The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH) has named Gensler’s Shanghai Tower as the 2016 Best Tall Building Worldwide, citing its “innovative design scheme in traditional Shanghainese architectural traditions.” The building was selected from among four regional winners, which included BIG’s VIA 57 West (Americas), Jean Nouvel’s The White Walls (Europe) and Orange Architects’ The Cube (Africa).
The tallest building in China, the design of Shanghai Tower drew from the concept of shikumen, a vernacular housing typology that blends indoor and outdoor space, in its unique sky atria located between layers of the building’s double skin facade.
The jury also lauded the building for its “sustainably minded design,” which used advanced form modelling techniques to result in a building form that reduces wind loading by 24 percent.
“Shanghai Tower shows the greatest commitment to communal space in a tall building since Commerzbank Tower completed in 1997,” said CTBUH Executive Director and jury member Antony Wood.
“It contains the world’s first truly ‘inhabitable’ double-skin façade on a skyscraper, which is not only remarkable for its intended greenery, but its incorporation into the tower’s overall ventilation strategy. The sacrifice of valuable floor area to realize this social amenity proves that the aspirations for Shanghai Tower went far beyond mere commercial gain.”
The VPVC office is a project commissioned to solve the demanding layout for a new bureau of lawyers, located in a single 500 sqm story of a translucent curtain-wall building with a single central circulation core in Santiago. Our proposal resulted the winner in a private competition.
The programme requested contemplated allocating 23 individual lawyer’s offices, 4 secretaries, accountants, interns and an area of services. As it is commonly arranged there are different hierarchies which are depicted by different office sizes. Nonetheless we opted to organise this array towards the external perimeter (natural illumination) and connect every room with the rest of the office by a public continuous aisle, which was designed alongside a 45 metre lineal wood shelve. The built-in quality cabinet contains archives and consultation books, and is fully designed in Lenga, a highly regarded FSC timber from Patagonia. In order to avoid a locked-in feeling common from deep plan layouts, we opted for translucent layers towards the centre, and in every aisle there was an open end reaching the building facade which allows for a continuous relation with the exterior and the pass of the day and light.
The material palette was carefully overseen to avoid the multiple finishings portrayed by the technical units, therefore we limited the colours to the extensive use of Lenga in corridors, specific ceiling areas and some furniture, whereas we used a crispier finishing such as stainless steel and glass as a counterpoint in frames and partition walls.
In October 1997, the unforgettable swooping metal panels of Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Bilbao made their debut, drawing the attention of art and architecture lovers around the world. Images of the building quickly circulated through the infant world wide web, turning the museum into an instant icon that permanently elevated and transformed the international perception of the city of Bilbao.
Cities all over the world saw the potential in creating their own “Bilbao Effect,” and soon, a slew of new eye-catching, sculptural buildings had be built. This phenomenon persisted through the 2000s, manifesting itself in works by Gehry, Zaha Hadid, and many others. But recently, notable figures both inside and outside architecture have began to distance themselves from the icon, notably in the design philosophies of OMA and alumni such as Jeanne Gang and Matthias Sauerbruch.
In a new opinion piece for the Guardian, photographer Stuart Franklin extends this sentiment not just to architecture, but to all images in general. Franklin explains the history of the “iconic image,” and explains the reasons why it may no longer exist.
CAVE redesigned the floorplan – both interior and exterior spaces – the finishings and tailormade design objects, essencial for the wel-lfunctioning of the villa.
Courtesy of CAVE
The spacial concept was to merge the interior with the exterior and transform the social area in one big space with diferent ambients and functions. The bedrooms are all distributed on the same facade to assure privacy and less exposure, while the social and exterior area are oriented south west where they find the best view and sun exposure.
Starting with two 12.5×2.5m containers, space was obviously limited and so it was important to provide well-lit, practical open spaces, thus all the spaces are white and the floor light grey.
Being a vacation house, time is an important theme to bring and create identity and life to the house, so all the exterior space is untreated wood that turns grey with time and makes the interior and exterior melt into one unique space whith similar colors and materials.
The Library of Congress has announced the winners of the 2016 Holland Prize, which recognizes the best single-sheet, measured drawing of a historic building, site, or structure, completed to the standards of the Historic American Building Survey (HABS), Historic American Engineering Record (HAER), or the Historic American Landscapes Survey (HALS).
The prize is awarded annually to “increase awareness, knowledge, and appreciation of historic resources throughout the United States while adding to the permanent HABS, HAER, and HALS collection at the LOC, and to encourage the submission of drawings among professionals and students. By requiring only a single sheet, the competition challenges the delineator to capture the essence of the site through the presentation of key features that reflect its significance.”
This year’s top prize was bestowed to a team of students from Universidad Politécnia de Puerto Rico for their drawing of the Lazaretto Isla de Cabras, a ruined 19th-century health institution in Puerto Rico, while honorable mentions were given to a drawing of the Chess Pavilion on Lake Shore Drive in Chicago by a team of students from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a drawing of the Plaza at the Mission of San Juan Bautista, California, by Cate Bainton.
