Arch Daily |
- Siblings / Arklab
- AD Classics: Park Hill Estate / Jack Lynn and Ivor Smith
- TR House / PMMT
- Apartment House Prenzlauer Berg / Barkow Leibinger
- House in Mukainada / Fujiwaramuro Architects
- Bed One Block Hostel / A MILLIMETRE
- Court House / KOIZUMISEKKEI
- Bardon House / Bureau Proberts
- 50-Foot-Tall Buckminster Fuller “Fly’s Eye” Dome to Be Erected in Arkansas
- Del Mar College Music Addition / Richter Architects
- Chicago Announces Controversial Plans to Replace Helmut Jahn’s Thompson Center with 115-Story Skyscraper
- House La Encantada III / Javier Artadi
- Alvar Aalto Foundation Breaks All-Time Record for Number of Visitors in 2016
- Uber Advanced Technologies Group Center / Assembly Design Studio
- 9 Unusual and Interesting Small Churches and Chapels, As Selected by Sketchfab
- Cotia Library Garden / IPEA
- Want to Understand the Inner Workings of China's iPhone City? Start Here
- FAAB Architektura Fights Smog in Cracow with Proposed Music Academy
| Posted: 26 Jan 2017 09:00 PM PST  © Åke E:son Lindman
 © Åke E:son Lindman From the architect. The twelve row houses sit on the boundary between a nature reserve and a paved street. They acts as a link between the two environments. Between urbanity and wilderness.  Site Plan They are constructed with four staggered floors that follow the terrain and act as a conduit between the street and the wood. The first offset floor towards the street contains the kitchen. An offset floor towards the wood contains the spacious living room. The bedrooms are located on the top floors, first the two smaller bedrooms one offset floor up from the living room with a window towards the street, then the master bedroom and a family room a further offset floor up, facing the wood.  © Åke E:son Lindman In addition to serving as a link between nature and the street, the houses act as a filter between private and public. The further up the residents go, the more privacy they enjoy. The kitchen faces the entrance and the street and has picture windows. The living room also has picture windows, but instead of overlooking life in the street, the offer the residents a view of the wood. The windows in the upper-floor bedrooms are covered by a coarse wooden screen, which helps limit insight from the outside but also frames the view from the inside and gives the building an expression that brings the wood and the house closer together.  © Åke E:son Lindman  © Åke E:son Lindman Product Description. Extended across the upper floor windows are timber vertical slats which helps limit insight from the outside but also frames the view from the inside and gives the building an expression that brings the wood and the house closer together.  © Åke E:son Lindman  This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| AD Classics: Park Hill Estate / Jack Lynn and Ivor Smith Posted: 26 Jan 2017 08:00 PM PST  © Wikimedia user/Flickr user Paolo Margari (licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0) From its hilltop vantage point in the east end of Sheffield, UK, the Park Hill Estate surveys the post-industrial city which sprawls westwards. Its prominent location makes the estate highly visible and it has, over time, become engrained in the popular consciousness – a part of the fabric of the city. Although today it divides opinion, following its completion in 1961 it was hailed as an exemplary model for social housing. Designed by architects Jack Lynn and Ivor Smith under the supervision of Sheffield's visionary City Architect John Lewis Womersley, the estate now stands as testament to an era when young British architects were revolutionizing the field of residential architecture with radical housing programs. The Park Hill Estate was part of Womersley's strategy to introduce more high-density housing to Sheffield, which he believed would foster a stronger sense of community than the ubiquitous back-to-back terraces.[1] This policy went hand in hand with an urgent need for slum clearance; The Park, a slum so notorious for its high crime rate that it was known locally as 'Little Chicago,' was demolished to make way for the estate.  Before and after renovation. Image © Paul Dobraszczyk The site was, in many ways, the perfect incubator for an ambitious housing scheme. Its elevated position would afford residents sweeping views and fresh air. Given the prevailing south-westerly wind, the estate would also largely escape pollution from the heavy industries to the north-east. The city center is just a short walk away, allowing residents to quickly commute to work without having to rely on public transport. Furthermore, the geological makeup of the area was such that it could bear the heavy load of a high-rise development. This choice of location may also have been influenced by housing projects abroad; in 1954, Womersley took several members of the Council Housing Committee on a tour of Western Europe to study high-rise developments on the continent. One of his travelling companions was Councilor Lambert, who later described how "the building up of hill-top architectural compositions is gradually producing something of the fascination of the Italian hill towns."[2] Park Hill comprises four residential blocks linked by high-level bridges, alongside an extensive ground-level development of shops, pubs, laundry rooms, a playground, and a school. The structure of the residential blocks, which range from four to fourteen stories high, is a grid frame of reinforced concrete infilled with brick. The exposed frame creates a mosaic of brick panels which progressively change in color from purple to terracotta, red and cream.[3] This design detail was recommended by Constructivist artist John Forrester, who had been brought in as a collaborator on the project after Lynn had chanced upon some of his constructions in a gallery and noted certain parallels between Forrester's work and his own.[4]  © Paul Dobraszczyk Writing in 1961, Reyner Banham distilled the character of the newly-built estate into a single word: unity.[5] In plan, the residential blocks appear to be distinct; in reality, they function as one cohesive building. This cohesion is largely due to the groundbreaking system of pedestrian navigation and circulation for which the estate gained widespread recognition and of which it ultimately became paradigmatic. The architects created what would become known as 'streets in the sky;' decks ten feet wide which stretch the length of the blocks and from which apartments are accessed. With the exception of the uppermost street, each run down to ground level at one or both ends. Much like a traditional road network, the streets offer extensive freedom of movement and, together with the bridges, are designed to bind the separate apartment buildings together to create a unified whole. The estate was designed to replicate the strong sense of community found in traditional British housing; the decks emulate the social function of the alleyways between terraced miners' houses found in Lynn's hometown of North Seaton.