The strategy implemented by AUM Arquitetos for the Regional Council of Administration of Santa Catarina, Brazil was based on the exploitation of the topography and its potential visual axes.

The program is distributed in two parts: the base, which includes the auditorium, plenary halls and chambers of courses, and the tower that houses the offices. The tower has only four supports, with spans of 20 meters in the longitudinal way and 10 meters in the transverse direction. Two steel beams with 30 meters structure the pavements’ slabs through metal rods every 5 meters.

Facing the sea, the position of the elevators allows all users of the building to enjoy a privileged view. To enhance the visuals to the sea and to the forest through the building, some modules go beyond the basic dimension of the tower, ranging from 1 to 2 meters in balance. These advances in the modules generate terraces on the upper floors, where it proposes to use a green cover to contribute to the thermal comfort of the building, and creating a pleasant work space.

The contemporary American house is experiencing a deepening crisis of identity in this era of growing environmentalism. This identity crisis began nearly fifty years ago with the end of the Case Study House program and the rapid acceleration of suburbanization. The discipline of architecture never regained its footing in the context of American housing as housing became a product, subject to the efficiencies and economics of mass manufacture. The impact of suburban sprawl on energy, water and transportation infrastructure was largely overlooked until its geographic consequences were already firmly entrenched. The widespread growth of environmentalism has begun to address this problem, but even the corresponding aesthetic of the environmental movement has done little to assert a new identity for the American house.

However, an appreciable shift is underway as a new audience of environmentally concerned citizens gathers. While this audience has embraced environmentally friendly product and equipment upgrades, the approach thus far is insufficient, as its impact on sustainable development is minor and its rate of change too slow. We believe growing environmentalism should be met with design ingenuity, not product specification. A lasting contribution to sustainable development or the quality of the built environment is impossible when underperforming architectural and urban organizations are simply reproduced using products branded as “green.” Read the rest of this entry »

If you’re bored with reality, check into the “Fluid Dream Art Hotel” for a night or two.

The new hotel, designed by dEEP Architects for a Beijing, China location just north of the iconic Beijing National Stadium, or “Bird Nest,” is being constructed as part of the city’s post-Olympic commercial growth strategy. The structure will have an intertwining metal exterior that will relate to the nearby stadium, and an interior whose flowing and surreal designs bring artist Salvador Dali’s imagery from canvas to real life.

The Fluid Dream Art Hotel will have 10,000 square meters of space, with an additional 1,500 square meters of outdoor courtyard areas. The individual rooms will be extremely secluded, adding to the mysterious air of the hotel; these units will be known as “egg villas,” again playing into the stadium’s nest theme, and will feature private outdoor spaces attached to the rooms.

The common interior spaces will be designed with Dali in mind, with walls, textures and furniture choices all relating to the movement of the human body, to art sculpture and painting, to light patterns, and to the concept of fluidity.

The architects have sought to contrast textures and shapes to create a structure of multi-dimensionality, but in a manner that still leaves visitors with the sense of softness, and warmth. This artful nest is still in its design phase; ground has yet to be broken on the project. Read the rest of this entry »

Iluma, a new entertainment and retail complex in the Bugis Street district of Singapore by WOHA Architects, will soon glitz up the city with a bold exterior design, and a variety of entertainment options indoors.

The exterior of Iluma is dynamic, with different floors featuring different façade shapes: some angularly form rectangles, and others curve into waves. These different shapes serve different purposes: the geometrically sound floors house such services as parking, cinemas and performance spaces, while the curved levels accommodate small retailers and entertainment services along “meandering paths.”

The contrast of the different levels is further accentuated by the exterior’s coloring, with “hot colors” bringing the rectangular areas to life, and gray and white schemes calming the curved areas. Though contrasting, both forms solidly place the building within its urban context: the bright angular zones speak to the city’s colorful block public housing, and the curved floors reference the intricately decorated local shop buildings.

Inside, a 40 meter-tall atrium serves as the interior focal point, and all roads lead here. The atrium is divided into two levels, with retail services downstairs, and entertainment options upstairs. Above, a lush, open-air rooftop terrace, complete with theater, event space and a café, creates an urban tropical oasis. Read the rest of this entry »

Norwegian Architectural firm MVRDV had their DnB NOR Bank Project top out this fall and is part of the large Oslo Barcode downtown development. Conceived as the largest and  most pixilated of three joined buildings which consolidate the banks operation. An underground concourse connects the three towers. The nonlinear narrative of the façade stands in opposition to it new neighbors situated along the track of the Oslo train depot. A complex program results with many informal spaces to allow staff interaction, open eating facility at the top and multiple paths through the building. The internal egress routes cross the building allowing multiple paths to each floor. Access is provided to the outdoors and green spaces for each floor as a result of the staggered floor plates.

