Werner Sobek was the winner of a competition for the redesign of Esslingen`s bus station. The central bus station of Esslingen was architecturally improved through a new canopy. Werner Sobek designed a curved canopy which is derived from the topography of the surrounding landscape. Through bulging on the long sides, the roofed area opens up to the surrounding landscape of vineyards and hills. The roof structure stands on single steel columns. The structure is made of a curved steel grid with the basic structure of a triangle. The cladding is done with triangle shaped glass panels which have the same dimensions as the basic structure of the grid. The use of opaque and transparent glass panels respectively provides perfect conditions for the people waiting under the roof. The covered area always receives natural light. At the same time glare and overheating during summer time are avoided.
Product Description. The use of steel in the load bearing structure was a quintessential prerequisite for the realization of such a light-weight, wide-spanning structure.
The project is part of Seine-Arche development which concerns a wider territory in line with the axis of Defense. Taking into account the natural relief and coexistence of various networks which pass through, the Seine-Arche development required the upstream of colossal structures.
Aiming to attract here new populations from all over the department of Hauts-de-Seine, the urban project was designed to restore the site scale and its habitability, through a series of seventeen “Urban Terraces”. The new buildings offer an architecture that is both monumental, in response to the scale of the site and which expresses the domestic nature of the programs. By his design, details and the choice of the materials, the project provides opportunities for the quality of living and the sustainability of the buildings. Even if the planned allocation for the Terrace 9 is divided into several programs, the whole ensures a single coherent expression. Our goal was to work accurately for functional quality and comfort of the housing program distributed between the three towers and the base.
Accommodations are of varied types, ranging from studios to T5, in accession or in social housing. The facades are exposed respectively to the four cardinal points, they are all provided with numerous openings that extend the inside of housings to cascades of terraces, or to small hollowed loggias, which are interposed in the design of the frame.
Product Description.We used the enameled brick as the main cladding of the base and one of the three towers. The bricks are mounted on stiff panels then fixed mechanically to the concrete wall through 20cm of isolating wool.
Tints were chosen in dark tones to give a certain nobility to the facade. The crafted nature of the production of bricks allowed to have variety of tint from a brick to the other one. The tint of joints was chosen to merge at best with that of the bricks and so have a very subtle rendering.
Architects Statement: Located 10km south-east of Melbourne, Caulfield South is a suburb home to a diverse range of architectural styles from Edwardian weather-board to Californian Bungalow to Red & Orange clinker brick.
Alarmingly – It is visually evident to see an increasing trend of these original housing styles being demolished to make way for large, two storey modern housing typologies. These are often conceived as mock – Neo-Georgian or rendered triple-fronted brick veneer.
Around the 1960`s and 70`s a number of European trained architects such as Ernest Fooks began designing a series of superb International Modern style inspired houses in and around the Caulfield and wider area. A protégé of Fook`s – Michael Richard Ernest Feldhagen also completed a number of exemplar International Modernist Style singular residences and mutli-residential flats around the same period.
Writer`s House is an alteration and additional to an existing orange brick veneer residence that was originally designed in the late 1960`s by Michael R E Feldhagen. The house was originally built for the current occupants Grandparents who were Jewish holocaust survivors and immigrated to Australia a few years prior to building the house.
The house was filled with beautiful original custom joinery specifically built for the house by Jakob Rudowski – A local joiner who made quite allot of furniture around the area in the 1960`s and 70`s.
Plan 1
Plan 2
In 2013 – the grandparents passed away and due to the distress of this event for my clients – The house lay dormant for a good part of 2 and a half years.
The first day we met with our clients was one of the few times they had come back to the house after losing their grandparents. This was obviously an emotional but somewhat therapeutic event – knowing that they were going to extend and celebrate the life of the Grandparents house through some extensive renovations.
I may note: Cigarette butts were still balancing on the side of ashtrays around the house from years prior. Surprisingly – The house did not have an eerie feeling given these types of frozen moments scattered around the house.
My clients – Danielle, a digital marketing professional and Adam who is a screen writer/journalist were heavily involved during the design & construction process. Adam`s background in writing, created a key driver in the way we approached the individual spaces within the house as chapters that were curated as a part of a whole story.
