London-based firm Nex—Architecture has unveiled its plans for a new Royal Air Force (RAF) Museum as a part of the RAF’s 2018 Centenary Program. The new project will revitalize an existing RAF museum in North London that was created in 1972, transforming it into a visitor facility and promoting the airfield heritage of the museum’s location.
The new scheme will put emphasis on improving visitor experience by “establishing a clear route through the exhibition spaces.” A prominent new 40-meter-long entrance and visitor center will be placed inside the Hangar 1 building, acting as a welcome and orientation point.
Inside, the hangar will be reconfigured to incorporate a new central hub providing a café, shop, members’ room, public viewing galleries and flexible use spaces. Clad in extruded aluminum fins and inspired by the overlapping blades of a jet turbine engine, this new element plays with visitors’ perceptions of transparency and solidity as they move around the building stated the architect in a press release.
The inside of the 5,200-square-meter space will additionally be finished in dark tones in order to compliment and provide a muted backdrop for the Sunderland bomber aircraft housed inside. Because this aircraft is too fragile to be moved, construction will be carried out around it. A new industrial door will be installed for access to other large aircrafts.
In addition to renovating Hangar 1, the project includes a new restaurant converted from a former officers’ mess dating from the 1930s. In this space, original brick walls and steel roof trussing will be complimented and contrasted with new ash paneling, display cabinets, and stained oak flooring.
The new buildings and masterplan will bring a much-needed coherence to the site, and will offer new spaces that enhance visitor experience and better communicate the story of RAF people and technology for its centenary year and beyond described the architect.
An existing semi-detached house nearby the city Centre Leuven (Belgium) was extended to a vivid and sunny home for a couple with a passion for sports, travel and books.
Plan 1
Plan 2
The difference in level between the street and the garden as well as the orientation of the façade was used as a reason for architect Rob Mols to design an extension that pulls the light all the way through the house. The patio situated in de middle of the home intensifies this element of light and creates an intimate space between the gym and the living room. The expansion includes a timber construction in which columns, beams and finishing panels are left exposed.
studio k replied to the expansions existing contrasts with a design for the interior and exterior space. The various rooms throughout the house are a variety of intimate, dark atmospheres opposite to bright, open atmospheres. To establish the link between the several areas, materials and colors where reused. The customer had a specific demand to provide plenty of space for storage purposes to exhibit books and paintings together with creating different reading and leisure areas each with their own function and atmosphere.
The library is located next to the entrance area on street level. The Wengé colored stained oak floor and dark stained oak veneer bookcases causes an intimate reading atmosphere. The large window opens onto the gently sloping roof terrace illuminating the spacious room. A green roof with ornamental grasses and flowers causes a green oasis that fades away into the underlying garden and trees. The large dining table can be used to give intimate dinners, as a workplace or to exhibit books.
Through a floating open staircase finished in a massive oak Wengé colored and a white painted frame you reach the garden level. A bright polished concrete floor extends to the outside garden and patio to enhance a continuity and coherence throughout this home. The furniture consists of vintage and new pieces that blend beautifully with the current white walls, large windows and visible wooden structure.
The kitchen can be closed off by large white sliding doors to extract the kitchen from its view. The same ambience has been created as upstairs in the library. You can alter the space into a closed or open, calm harmonious or warm intimate atmosphere. A movable cupboard unit can be used as an extra worktop or dresser. The cabinet wall in the kitchen also hides the access door to the bedroom. The gym is housed on the other side of the patio.
In the bedroom the wooden beams and ceiling are left visible. The orbicular shower creates a little intimate spa retreat. A simple freestanding white block separates the bedroom from the bathroom. The old cellars, situated behind the sleeping area, where rearranged as sauna, laundry, toilet and storage space. On the first floor are a reading corner, second bathroom and office located. A new staircase was put up to the attic to serve as a guest and movie room.
Welcome to the fourth installment of The Long(ish) Read: an AD feature which uncovers texts written by notable essayists that resonate with contemporary architecture, interior architecture, urbanism or landscape design. Ornament and Crime began as a lecture delivered by Adolf Loos in 1910 in response to a time (the late 19th and early 20th Centuries) and a place (Vienna) in which Art Nouveau was the status quo.
