Breaking news: Spain has been awarded the Golden Lion for best pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale, while Italian architect Maria Giuseppina Grasso Cannizzo has been awarded the prize for best exhibition.
More details to follow.
Alejandro Aravena and the jury for the 15th International Architecture Exhibition at La Biennale di Venezia have just announced the winning participations.
The Golden Lion for Best National Participation went to Spain for UNFINISHED. The jury cited Carlos Quintáns & Iñaqui Carnicero’s “concisely curated selection of emerging architects whose work shows how creativity and commitment can transcend material constraints.”
The Golden Lion for Best Participant in the International Exhibition, Reporting From the Front, went to Gabinete de Arquitectura. The award was granted to Solano Benítez, Gloria Cabral, and Solanito Benítez (all from Paraguay) for “harnessing simple materials, structural ingenuity and unskilled labour to bring architecture to underserved communities.”
NLÉ received the Silver Lion for a Promising Young Participant in the International Exhibition Reporting From the Front for his Makoko Floating School. The jury cited, “a powerful demonstration, be it in Lagos or in Venice, that architecture, at once iconic and pragmatic, can amplify the importance of education.”
Japan and Peru took home the Special Mention in the National Participations category. For Japan, the jury particularly appreciated “the poetry of compactness to alternative forms of collective living in a dense urban space.” They congratulated Peru for bringing architecture to a remote corner of the world, making it both a venue for learning as well as a means for preserving the culture of the Amazon.
Maria Giuseppina Grasso Cannizzo of Italy received Special Mention for her contribution to Reporting From the Front, which demonstrated “perseverance in using the rigours of her discipline to elevate the everyday into timeless works of architecture.”
As it was announced in May, Paulo Mendes da Rocha received the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement.
We will continue to post updates and images.
Located in the main square of a small fishermen village, Aquiles Eco Hotel aims to be integrated in the architecture and in the social structure of the surroundings.
The architecture is simple, raw and flexible, and it talks with the other houses and the small buildings all around.
The structure is composed by 13 wooden container sized rooms, set in a beton brut structure and painted with lime putty.
The tropical dry climate and the strong Aliseum winds make the island of Sao Vicente very fragile concerning its avaliable material. Only stones and sand can be found on the island, but still they are protected by local laws and not renewable in the short term.
For this reason we chose the certified wood to build the rooms, choosing renewability and sustainability, and also choosing a solution which is easy to assemble and disassemble. Due to the very unpredictable turistic demands, we chose a flexible structure, easy to eventually move in another place, or to dismantle and use in another contest or country.
The hotel is a prototype. Every solution is found thinking global and acting local.
The water in the showers is recycled and reused in the toilet flush. In the near future photovoltaic panels will be set on the rooftop.
In the ground floor there is the reception, the kitchen and the restaurant lounge. A Concrete floor, and simple furniture made with recycled wood (used for the concrete) are the main decoration of those open spaces.
The first floor and the second floor have quite the same disposition: 6 container sized rooms and a storage.
The last floor hosts a sea viewed suite, the cleaning room and a huge open veranda.
The rooms have a basic configuration to fit with the simple village living. They consist in a simple portal “skeleton” made by 8×8 wooden bars, and a “skin” of assembled wooden panels.
No need of air conditioning due to the crossed ventilation. No television, as we aim to encourage the discovery of the village and the open-air experiences instead of staying in the rooms. On the other side we offer wi-fi connection in the common spaces to be linked with the world. Low tech installation and few visual information let the visitors experience themselves and the surrounding environment.
The artworks inside the building are made by the artist-architect Moreno Castellano.
Botanica 32 is a private residence designed by Metricon. The home is located in Australia. Photos courtesy of Metricon
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Štefánikova Street is known as traffic route in the city center, yet it has the potential to be a city boulevard. It has a unique character with a varied structure of buildings from different historical periods. Two original buildings from the fifties and the seventies were reconstructed. Both were previously connected and operationally functioned as one building. Characteristics of both buildings were their to date street-facades (also known as buildings of railway engineering).
The aim of the reconstruction was to create a modern business center of class A. The building was extended towards the courtyard and in addition to the original one basement, two more basement floors were created (for parking). Also, there was a superstructure made of one of the floors above the original roof. The aim was to preserve the historical ties of the buildings and the boulevard character of the Štefánikova Street. Further aim was to involve the parterre into the street life.
