Dutch, India, Delhi, kinara store, mecanoo, Archohm, workshop, pavilion, design village, social encounters

Dutch practice Mecanoo Architecten worked together with Delhi’s Archohm, in order to design pavilions for the design campus at the Design Village in Delhi, India. The idea was that The Design Village would be generated along a central spine called the Ducth path, where pavilions will be placed with the aim of creating social catalysts by solving the daily needs of the users this campus.

One of the focus points of the Dutch path pavilions is to analyze and criticize their conventional program and function and reinvent them in a new innovative point of view to the typical functions required in a university campus. This way the designers would influence the future designers and show them that design can be a tool to solve people’s primary needs, and innovation is a continuous process for progress.

Rather than simply addressing the typical function of a convenience store – buying and selling, the pavilion aims at creating social encounters around it. Reinventing the conventional Indian “kinara store” by the opposition to the concept of closed introvert convenience store, exposing its most primary function to the exterior, it becomes the shopping social center of the Dutch path that is a magnet to attract interaction and enable chance of encounters.

The pavilion design and concept is based on modesty, openness, transparency and sustainability by using the natural resources that provides its surroundings, academic architecture principles and local construction system. With the motto that form follows anything, it criticizes the current trending of irresponsible iconic architecture. It solves first issues of shelter, shield, light, ventilation, function, structure, construction, etc. Form will come, it will follow its principles, avoiding pretentious forms and making it typical it will become special. The project pretends to be an example of simplicity and architecture principles, serving as a learning experience for the future students of the Design Village which will be the users of this building. Read the rest of this entry »

Stuart weitzman, milan, zaha hadid architects, flagship stoe, hong kong, new york, interior, gold, landscape, fashion

Zaha Hadid Architects competed 3,000 square-foot Stuart Weitzman Flagship store in Milan. It is created in playful dialogue of geometries which further create a rhythm of folds and recesses, shaped by functional considerations. Central design pieces and display units have been designed to showcase the collection while also providing seating. The design creates interior landscape, rooted in monochromatic palette. An intricate combination of materials and construction technologies has defined the spatial experience in the store. The modular seating and display elements have been constructed in fiberglass, dipped in rose gold.

The store walls and ceilings are made in glass-reinforced concrete, which shows solidity together with precision of complex curvatures, which generate focal points and areas for display. The design concept of the store is divided into variant and adaptive elements. Enabling the design to establish unique relationship within each world-ride location, the space had to be recognized at the same time as Stuart Weitzman store. Additional flagship stores are planned to be strategically located around the world – starting from Hong Kong, Rome and New York.

This vivid interior, chic and joyful but shaped after ergonomic needs is a statement design,which offers breathtaking experience to the customer, due to both fashion and architectural pieces. At Stuart Weitzman they state that this was a major new initiative that will help achieve the next phase of growth and raise brand recognition worldwide. They believe that the marriage of Zaha Hadid’s architecture and the very collection will create one-of-a-kind retail experience. Read the rest of this entry »

Lava, Laboratory for Visionary Architecture, Jeju Hills Hotel Resort, Korea, Jeju, hotel, organic, landform, landscape, arup

LAVA– Laboratory for Visionary Architecture designed Jeju Hills Hotel Resort for Korea – the island will house a luxurious hotel designed as another landform. JeJu is a mountainous volcanic landform located in the south east of South Korea. The island acts as a major holiday destination for South Koreans, as well as the Chinese and Japanese, as a result of its unique location between the three East Asian nations. The beautiful natural landscape and its seasonal variation attracts locals and holidaymakers alike. The island is home to the world heritage Hallasan volcano and lava tubes, a national icon and tourist destination.

