The SOHO Hailun Plaza is designed by UNStudio for Shanghai, China. The development is located at the intersection of two metro lines, therefore providing great connections to public transport and a desirable location for office and retail. It consists of 130m, 33 storey high office tower and 5 mixed-use and retail-office pavilions. Due to their placement as objects in the flow of commuters, the pavilions together with the tower direct the crowd and organize the outdoor spaces in different scales, providing the platform for a variety of urban activities.

The façade is the key element of this multi-object structure – it is constantly changing and it is multifaceted so it resembles the dragon skin. In the words of the architects, it’s the façade design that emphases the buildings as singular objects. The geometry is curved, yet with strong vertical lines and it permanently connects the buildings with the city of Shanghai. Together with colored texture of faceted facades, the development provides changing and dynamic appearance when approached from different directions. Read the rest of this entry »

A gigantic installation work by Tomás Saraceno, “In orbit,” was assembled this June in the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen in Germany. It is a suspended construction of steel sheet nets, in three levels under the glass dome and it consists of more the 2,500 square meters of mesh structure and half dozen spheres –air-filled balls of up to 8.5 meters in diameter. Visitors can enter the transparent installation and move freely in all three levels between the balls.

The whole installation looks like a surreal landscape, resembling a sea of clouds. The space is organized as a swinging network of relationships, resonances and synchronous communication. If it is entered by more than one person, the installation is set in motion and the tension of the steel cables changes. If the activities of the users are coordinated, the installation provides unique perception of the space, like from a spider web, due to vibration. Read the rest of this entry »

Few days ago, MAD Architects finally revealed their latest design for Beijing. The green building project, designed by Ma Yansong, was launched at Times Square, in New York. The project is a contemporary interpretation of China’s ancient natural philosophy in contemporary city and represents the continuation of “Shan-Shui City” – a design concept the architect has been pursuing. The location that surrounds the Chaoyang Park is reserved for extreme-modernism buildings and Yansong’s aim was to infuse the vigorous Shan-Shui culture into the new urbanization with this particular project.

The project is actually an addition to the world’s second largest city part and its author hopes that the high-rise won’t become the boundary which would separate the park from the city. Actually, the aim was opposite – by introducing Shan-Shui elements into the design, the building and the park are merged with the landscape and they became the natural extension of the city. Read the rest of this entry »

Austrian firm Coop Himmelb(l)au has designed the winning entry for the Dawang Mountain Resort Changsha, in China – winter sports resort and water park across an abandoned cement-mining quarry and lake. The winning proposal combines an Entertainment ice world with an Indoor Ski Slope, a Water Park and supporting leisure facilities.

The aim was to integrate the building’s volume into a unique landscape and the resort is positioned directly on top of a historical cement mining quarry pit and the lake. In the design solution towards the South and East, the existing quarry pit is revealed and the sculpted shell of the Snow and Ice World spans 170 meters from cliff to cliff over a sunken and hanging garden creating a new functional leisure space of islands, water, cliffside pathways and ramps connecting the building to this natural heritage. Read the rest of this entry »

RTA Office’s design for Telecommunication Tower for Istanbul is left to the citizens and to their free interpretation – the form suggests it could be a minaret sculpted by the wind or a twenty-first century lighthouse or none of the above. However, architects at RTA office strongly believe that the success of the idea depends on the way the designers understand the site. Therefore their proposal comes as a response to this very specific and strategically important point which bridges the gap between Europe and Asia, merging cultures and continents.

Through the history, Istanbul was characterized by the respect for its geography – for this reason the aim was to offer a proposal which would not jeopardize this relationship, but on contrary that would provide an end to the conquest of the buildings and artifacts at this specific site. That was the reason why the design proposal is not an actual building but more an object that undoubtedly reveals the natural and environmental attributes of the place and doesn’t belong to the city but to the landscape.

