A multipurpose building with a skin of chestnut shingles covering its facade was popular last week, so we’ve created a Pinterest board full of architectural projects featuring facades covered in slices of timber. See our new Pinterest board»
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Dutch designer Daniel Hulsbergen created this intricate lamp from materials similar to those he used as a child to make model gliders.
Daniel Hulsbergen of Studio Daniel designed the Satori Lamp for Dutch furniture design company Odesi. Hulsbergen used slender sticks of balsa wood to create the layered octagonal lamp.
“The materials used for building model gliders have some unique properties,” he said. “They are extremely light and very strong for their weight.”
The inner layer framing the light bulb is covered with a soft white canvas used for spanning model aircraft wings, which diffuses the light.
The outer layer forms a cage-like structure with a small section on each of the four sides also covered with fabric.
When light shines through the lamp, the frame creates shadow patterns on the ceiling and walls.
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by Studio Daniel for Odesi appeared first on Dezeen.
Pale bricks are arranged in a herringbone pattern on the outer walls of this compact house in north-east London that local architect Zoe Chan designed and built for herself (+ slideshow).
The Atelier ChanChan principal wanted the house to relate to the Victorian terraces that characterise London’s housing stock but to also have its own character, so she chose a steel frame infilled with a non-load-bearing herringbone brickwork, instead of the typical English and Flemish brick bonds.
“The choice to use brick creates a visual reference to the masonry construction of this particular street,” Chan told Dezeen. “However this isn’t a terrace, it’s quite different in character, so I chose to create my own personal expression using brickwork as the basis.”
Named Herringbone House, the two-storey structure slots into a non-linear plot that previously accommodated a series of derelict buildings, all of which had to be demolished beforehand. “It was in such bad repair, so everything needed to come down,” said Chan.
One of the biggest challenges was ensuring that light would be able to reach all parts of the 30-metre-long plot. As such, the house takes on an L-shaped plan that wraps around private courtyards at the front and back to allow light to permeate both floors.
Two skylights puncture the gabled roof to draw extra light in from above. One sits directly above the stairwell, where Chan has added a steel staircase with open risers to allow more light through.
For the interior, white-washed timber floors and surfaces are complemented by Scandinavian furniture, and a variety of soft grey and pinkish hues.
“I wanted to use materials that are very natural but also warm,” said Chan. “The idea was to maximise light, but I didn’t want it to be sterile, so I drew inspiration from Scandinavian architecture and its light natural palettes.”
An open-plan layout on the ground floor brings the living room and kitchen alongside one another, while a small study sits to one side and opens out to the front courtyard through a wall of glazing.
Three bedrooms are located beneath the sloping ceilings of the top floor and feature built-in storage units designed to add to the thickness of the walls.
Photography is by Mike Tsang.
Here’s a short description from Zoe Chan:
Herringbone House
The house aims to relate to its context by taking the syntax of the local vernacular: namely gable ended roofs and the brick material of the Victorian terraces. However, the open plan interiors with ceiling to floor windows, skylights and courtyards are supported by a modern steel structure.
The combination making for a modern vernacular house inspired by the old to create something new. The ornamental herringbone brickwork was used to create personal expression and to articulate the picture windows and volumes by using framing, pattern and variety in the laying of the bricks.
Practice name: Atelier ChanChan
Team: Zoe Chan (lead designer), Bob Chan and Joao Neves
Location: Islington, London
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Atelier ChanChan’s Herringbone House appeared first on Dezeen.
Brightly coloured pods resembling submarines contain meeting rooms at the new Moscow office for internet company Yandex by Russian studio Za Bor Architects (+ slideshow).
Za Bor Architects has previously designed several offices for Russian firm Yandex, including one in St Petersburg featuring giant three-dimensional computer icons, and this time renovated five floors of a building in Moscow’s Krasnaya Roza 1875 business district.
The architects developed a scheme incorporating colourful communal areas and meeting rooms interspersed among more typical workspaces, which feature a muted palette of grey and white.
“The client, as usual, wanted to see a happy and comfortable interior that would hold a large number of specialists,” said the architects.
The red and yellow meeting cabins are located on the fourth floor, and incorporate transparent panels resembling giant portholes fixed to the exterior of their rounded walls.
Groups of sofas with high padded backs and sides are arranged close to the pod-like meeting rooms to create additional places for secluded working or conversations.
