92 days into the 2016 Venice Biennale we have reached its exact midpoint, and the ArchDaily team, together with photographer Jesús Granada, bring you a video compilation from the opening days. With this video we want to thank the architects and talented teams that worked to produce invaluable exhibitions that were a joy to photograph and document. They showed patience, availability and attention to detail that made our job much easier. We also extend our thanks to architects in general—”viajeros en espiral que imaginan el universo” (spiral travelers that imagine our universe)—who inspire the work of all of us ArchDaily.
The ongoing events and visitors that inhabit this urban oasis, together with the designed spatial elements, bring a transformative and invigorating life to a neighborhood in the making. As Shanghai expands, the Hongqiao District has become its new vibrant neighborhood because of the concentration of Hongqiao Railway and Subway Station, Hongqiao Airport, the new Convention Center and the CBD. The developer Shui On Land, the mastermind behind the Xintiandi development introduced the HUB mixed-use development in the heart of this new district. The highlight of this complex is the Performance and Exhibition Center that is envisioned as the “hot spot” of culture and arts of the new neighborhood.
The interior concept draws inspiration from landscape to create a nature-like environment that provides retreat from the heavily built context and visual overload of contemporary culture. The performance center interior is perceived as a five-story urban oasis in the form of as a solid rock set inside the exterior envelop; spaces are carved out and programmatic elements inserted. Visitors arriving from the subway station find themselves walking into an underground space, with the ceiling covered in metal tubes mimicking the roots of the forest above.
A dramatic escalator tunnel with deep ceiling coves brings one out of the ground into the primary exhibition hall. A floating canopy of wood sticks hovering over the three-story atrium transforms the space into a forest. Gallery openings are wrapped in interlocking solid sandstone and light walnut balustrades. Wherever a visitor is, his/her role as the spectator and the partaker of a performance on stage is constantly alternating as one meanders along the cavernous galleries and bridges. Hidden above at the upper levels is the treasure box – a 750-seat performance hall with floating screens, associating with the bamboo slips from ancient China to “record” the stories inside. One can discover other delightful spaces carved into the sandstone mass throughout – golden toilet cubicals; cigar room, salon, and bars as wooden houses inserted into the rock; halls of mirror in black-glazed tiles with green toilet rooms; bronze elevator cabs; private VIP rooms dressed in hand-painted tiles that narrate the story of Hongqiao District’s humble past; and a golden trellis inside the VIP Lounge dotted with intricately crafted pendant lights.
From the architect. This house is located at the beautification zone of the ancient city of Kyoto, and it is built like two lean-to extended out from the 2-story main house.
Courtesy of Hideyuki Nakayama Architecture
The center of activities is, if anything, based on those lean-to. Those spaces are simply produced by spanning rafters between the retaining walls of the adjacent house and the main house, end various elements such as kitchen, a dining table, furniture and a bath tub are set around the main house, encircling the main house. The space is somewhat like a passage garden by alternately aligning the exterior and the lean-to along with the site boundary.
Floor Plan
By spending time going back and forth everyday through this passage garden, the residents can see the small and hard to grasp shape of the main house from outside in various angle. The volume of the house can appear like a tower, or a castle wall depending on the location to look at. The place where the family sleeps is on second floor of the main house and one will access from the staircase reaching out from the passage garden, therefore it is as if like going home rather than simply going to a bedroom. In this way the interior of the main house became a space slightly kept distance from the area spending daily lives.
The inside is a curved Horizont-like space, where the portion of the staircase, the thin steelframe floor, and the equally lined fittings are scattered around without displaying a sense of distance to each other. The relationship among those elements can be visible only after the residents reside and move around, along with the furniture placed at certain locations and drops shadow of each. The gable side of the house shows the doll-house conditions, open and visible from the adjacent street.
Section
There was no intention from the beginning to bring in the exterior into the interior, or release the daily life of the resident to the surroundings. However, there was such a thought of providing a depth to the extent of life produced within the cityscape, site ground and the house – which we have never felt before. I imagine the sort of new, powerful residents of the house transforming the house into a living space or a cityscape, through the daily lives of the family of four fully utilizing the depth of the extent I tried to produce.
