The Power Station Master Plan Project consists of the restoration of the Power Station and the master plan of the surrounding area. The Power Station is located on a natural harbor in the Bay of Baku, which used to serve as a small shipyard for the ships working for the oil platforms.
The Power Station was built by Siemens around 1900s and has lost its function as a power station but the building, with its beautiful stone construction, stands out from all the other surrounding buildings and has a unique aesthetic.
Although the whole project started with a request to rebuild a new power station, after a period of persuasion, keeping and restoring the power station became the primary objective of project. The scope of the project was to reuse the Power Station and build another building to house cultural and entertainment organizations. The area surrounding the power station was in poor condition, so the scope extended to the design of a master plan for the whole area.
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The new building was named ‘The Power Station’ and The Old Power House, was proposed to be transformed into a museum.
The new building complex, the New Power House, consists of 2 buildings linked with an enclosed bridge. An axis, starting with the Flagport Square and the highest flag poll of the world, crossing right between the New Power House buildings and ending on the other side of the bay with a possible future bridge, was created to link these elements both virtually and physically.
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The New Power House design reflects what defines an industrial building in the collective memory and yet has a contemporary style too. The simple geometric mass, use of zinc and wood for the large sloped roof and the façade helped the building revive the industrial spirit of the master plan area.
The coastal promenade of the Flagport area extends to the small bay of the Power Station master plan area. The direction to the Power Station buildings was strengthened with landscape design to allure more people. Industrial obsolete machinery were implemented as urban sculptures while enriching the activity of the park and giving it an atmosphere of open air museum. The buildings have been completed and started functioning since 2014.
It is not easy to play with a ball in a city. To use a public sports facility, you need to book two months in advance. As I recall, when I was young, anywhere in the neighborhood would become our playground, as long as we had a ball. Would it be possible to secure the space needed for playing ball in today’s overcrowded city?
Soccer field: 100m x 70m = 108 houses, 30 pyeong in size
Basketball court: 32m x 19m = 7 houses, 30 pyeong in size
Futsal court: 42m x 25m = 12 houses, 30 pyeong in size
Tennis court: 24m x 11m = 3 houses, 30 pyeong in size
Some of the ball games are some of the most mainstream outdoor activities out there, and can take place spontaneously anywhere as long as there are willing participants and a ball. And they are highly flexible with respect to season and time compared to other types of games. We picked four different types of ball games that need no special equipment and which anyone can easily learn how to play. The sides of the polyhedron correspond to these four different types of games, in addition to sporting goods rental. The size and area vary depending on the type of the sport and its characteristics.
#3. RULE
When Folded.
1. Mini soccer: This is a mini soccer goalpost whose size is small. The two teams, 2 people in each, switch between playing attack and defense, and they play for a set period of time.
Unfolded Plan
2. Triangle basketball court: In the triangle basketball court, the basketball rings come in different shapes and there are different numbers of them. The three triangular basketball rings are hung at different heights and locations. Whoeverputs the ball into each and every one of the basketball rings wins the round. Note that multiple goals in the same ring are not counted more than once.
3. Flying disk: The target on the wall shows the countable scores, as well as the animals from the game of yut. The player takes aim and throws a round disk at the target.
5. Sporting goods rental: The equipment room has the tools needed for playing. Also, this place can be used as a sales booth or an office during events.
1.Semicircle soccer field: This semicircle soccer field has the image of the audience attached. The two teams, 3 people in each team, will shoot to score. Note that if you shoot the ball from within the semicircle, it won’t be counted as a goal.
2.Hammock: Nets are taken out of the equipment room and installed at each of the corners to make a hammock.
Hanging Beds Plan
#4.Moving playground
The Undefined Playground is flexible to the participants’ needs, and the structures can be folded or unfolded. When folded, they act as the polyhedron walls, and when unfolded, they transform into a soccer field, and revealing a hidden resting place.
All houses in some way resonate the history of lives spent together. Rachel Whiteread’s “House” installation of 1993 exemplified the notion that memories are imprinted into the spaces in which we live. This project began with a conversation between architect and client around this idea.
