Terwagne / FORMa*
© Georges De Kinder
- Architects: FORMa*
- Location: 1310 La Hulpe, Belgium
- Architect In Charge: Benoit Nis
- Area: 1200.0 sqm
- Project Year: 2016
- Photographs: Georges De Kinder
- Structure: Bureau d’études A. & J. Escarmelle, Andoy-Wierde
- Technique: Alain Vandenheede
- Security & Energy: Coseas, Wavre
- Constructor: Marc Taviet, Floreffe
© Georges De Kinder
The building zone is situated at 5 meters distance of the lateral limits. On the street side, it’s aligned on the advanced parts of the houses on the west. Its depth is 15 meters. The Garden is oriented at the north-northeast.
© Georges De Kinder
Designed on the basis of the volumetric language and templates already present in the « Champ », the houses merge very well in the characteristic built environment of the « Champ des Mottes ».
Section
In order to integrate a contemporary living program in a well-defined environment, the existing volumetric language is re-interpreted with a twist.
© Georges De Kinder
The project benefits from a high quality environment. It’s conceived to take profit of the positive aspects of the parcel: environmental frame, garden, views, vegetation and natural daylight.
Plan 0
© Georges De Kinder
Plan 1
The houses offer large openings on the garden side and are turned to the south in order to let the sun penetrate generously. With this purpose, a part of the building is scooped out to create a patio, as a south-oriented part of the garden.
© Georges De Kinder
The patio is a light receptacle. It invites, punctuates the entry and creates a pleasant distance between public space and home. Located below, it turns part of the basement into habitable space, which can be used according to the residents needs.
The four houses are all unique, interpreting the same ideas in a different way.
© Georges De Kinder
The scooped out parts, fulfilling a vital function in the houses, push back partly the street side fronts. Combined with the variable backside facade plans, it reduces the building depth and creates a visual together of alternating volumes and depths.
© Georges De Kinder
The partly reducing of the building depth allows creating traversing living rooms combining environmental views, sunlight and direct contact with the garden.
Section
The staircase treatment reinforces the daylight quota in the central part of the homes.
The volumetric result is offering visual dynamism and permeability to the whole, dialoguing with the environing buildings of the « Champ des Mottes ».
© Georges De Kinder
Mooseberry Design Group Creates an Apartment in for a Young Woman in Kiev, Ukraine
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Tropikon Remodels a Home in the Old Quarter of Hanoi, Vietnam
Attic Apartment is a private home located in the Old Quarter of Hanoi, Vietnam. It was renovated by Tropikon in 2016. Attic Apartment by Tropikon: “The needs to have a new comfortable space in the old houses are inevitable demands of the residents living in Old Quarter in Hanoi today. With limited investment costs, expensive and time-consuming materials transport in the city, so that the green space solution interspersed proved..
LD 2 Country House / DNK Ag
© Alex Naroditsky
- Architects: DNK Ag
- Location: Moscow Oblast, Russia
- Area: 1200.0 sqm
- Project Year: 2012
- Photographs: Alex Naroditsky
- Architects: Daniil Lorenz, Natalia Sidorova, Konstantin Khodnev, Ilya Prezhezhetsky, Elena Serebrova, Maria Kochurkina, Nadezhda Kulikova, Alexander Ivanov, Alexander Krokhin, Andrei Taranukha
- Engineers: DME
- General Constructor: Alexander Ney
© Alex Naroditsky
From the architect. The house and surrounding landscape form one strong unit. The terrace overhangs the artificial pond. Garage and maintenance building are designed as a hill with a green roof park above. The hill also conceals house and the terrace from the road. All the inner house facades are made from water resistant and super strong merbau wood. The outer contour is of grey Jura limestone. Windows are equipped with sliding wooden jalousie screen. They allow light through and at the same time give sense of privacy. The interior is in the same color scheme as the facade: red wooden and grey-beige stone shades. The architects developed interior and construction elements, starting from the door knobs to sculptured staircase. The upper skylights open the interior to sun beams.