Original features such as brick walls and columns were integrated into the design, contrasting with new additions such as the colourful pods and furniture.
Two meeting rooms on the second floor are constructed as cave-like spaces with curving ceilings and walls covered in grey carpet.
The rounded shells of these rooms are staggered to make room for glazed gaps that allow light to enter, while curtains along the glazed front walls can be drawn when privacy is required.
On the lower levels, a stripe of green carpet meanders across the floor, and loops up onto the walls and ceilings that envelope glass-walled meeting rooms.
“The first three floors are connected with a generic element which is intended to form a giant ribbon that, while penetrating floors, forms streamlined volumes of meeting and conference rooms,” said the architects.
Curtains enclosing the meeting rooms on these floors match the orange and green colour scheme of the surrounding walls and furniture.
Photography is by Maria Turynkina and Dmitry Kulinevich.
Here’s a project description from Za Bor Architects:
Yandex Stroganov office in Moscow, Russia
The main place in Za Bor Architects’ portfolio is held by offices of IT-companies. It has a lot to do with a pretty informal and creative atmosphere that these firms are willing to build up for their employers, because working environment is one of the key factors that affect the company’s attraction. It is worth to note that Yandex – the largest IT-company in Russia, and one of the world’s leaders in this field, has been entrusting their offices to Za Bor Architects for six years already. Today there are 21 Yandex office in 12 cities of four countries of the world, that Za Bor Architects have developed.
Recently one more Moscow office of Yandex was opened in Stroganov building in Krasnaya Roza 1875 business quarter. This reconstructed building is full of columns and inter-storey premises, which influenced the interiors a lot. The client, as usually, wanted to see a happy and comfortable interior that would hold a large number of specialists.
The first three floors are connected with a generic element, that is intended to form a giant ribbon, that, while penetrating floors, forms streamlined volumes of meeting and conference rooms.
The first three floors have the following common elements of all Yandex offices, as open communication lines on the ceiling, unique ceiling lights in complex geometrical boxes, and compound flowerpots with flowers dragging on to the ceiling. Alcove sofas by Vitra are used as bright colour spots, and places for informal communication. Wall finishing is traditionally industrial carpet, marker covering, cork; and of course, a poured floor.
The fourth and fifth floors are constructed in a totally different style. You may only notice two signature elements of Za Bor Architects here – large meeting rooms – architects call them bathyscaphes, and employees named them Orange and Tomato due to their colours.
Such difference in decoration is determined with very complex construction elements and level differences in the building (the ceiling height varies from 2 to 6 meters), balconies, beams that were left from the previous tenants. Nevertheless, here we can see new colours, partition walls and flooring. Here, in these neutral grey-white interiors, rather than elsewhere, there are many workplaces completed with Herman Miller systems, and the largest open-spaces. Also there are cafeteria and game room with a sport corner.
This has constrained partition of the building into two separate office, in fact it helps clients and numerous visitors of Yandex Money department to deal with their issues, without distracting technical specialists, located on the top floors.
Client: Yandex
Address: Stroganov business center, 18B Leo Tolstoy str, Moscow
Project management: Yandex
Architecture and design: Za Bor Architects
Architects: Arseniy Borisenko and Peter Zaytsev
Project coordinator: Nadezhda Rozhanskaya
Furniture: Herman Miller, GlobeZero4, Vitra
Lighting: Slide
Acoustic material: Sonaspray
Acoustic solutions: Acoustic group
Flooring: Interface FLOR
Time of project — 2012-2013
Floor area: 5800 sqm
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meeting rooms to Yandex’s Moscow office appeared first on Dezeen.
Laboratory for Architecture in Barcelona uncovered barrel-vaulted brick ceilings during the renovation of this apartment in the architects’ home city (+ slideshow).
For the renovation of Casa Tomás, Laboratory for Architecture in Barcelona separated the interior into areas that will be used most at night and those that will be active during the day, connected by a small intermediate room.
Architect Pepe Gascón told Dezeen they discovered the “lovely roof” when they demolished the existing plaster ceiling.
“We supposed there was this kind of roof in the apartment because most of the apartments and flats built in this period of time were built with this kind of construction,” Gascón said.
“In the Catalan language it’s called ‘volta catalana’ which means ‘Catalan arch’ and it was an easy way to build a roof with ceramic tiles, where the arch distributes the forces it receives to both sides,” he explained.