The hotel is designed as a landform. ‘Valleys and canyons’, generated as a topological structure, form 2000 rooms around a terracing facade and internal courtyard rooms around interconnected open atrium spaces. These spaces connect to form a continuous green landscape throughout the interior of the hotel creating a natural atmosphere. This landscape continues to the canyon between the two sinuous residential zones, accentuating the connection with the beachfront forest over which they look. The whole development forms continuous landscape, within and out. The hotel also houses a cinema, restaurants, aquarium, waterfront promenade and marina seamlessly interact with a continuous shopping and retail experience. These activities seamlessly interact with the natural beauty of JeJu.

The development is 600,000 square meters in total, with the highest volumes reaching 77 meters. Organic in form, it represents the perfect continuation of the natural landscape of the island, minimizing visual impact. Read the rest of this entry »

Spiral, big, watch making, Switzerland, le brassus, vallee de joux, audemars piguet, addition, pavilion

BIG’s addition to the Maison des Fondateurs will be located among of the historical complex of workshops and factories in Le Brassus, Switzerland, in the heart of La Vallée de Joux. Its organization and architecture embodies the core values of Audemars Piguet. It had to be characterized by the independent spirit of the family owned company that has retained autonomy over the years, making it a game changing innovator in a field governed by rules and traditions.

This spiral proposal is rooted in the heritage of watch-making in La Vallée de Joux that goes back centuries and is nested in the nature and culture of the place and the people of the valley. And finally it had to incorporate the inner tension that characterizes Audemars Piguet and resonates throughout the brand, the craft and the designs as captured in the motto – to break the rules you must first master them. La Maison des Fondateurs is conceived as an oxymoron, striking but subtle, contemporary yet timeless. Functional and sculptural. Floating yet rooted. Local presence with a global resonance.

The spiral landmark is seamlessly integrated in the local landscape. The architecture aimed to be contemporary yet timeless in order to blend with the historical buildings and to create an intuitive sequence of spaces – old and new. A pavilion for the art and science of watch making is conceived as storyline for the visitors – every element governed by the functional requirements of the exhibition, appears as a striking sculpture conceived in a single gesture. Read the rest of this entry »

Tensegrity, tensile structure, arup, withinlab, 3d printing, steel, Australia, carbon footprint, cutting waste, sustainable

Arup engineers pushed the boundaries of 3D printing – by using the latest techniques – additive manufacturing – the team has created a design method for critical structural steel elements for use in more complex projects. The work gives a whole new direction for the use of additive manufacturing in the field of construction and engineering. The research also shows that additive manufacturing has the potential to significantly reduce costs, cut waste and slash the carbon footprint of the construction sector, which is essential in an era of environmental awareness.

Salomé Galjaard, Team Leader at Arup, states that by using additive manufacturing it is possible to create lots of complex individually designed pieces far more efficiently. This has tremendous implications for reducing costs and cutting waste. Most importantly, this approach potentially enables a very sophisticated design, without the need to simplify the design in a later stage to lower costs.

They created a redesign of a steel node for a light weight structure using additive manufacturing. Arup has a lot of experience with these kinds of structures, for example the tensegrity structure of the Kurilpa Bridge in Australia. The complex geometry of these kinds of nodes is an ideal showcase of the possibilities of this new technique.

Arup funded the development work and collaborated with a number of partners to realize the designs, including WithinLab (an engineering design software and consulting company), CRDM/3D Systems (the Additive Manufacturing partner) and EOS, who worked on the early development of the technology. Read the rest of this entry »

Oromia Bank Tower

By:  | June - 10 - 2014

Architectural competition, competition, LAVA, Laboratory for Visionary Architecture, Ethiopia, oromia, proposal, high-tech, tower, skyscraper, sustainable design, sustainable

In an era which could be defined by dominant need of representation of the power and by inevitable environmental awareness on the other side, LAVA’s concept for the Oromia Bank Tower in Oromia, Ethiopia brings the promising compromise – it creates an environmentally responsive icon, inspired by the local cultural identity and uses nature’s fluid geometry to be both efficient and beautiful. The façade design references waterfalls, the fine texture of local woven baskets, whilst the rich colors of opals highlight the significance of this national institution.

