We would like to take a second to focus on the wonderful, yet often overlooked, inner courtyard. The inner courtyard is essentially a “contained outside space” made up of transparent walls, and a well thought-out drainage system is a must. Other elements such as furnishings, decks, vegetation, stairs, water are then added, complicating the space created. The inner courtyard also plays a role in the building’s layout; in most cases it functions as the central point from which the other rooms and functions of the project are organized, giving them air and light when the façade openings are not enough.
Here is our selection of 13 stunning inner courtyards of houses and buildings that we have previously published on our site.
Detalle: Casa Quinta Do Carvalheiro / GSMM Architetti
Outdoor View. Image Courtesy of Saúl Ajuria Fernández
New typologies in architecture generally arise in two ways. The first is through a reevaluation of existing typologies that cater to familiar programs such as housing, schools, or healthcare. This is done in an effort to improve on the norm and to challenge accepted architectural notions, as seen for example, in the work of Moshe Safdie and OMA. The other is when an entirely new program, site condition, or client emerges and forces the invention of a new typology simply through their design requirements.
For his Master’s degree project at the University of Alcalá in Spain, Saúl Ajuria Fernández has envisioned the essential civic building of the future: the Urban Droneport. Located in what Ajuria has identified as a “disused urban vacuum” in Madrid, Spain, the Urban Droneport “allows and optimizes the transport of goods with Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems in urban areas” – in other words, drone-delivered packages.
Outdoor View. Image Courtesy of Saúl Ajuria Fernández
The project is exciting for many reasons, with Ajuria hoping that by designing for something that isn’t completely here yet, it shows how architecture can be “an engine of development and innovation.” Also exciting, for architects at least, is the fact that it provides a glimpse into what could be an entirely new typology of building.
South Node of M30 Road, Madrid. Image Courtesy of Saúl Ajuria Fernández
The idea of designing for something completely new is engaging as there are few or no precedents, presenting an entire section of the profession as a blank slate. Of course, this also comes with the responsibility of having to set the stage for future developments in a single design. It is unavoidable that simply through chronology, the first precedent will likely have a disproportionate amount of influence on the future of its typology.
Indoor View. Image Courtesy of Saúl Ajuria Fernández
With drones becoming more affordable and more precise, their widespread use in cities is becoming increasingly realistic. Ajuria’s proposal for a drone delivery center is a serious example of an urban opportunity, and may just provide the seed for the development of a new typology.
Elevation. Image Courtesy of Saúl Ajuria Fernández
While it might currently be tricky to envision drones flying alongside pigeons, this sort of architectural accommodation for new technology has been seen before. Perhaps one of the most universal examples of this is the train station. Though commonplace now, in the 19th century the challenge of designing a building that catered for the stopping and starting of trains, alongside passenger needs, was something that had never been approached before.
Section. Image Courtesy of Saúl Ajuria Fernández
Like a droneport, train stations are a place of interaction between the mechanical (the train or drone) and the human. In train stations, raised platforms have become common so that passengers no longer need to climb up to the train, assisting a human-mechanical interaction through design. In the Urban Droneport project, as the building’s location is noisy and polluted, the drone hangars form the outer layer of the building. The central space becomes the focus of human habitation, cushioned from the unwanted conditions outside, a spatial solution working in drone-human symbiosis.
Courtesy of Saúl Ajuria Fernández
The placement of a train station is also important, needing careful consideration of its relationship with a city’s existing rail, road and human networks. Ajuria also took the droneport location seriously, placing it in Madrid’s South Node, a currently unused urban site connecting directly to the highway. Not only does this allow for fast connection with the transit centers of delivery companies – with drones able to use the arteries of highways just as wheeled vehicles do – it also allows the project to be easily adapted to other highway locations.
New Infrastructure Network. Image Courtesy of Saúl Ajuria Fernández
While the train station typology arose out of necessity, it also came to heighten the experience of travel – black and white photos of light pouring in to Grand Central Station are perhaps the most cinematic example of this. The proportion, color, and care that Ajuria has put into his Urban Droneport’s design also shows this sentiment of celebrating the building’s program.
Process Axonometric. Image Courtesy of Saúl Ajuria Fernández
However, there is one drastic difference between trains and drones: while Grand Central Station does celebrate the commute, it also hides the trains underground. Other stations tend to eject their trains into walled-off cuttings or embankments. Drones however, would not be hidden and separated from the city, but instead occupy the airspace above and around us. This means that architects’ response to the promise of “unprecedented multidimensional urban space” and the need for “buildings that work to facilitate drone navigation and communication” could lead to a new typology entirely–potentially even in ways more definitive and integrated than train stations did in the past.
