From the architect. It was a challenging assigment to create a modern contemporary house in an long east facing land parcel. The idea is to have most of the rooms on ground floor with blocks of garden. Garden will be essential element to infuse all rooms with natural light and fresh air ventilation.
Using some of the finest teak material available in the island of Java, the interior space creates warm and contrast ambience from its cold unmarked geometric exterior space. Together with our wood counterparts, we created custom made wood elements i.e rustic main door, wall features, screens, and even cabinetries.
Archi-Union Architects has added a slatted timber extension on top of an old concrete and brick factory building in Shanghai, turning it into a showroom and workspace for a ceramic artist (+ slideshow). (more…)
Álvaro Siza, Serralves Museum, Porto, 1991-1999. First sketches for the projetc, [1991] 29,7 x 42,0 cm. [ASV/FS 25]
Description from The Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art: The first of a developing programme at the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art of exhibitions talks and events dedicated to contemporary architecture, ‘Raw Material’ presents plans, sketches, correspondence and photographs that offer a fuller understanding of the process of architectural design, beyond the self-sufficiency of the realized project. This will be the first exhibition to draw upon the recent gift to the Fundação de Serralves of 40 projects from the archive of Álvaro Siza as part of a collaboration between Fundação de Serralves, the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal and Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian in Lisbon.
Álvaro Siza’s practice is distinguished by his use of drawing as a working instrument in the prefiguration of forms and spaces within the process that brings him successively closer to the desired result. But an archive is more than just a set of drawings. The architect’s correspondence with his clients, the photographic record of the places where the works are to be built, relations with regulatory authorities and the opinions of the multiple actors involved in the construction processes, the models that support the perception of the proposals, the minutes of meetings and reports of the tensions arising at the building sites are documents that record an infinite number of episodes that remain invisible in the finished work. Offering insight into their contingent processes, the exhibition also offers invaluable understanding of the processes associated with the inventory, classification, and conservation of Siza’s archive, which will serve as a focus for future research and discussion about the role of architecture in contemporary society.
Raw Material: A View of the Archive of Álvaro Siza is organized by the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art, Porto and is curated by architect André Tavares.
About Álvaro Siza Álvaro Joaquim Melo Siza Vieira was born in Matosinhos (Portugal), in 25 June 1933 and he was awarded the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1992. From 1949-55 he studied at the School of Architecture, University of Porto, where Fernando Távora was his teacher. His first built project, Quatro Casas in Matosinhos, was completed in 1954. Siza was a professor in the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Porto, the city in which he continues to have his architecture practice. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Science; Honorary Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects; of BDA/Bund Deutscher Architekten; AIA/American Institute of Architects; Académie d’Architecture de France and European Academy of Sciences and Arts; Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts; IAA/International Academy of Architecture; Honorary Member of the Portuguese Architects; American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Álvaro Siza, Alves dos Santos House, Póvoa de Varzim, 1964-1968. Notes on the electric project 21,0 x 29,7 cm. [ASV/FS 10]
About the curator André Tavares Since 2006, architect André Tavares has been the editor of Dafne Editora, using publishing as a form of cultural and architectural practice. He was editor-in-chief of the magazine Jornal dos Arquitectos (2013-15) and is currently curator, together with Diogo Seixas Lopes, of the 4th Lisbon Architecture Triennale, ‘The Form of Form’. He holds a doctorate from the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Porto, where in 2009 he completed his dissertation on the presence of reinforced concrete in architects’ design strategies in the early 20th century. Resulting from his research in Mendrisio, Paris and São Paulo, he has published several books addressing the international circulation of knowledge among Portuguese-speaking architects, including ‘Arquitectura Antituberculose’ (FAUP-publicações, 2005), ‘Os Fantasmas de Serralves’ (Dafne, 2007), ‘Novela Bufa do Ufanismo em Concreto’ (Dafne, 2009) and ‘Duas Obras de Januário Godinho’ (Dafne, 2012). His lastest book, ‘The Anatomy of the Architectural Books’ (Lars Müller/Canadian Centre for Architecture, 2016), addresses the crossovers between book culture and building culture. In 2015 he curated the exhibition ‘Serralves Villa: ‘The Client as Architect’ at the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art.
Four Dutch cultural institutions are collaborating to build a new repository for their vast national collections. The new Netherlands Collection Centre (CC NL) will be built in Amersfoort, east of The Hague, and will replace the current depositories belonging to Paleis Het Loo, the Dutch Open Air Museum, the Rijksmuseum and the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands, combining these collections in a central hub. With an area of 30,000 square meters, the building will house 675,000 objects, and is scheduled for completion in 2020.
‘‘The building will be the physical memory of the Netherlands, from the everyday culture of the Dutch Open Air Museum to the ‘official’ culture of the Rijksmuseum and the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands, to the royal culture of Paleis Het Loo,” said Taco Dibbits, Director of Rijksmuseum Collections.
The design team selected by the institutions consists of Delft-based firm cepezed along with consultancies Peutz, ABT, and Valstar Simonis. The aim is that ‘‘the CC NL will be a high-quality, functional and sustainable building combining an energy-efficient art depository with an inspiring work environment for management and preservation of the national collection,” said cepezed’s Jan Pesman.
“The traces of an abandoned quarry on the outskirts of Ajloun City, stands charged as a catalyst for the design process of the Rangers Academy Building.”