[6] Shielded from the elements and generally traffic-free, it was correctly predicted that they would be used as areas for children to play and housewives to socialize. The generous width of the decks also allowed small electric milk floats to drive through the streets and make deliveries directly to residents' doors. By encouraging interaction along the horizontal axes of the estate, the architects avoided the problem of social isolation often experienced by residents of high-rise buildings. In referencing familiar architectural traditions and social spaces, they also eased the transition for those who moved into the estate from terraces elsewhere in Sheffield.  © Paul Dobraszczyk To create a sense of continuity and stability, neighbors from the demolished Park slum were rehoused in adjacent apartments in Park Hill, and the streets were even given the same names as those which they replaced. The strong community ties within the estate were one of its resounding successes, with various tenants' associations springing up to organize, as Lynn recounted, "fishing trips, treats for old folk, dances and a host of other social activities."[7] The composition of the residential blocks also strengthened this community spirit. A single roofline was maintained throughout the estate, with the height of blocks varying to accommodate for the sloping site. As a result, residents looking out from the street deck see another block at eye-level with their own; a visual metaphor for the purported egalitarian nature of social housing. The blocks form a wall along the western edge of the site, creating a boundary between the estate and the city center as if to demarcate Park Hill's territory. The blocks sprout eastwards from this wall, cradling the ground-level amenities to create an atmosphere of seclusion and security. The area encompassed by these curved limbs increases in size with the height of the blocks in order to aid air circulation and avoid any sense of claustrophobia.[8]  © Paul Dobraszczyk Lynn and Smith drew up the initial designs for Park Hill in just six weeks, a remarkable feat for a development which included 995 flats for 3,000 people. The speed of their output can be at least partly attributed to the fact that they did not draw up a complete architectural elevation for the residential blocks. Instead, they focused their efforts on creating an H-shaped template, comprising four apartments, which could be replicated in various configurations across the site; an architectural mass production. The deck forms the crossbar of the 'H', providing access to two apartments below and two maisonettes above. This configuration meant that streets only needed to be placed every three stories, thereby cutting down on both cost and construction time. Parallels have been drawn between Park Hill and Le Corbusier's Unite d'Habitation in Marseilles, which had been completed in 1952 and which also included an ingenious corridor access system on every third floor. Lynn acknowledged that the impact of the Unite d'Habitation was far-reaching[9], but this was by no means the sole, or even primary, source of inspiration for Park Hill. The concept of 'streets in the sky' had been championed by Alison and Peter Smithson, who had taught Lynn at the Architectural Association and who would later employ the system to great effect at their Robin Hood Gardens estate in London.  © Paul Dobraszczyk  © Paul Dobraszczyk Upon its opening, Park Hill was lauded as a breakthrough in social housing design. It was the subject of multiple films, gaining widespread publicity through a three-part documentary broadcast on national television, and many architects made pilgrimages to Sheffield to study the estate. Nevertheless, its heyday was tragically short-lived. Many of the ensuing problems were structural: the concrete rapidly spalled, the Garchey refuse system installed in the apartments proved prohibitively expensive to operate, and residents complained of insufficient sound-proofing. The real downfall of the estate, though, was brought about by the collapse of the steel industry in Sheffield in the 1970s. Park Hill was home to many steelworkers, and mass unemployment caused a huge surge in crime within the estate, which soon became dilapidated through vandalism and neglect.[10] Despite repeated calls for the estate to be torn down, in 1998 English Heritage controversially awarded it a Grade II* listed status, thereby making it Europe's largest listed structure. With the estate protected from demolition, and lacking the funds necessary to renovate the estate themselves, in 2004 Sheffield City Council awarded a contract to developers Urban Splash to regenerate the site. The ongoing extensive redevelopment work involved the removal of everything but the concrete frame. As a primarily commercial development, much of the social ethos of the original estate has been lost. Nevertheless, the apartment configuration and signature streets in the sky remain, though the latter has been narrowed in order to increase the size of the former. References to original design features are also made, with brightly colored aluminum panels replacing the brick infills. Smith described the redevelopment as "a new beginning"[11], suggesting that, even in its altered state, Park Hill continues to embody the same optimism for the future as it did when it was first built.  © Paul Dobraszczyk  © Paul Dobraszczyk References
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| Posted: 26 Jan 2017 07:00 PM PST  © Pedro Pegenaute  © Pedro Pegenaute From the architect. TR House Barcelona is a single-family house with a compact morphology. Its shape is the answer to the limitations presented by the pre-existing conditions, combined with an innovative solution and with solid functionality criteria. In light of the urban planning constrains of this site and once it is situated on a depressed area, we had to solve an accentuated slope between the main entrance and the access to the house, creating two levels of access; one inferior and one intermediate. Trough slopes and ramps that establish different relations between the landscape, the house and its interiors, we've tried to minimize the big impact of the gap between the main entrance and the lower part of the site.  © Pedro Pegenaute The result is a 13,00m x 13,50m three-storey cube-shaped volume, placed on a lower level than the street, that tries to establish a visual relationship with the creek that delimits the site, at the same time as it integrates itself visually with the landscape and with the surrounding higher buildings. The volume is organized in a way that gives response to the users' needs, creating a central axis from which you can access the several rooms and that guarantees, at the same time, privacy from the street and neighbours, and a visual relationship with the natural environment. In the opposite direction of this axis, the house seeks to merge with the verdant surroundings.  © Pedro Pegenaute The image of the building aims to respond to the defined functional needs. On one side, an outer envelope made of vitrified ceramic tiles, assembled on a stainless steel wired net, giving response to the need to merge with the green surroundings. Within a range of greens, we've worked with four different tones to obtain de same shades that one observes on the surrounding landscape during the four seasons of the year, creating the required merging feeling. By this ceramic curtain we were able to solve 4 plans that in architecture are normally solved in separate ways: the facade, the pergola, the curtain walls and the roof.  © Pedro Pegenaute  Diagram  © Pedro Pegenaute On the other side, the facades where all the rooms are open to, respond to visual and privacy settings, which connect or hide the inhabitants with the surroundings. The resulting solution is a facade created with chestnut wooden slats, which have openings that where strictly dimensioned according to lighting needs and comfort of the users. In these opening areas one can find a hidden system of adjustable horizontal aluminium slats that allow the user to control solar incidence and to provide greater comfort levels.  © Pedro Pegenaute  Floor Plans  © Pedro Pegenaute The outside platforms are stitched in a way that connects the different access areas located different heights, with a cobblestone ramp made with granite pieces interpolated with small grass areas.  © Pedro Pegenaute On the exterior side that is open to the landscape, a large wooden platform has de function to lengthen the living/dining room area, extending it to the outside, creating a nice outer living space, under the shade of trees. This platform also gives access to the back part of the house, establishing an interesting circuit flow.  © Pedro Pegenaute Due to its morphology and topography, the trapezium shaped site exposes a heavy slope on the tip that is closer to the creek. In this area, further away from the street, a playing area is generated. The pronounced slope is solved with a wooden platform sequence that establishes a dialogue between the house and the garden, once the platforms are made with the same type of chestnut wood that one can find on the facade. The proportion and disposition of the wooden pieces are the same, both on the facade and on the exterior platforms.  Section Therefore, the TR House Barcelona represents an innovative fully-functional exercise that achieves a clear dialogue with its surroundings at the time as it gives an answer to the changing needs of its users.  © Pedro Pegenaute  This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Apartment House Prenzlauer Berg / Barkow Leibinger Posted: 26 Jan 2017 06:00 PM PST  © Simon Menges
 © Laurian Ghinitoiu From the architect. Tucked away in the inner courtyard of a block in Berlin's Prenzlauer Berg neighborhood, an unusual residential house has emerged: With it's steep roof looming some 10 meters above the building — more pyramid than cube — this boldly shaped building is entirely enveloped by a multi-colored brick skin. Irregularly proportioned aluminum-frame windows reference the history of these inner courtyards, often given over to industrial use in this area of the city at the time of the district's initial development. At first glance, the appearance of the house does not seem to adhere to popular current conceptions of context-driven building expansions. In fact, it is the end result of tight parameters stemming from building regulations and historic preservation conditions. Used creatively as design tools, these restrictions led to a building that seems at the same time both familiar and strange, capable of blending into its surroundings while maintaining a strong independent character.  © Simon Menges  Section  © Simon Menges Within a framework of re-densification, two initially conflicting positions needed mediating: the historic preservation office, involved due to the existing heritage protection of the building block ensemble, stipulated that the new building follow the cubature of the initial structure that had been destroyed during the war, in effect reconstructing the original configuration. But the city's building department rejected this due to current setback regulations. The solution was to create a steeply sloped roof with an eave height of only around 7.50 m. With a slope of just under 70°, the roof stretches over three stories up to the building's upper edge, standing at a height of approx. 18 m, where a roof terrace seems to clip the pyramid's peak. The resulting volume, resembling the archetypal shape of a house in a child's drawing, satisfied the prescribed distance requirements between the building and the three neighboring plots. Just like its predecessor, the almost square-shaped structure stands with its back flush to the firewall of the rear building of the abutting courtyard. A shadow gap, widening significantly from the eaves upwards, underlines the independent nature of the new building.  © Simon Menges  Floor Plans  © Simon Menges A brick skin seamlessly covers the cubed volume produced via these limitations — from the vertical exterior walls, over the sloped façade and attic, up to the floor of the roof terrace. The bricks form the outer layer of a double-shelled construction. The exterior shell's brickwork references 'Gründerzeit' construction methods and the materiality of the front building's street-side façade, while its color spectrum quotes the tones of the surrounding façades within the courtyard. For this, a Brandenburg brick manufacturer fabricated 20,000 bricks in a range of six different colors: from off-white and yellow to orange-brown, pink, and grey. The bricks bear idiosyncrasies: either deliberately worked on before firing or with incidental traces of production and storage left visible, they cover the walls in an uneven pattern. Executing this unusual treatment on the sloped façades demanded a high degree of precision, applying the bricks via special supports and creating individually molded corner stones for the edges. Finally, the entire surface of the brickwork has been finished with a wash.  