‘Green corridor,’ ‘green connections,’ and a ‘green program’ are coming to Vietnam‘s third largest city, Da Nang. Antwerp-based design company OMGEVING was awarded a joint first place prize — out of 39 applicants —for the design competition for Da Nang’s Han Riverfront master plan that has an estimated cost of 85 million euros.
Courtesy of OMGEVING
The key principle remains restoring the river nature in the city while creating a park of which the shape refers to the original riverbanks said the jury.
Courtesy of OMGEVING
The Han river runs the length of the rapidly growing city of Da Nang. Its riverfront’s new master plan will stay on par with the developments in the area — while also regenerating the masterplan. In addition to a floating market place, a city park, and an urban sports park, four buildings will be employed: an opera building, a water hub building, and a redesigned market hall and concert hall.
Courtesy of OMGEVING
A 2.2-hectare park will be situated adjacent to the river, 3,000 new trees will create a design unity at the scale of the city as a whole. Motorbike and pedestrian bridges will sustain both riverbank parks to prosper.
From the architect. This house is a hybrid of several types of houses: first of all the first thing it wants is to be a “house of the Camp d’Elx”, as those still populate the rural districts with its peculiar silhouette, whose traditional architecture makes use of ceramic decks inclined and the deep porches -for shade- oriented at noon; But at the same time it also wants to be a “house-patio Mediterranean”, introverted, protected from the outside and purely white; And also has in its genetics a “Californian house”, one of those sophisticated houses of the admired modern architecture of Los Angeles -with whom we share Mediterranean climate- that unfold their plants -many L shaped- in open horizontal spaces which overlook the gardens and the refreshing swimming pools.
As a Mediterranean house, a vital piece of this project is the patio. The patio is a space that widens and multiplies the experiences of the house, and contributes to blur the boundary between the inside and the outside. As it is located in the entrance area of the house, it makes the arrival a very special moment, in fact the whole vestibular space is around the patio. In this house also has been used the patio to articulate the transition from one part to the other, clearly separating the common area from the private area of the bedrooms. And finally the most exciting thing about a patio is that it is an ‘open-air room’ that captures and filters light at different times of the day and year, filling the interior with very different nuances and very changing situations.
Another main part of the house is the kitchen. Around it is generated the whole ‘family life’ and will undoubtedly become the heart of the house in a multitude of moments and circumstances. That is why the kitchen is completely open to the rest of the house, a decision that also seeks the democratization of domestic roles and, above all, the idea of living and enjoying the entire interior landscape of the house. To reinforce this nuclear idea of the kitchen, it is located in the same baryonenter of the common space to precisely be able to dominate visually from that point all the common spaces -dining room, living room, patio and study-library- and all exterior spaces -porche, garden and swimming pool-.
The skylines of modern China are punctuated by architecture that amazes, inspires, and awes. Many of these towering structures are the work of the Beijing-based experimental practice MAD Architects, led by Ma Yansong.
People often ask what ‘MAD’ stands for; sometimes, I explain it stands for MA Design, but I like MAD (adjective) Architects better. It sounds like a group of architects with an attitude towards design and practice. I think it is important to practice architecture with an attitude, to be critical and sensitive to the issues and challenges in our world.
MAD Works is illustrated with 300 photographs, architectural drawings, and renderings that offer a thorough exploration of MAD’s international portfolio of completed works, unbuilt projects, and future ideas. The book also features a significant range of buildings including museums, theaters, and residences, as well as commissioned designs for urban planning, urban complexes, and old neighborhood renovations. In 2014, MAD was selected as the principal design architect for the George Lucas Museum of Narrative Art (LMNA), becoming the first China-based architecture firm to design an overseas cultural institution.
Organized thematically, this comprehensive architectural monograph explores the underlying concepts of MAD’s architectural works. MAD Works is divided into five chapters based on a series of creative concepts that reveal Ma’s attitude toward architecture. Named after his five art pieces—Fish Tank, Ink Ice, Feelings are Facts, Shanshui City, and Beijing 2050—the chapters operate as points of departure and inspiration for his subsequent architectural works. These five concepts categorize and organize the 28 featured works.
