Stockholm’s Southeast Kungsholmen is slowly transforming. Veidekke and Utopia Arkitekter are preparing a redevelopment proposal for the town — and they’re beginning by building an architectural gem. In addition to creating ambitious architecture, Utopia Arkitekter plans to add more housing developments closer to public transport. Their first project? The sector of Kungsholmen, Bolinders Plan, named after Jean Bolinder, who ran a mechanical workshop in the area.
Courtesy of Utopia Arkitekter
Our aim is to give Stockholm an architectural pearl of price with a contemporary identity of its own. In addition, we want to develop the existing square into an attractive piazza by taking good care of the area and putting non-housing premises into the bottom storey.
Courtesy of Utopia Arkitekter
By improving the ground conditions and giving the bottom story non-housing premises, the architects hope to improve the site. Informed by its surroundings, the building height corresponds with the adjacent Kungsklippan tower blocks. To allow for the turnaround point for traffic, the elevated bottom story will be pulled back slightly. “Playful” yet “elegant” are two words the architects used to describe the building’s composition as it tapers upward.
Courtesy of Utopia Arkitekter
At 17 stories, the building’s structure both respects and reacts to its site. The street, rocky conditions, and the turnaround influenced the shape of the building. A cycle path will be rerouted to run between the building and street, although the bus stop will remain in its current position. Multiple private terraces will be accessible for top floor residents.
Since its opening in March, Santiago Calatrava’s “Oculus” transport hub at the World Trade Center has garnered a lot of criticism for its exorbitant price tag. (The building cost nearly $4 billion to realize.) But look beyond the numbers, and there is something compelling about the physical form of the thing. Like all of Calatrava’s work, the structure invites visual interpretations—spiky fish or a bird, a dinosaur or a hedgehog. Architectural designer and illustrator Chanel Dehond riffs on these and more in the following sketches.
The reconciliation between tourism and communities has transformed Lake Lanalhue into a natural, economic and political resource. We are aware of being part of our own time and place, in the Arauco province where tense ancestral and historical demands are taking place, a complex period in many aspects, and instead of avoiding the implications that this entails, we decided to face this period by contributing from what we know best, and this is to act from within the territory with the architecture that makes us the most sense, that is the architecture whose action transforms and summons the encounter of worlds that at times seem so distant, but that share a specific place of the planet, a common place in the Cosmos.
Site plan
Yepún is one of the last works developed by Susana Herrera & Factoría in Lake Lanalhue. And like others, it is part of the continuity of a series of architectural and tourist projects that have been developed in the province of Arauco for more than a decade. And as such, it is an articulating architectural piece that becomes a landmark along with others, with a very specific tourist programme, become an Astronomical Observatory Tourist Ethnic.
Courtesy of Factoría
Yepun Observatory was partially co-financed by a Corfo, a governmental innovation contest won by its director Marcelo Cifuentes, who partered with Pedro Durán, owner of Quelén to decided to install here the southernmost observatory in Chile. Architecturally, it is a recycled object. Its structure is mainly in wood, and was entirely constructed by local master artisans. For us, is a project that transcends the architectural object itself and contextualizes it with several interventions around it and designed by Susana Herrera & her team Factoria.
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Locating this project in Quelén meant the opportunity to establish relationships between science and the cultural context, between astronomy and the Mapuche Cosmovision, between the certainties of man, and what is rather immeasurable. It was a question of redesigning a physical and virtual space, capable of integrating knowledge, experiences beyond the possibilities of hard science, to place all this in a simple, almost domestic scale intervention. It was to re-think a space of educational exchange in a rather warm and pleasant space that would be able to embrace an experiential program in a rather local architecture, where the wood and the craftsmanship were the hallmark that differentiated it from other observatories, those of metallic domes very common for this type of observatories. Here the local identity was already printed in the constructions of Quelén, and this new piece remodeled, should be part of that context and this way of doing.
Courtesy of Factoría
This new architectural project is also the opportunity to deepen and above all, to experience from the turistification the exchange between visitors, local communities and anyone who wants to get closer to observe and share new areas of knowledge and cultural exchange. To imagine that this was possible, beyond the architectural dimension seemed exciting to us. The specificity of this place in Chile made it possible to ask new questions and stand in a different perspective, with a new paradigm at this time, and indeed, recognizing that the ancestral cultures would surely have already done it before us.
Courtesy of Factoría
The Architectural object
The 2010 earthquake had made available the small Kurem Cylindrical Building, which used to be the reception of the demolished old hotel, which was now being built on the shores of the Lake. We worked with scarce resources, so it was natural to choose to recondition the old Kurem Building to transform it into the Observatory.