Section Along with the lively fabric of the brick façade, irregularly applied windows help to loosen up the strict geometry of this building that asserts itself as an unmistakably contemporary complement to the ensemble. Where the new construction meets the adjacent buildings, the windows orient themselves according to the sizes and proportions of those of its neighbors, eventually shifting with growing distance into square and horizontal formats. On the third floor, their bottom edge precisely matches the eave height and corresponds with the height of the windowsill. Their wide frames, made of polished anodized aluminum, are recessed flush into the building. Their metallic shimmer, smooth surface and sharp edges providing a perplexing moment in the otherwise traditionally crafted brick façade, replete with intentional irregularities.  © Simon Menges The house has two residential units that are organized as multi-level apartments. The lower unit, about 250 sqm, is organized into a ground-level living floor opening onto a private courtyard garden, with bedrooms located on the second floor. The upper apartment, about 200 sqm, consists of four levels: two for living, one for sleeping, and a roof terrace. The common staircase, the internal stairs of the living spaces, and the auxiliary spaces and utility rooms on all floors are compactly condensed towards the firewall.  © Simon Menges A unique character is created by this interplay of materials and production methods, the building appearing at the same time hand-worked and industrial, archaic and modern.  This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| House in Mukainada / Fujiwaramuro Architects Posted: 26 Jan 2017 02:00 PM PST  © Toshiyuki Yano
 © Toshiyuki Yano From the architect. Clients desired a house suitable for an elderly couple where gardening could be enjoyed. They also wanted a large space to be able to run a variety store and host a gallery or workshop in future.  © Toshiyuki Yano Therefore, we proposed a house with a planted walkway outside of the house. Outside of the house, we created wide rounded-shape earthen floor (doma) connected to the house. By planting flower and trees in and around the earthen floor (doma), the walkway appears.  © Toshiyuki Yano Making the most of existing Japanese dogwood trees, the house is located diagonally to the site with consideration given to a view of mountains on the road side, daylight from the south and misalignment of eye lines from adjacent lands.  Floor Plan After the completion, the house becomes a gathering place for people, including parents and children of the owners living nearby. The atmosphere of the house will continue to change as the plants grow.  © Toshiyuki Yano  Sketch  © Toshiyuki Yano Product Description. Western Red Cedar timbers are used for exterior wall and Oak and Kempas floorings are used for interior floor so that the client can enjoy aging of architecture with growth of plants in the garden.  © Toshiyuki Yano  This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Bed One Block Hostel / A MILLIMETRE Posted: 26 Jan 2017 12:00 PM PST  © Jirayu Rattanawong
 © Jirayu Rattanawong From the architect. Two years after Bed Station Hostel was completed in 2014, the client offered us with a new project, a typical one-block-shophouse in the same neighbourhood. A unit of 4m. width by 16m. depth, named BED ONE BLOCK HOSTEL after the building character. Despite a small area, all facilities are still required with the maximum bed number. Balance between public and private space is also necessary.  © Jirayu Rattanawong To design a hostel, a space for guests' social interaction plays major role. In BED ONE BLOCK HOSTEL, not only the common area, but also in each dormitory, social space was created for guests to share and relax. The common area was designed to be featured stair on the ground floor that connect to the space on the mezzanine floor, where everyone can meet up or use a working space individual and relax. Apart from the common area, each dormitory has its own small relaxing area where guest can privately take a rest, arrange their luggages or have a chat with other guests.  © Jirayu Rattanawong  Section  © Jirayu Rattanawong The exterior which greets all pedestrians was required with a buffer to conceal back of house facilities, such as air conditioning and other systems. A distinct pattern for the facade was intended to relate with Thai-element. After experimenting with many options, a pattern of shingle tiled roof with a twist of modern material and pattern was the final solution. White perforated steel sheets with various hole sizes were arranged diagonally which created difference of transparency and contrast to the adjacent blocks. This facade benefits not only an appealing exterior appearance but also allow natural light and still maintains privacy of interior space.  Plan  Plan A welcoming and friendly service might not be enough to make a good hostel. But with a good design to support guests' behaviour can make it a great one. This is what BED ONE BLOCK HOSTEL is trying to achieve.  © Jirayu Rattanawong  This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Posted: 26 Jan 2017 11:00 AM PST  © Toshiyuki Yano
 © Toshiyuki Yano From the architect. For this house project, we've tried to create a new relation between indoor basketball court and living house. The layout arrangement of this house is inspired by typical gymnasium layouts, where we have the indoor basketball court planned in centre core space of the house, with rooms located on opposite sides of the court.  © Toshiyuki Yano  Section  © Toshiyuki Yano The house is designed with a unique scale, which makes it hard to define whether the interior space is grand or narrow; the basketball court is ¼ the size of a regular basketball court, with a 3050mm high basketball ring, and a 6000mm high ceiling, which is even large enough to play free-throws. The centre court is also designed to be multi-purpose, with a possibility in becoming a home library, and more possibilities to be explored by the client over time.  © Toshiyuki Yano  This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Bardon House / Bureau Proberts Posted: 26 Jan 2017 09:00 AM PST  © Alicia Taylor Photography
