Hasta La Ideas

When asked to draw up plans for a cycle-hire shop in southern China, Dutch studio NL Architects thought it would be fun to put a velodrome on the roof.

The curved rooftop track of the Bicycle Club will overhang the glazed exterior walls to shade a shop and cafe on the ground floor.

Once they’ve hired a bike, customers will be able to take it straight up to the track via central staircases, which will double-up as seating areas for spectators.

The architects are now working up detailed designs for construction.

Another Velodrome that’s worth a look is the one completed for this summer’s Olympic Games. See images here.

Here’s a little more text from NL Architects:

Housing Corporation VANKE has asked us to make a proposal for a Bike Club as part of a big resort in Southern China that we are currently involved in.

The Bike pavilion should accommodate bike rental and a cafe.

A protruding roof could be very welcome in this tropical climate.

The oversized top perhaps could house an additional function. What about a velodrome?

The elegant curvature of the steeply banked oval bike track creates an optimistic gesture; eaves curled upward: a surprisingly functional pagoda.

Construction of the controversial 115 metre-high sculpture that artist Anish Kapoor and structural engineer Cecil Balmond designed for the London 2012 Olympic park is now complete.

Visitors will enter a central elevator to ascend the steel tower, named the ArcelorMittal Orbit, arriving at an observation deck with a panoramic view of the city. To exit, they will be encouraged to climb down a staircase of 455 steps that spirals around the tower’s exterior.

Around 560 metres of red tubular steel form the structure and 250 coloured spotlights illuminate it at night. Internal fit-out will begin later this month and the attraction will open to the public before the games begin in July.

The project suffered a huge backlash when the initial plans were revealed back in 2010. See the comments from Dezeen readers here.

See also: our earlier stories about completed Olympic venues the aquatics centre, the velodrome and the main stadium, and see all our stories about the London 2012 Olympics here.

Photography is by ArcelorMittal.

Here’s some more information from the London Mayor’s Office:

ArcelorMittal Orbit unveiled to the world

Main construction of the London 2012 landmark is declared complete.

ArcelorMittal, tier two sponsor of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games and the world’s leading steel company, will today offer a preview of the completed ArcelorMittal Orbit – the 114.5 metre sculpture designed by Anish Kapoor and Cecil Balmond which will stand at the heart of the Olympic Park.

The ArcelorMittal Orbit is being handed over to the London Legacy Development Corporation later this month, so that Balfour Beatty Workplace can complete the fit-out ahead of the London 2012 Games where it will be a ticketed visitor attraction.

The press event will be attended by the team behind the sculpture, including Anish Kapoor and Cecil Balmond, Lakshmi N. Mittal, Chairman and CEO, ArcelorMittal, and Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, alongside the architects, engineers and builders who have helped bring the project to reality. For the first time, attendees to the unveiling will be able to travel up to the viewing platform and enjoy a panoramic view of up to 20 miles, encompassing the entire Olympic Park and London’s skyline beyond. At 114.5m, the ArcelorMittal Orbit is the UK’s tallest sculpture and stands 22 metres taller than New York City’s Statue of Liberty.

“It gives me great pride to see the ArcelorMittal Orbit standing not only as a completed work of public art but as a physical symbol of the Olympic spirit,” comments Lakshmi N. Mittal, Chairman and CEO of ArcelorMittal. “It makes me very proud that ArcelorMittal plants from across the world contributed to this showcase of the strength and versatility of steel,” he adds.

Boris Johnson: “This 114.5metre-high attraction to trump rivals the world over is a calling card for investment in east London. It is a symbol of prosperity and growth, backed by one of the world’s most astute business leaders, which delivers the strongest message that this part of London is open for business after decades of neglect.

“In addition to the £11billion plus investment that has taken place around the Olympics over the last four years, the ArcelorMittal Orbit will draw visitors to newly regenerated swathes of east London in perpetuity and has changed our skyline and aspirations forever. The development of this area, creating new jobs, homes, schools, and thriving communities beyond the Olympics, is one of the most important regeneration priorities as we lay the ground now to meet the needs of the next 25 years.”