Loos used the essay as a vehicle to explain his distain of “ornament” in favour of “smooth and previous surfaces,” partly because the former, to him, caused objects and buildings to become unfashionable sooner, and therefore become obsolete. This—the effort wasted in designing and creating superfluous ornament, that is—he saw as nothing short of a crime. The ideas embodied in this essay were forerunners to the Modern movement, and especially those practices that would be advocated at the Bauhaus in Weimar.
Extract from Ornament and Crime
The human embryo goes through all the phases of animal life while still inside the womb. When man is born, his instincts are those of a newborn dog. His childhood runs through all the changes corresponding to the history of mankind. At the age of two he looks like a Papuan, at four like one of an ancient Germanic tribe, at six like Socrates, at eight like Voltaire. When he is eight years old, he becomes conscious of violet, the colour discovered by the eighteenth century, for until then violets were blue and purple-fish were red. The physicist today points out colours in the spectrum of the sun that have already been named, but whose comprehension has been reserved for future generations.
The child is amoral. So is the Papuan, to us. The Papuan kills his enemies and eats them. He is no criminal but if a modern man kills someone and eats him, he is a criminal or a degenerate.
The Papuan tattoos his skin, his boat, his rudder, his oars; in short, everything he can get his hands on. He is no criminal. The modern man who tattoos himself is a criminal or a degenerate. There are prisons in which eighty per cent of the prisoners are tattooed. Tattooed men who are not behind bars are either latent criminals or degenerate aristocrats. If someone who is tattooed dies in freedom, then he does so a few years before he would have committed murder.
The urge to decorate one’s face and everything in reach is the origin of the graphic arts. It is the babbling of painting. All art is erotic.
The first ornament invented, the cross, was of erotic origin. The first work of art, the first artistic act, which the first artist scrawled on the wall to give his exuberance vent. A horizontal line: the woman. A vertical line: the man penetrating her. The man who created this felt the same creative urge as Beethoven, he was in the same state of exultation in which Beethoven created the Ninth.
But the man of our own times who covers the walls with erotic images from an inner compulsion is a criminal or a degenerate. Of course, this urge affects people with such symptoms of degeneracy most strongly in the lavatory. It is possible to estimate a country’s culture by the amount of scrawling on lavatory walls. In children this is a natural phenomenon: their first artistic expression is scribbling erotic symbols on walls. But what is natural for, a Papuan and a child, is degenerate for modern man. I have discovered the following truth and present it to the world: cultural evolution is equivalent to the removal of Ornament from articles in daily use. I thought I was giving the world a new source of pleasure with this; it did not thank me for it. People were sad and despondent. What oppressed them was the realization that no new ornament could be created. What every Negro can do, what all nations and ages have been able to do, why should that be denied to us, men of the nineteenth century? What humanity had achieved in earlier millennia without decoration has been carelessly tossed aside and consigned to destruction. We no longer possess carpenters’ benches from the Carolingian period, but any trash that exhibited the merest trace of decoration was collected and cleaned up, and splendid palaces built to house it. People walked sadly around the showcases, ashamed of their own impotence. Shall every age have a style of its own and our age alone be denied one? By style they meant decoration. But I said: Don’t weep! Don’t you see that the greatness of our age lies in its inability to produce a new form of decoration? We have conquered ornament, we have won through to lack of ornamentation. Look, the time is nigh, fulfilment awaits us. Soon the streets of the town will glisten like white walls. Like Zion, the holy city, the metropolis of heaven. Then we shall have fulfillment.
But there are some pessimists who will not permit this. Humanity must be kept down in the slavery of decoration. People progressed far enough for ornament to give them pleasure no longer, indeed so far that a tattooed face no longer heightened their aesthetic sensibility, as it did with the Papuans, but diminished it. They were sophisticated enough to feel pleasure at the sight of a smooth cigarette case while they passed over a decorated one, even at the same price. They were happy with their clothes and glad that they did not have to walk about in red velvet pants with gold’ braid like monkeys at a fair. And I said: look, Goethe’s death chamber is more magnificent than all the Renaissance grandeur and a smooth piece of furniture more beautiful than all the inlaid and carved museum pieces. Goethe’s language is finer than all the florid similes of the Pegnitz Shepherds.[1]
The pessimist heard this with displeasure and the State, whose task it is to retard the cultural progress of the people, took up the fight for the development and revival of ornament. Woe to the State whose revolutions are made by Privy Councillors! A sideboard was soon on show in the Vienna Museum of Arts and Crafts called The Rich Haul of Fish, soon there were cupboards called The Enchanted Princess or something similar, relating to the ornament that covered these unfortunate pieces. The Austrian government takes its task so seriously that it makes sure that puttees do not disappear from the borders of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. It forces every civilized twenty-year-old man to wear puttees instead of knitted hose for three years. For every government still labours under the supposition that a nation on a low standard is easier to govern.
