Aedas has been selected as the winner of a competition for a new mixed-use tourist and transportation hub in Sanya, China. To be located in front of the existing Sanya High-Speed Railway Station, the Sanya Integrated Commercial and Transportation Hub will feature a variety of public program elements serving visitors to the city.
The design of the complex has been inspired by forms of the Chinese dragon and phoenix. On the ground level, a retail podium will be accessed through an interior shopping street/village. Other elements will include a hotel, serviced apartments, a wedding and event hall, a cinema, a children’s playground and a sky garden, all linked together via a continuous canopy system.
The complex will be linked to the nearby rail and train stations, as well as the bus terminal, making it easily accessible to the public, and will be integrated into the masterplan for the area, envisioned by Aedas in 2012.
The project is expected to be completed in 2019.
News via Aedas.
New York City – New York – USA (by Tabitha Kaylee Hawk)
Home in a residential neighborhood in the city of Erechim, located in the northern region of RS state, 390 km from the capital Porto Alegre.
Created to functionally accommodate the lifestyle of a couple, the design of the Villaggio House was conceived with well-defined conditions: to preserve the topography and the woods, to be used as an area of leisure, contemplation, privacy, and integration with nature, and to be easily accessible, keeping it to one level without any stairs.
Thus, the main house was located on an area of elevated terrain, out of the woods and distant from contact with the street, in a position of topographic declivity. The reception room was placed opposite the house with the woods in between. The woods, besides an area for leisure and contemplation, sets an element of privacy and coolness.
The solution found was the use of a metal structure. The house is a large platform above the land slope, like a tree house, with sustaining metal arms, overhanging a garden. This choice of structure opened the way for plasticity and lightness. Along with providing generous spans, the metal structure contrasts with other elements like concrete, wood and glass.
When the house is open, the feeling is that the indoor and outdoor environments interconnect, rendering the size of the rooms even larger, since the integration with nature is constant.
The roofs are actual hanging gardens, shaped by beds of foliage, flowers and grass, that turn into an extension of the patio. The benefits of the roof garden are not restricted to the landscape aesthetic aspect, they influence the thermic and acoustic quality of the environment, and provide more delay time in the absorption of pluvial water on the land.
Noteworthy in this project is that the respect to the topography of the land and to the existing nature was integrated to technology for the comfort of the dwellers. The few walls in the design are made with light elements, composed by cement plates, OSB wood panels and drywall panels filled in with rockwool sheets. The house also received an automation system, which enables control of different electronic circuits even at a distance with a mobile phone application that activates lights, security cameras or the alarm system, as well as opens shades and canopies or operates the garden watering system, all integrated within one system.
More than the project of a house, the aspiration was to design a place to live fully.
The biggest obstacle to our success as business owners is often not a lack of knowledge or resources, but rather our ability to manage time. As a freelancer, I’ve had the opportunity to experiment with several time management strategies over the past few years. Here are four of them that I’ve found especially useful for maximizing productivity.
Here are four of them that I’ve found especially useful for maximizing productivity.
Your Einstein window is the time of the day when you’re the most mentally alert and productive. If you’re not sure when that is for you, ask yourself if you’re a morning person or a night owl – this should give you a pretty good hint.
You can get more productive hours out of your day by designing your sleep schedule around this critical window.
I’m a morning person – my brain goes down with the sun. To make the most of those early morning power hours, I trained myself to go to bed two hours earlier during the week. This has allowed me to extend my Einstein window by two hours, which makes a huge difference to my overall productivity.
By training my body to follow a regular sleep schedule I’m able to fall asleep faster than I did before, and I wake up feeling more alert and energetic.
When you’re designing your own sleep schedule, make sure to allow for the time it takes you to fall asleep or you’ll be setting yourself up for burnout. The full recommended eight hours of sleep plus an extra 30 minutes to an hour may seem like a lot, but it’ll keep you at your best in the long term.
As freelancers and business owners, our workdays are made up of many different activities: marketing, managing inventory, bookkeeping, feeding the content machine, managing contractors, working with clients, and so on.
While a bit of variety is refreshing, many of us have thrown the baby out with the bathwater when it comes to the entrepreneurial lifestyle. We associate routine with those poor sods working a 9-to-5, label it restrictive, and carry on in our fragmented schedules – which, let’s face it, are often high on task volume and low on results.
A great way to avoid this trap is to use a habit-tracking app to manage the day’s activities (I’m currently using Strides). Whereas before I kept a list of writing tasks that I wanted to complete in a day, I’ve now consolidated them into one daily habit: “Write 2 Hours.”
The beauty of thinking in terms of habits rather than tasks is that you’ll simplify your to-do list and achieve momentum – that steep curve in productivity that happens when you consistently apply yourself to a routine.
As an added benefit, you’ll waste a lot less time and energy making decisions, since the bulk of each day is already planned out for you.
A smart routine is liberating, not restricting. And once something becomes a true habit, it’s easier to do it than it is not to do it, and that’s when you start to see real follow-through.
Procrastination is a major hazard for the self-employed. In reality, the act of making that unpleasant phone call you’ve been avoiding will only take up five minutes of your day. Left unresolved, it takes up too much mental real estate and prohibits you from moving ahead with confidence.
If you want to experience an immediate boost in productivity and motivation, make a list of the tasks you’ve been actively avoiding and commit to handling them before you do anything else.
If it’s a task that you absolutely hate, go ahead and outsource it. In many cases, the cost of hiring someone is minor compared to the cost of inaction.
See Also: 5 Reasons to Outsource Your Crazy Life
The fewer goals you commit to at a time, the more time and energy you’ll be able to put into those goals, and the better results you’ll ultimately get.
For ambitious people, this is easier said than done. It means some of your goals will have to fall by the wayside – for now, at least. Personally, I’ve tried all kinds of clever ways to work multiple large-scale projects into my schedule. You’ve probably done the same. In the end, you probably didn’t get the results you’d hoped for.
In my own experience, the sweet spot is two, maybe three, major goals at a time. If you focus your efforts in this way, you’ll be able to devote a good chunk of time daily or weekly to each goal, retain the passion you initially felt for it, and build up the momentum that’s so important to successful execution.
See Also: 10 Productivity Musts for Freelancers
The post 4 Productivity Tips for Busy Entrepreneurs appeared first on Dumb Little Man.
The end of 2016 is nearly upon us, and with the start of 2017 comes speculation about who will be the next Pritzker Prize winner. Will the jury honor an influential member of the “old guard,” as they did in 2015 when they bestowed the award upon the late Frei Otto? Or will they recognize a young architect who is redefining the profession, as they did when they selected Alejandro Aravena earlier this year? Will they reward virtuoso spatial design, or will they once again acknowledge the role of social impact, as they did in recognizing Aravena and Shigeru Ban in 2014? Will the award go to an individual or to two or more architects working together, as it did in 2010 when SANAA scooped the prize?
We want to hear from our readers – not just about who probably will win the prize, but about who should win the prize, and why. Read on to cast your vote in our poll, and let us know in the comments whose name you’d like to hear announced in 2017.
“Look up” in Manitoba Legislative building 📸: @brendanli.park thanks
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