Anish Kapoor: “I am absolutely delighted that construction is now complete and I would like to thank the project team for making this possible and for their work on what is technically a very challenging project. I am looking forward to the Olympics when visitors to the Park will be able to go up the ArcelorMittal Orbit for the first time and I am delighted that members of the public will be able to interact with the work in this way.”

Cecil Balmond: “Anish and I were conscious from the beginning that the ArcelorMittal Orbit would be a lasting legacy to the city and so we wanted to stretch the language of the icon as far we could go. The Orbit is a hybrid, a network of art and structure, and its dynamic is the non-linear. You read into it multiple narratives in space.”

One of the world’s leading artists, Turner Prize winning Anish Kapoor studied in London, where he is now based. He is well known for his use of rich pigment and imposing, yet popular works, such as Marsyas, which filled the Tate’s Turbine Hall as part of the Unilever Series, Cloud Gate in Chicago’s Millennium Park and his recent record breaking show at the Royal Academy, the most successful exhibition ever presented by a contemporary artist in London.

The ArcelorMittal Orbit was designed by Anish Kapoor and one of the world’s leading structural designers, Cecil Balmond, who trained and lives in London, and is known for his innovative work on some of the greatest contemporary buildings in the world, such as the CCTV building in Beijing, as well as many Serpentine Gallery Pavilion commissions.

Construction of the ArcelorMittal Orbit took 18 months and required 560 metres of tubular red steel to form the sculpture’s lattice superstructure. The result is a bold statement of public art that is both permanent and sustainable, with close to 60 per cent of the 2,000 tonnes of steel used in the sculpture being drawn from recycled sources, underlining steel’s status as the world’s most recyclable material. Steel was chosen for the ArcelorMittal Orbit because of its unique properties including strength, modular structure and advantages of weight and speed of construction.

Sitting between the Stadium and the Aquatics Centre, the ArcelorMittal Orbit will be a beacon of the Olympic Park during the Games and the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park as the area will be known after the Games.

Visitors will be able to take a trip to the top of the structure in a lift and down too if they wish, although they will be encouraged to walk down the spiral staircase, which has 455 steps and has been designed to enable the guests to experience the feeling that they are orbiting around the structure as they descend it.

After the Olympic and Paralympic Games and following a period of transformation, the Legacy Corporation will run the ArcelorMittal Orbit as a visitor attraction with ticketed viewing from the observation decks and a compelling venue for private functions. It will be able to accommodate around 5,000 visitors a day with potential to attract around one million people during its first year of operation. It will have the capacity to accommodate between 400 – 600 visitors per hour, including full wheelchair access.

Last month, the Legacy Corporation announced that the ArcelorMittal Orbit will light up East London after 250 colour spot lights were added to the sculpture. Each can be individually controlled to produce a stunning digital combination of static and animated effects including a 15 minute moving light show every evening after the Games.

Andrew Altman, Chief Executive of the London Legacy Development Corporation, said: “The ArcelorMittal Orbit will become one of London’s most spectacular visitor attractions and a stunning backdrop to the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. “Not only will it offer differing views by day and night, but it will light up the East London skyline to become a beacon of the incredible transformation of this part of East London.”

The Legacy Corporation, which will lease the ArcelorMittal Orbit to LOCOG during the Games, has said that 85% of the 50 jobs created in the venue after the Games will go to local people.

As a tier two sponsor of London 2012, ArcelorMittal has committed to funding up to £19.6 million of the £22.7 million cost of the ArcelorMittal Orbit, with the outstanding £3.1 million provided by the London Development Agency. It has been estimated that the resulting visitor attraction will generate up to £10 million of revenue per annum and create up to 50 new jobs following the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

Dezeen Wire: the restoration of historic tea clipper the Cutty Sark in London by Grimshaw architects has been derided by architecture critics and conservation experts after being officially reopened by the Queen yesterday. Here’s a round up of what people are saying.

