© Delfino Sisto Legnani and Marco Cappelletti

• Architects: OMA
• Location: Normandy, France
• Partner: Rem Koolhaas
• Client: Communauté d’agglomération Caen La Mer
• Area: 12500.0 m2
• Project Year: 2017
• Photographs: Delfino Sisto Legnani and Marco Cappelletti, Philippe Ruault

• Competition Project Manager Client: Barcode Architects: Dirk Peters
• Competition Associate In Charge: Clément Blanchet
• Competition Team: Cristina Ampatzidou, Joshua Boyd, Nils Christa, Marc Dahmen, Guillaume Durand, Alice Grégoire, Simon de Jong, Anthony Joyeux, Noémie Laviolle, Clément Périssé, Jos Reinders
• Aps & Apd Project Manager: Dirk Peters (Barcode Architects), Francisco Martinez (APS & APD)
• Aps & Apd Associate In Charge: Clément Blanchet
• Aps & Apd Team: Marek Chytil, Paul Cournet, Lionel Debs, Javier Guijarro, Didzis Jaunzems, Sangwoo Kim, Pierre Jean Le Maitre, Filippo Nanni, Clement Perisse, Maria Aller Rey, Mariano Sagasta, Giulia Scotto
• Pro & Dce Associate In Charge: Clément Blanchet
• Pro & Dce Project Leader: Francisco Martinez
• Pro & Dce Team: Merve Anil, Alicia Casals, Helena Hiriart, Phil Handley, Sangwoo Kim, Byungchan Kim, Pierre Jean Le Maitre, Maria Aller Rey, Mariano Sagasta, Giulia Scotto, Sara Sun
• Construction Partner: Chris van Duijn
• Construction Manager: Francois Riollot
• Construction Project Leader: Francisco Martinez
• Construction Team: Maria Aller Rey, Julien Miguel, Phelan Heinsohn, Jerome Picard, Jeanne Le Lièvre
• Architecture Collaborators : Barcode Architects, Clement Blanchet Architecture
• Engineering: Iosis / Egis Batiments
• Sustainability & Facade: Elioth
• Acoustic: RHDHV
• Scenography: Ducks sceno
• Renderings / Moving Images: ArtefactoryLab
• Façade: Robert-Jan van Santen / VS-a group
• Curtains: Inside Outside

© Philippe Ruault

Level 00

From the architect. Bibliothèque Alexis de Tocqueville is a public library for the metropolitan region Caen la Mer in Normandy, France. The 12,000 m2 multimedia library is located at the tip of the peninsula that extends out from the city of Caen to the English Channel. Its key position – between the city’s historic core and an area of Caen that is being developed – supports the city’s ambition for the library to become a new civic center. The library’s glass facade visually connects the adjacent park, pedestrian pathway and waterfront plaza to the interior and together with two large ground floor entrances at both sides of the building, enables a fluid interaction of the library with its surroundings. On the upper floors, the urban belvedere provides unobstructed views in all four directions.

© Delfino Sisto Legnani and Marco Cappelletti

The building’s cross-shaped design responds to the urban context, with each of the four protruding planes of the cross pointing to a landmark point in Caen: to the historical sites of the Abbaye-aux-Dames in the north and the Abbaye- aux-Hommes in the west, to the central train station in the south, and to the area of new construction in the east. At the same time, the geometry of two intersecting axes is informed by the library’s programmatic logic. The four planes, each housing a pedagogic discipline — human sciences, science and technology, literature, and the arts — meet in a large reading room on the first floor, to encourage maximum flow between the departments. This main library space is carved out of the center of the solid cross, defining the building’s design as an opposition between mass and void.

© Delfino Sisto Legnani and Marco Cappelletti

Longitudinal Sections

As a civic center where people meet and share knowledge and information, public space is at the core of the library’s design. At the entrance level on the ground floor, there is a large open space with a press kiosk and access points to an auditorium with 150 seats, an exhibition space and a restaurant with an outdoor terrace on the waterfront. The first floor contains a large variety of work and reading spaces and 120,000 documents, with physical and digital books placed side-by-side in the bookshelves. The digital extension of the physical collections, integrated within the bookshelves, is one of the new multimedia features of the library. The top floor of the library is occupied by a space for children, as well as offices and logistics. The archive and special historical collections are stored in safe and dry conditions in the concrete basement, protected from the surrounding water by an innovative waterproof membrane applied on the inner side of the concrete walls. 

