Hasta La Ideas

Coastal walkers in south-west England can now detour through a historic naval supply yard thanks to this dramatic staircase that cuts through formerly impregnable walls (+ slideshow).

Designed by Gillespie Yunnie Architects, the cantilevered stairs link Royal William Yard in Plymouth to the public park above, allowing ramblers on the South West Coast path to enter walk through the 19th Century yard for the first time.

The stairs are part of the regeneration of the yard by developer Urban Splash, which is converting the complex of Grade I-listed warehouses that once held supplies of beer, rum and ship’s biscuits into apartments, offices, shops and restaurants.

At night the stairs are illuminated by colour-shifting ribbons of LED lights.

Photography is by Richard Downer.

Here’s some info from Gillespie Yunnie Architects:

The stair links the defensive western end of the Royal William Yard to the South West Coast path above the site. The Royal William Yard was designed by Sir John Renny to supply the entire Royal navy Fleet with beer, rum, ships biscuits and cured meat. Built between 1826 and 1831 it was used continually by the Navy until the 1990s when it closed and has since been subject to one of the largest regeneration programmes in the South West. Gillespie Yunnie Architects have been working with developers Urban Splash since 2005 on the Grade I Listed site, which now houses a mixture of apartments, offices, shops and restaurants.

The Royal William Yard has always been a dead end due to its naturally defensive nature and peninsular location, so the staircase linking the far end of the Yard with the open green space of the peninsula above has always been a key part of the regeneration masterplan, to allow residents to access the park and historic battlements at the top of the high retaining wall, and allow walker to continue along the Coast Path route via a dramatic piece of architecture.

As a practice we are all very aware of how stunning our local coastline is, we all sail, surf and regularly walk the coast path. To be involved in linking two amazing and contrasting waterfront locations with a piece of bold contemporary design was always going to be right up our street. We designed the stair to emulate some of the excitement and surprise of journeying along the South West Coast path.

The journey is very different depending on which way you approach the stair; From the Yard, the stair is a dark solid mass, snug against the historic retaining wall, and the journey, hidden by the high solid sides, is only apparent as you begin to climb the stair, with the concealed glass viewing platform and panoramic views over the Tamar Estuary across to Cornwall being concealed until the last minute; from the park above, you first have to find the entrance, housed within a sunken ruin of an old military store. A steel ‘portal’ is cut through the huge wall marking the start of the journey, and your first view opens up before you, as you descend down the cantilevered upper flight. At night it changes again, using concealed LED ribbon lights beneath the handrail to wash the entire inner surfaces with an ever changing river of colour, a bit of fun, and brightness in the otherwise dark, hard context of the old military site, and reminiscent of seaside promenades across the country.

Architects: Will Hoare / Jackie Gillespie (Gillespie Yunnie Architects)
Developer/Contractor: Urban Splash
Steel Fabricator: Underhill Engineering
Engineer: Hydrock Structures 1

See more staircases, including this one made of extremely narrow steel rods

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by Gillespie Yunnie Architects appeared first on Dezeen.

News: London is set to offer a rival to New York’s acclaimed High Line park with these competition-winning proposals for a landscaped promenade linking gardens and railways arches along the River Thames.

The competition, set by the RIBA and local organisation Vauxhall One, asked architects to “create an outstanding new addition to the urban environment” within a district of Nine Elms, along the South Bank.

The winning entry from Erect Architecture and landscape architects J&L Gibbons is influenced by the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens, an amusement park that was a popular location for promenading and entertainment from the mid seventeenth century to the mid nineteenth century.

A contemporary promenade will link major hubs within the site, with a series of permanent and temporary installations along the route acting as “curiosities” to emulate aspects of Vauxhall’s history.

Rain gardens will provide sustainable drainage along the pathways, which will be composed of different textured paving to provide variety throughout the scheme.

Chris Law, public realm and development director for the Vauxhall BID praised the imagination of the winning entry: “Rain gardens mix with strangely pruned trees to create a real Cabinet of Curiosities. So Vauxhall! Who would have thought that sustainable urban drainage could be so cool!”

The public spaces are located within a larger masterplan for the Vauxhall Nine Elms Battersea (VNEB) area, which includes the transformation of Battersea Power Station into a mixed-use development and the building of the new US Embassy.

The park will hope to replicate the popularity of the High Line, which first opened in 2009, with the second section opening in 2011. In a movie filmed on our recent trip to New York, designer Stephen Burks told us that the High Line is helping to transform the architecture of the surrounding areas.

