The City of Los Angeles has selected a team led by Gruen Associates to design a 12-mile section of the Los Angeles River Greenway as a part of Frank Gehry’s comprehensive master plan. The design team will also include architects Oyler Wu and landscape firm Mia Lehrer + Associates, who recently won a competition for a new park at First and Broadway in downtown LA. Upon its completion, the greenway will allow residents to walk and bike nearly 30 miles between the neighborhoods of Canoga Park and Elysian Valley.
The greenway design will include a bike path, pedestrian walkways and shading elements, as well as landscaped areas to support habitat and manage stormwater. The project will also complete the existing Los Angeles River Bike Path from the West Valley to Griffith Park.
“The Los Angeles River is a common thread that links us to our history, and connects us to the natural world,” said Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti in a press release. “This bikeway will give all Angelenos a new way to experience our city, build accessibility to our revitalized river, and expand green space for families to enjoy.”
The team will now take the next 9 months to complete a detailed feasibility study and hold public forums for community input and review. Construction is expected to be done in several phases, with a yet unspecified completion date.
New York City’s underground transport network is going to get more than 1,000 redesigned trains that will aim to increase capacity, and reduce overcrowding and delays (+ slideshow). (more…)
Photographs: Courtesy of Fabrica Nativa Arquitectura
Engineering: Xavier Solis Orellana
Courtesy of Fabrica Nativa Arquitectura
Plan 2
How many stories exist that go unnoticed, the following tells the story of a young divorced man with three children (very common story in this country) the children occasionally visit him, he corresponds with a monthly allowance stipulated by the Ecuadorian state, with a basic salary and even studying it was difficult to improve his housing.
Drawing
Diagram
Thirty years old, he lived in emergent housing with physical problems exacerbated by the ephemeral materiality and the passage of time, on a lot 4.80 m wide by 20 m deep given by his grandfather. Given the situation, the family decides to raise funds to improve the house.
Courtesy of Fabrica Nativa Arquitectura
Elevation
With great determination and thinking of a strategy to recycle some of the existing materials, with a limited budget, we started the project. Of the existing 4.80 m by 5.50 m of construction, we recycled: the roof, sanitary facilities, three out of four walls, the bathroom, half the floor made of wooden slats and particle boards.
Courtesy of Fabrica Nativa Arquitectura
Section
The intervention involves balancing the materiality and climate of the city, the first step was to work with the roof made of sheet metal plates, to improve indoor thermal conditions we raised the height of the house, increased the volume of air to be heated, which allowed us to have a good temperature inside most of the day. The front and side walls are completed with translucent polycarbonate recycled sheets using natural light in the day. At night the interior light is projected outwards.
Axonometric
This first response allows us to think of an alternative interior design that fits his current lifestyle. We designed a single container for all activities: sleeping, eating, socializing, grooming and caring for children when they visit. The second response was the structure, we designed it with the same square iron pipes forming a framework that is repeated three times, its completion contrasts with the horizontal linearity of neighboring roofs.
Courtesy of Fabrica Nativa Arquitectura
The construction process was conducted with local labor, it took six weeks to complete, the finishes of the house only allow the use of color, this covers the house unifying the use of craft blocks, concrete, wood and metal; it gives its expressiveness both inside and outside.
After years of waiting, Herzog & de Meuron’s Elbphilharmonie concert hall in Hamburg, Germany, finally has been given an opening date. The building will open its doors to the public with grand opening concerts by NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra on January 11 and 12, 2017, followed by a three-week festival featuring the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra and the Berlin-based band Einstürzende Neubauten.
The soaring glass structure, constructed on top of a historic warehouse along the River Elbe, was first envisioned in 2003, but rising costs and legal issues with the contractor led the project to be put on hold.
In 2012, the philharmonie was the subject of an installation at the Venice Biennale, where the building model was surrounded by uncensored press reports demonstrating the massive amounts of public debate that had already plagued the project for years.