The scope of work broadly involved heritage refurbishment and a contemporary rear extension to an inner-city Victorian terrace house. The ambition of the project was to inscribe the owners’ joint experiences as a couple into the spatial character of the building, and provide a new context for their current life together as a family with two young boys. To achieve this, the architectural idea spanned both the historic fabric of the existing building and the new extension.
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To establish a brief for the project, instead of asking the clients to produce a written document, we suggested they sketch plans of the previous homes they had lived in. These scaleless hand-drawn reflections – which we referred to as “planometric memories” – revealed in their disproportions, the clients’ subconscious aspirations for the new home. Key aspects of the spatial planning, volumetric character and material palette of the architecture was informed through this process. Circulation spaces vary significantly in scale and meld with the living spaces of the house; and there is an emphasis on level change and the associated experience of implied depth.
The house is also conceived as a nested set of containers: a set of “Russian dolls” that might infer yet other unrevealed histories. The large fibreglass clad pod floating above the kitchen space is one of these objects. To achieve the sense that this cloud-like form is levitating within the larger volume of the kitchen and dining areas, a series of steel hangers drop down from portal frames that span the width of the rear extension, thereby avoiding any visually apparent use of structure. The fibreglass cladding was designed using a 72 piece dia-grid comprising 17 different 3d custom-designed tiles integrating lighting. This was produced from a digital model developed following construction of the framing and lining substrate and a careful on-site survey of the shell by the builder.
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Contrary to a typical compact terrace house, the ground floor level at the rear is raised to allow for more expansive views to the surrounding street context. This had the added advantage of providing a well-ventilated and less costly timber sub-floor space with additional outdoor storage. The external deck and garden, developed in collaboration with Katherine Rekaris Landscape Architecture, cascades down towards the back fence and is framed by a series of off-form concrete planters that act as impromptu seating from which to look back at the house.
The park was designed from 1972 to 1974—before the advent of the American With Disabilities Act of 1990—by architect Louis Kahn, who died in Pennsylvania Station carrying the plans for the finished memorial. At its southernmost end the park features a 12-by-60-foot sunken terrace that, ironically, President Roosevelt himself would not have been able to use with his wheelchair.
The de Blasio administration has declared categorically that the park is not accessible and needs to be fixed, and is currently withholding a permanent certificate of occupancy and hundreds of thousands of dollars in financing until the dispute is resolved.
Board members of the Four Freedoms Park Conservancy have “said that the sunken terrace was a design device created to enhance the views from an open-air enclosure known as the Room, and that those views could be enjoyed by anyone in a wheelchair or motor scooter.”
Courtesy of Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Park, LLC
James Stewart Polshek, a Conservancy board member who studied under Kahn, has noted that the sunken terrace was never intended to be a destination in itself. The de Blasio administration has suggested that ramps be installed on either side of the Room, a solution that the Conservancy has explored, but which it believes would ultimately compromise Kahn’s original designs.
While the Conservancy is reluctant to accommodate new ramps that alter the original park design, it has already modified subtle pieces of Kahn’s work to improve accessibility. For instance, loose gravel, a difficult surface for wheelchairs and motor scooters to move on, was replaced by a polypropylene honeycomb grid of two-inch hexagonal voids filled with gravel clusters held together by resin. Moreover, levels of cement and gravel fills between the promenades’ granite pavers were raised, so as to create smoother surfaces. Both of these modifications were made in consultation with the Commissioner of the Mayor’s Office for People With Disabilities, Victor Calise.
For the time being, the Conservancy is prepared to operate the park as it is now, under a temporary certificate of occupancy. Until the issue is resolved, however, the sunken terrace is closed to all.
Courtesy of the National School of Architecture of Versailles (ENSA-V)
A group of 20 students from the National School of Architecture of Versailles (ENSA-V), along with chief of project Frank Rambert, have designed and built a small-scale building based on the theme of “The Minimum Habitat.”
Over a period of four months, students created individual projects meant to display, in a minimum number of square meters, the space that a person needs to live. A jury then selected one project to be built. This project covers a total of 12 square meters, with a five square meter footprint.
Courtesy of the National School of Architecture of Versailles (ENSA-V)
Each use of the space is located on a different level, creating a vertical progression for the user that can be seen from both the inside and outside of the structure.