Including a foreword by Sir Peter Cook, founder of Archigram, and an interview by Aric Chen, curator of art and design for M+, the new museum for visual culture in Hong Kong, MAD Works is a visually stunning and in-depth monograph that catalogues the awe-inspiring works of one of the most dynamic contemporary architecture firms to emerge in the 21st Century.
Foreward by Sir Peter Cook (Extract)
This architect is the bringer of the new fluency: clearly they emerge out of a very real sense of structure, weight, substance and, above all, form but they seem to have no fear of the hiccups that European or American architecture often gets strangled by – which then have to be resolved, or ‘played’ by niceties of articulation or grammar. At this point it remains for one to pick out from his architecture some intriguing characteristics. Of materiality: that one senses the inherited palette of glazed openings and universal white surfaces may be starting to bore him? That he is still happier with some degree of axial formality that in the West, we associate with pomp, but that he has the spirit to scramble all of it at any minute and make an apparently random plan arrangement.
The old avant-garde figures often went out so far that in their mature work they either lost their public or had seduced them so far that they forgot there had ever been any other type of proposition or aesthetics. It is interesting that Ma Yansong is a frequent lecture visitor to the West, but what does he need from us? The incentive, with this work is reversed, for he has surely bewitched us.
Isbn: 9780714871967
Title: “MAD Works: MAD Architects” Introduced by Sir Peter Cook
Author: Ma Yansong
Publisher: Phaidon Press
Publication Year: 2016
Binding: Hardcover
Language: English
“MAD Works: MAD Architects” Introduced by Sir Peter Cook
From the architect. The Lion Match Office Park is a redevelopment project, the conversion of commercial and industrial space of approximately 21000 m2 into an office park environment with the addition of approximately 4000m2 of new built space. routes and the city’s ‘Golden Mile’. Commissioned by JT Ross Property Group, the developing client, it well positioned between Durban’s Stadiums, transport included
Partial conversion of the premises occurred between 1979-1980, but for the most part the original white envelope and other site elements remained in tact; subsequently placing the original building under the protection of KwaZulu-Natal’s provincial heritage agency AMAFA, necessitating that the project have a historical and sustainable underpinning.
Dean Jay Architects’ approach to the redevelopment was one of visual harmony; by sensitively removing certain elements of the built fabric, the commercial viability and life of the existing infrastructure could be extended through upgrades and adaptable reuse. Visually distinct and legible additions are reconciled to the existing through the use of a uniform white palette, by echoing the established roof profiles and through sensitive articulation between old and new.
Section
The office park is subdivided into 10 different zones, to the most part consisting of offices, with a notable intervention being the conversion of the original Incinerator room into a bistro style restaurant facility that serves both park occupants and the public.
The primary new built intervention houses the head office of JT Ross, who had the express desire to maximize sea views to the East and establish visual ties to the rugby fields below. The notable 20m2 post-tension concrete cantilever is not purely demolish original structures.
aesthetical, but acts to reconcile spatial requirements with the inability to The greatest challenge can be accounted to the massive parking requirements generated by the amount of office space. Through the introduction of green pockets and envelopes, a park continuity was established to soften these hard edges and delineate pedestrian and vehicular circulation from each other.
Facebrick and concrete compliment the predominant white palette. COROBRICK Terracotta Satin facebrick is used in a ‘relief’ and ‘flush’ English bond pattern, as well as ‘edge’ bond pattern.
With the original outline, the only change was in the existing stairwells, through the usage of weathering steel e dimensioning its usage according to the visual weight in order to hierarchize the absence of mass. This way, it was possible to balance the whole building.
The house is divided in two floors, where the social room, placed in the ground floor, enjoys the direct relation with the outdoor areas, while the suite, located in the first floor, can be reached by indoor stairs used for storage and but also to separate the rooms.
The original outline was as important as the contemporary style added to the building. Clear colours and a minimalist language were used in order to maximize the bounds and give an idea of wider and open area.
The surrounding can be characterized by gabled roof low rise houses built in high density with lush greenery, narrow street with hedge and clayey wall. Y house is considered as a continuous space to this ambient context supported by treelike structure.
Diagram
Diagram
House Concept
The diagonal columns are tied together at the bottom and reaching the roof grid frame at their top. On the ground floor, these columns appear as trunks of trees making the space open and one continuum with the garden. In contrast, on the first floor, they become dispersed and one may feel like surrounded by branches of trees. Daily goods inserted and stored in-between these columns, act as leaves of tree, will gradually define personal space for each family member.
