From the architect. A concrete party wall extends the entire length of the townhouse, separating it from its neighbour (it is one in a row of three) and visually connecting the front entry to the rear courtyard garden.
On the ground floor the study, kitchen and living areas flow around a glazed central courtyard, which with an adjacent crafted timber stair provides a central light source and focus to the long lineal space.
A small den provides a quiet retreat and addresses the front deck and garden. The upper floor includes two luxuriously appointed bedrooms and a yoga studio, Yoga Lane, sits above the carport beyond the rear courtyard.
A long black timber balustrade off the front bedrooms hovers over the entry porches of all three townhouses and forms a unifying element for the building. It is capped with a steel framed pergola that once vine covered will soften the architecture and relate it to the leafy tree lined streetscape.
Photographer Laurian Ghinitoiu has captured the latest photos of BIG’s courtscraper, VIA 57WEST. Exploring the urban context of this unconventional high-rise, the images illustrate how the building’s swooping facade and peak appear from different sight lines.
Milan 2016: Italian architect Carlo Ratti has created a system of smart modular seats that can be adjusted with an app or hand gestures into different configurations (+ movie). (more…)
From the architect. Chigorodo –which means “river of bamboos” in the native embera tongue– is a town with a population of over 65,000 people, 34 meters above sea level, located in the central part of the Uraba sub region 250 kilometers northeast of Antioquia’s capital, Medellin. It’s a strategic geographic region and it holds great importance to Antioquia’s progress given it’s the access route to the department’s sea.
The banana industry and economic center of the region consisting of the Turbo, Apartado, Carepa and Chigorodo urban centers integrated along the road to the sea in a process of conurbation, grants the Chigorodo Educational Park a strategic location in the area.
An open field with no vegetation located in the town’s old airport –now in disuse and exempt from the urban center– across the river and the backbone that connects Chigorodo with other municipalities, serves as a site for the project neighboring with an existing sports hall and skating track, and is emerging as a new sports and recreation center of the town.
Plan
The difficult climate between warm (average temperature of 28ºC), humid (tropical rain forest and tropical montane forest), and high rainfall (6219 mm per year), conditioned the way we approached the building: we needed to build a large cover that would protect us from the merciless weather, sun and rain. It created a great artificial shadow that would act as a tree generator of environmental comfort.
The cultural diversity of the region made up of indigenous communities, afro, settlers and migrants is manifested in how we intervened the environment. The territory was occupied dispersedly. The Embera communities, for example, build their villages through the grouping of “tambos”, small huts with a circular base, open sides that allow air flow and elevated from the ground to protect against floods and humidity. The tambo is divided into two circular modules, one gathers the bedroom area and the other houses the kitchen and food storage.
The Educational Park draws from this notion, reinterpreting, understanding their constructional intelligence and implicit cultural value in the conception of the circular space. Not from the geometric shape, but rather from a space-time concept of centrality and continuity.
Section
Section
The building is structured through clustering circular volumes on a platform specifically responding to each of the functions – classrooms, administrative area and services– all under the same roof. The separation between the volumes and the cover establishes a ventilation space, hence preventing overheating of the classroom and responding to the climate conditions of the place.
Construction materials are simple. The cylinders are made up of vertical bands of concrete blocks and openings (of three different sizes) with a permeable enclosure in iron rods, thus alternating full and empty sections generating a rhythm and allowing continuous cross winds.
Section
The cover hovers over the cylinders, following the geometric line of the platform, supported by round metal columns –like the tree trunks that support the high ceilings of the traditional buildings– which are exempt from the wall, freeing them from their structural function allowing the separation between volumes and cover.
Two small access squares, the platform that works as a great urban bench, the classrooms, and the corridors as rooms allow the space to be used in various ways, responding to the community’s needs expressed through interviews, workshops and public meetings in an early design phase. There, education, entrepreneurship, sports, art, culture, and technology programs will be articulated, turning the building into a meeting point and a social space capable of generating a sense of community.
Diagram
In the words of the former governor of Antioquia, Sergio Fajardo, an Educational Park is “a public space for townspeople to come together in the 21st century; an open space for the entire community; it’s the belief that quality public education, science, technology, entrepreneurship, innovation and culture are the privileged actions for –through the potential and wealth of our regions– fighting against social inequality, violence and the culture of illegality.