Courtesy of the National School of Architecture of Versailles (ENSA-V)
The project was built in one week in Lyon, France, at the Grand Ateliers Villefontaine, and then moved to Versailles, where it is displayed in the South Court of Small Stables of Roy at the Château de Versailles.
Courtesy of the National School of Architecture of Versailles (ENSA-V)
The design of this building will be a reference in sustainable architecture for all buildings that will be located in the future city of Malaga Airport. Its sustainability has been certified by the Green Building Council Spain.
Sustainable design strategies in this building are: passive design to reduce the energy demand, use of vegetation as a constructive element, extra isolation of the envelope, the use of the thermal inertia of enclosure and floors, the use of efficient lighting and air conditioning, the use of solar thermal energy for heating, integrated air conditioning and lighting control, power generation in the building, reducing water consumption and waste generation, the use of rainwater, use of recycled and recyclable materials and quality air control.
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The building is conceived as a pilot office allowing direct experience of future developers and users. The extra cost of 5% over a conventional construction, along with the dissemination of the results of the monitoring of the building will be an excellent tool to promote sustainable architecture in the area of Malaga.
The impact of the implementation of the building in the neighborhood has been minimized elevating it to allow the existing park pass under the building and placing vertical gardens in front of the nearby homes.
Power generation in the Project exceeds the energy demand for the building, so we can say that this is a zero-energy building, even a plus energy building.
The building design represents a savings of 65% in consumption compared to the reference building established in the regulations. CO2 emissions to the atmosphere are reduced 14,678.19 kg a year. Water consumption is reduced by 50% compared to a conventional building. The generation of waste on site is reduced by industrialized systems and 75% of those generated have been recycled. Finishing materials are used responsibly and low environmental impact origin. The impact of construction is minimized byincreasing the life of the building structure from 50 to 100 years.
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The architecture of the building itself guarantees the quality of life of users while preserving their health. The working spaces of the building ensure a limit on the toxicity of interior finishing materials; it ensures good air quality through its monitoring; discomfort high velocity air in air conditioning are avoided; adequate natural lighting and glare protection in the workplace is guaranteed; artificial lighting levels appropriate to the task are guaranteed; acoustic comfort is guaranteed by isolating work spaces from exterior and limiting reverberation time of the rooms; and the quality of service provided is secured by involving users in the use and maintenance of the building.
The design of this building has been conceived as a prototype of the Zero Energy Buildings that will be mandatory for public administrations from 2018 and in general for all construction of new buildings from 2020.
The organising committee behind the Pavilion of China at the 2016 Venice Biennale (the China International Exhibition Agency) have revealed that the exhibition will be entitled Back to the Ignored Front, themed around “things and designs that embody traditions of the past and have a lasting presence.” Based on the premise that Chinese architecture has been pioneering in the nation’s modernization for the last three decades the show, which will be on display in the Arsenale, intends to tackle how these “developments generally focus only on the new ‘futuristic’ frontier.” ‘Spectacular’ buildings and cities are, in their words, “erected one after another, seldom taking a glance at the things passed by – ancient traditions and daily lives.”
They continue: “Our nation’s dignity, welfare and equality are the original reasons for modernization in the last hundred years. In China dealing with these issues is the ‘ignored front’ of modernization. Our ancient Chinese concept of Tao is an active and holistic conception of Nature. Tao can be roughly thought of as the flow of the Universe, or as some essence or pattern behind the natural world that keeps the Universe balanced and ordered.”
“Daily Design follows Daily Tao. It satisfies us in our daily lives not by introducing a new future to replace the past, but by polishing the past and integrating it into our daily lives. It doesn’t intervene, instead, it mediates communities. It makes design accessible to the majority’s lives. It does not believe that architecture has a bright future on our planet, unless we act abstemiously and responsibly in the present.”
“Together, we would like to share our faith in ancient Chinese wisdom with the rest of the world.”
Approach Architecture Studio (AAS), Beijing, was founded in 2006 by principal architect LIANG Jingyu. Focusing on cross-disciplinary research, AAS practices a slow method, in contrast to the context of rapid Chinese Construction. Completed projects include: Iberia Centre of Contemporary Art, Beijing; Minshen Art Museum, Shanghai; and the urban conservation and regeneration plan for Dashilar, an ancient and historic quarter of central Beijing.
