New Concepts

[.:taymaz:.]

Vital Building by Mozas+Aguirre

[LTR]Vital Building by Mozas+Aguirre

​

​

Vital Building, Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain by Mozas+Aguirre Arquitectos
images: Cesar San Millan

These are the headquarters for the local savings bank. The idea is to identify the building as a live organism in motion. A black skin made of glass protects the inhabited spaces behind the stainless steel pairs. Created by Mozas+Aguirre Arquitectos, the building has a chromosome-shaped floor, with four arms. The structural concept is based on pairs of exterior metal supports, clad in stainless steel composite panels. One of the arms has been conceived as a 26-metre cantilever. In this case the concept changes and the pairs do not have any structural function.
The hall in the heart of the building has two facades, enclosed by a work of art. They have been constructed with bright red polyurethane panels with manually painted biological pattern.​

[/LTR]

 

[.:taymaz:.]

imes Hotel by Alexander Lotersztain


[LTR]

July 11th, 2008

​

The Limes Hotel by Argentinian designer Alexander Lotersztainopened at the end of last month in Brisbane, Australia.

​

The hotel incorporates a roof-top bar and cinema and is the first Australian hotel to join the Design Hotels organisation.

​

Here's some info from the hotel:
–
First Australian member of Design Hotels opens
Designed by award-winning designer, Alexander Lotersztain, the first Australian member of Design Hotels, the Limes Hotel, opened June 27 in Brisbane.

​

Located in Fortitude Valley, the hub of Brisbane's nightlife, also known for its trendy cafes, shops, bars and restaurants, in keeping with this vibrant neighbourhood, Limes has been created to include a completely open air roof top bar and roof top cinema (in hibernation until Spring).

​

Drawing inspiration from a lifetime of international travel, with countless hours spent in aeroplanes and hotel rooms, Alexander concentrated his design focus on the 21 rooms to cater for the independent traveller, rejecting the 5-star norms and opting to focus on guests' primary travel requirements through unique design solutions in styled lodgings.

​

"Attention to detail is reflected in my design choices, which are understated yet buzzing with the contemporary energy of Brisbane and the Valley surrounds," Alexander said.

​

The rooms feature custom Corian (by Dupont) kitchen benches and toilette vanities, Blackbutt timber bed heads, custom powder coat aluminium door handles, splash-back and floating bedside tables, Luna Textiles curtains and bathroom wall tiles by Bisazza. Each room has an individually hand painted feature wall created by using a mineral coating technique (Julien Fantone, Idea Creations).

​

"The Limes concept is an emphasis on the essentials to make a pleasing and at times novel experience, whether staying for a night, a drink, a movie or all of the above," Alexander said.

​

Where design permitted, mundane items such as rubbish bins and cables are minimised or completely hidden. This not only makes the room look cleaner and visually clearer, but also from a practical aspect, makes the servicing of the room more efficient.

​

"I wanted to make Limes a design experience, however stripped of the associated design ideals of something unattainable. I shifted the design focus to make the guest feel special, yet not afraid of jumping into the bed like it was their own."
Limes is a stunning yet simple urban retreat, and throughout all facets of the hotel from the rooms to the roof top bar and cinema, Alexander has created a modern and warm atmosphere unencumbered by excessive ornamentation.
"I decided to view the hotel in its absolute entirety – considering the intended look and feel, and paying heavy attention to the interiors, furniture, surfaces and finishes, as well as extending my design influence to Limes' music and drinks list. I went on to give the Limes a "face" by tangibly branding the hotel through its facade – an extension of the Limes logo on a gross scale. By leaving no facet of the hotel to chance, one feels what I can only describe as the "spirit" of Limes when in its presence. A strong feeling within the doors of Limes and a residual impact realised on returning home."
–


My Best Regards For Ever And For Always
Fantasy is my Architecture\ The Fantasy Become Reality
Arch : M. F. KanFar ​

[/LTR]

 

[.:taymaz:.]

Seeing the light - SOM's stunning church

[LTR]

Rising from its base in Downtown Oakland SOM's Cathedral of Christ the light forms an admirable curved silhouette contrasting to the square blocks surrounding it

