The initial idea was to create a contemporary Chinese courtyard house with a “回” shaped volume, a layout with individual living units and shared family spaces. They are connected by a looped corridor and separated by small light wells.
Diagram
“Sky-Voids” are distributed in the corners of the building to provide natural lighting and ventilation and are designed as individual small courtyards.
Big glazing facing the central courtyard is designed and “Sky Voids” provide inner-views of the garden. This is a project trying to re-define a modern Chinese courtyard house and explore how space can be divided individually but stay closely connected
The house is located in the residential area of facing the Sagami Bay in Kanagawa Prefecture,Japan. This town has a mild climate and open atmosphere with sea breeze for long time. On the other hand, the site has different atmosphere of the whole town by surrounded new housing group.
We planned the house which is continuous form the town to outer space/interior space due consideration to the following conditions.
1) The house has private environment in a built-up area with natural environment and open-mind city. 2) The four of his family is tie strong and feeling a sign of his family.
The site space resemble as one of the living space. The gap make continuous internal and external space by utilize effectively the entire site. These shifted space become the entrance approach ,garden ,terrace ,parking and living space in continuously.
We feel external space also available as part of the living space due to moderate level difference by between south garden/terrace 1/terrace 2/dinning. As for even inside the house, similar to outside by the split-level with a moderate level difference, it will be the space to feel the sign of life.
It was consideration to ensure the thermal environment and the private space by north and west side facing the road is covered with almost wall. We feel pleasant breeze due to windows takes up north-south side and the warm air discharged to upper space by skip floor and stairs without riser.
In Connect Parkville we pursue the idea of “stitching together” urban fabric with “quiet architecture”, informed by Austrian architect Hermann Czech’s “architecture as background”. We work to principles of “simple moves” and economy: no more, or less, than is necessary to achieve our program.
Axo
These are universal ideals applied in a site and brief specific response. This project, for a family of five in a visually intact but functionally stressed conservation area, required another layer over existing program and built form. Our insertion is a quiet addition that relies not on references but scale and contrast executed with appropriate confidence. The addition is backdrop, its exterior casual, formed by lightness.
We have taken the idea of layering literally: the brief (accommodation, domestic activities, outdoor activities, storage) calls for new space (internal and external), connectivity and a skin: floor, wall, roof.
Plan 1
Plan 2
The skin protects from and is open to the outside, and relates to its built context. Surrounded by solid masonry walls, the new works are layered and loose: the roof is lifted, split and extended; new walls show multiple skins; the main façade is screened with obscure glass to express ambiguity. To the street the new addition appears transparent under the sun and the extension seems to float. Sun penetration through skylights continuing to the outside and reflections add to the notion of “layers of light”. We pushed our program hard to incorporate this detail into this domestic realm (and stay within average costs for a project of this nature).
We introduced ease of use and informality, lightness in more than one sense of the word. The old house was opened for flow and interaction; main residence and out building linked with simple gestures. Communal functions in the home are separate but connected: the kitchen as transitional space; dining a discrete light-filled atrium; and the living room as introvert retreat. To create an inherently sustainable project the solution considers solar control, thermal comfort, natural light, and ventilation.
After years of steadfast disapproval of the proposed design for the Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial in Washington, D.C., the Eisenhower family has finally voiced their support for the Frank Gehry designed park and monument – once a few more minor changes are made.
The 15-year-long process has already seen a multitude of design tweaks and revisions, but it appeared to have been decisively green-lit last summer following final approval by the National Capital Planning Commission (NCPC). In the past year, however, the project has once again stalled, as the Eisenhower Memorial Commission has struggled to find private donors following the withdrawal of congressional funding for the project in 2013.
In finally receiving the family’s support, the commission likely hopes to garner renewed enthusiasm for the project from both private and public sources.
“While some of us may have had other preferences in the past, all of us support your proposal,” wrote Susan Eisenhower, the president’s granddaughter, in a letter to memorial advisory board member and former secretary of state James Baker. “We recognize that your recommendation offers a compromise, one which all Americans who loved the general and the president can support.”
The newly requested modifications include changing the subject of the 8-story tall metal tapestry, the centerpiece of the project, from a scene from Eisenhower’s boyhood home of Abilene, Kansas to a representation of Normandy beaches in peacetime, to celebrate the D-Day invasion that Eisenhower oversaw during World War II. To compensate, the family has also requested a “renewed focus on Ike’s home state of Kansas,” with a new element to be located somewhere else in the park.
The commission stated that they will relay the comments to Gehry “to begin making the agreed upon modifications and move the project forward with dispatch.”
More information about the memorial and modifications can be found here and here.
