The SOHO Hailun Plaza in Shanghai is 33 stories of multicolored, multifaceted facade that moves and changes depending on the viewers position, giving it a breathing, dragon-scale like aesthetic. Located at the intersection of two metro lines, the tower and its series of smaller mixed-used pavilions direct the flow of commuters and organize outdoor space for a variety of different urban activities.
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Grafton Architects added the four new buildings to the main campus of the University of Limerick, which straddles the River Shannon in the west of Ireland. Alongside the existing sports pavilion, world music academy and health sciences facility, the structures frame a new student plaza on the north side of the campus.
The architects selected different materials for the two types of building. “The language of the medical school is that of an educational institution while the student residences appear like three large houses,” they explain.
For the four-storey medical school, they added a facade of cool grey limestone that references the local architectural vernacular. An angled colonnade directs visitors into the building, where a full-height atrium leads through to laboratories and lecture rooms.
“[The atrium is] designed as a social space with enough room to stop and chat or lean on a balustrade/shelf and view the activity of the entrance and other spaces above and below,” say the architects.
The three student housing buildings zigzag along the northern perimeter of the plaza. Each block has a brickwork exterior with recessed windows and concrete sills.
Inside, floors are laid out with living rooms and kitchens overlooking the public square in front, while bedrooms face back to the quieter northern border of the campus. There are also sheltered meeting places carved out of the base of each block, leading through to the laundry room and bicycle store beyond.
As well as these buildings, the architects also added a new concrete bus shelter to the campus, with steps and ramps that negotiate the sloping ground.
Photography is by Denis Gilbert, apart from where stated otherwise.
Here’s a project description from Grafton Architects:
Medical School, Student Residences and Bus Shelter at the University of Limerick
The University of Limerick, in the South West of Ireland occupies a large territory, formerly a Demesne, and is situated on both sides of the lower reaches of the river Shannon, the longest and largest river in Ireland. Part of its most recent expansion to the north of this great river, accessible by pedestrian bridge from the existing campus, provides for the construction of a new medical school building and accommodation buildings for students attending the facility. These new buildings are also intended to address a large public open space which will ultimately become the focal point for this expansion of the campus to the North.
The aspiration is to combine faculty buildings and residences in a manner which encourages overlap and contributes to the life of the public spaces at the University. Aspects of the formal character are derived from an interpretation of the campus master plan which requires an organic approach to the making of public spaces on the north side of the river Shannon. Here the ground is sloping and remnants of the agrarian landscape pattern are still evident in the form of old field patterns and hedgerows.
This new suite of buildings combines with three existing, neighbouring institutions, the Sports Pavillion, the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance and the Health Sciences Building, in order to make a new public space. The new buildings consist of a medical school, three blocks of student housing and a canopy/pergola forming a bus and bicycle shelter.
The Medical School, the last in a series of set pieces, acts as an anchor around which the other buildings now loosely rotate. The language of the medical school is that of an educational institution while the student residences appear like three large houses. The concrete bus shelter, together with the residences combine with the medical school to form a loose edge to the public space. The bus shelter canopy, steps and ramps negotiate the level change to the sports pavilion beyond.
Photograph by Alice Clancy
The central space slopes gently to the west. Three oak trees, stone seats and steps occupy a central level platform subtly providing a focal point before the space moves out, fracturing at the edges to connect to the residences, car parking and other faculty buildings. The surfaces of the public space move from hard to soft, south sloping grassed spaces, designed with and without furniture to provide for leisure and lingering. The buildings stand guard facing the public space, distinguished by their material.
Photograph by Alice Clancy
Limestone is used to represent the ‘formal’ central medical school, making reference to the limestone territory of County Clare in which this side of the campus is located. The stone wall is folded, profiled and layered in response to orientation, sun , wind, rain and public activity. A colonnade to the south and west corner acts as a gathering and entrance space. In contrast the north and east walls are more mute.
Photograph by Alice Clancy
In response to the deep plan, the roof-form is modulated to light multiple spaces, including the central circulation space, the clinical skills labs, the corridors, and a small roof terrace.
An open central stair connecting all of the primary spaces, threads through all levels of the interior, designed as a social space with enough room to stop and chat or lean on a balustrade/shelf and view the activity of the entrance and other spaces above and below.
Brick follows through to the residences from the existing accommodation buildings behind. Here the material is given depth and the facades deeply carved providing a form of threshold between the domestic interior and the public space that they overlook. All living spaces address the public space to the south east with the more private study bedrooms facing north east or north west.
The undercroft of the residences is carved away providing archways allowing pedestrian movement from the carpark and bus park to the north as well as forming sheltered social spaces for students. Large gateways open into the entrance courts of the housing blocks where stairs, lift, bicycles bins and common laundry facilities are.
Size: Medical School 4300m2, Student Housing 3,600m2, Pergola 180m2, Piazza 1.2ha, Date: Completed December 2012 Location: University of Limerick, Limerick, Ireland
Project Managers: Kerin Contract Management Structural and Civil Engineers: PUNCH Consulting Engineers Mechanical and Electrical: Don O’Malley & Partners Quantity Surveyors: Nolan Ryan Tweed Health & Safety: Willis Consulting Fire Safety and Access: G. Sexton & Partners
In the first of a series of exclusive video interviews with Richard Rogers, who celebrated his 80th birthday yesterday, the British architect discusses the themes of his current Royal Academy of Arts retrospective and explains why he believes that a building should not just be designed for a specific client, but society as a whole.
“The Royal Academy asked whether I would like to do an exhibition about my life, not specifically about my work,” he says. “[It is] more about the thinking and also a section through 80 years of life.”
The key theme of the exhibition, Rogers explains, is social responsibility.