Buildings of the 50-ies are recognized as the period in which they arise. Gradually disappearing from our cities, this layer of history is often covered with another layer. Despite the fact, that there was a possibility to build a new and attractive facade, the idea to maintain and enhance the spirit of the ’50s has become essential for the project.
Since the technical condition of buildings and construction system did not allow for the required flexibility, the building of the 50-ies was demolished and re-created as a replica of the original facade. Materials, such as travertine cladding on the parterre or mosaic facade were applied again on both buildings. The elements have been reconditioned or replaced by replicas (railings or inscription on the buildings). The original inscription on the building found its place on the facade once again, but in a new form, which after deciphering reveals the original name. The project combines the demands of modern, flexible, energy-efficient buildings with the preservation of historical values and spirit of the ‘ 50s.
From the street, the unifying element of these buildings became a parterre and the superstructure above the 6th floor. From the courtyard, the buildings are united with an austere modern facade allowing flexibility of the interior. The unity of the two buildings was strengthened by eliminating the difference between the facade and roof. As materially as well as tectonically, the roof plane and the facade appear as a single entity with different inclinations. There were daring technical solutions applied, which have never been implemented in Slovakia before.
The building has nine floors, three underground floors and 65 parking spaces. There is a central entrance with reception and two retail spaces on the ground floor. The offices offer variable disposal solutions as required by owners. On the top ninth floor is a terrace with a view over the rooftops, overlooking the Slavín, Bratislava Castle and the Presidential garden. There is also a smoking terrace on the roof.
Thanks to innovative environmental technologies is a building classified as a green building. Within the pre-certification, the building itself meets the strict quality standards according to the international method BREEAM (Building Research Establishment´s Environmental Assessment Method). Heating and cooling is provided by heat pumps. Parking is available on one over ground and three underground floors. The architects managed to ensure an above standard number of parking spaces for their clients. In addition, stands for bicycles are also available, as well as a dressing room and a shower in the garage.
Villa Erard is a residential project designed by Andrea Pelati Architecte in 2015. It is located in Nods, Switzerland. Villa Erard by Andrea Pelati Architecte: “The villa is settled in a strictly planned residential zone hanging over the Diesse plateau, in the Swiss Jura Mountains. Contrasting with its heteroclite neighbours, the contemporary design revisits the typical gable roof houses. Encased in the rock mass, the almost hidden entrance door opens..
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From the architect. While persian carpets are world renowned, bricks have a strong relationship with iranian historical architecture. in this building, ‘the house of 40 knots’ by habibeh madjdabadi and alireza mashhadimirza, the two entities are fused into a contemporary façade that appears as a collection of intricately interwoven modules.
in textile factories, two people work together to make a carpet – one reads the instructions while the other sits behind the scaffold and makes the braids. the architects elaborate by saying, ‘the one who reads the instruction does not necessarily know how to knit. she reads the instructions, usually with a rhythm, and like a song: two reds, a yellow below, two blue . . . those instructions are usually drawn on checkered papers.’ the handmade exterior of this residence is also made using a similar system. one craftsman reads and the other places raised, filler, and hollow bricks in corresponding supporting bars between L profiles. due to this technique, there is no need for phase drawings and the construction sequence can be performed through a series of simple, localized labors. workers can lay down the clay blocks row by row without having to understand the concept of whole façade.
as the result is thought to be one unified object, madjdabadi and mashhadimirza intentionally avoided designing different components separately. instead, the aesthetic is defined by a series of loose rules that allow both sides of the repeated units to be visible. from the outside, they appear as an integrated texture, and from the inside, they appear as window parapets embedded into the masonry. also, a standard cube geometry is used at various scales: in the protrusions of the outer surface, in planters of the fencing, and in shelves of the interior.
A Clean Affair
On behalf of one of the world’s leading enterprises for the production of solar panels and regenerative energy, TRIAD Berlin and TRIAD China developed the overall concept for a unique showroom and exhibition sector, which addresses both the history and future of energy production.
The Renewable Energy Exhibition Center extends over 1,900 sq. m., it is a unique showroom and exhibition experience. On a large 180°- cinema screen visitors can learn about the development and the successes of the Hanergy Company as well as about the future of sustainable energy production. For this TRIAD Berlin produced, inter alia, the main film in which spectacular images were produced by using special cameras, drones and CGI sequences.
Hanergy’s thin-film photovoltaic systems will become part of cutting-edge technology in the foreseeable future. The multinational company is pursuing its stated aim of making the world a better place by means of clean energy.