© Alex Naroditsky
Floor Plan
© Alex Naroditsky
7 Slope Studios / NAN Architects
© XIAO Xiao
- Architects: NAN Architects
- Location: Shanghai, China
- Design Team: NAN Xu, Guo Qiwei, Zhu Zhaoyu
- Structure: Xia Bin
- Area: 780.0 sqm
- Project Year: 2016
- Photographs: XIAO Xiao
© XIAO Xiao
From the architect. This project is located in an abandoned factory campus in a former concession district of Shanghai, surrounded by colonial architectures.
Sketch
The design objective is to take advantage of the city’s heritage to recall the memory of the district, and create an open public office space.
© XIAO Xiao
Based on the surrounding old buildings, abstracted prototype units with similar scale are created. Several terraces are provided by interlocking and setback of this units, which provide opportunities for communication, and create a facade with rhythm rather than a dull building edge.
Diagram
Two passages directed to the city landmark went through the lower part of the building and connected the courtyards.
© XIAO Xiao
Each studio has an independent courtyard facing the landscape.
Windows with different elevations provide a possibility for further construction of a mezzanine on the ground level.
© XIAO Xiao
Section
© XIAO Xiao
Waterscape – Memory of Water / Moriyuki Ochiai Architects
© Takumi Ota
- Architects: Moriyuki Ochiai Architects
- Location: Hakone, Ashigarashimo District, Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan
- Design Team: Moriyuki Ochiai, Wakana Sujishi, Jillian Lei, Charlotte Jacob, Florentina Carrier, Marina Masuda
- Area: 420.0 sqm
- Project Year: 2016
- Photographs: Takumi Ota
- Constructor: Ueno Construction
- Special Paint: Osamu Yamaguchi
- Client: Hakone city
© Takumi Ota
From the architect. The following renovation project aimed to transform a botanical garden located near Lake Ashi in the Hakone area, into a museum / a multi-purpose space.
The site is surrounded by a rich natural environment centering around a lake (Lake Ashi) and a mountain (Mt. Hakone). A large banyan tree, a tree emblematic of the botanical garden, used to stand at the centre of the glass dome serving as the entrance to the existing building. In this environment, precipitation(moisture) from the area would percolate through the site’s soil and collect around the roots , thus creating a natural spring filled with pristine waters.
© Takumi Ota
For the purpose of the museum renovation project, we were tasked with designing a space inside this entrance that could accommodate a kitchen, a dining space, and a stage for temporary exhibitions and performances, such as concerts and plays.
We envisioned a place that would adapt to the museum’s needs by enabling a variety of activities.
© Takumi Ota
First, we poured new concrete over the entire floor and created an octagonal amphitheater at the center of the entrance dome where the banyan tree used to be. A transparent resin was then spread at the bottom of the amphitheater floor to form a spring filled with the profound serenity and mystery surrounding water by acknowledging the memory of the botanical garden’s naturally occurring body of water, as well as the Hakone landmark that is Lake Ashi.
© Takumi Ota
The octagonal amphitheater functions as a multi-purpose venue that can be used as seating for dinning, as a central performance area surrounded by tiered seating for concerts or plays, or as a display area for a temporary exhibition. We considered that layering the ever-changing image of the venue’s daily configurations over the shimmering movement and changing appearance of water filled with memories would be the best approach for this location.
Floor Plan
In the same way that a lake is the accumulation of water droplets brought from various water sources, the transparent resin floor was flooded with elegant and lively elements using different reflective materials, such as mirrors, pieces of glass and fragments of metal, to produce a variety of light shining off the water surface.
Just as changes occur in the flow of water when one stream meets another, the flow of materials blend and interact with each other as individual bundles of light gain momentum and send beautiful ripples traveling across the surface.
© Takumi Ota
The changes created by these reflective materials confer abundant expressivity to the light which glows with the organic vitality of water, thus deepening its poetry while imparting beauty and mystery to the memory of water.
Like the surface of a lake that mirrors the evolving landscape, the changes in natural light, such as that from the morning or evening sun, the seasonal variations in the color of the trees, such as the fresh green leaves of spring or the red autumn leaves, all come together in a signature gradation that spreads throughout the newly built concrete and transparent resin surfaces like a wave of color filled with lively movement.
