The Daniel Urban Kiley Teaching Fellowship is awarded annually to an emerging designer whose work articulates the potential for landscape as a medium of design in the public realm. The Kiley Fellow will be appointed Lecturer in Landscape Architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design for the 2016-17 academic year. While the Kiley Fellowship is awarded competitively on an annual basis, successful Fellows are eligible to have their academic appointments renewed for a second year at the rank of Lecturer, dependent upon review of their teaching, research and creative practice.

This initiative is intended to recognize and foster emerging design educators whose work embodies the potential for landscape as a medium of design in the public realm. The Daniel Urban Kiley Fellowship builds upon the history of pedagogic innovation at the GSD as well as the century of leadership in landscape education within the Department of Landscape Architecture.

Deadline for receipt of applications: January 15, 2016

For details and more information, please visit Kiley Teaching Fellowship or send an email to: kileyfellowship@gsd.harvard.edu.

Fascinating Shape

An exhibition pavilion with a particularly impressive façade design has been created in Milan for the Expo 2015. The concept, based on a design of the renowned architect Daniel Libeskind, is a flowing organic shape which originates from a free-hand sketch. Shimmering vermillion stoneware tiles produced by Casalgrande Padana are used for the façade of the complete building. The glazed material with its shimmering metallic surface and the dynamic three-dimensional pattern emphasises the impact of the pavilion. The tiles were attached to the curved parametric building with an intelligent anchoring system. The undercut anchors by KEIL of Engelskirchen used for this made the secure and invisible installation possible. The pavilion which has been created is an impressive statement of the possibilities offered by technical detail solutions to modern architecture and façade design.

The Expo 2015, taking place in Milan until 31 October of this year, has the theme of “Feeding the Planet – Energy for Life”. A total of 155 nations participate in the world exhibition and leave visitors with a lasting impression with the individual and unusual architecture of their national pavilions. This year, the Chinese real estate company Vanke is represented with its own pavilion. The interior of the pavilion represents a traditional communal Chinese dining hall, a “Shitang” with its customs and utensils – and thus takes up the theme of the world exhibition.

4,200 ceramic tiles

The façade cladding of the Pavilion sets the tone. Specially designed 60 x 60 centimetre porcelain stoneware tiles are used for this. They are attached with the KEIL undercut system. The fixing points are not visible so that the special visual impact of the tiles is not adversely impacted. The mixture of clays, quartzes and feldspars used for the tiles in combination with a metallic glaze rich in oxides provide for a ceramic surface with dynamic effect. In addition, the tiles were given a fractal 3D pattern. As a result, the colour appearance of the pavilion changes – depending on incidence of light, time of day and viewing angle of the observer – from a deep red to shimmering gold. A total of 4,200 tiles are used for the scale-like skin of the building. The individual elements do not touch and thus create their own shadows.

Extraordinary façade construction

The flowing curved shape of the building demands a clever façade structure and the thought out installation of the individual elements. The supporting steel structure of the pavilion consists of portals and struts which lend shape to the complex geometry. Profile sheets were mounted horizontally with joint cement and provided with a secondary support layer. A cladding layer follows consisting of mineralised wood-fibre panels and graphite polystyrene panels covered with render protecting the building from air and water. However, the façade becomes complete only with the ceramic tiles. To attach them, steel squares are anchored to the structure of the pavilion and welded to round calendered steel rods. The latter surround the architectural shape and run parallel below each other. They form the base for the subsequent installation of the façade tiles.

Requirements for the installation of the façade panels

The façade cladding must follow the curved shape of the building and create a uniform organic impression. For this reason the ceramic tiles were fitted on the rear with metal plates and a system which enabled adjustment during installation. Thus an adjustment to the asymmetric shape was possible on site. Another aspect for the attachment of the tiles was safety: unexpected breakage of individual tiles or loading from wind gusts and other weather effects must not endanger the structure. In addition, the attachment had to be invisible so that the harmonic overall impression of the sinuous building was not impaired.

Anchor system for invisible attachment

The KEIL undercut technology is particularly suitable for these requirements: For the Vanke Pavilion in Milan, this intelligent system enables the invisible and, at the same time, very secure attachment of the façade cladding. The attachment points are on the rear of the tiles. A special drill bit produces the cylindrical hole as well as the conical undercut in one step. These form the basis for the attachment of the undercut anchor consisting of an anchor sleeve and a hex screw. When the screw is inserted, the anchor sleeve settles into the undercut hole with a positive fit and free from stress. The different diameters of hole and undercut ensure a secure hold – without loading the tile. Thus stress cracks are avoided. The tile can be cleanly attached to the support structure with the bracket situated between anchor sleeve and screw.

