House PY is a private home located in Cuenca, Ecuador. It was designed by ModulARQ Arquitectura in 2016. Photos by: Juan Alberto Andrade
Aedas’ “Cloud on Terrace” Will Bring Vertical Public Space to the Heart of Shanghai
Courtesy of Aedas
Aedas has unveiled plans for Gemdale Changshou Road, a new mixed-use project located within Shanghai’s urban city ring that will add 45,000 square meters (484,000 square feet) of terraced office and retail space within close proximity of a planned residential development.
Led by Aedas Hong Kong Director Andrew Bromberg, the design is nicknamed “Cloud on Terrace,” as it uses a series of green terraces as a visual and occupiable “bridge between the low-rise, residential developments to the south and Changshou Road to the north.”
Courtesy of Aedas
At its base, the retail podium creates a streetwall along the property edge, gradually stepping away with vegetated terraces to meet the tower setback. Entrances to the retail areas are located at both ends of the building, facing the most highly-trafficked pedestrian junctions and linking to two nearby metro station entrances. According to Aedas, these design decisions will make the development highly accessible, providing a “missing ‘humanism’” to the neighborhood.
Courtesy of Aedas
As the building rises, the terraces dissolve into the tower’s deliberately ambiguous form, articulated with soft corners and a rippling curtain wall façade to gently reflect its surroundings. The architects describe the visual impact as one that will “allow the tower to float above the green terraces of the retail below as a ‘cloud’ may sit on hill.”
Section. Image Courtesy of Aedas
Further contributing to its interaction with the street, the tower has been oriented to optimize views along Changshou Road, while below, a recessed ‘cave’ breaks down the mass to a human scale.
Level 1 Floor Plan. Image Courtesy of Aedas
Typical Office Floor Plan. Image Courtesy of Aedas
The building has also been designed for ideal light conditions: horizontal ribs around the tower act as sunshades and high-performance, low-e, low-iron glass has been specified for the curtain wall to reduce solar gain on the office floors. Natural landscaping on the podium balconies will also provide cooling and shading benefits to the naturally-ventilated environment.
Courtesy of Aedas
Gemdale Changshou Road is expected to be completed in 2019.
News via Aedas.
BIG and Hyperloop One Unveil Designs for Unprecedented Autonomous Transportation System
Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) and Hyperloop One have unveiled joint designs for an autonomous transportation system and the world’s first Hyperloop pods and portals in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The designs are being presented as Hyperloop One signs a deal with the Dubai Roads and Transport Authority (RTA), bringing the project one step closer to reality.
© BIG
In May of this year BIG, along with Arup and AECOM, partnered with business magnate and global innovator Elon Musk to design and develop the vehicles and spaces necessary to make the Hyperloop system human-friendly. Initial tests on a system built in the desert outside of Las Vegas saw the model pods reach speeds of 187km/h (116mph) in just 1.1 seconds. Hyperloop One partnered with BIG in order to develop a detailed feasibility study, financed by the RTA. Their joint concept designs for autonomous transportation in the UAE also includes plans for the world’s first Hyperloop One Portals and Hyperloop One Pods that will take passengers from downtown Dubai to downtown Abu Dhabi in twelve minutes, replacing a two-hour drive.
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“Together with BIG,” Josh Giegel, President of Engineering, Hyperloop One has said, “we have worked on a seamless experience that starts the moment you think about being somewhere – not going somewhere.” He continued:
We don’t sell cars, boats, trains, or planes. We sell time.
According to BIG, the design of the scheme is based on a study of “how an urban and inter-city transport network should integrate with existing infrastructure.” They describe it as autonomous, point-to-point and able to vastly simplify the experience of “getting from front-door to final destination.” The locations of the initial route in the UAE have been selected by passenger density and proximity to existing or planned transportation hubs. They state that “all of the portals have been designed as individual answers to different contexts, yet appear similar and easily recognizable.”
