A new fencing system uses the same tried and tested hardware as a standard sliding gate, but with a twist; the vertically operable slats sink into the ground in less than five seconds, disappearing completely. The Fancy Fence was created to streamline accessibility, while also improving the visual bulk of traditional fences by removing all horizontal elements. The system can be installed in an infinite number of configurations and incorporates elegantly designed fixed slats, the retractable gate and an “invisible” walkway gate.
Courtesy of Fancy Fence
The Fancy Fence’s vertical mechanism reduces the overall footprint needed for sliding or swinging gates, meaning that the space adjacent to the fence can be fully functional. The invisible walkway gate retains a hinged joint for quick pedestrian access. The entire system can be installed in less than 24 hours, and allows for a fully customized arrangement. The fencing elements are available in a range of sizes and finishes, some of which are visible in the gallery below.
Fancy Fence was developed with safety and security in mind, using entirely prefabricated, standard components that have undergone years of testing. The mechanical elements of the fence are operable year-round, with built-in contingencies for extreme weather such as flooding or snowing. The retractable gate uses the same sensor technology as sliding gates, and will only rise if the area above the gate is completely clear. Despite its mechanical functionality, the system can still be used during power outages through an emergency manual operating system that is light enough to be engaged by children, as seen in the video below.
For more information, check out the Fancy Fence website.
"It Takes a Block" Proposal. Image Courtesy of Kjellander + Sjöberg
Stockholm-based firm Kjellander + Sjöberg (K+S) won the Swedish division of the Nordic Built Cities Challenge 2016 with their vision to transform Sege Park, Malmö into a socially sustainable residential hub. Their project “It Takes a Block” uses climate-smart and economically varied housing models to test architecture’s capability to foster sustainable living. The proposal was developed in association with students from Lund University and Danish landscape architecture firms BOGL and Sted.
"It Takes a Block" Apartment System. Image Courtesy of Kjellander + Sjöberg
The design responds to the critical need for urban density in Swedish cities by providing 800 compact apartment units across the 40,000 square meter site. Despite the high density and block arrangement, the scheme contains a multitude of shared spaces and open, unprogrammed communal zones. These areas are intended to act as points of shared knowledge and resources, consolidating waste and fostering a greater sense of community interaction within the complex.
"It Takes a Block" Standard Apartment. Image Courtesy of Kjellander + Sjöberg
The proposal intertwines typologically variant apartment types with public program, with the intention of creating “rich socioeconomic variation.” Careful consideration of the existing environment will further this variation by creating conscious links to integrate the new development into its surroundings. The new building stock is proposed to “organically grow” from the existing 1930s buildings and parklands, creating a diverse new urban neighbourhood.
“The starting point of the design has been the fact that the long-term sustainability is ensured by providing opportunities for residents to engage and interact with their local environment,” K+S said of their design.
"It Takes a Block" Duplex Apartment. Image Courtesy of Kjellander + Sjöberg
K+S are currently engaged in several multi-residential projects across Sweden, including a new civic block in Kiruna, which applies similar approaches to climatic control and community-centric planning. The practice’s interest in sustainability, visible across their portfolio, has been further explored at this year’s Venice Biennale.
The overall winner of the Nordic Built Cities Challenge will be announced in November. K+S are one of six winners vying for the top honor, with the other projects dotted throughout the Nordic countries, in sites such as Trygve Lies plass in Oslo, Norway; Karsnes harbour in Kopavogur, Iceland; and Hans Tavsens Park and Korsgade in Copenhagen, Denmark.
"It Takes a Block" Exploded Axonometric. Image Courtesy of Kjellander + Sjöberg
Learn more about the Nordic Built Cities competition, here.
Short History The Ravelijn “Op den Zoom” is a fort-island of the city of Bergen op Zoom in The Netherlands which is made in the beginning of the 18th century by Menno van Coehoorn, a famous fort builder. This is the only “ravelijn” of him still present. The island sits just outside of the former center of the city. At the end of the 19th century the fortress lost its defensive function. Nowadays the island-fort is mainly used for small public and private events.
The assignment The assignment was to make a kiosk with public toilets and an information point on the Ravelijn
Diagram
Concept The fort is made of a brick foundation with earth walls on top. The earth walls surround the fort on all sides. But the wall at the side of the city is not an original one. In times of war this one was not necessary, because there was no attack expected from that side. We used exact that not historic earth wall to make the kiosk in it. It sits on the side and it’ s incorporated in the fort. We made 2 entrances, one for each toilet. The information point is accessible through those entrances.
In this article, written by Christian Dimmer and illustrated with photographs by Max Creasy, the post-earthquake and tsunami coastal architectural landscape of the Japanese Prefectures of Aomori, Iwate and Miyagi are presented and studied.