Prince Bay Marketing Exhibition Centre is located at Shekou Harbour, Shekou, the birthplace of the Shenzhen Economic Reform. The recent ‘Shekou Starting Again Plan’has further positioned Shekou Harbour as the heart of the important Shekou Free Trade Area. Therefore, in response to the area’s unique geographical and cultural characteristics, it was essential for the design of the exhibition center to reflect the past triumphs while looking forward to the immense future potential of Shekou.
The design concept is based on the shape of a “three-blade propeller”, which extends out into of three sets of 70 meter smooth surfaces and three super-scale windows. The three surfaces represent Chiwan Hill, Weibo Hill and Shenzhen Bay respectively, while the three windows open to Shekou Bay, Chiwan Bay, and Dananshan Park. The orientation of the surfaces and windows provide a visual tour of the famous spots of Shekou while allowing visual consistency and clear sense of space.
Diagram
Floating + Twisted
Located in the reclaimed land, the site is surrounded by wide open space. By raising the main space of the building to 6 metres high, line of vision is suddenly opened up to views of cruise ships and mountain trees in the distance. Airy overhangs provide shaded respite for visitors from the strong subtropical sunlight. Moreover, the twisted shape make flowing curves at the interchange, folding out to building volumes made of glass and steel, creating lightness and more dynamic form.
An Opaque Box Exhibition Box + Transparent Side Court
Three double-layer opaque exhibition halls are built around a three storey high atrium. Throughout the descending visitor route, a variety of high-tech virtual images and model images are presented, displaying Shekou’s past, present, and future. Visitors are free to walk around the side court made of glass louvers. They could overlook the mountain and sea, recalling the city throughout the generations, and enjoy the view of Prince Bay while appreciating the city’s urban growth. The alternating experience of “inside” and “outside”, together with the contradiction of “opaque” and “transparency”, allow the conversion between “virtual” and “reality”, and transformation between “time” and “space”, producing a rich multi-dimensional experience. The Edge of the side court flip up to form the roof, a covering for the “hanging garden” with fantastic views. The material of the exhibition hall include dark red brick and etching copper reflecting the history of Shekou, while the glazed glass of the side atrium suggests futurity. Merging of these two materials at a distance echo a balance of warm and cold.
For a temporary building, glass and steel are the most environmental-friendly materials. The design applies “twist and turn” to the geometry in order to break the boundary between “wall” and “roof”, thus guiding viewer’s sight towards sky. Meanwhile, it forms an elegant wave-like curved profile, symbolising the influence of harbour culture. To realise the ideal 3D effect within budget, the team came up with a solution of breaking the structure into 2D parts. By accurate 3D model optimisation and analysis, 270 main keels with 90 different lengths (total length 3645m), and 6300 pieces of rectangle glass with 1800 sizes (optimised to 420) ultimately realised the elegant yet powerful shape.
As the client required the project to be completed within an extremely short time of 10 months, from design to complete construction, it was necessary for the AECOM team to taking the ‘design-build delivery system’ which allows high design accuracy and effective implementation. The multi-disciplinary team within AECOM collaborated extensively, to produce and manage the architectural, landscape and interior design during the entire design process, while coordinating with the exhibition, lighting and curtain wall design teams to ultimately completed this “unrealisable” task.
From the architect. The site of Hotel Doban is located in the middle of the village, Byeonsan-ri, deeply in Baekbyonbong Mountain looking down the South Han River and the downtown of Yangpyeong. All sides around the terraced landscape, which are surrounded by the ridge led from Baekbyonbong, enclose a quiet retreat like a folding screen. The end of the ridge and the earth of the terraced slope open far toward the South Han River and Yangpyeong city, such as standing on the mountain observatory, to provide a resting place overlooking the complicated everyday lives.
Diagram
Terraced Landscape
The earth around the site is a terraced landform by the height of 5~6m as a newly developing area. In order to strengthen the sense of overlooking platform and minimize the loss of natural terrain using the existing landform, the terraced landscape was planned. The terraced floor inside the building, following from the flow of surrounding landscape, differentiates functional space through different heights and depths in a single independent space without walls.
The group of units is unfolded geometrically sliding down the slope. As a result, it provides guests with a totally individual space which has a different view and space independently for each unit. The individual unit functions as a view frame for independent activities open to the outside, and have a private external Jacuzzi space open to the sky in between units. The assemblage of units was delicately designed to create a separate axis without any focal points while mixed into one building.