Sketch
It was our joint intention that whatever new works we did to the house would not impact on the original integrity of the original house and it memories. There is often a very fine line between creating a nostalgic ‘museum’ of something that was AND removing all notion of the existing all together. Existing Wallpapers, Chandeliers and Building Fabric were kept where possible including the existing Rudowski Furniture which was restored. A number of existing sofas have been reupholstered to give them a new life.
This existing fabric has been very carefully set in contrast with new contemporary furniture, joinery and materials, that reside as a background palette to highlight the existing and at the same time – celebrating the new. Both existing rear and front painted timber windows were replaced with full height steel windows that encompass the interior spaces with a rich warm light.
The project consisted of an extensive internal renovation and some external works. A new large ‘party’ deck bounded either side by two black aluminium perforated privacy screens not only solved a practical issue of overlooking but more importantly was used to extend the internal areas to create a much more flexible internal/external cohesion of space.
An existing dark corridor/foyer space has been re-imagined as a light filled, plywood lined gallery space to hang art and offer a surprise to the unsuspecting visitor. This space also acts as an umbilical of sorts, simultaneously linking & closing off the living, kitchen and dining spaces of the house with the more private bedroom areas when the occupants are entertaining.
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A section of wall was removed from the existing kitchen to submerge the dining area & yard back into the house. The kitchen itself represents a minimal yet utilitarian palette of materials & details. Set in a minimal white plaster & limewashed ply finish the configuration of cabinetry allows the kitchen`s mess to be hidden away through a series of bi-folding & sliding panels.
Compositionally opposite to the kitchen, A cozy TV ‘snug’ space is tucked back into the house to create a more intimate area specifically for watching movies & the reading of a good book. A large full-height sliding panel allows the space to become ‘a part’ of the main living area or made completely separate & hidden beyond.
Both Kitchen and TV Snug open out to a generous living and dining area, free of a TV and instead highlighting restored memories of the past. At one end, a linear rosewood sideboard and the opposing, a wonderfully crafted pull-out bar unit, both designed and made by Jakob Rudowski in the 1960`s. The existing sofa`s [also Rudowski`s] have been bought back to life, re-imagined in a bright lime green upholstery. A new custom Oak and steel dining table seamlessly tie with the rich polished concrete slab throughout the space. The reflections projected internally through external open blockwork and perforated aluminium screens add a surreal play of light through the newly installed full-height steel windows throughout the day. Operable louvres in the TV snug and main living & dining areas create opportunity for cross-ventilation to occur and create flexible control of the internal temperature throughout the day.
At the other end of the house – A series of bedrooms and bathrooms were re-configured & re-imagined to accommodate the client and their growing family.
Linking to the foyer/gallery – a modest powder room clad in black formply and concaved delicate green tiles, creates a bold introduction to the spaces. A series of three bedrooms and a kids bathroom spawn off a central corridor, part of which was taken up to accommodate a walk-in-robe for the master bedroom. The master bedroom is light filled and has framed view of a tree canopy within the front yard. A robust yet sleek ensuite, featuring a series of poured insitu concrete elements such as a bath, basin and vanity tops contrast with sleek black steel thresholds, mirrors and pendant lights in conjunction with a filtered natural light to create a ‘moody’ spatial thematic.
The lower [down-stairs] areas of the house have been re-configured to become a self contained unit of sorts when the client`s young children grow up. For now – the spaces will host, an intimate subterranean whiskey den/wine cellar for a late night nightcap, a bathroom and a writing room, which has a direct physical link to the front courtyard. This front courtyard space was re-claimed from the previously unused- front garden to become a practical and useable space for contemplation and relaxing. The addition of this sweeping screen to formalise this area was to be the sole formal adaption to the existing identity of the house from the street.
From street level, the existing front windows were replaced with thin steel, double-glazed windows. A minimal white colour scheme was applied to the existing stone and aluminium fascias. The colour black was used to celebrate existing formal structural lines. The existing orange bricks have been retained to maintain the house`s history and timeless glory.
Architectural competition organizer Bee Breeders has announced the winners of the international Melbourne Tattoo Academy competition, which sought to “recollect and [postulate] principles of architectural humanism in contemporary culture,” asking entrants to consider disciplinary introspection into spatial and material issues concerning culture, society, and individuality.