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How Hyperloop One Will Work
According to the designers, “all elements of the travel experience are designed to increase convenience and reduce interruptions. The main objective of the design is to eliminate waiting from the passenger experience. Hence, the stations are called portals. All departure gates are immediately visible upon entering the portal, and a simple numbering system allows passengers to quickly identify them. Passengers will travel in pods that have room for 6 people. The pods are contained within a transporter, a pressure vessel attached to a chassis for levitation and propulsion that can accelerate the transporter to 1,100km/h.”
“Passengers board the next pod that is available, which moves onto a transporter to their final destination. The relatively small unit-size of the pods paired with a high arrival and departure-rate allows for on-demand travel. Different interior environments and seating arrangements offer passengers a travel experience tailored to their needs, whether travelling solo or in groups, for business meetings or casual trips.”
“The pods operate autonomously from the transporter, which means they are not limited to the portal area and can move on regular roads and pick up passengers at any point. At portals, pods are loaded onto the transporter and hyperjump to another portal, where they merge onto the street and drop passengers off at their final destination.”
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Jolimont / NOMOS
© Miguel de Guzmám
- Architects: NOMOS
- Location: Geneva, Switzerland
- Architect In Charge: Massimo Bianco, Lucas Camponovo, Daniel Schwarz, Ugo Togni, Katrien Vertenten
- Area: 1800.0 sqm
- Project Year: 2015
- Photographs: Miguel de Guzmám
- Client: SCHG
© Miguel de Guzmám
From the architect. The building is located on the higher grounds of Geneva’s Mervelet neighbourhood. At the heart of a rapidly changing residential area, the site has the remains of a garden-city with scattered century-old houses and trees.
© Miguel de Guzmám
Depending on use and context, the outside skin of the building can have several expressive overlays. It reacts like a sensitive interface between inhabitants and their perceived and lived environment. Facing south and west, the alternate assembly of prefabricated concrete modules creates the structure of an inhabited hive.
© Miguel de Guzmám
7th Floor
© Miguel de Guzmám
On the loggias, stainless steel railings lean forward and rotate gradually. The create a curved lining that is perceived differently depending on daylight and location. This arrangement offers both intimacy and transparency.
© Miguel de Guzmám
The rough combination of building materials continues in common areas; a polished concrete slab on the floor, walls covered with cement and iron for the stairs’ railings. The oakwood used for the handrail and entrance doors creates a domestic and nostalgic feeling when entering the apartments.
© Miguel de Guzmám
Inside the apartments, the large hallway allows views across the day and night areas, and creates a space with multiple uses. In the rooms, alternating high and low windows define the volume. Living rooms with fullwidth glazed windows continue onto loggias. These exterior living quarters project themselves towards the surrounding trees and scenery.
Section
These typologies and arrangements provide the dwellings with the distinctive attributes of a family house surrounded by a garden. In doing so, the 63 public utility housing units are designed as a Building-Villa.
© Miguel de Guzmám
Highlights at the 2016 Dutch Design Week Center on Reinventing the Humble Brick
© Nick Bookelar
The strength of Dutch Design Week (DDW), held annually at the end of October, lies primarily in product design. Although the event has expanded over the past five years to incorporate more fashion, graphics and architecture, small-scale industrial design has retained its preeminence. Many of the designers on show in this year’s edition, however, have embraced the challenges of other design disciplines and allowed them to feed into their work. But where does product design meet architecture? Building materials and, most notably at the 2016 event, some really nice bricks. Rotterdam-based architect Alison Killing guides us through her top installations.
Upcycling
A number of designers across DDW have been working on ways to put industrial waste to constructive use. Often the result of their research is to have the relevant waste product—be it rotten fruit, broken glass, worn out leather or fragments of stone—crushed down and compressed into, you’ve guessed it, bricks. What may at first appear reductive nevertheless involves a complex research and design process in order to ensure that the material binds correctly, is able to bear the loads required for its use in construction, and is also aesthetically attractive.
