Sydney, Australia, Infinity by Crown, landmark, icon, residential, mixed-use, Takada Architects, loop

‘Infinity by Crown’ Landmark is ambitious mixed-use, multi-residential complex, designed by Koichi Takada Architects. Located at the gateway of the Green Square Town Center in Sydney, the proposed scheme aims to engage the public through architecture and to become a seamless interchange of public and residential activities. Constant pedestrian movement around the perimeter of the building, as well as public activities and traffic flow, sculpts its fluid architectural form entertaining more than a static architectural state. It defines a new and interactive residential typology. It is a symbol of new architectural influence and the future of a new living center in Sydney.

The relationship between the public and residential activation has become intrinsic to the concept of ‘Infinity by Crown’. The design features are represented in the blend of two loops – one designed to activate the public plaza and street-scape, the other providing amenity and open space for residents. The feature loop provides an iconic and recognizable form in the skyline, with a strong presentation to, and activation of the public domain.

The residential loop, north-oriented, lets sun and breeze into the public loop and central courtyard throughout the year, making it an inviting and attractive space for the public to gather. The continuing loop, as it tilts toward the plaza, defines and enhances the connection to the public domain and protection of the solar access to the adjacent Green Square Plaza. The unique garden terraces provide a gentle transition into the urban fabric, relating to the ambitions of a lively, connected, green and sustainable master plan.

The two loops connect, becoming a seamless and continuous part of the architectural fabric. The resulting design is one that is fluid, connected, activated and responsive to the urban context of Green Square Town Center and its desire for a new vision of architecture. Read the rest of this entry »

Green design, sustainable design, vertical gardens, school design, Stockholm, Sweden, 3XN Architects, 3XN, greenhouse

As they state in 3XN Architects, Green School Stockholm, Sweden, is a new type of school with a modern approach to sustainable living. By actively educating about locally grown food, and by creating a multitude of green exterior public spaces, the building encompasses a full lifetime of sustainable living: from kindergarten to high school, college dorms to senior apartments.

The building is formed by two adjoining arcs – the green school and accompanying greenhouse constitute the public arc and allow for internal and external circulation through the building with the vegetation growing all around. Nine levels of housing for students and seniors twist, slide and shift to create wide private terraces and maximum daylight exposure.

Wide atriums open up the green school to accommodate spontaneous learning. This green pathway through the school culminates with a large greenhouse as the focal point. The greenhouse encompasses three enclosed levels for maximum productive growing and extends upwards with hanging gardens and vertical farming alongside the student and senior residences.

The inside public area houses an organic food store, where the organically grown vegetables from the greenhouse are sold. The Green School’s kindergarten is located directly adjacent to a birch grove. Here, the children get their own safe oasis. With the green terraces outside the building, allowing pedestrians to ascend and move from the lower northern side of the site up and across the street to the higher southern side, the building becomes a productive extension of the planned green corridor for the area as well as an avenue for the public. Read the rest of this entry »

Foster and Partners, Gehry and Partners, Battersea, London, UK, Power Station, hub, community park, retail, residential complex

Battersea Power Station Development Company has recently unveiled the plans for Phase Three of the development, designed by world-renowned architects Gehry Partners and Foster + Partners. Following an international design competition held in September 2013, the two architectural practices were chosen for the bold and innovative designs they had for both new homes and a new pedestrian retail street in the area to the south of the Power Station. The designs reflect the shareholders’ commitment to creating world-class buildings that will complement the iconic Power Station, while becoming destinations in their own right.

The third phase will comprise over 1,300 homes in a range of sizes and styles in two zones on either side of the boulevard. In addition, a 160 room hotel and 350,000 sq ft. of retail and restaurant space plus additional leisure space will be delivered as part of the proposals. 103 affordable homes from the total of 517 being provided across the development will also be delivered as part of this third phase.

Gehry Partners has designed the five buildings to the east of The Electric Boulevard known as “Prospect Place”, which comprises around half of the planned residential units, double-height retail spaces at street level, a community park and multi-use community hub, and the distinctive “Flower” building.