Courtesy of Factoría
We kept the original Oregon pine wood structure of the building and its elliptical shape. We use wood because it is the material of the existing structure and because there is good availability of it on site. Steel pleats were added to extend the column structure. Regarding the lining of the building, the need to avoid light pollution forced us to close the entire building, which was previously much glazed. Wood boards on the outside were placed in an upright vertical and tertiary planks in the interior, completely covering the 11 Oregon pine pillars, 200x155mm which transmit the entire load to the foundation without joists. In the two spans with lower radius of curvature, we placed vertical diagonals of Oregon pine in the shape of a cross to avoid very large drifts in the upper level. On the top floor; where the telescope is located, a rigid plane was designed in which steel beams formed by two connected channels forming an “I” beam were placed. These beams provide stability to the top floor. Among them is an Oregon pine latticework formed of beams and chains. This, structured a resistant floor that avoids the vibrations that are critical and that can disturb the operation of the telescope.
Courtesy of Factoría
The scales of the project
This architectural piece has four scales:
The landscape scale: The previews remodeled and transparent building that was mimicked with the kiln of the hill, was completely closed, becoming almost a trunk / or great * Rewe. Placed in the upper part of the hill, on an elevated plane and of strong pendant to the lake, it becomes an architectural landmark. The southeast façade embodies the landscape dimension that integrates the lake, the Nahuelbuta Range and finally with the black eye, that dark lake sky surrounded by the mountain.
The intermediate dimension is embodied by the west side of the building. The slenderness and closed skin of the Yepún is a perfect backdrop for the lateral amphitheater formed by the stairs of the Metawe Building and the square that separates them. This vitalizes the public space ideal for concerts, marriages and backdrop for movies and shows.
Courtesy of Factoría
The Northwest façade responds to a more pedestrian scale, which is reached from a zigzag wood platform. An extruded volume of smaller height softens the main volume and articulates the ascent of the different levels, as if it were a great Rewe that connects the earth with the infinite sky.
Finally, the last and most ambiguous and difficult to understand, is the scale of the universe. We know that if we look at a star that is a million light years away, we are looking at what the universe was like a million years ago. It means that the light that comes from it has taken a million years to reach us. This is basics in astronomy, and it is obvious that space is extended indefinitely, and that thanks to the telescope we can probe the depths of space. And although the universe seems to have the same aspect always, in fact it changes decisively with the time like when the stars began to shine or the fact that in century XX we understood that the galaxies are moving away and therefore the universe is expanding, in other words, the universe continues without end in space. Placing ourselves in that place helps us to get out of our own convictions, and this is mind-boggling.
Courtesy of Factoría
The Structure
From the old structure, we remove the staircase and the attic. In order to keep the center of this space clear, we built a ramp around the interior contour formed by cantilevered beams that are attached to the pillars by means of steel profiles, which allows us to create an ascending museological route without being interrupted by pillars in the interior. In addition, to increase the height of the building and to accommodate the telescope here, we had to surpass the heights of the existing buildings. For this, it was necessary to design steel rings, of the barrel type with tweezers between them, to avoid buckling. We worked with the calculator José Nicolás Durán, who designed this system with the 11 wooden pillars. The last level houses the rotating cover that opens in its center to clear the view of the telescope adapting to amateur and professional astronomers.
Detail
The Inner Experience
Three ascending levels make up the Yepún. The smallest configures the access, with a height not exceeding 2.5mt. When your pupils become accustomed to the darkness, you are pulled into the central elliptical and cylindrical space whose wood makes it close and intimate. A somewhat small space, with no possibility of exterior view that keeps you focused on the route and the total darkness, almost uterine that takes you out of the context of which you come from. The invitation, is to climb an elliptical perimeter ramp and transit in another dimension, another time.
Courtesy of Factoría
You walk up, and as you become aware of human smallness, you may remember that we are all so tiny without exception, and that we all fit into the same galaxy, whose size is hard to understand, and reminds us that we are really nothing. This feeling does not discriminate and the invitation is kept open throughout the visit to perceive the smallness of the time in which we inhabit this tiny planet that we call Earth, a sensation that we all warn without exception.