The shape to the tower is given by the sum of flexible threads that adapt to the body. As the shape varies so does the floor plan which allows different functions within the same tower.  Regarding the energy sources, the tower works on wind power but as such it also clearly resembles an element that had been shaped by the wind. The texture of the tower changes in perception as the visitor is approaching the object –from solid it transforms into a mesh.

Spatial Practice is the architectural office behind the project of Harbin High Speed Railway west train station Twin Towers. The landmark structure is mixed-use and houses office spaces, residential apartments, retail spaces and a connection to a new underground infra-structural hub.

The Station in Harbin city will become the northern China gateway, linking major cities with daily high-speed links to Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai and Guangzhou. Harbin West Station is a transportation hub and the towers fully benefit from sitting on it and being hyper-connected to city’s main infrastructure – distances are shorter and faster business transactions and communication is encouraged.

The Towers are the new icon of the Haxi Business Development Zone and they balance the relationship between empty and full, mass and void, private and public. Each tower communicates specifically with the site, with the north SoHo and Service Apartment tower atrium opening toward the Plaza, and the south Office Tower atrium oriented toward the Business District. Read the rest of this entry »

This temporary pavilion in Salzburg, designed by Soma Architecture, presents unique venue for contemporary art production in the city known for its classical music events. The main user of the structure was a contemporary music festival – the Salzburg Biennale and during next ten years the pavilion will move and will be used for various art events at different locations.

As the art as a process which involves many participants doesn’t reveal itself at first sight, but demands time and engagement and unfolds slowly, the pavilion’s appearance provokes curiosity and invites visitors to experience the unusual and unknown.

The main architectural concept of the pavilion is repetitive and inherited – rule and variation. The design process is based on repetition of one element and they are aggregated by a set of rules, according to the architectural effect the architects aimed for. Aluminum profiles of uniform length together produce irregular, mass-like conglomerate that changes in appearance during the day, depending on present light condition. Read the rest of this entry »

Tetsuo Kondo Architects created playful installation for the Sunken Garden of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo. In collaboration with Transsolar, they designed a small bank of clouds that are captured in the transparent, two-storey container and could be seen from the outdoor plaza, entrance hall, exhibition galleries and other parts of the museum.  This cloud installation is the second one created by this team – trey previously collaborated to produce an indoor cloud at the Venice Biennale in 2010.

When one climbs the stairs beyond the clouds to reach the top of the cube, the museum, the surrounding buildings, and the sky stretch out above the clouds. The clouds are in constant motion and their edges are both sharp and soft. Color, density and brightness are ever changing, depending on the weather and the time of the day. Read the rest of this entry »

Places of culture always form very significant network in every urban center. The city of Sejong in South Korea will strongly benefit from a new Center for the Performing Arts, as the vital part of the city’s emergence and growth. Designed by Asymptote Architecture, the proposal calls for architecture rooted in the contemporary urban life of Sejong as well as it celebrates the contemporary culture as expressed through elegant and sophisticated design principles.

The aim of the designers of this performing center was to capture the spirit and flavors of local architectural traditions therefore the elegant, curved roofs of pavilions, temples and traditional, monumental buildings are transformed in the architecture of contemporary expression, allowing continuity of culture and city’s 21^st century cultural aspirations. Read the rest of this entry »

The design for the new Petersen Automotive Museum has been finally revealed. The announcement that the 20th anniversary of the company will be marked by complete exterior transformation and significant redesign of the interior followed the controversy. However, New York based office Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates is behind the cutting edge design for the new Petersen Museum. Undulating metal façade followed by stunning interior characterizes their proposal for the corner of Wilshire Boulevard at Fairfax in Los Angeles, showing California’s rich automotive heritage.

The new design for the Museum will transform the building into a landmark. Ribbons of stainless steel wrap the structure from three sides and over the top evoking the notion of speed and the organic form of the coach-built automobile. At night, the Museum is lit and transforms into an attraction for the neighborhood, known as The Miracle Mile. Read the rest of this entry »