The building was designed and constructed, entirely new, in 2014, after the previous building collapsed in 2011. The new design proposes an identity that mostly concerns on creating a completely new facade with three black panels of prefabricated monolithic and heavy concrete, integrating the windows.
Each floor becomes a small apartment except for the ground floor that becomes a duplex unit with a garden. The interiors also incorporate the traditional central stair with a skylight to all the internal spaces and circulations.
The new construction finally reflects the metric and the characteristics of the traditional buildings, representing a possible reinterpretation of the collective housing in the historical centre.
Schmidt Hammer Lassen Architects has won an international competition for the design of an urban redevelopment plan and high-rise in Stavanger, Norway. Beating out entries from Snøhetta, UNStudio, Dark Arkitekter and Eder Biesel Arkitekter, the winning proposal, “Breiavatnet Lanterna,” features a dynamic scheme to support the proliferation of sustainable and creative work environments throughout the city.
The project encompasses a new public center, the transformation of an existing park and a new 101 meter (331 foot) tall tower that will contain 18,170 square meters (195,580 square feet) of highly-flexible space for offices, restaurants, conferences and exhibitions. Both the ground and top floors of the high-rise will be publicly accessible, ensuring the building will remain an asset for the entire community.
The new tower will be located near Stavanger Central Station, beside the future “Tivoliparken,” a new green space that will link the district to surrounding neighborhoods and the greater city. The tower is accessible on 3 sides, with the main entrance turned toward the park, rather than the street. To cohesively site the building within the city, the plan of the ground floor has been arranged to interweave with the existing urban fabric.
“The new 26-storey tower will stand simple and modern in its form with a clear Scandinavian architectural reference, bringing a timeless expression to the varied building structures in the area,” the architects explain. “The facade design is a composition of slim vertical aluminium and glass panels which offer increased daylight to over 1,000 work spaces. The building design is optimized to the highest degree of user-friendliness and energy efficiency. Green terraces at different heights and orientations bring a distinct recognizable character to this new high-rise in Stavanger, which will be one of the highest in Norway.”
Public program on the first two floors will include a café, restaurant and cafeteria, as well as adaptable performance and exhibition spaces centered around a large amphitheater staircase. The third through fifth floors will house a church currently located on the site, while floors 6 to 24 will contain brightly lit, open concept offices. The top two floors will offer conference facilities, restaurants, bars and public space featuring panoramic views of the city skyline and nearby fjord.
The competition was managed by Base Property and Borderholm Aksjeselskap, who were seeking a “timeless, high-quality, sustainable” development to serve as a new attraction for Stavanger.
Designed for a young family of four, this 3,000 square-foot house in Vancouver’s Mount Pleasant neighbourhood offers a contemporary take on single-family residential living.
Despite its unequivocally modern aesthetic, the house is sensitive to its immediate context in its scale and materiality; the datum line responds to the houses immediately adjacent, and elegantly thin strips of stained cedar wrapping the structure take their cue from the domestic application of wood siding in the area. The second storey cantilevers over the entry level, amplifying the sculptural quality of the home and the abstracted graphic composition of the front façade. The entryway is further recessed to enhance the spatial juxtaposition of solid and void.
Dramatic contrasts are present between the black cladding and a pristinely pale interior.
Custom millwork and floors in white oak comprise a seamlessly integrated system that contributes to the uninterrupted and streamlined effect. Furthermore, the contemporary appeal and circulatory flow of the open floor plan makes the interior seem larger, and encourages maximum usage of all spaces. Kitchen, dining and family areas are separated from the living area by a wall containing a three-sided open fireplace that augments the degree of porosity between rooms.
A projecting skylight offers an additional source of natural daylight from above to wash down to all three floors below. The stair, an architectural artifact itself, features a transparent glass balustrade and open risers, all of which permits light from above to further suffuse the interior.
Landscaping gestures enhance the connection between indoors and outdoors, extending enjoyment of the house to the backyard during warmer months. The provision of a generous back deck accessible from the family room encourages al fresco dining and an appreciation of the verdant, lush ambiance of mature deciduous trees and plantings native to the West Coast.
Urban artist DAKU has created a dynamic solar mural, “Time Changes Everything,” on a building in the Lodhi Colony area of Delhi as part of India’s first ever public arts district. Words associated with human emotion and the passage of time have been mounted perpendicularly on the building facade, casting shadows that shift as the sun moves across the sky, eventually extinguishing as the sun completes its journey.
The mural was created as a part of St+art India, a local initiative that commissioned 25 international street artists to transform the urban landscape of the Lodhi Colony District into an outdoor public arts gallery.