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You continue to rise, and the museological experience begins with the subtle archigraphy of laser engraving on lightly lit acrylics and oblique geometries inserted into the rhythmic wooden supports. Almost at the top, a small staircase takes you to the end of the route, to a circular space formed by a perimeter bench and a central pedestal where you meet the telescope. Once here, the ceiling is opened as necessary, so that the telescope’s lens allows you to observe the cosmos. This small building makes us perhaps aware of where we are. It situates every visitor equally in this specific point of the universe, on the edge of the world, between Lake Lanalhue (place of lost souls), and the Nahuelbuta, mountain range of the Paleozoic, initiated some 570 million years ago, much earlier To the formation of the Andes Mountains, but not old enough in relation to the formation of planet Earth as part of the supercluster of galaxies more than 4.6 billion years ago.
For us, this experience is almost surreal; and is that, finally, such a simple architectural space located on the edge of Lake Lanalhue, allows us to situate ourselves in this new stellar dimension, with an architecture of uterus whose experience of space makes you abandon all the certainties relativizing them to allow a new logic of relationships. Relationships between humans, between civilizations, between beings that inhabit the same point on the planet.
Portuguese photographer Francisco Nogueira captured the building’s spaces in this comprehensive gallery of images. The MAAT proposes a new relationship between the river and the visitor through a building whose simultaneous power and sensitivity explores the convergence of contemporary art, architecture, and technology. As a structure in the landscape, the building becomes landscape by allowing visitors to walk over and on the museum itself. See here 70 stunning photos of MAAT’s interiors and exteriors.
From the architect. Powerhouse Company is pleased to present its second completed city centre cinema for Pathé Theatres. Following the opening of the Arnhem cinema, the cinema of Maastricht, the Netherlands opened its doors. Powerhouse Company’s design is injecting the glamour back into going to the movies.
Just to the north of the city centre of Maastricht, in a renewed district named Sphinxkwartier, the new 1000- seat cinema is designed as a cultural hub for film, streamed opera, lectures and events. The 130m-long foyer and the eight screens are stretched across the entire length of the movie theater and is situated between the screen rooms and the Boschstraat. The building’s exciting context-specific architecture seeks to capture some of cinema’s 1920s and 1930s heyday in its classic, formal modernism.
Situation
Pathé Maastricht forms one side of a masterplan development by Palmbout urban landscapes to transform an area which has lain derelict since 2006. The cinema connects directly to an ensemble of three connected factory buildings built between 1928 and 1941 for Sphinx, a manufacturer of ceramics. The 130 meter long cinema is divided into three parts; high parts at the two entrances and a lower middle portion for the screen rooms. Entranced on one end to the square, and abutting to the other onto a triumphant arch for the Sphinx factory entrance, the cinema programme is a series of rooms along the length of the building at ground floor level.
Inspired by the industrial readiness of the adjacent buildings and carried out in a dark brick, Pathé Maastricht contrasts with the monumental white Sphinx factory. The exterior has been crafted as a series of steel volumes shuttered in with black brick and glass, echoing of the industrial roofscape of the factory complex. Like the rear projector room itself, the street colonnade following the line of the building is like a viewing box from which passersby can glimpse the drama of the experience unfold. The main entrance and the VIP café called Charlie’s is highlighted by a difference in height and a jump back façade.
Elevation
Together with developer Epicurus Development and interior designer EUP Design, both experienced in cinema design, the project is designed to fulfil Pathé’s ambition to be the Dutch market leader in quality cinemas. Turning the cinema on its head, Pathé Maastricht transforms the experience into an enjoyable one, making lingering, meeting and socialising as much part of it as viewing the film itself. The cinema is again part of the city to take pride in.
The facility is located in the central part of the site (25 000m2) in one of the most famous wine regions of Slovakia – the Small Carpathian wine region, close to the capital Bratislava. Wine is made exclusively from own grape, raised in own vineyards.
The goal was to include under one roof diverse functions – wine production, art, gastronomy, shop, hotel with wellness area and hunting room, offices, staff accommodation etc.
The main entrance is located from the state road between the towns of Modra and Dubová. The complex of the winery (5400m2) is designed as a compact unit and is sensitively composed into the site using its natural slope, giving a clear functional division of the architectural mass.
The winery part is an archaic concrete prism with a green wall which is also creating a visual barrier for the production part, eliminating the negative visual perception of the hall.
The manufacture and distribution as well as all the other relevant parts of the wine factory are in the northern part. Service court is in the western part, composed in the terrain cut. The entire production area is mostly located below the surface, entirely covered by green roofs, which largely improves the energy balance.
At the entrance hall is the wine tasting in a comfortable environment with fireplace with visual contact with the tank hall, wine cellar, barrique cellar and wine archive. This space is also used for banquets, conferences etc.
First Floor Diagram
From the entrance hall concrete stairs lead to the restaurant on the second floor with a large fireplace and visual contact with the kitchen, southerly and northerly views to the exterior and also with direct connection via the rear entrance to an outdoor terrace.