Writing in The Guardian, Steve Rose says the decision to sit the ship on a glass plinth has resulted in the impression that: “It’s no longer a ship, nor quite a building, but some bizarre hybrid of the two.” He claims that the experience improves once inside though. “There’s something bracing about standing ‘underwater’ and looking up along the ship’s copper-lined keel.”

The Telegraph reports that conservation groups are upset that Grimshaw’s intervention obscures the lines of the ship’s hull, quoting sailor and architect Julian Harrap who said: “Why on earth hoick it up into the air? Why do you have to put these bloody great beams right through the middle of it, to damage the fabric of it?”

Over on Twitter, Building Design editor Amanda Baillieu asks, “Would it have been a nobler end if the Cutty Sark had sunk?”, while the Sunday Times architecture critic Hugh Pearman said, “Haven’t been there yet but does restored Cutty Sark looks like a ship half-in, half-out, of a bottle?”.

Meanwhile, the BBC reported that Cutty Sark director Richard Doughty defended the renovation, claiming the solution creates “a very different experience, offering a light environment in the Cutty Sark’s new elevated position.”

See our previous story about the Cutty Sark here, all of our stories about Grimshaw here and lots of stories about boats here.

Slideshow: a rainbow of coloured panels extend up from a concrete base to form the walls of this sports hall in A Coruña.

Designed by Spanish architect José Ramón Garitaonaindía de Vera, the Arteixo sports centre contains a single games hall, surrounded by changing rooms, toilets and other facilities.

The walls of the building enclose a small square courtyard near to the entrance lobby, as well as another stretching alongside the games hall.

An external staircase leads up to a first floor terrace, where visitors can observe activities taking place inside.

You can read more stories about design for sports here, including our recent story about a concrete gymnasium with a windowless yellow facade.

Photography is by Hector Santos-Díez.

Here’s some more information from the architect:

Arteixo Sport Centre

In a parcel with a regular and flat shape, with a river within its boundaries, stands the Arteixo Sport Center. To the North it faces the municipal pool, to the South is bounded with another parcel owned by the same Partial Plan. In West direction lies to the road known as “Travesia dos colexios” and this which provides access to the Sports Center. Finally the river sets the limits to the East.

At first sight, Arteixo appears as the clearly defined things do, denying some common places about oneself. Quick architectures which, despite all, stand the test of time.

The assignment of a unique building in a consolidated urban area, the configuration of the site, limits on the scope and the characteristics of a project, which use conforms their own position in the plan, leads us to a regular configuration without stringency to facilitate its operation.

The Sports Centers have an urban dimension relatively aggressive due to its scale. We propose a support area that wraps the main track to achieve the appropriate scale transition within the ambit.

Furthermore, these facilities are usually dark places, so we opt for a box beams structure in the longitudinal direction to the track, so that receives North light, optimal for the game, and South light nuanced through translucent polycarbonate in that box beams.

In another vein, following the path started long ago, Arteixo Sport Center arises as a rainbow, using this metaphor to explain the final result: the rainbow that amazes us, that comes and dazzles us with his presence and that leaves no one indifferent.

Therefore the material used for the facade is the U-glass overhead on wooden panels painted in colours.

Architectures is always designed for the user, which is the only possible way to reach its completion, its public use more domestic and why not, the always intrinsic illusions to the path laid out time ago, make the work ringworm of all colors.

This is the most personal project because it wants to present an illusion: it’s like a dream and my journey.

The building stands on a concrete base that enhances the already lightweight facades; the color closing through the U-glass that surrounds it allows it to be visible during the day in a diffused way and nights throught some projectors indicating to the public when there are important events in the sports center, establishing beyond their own use directly relationship to the urban environment in which it sits.

We propose a courtyard in the longitudinal direction with the intention that the vegetation can enter in the building.

Take special relevance the terraces that can be accessed from the outside. These increases the capacity of sports center because from them you can also see the play área while are a outside balcony from where one sees Arteixo.

The structure of the service area is concrete, the floors of prefabricated slabs and fencing, also a concrete wall with plasterboard cladding and insulation. The structure was solved by parallel trusses on steel columns HEB-300. The metal structure reveals further the intrinsic character of the work in this case subject to a universe where color has filled all space.