© Delfino Sisto Legnani and Marco Cappelletti

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© Marcos Mendizabal

• Architects: Alemparte-Morelli y Asociados Arquitectos
• Location: Vitacura, RM, Chile
• Area: 16823.0 m2
• Project Year: 2014
• Photographs: Marcos Mendizabal

• Collaborators: Luz Honores, Nelson Grandon
• Engineer: BYB Ingenieros
• Builder: ISA

© Marcos Mendizabal

From the architect. The edificatory  model  contained in the  norm of the Decree of the Regulatorty   Plan  of the Vitacura Municipality  for  Kennedy Ave. in the section of  Manquehue-Padre Hurtado, defines a typology of isolated medium height building,  this condition leads us to conceive this commission  as an architectural piece which by the addition to others may have the capacity to contribute to the configuration  of an urban course on a  large scale such as is Kennedy Ave.

First Floor Plan

The land in particular,  its corner condition and its buildable area give us   a volume of 9 levels plus mechanical floor,  with a height of 35.62 meters., and a plant of 21.30 meters  per  36.00 meters; these dimensions produce a rather flat volume that  proportionally  to  its height displaces a considerable mass;  Our interest arises from the challenge of managing this condition regarding the city;  how to integrate a prismatic volume which  performs  its activity(services) that throw itself into, with the city?; for this we developed two significant operations: first, to provide the building  envelope with relevant degrees of transparency to enable the citizen, the observer to understand , the activity that takes place in the building without thereby lose  the conditionsof  energy conservation, efficient use of economic resources, which we are  obliged due to the high environmental  comfort  standard   required for office buildings.

© Marcos Mendizabal

Consequently, there has been designed a skin type  “window belt”  between slabs with an exterior structuring made of laminated crystal ribs   that replace the traditional aluminum “mullions”  on the inside, to the above is added   a horizontal  division in  tranches of  two levels  alternating the vertical elements of facade  achieving a “vibrato” of the south facade, east and north, the degree of reflectivity of the glass in “soft code”  does meet the  requested standars of  the project so the facade   contribute to control  thermal gain thus reducing   the initial investment in climate mechanical equipment.

© Marcos Mendizabal

Towards the west facade the building envelope generates a double skin based on aluminum lattice rotated in relation to the facade plane thus  producing  a shadow box adequate to be  protected  against excess light radiation generated by this orientation at the end of the day.

© Marcos Mendizabal

The second operation consisted of  set free all  the outdoor spaces, first level to   public use, eliminating cars from the surface,  thus providing the peaton  a better offer of accessibility through a continuous succession of spaces such hard squares to the  program of commercial stores in this level and in the  plinth.

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Dame Zaha Hadid. Image © Brigitte Lacombe

As reported by The Guardian and the Architects’ Journal, the last will and testament of the late Zaha Hadid—who passed away in March 2016 aged 65—has revealed that the Dame of the British Empire and Principal of Zaha Hadid Architects had a net fortune of £67,249,458 (around $82.5million or €77million). This sum, which was filed in the UK High Court in December last year, will be bequeathed in small parts to nieces and nephews (£1.7million), her brother Haytham Hadid (£0.5million), and her business partner Patrik Schumacher (£0.5million). At the time of her death, Hadid was unmarried with no children.

Her practice, of which she acted as sole owner, has been left in trust. Her executors—Patrik Schumacher, developer Lord Peter Palumbo, artist Brian Clarke, and her niece Rana Hadid—have been given powers to distribute “all or some of the income from her several businesses […] to a wide range of parties.” This includes the Zaha Hadid Foundation.

