In many ways, “Uptown Row” is a development between two worlds. The site is situated less than 500 feet away from a light rail station in Uptown Phoenix, between a heavy commercial thoroughfare and historic residential district. Its typology straddles the line between a single-family home and multi-family complex. It is part of a city that relies on the automobile but is actively shifting towards public transportation. This 10-unit greyfield development designed by young Phoenix based architecture firm The Ranch Mine and built and developed by Boxwell Southwest finds harmony in a diverse neighborhood, stitching together disparate elements in a refined, modern complex.
The design intent of this development was to create a pedestrian friendly single-family area in a largely automobile centric city. The site plan breaks down into two identical, mirrored buildings, roughly the same size as the commercial buildings to the west and south. Each building contains 5 townhomes that break down the overall mass into widths roughly the same size of the historic homes to its east, providing a residential scale familiar to the neighborhood. Each of these units are accessed via pedestrian walkways amid desert plantings and a spaced block wall that provides casual opportunities for socializing with neighbors.
Specific attention was paid to the placement of windows and rooms, providing consistent “eyes on the street”. The front units have ground floor offices with separate entrances from the home for the increasing number of people who have home businesses. Custom cor-ten steel window boxes poke out from the standing seam metal skin to provide additional shade for these front facing windows. All of the units have 10 foot ceilings and large sliding glass doors that open up the inside to private courtyards, making the spaces live larger than their footprint.
There are 3 primary exterior materials in the development, rusted steel, adobe inspired face brick, and stucco. The rusted metal takes it cue from the heavy industrial feel to the west and south of the property, and clads the front of the structure as well as the drive court. The tallest part of the structure is clad in face brick that evokes the 90 year old adobe house that book ends the opposite corner of the street, and is the oldest house on the block. The stucco and offset concrete block site walls bring in the most common materials in the neighborhood.
The 3 story, stacked floor plans break down into living on the first floor, bedrooms on the second floor, and a flex space on the third floor. This flex space features a wet bar and opens out onto a trex covered roof deck with a built-in grill, creating an ideal indoor/outdoor entertaining space that takes in amazing views of the city, mountains, and desert sky beyond.
Have you ever wanted to look over an entire city from the comfort of your own desk? Do you have a sentimental relationship with the city of Tokyo? If you answered “yes” to these questions, iJet Inc, a 3D print solutions company, along with DMM.com Ltd, have launched a Kickstarter that might be for you.
One Hundred Tokyo is a project aiming to reproduce Tokyo’s urban landscape in the form of one hundred ten by ten centimeter 3D printed models. All of the data and equipment needed to gather visual information of the city has been provided by ZENRIN Co Ltd, who traveled around the landscape in specialized vehicles. The 3D models created by this process are then printed on 3DSystems printers, using gypsum powder that is coated in a special resin in order to harden, and then coated once again in resin paint to achieve the full-color skyline.
The tiny models, at an estimated scale of 1:12500, can be placed together as a set of one hundred, displaying all the quarters of Japan’s capital city, or bought separately if you have a soft spot for a specific district. Backing the Kickstarter with any amount above $85 will guarantee you a miniature model to place upon your desk–or to stick to your refrigerator, as the backs of the models are magnetic.
iJet Inc., based in Minato-ku, Tokyo, is aiming to make 3D printing more accessible to the general public, using their experience with 3D printing, scanning and data processing. One Hundred Tokyo is the materialization of their expertise, projecting their local architectural environment to a global scale – in miniature.
From the architect. This passive solar new-build house on the edge of the Great Karoo desert in South Africa acts as a poetic and flexible agricultural object. Located on the outskirts of the town of Prince Albert, at the foot of the Swartberg Pass, a World Heritage site, the shifted geometries of the plan are a consequence of arranging the spaces in response to the surrounding landscape.
A harvester of light and air, adjusted by its inhabitants in response to the changing natural elements. The brief demanded that the house bring the inhabitants into a closer relationship with the natural world. Enhancing their awareness of the spectacular natural landscape of the Swartberg and the Karoo. With significant changes in light, heat and wind, at different times of day and during different seasons; a ‘fabric first’ approach was adopted to the design and planning of the house; a focus on passive, rather than an active means to heat and cool the building.
The house was built by local builders with a minimal cost of less than £200,000. It uses a limited palette of robust materials, which connect to the previous use of the site as a sheep farm – brick-on-edge floors, ash, local roughcast lime-washed plaster and white ceramic tiles. Utilising local labour and materials connect the home with the traditional building style in the Karoo.
The patterned brick-on-edge floors and roughcast plaster walls and ceilings are kept consistent throughout the exterior and interior spaces, allowing for an ambiguity between inside and out. They are deliberately non-domestic and unrefined. The finely detailed joinery, made in oiled ash, acts as a counterbalance to the more robust materials and differentiates between the sculptural qualities of the solid structure and the elements made to be touched and used in everyday life.
With the intense heat of summer the thick-walled house can be shuttered, while in winter the large openings act as sun catchers, allowing the dark brick floors to radiate the stored warmth of the sun in cool evenings.
