Schmidt Hammer Lassen Architects has been awarded first prize in the competition to design the Student Center and Library for the Wenzhou-Kean University in Wenzhou, China. Set on 500 acres of land in a rural mountainous region, the 25,000 square meter project will provide learning and living space for 8,500 students.
Wenzhou-Kean University is cooperatively run by Wenzhou University, in China, and Kean University, in New Jersey, USA, and aims to merge Chinese and American teaching methodologies. Thus, the new Student Center and Library is focused on embracing diversity, interaction, and the sharing of knowledge.
Located in the heart of the university, the new building will connect the educational facilities in the south and student residences in the north.
At the ground and first level, the building will house a student activity center designed as a central marketplace, which will feature a café, theater, dance and music studios, exhibition space, sport and games areas, and spaces for informal gathering. The third to ninth floors of the building will be occupied by the library and study spaces, which are organized around a central book stack. The book stack culminates in a large reading room on the top level.
Courtesy of Schmidt Hammer Lassen Architects
The exterior of the building is inspired by Wenzhou’s mountainous terrain and local bamboo constructions, and is thus wrapped in a semi-transparent glass covered in an abstract fritted pattern.
Courtesy of Niall McLaughlin and Yeoryia Manolopoulou
Losing Myself, a collaborative exhibition by Níall McLaughlin and Yeoryia Manolopoulou, will be presented at the Ireland Pavilion at the 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale. Focusing on Alzheimer’s Disease, the exhibition highlights the process of “designing and revisiting buildings for people who have dementia.” The exhibit contains two main components: a website that arranges a series of drawings, stories, and research on dementia; and an installation in the pavilion, which contains drawings that explore a building designed for people with dementia.
Courtesy of Niall McLaughlin and Yeoryia Manolopoulou
The installation allows visitors to experience the Alzheimer’s Respite Center in Dublin, Ireland as it is experienced by patients and their caregivers. Since patients don’t have the ability to situate and navigate themselves throughout the building, they lack the ability to understand and remember architectural spaces and processions. The installation uses time-based projection to draw the navigating experience of sixteen patients during a single day. The effect of dementia on an architect’s fixed plan “produces a fragmentary world; and, because there is still recourse to deep memory, a world that is filled with a phantasmagoric and unbidden procession of other spaces and times.”
Courtesy of Niall McLaughlin and Yeoryia Manolopoulou
The website, www.losingmyself.ie, serves as a documentation of conversations with experts across a range of fields involved with patients, as well as family and friends of those with dementia. These interactions are useful to architects and scientists alike. The site also records how this research formed the immersive installation.
Courtesy of Niall McLaughlin and Yeoryia Manolopoulou
Ireland at Venice is an initiative of Culture Ireland in partnership with the Arts Council.
Supported by Culture Ireland, the Arts Council; the Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht; the Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland and the Bartlett School of Architecture at UCL.
From the architect. Paradoxically the new main cabin at Årsund was built after the annex. This due to the fact that the original cabin, with exception of the annex, was removed to make way for the new-build. Moreover, the annex was drawn by another architect office and completed a few years ago. We therefore had to design a new whole, which included the annex and yet at the same time created a new building which in itself would provide a satisfactory solution both for site and program
The top, front module facing west contains a small study and has the best ocean views. The room can sway in storms, but the construction allows for flexibility in strong winds! The modules which are leaning towards the eastern wall of the main construction, sheltered from the westerly winds, serve as bedrooms and a retreat for individual family members when they need some time for themselves.
The Taj Mahal-ish front situation shows how the composition is balanced in two ways. First, the ridge of the gabled roof is skewed towards the annex such that the roof of the annex can be seen as the southern side of a large gabled roof, covering both the main volume and the annex. Secondly, the large window of the top front module serves both as a centerpiece for the composition as a whole and as a dynamic counterpart to the glass corner at ground level to the northwest.
The entrance has a somewhat seductive nature by being both inviting and at the same time secretive. You are led towards an entrance by the curved path and by the roofs and volumes surrounding the entrance. Still the entrance remains hidden and uncertain. The use of shingles (which are normally reserved for weather-exposed walls or roofs) on the wall leading to the entrance underlines this ambiguity.
