Courtesy of Tom Wiscombe Architecture

The team led by Tom Wiscombe Architecture has been selected as the winner of the Sunset Spectacular Billboard Competition, which tasked firms to design a multi-dimensional, kinetic billboard to “bring creativity and originality back to the Sunset Strip.”

Triumphing over finalist proposals from Gensler, TAIT Towers Inc. and Zaha Hadid Architects, the winning design, titled “West Hollywood Belltower,” draws from West Hollywood’s unique history and relationship with the billboard, and builds on its evolution from 2-dimensional sign to 3-dimensional icon-object.

Courtesy of Tom Wiscombe Architecture

Partnering with builder/operator Orange Barrel Media, Structural Engineer Walter P Moore and the Museum of Contemporary Art (MoCA), Tom Wiscombe Architecture has envisioned a proposal that rejects the stereotypical “sign-on-a-stick” billboard typology in favor of a “spatial and interactive” intervention on the streetscape.

The design of the Belltower consists of three faceted “petals,” which have been pulled apart and rotated to create an occupiable interior. Unlike standard billboards that are intended to be seen only in passing, the Belltower invites pedestrians to occupy the area around and within the billboard. In this way, the structure operates in a manner associated with deep-rooted urban archetypes representative of community engagement, such as bell-towers, clock-towers and obelisks.

Courtesy of Tom Wiscombe Architecture

Courtesy of Tom Wiscombe Architecture

On the outer faces of the perforated metal planes, a variety of technologies have been employed to display the billboard’s media content: irregularly-shaped high-resolution LED screens, video projections and theatrical lighting. These options will allow the Belltower to cater the display to specific content types, which will include a combination of commercial media, feeds from concerts and other cultural events, branding and news from the City of West Hollywood, and video art installations curated by MoCA.

Courtesy of Tom Wiscombe Architecture

Courtesy of Tom Wiscombe Architecture

The interior space will also be customizable, and will allow visitors to control its appearance:

“The interior space of the Belltower is vertical, immersive, and engages the public imagination. It contains a sculptural object that is programmed with interactive and trending social media,” explain the architects. “Pedestrians can interact with it directly via apps on their smartphones, altering patterns of light pulled from the deep web, or ‘pushing’ digitally altered media content onto it.”

Courtesy of Tom Wiscombe Architecture

Courtesy of Tom Wiscombe Architecture

Adjacent to the structure, a public square containing seating areas, site lighting, drought-tolerant landscaping and flexible space for outdoor markets or events will connect the billboard to the rest of the city while providing pedestrians with a setting to meet, relax and play.

Courtesy of Tom Wiscombe Architecture

“Ultimately, the significance of this project is that it will exist simultaneously in two realms: the local physical space of the Sunset Strip and the global digital space of social media. Potentially the most ‘Instagrammable’ billboard in the world, this project will actively share the uniqueness and creativity of West Hollywood with the world.”

Courtesy of Tom Wiscombe Architecture

The winning team will now continue to work with the city to refine their proposal before its realization.

News via Tom Wiscombe Architecture.

http://ift.tt/2eobexb

© Marcos Mendizábal

• Architects: CARREÑO SARTORI arquitectos
• Location: Gerónimo de Alderete 1155, Vitacura, Región Metropolitana, Chile
• Author Architects: Mario Carreño Zunino, Piera Sartori del Campo
• Area: 595.0 sqm
• Project Year: 2016
• Photographs: Marcos Mendizábal

• Electric Project: Pablo Oyola
• Sanitary Project: Leonardo Cuevas
• Landscape Project: Carreño Sartori Arquitectos
• Collaborators: María José Saez
• Calculation Project: Vertical Ingenieros – Roberto Soto
• Plot Area: 499 sqm

© Marcos Mendizábal

From the architect. The project introduces an open interior spatiality, in which the different levels are related with the context through large windows and a gap which cross the interior.

Sketch

While the first floor extends to the site edge through a side yard, the second one is facing the street and the neighbor gardens. Finally, the terrace of the third level has views to the valley and the Andes.

© Marcos Mendizábal

The products exhibition is related to the visual experience of the site, the city and the valley, complementing the permanence in the building, where the clients come with enough time to buy specific products.

© Marcos Mendizábal

The sequence of spaces and views is experienced through a set of stairs that differs in their sizes and materials. The continuity between the first and second level is achieved with a wide stair. After that, a lighter and vibrant metal stair is placed to link the terrace.

Sections

The relationship between parking spaces and use spaces is extremely required, forcing a set of operations to clear the ground, defining the project physics. A concrete base contains the building basement, organizing the first level and receiving a reticulated metal structure, passing over the cars and their circulations.

© Marcos Mendizábal

The northern light is almost completely sealed, opening the building to indirect light of the south. A brightly interior is achieved, in which the objects are exhibited avoiding the glare of direct sunlight. The outside is directly illuminated, alternating inside and outside views.

http://ift.tt/2eh2BTG

Vertical Walking movement. Image © Rombout Frieling Lab

Vertical Walking, an experimental prototype by Rombout Frieling Lab designed “to move ourselves between floors in a building,” exploits the potential of the human body, materials and intelligent design to require less than 10% of the effort required by taking a flight of stairs – and without the need for any sort of ancillary power supply. The ultimate aim of the designers is to allow people to “move harmoniously through our vertical habitats of the future.”