The pixilated form also provides daylight penetration deeper into the interior and a large covered outdoor entrance to the lobby. Areas of floor to ceiling fenestration using advanced thermal glass enhances the daylight harvesting. The 17 floor building will hold an impressive 2000 workstations along with the executive suites and trading floor. A stone skin will cover the face of the building allowing for crags to provide vegetation mimicking the Norwegian mountains. Construction will be completed in early 2012. Read the rest of this entry »

OMA unveiled their design for The National Museum of Archeology and Earth Sciences (MNAST) located on one of Rabat’s highest points: the gardens of the Lyautey Residence, which used to house Morocco’s French administrator. The MNAST will act as a catalyst for Rabat’s development, its innovative architecture reinforcing its urban and cultural attraction. The building is a long, flat isoceles triangle, resembling an ancient relic or indeed an archeologist’s tool. But the shape is primarily motivated by three axes on the site: Franklin Roosevelt Avenue, facing the city in the east; the park in the north; and the Lyautey Residence and formal gardens in the south-west. Rather than appropriating the Lyautey Residence as a part of the museum, the MNAST – with its entry is at the same level – will engage it in dialogue. Through its topographical connection with the MNAST, the Residence will be inscribed anew in the contemporary history of Morocco. Read the rest of this entry »

This competition proposal for Center for Promotion of Science in Belgrade was designed by a team of young Serbian architects Milos Zivkovic, Nebojsa Stevanovic, Janko Tadic, Aleksandar Gusic and Slobodanka Tadic. The object itself is a place where two ages crash – a collision of modern function and retro environment. Its architecture should provoke, associates, intrigue observers as much as its users. In time, exhibits have taken on a new form, so today the requirements for new architectural concepts have also changed. The user now becomes a participant and without him an exhibition does not exist – by activating it he becomes a part of exhibition, together they form a spectacle.

The main space is formed by de-leveled staggered slabs, recessed from the facade so they can be perceived from all levels and angles. With continuous movement through space and the use of exhibits, the user creates a form of event for himself and for the observer. All elements of the facility are subordinated to this idea and so are the access ramp and conference room that form environments that look out on the exhibition areas. The highest level of the building is formed in relation to program requirements; it is compact and offers dark areas that correspond to different types of exhibitions. In the floor there are gaps through which you get a new perspective of the spectacle. The facade of the building is used as a filter for the outside observers who watch through Fresnel lenses which are located on three sides of museum. It gives them ability to see enlarged image of the inside space and giving them a whole different perception of the Center. Read the rest of this entry »

Budapest architecture firm Építész Stúdió has designed a “Village in the Air” to compete in this year’s A101 Bock City Competition in Moscow.

Though the apartment complex, a series of connected buildings, is raised on stilts, the complex as a whole has been designed horizontally, with the idea of a spread-out village as the largest and best way to group people residentially. The architects capped the height for the buildings within the village at four stories. Some buildings will have only two or three stories, but with four, the buildings will match the height of the surrounding trees, bringing the built environment in line with nature.

Further greening the complex is the fact that the buildings are elevated off the ground, meaning the whole surface of the village can act as a park. Green roofs symbolically connect the building tops with the ground underneath in addition to providing environmental benefits.

Well-defined courtyards and atriums help break the large-scale village into smaller pockets of neighbors, making the complex as a whole more personal. There will be 150 apartment units in the complex, which will have a total floor space of 15,000 square meters. Read the rest of this entry »

This project was developed by Jungwook Lee as Design Thesis at Cornell University. The study is briefly summarized through three main topics. The first topic was to analyze the sense of smooth and striated space from Deleuze and Guattari’s philosophy book; ‘A Thousand Plateaus with Architecture Point of View’. The second part included the research of weaving structures characterized by striation that can mutate into smooth spaces. The last study was to re-define the massive grid system in Manhattan. This study proposes the alternative architectural result of the combination of smooth spaces with striated spaces. Read the rest of this entry »

The Loop Cathedral for Vienna, Austria designed by Chi Wai Chan examines various notions and typology of a religious building bringing it closer to contemporary requirements and sensibilities. Many feel that Catholicism is just a grandiose relic on the outside without much substance on the inside. This superficiality rather than spirituality becomes the main agent for the explorations.

The project manifests the notion and affect of an ‘Exquisite Corpse’ or a skeleton of fluid lines that flow together coherently to achieve the effect of ‘part becomes whole and whole becomes part’. The language is exuberant and excessive. It is dark and sinister like a cathedral in Gotham city. The iconograpic typology of a Gothic Cathedral was disseminated with formal elements of a tower and base to remain. Animated formal attributes and surface tessellations reinstitute the ornamental and decorative affect of a Gothic Cathedral. The cathedral as an institution exists only in excess.

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