Italian architects Massimiliano and Doriana Fuksas recently proposed an elevated park above a railway line in the Italian city of Bari – see more design for parks and gardens.

Here’s a statement from the developers and the RIBA:

Erect Architecture announced as winners of the RIBA and Vauxhall One’s International Design Competition

Following a unanimous verdict from the judges, the winner of the RIBA and Vauxhall One’s international design competition has been announced. London based Erect Architecture and J&L Gibbons will now work with Vauxhall One to re-design the public realm in the Vauxhall area of Nine Elms on the South Bank.

Over the last month the three shortlisted entries have had a chance to expand their initial ideas, along with a Green Infrastructure Audit from the Mayor’s Office, before presenting back to the judging panel. In winning the competition Erect Architecture have landed a five year programme of work in which they will work with the Vauxhall One team to realise their plans.

The winning plan demonstrated understanding of the site, history and context, offered exceptional design flair and innovation, and exhibited excellent understanding of Green Infrastructure. In addition the design was quirky and fun. The design entitled The Promenade of Curiosities, focuses on the creation of a Vauxhall Walkway and improvement to the Vauxhall Gardens and Railway Arches.

Chris Law, Public Realm and Development Director for Vauxhall One, commented: “We were absolutely delighted with all the entries. It shows what level of design interest there is in Vauxhall. But the Erect/ J&L Gibbons entry was really special. It has so many quirky and innovative features. We really want to make a difference by regenerating Vauxhall through green and sustainable measures and their entry was outstanding.”

The competition was judged by a panel of high profile figures (including Sue Illman, President of Landscape Institute, Stephen Crisp, Head Gardener to the US Ambassador, Christopher Woodward, Director of the Garden Museum and Doreen Lawrence, mother of Stephen Lawrence) and entries were judged on a number of criteria including opportunities for green intervention, inventiveness, viability and complimenting of existing planning to ensure a joined up and considered public realm for the entire area.

The aim is to create a striking new identity for the area in and around Vauxhall – a stretch of land dubbed the ‘Missing Link’ between the new US Embassy and London’s South Bank. Vauxhall is at the heart of Nine Elms on the South Bank, the £15 billion opportunity area between Lambeth Bridge and Chelsea Bridge which includes Vauxhall town centre, the new US Embassy and Battersea Power Station.

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answer to New York’s High Line appeared first on Dezeen.

Landscape architects EMF teamed up with architecture firm Ardèvol to remove over 400 buildings from a former holiday village in north-east Spain and transform the landscape into a series of meandering pathways and coastal viewpoints (+ movie).

The Tudela-Culip (Club Med) resort at Cap de Creus in Cadaqués had been a holiday destination for 900 tourists every summer, but in 1998 the coastal site was given protected status as a Natural Park and the resort was forced to close its doors five years later.

Working alongside over 50 specialist consultants, EMF and Ardèvol were able to deconstruct most of the buildings of the Tudela-Culip and restore the natural landscape amidst a series of architectural interventions.

The most prominent addition to the site is the Cubes Viewpoint, a pair of Corten steel structures facing out to sea, while slabs of stone and more Corten steel were used to create seating areas and landmarks elsewhere around the park.

Pathways are divided into a three-tier hierarchy. The main access road is laid in asphalt, secondary pathways are formed from concrete, and informal routes are defined by ankle-height metal railings.

Small Corten panels scattered around the site feature cutaways that highlight how some of the natural rock formations resemble animals.

The five-year-long project was completed in 2010, but recently received the Rosa Barba European Landscape Prize at the 7 European Biennial of Landscape Architecture.

See more landscape architecture on Dezeen, including a colourful Copenhagen park by BIG and a staggered concrete square in Zaragoza, Spain.

Photography is by Martí Franch, Pau Ardèvol and Esteve Bosc.

Read on for more details from the design team:

Tudela-Culip (Club Med) Restoration Project in the Natural Parc ‘Cap de Creus’

This project is a showcase for landscape driven nature restoration projects. It turns a demolition order, a purely and strictly habitat reclamation, into a creative landscape restoration development. Through necessarily inexpensive actions, the design skilfully construes and orchestrates the deconstruction as a combination of destruction and construction to celebrate the site’s peculiarities, both natural and cultural. It proposes ways to choreograph on-site visitors into a narrative that stimulates the culture in nature in an innovative approach to finally question whether erasing and voiding is just as valid as filling in and adding.