High-tech methodology of the tower combined with local construction and delivery techniques create a sophisticated tower borne out of a strong sense of place. Simply organized, the sky-scraper consists of an iconic main banking hall on the ground floor with 20 levels of office space above.

More with less has been achieved by the innovative integration of structure and environmental control systems. A façade of external fins controls solar gain and reflects light deep into the floor space, saving energy. The tower’s upper levels step back to give way to a spectacular rooftop cafe, complete with a solar harvesting open-air roof canopy. Optimized site boundaries, maximized plot coverage, adaptability for future proofing and efficient floor plate dimensions all combine to create a tower that is at once iconic, efficient and forecasts a strong future direction for the city.

Oromia Bank Tower project by Laboratory for Visionary Architecture is a competition proposal, done together with JDAW Battle McCarthy Architects. Read the rest of this entry »

, ben van berkel, Beijing, china, development, tower, high rise, mixed-use, scitech, public zones

The Scitech mixed-use redevelopment by UNStudio is located on a crossing point of traditional and modern developments in Beijing, China. The site is adjacent to the city’s east-west central axis leading to the Tiananmen Square. UNStudio’s massing strategy for the plot focuses on creating optimal links between the mixed-use programming of the redevelopment, whilst interweaving a dense low rise development with a high rise component. Simultaneously, through phasing the redevelopment, the existing retail mall is integrated into the design from the outset.

In the low rise portion of the new development, a series of connected courtyards organize the different programs around the user flows to form an urban carpet, providing outdoor and indoor spaces which combine programs through internal and external links. This five to seven storey high podium is designed as an undulating landscape that organizes the traffic flows on its perimeters, whilst providing interior green and sheltered spaces for pedestrian access. The towers emerge from the low rise base and provide singular usage for hotel and office premises. In the intersection with the low rise podium, functions are allocated accordingly to create maximum synergy between activities in the low rise zone and the towers. The public zones in the towers are highlighted by connected atria and voids.

The podium is primarily dedicated to retail function with five levels underground and eight levels above ground, including spa and conference facilities located within the upper floor and roof-scape. Three underground levels provide parking facilities, and the remaining two house a supermarket, food court and programmatically arranged drop offs to sustain the ground level for pedestrians. These levels have visual links and vertical circulation to the upper levels through a series of voids. The main circulation concept utilizes clustered atriums instead of one central atrium. This concept enables stretched diagonal visual and physical links as well as local aggregations of varied atmospheres. Read the rest of this entry »

Miami, florida, SOM, hub, transportation hub, railway, multi-modal, iconic, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP. All Aboard Florida’s passenger stations , Fort Lauderdale, West Palm Beach

SOM’s design for All Aboard Florida’s new multi-modal hub for Miami is finally revealed. In addition to the Miami hub, SOM is also planning and designing All Aboard Florida’s passenger stations in Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach. All Aboard Florida’s 235-mile network of rail lines will connect South Florida to Orlando by utilizing the current rail infrastructure for the Florida East Coast Corridor between Miami and the Space Coast and creating new tracks into Central Florida. The transformational infrastructure project will provide a vital new service for Florida residents, business people, and visitors and eliminate more than three million car trips from the region’s roadways each year.

All Aboard Florida integrates transportation infrastructure with mixed use development to serve as a catalyst for transformation and economic vitality in a city that is quickly becoming a model for urban living today. At SOM, they state that the project is a true celebration of the power and potential of transit-oriented development.

