The folded concrete walls of this lakeside visitor centre in China‘s Anhui Province were designed by architects Archiplein to mimic the uneven surfaces of the surrounding mountains (+ slideshow).
The two-storey building sits at the base of Jiǔhuá Shān, one of the five Sacred Mountains of China, and provides a restaurant and rest stop for the many pilgrims that visit the landmark each year.
Architects Feng Yang, Leroux Marlène and Jacquier Francis of Archiplein wanted to design a building that merges with the landscape, like in traditional Chinese landscape paintings.
“In this kind of painting, the building and the nature are not two separated systems stuck together; they are represented as an integrated whole where the architecture is not the main focusing point of the composition,” they explained.
The building is constructed from concrete, which was formed against wooden boards to give a rough texture to the exterior surfaces.
The walls zigzag in and out on both levels, creating a series of facets along the lakeside facade.
“The strategy is to consider the building as the continuity of the existing topography so as to reduce its impact on the land,” said the architects. “The building is bended by following the natural movement and defines a set of different faces that minimises its size.”
Dozens of square windows are scattered across the elevations and matching skylights dot the rooftops.
An internal ramp connects the two floors inside the building, which both contain large dining areas filled with tables and chairs.
The architects have also added a shallow pool of water with steps leading down to its surface.
The project is located in Anhui province, in one of the five sacred Taoist mountains of China.
To define the new relation between this building and the surrounding nature, the project has been inspired by the typical Chinese painting.
In this kind of painting, the building and the nature are not two separated systems stuck together, they are represented as an integrated whole where the architecture is not the main focusing point of the composition.
It reproduces in a way the natural form and follows the general movement of the landscape.
For this specific situation we develop this philosophy of vanishing. The strategy is to consider the building as the continuity of the existing topography so as to reduce its impact on the land.
The building is bended by following the natural movement and defines as set of different faces that minimises its size.
Named Fogo Island Inn, the building is the latest edition to an ongoing arts residency programme being established on the Newfoundland isle. So far Saunders Architecture has completed four of six live-in artists’ studios and, most recently, this 29-room hotel and cultural attraction.
Photograph by Iwan Baan
The building has an X-shaped plan comprising one two-storey volume and an intersecting four-storey block, both clad in timber.
Photograph by Iwan Baan
Dozens of narrow columns support the protruding ends of the building, ensuring it has a minimal impact on the rocks, lichens and plants that make up the coastal landscape.
Photograph by Alex Fradkin
“The inn is completely tied to Fogo Island and traditional Newfoundland outport architecture by the way it sits in the landscape and the materials used throughout,” said the architects.
Photograph by Alex Fradkin
“The knowledge and skill of local carpenters and craftspeople were essential for establishing the details used throughout the buildings,” they added.
Photograph by Iwan Baan
The smallest side of the building contains a series of public facilities, including an art gallery, a library dedicated to local history, a cinema, a gym and various meeting and dining areas.
Photograph by Alex Fradkin
The four-storey structure runs parallel to the seafront and accommodates the 29 guest suites. The majority of these come with their own wood-burning stoves, plus three of the rooms feature a mezzanine floor.
Photograph by Alex Fradkin
A deck on the roof of the building offers saunas and outdoor hot tubs, while laundry facilities and storage areas occupy an extra building nearby.
Photograph by Iwan Baan
Here’s a project description from Saunders Architecture:
Fogo Island Inn
The Fogo Island Inn is a public building for Fogo Island with 29 rooms for guests. The building, located between the communities of Joe Batt’s Arm and Barr’d Islands on the Back Western Shore, is an X in plan. The two storey west to east volume contains public spaces while the four storey south-west to north-east volume contains the remaining public spaces and all the guest rooms and is parallel to the coast.
Photograph by Iwan Baan
The public areas on the first floor include an art gallery curated by Fogo Island Arts, a dining room, bar and lounge, and a library specialising in the local region. The former president of Memorial University Newfoundland, Dr. Leslie Harris, donated the foundational material for the library. The second floor includes a gym, meeting rooms, and cinema. The cinema is a partnership with the National Film Board of Canada. The fourth floor roof deck has saunas and outdoor hot tubs with views of the North Atlantic.
Photograph by Iwan Baan
All guest rooms face the ocean with the bed placed directly in front of the view of the Little Fogo Islands in the distance with the North Atlantic beyond. The room sizes vary from 350 square feet to 1,100 square feet. Guest rooms are located on all four floors with the 21 rooms on the third and fourth floors all having a wood-burning stove. The ceilings of the rooms on the fourth floor follow the slope of the roof and the three rooms on the east are double volume spaces with the sleeping area located on the mezzanine.
