Venice Architecture Biennale 2016: Dutch office MVRDV has designed a completely see-through glass kitchen that aims to inspire a “more healthy, if not sexy” approach to food (+ slideshow). (more…)
From the architect. This project began as a renovation to Tache Hall, a 1911 student residence, for Music and Art at the University of Manitoba. When an opportunity arose for federal stimulus funding during the 2009 recession, the decision was made to develop a portion of the program separately, so it could be designed and constructed in an expedited manner to meet funding deadlines. This project, the ARTlab, became the first of a multi-phase creative arts facility.
The 6300 sqm ARTlab program consists of large spaces for the School of Art to complement small spaces within Tache Hall. Included are a national-standard gallery, lecture hall, soundstage, administration, and a variety of new and traditional media studios.
The volume of the ARTlab interlocks with that of Tache Hall, reinforcing that the two buildings are an integrated arts facility and maximizing north daylit studio spaces on the site. The extension of the north wing of the ARTlab around the corner of Tache Hall prominently places the ARTlab on the principal outdoor space on campus, Duckworth Quadrangle.
To facilitate critical urban connections to the south, the north wing of the ARTlab is raised one storey above grade. The covered area below forms the entrance to the ARTlab and a generous covered outdoor space for school and gallery events. Large V-shaped columns animate this space at an urban scale, negotiating the structural grid of the building with below-grade obstacles. The result is a lively courtyard caught between historic and contemporary buildings.
To facilitate connections above-grade, a pair of bridges link the upper levels of the ARTlab to Tache Hall. Below-grade, the ARTlab ties into the campus tunnel network, a key pedestrian circulation system during the bitterly cold Winnipeg winter months.
Within the ARTlab, a narrow atrium links upper floors to below-grade spaces. Animated by south daylight, this atrium forms a spiraling vertical circulation space for the building.
On the ground and tunnel levels are the two principal public spaces of the building, The School of Art Gallery and the Lecture Hall. Terraced seating at the base of the atrium creates a multi-level lobby that connects these two facilities together, tying them to both at-grade and below-grade campus circulation. Studios and administration are on the upper floors to take advantage of natural light.
The exterior of the ARTlab juxtaposes modern construction with the historic masonry of Tache Hall. The north elevation is fully glazed, so that the studios enjoy diffuse daylight and, at the same time, provide a visible expression of the life of the School of Art to the public spaces below. The east and south elevations are reticent, landscape walls. Aluminum grilles veil the envelope from sunlight and offer privacy from the nearby School of Business. The Virginia Creeper planted at the base of the grilles will eventually form a seasonably-variable campus-scale vertical xeriscape.
The Victoria and Albert Museum has unveiled its latest installation: the Elytra Filament Pavilion, a project displaying the culmination of four years of research on the integration of architecture, engineering, and biomimicry principles, in an exploration of how biological fiber systems can be transferred to architecture.
The 200-square-meter structure is inspired by lightweight construction principles found in nature, namely “the fibrous structures of the forewing shells of flying beetles known as elytra,” states a press release.
The pavilion’s canopy is made up of 40 hexagonal component cells, each weighing an average of 45 kilograms. These cells were constructed over a four-month period by a robot at the University of Stuttgart and assembled on site at the Victoria and Albert’s John Madejski Garden.
Elytra will grow and change in configuration over the course of the Victoria and Albert Engineering Season in response to anonymous data captured by real-time sensors of how visitors use and move under the canopy. Data will be mapped and available online throughout the season, and on June 17 and 18, and September 22, “visitors will be able to see the pavilion evolve as new components are fabricated live in the garden by a Kuka robot.”
Overall, the pavilion will be made from glass and carbon fibers using a new robotic technique that entails the winding of composite materials by a robot arm.
Learn more about the project here.
News via the Victoria and Albert Museum.
This set of images by photographer Iwan Baan provides a first look inside Herzog & de Meuron‘s extension to the Tate Modern art gallery, set to open next month in London (+ slideshow). (more…)
This Montreal residential building by local studio Naturehumaine features a simple brick facade punctuated with square windows and a rear parking area topped by a steel canopy. (more…)
Venice Architecture Biennale 2016: Vietnamese architect Vo Trong Nghia has revealed that he makes his staff meditate every day to help them “resist cravings and improve concentration”. (more…)
House K is a private residence located in Düsseldorf, Germany. It was designed by the Bielefeld-based firm Architekten Wannenmacher + Möller GmbH. House K by Architekten Wannenmacher + Möller GmbH: “The building is located in a residential area of Düsseldorf, in the ‘White Estate’ in Golzheim. This estate was constructed by the National Socialists in 1935/36 in a period of one and a half years as a model estate that..
The Pavilion of Turkey at the 2016 Venice Biennale will feature an exhibition titled Darzanà: Two Arsenals, One Vessel, which links the cultural heritage between the language and architecture of dockyards in Istanbul and Venice. Curated by a team of Turkish architects, the display will present “a last vessel,” that has been built using waste materials found at the Haliç dockyards in Istanbul, and transported to the Biennale.
While Venice and Istanbul have two vastly different cultures, at one point in history, their culture and commerce were deeply seeded in dockyards, which produced and launched ships. The term Darzanà is a hybrid word that roots itself in Mediterranean languages, which were historically used as a means of communication between sailors and merchants. For the purpose of this exhibition, these languages have been interpreted to define a common architectural language.
The vessel on display, dubbed “baştarda” (another hybrid word), “is a cross between a galley and a galleon and is propelled by oars and sails.” The baştarda symbolizes “the hybridity specific to the Mediterranean.” It will represent a ship that was left to rot in Istanbul but has set sail for Venice for a new life “all the while looking for clues to transform fronts and borders into thresholds and spaces of consensus.” Since architects often face ideas about confrontation and the breaking of borders, this exhibition will transform this space of conflict into a space of consensus through architecture and the metaphor of the baştarda.
Learn more about the exhibition, here.
The two houses, which remained empty for twenty years, became known by the graffiti in one of the facade “People could leave here”. The new owner planned to build 9 apartments for rental.
As the internal structure of the building didn’t exist, we decided to take a radical action that would result suitable for its new purpose. All that remained standing of these old houses were its outer walls, now preserved and renovated.
Moreover, the project, instead of using the enclosed shape that the old facades seemed to suggest, we chose to create, inside the facades, four isolates volumes with different shapes, which make up four small towers where the apartments overlap. Each apartment is close to 50Sqm, and consists in two floors with a living room/ kitchen and a bedroom and Bathroom included.
When dissociating the four floors of the new interior facade from the two old facades, the project, allowed not destroying the scale of urban memory. The two levels of existing windows hide now four new floors, where the existing facade plays the role function of a filter between the apartments and the busy street. We tried to create a tension between a structured geometry from the existing object (old facade) and a new object of clear rules, independent, which merges with the new towers.
The access to the apartments is done by an open-air gallery that leads to a common staircase in the outside.
Beside, small-scale shifts create relational diversity among the apartments, between the living spaces and the terrace and also among the inhabitants, who benefit from interacting with these areas. Altogether the apartments form a single building, an environment that creates spaces for human relationships and interactions with the city itself.
Duplex in Gracia is a home designed by Zest Architecture. It is located in Barcelona, Spain. Duplex in Gracia by Zest Architecture: “In a building in Gracia, where the owners owned two apartments one on top of the other, ZEST was asked to create a spacious, welcoming family home. The brief included the creation of both a dedicated music room, suitable for small concerts of chamber music, and a library..
