Hasta La Ideas

This ridged steel art gallery by South Korean studio Mass Studies has half of its floors buried underground while others balance on a pair of triangular piloti (+ slideshow).

The Songwon Art Space is located in Buk-Chon, a suburban district filled with traditional Korean Han-Ok houses, and the building is squeezed onto a steeply inclining site between two roads.

Mass Studies faced restrictions on the size of the new building and had no choice but to place some spaces below ground to maintain sight lines towards a neighbouring historic residence. “We neither wanted this project to become a compromise to the restrictions nor a mere negotiation between the contextual obligations,” explained the architects.

In response, they planned restaurant and event spaces on the two upper floors, while two exhibition floors occupy the basement and a car parking level is slotted in between.

“We had to come up with a structural scheme that simultaneously lets us fit everything within the relatively small site and also lifts the building up,” said the architects. “This composition allows the building to be seen as performing a ‘silent acrobatic act,’ slightly floating above ground while still staying close to it.”

When approaching the building, visitors are faced with two large windows. A length of curved glazing offers a view into the restaurant while a triangular aperture faces down towards the entrance of the exhibition spaces. The architects describe this as a “sudden unexpected moment of vertigo” where “the entire height of the building suddenly presents itself”.

A sloping roof angles up to follow the incline of the hill and features a large skylight to brings natural light into the upper floors. Louvres across the ceiling moderate this light, while voids in the floor plates help it to filter through the building.

Louvres also crop up on the exhibition levels, where they allow curators to adjust artificial lighting.

A surface of steel wraps the facade and is made of hundreds of vertical strips.

Seoul-based Mass Studies is headed up by architect Minsuk Cho. Past projects include the Xi Gallery in Pusan and the recently completed headquarters for internet company Daum.

See more architecture in South Korea »

Photography is by Kyungsub Shin.

Here’s some more information from Mass Studies:

Songwon Art Space

Buk-Chon, where Songwon Art Space is located, is one of the few areas that were less affected by the heavy wave of development that has been sweeping through Korea since the fifties. The townscape is based on an irregular network of streets that weave through the area, where Han-Ok is the dominating architectural typology.

During the past 10 years Buk-Chon has seen lots of buzz primarily caused by the newfound interest of the public on the traditional townscapes. Han-Oks (traditional Korean houses) have become a subject of admiration again, and many commercial/cultural businesses have been brought into the area to take advantage of this setup. In this social context, it is consensual that any new development in the area intrinsically faces the challenge to simultaneously conserve existing values, and contribute in a new way to what already is.

Not surprisingly, with our project we faced numerous restrictions and conditions that were inherent to the site. The design development process took an unusual amount of time – as we neither wanted this project to become a compromise to the restrictions nor a mere negotiation between the contextual obligations. The design is a result of optimizing the parameters, sensitively reacting to the surrounding and simultaneously developing a rigorous logic.

A Pre-determined Shape

The site is an irregularly shaped piece of land, roughly 297 sqm in size, sitting in an entrance location to the Buk-Chon area when approached from the city center. The two adjacent roads meet in a sharp angle, with the main street sloping up towards the site. These situations give this small plot an unusually strong recognizability.

The massing of the building is largely limited by two conditions – the shape of the plot determined the plan of the building, and the adjacently located House of Yoon-Bo-Sun, a cultural heritage site, determined the elevation of the building to be cut in an angle in relations to sightline conservation. The volume trapped in these restrictive borders could only contain roughly two thirds of the maximum buildable floor area above ground (90% out of max. allowed 150% FAR). Therefore, much of the exhibition program had to be located below ground-level.

The resulting building is three floors below ground level and two floors above. The bottom two floors are used as an exhibition space, the semi-underground B1 level as parking, and the top two floors house a commercial restaurant and other social functions.

Structure – Silent Acrobat

Another condition with the site was the parking requirement – 7 spots needed to be provided within the plot area. The only way to suffice this condition was to designate a semi-underground level that is made accessible from ground level through the use of a piloti scheme. We had to come up with a structural scheme that simultaneously lets us fit everything within the relatively small site and also lift the building up. By making the piloti structure out of two triangular walls, forming half a pyramid, we were able to also house the entrance and staircase leading into the main space below ground within the structural element.

With the exception of the sloping roof, the aboveground mass is generally represented in a set of strictly horizontal or vertical concrete planes, forming a hard shell-like unibody structure. The Mass is then balanced on the aforementioned ‘half pyramid’ on one side, and a leaning column on the other. This composition allows the building to be seen as performing a ‘silent acrobatic act,’ slightly floating above ground – while still staying close to it.

