Morning View North of Entrance from Massachusetts Ave. Image Courtesy of Bates Smart
Australian office Bates Smart has unveiled their design for the new Australian Embassy to the United States to be located in the diplomatic heart of Washington, D.C. Developed in partnership with local firm KCCT, the new building will provide the embassy with a contemporary workspace with views to the White House.
View North of Atrium Hub spaces. Image Courtesy of Bates Smart
Bates Smart’s design draws inspiration from the Australian landscape, allowing the building to become a symbol for their home country.
“The environmentally sensitive design embodies the spirit of Australia through direct references to the distinctive Australian landscape: its bright and clear natural light and open skies, its warm materiality and its vast scale,” said the architects in a press release. “The use of these associations will create a civic building and symbol of Australia that is both enduring and welcoming.”
Morning view West of Eastern Elevation from 16th Street. Image Courtesy of Bates Smart
Offices and flexible working areas encircle a large glass atrium, which provides the building with an abundance of natural light. On the ground floor, a large open public space leads guests into the building and to a series of exhibition gallery and event spaces for ceremonial and public functions.
View North East from Entry to Breakout Space. Image Courtesy of Bates Smart
The building has been designed to meet the highest possible global environment standards, employing a thermally efficient façade system, a green roof with an extensive photovoltaic array and the latest building services technologies, as well as through the expansive use of natural light.
The new building will replace the existing Australian Embassy, which was designed by Bates Smart’s Sir Osbourne McCutcheon in 1964.
View South from Office floor down to entry. Image Courtesy of Bates Smart
“It is with great pride that we have the opportunity to replace this building with the next generation of Bates Smart design,” said Kristen Whittle, Director of Bates Smart. “The design of the new Embassy has been inspired by the unique and beguiling beauty of the Australian landscape. The project has a refined and rich materiality which will make it stand out in Washington.”
Design Team: Jeanne Gang, Mark Schendel, Todd Zima with Aurelien Tsemo, John Castro, Emily Licht, Vincent Calabro, Wei-Ju Lai, Ashley Ozburn, Laura Ettedgui, Chris Vant Hoff, Beth Zacherle, Paige Adams, Ana Flor, Zac Heaps, William Emmick, Roger Molina-Vera, Kara Boyd, Jay Hoffman, Schuyler Smith, Weston Walker, Juan de la Mora, Christopher Ciraulo, Lindsey Moyer, Will Lambeth, Danny Jimenez, Angela Peckham, Michael Leaveck
From the architect. The Campus North Residential Commons offers the kinds of social spaces and experiences that enhance campus and academic life for today’s undergraduates. The full block site is intended as a new portal to campus and is designed to encourage interactions and exchange between students while also opening up the university to the greater Hyde Park community.
Campus North offers a mix of student residences, dining options, amenities, retail, and outdoor green spaces. Extending the campus footprint to the north, the location and placement of the structures create a new “front door” for the University, opening up to the greater Hyde Park neighborhood and strengthening pedestrian connections between the campus and nearby communities.
The design situates four slender bar buildings in an urban fabric of plazas, gardens, walkways, and courtyards that together form inviting, public and semi-private outdoor spaces for students and neighbors. The building is scaled to its context, with the highest structure completing the urban edge of busy 55th Street, while nearby structures are more attuned to the residential neighborhood along University Avenue. Pre-cast concrete panels are used to clad the building, a contemporary facade informed by the University’s neo-Gothic tradition.
Enhancing the University’s House system, which encourages interaction and collaboration between students of different years to support social and academic success, the buildings are organized around House hubs, three-story communal spaces that are designed to feel comfortable and homey. Each hub offers distinct spaces for studying, movie watching, cooking, and playing in small groups or individually, while also enabling all House members to assemble together to discuss household chores and energy use and to plan group activities or study sessions.
BIG and Heatherwick Studio have been selected as the architects for the new Google Headquarters at their King’s Cross campus in London. The ten story, 650,000 square foot building will be the first wholly owned and designed Google facility to built outside of the United States, and is part of a campus expansion plan that will eventually contain offices for 7,000 employees.
