© Nick Caville BDP. Courtesy of the Landscape Institute

BDP and Wolfgang Buttress’ pavilion, The Hive, has been awarded the 2016 Landscape Institute Award for Best Design for a Temporary Landscape as part of their 2016 awards program.

Judges for the award noted the project’s ability to interact with its site, remarking that they were ‘impressed by the quality and simplicity of the design and execution, in particular the way in which the design works with a sensitive landscape to provide a beautiful and functional temporary setting for the installation, and a longer-term facility for events and education.”

Image Courtesy of Kew

“The submission engages with the idea of ‘temporary’ in an interesting way. It uses the temporary opportunity of the installation to engage thoughtfully with the purpose, and short and long-term needs of the site,” the judges’ statement continued.

Originally designed for the Milan Expo 2015, The Hive has since been relocated to Kew Gardens in central London for two years as part of a larger event space. Designed to provide visitors with a glimpse into the lives of working bees, the pavilion is constructed of 169,300 individual aluminum components equipped with hundreds of LED lights. As the meadow surrounding the structure develops, various plant species will begin to flower, bringing with them the sights and sounds of real bees and creating a layered, multi-sensory experience.

Each year, the Landscape Institute presents landscape professionals with awards honoring “the most innovative projects to have shaped, restored and protected the natural and built environment.” Awards are given in 16 categories.

You can check out the full list of this year’s winners, here.

News via the Landscape Institute.

Gallery: Wolfgang Buttress’ Relocated Expo Pavilion, The Hive, Photographed by Laurian Ghinitoiu
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Wolfgang Buttress’ Celebrated UK Pavilion, “The Hive” Moves to Kew Gardens
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UK Pavilion – Milan Expo 2015 / Wolfgang Buttress
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© Sama Jim Canzian

• Architects: D’Arcy Jones Architecture
• Location: Vancouver, BC, Canada
• Architects In Charge: D’Arcy Jones, Jesse Ratcliffe, Ben Reimer
• Area: 1500.0 ft2
• Project Year: 2016
• Photographs: Sama Jim Canzian

• Structural Engineers: Impressa Construction

© Sama Jim Canzian

From the architect. When the project started, this 105-year old house on a narrow 25’ wide lot had been an unheated and neglected shelter for an elderly occupant.   It was overrun with rats and was almost tipping over sideways. The new owners met D’Arcy Jones on the street at a real estate open-house, when he was considering buying it as a new of office for his practice.  The cost to restore the house seemed too high, so D’Arcy declined to make an offer on the property.  A few days later the new owners tracked him down via the web, and asked if his office could modernize the house. The architects rolled up their sleeves, ate their words, and got to work.

© Sama Jim Canzian

The basement floor was lowered, becoming a new living, dining, kitchen and entry area. A new heated concrete slab was poured, to offset the chill of having the main living spaces of the house built on the ground. By exposing the existing floor joists, the main level is a raw and simple space, carved from under this narrow house. Bedrooms, bathrooms, storage and utility spaces are on the second and attic level. Rotted exterior walls were replaced only where required, with a new 2-storey tall raked window on the front and back replacing the walls that had the most decay.

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All new interior cabinets, handrails and fittings are white, to create a timeless backdrop in contrast with the rusticity of the existing house. The existing exterior stucco was patched and repaired, then painted black. Like a film that switches between colour and black / white footage, the minimal exterior of this renovation exaggerates the colours of textures of this working class East Vancouver neighbourhood. The silhouette and massing of the existing house was completely retained, keeping the architectural history of the existing house alive.

© Sama Jim Canzian

The sunken wells at the front and back were planted with new native plants, species uniquely suited to the shade of a massive maple tree in the city boulevard. Sinking the rear terrace to be flush with the new lower level’s floor height created a private refuge that will become a green cocoon as the landscape matures. 

© Sama Jim Canzian

Product Description. New Douglas Fir plywood floors were installed on the second and attic levels, to match the wood of the existing house’s old Douglas Fir floor joists.  Through material continuity, the distinction between 1911 and 2016 is intentionally blurred.

© Sama Jim Canzian

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The world’s first solar panel road has officially opened in a small village in Normandy, France.

Built in the small village of Tourouvre-au-Perche, the 1 kilometer route, dubbed the “Wattway,” is covered in 2,800 square meters of photovoltaic panels. It is designed to be used by up to 2,000 motorists per day, while providing an average of 767 kilowatt-hours (kWh) per day, enough energy to power all of the street lighting in the 3,400-resident village.

“Solar road” opens in French village – a first for the technology.https://t.co/gcViejgBCE http://pic.twitter.com/WXdTBnqep8

— Erik Solheim (@ErikSolheim) December 23, 2016

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To protect from wear, the panels have been coated in a resin containing five layers of silicon.

The road’s construction is part of a push by French ecology officials to install 1,000 kilometers of solar roads throughout the country within the next 5 years. Constructed at a cost of €5 million (about $5.2 million), directors view the project not as a finished product but as the next step in the development of the technology.