All right, then, the plague of ornament is recognized by the State and subsidized by State finds. But I look on this as retrogression. I do not allow the objection that ornament heightens a cultivated man’s joy in life; I do not allow the objection: “but what if the ornament is beautiful…” As far as I am concerned, and this goes for all cultivated people, ornament does not give zest to life. If I want to eat some gingerbread, I choose a piece that is quite plain, and not in the shape of a heart or a baby or a horseman, and gilded all over. The man from the fifteenth century will not understand me. But all modem people will. The advocate of ornament believes that my urge for simplicity is equivalent to a mortification of the flesh. No, my dear art school professor, I’m not mortifying myself. I prefer it that way. The spectacular menus of past centuries, which all include decorations to make peacocks, pheasants and lobsters appear even tastier, produce the opposite effect on me. I walk though a culinary display with revulsion at the thought that I am supposed to eat these stuffed animal corpses. I eat roast beef.
The immense damage and devastation wrought on aesthetic development by the revival of decoration could easily be overcome, for no one, not even governments, can arrest the evolution of mankind. It can only be retarded We can wait. But it is a crime against the national economy that human labour, money and material should thereby be ruined. This kind of damage cannot be put right by time.
The tempo of cultural progress suffers through stragglers. I may be living in 1908, yet my neighbour still lives in 1900 and that one over there in 1880. It is a misfortune for a country if the cultural development of its people is spread over such a long period. The peasant from Kals lives in the twelfth century. And in the jubilee procession there were contingents from national groups which would have been thought backward even in the period of the migrations of the tribes. Happy the country that has no such stragglers and marauders! Happy America! In our country there are old-fashioned people even in the cities, stragglers from the eighteenth century, who are shocked by a picture with violet shadows because they can’t yet see violet. They prefer the pheasant on which the chef has had to work for days, and cigarette cases with Renaissance decoration please them better than smooth ones. And how is it in the country? clothes and furniture belong entirely to earlier centuries. The farmer is not a Christian, he is still a heathen.
Stragglers slow down the cultural progress of nations and humanity; for ornament is not only produced by criminals; it itself commits a crime, by damaging men’s health, the national economy and cultural development. where two people live side by side with the same needs, the same demands on life and the same income, and yet belong to different cultures, the following process may be observed from the economic point of view: the man from the twentieth century becomes ever richer, the one from the eighteenth ever poorer. I am supposing that each lives according to his inclinations. The twentieth century man can pay for his needs with much less capital and can therefore save. The vegetables he likes are simply boiled in water and then served with a little melted butter. The other man doesn’t enjoy them until honey and nuts have been added and someone has been busy cooking them for hours. Decorated plates are very dear, while the plain white china that the modem man likes is cheap. One man accumulates savings, the other one debts. So it is with whole nations. Woe to the country that lags behind in cultural development! The English become richer and we poorer…
Even greater is the damage ornament inflicts on the workers. As ornament is no longer a natural product of our civilization, it accordingly represents backwardness or degeneration, and the labour of the man who makes it is not adequately remunerated.
Conditions in the woodcarving and turning trades, the criminally low prices paid to embroiderers and lacemakers, are well known. The producers of ornament must work twenty hours to earn the wages a modern worker gets in eight. Decoration adds to the price of an object as a rule, and yet it can happen that a decorated object, with the same outlay in materials and demonstrably three times as much work, is offered for sale at half the price of a plain object. The lack of ornament means shorter working hours and consequently higher wages. Chinese carvers work sixteen hours, American workers eight. If I pay as much for a smooth box as for a decorated one, the difference in labour time belongs to the worker. And if there were no ornament at all – a circumstance that will perhaps come true in a few millennia – a man would have to work only four hours instead of eight, for half the work done at present is still for ornamentation.
Ornament is wasted labour and hence wasted health. That’s how it has always been. Today, however, it is also wasted material, and both together add up to wasted capital.