The team was awarded the commission after an original scheme by AHMM architects was put on hold in November 2013. Images of the new designs have yet to be released.
“From the beginning, the project to give Google a new home in King’s Cross has been extraordinary,” said Bjarke Ingels and Thomas Heatherwick in a joint statement.
“Rather than impose a universal style on Google’s buildings in the UK and the USA, we have tried to create an interestingness that fits the scale and the community of King’s Cross. The Silicon Valley startup garage meets the London train sheds in a building that couples clarity with eccentricity and anchors innovation with heritage.“
The BIG/Heatherwick-designed building will be the last completed of three new campus buildings, joining the recently finished 6 Pancras Square, designed by AHMM, and a second 280,000 square foot, 10-story building by Mossessian Architecture that is currently under construction and slated to open in 2018.
Sundar Pichai, Google CEO, said “Here in the UK, it’s clear to me that computer science has a great future with the talent, educational institutions, and passion for innovation we see all around us. We are committed to the UK and excited to continue our investment in our new King’s Cross campus.”
Google is planning on investing more than a total of £1billion on the project, including the new building and the cost of hiring thousands of new staff members. The building will sit within the larger 27 hectare King’s Cross redevelopment masterplan, which comprises more than 50 buildings and 1,900 homes, including the new Coal Drops Yards shopping area, also designed by Heatherwick Studio.
Casa Estudio is an urban regeneratio project that brings a deteriorating house originally built in the 80s back to life, located in a micro industrial area of the city.
El entendimiento de condiciones pre-existentes causa una sutil intervención en el espacio a partir de un sistema de patios y la honestidad en los métodos constructivos empleador El desafío principal del ejercicio fue hacer más con menos. Desde resolver un planteamiento arquitectónico que logre ampliar un estudio en planta baja e independizar un nuevo departamento en planta alta, hasta maximizar el espacio interior-exterior habitable. La estética/forma del proyecto radica en la funcionalidad y el manejo aparente de los materiales
La implementación de una serie de patios permitió ventilar e iluminar naturalmente todos los espacios. Su revestimiento con barro, material regional que tiene fuerza y contraste, renovó espacios de respiro para la contemplación Debido al esfuerzo presupuestal, la materialidad de la casa se expone al desnudo. Exige alta calidad en mano de obra, puesto que el tabique, firmes, vigueta y bovedilla que se colocaron son acabados finales. Esto representó gran enseñanza al taller sobre las metodologías constructivas regionales. Se usaron también texturas vernáculas que el bajío ofrece. Como es el caso del junquillo, palma de tallo nudoso, fuerte y con propiedades flexibles por su altitud, extraído de Bucareli, una región de la Sierra Gorda Queretana
El proyecto comprende y respeta su contexto. Pero también asume sus limitaciones. Casa Estudio recuerda su digno pasado y atiende a las necesidades de quienes la habitan para ser un lugar de vivir-trabaja
In this latest photoset, photographer Laurian Ghinitiou gives us a first look at BIG’s Transitlager, a new mixed-use arts complex located within and around an existing warehouse building in Basel, Switzerland. Now nearing completion, the renovation and expansion is characterized by its reaction to the existing geometries of the nearby industrial infrastructure, taking the form of two distinct buildings, one placed on top of the other. The complex will contain a series of multifunctional floors for art, commerce, working and living in becoming the center of the new arts district of Dreispitz.
Location: Amsterdam-Noord, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Team: Joost Baks, Gijs Baks, Remi Versteeg, Stijn de Weerd, Bram van der Heuvel, Ines van Sandick, Lars Goossens, Naomi Cheung San, Carlos Callejo, Vincent van Leeuwen
From the architect. Space Encounters won the pitch to design and construct the new Joolz headquarters in a former machine factory building in Amsterdam-Noord. The designer and manufacturer of ergonomic pushchairs is a fast-growing Dutch company from Amsterdam which aims to do things differently. Joolz has a strong ideological agenda when it comes to responsible entrepreneurship. Key to the new building should be their core value: positive design.