On one side of the apartment’s H-shaped plan, four rooms have been transformed into a single open-plan space for the living, dining and kitchen areas.
A bathroom on the opposite side of the apartment features green tiled walls that never meet the vaulted ceiling, but a row of glazed panels is slotted between to bring extra light into the space from above.
Two bedrooms are situated on either side of the bathroom, completing the side of the residence dedicated to night time.
The ceiling in the living area has been left exposed to show the red tones of the clay ceramic, while vaulted ceilings elsewhere are all painted white. A mixture of wooden boards and patterned Mallorcan tiles cover the floors.
Narrow terraces are positioned at each end of the apartment. The one at the bedroom end is screened by a steel trellis covered with climbing plants, while the second faces down onto the street.
Photography is by José Hevia.
Here’s some information from Pepe Gascón:
More Dualism, Less Monism
Louis Kahn divided spaces into two types: served and servant (where ‘servant’ refers not to domestic staff but to spaces serving other spaces). Marcel Breuer structured a considerable number of his single-family homes into a bi-nuclear scheme. The pre-existing H-shape of the Tomás home already favoured its spatial organisation into two living areas, as in Breuer’s plan: one part to be used for daytime activities – the social area – and the other for night-time functions – the private area. The connecting room was to be a servant space but also given its own character so that, rather than being relegated for use as a mere passageway, it could also function as a living area. The other two rooms would be served spaces.
Although these two served spaces are almost similar in terms of dimension and geometry, both are defined in completely opposite ways. The public part is clear space while the private section is divided. The former is open to the street and the latter closed off by the inner courtyard of the block. The main space extends outwards via a balcony, while the other area is filtered and separated from outside by a uniform glassed-in veranda where climbing plants partly screen the glass slats that close it off. The balcony acts as a kind of solarium before the living room, dining room and kitchen area. The veranda, however, is like a shade house in front of the dormitories thanks to the plant filter provided by the creepers.
Dimorphism is the term used in biology for the phenomenon in which two different anatomical aspects appear in the same species. This principle was used to “furnish” the served spaces of the house. In the public zone, it is by means of the free-standing bench in the kitchen. In the bedroom area, the bathroom is set out like one more piece of furniture since it rises from the floor and does not reach up to the joists or the vaulted ceiling. The bathroom can be understood in Kahn’s language as a servant space since it serves both bedrooms.
The same applies to the transversal strip comprised by the vestibule, the toilet and the storage space for household appliances – paved and finished with decorative tiles – which also serves the living-room, dining room and kitchen. Even the servant space connecting the two parts of the house is multiplied by adding a dual-level or, better said, a bi-vertical loft space.
The spatial result of this project is therefore a contrivance whereby opposites, symmetries and balances mediate served and servant spaces. This is a house structured in a bi-nuclear fashion which repeats dualities again and again or, in other words, it brings together in one very small home twofold, different and contrasting spatial characteristics: clear-divided, open-closed, extended-separated, broken up-filtered, above-below. In short, it is a project based on dualism rather than on monism, with Kahn and Bauer as its double references.
Architecture: LAB, Laboratory for Architecture in Barcelona – Pepe Gascón & Víctor Sala (architects)
Client: Miguel Gayoso
Contractor: Constructora Montnegre (Tordera, Barcelona), Spain
Dirección de obra: LAB, Laboratory for Architecture in Barcelona – Pepe Gascón & Víctor Sala (architects)
Coordinación de seguridad y salud: LAB, Laboratory for Architecture in Barcelona – Pepe Gascón & Víctor Sala (architects)
Project area: 8000 m2
Cost: €73.000, 00
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renovated Barcelona apartment appeared first on Dezeen.
Light projected through a soap bubble throws patterns generated by the tiny vibrations of a speaker onto the ceiling in this installation by Royal College of Art graduate Dagny Rewera (+ movie).
For the Invisible Acoustics project, Dagny Rewera set up three speakers with lights attached on brass armatures. To visualise the sound emitted, the designer developed an automated system that dips a hoop into a soap solution and holds it directly above the speaker.
When switched on, the sound waves cause the soap bubble to vibrate, but these tiny aberrations aren’t visible to the naked eye, so a lens is suspended above the soap to magnify the microscopic changes in the surface of the bubble. The results are then projected onto the ceiling to create kaleidoscopic images that change with the music.
“The aim of the project was to change the perception of the everyday,” explained Rewera. “The project tries to enhance the greater understanding of the world we are surrounded by and [suggests] there might be parallel worlds unnoticed in our mundane lives.”