Now nearly ready for public occupation, the building will house three concert halls, a large music education area, a panoramic viewing platform with views of the city, and a hotel. The Grand Hall, the largest of the three concert halls, will seat 2,100 and features an acoustic environment designed by internationally acclaimed acoustician Yasuhisa Toyota.
A virtual tour of the project can be found here, with more information about the project on the Elbphilharmonie’s website, here.
Guests are invited to sleep under the stars in this open-air hotel, which is located 6,463 feet above sea level in the mountains of Graubünden (+ slideshow). (more…)
French architect and Confluence Institute founder Odile Decq has called for entrepreneurial skills to be taught in architecture schools to help architects navigate the “broken” global economy. (more…)
From the architect. Right at Paris’ doorstep, the Evergreen Campus hosts the Crédit Agricole’s head office. Multiple corporate entities share this space; the entire campus revolves around a central park that acts as its green lung.
Structure Exploded
The reception pavilion spans on 600 m2 and two levels. A familiar landmark for those who work on the campus, it also helps visitors find their way more easily. This architectural structure opens the campus to the city and is in line with the site’s environmental vocation. Nine bending radiuses were necessary for the metallic exterior’s complex design:
– The “comma”, that protects the personnel’s entries with its porch;
– The pavilion in itself, mostly glassed, by which visitors enter the site at street level and can access the campus at the first level inside.
At campus level a space that is largely open to the park can be used to host temporary exhibitions. It is also able to receive an audience, as was asked by the Montrouge municipality.
The building’s clear and bright tones express its modern, rigorous and masterful craft.
The pavilion renews the site’s image, becomes the Evergreen campus’ store window and expresses the Crédit Agricole’s values of innovation and efficiency by displaying its architectural boldness.
Dutch firm MVRDV has designed an entertainment complex featuring inverted facades and a huge blob of gold, which will be built in Seoul, South Korea, ahead of the 2018 Winter Olympics (+ slideshow). (more…)
House 4.16.3 is located in the city of Erechim, in the countryside of Rio Grande do Sul state, around 400 km from the state capital, Porto Alegre. The region has a subtropical climate, with warm, humid summers and chilly, rainy winters, which poses yet another challenge to the architect, in terms of habitability. Built on a terrain with a slope of twenty meters and several native plant species, the project sought to minimally alter the topography, proposing a building that lies on one of its highest parts and, from there on, develops sometimes accommodating itself on the natural profile and sometimes hovering over it.
The program was divided into two volumes: the first is 42 meters long and 8 meters wide, positioned parallel to the contour lines, holds services and the house’s intimate area. The second is one floor below and accommodates the social sector, connecting directly to the patio and the pool area. The two blocks form a “T”, just as the Prairie Houses of Frank Lloyd Wright and articulate through vertical circulation. Where the imaginary axes meet there is a double height ceiling that unites the volumes and allows the intimate area of the house to spatially take over the social area.
Plan
Plan
There are two accesses, one of daily use of the residents, which is through the garage and allows the house to be used as if it were one-story despite of the rugged topography, since the basic program is completely at the same level. The other access is at the lower level, through the living room with double height ceiling, and through it there is access to a promenade architecturale, which starts on the promenade, passes under the structural balance of 4.5 meters and develops through the pillars below the main volume.
On the slab of the lower volume there is a garden terrace, which can be accessed from the intimate living room, and next to the barbecue lounge there is another terrace, where the pool is located. From both the user is positioned at the same level of the treetops and this artificial floor takes the view as if the landscape were habitable.
The work is materialized through common construction techniques of the region: the structure is in reinforced concrete and the walls are ceramic brick masonry coated with cement and sand mortar plaster. The labor used was local and in addition to the utmost respect for the natural terrain profile, the house has a rain water reuse systems; heating through solar energy; natural ventilation and lighting in every room; reduction of energy losses through double exterior walls with air chambers and also high performance double glazed window frames. Individual actions that together make a difference for the environment.
This residence was requested by a couple who were already friends before being clients, who also had children whom we watched grow. The design act took, more than ever, the