Of the many projects which have travelled this track, two projects stand out. Thomas Missé’s From Ash at the Design Academy Eindhoven graduation show takes a large number of the by-products from a coal power plant—fly and bottom ash, water vapour, heat, and the portion of electricity which is wasted without making it to the grid—to create a “geopolymer,” a hard, ceramic-like material, as well as a small number of bricks which incorporate a shiny, black, coal-like aggregate.
Courtesy of Dutch Design Week. Image © Nick Bookelar
Tom van Soest is a graduate of the Design Academy and is showing at DDW as part of the Young Designer section of the Dutch Design Awards. His graduation work, from 2012, is also a study of transforming waste products into bricks – this time, waste from the construction industry. It is a strength of the Academy that many of their students go on to develop their thesis work into industrial products for sale and van Soest is far from the only designer at DDW showing professional work that was initially developed during their study days. In the past four years van Soest has worked with the industry in developing the bricks to meet the technical standards for new build construction in The Netherlands, and to create a company—”Stonecycling“—that can produce them at scale. On display is one of the company’s designs, incorporating crushed glass to produce a wall with a shimmering, silvery surface.
Courtesy of Dutch Design Week. Image © Cleo Goossens
Bricks of the Future
Over at the Klokgebouw, students from Amsterdam’s Academie van Bouwkunst have displayed their designs for the bricks of the future. Producing bricks is both energy and material intensive, so the students have spent the past three months working with three brick manufacturers from across The Netherlands, experimenting with substitute materials and shapes that require less energy to make. The resulting forms—zigzags, crosses, and lozenges—also produce interesting textural effects as they are stacked into walls.
© Nick Bookelar
Best in Show
The best brick on show however, goes to Rotterdam-based practice MVRDV, and the solid glass block that they developed for Chanel’s Amsterdam storefront together with the Technical University at Delft, ABT and Poesia. The brick is part of the Product section of the Dutch Design Awards, on show here as an object in its own right rather than simply one element, albeit a notable one, in a wider architecture project. They’re displayed, unglued, in a low wall through which light can refract and where, since they’re unfixed, they can be handled by visitors.
Heavier than they initially appear, smoothly polished, and with rounded corners they come across as an unlikely construction material – they lack the rough edges and appearance of toughness you would typically expect. They look instead like really expensive paperweights, and yet they are also able to meet the stringent demands of being the main structural element in a load bearing facade. MVRDV’s larger claim for them—that creating buildings with transparent glass walls will transform architecture and our cities—didn’t stack up in the early 20th Century, and almost certainly doesn’t stack up now. That said the bricks that they have created are an impressive aesthetic and technical achievement.
Courtesy of Dutch Design Week. Image © Nick Bookelar
The strength of Dutch Design Week lies in the close links between the work of design schools and the younger designers who are driven primarily by the exploration of concepts, alongside wider industry, whose main interest is in presenting goods for sale.
Dutch Design Week 2016 ran from the 22nd to the 30th October.
ColectivArquitectura Designs a Home in a Dense Pine Forest in Almada, Portugal
Aroeira III is a private residence designed by ColectivArquitectura. It is located in Almada, Portugal, and was completed in 2011. Aroeira III by ColectivArquitectura: “Situated in a dense pine forest, the hexagonal plot had no references to the choice of location for the construction. It was conditioned by ‘occupation zone’ defined by the Master Plan – a circle of 12.50 m (37.5 ft) radius centered at hexagon that defines the..
House in Estoril Beach / José Adrião Arquitectos
© Nuno Almendra
- Architects: José Adrião Arquitectos
- Location: Praia do Estoril, Ilha da Boavista, Cape Verde
- Area: 3918.0 sqm
- Project Year: 2012
- Photographs: Nuno Almendra
- Principal: José Adrião
- Project Manager : Carla Gonçalves
- Equipe: João Albuquerque Matos, Margarida Lameiro, Ricardo Aboim Inglez, Sara Jardim
- Structure : MB – Engenharia
- Mep : MB – Engenharia
- Contractor: CFS
From the architect. The detached houses at Praia do Estoril are located in a privileged area in Sal-Rei, Boavista Island, Cape Verde. The location is excellent due to the great proximity to the city centre – within a few minutes walking distance –and the direct access to the magnificent beach and the dunes of Praia do Estoril.