Successful entries to the competition thus challenged personal and social conceptions of the tattoo as an art form, as well as the cultural and philosophical implications of tattoos in architecture.
Notable among the relationships and juxtapositions established include: critiques on permanence and longevity; the irreversible transformation of flesh and nature; correlation between graphic and retinal expression, graffiti and street art, the scenographic and decorated shed; lastly, body art as boutique parlor fashion, and high couture – noted the compatition organisers.
The winners of the Melbourne Tattoo Academy competition are:
First Prize: Melbourne Tattoo Academy / Matthieu Friedli, Agathe Sautet, Clara Berthaud; École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland
Courtesy of Bee Breeders
The first place entry stands apart because of its strong response to a difficult urban condition and its conceptual relationship to the ethos and culture of the tattoo. The project combines the two triangular sites, separated by a diagonal street, with a perforated black metal screen to create a rectangular urban frame. This frame partially conceals and contains an interior environment separate from the surrounding urban fabric, comprised of an open-air park on one lot and a concrete, steel, and glass structure on the larger lot. While the exterior frame disrupts the urban grid and allows it to stand apart from its urban fabric, the interior deploys a steel post-and-beam grid structural solution, oriented to the fabric of the city. This frame and structural system create a gradient of interior privacy while interfacing with the public and allowing a flexible floor plate for future use. The material selection evokes a raw refinement, elevating the practice and culture of the tattoo as a sophisticated institution. Ultimately, the strength of the project is found in its careful balance between the powerful demarcation of its territory through a simple frame, reflecting the ethos of the act of the tattoo as an irreversible transgression, opening its interior to the public through its simple tectonic kit of parts, and allowing the building to evolve over time.
Second Prize: The Tower and The Lair of Tattoo / Morgan Baufils; Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture et de Paysage de Bordeaux, France
Courtesy of Bee Breeders
The second place entry for the Melbourne Tattoo Academy is awarded to a project that stands out through its clear distinction as other. In forming an urban artist colony of sorts, the project acts as a haven for like minded individuals to gather, collaborate, and experiment. The narrative of the project takes on the cultural assumption of tattoo as a form of underground art that is both intimate and exclusive, while also being exhibitionist and voyeuristic. This is expressed through an architecture that is simultaneously fortified, moody, and inward looking, yet outward in its iconic scale and artistic expression. The proposal keenly develops cross connections between two related art forms, tattoo, or body art, and graffiti, or street art. Both tattoo and graffiti are forms of inscription, the tattoo traditionally more personal and graffiti, social. Through connecting the two forms of expression, the project enhances the social nature of both. Developing a cultural correlation between subject and venue, body and building. For both the tattoo artist and graffiti artist, the building acts as a form of blank canvas for rotating collaborations. Through narrative and architectural form, the second place entry creates a countercultural utopia, setting the academy apart as other from its context.
Third Prize: Tattoo City / Alexandru Tintea, Arturo Garrido; Universidad Politécnica de Valencia, Spain
Courtesy of Bee Breeders
The third place entry for the Melbourne Tattoo Academy is unique in its treatment of the urban. “Tattoo City” creates a campus in the city, establishing a series of rooms — including a gallery, exhibition space, presentation venue, coffee shop, and guesthouse — to create a public and almost voyeuristic enclave for an art that is often considered taboo. This series of rooms is connected by a “medieval street,” a public outdoor space that unites each programmatic piece to display and elevate the art of tattooing. By half-burying the program in a series of off axis rooms, the proposal establishes an exterior promenade, challenging the typological demands of a cultural ritual that is often pushed to the fringe of accepted societal norms. Through this critique of an art that is both an intimate act and an outward expression, “Tattoo City” questions the stigma of the tattoo, elevating it to an artistic discipline that demands public display and acknowledgement.
Learn more about the projects, as well as about other entries, here.
The future development of the Arabia Historic District in Helsinki has culminated in the second round of a two-stage competition.
Arabiazza(s) — one of the four proposals selected for the second stage — was developed by team leader Anssi Lassila and comprised of OOPEAA working in collaboration with Lunden Architecture and Gehl Architects acting as a consultant in urban public space. Through a sequential flow of spaces in the form of public squares, Arabiazza(s) fundamentally aims to encourage public interaction. The intent to engage a broad range of people — from students to tourists to workers — inspired the creation of multiple sheltered inner courtyards.