As the water evaporates from the solution, the concentration of soap reveals a range of hues that intensify over time.
The soap film is designed to last up to an hour. If the bubble bursts, the automated system re-dips the hoop into the solution, starting the whole process again.
Each of the three speakers plays tones in a variety of different frequency ranges, meaning each visualisation is different.
“My role as a designer is choreographing these invisible worlds, revealing their beauty and importance and guiding the users from the mundane into the spectacle,” explained Rewera.
Rewara completed Invisible Acoustics for the Design Products course at the Royal College of Art in London. It was inspired by cymatics, the study of visible sound and vibration first studied by English philosopher Robert Hooke in 1680.
Here’s some information from Dagny Rewera:
Invisible Acoustics
The project titled Invisible Acoustics is a project that slips suggestively into a different world – one that requires different means for its explorations as well as its interpretations.
The world of the invisible
The project is an audio-visual installation of three sound and light units, which visualise the normally invisible form of sound. Based on the scientific study of Cimatics, the units reveal the true, organic form of sound and vibration.
Using the surface tension of a soap film, the vibration created by the sounds source transforms the soap into a flexible three-dimensional sculpture, unseen with the naked eye. By bouncing light of the film through a lens, the microscopic transformations of the soap membrane are enlarged and projected on the ceiling, creating a hypnotising light performance.
The soap film , designed to last up to an hour, through time transforms the image into an explosion of hues, as the water in the soap lens evaporates. When it finally bursts, the automated mechanism re-dips the soap wand in the solution and starts the performance again.
Each designed device plays different tones in a frequency range. These differences in frequencies are translated real time into individual light projections. At the same time, creating a sound and light spectacle when experienced as a whole.
The aim of the project was to change the perception of the everyday. By choreographing a smaller detail, the project tries to enhance the greater understanding of the world we are surrounded by and put to light that there might be more parallel works unnoticed in our mundane lives.
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in Dagny Rewera’s installation appeared first on Dezeen.
Opinion: in response to Joseph Rykwert’s Royal Gold Medal lecture this week, where the critic stressed that all design has political implications, Kieran Long rejects Zaha Hadid’s assertion that architects have “nothing to do with the workers” who die on construction sites.
“Did I ever tell you about the time I met Walter Gropius?” Joseph Rykwert is leaning across a table in Daquise, the Polish restaurant in South Kensington he has been frequenting for nearly 50 years, a sparkle in his eye. “I was at the Royal Academy, and on the landing halfway up the stairs I saw Jane Drew, who I knew quite well, and Gropius, who I knew from photographs,” he says. “I walked up to them, and Jane Drew said: ‘Professor Gropius, this is Joseph Rykwert. Joseph, go and find Professor Gropius a taxi.'”
Rykwert gave me this finely turned anecdote on Saturday, at dinner after a symposium about his work at the Victoria & Albert Museum. This week in London has been a festival dedicated to the venerable architectural historian, focussed around the Mardi Gras of Tuesday’s award of the Royal Gold Medal by the RIBA.
Rykwert for me, although I have met him many times and was his editor at the Architects’ Journal, is a legend, a different order of individual to most other writers and certainly to myself. The Gropius story shows how he links us with the first generation of modernist masters, but he is also someone whose work (and that of his prominent students like David Leatherbarrow, Mohsen Mostafavi and Alberto Perez-Gomez, not to mention legion younger protégés) has tangible and I think growing influence in contemporary architecture. He is one of the few historians whose works are routinely assigned by teachers in architecture schools and all of us, surely, aspire to his literate, balanced prose.
The Gropius story also shows Rykwert’s appetite for gossip, and for the almost implausibly perfect story. Despite some claims to the contrary that I’ve heard in the last few days, I think Rykwert would like Dezeen and the writing found around the web, and I’m positive he’d be writing in these forums if he were beginning his career today.
The thing about giving the gold Medal to any critic, and especially one as widely read and respected as Rykwert, is that his opinions are unmistakably available to the rest of the world. It’s not really a question of convenient interpretations allowing generic and polite appreciation. You either agree with Rykwert’s words, or you don’t. You either believe, for instance, the idea that the plan of a Roman city had mythic origins giving each citizen a sense of their place in the cosmos, or you think he’s wrong and it was all about troop movements. And you can either deal with the implications of that insight, or ignore them.