Yangmeizhu Xiejie (Street)、Dashilar and Dashila(b) Courtesy of NDC
Born in 1971 in Jilin, is currently based in Zhuhai, Guangdong Province.MA Ke is one of the most influential Chinese designers, both at home and abroad. In 2008, she became the first Chinese designer to present her work in the Paris Haute Couture Week. Her designs have been exhibited in countries including France, United Kingdoms, Netherlands, United States, and Japan. Her collection WUYONG/the Earth, which debuted in Paris Fashion Week Spring/Summer 2007, received the 2008 Prince Claus Award in the Netherlands. The film featuring MA Ke and her “WUYONG /the Earth” collection, produced by Golden Lion winner director Jia Zhang-Ke, was awarded the Best Documentary Award in the 64th Venice Film Festival.
WUYONG Courtesy of MA Ke
In 2006, MA Ke founded the WUYONG Design Studio in Zhuhai. Today, WUYONG has become a social enterprise, and it is committed to the inheritance and innovation of traditional Chinese handicrafts. In September 2014, “WUYONG Living Space” was inaugurated in Beijing, presenting original works which cover all basic necessities in life from the WUYONG collection. The products are designed and hand-made with natural materials, in order to draw people’s attention to a simpler and healthier lifestyle: to have a more harmonic relationship with nature, and to be more environmentally friendly and sustainable. “WUYONG Living Space” also regularly hosts non-pro t exhibition for traditional Chinese folk arts and handcrafts.Since 2013, MA Ke has been invited to produce personalised designs for China’s rst lady Peng Liyuan in high-pro le international trips.
Beijing-based People’s Architecture Office was founded by He Zhe, James Shen and ZANG Feng in 2010, and consist of an international team of architects, engineers, product designers and urbanists. The studio has been honored with international awards including multiple Architizer A+ Awards and Red Dot Awards as well as the prestigious World Architecture Festival Award.
Courtyard House Plugin Courtesy of PAO
With the belief that design is for the masses, PAO aims to be conceptually ccessible and culturally pragmatic. Our work is always socially motivated. The office is a historic courtyard house in the center of Beijing and functions as a laboratory for observation, testing, and building.
Rùn Atelier was co-founded by Mr. WANG Hao and Ms. YE Man in the year of 2015, which was known as Anonymous Architects Workshop & Y.M.A studio in the past.
Country Construction Institution Courtesy of Rùn Atelier
Based on daily aesthetics, independent thinking and architectural philosophy of mutual benefit of resident and residence, Rùn Atelier re ects on traditional culture, learns from both ancient and modern art and respects the natural law of coexistence. Rùn aesthetics is created carefully to achieve the beauty of subject and style, to return to purity and simplicity.
Born in Xi’an, China in 1970.SONG Qun is an artist, planner, as well as the founder and editor-in-chief of Local. He has been recording local culture and city memories of Xi’an from the perspective of the civil society for a long time. At the same time, he has been collecting and sorting out the related literature and material objects, as well as doing studies and practice on city development and changes. Meanwhile, he has planned and held a number of urban residential and commercial construction projects successfully. Since 1992, He has been teaching in Shaanxi Normal University at Academy of Arts.
WANG Lu was born in 1963 in Zhejiang, China, and entered the School of Architecture of Tsinghua University in 1979, received the Master’s degree of Architecture and began working as an assistant in the School of Architecture in Tsinghua University in 1987. Since 1991, he had pursued study in Hannover University in Germany. He received the Ph.D. in 1997. Now he is professor at the School of Architecture in Tsinghua University, was the chief editor of World Architecture Magazine from 2000 to 2012, and founder of the “WA Chinese Architecture Awards”. Besides the professorship in the university, he leads also the architectural of ce “in+of architecture”. His works are published in many magazines and books, like in AV, Architectural Record, Bauwelt, Space etc., and participated in many exhibitions in China and abroad. He is curator for the Chinese Pavilion of the 1st international Architecture Triennale in Lisbon (TAL’07).
Maoping Village School, Leiyang Courtesy of WANG Lu
View Unlimited LA, CUCD is led by Ms. XIE Xiaoying, the principle designer. The studio’s work is characterized by interdisciplinary cooperation that brings together the expertise and effort of planners, architects, designers, engineers, artists and social scientists.