The new office measures 1.600 m2 and is located in the developmental area of Amsterdam-Noord and consists of a spacious industrial hall and a generic office building. It’s obvious where the quality and character resides, but unfortunately, the office blocks the hall from view from passersby. The first step to nullify this disbalance in quality is taken by removing all the walls on the ground floor, making the hall visible from the street. Subsequently large openings are made in the office buildings facade, further removing all associations of mediocrity.
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The new glazing is placed under an angle to -in line with the brands beliefs – improve transparency. But the main intervention are three lavish gardens filled with trees, plants, birds and fish. Extruded from three of the existing roof lights, they echo the scale and logic of what was already there. Next to express the Joolz ideology by providing a pleasant backdrop for the daily routines, these large glazed gardens also improve the internal climate and provide employees with some more exotic choices to pick as their work location for the day.
Hancher Widely recognized for commissioning new works of dance and music, Hancher reaches audiences well beyond the University of Iowa. The new home for this renowned institution occupies a prominent location in Iowa City.
Overall Planning/Massing The design responds to its site and context on the exterior, and to its program and planning adjacencies on the interior. The exterior building design is specifically influenced by the Iowa River to its east, Park Road and City Park to its north, the Levitt Center to its west, and the Arts Campus to its south. The long sweeping curves of the building respond to the bend and flow of the Iowa River and its surrounding topography. Its tapered and cantilevered forms allow for the maximum amount of transparency at all levels of the public lobbies. Smaller scaled elements along Park Road echo the forms of the adjacent Levitt Center. The Levitt Center’s rotunda, along with the Hancher Rehearsal Room volume, forms a metaphorical gateway to the Arts campus.
Site Plan
There are two ADA accessible, pubic entrances at the south east and south-west corners of the building. The loading dock and loading court off of Park road was designed to accommodate large turning radii required by semi-trucks. Three berths/truck-docks load into the scene dock/transfer area, which is directly adjacent to the main stage. The dressing rooms, the production offices, crew rooms are all designed for maximum efficiency and convenient stage relationships.
Exterior Materials The exterior skin is comprised of stainless steel and glass ribbons. The cypress wood soffits lend a welcoming and inviting quality to the building, enhancing the natural warmth of the spaces as it transitions from exterior to the interior.
Lobby All public spaces offer panoramic views of the river and the campus. The lobby atrium is a light filled space with a ribbon like terrazzo grand stair threading and connecting the four lobby levels on its ascent. The west wall of the lobby expresses the shaping and movement of the building and is finished in a special pearlescent plaster. The skylights that appear on different levels reinforce the shape of the building and allows for dramatic secondary lighting and transparency.
Hall The new auditorium creates an intimate experience between the patrons and the performers on stage. The curved, sweeping balconies and terraces continue the idea of the exterior ribbons throughout the interior of the hall. The individually adjustable arced LED lighting fixtures reinforce the shape and geometry of both the building and the hall and creates a dramatic theatrical experience. A collapsible orchestra shell, adjustable acoustics, AV systems and production lighting allow the hall to be tailored specifically for performances ranging from orchestra and opera to Broadway presentations and dance.
Rehearsal Room Although the rehearsal room has its own exterior entrance, a grand gallery connects it to the main lobby. This acoustically and theatrically flexible room can host events ranging from receptions to experimental theater, including potential events utilizing the acoustically glazed north wall and intimate outdoor amphitheater.
Product Description. The exterior stainless steel panel system was custom manufactured by AWS, Architectural Wall Systems, of Iowa. This rain screen panel system is made of 18”x60” 2mm thick stainless steel panels. The panels utilize a non-directional brushed finish that diffuses the light and reflection. They are installed in a staggered pattern and are non-sequential, allowing individual panels to be changed at any time. Architecturally, this results in a taught and subtly textured skin that sublimely reflects the ever-changing sky, sunlight, and landscape.
Earlier this year, Hyperloop One announced a list of design partners that included Aecom, Arup, and Bjarke Ingels Group. Now, RB Systems—which was a finalist in the SpaceX Hyperloop One Pod Competition—has released a speculative design vision for a Hyperloop station and passenger pod. The spatial and programmatic concepts are largely experimental, as there are no precedents for this futuristic building typology.