Model
The residential project consists of 18 detached houses, creating a small residential area located in the middle of an alley connecting the houses directly to the seafront promenade of Sal Rei and to the beach.
© Nuno Almendra
The units have two or three bedrooms and a courtyard. The walls surrounding the courtyards provide a private and intimate atmosphere, as well as a protection from the wind and the sand from the beach.
© Nuno Almendra
Each unit has two floors. The common areas are located on the ground floor, with a spacious kitchen and living room area. The living rooms, depending on the type of house, open directly to one or two porches that create a relation between the interior of the house and the outside area. The window’s framework and its deep opening allow an almost complete connection with the exterior, reinforcing this relation. The porch along the house is an exterior lounge area with shade, protecting the interior of the house from the direct sunlight and the occasional rain.
© Nuno Almendra
In the upper floor, is the private area of the house, with the bedrooms and the two bathrooms. The bedrooms and the bathrooms open to a balcony, protected from direct sunlight, creating a relation with the surroundings and the sea.
© Nuno Almendra
The house’s main yard has a garden area with local plants, that are easy to maintain, and a swimming pool.
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The finishing of the houses is simple and informal. The paving is made of weak concrete, the walls and the ceilings are plastered and painted in white and the aluminium frameworks are lacquered in matt white. The concept of the house was designed to reflect the casual and relaxed living of a beach house.
© Nuno Almendra
Felipe Hess Remodels a 1940s Private Residence in São Paulo
CSF House is a residential project completed by Felipe Hess in 2016. The home is located in São Paulo, Brazil. CSF House by Felipe Hess: “Originally designed by modernist architect Zenon Lotufo in the late 1940s, this house passed through a total renovation and expansion to host the new family and become up to date with contemporary way of living. Initially a ground house with ‘butterfly’ shaped roof, the construction..
Gazeta.ru News Agency Office / Nefa Architects
© Ilya Ivanov
- Architects: Nefa Architects
- Location: Moscow, Russia
- Architects In Charge: Maria Nasonova, Margarita Kornienko
- Authors Team: Dmitry Ovcharov, Elena Potemkina
- Chief Architect : Dmitry Ovcharov
- Area: 600.0 sqm
- Project Year: 2016
- Photographs: Ilya Ivanov
- Project Management: Daria Turkina, Maria Boyko
- Visualization: Dmitry Tridenov, Rustam Yusupov
- Lighting Designer: Varvara Shchetinina
- General Contractor: Shafran
© Ilya Ivanov
From the architect. Gazeta.ru is one of the oldest news agencies in Russia. Owned by a large media holding Rambler&Co, the editorial office of Gazeta.ru was relocated to Danilovskaya Manufactura, a 19th century former manufacture building, to join other subdivisions of the media group.
© Ilya Ivanov
Business goal. The challenge was to create a comfortable and multifunctional work space for a journalists’ team that included areas for different activities – zones for concentrated work along with various meeting and social spaces.
Floor Plan
Floor Plan
The editorial office of Gazeta.ru occupies the third and the fourth floors of a 4-storey building. Office accommodation comprises workspace areas for individuals and teams, meeting rooms, lounge-zones, mini coffee points as well as a kitchen-dining-room located on the 4th mansard floor.
© Ilya Ivanov
Besides, employees can use a multifunctional hall equipped with most modern audio-visual equipment for conferences, lectures, meetings and presentations. Formally, the hall belongs to Chempionat.com – another subdivision of the media holding Rambler&Co – but both teams have it at their disposal.