Approved system

In addition to the tiles used in Milan, other materials, too – such as natural stone, cast stone and glass fibre reinforced concrete – can also be attached with the KEIL undercut technology. The system has extensive building approvals – also at European level. Thus the manufacturers of façade material no longer have to obtain their own approvals. For the planner, this means the greatest possible selection of façade materials for the design and their attachment under defined conditions with clear performance parameters. The seismic safety of this technology has been tested up to magnitude 9.4 on the open-ended Richter scale. Characteristic values for wind suction loading are also available. Internationally, the attachment has proven itself under extreme weather conditions – in the cold of Novosibirsk and the heat of Kuwait.

Building with a striking character

With a height of twelve metres and a gross floor area of 740 square metres per floor, the Vanke Pavilion in Milan has a nett exhibition space of more than 900 square metres. Even from a distance, the curved building stands out clearly and acts as a magnet to visitors due to its innovative architecture. The organic shape mirrors the Chinese landscape with its mountains, rivers and hills and at the same time its scale-like surface recalls a dragon. The pavilion is an outstanding architectural example for innovative façade design and emphatically highlights the use of technical solutions. The sophisticated attachment technology by KEIL opens up many possibilities of designing a harmonious façade without visible attachment points. Read the rest of this entry »

Sited in the currently emerging Bahrain Bay, just north of Manama, the tower encompasses housing, offices, retail, and public spaces–all of which seek to remain flexible and adaptable to future change. In this way, as Bahrain Bay further develops, the tower strengthens local character and supports community needs, while simultaneously creating an iconic destination. Standing at a height of 49 stories–or 170 m–it is composed of two housing components atop of plinth of retail, offices, and a parking garage, the last of which occupies seven stories and includes 700 spaces. The creation of these two housing components within one site, maximizes the amount of glazing within each housing unit, and engages the tower with its adjacent buildings, which also stand at 170 m.

The plinth’s ground floor is publicly accessible and is mostly composed of retail and public lobby space. Due to a division of these ground floor spaces, along the site’s southern edge, a breezeway was created that allows the public to traverse the tower’s entire site–without entering its interior–which serves to infuse the tower’s immediate context with pedestrian life. In this way, the ground level frontages of the tower’s retail spaces are maximized. This also increases the amount of evening lighting on the ground floor, and thus also the adjacent sidewalks and pedestrian walkways. Common areas accessible to all residents–such as cafés and wellness centers–are dispersed throughout the tower, the largest of which is a sprawling roof garden on the tenth floor.

Four types of housing occupy both components of the tower: studio, one-, two-, and three-bedroom units. All are organized in such a way, so that minimum circulation is wrapped around the core, which enables circulation to instead be allocated to the interior of each unit; this maximizes their amount of living space. Each unit was designed so that there are two walls of glazing along their exterior edges, which was made possible by the placement of–most often–four units on each of the tower’s living levels. Floor-to-ceiling height operable windows allow for ample access to light and air from within each living space. Due to this increased floor area ratio, each unit has a covered exterior space nearly equal in size to its interior. And as the circulation of each housing unit occurs along its glazed edges, rather than through an interior corridor, the transition between inside and outside within each unit is dissolved, which allows for seamless living between interior and exterior spaces.

Due to the extensive amounts of glazing on the tower’s façade, a panel-like system of sliding aluminum louvers serves as an additional layer of privacy and shading–in tandem with the façade’s treated glass, and the covered exterior terraces. Together, these elements protect the tower’s interior from passive solar gain, while the louvers lend to the tower, an ever changing and thus chameleon-like appearance, due to the reflections they catch from direct sunlight. As the tower reinterprets its immediate historic context by innovating while retaining essential cultural characteristics, its housing, offices, and retail spaces impart an understated elegance, modernity, and iconic world-class address in Bahrain Bay. Read the rest of this entry »

Sport complex “Diana” is located in vast urban park in the heart of city of Yambol. The project is reconstruction of existing sport hall with capacity of 800 spectators and extension with new multifunctional sport hall with capacity of 3500 spectators. The aim of the project is not only to add bigger sport hall, but to transform the building in multifunctional sport complex for sport and cultural events. Thus the complex will be significant and vibrant part of urban fabric.