From the museum is a spectacular view to the exterior thru the glassed façade, bracket terrace over the water surface. The museum is focused on the art from the second half of the 20-th century.
The museum object is divided according to the architectural design for segments of different geometry of 18 m span and separate structure of reinforced wall of 30 cm thickness wedged into the foundation structures.
Long glassed corridor for visitors from the entrance hall allows watching the production as well as a sight into the barrique cellar. At the end of this communication is the owners own VIP atrium, office, tasting salon, archives and own facilities.
Management of production and the administration is located in the second storey of the production hall with an exit to the economic court. Daylight distribution into the production hall is secured through monolithic skylights on the green roof faced to the north, by which direct sunlight is prevented.
Second Floor Diagram
Accommodation for the manager is designed as an energy house with green roof, with only one glass facade to the southwest. It is sunk into the terrain creating its own patio and by this is separated from the public part of the area.
The production building is two-storey and part single-storey. The modular system is 6×7.5 m, at the barrique cellar 3×12 m. The supporting system consists of 30cm thick prefabricated monolithic interior peripheral walls.
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Apartments and the house of the employees are located in a single-storey building with a green roof.
The project includes the construction of an elementary school and the extension of a kindergarten. The aim is to build a contextual architecture, fully merged in its environment.
Plan 1
Pavilion architecture that smoothly fits its surrounding vegetation by limiting the footprint and preserving the existing trees. Moreover, there is no physical barrier thus allowing the view to embrace the entire site. The volumes are made of compressed earth block (CEB), and are covered with light metallic roofs.
Courtesy of Segond-Guyon Architectes
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Courtesy of Segond-Guyon Architectes
The site’s identity is preserved by leaving the existing buildings in place. New constructions are organized around a vegetal playground, following a “U shaped configuration”. Wide outdoor passageways leading to the classrooms protect from rain and sunlight thanks to large roof overhang. The use of local resources and local materials generates a subtle balance of textures that gives the place a unique identity.
From the fashion circle to the art circle, the word “MIX&MATCH” has surpassed the scope of “retro mixed industrial trend” or “art mixed with beast”; and in the field of architectural design, the diverse, mixed and crossover thoughts have also brought us plenty of surprises…
Traditionally, our impression about plant is simple and noisy. However, we hope to break the existing recognition of traditional plant in the design for the headquarter buildings of Inventronics Group, a hi-tech enterprise which stands out in LED. We try to combine the multiple collision thoughts in the age of internet, merger with diverse functional space, and make it into a mixed type headquarter building integrating production, office and scientific research.
The design starts from the demand for diverse functions. It integrates the diverse functional spaces, including the large dimension space for production, the dedicated space for R&D, ordinary office space for administrative use and the high-end club which represents the image of the enterprise headquarters. It also tries to blur the boundary among different functional blocks through complex and diverse functional organization, thus to break the barrier among different strata, to gather people of different working posts, and to create more collision possibility for people in it.
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Architectural Dimension of Distinct White and Black
The design takes two groups of connected flowing dimensions as prototype, and incorporate the feeling and experience during temporal and spatial transformation, thus to have the relatively abstract architectural intension obtain concrete expression. The two blocks of distinct white and black engage and interweave with each other. White represents the first line production team which is of great vigor while the black is the down-to-earth R&D team which is sober and prudent. The transparent glass blocks among them are just like a kind of invisible adhesive, implicating the independence and connection of the two.
To meet different demands for future development of the enterprises, the design creates comfortable working environment for different groups with the organization mode of “functional mode + atrium space”. Together with diverse indoor environment, it ensures the close connection among different functions but also ensures the flexible and efficient organization relationship. Meanwhile, it also finds a new thought for the variability of future space.
In the new buildings of the city, the design puts the compound functional diversity in the open space through multiple platforms and multi-layered public space such as the sunken garden and the 3D green slopes. Together with the large span space and tranquil pool at the entrance to the ground floor, it attracts the outside traffic with amiable posture while ensuring the proper privacy for internal use. In this way, it breaks the boundary between indoor and outdoor space and contributes to the city with its landscape, while introducing the vigor of the city into it. Each time when night falls, the boundless pool at the entrance reflects the sixth facade at the top and renders a picturesque scene for the city.
No one live in the city in isolation. It is also true with the architecture. We hope that we could put more vigorous space into it by resorting to the internet thoughts with the precondition of satisfying the diverse demands of hi-tech enterprise development. We hope to ignite different sparks among different group of people and to offer the city and different users with more kindness through this building.
