London-based Moxon Architects has completed a contemporary glazed extension to this Grade II listed town house in south-west London.
Moxon Architects added a new top floor to the house and a rear extension on the lower ground floor to increase the total volume by more than a quarter.
They transformed the property by removing internal partitions and reconfiguring the layout, creating fewer rooms that provide larger open-plan living spaces.
“The driver for this scheme has been to treat the existing structure as a geometric guide for the setting out of new material and spatial interventions,” the architects said.
A two-storey atrium brings natural light into the lower ground floor and contains a limed oak staircase.
The staircase has an inbuilt library, retractable writing desk, secret compartments and library steps.
The lower ground floor opens onto a rear courtyard garden.
Moxon Architects have completed a grade 2 listed house conversion in Chelsea. The driver for this scheme has been to treat the existing structure as a geometric guide for the setting out of new material and spatial interventions.
The space has been radically reconfigured throughout, to provide a fewer number of larger and better rooms, with additions to the top and bottom of the house increasing its volume by over a quarter.
The original structure is retained internally as traces within the new layout – differential materials and finishes follow the extents of the previous structure across the walls, floors and ceilings of the new space.
This geometry sets up a framework for the use of the space: circulation and use has been established within these geometric confines, whilst simultaneously the house has become lighter and more open, reflecting the needs of the client.
The limed oak staircase overlooks a new double height which brings light deep into the lower ground floor and includes a high level library, pull out writing desk, secret compartments and library steps.
In our second exclusive video interview with Richard Rogers, the British architect reveals that key elements of the Centre Pompidou in Paris, which he designed together with Italian architect Renzo Piano, were strongly influenced by the radical thinking of the 1960s.
The Centre Pompidou was born out of a competition launched by the French government in 1970 and was completed in 1977. However, Rogers cites the political unrest in Paris in the previous decade, when protesting students and workers came close to overthrowing the government in 1968, as a key influence.
“That moment nearly changed history, certainly for Europe,” Rogers says. “It looked as though there would be a revolution. In fact, it didn’t happen. But we captured some of it in the building.”
He adds: “It was a highly active period of politics, and you could argue that it was a part of the concept [for the building]. This was a dynamic period, a period of change, but we wanted to catch what was going on at the moment.”
The Centre Pompidou, Paris. Photo copyright: Philippe Migeat
The Centre Pompidou is also linked to 1968 by its name. Originally called the Centre Beaubourg, the building was renamed when Georges Pompidou, who was prime minister of France when the protests kicked off and became president after Charles de Gaulle was forced to resign, died during construction of the building.
“It is said in France that Pompidou had a plane revving up because he thought he would lose the war against the students, the intellectuals, and the workers,” Rogers says.
The original competition model of the Centre Pompidou, currently on show at The Royal Academy of Arts in London
In Roger’s and Piano’s original design, the main facade of the building featured a large screen, which would have displayed information from other arts and cultural institutions around the world. But this was scrapped after Pompidou’s death for political reasons.
“The facade on the building, if you look more carefully, was very much about the riots and very much about Vietnam,” Rogers says. “We had it all going very well until Pompidou died and Giscard [the subsequent president of France] came in and sunk it with no hands. He said: ‘It is a political weapon, I don’t want it.’ So that died.”
Model showing the external structure and services of the Centre Pompidou
Rogers says that the idea of the putting all the structure and services on the outside of the building to maximise the flexibility of the internal space also has its roots in the volatility of this period of history.
“We wanted to make a building that was clearly of our period, which caught the zeitgeist of the now,” he says.
Richard Rogers with Renzo Piano
“The one thing we knew about this age is it’s all about change, if there’s one constant, it’s change. So we said that we’d make massive floors, which were the size of two football pitches with no vertical interruptions, structure on the outside, mechanical service on the outside, people’s movement on the outside and theoretically you can do anything you want on those floors.”
“We didn’t say where the museum should go, where the library should go, and of course, the library changed radically because when we started there were books and by the time we finished it books were almost finished because of I.T. So again that’s about change.”
Section from the original competition entry for the Centre Pompidou
The radical design of the building was initially met with hostility, Rogers claims.
“It was vilified whilst we were designing it from the first day onwards,” he says. “Nobody said one kind word until it opened and when people started to queue up.”
He reflects: “I remember once standing outside on a rainy day and there was a small woman with an umbrella who offered me shelter. We started talking, as one does in the rain, and she asked: ‘what do you think of this building?'”
“Stupidly, I said that I designed it and she hit me on the head with her umbrella. That was just typical of the general reaction of the people, especially during the design and construction stage. [People thought we were] destroying their beautiful Paris.'”
However, Rogers believes that shock-factor is a mark of good architecture.
“All good architecture is modern in its time,” he says. “Gothic was a fantastic shock; the Renaissance was another shock to all the little medieval buildings.The shock of the new is always rather difficult to get over.”
External escalator on the facade of the Centre Pompidou. Photo courtesy of Shutterstock
Despite the initial reaction, Rogers says that the French public warmed to the building over time and maintains that the project as a whole was always designed “for the people.”