As ornament is no longer organically linked with our culture, it is also no longer an expression of our culture. Ornament as created today has no connection with us, has no human connections at all, no connection with the world as it is constituted. It cannot be developed. What has happened to the decorations of Otto Eckmann and those of Van de Velde? The artist always used to stand at the forefront of humanity, full of health and vigour. But the modem ornamentalist is a straggler, or a pathological case. He rejects even his own products within three years. To cultivated people they are unbearable immediately, others are aware of their unbearableness only after some years. Where are the works of Otto Eckmann today? Where will Olbrich’s work be in ten years’ time? Modern ornament has no forbears and no descendants, no past and no future. It is joyfully welcomed by uncultivated people, to whom the true greatness of our time is a closed book, and after a short period is rejected.
Mankind today is healthier than ever, only a few people are sick. But these few tyrannize over the worker who is so healthy that he cannot invent ornament. They force him to make the ornaments they have invented in the greatest variety of materials.
Changes in decoration account for the quick devaluation of the product of labour. The worker’s time and the material used are capital items that are being wasted. I have coined an aphorism: The form of an object should last (i.e., should be bearable) as long as the object lasts physically. I shall try to clarify this: A suit will change in fashion more often than a valuable fur. A ball gown for a lady, only meant for one night, will change its form more speedily than a desk But woe to the desk that has to be changed as quickly as a ball gown because its shape has become unbearable, for than the money spent on the desk will have been wasted.
This is well-known to the ornamentalists, and Austrian ornamentalists try to make the most of it. They say: “A consumer who has his furniture for ten years and then can’t stand it anymore and has to re-furnish from scratch every ten years, is more popular with us than someone who only buys an item when the old one is worn out. Industry thrives on this. Millions are employed due to rapid changes.” This seems to be the secret of the Austrian national economy; how often when a fire breaks out one hears the words: “Thank God, now there will be something for people to do again.” I know a good remedy: burn down a town, burn down the country and everything will be swimming in wealth and well-being. Make furniture that you can use as firewood after three years and metal fittings that must be melted down after four years because even in the auction room you can’t realize a tenth of the outlay in work and materials, and we shall become richer and richer.
The loss does not hit only the consumer, it hits the manufacturer above all. Today, ornament on items that need no ornament means wasted labour and spoilt materials. If all objects were aesthetically enduring for as long as they lasted physically, the consumer could afford to pay a price that would enable the worker to earn more money and work shorter hours. I don’t mind spending four times as much for an article which I am certain I can make use of and use up completely as I would for one inferior in shape and material. I don’t mind spending forty kronen for my boots although I could get boots for ten kronen in another shop. But in trades suffering under the tyranny of the ornamentalists, good or bad workmanship does not count. The work suffers because nobody wants to pay its true value.
And that is a good thing, because these decorated objects are only bearable in the cheapest form. I can get over a fire’s havoc more easily if I hear that only worthless rubbish has been destroyed. I can enjoy the tripe in the Künstlerhaus because I know that it has been put up in a few days and will be torn down in a day. But throwing gold coins around instead of pebbles, lighting cigarettes with a banknote and pulverizing a pearl and than drinking it is unaesthetic. The most unaesthetic decorated objects are those made of the best materials with the greatest care, those that have demanded hours of work. I cannot deny having asked for high quality work above all-but not this kind.
Modern men who revere ornament as a sign of the artistic expression of earlier generations, will immediately recognize the painfully laboured and sickly ornament of today. No-one can create ornament now who lives on our level of culture.
It is different for people and nations who have not yet attained this level.
I am preaching to the aristocrats; I mean, to the people in the forefront of humanity who still fully appreciate the needs and strivings of those beneath: them. They understand the native weaving ornaments into textiles to a certain rhythm, which can be seen only when torn apart, the Persian knotting his carpet, the Slovak peasant woman embroidering her lace, the old lady crocheting wonderful objects in beads and silk. The aristocrat lets them be, for he knows they work in moments of revelation. The revolutionary would go there and say “This is all nonsense.” Just as he would pull the old woman away from the roadside shrine with the words: “There is no God.” But among the aristocrats the atheist raises his hat on passing a church.