​

Appearing as a sanctuary in its context as a holy building as well as for architecture, the wooden frame of the inner structure of the Cathedral stands like an upturned ark while the layered structure offers a contemporary sense of solace.
The 2000 year old St Francis de Sales Cathedral was damaged irreparably by the 1989 Lorna Prieta earthquake, but the new Cathedral building presides where this stood updating but retaining the religious message by stripping away the traditional iconography. The approachable result remains open to the region’s ever-changing multi-cultural makeup and to the future.
As its name suggests, the Cathedral draws on the tradition of light as a sacred phenomenon. Through its poetic introduction, indirect daylight ennobles modest materials—primarily wood, glass and concrete. With the exception of evening activities, the Cathedral is lit entirely by daylight to create an extraordinary level of luminosity.
The lightest ecological footprint was SOM’s core design objective. Through the innovative use of renewable materials, the 1500-seat Cathedral minimizes the use of energy and natural resources. The structure’s concrete makes use of industrial waste fly ash, a byproduct of coal production that requires less energy to produce than cement. An advanced version of the ancient Roman technique of thermal inertia maintains the interior climate with mass and radiant heat.
Douglas Fir, obtained through certified harvesting processes, is aesthetically pleasing, economically sound, and structurally forgiving - the wood’s surfaces add warmth while its elasticity allows for the bending and returning of shape during seismic activity. Through the use of advanced seismic techniques, including base isolation, the structure will withstand another 1,000-year earthquake.

​

​

​

​

​

__________________
​

[/LTR]

 

[.:taymaz:.]

Container for life

Single-family custom residence utilizing recycled ISO cargo containers.
​

Container architecture is on the rise – the basic structures offer a simple and environmentally conscious solution to room creation and the competition seems to be underway to use the structures to their best potential. This container-home is one of the latest to utilise this technique, using 8 cargo containers varying in legth. By embracing its humble beginnings to stylish ends, WAN find it worthy of House of the Week status. Christian Kienapfel discusses the Redondo Beach Container Home in its wider context…


The redeployed containers are a critical element of the transportation infrastructure that facilitates global trade and with the ongoing trade imbalance; millions of containers remain in ports around the USA.. Combined with technologies from the neighbouring aerospace industry, the containers have been brought together with a traditional stick frame construction to create a hybrid home. The use of materials and methods from other industries, non-related to residential construction is part of the architect’s philosophical approach.
Airplane hangar doors open the family room to the courtyard where a subterranean cargo container swimming pool is located. The recycled containers, the ceramic based insulation (same that is used on NASA’s Space Shuttle), the prefabricated metal roof panels, the multi-skinned acrylic sheets employed on greenhouses, the formaldehyde free plywood, the tank-less hot water heaters, etc. all add up to a home that is innovative, affordable and environmentally conscious.
The affordability of this building system, in addition to the containers being virtually mold proof, termite proof, fire proof and nearly indestructible, will enable the mass of society to realize the dream of creating a quality custom home at an affordable price. Study the methodologies of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Textile Block homes, Andy Warhol’s Prints, or McDonald’s Hamburgers, and you’ll find that the Architect is simply reinterpreting and re-presenting the best of these processes in a different medium. This project is the torchbearer for a new, more affordable, method of design and construction - Architecture as a Product.

​

​

​

​

 

[.:taymaz:.]

House in Somosaguas / A-cero

[LTR] House in Somosaguas / A-cero

The spanish architecture firm A-cero, directed by Joaquin Torres, has built a new house in the Madrid outskirts that synthesizes the evolution of the studio’s signature design language and its technical experimentation over the last years. The house can be aesthetically inscribed in the series of projects made by the studio since its international expansion, in places like the Dominican Republic and Dubai, presenting a greater spatial complexity and and use of shapes that underlines the relation between A-cero’s architecture and contemporary sculpture.
At first impression the house clearly shows its intentions, with the dominance of stylized curves and bold shapes that relate harmonically to its natural context while keeping a clearly modern character. The horizontal shapes pile up one on another, creating a stratified building that seems to emerge from the earth like a natural formation, the façades are treated with a texturized dark concrete, completing the mineral analogy.

​

In this capacity of being at once natural in its matter and artificial in its forms, the house reminds of the work of minimalist sculptors like David Nash, or a piece of land art.
The interior contains a varied program, solved with a very complex array of spaces with different heights and levels, as well as the particular shape of some of the rooms. The lower level contains the main hall -covered by a curved ceiling that accentuates its relevance-, living and dining rooms, master bedroom, gym, interior pool, kitchen and service areas. On the upper level is located a painting studio, under a long curved ceiling, flooded with natural light and the best views over the surrounding landscape. The basement is dedicated to health and leisure, with a bar, games room, chill out, massage room, projection room, cellar and gym.

​

The spaces are freed of columns and other elements that would alter its fluidity and openness, light materials have been used in the interior design to improve this aspect. The floors are covered with large format white ceramic tiles and the bathrooms are finished in white aluminum.

​

​

​

​

​

​

ground plan [/LTR]​

 

[.:taymaz:.]