© Takumi Ota
Furthermore, we applied vivid colors, such as purple and light blue to the steel frame(column and beam) and concrete parts of the dome walls, as if the vibrant colors contained in the lake surface were splashed onto its surroundings, to lend the gloss and freshness of water to the entire space.
The brown walls of the kitchen booth are covered with wood plates shaped like dancing shards of light from the spring. Moreover, the rough grain motif of each of the plates can be perceived as the flow of a waterfall, thus infusing the space with the vitality produced by the resonance between the energy of water, and the trees found in the surrounding mountains.
© Takumi Ota
By bringing unity to the space and reflecting minute changes in its natural surroundings, this spring of memories spreads the image of water to the entire landscape and creates an environment where one can experience the wonder and mystery of natural phenomena while enhancing the fun and joy derived from human activities.
As the building undergoes a transformation from botanical garden to museum, the world ushered by the memory of the spring becomes engraved in our hearts along with the sparkle of flowing water, and its narrative is spun into the future.
Syunkato Soba / Design & Creative Associates
© Hiroyuki Oki
- Architects: Design & Creative Associates
- Location: District 1, Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam
- Architect In Charge: Atsushi Kawaguchi
- Area: 170.0 sqm
- Project Year: 2015
- Photographs: Hiroyuki Oki
© Hiroyuki Oki
“SYUNKATO SOBA” opened along Le Thanh Ton Street in the center of Ho Chi Minh City, which is popular for Japanese residents.
© Hiroyuki Oki
The site is located in a cluttered town with busy traffic, surrounded by overflowing people, cars, and bikes. Upon entering the restaurant, away from such bustle of the city, a quiet and comfortable space welcomes the guests as if entering a different world. Our intention was the creation of a space for people to feel “Japan” by eating soba cuisine prepared by a soba master.
Plan 1
© Hiroyuki Oki
Plan 2
The existing building has a narrow shape with about 5m width and 25m depth.
The first floor consists of the bar with a 10m counter made of solid wood from Africa, the soba making area surrounded by glass walls that faces the main street, the kitchen at the back and the counter kitchen connected to it.
© Hiroyuki Oki
In order to provide a relaxing atmosphere for dining, the ceiling height was lowered from the previous 3.6m to 2.4m. The see-through, wooden hanging frame above the counter ensures the openness of the space, while properly dividing the guest tables and the kitchen. The vintage lumber, the painted walls resembling rammed earth, and stone masonry walls create a Japanese atmosphere.
© Hiroyuki Oki
The second floor consists of the tables and private dining room.
In order to efficiently place tables in a 5m wide shop, millimeter-scale fine adjustment is necessary for compromising sizes such as the tables and isle width. Arrangement of the tables and dividing them are of the utmost importance since spacing is directly linked to comfortability.
© Hiroyuki Oki
In order to avoid crossing the lines of vision between customers or an excessive feeling of enclosure, the see-through wooden partitions with various shapes and finishes are used to ensure comfort. The only private dining room is located at the backmost location of the shop, dynamically surrounded by large solid wood boards and granite, creating a uniqueness in the restaurant.
© Hiroyuki Oki
Woodland Elementary School / HMFH Architects
© Ed Wonsek
- Architects: HMFH Architects
- Location: Milford, MA, United States
- Architects In Charge: Laura Wernick, FAIA; Matt LaRue, AIA; Robert Williams, AIA
- Area: 132500.0 ft2
- Project Year: 2016
- Photographs: Ed Wonsek
- Client : Town of Milford, MA
- Owner’s Project Manager : NV5
- Construction Manager: Shawmut Design and Construction
- Landscape Architect: Crosby Schlessinger Smallridge, LLC
- Structural Engineer: Foley Buhl Roberts & Associates Inc.
- M/E/P, Civil, Energy Modeling Engineers: Garcia Galuska DeSousa Consulting Engineers, Inc.