My shoes are covered over and over with decoration, the kind made up of pinking and perforations. Work done by the shoemaker but not paid for. I go to the shoemaker and say: “You want thirty kronen for a pair of shoes. I’ll pay you forty.” In this way I have raised the man to a level of happiness which he will repay me for by work and material of a quality absolutely out of proportion to the extra cost. He is happy. Good fortune rarely comes his way. Here is a man who understands him and appreciates his work and does not doubt his honesty. In his imagination he can already see the finished shoes before him. He knows where the best leather is to be had at present, he knows which of his workers he can entrust the shoes to. And the shoes will boast perforations and scallops, as many as can possibly be fitted on an elegant shoe. And then I add: “but there’s one condition. The shoe must be quite plain.” With that I’ve toppled him from the heights of contentment into Tartarus. He has less work, but I have robbed him of all his pleasure.
I am preaching to the aristocrats. I tolerate ornaments on my own body if they afford my fellow-men pleasure. Then they are a pleasure to me, too. I put up with the ornaments of the natives, the Persians, the Slovak peasant woman and my shoemaker’s ornaments, for these workers have no other means of reaching the heights of their existence. We have art, which has replaced ornament. We go to Beethoven or Tristan after the cares of the day. My shoemaker can’t. I must not take away his joy as I have nothing to replace it with. But whoever goes to the Ninth Symphony and than sits down to design a wallpaper pattern is either a rogue or a degenerate.
Lack of ornament has pushed the other arts to unimagined heights. Beethoven’s symphonies would never have been written by a man who was obliged. to go about in silk, velvet and lace. Those who run around in velvet nowadays are not artists but buffoons or house painters. We have become more refined, more subtle. The herd must distinguish themselves by the use of various colors, modern man uses his clothes like a mask. His individuality is so strong that he does not need to express it any longer by his clothing. Lack of ornament is a sign of spiritual strength. Modern man uses the ornaments of earlier and foreign cultures as he thinks fit. He concentrates his own powers of invention on other things.
Footnotes [1] A society founded in 1644 by Georg Philipp Harsdörffer and Johann Clajus, devoted to ennobling the German language.
The Ezinge education park is located in Meppel extending from the Ezinge residential neighbourhood, between the railway and cluster of sports fields. The elongated, bronze-tinted buildings accommodate five secondary schools and a sports complex. A new street, Dahliastraat, separates the school from the residences, and also enables the neighbourhood to end with a new row of dwellings.
Plan
Orientated perpendicular to the railway, the relatively narrow bands of buildings span between Ambachtsweg and Ezingerweg. This horizontal division, which also varies subtly in height, splits the building mass visually into smaller volumes. This connects the buildings better with the smaller scale of the adjacent residential neighbourhood. The integrated complex features a multi-storey building called the Hart van Ezinge, which serves as a landmark for the education park.
Inviting The entrances of the three large schools and auditoriums are placed in glass sections positioned between the bronze bands. Contrast in material and transparency lend the entrances an inviting quality. The entrances of the two special schools are facing the park which connects the school and sports complex . The design of the sports complex echoes the elongated form of the main buildings. Connected to the sports fields and green banks of Reest creek, the elevated complex accommodates bicycle parking and car park underneath.
Although the schools operate independently with their own classrooms and open areas for working, they are mutually connected by shared workshops for practical subjects. The technical workshops are strategically placed along the new Dahliastraat; in this way, the students can showcase their work to the public. The classrooms for hospitality subjects front a terrace in the park. Visible from a distance is the multi-storey building with theatre and dance hall, and classrooms for art and music.
A building containing shared facilities for five different schools must be united by a clear concept. A central waterfall stair that cascades along voids and dynamic walkways form a true architectural route through the building.
Plan 0
Plan 1
Plan 2
Plan 3
Anodised aluminium With its glimmering tints of bronze, the building has a striking appearance. Light bounces from the distinctive facade cassettes made of anodised aluminium, both flat and sloped. The ribbed aluminium panels on the plinth form a light-coloured band that wraps around the building. The tower landmark stands out through the colour full artwork . A limited range of windows was specified for the facade, their deep reveals and playful arrangement contribute to the building’s lively appearance.
A big woodwork of stepped bookshelves is the key element that characterize this remodelling project just outside of Paris: a private three-storey house renovated by Italian architect Andrea Mosca.
Courtesy of Andrea Mosca
Andrea Mosca designed the interior for a family of five who stayed at a friend’s house during the renovation and were enamoured with the living room bookshelf. The aim of this project was to transform this dark, run-down home into a bright and warm space, add an office zone on the mezzanine and create a separate but visible kitchen.