Foster + Partners has designed the undulating building to the west of The Electric Boulevard called “The Skyline”, which brings together the other half of the planned homes, including 103 units of affordable housing, in addition to a medical center and 160-room hotel. Two floors of retail front on to the western side of the street, while generous breaks in the façade allow daylight to reach the public spaces below. The entire top of the building is laid out as one of London’s largest roof gardens – over a quarter of a kilometer long, the garden will have views of the Power Station, river and city beyond. Read the rest of this entry »

Cotai, Zaha Hadid Architects, City of Dreams, Melcro Crown Entertainment, gaming, exposed skeleton, hotel, Macau, dynamic

Cotai’s City of Dreams Hotel Tower is new design by Zaha Hadid Architects and the development of this new, skeleton-exposed, iconic feature commenced in 2013. Melcro Crown Entertainment – a developer and owner of casino gaming and entertainment resort facilities in Asia has recently unveiled the project details for their fifth hotel tower at City of Dreams, the company’s flagship property in Cotai, Macau.

The tower houses approximately 780 guestrooms, suites and sky villas, over 40 floors. The hotel includes a variety of meeting and event facilities, gaming rooms, restaurants, spa center and sky pool. All the programs are wrapped in single, cohesive envelope and due to integrating extensive back of house areas and supporting ancillary facilities, it is possible to have them all working perfectly under the same roof.

The design of the tower combines dramatic public spaces and generous guest rooms with innovative engineering and formal cohesion. The rectangular outline of the site is extruded as a monolithic block with a series of voids which carve through the center of the tower, merging traditional architectural elements of roof, wall and ceiling, in order to create a sculptural form that defines many of the hotel’s internal public spaces.

The tower’s exposed exoskeleton reinforces the dynamism of the design. Expressive and powerful, this external structure optimizes the interior layouts and envelops the building, further defining its formal composition and establishing relationships with the new Cotai strip. Read the rest of this entry »

Brattørkaia, Snøhetta, sustainability, sustainable design, Norway, heat pumps, heat exchanger, solar power, solar cells, holistic approach, energy-positive construction

The Powerhouse Alliance is creating the first office building in Norway that produces more energy than it uses. The Powerhouse is designed by Snøhetta and the result is a completely new architectural concept for what will be the world’s northernmost energy-positive building. Buildings account for 40 percent of the world’s energy consumption, and energy-positive construction is an important part of the solution to global warming. The development is a complex and challenging task that requires holistic approaches and thinking. The building is unique and shaped by its surrounding conditions.

Solar energy harvesting is the main design driver for this project. Solar cells, heat exchangers and heat pumps will produce electricity and heat for the building, and sea water will contribute to both the heating and cooling system. The building rises from the fjord towards the north creating a south-facing sloping roof, an optimal condition for solar energy production. The location of the solar cells and windows in the façade accounts for the sun’s intensity to optimize day lighting conditions and minimize energy consumption. In the areas most exposed the sun, the window openings are reduced to minimize the solar heating of the building, while the dense construction of the façade maximizes use of solar energy.

This new construction is designed with the intent that the excess energy produced during the building’s operational lifetime will exceed the energy used to create the building. Brattørkaia is located by the sea in downtown Trondheim and is the planned site of Norway’s first energy-positive office building. Read the rest of this entry »

Snøhetta, cultural center, King Abdulaziz Center, auditorium, library, stone, performing arts, cinema

The playful King Abdulaziz Center for World Culture by Snøhetta is expected to be completed in 2015. It is a bold new initiative on the part of the Saudi Aramco Oil Company to promote cultural development within the Kingdom. The powerful condition of the keystone arrangement is visible from a longitudinal section – the main stone is seen to be suspended within the public areas below ground while the remaining elements reinforce this event.

Located in Dhahran in the Eastern Province the Cultural Center will provide for a wide range of activities serving the local population and becoming a cultural landmark on both a regional, national and global horizon. When completed, the project will contain diverse cultural facilities, including an auditorium, cinema, library, exhibition hall, museum and archive. The auditorium will seat 930 visitors and will provide for a wide range of events ranging from opera, symphony concerts, musicals and lectures etc. Together with the smaller cinema, this will be a unique venue for the performing arts in the Kingdom.

The library will become a center of learning containing some 200,000 books on open access and catering for all ages and categories of users. The great exhibition hall will accommodate large scale travelling exhibitions, as well as providing the setting for social events, banquets and conferences. The museum and archive facilities connect the vibrant cultural life of the center to the past and to the very roots of the society from which this center is conceived.

The museum spaces are organized around the central light. This is both a source of daylight, penetrating deep into the space, but also a source of inspiration for the architecture and content of this building. Read the rest of this entry »

Rococo, baroque, Michael Royer, Pennsylvania, UPenn, symmetry, asymmetry, dynamic

Colonizing Rococo is a design project by Michael Royer, done at University of Pennsylvania. The main idea behind the project was to use contemporary techniques, such as aggregation and emergence in order to try to revisit architectural problems of the past. Contemporary computer techniques allow for the use of highly complex geometries that could only be achieved by master craftspeople in the past.

The project is significantly dealing with the ideas of asymmetry and symmetry and questions of ornament. Looking back at problems from the 18th century lights our contemporary issues in different way, bringing new way of answering questions such as façade as ornament and the relationship between symmetry and asymmetry. Baroque and Rococo craft work and architecture were a specific jumping off point when looking at these issues. The emergent qualities in the building arise from the aggregation of parts to create a whole. The symmetry in the project was then put in as a counterbalance to the emergent technique that had already taken place. This is the point at which an uncanny scenario happens in the building where emergence and contemporary issues of creation are brought back into the historical issues of symmetry and asymmetry of the Baroque and Rococo. Read the rest of this entry »

The Vertical Village in Calabria, Italy, by Oxo Architects, in collaboration with OFF, Philippe Rizzotti, Samuel Nageotte and  Ramboll UK is a winning competition proposal for a ‘Solar Highway’, which re-used sections of the Salerno-Reggio Calabria highway soon to be decommissioned by the Italian Highways Authority. The project of a viaduct is ambitious as well as audacious in both its program and architectural form. As they state at Oxo Architects, every consideration on viaduct redevelopment must start with particular attention to the largest sense of its context as well as its components, both visible and invisible. It is of course essential to consider the site potential in order to integrate the project within its landscape. The authors faced two opposite scenarios as the viaducts can be either adapted to integrate in the continuity of Calabria’s common society, or on the other hand, they can give a push of motivation for new possibilities that such an atypical redevelopment offers to the region, and developed the second option.  The winning architectural team proposed a re-appropriation of the viaducts into residential, leisure and health centers that take on a typology that rises out of the context and the goal of environmentally conscious development. The project was influenced by the primary observable characteristics of the site. The Calabre region has one of the most stable climates in the world and is located in a variety of natural habitats among human interventions.  The Vertical Village is designed as an autonomous settlement.

The Vertical Village in Calabria, Italy by  OFF, Tanguy Vermet, Philippe Rizzotti, Samuel Nageotte and  Ramboll UK is a winning competition proposal for a ‘Solar Highway’, which re-used sections of the Salerno-Reggio Calabria highway soon to be decommissioned by the Italian Highways Authority.

The project of a viaduct is ambitious as well as audacious in both its program and architectural form. As they state at Oxo Architects, every consideration on viaduct redevelopment must start with particular attention to the largest sense of its context as well as its components, both visible and invisible. It is of course essential to consider the site potential in order to integrate the project within its landscape. The authors faced two opposite scenarios as the viaducts can be either adapted to integrate in the continuity of Calabria’s common society, or on the other hand, they can give a push of motivation for new possibilities that such an atypical redevelopment offers to the region, and developed the second option.

The winning architectural team proposed a re-appropriation of the viaducts into residential, leisure and health centers that take on a typology that rises out of the context and the goal of environmentally conscious development. The project was influenced by the primary observable characteristics of the site. The Calabria region has one of the most stable climates in the world and is located in a variety of natural habitats among human interventions.