 © Alicia Taylor Photography From the architect. Liam Proberts, Managing and Creative Director of award-winning Brisbane-based architectural practice bureau^proberts, has designed his family home.  © Alicia Taylor Photography The house is situated on a wide, ridge-top block in the hilly Brisbane suburb of Bardon, falling steeply due-north to a tree reserve.  © Alicia Taylor Photography Amongst an established avenue of large gabled interwar houses, the facade from the street is familiar. Angular monochrome textures screen the house in what Proberts describes as "a strident interpretation of the more traditional gables and hip roofs of its surrounds".  © Alicia Taylor Photography "The materials and screens are deliberately constructed to reveal shapes and framework that draw on its Queenslander context," says Proberts. Behind the screened façade, a triangular skylight shrouds the entryway and creates a private transitional space that plays with light and shade, and obscures inside from out.  © Alicia Taylor Photography This seamless connection with the landscape proliferates as the hallway descends to the main living level, which is designed around an internal courtyard. "The design is grounded in – and strongly connected to – the landscape and characteristics of its sloping site," Liam said.  Lower Floor Plan  Middle Floor Plan  Upper Level Floor Plan The open living space creates a veranda-like thoroughfare, melding the courtyard with the landscape beyond, via glass sliding doors along the entire northern edge. Reaching out to the reserve like a promontory, the only barrier to the trees is a soft planting recessed at the floor edge.  © Alicia Taylor Photography Upstairs, the master bedroom and ensuite perch amongst the tree tops, drawing the landscape in through seamless glazing and low-level louvres. Along the eastern side, the additional bedrooms enjoy full-height ventilation and privacy, protected by the screened façade as it extends from the entry.  © Alicia Taylor Photography  © Alicia Taylor Photography The lower level houses a relaxed family space that opens up to a terraced yard and pool at the natural ground level of the sloping block, continuing the fluidity and connection to landscape.  North-South Section Liam's understanding of subtropical living and passion for the Queensland architectural vernacular stems from his childhood, growing up in the tin and timber cottages of Spring Hill.  © Alicia Taylor Photography Dark and stained timber feature as expressed beams, against a backdrop of lime- washed hoop pine features extensively throughout the main living spaces (as panelling, screening, ceilings and joinery elements). The result is an intriguing, yet familiar collection of forms and materials combined in an exciting and thoughtful way.  © Alicia Taylor Photography  This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| 50-Foot-Tall Buckminster Fuller “Fly’s Eye” Dome to Be Erected in Arkansas Posted: 26 Jan 2017 08:10 AM PST  3D computer rendering of Buckminster's Fly's Eye Dome as it will appear on the North Lawn at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. (View from Early 20th Century Gallery Bridge.). Image Courtesy of Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art One of Buckminster Fuller's visionary housing structures is set to be erected at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas. The 50-foot structure, known as the "Fly's Eye Dome" is the largest of only three original prototypes hand-fabricated by Fuller during his lifetime. Inspired by the shape of an insect's eye, the structure was designed by Fuller as an affordable, portable home of the future. The dome features 61 openings with its geodesic framework, which were intended to hold solar panels and water collection systems that could allow the dome to be self-sufficient. Designed in 1961, the 50-foot dome was displayed during the Los Angeles Bicentennial in 1981 before spending the next three decades in storage. In early 2013, the dome was acquired by architectural historian Robert Rubin, who restored it to show at Festival International d'Art in Toulouse, France, in the summer of that year. Now, it has found a permanent home on Crystal Bridges' North Lawn, not far from a recently relocated Frank Lloyd Wright Usonian home, the Bachman-Wilson House. "It is shocking and people are going to go, 'What is that?'" Curatorial Assistant Dylan Turk told AP. "Hopefully they'll go out there and want to know what it is." "We have an actual piece of paper where he had a picture of a fly that he had found in a newspaper in the '60s," continued Turk. "He saw it and thought, 'The structure of this fly's eye could become one of my type of domes.' He was literally looking at a fly's eye." The other two original domes, measuring 12 feet and 24 feet, are both held by private owners, the smallest being owned by one Sir Norman Foster. The Fly's Eye Dome will be installed in the summer of 2017. News via Crystal Bridges. At Crystal Bridges Museum, Frank Lloyd Wright's Bachman-Wilson House Reframes Architecture as Art  This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Del Mar College Music Addition / Richter Architects Posted: 26 Jan 2017 07:00 AM PST  © Craig Blackmon
 © Craig Blackmon From the architect. This project is an initial phase of a larger program to provide much needed expansion and renovation to the aging facilities that serve the nationally-recognized Del Mar College Music program. The project includes two recording studios, a rehearsal hall, and music laboratories and classrooms. The original building, built in the 1950's and 1960's was dominantly oriented to a campus perimeter street, away from the pedestrian core and life of the campus. As music provides an important element to the campus cultural life, it was considered a key project opportunity to provide significant campus benefit beyond technical scope of the project – to utilize this initial phase to re-direct the Music Department to the heart of the campus, to create better pedestrian linkages to the campus, and to begin delineating new, lively campus outdoor spaces.  © David Richter The design seamlessly extends the established campus materials of buff brick and pink cast-stone while energizing the urban campus core with a dramatically curved glass curtain-wall with integral solar shading. This concave new dominant facade expresses musical qualities of meter and movement and offers a new architectural identity for the Music Department facing the historic heart of the campus. Additionally, it boldly scribes and enhances an important but previously obscured north/south campus path, and creates an acoustic and visual backdrop for a planned-impromptu amphitheater carved into a new campus courtyard to the east.  © Craig Blackmon  First Floor Plan  © Craig Blackmon Product Description. The curved glass curtain-wall with integral solar shading expresses musical qualities of rhythm and expression. It forms the concave facade that creates an acoustic and visual backdrop for planned and impromptu performances.  © Craig Blackmon  This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Posted: 26 Jan 2017 06:00 AM PST  115 story skyscraper that could replace the Thompson Center. Image © Adrian Smith Gordon Gill Architecture. Via Crain's Chicago may be about to receive a new supertall skyscraper in the heart of the Loop – but it would require the demolition of one of the city's most polarizing buildings, the James R. Thompson Center, designed by Chicago architect Helmut Jahn. Owned by the state, the postmodernist Thompson Center and its colorful glass atrium have been the subject of both criticism and adoration since its opening in 1985. But wear on the building throughout the years has led to an estimated maintenance bill of $326 million, prompting the state government to find ways to rid itself of the potentially crippling costs.  