© Kangshuo Tang

• Architects: MAT Office
• Location: Chaoyang, Beijing, China
• Design Team: Kangshuo Tang, Miao Zhang, Siyao Huang, Zhuo Bing, Yanru Li, ZhenXu, Xin Xu
• Area: 600.0 sqm
• Project Year: 2016
• Photographs: Kangshuo Tang

• Client: Tong Deng Culture and Media Ltd.

© Kangshuo Tang

Tongdeng Culture and Media Ltd – Beaver Workshop Office Space in Beijing

“Beaver Workshop” Office Space is an innovative work space tailored for a film and media company. It is located in a business park for creative industries, which was transformed from a concrete factory, in Chaoyang District, Beijing. The original space was a single-story truss-structured warehouse, containing three spans, with net height 6 metres and ridge height 9 metres. The client expects to double the usable area by adding an interlayer, thus fulfilling the functional requirements of animation, art, screenwriting, directing, producing, and logistics sections.

Diagram

© Kangshuo Tang

Section A-A'

We expands the usable space by inserting a multi-opening box which occupied more than half of the site: an atrium and all the inward rooms as Independent offices, meeting rooms, rehearsal room and logistical spaces are contained in the box, while the flowing space outside the box are left for open work space. The client wants to create a flexible, interactive, equal, and fun space atmosphere to inspire employees’ creativity. A split-level strategy is applied to arrange the large conference room and the animation rehearsal room so that people from both first and second level can see the activities inside these spaces. The flowing space creates unique experiences by the collaboration of five different levels and the multi-opening walls.

© Kangshuo Tang

Diagram

Public areas are vital compositions in this innovative office project, and practitioners in creative industries would expect comfortable and relaxing public spaces with life-like experience in this kind of office projects. The atrium connects first and second floor vertically, with lamps and potted plants hanging above a long table, in order to serve a perfect place for presentation, open conference, brainstorming, and team-building party. The tea corner, instead of being enclosed as in a traditional office space, is enlarged into an island bar, providing a recreation spot and networking platform as well as a space for temporary small meeting and brainstorming. The highlight of public space is the atrium area on the second floor: sunlight flooding in through the skylights, hanging plants running through the whole space from roof to the first floor, work space for art and directing section outside the multi-opening box, while on the inside the rehearsal room, the conference room, and the independent office on third floor. Almost every space is making connection with this central area spatially or visually.

© Kangshuo Tang

Sectional Elevation

There are mainly three features in the design of this office space:

1, Due to the extension layers inside the space, the vertical circulation between levels merges out as the primary issue in the space. We decided to choose the longest path, the one spiraling up along the box. The extended path enriches the spatial experience during walking and increases the sense of volume. 

© Kangshuo Tang

© Kangshuo Tang

2, Since the client is a film and animation media company, contextualized spatial experience would be the best way to interpreting their characteristics and corporate culture. In Beaver Workshop Office Space, the spiral path links up different office scenes in working areas, meeting areas and recreation areas, with these scenes independent functionally but connected spatially. 

3, The insertion of the multi-opening box allows multi-layered penetration and flow in the space. Every independent scene linked up by the path can interact with each other visually, endowing this space a transparent feature in phenomenon.

© Kangshuo Tang

© Kangshuo Tang

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© Nathan Rist

Students from the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture, Taliesin West have designed and built “Little Shelters,” a collaborative project in the Sonoran Desert in Arizona, as part of a design and build studio led by little maps.

The project began with an individual exercise, where students Daniel Chapman, Mark-Thomas Cordova, Jaime Inostroza, Dylan Kessler, Pablo Moncayo, Natasha Vemulkonda, and Pierre Verbruggen each created their own temporary shelters. Partially due to harsh desert conditions, the students, with their instructor David Tapias, later decided to design and build as a collective effort instead.

The main objective was to utilise as many on-site resources as possible, but with a $2,000 budget from the school, the students purchased inexpensive materials from warehouses giving them the freedom to further explore their designs. 

© David Tapias

Overall, the project took 12 weeks to complete, and led to the construction of two shared shelters and a gathering space. Over future years, these shelters will be utilised by other students, who will transform, maintain, and document them on the little maps Website.