The Vertical Village is designed as an autonomous community. Read the rest of this entry »

Snøhetta, Saudi Arabia, metro, Makkah, flexible, adaptable, futuristic, pattern, tradition, mashrabiya

Widely known, award-winning architectural practice Snøhetta has designed The Makkah Metro C-Line Stations for Saudi Arabia. The exciting design envisions the unique fusion between the ultra-modern technology of the metro system and the historical richness of Makkah, therefore architecture acts as a framework – both for understanding and enriching the places it meets along the metro line – and for projecting the future vision and goals of the city.

The station – a sleek skin of the future, hovers delicately above the rising urban landscape of the city, creating a new public arena in the space between the ground and the sky. Linking again with tradition, the wrap is a unique ceramic tile with varying degrees of textures and signatures developed in cooperation with local artists.

The hard shell of the station on the inside is revealed to have a soft and ornamented interior consisting of a complex yet contextual mashrabiya screen. The screen links history and technology, consisting of traditional patterns applied through the latest of computer and fabrication technologies – symbolizing the duality between the future and the past. ​From station to station the mashrabiya screen changes again in color and material offering each station a personal signature whilst retaining a coherent identity throughout the line.

The meeting point, suspended between these two moments, as the plaza rises and the station reaches down, represents the common link between these two distinct elements within the public realm. Creating a bold yet elegant icon for each station – the design defines the network as a coherent unit changing slightly from station to station, because of the different city pattern.

Due to using a highly adaptable strategy for the demands and constraints of the site on the landscape, the new urban plaza connects, orients and safely manages both large and small groups of commuters and pilgrims from all parts of the city and the world – whether departing and arriving on a daily basis or for the first time.

Snøhetta, Saudi Arabia, metro, Makkah, flexible, adaptable, futuristic, pattern, tradition, mashrabiya

Snøhetta, Saudi Arabia, metro, Makkah, flexible, adaptable, futuristic, pattern, tradition, mashrabiya

Snøhetta, Saudi Arabia, metro, Makkah, flexible, adaptable, futuristic, pattern, tradition, mashrabiya

Snøhetta, Saudi Arabia, metro, Makkah, flexible, adaptable, futuristic, pattern, tradition, mashrabiya

Snøhetta, Saudi Arabia, metro, Makkah, flexible, adaptable, futuristic, pattern, tradition, mashrabiya

 

Serpentine pavilion, 2014, smiljan radic, chile, London, England, sou fujimoto, shell, flexible, multi-purpose

This year’s Serpentine Gallery pavilion will be designed by Chilean architect Smiljan Radic. Radic is fourteenth architect chosen to design a temporary Pavilion in Kensington Gardens and his cloud-like design will follow Sou Fujimoto‘s last year structure. The new structure will occupy a footpring of 350 square meters on the lawn of the Serpentine Gallery – this semi-transluscent, cylindrical structure is designed to resemble a shell, resting on large quarry stones.

The new Pavilion is designed with a multi-purpose, flexible social space with a cafe inside. Visitors will enter and interact with the Pavilion in different ways throughout its four months tenure. On Friday nights between July and September, the venue will become the stage for the Galleries’ Park Nights series, which will bring together art, poetry, music, film, literature and theory, including three new commissions by emerging artists Lina Lapelyte, Hannah Perry and Heather Phillipson. AECOM provides engineering and technical design services as it did last year. In addition, AECOM will also be acting as cost and project manager for the 2014 Pavilion.

Radic sees the 2014 Pavilion as a part of the history of small romantic constructions seen in parks or large gardens, the so-called follies, which were hugely popular from the end of the 16th Century to the start of the 19th. Externally, as he states, the visitor will see a fragile shell suspended on large quarry stones. This shell, white, translucent and made of fiberglass, will house an interior organized around an empty patio, from where the natural setting will appear lower, giving the sensation that the entire volume is floating. At night, thanks to the semi-transparency of the shell, the amber tinted light will attract the attention of passers-by like lamps attracting moths, as stated by the author. Read the rest of this entry »