“We are still on an experimental phase. Building a trial site of this scale is a real opportunity for our innovation,” said Wattway Director Jean-Charles Broizat in a statement. “This trial site has enabled us to improve our photovoltaic panel installing process as well as their manufacturing, in order to keep on optimizing our innovation.”

The road will now begin a 2-year testing period, in which the feasibility of adapting the technology will be measured.

News via The Guardian. H/T Inhabitat.

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© Sona Manukyan & Ani Avagyan

• Architects: SNKH Architectural Studio
• Location: Yerevan, Armenia
• Architects In Charge: Ashot Snkhchyan, Arminé Snkhchyan
• Area: 80.0 m2
• Project Year: 2016
• Photographs: Sona Manukyan & Ani Avagyan

© Sona Manukyan & Ani Avagyan

“OD” is the first blow dry bar in Yerevan, Armenia, created by a group of young and enthusiastic entrepreneurs. The primary goal was to create a new model of a beauty salon and to outline the lifestyle through the interior, to create an atmosphere that the customer is not used to.

© Sona Manukyan & Ani Avagyan

The OD Blow Dry Bar lies in a 1930’s neoclassical building, in the very center of Yerevan, near Republic Square. Previously this space hosted a luxury boutique and it faced radical changes since we started the design process. Everything possible was demolished besides the natural travertine floor which had a big impact on the final design. The old ceiling had two covers: the original one from the 30’s and the second one – from the last renovation. All the layers were demolished to expose the original concrete ceiling construction with its vintage texture and tone. As a result we’ve got an extra 1.5m height.

© Sona Manukyan & Ani Avagyan

The shape of the floor plan allowed us to divide the space into two parts. The first – entrance zone with the bar/reception, three mirrors and a little lounge zone, the second zone hosts two mirrors, shampoo backwash and a small area for the storage in the back of the interior.

 “Od” means air in Armenian, that is why the sky blue was chosen as a main color for the interior which gently contrasts with the brutality of concrete elements in the interior. The stylist’s desks and the coffee table are custom made of concrete and plywood. All the five mirrors have different shapes to give a dynamic and personalized feeling to the interior. 

© Sona Manukyan & Ani Avagyan

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US Embassy in Oslo. Designed by Eero Saarinen. Image © Flickr user A.Curell. Licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0

The Eero Saarinen-designed US Embassy in Oslo is set to be placed under historic preservation orders following the building’s sale by the US government.

The US embassy to Norway since 1959, the building will change hands once staff are moved into the new US embassy building at Huseby, which is expected to complete in early 2017.

US Embassy in Oslo. Designed by Eero Saarinen. Image © Wikimedia CC user Bjørn Erik Pedersen. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0

Located across the street from the Norwegian Royal Palace and the Nobel Institute, the triangular embassy building was described by Saarinen as “a gentleman” in formal attire.

In its early days, the building was accessible to the public, and was known for its extensive music library containing jazz and rock-and-roll favorites. Later, as security concerns rose, the building was shut off from locals, earning it the nickname “Fortress America.”

Screenshot via U.S. Embassy in Oslo. ImageNew US Embassy at Huseby. Designed by EYP Architecture & Engineering

Screenshot via U.S. Embassy in Oslo. ImageNew US Embassy at Huseby. Designed by EYP Architecture & Engineering

Residents hope that following the sale, the building will be returned to its “Cultural House” roots. Other floated plans include a police station or office building.

“It’s only when the Americans actually sell the building that we legally can protect it,” Morten Stige, a department leader at Oslo’s Byantikvarentold Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK) told the English-language Norwegian publication NewsInEnglish.no.

Screenshot via U.S. Embassy in Oslo. ImageNew US Embassy at Huseby. Designed by EYP Architecture & Engineering

“[The embassy] is one of the foremost examples of international architecture in Oslo from the post-war years. The building also has an historic function as an American embassy. Those two things together make it clearly subject to historic preservation.”

The new, 80,700 gross square foot embassy, designed by Albany, New York-based EYP Architecture & Engineering, will be located in nearby Huseby and will accommodate approximately 200 employees. The building has been designed to meet ambitious security and environmental standard.

News via NewsInEnglish.no, Portland Press Herald.

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© Marcos Guiponi

• Architects: María Inés García, Maximiliano García
• Location: Parque de Miramar, Cdad. de la Costa, Departamento de Canelones, Uruguay
• Area: 242.0 m2
• Project Year: 2016
• Photographs: Marcos Guiponi

• Adviser Architect: Enrique Castro
• Structure Advisor: Magnone-Pollio ingenieros civiles
• Sanitary Advisor: Federico Estoup
• Competition Jury: Francisco Firpo, Luis Oreggioni, Luis Zino

© Marcos Guiponi

From the architect. In a long building lot, the house is conceived as an answer to that and follows that proportion. The width – almost half the width of the terrain – turns the sides into areas of opportunity, so the more pronounced projections of the interior space occur in directions perpendicular to the parcel.

© Marcos Guiponi

The social area of the home is defined as a “thorn” that is gaining privacy as one moves from the front to the back. This area is structured when it’s combine with the volumes that harbor more contained and / or private activities. Once the social area is segmented, a succession of subtle diagonal visual connections are created and show how the spaces interconnect each other and at the same time, the projections-expansions to the outside are settle.