As for the covers will be of three types. Practicable prefabrication concrete panels of 8 cm thick and not pratical, finished in stainless Steel dual finish autoprotected impermeable sheet.

For pavements, including bleachers, used industrial recycled oak parquet of 2.4 cm thick. This choice of runway pavement and the grandstand provides a continuity not only of the material also visual for the viewer, and establishing a closer relationship with the game.

Light floods for color loose in the environment and strain from the outside.

There have been many that over time have found in the rainbow a source of inspiration for their work. Remember to Raymond Queneau in Exercices of Style, 1947 or Terencio Formenti in his Poems book carried by the wind.

Architect: José Ramón Garitaonaindía de Vera
Location: Avenida de Arsenio Iglesias, Arteixo, A Coruña, Spain.

Project Team: Montserrat Neira, Omar Curros.
Clients: Concello de Arteixo (Arteixo City Council)

Project Square Footage: 1,527 m2
Site Area: 3,150 m2
Completed: 2011

Structural Engineers: Jorge Aragón Fitera.
Contractor: Construcciones Riotorto S.L.
Budget: 2,293,128 milliones de Euros.

Click above for larger image

Click above for larger image

Click above for larger image

Spanish architects MedioMundo have completed a bright red multimedia centre amongst a collection of towering apartment blocks in Seville.

The Cibercentro Macarena has a red-lacquered steel exterior, with shutters that fold away from windows like the gills of a fish.

Like its neighbours, the building is raised up on a series of pilotis, creating a sheltered Wi-Fi terrace underneath.

A glazed entrance lobby and two multi-purpose rooms are also located on the ground floor, while two more and an office occupy the first floor. Stairs lead up to a terrace on the roof that can be used for hosting events.

We recently grouped together all our stories about red buildings – see them all here.

Photography is by Fernando Alda. See more images of this project on Alda’s website.

Here’s some more text from the architects:

“A connecting point, a meeting point”

We are interested in investigating the conformation of a physical space which, devoted to virtual connexions and information, becomes a real ‘meeting point’. We want to propose through architecture the confluence of ‘sites’ for both virtual and material social networks.

Information Technology has re-configured the human being and its social relationship. Information has unfurled communication spaces and has given depth and thickness to the frugal daily time.

Which meeting places of these intangible spaces can be designed from the tangible production of architecture?

Spaces that might be considered part of the “future”, are already common places in our present that we usually enjoy and share in our homes and workplaces, where we spend our leisure and free times. These are spaces where re-invent the relationship between collective and private spaces, formation and information, communication and dialogue.

Only in counted occasions has architecture proposed a setting in which information and space interact. Sometimes attention to new information technologies has wandered between metaphoric formal exercises and pixelized communication prosthesis. The superimposition of matter and technology to incorporate these flows has created a complexity in the building that sclerosises it. That generates an unavoidable obsolescence that underlines it contemporariness condition.

This is the reason why our research is centered around architecture as the medium for multitude programmes: functions and timings, that means, being a programmable ‘hardware’. We study how to propose a pluripotential container where all flows of users and visitors may enter, where citizens may interact among others. That is, architecture that holds active social ‘software’.

We propose to do less architecture to make more ‘gathering events’ happen: a principle of basic ecology that makes integral sustainability possible as a constructive, economical and social objective.

All social centres are, more than a place, a process where new neighbourhood forms are articulated with ‘agents’ and ‘places’ that are nearby but also with others that are geographic and culturally more remote.

The new Social Cyber Centre Macarena Tres Huertas is a place where such categories as collective/intimate and informational/educative space will be re-proposed.

We think in such places ‘presence’ (citizenry) is more important than ‘permanency’ (buildings), where architecture, in this world of networks and meeting places, is a phenomena in transit. That is why the building is carefully set in its surroundings, put to the residents’ disposition.

DESCRIPTION

The Social Cyber Centre Macarena Tres Huertas competition was organized in the process’ frame of administrative decentralization and progressive establishment of the so called ‘tele-administration’, as the city government (EMVISESA) firmly aims to make available its advantages to all citizens. This implicitly demanded a new spatial medium to provide the local inhabitants with the necessary equipment for computing and information technologies.