Norman Foster could plausibly say of an architect and fellow Gold Medal winner like Alvaro Siza that he has the deepest respect for his work etc, without really having to face the question of their diametrically opposed views of what architecture is and how human beings find a place in the world. Perhaps all buildings are themselves ambiguous enough that we can elide even fundamental differences (with the possible exception of work by the progeny of the Prince of Wales school of architecture, or narcissistic and vocal numbskulls like Wolf Prix). Flattening difference in architecture probably results from a profession keen to avoid conflict within: the idea that one shouldn’t criticise a fellow professional.
In the big, if-not-exactly-happy-then-mutually-uncritical family of the profession that the Royal Institute of British Architects tries to bring together, it would have been interesting to know, for instance, what Dominique Perrault might have thought of Rykwert winning the prize (Rykwert says of the Bibliotheque Nationale de France in The Seduction of Place: “Demoralised by disaffection and labour problems, by inept book stack towers and disgraced by sterile, unhappy public spaces – both within and without – it seems a perfect candidate for a revised edition of Peter Hall’s Great Planning Disasters.”), or, say, any developer or architect involved in London’s Docklands (which Rykwert calls “socially confused” amongst other things in the book already cited).
A true critic is the unwelcome guest at a party of architects. Rykwert himself found that out the hard way when he began teaching architectural history at the University of Essex in 1967. What Eric Parry in the Gold Medal citation called the “architectural authorities” (in fact the RIBA itself) tried to close down this course because it stood outside their approved version of how architectural history should be taught and who might be permitted to learn it.
This is why Rykwert’s Gold Medal lecture on Monday night, which some found tortuous, was so important. He began by describing his work as a designer, and followed that with accounts of the three architects who turned down the RIBA Royal Gold Medal (Richard Norman Shaw, John Ruskin, who turned it down twice, and William Richard Lethaby) embroidering it with anecdotes so detailed that at one point I thought Rykwert was about to say no to it himself. His theme was the age-old problem of whether architecture was an art or a profession.
For Rykwert, this is a non problem – a false dichotomy. Some audience members at Monday’s lecture tried to ask him about where politics stands in relation to architecture, but Rykwert’s work stands for the idea that every act of design, or writing, is political. Design is a set of ethical commitments or reticences. We cannot absolve ourselves of responsibility for the full range of implications of a project – as Zaha Hadid tried to week – any more than we can choose just to breathe the oxygen in the atmosphere, but not the nitrogen and carbon dioxide. Rykwert has earned a place alongside Ruskin and others because of the clarity of his commitment to an adulterated but rich and meaningful view of architecture.
Kieran Long is senior curator of contemporary architecture, design and digital at the Victoria & Albert Museum. He presents Restoration Home and the series The £100,000 House for the BBC, and is currently the architecture critic for the Evening Standard newspaper.
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for the implications of a project” appeared first on Dezeen.
Dezeen Guide: design events taking place in March include festivals in Iceland (pictured), Mexico and Costa Rica, plus thirteen more in our update this month.
Conflict & Design
Genk, Belgium – until 9 March 2014
The seventh Flanders Design Triennale focuses on how designers respond to conflict and the impact their creations have on society.
Munich Creative Business Week
Munich, Germany – until 2 March 2014
Studios and exhibitions open across Munich to connect designers and brands, as well as showcase work to the public.
Design Indaba
Cape Town, South Africa – until 2 March 2014
This annual conference in Cape Town draws both renowned international designers and newcomers to South Africa’s emerging design scene. See Dezeen’s coverage of Design Indaba 2014 »
Design Shanghai
Shanghai, China – until 2 March 2014
The organisers of London’s 100% Design event bring contemporary, classic and collectible design to Shanghai.
Bloomberg Businessweek Design
San Francisco, USA – 10 March 2014
The US magazine holds its second annual conference for 400 attendees. Top designers speak about technology, genetic engineering, 3D printing and more.
Singapore Design Week
Singapore – 10-16 March 2014
Encompasses anchor event SingaPlural and Paris trade fair Maison&Objet‘s first exhibition in Asia at the Marina Bay Sands resort.
MIPIM
Cannes, France – 11-14 March 2014
This event on the French Riviera is an opportunity for developers to invest in new commercial and residential property.
FID
San Jose, Costa Rica – 13-15 March 2014
Costa Rican architects, designers and photographers assemble for talks, workshops and parties at this multidisciplinary festival.
