This week’s Dezeen Mail features 24 projects shortlisted in a competition to find London’s best house extensions, Dezeen’s review of 2016 and MAD’s topography-inspired housing in China. Subscribe to Dezeen Mail ›
Floating orange platforms across an Italian lake and a disorienting mirror maze are among US editor Dan Howarth’s 10 favourite installations from the past 12 months, continuing our review of 2016. Read more
Skidmore Owings & Merrill designed this latticed pavilion in lieu of a Christmas tree for the courtyard of a building designed by the late Jørn Utzon in Aalborg, Denmark. Read more
The problem with Britain’s railway stations isn’t anything to do with style, it’s that they are all just malls waiting to happen, argues Owen Hatherley in his latest Opinion column. Read more
From the architect. In Bucheon, a suburb of Seoul, there is an area called GgaChiWool. This area, which is also known as a residential housing complex, has been continuously expanding. When first visited the site, housing development was already over, and new houses were almost filling the complex. The low-rise houses, the quiet footpaths, and roads to the private gardens brought great attraction of the site. However, most of the houses already built were houses that did not deviate much from the general category of multi-family houses.
Dwelling one, two, three.
The young couple came to our office and shared their dream of living in the suburbs, not in Seoul. They were married and had two children, living together with their parents. After long consideration, the three generations decided to live together under one roof. One of the great advantage of living in residential house is that there is a garden. Young couples expressed their desire to use both the ground floor garden and the terrace area with the rooftop space. The total floor area is 220m2, and the area that can be used by couples is not so. Nevertheless, we have begun to think about the space in which a generation can use three floors. The reason is that it was expected that the space beyond the space divided by the floor could come out.
1st, 2nd and 3rd floor roof terrace
The young couple’s parents wanted to use the ground floor and wanted to have an access for their children to visit their grandparents’ home inside the house. There is a private hidden access, where the children could visit the grandparents without going outside the house. It is a place where the privacy of each other is protected but at the same time the children can freely go through.
Selection of external materials
The outside materials of the surrounding houses were stone or brick. Considering the simple taste of the owner, the white stucco-flex was used to form the basic mass and the front elevation, which faces the road is cladded with red brick tiles. The brick tiles were used only at one side so that the common material form into a unique facade. The joint color was similar to the brick color, which gives an impression of ‘ Dansaekhwa (monochrome)’ of Korea. Red Square House has the identity of the house through this elevation.
A house after the Christchurch quakes. One creative home comes down, another goes up, the new silhouetting the old, reminding, resettling, providing lineage.
Where the former villa sat square and inward, the new layers out across the southern view, shaping to the silhouette for light, and framing a greater appreciation of the everyday.
Timber traces the silhouette of the old house, providing warmth, and privacy by opening and closing the view, finding sun and shelter on a south facing shadowed and exposed site, and layering ways in and out amongst its close neighbours. That the house is hard to recognise from afar, but remains open to its close community, is testament to the notion of resettling with surrounding context, ideas we exhibited at the 2015 Prague International Architecture Festival entitled Soft Architecture : Soft Context. House with Villa Silhouette is finished as a moment in time, yet looks to its neighbours for future re-finishing. It is soft and participates with a landscape that continues to shift both physically and as a community.
To its artists owners’, the house provides an affordable continuation in lieu of their much loved but earthquake destroyed villa; a place of craft, creativity, and lineage through the earthquakes. Post quake, they find renewed interest in small things: hanging a pot plant, drying a wetsuit, making tracks for the cat to walk on, an interest in 1970’s aesthetics… Frames are left to provide opportunity for future play, adaption, new endeavours, change. Post-quake time has become more continuous.
Life goes on, remaining (like Lyttleton) modest, informal, busy, and full of the same eclectic furniture and stories as before… but resettled and ready for more.
An “alternative Christmas tree” designed by Skidmore, Owings and Merrill (SOM) has been erected in the courtyard of the Utzon Center, coinciding with SOM’s current exhibition, ‘Sky’s the Limit’. Located on the waterfront in Aalborg, Denmark, the Utzon Center was the last project to be designed by the center’s namesake, renowned Danish architect Jørn Utzon.
The temporary sculpture was designed through a collaborative process between SOM and lighting designer Steensen Varming, and is constructed using modules from Peter Lassen’s GRID system. Inverting the spatial quality of a traditional Christmas Tree, the sculpture provides a space for gathering and reflection.
Using 1,000 square GRID elements, the “tree” reaches a height of 7 meters (23 feet), and features an array of color-changing lights, illuminating the courtyard in a wash of color.
“Stepping into the middle of a Christmas tree and getting that different and, in some ways, mind-bending experience of space and design, is not something you can experience elsewhere in Denmark,” says Lasse Andersson, creative director at Utzon Center.