Due to the rapid projected turnover rate of a 1 pod per minute, the design demands a high degree of automation, a carefully considered sequence of spaces, and a well-developed circulation plan for the pods to perform their many operations in a short time. Rustem Baishev of RB Systems proposes solving this challenge with a difference in levels: once a pod enters the station, it is carried on tracks to a platform, after which passengers and luggage unload; finally, an elevator lifts the pod to an upper level, where it is prepared for departure. All these maneuvers would be operated by an automatic dispatching system. A concrete rail shift inside the station will help to streamline this sequence and serves to dictate the station’s overall layout.
The interior of the station is intended to celebrate and generate excitement for the new technology. The space is, therefore, expansive, brightly colored, and filled with light, while adopting space-age aesthetics. A user-friendly wayfinding system includes easily visible timetables, spacious waiting halls, and a transparent service block. The proposed structural system is an experimental space-truss assembled from fiberglass; PV cells are molded into the glass assembly to block excess solar heat.
Elon Musk of Tesla and SpaceX first proposed Hyperloop, a tubular transit system that relies on magnetic levitation technology to transport passengers at over 700 mph, in 2013. The specific machinery and safety strategies to be implemented in RB Systems’ proposal remain to be resolved.
“Gang style” bathrooms, in which rows of stalls are installed opposite rows of wash basins and designated only for males or for females, have been de rigueur in educational facilities for the last hundred years. They involve predictable plumbing, mechanical exhaust, and fixture costs. Short doors and divider walls allow for the passive monitoring of behavior.
Relinquishing this traditional bathroom model is daunting, since individual toilet rooms can significantly increase costs through additional plumbing, ductwork, ventilation, partitions, doors and hardware. These designs many times require additional space, trigger further ADA compliance, and invalidate some USGBC LEED points. Moreover, school districts typically have limited budgets, established facilities, and deep-rooted social practices.
Which is why the initiative shown by Grant High School in the Portland Public School District has been so extraordinary. In 2013, the school had 10 students who openly identified as transgender. To help combat the real possibility that they would drop out due to a perceived lack of safety, administrators designated four student bathrooms and two staff bathrooms—each individual rooms with a toilet, sink and mirror—as gender-inclusive. The bathrooms were immediately popular with all students at Grant HS, transgender or not, who enjoyed the privacy afforded by these enclosed facilities.
With a major renovation of the 1920s-era school on the horizon, the District realized that providing equitable toilet facilities for all 1700 students would be essential.
Architecture firm Mahlum’s design solution for Grant HS centered around replacing all existing “gang-style” bathrooms with individual toilet rooms with full doors opening to a shared space for wash basins and drinking fountains. Urinals will not be installed. Two entrance and exit points eliminate the feeling of going into a “dead-end” room, increasing safety and security. Signed with a simple pictorial representation of a toilet, not the ubiquitous “his” (pants), “hers” (skirt), or “their” (both), the toilet room is open for use by all. When the renovation is complete in 2019, Grant HS will become the first in the District—and one of the few in the nation—to house one hundred percent inclusive bathrooms.
Mahlum’s design solution for Grant High School in the Portland Public School District. Image courtesy of <a href='http://ift.tt/2eBfGtE;
For the new Northwood Elementary School in the Mercer Island School District, the same architectural team also abandoned gang style bathrooms, instead placing individual toilet rooms in many places on each floor. This solution boosts program flexibility and reduces time lost to toilet transitions. Since the District intends to keep the bathrooms unlocked and available to all students, the solution maximizes restroom equity, which is especially helpful for young students just learning to navigate social customs and keen to fit in with their peers.
Higher education institutions may more easily implement equitable bathroom designs because users are older, more diverse, and tend toward open-mindedness. For a new residence hall currently under construction at University of Oregon, Mahlum held student listening sessions, which revealed a strong desire for gender-inclusive living units with private bathrooms, as well as visibly inclusive public restrooms at the ground level and in common areas. However, residence facilities are still typically grouped by gender per floor or per community, and although suite-style bathrooms serving smaller clusters of students potentially mitigate gender-segregated restrooms, they can cost more. Like school districts, college and university administrators fear that enhanced design solutions will escalate costs, consume space, and drive up room rates.