International Furniture Fair Singapore
Singapore – 13-16 March 2014
This annual furniture trade and business event encompasses interiors fair The Décor Show and product showcase Hospitality 360°.
Design Days Dubai
Dubai, UAE – 17-21 March 2014
Designers and galleries exhibit work at the Gulf’s biggest design event, extended to five days for its third edition.
Wearable Technology Show
London, UK – 18-19 March 2014
Speakers from Google, O2, McLaren and other leading companies share insights into the future of wearable gadgets at this two-day conference.
Designs of the Year
London, UK – 20 March – 7 July 2013
London’s Design Museum exhibits exemplary projects from the past year, which are all nominated for the title of Design of the Year. See the full shortlist of designs on Dezeen »
Mextrópoli
Mexico City, Mexico – 22-26 March 2014
A series of talks and conferences concerning architecture and urban design issues takes place in Mexico City, alongside workshops and city tours.
DesignMarch
Reykjavik, Iceland – 27-30 March 2014
Icelandic designers open their Reykjavik studios and host workshops for the public over four days.
Light + Building
Frankfurt, Germany – 30 March – 4 April 2014
The world’s largest trade fair for lighting and construction showcases products aimed at reducing energy consumption in the home.
FutureEverything Festival
Manchester, UK – 31 March – 1 April 2014
Speakers including Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg and James Bridle will speculate on the future of design and making during this two-day conference.
See all events in Dezeen Guide »
You can add Dezeen Guide events to your calendar so you never miss a thing. For more information or to submit an event for inclusion in the Dezeen Guide, please email hello@dezeenguide.com.
Dezeen Guide is now on Twitter! Follow us here for the latest updates and to find out when new events are added.
Photograph of Reykjavik is courtesy of Shutterstock.
The post Dezeen Guide update:
March 2014 appeared first on Dezeen.
Giant sheepskins, crumpled metallic leather and plastic sheets adorned models at fashion designer Gareth Pugh‘s Autumn Winter 2014 show during Paris Fashion Week.
Pugh washed out the palette for his latest collection, predominantly using white furs and plastics to create garments with exaggerated silhouettes.
A huge key for winding up old-fashioned clockwork toys protruded from the back of a dress that zipped up at the front.
Fluffy outfits were accompanied by wide-brimmed hats with lengthened crowns to further distort the silhouette.
One top was formed from a transparent piece of plastic tied around the waist and continued up as a flat sheet to the eye line.
A range of garments were created in metallic leather, which was bunched up and crinkled to create texture and warp the reflections.
PVC was tied into halter necks, wrapped to form waistbands and scrunched into skirts, and then worn over cream dresses.
Coats also included a layer of see-through plastic over the top, which extended past the hems.
More tops were formed from overlapping squares of white plastic so they appeared pixellated.
Twisting trousers continued over the shoes, creating the illusion of longer legs.
Models’ hands were covered in chalk and all without hats wore cream hair nets.
The show took place yesterday as part of Paris Fashion Week, which continues until 5 March.
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snowmen and wind-up toys appeared first on Dezeen.
French firm Dominique Perrault Architecture has completed a 220-metre skyscraper with a folded glass facade in Vienna, which has now become Austria’s tallest building.
DC Tower 1 was created by Dominique Perrault Architecture for a site on the eastern bank of the Danube, where it will be joined in 2016 by a smaller facing tower with a facade that will appear to mirror its undulating surface.
The 58-storey tower containing offices, apartments, a hotel and a top-floor sky bar rises above a public plaza in the Austrian capital’s developing Donau City district.
When the second tower is constructed it will be angled slightly so the space between the uneven facades of the two buildings will frame views of the city from the river.
“The towers function as two pieces of a gigantic monolith that seems to have split into two unequal halves, which then open to create an arch with undulating and shimmering facades that bring the newly created public space to life in the void created there,” said Dominique Perrault.
In contrast with the slick, straight-sided walls on three sides of the tower, the faceted facade creates a shifting pattern of light and shadow that animates the surface and lends it a rippling quality.
“The visual qualities of the folded facade create a new way to read the skyline of Donau City, its undulations signalling the entry point of this new polarity,” said Perrault. “The folds contrast with the no-nonsense rigour of the other three facades, creating a tension that electrifies the public space at the tower’s base.”
At the rear of the tower, a staircase leads from an access road to a long building that acts as a publicly accessible entrance and drop-off area.