SOM’s three stations will be key portals within All Aboard Florida’s rail system. Envisioned not only as gateways to their respective cities, but also as iconic destinations, the terminals will be filled with spaces to shop, eat, and meet. In downtown Miami, SOM has responded to an extraordinarily challenging and dense site by elevating the railways 50 feet in the air. Retail spaces are vertically layered beneath the soaring tracks and ample use of glass will give the station a shimmering, lightweight quality. This innovative solution allows thru-streets to remain open to traffic and for valuable street front real estate to remain leasable. Moreover, this bold architectural gesture creates a landmark terminal, serving as a symbol of a 21st-century Miami. Read the rest of this entry »

UNStudio, Paris, France, bioclimatic, tower, sustainability, second skin, active strategies, passive strategies, flexibility

La Tour Bioclimatique office tower by UNStudio was designed as an organizing element for the previously disconnected programmatic clusters within the Issy-Les-Moulineaux area of Paris. In order to find the most optimal placement on the site, a typological study was performed, resulting in a streamlined plan that gives an optimal basic plan.This basic plan of the building has been further optimized into a smart organization by utilizing software driven form-finding processes which take into account optimal floor area in relation to compact core design, optimal facade length and daylight penetration for the offices.

As they state at UNStudio, sustainability is an integral part of the design process as three interconnected entities – passive sustainability which focuses on non-technological parameters such as building efficiency, flexibility and materials; active sustainability which integrates fully the design of technological techniques to advance the operational efficiency and social sustainability which caters on the level of user comfort and the influence of the building on its surroundings on multiple scale levels. Next to building efficiency, flexibility is an equally important factor for ensuring future usability. The floor plan and vertical distribution are designed in such a way that many different tenant scenarios can be realized.

The facade functions as a skin for the building that contains all the key factors of a sustainable high-rise building. The concept of the natural ventilated double facade is limited to a height range of 1-4 floors to prevent the risk of overheating, allowing the system to perform to highest standards in all seasons. The building influences the comfort and well-being of individuals by incorporating working environments with different qualities, such as communal work spaces, concentration work spaces, lounges, meeting centers, team work centers. By connecting floors through the expanded double facades and by planting these spaces, vertical office gardens can be created to provide pleasant working environments. Read the rest of this entry »

Memorial plaza, Snøhetta, New York, US, pavilion, ground zero, world trade center, LEED, wtc

The National September 11 Memorial Pavilion opened May 21st. Snøhetta was commissioned to design the only building on the memorial plaza at the World Trade Center site. The program has changed several times, however it has remained a cultural facility dedicated to visitor comfort and orientation. The design for the building embodies a careful reaction to the horizontal character of the memorial plaza’s design, while also providing the area with a lively organic form that allows the visitor to imagine the site and city in a broader sense.

Snøhetta’s design approach has always been characterized by an exploration of context. The WTC Memorial site carries with it both the power of its history and a new hope for the future. It is a place that conveys the memories and dreams of people around the world who are affected by its presence without forgetting its intimate connection to the people of New York. With its low, horizontal form and its uplifting geometry the Pavilion acts as a bridge between two worlds – between the Memorial and the Museum, the above and below ground, the light and dark, between collective and individual experiences. Inclined, reflective and transparent surfaces encourage people to walk up close, touch and gaze into the building.

Within the atrium there will stand two structural columns rescued from the original towers. Although removed from their former location and function, they mark the site with their own original aesthetic gesture. The Pavilion’s jewel-like, striped façade was developed in collaboration with the Client to allow the building to have a strong resonance for the visitor as well as providing visual and architectural connection to the surrounding urban environment. The flat plane of the Memorial Plaza is pierced by the glass Atrium of the Pavilion, which allows visitors to enter the below-grade Museum and bring with them sunlight from above.

Memorial plaza, Snøhetta, New York, US, pavilion, ground zero, world trade center, LEED, wtc

Memorial plaza, Snøhetta, New York, US, pavilion, ground zero, world trade center, LEED, wtc

Memorial plaza, Snøhetta, New York, US, pavilion, ground zero, world trade center, LEED, wtc

Memorial plaza, Snøhetta, New York, US, pavilion, ground zero, world trade center, LEED, wtc

Memorial plaza, Snøhetta, New York, US, pavilion, ground zero, world trade center, LEED, wtc

Memorial plaza, Snøhetta, New York, US, pavilion, ground zero, world trade center, LEED, wtc