Few disasters were as complex and their implications as hard to grasp as the compound calamity of earthquake, tsunami, nuclear meltdown that hit the North-East of Japan on March 11, 2011. While over 500 kilometers of coastline were devastated, the disaster unfolded in each of the hundreds of towns affected differently depending on local topographies, urban morphologies, existing landscape formations, collective memory of past disasters and preparedness, and the social ties within the communities.
When travelling along the rugged coast of the Prefectures of Aomori, Iwate and Miyagi—with their tiny towns and fishery ports nestled into deep coves and then entering the vast agricultural planes near the big cities of Ishinomaki and Sendai, followed by the depopulated no-go areas in Fukushima—recovery from the traumatic disaster continues to greatly vary. The challenges of reconstruction are further complicated by the fact that most of these peripheral communities, far away from the prospering metropolitan centres of Japan, have long been depopulating and rapidly ageing.
Despite these vastly different scales, topographies and multi-layered challenges the traveller is struck by the repetitive repertoire of generic reconstruction responses: giant concrete seawalls and tetrapods sharply separate sea and fishing communities, not heeding the beauty of the landscape, or the working routines of the fishermen; vast plateaus of new building land are created in the tsunami-endangered lowlands for detached, suburban homes that might never materialise because of a lack of economic opportunities of prospective residents; featureless high-rise housing estates are created for disaster victims in low-rise rural communities that will further isolate their traumatised, mostly elderly inhabitants.
Scattered across the vast, weed-grown emptiness of the reconstruction areas we find occasional architectural statements by luminaries like Toyo Ito, Kazuyo Sejima, Riken Yamamoto, Sou Fujimoto, Klein and Dytham among others, who, with their “home for all” project series, sought to create nodes for community life in the aftermath of destruction. Five years later, the best of these have grown into vital community centres that are heavily used, while others are merely used as storages or not at all. This suggests that recovery is not merely a matter of rebuilding physical structures like new roads, ports, seawalls and community centers. To deal with the complex issues at hand—depopulating, and hyper-raging towns with few job opportunities and traumatised populations—new planning and design practices are needed to enable and empower communities; to cope with trauma; to develop new economic models and strategies that bring back young people from the metropolitan centres; to strengthen creativity and self-reliance.
Architecture has an important role to play here. It can provide for vital and lively meeting places; create civic pride and place identity by utilising local materials and crafts and involving its future occupants in design, programming, and management. However, more than just placing architecture inside a community from outside, without deeply understanding the local needs, designers must seek to integrate these structures into the social practices and the life of communities; it must be a living architecture that grows and develops.
More importantly, architects and planners need to design processes and relations within the community that foster social capital and community resilience, to adapt to the challenges ahead.
You can see the Tohoku Projects Map with post-disaster recovery projects, here, and view daily updates on Tohoku’s recovery, here.
The plot is triangular and the house is set out in an “L”, forming patios and terraces on the south side, and on the west side, looking out over the pine trees and the Oitavos /Quinta da Marinha golf course. Each of the “arms” of the L-shaped structure has a distinct function: private areas (in the arm parallel to the street), and communal living areas (in the arm perpendicular to the street).
The main entrance is at the intersection of the two arms, marked by a recess on the facade and a perpendicular protruding wall, coated with black “Laminan”. The service entrance is to the north and not visible from the street. The project requirements were clear: it was imperative to minimize both the build time and the need for future maintenance. The solution on the ground floor was the use of “Corian”. The façades were completely clad either in “Corian”, “Corten Steel” (on the fist floor) or “Laminan” (entrance).
The street-side façade (on the east side) is virtually “blind” and works as a high protective wall for the interior of the house and grounds, allowing total privacy throughout house which opens out to the south and west sides (the sides where there is sun, and views of the garden and pool). This façade is characterised by a long low window, which runs alongside a reflection pool.
A glass bridge was created (a sloping ramp), between the dining room and the living room to allow light through to the lower floor.
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The outer pergolas, on the southern and western façades are made of steel with a slatted wooden roof structure in IPE. On the ground floor, these terraces and pergolas surround and frame the pool area in sandy tones.
From the architect. This ‘Cinema house’ is not only life space for client’s family but also work place for client who works on film PR. The site has level difference and it is facing a small park on the south. So client wants to capture this natural view and sunshine. Additionally, he needs simple and efficient circulation with modern concept.
Firstly, whole site is divided into two parts in order to be used more efficiently, and main building is located on the upper part. And then we attempt to control strong sunlight from south with depth of space. As for the Indoor space, because everyone has their different activity time, we located parents space on the 1st floor, and clients space (room & work place) on the 2nd floor. On the other hands each floor’s public area is connected with double story high open space near stairs. It helps the family communicate optically and auditory with respecting each private life style.
