architecture
OMA’s Taipei Performing Arts Center Facade Unveiled
OMA's Taipei Performing Arts Center Facade Unveiled. Image © OMA by Chris Stowers
The scaffolding obscuring the facade of OMA’s Taipei Performing Arts Center has begun to come down, exposing the aluminum exteriors of the spherical Proscenium Playhouse and the Multiform Theatre for the first time. Upon completion, the experimental building will feature a looped public pathway, flexible auditoriums and unique stage environments. Construction on the building is now moving full speed ahead, with an expected opening date in June 2017.
Continue on for more images of the in-progress building.
OMA's Taipei Performing Arts Center Facade Unveiled. Image © OMA by Chris Stowers
The Taipei Performing Arts Center will house three theaters in total: the 1,500-seat Grand Theatre, the 800-seat Multiform Theatre designed with a flexible layout for experimental performances and the spherical 800-seat Proscenium Playhouse, which serves as perhaps the most iconic element of the facade. The three theaters will be joined together by a transparent central cube containing shared backstage and technical facilities that will allow the theaters to be used independently or in tandem, expanding the potential for experimental theater pieces.
OMA's Taipei Performing Arts Center Facade Unveiled. Image © OMA by Chris Stowers
OMA won the design competition for Taipei Performing Arts Center in January 2009, with construction beginning in 2012.
Read ArchDaily’s interview with OMA partner-in-charge David Gianotten here and follow the links below for past coverage of the building.
OMA wins competition for the Taipei Performing Arts Centre
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OMA’s Taipei Performing Arts Center breaks ground
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OMA’s Taipei Performing Arts Center (TPAC) Tops Out
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House in Braga / AZO. Sequeira Arquitectos Associados
© Nelson Garrido
- Architects: AZO. Sequeira Arquitectos Associados
- Location: Braga, Portugal
- Area: 515.0 sqm
- Project Year: 2011
- Photographs: Nelson Garrido
- Authors: Mário Sequeira, Alfredo Machado
- Team: Nuno Veiga
© Nelson Garrido
From the architect. Located in the periphery of the city of Braga, this lot has 815 m2. It is placed in a hillside and it is in the privileged visual alignment for the city. With a total of 3 floors, the housing was thought of form to adapt it the declivity of the land, allowing a good functioning and joint of all spaces, preventing a construction with too much impact, keeping with involving a balanced relation allowing the creation of a useful exterior space.
© Nelson Garrido
Section
© Nelson Garrido
The intermediate floor is composed for the social zone, constituted of the kitchen, main room and room of games. These spaces become related with the exterior zone where if it finds the swimming pool and the garden. The superior floor is destined to the private area of the building and groups in three suites and an office. In the inferior floor it is placed garage. The totality of the volume is composed for the white color, and the contrast of the glass with the black metal of the doors and windows.
© Nelson Garrido
Floating Restaurant in New York Takes the Dining Experience to New Heights
Courtesy of Big Foot Developers
New-York-based Big Foot Developers have unveiled the designs for The Floating Restaurant, a glass cube restaurant that will hang between two smokestacks at the historic Glenwood power plant over the Hudson River in the Yonkers neighborhood of New York City.
With forest on the riverbank, the water below, and green space inside the restaurant, the project aims to blend architecture and nature while having a minimal impact on the view of the site.
The floors walls, and ceiling of the construction will be made of glass, and the entirety of the restaurant will be suspended by tension steel cables.
Courtesy of Big Foot Developers
News via Big Foot Developers.
