From the architect. Bean Buro’s design for UBER’s new Hong Kong office takes inspiration from Gottfried Semper’s writings on vessels, where he described the notion of form and function acting as a structured whole, with individual parts fulfilling their own function while cooperating with others to achieve an overall aim and effect.
UBER’s new workplace, totaling 9,000sqft (830sqm) on the top floor of an existing office building, was inspired by such notion of volumes and functions. Interpretations of the city’s waterfront topography and curvy mountains generated an undulating, voluptuous dark blue inhabitable vessel that contained meeting rooms, service areas and private work booths.
Each individual part of the vessel was a variety of work spaces equipped with their own privacy control such as misty gradient glass partitions or curtains. Work clusters occupy the open neighborhoods, each with access to shared supports and collaborative work zones. The work clusters can be re-arranged to match the constantly changing needs of the company.
Referencing the local urban life, the reception introduces vibrantly coloured tiled walls and floors, contrasted with handcrafted neon signage, while a padded felt wrapped reception desk is reminiscent of luxurious car seating. An intricate wall art by local artist Bao Ho envisions a floating city vessel, packed with Hong Kong landmarks, futuristic transports and lucky Feng Shui symbols for the company. Staff is in turn encouraged to express themselves creatively through writable walls and columns.
The space was designed humanly to connect people, reflecting the company’s ethos. Thus the heart of the workplace is a café pantry, designed to support large social events, independent working and informal meetings. It includes a collaborative bar island, stage seating, and a 20m long signature ‘Bean’ table with integrated cushioned seats facing the city’s racecourse and sports grounds.
Product Description: – Referencing the local urban life, the reception introduces vibrantly coloured tiled walls and floors, contrasted with handcrafted neon signage.
From the architect. Palo Alto Networks is a company involved in developing cyber defense solutions.
It is located in downtown Tel Aviv, on the 24th floor of a complex of multi-story office towers alongside an eclectic variety of buildings built during the city’s historical eras. This is a multi-layered colorful part of Tel Aviv, where alongside banks and high tech companies, one finds low-tech businesses and assorted shops such as painting workshops, artists’ studios and restaurants.
The design inspiration evolved from the aim of introducing that colorful eclectic low-tech outside environment into the 24th floor where Palo Alto, one of the world’s most innovative companies, is located.
As the design team, we imported characteristic elements from the outside environment, filtered them into a design vocabulary and gave them different uses. For example:
•Steel window profiles and garage doors evolved in their role and expression into open-space partitions.
•Exposed brick blocks found a new role as an interior wall in a conference room.
•Old textured window glass were integrated in the partitions dividing private and public spaces.
•Paint buckets from painting workshops become distinctive wall decorations.
•Old industrial fan blades became ultramodern light fixtures.
All employees, including managers, work in open spaces located at the perimeter of the floor, alongside the windows. Transparent high partitions enable intimacy and improve acoustics, yet allow the urban feel of the outside environment to flow in.
Throughout the floor are formal/informal conference rooms, classrooms and working spaces that benefit from the transparent materials and visualization of the whole floor. These transparent walls conceptualize the company’s major product – its firewall.
From the architect. In a singular landscape, in the middle of a plain surrounded by forest massifs, four former farm buildings take place around a yard near a pond. The site lends itself so majestically to the pondering over the landscape and over the wildlife. Our intervention aims to highlight the local patrimony and respect it by the architectural creation.
The main building, the only living building before de reconversion, is entirely cured to adapt itself to the modern constructive exigencies but also to find a volumetry that allows the development of the existent attic. The extension, in a wood frame, joins the continuity of the volumetry of the former building. The extension is covered with a cladding in a slatted reclaimed poplar. This material creates the same architectural language common in each building. The poplar is used for his resistance to the weather but also to his natural tendency to take golden and silver reflects getting older. It’s a living material that is taking a real part in the environment.
Inside, the former part hosts he more private parts of the house while the extension welcomes the reception rooms. The “cathedral” living room is fully opened to the landscape and the pond, allowing us to enjoy the spectacular landscape offer by the nature in every season. The contemporary architecture try here to disappear to reveal the quality of the landscape and also the quality of the traditional building.
Product Description: The reclaimed poplar creates the same architectural language common in each building of the project.
Towering like an infinite mountain of stone, a building devoid of windows and doors is hand-drawn in the tradition of the old masters. Elsewhere, colored strips of tape address the same project, visualized as a sequence of stacked layers. In yet another image, this time presented in a more realistic style, the cityscape is framed by two men gazing out at the viewer with a grin.
It’s a daring experiment that Tchoban Voss Architekten undertake in their exhibition “Images from Berlin.” Instead of presenting their projects with the usual means, they have delegated this task to 11 visual artists. The aforementioned works stem from a confrontation by Gottfried Müller and Valery Koshlyakov with the Museum for Architectural Drawing. Meanwhile, the Living Levels are approached by the duo Vrubel & Timofeeva as an everyday urban environment.
Gary Schuberth and Scott Tulay contemplate the spectacular cantilever of Hotel nhow, while Thomas W Schaller has the Stern Center in Potsdam rise dramatically into the sky. Nikolai Makarov and Michele Alassio take on the interior of the synagogue in Münsterche Strasse, as well as the Russian Pavilion at the 2012 Architecture Biennale in Venice. Interpretations by Alexander Brodsky and Vladimir Dubossarsky complete this kaleidoscope.
At first glance, the images have seemingly nothing in common – except for their representation of architecture. While some emphasize it in the foreground, others use it as a backdrop. Some focus on the overall composition, while others hone in on fine details of the façade. Nevertheless, there is a thread that holds them together: they are representations, which are simultaneously true to the original. Another common basis is the architectural language itself, arising from Sergei Tchoban’s significant contributions to the city of Berlin over the course of 20 years.
Tchoban Voss Architekten opened their office in Berlin in 1996. Since then, Sergei Tchoban has gone on to design, plan and implement numerous new buildings, including the Cubix movie theater at Alexanderplatz, Quartier DomAquarée, Hotel nhow Berlin at Osthafen, the synagogue in Münstersche Strasse, and the Living Levels residential high-rise on the Spree River.
Santa Cruz – California – USA (by Florent Lamoureux)
Sig Nordal 