© Ilya Ivanov
The whole publication process is very fast so the speed of communications between different departments is extremely important. That`s why working desks are placed in an open space. The chief editor`s and his assistants` cabinets are located right in the middle of the editorial office for the convenience of communications and information transfer with all the departments of the news agency.
© Ilya Ivanov
The portal`s reports cover a wide range of news: politics, style, auto news. Architects decided to show the scope of information the agency reported using only one color- White. Graphic black accents on the floors and windows create an image of a newspaper page or an information web-site.
© Ilya Ivanov
The interior is made up mostly with custom furniture produced in local workshops according to the architects` sketches.
© Ilya Ivanov
Liuzhou Suiseki Hall / TianJin University Research Institute
- Architects: TianJin University Research Institute
- Location: Liuzhou, Guangxi, China
- Architect In Charge: Zhang Hua
- Design Team: Huang Nanbei, Wang Qian, Sun Qingwen , Zhai Xiangtao, Li Qian, Guo Qing Zhang Hua
- Area: 16500.0 sqm
From the architect. Fuzhou city in Guangxi province is a beautiful ancient town. Liujiang River washed out a island of dozens of square kilometers which shapes like a boat in Guangxi karst land, offers great views which is far more better than Guilin. Liuzhou Suiseki hall is located in the southeast of Deer hill park. Behind the Liuzhou Suiseki hall there are two mountains which one is lower and rounded and another is higher and steeper, the local people call them Mother red deer hill and Red deer eggs Hill,they stay harmony and contrast the characters of each other, called the masterpiece of nature gods.As a Perfect echo of the two hills,a prior architectural form was born with the right folded and the left curved.
On the architectural space and shape design, first, the rectangular plane is distorted in “X”and”Y” dimension into a parallelogram which is divided to 12 parts by “s” shaped curves, these 12 parts have self-similar characteristics. Second, after tearing the plane, the z axis entered. Each part is extruded vertical along a S shape, the movement of each part participate with the other parts and the macroeconomic effects.
Height become lower from the southwest to the northeast gently .At last, two different kind of force were exerted on the two end of this building , so at last, the building is curved in one elevation and linear in the opposite one, which is a rejection of water and mountain in nature landscape .
Sectional View
We have become accustomed to the way that round and rectangle cannot exist in one shape,but in this building Curves and straight lines are no longer in contrast like in Euclidean geometry, but become a Integrate under series of topological nonlinear transformation. I call it ” manifold “, a movement variation from beginning to end and filled with two or more different forms in one body, the body is not a result but a process, a Continuous changes from linear to nonlinear geometric composition, with both topological and fractal characteristics.
Floor Plans
From the cultural point view of, in Chinese landscape culture, a mountain and a stream are not opposite , but a harmony worldview, philosophy and aesthetics view. Mountain and Flowing Water like “yin” and”yang” are the performance of all things ‘ two sides, is a unity of opposites and can transform into each other between the two. The heavy part is earth, while the light part is heaven. Such thought is not only an literal ideal of the Intellectuals, a comprehensive ancient people feel about nature, but also a phenomenon we can observe in nature. In karst landform, stone surface pattern under the impact of fast-flowing water will have manifold changes.
This is a special texture stone waterlines in the impact of years of water erosion, which I call the solidification of water. In other side, high temperatures will change stone into liquid form too. This special liquid under high temperature at the sudden change in temperature will also show the characteristics of the water, still filled with a sense of movement . Various changes described above belong to the topological fractal transform or change in the geometry.
The form of Liuzhou Suiseki hall is composed by a series of topological transformation and fractal geometry of self-similar and self-affine random variation,one elevation is composed by water-like curve while the other one is composed by rock-like poly line, but they look harmony in one building and perform a amazing view.According to the author’s study, architecture and mathematics manifold are similar in geometry, different disciplines, different focus. The difference is that one is mathematics, one is aesthetics.
Sig Nordal 