Courtesy of OOPEAA
The [Arabia] area has seen many transformations over time, and now that the factory that once was the heart and soul of the area is no longer active, the neighborhood is facing yet another new phase of development, writes Anssi Lassila.
Courtesy of OOPEAA
The project’s secondary goal is rendering a sustainable urban environment within the district. To promote walking in the neighborhood, the architects have curated a clear path through the area, complementing the sequence of squares. In addition to public space, the old Arabia factory building will be converted to a hotel featuring loft apartments on the top floors. Housing for students, senior citizens, and families will have specific designs.
Courtesy of OOPEAA
Furthermore, to cultivate the district’s creative side, the Design Center will feature exhibitions and a space for an architecture-related museum. Courtyard gardens also offer green respites for the district’s visitors. Additionally, in an effort to attract tourists, the area will feature a public library, restaurants, and cafes.
Courtesy of OOPEAA
Courtesy of OOPEAA
Arabiazza(s) aspiration to create a vibrant neighborhood is ingrained in their urban plan. Preserved and renovated buildings will sustain the historic elements of the neighborhood, while transportation by bike or on foot is emphasized through the series of spaces.
Courtesy of OOPEAA
Location: Helsinki, Finland Size: 147 000 m2 (whole); 52 000 m2 (new construction) Year: 2016 (competition) Competition team: Arabiazza(s) was developed by a team led by Anssi Lassila and composed of OOPEAA working in collaboration with Lundén Architecture. Gehl Architects acted as an expert in matters of urban public space. Team: Anssi Lassila (OOPEAA), OOPEAA Office For Peripheral Architecture, FIN, Kazunori Yamaguchi, architect, M. Arch, Pavla Hradilova, architect, M. Arch, Iida Hedberg, architect SAFA, M. Arch, Marko Simsiö, architecture student, Lundén Architecture Ltd, FIN, Eero Lundén, FRSA, architect, M. Arch, Maija Parviainen, architect SAFA, M. Arch, Ron Aasholm, architect, M. Arch, Carmen Lee, architect, M. Arch, Rubén Tomás Verde, M.Arch, Gehl Architects, DK, David Sim, Partner, architect SAR/MSA, M. Arch, Malin Nilsson, architect SAR/MSA, M. Arch
The historic warehouse from the late 19th century, similar to dozens of others that are to be found along the railway. Nice proportions, simple design, practicality.
We considered to build company facilities within the warehouse space. Then we decided not to. We rather chose to revive unused adjoining house which had been recently poorly renovated.
We let demolish the floor with weirdly formed gable roof (the product of previous adjustments) and we construct a new floor with flat roof.
Floor Plan
Floor Plan
Large windows allow workers to have good control over the traffic around. At the same time, they allow kind of nostalgic view into the past – looking at the railway and adjacent buildings that are changing all the time.
The winners of the 2016 INTBAUWorld Congress Excellence Awards have recently been announced. Categories for this year’s competition were Community Engagement, New Building, Urban Design, and Emerging Talent. The awards were given during the INTBAU World Congress 2016, a biennial forum that brings together international participants to debate the most pressing global issues facing building, architecture, and urbanism.
“I join my jurors in applauding the considerable depth and breadth of this year’s award submissions,” said Anne Fairfax, President a Fairfax & Sammons Architects and jury chair of the Excellence Awards. “We found the projects to be thoughtful in leading by example in the use of traditional design but we were also pleased to see the positive social activism and environmental responsibility that characterized many of the projects, reaching deep into the values of the INTBAU mission.”
Part of a future inclusive school for deaf children, the building process is based on thorough fieldwork of local materials, techniques and building typologies of the surroundings, and realized through community participation.
Community Engagement – The Mount Pleasant Association
Courtesy of INTBAU
Their ‘alternative’ community-led proposal for an old sorting office has successfully submitted Britain’s largest ever Community Right to Build Order. Receiving huge support from the local community, the urban design consists of characterful mansion blocks and is mixed use and human scale.
Urban Design – The Notre Dame Plan of Chicago 2109
The Notre Dame Plan of Chicago 2109 contends that the broad traditions of humanist architecture and urbanism possess ample resources to solve many of the contemporary city’s most demanding practical and aesthetic problems. Chicago 2109 envisions a legible and humane metropolitan Chicago resulting from a holistic consideration of land stewardship, regional transportation, water conservation, waste water treatment, tax and zoning law, walkable neighbourhood design, durable construction, historic preservation, climate adaptation, and the symbolic content of urban form.