“When we did our first studies, it showed that there was no public space nearby,” he says. “So we created this big piazza. There were, I think, 681 entries [to the original design competition] and strangely enough there were no others with a big piazza. That is really critical to the workings of the Pompidou.”
Piazza in front of the Centre Pompidou. Photo courtesy of Shutterstock
“We said that we will put the building not in the middle of the piazza, but actually on one side because that will give people a place to meet,” he continues. “The idea was that you had a public space, and you’d go up the facade of the of the building in streets in the air with escalators floating across it, so the whole thing became very dynamic. People come to see people as well as to see art; people come to meet people. So we wanted to practice that as theatre.”
Rogers concludes: “The whole idea of Pompidou was that it is a place for the meeting of all people. And the success of it was that the French took it over and it became the most visited building in Europe.”
The Centre Pompidou. Photo copyright: Georges Meguerditchian
Rogers was speaking to Dezeen to mark the opening of an exhibition called Richard Rogers RA: Inside Out at the Royal Academy of Arts in London. The movie contains rare archive material provided by Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners to coincide with the show.
The London home designed by Rogers for his parents, and which influenced his later design for the Pompidou Centre, was recently put on the market for the first time since it was built in 1968.
Garage of Bears est une collaboration entre les créatifs d’OpenBox, qui ont pris en charge l’architecture du lieu, et d’Onion, qui se sont chargés de la présentation des dizaines d’ours et célèbre toys Be@rbrick multicolore qui ornent les murs. Le résultat est un espace au design novateur et ludique à découvrir.
UNStudio’s aim in designing the new laboratory and offices for the Japanese pharma-co Astellas in Bio Science Park was security of the scientific research center without sacrificing a pleasant, open working environment. To achieve this, the structure integrates the security concept inclusively with the frame of the building serving as an unconcealed enclosure. At the center is a courtyard surrounded by glass facades that provide sufficient daylight and transparency into each of the 3 work areas.
Security is an essential element in the design of the building, which houses both offices and an ultramodern laboratory for scientific research. Rather than approaching this issue in an exclusive way – by confining and fortifying the structure – the design for the Astellas building integrates the security concept inclusively, with the frame of the building serving as an unconcealed enclosure.
Equally essential to the design of the building is the creation of a pleasant, open and transparent working environment for Astellas employees, in addition to an agreeable and welcoming gesture to their international visitors. The organization and materialization of the building ensures clear views from each of the three areas within the main frame. Glass facades are employed to provide sufficient daylight, whilst also creating open visual communication throughout the structure.
The building frame integrates into one gesture three sections of varying heights, which together encircle an inner courtyard garden. Covering six floors on the west side of the building are the office spaces. A restaurant with a roof terrace is located on the lower floor of this area. The Eastern section of the building houses four floors of laboratories. The main entrance to the building is located on the South East and employs the concept of the hotel lobby to comfortably welcome employees and visitors from home and abroad. The floor to ceiling glass facades and large skylights of the expansive, 3.7 meter high lobby area provide visual links to both the inner garden and the surrounding street life. The Western side of the lobby area houses seating areas and meeting rooms. Direct access to the inner garden, which is based on traditional enclosed Japanese gardens, is possible from all three sections of the building.
Parking is provided at street level to the East of the building and in a sunken parking garage underneath the main structure. The ground floor of the building is raised to a height of 1.7 meters and is accessed by steps which lead to the lobby area from street level. The floor plans in the interior are flexible and based on the campus concept, where emphasis is placed on communication.
Glass and aluminum are the main materials used in the façade of the Astellas building in order to provide a lightweight structure which requires less material usage in its foundations. Lamellas are incorporated on each level of the façade in order to deflect direct sunlight. The glass panes are further coated to additionally reduce heat load to the interior. On the Northern side of the building, where sunlight is less prevalent, floor to ceiling glass is employed, with 4cm deep lamellas. The South and East/West facades respectively are furnished with lamellas with a depth of 30cm and 20cm. Parapets of 90cm are also employed on these facades in order to further reduce direct sunlight penetration. The building as a whole has an 89%-90% net to gross floor ratio, with an underground energy storage system further reducing energy usage. Color is introduced into the façade by means of a vertical variation in the four contrasting tones of the Japanese Manga animation films.
Lisbon architect Nuno Simões of DNSJ.arq has completed a series of staircases and walkways to allow visitors to explore a historic cave near Évora, Portugal.
The project, at the Gruta do Escoural at Montemor-o-novo in Portugal’s Alentejo region, involved replacing degraded existing temporary steps with a new steel structure with ipê timber boards.
In addition, the architects built a new anti-chamber to protect the entrance and control thermal exchange between the exterior and interior of the cave system.
The sensitivity of the limestone caves, which are noted for their Paleolithic-era rock-art and funerary graves, meant that construction techniques that might damage the sensitive historic site, such as welding or in-situ concrete pouring, could not be used.
The assignment was to build a new structure to replace the former temporary structure, which was in very poor condition, and a new antechamber,” says architect Nuno Simões of DNSJ.arq. “We decided that this structure should be opaque and black in sharp contrast with the light colour of the limestone cave.”
He added: “The main concerns of the structure to allow visitors inside the cave was to be able to run a clean and dry construction, considering the impossibility of using construction techniques that would require welding or in situ concrete and the use of enduring materials capable of withstanding the passage of time in a particularly hostile environment.”
Human remains dating back 50,000 years have been found in the caves. The earliest occupants were Neanderthal hunter-gatherers, and later it was used as a funerary site during the Neolithic era.
The project was commissioned by the Alentejo cultural department and completed in 2011.
This house outside Barcelona by Spanish studio MDBA features a glazed living room that thrusts out towards the descending landscape (+ slideshow).
The three-storey family house is constructed over the edge of a hillside in the town of Sant Cugat del Vallès. Maria Diaz of MDBA wanted to take advantage of the panoramic views, so she designed an L-shaped residence that extends outwards at the rear.
Floor-to-ceiling glazing surrounds each rear elevation, plus a balcony stretches out beside the living room and kitchen.
In contrast, the front of the house has a white-rendered facade with square windows and a wooden front door.
“The form and the position of the house is a response to the shape and aspect of the plot, closed on the street side and open to the city landscape,” says the studio.
Steel I-beams support the weight of the projecting living room and extend up through the floors. A hillside patio is located underneath, while a terrace sits over the roof.
The house’s staircase is positioned next to the entrance, leading to three bedrooms on the top floor and a garage downstairs.
The form and the position of the house is a response to the shape and aspect of the plot, closed on the street side and open to the city landscape. Each level has its own relationship with the external space.
Vertical communication is a backbone that connects spaces on either side, it is closed at the entrance and it opens itself to the landscape in the upper floor.
Windows on the street define the landscape inside wall massivity and towards interior garden, the house opens itself looking to the city, massivity disappears and prevails the volume that looks for the landscape.
News: Parisian design agency RSi-studio have sent over the image that won them the award for Best Commissioned Architectural Image at the 2013 CGarchitect 3D Awards last month.
The CGarchitect 3D Awards is an annual award that recognises the best in 3D visualisation. This year’s winners were announced on Saturday 6 June 2013 at the Mundos Digitales Conference in La Coruna, Spain.
RSi-studio is a 3D visualisation agency based in Paris. It was founded by Matthieu Blancher and Gael Nys, both graduates of the Camondo School in Paris. The studio has produced imagery for architects including MVRDV, BIG and Dominique Perrault.
French designers Zébra3/Buy-Sellf have designed a prefabricated holiday home in the shape of a cloud that sits next to a lake in south-west France (+ slideshow).
Le Nuage (The Cloud) cabin by Zébra3/Buy-Sellf was designed for the Urban Community of Bordeaux (CUB) and is located in the Lormont commune just outside the French city of Bordeaux in south-western France.
It was originally designed as an art installation and is now used as a rural shelter for holidaymakers. “Sleeping in a comic-style hut […] is a unique urban experience,” said Zebra3.
The cabin is made from softwood, plywood, plexiglas and glass‐fibre reinforced plastic. It is painted white to look like a fluffy cloud and has thin slanted windows that offer views across the countryside.
Sitting on the side of the French lake and surrounded by leafy hills, the playful cabin shelters up to seven people.
It provides only bare essentials such as bedding. The cabin does not provide any electricity or water.
Fubiz vous présente le nouvel épisode Fubiz TV Issue 21. Au sommaire de ce numéro, une sélection du meilleur de l’actualité de l’univers créatif et nous avons eu la chance de rencontrer le réalisateur et producteur Thibaut de Longeville dans les locaux de son agence 360 Creative pour une interview exclusive.
News: French architect Jean Nouvel has been officially declared winner of the competition to design the prestigious National Art Museum of China in Beijing, ending months of speculation.
“By a notification sent on July 25th 2012 and signed by the National Art Museum of China (NAMOC), Jean Nouvel (Ateliers Jean Nouvel) and Beijing Institute of Architecture Design (BIAD) have been declared winners by the jury of the international competition for the construciton of the NAMOC in Beijing,” Schmitt wrote.
In an email to Dezeen this morning, Schmitt added: “I have nothing more to say at this moment. We are still having negotiations with Chinese officials to finalize our project.”
Nouvel was shortlisted for the project last year along with architects Zaha Hadid and Frank Gehry, but despite rumours suggesting Nouvel had won, there has been no official word on the outcome until now.
David Nam, partner at Gehry Partners, told Dezeen last week: “To our knowledge the Chinese government has made no official announcement [about the winner of the competition]”.
When complete, NAMOC will be the showpiece building at a new cultural district in the Olympic Park in the north of the Chinese capital. The building will be dedicated to displaying 20th century art and calligraphy both from China and from around the world.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