© David Tapias

© Nathan Rist

© David Tapias

News via the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture, Taliesin West.

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© Matej Lozar

• Architects: AB objekt d.o.o.
• Location: Zgornja Kungota 11a, 2201 Zgornja Kungota, Slovenia
• Architect In Charge: AB objekt d.o.o.
• Area: 850.0 sqm
• Project Year: 2015
• Photographs: Matej Lozar

• Architects: Boštjan Matul u.d.i.a., Dominik Sagadin u.d.i.a.
• Collaborators: Aleš Strašek u.d.i.g., Matevž Germadnik d.i.g.
• Investor: chef Gregor Vračko, Restaurant House Denk

© Matej Lozar

Floor Plan

From the architect. Renovation and addition of House Denk, a restaurant with a long-standing tradition and a renowned reputation, started with a bold vision in a head of a young, dashing chef Gregor Vračko. After perfecting his cooking skills in the finest restaurants of Portugal, Germany, Austria, The United Kingdom, The States and elsewhere, he returned home, determined to merge the tastes and aromas of the world with local tradition. But first, he needed a place with the appropriate atmosphere. Boštjan Matul and Dominik Sagadin, two young aspiring architects seemed like the perfect creators to materialize his vision. The restaurant standing today at the crossroad in a small village next to the Slovenian-Austrian border could be seen as merely a renovation, but the splendid fusion of modern breeze and local tradition surpasses everything in its close and distant region, architecturally and culinary.

© Matej Lozar

Even though the extension of House Denk looks rather contemporary, its simple structure of two longitudinal volumes doesn’t marginalize the rest of the village. The first volume is facing the street, inviting the guests to come closer, whereas the second offers an intimate meal with boundless views of the surrounding garden. The two volumes comprise and subtly hide the existing building; their appearance is on the edge of being only an extension. Not only that they complete the old house, they also refine the village of Zgornja Kungota.

© Matej Lozar

The main entrance in the eastern volume welcomes guests with its solemn ambience; dark textile floor, dark brick walls combined with rough wood, dim light and antique pieces. After a few steps, a whole new world opens through a transparent wall overlooking the green atrium: it is the passage to the dining area. The second volume with its pavilion formation poses as a contrast to the entry one. It strings along southern side amidst trees and ponds; detached from the main house and accessed through a glazed bridge, it is generously lit with large windows, but still, the wooden floors and a dark ceiling provide just the right dusky atmosphere for the chef’s creations. Both volumes are connected with a spacious outdoor terrace; the rhythm of pillars from the entry volume is gradually vanishing until it finally reaches the edge of the terrace. The dining extension and terrace refuse to follow slight descending of the terrain; they are lifted on refined metal pillars above the garden instead, letting the nature pass through and ramble around the atriums.

© Matej Lozar

Restaurant House Denk stands proudly with its bold presence and just like its chef, exceeds expectations. A varied and an integral whole is gently woven into rural surroundings, boldly surpassing its domain.

Section

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A new video by JDS Development Group, Building Knowhow: Skybridge, begins with an anecdote of a day when the firemen showed up at the site. “We got a call – the buildings are falling down!” the chief fireman told Michael Jones, director of JDS. Jones responded with a chuckle, “they’re supposed to be like that!”

Located on the East Side of Manhattan, the American Copper Buildings, designed by New York-based SHoP Architects, test the boundaries of engineering. In an informative video, JDS Development Group documents the building of a skybridge between the towers, outlining their detail-oriented, step-by-step approach. Located 300 feet in the air, it is New York’s first major skybridge in 80 years.

However, the skybridge is not merely a ‘footpath’ between the towers; the bridge also transfers electricity and condenser water between the towers. 

SHoP Architect’s designs for 626 First Avenue were revealed only last year, and the building is estimated for completion in 2017. 