Steven Holl Architects (SHA) has been commissioned by Williams College to complete a program and masterplan study for the Williams College Department of Art and Museum of Art (WCMA). “The Master Plan aims to evaluate programming and space needs toward the determination of a program to catalyze the engagement of students, faculty and visitors with the visual arts,” says SHA.
After talking with nearly 30 distinct groups of students, faculty and museum staff, SHA defined five main goals in which the study is based on:
Expand William College’s art presence in the region;
Connect the arts across campus;
Shape campus space, connecting interior to exterior;
Make architecture in complementary relation to the picturesque campus;
Create inspiring spaces for teaching and exhibiting art.
“Historically one of the most important launching institutions for museum leaders around the world, Williams College extends its dedication to excellence in art education with this new campus development phase,” said Steven Holl.
“It is a great honor to work with the College to enhance the research and teaching spaces of the art department, and to expand WCMA’s unique role as a teaching museum and a regional center for public intellectual life,” added Senior Partner Chris McVoy.
From the architect. ADHOC architects is proud to announce that his project for the Univers NuFace cosmetic care clinic in Laval is now open. One of a kind, Univers NuFace offers a fantastic experience to its client transporting them into a whole new world. An alternative space which is in between the luxury boutique and a hi-tech laboratory.
Floor Plan
Our team designed a space, which is both luminous, clean and fun. The challenge was to create in the new space a professional and immaculate image while also transmitting NuFace’s owner’s extravagant personality. Their desire to build a candy bar and to embellish the space with full-size Star Wars characters pushed the project forward.
Our concept was initially inspired by the butterfly’s image that ties all of Univers NuFace’s corporate identities together: NuFace, NuAddiction and Délivrance. It was of utmost importance that the new clinic embodied the harmony between the different brands while also allowing their specific characteristics to shine.
ADHOC’s strategy was to create a clean and luminous space which would link the different parts together through colors, textures and materials. The resulting look is one of unity and coherence that allows for each zone’s specificity to stand out. Easy and low-cost methods such as the creative use of contrasting paint colors were used to create different atmospheres within the consultation rooms without adding walls. Furthermore, the use of digital parametric tools allowed our team to create from a microscopic texture of a butterfly’s wing a motif reinterpreted in the clinic’s different zones. The result is abstract, contemporary and fundamentally linked to our client.
The short deadlines were also a challenge for our team but the amazing relationship between the different actors in the project created a resounding success. A fruitful collaboration with the contractor and with the client is even more important in such a fast-track project. In the end, this project truly embodies the definition of ADHOC: an architecture firm dedicated to solving specific design challenges by working outside of the traditional work patterns and by collaborating with a rich variety of partners.
Rotterdam—the original “tabula rasa” city—will soon become host to a giant staircase, ascending 180 steps from Stationsplein (outside Rotterdam Central Station’s iconic entrance) to the top of the world-renowned Groot Handelsgebouw. According to MVRDV, the structure “follows in the city’s tradition of celebrating reconstruction milestones” and the scaffolding system used to construct the staircase will be “a nod” to the 75th anniversary of the rebuilding of the city following World War II.
The giant infrastructural folly has been designed to respond to the angles of the existing station, “connecting the contemporary icon with a historic monument” whilst—through its construction—referencing the seemingly perpetual urban reconstruction that the city has, and continues to, experience.
At the top of the staircase—which will sit at 29 metres tall and 57 metres long—ascenders will find a temporary observation deck, providing expansive views across the port city. The roof, currently occupied by a bar, will also see the temporary reopening of a former cinema (last active in the 1960s) which will screen a wide variety of films, debates and performances during the life of the installation. Winy Maas, co-founder of MVRDV, has indicated that “it would be good to make it a permanent fixture.”
The Stairs, as it has been titled, will be officially opened on the 16th May 2016 by Rotterdam’s Mayor and will remain open until the 12th June. Admission is free and the installation will be open from between 10:00 and 22:00.
MVRDV also have proposed another controversial (and more permanent) project for Rotterdam. Find out more, here:
