This is a renovation of collective housing in Osaka.The small which was renovated is filled with natural light and refreshing wind going through the inside. Flowing clouds and flying birds are reflects on the glossy floor.As time has passed, this white space is dyed by various color of sky.
Courtesy of Jun Murata
Several handmade flowerpots made of concrete are displayed inside. Warped shape. Simple texture. Small plants are dissolving in daily life.
Courtesy of Jun Murata
Trains and cars. Moving crowds. Voices of children echoing in the distance. Various tone of city is passing in the peaceful interior.I want dwellers to enjoy small life in the city with feeling the nature.
From the architect. The challenge: using the building circular geometry and creating efficient spaces. The design process starts with creating radial axis from core and split it with circulation torus; it creates straight trapeziums spaces for open /closed offices and meeting rooms.
Axonometric
Focus point: Another design principal is creating a multipurpose interactive unit to gather people both business and social proposes. Area located the most common part of the office faced both circulation and office areas. Row wood layered design hides all the hardware units but act as see through partition.
Organic fluidity: Designing chamfered ceiling edges at the circular form building creates homogenous lighting reflections. Diffused light breaks side effects of the low ceiling.
Natural light: Creating radial axis perpendicular to the facade for transmitting natural light to inner core. While transmitting natural light over radial axis, gathering light due to translucent material.
Axonometric
Coherent material usage: Material decision made by the identity of the global firm and light fluidity. To create light circulation geometry and light used together. Lighter colors reflect the light all around the area with the smooth effect of chamfered edges. Neutral touch of grayscale colors provides to create identity in order to usage of powerful red identity. Using fabric products such as acoustic carpet and acoustic wall coverings on reflected surfaces provides acoustic comfort at low ceiling space.
From the architect. The initial core aim of the St Kilda East Townhouses was as a family development generating two typical dwellings that can functionally house downsizing grandparents in one (my parents), and comfortably accommodate a young family of five in the other (myself, wife and kids). It had to be cost effective but with a good aesthetic outcome. The site being located on a corner with a dog leg in the street and a street address to the long boundary meant that the dwellings needed to run end to end, parallel to the street. This breaks from the more traditional side by side mirrored plan townhouse. It also meant that along with particular site and planning conditions, in this case, daily living is somewhat exposed to the local community.
While the building itself is a striking and prominent presence, the architectural success of these dwellings is how they embrace genuine social interaction in an increasingly prohibitive culture, avoiding obsessions with technology, regulation and total privacy. Kids lean over the fence to say hi to grandparents & passers-by, dogs bark in unison and neighbours honk as they drive pass.
The two read as one, with a long, elevated oblong containing the more secluded areas which still remain very connected to the neighbourhood with a long continuous strip window that still maintains suitable privacy. It presents itself as an extension to the streetscape as the site falls and tapers to the short southern boundary, maintaining its elevation with the open living areas below and floating out over the street corner.
Ground Floor
1st Floor
Functionally the layout efficiently minimises egress zones, opting for room to room movement giving this space back to living areas. A multipurpose airlock separates the dining room from the study/4th bed and powder room. This also doubles as an ensuite when a cavity slider is used to close it off to the living area so it can service the study/4th bed. Both townhouses are crowned by roof decks that provide generous entertaining areas with amazing 180° views of Port Phillip Bay, Indented Head, and the You Yangs right through to the city skyline. The sunsets are regularly spectacular and it dangerously invokes excessive entertaining, especially when passing friends, both in the car and on foot, look up to see who’s up there, stop and come in for a “quick drink”.
Through thermally passive design, the challenging western exposure is controlled by a modest eave which supports removable external blinds at ground floor, while level 1 has a reduced horizontal glazing area but fully openable sliding windows to its full length and more window openings to the eastern side which allows extensive cross ventilation to all rooms. The stair can be closed off at level 1 to act as a thermal chimney which draws the air up from the ground floor up and out of the fully openable bi-fold doors to the roof deck to generate a breeze in any wind direction. The whole building is double glazed and while there is heating and cooling available in extreme conditions, in most instances it is very much a case of the occupants utilizing and operating the house to properly benefit from these passive features.
Careful selection of hardwearing, economic materials combined with controlled portions of higher end detailing, enabled the dwellings to be delivered for a construction budget of approx. $600,000 each. At 174m2 and 189m2, the efficient footprints happily accommodate & facilitate the requirements of two very different demographics and are a great example of multi-functional medium density living which has been neglected by recent government and we believe could be a very important part of trying to rectify the problem of the current housing situation in Victoria.
The outcome is two aesthetically interesting, modestly sized and very efficient homes that successfully draw on how the architecture responds to the site more than how the site responds to the architecture. Both households will have an extremely hard time deciding when the time will come to move onto the next nuclear family project!
Final renderings of BIG’s latest New York City project, 149 East 125th Street in East Harlem, have been revealed at the project’s groundbreaking ceremony. In contrast to original images showing a bright red facade, the undulating, rotating building will instead feature a gray exterior that Bjarke Ingels has referred to as “inspired by an elephant’s skin.”
The 11-story building will encompass a total of 275,566 square feet containing nearly 40,000 square feet of retail space and 233 studio, one-bedroom and two-bedroom rental apartments, of which 46 will be rented at affordable rates through the NYC housing lottery.
As the structure rises, the volume turns to pass over top of an existing New York DMV building. On the roof will be a communal garden and lounge area.
Inside the building, common areas will be clad in a burst of colors and patterns inspired by Ingels’ recent travels to the Caribbean, while individual units will be finished with more neutral tones to allow for personalization.
Building amenities will include a fitness center, roof garden, game room and lounge, as well as a dedicated area of the lobby exhibiting works from local artists.
From the architect. The project involves an extensive refurbishment of the existing sports facilities and its extension.
Plan 0
The refurbishment required to conserve the old sports hall. The project includes two new separate buildings, and a new entrance hall that links the old and the new constructions.
The two new buildings are conceived as two regular prisms. One houses the indoor pool, its locker rooms, spa area and multipurpose rooms, and the other the Municipal Sports Department and a small auditorium.
By contrast, the entrance hall is a completely irregular distribution volume. It adapts its shape to successfully integrate new buildings with the existing one. It is cladded entirely in zinc sheet, to be read as a unitary element, with no difference between facades and roof.
The pool building prism is a glass volume on three sides, South, East and West. In summer, its lower part opens to the grassland, through guillotines windows 9 m. high. Above, the glasses are protected from the sunshade with horizontal aluminum louvers. The roof, formed by four large skylights, it can also be opened. On the North side are located the locker rooms and the spa area, with saunas, Jacuzzis, Scottish showers, cold water swimming pools, and a solarium overlooking the park. Below the pool, technical rooms (purification and air conditioning) and multi-purpose sports halls are located.
The prism which houses the offices of the Sport Department is formed on the ground floor by three volumes (auditorium, warehouse and the staircase) forming a concrete podium. Above this podium, the first office floor is solved with ventilated facades of high pressure laminated panels finished on wood on three sides. The fourth facade, facing south and with the best views of the garden, is a curtain wall protected from the sun with wooden louvers.
The project is completed with the refurbishing of the existing facilities. A new gym is located in the old swimming pool, opening one of its facades entirely to the garden. Under the gym, medical units and monitors offices replace the old technical rooms. All these rooms open to a new inner courtyard, which serves as connecting element with the new building, where also overlooks the new multipurpose rooms and the swimming pool lockers.
Danish firm CEBRA has released images of ARCTIC, a new museum and research center dedicated to the study and education of Greenland and the Arctic, to be located along the Hundested harbour in Halsnæs, Denmark. Although Greenland has been a part of the Kingdom of Denmark for over 600 years, ARCTIC will be the first museum or center that communicates the relationship between these countries through historic, contemporary and future perspectives.
Courtesy of CEBRA
”The idea is to create a place that currently does not exist in Denmark. A place where Greenland, the Arctic and Denmark are physically linked together, and which can provide visitors with experiences that promote a better understanding of the connections between Denmark, Greenland and the Arctic. A place where we can explore Greenland and the Arctic and where [polar researcher] Knud Rasmussen’s travel descriptions and stories can be expanded to include the history of the whole of the Arctic region – today and in the future,” explains Søren La Cour Jensen, Senior Curator and daily manager of Knud Rasmussen’s house in Hundested. “Just consider themes such as international politics, climate change, new shipping routes and raw materials.”
Courtesy of CEBRA
The design of the center has been inspired by the traditional architecture of the Arctic region as well as its bright, natural landscape to create an icon, in hopes of making the importance of arctic study literally more visible.
Courtesy of CEBRA
”The architecture is inspired by the Arctic forces of nature and the buildings with their rounded forms are designed to withstand this type of harsh climate,” explains architect and CEBRA partner Carsten Primdahl. ”A building with sculptural, round forms and curved lines will stand as an iconic and culture-bearing attraction for the town. A cultural attraction that will show the beauty and significance of the Arctic landscape.”
Courtesy of CEBRA
Courtesy of CEBRA
The building consists of three interlinking domes housing the various museum and research center program elements, and is surrounded by a series of outdoor spaces to allow visitors to fully take in the Hundested harborfront.
The team will now work with a group of stakeholders to refine the design and determine a construction schedule.
The nursery Jules Guesde, built in 1898, is the first Paris public nursey dedicated to small children built with the objective to reinforce the care, sanitary protection and wellbeing of new born and very young children.
Site
The original building is representative of a “generous” architecture which sought, in line with the initial hygienist ideals, comfort, health and wellbeing for the occupants and quality of air which did not exist in the majority of homes at that time.
Our project of rehabilitation aims to achieve the following objectives:
increasing the capacity of the day-nursery to receive 33 children with 3 distinct age sections
creating an new entrance hall for the public on the lower ground floor
reduction by 50% of the primary energy consumption of the building with an aim for 80kWhEP/m² per year established by the “Paris Climate Protection Plan” to achieve less greenhouse emission and less energy consumption by 2020 in excess of European targets.
Street Side Courtyard and the New Entrance The original brick street facade is richly decorated with polychromatic multi-materials with ceramic floral motifs.
The new entirely glazed facade for the lower ground floor opens out completely and offers a maximum of natural light into the internal spaces including the main entrance hall.
Street Facade The design intent for the project is seen in continuity with the original building, taking into account the value of its architectural heritage and its intrinsic qualities (volumes, and natural light penetration).
At the same time, it introduces contemporary elements which, inspired by the vocabulary and characteristics of the original decorations and playing with the reference to the world of plants as a leading thread, translates and presents them in the global project.
For the lower ground floor facade this play on references is expressed in the tree form of the new steel columns supporting the facade above and which seem to extend the plant form decorations to the ground below, making them “take root”.
Rear Courtyard Facade The same creative spirit and architectural treatment gives life to the rear courtyard. The existing blind facade is transformed into a translucent envelope of polycarbonate with a metal mesh serving as brise-soleil allowing natural light to penetrate internally.
The mesh, laser cut with tree form shapes, botanical references and enriched with recognizable forms of animals, projects these forms in a shadow play through the polycarbonate.
Elevation
The effect obtained internally suggests an exterior open and natural world, whilst outside the forms and textures of the mesh, directly accessible to the touch and views of the children, constitute for them an interesting sensory and cognitive experience.
Treatment of Internal Spaces Our project has integrated the quality of the original generous volumes and maintains the original structure and the largely glazed partitions allowing natural light to penetrate deep inside.
At upper ground floor, in the volume under the restored rooflight, the sleeping space for the “middle children’s section” is accommodated under an igloo shaped structure naturally lit by the new polycarbonate facade.
Section
Product Description.The EVERLITE DANPALON façade facing the courtyard allowed us to transform the existing opaque wall into a translucent backdrop of polycarbonate with an external metal mesh serving as brise-soleil.
The polycarbonate allows natural filtered light to penetrate the large volume under the skylight.
The mesh, laser cut with tree form shapes, botanical references and enriched with recognizable forms of animals, projects these forms in a shadow play through the polycarbonate.
With an external space surrounded and constrained by imposing buildings the effect obtained internally suggests an exterior open and natural world, whilst outside the forms and textures of the mesh, directly accessible to the touch and views of the children, constitute for them an interesting sensory and cognitive experience.
Arcaid has shortlisted 20 of the year’s best architectural photographs in the running for the 2016 Arcaid Images Architectural Photography Awards. The annual award presents prizes in four categories – Exteriors, Interiors, Sense of Place, and Building in Use – and judged by an esteemed panel on their atmospheric quality, composition, use of scale and more.
This year, judges for the award include Emily Booth, executive editor of The Architectural Review; artist and Sto Werkstatt curator Amy Croft; Katy Harris, director of communications at Foster + Partners; architect Kai-Uwe Bergmann of BIG and photographers Fernando Guerra and Ulrich Müller.