Ground Floor Plan
The beech wood shelves other that just forming a Bookcase, act as stair railing, office space dividers and general storage within the two levels.
Courtesy of Andrea Mosca
Usually conceived as a series of flat shelving, this bookcase is made around a single element that is repeated into the space to design the project. The first unit goes from the first floor to the mezzanine, serving as the main bookshelf in the living room as well as a railing on one side of the stairs.
First Floor Plan
It continues then on the mezzanine level, where it becomes a storage unit that hides the bedroom entry and the office.
Courtesy of Andrea Mosca
A big glass pillar covered with mirrors disclose the theme of this project even before entering the main living room.
Courtesy of Andrea Mosca
The kitchen is separated from the dining room by a glass panel and a glass sliding door to fill the space with natural light.
Courtesy of Andrea Mosca
White painted wood floor and Beech bookshelves fill now the space with warm natural light giving this house a new life.
From the architect. Government of Goa proposes to construct a multi-utility public building in Valpoi, a small town in the Western Ghats. It had to include a Bus Stand, a Community Hall and a Children Park with a Jogging track. The Building complex required to be maintenance free and in low budget, with all units independent in their operations, function and administration.Valpoi being nestled in the magnificent Western Ghats is often frequented by an army of hovering clouds that carry with them an armour of lightning and thunder. The design aspires to capture this wonder of nature.
Courtesy of Rahul Deshpande
Valpoi faces an annual rainfall of 200 inches from June to October. The design evolved in response to the brief and the climate. The plan therefore is Compact, less Porous, yet Open in its attitude, well ventilated and adequately lit.
Courtesy of Rahul Deshpande
Courtesy of Rahul Deshpande
The triangular exposed laterite walls masquerading as mountains in the landscape, gives a sense of direction to the visitor and his eye, being sheltered by an overpowering yet graceful metal clad roof which floats as a cloud, at times teases to express itself as a stroke of lighting. A deliberate attempt to create an illusion of suspension and lightness, is pulled off through a series of eloquent cantilevering roofs and unattached walls.
Courtesy of Rahul Deshpande
Plan 2
The Bus stand is an independent entity boasting with its wide entry and exit, 10 parking bays and 9 idle parking. Its plan is commuter friendly, spacious and open. It provides for shops, waiting areas, toilets and drivers rest areas. The overwhelming roof shelters the buses and commuters from the scorching heat and the fury of rains. The Security House and the Toilet block though separate units blend into the fabric of design.
Courtesy of Rahul Deshpande
The Community Hall “The journey is more important than the destination”- precisely the notion of the design. Through a labyrinth of laterite wall passages you reach the Community hall welcoming you with its vastness and silence. The decor is minimal, the lighting cleverly restrained and space wonderfully sublime.
Courtesy of Rahul Deshpande
The Children Park Tucked away in the west end of the site the Children’s park is a contrast in its attitude. The colours clash against themselves fabricating an intentional chaos. The play equipment compliments the chaos as “Child’s Play”. A well leveled and paved walkway meanders around the play area and the orchard, which when walked on surprisingly covers half a kilometer, qualifying it to be Joggers Park too.
Courtesy of Rahul Deshpande
Product Description.Roof sheet of TATA, Bluescope make is the principle material used in the project. Flexibility in usage of the material and the graceful silver colour resembling as a floating cloud, at times teases to express itself as a stroke of lighting, over the triangular exposed laterite walls masquerading as mountains in the landscape.
From the architect. Overcoming the shape and capacity of the site………..Although the site has a capacity of approximately 139 m2 on record, the actual area of land available is even less then 83m2 when considering the building regulations. There was a high risk of narrow corners turning into idle patches, furthermore, being adjacent to the 25m-wide road, it was without doubt an inimical housing site, constantly exposed to noise and dust. Moreover, on the other side of the road, new apartments and shopping district were about to go under construction, therefore the occupants were likely to have a big chance of isolating themselves from the fuss for the next few years.
Above all, it was important to learn the building regulations to find ways to assure the maximum living area on such small plot of land. After a numerous meetings we could come up with a legitimate strategy that also ensures decent living quality.
We anticipated that the balcony spaces would help overcome the inefficiency of the land. By cutting off the narrow corners, we found new possibilities in corner areas. One of the corners turned into an open balcony, meeting the client’s wishes, and the other into a private balcony accessible from the bedroom. An atrium-like space full of sunlight is also created with one of the narrow corners. Corners left in interior also found a way to meet the practical requirements of space by creating a storage area for electronic devices such as air conditioner or a vacuum cleaner.