News via The Guardian, Architects’ Journal

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© MCA Estudio

• Architects: Solange Cálio Arquitetos
• Location: R. Cila, 3344 – Vila Imperial, São José do Rio Preto – SP, Brazil
• Architect In Charge: Solange Cálio
• Area: 785.0 m2
• Project Year: 2014
• Photographs: MCA Estudio

• Landscape Architect: Luciano Fiaschi – LF Paisagismo
• Team: José Ricardo Corrêa, Bruna Silvestre Parra, Bruna Silva Tozzo, Tamires Edvirges da Cunha, Lucas Fernades de Jesus, Marcos Rogério Navarro, Siumara C.Cálio, Thays Eleida Pereira, Juciara Fernanda da Silva
• Engineer: Dilson de Paula
• Cliente: Rodobens Negócios Imobiliários, Grupo Cem Participações, Grupo Tarraf

© MCA Estudio

Section

From the architect. Within a small condominium with 24 lots, in S.J.Rio Preto, the architect Solange Cálio chose a lot of 1,100 m2, to make her home, for family and friends.

The main idea was to design a project based on the desire to be together and enjoy the company of the two children and the husband.

The concept was achieved through integration between environments.

© MCA Estudio

The architecture project was born along with the landscaping.

Through large gaps the internal and external part of the house has total union, and brings natural lighting into the house

© MCA Estudio

The house has 3 suites, being 2 of the children, the closest, and the double, near the balcony, which provides privacy and warmth.

The floor in cumaru follows from the entrance of the house to the pool, on the deck. In the kitchen was placed glassy insert, only in the wet area, in front of the work bench.

© MCA Estudio

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As editors on the Projects Team at ArchDaily, we wanted to reflect on the projects published in 2016—and, based on those submissions, to consider what we hope to see from the submissions we will publish in 2017.

During 2016, the projects we published had a high level of visual impact. Axonometric views were part of the vast majority of our publications, democratizing understanding by creating easily accessible views which closely resemble reality. Secondly, the development of immersive video technology has allowed us to publish full 360-degree tours through the interiors of works of different sizes, generating images which are increasingly representative of the physical reality of the work in question.

In general terms, the graphic representation of published projects has shown a user-oriented approach, typically using methods that eliminate the barriers of technical representation to generate universal participation. However, this graphical progress towards transmitting ideas in a clear way has not, on the whole, been reflected in the texts that accompany published works.

We are now hoping to publish works whose graphics take into account specific contextual situations. As Massimo Scolari discusses in his book “Oblique Drawings”:

Visual and conceptual representations are manifestations of the ideological and philosophical orientations of different cultures.

We expect for each work to be represented by drawing techniques selected not only for their aesthetic effects, but instead because they reflect the ideology of the architect—since it is not the same to use, for example, an axonometric perspective with parallel projection as it is to use an oblique projection. In reference to texts, we seek to promote descriptions which give a complete understanding of the work while clearly highlighting the project’s main aspects, using references if necessary to engage the reader through reflection on the work itself and the proposed design decisions.

The text as a catalyst for thought

Vila Matilde House / Terra e Tuma Arquitetos Associados
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We seek to publish clear and objective project texts that reveal the fundamental aspects of each project in a coherent way, capable of communicating the essential information to the reader and inviting them to create opinions about the work. Here are some good examples we received in 2016:

Estonian National Museum / DGT Architects (Dorell.Ghotmeh.Tane)
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Images as a way of thinking

‘Simone Veil’ Group of Schools in Colombes / Dominique Coulon & associés. Image © Eugeni Pons

Photographs:
We look for photographs that show general views of the project, first with broad views that show the relationship between the construction and its context, and then views which show the relationship between the different interior spaces. Also important are photographs which show particular aspects: close-ups that highlight details, finishes, and materials. Correction of perspective and color should be considered if necessary. Overall, we look for thoughtful photographs of each work, which go beyond fashions in the photographic technique. Here are some great examples we received in 2016:

The Bahá'í Temple of South America by Nico Saieh. Image © Nico Saieh

Diamond Island Community Center / Vo Trong Nghia Architects. Image © Hiroyuki Oki

Plans and drawings:
We expect drawings, plans, perspectives, collages, and sections, among other forms of representation. These should communicate the vision of the architect while delivering technical content in an accessible and readable form, using new technologies in order to accurately report the main characteristics of each project. Here are some excellent examples we received in 2016:

Courtesy of fala atelier

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