The photographs will be showcased at World Architecture Festival from November 16-18 in Berlin, Germany, where the overall winner will be announced. The shortlist of 20 images is as follows:
Buildings in Use
via Arcaid Images
Photographer: Fabrice Fouillet Building: Musee de Confluences, Lyon, France / Coop Himmelb(l)au
From the architect. The client approached BUDIC (http://www.budic.com.mx) with two main requests for their house project, one functional and one aspirational. On the one hand, they needed a house that had adequate scale and comfort for a couple whose kids have grown and left the home, but that at the same time in which they could have a Christmas celebration with over 60 members of their extended family. On the other hand, they wanted to live in a “French Villa” that took advantage of the privileged location that the site provides on a peninsula.
Using the “French Villa” as a conceptual departure point, we adapted a pyramidal hipped-roof module that is implemented throughout the plan varying in size depending on the hierarchy of the space. This approach allowed for an integrating concept, at the same time it permitted for continuous and flexible, yet differentiated, spaces. This approached fulfilled the restriction from the residential development, where the project is located, to have pitched roofs covered in the clay roof tiles common to traditional Mexican residential architecture and it also met the clients’ desire to have tall expansive spaces, as the roof measures as much as 7.8 in height internally.
First Floor Plan
The pyramid as an organizing module was not only employed in plan, but in elevation as well, generating the organization of all of the façade elements as a series of protruding and detracting pyramids clad in smooth “conchuela” marble in combination with rough marble panels to create a series of contrasting textures. The façade pyramids are then cut to open windows and doors whose edges are delineated by metal frames that integrate LED lighting to highlight the volumes and to produce dramatic effects at night.
The pyramid motif is repeated in other details in the house, including flooring, doors and fixed furniture design in order to weave a formal logic through all of the scales of the project
Sections
Functionally, the project is arranged very simply in two main wings –public and private- connected by a vestibule that opens up to a garden-patio that overlooks the lake and can be filled with a thin layer of water or emptied to allow for bigger family events.
The access to the vestibule is through a closed courtyard shaded by an existing tree.
The private volume of the house includes the owners’ bedroom, which includes a bathroom with a jacuzzi that visually blends with the adjacent outdoor pool. It also includes the visitors’ bedrooms in the second floor, accessible through the main stair. The TV Room/Office acts as the space that marks the transition between the public and private realm.
Axonometric
The public wing is conceived as a series of continuous spaces –living room, bar, dining room, breakfast room and kitchen- that can be integrated or used separately. The covered terraces that they connect to on the south façade also act as sun protection and extensions of the interior public space. An additional request by the owners to be able to constantly see and hear their visiting grandchildren from the kitchen -where they enjoy cooking- was solved through the insertion of a game room in a mezzanine that overlooks an expansive double-height kitchen.
In the end, the project achieved the original goals of the clients by using their dream of living in a French Villa to develop a formal organizing concept that was flexible enough to seamlessly accommodate their lifestyle requirements as well.
From the architect. The Docks area is a new ecodistrict on a former industrial area near Paris. Located at the edge of the city directly along the Seine, its significant industrial heritage provided inspiration for the construction of this 90-housing unit building.
Next to the former Alstom industrial hall, which is in the process of being rehabilitated, this project drew on the considerable history of the area. It was inspired by early 20th century concrete industrial buildings, whose forms were powerful and imposing, if at times strange, to which it has added footbridges and metal stairways.
The project has a strong, very assertive, and even imposing character that draws on the surrounding environment and its history to insert itself into this novel urban situation. To the north, along the parvis des Bateliers, across from the new parc des berges de Seine, the building asserts its verticality and height. To the south, the stories descend in steps, refining the overall volume and allowing for light to penetrate the core of the block. Perforated metal, lacquered “boxes” stretch out from the building to shape its silhouette, creating large outdoor spaces that look out onto the landscape. At the ground level, a private passageway crosses right through the block through a landscaped garden while the base of the building houses businesses.
Ground Plan
Floor Plan
Floor Plan
Planted terraces punctuate the project at almost every level. On the 6th floor, a large, shared vegetable garden is open to inhabitants who want to grow things high up. At a time when local consumption has become a necessity and even a commitment, and as the open surfaces of our cities continue to dwindle, using rooftops opens up a world of alternatives.
Sig Nordal 