Design Of Wayfinding, Interior And Exterior, Design Of Models: Jonthan Penne Architecten
Area: 7.000 sqm
New Construction: 2.500 sqm
Courtesy of Jonathan Penne Architects + Rapp+Rapp
From the architect. In 2015 the Waterlinie Museum at Fort Vechten opened its doors to the public. The new museum and landscape design is “a major cultural highlight in 2015,” said Mariette Pennarts, deputy of culture in the province of Utrecht.
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The two-hundred-year-old fort is part of the Nieuwe Hollandse Waterlinie, a 85 km long military fortification which has been nominated in 1995 for the UNESCO World Heritage list. In this anniversary year, the fort will serve as Waterline Museum to the master plan by West 8 and Jonathan Penne Architecten. Anne Holtrop designed a new pavilion, which is similar to the original bunkers underneath a grass roof.
It is an ingenious system of dikes, locks and fortresses built in the nineteenth century to keep the enemy at a distance by flooding a 3,5 kilometer wide area. The Waterlinie decayed in recent years, including the vegetated construction of Fort Vechten, which then settled various kinds of rare plants and animals in the course of time.
Courtesy of Jonathan Penne Architects + Rapp+Rapp
The narrative intervention of the developed masterplan is not only easily recognisable from the air, but also from the roof of the fort. An eighty-meter wide strip in which the fort is returned to its original, clean geometric condition of around 1880, stretches 450 meters long across the landscape.
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The huge dimensions of the fort are also explained by a narrow intersection of the six meter high earthen rampart surrounding the fortress. This cut together with a narrow bridge over the canal makes the the new outdoor museum accessible. The fort is free to the public, and spread over the terrain there are some hidden treasures. There are trails outside the fort, the upper fort, there are several buildings made accessible, there is a cable car and a raft over the moat. Besides the historic buildings there are also new additions, including the pavilion of Anne Holtrop, which folds a 50-meter-long model of the Waterlinie, which visitors themselves can flood. There is also space in the masterplan for topics outside the waterline, like the national forest association, an important partner to explain the special nature, and the Roman Limes.
Penne Hangelbroek has been involved since the beginning of the process, first as a responsible partner of Rapp+Rapp then from Jonathan Penne Architects. He says: “The masterplan consisted in the strip that we then have meticulously restored. This included buildings, bridges as well as reconstructing the earthworks. But we had also determined the location and architect of the new pavilion. Finally we where given a lot of freedom from the content of the exhibition to way finding plan.”
Now this unique piece of historic landscape has been brought back to life.
The proposal is drawn in a very conditioned and rigid plot, traducing the only possible location and implantation area. It has also a very restrict budget that accurate a extreme rationalization.
In consequence of all this major conditions, we had to do an optimization, in several fields, such as areas, volume(s) and program – this house in mainly the result of all this “impositions” and my work was mainly directed to solve very objective questions.
However, the project was developed far beyond this effort of going until the edge, because we knew that the initial conditions couldn’t be all our achievements – we had to promote all this to a different level creating a good balance between the form, the function, image and construction, program and uses.
The plot gave as the conditions to solve the project with relatively simplicity, creating a construction with two different levels, dividing the social uses in the ground floor from the private uses in the first floor, reducing to the minimum the circulation areas, closing possible visual or physical connections to the east side (street) and opening it, the maximum as it was possible, to the west, to the place where the sun is hiding every day, the sea and the great range of the horizon.
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The image of this house also assumes this duality between common areas and private areas, using the natural platform to install the first ones and assuming the first floor for the occupation of the other ones.
Constructively the solution reveals this difference, not only as a way to value the distinction of the functions as also to control the scale of the building in its interaction with the surroundings – it translates the gravity of the ground floor with a more heavy volume in the connection with the plot and creates a sense of less weight to the superior volume, white and clean.
From the architect. The House NO: 2 is located in city of Isfahan and is built on 300 sqm plot of land with 4 residential units And 5 Levels as client general demands :
Ground floor for parking area , entrance and lobby , yard and mechanical room.
Basement as a saloon for ceremonies and some storage rooms .
