Bjarke Ingel’s Serpentine Gallery Pavilion, which opened last week, will have an afterlife touring Asia and the USA after being bought by Canadian developer Westbank. But what happened to the myriad seasonal architecture marvels erected around the world last year? Dezeen investigates. (more…)
From the architect. Located overlooking the proposed Metro Sports Facility at the Western end of Moorhouse Ave on the fringe of the Christchurch CBD, the brief called for a new commercial development with a mix of bulk retail, office space and hospitality.
As the new building is on a major arterial route in Christchurch, it primarily experienced while driving. Our design approach was to generate the building as a billboard that shifts dynamically as you drive East or West along Moorhouse Ave, capturing the motorists’ attention.
The building is cast as collection of characters and references to Christchurch’s architectural canon. Amongst others, the cast includes the striped façade of the Antigua Boat Sheds, and the zigzag verandah of Paul Pascoe’s, now lost, Christchurch Domestic Airport Terminal.
During demolition of the previous earthquake damaged building on site a large hand painted sign was revealed, ‘The Farmers’. As this sign would be archived again, between our new building and the neighbours’ existing building, we decided it should to be translated into the design of the façade of the new building.
An abstract machine was created to manipulate the vertical sun shading fins and gloss/matt Alucobond panels of the façade through Binary and Morse code to give the impression of a random fin and façade pattern, allowing the ‘The Farmers’ sign to be coded within the new façade.
Functionally, the ground floor consists of a café/restaurant space at the entrance corner. This space opens an outdoor dining area underneath the faceted mirror stainless soffit of the cantilevered floor above.
The remainder of the ground floor consists of large format retail and office space.
The first floor is accessed via a dramatic double height foyer space, which is capped with a large skylight. A faceted wall battened with cedar cascades down from the skylight to the ground.
The foyer staircase is defined a blackened steel balustrade which folds into flush into the tiled floor at the base of the staircase.
Stereotomic architecture is characterized by two strong themes: the continuity of the forces of gravity to the ground, into the soil; and the search for natural light, which drills through the massive, solid walls to illuminate and allow habitation by the human being. It’s from these themes that this project takes its power.
Today we present to you May’s Project of the Month, the San Bernardo Chapel, which in its search to transform ecclesiastic symbolism uses nature as a way of ritual expression. The client required a place in a remote location that accommodated religious acts and rituals, in a context in which time is reflected by the use of recycled materials—materials that have been a part of the place for more than 100 years. This established construction criteria based on ancient masonry techniques. However, the project also involved the use of new materials in the interior of the work, creating an interesting play of textures.
San Bernardo Chapel / Nicolás Campodónico
Through the careful selection and arrangement of materials the architect creates two key effects: one in which the outside of the building gives testament to the passage of time, and the second one in which a warm atmosphere is produced by the light illuminating the new interior bricks.
The main idea of the project is in relation to the incoming horizontal grazing of light and the projection of the cross on the inside. – Nicolas Campodónico, Architect
The interior vault system—which references the historic coal ovens used to fire bricks in Argentina—is used to allow light to enter without any interruptions, and at the same time to generate a contrast between the red bricks and the shadow created by the beams, forming a cross at a certain time of the day. Alluding to the Via Cruces, the architect brings the elements together with a simple gesture, using nature to complete the project’s symbolic element and transforming the architecture into something higher than a human act.
The sensuality of the materials, and how nature is introduced into the project, tells us that this is a place of timelessness; it brings our consciousness into a holy place, where even surrounded by modern architecture it returns to its origin.
See the full project post here:
Capilla San Bernardo / Nicolás Campodonico
Located in the Pampa plains, in the east of the province of Cordoba, Saint Bernard´s Chapel (the local patron saint) rises in a small grove, originally occupied by a rural house and its yards, both dismantled in order to reuse their materials, especially its one-hundred-year-old bricks.
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How was the design process? What technologies did you use to design form and stability?
The design process was based on certain assumptions, some from the commission itself and others on issues that we wanted to develop. Some of these issues are more specific as those related to the site, and others were more conceptual such as the idea of replacing symbolisms for rituals. The spaces (indoor and outdoor) were conceived and designed to be instruments of the concepts raised. The interior form was developed with analog tools (hand drawings and physical models). The project’s location must respond to a given solar position, it was calculated with a physical model scale 1:20 placed in site on August 20, 2011, day of Saint Bernard’s day. The stability of the structure was taken from the base of the argentinian coal oven, also called “half orange” although for the chapel, a section of it was removed to allow horizontal natural light inside. This operation is the greatest challenge, both constructive and structural. All this led us to investigate ancient technologies that are already obsolete and try to reconstruct empirical knowledge.