Vertigo Moment, Two Windows at the Corner

In section, the building can be seen as two programs separated by the parking area – the social function of the restaurant above, and exhibition spaces below. As the sharp corner of the site is approached by pedestrians, one encounters two acrylic windows each revealing one of these two spaces – a curved, seamless window to the top, revealing the 7-11m high space to the above, and a triangular window within the base of the pyramid reveals the 8m space below, resulting in a sudden unexpected moment of vertigo as the entire height of the building (some 19 meters) suddenly presents itself.

Two kinds of Light Conditions

The two main volumes differ in the way they deal with lighting conditions. The underground volume needs to provide varying lighting conditions depending on the requirements of the exhibitions it houses – thus flexibility is essential, and the system relies heavily on artificial lighting. The exception is made in the entrance to the exhibition space, where the previously mentioned triangular skylight dramatizes the entry sequence by providing natural light into the vertical space. One may think of a skylight as an object that is looked at from below, but in this case the triangular window greets the visitors as an opening in the ground and then later changes its identity into a skylight as we descend into the gallery. We think of this as an adequate, surprising way to begin the gallery experience.

The walls of the social/ restaurant space above ground are mostly solid – with the somewhat limited exceptions of a few slits and small windows that were devised to provide ventilation and some amount of view towards the outside. The main source of lighting here is the skylight that takes up a large portion of the sloped roof – a response to the cultural heritage regulation from an adjacent building. The ceiling is composed of 3 layers of steel components – skylight frame, structure and louvers – each of these layers are oriented differently for a diffused lighting effect. The skylight itself is made of triple glazed panes with an embedded layer of expanded steel mesh which aids the process of primary sunlight filtering.

The steel louver system is applied to the ceilings of both the restaurant and exhibition spaces, albeit for different purposes. If the roof louvers were installed to control the daylight, the basement ceiling louvers were to add flexibility to the artificial lighting system. This gesture of using the same louver system in different ways was also to have the two spaces create a visual coherency.

The exhibition space has a polished concrete floor and white walls, whereas the more social restaurant space keeps the naturally exposed white concrete as its finished surface. The two spaces share a somewhat understated material and color scheme, but vary subtly according to the functions of the spaces.

Silent, but Unfamiliar Pleated Wall

It was suggested by the client that we use a material manufactured by a specific steel manufacturer – who is also an important supporter of Songwon Culture Foundation. This particular steel company has the technology to roll paint various colors and patterns onto rolled galvanized steel sheets. These products are commonly used as a reasonably priced exterior finishes, normally in a panel format.

With the help of the metal company we were able to apply a customized finish that resembles concrete or perhaps weathered zinc, in somewhat of a distressed tone. This finish was applied through the roll printing process and then these coloured Galvanized sheets were folded and cut into V shaped channels of 5 different widths – ranging from 3 to 7cm in 1cm increments. These channels wrap the exterior of the building forming a row of full height vertical strips, in a randomized array of the five different widths. Absent of horizontal breaks, this exterior finish gives an illusion of being casted in a single piece, rather than being an assembly of several smaller pieces. The intention was to have the building perceived as an ambiguous monolithic mass.

The resulting pleated texture, combined with the varying boundary conditions of the building plan – having straight and rounded portions – reacts with the natural lighting conditions in an unpredictable way and obscures the materiality and construction of the exterior. Here the building becomes ‘silent but unfamiliar.’

Above: site plan – click above for larger image

Above: top floor plan – click above for larger image

Above: upper ground floor plan – click above for larger image

Above: lower ground floor plan – click above for larger image

Above: upper basement floor plan – click above for larger image

Above: lower basement floor plan – click above for larger image

Above: section one

Above: section two

The post Songwon Art Space
by Mass Studies appeared first on Dezeen.

This lopsided house by Argentinean studio Adamo-Faiden has a pointed balcony poking out of one side and a caged terrace on the roof (+ slideshow + photos by Cristobal Palma).

Located in Villa Adelina, a suburb in the north of Buenos Aires, the two-storey Casa Martos butts up against a neighbouring commercial building of the same height and Adamo-Faiden has matched the proportions of the volumes to tie together the conflicting architectural styles.