First floor should divided into 2 small unit for client’s guests settlement.
Because of client’s past bad experiences of living in dark and damp house , we understood quickly that the most crucial issue is providing the maximum possible light and fresh air inside the house especially in living and sitting rooms of two upper floor.
So we tried to locate all living rooms along south side of units with maximum size of openings . even in 3rd floor we decided to break the roof and push the living roof upper, therefore we could have more openings and better ventilation by the side windows in the east and west .
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But the solution in north were the family rooms were located was not as easy as in the south. Because according to municipality limits in Isfahan ,all the buildings must block the view in the north façade up to 175cm height in every stage. And surely masonry materials should be used to fulfill this rule in lower 110 height and between 110-175 frosted glass is allowed .
With focusing on this rule we understood easily that every stage in our north façade is divided into 3 part :
1- Solid part (lowest level)
2- Semi transparent part (middle level)
3- Transparent part (upper level)
In first step, this separation gave us the basic lines for façade designing, and after that we tried to make more details and to develop the solid part by transforming it into double skin layer. So we could have indirect light and ventilation even in lowest part.
South Facade Diagram
In next step we located a plant case between the layers in solid part with some kind of running plants that it caused more freshness in inner spaces and made our façade alive by connecting outside and inside to each other.
As we believe that the façade in residential buildings should never impose any inconveniency for the people who live inside, so in both south and north we tried to adopt the facade to internal spaces and do not add anything useless on the face of the building.
According to the usage of basement as a saloon for ceremonies and a public space it seemed necessary to have natural light and fresh ventilation in there (as we had it always in our historical architecture), so we created a courtyard in down level of basement with plants and flowed water to make better and more enjoyable atmosphere .
RMIT Bundoora features some great common areas with a resident lounge with TV, pool table, and table tennis; a gourmet kitchen with dining tables and chairs; two themed game zones: The Den and The Deck; learning spaces with project rooms and video conferencing; dedicated postgraduate club-style lounge area; and an outdoor terrace with BBQ.
To manage the facility, RMIT has appointed UniLodge a professional management company. UniLodge is a specialist operator of student accommodation providing innovative and responsible pastoral care.
Currently, there are 5500 full-time and 1200 part-time students studying at Bundoora – from vocational education and undergraduate, to postgraduate research. Programs include health and medical sciences, science, engineering and education. The new 11,000m2 facility include:
The Village Hall: combines the functions of common room/shared kitchen/ TED Talks and Discursive Zone, plus ample study and relaxation space
The Living Room: includes dedicated themed game zones – The Den and The Deck
The Postgraduate Research Hub: dedicated space for postgraduates incorporating a club-style lounge area, with a distinct look and feel, and study niches for individuals or small groups
The Project Zone: dedicated informal learning space that includes a project room and meeting rooms with video conferencing
The Pit Stop: provides an opportunity for all students to touch base with reception, guests and each other
The Gourmet Kitchen: a space for group gourmet cooking on Level One, plus a Veggie Patch on campus to access fresh produce
The Communal Laundry: provides commercial washers and dryers in a social space that is central to all residents
Secure resident car park: feature lighting, CCTV, boom gate access and can be rented by resident students for a fee from RMIT University
RMIT Bundoora West Student Accommodation (BWSA) is built around a social and educational central ‘core hub’ with two accommodation wings branching out from this. The hub is a timber structure, using laminated veneer lumbar (LVL), while the accommodation wings are clad in zinc and powder coated aluminum. The central hub is a double-height space for presentations, functions and includes a cinema screen that is concealed in the ceiling. The building sits within an Aboriginal heritage trail and surrounded by 400-year-old red gums and scarred trees and located in the Northwest sector of the Bundoora campus and is bordered by McKimmies Road. RMA worked closely with the Project Arborist to ensure appropriate tree projection zones for these trees, some of which hold particular cultural significance to the local indigenous community.
RMIT BWSA, operated by Unilodge, provides accommodation for 372 students and is the University’s first on campus accommodation building. The broad mix of unit types, single bedrooms, share rooms and apartments for undergraduate and postgraduate students, offer a genuine choice to students and appeal to those remaining on campus over the course of their studies.