We consider Y house as a case study, an application of more general system that spread columns and their density defining the space. However, in contrast to modern architecture models that is more universal in all direction, this system is pursuing an architecture that blend and respond to ambient context, or gravity.
From the architect. Nature is created by the providence of nature itself. The innate ability to expand in size to take in as much sunlight as possible, the nature of splitting up and penetrating into the earth to absorb even a tiny drop of water, and the vertical impetus to go against gravity and soar perpendicularly; as such, nature endeavors to create the optimal forms and arrangements based on the instinctive energy for survival. To this end, nature finds its own beautiful order, and grows according to the optimal proportion, size, and geometric principles between symmetry and asymmetry, between balance and imbalance.
This structure is a sunlight generation sculpture that derives from the geometric pattern and form of a pine cone, which are optimized towards natural order and principles, thereby forming a place of rest as a natural creature through cutting-edge digital fabrication. The overall structure largely consists of the roof adorned with geometric patterns, pipes propping up the roof, and materials connecting between them. The roof is built in a shell structure consisting of prefabricated modules designed for the installation of solar panels and electrical wiring. The pipe structure to support the roof forms a three-dimensional structure with two-dimensional arcs that intertwine and support each other without vertical members, resembling vines. Both the installation and assemblage are done through prefabrication, while every component was manufactured in a factory by module and bolt-assembled on the ground, thereby minimizing field work for the optimal use of time and space, as well as maximizing the structural aesthetics of the structure’s geometric shapes.
Diagram
Installed with solar panels, the roof inclines at an angle optimized to receive as much sunlight as possible, in order to create a resting area within nature decorated by beautiful patterns of shadow on the floor of the interior during daytime, while powering the lighting inside the building and the outdoor lighting in the park around the building during nighttime by generating as much as 1.2kW per hour. This project is a prototype for mass production, and also an attempt to respond to the potential demand for an environmental structure using solar panels, as well as for creating a new market by commercializing this type of eco-friendly structure through the incorporation of design elements.
From the architect. Located in Redhill, the project is a demonstration of heartland rejuvenation and community building, through Masterplanning and the adaptive reuse of Bukit Merah Vocational Institute built in the 1970s. The property was re-purposed as the Enabling Village – an inclusive space that integrates education, work, training, retail and lifestyle, connecting people with disabilities and the society.
Before re-development, the property did not contribute to the neighbourhood. The Masterplan re-imagines the Enabling Village as a park/garden destination, and is designed as an integral part of the neighbourhood’s pedestrian network.
Master Plan
The design scope includes architecture, interior design, signage, lighting, art and landscaping to deliver a holistically integrated environment. The buildings are re-named as “Nest”, “Playground”, “Village Green”, “Hive”, “Hub” and “Academy” – based on their characters and programmes. These are seamlessly connected by ramps, landings and lifts.
The new Nest building is anchored at the main pond and serves as a beacon, drawing pedestrian flow through the new linkways. The architectural expression and finishes are continued at the existing buildings as facade, canopies and surfaces. A timber terrace is laid over the courtyard at the Playground, stepping down as an amphitheatre with integrated ramps. The terrace continues under and past the building as a balcony overlooking activity islands and as a garden trail connecting to the adjacent housing precinct. Pre-cast concrete pipes are inserted below the amphitheatre as resting nooks. The open space between the Village Green and the Hive is reactivated as a garden yard with re-purposed sea containers as bridges, follies and meeting rooms loosely scattered with recycled oil drum planters. ‘Up-cycling’ continues as interior design features in the Art Faculty and Hive.
Wayfinding is developed as a series of touch-points at entries and strategic junctions to assist with orientation and navigation. Each building is identified by a feature wall with coloured graphics. External lighting is designed to give a serene park ambience. Building facades, drop-offs, cabanas and walkways are accentuated as beacons and connectors in the park. Art is integrated into the garden with building-scale murals, incorporating artwork by autistic artists.
Landscaping and water gardens are designed with a variety of native species, scales and colours, complementing the conserved trees to attract biodiversity and support ecosystems. Verandahs and cabanas extend out from passages as outdoor meeting spaces, bringing nature closer to people.
The Enabling Village champions sustainability and sociability by promoting the learning, bonding and healing of people with varying abilities within a biophilic environment. This creates an inclusive space that enables and values everyone.
Sig Nordal 