The day/night, light/dark character of the house is emphasized by large glazed doors, which slide away into roughcast plaster walls, and small scattered openings allow shafts of light to penetrate into shadows, cleverly configured according to the positions of stars in constellations visible from the upper roof terraces.
The large elevated roof terraces act as a modulated raised ground surface. They allow far views of the mountains, and bring the inhabitants closer to the clear, star-filled skies. Openings and spaces are designed to bring near and far landscapes into the way in which the house is experienced, collapsing the distance between nature and everyday life.
To commemorate the 50th anniversary of Alvaro Siza Vieira’s Piscinas de Marés (Pools on the Beach) in Leça de Palmeira, Portugal, photographer Fernando Guerra shared an interesting photo shoot project with us.
The young Álvaro Siza Vieira, then 26, was called to make salt water pools along the shore at Leça da Palmeira in Matosinhos, Portugal. The facility, which was completed in 1966, is made up of changing rooms, a café and two pools- one for adults and one for children – and became one of Siza Vieira’s most recognized projects, classified as a National Monument of Portugal in 2011.
The design takes advantage of natural depressions in the rocky terrain and embeds basins of salt water. The pools reach the ocean and mingle with other natural formations present along the coast of Matosinhos. The volumes are integrated into the landscape, hiding it and framing it at times, but clearly highlighting this human intervention on the natural site. Siza created a deliberate contrast between the organic stones and the sharp geometry of his architecture.
The building is arranged parallel to the walkway, leaving the horizon completely unobstructed from the road. Access to the facilities is via a subtle ramp that gradually hides the view of the traffic and the ocean. This transition between the road and the sea stands out as a sensory experience – as you travel down the walkway the ocean becomes less and less audible. When leaving the changing rooms, one enters into a series of platforms and the water again becomes the dominant view, the pools appear between the vast ocean and the complex. Formed by low concrete walls, natural rock formations are scattered along the edges of the pools which merge with the ocean horizon. This intentional vagueness blurs the real understanding of the boundary created and visually increases the length of the space.
The complex is made of concrete, with exposed wooden beams. The tone of the concrete used is slightly lighter than the rocks on the ground, showing the presence of man in the natural environment. The covers are made of wood, covered with copper plates on asphalt screens.
The building’s 50th birthday is being celebrated with a restoration project, with simple interventions in the building – which remains in use. In addition, there will be a book launch “Piscina na Praia de Leça — The Pool On The Beach” with drawings, photographs, memories, and texts from Siza himself as well as other authors.
See full project details after the gallery.
AD Classics: AD Classics: Leça Swimming Pools / Alvaro Siza
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From the architect. The main aim is to build new multifunctional centre of Vlasta Burian. The building will serve as a social and cultural centre of the former Liberec native Vlasta Burian, presentation of his life and lifestyle through lectures, leisure activities, courses, creative workshops etc. The building should increase attractiveness of adjacent old town.
Plot is located in a historical part of the town, near the city centre. This object completes the free vacant lot, trying to complete a city district that is damaged by time interventions and inaction of real estate owners and developers.
House respects the scale, volume, street line, architectural typology, morphology, rhythm of surrounding buildings.
Architecture of the building is based on the height and mass of the neighbouring apartment building. New building is keeping cornice line. Hipped roof is a result of analyse for the optimal roof volume from the insolation of the neighbouring house point view. Floor plan copies the limits of the plot.
Colour and material uniformity of the external skin including roof and facade is reached by the slate tiles. The main architectural principle of the exterior material should be naturalness, truthfulness. Rhythm of the windows is symmetrical, and respects the surrounding apartment buildings articulation.
The proposed building has four floors, no basement.
The main entrance to the building is from southwest side from Široká Street. The main entrance for employers and parking is from courtyard. On the ground floor level is located entrance hall, staff room and toilets. The visitors of the centre continue to the upper floors when they can find the common rooms for leisure time activities, exhibitions, projection, etc.
The construction structure is selected as a combination of reinforced concrete and the columned wall system. Ceiling structures at is made of the reinforced concrete beams around the perimeter of building and reinforced concrete floor slabs. The staircase is designed as a monolithic reinforced concrete anchored to the stair and elevator walls. The supporting structure of the roof is made by sloping reinforced concrete slabs, which are anchored to the perimeter beams and are supported by monolithic walls of stairs and of the elevator shaft. Horizontal rigidity is ensured by communication core with solid concrete walls. The building is founded on piles.
We hope that this building could become future precedent for possible new development in district of down town.
From the architect. The project is a collaboration between Quique Dacosta food design lab and ggarchitects.
Quique Dacosta food design lab is a Dacosta initiative to create synergies with the food industry.
The spatial concept parts from a gastronomic concept, Dacosta’s landscapes, therefore the tectonics of the space are generated as a three-dimensional topologic cut with landscapes invading every constructive element: tables, ceilings and walls.
The strategy is to sublimate the purpose of objects, disappearing the boundaries between space, function and decoration. Additionally, as a result of the experience gained from collaborating with Porcelanosa, the home kitchen line is born. In this sense, the launch is double: Dacosta opens his creativity studio on the one hand and, secondly, releases into the market a kitchen line on the other, making possible for people to enjoy the same technology and technical solutions that Dacosta uses in his restaurant.