Wee Studio completes crowdfunded treehouses on the edge of a woodland stream
This pair of stilted wooden huts are set among poplar and hawthorn trees in a stretch of woodland at the foot of Mount Wuling in Beijing‘s Miyun District (+ slideshow). (more…)
UK architects predict crash in workload in face of Brexit uncertainty
Brexit crisis: architects have reported concerns over the future of their businesses in the first major survey of confidence levels since the EU referendum. (more…)
Dalit Lilienthal renovates small Tel Aviv apartment to fit a growing family
Svoya Studio Designs a Stylish Home in Dnipropetrovsk
SHHH… is a private home located in Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine. It was designed by Svoya Studio. Photos by: Alexander Angelovski
“World’s Tallest Timber Tower” Tops Out in Vancouver
Courtesy of Talk Shop Media
The world’s tallest timber tower has topped out this week, standing 53 meters high in the Vancouver skyline. The 18 story building, designed by Acton Ostry Architects, began construction in November 2015 and has since opened the floodgates for a new wave of mass timber towers. The building, which has been erected at record speed, will house 404 students as the Brock Commons Student Residence at the University of British Columbia (UBC). Offsite-production and the careful coordination of trades saw it rise at a rate of two floors per week, with the official completion set for mid-2017.
The building utilizes a hybridized construction model, with concrete cores and prefabricated steel elements assisting the mass timber frame. Lateral and vertical stability is gained from the combination of these material elements. In order to meet the new seismic design requirements for the 2015 National Building Code of Canada, steel connectors are fitted to the glulam columns to provide direct load transfer between the columns and a grid of cross-laminated timber (CLT) panels.
Courtesy of Talk Shop Media
Crucially, the glulam columns and the CLT panels were prepared offsite, allowing them to be installed immediately as they arrived at UBC. Structurlam provided the mass timber package, and their engagement in the early stages of manufacture design allowed the process of lamination to be optimized. In their press release, the project team said that the assembly of the building was “like Lego”; the individual elements were all so carefully planned, they fit together perfectly.
Courtesy of Talk Shop Media
CNC machinery and heavily refined 3D information allowed a level of precision that was integral to this perfect assembly. The careful preparation taken in the pre-production stages ensured that the building stuck to its ambitious timeline – one floor every three days – with virtually zero wastage.
The four trades working on the erection of the tower had to work together perfectly in tandem, with no team jumping ahead of another. The 8 week completion time for the mass timber structure will go down as a significant milestone in construction, setting the standard for the completion of other wooden buildings.
Courtesy of Talk Shop Media
The rise of timber towers was inevitable, as the benefits of wood as a construction material are plentiful. Aside from being a sustainable building material that stores, rather than emits, carbon dioxide, the lower amount of energy that is consumed during fabrication also lowers its carbon footprint. The construction methodologies are now catching up with its potential, meaning that we should be seeing mass timber construction becoming more and more common over the next few years.
For more information and some early construction images, check out our feature from earlier this year.
News via Talk Shop Media.
TRAX Roeselare / NERO Architecten
© Filip Dujardin
- Architects: NERO Architecten
- Location: Roeselare, Belgium
- Area: 1400.0 sqm
- Project Year: 2015
- Photographs: Filip Dujardin, Courtesy of NERO Architecten
© Filip Dujardin
The redevelopment of a former train transfer station to a cultural site in the center of Roeselare, Belgium. Important characteristics from the surroundings and the impressive existing structure on an elevated square were the key starting points. By opening up the former warehouse on all sides and removing some small buildings we see the large plinth as one elevated urban square, the starting point of a large new and green strip in the larger masterplan for the uninhabited area’s next to the railway. Underneath the large canopy, 4 new volumes are carefully placed, searching for a balance between build and unbuilt space; between defined and non-defined area’s.
© Filip Dujardin
Plan Site
© Filip Dujardin
The conservation of the former warehouse is crucial to make a transition and new identity for this space. There are 4 buildings planned under the canopy with a variety of functions; repetition rooms, party hall, artist studio’s, depot, etc. The most public functions are placed more at the front of the plinth. The open character of the structure also allows for lots of outdoor activities; organised or not.
© Filip Dujardin
Phase 1 of the masterplan is currently build with the realization of youth and meeting center TRAX.
© Filip Dujardin