The designers acknowledge that the price of urban land is “skyrocketing.” With a further three billion people expected to move into urban environments in the decades to come, they argue that we will be forced to exploit vertical space: “more and taller towers [and] the use of attics and roofs.” At the same time, the global population is ageing; “staircases are becoming major bottlenecks.” Elevators, they state, rely on significant amounts of external power, while depriving us from daily exercise.

According to its designers the prototype has been successfully tested by a wide range of users, including those suffering from Multiple Sclerosis (MS).

Vertical Walking Integration. Image © Rombout Frieling Lab

Vertical Walking. Image © Rombout Frieling Lab

A prototype which was until recently stationed outside the Giardini at the Venice Architecture Biennale is currently on display at Dutch Design Week in Eindhoven. The designers have patents pending.

http://ift.tt/2dCTejk

© Sergio Pirrone

• Architects: WMR arquitectos
• Location: Bajada Peatonal a Puertecillo, Navidad, VI Región, Chile
• Architects In Charge: Felipe Wedeles, Macarena Rabat, Jorge Manieu
• Area: 313.0 sqm
• Photographs: Sergio Pirrone

• Collaborating Architect: Laura Decurgez
• Area Of Cabañas 1 & 2 : 54 sqm
• Area Of Cabaña 3 : 74 sqm

© Sergio Pirrone

The brief was to build a set of cabañas for a couple of surfers and musicians, with the main cabaña as the house.

© Sergio Pirrone

The driving idea behind the project was to generate semi-buried volumes placed at the start of a steep cliff, to achieve a sense of vertigo on the terraces. The visual focus and orientation to the west lies on the same axis as the cliff, with views framed by the surrounding hills. 

© Sergio Pirrone

Plans

© Sergio Pirrone

The idea was to ensure that the views of the neighbors behind the house were not interrupted, allowing a connection between the natural terrain and the roof of the main house. 

Elevation / Section

The modulation of the wooden structure in two-meter modules embodies the economy of the project. The predominantly used materials are local pine and glass, which create a light, easily constructible structure.

© Sergio Pirrone

http://ift.tt/2eKcuYi

© Philippe Ruault

The official opening date for Caen’s new public library, designed by Rotterdam-based practice OMA, has been slated for January 13, 2017. The Bibliothèque Alexis de Tocqueville will serve as the main library for the metropolitan region of Caen la Mer (in Normandy, France), with 12,000sqm of freely accessible multimedia space. Positioned on the tip of a peninsula that extends from the city to the English Channel, the site is part of a larger area of redevelopment. The ambition is for the library to become “a new civic center” for the city.

© Philippe Ruault

According to the architects, “the design of the [library] is defined by an opposition between mass and void, its main library space carved out of the center of the solid cross.” This “urban belvedere” therefore provides views in all four directions from the site, and connects four types of library spaces (human sciences, science and technology, literature, and arts) into one “intimate reading room.”

© Philippe Ruault

Chris van Duijn, Partner at OMA, has said: “This completion marks the beginning of a larger transformation within Caen. The library pivots from the historical center to the new urban master plan, stretching from city to sea. The cross-shaped building marks this central location between the old city and the new, and is a symbol for an institution deeply invested in the future of Caen.”

Axonometric

About the Design

Bibliothèque Alexis de Tocqueville is a public library for the metropolitan region Caen la Mer in Normandy, France. The 12,000 m2 multimedia library is located at the tip of the peninsula that extends out from the city of Caen to the English Channel. Its key position – between the city’s historic core and an area of Caen that is being developed – supports the city’s ambition for the library to become a new civic center. The library’s glass facade visually connects the adjacent park, pedestrian pathway and waterfront plaza to the interior and together with two large ground floor entrances at both sides of the building, enables a fluid interaction of the library with its surroundings. On the upper floors, the urban belvedere provides unobstructed views in all four directions.

Axonometric

The building’s cross-shaped design responds to the urban context, with each of the four protruding planes of the cross pointing to a landmark point in Caen: to the historical sites of the Abbaye-aux-Dames in the north and the Abbaye- aux-Hommes in the west, to the central train station in the south, and to the area of new construction in the east. At the same time, the geometry of two intersecting axes is informed by the library’s programmatic logic. The four planes, each housing a pedagogic discipline—human sciences, science and technology, literature, and the arts—meet in a large reading room on the first floor, to encourage maximum flow between the departments. This main library space is carved out of the center of the solid cross, defining the building’s design as an opposition between mass and void.

Axonometric

As a civic center where people meet and share knowledge and information, public space is at the core of the library’s design. At the entrance level on the ground floor, there is a large open space with a press kiosk and access points to an auditorium with 150 seats, an exhibition space and a restaurant with an outdoor terrace on the waterfront. The first floor contains a large variety of work and reading spaces and 120,000 documents, with physical and digital books placed side-by-side in the bookshelves. The digital extension of the physical collections, integrated within the bookshelves, is one of the new multimedia features of the library. The top floor of the library is occupied by a space for children, as well as offices and logistics. The archive and special historical collections are stored in safe and dry conditions in the concrete basement, protected from the surrounding water by an innovative waterproof membrane applied on the inner side of the concrete walls.

Axonometric

Axonometric

News via OMA

http://ift.tt/2exXodH