Photograph by Iwan Baan
An outbuilding to the south of the inn contains service functions like laundry, storage, wood fired boilers, backup generator, and solar thermal panels on the roof. The required number and orientation of the solar panels dictated the form of the outbuilding and the angle of the roof. The space between these two buildings creates an entry court and frames the main entrance. Vehicle parking is off site.
Photograph by Iwan Baan
The inn is a fully contemporary structure, built using modern methods. Ecological and self-sustaining systems were subtly integrated from the beginning of the project, incorporating the latest technologies to reduce and conserve energy and water usage. It is a highly insulated steel frame building and the windows have the equivalent rating of triple pane glazing. Rainwater from the roof is collected into two cisterns in the basement, filtered, and used for the toilet water and also to be used as a heat sink. The solar thermal on the outbuilding panels provide hot water for in-floor heating, laundry and kitchen equipment.
Photograph by Iwan Baan
The inn is completely tied to Fogo Island and traditional Newfoundland outport architecture by the way it sits in the landscape and the materials used throughout. The building hits the land directly without impacting the adjacent rocks, lichens and berries. The exterior cladding is locally sourced and milled Black Spruce. The knowledge and skill of local carpenters and craftspeople were essential for establishing the details used throughout the buildings.
Photograph by Alex Fradkin
The interiors of the inn continue the incorporation of the traditional with the contemporary. The materials, history, craft techniques and aesthetic of outport Newfoundland are the starting point for what has become a long term and ongoing collaborative project between contemporary designers from North America and Europe and the men and women makers and builders of Fogo Island and Change Islands. The furniture, textiles and interior surfaces throughout the inn are reminders that you are on the Back Western Shore of Fogo Island.
Photograph by Iwan Baan
The Fogo Island Inn is owned by the Shorefast Foundation, a Canadian charitable organisation established by Zita Cobb and her brothers with the aim of fostering cultural and economic resilience for this traditional fishing community. The project has been a collaborative effort now lasting over 7 years starting with the relationship between the Fogo Island based Shorefast Foundation and the Newfoundland born and Norway based architect Todd Saunders. This atypical collaboration continues to be a happy adventure and is a kind of miracle considering the typical client-architect relationship on a project of this scale and duration.
Portuguese studio Belém Lima Arquitectos has perched a pair of gabled cabins on the edge of a dam in northern Portugal to provide a public boathouse and cafe (+ slideshow).
Belém Lima Arquitectos positioned the cabins at opposite ends of a wooden jetty alongside Bagaúste Dam in Lamago.
The new facilities serve the increasing number of tourists travelling past the dam on their way to wineries in the nearby Douro Valley.
“The location was already used in the summer but the facilities were very poor,” the architects told Dezeen.
“The Mayor of Lamego suggested building a new wharf, a bar area and a warehouse for canoes as well as the entire surrounding area,” they added.
The single-storey cabins have sharply pointed rooftops and their exteriors are clad with aluminium panels.
The combined cafe and bar is filled with tables and chairs for customers, which spill out onto a covered terrace.
Glass windows along one side of the cafe offer views out across the dam, while ramps outside lead down to the water’s edge.
The new boathouse sits at the other end of the jetty. Exposed diagonal braces support the walls, interspersed with metal hooks for storing public rowing boats and canoes.
Zaha Hadid’s competition-winning design for the new 80,000-seat stadium was approved by the Japanese government six months ago, but sports minister Hakubun Shimomura has now backtracked on the decision, telling parliament that that 300 billion yen (£1.8 billion) is “too massive a budget” for the construction.
“We need to rethink this to scale it down,” he said. “Urban planning must meet people’s needs.”
In a statement last week Maki, who was awarded the Pritzker Prize in 1993, said: “The problems I see with the planned stadium all relate to the issue of scale.”
Fujimoto had also voiced his objections to the size, commenting via Twitter: “We are NOT against Zaha. We just think the basic requirement of the competition was too big for the surroundings.”
The Iraqi-born British architect saw off competition from 10 other finalists, including Japanese architects SANAA, Toyo Ito and Azusa Sekkei. The judging panel included Tadao Ando, who commented: “The entry’s dynamic and futuristic design embodies the messages Japan would like to convey to the rest of the world.”
Set to replace the existing Kasumigaoka National Stadium, the new building will be located alongside Kenzo Tange’s iconic 1964 Olympic stadium in Tokyo’s Yoyogi Park.
Zaha Hadid Architects previously designed the Aquatics Centre for the London Olympics in 2012.
These previously unseen photographs show the faceted modular structure of the Baku Crystal Hall in Azerbaijan, which was designed and completed in just eight months (+ slideshow).
The building, which was presented earlier this month at the Inside Festival in Singapore, had to be designed and constructed simultaneously to be ready in time to host last year’s Eurovision Song Contest, so German firm GMP Architekten collaborated closely with contractors Alpine Bau Deutschland and Nüssli throughout the process.