Last but not least, we proposed adding another layer on the façade to secure the building from the neighboring construction site. This double-skin method provides balcony space enclosed with walls, creating more stable dwelling area from the hostile environment.
A second house on the shores of Yoron Island, an island which was created from elevated coral reefs. Located on the Southernmost point in Kagoshima prefecture, this island is surrounded by a beautiful emerald green ocean which is visible from this site. The design was centered on the idea of solving a contradictory task of appropriately intaking the view, sunlight and wind, also to protect the people living from the harsh rays and hurricanes this area is known for.
Site Plan
Taking the view in consideration, within the low rise architectural volumes of the project the master bed room was kept on the ocean side to fulfill the given view, and rooms with other functions in face the land side. The large un-even space between these two volumes function as the main space, which becomes the path of the seasonal winds.The main living spaces which have pent-roofs function as a comfortable inner terrace.
By installing mesh-like fixtures to the outer rims of the pent roof, a buffer zone was created to secure the safety of the interior from objects flying during the hurricanes as well as creating a comfortable opening for the panorama both opened and closed. The mesh fixtures were inspired by a traditional Okinawa construction material called the “Flower Block”. By creating a fixture based on this basic module, a strong exterior image was created. With hammer toned reinforced concrete, and by using natural materials with distinct characteristics in the interior we aimed to create a place that blends into the local climate.
From the architect. Conjunto Volcanes is a social living complex located in Guadalajara City, Mexico. Designed for a Real State Development Group that works mostly in middle an low income class regions, Conjunto Volcanes emphasizes on creating economic, accessible living units, that could have aesthetics qualities related to the context and could generate cuality living conditions that can mean a sense of appropiation of the living space.
The project focuses on placing the program units (16 units in total) on the limits of the lot, to create an interior parking lot, used also as a multipurpose space, where kids can play securely while being watched out from every program unit, creating at the same time air space between buildings, giving the sensation of having privacy and silent as a living experience in the complex. This condition also provides each unit the possibility of having as much as linear meters it could have, to provide proper lighting and crosswind to each unit, giving the sensation of a constant relationship between the interior and exterior environment. As a result of this interior/exterior relationship, a sense of neighborhood is created where users can in some way relate to each other without sacrificing privacy.
Using economic materials such as brick and typical masonry building system from the region, the complex stare itself as a game of textures that give the sensation of identity, playing with different kinds of lighting intensities that ensure comfortable living spaces, that can not only give enough natural light to the habitants, but a sense of “home”.
The third and final phase of the ChicagoRiverwalk is officially open to the public. Designed by Ross Barney Architects, the 1.5 mile long promenade revitalizes an underutilized industrial area into an active public space featuring restaurants, cultural activities and amenities while reconnecting the Chicago River to the urban fabric of the city.
“The swampy Chicago River gave birth to arguably the greatest city of the 20th Century,” said design leader Carol Ross Barney. “In Chicago’s formative years, the river was its lifeline, brimming with traffic. Burnham built his 1909 plan on a civic waterway and promenade along the river. We were entrusted with the responsibility of to finally complete that vision and transform what had become a postindustrial leftover into a 21st century urban waterfront.”
The 15-year-long project was completed in 3 phases. Phase 1, completed in 2009, includes Chicago’s Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial, Wabash Plaza, and the Bridgehouse Museum Plaza, while phases 2 and 3 are home to six “conceptual, outdoor rooms” each designed to interact with the waterfront in a unique way.
Joining the phase 2 additions, “the Marina,” “the Cove,” and the “River Theater” (completed in 2015), will be the “Water Plaza,” featuring a sundeck and children’s fountain; “the Jetty,” an interactive river ecology learning area; and “the Boardwalk,” a space for relaxing and enjoying views of nearby floating gardens.
Designed to act as the missing seam between Wacker Drive’s Beaux Arts architecture and the natural landscape of the River, the architects hope that the ChicagoRiverwalk will become a public amenity that promotes the stewardship and protection of one of Chicago’s most precious resources, the river. Looking forward, the riverwalk has been designed to be expanded into a swimming area for a future when the water is clean and swimmable.
Sig Nordal 