The project is a complex of Bungalow (Djoglo Bungalow) and Lounge (Djati Lounge) situated in the mountainous city of Malang in Eastern Java. This complex comprise of eleven bungalow that spread on the site next to the golf course and a restaurant/multifunction room. The project takes on a contemporary approach of Joglo, a traditional vernacular house of Javanese people with its roof structure that mimics the sourrounding mountain.
The term “Joglo” is also used to refer the distinctive type of Javanese roof constructed by terracota roof tile with rising central part of roof supported by four or more main wooden columns (saka guru). The roof formed a pyramid-like structure with central part is taller and steeper. Joglo consists of two parts; the pendopo and dalem. The pendopo is the front section of Joglo which is used to receive guests or as reception hall. The dalem is the inner sections with walled enclosure and rooms such as bedroom and kitchen.
The use of modern material such as glass and steel have allow the dalem of a joglo a new interpretation in spatial experience. The typically solid timber wall has been replaced with glass wall allowing more connection between the interior and exterior by absorbing the view of the surrounding mountains while maintaining privacy. The use of hollowed terracota concrete on the pendopo allows the unobstructed cool breeze of the city of Malang inside the space. The traditional roof structure typically made of terracota roof tile is replaced by modern roof shingle, creating a more contemporary look.
Lead Architects: Joseph N Biondo, AIA – Principal Randy Galiotto, AIA – Project Architect Joseph Balsamo – Project Manager Kate Carter Elliot A. Nolter David S. Wrigley, CSI, CCS Henry J. Delvecchio Michael Metzger, AIA, LEED AP William H. Deegan Christa Duelberg-Kraftician, AIA, LEED AP BD+C, GGP Pat Ruggiero Andy McAllister Christie Jephson Nicas Dan Silberman Austin McInnis
From the architect. Decades before the city’s founding in 1752, the region later known as Easton, Pennsylvania was originally known as “The Place at the Forks” by the Lenape Native American tribe. This nickname refers to the position of the city at the confluence of the Delaware and Lehigh rivers. These rivers proved significant throughout history, allowing Easton to become a prominent military base during the Revolutionary War, one of the first three cities to hold a public reading of the Declaration of Independence, and a significant transportation hub for the steel and coal industries during the 19th century.
Today, the Delaware and Lehigh rivers are united at the site of the new Easton City Hall and Transportation Center – a nod to the city’s history and a signal of the resurgence of government and transportation in the region. The building serves as Easton’s public gateway and is a welcoming symbol for the city’s future.
The complex is made up of two companion structures: a three-story, 45,000-square-foot hybrid civic building and a three-level parking deck. The main building houses Easton’s local government on its upper two floors; retail tenants and a regional transportation hub occupy its base. The mixed programming within the complex gives this civic building a life beyond its normal 9 a.m. – 5 p.m. office hours.
The open floor plan’s organization is guided by planning principles that embody the spirit of Easton’s local government: welcoming, collaborative, open, transparent, and innovative. City Hall recalls the City’s historic beginnings as a transportation hub by showcasing the movement of people through the intermodal center, the movement of goods through the retail tenants, and the movement of ideas through the government offices and public spaces.
The building massing modulates in plan, section, and material texture to complement the pedestrian scale of Easton’s historic district. A glass entry and façade symbolize Easton’s commitment to transparency in government, allowing passers-by to see activity happening within, while providing views of the city’s downtown for building occupants. A shingled glass canopy above the entry symbolizes the three tributaries of Easton: the Delaware, Lehigh, and Bushkill. When it rains, this canopy becomes a stage for running water which overlays the subsequent view upwards to a sculptural steel railing and three story lobby, evoking Easton’s local tributaries.
This public lobby bisects the building’s simple, linear organization; it is here where the tactile experience is felt at its apex. The primary material of the building’s public spaces, including the lobbies and City Council chambers, is Pennsylvania Cherry. The wood is patterned to resemble an abstraction of the Lenape tribe’s longhouse, historically clad in shingled bark. The building’s structural parts are subtly evident and recall the history of transportation–intricate and resourceful structural elements that traversed the landscape and waterways, layered like sediment settled at the bed of a river.
Product Description. The building’s design is economical, strategically using resources on public spaces, while government space is flexible and modest. Locally fabricated precast concrete panel systems from Slaw Precast provide both structure and envelope and use board-form patterning techniques to create a texture reminiscent of early colonial masonry joints. Northampton County, which encompasses the city of Easton, is the birthplace of American Portland Cement, an element that has not only propelled the region’s past successes, but has also become a high-tech building material that delivers incredible gains.
Sig Nordal 