In the late 1980s-1990s, the Jordanian Government decided to stop many functioning quarries for a variety of environmental reasons. The abandoned quarries remained as untreated wounds and abandoned cuts in the landscape, with no serious land reclamation efforts. The proposed site of the new the Rangers Academy Building held the shadows of a once was a functioning quarry. In this project, our office decided to celebrate the quarry instead of erasing it, by using this man-made artificial exposed cliff to the advantage of the project. This deformed cut turned into the real thrilling challenge of the site.
The building design was based on the quarry cliff cut-line that a bulldozer driver once drew in the land some twenty years ago, never knowing that this line will be the base of a building elevation. The building follows the quarry line very accurately creating a linear addition of constructed stone to the bedrock. The total fill elevation adds up from the ratio of one third added layer of construction on top to two thirds bedrock.
The massive southern elevation, which is the most dramatic of all, consists of very small windows with giant vertical blade-like stone cracks shearing into zero width. Those cracks bring light into the vertical circulation areas and the hidden bathroom gardens. The shearing cement in the walls thins down to zero in width, causing the knife edges to crack and act upon their material character.
The Academy Building has a double folded functionality: from one side it is an environmental academy that presents nature-oriented educational programs, on the other, it is a high-end restaurant and a craft shop that finance the academic program of the project.
Arriving to the building after crossing a bridge spanning 30 meters over the quarry gap (the longest masonry arch in Jordan and probably the region and is equivalent in diameter to Hagia Sophia’s dome), the building welcomes you at the exact middle contact point between the restaurant’s dining room to your right, and the academy to your left. There, the quarry rock acts as the main foundation.
The corridors are defined by a crack in the ceiling that lets natural sunlight in and guides the visitor to the rest of the academy. The building has a very basic treatment of materials. It is made from Ajlouni lime stone from the site’s quarry and other quarries that share the same strudel of rock. In the lecture hall, plain concrete block is used for acoustic buffering and insulation in addition to straw in the wall sections. Cuts in the walls were kept exposed without plastering, which shows in the openings of the hall.
On the opposite side of the building facing the forest which was not affected by quarrying activities, the academy touches the forest with a beautiful handshake. The building hovers over the forest and barely touches it. It has minimal footprint as the foundation columns cantilever tilts at 45 degrees above the forest floor, and cantilevered terraces with blade-like edges floats –almost like paper- above trees canopies.
London Festival of Architecture 2016: 60 years after John Leslie Martin completed the Fitzhugh Estate in London, photographer Sharon O’Neill visited to see if the project lived up to its promises (+ slideshow). (more…)
Commissioned by the Danish Foundation for Culture and Sports Facilities, Andersen & Sigurdsson Architects’ Light Pavilion design is open and transparent, encouraging participation. With an area of 1,200 square meters, the multi-purpose structure will house a range of planned and spontaneous activities. The architects’ vision was to create a space in which a multitude of events could take place in and around it.
While the actual structure is currently under construction, a model of the building is on display at the Danish Pavilion for the Venice Biennale, alongside 15 other models of buildings that are deemed to be a source of national pride. The theme for this year’s Danish pavilion focuses on “architecture that benefits local communities,” a quality the Light Pavilion encapsulates.
Courtesy of Andersen & Sigurdsson Architects
As its name suggests, the pavilion is light-filled. A steel framework and textile roof provides shelter from the wind and rain, while its transparent vinyl facades create “visible contact” between the pavilion and the surrounding environment. Its open quality serves a double-purpose; it minimizes the use of artificial light during the summer months and creates a luminous quasi-outdoor environment during winter.
Courtesy of Andersen & Sigurdsson Architects
Andersen and Sigurdsson’s schematic design is infinitely adaptable and bears references to other lightweight structures such as tipis or Bedouin tents. Their malleable nature is reflected in the ability for the Light Pavilion to be placed in a rural or urban setting, and its façade can be opened and closed depending on the weather conditions. This not only allows the pavilion to be used year-round but also accommodates activities from a variety of user groups.
People’s impromptu sketches of bicycles have been turned into a series of absurd-looking digital renderings in the Velocipedia project (+ slideshow). (more…)
David Adjaye is set to release a vinyl record with his brother Peter, a composer and musician with whom David has been formally collaborating for over a decade, reports The Spaces. The record, Dialogues, presents a collection of 10 of Peter’s sonic responses to David’s architectural projects. “When I see architecture I hear sounds – I respond to the visual. David responds to sound – he creates with a soundtrack in his mind,” Peter said of their creative dynamic.
The brothers collaboration formally began in 2003 with a soundscape Peter designed for David’s Asymmetric Chamber at the Cubeg gallery in Manchester. The relationship between the design of the chamber and the sound that filled it focused on reciprocity, with one “imprinting” the other. Peter said of their working process that David “drew a picture for what the sound would look like. I came back with a soundtrack the next day.” The piece, titled Echoes, made it onto the record alongside nine other responses.
Some of these compositions include “Dirty House Music” for Dirty House, “PeaceSphere” for the Nobel Peace Center, and “3 Views of Light” for the Genesis Pavilion. Along with the videos of each track posted to YouTube, Peter has provided descriptive explanations of the ways in which he translated each piece of built architecture into sound, with some “directly echoing the structure into music” and some recreating a feeling or sensation.
The record is due for release on vinyl on July 8, and in the meantime you can listen to the 10 tracks here.