© Ed Wonsek
HMFH Architects worked closely with educators to develop the concept for this new grade 3-5 elementary school. The educational program for the school is built around a team teaching methodology and inclusionary instruction that makes use of directed learning, small group activities, skill building, individualized instruction, and project-based learning as well as other techniques to ensure that the needs of each student are addressed. This is reflected in the design that features a series of shared spaces and small learning communities for the school’s 985 students.
© Ed Wonsek
© Ed Wonsek
Reinterpreting the predecessor Woodland School’s open plan concept, the new school is organized around grade-level learning. Each grade occupies one floor in the academic wing, grouped into three smaller clusters of six classrooms with a learning commons just outside the classrooms. These common areas, including a media space, amphitheater, circular storytelling rooms and an array of project areas, encourage a range of flexible teaching approaches. Educators can easily shift from classroom environments to large-group events, team projects, and small-group work sessions in the adjacent learning commons. Sinks and flexible furniture are included within the project areas to support “messy” hands-on activities.
© Ed Wonsek
The school’s flexible academic wing was also designed for Woodland’s approach to differentiated instruction and RTI (Response to Intervention), in which students of differing abilities work in smaller groups in shared, small-group spaces next to pairs of classrooms. These small rooms are visible from the adjacent classrooms and allow students to stay near their “home base.”
© Ed Wonsek
Courtesy of HMFH Architects
Bookending the three-story academic wing are two wings housing core and community spaces: a dining/arts wing, which houses a cafeteria/performance space with stage, kitchen, music rooms, art rooms, a STEAM room, a viewing balcony, and administrative offices; and an athletic wing, containing a gym and a multipurpose wellness center.
© Ed Wonsek
The new Woodland Elementary School has allowed the Town of Milford to address several critical facility issues, including realignment of town-wide grade configuration that reunites grades 6-8 in a single middle school, first-stage implementation of a new district-wide educational technology program, and accommodation of a growing elementary-aged population. The new school was constructed adjacent to the existing school, which allowed students to safely attend school without disruption while the new school was built.
© Ed Wonsek
Product Description. The three-story academic wing is primarily clad with a concrete panel rain screen system. The concrete panels, in an 8-inch horizontal plank configuration, complement the brick masonry employed on the two-story ‘dining/arts’ and ‘athletic’ wings on either end in its range of texture and subdued color tones, as well as in its durability. The lightweight application and thinness of the product allow the panels to freely wrap the fold-out faces of classroom bay windows at the academic wing. Because of the directionality of the bay windows, the concrete panels are the most visible component of the façade until closer approach reveals bright colored panels in the fold of the bay windows, creating an element of surprise.
© Ed Wonsek
Herzog & de Meuron’s Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg Photographed by Iwan Baan
Exterior. Image © Iwan Baan
The Plaza of Herzog & de Meuron’s Elbphilharmonie has opened to the public. The concert hall’s observation deck, located 37 meters (121 feet) above ground level, is designed around a public square concept and is accessed via a 82 meter (269 foot) long, curving escalator, providing visitors to panoramic views of the city and harbor.
To mark the event, the Elbphilharmonie has released a new set of photographs by Iwan Baan, showing off the newly completed interior spaces. The full building is set to officially open to the public on January 11 and 12, 2017.
Exterior. Image © Iwan Baan
Plaza. Image © Iwan Baan
Plaza. Image © Iwan Baan
Rooftop. Image © Iwan Baan
Plaza. Image © Iwan Baan
Grand Hall. Image © Iwan Baan
Grand Hall Foyer. Image © Iwan Baan
Grand Hall Foyer. Image © Iwan Baan
Grand Hall Foyer. Image © Iwan Baan
Tube. Image © Iwan Baan
Grand Hall. Image © Iwan Baan
Tube. Image © Iwan Baan
Plaza. Image © Iwan Baan
Grand Hall. Image © Iwan Baan
Foyer Kleiner Saal. Image © Iwan Baan
Exterior. Image © Iwan Baan
Grand Hall Foyer. Image © Iwan Baan
Plaza. Image © Iwan Baan
Grand Hall Foyer. Image © Iwan Baan
Exterior. Image © Iwan Baan
News via Elbphilharmonie.
Sig Nordal 