Chance, necessity, environmental adaptation.
Almost as it happened to Darwing’s evolution theory, chance and necessity converged (the City Government demands and our research) interceded by local determinations: the surrounding characteristics and the restrained economic conditions.

The district Macarena Tres Huertas is characterized by its high density (eight-floor buildings) dwellings blocks supported by pilots that leave porches on the ground floors. This allows for visual transparency and free circulation among the gardens thus avoiding its perception as an opaque and stagnant space.

Therefore the new ‘Macarena Social – CyberCentre’ rests in this place generating a visual and transit transversal in order to optimize the accessibility to the surroundings paths and open areas.

The ground floor is released of programme in order to create a wi-fi plaza below the building, a small access garden, which together with a porch linked to a cafeteria and a multipurpose room, are offered as a wi-fi neighbours’ meeting and leisure room. Over these spaces, a volume lined with red lacquered sheet arises, where computer labs, workshops and offices are placed.

N-POTENTIAL PUBLIC SPACE:

The main idea is to raise to the power of three the former free spaces now occupied by the building by means of multiply n-times the tangible spaces: garden-wi-fi plaza; multipurpose and connected spaces on the 1st floor, and the flat roof, which is offered to the neighbours as a terrace to hold events and as river viewing point.

PROGAMABLE BUILDING

The new ‘Macarena Social – CyberCentre’ is designed as a programmable setting, where functional definition will depend on the timing of its uses and the users participation on the given spaces. Only by thinking in these terms, has a functional determination that could damage the survival and natural evolution of the spaces been avoided.

The requirements demanded initially (administration, services and installations) are all risen up and compacted into a nucleus on the first floor, allowing the rest of the space to be free and flexible rooms equipped with computer connections. On the ground floor, the garden and the porch leads us to the access control, a multipurpose room and a small cafeteria, tall in a close relation with the wi-fi plaza. Above it all, the terrace in offered as a motivation for activities and celebrations.

MATERIALS

The new building offers a simple but straightforward image.
Its materials are sincere, so it has a very important significance: red-lacked fold up steel sheet over thermal insulation and brick wall, leaving a ventilated area for climate control. The steel sheet has different perforation densities that allow different levels of privacy and even security. There are several intimacy gradients managed by the ‘gills’ over the windows (vertical lama or banderols that make the building breath), orientated to free spaces, preserving the windows and views to the dwellings’ privacy.

It is a statement on sustainability in terms of normalized construction, organized by structural units and standard module, with serial production process, controlled transport and executing time, that benefits the energy and emission control. The building follows passive construction on order to rationally deal with the extreme weather of Seville: make the most of thick isolation, natural ventilation and natural lightning.

Social – CyberCentre ‘Macarena Tres Huertas’ is a site where traditional categories meet to be re-defined: an advanced technological site, environmentally conscious, urbanly responsible and socially active.

Name Of The Project: Socialcybercentre Macarena Tres Huertas
Architects/Authors: Mediomundo Arquitectos Marta Pelegrín+Fernando Pérez
Programme: Socialcybercentre
Site: José Díaz Street. Sevilla
Competition Date: 2009
Recognizions: 1º Price
Phases: 2009 Compatition, 2009 Executing Projects, 2010 Construction
Contractor: Eurocon S. L. Construcciones
Cathegory: Social Facility
Superficie: 410 M2
Promotor: Sevilla City Government
Co-Designer Architect: Mario Ortega Gómez (Mog-Arquitectos )
Other Contributions: José Antonio Lubiano (Cost Control) Tedeco Ingenieros (Structure Calculation), Elías Pérez Lema (Installations) Fabio Orizia Pérez, Raúl Elías Bramón, Silvia Casitas
Consultants: Fabio Orizia Pérez, Raúl Elías Bramón, Silvia Casitas Montero, Ana López Ortego, Harold Guyaux (Office Team)
Translation: Vincent Morales.