The main architectural approach of the building`s design is to provide a comprehensive sustainable architectural concept for the sport complex and the public space around it.

NEW MULTIFUNCTIONAL HALL
The heart of the complex will be new bigger hall with multifunctional sport field with four sided spectators seats. The hall will be used for sport events, cultural events and concerts. The hall interior is dominated by rough reinforced concrete spectator platforms and the fluid lines of the roof. The hall space is not divide from the foyers and thus made it more vast and dynamic. The fluid forms of the “building skin” follows the functional requirements for height and space.

EXISTING HALL RECONSTRUCTION
The orthogonal volumes of the existing hall will be reconstructed as a contrast of the bio forms of the new addition. The two parts (new and existing) will be cladded with same aluminium composite panels with light “hameleon” color. The existing hall will be used for training purposes.

SURROUNDING PUBLIC SPACE
The complex is naturally flow in the park environment. It serves as border /entrance to the park from the adjacent boulevard where the new hall is faced. There is a pedestrian bridge from the boulevard to the hall which is suspended above the parking.

Architect: StudioATM Read the rest of this entry »

The skin of the Abra is an adaptive response solution for an outdoor music pavilion allowing for optimal sun penetration, natural ventilation, and acoustics. The pavilion serves as a temporary summer installation for music festivals in the city of Chicago.

Depending on the pavilion’s location in relation to the sun, certain panels will decrease their opening to allow ambient filtered light, while others maintain a full flexed position for natural ventilation. Thin film photovoltaics are added to the skin to absorb ambient sunlight allowing for omni directional solar gain as they wrap around the shell of the pavilion. The angular projections from the openings reflect the music from the ceiling and walls allowing for the sound waves to reach the ear and become embellished. Due to the lightweight construction, the pavilion is easily movable from location to location which is why it’s adaptation to different orientations is so necessary.

Design: Tashio Martinez Read the rest of this entry »

This bespoke living space is designed in a private residence located in Delhi-NCR, India. The brief was to transform the existing space into an interactive dynamic space that would be used as a family lounge as well as for guests.

The design proposal looks at analyzing the movement patterns and thereby designing two islands in the space. Geometrically they are carved out of each other, maintaining the design coherence. One island focuses on seating and the other one focuses on creating a wall paneling system that extends and integrates into the sitting as well.

Feature wall inculcates the design language of the room. Free flowing curves have been used which transform from shelving systems to seating to a wall pattern and also encases LED lights to give a soft mood lighting to the space.

The sofas, tables, wall systems were designed as bespoke elements specifically for this space and to create a unique compact design not governed by existing modular sizes available. The carpet was also custom made.

Complete Sustainability was achieved due to the chosen design principles of low-impact materials, energy efficiency and renewability of the materials. Materials were used that were locally available The production and choice of materials was governed by this principal and it was ensured that material available within 5 km distance were used to cut down the transportation distance. Also the production process took place on site itself using energy efficient processes.

Use of locally available materials and techniques ensured in keeping the cost of project economical. The local craftsmen and the basic tools that were used was kept in consideration during the construction drawing phase. Wooden ribs were designed for the sofas to create the framework for them which was filled in with foam and finished by hand stitched upholstery.

The color scheme of the room has been kept as white and gold. A play of textures is evident in the space in these two colors itself.

Architects: Studio Symbiosis
Principal Architect’s: Amit Gupta and Britta Knobel Gupta
Project Team: M. Shaique Uddin, Rishi Sapra, Mayank Ojha Read the rest of this entry »

The proposed house designed by Constantinos Kalisperas Architectural Studio is situated in the outer suburbs of Nicosia surrounded by the endless tranquility of the majestic agricultural terrains.

Inspired by the existing topography of the area, form and landscape interweave into one hybrid structure, allowing for multi-layered program, views and landscape to co-exist harmoniously.

The proposal was perceived, taking into consideration the traditional local architecture of having an internal courtyard (iliakos) as the main core of the building, so as to allow the surrounding program to interact fluently within its boundaries.

Using openings (iliakous) as a tool for unifying spatial and programmatic qualities within the building’s essence, the proposal allows natural sunlight to gently penetrate and gradually evolve as a controlled environment, a “secret garden”, within and below the dynamically suspended envelope, floating above ground level.