The roofscape, like a ridge around the site, is surrounding units with successive lines. The continuous roof surfaces maximize the effects of continuity through repetition, by interlacing the flow of roof enclosing the individual units. The individual units compose the whole together, which creates a unique appearance inspiring the rocky mountain behind the site. The building form can be seen easily at a distance from the entrance of Byeongsan-ri valley, which was intended to be a landmark of this area.
Lilas, Zaha Hadid Architects’ design for the 2007 Serpentine Gallery pavilion, has be reinstalled at a new location on the south lawn of Chatsworth House, the Derbyshire home of the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire. The mushroom-like pavilion has been put on display as part of Sotheby’s annual Beyond Limits sculpture exhibition, and is for sale through the international auction house.
Already having designed the inaugural Serpentine Gallery Pavilion in 2003, for the 2007 edition, Zaha Hadid Architects designed Lilas after rising steel prices delayed the construction of the proposed design from Olafur Eliasson and Kjetil Thorsen.
Former Serpentine director Julia Peyton-Jones, the mastermind behind the Serpentine Pavilion program, remembered feeling relief after Hadid offered to step in.
“It was one of those little miracles,” she said. “It was uncomfortable to be in the position of not having a pavilion on time that year – [but] stuff happens and it is how you deal with it that is the major issue. As a result we had this gorgeous project that was unexpected and it was an absolute little gem… so typical in its simplicity and so relevant to her work.”
Now re-erected at Chatsworth House, the pavilion can be appreciated in a new light through the contrast with its traditional surroundings, a juxtaposition of styles Sotheby’s curator Simon Stock says “complement in a way the pyramid does at the Louvre.”
Forest Lodge is a new home with a difference. This is a mobile dwelling built to comply with the Caravan Act 1968 which restricted both the construction and size of the dwelling.
The clients, who had been living in a static caravan for 15 years on their stunning five acre property in the New Forest National Park, approached local Award Winning practice PAD studio in 2009. A key requirement of their brief was to create a new, very low energy dwelling, flooded with light and with a strong connection to the surrounding landscape: Importantly, the new dwelling should not resemble or feel like a mobile home. PAD studio spent considerable time researching the mobile home market and familiarising themselves with the nuances of constraining legal requirements.
PAD studio’s approach to design is deeply rooted in place and they spend time visiting the site at different times of the day to experience the light, views and surroundings. This particular site, located at the edge of a clearing in the heart of the New Forest is accessed from a long gravel track that slowly revealed views of the existing property. This journey through the landscape became a generating idea for the new home which continues the route, inviting nature into the home through carefully placed window openings. These large apertures focus and frame the stunning views, displaying them internally as if paintings on large canvases.
Approaching from the East, the house is glimpsed and slowly revealed through mature trees. The trees verticality and the texture of their bark are echoed in a variety of timber treatments used on the homes cladding. Vertical panels of dark stained sweet chestnut provide a rhythm to counterpoint unstained horizontal chestnut cladding that wraps and unifies the whole. By utilizing a gradual level change across the site, the architects have allowed the northern end of the home to float above the landscape, resting and projecting dynamically over a limestone plinth. The western wall of the property is almost completely glazed affording a feeling of light and spaciousness and opens onto a large terrace and lawn beyond.
Internally, the material pallet is restrained and natural with oak, limestone and white panelled walls. This deliberately muted array of materials provides a backdrop which is painted by the forest’s changing light and rendered by the colour of the landscape beyond the building. Architect designed locally crafted bespoke joinery, thoughtful details and connection with the landscape give this home a feeling of solidity, serenity and permanence; far removed from the client’s previous home.
PAD studio has exceeded the client’s aspiration for a low energy house by designing this building to meet the rigorous Passivhaus standard. The home is essentially a self-sufficient dwelling with a 3.8kW Photovoltaic array on the roof to generate electricity and air source heat pump to provide hot water for an under floor heating system. A sewage treatment plant manages waste and rainwater is collected in an underground storage tank and used to water new landscaping surrounding the house that was also designed by PAD studio. It is difficult to imagine that this ‘mobile home’ was prefabricated, built away from site and craned into position in two separate pieces. Forest Lodge is an excellent example of what can be achieved through imagination, innovation and careful consideration.