The facade of the house faces south-west, which architect Marcelo Faiden explains was to bring in natural light and prevent any issues with overlooking windows from the other two properties. “This decision allowed us to cover the ten-metre-high party wall, maintaining the existing sunlight and generating long views to the new house,” he said.

The balcony shelf protrudes from this glazed elevation behind a layer of metal fencing, creating a ledge of plants beside the first floor window. Faiden added: “From the inside, the vegetation of the double enclosure seems to merge with the patio of the next plot.”

A small room and garage occupy the ground floor of the house, while the bedroom, bathroom and living room are positioned on the first floor.

The architects compare the project with Casas Lago, their first built project, which also features a rooftop terrace. “In both cases the new construction tries to create a relation with the urban fabric through an immaterial, open air room located on the terrace,” said Faiden.

Since completing Casas Lago, Adamo Faiden has worked on a number of residential projects, including designs for social housing on top of existing homes and a housing block that could also be used as offices. See more architecture by Adamo Faiden.

See more architecture in Argentina »

Photography is by Cristobal Palma. See all our stories featuring Cristobal Palma’s photos.

Here’s a short description from Adamo-Faiden:

Martos House

The house is located in Villa Adelina, a neighbourhood in the north area of Buenos Aires suburbs where great commercial activities, industries and housing coexist.

The construction is close to the street in a lot where a prefabricated house already occupies the central area of it.

The characteristics of the buildings nearby, determine the position of the new house. An industrial building generates towards one side a 10 meters height division wall that is used to structure lengthwise the house while orientating all the interior spaces towards the garden of the opposite field.

A metal tray runs all along the structure length, becoming a shell for a new vegetation that gazes from the inside and seems to merge with the neighbouring garden.

Above: site plan – click above for larger image

Above: ground floor plan – click above for larger image

Above: first floor plan – click above for larger image

Above: roof plan – click above for larger image

Above: section aa – click above for larger image

Above: section bb – click above for larger image

Above: section cc – click above for larger image

Above: front elevation – click above for larger image

Above: rear elevation – click above for larger image

The post Casa Martos by
Adamo-Faiden appeared first on Dezeen.

Shimmering aluminium skin and a gaping mouth give this ice rink in Belgium by architects L’Escaut the look of a whale (+ slideshow).

The architects describe their design as a “round, fluid and generous shape” that evolved to take the form of “a sea monster, a whale covered with 200,000 aluminum scales”.

The ice rink is located in the city of Liège and forms the new wing of the recently constructed Médiacité shopping complex that sits beside the river in Longdoz.

A protruding window with softly curving edges gives the whale a large eye, while the open mouth provides an entrance for cars to the parking area below the building.

The pedestrian entrance to the ice rink is located within the shopping centre and there are no additional windows, aside from a few small portholes along one edge.

The 1200-spectator ice rink fills the interior of the building and is large enough to host international competitions in speed skating, ice hockey and figure skating. Recycled seating furnishes the arena and was salvaged from the interior of an ice rink, just a short drive away in Coronmeuse.

Glue-laminated timber beams and joists give the structure its curved profile and wrap around a recreation room and cafe on the edge of the rink.

Brussels studio L’Escaut designed the building in collabotarion with local architects BE Weinand.

Whales have provided the inspiration for a number of designs in recent years, including a flying hotel proposed in France and a whale-shaped cultural complex in Hungary. We also recently featured a staircase concept inspired by a whale’s spine.

Above: exploded diagram – click above for larger image

Photography is by Marc Detiffe.

Here’s a project description from the architects:

Olympic Ice Rink of Liège

At the root of the project: a round, fluid and generous shape, as a metaphor of a universe of ice. As its construction progressed: a sea monster, a whale covered with 200,000 aluminum scales.

Public/Private

The new ice rink of Liège is embedded into a crevice of the Médiacité, private real estate development project which came to redevelop a former industrial site on the right bank of the Meuse. It inherits several constraints that it clarifies in an autonomous and unitary form, until incorporating the access to the mall’s car park in its climax: the whale’s head.

As the opacity of the building is essential to insulate it from the heat, it is its entire body, by its nature, its material and its shape that means the relational dimension it wants to maintain with its environment. Moreover, the composition of its outer shell (on the mass-spring-mass principle) achieves a noise attenuation of 50db and protects the residents of the adjacent street.

Apart from a succession of portholes to the street sidewalk that suggest the activity of the strange object, the only transparent opening in the façade, is this bay as big as an antechamber that realizes a frank and larger indoor/outdoor contact.

