This triangular viewing platform perched on the edge of a mountain was created by Norwegian studio Code Arkitektur as a rest stop for one of the country’s picturesque tourist trails (+ slideshow). (more…)
Our job of the week on Dezeen Jobs is for an architecture curator at London’s Royal Academy of Arts, which staged the Sensing Spaces exhibition in 2014 (pictured). Visit the ad for full details or browse more architecture and design opportunities on Dezeen Jobs.
Casa Pajarera is a residential project completed jointly by Catalina Patiño & Viviana Peña. The 1,292-square-foot home is located in Retiro, Antioquia, Colombia. Photos by: Isaac Ramírez
The Skellefteå Kulturhus competition provided a critical opportunity to shape the cultural landscape of Skellefteå in northern Sweden, and the brief elicited a range of exciting responses. Stockholm-based architecture studio Norell/Rodhe have now unveiled their entry, titled “Supergroup.”
Their proposal features a colorful composition of interlocking building volumes which reference the traditional use of luminous, colored plaster facades in the local area. The masses retain their own function and qualities but form a lively community when grouped together.
Norell/Rodhe’s entry gathers several cultural institutions – a theater, two art galleries, a library, a conference center and a hotel – as a set of individual buildings grouped on top of a low podium. This way, each institution retains some of its independent identity, while simultaneously allowing for productive adjacencies with neighboring institutions. On the exterior, each building mass acquires its own character based on color, proportions, and planar rotation.
Alongside the colorful links to Skellefteå’s building stock, the project also links back to the town through a specialist glulam timber structure. The industrial processing of timber and associated local expertise is here utilized to create a contextually relevant and structurally expressive building. The glulam timber features prominently in the interior, where a short-span structure and densely arrayed columns help to emphasize the direction of each building.
Shared and communal spaces are created in the podium as well as in intersections between building volumes. In this way, the interior becomes a dense urban condition with junctions, piazzas and landmarks – a city without streets consisting solely of tightly packed architecture – said Norell/Rohde in their press release.
The scheme was developed in response to an open, anonymous competition run by Skellefteå Municipality, which was won by White Arkitekter. The second place winning entry was from a team of young Danish architects. For more information, the competition brief can be viewed in full at Sveriges Arkitekter.
News via Norell/Rodhe.
Dezeen Watch Store: Uniform Wares has become the latest watch brand to design a range specifically aimed at women. (more…)
From the architect. With the second arch bridge on the spectacular alpine road to Ebnit, a sub-district of Dornbirn, the master plan for three infrastructure projects is one step closer to completion. The Schaufelschlucht Bridge has been integrated into the tremendous natural surroundings just as naturally and impressively as the Schanerloch Bridge before it.
Both were built following the same principle: a visible display of internal and external forces, cast in concrete. The twisting and tapering of the bridge on the valley side gives a clear idea of the structural capabilities of the arch shape, while its counterpart on the Ebnit side withstands the dynamic force of the water, which has carved a deep gorge in the rock face over the course of thousands of years.
The dark, narrow tunnels, formed by the forces of nature, and the forbidding sheer rock walls along the road act as the backdrop for a dramatic spectacle no one passing by could hardly miss. The bridge’s concrete parapets escort motorists and give them a sense of safety as they cross the roaring, rain-swollen waters, and the solidity and equilibrium of the homogeneous structure make it seem invincible and built for eternity. Sustainability in its truest, while timeless, form.
[Marina Hämmerle]
Villa Tranquille is a private residence designed by ARTELABO. Completed in 2015, it is located in Gignac, France. Villa Tranquille by ARTELABO: “The « Villa Tranquille » or « Quiet House », designed by Artelabo is located on tiny plot of land with a gorgeous view on the Hérault Valley. The overall geometry of the house is based on a repeated sequence of four volumes, inscribed in a regular pattern,..
In a very narrow assembled building plot the house tries to formulate its architectural idea from the barriers and disadvantages of the split. Only by the self-conscious positioning to the access road in the south and the distance indulgence granted by a neighbor, the densification of the plot was ever possible. On this strip of land which is steeply sloping north to the Lohbach (small stream), from then on an elongated rectangular blank develops over 3 stories vertically into the air.
On the ground floor a small studio is enrolled, which uses the few level surface of the exterior area. Cooking and eating is a floor above. There you sit comfortably protected and privatized either at a table inside or in a small loggia.
Topmost are the living room and fireplace under a sheltering, uniting gabled roof.
Strategically placed openings stage different views to the lake, the river and back to the village. The fenestration of the house generates a pleasant pulse of light and darker areas. The opening portion of the façade, deeming appropriate, prevents the spatial flow out of the interior. The windows communicate in a proven way to the outside and privatize at the same time life in the house in a pleasant way.
The house has a massive core zone of concrete. Outwardly to wall and roof completes a wooden mantle from vertical wood elements. The classic theme of a solid characterful center of the house is operated, which includes the stove, the kitchen and the bathrooms. Opposite, towards the windows it becomes continuous wooden, more tender, lighter. The spatial compression of the interior widens softly, with differentiated transitions, to the exterior.
Outdoor the facade with its black coloring engages in the immediate vicinity to still prevailing images of sunburned agricultural huts. Because of the pushing back of agricultural use in Vorarlberg’s Rhine Valley, too few of these relics have remained.