RMIT BWSA’s façade is clad with black zinc and powder-coated aluminum with bronze powder forms. The central hub’s exposed wooden beams make a striking statement when viewed from different angles.
The building forecourt has a large outdoor wooden deck and around the future retail space, within the window pop outs, are timber seats for students to enjoy.
The building achieved a 5-star Greenstar design rating. The building uses thermal chimneys, window actuators, solar hot water systems and harvesting of rainwater. Rainwater harvesting is used for toilet flushing, laundry and landscape irrigation. Reduced temperature warm water distribution is used to reduce ongoing loop losses. Water efficient fixtures and fittings have been installed.
RMA has used a lot wood throughout the interiors, including the main staircase and corridors that provide a welcoming and inviting space for those living within the building.
Tasmanian oak flooring is used within the central core hub and main stairwell that snakes its way up through the building’s core. Plywood is used throughout the hub’s ceiling and common areas.
Also, plywood lines all corridor walls throughout the building and has been used on shared kitchen ceilings and within the interior walls of apartments.
The Hub’s timber structure is exposed internally and can be viewed from the street as well from different levels.
We considered the residences as a mini community with a distinct set of functions and how that community will interact with the broader campus community.
We achieved a degree of privacy whilst also providing amenities such as acoustic separation, abundant natural lighting, thermal comfort and safety.
All of this was delivered with a focus on using wood throughout the building challenging conventional student housing accommodations and how a building interacts with nature and natural products such as wood.
Building sits along Aboriginal heritage trail – Keelbundoora Scarred Trees and Heritage Trail – named after a Wurundjeri clan ancestor. As a child in 1835 he was present at the signing of the Batman Treaty, which marked European colonists’ arrival. Keelbundoora’s descendants helped create this trail. It leads from the café near building 202 out to plenty road via the lake and frog pond.Situated near Red gums that are well over 400 years old.
This tree shows evidence of three different scarrings. The original scar may have been of cultural origin, but later scarring – probably caused by fire – has obscured the evidence.
This woodland used to have a sparse cover of red gums over scattered wattles, with a dense ground layer of grasses and forbs, such as kangaroo grass and yam daisy. Yam daisy tubers were a staple Aboriginal food.
The area once had kangaroos, goannas, snakes, birds of prey, ground-dwelling birds, and invertebrates such as beetles, ants and grasshoppers. Local Friends of the Bundoora Red Gums Group is currently restoring the area to its original appearance.
From the architect. Aesop recently announced the opening of a new Snøhetta designed signature store in Singapore. Situated just off the bustling thoroughfare of Orchard Road, Aesop ION opens on May 12. The interiors commemorate Orchard Road’s original incarnation as a nutmeg plantation. Inspired by its obscured past and underground location, Snøhetta created an upside-down forest using a sensitive assemblage of materials, colors and forms.
Courtesy of Snøhetta
A dark ceiling references the orchard oor, complemented by sisal carpet in the same rich tone. Thin timber battens hang from the ceiling, forming walls that curve throughout the space like three trunks in a grove. Selected central battens are suspended with horizontal ‘branches’ xed to the stems acting as product displays. Exposed walls are pink, reminiscent of the color of mace, the other spice harvested from the nutmeg fruit.
Ceiling Battens
A connection with the nearby Aesop Raf es City is established through the use of brass in functional elements such as the sales counter and sink – the metal’s luster enhanced by overhead lighting.
Courtesy of Snøhetta
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Courtesy of Snøhetta
Aesop ION is the fourth Snøhetta designed Aesop signature store to open. Aesop Raf es City, which is also designed in collaboration with Snøhetta, was opened in Singapore earlier this year. Snøhetta has further been involved with the design of Aesop’s rst signature store in Oslo, Norway, as well as the store in Fasanenstraße, Berlin.
From the architect. Enter Projects has recently been commission by Primo for Lot 1 Café & Restaurant, located at 20 York Street, Sydney CBD in the ground floor and basement of the 950sqm John Solomon building. Being in the coffee industry for 3 generations, the client enthusiastically embraced the design concepts, using patterns that delicately lace the infamous ‘Café latte’ as the primary design inspiration.
