Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners has revealed its new home inside the so-called Cheesegrater tower, featuring brightly coloured furnishings, exposed steelwork and a big central meeting space (+ slideshow). (more…)
From the architect. Conceived of as a beacon-like sanctuary within its gritty industrial neighborhood, this 3000sf space serves as Top Chef and James Beard Award Winner Paul Qui’s flagship restaurant. Working partially within strict limits of the original building’s footprint and massing, the restaurant embraces its relationship to the site and rekindles its dialogue with the evolving neighborhood. A unique plan diagram allows for guest reception with direct access from the pedestrian-heavy 6th street or from the rear parking lot, and the simple, yet sculptural roof forms subtly nod toward both the sacred and the home, two parallels the chef wanted to convey to his guests.
The stylistically abstract, hard protective outer shell gives way to a richly textured progression of warm interior spaces, including an indoor/outdoor courtyard, bar, dining room, special format tasting room and completely open kitchen. Inside, extensively repurposed materials from the original building imbue the space with character and contextual history. The experimental, craft-based ethic of the chef convey in the spirit and details of the architecture, which incorporates hand-made pottery elements, integrated art installations, and operable sliding walls that allow the spaces to be reconfigured for special events (or at the whim of the chef). Even the trunk of a pecan tree that once grew through the roof of the original building has been milled into tabletops and plateware.
Continually acclaimed by critics and foodies as one of country’s best and most innovative restaurants, the building acts as a true workspace first and foremost, offering guests a unique opportunity to engage and participate with the boundless creativity and expertise of its proprietors.
Israel has unveiled its theme for the 2016 Venice Biennale: “LifeObject: Merging Architecture and Biology”. Their pavilion will be comprised of a large-scale sculptural installation and seven speculative architectural scenarios relating to Israel. The exhibition will focus on the relationship between biology and architecture, acting as a “research oriented platform.”
The curatorial team, including architects Bnaya Bauer, Arielle Blonder, Noy Lazarovich, scientist Dr. Ido Bachelet and curator Dr. Yael Eylat Van-Essen, invited seven groups of architects and scientists – among them Prof. Dan Shechtman, a Nobel Prize Laureate – “to synergize their knowledge, and reorient their approach towards architecture.”
The exhibition includes both ideas that can be implemented as well as “new visions for the future,” with examples ranging from using nano-materials to naturally control transparency in desert structures, to employing cancer treatment techniques to deal with urban densification.
A self-supported structure inspired by a 3D scan of a bird’s nest sits at the center of the exhibition. Dubbed LifeObject, this structure “undulates and curves throughout the lower floor of the pavilion.” Combining composite, smart and biological materials, LifeObject is a “living structure.” Human presence around the structure opens a cabinet de curiosités, “filled with biological materials that are expected to have a significant impact on architectural design and construction.”
The exhibition’s conceptual foundation is ‘resilience’, “an essential element of biological systems that refers to their ability to cope with shock or trauma.” This theme “bears increased significance upon Israel and its geo-political context, where states of crisis continually rise up, greatly influencing quality of life and spatial design.”
Learn more, here.
Hungarian firm Napur Architect has been selected ahead of BIG, OMA and Zaha Hadid Architects to design a major new museum in Budapest’s City Park (+ slideshow). (more…)
Two Houses at Nichada is a private home located in Bangkok, Thailand. Completed in 2015, it was designed by Alkhemist Architects. Photos by Peerapat Wimolrungkarat & Ketsiree Wongwan
LIAG Architects has unveiled their design for a new art storage building. Commissioned by the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the aim of the project was to create a large open space, while simultaneously meeting other needs such as protecting art that can’t be exposed to daylight, controlling the temperature in certain zones, and using minimum amounts of energy to operate the building.
The 29,000 square-meter storage building is a simple volume designed not to reveal the organization of the interior. The entrance is a gold cladded arch shape, which opens the building towards an adjacent train station. The compact volume allows for the form to be expanded upon to create a larger facility if needed in the future.
The layout of the facility allows for art to be transported through the shortest routes possible. Each of the three floors contains one main corridor from which all spaces are accessible.
The design addresses the need to protect the artwork through both passive and active systems. The façade system utilizes a material that reflects daylight, but avoids glare. This material not only changes the building’s appearance throughout the seasons, but also allows controlled amounts of light to enter into the storage spaces.
The temperature of the facility is moderated by an insulated skin and energy stored in the ground. Different programs within the building are situated in ways that meet their specific needs. Studios and offices, which can tolerate warmer temperatures, are located at the top of the building, while cooler storage spaces are located on the lower levels.
DESIGN TEAM: Thomas Bögl, Maja Frackowiak, Jordy Aarts, Erik Schotte, Arie Aalbers, Jeroen Moerman, Anna Gunnink, Clemens Rothleitner, and Jose Reviriego Machío.
From the architect. An open space of 260 dunams in the heart of Jerusalem, Israel, on the edge of the Givat Mordechai neighborhood, opposite the busy Pat Intersection It is named after a herd of 17 gazelles that lived in this area, bounded by urban development and major transportation routes. The population of gazelles was in danger due to this massive urban development. In the early ’90s, Real estate developers have sought building rights in the area. Local activist supported by the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel (SPNI) fought to preserve the site as a natural oasis and turn it into an urban nature park. After lengthy court battles, that ended in the activist victory, the building plans where dimissed .An alternative plan for the nature park was created by the Local activist in a unique public planning process.