The dynamic form of the house projecting from the ground towards the sky achieves additional spatial and programmatic organization, revealing its programmatic qualities into the surrounding topography and beyond. The tectonic plate of the volume above provides “shelter” to the courtyard below.

The courtyard becomes a transitional zone between living and resting areas. The living areas allow the external garden to interact, “dissolving” the internal and external, public and private boundaries. The bedroom area suspended from above allowing constant natural air flow and multiple views towards the pool area and beyond.

Small openings, like progressive “urban noise” throughout the external envelope of the proposal, become “devices” for filtering light within the sheltered spaces at different timeframes. Carefully placed, each opening allows both users and externals to frame views of the scenery, and vice-versa, like a “collective camera”.

Throughout its dynamic presence the formal and programmatic morphology of the proposal inspires a subtle “contrast” to the poetic wilderness of the endless urban terrain and its golden fields. Read the rest of this entry »

The existing circular silo structure emerging form a pond triggers the idea of a water garden inhabited by aquatic plants. Circular as lotus leaves, four volumes are stacked up within the silo; circular isles and green areas define the external spaces.

As in a natural pond where reeds emerge form the shallow water, the emerging volumes are shaded with an uneven screen of bamboo trunks. The iconic existing silo structure is respected and left stand alone, its main inner space acting as a common public square.

The new volumes and the two existing brick buildings accommodate the spaces for an ideas factory, an unconventional place where people can work and create, share their ideas and meditate. Inspired by nature and led by design, the new si.lotus garden factory poetically inhabits the place.

Design: Pelizzi Architettura Read the rest of this entry »

Inspired by lace, Dense Atmosphere, explores the possibility of creating complex atmosphere using a basic construction material – lumber. The structure utilizes lace like densities to both block and reveal activities in the building promoting religious understanding.

Designed in response to the scale of the construction material, the structure is based of a grid defined by the structural capabilities of the material. Using a 2×4 as a proposed material, the grid becomes constrained to a maximum of 6’ by 6’ based on the member’s span distance as a beam. This results in a dense flat grid that is extruded to the maximum possible height of the member acting as a column: 16’. The column elements are slanted to affect visitors at the scale of an individual. Movement becomes more restrained thus the visitor of the building is slowed down and encouraged to experience wandering rather than rushing. In order to connect the visitor with the building, the grid houses stacks of books. These are observed by the visitor as he experiences the building. As the individual continues to explore the building, he begins to discover larger spaces. These are freed from the density of the angled columns. Even though these spaces are more open than the rest of the building, they still feel enclosed as result of the aggregations formed around them. These voids provide a sense of serenity that is used for meditation.

Design: Mircea Eni at the Illinois Institute of Technology Read the rest of this entry »

Designed by UK’s Metropolitan Office of Innovation (MOI), Shanghai Office, YOHO City is a new architectural landmark for the Jiangsu’s ‘forgotten’ city of Sui Ning, China. The development is a playful and efficient sustainable mixed-use that is designed to balance modern needs together with traditional Chinese historical culture and spatial identity.

Sui Ning will become a new major gateway that connects other cities around the area to Anhui and Xuzhou and further onto Suzhou, Nanjing and Shanghai. Taking inspiration from the Province’s historically famous silk weaving, the building layout and master plan creates streets, boulevards, plazas and squares by ‘stitching up’ the broken city fabric that currently separates the site’s surrounding and rest of the city, creating a new vibrant commercial hub that regenerates the area.

The single tower, acts as a beacon, fans out and is wider on the west and east side to capture the river view and natural wind breeze to the south creating a more comfortable environment for the hotel guests and serviced apartment residents on the upper levels. The SoHo offices on the lower floors have outdoor terrace access with views to the courtyard and commercial plazas with direct access to the riverfront via a pedestrian bridge linked at the 4th floor helping to activate and create a new water promenade for the city.

This unique 140,000 sqm development (excluding underground and parking), is designed to kick-start this forgotten region of the Jiangsu Provence and incorporates traditional Chinese cultural element such a courtyards and shaded walkways in providing a sustainable and inspiring place for people for all seasons of the Jiangsu weather whilst garden terraces at all levels and bridging to the river’s edge create a harmonious connection between the built and natural environment. Read the rest of this entry »