Thailand’s new tallest building, MahaNakhon, has opened to the public with a spectacular light show highlighting the pixelated-design of the 314 meter tall building. Designed by Büro Ole Scheeren, the 77-story mixed-use skyscraper contains space for a hotel, retail, bars, restaurants and an observation deck, as well as 200 condominium units managed by Ritz-Carlton Residences with unparalleled views out onto the Bangkok skyline and beyond. The building’s distinct appearance is created through carving a pixelated spiral up the building, creating “an architecture that encloses and protects its inhabitants while revealing the inner life of their city.”
Continue for more images of the completed building.
Now Thailand’s tallest tower, MahaNakhon’s reign may not last long, as a much taller structure, the 615 meter tall Super Tower, is planned to feature on Bangkok’s skyline in 2019.
From the architect. Zambeze is an apartment building with four living units. Designed for a family that required every unit to have similar interior and exterior areas. That was resolved by placing one single apartment on the first floor, having open areas around it. As the building sits on a hill, the next two floors are occupied by two duplex units that have their exterior spaces on the back and sides of the lot. Finally, the remaining unit located on the fourth floor, had its exterior space created by covering the terraces on the second floor of the two duplex apartments. This creates a double story porch that is visible on the frontal facade.
The Miravalle area, where the building is located at, has the privileged views of the Cumbaya valley towards the East. This is why the frontal façade, which faces this direction, is very open, taking advantage of these views.
The structure of the building is made of cast-in-place concrete. Its columns, beams and ceilings are all exposed in the interior of the apartments. Artisanal brick was used to build the perimeter of the building, which was left exposed in the interior and exterior walls. Other materials used were wood for the screen that hides the vehicular access to the building and becomes an important element of the facade, and iron for the stairs of the duplex apartments and the hand railing of its terraces.
Important design details are the spaces creating tension on the side facades. These spaces help transition materials and divide volumes when they change in height. These height variations happen as the building responds to the positive gradient of the hill. Other important aspects are the green and brick combination on the terraces. Said terraces were designed in such way to allow trees to grow in every level of the building. Additionally, the side walls of the double story porches of the duplex apartments are made of artisanal brick. However, they are placed leaving spaces between them allowing more daylight in and, at the same time, giving privacy from its close neighbors.
Wood has always been one of the essential materials used in construction, and with the ongoing trend of timber-framed tall buildings, it has become more important than ever to be conscious of the impacts on the environment from the types of wood we source.
Currently, there exist more than 50,000 tropical timber species in the world, yet only a small percentage of those are utilized in construction projects. This has led to the exploitation of the more well-known timber species, altering the diversity of the world’s tropical forests and putting those species in danger of disappearing completely. But what if we began building with the full range of species available to us?
In efforts to increase awareness for the multitude of timber varieties available on the market, The Forest Stewardship Council of Denmark (FCS Denmark) have developed an online database of lesser known timber species (LKTS).
Courtesy of FCS Denmark
The website allows users to search through more than 200 species and 50 case studies of current applications of LKTS (and will be constantly updated as new cases and data become available), providing inspiration and guidance for architects and designers looking to use wood in their projects. The database gives technical descriptions of the capabilities of each species, as well as their practical applications and examples of existing projects in which they have been used. By making this information publicly available, FCS Denmark hopes that designers will begin to employ a more diverse selection of wood types as an alternative to the more well-known ones.
Courtesy of FCS Denmark
“It is our goal to create a more diverse timber market and break with the conventional thinking that dominates the industry today. We are not telling people to stop using well-known timber species like teak or cumaru – as long as they come from sustainable sources. However, if we can substitute some of it with lesser known species, it will make sustainable forestry much more profitable for the forest owners,” says Kristian Jørgensen, project coordinator at FSC Denmark.
FSC Denmark also welcomes users to submit their own LKTS case studies to help grow the database and support the goal of developing a “more diverse timber market to support sustainable forestry, improved pricing and regional development through the commercialization of a greater variety of wood species.”
Courtesy of FCS Denmark
You can check out the database for yourself, here.
If you want to upload your own FSC certified LKTS projects or if you have any questions, please contact Kristian Jørgensen from FSC Denmark at kristian@fsc.dk. For more information about FSC, please visit the organization’s international website.
Sig Nordal 