The plan was presented to the municipality, who then decided to adopt the idea and turn it into an operative planning process. Our firm, alongside with a Landscape architecture firm of Rachelle Wiener Landscape & Architecture, were appointed as designers and leaders of the planning team. In January 2013, work began on the park, which is described as Israel’s first urban wild nature reserve.
The highlights of the park will be a pack of about 30 wild gazelles, which roam freely throughout the grounds in a natural setting .the design is ecology minded, trying to enhance the existing ecological system and improve it . It includes 5 natural and man-made ponds, based on the existing drainage water system that flow through the park. To accommodate visitors, the design offers a set of lookout points for observing the various natural wildlife that inhabits the park, an entrance building, parking lot and plaza, a new visitor and research center, and manmade island.
Dowel House is a residential project completed by FMD Architects. It is located in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Dowel House by FMD Architects: “The brief was to create refurbish the existing single fronted terrace internally. The layout remained as is, with the central study to flexible to as 3rd bedroom or study. A clerestory skylight was to remain but be furbished to become a point of focus over the dining area…
With the opening of the 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale almost upon us, architects, curators and artists have already started to migrate to the city to unlock pavilion doors and sweep out the past six months of hibernation from the previous biennale season. This year, however, one pavilion has confirmed that it will remain closed – the Canadian Pavilion will not be opening its doors. Closure of the space has been attributed to a much-needed renovation, which has been mentioned by those who have exhibited in the space, specifically Shary Boyle at the 2012 Venice Art Biennale. Nevertheless, there are whispers that the political nature of this year’s entry may have been another reason to keep the pavilion shut. That said, Canada will be present by staking claim in the Giardini with a provocative installation entitled Extraction.
The installation outlines the strategic and expansive role that Canada has played in the mining industry, both at home and abroad. Canada’s involvement in worldwide mining extends long past its history as a nation. According to the curators, it can be traced back to the time of King John of England and the Magna Carta 800 years ago – a document which provided the proper legislation to separate surface rights from mineral rights, making the latter the domain of the Crown. Today it is the largest land owner in the world, having authority over 95% of Canadian lands.
The power of the State of Canada, the largest constitutional monarchy in the Americas, gives its corporations the same access to mineral rights. This has made Canada home to over 75% of all global prospecting and mining companies. Silently and tenaciously this prolific mining activity has worked fairly unnoticed, extracting the raw materials that make up the building blocks of contemporary urban infrastructure. The materials that make buildings and cities are grounded in colonial construction; that is, because architecture itself serves the political purposes of building of a country.
Extraction will present 800 years of building an empire in a short film of 800 images from 800 contributors in 800 seconds. The 13 minute and 30 second film will be viewed through the keyhole of a survey stake that will be driven through the core of Canada’s colonial past, its Italian neighbors at the Venice Giardini being France, Germany and the United Kingdom. This intervention will take place outdoors, in the open air, strategically aligned at the intersection of these three pavilions to expose their histories and tensions, enabled by the security of foreign ground.
Deliberately embedded in the ground, it asks visitors to kneel down to watch the film one by one – a unique event for Canada and the Venice Architecture Biennale. The curators have designed a rare survey stake for the installation to be forged in pure gold and inscribed with the words summa virtus terra est, or “the greatest power is land.” Typically used in mining, a survey stake is the legal and territorial instrument at the interface of a legal property boundary on a survey drawing and the actual ground and precedes all forms of territorialization, construction and power. In this language, Extraction uses the golden stake as a counter-monument; in the words of the curators, the intersecting arrows marked on its face nullify the stake itself and will therefore symbolize the self-cancellation of the empire.
The team behind the installation have donating their time and services as landscape architects and ecological engineers at a contaminated gold mine in Furtei, Sardinia. First owned and operated by Australian mining companies, the Furtei gold mine was later sold to Canadian companies, who abandoned the site in 2009. Mining and exploration there spanned twenty years and failure to clean up the site following invasive operations generated significant levels of acid mine drainage and contamination, including cyanide and arsenic–based processes that threaten the agricultural region and Cagliari watershed.
The story of Furtei is not isolated. It is only one among many mines left behind in the shifts of global resource capital. Being in Italy, Furtei was chosen specifically by the curatorial team in order to ground Canada’s history to Italy at this year’s Biennale. A small booklet outlining the story of Furtei and Canada’s current remediation efforts will be given to visitors, along with 100g of aggregate ore from Furtei. Interestingly, the concentration of the gold ore is one part per billion; this extremely low ratio marks an important shift in world mining today – as the concentration and grade of ore (from precious metals and other minerals) in the ground decreases, the environmental effects dramatically and irreversibly increase. In other words, it’s fool’s gold.
Notwithstanding the bunker-like appearance of Canada’s closed pavilion this year, its location outdoors and in the open air reinforces the root of Extraction. Typically dwarfed by its neoclassical neighbors in the Giardini—a bittersweet irony given that the Canadian Pavilion should be tucked between these political powers—Canada will this year emerge from beneath the trees to declare a new identity. This is the debut of the “territorial revolution,” since the grand and final act planned by curator Pierre Bélanger (OPSYS) and the Extraction team is to present Queen Elizabeth with the golden stake at the closing of the biennale. This gift, which will coincide with the eve of Canada’s 150th anniversary of Confederation is, as Bélanger states, “a declarative gesture of retrocession and independence.”
Extraction has been commissioned by the Art Gallery of Alberta and is curated by OPSYS, under the direction of Pierre Bélanger, a Canadian landscape architect, urbanist and associate professor at Harvard. In addition, OPSYS is collaborating with Canadians, Atelier Hume, goldsmiths and gemologists, who are forging the stake and with RVTR to co-write the book Extraction Empire.