Winner
Lazaretto Isla de Cabras (Goats Island); Toa Baja, Puerto Rico / Anexyulianne Thillet, Alneris Lugo, Monica Ortiz, Angel Marrero, Jessica Martinez, Fabian Rivera, Natalie Santa and Emmanuel De La Paz. Image Courtesy of Library of Congress
Lazaretto Isla de Cabras (Goats Island); Toa Baja, Puerto Rico / Anexyulianne Thillet, Alneris Lugo, Monica Ortiz, Angel Marrero, Jessica Martinez, Fabian Rivera, Natalie Santa and Emmanuel De La Paz
Faculty sponsors: Prof. Claudia Rosa-López and Prof. José Lorenzo-Torres (Universidad Politécnica de Puerto Rico)
The lazaretto’s original purpose was to house yellow fever and cholera patients, but few remember such noble commitment today. Instead, for over a century today—and in spite for being a ruin—the lazaretto has been an emblematic landscape component in San Juan’s Bay with a distinctive profile that has been appreciated by many generations of residents and visitors to the old city. It represents the only example of its kind ever built in Puerto Rico, simultaneously underlining how Spanish Colonial building codes required health related facilities to be built outside the walled enclave. Its construction methods highlight building practices imposed on the Island (and Cuba) by Madrid’s School of Engineers, Roads and Port Facilities. The project’s dossier (narrative) became the precedent for detailing succeeding comparative building initiatives in terms of scope, tectonics, and contents.
The Chess Pavilion is an open-air structure that was built in 1957 out of concrete and Indiana limestone. The site where the pavilion is located has been a popular gathering place for chess players since the 1930s. The Chess Pavilion received a Citation of Merit from the Chicago Chapter of the American Institute of Architects at its Civic Pride Luncheon in 1957.
Franciscan missionaries founded twenty-one missions on the Pacific coast of the Spanish colony of Alta California between 1769 and 1823. Control of Alta California shifted to Mexico in the 1820s and to the United States in the 1840s. Some of the communities that grew around the missions became major cities; some missions were abandoned and later reconstructed. Portions of El Camino Real, the road connecting the missions, became interstate or state highways. Mission San Juan Bautista was the fifteenth mission to be established, in 1797. Despite repeated damage from earthquakes on the adjacent San Andreas Fault, Mission San Juan Bautista was never moved from its original location and has been in continuous use as a church since its establishment. Its environs are still largely agricultural, its plaza has been restored to the spirit of its 1870 state, and its adjacent portion of El Camino Real is still unpaved. Noted architect Irving Morrow, landscape architect Emerson Knight, and mission restoration specialist Harry Downie played a part in the restoration of the buildings and landscape. Current and former mission sites are of archeological interest.
More information on the prize and this year’s winners can be found at the National Park Service website, here; or search through the Library of Congress’ database of drawings, here.
The client, Calera de Tango’s Municipal Education Corporation along with the local municipal government, strived to build yet another sports hall as part of their master plan for providing adequate sports infrastructure for the community.
The proposal tries to keep maintain the aesthetic lines of the previous municipal gymnasium, by repeating the use of Tubest metal frames. This allowed us to think up a clean integrated space of great proportions. Unlike the previous gymnasium, the structure remains inside the walls, creating an independent exterior skin. One of the main ideas was to achieve a clean connection between the existing school and the new sports hall. The connecting element took the form of this was by a steel structure marquee made up of visible steel H-beams, which evokes the modernist ideals and acts as an homologizing element between the different clearance heights of the two buildings. Once again, based on our experiences in Japan, we prioritize simplicity in the use of interior materials. The mixture of white and wood highlights the rhythms of light coming in from the outside to form a balance of warm and light hues that enhance the interplay of dimensions and textures within the hall. Through games and sports these are joined within the expanse, and become themselves the expressions of both the public and the intimate.
The Rotermann quarter is in a historically important location in the heart of Tallinn – between the Old Town, the harbour and Viru Square. The roads to Tartu, Narva and Pärnu already intersected on Viru Square in the 19th century, making it Tallinn’s official central point. The Rotermann quarter is packed with historical buildings almost as densely as the Old Town. Christian Abraham Rotermann, the owner of the enterprise Rotermann Factories, established in 1829, initiated the development of the compact industrial district. Industry and trade in the quarter has seen both good times and bad. The Soviet years wrecked the buildings and during the uncertain years that followed the buildings became dilapidated so that repairs seemed impossible. In 1979 the decaying district became the set for Andrei Tarkovsky’s world famous movie “Stalker”. The National Heritage Board designated the Rotermann quarter historically valuable in 2001, and so the old industrial buildings that have found a new function should coexist peacefully with high quality contemporary architecture.
Courtesy of KOKO architects
Plan
Courtesy of KOKO architects
The historic supervisory building in front of the grain elevator (Rotermanni 2) houses a restaurant. The roof of the building has been raised by one metre, thus appearing to hover. The aim was to let natural light enter and make it possible to use the second floor.