How the arrangement of bricks influence the structure? Can you illustrate with a diagram or detail.
The bricks are arranged in radial way, each brick is directly aligned to the center of a sphere of 6 meters diameter inscribed in the chapel. This spherical condition of the structure lets te structure work primarily to compression. The biggest challenge was to give structural strength to all those parts of the project that were outside of this system. To plan and direct the masonry work we developed a ‘compass “(inspired by the table used for coil ovens) which draws a curved level for each course and at the same time gives the slope of each brick so that the small side of it is flat with space.
Beyond the inscribed sphere, as main idea of spatiality and structure, and inspired by the Pantheon, the space’s final composition is the combination of a cylinder section, two straight walls tangent to it that extend it to the west, a segment of a sphere or a conical dome and vault.
Did you use some form of formwork for the installation of the structure? Is there a photographic record of this process?
The project’s main idea is the relation between the income horizontal evening’s grazing light and the projection of the cross inside. For this reason it was very important that the interior surface was continuous and smooth avoid shadows that interfere with the cross. This line of work led think that if we use formwork we were risking to find defects that were impossible to repair later. Remember that under a raking light a few millimeters gap can cast long shadows. We decided to use two associated techniques (Half orange oven and Mexican vault) with which we could build the shell in a self sustained manner and monitor every day progress of it with the setting sun as the shell itself was being terminated and permanently exposed.
Architectural photographer Iwan Baan has taken new images of the Steven Holl-designed Bloch Building at the Nelson-Atkins art museum, which show the structure as it enters its 10th year (+ slideshow). (more…)
Viennese firm Zechner & Zechner have been awarded first prize in a competition to design a new office building in the courtyard of the historic Rossau Barracks building in downtown Vienna. The firm’s entry, called “Floating Double-X,” takes inspiration from the symmetry of its context to place a minimally invasive office block into the existing courtyard space.
The competition’s challenge was to design a new office building with room for 400 employees of the Ministry of National Defense and Sport within the existing inner court of the Rossauer Barracks. Due to the barrack’s status as a distinctive landmark of the city, the solution required a sensitive approach. Zechner & Zechner chose to address this by minimizing the interference between the new and existing buildings.
Using the architectural concept of “double symmetry,” the new building takes the form of a double-x shape in plan, aligned with the axes of the existing buildings. The facade is covered in a mirroring system that reflects the elevations of the barracks, creating a visual counterpart to the original building.
The structure is also functionality and environmentally unimposing; slender, irregular columns raise the building 5.5 meters above the ground, allowing users to continue to traverse the courtyard unimpeded, and passive techniques allow the project to meet the highest standards of energy efficiency and sustainability. Through these techniques, the energy consumption for heating, cooling and lighting is minimized, and pedestrians can use the shade created from the building to escape the heat on a warm summer day.
From the architect. Building envelope design of new natural gas power plant and construction of visitor observation deck at Düsseldorf’s Rhine Bend in immediate vicinity of the harbour and city centre. The facade links the observation deck and power plant components creating a complex of buildings which, through an interplay of closed frames and illuminated joints, has become a structural logo for the city’s energy supplier at night.
The new highly efficient and climate-friendly natural gas power plant is visible from afar at the bend of the river Rhine and, as a distinct landmark, indicates the city’s south-west boundary. A facade made of steel frames wraps the various building components of the new power plant in a uniform cloak. The individual modules have been designed to meet the diverse requirements of the inner workings; at the same time, the rhythmic pattern of the skin divides the vast scale of the facility into acceptable units.
The largest frame element completing the plant in the north-east, the so-called “City Window”, incorporates the smokestack – the highest point in the complex. A lift takes groups of visitors up to an observation deck approximately 45 metres above the ground from where, through a fully glazed facade, they can see across the vast expanse of the power plant as far as Cologne and north across the river Rhine to Düsseldorf’s city centre.
Last year we published a list of 22 websites meant to make an architect’s job a little bit easier. From selecting the perfect color scheme to tracking the price of your next big purchase, solving technical problems or simply trying to balance your sleep and caffeine intake, the list sought to offer solutions to a diversity of issues – with something (hopefully) for everyone.
This year we offer an addendum with seven additional sites meant to further allay the ever-stressful life of architects. From using peripherals for additional screen real estate to receiving your daily fill of the top architecture news, or converting PDFs to DWGs and adding scale figures to models, ArchDaily seeks to share more of the best of what the web can offer to architects.
1:25, 1:50, 1:87, 1:100, Scale offers a variety of architectural figurines meant to add the to-size people that every model craves.
