000 square meters in total, the museum structure will be the first in the cultural district. Planning museum is the “subtractive” space – the negative to the Ecology museum’s positive, together two museums make a complete box.

Marking the entrance to the Planning Museum, shared public plaza gathers the visitors around the large model of the eco-city and a temporary display area, further directed to the exquisite space experience of great interiors and program sequences, from multimedia system, through the theory and practice zones, to the interactive display on the third floor. The top storey facilitates the green architecture, landscape and water resources exhibits and the access to the vegetative rooftop, offering panoramic views to the future city. Read the rest of this entry »

The design concept for UN Studio’s proposal for National Art Museum in Beijing, China is based on the uniting dualities, complementing each other: day and night, inside and outside, past and future, calm and dynamic, large and small, individual and collective. Its formal expression references ancient Chinese ‘stone drums’, therefore the form of the museum highlights the identity of the country, its spirit and essence. However, wrapped in a contemporary media facade with illuminated art projections, the Museum represents modern interpretation of a precious piece of tradition.

The designers explain that while the architecture of the museum is represented by the ancient artifact of the stone drum, the art within represents its spirit, or its “essence” – in the same way that the agile strokes of ink in a Chinese painting give spirit to a blank piece of paper, the art collection gives spirit to the museum. Read the rest of this entry »

OMA’s entry for 425 Park Avenue competition, awarded to Foster and Partners, in their own words proposes one aesthetics, oscillating between nearly exhausted orthogonality and a still immature curvaceousness. Shohei Shigematsu, in charge of New York office, and Rem Koolhaas were project leaders for the competition that brought together international practices such as Atelier Christian de Portzamparc, Ateliers Jean Nouvel, Herzog & de Meuron, KPF, Maki and Associates, Renzo Piano Building Workshop, Richard Meier, Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners and Zaha Hadid Architects.

The form of the high-rise was the response to Manhattan’s zoning laws for commercial buildings, requiring a silhouette from which it is almost impossible to escape. OMA’s interpretation was slightly different – the three cubes are connected by curved planes of the envelope, reflecting the city and the sky, and creating smooth transition from cubes of different sizes. Stacked, one on top of another, cubes alter in dimensions – the lowest one is a solid block on Park Avenue while the smallest one is on top, rotated 45 degrees. Read the rest of this entry »

This small scale experimental theater in Taiyuan, China, is one of the latest projects of Los Angeles based practice, Yaohua Wang. Located at a cross road in Taiyuan Yin Ze District, this mechanical wonder is an investigation, setting new standards for theater design. Due to its interactive nature, it offers one dynamic space experience – as the audience climbs up the stairs to get access to the theater, the entire site context around the theater is changing and revealed.

The theater building consists of two main spaces, stacked vertically. The envelope of the performance space is sound proof glass, therefore providing great view to the city and creating exiting relationship between private, art activity and the public space.

The structural system lifts the theater up from the ground, in order to create public outdoor shelter space. The structure of the stage can be lowered down, through a mechanical system so it connects to the backstage, which is under the performance space. Simultaneously, artists can elevate and disappear in front of the audience, through the same system. This active and surprising theater experience opens whole new horizon of opportunities for architects, designing performance facilities. Read the rest of this entry »

“Lotus Dome,” interactive artwork by artist and architect Daan Roosegaarde, is a living dome made out of hundreds of ultralight aluminum flowers that fold open in response to human behavior.

When approached, the big silver dome lights up and opens its flowers. Its behavior moves from soft breathing to dynamic mood when more people interact. The light slowly follows people, creating an interactive play of light and shadow. The graphic representations of the lotus flower on the walls, and the deep bass sound, transforms the Renaissance environment into a “Techno-Church.”

The smart Lotus foil is specially developed by Studio Roosegaarde and their manufacturers, and is made from several thin layers of Mylar that fold open and close when touched by light. This high-tech craftsmanship is similar to the innovative thinking of the church’s architecture of the 16th century. Roosegaarde: “We’re updating Renaissance.” Read the rest of this entry »

An experimental music hall as an extension of old power plant building in Bratislava is a narrative in itself proposed by Miro Straka from the Academy of Fine Arts in Bratislava. It tells a story of architecture as well as story of its own, fairy tale celebrated by a modern man – cinematic cliché. How to reinvent figurative ornamentation in architecture in a way it would engage our imagination? Greek mythology is no longer common knowledge – just a nostalgic memory of the past. However, new symbols and meanings arose with birth of pop-culture. Stories which everyone can understand and interpret – Optimus Prime as new atlas, carrying weight of humanity on his shoulders, Or Darth Vader as symbol of despotic power.

Straightforward principles (of old building) in contrast with restless and surprising organization, where linear structure is replaced by unexpected spaces and the austerity of reinforced concrete twisted into constantly changing mass without any visible language logic. Seemingly useless and unreadable object opposed to repetitiveness and predictability of present and planned design. With mass customization and big scale printing modularity loses its present reasons, that is where blending come in, connecting not fitting or related objects not based on their shape but rather on their meaning, where bricks are used in modularity anything(batman) can be used in blending. Read the rest of this entry »

This winning proposal for Musée de la Romanité in Nimes, France, by Elizabeth de Portzamparc had to deal with a fragile situation which required respectful and exceptional dialogue – the building is located on the gate of the old city of Nimes, and emerging from the archaeological remains the it had to establish complex relation, made both of opposition and complementarity, with the two thousand years old antique Arenas of Nimes. The creation of the museum building was only a part of wider project, including urban regeneration of the „Grill“ plot, the museography, the archaeological garden landscaping and a feasibility study of a congress center and a hotel.

Two geometries coexist successfully – in contrast with the magnificence of the static, great stone volume, the Museum’s offers light and luminous presence of one fluid architecture. Acting as a gate of an urban promenade, museum reveals the Arenas through its transparent ground floor, which attracts and invites visitors inside. The building of the museum was designed to generate coherence in the city, the inventive museography within it and the archaeological garden that extends it. Read the rest of this entry »

The Chicago office of SOM | Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP won an international competition for the Greenland Group Suzhou Center in Wujiang, China. This 358 meters high split-core tower is their sixth project with the Greenland Group. Key design feature for this high-rise is semi-controlled atrium acting as the “lung” of the building, maximizing daylight penetration and natural ventilation in the public spaces and the lobbies. Series of high efficiency measures were taken along the design process, with the objective to achieve a 60% savings in energy consumption and a 60% reduction in potable water use. This highly efficient landmark is a result of interdisciplinary collaboration and the serious commitment to elegant high performance design.

A set of high performance energy saving strategies include high performance façade – using cooler air at the higher levels for the natural ventilation, natural light harvesting, energy recovery systems, demand controlled ventilation and onsite energy center to capitalize on the overall load diversity of the development. The building is oriented to harness the stack effect and prevailing winds, through the east and west facades of the atrium. 30-story tall operable window provides significant environmental performance of the lakefront development, corresponding with the hotel and residential floors. Read the rest of this entry »