Courtesy of KOKO architects
Section
Courtesy of KOKO architects
One of the most spectacular buildings in the Rotermann quarter, the grain elevator located on Hobujaama Street, was completed in 1904. The narrow building is over 100 metres long. The longer sides have no windows, but instead the limestone facade of the building is accentuated by metal straps that reinforce the wall. The wall is packed with metal details, like a useful old coat covered in buttons. The straps had the purpose of keeping the grain elevator walls intact even when the grain expanded.
Elevation
Since the inner street side has openings that have been walled shut at various periods, the ground floor of the building houses business premises. The interiors of these rooms have preserved the old grain hoppers hanging from the ceilings. An arcade that crosses the middle part of the building on the ground floor divides the space and creates an entrance to the inner street leading towards the centre of the district. Dance studios are housed on the floor without windows and the attic provides offices with skylights that look out across the district and the Old Town.
Courtesy of KOKO architects
2016 National Heritage Board of Estonia / recognition of exemplary heritage restoration / reconstruction project of Rotermann Grain Elevator
Young tech team (Bar Smith, Hannah Teagle, and Tom Beckett) has launched a Kickstarter campaign for Maslow, a four-by-eight-foot at home CNC cutting machine made to assist construction efforts by cutting user-specified shapes out of wood or any other flat material. Designed to be affordable—at under $500—easy to use, inclusive, and powerful, the project aims to share designs digitally so that you can build on the work of others or create your own from scratch.
Based on the design of the hanging plotter, Maslow “uses gear-reduced DC motors with encoders and a closed-loop feedback system to achieve high accuracy and high torque.”
Courtesy of Maslow CNC
The machine is easy to assemble, requiring no soldering, programming, or complex tools, but rather, only a Philips head screwdriver, a pair of pliers, and a handsaw, as well as additional materials of two bricks, two sheets of plywood, and three two-by-fours.
Courtesy of Maslow CNC
Courtesy of Maslow CNC
Courtesy of Maslow CNC
Furthermore, Maslow connects to your Mac, Windows, or Linux computer with a standard USB connection. All designs, PCB layouts, firmware, and software for the project are available for free on the project website, and users are encouraged to also share their digital files so others can benefit.
Courtesy of Maslow CNC
Courtesy of Maslow CNC
“Building things digitally is the future, and we believe it should be for everyone,” says founder Bar Smith.
Novopechersky Dvor is a visualization created by Iryna Dzhemesiuk. The home was designed for a young couple and is located in Kiev, Ukraine. Novopechersky Dvor by Iryna Dzhemesiuk: “This space we designed for a young and ambitious couple who love the minimalist modern style. The apartment is located in a new residential complex “Novopechersij dvor” in Kiev. The presence of a panoramic view of the city was one of the..
From the architect. The 38 social housing units at 10/12 rue Bonnet in the city of Clichy-la-Garenne completed for Efidis (social housing landlord) are located at the doorstep of Paris, along the périphérique beltway. At the edge of the capital and its inner suburbs, they look towards both the Clichy-Batignolles district and the new high court designed by Renzo Piano, and the greater Paris area. Inside and out, they embody the metropolitan issue of eliminating borders. The architects seem to have set a roadmap to relay the dynamism that characterizes the urban development zone of Batignolles in a disparate environment. It is this double relationship with the city dictating the physiognomy of the building that seems to transcend the limits of the périphérique to connect two different urbanities towards a common future.
The multifamily-housing building sets a unique standard of a new neighborhood, which will mark the threshold of Clichy-la-Garenne, the aptly named urban developement zone of “entrance of the city”. Constructions can climb up to 10 stories allowing the building to overlook a large part of its surroundings. Through this emergence it approaches Paris and its attempts of achieving great heights. The southeast facade on perforated metal vibrates with its and echoes the activity of the city and the speed of the périphérique.
Located on the elbow of Bonnet street, the building takes part to the composite fabric of Clichy-la-Garenne, starting by its street and its numerous buildings in brick of varied color, which emerged over time. To begin this dialogue, the northwest and southwest facades feature a dark red ‘Lucca’ brick full with vivid joints which, in addition to giving its name to the residence, signs the resolutely contemporary look of the building.
To render this brick facade even more vibrant, an array of ornamentation connects two expressions of the city, that of the capital and that of the suburbs. A motif in Art deco tones, two crossing diamonds, originates from the overhanging and recessing of brick headers on one side, and through large- scale metal perforations on the other.
On the ground floor facing the street, the facade alternates large spans of brick with glass-covered surfaces such as the entrance and the commercial space. The moucharabiehs, attained from the spacing between bricks, roam to create intimate spaces or ventilate premises with a transparency that only allows to glance in from certain angles. The hall, in turn, acts as transition between the exterior and the interior by allowing to view from the sidewalk into the garden at the heart of the lot.
The units also entertain this ambiguity of rapport to the gigantism of the city or the intimacy of their street by opening to the heart of the lot through balconies and loggias, which hide behind the perforated metal, or through loggias cut into the brick facing the street. Each apartment has at least a double exposure: by multiplying the exposure of each unit the project transforms the natural light contributions in order to connect the interior with its environment. This also multiplies the viewpoints on an ever-changing city that builds upon itself and extends its borders to regenerate its identity.
Sig Nordal 