EMPAC's new art headquarters complete

[LTR]

Technological adaptability creates ideal performance and research spaces
​

The Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute will soon open the doors to its € 131 million Experimental Media and Arts Center (EMPAC) conceived by Grimshaw Architects.
Located on the edge of the Rensselaer campus the new facility is anchored to the side of a challenging 45-degree hill overlooking the city of Troy. The multi-disciplinary center offers an ambitious, international artistic program providing opportunities for interaction and exchange between artists and researchers in science and technology.
The architects challenge was to combine, in one building, the permanence of the traditional performing arts with the transient character of experimental media.
As one of their starting points, Grimshaw Architects considered the resonant chambers of stringed instruments, in the belief that tradition and experimentation are linked by the unvarying physics of sound. As many as two dozen spaces in the building, all built to first-class acoustic standards, may be in use simultaneously. To allow this to happen without acoustic interference, the major venues are distributed in a cascading arrangement on the site to increase isolation and are constructed with separate foundations, complex independent superstructures and resilient isolation.
Visitors enter the building at the top of the hill and enter the lobby. From this space, a series of bridges cross over a three-storey atrium and pierce into the cedar “hull” that houses the concert hall. Two stairways descend on either side of this space and lead to the theater and two black box spaces that can be used for scientific research and performances.
EMPAC’s innovative features include technological methods never used before in the United States such as a glass curtain wall, featuring mullions that carry heated water to insulate the space from sharp winters. The HVAC system, virtually silent to preserve the integrity of performances and research, uses displacement ventilation to push air through registers under the seats. The centre benefits from more than 8000 inputs and hardwiring to CCNI, the world’s largest university- based supercomputer.
The state of the art centre comprises of a 1,200 seat concert hall, a 400 seat theater, 2 flexible seating studios and 4 artist-in-residence studios. EMPAC will open its doors to the public in October a grand opening to honor the new facilities.

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

[/LTR]

 

[.:taymaz:.]

celebration of independence

celebration of independence

Bicentenary Towers celebrate 200 years of Mexican independence

​

The 10th International Arquine competition to design two towers to celebrate Mexico’s bicentenary, has been won by Gregorio Vasquez and Manuel Wedeles with their designs for Tezozomoc and Xochimilco. The two mixed-use towers - intended to be completed for the bicentenary celebrations in 2010 – will be set in two strategic areas of Mexico City; the Azcapotzalco Technology Park and the Xochimilco Ecology Park. Each tower will be 83 stories, with around 100,000 metres of floor space, and will include offices, residential apartments, a hotel, and retail areas, separated from one another by a sky garden and connected with vertical voids.
The Serpiente Emplumada Tower (Tezozomoc) is shaped by two ellipses, which intercept each other at their core. These ellipses extrude and twist separately, one slightly and the other dramatically, generating moments where the two shapes intersect and complement one another. The outer shell of Tezozomoc creates an interior vertical void where air can circulate and be cleaned up by various layers of air filters. The Piramide del Sol Tower (Xochimilco) extends geometrically from a square at its base, and is shaped by four extruding squares twisted on their vertical axis, to a rectangular tower at the top, the axis of which marks the direction of the sun. As with Tezozomoc, these twisting volumes generate vertical voids that are used as air ducts where air can be filtered and cleaned, and recycled back into the atmosphere.
Vasquez and Wedeles Architects not only designed the towers to reflect the technological and ecological aims of the competition – with the buildings acting as air filters for their respective parks - but also to represent the history of Mexico itself, with Tezozomoc referencing the ancient Mayan civilisation and Xochimilco representing the Aztecs.

 

[.:taymaz:.]

Open for business

pen for business

​

Tour T1 towers over Europe’s largest business district

​

Designed by French architectural firm Valode and Pistre, the T1 Tower is now complete. Situated in La Défense, the high-rise business district west of Paris, the tower has a floor area of 70,000 sq m and features restaurants, meeting rooms and underground parking to support the office space within.
Valode and Pistre describe the T1 as having been "conceived as a folded glass plate, 200 metres high, cut by an arc on its north face. The distinctive profile changes according to one’s vantage point and assures the tower’s insertion within the surrounding context. Seen from the south, the tower appears as a ship’s bow, a vertical element and a complement to the skyline of the La Défense business district. Seen from the east and west, T1 is perceived as a large sail, its curving form providing transition to the lower scale of the adjoining neighbourhood. The image given by the north façade is one of a tall staircase, climbing to the sky and disappearing as the façade curves out of view. The tower’s configuration allows for large floor plates and panoramic views, associating spatial quality, efficiency and the latest building services.”
Tour T1 is part of La Défense's once again expanding business quarter, which is now the largest purpose-built business district in Europe.

​

​

​

​

​

​

__________________

 

[.:taymaz:.]