A 3D collaboration platform meant to revolutionize the CAD industry, Modelo uses best-in-class technologies and design thinking to alleviate communication, presentation, and project management challenges.
One of the leaders in VR, Sketchfab is browser-based platform for sharing and viewing 3D models that seeks to make this technology as universal to architects of the future as digital drawings and renderings are today.
This online automation transforms PDFs into editable AutoCad DWG files with all the lines, polylines, hatches, arcs, ellipses, and images intact.
Need vector based characters to populate your renderings? PimpMyDrawing.com offers high-detail outlines of models to complete monochromatic project schematics – and they’re free!
1 Email with the 5 Most Shared pieces of content from the Top 19 Architecture Websites. Daily.
Transform your iPad or other peripheral into the second-monitor you never knew you had. Never miss an important email, iMessage, or article with the ability to multitask permanently, and then at the end of the day, your tablet resumes being the mobile device you always knew it to be.
With the Euro football championship now underway, we’ve collected together everything you need to know about six of the tournament’s key venues, including a brand new stadium by Herzog & de Meuron. (more…)
From the architect. This building, located next to the Tapada das Necessidades in Lisbon, consists of a three-storey structure plus attic, two exterior patios and a large terrace on the middle floor. The pre-existing building has been completely restored, transforming it into a single-unit family home: originality is emphasized, whilst functionality is fully embraced in order to create a contemporary family living space.
Taking full advantage of the original features of the exterior walls, roof, and window and door openings, the interior spaces were reorganised and adapted, creating areas designed to make the most of natural light on all four elevations. The restoration of the existing patio and terrace was intended to emphasize the relationship between indoor and outdoor living spaces.
Regarding room distribution: the entrance area is the point of access for the upper and lower floors. The lower floor houses the service areas and parking. The communal living areas (living room, dining room and kitchen), located on the first floor, are linked to the outside through large windows leading onto the central terrace – the heart of the middle floor. The three bedrooms are distributed on the top floor and enjoy direct sunlight and fantastic views. The attic provides an open-plan play area.
Atlanta’s Woodruff Arts Center has tapped New Orleans-based Trahan Architects to lead the renovation of the Tony Award winning Alliance Theatre. A cornerstone member of the Woodruff Arts campus, which is also home to Richard Meier’s High Museum and museum expansions by Renzo Piano, the project will include a complete transformation of the Alliance Stage, theater rehearsal spaces, education spaces and support facilities. Selected from a competition of over 30 firms, Trahan’s design will be the first major renovation for the theatre since its construction in 1968.
Led by Trahan Architects founder Victor F. “Trey” Trahan and partner Leigh Breslau, the design of the 650-seat Alliance Theater focuses on patron experience, fostering connectivity within the audience chamber; between performer and patron, and among the patrons themselves.
Principal Trey Trahan explains, “We should be thinking about a space that celebrates equality of each person and the diversity of Atlanta. We created a theater that responded to that elevated participation from the public.”
This is done by breaking the standard vertical threshold of a theatre – blurring the distinction between levels through sensuous wood forms and minimizing the separation between the orchestra and balcony levels. Comfortable seating linked with cascading staircases and terraces will place the audience closer to the stage, and accessible seating will be available on multiple levels, including areas in the center of the house not typically designated for wheelchair bound patrons. The result is a space that will feel intimate and inviting.
To achieve this effect, Trahan employed Brooklyn-based sculptor Matthias Pliessnig to help create the white oak forms that respond to the site lines and acoustical requirements of the theatre. This strategy follows Trahan’s interest in working not only with artists, but also with craftsmen to create textures that can withstand and thrive in spaces of high usage.
“This room will be beautiful at the end of construction, but will age to become even more beautiful as the wood ages and patinas. We hope that the geometry of wood surface draws you in and allows you to feel it as you move through the space,” says Trahan.
The theater’s inner lobbies and circulation spaces have been redesigned to wrap around the performance chamber on both levels, providing comfortable movement throughout, and integrated signage will animate the spaces and provide information on current and upcoming events. New back-of-house spaces including dressing rooms, lounges, offices and artistic support spaces can be found at a level below the stage, and a new mezzanine and full floor multi-purpose hall will be inserted behind the stage house for production and rehearsal support. A second rehearsal hall will replace existing offices on the the third floor, and on the fourth level, a double-height wardrobe shop will feature restored skylights to flood the rooms with natural light.
State-of-the-art technology will be featured in areas of the renovation, including installing lighting catwalks to make use of the stage easier and safer. The renovation is part of Phase I of the Woodruff Arts Center’s Transformation Campaign. Future phases will include renovation and addition to other Woodruff facilities and a redesigned campus plan.