Conceived as both a concert hall and a sports stadium, the 25,000-seat stadium comprises a lightweight steel structure with a faceted membrane facade intended to resemble cut crystal.
According to Nussli’s Claus Kruppa, it was originally planned as a temporary structure, but was subtly altered during construction to enable it to remain in place for longer.
“A small change in the drawings, and now it’s going to be there for 30-40 years,” he said.
The building is located on a peninsula outside the centre of Baku. Its facade is covered with 9500 LED lights, which bring the structure to life after dark.
Japanese architect Tadao Ando has added an auditorium with a curving concrete interior to the Palazzo Grassi – a contemporary arts centre inside an eighteenth-century palace in Venice (+ slideshow).
The Teatrino is the third phase of Tadao Ando’s renovation of the Palazzo Grassi, which is now owned by luxury goods tycoon François Pinault. After converting both the main building and the accompanying Punta della Dogana into contemporary art galleries, Ando added this extra building as a venue for conferences and performances.
Curving concrete walls separate the 220-seat auditorium from reception areas, dressing rooms and storage areas, providing a blank canvas for hanging artwork or film projection.
Lighting fixtures are tucked around the edges of a suspended ceiling in the main lobby, while triangular skylights offer a source of daylight.
The Teatrino occupies a space that once served as the palace’s garden. More recently it had functioned as a theatre, but has been closed to the public since 1983.
Only the facade of the original building remains, with the new structure erected behind.
Here’s a project description from the design team:
The Teatrino of Palazzo Grassi
The François Pinault Foundation is strengthening its implementation within the artistic and cultural life of Venice. A new site, created for conferences, meetings, projections, concerts, etc., will be added to the ensemble of Palazzo Grassi-Punta della Dogana-François Pinault Foundation: the Teatrino, which will open its doors to the public in June 2013.
After the restoration of Palazzo Grassi in 2006, followed by that of Punta della Dogana, inaugurated in 2009, the rehabilitation of the Teatrino in 2013 constitutes the third step of François Pinault’s broad cultural project for Venice. Conceived and conducted by Tadao Ando in close collaboration with the Municipality of Venice and the competent authorities and services (including the Superintendent of Architectural Assets and Landscapes of Venice), this restoration will maintain the spirit of architectural continuity of the preceding renovations. Work will begin in summer 2012 and last ten months.
Spread over a surface of 1,000 square meters, the Teatrino will be equipped with an auditorium of 220 seats, completed by reception areas and spaces for technical equipment (boxes, equipment for stage management and simultaneous translation, etc.). Thus, it will provide Palazzo Grassi-Punta della Dogana-François Pinault Foundation with optimal technical conditions (including acoustics) in a comfortable setting, in order to develop more fully the cultural dimension of its activities: meetings, conferences, workshops, lectures, concerts, performances, research, … with an emphasis on the moving image (cinema, artist, films, video, video installations, …). It will also reinforce the Foundation’s role as a forum of exchange, meeting, and openness towards the city.
Construction photography
Located on the Calle delle Carrozze, alongside Palazzo Grassi, the Teatrino was conceived in 1857 to serve as the palace’s garden. A century later, it was transformed into an open-air theatre, which was renovated and covered in 1961. It was abandoned in 1983 and has been closed to the public ever since.
Italian designer Luca Nichetto has created a pavilion in Beijing with a facade covered in 1200 vertical brass tubes (+ slideshow).
Nichetto‘s pavilion sits within a garden and houses a range of design showrooms.
The tube facade is a reference to blades of grass and the landscaped setting in which the pavilion sits.
The brass tubes will oxidise and change colour naturally as time passes.
Behind the facade sit large bronze monoliths with generous windows revealing the exhibition spaces inside.
The reception and business area in the centre is clad in elm wood recycled from old houses in the Hebei province.
White plaster and concrete floors provide a plain backdrop for the products on sale in the showrooms.
The first floor mezzanine is lit by a large skylight, which is embedded within the exposed concrete beams.
The railings are decorated with gridded lattice work that references the plan of the building, and the same pattern is used for the window in the reception area, rugs and air-conditioning grids.
The pavilion opened to coincide with Beijing Design Week, which took place from 26 September to 3 October.
Weddings and parties take place inside halls framed by stone, timber and bamboo at this events building for a Vietnam hotel by Vietnamese firm Vo Trong Nghia Architects (+ slideshow).
There are three banquet halls contained inside the building – one on the ground floor that seats 800 guests and two on the first floor that each accommodate up to 400 people.
The largest space is known as the Stone Hall, as it surrounded by ridged walls made up of basalt stone slabs. Some of the slabs have been polished, while others have been either hammered or left raw.