HOME·Communal Garden Courtesy of View Unlimited, Landscape Architecture Studio, CUCD
Born in Jiangsu Province, China in 1972. ZHU Jingxiang, one of the best Chinese contemporary architects, is also believed to be a most in uential innovator on building systems. Since 2008, he invented a series of innovative light-weight systems and applied them for post-disaster reconstruction projects and sustainable development in Chinese remote provinces and Africa. He is currently the Associate professor in School of Architecture of Chinese University of Hong Kong. Lives and works in Hongkong.
Born in Anhui Province, in 1970. ZUO Jing, an independent curator, a voice and practitioner for China’s rural reconstruction, and the Editor-in-Chief of Bi Shan Mook. During the past decade, Zuo has curated a number of contemporary art exhibitions in China and overseas. In recent years, Zuo has shifted the focus of his work to rural reconstruction, including research and publication on traditional crafts, protection and revitalization of ancient architecture, as well as re-invigoration of public cultural life in rural areas. He is now working at the Rural Reform and Development Institute, Anhui University.
Crafts in Yixian County/Another Alternative: Township Reconstruction Courtesy of ZUO Jing
The exhibition has been curated by LIANG Jingyu:
Born in Jiangxi Province, China in 1969. LIANG Jingyu is the principal architect of Approach Architecture Studio in Beijing. He was rst known for his award-winning art museum and gallery projects. Impressed by the book Shelter by Lloyd Kahn, 1973, he became the translator of the book’s Chinese version (published in 2009). In 2010, he was converted to Buddhism. From 2010 to 2013, LIANG Jingyu acted as chief planner, masterminding the extraordinary urban conservation and regeneration plan for Dashilar, an ancient and historic quarter of central Beijing. At present, LIANG Jingyu is the professor of Beijing University of Civil Engineering and Architecture, design studio tutor of Tsinghua University. His areas of research include Chinese traditional dwelling culture, Gandhian economics, Asian natural farming, permaculture, and Amish life style.
What do we mean when we say that our homes are “extensions” of ourselves? To put it more precisely, can a home be an extension of more than one person’s sense of “self”? And what happens when a single building is expected to be a home for two very different people? These are the questions asked in the project “Home at Intersection” by Netherlands-based architect Yushang Zhang.
Developed as a personal project in Zhang’s spare time Home at Intersection is, at its heart, as much a story told through architecture as it is an architectural design. The story chronicles the relationship of two young lovers as they embark upon a new chapter in their life together, building and then inhabiting their dream home. But much more than that, the project investigates themes of individuality and social bonds, using architecture as a medium to understand our hidden emotions.
This story-like approach to architecture is nothing new: in particular, it is reminiscent of the work of Studio Weave, who often combined architecture with whimsical storytelling. Take for example their design for Freya and Robin, a pair of cabins set on a lake in which Studio Weave sought to “create evidence of an imagined fairytale.” For this design, the love story of Freya and Robin influences the architecture as much as the architecture influences the story; Yushang Zhang’s work is much the same, in spite of the fact that it is an unbuilt design.
Zhang’s story (which you can read in full here) begins in a humble setting:
The two protagonists of this story, Fred and Sofia, used to live together in a simple little house… The interior wasn’t spacious but it made a cozy home. In such a narrow space without any partition, they almost became each other’s air.
However, once they start to plan a new home together, Fred and Sofia happen upon the uncomfortable realization that they are an example of the idea that “opposites attract”: their opinions differ on what rooms their new house should have and the architectural style of the space itself. As a result, they happen upon an unusual solution, a cross-shaped house composed of two entirely different architectural entities, with each of the inhabitant’s every wish for their home satisfied by one of the two volumes. Each volume is long and thin in order to offer the best possible views, and where the two volumes intersect are three rooms which they share, a bedroom, dining room and “memory room” holding mementos of their time together.
The formal resolution to the problem that was self-imposed by Yushang Zhang is certainly intriguing. Stripped of any context—the house is, it seems, set in an endless wilderness—it is a fit-for-purpose design that visually represents nothing more than the requirements of its inhabitants. In a way it is reminiscent of the effortless diagrammatic approach of firms such as BIG, in which any given input creates a logical output in terms of form.