Basically, every space is divided by parallel 5 lightweight wooden structure walls and it has been one of the facade elements in itself. Structure walls and slabs make some frames, and that has many different condition and function with diagonal finish. The outdoor space which is created by the depth of frames makes the space vital, and control the amount of sunshine. In technically, at the same time, diagonal walls hide some facilities. This is a way to design plan and elevation within lightweight wooden structure system.
Each space is very simple. However, when natural sunlight is going into all of the space with different characteristics, this house has stereoscopic variation.
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The movie film is simple and flat, but when light penetrate it, we can feel abundant space.
The rapid urbanization in several Asian cities has dramatically reduced the living area per person. Especially in Hanoi or Ho Chi Minh City, most people, sometimes extended families, spend their lives in narrow and long tube houses where they live apart from nature and in dark and unventilated spaces. Long tube houses for extended families have always been a complicated question for generations of Vietnamese architects.
The building which is 3.8 meters wide and 40 meters long belongs to a 3-generation family with different ages, lifestyles and interests. The requirement is that there is personal space for each member. However, there needs to be some open common areas, just like in traditional Vietnamese houses. They will create a link between generations.
The front yard, backyard and terrace of the house are great places with fresh air for adults to relax and restore their energy for work. After school, the young members can play at the swimming pool at the center of the house. The elderly members usually have free time, so looking after the plants and having regular contact with other members at the common areas can make them happy. The ventilation and lighting solutions put forward are suitable for the tropical climate in Vietnam. The aim is to save energy more efficiently, help reduce climate change, bring family members closer to nature and help them become more responsible for the environment.
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The water and plants make the air fresher and cooler in every corner of the house. The wind can go into the building from both facades. Then, it is filtered by the double skin made of layers of plants. And finally, the fresh air goes through the living spaces and exits via the skylight. The sunlight that goes into the house from the two facades is filtered by the plants. The amount of sunlight that actually penetrates the house is appropriate. The sunlight from the skylight is filtered by a concrete louver placed in a position that matches the sun’s path. At the hottest time of the day, this louver will reduce the amount of the sunlight going down the stairs below. Moreover, the sunlight can still get inside through many slots on some walls.
The dappled sunlight appears everywhere in the building. At each time in a day, the sunlight comes in and creates different shapes at many places along the house. This brings everyone feelings of happiness and excitement. The architects hope that they have created a fresh, healthy and meaningful living space that can bring family members closer to each other, and at the same time, closer to nature in their daily life.
Design Team: Zhang Lei，Liu Wei, Ma Haiyi，Chen Junjun, Zhang Qilin, Shao Xuan
Area: 260.0 sqm
Project Year: 2015
Photographs: Courtesy of AZL Architects
Collaborator: ADI-NJU
Courtesy of AZL Architects
From the architect. Located in Daijiashan Village,Eshan She Nationality Township of Tonglu, Zhejiang Province, the Avant-Garde Ruralation Library is the 11th Bookstore run by the Librairie Avant-Garde. With the culture-spreading idea ——Avant-Garde and Library, as well as the unique regional natural and human landscape of the ‘Shes’ village, this project has become the public life bond among local villagers and alien readers, and also become a a focal point of local cultural and creative industries. The main body of the library was an idle yard lying at one side of the village’s main street, including two yellow mud adobe houses and a platform projecting from a slope. While maintaining the structural and spatial sequence of the buildings and courtyards, the architectural design restores the current declined status to a healthy state. The relationship between the new and the old strengthens the ‘timing’. The carriers of time and memory – the adobe walls, tile roofs and roof trusses have become the spatial dominance, and have jointly created context-continuing contemporary local aesthetics, together with the publicity of function regeneration.
Courtesy of AZL Architects
The Chinese thousands-of-year tradition roots in agricultural civilization. The authentic Chinese architectural tradition lies in the rural settlement, the organic and integral urban-rural relations, as well as the continuing development model lasting for thousands of years, which is a sort of territoriality based on ‘cultural consciousness’.Our thinking focuses on the fundamental aspect ‘time’. The touching built environment characteristics in any area are the strength of time depositing. Comparing with the irresistible ‘time’, the ‘space’ design meticulously constructed by architects tends to be more personalized, and cannot face the challenge of life.
Courtesy of AZL Architects
In the Avant-Garde Ruralation Library renewal project, the creation of architectural space i.s strictly constrained, and carefully made as an imperceptible time ‘rest’. The new elements including courtyard corridors and interior facilities are attenuated by their pure form.Equally important, these subtle formal elements – which also are the industrialized and productized addition, is crucial relating to the contemporary function of libraries. The re-established spatial boundaries of the ‘old’ building created by the ‘new’ elements re-direct the past time to reality. From the construction process to the cultural management integrating into the rural life, the ‘new’ and the ‘old’ together contribute to a stage of life scenarios, rather than an abstract purified spatial definition.