Lot 1 at 20 York St is a conversion project from an original storage house & cart-way, to a retail store, to Lot 1. The design explores complex geometry and the connection of form and functionality utilising digitally fabricated interiors. Curved timber geometries using native Australian materials join seamlessly to circulate, unfold and connect all of the functions of the venue while providing a journey through the historic Sydney interior. Spaces were stripped back to reveal the existing fabric of the building; principally exposed brick, sandstone walls, wooden columns and old steel work, all serving the building during it’s many stages and all integral to the rich, original tapestry. The existing features are intelligently juxtaposed by the continuity of the new form and the smooth Australian hardwood veneers are further layered by an adaptable lighting scheme.
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Careful spatial planning has maximised foot traffic within the interlinking coffee shop and restaurant. The downstairs offers private lounges and dinner booths with the basement mezzanine giving an option of alfresco dining. Dynamic geometries interlace the many spaces with 3 dimensional curves ensuring that the project cannot be comprehended from one single vantage point.
From conception, to early renderings and 3D models, through to laser cutting and CNC, only 3D models were used without construction drawings or conventional plans and sections. The result embodies conceptual swirls that motion a dialogue between the building, the brand and the user.
Diagram
Excellence in the design lies in how Enter Projects artistically interpreted the everyday, familiar coffee swirl pattern and transformed that into a fully functioning 600 seater café, bar and restaurant. The space now serves not only as a hallmark for the coffee company themselves but also as a destination for the many end consumers in Sydney’s CBD.
The design solution is an example of excellence in Interiors given the unusual marriage of awe-inspiring aesthetics and full functionality within one given space: using non-orthogonal geometry, it delivers a form that remains responsive to its function and surroundings. Rigorous space planning was required both front and back of house alongside a well defined but subtle colour palette which created a comfortable and atmospheric environment. The gymnastics of the geometry were required to perform multiple functions including service, seating, privacy and lighting.
Courtesy of Acton Ostry Architects Inc. & University of British Columbia
Construction is underway in Vancouver for the world’s tallest timber tower by Acton Ostry Architects. The 18-story Brock Commons Student Residence at the University of British Columbia, which began construction in November 2015, will be completed in the summer of 2017. At 53 meters tall, with housing for 404 students, it will be the tallest mass wood hybrid building in the world. The structure’s two freestanding concrete cores will be completed by the end of May, after which, the erection of the mass wood structure will take place.
The $51.5 million project is being completed with Architekten Hermann Kaufmann of Austria as tall wood advisors, Fast + Epp as structural engineers, and GHL Consultants Ltd. as science and building code consultants. Brock Commons demonstrates the benefit of a hybrid design that combines mass wood and concrete, with costs that are comparable to all concrete and steel structures.
Courtesy of Acton Ostry Architects Inc. & University of British Columbia
The building’s construction is comprised of a one story concrete podium, the two concrete cores currently under construction, and 17 stories of mass timber topped with a prefabricated steel beam and metal deck roof. Lateral stability is provided by the cores, while vertical loads are carried by the timber structure. The building’s glulam columns are fitted with steel connectors that provide a direct load transfer between the columns and a grid of cross laminated timber (CLT) panels, allowing the building to meet new seismic design requirements for the 2015 National Building Code of Canada.
Courtesy of Acton Ostry Architects Inc. & University of British Columbia
Upon completion of the concrete cores, it is projected that the mass wood hybrid structure and facade will be erected at a rate of at least one floor per week. Speed is being achieved by use of prefabricated materials, including the CLT slab panels, glulam columns, steel connectors, and facade elements. As a proof of concept for the swiftness of construction, a two story project mockup was successfully built in July of last year. The building, which has been designed to target LEED Gold certification, will tap into the UBC district energy system, and by employing carbon-trapping wood construction, it will have a carbon benefit of 2,563 tonnes (the equivalent of taking 490 cars off the road for a year). The hope is that once Brock Commons is completed and able to be studied, British Columbia’s building codes for tall wood structures will be revised and mass wood construction will become more common.
Courtesy of Acton Ostry Architects Inc. & University of British Columbia
Courtesy of Acton Ostry Architects Inc. & University of British Columbia
Sig Nordal 