Yet despite this seemingly ideal design, Fred and Sofia soon find that the sense of individuality offered by the new house causes them to drift apart. As their schedules begin to involve less of each other they find less common ground, and less of a desire to occupy the communal space at the intersection point of their home.
This sad, slow separation is underscored at the end of the story when Fred waits for Sofia for hours in their shared dining room, only to then realize she has, without telling him about it and without him even noticing, extended her part of the home right out to the horizon. Zhang concludes:
The amplified personal identities, the unrestricted freedom and the insatiable desires can turn a home into a tiny intersection point of two utterly different and extremely busy lives… Over time, when the intersection point loses its gravity and we move too far on our own tracks to meet each other again, home doesn’t exist anymore.
Yushang Zhang’s story is certainly no Shakespearean tragedy, and at first it may come across as overly sentimental and more than a little naive. But it nevertheless offers a poignant lesson for architects, giving a new perspective on the ideal of user-oriented design. The people we design for are complex and multilayered, and often our jobs as architects should be to recognize those desires that shouldn’t be met in designing for them. The logical solution to a problem may in fact bring a set of intractable problems of its own.
From the architect. The Flemish Brabant municipality of Tielt-Winge -Belgium has been a place for people to enjoy a striking example of landscape architecture since May 2015. An eye-catching structure that blurs the distinction between a tower and a stairway floats high above the famous Kabouterbos (fairy tale forest) and draws the curiosity of many Tielt residents and passers-by. The intriguing volume of steel is clad in weathering steel from top to bottom.
The story of the Tielt stairway tower goes back a long way. For many years, the hill to the west of the Vlooiberg was adorned by a wooden lookout tower about four meters in height. Aside from the all the youth of Tielt, unfortunately this tower also attracted vandals who irreparably damaged it by setting it on fire. The pride of Tielt-Winge had to be closed to the public for the sake of safety. Heated debates followed, and the municipality finally decided to replace the small wooden tower with a new, monumental object that would be able to withstand the ravages of time.
The requirements in the specifications reflected this goal: the new tower was to be made completely out of metal, be at least ten meters high, include a shelter and be resistant against any form of vandalism.
Instead of a conventional construction with a spiral staircase, the designer conceived a suspended volume without too many decorative frills. The “Vlooybergtoren” as it is called is 11.28 meters tall (the top platform comes out at 10.08 meters + 1.20 meter railing wall) and is built on a galvanized substructure that is clad in weathering steel, a subtle reference to the typical red-brown color of the ironstone in the Hageland region. All in all, the imposing stairway tower weighs no less than thirteen tons.
In the designer’s own words, modeling the Vlooyberg Tower was “a war against its own weight.” To ensure that the structure would be strong enough and would not sag, he manually calculated the forces acting in each element. His findings gave the stairway tower its ultimate form and dimensions. The structure evolves from large, heavy and strong, to small, light and slender. The railing wall functions as a structural beam that makes the steel structure strong and stable enough to withstand the forces acting on it. Two vibration dampers ensure that the stairway tower does not start to vibrate under foot.
The structure was fully prefabricated and assembled on site section by section. In the end, it only took half a day to install. As a landmark with strong iconic value, the Vlooyberg Tower literally and figuratively raises the profile of the beautiful region around Tielt-Winge. Natives of Tielt, chance passers-by and fans of modern architecture all greatly enjoy this intriguing monument.
The Legacy of Wells Coates is a mini-documentary by photographer Baker and director Alex Simpson that explores the modern designs of two of Well Coates’ most iconic buildings: the Isokon Building in London and Brighton’s Embassy Court. Both buildings have been restored and adapted, and are occupied by residents who give their insights on the architectural significance of their homes in this short film.
The Isokon was once home to notable architects Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer, who lived there as neighbors. “The Isokon Building doesn’t just have a history that ended back then [in the 1930s]…It’s an ongoing story,” says Magnus Englund, a resident of the Isokon’s penthouse apartment. Meanwhile, the clean design of the Embassy Court, located right along the sea, is described by a resident as “living in a piece of art.”
Sig Nordal 