115 story skyscraper that could replace the Thompson Center. Image © Adrian Smith Gordon Gill Architecture. Via Crain's In late 2015, Governor Bruce Rauner proposed a sale and demolition of the building for an estimated $220 million, but the motion was thwarted by the Democrat-controlled Illinois General Assembly. Now, the state has returned with a more concrete plan that would include a 1,700-foot-tall tower designed by Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture containing mixed-use space, illustrating the vast potential of the site. The tower would house office, residential, hotel and retail spaces, while surpassing the Willis Tower as Chicago's tallest building.  Thompson Center interior. Image © wikimedia user Tripp. Licensed under CC BY 2.0  Helmut Jahn's Alternative Proposal. Image © JAHN. Via Crain's Learning of the Thompson Center's potential fate, Helmut Jahn's firm, JAHN, responded to the news with a proposal of their own that would add a 110-story tower to the edge of the site, integrated into the existing building.  Thompson Center from the street. Image © wikimedia user Primeromundo. Image released to public domain As of now, all proposals are purely speculative – any sale of the building would require planning to relocate hundreds of state workers along with satisfying long-term retail agreements. Read more about this story, here. News via Chicago Tribune, Crain's. Chicago's Overlooked Postmodern Architecture  This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| House La Encantada III / Javier Artadi Posted: 26 Jan 2017 05:00 AM PST  © Elsa Ramirez
 © Elsa Ramirez From the architect. The house La Encantada III, is an oasis within another: the residential neighborhood of La Encantada, connected to the Villa Swamps, is in fact an oasis on the desert coast of Lima.  © Elsa Ramirez The project is organized in three parallel volumes that liberate among them free areas that protract green as a protagonist element.  © Elsa Ramirez  Ground Floor Plan  © Elsa Ramirez The first volume contains the service areas, the second, two stories, the social areas and the bedrooms, and the third a gymnasium and a small workshop.  © Elsa Ramirez  Axonometric  © Elsa Ramirez The volumes have been strategically perforated to reveal this condition and facilitate the journey through them all along the terrain, from the entrance to the bottom of the whole structure, in a sequential architectural walk.  © Elsa Ramirez  This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Alvar Aalto Foundation Breaks All-Time Record for Number of Visitors in 2016 Posted: 26 Jan 2017 04:00 AM PST  © Samuel Ludwig Last year saw the Alvar Aalto Foundation experience a record-breaking number of visitors at each of its four sites – a total of 42,755 as opposed to the 36,744 people that toured the sites in 2015. Of those numbers, The Alvar Aalto Museum and the Muuratsalo Experimental House in Jyväskylä received a total of 20,005 visitors combined, half of which had arrived from outside of Finland to explore the Museum, while also continuing the recent trend of an increasing number of visits over the past five years.  Muuratsalo Experimental House / Alvar Aalto. Image © Nico Saieh Meanwhile, in Helsinki, the Finnish architect's Aalto House and Studio Aalto had 11,682 and 7,068 tourists respectively, both approximately accommodating an additional 1,500 people to the previous year. According to the foundation, the steady growth in numbers of visitors is partly due to an extended summer tourist season, coupled with greater media coverage of Aalto-related topics.  Säynätsalo Town Hall. Image © Flickr user singhkumar licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0. Image The sites have also been given more public exposure and are as of late, hosting small functions and conferences, including a popular exhibition on the works of Somo and Jussi Heikkilä, seen by over 8,000 people.
 Jyvaskyla University / Alvar Aalto. Image © Nico Saieh All four sites have been the source of international attention, attracting travelers from across 50 different nations. Throughout the year, guided tours were conducted in 7 languages, while Japanese visitors accounted for more than a quarter of those visiting. Learn more about the foundation's public sites here. News via: Alvar Aalto Foundation. 10 Projects by Alvar Aalto Which Highlight the Breadth of His Built Work Alvar Aalto Foundation Launches Competition to Form Museum Center in Jyväskylä Look Through 15 of Alvar Aalto's Most Notable Works with This Digital Stereoscope Google Launches New Virtual Experience that Takes You Inside Alvar Aalto's Works AD Classics: Muuratsalo Experimental House / Alvar Aalto  This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Uber Advanced Technologies Group Center / Assembly Design Studio Posted: 26 Jan 2017 03:00 AM PST  © Jasper Sanidad
 © Jasper Sanidad From the architect. Since Uber's inception in 2009, the company has transformed the way we live by connecting over a billion riders to drivers in 450 cities and counting. In 2015, Uber opened the Advanced Technologies Group (ATG) Center in Pittsburgh to research and develop solutions for mapping, vehicle safety, and autonomous transportation. Pittsburgh's long history of cutting-edge production technology and manufacturing the most essential machines of its age matched perfectly Uber's desire to launch and build its first self-driving vehicle. This idea of marrying the past and future became the design inspiration behind ATG.  © Jasper Sanidad In a renovated 80,000 sf warehouse space, engineers will be envisioning, designing and building a city for the future. Every wire, part, and idea forged within these walls will be an artifact of that future. Uber envisioned this space as a cathedral to the values of industry—hard work, dedication, creativity. At the head of the plan's central nave is the showroom which acts as a kind of altar to the autonomous car. Everything here is white - stark white, from the bleached pine stadium seating canted slightly, looking out a curtain wall at the Allegheny River, to the granite fireplace, warming the space on snowy, winter days.  © Jasper Sanidad Drawing inspiration from the "City of Steel" (now a "City of the Future"), Assembly Design Studio wanted to both contrast and complement the bright white of a showroom by warming the space with colors and materials associated with the industrial era. The worn corten steel frames, glass walkways, and natural grain of local hardwoods all echo the city's former glory.  © Jasper Sanidad  © Jasper Sanidad Unlike a typical technology office, this space is for builders. With ample desk room and a table between every pack of workstations, each person can work 360 degrees. Every work area has room for toolboxes, carts, and, of course, prototypes. There are studio spaces, designed for teams of six to brainstorm and hash out specific projects over a set period of time. Each space has an informal area, two small conference rooms, and six workstations. "We built a space based on function first" says Liz Guerrero, co-founder at Assembly. "They're builders. We wanted to bring beauty in basic, functional elements by pairing materials in interesting ways to create a rich experience."  © Jasper Sanidad Housed beyond the rows of workstations and studios is a fully-functional machine shop. Autonomous cars are engineered, built, and tested. After receiving final, finishing touches, they are driven across white tiles into the main central nave. Merging the machine shop with the showroom is a testament that designing with function in mind first can still take an elevated, stunning form.  Floor Plan From the "Tunnel of the Future", lined with an evolving series of prototypes, serving as a reminder that success is a process of iteration, to the corten laser cut panels, framed in smoked glass, depicting the birthplace of Uber and ATG, the "City of the Future" may be a place where the vehicles of both design and function may be a thing of the past.  © Jasper Sanidad Product Description. Steel is primarily used as an authentic counterpoint to the futuristic elements in the space (the Tunnel to the Future, the glowing ceilings, and, of course, the autonomous cars and robotics parts) - it speaks to the urban vernacular of Pittsburgh and to the rich industrial history of the city.  © Jasper Sanidad Steel is featured prevalently in the space - from the main reception area wall panels to the custom reception desk, from the cor-ten panels showings maps of Pittsburgh and SF to the fireplace shrouds to the detailing on the many custom furniture pieces.  © Jasper Sanidad  This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| 9 Unusual and Interesting Small Churches and Chapels, As Selected by Sketchfab Posted: 26 Jan 2017 01:30 AM PST  Once again, thanks to our collaboration with Sketchfab, here we have a selection of 9 virtual experiences through churches and chapels from Europe, Africa and the Americas. Each small building has its own special story, either geographical, political or structural—from one building that has experienced its own mini tour of Europe, to another which contains some rather unusual building materials. The diverse sites each seem to hold secrets, all of which can now be explored through 3D scanning technology. The fascinating variation in structural forms is also apparent, showcasing how even humble architecture has the potential to create a rich list of virtual spaces. For a more immersive experience, all of these models can be viewed on a virtual reality headset such as Google Cardboard. San Crisogono Paleo-Christian Basilica (Rome, Italy)Built in the 4th Century, San Crisogono is the oldest church on this list. However, it was rebuilt in the 12th Century by John of Crema, as well as in the 17th Century by Giovanni Battista Soria. In 1907, the so-called Paleo Christian Basilica was discovered beneath the San Crisogono, with artifacts dating back to around the 8th-11th centuries. Carpathian Ruthenian Church of the Saint Michael Archangel (Prague, Czech Republic)This church was relocated to Prague in 1929, but was originally built in the village of Velké Loučky (now a part of Ukraine) in the second half of the 17th Century. Its timber construction, numbered to keep track of the individual parts, made this deconstruction and reconstruction possible, and it had already been done once before; in 1793, Velké Loučky sold it to their wealthier neighbors in the town of Medvedovce. Although its current location is in Prague, this church holds the history of three towns and cities in its walls. Beta Abba Libanos (Lalibela, Ethiopia)Beta Abba Libanos can be found in one of Ethiopia's holiest cities, known for its monolithic churches and home to a population that almost exclusively consists of Ethiopian Orthodox Christians. Many of the churches found in the area are carved from a single piece of rock, excavated from the earth instead of built from it. In the late 12th Century and early 13th Century, Lalibela was ruled by Saint Gerber Mesquel Lalibela, who wanted to create a new Jerusalem in the town, after the old Jerusalem was captured by Arabs in 1187. Eleven of the churches are now recognized by UNESCO Wold Heritage. Eidsborg Stavkyrkje (Tokke, Norway)One of the best-preserved stave churches in Norway, Eidsborg Stavkyrkje is located by the Vest-Telemark museum in Eidsborg. The church is estimated to date back to around the years 1250 – 1300, but was partly reconstructed in the 1800s and restored in 1927 revealing Renaissance-era ornamentation and murals within the building. Church of Saint Joseph (Pidhirtsi, Ukraine)Dating back to 1766, the Church of Saint Joseph was originally a family tomb, and was converted into a temple in 1861. Between 1869 and 1939, the ownership of the building changed, and it was turned into a museum before its dome, one of its walls and multiple statues were destroyed during the Second World War. In 1997 the building was donated to the Lviv Art Gallery, and was restored. Timişeni Church (now at) the National Village Museum (Bucharest, Romania)Located in the Herastrau Park in Bucharest, the church is currently an open-air museum, a part of a much larger showcase of authentic Romanian peasant buildings scattered around an area of 100,000 square meters. Milot Chapel, Sans-Soucis (Haiti)"Without Worry," as Sans-Soucis translates to, was completed in 1813 to house Haiti's first monarch, Henri Christophe. Its ruins look over the Milot Chapel where Henri Christophe was crowned the king of northern Haiti in 1811. The palace was destroyed during an earthquake in 1842, but the chapel still stands as a memory. In 1982 Sans-Soucis became a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Castello di Amorosa Chapel (Napa Valley, USA)The Sonoma Chapel belongs to the Castello di Amorosa, a castle with 107 rooms, 8 levels and a winery, located near Calistoga, California. Up until May 2012, the winery held a weekly Catholic Mass in the tiny chapel, before it was ordered to cease by the local government. These restrictions also apply to weddings and receptions, but the castle can be rented out for corporate gatherings and fundraisers. Byzantine Church (Agios Petros, Greece)Travel 40 kilometers from Athens in the southeast direction, and you will arrive at this Byzantine Church. The style of the architecture and the type of stone used for the church both date back to the late 12th Century to early 13th Century. However, in this example of the period fragments of older buildings and even tombstones have been integrated into the construction.  This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Posted: 26 Jan 2017 01:00 AM PST  © Dalton Bertini Ruas