SHoP’s 626 First Avenue Coming Soon to NYC’s East River
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Courtesy of OMA, Photograph by Delfino Sisto Legnani and Marco Cappelletti

In the past two weeks, ArchDaily readers have held debates on the preservation of the past in OMA’s Fondaco dei Tedeschi in Venice, and discussed the future for the people of Makoko in Lagos after their much-praised floating school designed by NLÉ collapsed due to heavy rain. Read on to find out what they had to say about these stories and more.

New Debates

Making Sense of OMA’s Fondaco dei Tedeschi Renovation

Courtesy of OMA, Photograph by Delfino Sisto Legnani and Marco Cappelletti

After their renovations at the Fondazione Prada and the Garage Center for Contemporary Art, OMA’s transformation of the Fondaco dei Tedeschi in Venice into a department store has continued to cement their reputation as a new force in the realm of architecture preservation. Their approach—which follows the popular tactic of revealing a building’s history, but is unusually bold in making striking new additions—seems to have won a few fans among our audience:

It’s an elegant, tongue-in-cheek intervention that grafts OMA’s spatial vocabulary into a historical Venetian palazzo. I love the un-puritanical juxtaposition of geometric cuts and flying stairs/escalators against the atrium’s colonnade, the ‘fake’ opus-incertum walls and the Venetian red-painted handrails—a whole theatrical paraphernalia that works quite well in this case. – soperdida

OMA’s alteration and exposing of layer upon layer of older gross modifications strikes me as rather joyous. Along with the historic Fondazione Prada complex, OMA’s approach becomes clear. No sterile meaningless restorations and especially little if any creation of phony “new-old” interventions. Like all of OMA’s work this is not about a “style” but a fresh pragmatic approach—the essence of modernism. The insertion of yet another new function into a structure 6 centuries young promises centuries more of workable, enjoyable space for commerce and social participation. Bravo! – Steven S Dornbusch

However, not everybody agrees, as some felt that OMA’s boldness was disrespectful to the fabric of the listed heritage building:

Quite disrespectful, I realize that modern should not be confounded with the old, but making concrete so rough is too much. The first impression was nice, but after studying it profoundly it turned out to be a big mess. There is no correlation between styles, material, and shapes, the the architects mixed up styles (or everything they knew), things which are not suitable together. The building was treated as if there was no old building. – SomebodyThatIUsedToKnow

What is the Future of NLÉ’s Floating School After Its Collapse?

via NAIJ.com

For the past three years, the architectural community has been promoting NLÉ’s Makoko Floating School as an intelligent response to the challenges facing poor communities in precarious spaces, both physically and economically. However, all of that was brought into question this week by the structure’s sudden collapse. What happens next will depend heavily on the reaction of the NLÉ, the people of Makoko, the architectural media and the rest of the profession at large. One reaction was provided by our readers, one of whom seemed to see the collapse as a minor setback at most:

I would not say this is a negative against NLÉ. This structure was an innovation towards solving a social problem, using design in an inexpensive way. Much like how we learned how to keep today’s buildings standing, all of us architects should look at this example to further the discussion on how can we can build a similar situation to withstand the extreme elements. – Sean

Continuing Discussion

Wild Ideas in the Windy City

Courtesy of Marks Barfield Architects and Davis Brody Bond

After our last AD Readers Debate, in which one commenter asked whether the Chicago cable car designed by Marks Barfield and Davis Brody Bond was intended as a tourist attraction or a piece of the city’s transport infrastructure, another commenter took the opportunity to criticize the idea in more certain terms:

The advantage of public transit is that it has the ability to move large numbers of people efficiently and allows for flexibility (getting on and off in different places). Gondolas were designed for a very different purpose and thus don’t function well as mode of urban public transit. Also, they are constantly closed due to high winds. Need I remind everyone of Chicago’s nickname, of which it most definitely lives up to?

This is a great 2nd year studio project, utopian and whimsical, but from legitimate architects? It’s one thing to put it out there as a fun exercise in thinking outside the box but reeling in engineers and developers and selling it like it is something that it is not, is naive. Unfortunately these gimmicky publicity stunts cause many outside of the discipline of architecture to question our relevance and ability to tackle the complexities of the real. – J Davis

Keep the debate flowing! Please post any responses to these topics in the comments below.

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