Michael Graves & Associates, architects of more than 350 major buildings around the world, have just finished work on The Louwman Collection, the National Automobile Museum of the Netherlands. The project was designed by MGA Principal and Studio Head Gary Lapera, AIA.

Speaking of the firm’s interest in museum design, Founding Principal Michael Graves remarks, “For an architect, museums are certainly among the most gratifying commissions one can receive—they give you a chance to contribute to cultural history and to the public’s shared experience of that history. We’ve been fortunate to have designed a variety of museums over the years.” Says Gary Lapera, “In designing this particular museum, we were greatly influenced by the character of the historical and physical context, and endeavored to give this institution a presence with a unique sense of place.”

The 185,000-square-foot building contains temporary and permanent exhibition galleries, a reception hall, conference facilities, an auditorium, food service facilities, and workshops for conservation and repair of cars. A gift to the people of the Netherlands, the Louwman Collection is a public showcase of selections from collector Evert Louwman’s extraordinary vintage automobile collection. In addition, the National Automobile Museum of the Netherlands is home to the world’s largest collection of automotive art. Read the rest of this entry »

If there’s one thing architect Timothy Gowan knows, it’s the buildings of New York City. Gowan sees the new architecture in the city evolving to incorporate sustainable technologies and innovations in design, but he sees this evolution as detached. Gowan seeks to add to the vernacular with a building that is able to take the urban context and previous precedent set by the city’s monuments into account while also embracing modernism.

The resulting building that Gowan has designed at once adds something new and fills a niche very specific to the block and building site it is designed for. The building is a 77-story tower constructed of steel, glass, limestone, and metal panels facing 8^th Ave. between 42^nd and 43th Streets. Citing a need for a break in the architectural patterning of the area, the base of his tower serves as an urban plaza. Read the rest of this entry »

If the city represents a desert, it might seem antithetical to propose that a skyscraper be the oasis, that refreshing place of respite amidst the harsh atmosphere. After all, skyscrapers are akin to sand dunes in the urban desert. However, four master’s students at Kookmin University in Seoul, South Korea has envisioned a structure that functions as an oasis in the dense desert by appealing very specifically to the human senses.

Kim Kyung-hwan, Bae Sung-eun, Jang In-chul and Park Jong-bin have designed an “Urban Oasis” that addresses each of the human senses in a calming way so as to enable rest and relaxation by virtue of being and near the structure. Wide open spaces relieves stress on the eyes; quiet, natural areas appeal to the ears; organic fruits and vegetables available on site enliven taste buds; the fresh smell of natural space clears the mind via the nose; and the community within the building and their collective warmth brings comfort through the sense of touch. Read the rest of this entry »

The city of Bilbao, Spain has a restrictive building code that requires stepped setbacks for all multistory buildings along its main boulevards. Coll Barreu Arquitecto’s response was to assemble a hybrid double skin which not only created a distinctive contemporary face but improved the building’s performance characteristics. The outer glazed skin is composed of framed glass set to a tubular frame. The windows are separated by several inches. Two major benefits arise from the design application: sound levels from the busy boulevard in the heart of the city is significantly reduced, and solar heat gain is curtailed by radiation reduction and a breathable wall system. The separated prismatic face also allows for balconies to wrap the structure without impeding the dynamic facade’s appearance which reflects the ever changing environmental light conditions. Behind the facade a traditional fenestration of double glazing wraps the two street side walls of the facility.

The code required tower hosts meeting spaces in a daylit, two story atrium that opens to a roof deck. The seven stories below contain office space and a subterranean three floor robotic parking lot, providing dense land use. Read the rest of this entry »

Zaha Hadid Architects designed a new museum of contemporary art for the Kingdom of Bahrain. The new complex will house exhibition spaces for permanent and temporary collections, multi-event auditorium, education facilities, studios for artists at residence, and retail areas. The project is estimated to be completed by 2012 and was funded by the Cultural and National Heritage Sector of Bahrain.