© Marcos Guiponi

The projections are accompanied by pavements that are defined according to the adjacent program inside the house and the kind of the activity that could be carried out in this one. The pavements characterize the outer space and generate diferent areas that favor the interaction between themselves and the virgin portions of the terrain.

© Marcos Guiponi

Floor Plan

© Marcos Guiponi

The space-material logic that defines these expansions is the interaction of each space with one of the massive volumes to its back and a closing of curtain wall forward, which accentuates the flow towards the sides. Other types of spatial sequences appear when these volumes are perforated and allow visuals that cross transversally.

© Marcos Guiponi

After contest descriptive memory

The contest proposal show some ambiguities that were the subject of revision in the adjustment process.

In this sense we understood that the project could take, among others, two well-differentiated courses. In the first one the boxes adopte an ethereal character being materialized with the minimal thicknesses and their presence doesen’t give evidence of permanent elements. The other way was completely opposite: increase the mass, this was the one we chose.

© Marcos Guiponi

Now the boxes would be anchored to the floor, they would emerge from it. Accordingly, the roof is pulled up and rests on the boxes, since at the beginning it was an element that was between them. The boxes became carriers and the pillar and beam structure proposed in the competition was abandoned. We noticed that in that gesture we could make the façades the very image of the structure, as elemental as a dolmen. From here came the decision of build the walls with rustic bricks.

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The social space of the house is defined by three elements: the volumes of brick that came from the floor; The concrete roof which massive character go with the idea of giving shelter; The floor of gray monolithic and concrete that flows between the volumes and that confer the house a strong relation with the exterior. The private, service and annex areas were distributed in the different boxes, the white color of the interior of them maximizes the illumination capture through the square windows while intensify the passage of space-between to space-within.

© Marcos Guiponi

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© Fernando Guerra | FG+SG

• Architects: Visioarq Arquitectos
• Location: Faro, Portugal
• Authors: Vicente Gouveia, Pedro Afonso, Nuno Poiarez
• Area: 1240.0 m2
• Project Year: 2016
• Photographs: Fernando Guerra | FG+SG

• Project Team: Margarida Pereira, Inês Stoffel, António Teixeira
• Structural Engineering: A3R
• Installations: MEP

© Fernando Guerra | FG+SG

The QL House is located in one of the most exclusive areas of Algarve, on the Portuguese southern coast, a singular presence in an essentially residential neighbourhood. 

From where it was erected it is possible to see captivating surroundings: golf courses, residences, the estuary and, dominating the background, the Atlantic Ocean. 

© Fernando Guerra | FG+SG

The QL House project was an exercise in balancing spaces and landscape integration. The articulation of two overlapping and perpendicular spaces generated not only a particular spacial dynamic, but also different visual relations between full and empty, light and dark – caused by the dynamic of shadows – between private areas, semi-private areas and the view of the surrounding landscape.

© Fernando Guerra | FG+SG

Two stories and a basement encapsulate a precise functional program: garden, swimming pool, sun room, living and dining room, bathrooms, a regular kitchen and a summer kitchen, four bedrooms, an office and space for a playroom. 

© Fernando Guerra | FG+SG

Circulation takes place through a continuous stairway along the indoor garden, which illuminates all the indoor spaces in this home. This nuclear garden structures the direct interaction between the entire indoors and the outdoors, gifting all spaces of the QL House with the luxury of natural lighting.

Floor Plan

The spaces were designed to create constant and singular relations between the indoor and outdoor spaces, in a permanent and multifaceted dialogue.

© Fernando Guerra | FG+SG

The bedrooms, on the first floor, face the green surrounding landscape, and take advantage of the terrace on the roof of the living room and summer kitchen in order to create areas for contemplation on the top floor. The space occupied by the bedrooms extends in both directions beyond the bounds of the first floor, hovering over the empty space, in a serene and quiet balance.

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On one side, a balanced veranda greets the main entrance to the house, on the other side, a pergola provides shade for the living area by the pool and living room, making particularly hot summers more enjoyable.

© Fernando Guerra | FG+SG

The main entrance to the house is through a door of unusual dimensions, in line with the imposing scale – one of the singular features of this architectural piece. 

© Fernando Guerra | FG+SG

White concrete walls formalize the spaces in the QL House, in a chromatic mimicry of the buildings in this region of Portugal – designed with a particularly hot climate in mind.

The natural cork lining, a traditional Portuguese material, is articulated in the connection between the space and the land. The bedrooms, on the other hand, feature slats and motorized metallic shutters in their lateral openings, which filter light without making it impossible to contemplate the surrounding landscape, surely one of the valuable assets of the QL House.

© Fernando Guerra | FG+SG

The project was structured primarily with the goal of valuing the relationship between the indoor and outdoor spaces, the creation of complicities between the user and the landscape, and the former with the created space. As built, the QL House exceeded expectations and once again endorses the work of Visioarq- Arquitetos.

© Fernando Guerra | FG+SG

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