Nakheel Harbour & Tower by Woods Bagot

[LTR]

October 6th, 2008

​

Architects Woods Bagot have designed a kilometre-high tower for developer Nakheel in Dubai.

​

The tower, unveiled at the Cityscape real estate fair in Dubai, will be the world’s tallest building and is part of a development that also includes “the world’s first inner city harbour”.

​

The following information is from Nakheel:
–
Includes tower more than a kilometre high and the world’s first inner city harbour
Dubai, October 5th, 2008
Inspired by Islamic design and geometry, master developer Nakheel announced today that it is building Dubai’s capital, Nakheel Harbour & Tower. The new community was launched at a VIP event hosted by His Excellency Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem, Chairman of Dubai World.

​

At the core of the Nakheel Harbour & Tower development is a tower more than a kilometre high and the world’s only inner city harbour. The development will cover an area of more than 270 hectares and become home to more than 55,000 people, a workplace for 45,000 more and attract millions of visitors each year.

​

“There is nothing like it in Dubai”, His Excellency Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem said at the launch. “Nakheel Harbour & Tower is located in the heart of ‘new Dubai’, where we have focused on creating a true community, a location for living, working, relaxing and entertaining, for art and culture. All of this is concentrated in one area.”

​

In line with Nakheel’s role in shaping Dubai’s future and creating some of the world’s most iconic developments, Nakheel Harbour & Tower incorporates elements from great Islamic cities of the past - the gardens of Alhambra in Spain, the harbour of Alexandria in Egypt, the promenade of Tangier in Morocco and the bridges of Isfahan in Iran.

​

“With Islamic influences governing its design, Nakheel Tower has been able to reach its height of more than a kilometre. This inspired approach has enabled us to achieve a number of amazing feats of engineering, for example the Tower will be the world’s tallest concrete structure,” said His Excellency.
Nakheel Tower will have four individual towers within a single structure – a groundbreaking engineering feat. A distinctive crescent-shaped podium encircles the base and complements its remarkable height.
“Nakheel has sought inspiration not just from Islamic design but also from the Islamic principles of inclusion, innovation, diversity, excellence, growth and progress. These are the same principles that have motivated and guided Islamic culture and helped create its great cities throughout history. Now they are shaping the cities of the future,” enthused His Excellency Sultan Bin Sulayem.
Not only has a development of this shape and scale not been attempted before, but it is also a further example of Nakheel’s innovative projects that have changed the way the world looks at Dubai.
The multibillion dollar Nakheel Harbour & Tower development will include 250,000m2 of hotels and hospitality space, 100,000 m2 of retail space and huge expanses of green spaces including canal walks, parks and landscaping. The new development is geographically central to the Emirate of Dubai, at the intersection of Sheikh Zayed Road and the Arabian Canal; and will also complement Nakheel’s surrounding developments including Jumeirah Park, Jumeirah Islands, Discovery Gardens and Ibn Battuta shopping mall.
The Nakheel Harbour & Tower development minimises car use and maximises train, bus and water transportation. A complete transportation hub blends into the harbour area with metro transportation combined with a unique water transport interchange, with Abra & Dhow station links.
Sustainability and safety will be key to the planning and design of Nakheel Harbour & Tower, with the latest standards and technology incorporated in the development.
“The inspiration for the project came from Sheikh Mohammed’s vision for building for tomorrow,” said His Excellency. “He is famously quoted as saying that ‘before evaluating the future, we have to take a quick look at the past. For it is the foundation of tomorrow’.
“It sends another message to the world that Dubai has a vision like no other place on earth.”
​

[/LTR]

 

[.:taymaz:.]

Lace Apartments by Ofis Arhitekti

​

September 23rd, 2008

Slovenian architects Ofis have completed an apartment block in the centre of Nova Gorica, Slovenia.

The facade is composed of a 3D “lace” pattern that generates elements such as balconies, terraces and pergolas.

Photographs are by Tomaz Gregoric.

The following information is from Ofis Arhitekti:
–
Lace apartments
The location of the apartment block is in the centre of Nova Gorica (population 32.000) – Nova Gorica is situated in the west of Slovenia, adjacent the Slovene – Italian border. It lies 92 meters above sea level.

The town has also very specific climate conditions – it is renowned is the hottest town in Slovenia in summer and very strong winds in winter.

The object is positioned on the fixed urban plot 48 x 16m x 5 floors. The formal concept reinstates three-dimensional lace which embraces the volume of the building.

Furthermore, the lace is transformed into functional elements – projecting roofs, pergolas, apartment dividing walls, terraces and balconies with loggias.

These elements are protecting external spaces and interior of apartments and provide additional privacy to inhabitants.

__________________​

 

[MamoshLove]

جالب بود مرسی