The enigmatic volume emerges from a narrow coastal land stripe at the Gulf of Bahrain. Describing a gentle curve while gradually rising from the ground a volume is formed that bends slightly and reaches over the water towards Manama. The building appears mystically floating above a coastal landscape. Public fields flow around the sculptural mass of the museum, underlining its presence with curvy-linear lines echoing the contours of the volume. The overall dynamism and fluidity of the elongated form support the emphasis on movement through and around the museum. Read the rest of this entry »

In designing an entry for eVolo’s 2010 Skyscraper Competition, three architecture students from Romania, Csegzi Kamilla, Hoffman Alexandru and Moldovanu Vladimir, wanted to question what forces really impact a building’s design. The large, theoretical question comes from using Bucharest as the city to site a new skyscraper: in a place run, until recently, by a communist regime, along with the oppressed mentality and Soviet architecture that accompanies such a force, how can architecture help a culture move beyond a suffocating era?

An architectural style “without form,” the trio claim, can be a way that design can bring “progressive change,” as the architecture itself is eternally able to evolve, grow, develop. The group’s design shows rods growing out of stable, low structures; these rods have units attached to them as they ascend. The units can flexibly change as needed, shift within the building’s location or be replaced altogether. Read the rest of this entry »

A project for a centre for contemporary arts in Rome is now officially the best new building in the world. MAXXI, National Museum of XXI Century Arts, Italy, designed by Zaha Hadid Architects, UK, has won global architecture’s most coveted accolade of ‘World Building of the Year’ at the prestigious World Architecture Festival Awards (WAF) 2010.

The presentation of the WAF Awards took place during a special ceremony, which marked the conclusion of the biggest global celebration of architecture – the World Architecture Festival, held at the Centre Convencions International Barcelona (CCIB) this week.

The winning design was selected from a shortlist of 15 projects from around the world by the WAF ‘Super Jury’. The ‘Super Jury’ consisted of Arata Isozaki, Barry Bergdoll, who is the Philip Johnson Chief Curator of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Enrique Norten, founder of TEN Arquitectos, and Hanif Kara of engineer Adams Kara Taylor.

Speaking at WAF 2010 Paul Finch, WAF Programme Director, said: “The clarity required for architects to present their work in ten minutes often underlines the clarity of thought itself. There were a number of buildings that the judges admired, but the winning building had a certain inevitability to win the overall award. This is a building which is a volume, which takes its place in a very happy way, inside the volume of a city – an unwound Guggenheim, with ribbons of connectivity. It is a building which will still be talked about in the history of architecture in 50 years time.” Read the rest of this entry »

The Tour de la Porte Chapelle is a new mixed-use development in Paris, France designed by award-winning architectural firm Abalos Sentkiewicz to be completed in 2012. The project was commissioned by the City of Paris as a new urban hub for the area; the innovative building is composed of three main towers that peel off from a multi-purpose plinth with civic, retail, and recreational areas. The towers are divided according to program including housing, offices, and hotel – a very interesting aspect of the proposal is the weaving of programs at the lower floors creating interstitial hybrid spaces. Read the rest of this entry »

Stuttgart, Germany architecture student Christian Hahn is dreaming of America with his “Use Arrangement” eVolo 2010 Skyscraper Competition entry, which envisions a lively tower for the tip of Manhattan near Battery Park.

To honor the constant flow of traffic, both human and automobile in New York City, Hahn has designed the building to accommodate pedestrian traffic; he seeks the lively flow of people in the building’s core so that it feels “alive.”

The structure itself is a series of thick geometrical shapes arranged into a cohesive tall tower; each individual honeycomb is a “parcel” with several horizontal slats as floors that can hold different units. The massive tower has enough space to essentially act as its own city, with parcels being used as residences, offices, parks, retail space. The building will even house a police station, a fire station and a school. Read the rest of this entry »

The display category at the World Architecture Festival this year was not only about displaying objects, but even more about telling stories. Many of the display nominees were more like exquisite small museums. In the category we also found two of the pavilions from the Shanghai-Expo, where architecture itself is supposed to tell the story of a country. The category winner the Spanish pavilion by Miralles Tagliabue EMBT, is as much a piece of art as it is architecture.

The idea of taking wicker, even though not solely a Spanish material, shows what architecture can do when Expos like this send architects off doing the unthinkable. It stands out as a building, and a story, that the visitors to the event will remember. The container of the exhibition becomes an ephemeral poetic and strongly memorable image of the creativity of Spain. The connection of the Chinese visitors to the craft of wicker making encourages a level of sympathy with Spanish craftspeople of past times. Read the rest of this entry »