Three concepts have been worked on, which can be extrapolated to domestic kitchens:
Two strategies have been used in the doors-walls: the rear wall is mirrored in order to enlarge the space and the lateral walls are a topographic cross section that creates a continuous landscape with the ceiling.
IN THE RESTAURANT
The traditional restaurant operates under a two-speed rhythm, two worlds: kitchen and lounge. This articulation may be very different, from complete separation to confinement, but there’s always a table and kitchen. Until now, perhaps, the chef’s table was the closest element to the kitchen, since eating usually took place within that space.
A further step has been taken in the creativity studio, since we’re no longer talking about a table within the kitchen but, instead, eating in this same place. The main area where meals are cooked and research takes place is also used for eating; in this sense, the guest is able to be with Dacosta.
The chef becomes more approachable as he maintains direct contact with diners, whom while being in the kitchen come into contact with the very act of cooking. This fact certainly breaks new ground and amplifies the dining experience.
DOUBLE VECTOR
The creativity studio represents a new stage in the design-gastronomy relation. Thanks to Quique Dacosta food design lab, a double vector is established in which design not only affects and interacts with gastronomy, as has happened in the past, but the chef himself influences and creates through his food design lab, building a new relationship with the industry.
From the architect. The former cloth factory “Tuchfabrik“ in Berlin appears now in a fresh, attractive look. Before entering the building, the visitor is going one step back into the history by looking at the new façade: for its design the architects used digital printed panels with patterns of yarn bundles as a reminiscence of the original building’s utilization. Tightly interwoven threads are shimmering in different colours on the grey-black background like an oversized tribute to the history of this place. The particularity of the solution lies in the application of light aluminium sandwich panels. The printing motives on each of the 440 sheets are unique – thus every panel has its own ID as well as its own allocation.
Constructed in 1966 in the north of Berlin and in close proximity to Tegel airport, the unpretentious factory complex consisted once of two volumes – the office and the production parts. During the renovation process the architects connected both parts into one unit. Since the existing construction could not bear high loads, very light aluminium sandwich panels were used and installed on the punctuated façade. As a completion to the new look of the Tuchfabrik big avant-garde Rodtschenko letters are emphasizing the entry area.
Today a mix of creative offices, trades, business and commercial spaces is hosted in the former Tuchfabrik.
From the architect. Built from 500 borrowed plastic chairs, Urchin aims to question the role of the everyday object: from the typical use that ‘affords’ sitting to an aggregation that becomes skin-like: the object’s features are no longer understood in terms of their use (legs, arms, seat) but in terms of their form (spikes, curves, voids) as, due to their rotation away from the ground, they lose their relationship with the human body.
Dipping down in response to the statue of AD White, the pavilion allows the seated figure of one of Cornell University’s founders to enter into the (impossible) circus.
No chairs were harmed in the production of Urchin, and they will be returned to circulation afterwards. Urchin plays with the question of usefulness and uselessness by the manipulation of the simple chair, and consequently our perception of the chair and the connection between our bodies, the chair’s components and their orientations. The question of use as a primary perceptual phenomenon is a product of James J. Gibson’s Theory of Affordances in his Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. The project aims to provoke the questioning of usefulness and perception from the scale of the individual chair unit to the scale of the pavilion.
From the scale of the city to the detail, CODA designs unique, site-responsive, and sustainable solutions that balance function and desire. Our award-winning work is known for its use of an innovative material palette, as well as for our commitment to a dynamic interaction between the architecture and its inhabitants over time.
Since 2008, CODA has designed clever solutions for a range of programs, from art installations to houses, from religious and public buildings to housing, and from furniture to entire city design. Despite this range, all of the projects have a specific approach in common: a serious investigation of the programmatic needs of the user at the same time as an expanded analysis of what the site has to offer, including materials, energy, artisanal techniques, etc. This approach leads to solutions that are at once novel and sustainable. Our designs are often not one thing, but exist in different states in response to different seasons or programs.
CODA has in-house expertise in both urban design, master planning, building design, and product design. CODA also collaborates with a variety of artists, fabricators, landscape designers, and engineers.
“Soro”, meaning alcoholic beverage in Konkani is a tavern conceptualised within the ruins of an old corner store. The corner store itself became the protagonist in the story of the bar; the design is centred around the concept of a 1940’s warehouse owned by a local dealer who traded in different merchandise. Thus retaining as much of the original structure as possible became pivotal.
The three walls that stand at the junction of the roads abutting the site have been left largely untouched. Their dilapidated charm became the perfect opportunity to create an understated entrance into the young, hip, industrial chic bar that unfolds within. The interior walls have been brought to life with vintage graffiti by Patanga Arts, a Mumbai based set design company. Bold elements of graphic design were introduced into the flooring by using an eclectic array of cement tiles in a customised pattern. All the ducting and electrical piping was left exposed carrying forward the theme of the industrial warehouse.
Sig Nordal 