On the one hand, the public building is integrated into the multitude of store names of the mall, as the main entrance is located at the “gallery” side. On the other hand, through its secondary entrance, it is inserted at the back of the service street of the shopping centre, giving a more positive urban value to this dead end. This “public mammal”, stranded behind a scene dedicated to consumers, plays with the shimmering of its metal skin and the glare of its white interior to attract citizens and encourage them to skate.

The whale’s head above the car park entrance

The main access to the car park of the mall is located at the only “end cap”, identity pointer of the rink. This dome is the most curved and spectacular area of the façade, where the careful scheme of the scales is revealed. This volume rises gently to allow cars to go. A load bearing element straight out of the 70’s reminds us of the glorious past of Liège, a time when car was queen in town planning as in some architectural projects (residence Simenon and its included petrol station, residence Belvedere with its architectural ramp). Today, it is no longer welcome, but it is still omnipresent in the city. Why should we deny it? Let us honor it by adding the atmosphere of New York in the 20’s and its “diners”.

The interior space of the rink focuses on the heart of the matter: functionality, economy and pleasure.

Guided tour

In the Médiacité, at the entrance to the ice rink, a white light shower of 1000 lux indicates the direction of the world of ice. Once past the airlock chamber, we dive into an ambient temperature of 16 ° C all year round.

In the whale’s stomach

Upon arrival in the foyer, the whole rink and volume of the building is visible through a transparent metal wall. Here you can sometimes have a hint at amateurs, sometimes hockey teams or figure skaters. The skating area is directly accessible from the foyer. We get our skates, pull them on and are ready to slide!

The “wood room” adjacent to the rink is a recreation room with a solid oak flooring. One can enjoy Liège waffles, perhaps even Lacquemants in October? As visitors, walking along the metal wall until the end, we are reaching the first floor and its cafeteria. On the way, by looking through the mesh, the kinetics of storage is shown: skate drying and sharpening.

While climbing the stairs, we discover the dome and a large window with rounded edges, and finally the carcass of a marine mammal… Ah yes, the whale!

If we’re coming by car, we quickly identify that it is the glued laminated timber structure completely laid bare before our eyes that creates the strange shape previously penetrated. Are we inside the Venturi’s duck?… The scales ratio is therefore increased tenfold. Just a quarter turn to the right and the rink, surrounded with its 1200 seats, presents itself to our eyes. The inhabitants of Liège will recognize the seats of the former ice rink from Coronmeuse, hosted in the “Grand Palais des fêtes”, built for the Universal Exhibition of 1939.

During events, the cafeteria is transformed into a XXL taproom, integrating the walkway along the façade that merges with the rink volume: the domestic scale of the bar is then confronted with the massiveness and the emotion of a hockey match or a figure skating gala.

Thirsty racehorse

The pleasure of the skater, the player, the spectator and the visitor is made for by the space, but also by the performance of this tool: an outer shell with an insulation factor of K22, equivalent to a passive house; 2 refrigeration units developing 1000kW coupled with 4 sets of air coolers; a ventilation system of the room with a flow rate of 60,000 m3/h for dehumidifying the air of the rink; 80 spotlights ensuring a perfect homogeneity of 1200 lux during matches and competitions, particularly when broadcasted.

Formidable engineering was necessary to allow this sea monster to perform at a high level, but also to reuse consumed energy: heat pump, ventilation system and hot water tank recovering a part of the heat produced by the refrigeration units, a piping system as a Tichelmann loop to better distribute the cooling liquid under the rink and thus consume less.

During the preliminary studies, a connection to the heating system of the shopping centre was also considered to carry away part of the generated heat. It can still be done later if the centre wishes.

Place: Longdoz district, Liège (Belgium)
Program: Olympic ice rink with 1200 seats /1800 skaters on ice.

Client: City of Liège
Funding: SPW Infrasports
Process: competition
Technical control: SECO
Project authors: L’Escaut-BE Weinand (Momentary Association)
L’Escaut Architectures: David Crambert, Annelies Kums, Michael Bianchi, Olivier Bastin Claire Laborde, François Lichtlé, Deborah Vanderlinden, Tilman Gappa

Structure: Bureau d’études Weinand: Yves Weinand, Arianit Shevelli
Fluids: BET Nicolas Ingénieries
Acoustics: CAPRI acoustique
Health and Safety Coordinator: SIXCO
General contractor: Moury Construct
Timber structure: Lamcol
Cooling production: Axima Refrigeration
Electrical system: Balteau
Finishing: Keppenne

Surface areas: 6700 sq m
Duration: 2007-2012

The post Olympic Ice Rink of Liège
by L’Escaut appeared first on Dezeen.