Location: Cap de Creus cape, Cadaqués, Catalunya, Spain
Area: 90 ha
Period of design: 2005-2007
Implementation period: 2009-2010

Landscape architects: EMF landscape architects – Martí Franch
Collaborators EMF: M. Batalla, M. Bianchi, A. Lopez, G. Batllori, L. Majer, C. Gomes M. Solé, L. Ochoa, J.L Campoy
Architects: J/T Ardèvol S.L. – Ton Ardèvol
Collaborators Ardèvols: Raul Lopez, Cristina Carmona.

Commissioned by: Ministerio de Medio Ambiente, Medio Rural y Marino. Generalitat de Catalunya. Gestora de runes de la construcció S.A. Parc Natural del Cap de Creus.

Construction companies:
Tragsa (deconstruction)
Control Demeter and Massachs Excavacions S.L.U. (deconstruction, waste management, Restoration and re-urbanization)
Jardinería Sant Narcís (invasive exotic flora extraction)
Serralleria Ferran Collel (viewpoints, totems, terciary path, animal rock identification)

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Cap de Creus by EMF and Ardèvol appeared first on Dezeen.

These new shots by photographer Ty Cole document the scene at Louis Kahn’s Four Freedoms Park in New York, which opened to the public in autumn 2012 almost 40 years after it was designed (+ slideshow).

American architect Louis Kahn was appointed to design the park in 1973 to commemorate the life and work of President Roosevelt, whose seminal Four Freedoms speech in 1941 called for freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want and freedom from fear.

Stretching out across the East River at the southernmost tip of Welfare Island, the park was envisioned as a triangular plain that directs a forced perspective towards a statue of the then president.

The architect died shortly after completing the design and funding issues prevented construction for another 38 years, during which time the island was renamed Roosevelt Island. In 2010, as part of the mayor’s plans to develop the area into a new residential community, Kahn’s plans were put back into action.

The completed park opened to the public on 24 October 2012, with a bronze bust of Roosevelt created by artist Jo Davidson as its focal point.

A granite terrace sits beyond the artwork, creating a contemplative space that Kahn referred to as “The Room”.

Five copper beech trees mark the entrance to the park, while two rows of linden trees line the edge of the triangular central lawn.

Louis Kahn is revered as one the greatest architects of the twentieth century. Four Freedoms Park is his final work, but his best-known designs include the Phillips Exeter Academy Library in New Hampshire and the Kimbell Art Museum in Texas.

In 2008 we featured new photographs of Kahn’s 1961 project Esherick House, which was just about to be sold at auction.

See more photography by Ty Cole on his website.

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by Louis Kahn appeared first on Dezeen.

International firm SWA Group has been selected to redesign Futian District in Shenzhen, an area that’s larger than Manhattan (+ slideshow).

Above: raised walkways and gardens are proposed for Futian District

Landscape architecture and urban planning firm SWA Group hopes to transform the congested and car-dominated district of central Shenzhen into a calmer, greener space where pedestrians are welcome.

As part of SWA’s masterplan, titled Garden City of Tomorrow, residential streets will be made over with exercise areas for all age groups as well as quieter green spaces.

Office streets will incorporate gardens with seating areas, while retail streets will encourage pedestrian traffic with public art and better lighting.

A botanical garden in the shape of a circuit board, representing Shenzhen’s electronics industry, has been proposed for a space alongside the Civic Center.

Three existing parks divided by major roads will be linked by a raised landscape of walkways, cycle paths and gardens called the Bridge Park.

Above: a botanical garden has been proposed alongside Shenzhen Civic Center

“Our landscape and urban design strategies will rebalance Futian from a car-dominated city with a challenging street system to offer a more beautiful, more functional environment, from landscaped boulevards and greenspaces to plazas and large gathering spaces,” said Sean O’Malley, the principal leading the masterplan from SWA Group’s office in Laguna Beach, California.

The first phase of construction is expected to begin in the second half of 2013, with completion by autumn 2014.

Futian is home to the Shenzhen & Hong Kong Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism and Architecture, where we made a series of movies in 2009, including one about a project to build a farm in a city square and another looking at an installation of 10,000 garments manufactured in Shenzhen.

Other projects in Shenzhen we’ve featured recently include a registry office that looks like its covered in confetti and the Kingkey 100 skyscraper, the tallest building in the city.

See all our stories about Shenzhen »
See all our stories about masterplans »

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by SWA Group appeared first on Dezeen.