Emerging Talent – Ubaldo Occhinegro
Ubaldo’s virtuosic research and drawing project catalogues the typology and construction of military and residential castles built in Southern Italy by Emperor Frederick II Hoenstaufen of Swabia between 1220 and 1250. These castles represent a unique fusion of architectural styles. With their future looking uncertain due to neglect and lack of conservation, Ubaldo’s project provides both a useful record and drawn reconstruction, as well as being a work of great artistic merit.
These winners, along with honorable mentions, will be honored at an Excellence Award Ceremony on 15 November at the Royal Society of Arts in London.
The house is built near Krakow, on the southern slope’s building plot with extensive panoramic views on mountains’ range Karpaty and Beskidy. Starting to create a house project in such a place, we wanted to reinterprate the “Zakopianski Styl” (an old architecture style which is assigned to Polish mountains). That’s why we’ve created the expressive, triangle attic block, which goes beyond the outline of the walls. Together with the plinth and openwork railings, it creates the space functionaly comparable to the traditional veranda. Complement to the concept are Canadian Cedar shingle and boards. These natural materials, aging, every year will change the building’s visual reception.
Product Description. Timber elevation and roof (boards and shingle) are perfectly common to a local Polish nearmountain building tradition, which is exacly where the house is built. These natural materials will change during the time, they’ll “live” together with the seasons and wheather. Because of it with every passing month and year the building will blend more and more into the landscape.
The “Rust Belt,” a region of north central United States, is well known as an area where once thriving industrial cities have declined in economic health and population. As a result, many of the region’s cities have been subject to grand proposals that aim to fix these city’s problems–but could such schemes also provide a way to intervene in other serious global issues? In a recent article, Metropolis Magazine’s Web Editor and former ArchDaily Managing Editor Vanessa Quirk argues that refugees could reinvigorate such cities, describing how refugees are “boosting American’s legacy cities,” but simultaneously “encountering resistance from residents.”
In one sense, the proposal is incredibly simple: “Syrians need homes; Detroit needs people.” However, as Quirk explains, there are of course plenty more layers to the situation. What, then, is the role of design when it comes to cutting through these layers, and could it be a way to “reframe the narrative around refugees,” providing a response to those who still harbor a fear of the “other”?
These questions begin to be answered through several case studies across Detroit, Buffalo and Cleveland, where design has already begun to contribute to the new lives of refugees and immigrants, in increasingly healthier, more vital neighbourhoods.
For the full story, read the entire piece over at Metropolis Magazinehere.
The building zone is situated at 5 meters distance of the lateral limits. On the street side, it’s aligned on the advanced parts of the houses on the west. Its depth is 15 meters. The Garden is oriented at the north-northeast.
Designed on the basis of the volumetric language and templates already present in the « Champ », the houses merge very well in the characteristic built environment of the « Champ des Mottes ».
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In order to integrate a contemporary living program in a well-defined environment, the existing volumetric language is re-interpreted with a twist.
The project benefits from a high quality environment. It’s conceived to take profit of the positive aspects of the parcel: environmental frame, garden, views, vegetation and natural daylight.
The houses offer large openings on the garden side and are turned to the south in order to let the sun penetrate generously. With this purpose, a part of the building is scooped out to create a patio, as a south-oriented part of the garden.
The patio is a light receptacle. It invites, punctuates the entry and creates a pleasant distance between public space and home. Located below, it turns part of the basement into habitable space, which can be used according to the residents needs.
The four houses are all unique, interpreting the same ideas in a different way.
The scooped out parts, fulfilling a vital function in the houses, push back partly the street side fronts. Combined with the variable backside facade plans, it reduces the building depth and creates a visual together of alternating volumes and depths.
The partly reducing of the building depth allows creating traversing living rooms combining environmental views, sunlight and direct contact with the garden.
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The staircase treatment reinforces the daylight quota in the central part of the homes.
The volumetric result is offering visual dynamism and permeability to the whole, dialoguing with the environing buildings of the « Champ des Mottes ».
Sig Nordal 