“These stone slabs have different surfaces, creating both dignified and delicate spatial characteristics, which are well suited to festive ceremonies,” said the architects.
The other two halls are double-height spaces with vaulted ceilings, including one made from self-supporting bamboo frames and one comprising nine fan-shaped timber fins.
A large foyer connects the three halls and leads up to offices on the second floor.
A louvred facade made from locally quarried pink granite surrounds three of the building’s elevations, helping to shade the interiors from direct sunlight.
“The louvres blur the outline and details of the building, creating an abstract volume, well balanced with the surrounding landscape,” added the studio.
Here’s a project description from Vo Trong Nghia Architects:
Kontum Indochine Wedding Restaurant
Kontum Indochine Wedding Restaurant is designed as a part of a hotel complex along the Dakbla River in Kontum City, Central Vietnam. Adjacent to Dakbla Bridge, a gateway to Kontum City, the restaurant serves as a venue for wedding ceremonies, conferences and social activities of the hotel guests and citizens. The 5500-square-metre building, which contains three banquet halls and office space over three storeys, is covered by louvres made of local pink granite stone, quarried in Binh Dinh Province, 150km away from the site. The louvres blur the outline and details of the building, creating an abstract volume, well balanced with the surrounding landscape. Two different finishes were applied to each louvre; its front surface was polished, creating a sparkling exterior when exposed to sunlight, while the two edges and back surface were framed to soften the light coming into the building. Visitors can enjoy the view of the river through the louvres in light pink, being protected from harsh tropical sunlight.
The three banquet halls feature three different natural materials; stone, bamboo, and wood. Walls and columns of the “Stone Hall”, located on the ground floor and capable of 800 guests, are composed of Basalt stone slabs 120 deep, 80mm high and 595mm long. These stone slabs have different surfaces; pitch-faced, polished or hammered, creating both dignified and delicate spatial characteristics, which are well suited to festive ceremonies. Both the “Bamboo Hall” and “Wooden Hall” are located on the second level, each having capacity for 400 guests. The materials vary between the two halls, giving different characteristics of each space.
The “Bamboo Hall” is a ceremonial space composed of self-standing bamboo frames 6.5m high and spanning 18m. These bamboo frames are illuminated by the light fittings, hence the hall gives a quiet and intimate impression compared to the bamboo structure in the adjacent facility; “Indochine Café” which is a commodious open space.
The “Wooden Hall” has a ceiling consisting of nine fan-shaped louvres. The louvres are made of 20mm x 50mm brightly coloured pieces of endemic timber locally called “Kate”. The ceiling gently illuminates the interior functions similar to a light shade.
Natural light and air pass through the pink stone louvres into the foyer, which lies in front of the two halls and is accessible from the staircase on both ends of the building.
Massing diagram
Architect Firm: Vo Trong Nghia Architects Principal architects: Vo Trong Nghia, Takashi Niwa (2 principals) Status: Built in 07. 2013 Program: Banquet hall Location: Kontum, Vietnam GFA: 5,524m2 Photographs: Hiroyuki Oki Client: Truong Long JSC Contractor: Truong Long JSC + Wind and Water House JSC
Sou Fujimoto told the Architects’ Journal (£) that the campaign was set up because Zaha Hadid‘s building will be “too big” in relation to its surroundings, which include Kenzo Tange’s iconic 1964 Olympic stadium.
“I hope that this protest is successful in shrinking the design to fit the context,” he told the magazine. “I’m not fighting Zaha. The competition for the stadium was very rigorous and we can’t overturn everything. But the design could be better.”
The symposium, entitled Re-thinking the New National Olympic Stadium in the historical context of Gaien, takes place tomorrow and will be streamed live via the Ustream website. Other architects involved include Hidenobu Jinnai, Taro Igarashi, Shinji Miyadai and Tetsuo Furuichi.
Zaha Hadid won a competition to design the stadium in November 2012, seeing off competition from 10 other finalists including Japanese architects SANAA, Toyo Ito and Azusa Sekkei. The judging panel included Tadao Ando, who commented: “The entry’s dynamic and futuristic design embodies the messages Japan would like to convey to the rest of the world.”
Beijing studio MAD has revealed new photographs of its hotel shaped like a giant horseshoe at the edge of Taihu Lake in Huzhou, China (+ slideshow).
The Sheraton Huzhou Hot Spring Resort comprises a pair of matching 27-storey towers that are connected on the upper levels to form a smoothly curving arch across the water.
Ma Yansong of MAD designed the building for the Sheraton hotels chain, which was responsible for the interior fit out. A total of 282 guest rooms are contained inside, while additional villas and guest facilities are housed within several accompanying buildings.
Some rooms are already available, but the building will officially open in December – read more about the project in our earlier story.
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