“By mounting several words on the wall which cast an evolving shadow through the day, the artist speaks metaphorically of all the things in life which change over time. The words highlighted in this piece not only speak of the nature of our lives but also the ephemeral nature of street art – which is constantly changing,” explain St+art India on their facebook page.
The piece is active from around 9:30 AM to 14:30 PM each day (depending on the time of year), but is most legible at noon, when the high sun creates shadows that fall directly back onto the wall, giving the words a crisp, dark outline.
The construction of the new Angela Davis school in Bezons takes part in the creation of the new city center. The project, by its function of active urban facility is a key part of this city center. The goal of this construction is double : it must be a functional and sustainable public facility and also a milestone of this new neighbourhood. The school plot is an important link between the new center and the rest of the city.
On the east side, the one story building with its vegetated roof evokes the roofs of the surrounding houses. The school integrates itself softly to the existing urban grid. The landscape is prolongated all along the plot to the South until the Edouard Vaillant street and come inside the school under the zinc North façade.
The stone elevation creates inaccessible terraces reminiscent of suspended dry stone gardens and creates the promontory of the elementary school courtyard. This mineral stratification reminds castles, an évoque un château fort, a reassuring and timeless building, full of nature. The new school has a urban façade on Francis de Pressensé path with transparency on ground floor and suspended zinc «box» on first floor.
The bridge over the entrance spans the planted walkway which is integrated to the building as a natural protection and presence behind the façade. The rows of high plane trees on South and North are preserved, prolonging the park on E. vaillant street. On the secondary path, the façade is carefully designed with a succession of aluminum vertical pieces, playing with sunlight.
Plan
The entrance space is large and sheltered, sha- red between infant and elementary school. With the nature coming inside the school through this entrance, the pupils are feeling protected, imagination is smoothly taking place.
The refectory of each school are both on the ground floor but independant. The multimedia pole is located just between infant and elementary and keeps its autonomy. In addition to the pedagogic garden, there is a greenhouse on first floor, permitting to make gardening pedagogic activities all year.
All circulations are naturally lit through large and coloured windows. Real materials, durable and robust are used. The courtyard façades are cladded with Larch wood and protected from rain by a roof overhang. This envelop is also efficient, airtight, and its conception includes a maximal insulation to minimize energy losses. The rainwater management is optimized with vegetated roof and terraces. All windows and doors are wood and aluminum.
Thermal inertia of the building, strengthened by its concrete base, is valued by night ventilation for summer comfort. The pedagogic greenhouse is used to pre-heat the school air during winter.
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Build Angela Davis school is write a new page of Bezons’ history. In addition to integrating the urban options of this new borough, we propose to extend them and add ours, to enrich and bring an ambitious renewal for the city. This school keeps the promise of simple and clear daily ope- ration, a sustainable building. It will be a learning place which will leave its place to the imagination.
Patrick Bateman’s apartment from American Psycho is one of the most iconic locations in recent film history – his bone-white business card writ large. The sterile set design, by Gideon Ponte, is as impersonally creepy as Christian Bale’s performance (sure, put a telescope by the window, why don’t you; a serial killer without voyeurism just isn’t scary enough.) Archilogic’s interactive 3D model invites you to experience the apartment from the inside – without fear of an axe to the head.
The film’s satire rests heavily on materialism and superficiality, Bateman’s status anxiety elevated to existential terror and psychosis. So naturally, his own living space – it’s hard to call it a home – is subject to the same inhuman perfectionism. From a Mackintosh chair to Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona suite, every desirable piece adds to his armor of success. But in this extreme minimalism, without any trace of personality on show, the space feels hollow and empty. Even the Robert Longo artworks – oversized, black and white, and off-balance – add to the unsettling vibe.
Courtesy of Archilogic
Courtesy of Archilogic
Is this cold, hard atmosphere intrinsic to Eighties Manhattan style? In other hands, the kitchen – with its inviting window into the living room – could be a convivial space, a social focus. In Psycho, it’s the almost industrial, stainless steel backdrop to butchery (bet you don’t remember any actual eating taking place in that kitchen; the fridge is just a decapitated head storage system). The all-white bedroom, instead of a pristine place of rest, is a surgical theater. And yet, on its own merits, it’s a desirable apartment. Take a tour and try humanizing it with your own choice of furnishings… Blood not included.
Start the tour above, or via this link. The animation will guide you through different spaces in Patrick Bateman’s apartment.
The camera icon will repeat the animation.
The floorplan, dollhouse and person icon change the viewing mode.
The black menu bar on the right provides most importantly the account, interior and sharing menu.
Sig Nordal 