Inclusive restroom design at the University of Oregon. Image courtesy of <a href='http://ift.tt/2eBfGtE;
The desire to create more equitable restroom design can also be stymied by building codes that have not yet caught up to changing opinions. Local jurisdictions have limited legal authority to enact code changes, so they usually have no other recourse but to uphold strict compliance. As society calls for more equitable bathroom design, the design and construction industry must demand large-scale code changes to allow “alternate paths” that comply with the intent of code and, moreover, serve the public good.
While the transgender movement may be currently illuminating the issue, toilet privacy affects a much broader group, including families with young children, adult caregivers, and people that are mobility-challenged or have health issues. Enhancing equity through privacy is a basic human right that primary, secondary and higher education institutions can uphold through thoughtful design solutions. By rethinking bathroom design in retrofits or new facilities, what was once an afterthought for architects can become a way to not just promote self-esteem, health and well-being, but improve safety and security.
As architects struggle with understanding what communities need and how to meet and overcome antiquated code regulations, we must quickly find a design vocabulary, inclusive of iconography and code guidelines, to reflect best practices. And most of all, we must place equity and human dignity at the center of these conversations.
JoAnn Hindmarsh Wilcox AIA LEED AP, Associate Principal is the Design Lead for the education studio at Mahlum. JoAnn crafts nationally recognized buildings that prioritize student learning and support student life, rooted in a multi-platform, collaborative engagement process.
Kurt Haapala AIA LEED AP, Partner, is an industry leader in the planning and design of student life and housing facilities, and has helped build Mahlum’s higher education housing studio into a nationally recognized practice.
At the Rio 2016 Olympics, Studio GTM Cenografia developed a temporary installation for Nike. The space, inspired by containers and industrial sheds, occupies a total area of 600 square meters and was built in a metallic structure and wrapped in galvanized trapezoidal tiles. The cube used in the project is an installation from Brazilian artist and designer Muti Randolph, one of the pioneers of digital illustration in Brazil.
Our friends from ArchDaily Brasil talked with the architect Daltro Mendonça (GTM Cenografia) to find out more details on material choices and the execution of the project.
Courtesy of Nike
What were the main materials you used in the project?
Daltro Mendonça (DM): Metal beams, galvanized trapezoidal tiles, corrugated metal sheets, interior floors and surrounding structures out of wood, concrete pottery and vinyl plates.
Courtesy of Nike
What were your main sources of inspiration when choosing the materials used in the project?
DM: The customer’s desire to have a more industrial, clean feel, to make people think of the world of ports and shipping containers, we went for using a lot of metal, as a structure, in the finish or even furniture.
Courtesy of Nike
How did decisions related to materials influence the concept of the project?
DM: The details and finishings that we used because of the choice of material, ended up contributing to the desired design. For example, the choice to also use galvanized trapezoidal tiles in the interior of the space.
Courtesy of Nike
What advantages did the materials you used offer the construction of the project?
DM: Since we were looking at a project that was going to take almost 3 months to plan and work out all the details, 20 days to manufacture and another 15 days to put all together, the prefabrication and modulation that these materials offered were essential to be able to execute and complete the work within the initially determined time frame.
Courtesy of Nike
Did any of the project’s challenges involve the choice of these materials?
DM: No, just the opposite. They helped to achieve the necessary speed for this type of work.
Did you ever consider any other possible materials for the project?
DM: No, from the conception stage on, we had already decided on metal for the structures and the closures, which in addition to modulation and assembly, helped define the proposed aesthetic.
Courtesy of Nike
How did you research the right suppliers and builders for the materials used in the Nike project?
DM: We didn’t need to. Since they were simple, daily use materials, a research phase wasn’t necessary. We only needed structure samples and closures to define the finishings.
Sig Nordal 