Vietnamese studio Vo Trong Nghia Architects has hidden a bamboo-framed conference centre behind a fortified stone wall in the countryside outside Hanoi (+ slideshow).

The 80-metre-long wall may look like a historic structure, but the architects actually constructed it as part of the project. “In north Vietnam, there is a tradition to make rustic stone walls,” Vo Trong Nghia told Dezeen. “I wanted to make the wall become a part of the beautiful landscape.”

Built using dry stone, the wall curves gently around the edge of the building, shielding the interior from the road and protecting it from the noise of a restaurant across the street. “I wanted to design a quiet space for the new conference hall,” said the architect.

New earth mounds rise up around the edges of the wall but a tunnel-like entrance leads inside, where a reception lobby directs visitors into the largest of two conference halls.

Once inside, the bamboo framework is revealed as a row of trusses that follow the curve of the facade to supporting the asymmetric roof above.

The architects deliberately specified locally sourced bamboo for the structure. “In southern Vietnam, we often use ‘Tam Vong’ bamboo, which is bendable and suitable to create a curving figure, but this is not very available in north Vietnam, so we used ‘Luong’ bamboo, which is more common,” Nghia explained.

Describing the difficulties the architects encountered with this material, he added: “This bamboo has a big diameter and is difficult to bend. Our challenge was to create a pliable form by using this hard and straight bamboo. So the frames of the roof had to change their shape gradually.”

Grey brick walls line the interior and while pendant lights hang down from the ceiling to sit level with the eaves.

The Dailai Conference Hall forms part of the Flamingo Dailai resort, a holiday retreat surrounded by woodland at the foot of the Tam Dao Mountain in northern Vietnam.

Vo Trong Nghia Architects frequently use bamboo for their buildings and recently came up with a concept for low-cost modular homes built using the material.

The architects also picked up two awards at the 2012 World Architecture Festival, where we interviewed Vo Trong Nghia about his plans to reduce the energy crisis in both residential and public buildings. See all our stories about Vo Trong Nghia Architects.

Photography is by Hiroyuki Oki.

Here’s some more informataion from Vo Trong Nghia Architects:

Dailai Conference Hall

A residential resort, named Flamingo Dailai Resort, was planned and partly constructed for busy city citizens to enjoy their weekends surrounded by nature. It is located in the middle of flourishing forests between Dailai Lake and surrounding mountains, about 50 km away from Hanoi. The guests of this resort can enjoy the beautiful landscape inlayed with numerous natural objects, plants and flowers and escape from their daily life in cramped quarters.

The lot of Dailai Conference Hall is located beside the main access road, which is used as an entrance for the whole resort; the building welcomes all visitors when they come. To enhance their expectation for a delightful stay in the resort, an impressive curved stone wall along the road was designed as its “receptionist”. The wall, which is 80-meters long, 8-meters high and 1-meter thick, offers a sequential view to visitors, revealing and screening the surrounding nature from place to place. Furthermore, the curved wall works as a device, which raises the morale of visitors and attempts to lure them to events being performed in the hall. An orthogonal access between artificial hills conducts visitors through the stone wall, then, visitors reach a foyer covered by a dynamic bamboo structure with an extraordinary scale.

The wide-span structure of the conference hall consists of the composition of straight bamboos. Bamboo itself has many advantages, such as beautiful color, texture and reproduction potential. Many bamboos are assembled into a structural frame, which has higher reliability and redundancy than bamboo used individually. Its maximum span is 13.6 meters and the positions of the joints at each frame are adjusted to make a generous curve of the roof. Though the functional requirements as a conference center divide the space into specific rooms such as a main hall, sub hall, foyer and supporting rooms, the dynamic bamboo structure enables visitors to feel the spaces are wider and more open, showing its continuity through a transom window above the partitions.

Bamboo and stone are abundant natural resources near the area. The hall achieves its originality and special atmosphere by using these local materials in plenty. Consequently, the building becomes a friendly accompaniment to nature. The aim of this building is not only to supply a nice space for events but also to deepen the experience of the generous spirit of nature.