‘Sky’s the Limit’, an exhibition covering SOM’s history of skyscraper design, will be on display from December 1st to January 15th, while the “Christmas tree” will remain in place until the end of January.
News via SOM, Utzon Center.
From the architect. The Jackson Laboratory for Genomic Medicine was designed to be sophisticated enough to entice internationally acclaimed scientists, bold enough to symbolize the state of Connecticut’s commitment to advanced research, yet practical enough for an economic nonprofit organization serious about its mission.
Centerbrook Architects & Planners in collaboration with Tsoi/Kobus & Associates of Cambridge, Massachusetts, designed the $135 million research facility. A nonprofit research institution based in Maine and with facilities in California as well, JAX has a staff of 1,400 professionals nationwide and is a designated National Cancer Institute research center.
Opened in 2014, the 189,000-square-foot JAX building is set on a 17-acre site adjacent to the UConn Health campus. It houses state-of-the-art laboratories where more than 300 biomedical researchers, technicians and support staff will probe the human genome for new treatments for cancer, Alzheimer’s, diabetes and other daunting diseases.
The building includes 17 “wet” biology labs and another 17 “dry” computational science labs, along with scientific service areas. The labs are clustered in large open suites to encourage collaboration among scientists and technicians, and to enable spaces to be reconfigured quickly and easily as research programs grow or evolve.
At the building’s entrance, visitors walk into a light-filled, double-story vaulted reception area leading to: a 200-seat auditorium, two large conference/seminar rooms and a 200-seat dining area that opens into an outdoor courtyard. On the second floor are core service labs, a data center, offices, conference rooms, an employee fitness center and an informal seating area referred to as the “pub” for casual networking and formal pre-conference gatherings. Research labs and faculty offices will predominate on the third and fourth floors.
Product Description. The building consists of a structural steel frame faced with Canadian limestone, glass, and 14,000 square feet of Rheinzink 1.0 mm prePatina Blue Gray Zinc panels fabricated by MetalTech-USA. The zinc panels were selected because they age well and become more beautiful as the building ages. The Blue Gray hue of the zinc was specified as it complemented the limestone, which has blue veining. It also subtly blended with the champagne and pewter colors of the aluminum curtain wall frame.
Foster + Partners’ designs for the latest tower to be located within New York’s Hudson Yards megaproject have been revealed. Named 50 Hudson Yards, the building will rise 985 feet (300 meters) into the sky in becoming New York City’s fourth largest commercial office tower with 2.9 million gross square feet and the new home of leading investment firm BlackRock.
The 58-story building will be located at the northwest corner of 33rd Street and 10th Avenue, with entry points will be accessible on all four sides of the building. Directly adjacent to Hudson Yards’ new subway concourse, the building will also provide onsite bike storage, allowing for an easy commute via multiple modes of transportation.
The LEED-Gold rated tower will take the form of three stacked blocks of commercial space offering private sky lobbies, outdoor terraces and valet and drop off through a private porte-cochère. Clad in white stone, each block will be separated by the dark band of fully glazed floors offering access to the roof terraces. On the east and west elevations, the facades are broken into four-story glass boxes framed by white stone, while on the north and south elevations, the building’s verticality is accentuated. At the tower’s peak, a “halo” will glow at night, giving the building a distinguishable presence of the city skyline.
The building interiors will feature large, column-free floorplates spanning a minimum of 50,000 square feet, becoming one of just a few West Manhattan buildings to accommodate 500-plus people per floor. This freedom of space will allow for a variety of arrangements capable of meeting the needs of both large enterprise tenants and smaller companies and organizations.
“50 Hudson Yards is a key part of a larger vision that integrates places to live and work within a dense, walkable urban neighborhood,” said Norman Foster. “Covering a full city block, the building is highly permeable at ground level, allowing it to engage fully with its urban location. Designed for a sustainable future, the building makes an important contribution to the regeneration of the far west side of Manhattan.”
“50 Hudson Yards is envisaged as a vertical campus in the heart of Manhattan that is eminently readable at city scale with three distinct blocks stacked one above the other,” added Nigel Dancey, Head of Studio for Foster + Partners. “Crafted from a simple palette of white stone and glass, the building’s primary structure has been pushed to the edges to create large-span flexible floorplates. It aspires to define the workplace of the future, bringing to the fore the practice’s values of innovation and creativity by producing a positive work environment that seeks to fulfill the needs and expectations of a demanding workforce.”
The project is being developed by Related Companies and Oxford Properties Group. Construction of 50 Hudson Yards will begin in 2017, with an expected opening date in 2022.
News via Related-Oxford.
Sig Nordal 