Ground Floor Plan
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To adapt to the new function of the library, the most critical design strategy is to lift up the roof. The internal beam-column frame which supports the roof has been heightened by 60cm as a whole. Taking the advantage of the increased height, the high windows can be constructed; thus light, air and the beautiful bamboo forest landscape are naturally introduced into the interior reading space. The realization of the roof uplifting mainly relies on the local craftsmen’s traditional skills – extending partial columns by the means of crafty tenon skill. Parallely the renovation of the grey-tile roof is undertaken; the thermal insulation construction attached to the sheathing has greatly improved the thermal performance of the old building. Outside the building, due to the high windows the original adobe walls and grey-tile roof take on a dramatic performance — closed and open, heavy and light, forming a gentle landscape focus of the village against the background of the trimmed outdoor landscape and lighting design.
Courtesy of AZL Architects
The permeable wooden grille corridor linking the main room and the partial room is able to strengthen the functional connection between the renewed library and the café, and also to redefine the sensitive experiencing sequence of the outdoor space. In between the streets, the stairs and the corridor, a compact and friendly front yard is situated;passing through the tortuous corridor, or coming out from the inside of the building, the building, the corridor and the arc-profiled platform come into sight, which together define the outdoor reading space. Inside the building, the well-organized stairwell, partial platform, and permeable bookshelf partition contribute to spatial publicity; the renovated wooden roof structure forms a bright and powerful space atmosphere by means of intensifying the lighting.
Exploded Axonometric
Courtesy of AZL Architects
The most common brick masonry structure is applied to the café foyer added within the partial room on the east side, the stairs and the toilets constructed in the main room on the west side. Its independent foundation treatment has a reinforcing effect on the main structure of the original building. With the highly-attenuated form of industrial products, the newly-built interior walls, floors, stairs, furnishings and other facilities define the time boundaries of the traditional building, and form the regulating mechanism of the contemporary new function; thereby the space is enabled to accommodate continuing and developing contemporary regional life experience.
Urbanization process in Vietnam that is seen as the development, but in our opinion it is the disorder and vandalism. People are driven to the house where they are not inherently subject to change and adapt to his way of life and the environment. Tra On – a district of Vinh Long province, located to the east from the city of Vinh Long 40km – is in this process . From wide-open land with fields, rivers, people are gradually being transferred to the batch house closely divided, poor lighting and poor quality living space. Besides that people also face many social evils increasing galloping theft, murder, drugs … do people have to live daily in fear and distrust. The overarching fear, do fades away openness, people become more aloof, and almost “hide” in their own oasis.
“The Longcave” is a project in this context on the area of 5x40m. With thoughts create a place, not just a house, but it is where emptying anxiety, fear, the only remaining calm.
“The Longcave” is inspired space section of Son Doong cave *, and human life in the initial period of the cave. When stepping through a door and step in space without walls, the space is a combination of the “Khoản trống.” The different sectional shape for the same equivalent area create different feelings for each space. The boundary between inside and outside is blurred away.
*Son Doong cave(Vietnamese: Hang Son Doong) is world’s largest cave, located in Quang Binh province, Vietnam. It is found by a local man named Ho Khanh in 1991 and was recently discovered in 2009 by British cavers, led by Howard Limbert. The name “Son Doong” cave means “mountain river cave”, It was created 2-5 million years ago by river water eroding away the limestone underneath the mountain Where the limestone was weak, the ceiling collapsed creating huge skylights…
From the architect. Alfred House is the addition and reconfiguration of an existing two storey, two bedroom terrace, with a tired lean-to that had little relationship with the exterior space. The client wanted us to replicate one of our previous projects, Vader House, as they liked the idea of a centralised courtyard. We were able to push the concept further due to the property’s connection with the laneway.
The lean-to was removed and the space redesigned to include an internal garden, kitchen/laundry, living/dining room, bathroom, (mezzanine) office and store room/garage, for the client’s prized motorbike. Rather than placing the addition directly on the rear of the house, we moved it back to the boundary laneway. In doing so we essentially turned the dodgy little lightwell, that you find in most terrace houses, into an entire garden. With a backyard you have to chose to go outside, whereas here you don’t have to make that decision, the walls easily fold away to activate the space in a more natural way.
Ground Floor Plan
Long Section
Alfred was a real fine tuning exercise, unrelenting on every detail whilst working to a tight and constrained budget. The way the doors in the kitchen come together without the use of a central column, the deceptive mirror splashback, use of perforated steel to filter light, the way the back glass window opens up completely without a fixed panel – it all required the greatest of effort but appears effortless
Sustainability is at the core of Alfred House. We’ve introduced North-facing glass and perforated metal awning to enable passive solar gain. All windows are double glazed with thermal separated frames. White roofs drastically reduce urban heat sink and heat transfer internally. High performance insulation is everywhere.
Sig Nordal 