 © Dalton Bertini Ruas From the architect. The design of this private library has started from a requisite of space from a bibliophile: to organize and expose a collection of books previously confined in boxes. It was proposed a dialogue between daily habits cultivated in a pre-existing house and a large garden area available.  © Dalton Bertini Ruas The additional library's area intended to maintain distance enough for the recognition of new volume autonomy as well as to be placed comfortably close enough to complement and connect existing balconies and external areas. The zone of transition between new and old volume was established by a generous garden, and its incorporation into the project was determined from distinct purposes of the openings:  Site Plan Transparency: north and south facades that aim at a visual contact with existing house and the bordering garden, being protected in the north by eaves that avoids solar rays in summer and invites them to enter in winter;  © Dalton Bertini Ruas Translucent: the eastern facade is filtered with inclined horizontal brises, which homogenize external landscape, and at the west facade a dense vegetation filtrates direct sun rays and homogenizes external view;  Section  Section Dematerialization: The zenith opening is performed with special high solar filtration glass, and its position dematerializes a continuous brick wall from the main shelf, reflecting and framing the external pines.  © Dalton Bertini Ruas Inner spaces are thus defined by the openings and are arranged by the central double-brick wall, which structure the library main casing. The toilet, the most enclosed space of the design, is the buttress of this mixed structure of wooden pillars and structural masonry wall. In contrast, the most open space is the reading balcony, where one seeks to keep a simplicity of habits of reading under the canopy of a tree.  © Dalton Bertini Ruas  This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Want to Understand the Inner Workings of China's iPhone City? Start Here Posted: 26 Jan 2017 12:00 AM PST  Apple Store in Shanghai, China © Flickr user wza. Licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 The New York Times has published an in-depth article entitled 'How China Built iPhone City With Billions in Perks for Apple's Partners', revealing a treasure chest of public benefits for the world's biggest iPhone factory in Zhengzhou, China. In a city of six million inhabitants in an impoverished region of China, the local government has contributed $1.5 billion to Foxconn, Apple's supplier of iPhones. The money is used, in part, to improve local infrastructure, reduce Foxconn's export costs, and build housing for the factory's 350,000-strong workforce (five times the number of people employed directly by Apple in the United States).  iPhone City, Zhengzhou at night © Flickr user damien_thorne. Licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 In order to reap the economic benefits of hosting multinational companies such as Foxconn, the Zhengzhou authorities have offered the company a broad portfolio of benefits. These include a $600 million contribution towards the construction of Foxconn's manufacturing complex, 5% discounts on energy costs, and a relaxation of corporate tax rates.  Foxconn manufactures the iPhone © Flickr user prachatai. Licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 However, the revelations come at a time of uncertainty over the future of globalization. With the rise of economic nationalism in both China and the United States, emboldened by President Trump's denouncement of Apple's global business model, the willingness for countries to use public money to court private companies may soon disappear.  Zhengzhou Convention Centre © Flickr user josechugijon. Licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 Learn more about the iPhone City and the effect of multinational companies on the urban environment in the full article here.  Downtown Zhengzhou, China © Flickr user kenner116. Licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 News via: The New York Times.  This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| FAAB Architektura Fights Smog in Cracow with Proposed Music Academy Posted: 25 Jan 2017 10:00 PM PST  Courtesy of FAAB Architektura FAAB Architektura has designed a smog-fighting music academy on the site of a former military base in Cracow, Poland. In a city constantly tackling air pollution, FAAB has incorporated a 1300 square meter "Air Purifier" into their proposal, combating CO2 levels as effectively as 33,000 city trees. This system, however, is only one element in a music academy wholly integrated with its natural surroundings.  Site Plan. Image Courtesy of FAAB Architektura The proposed scheme forms part of a larger vision known as the 'Cracow Music City', and creates vital links between Cracow and the Vistula River. FAAB's proposal is largely car free, with emphasis given to pedestrian and cycle traffic. Consideration has also been given to a potential water tram along the river, adding to the scheme's versatility in a changing urban landscape. The buildings are clad in vernacular wooden lap panelling, adapting to their natural surroundings.  Ground Floor Education Building. Image Courtesy of FAAB Architektura  Ground Floor Concert Hall. Image Courtesy of FAAB Architektura The proposal contains three elements; an educational wing, concert hall, and small guest building. These elements meander between existing trees, alternating between indoor and outdoor space. As well as providing recreational space for students, this enables natural light to reach all practice rooms, common areas and administration suites. The user is fully immersed in nature, with a promenade leading through a park to the concert hall entrance, and circulation carefully considered to maximize views of the nearby River Vistula.  Courtesy of FAAB Architektura  Courtesy of FAAB Architektura The proposal takes full advantage of sustainable technology. As well as being equipped with an Air Purifier, the scheme is ventilated using Ground Heat Exchangers, reducing the energy needed to control internal temperature. The scheme is also capable of reusing rain water, and the heat from used hot water.  Hot Water Reuse System. Image Courtesy of FAAB Architektura  Rain Water Collection System. Image Courtesy of FAAB Architektura Through their proposed academy, FAAB has made a positive contribution to the relationship between the built and natural environment.
News via: FAAB Architektura.  This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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