A series of square metal canopies arranged around the building’s other elevations create a sheltered route across the plaza towards the entrance on the front facade.
The interior was designed to have a raw, monumental quality, with structural elements including concrete columns and bracing beams left exposed.
Materials including metal and stone are used throughout the lobbies and circulation areas to enhance the building’s robust aesthetic.
Walls and ceilings are covered in glossy black panels that echo the slick reflective surface of the facade, while simple fluorescent tube lighting adds a suitably industrial detail.
Photography is by Michael Nagl, unless stated otherwise.
Here’s a project description from Dominique Perrault:
DC Tower 1
When an architect delivers a building it is always an extremely emotional moment, marked by the end of a long process of mediation, from absolute potentiality of early sketches to fine tuning in situ of final details. An actor, for a time, in the endless development of territories, the architect exits the scene. He hands over the controls to those he has been working for. This is the moment when architecture transitions from the intellectual, conceptual state to the fundamentally physical and real.
In Vienna, these feelings are magnified by the iconic character and extreme visibility of the DC Tower 1, but also by the history that binds me to the project. One beginning twelve years ago, in 2002, when WED held an international competition for the development of the last remaining section of Donau City, and a history which continues to be written.
From the start the project offered a site with incredible potential: an open terrain, facing Imperial Vienna, embedded in the geography of the Danube, lying on a plateau on the river’s eastern bank, like a bridgehead to two Viennas. But the site was not virgin territory as several previous projects had been conceived for it. So there was a conceptual “already there”, a thoroughly fascinating virtuality.
Very early on, what kindled my interest most in this site was the bridgehead with the rest of the Donau City district, with the river banks but also the conditions for breathing life into a public space on an esplanade. We took advantage of this commission to design a genuine entry gate to Donau City. Reversing objectives for earlier development projects envisaged here, WED specifications called for a decidedly mixed-use program, an indispensable condition for germinating the contemporary urban vibration we were proposing to create in and around the towers.
The towers function as two pieces of a gigantic monolith that seems to have split into two unequal halves, which then open to create an arch with undulating and shimmering façades that bring the newly created public space to life in the void created there. Dancing on their platform, the towers are slightly oriented toward the river to open a dialogue with the rest of the city, turning their backs on no one, neither the historic nor the new Vienna.
Today, the first of the two towers is up and the result is quite amazing, thanks notably to the invaluable collaboration of the Hoffmann-Janz architecture office. The visual qualities of the folded façade create a new way to read the skyline of Donau City, its undulations signalling the entry point of this new polarity. The folds contrast with the no-nonsense rigour of the other three façades, creating a tension that electrifies the public space at the tower’s base.
The façade’s folds give the tower a liquid, immaterial character, a malleability constantly adapting to the light, a reflection or an event. For interior spaces, on the other hand, with Gaëlle Lauriot-Prévost, the associate designer, we have tried to make the building very physical and present. The structure is not hidden, does not evade the eye. The exposed concrete framework is touchable. Stone and metal used in lobbies and circulations contribute to the tower’s generous and reassuring physicality.
We have tried to avoid a tendency in contemporary architectural production to hide the architect’s real work, of sewing, suturing the project and contextualising and anchoring it in the environment. Design emerges in a later phase. Towers floating above the ground are too severe, like architectural objects, objects in themselves. They must land, take root in the soil of cities, in places where their urban substance is found. The aim is to get the basic horizontality of the city and the public space to coincide with vertical trajectories.
The work on the base and foundation of the DC Tower 1 was highly stimulating. Architectural arrangements determine the tower’s relationship to the ground. On the back façade, the public space rises from the level of the esplanade in a series of staggered steps to reach the ground reference plane. This structuring of topography launches the tower and creates a spatial interface accessible to all, making the occurrence of such a physical object both possible and acceptable.
On the other three façades, metallic umbrellas gradually rise from the ground on the approach, softening the violence of the eruption and blending city and movement into the tower’s future. Important work on neighbourhood fringes remains to be done to reveal the geographic features of this urban landscape and take better advantage of the river bank.
With this first tower the city of Vienna has demonstrated that the punctual and controlled emergence of high-rises can participate in creating the city and produce contemporary, economical, high-energy performance mixed-use buildings adapted to metropolitan business requirements and lifestyles.
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now Austria’s tallest building appeared first on Dezeen.
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