Architect Firm: Vo Trong Nghia Architects
Principal architects: Vo Trong Nghia, Takashi Niwa
Contractor: Hong Hac Dai Lai JSC + Wind and Water House JSC
Status: Built in 08. 2012
Program: Conference Hall
Location: Vinhphuc, Vietnam
GFA: 730m2
Client: Hong Hac Dai Lai JSC

Above: floor plan – click above for larger image

Above: cross section – click above for larger image

Above: front elevation – click above for larger image

Above: rear elevation – click above for larger image

The post Dailai Conference Hall by
Vo Trong Nghia Architects appeared first on Dezeen.

The first and only built project by the late experimental architect Lebbeus Woods is the Light Pavilion, one of of three large-scale installations at Steven Holl’s recently completed Sliced Porosity Block in Chengdu, China (+ slideshow).

Conceived as an entanglement of light and geometry, the four-storey construction of steel rods and glass platforms is suspended within a large opening in one of the five towers that make up the new mixed-use complex.

Staircases wind up through a series of illuminated columns, leading to balconies overlooking the pools and terraces of Sliced Porosity‘s central plaza and the buildings of the city beyond.

Woods designed the space in collaboration with architect and professor Christoph a. Kumpusch and it was completed shortly before his death last October.

“Too much could be made of the fact that the Light Pavilion is Lebbeus Woods’ first and, sadly, last ‘built’ work,” said Kumpusch. “This project, from my perspective, was an extension of drawing, a condensation of thoughts as a material manifestation.”

Kumpusch describes the pavilion as a “prototypical space of the future”. He explained: “The Light Pavilion is designed to be an experimental space, one that gives us the opportunity to experience a type of space we haven’t experienced before.”

By day the structure appears as a deconstruction of the tower’s gridded steel framework, but by night it transforms into lines of glowing colour that change in relation to the time of day, the month and the year.

“The space has been designed to expand the scope and depth of our experiences,” added Kumpusch. “That is its sole purpose, its only function, encouraging us to encounter new dimensions of experience.”

Steven Holl’s Sliced Porosity Block is a mixed-use commercial complex conceived as an alternative to the “towers and podium” approach commonly adopted projects of a similar scale. The five towers surround a plaza that wraps over a ground floor shopping centre.

Woods (1940-2012) was long admired by students and academics for his fantastical drawings that verged on science fiction. See some of his early sketches from the 1980s in our earlier story.

Photography is by Iwan Baan.

Here’s the full statement from Christoph a. Kumpusch:

Too much could be made of the fact that the Light Pavilion is Lebbeus Woods’ first and, sadly, last “built” work as if building was valued over drawing or thinking. This project, from my perspective, was an extension of drawing, a condensation of thoughts as a material manifestation. Pouring over construction documents with Lebbeus again and again, I can safely say that the ideas did not stop when the building process began. Rather, the demands of a “real project” triggered more conceptualization.

The Light Pavilion is designed to be an experimental space, one that gives us the opportunity to experience a type of space we haven’t experienced before. Whether it will be a pleasant or unpleasant experience; exciting or dull; uplifting or frightening; inspiring or depressing; worthwhile or a waste of time, it is not determined by the fulfillment of our familiar expectations, never having encountered such a space before. We shall simply have to go into the space and pass through it. That is the most crucial aspect of its experimental nature, and we – its transient inhabitants – are experimentalists.

Located within an innovative mixed-use complex of towers designed by Steven Holl Architects, the Light Pavilion offers visitors the opportunity to explore a prototypical space of the future. Visitors walk up and through a complex network of luminous spaces that are ephemeral, evocative and changing. Following sloping glass and steel stairs suspended between glowing structural columns, visitors ascend by several possible paths to balconies overlooking pools and landscaped gardens in the plaza below while framing views of the city of Chengdu beyond. The elements defining it do not always follow the rectilinear geometry of its architectural setting, but instead obey a geometry defined by dynamic movement. Their deviation from the rectilinear grid releases its spaces from static stability and sets them in motion. The structural columns articulating the Pavilion’s interior spaces are illuminated from within and visibly glow at night, creating a luminous space into which the solid architectural elements appear to merge.

From distances across the city, the Pavilion is a beacon of light. The structure radiates subtly changing colors for different holidays and times of day, months and years. The space has been designed to expand the scope and depth of our experiences. That is its sole purpose, its only function, encouraging us to encounter new dimensions of experience.

I prefer to see this not as a stand-alone built work, but merely the last leaf of a stunning portfolio and a culmination of so many dreams.

The post The Light Pavilion by Lebbeus Woods
with Christoph a. Kumpusch appeared first on Dezeen.