“We’ve decided to call the exhibition Inside Out, partly because I often put structure and ducts on the outside of buildings,” he says.
“But the real title is Ethos. The idea is that we have a responsibility to society. And that gives us a role as architects that is more than just answering the client but also to answer the passerby and society as a whole.”
Greeting visitors in large letters on the wall of the first room in the exhibition is a quotation that reads: “A place for all people, the young and the old, the poor and the rich.”
Rogers explains that this was the first paragraph that he wrote with Italian architect Renzo Piano when they were preparing their competition entry for the Centre Pompidou in Paris, which would go on to become one of Rogers’ most famous buildings.
“It shows the heart of this exhibition because that gave us the way of handling the Pompidou not just as a building, but also as a place, which I’m much more interested in,” Rogers says.
Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano
In this room there is also a video projected on the wall, in which Rogers explains his concept of “ethos”.
“It’s based funnily enough on my mother’s watch, which I always wear,” Rogers says.”It is a Bulova, which has beautiful workings in it. It’s some 50 years old now, and [the video] sort of explains my work through that watch.”
On the wall of the exhibition’s final room is another quotation, a translation of an oath that young men of ancient Athens had to swear before becoming full citizens: “I shall leave this city not less but more beautiful than I found it”.
“It is an oath which I would like to think we are all trying to do,” says Rogers. “Using beauty in that very broad, shall we say Greek way: democratic and intellectual, not just purely aesthetic.”
Rogers goes on to explain that he believes that good architecture is the result of teamwork, rather than one person’s vision.
“I work very much with colleagues, with friends,” he says. “Architecture is about teams. The idea that you suddenly wake up and do a sketch is not true. The only time I do that, I usually wake up with a hangover the next morning.”
He continues: “Like any work, whether film or book, [architecture] has its own inertia, it changes direction. And also the scale changes. The scale in your mind, the scale in models slowly gets more and more attuned to what you’re actually doing. You can’t imagine a building as complete any more than you can imagine 500 pages [of a book].”
The exhibition also features a number of personal items, including a report card from Rogers’ fourth year as a student at the Architectural Association School of Architecture, which doubts his ability to succeed as an architect.
Rogers’ report card from the Architectural Association School of Architecture
“Rogers’ late entry into the 4th Year was not successful,” reads the report. “He has a genuine interest in and a feeling for architecture, but sorely lacks the intellectual equipment to translate these feelings into sound building.”
“I was an appalling student, all my life,” admits Rogers, who was later diagnosed as suffering from dyslexia. “In fact, I enjoyed myself much more in the last third of my life than I did in my first third.”
“Everybody said I was stupid and then I found out that actually I had learning difficulties. So those gave me a lot of problems for the first thirty years. But the last 30 years of my life have been fantastic.”
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.
Lisbon studio ARX Portugal has extended a secondary school in Odivelas, Portugal, by adding angular concrete structures amongst the existing classroom blocks (+ slideshow).
Caneças High School previously comprised a series of rectilinear two-storey buildings, each containing approximately 12 classrooms. For the extension, ARX Portugal sought to tie these existing spaces together with a network of pathways, courtyards and informal study areas.
“The proposal is structured [using] a double interpretation of the learning concept: formal learning and informal learning,” say the architects, explaining how they perceive their additions as “collective spaces” for group studies and activities.
The entrance to the campus is located on the east side, where a large concrete entranceway is imprinted with a selection of large letters and numbers.
A second entrance can be found along the south side of the complex and leads into a grass courtyard surrounded by arcades. These spaces are sheltered beneath angled concrete canopies, supported by a mixture of both regular and wonky columns.
New indoor spaces feature a monochrome colour palette and include a number of casual seating areas that bring activity into the corridors. There’s also a new library, student lounge and auditorium.
The existent school is located in the outskirts of Caneças, Odivelas, in a territory of intense discontinuities. The proposal is structured beginning in a double interpretation of the learning concept: formal learning and informal learning. Those two types are translated in the building in two different architectural approaches, maintaining a dialogue between them. In consequence, the stiffness of the existent blocks, where the classrooms are placed, are structured like “learning machines”, in contrast with the informality of the new parts, enabling the “informal learning” in the collective spaces.
Considering that in the school, every spaces are teaching spaces, that each one as its own importance, the organisation and articulation between spaces is meant to fluid, with physical and visual permeability, allowing a more spontaneous and creative appropriation, leading to the willing of learn through space.
The human relations and activities are, in the end, in the base of all knowledge. From a tectonic point of view, the solutions adopted give the building an idea of matter unity and grant the space an elementary and abstract character.
Owner: Parque Escolar EPE Location: Rua da Escola Secundária, Caneças, Portugal Architecture: ARX PORTUGAL, Arquitectos Lda. Nuno Mateus and José Mateus Work Team: Ricardo Guerreiro, Fábio Cortês, Ana Fontes, João Dantas, Sofia Raposo, Mariana Sá, Emanuel Rebelo, Diana Afonso, Miguel Torres, Filipe Cardoso, Bruno Martins, Marc Anguill, Gaia Pelizzari, Rodrigo Henriques
Landscape Architecture: Traços na Paisagem Graphic Design: Pedro Falcão Engeneerings: SAFRE, Estudos e Projectos de Engenharia Lda; PEN Engenharia; CTQ, Lda.; SOLGEN; GEOTEST 3D Modeling: Traços na Paisagem
School Building: 11 600 m2 Total Intervention Area: 32 600 m2
Le studio parisien Hertrich & Adnet a réalisé un bel aménagement intérieur de l’hôtel Agora Swiss datant des années 70 situé à Lausanne. Multipliant les références à la culture helvétique, cet hôtel propose de plus une vue imprenable sur le Lac Léman à découvrir dans la suite en images.
The University of Chicago doesn’t want for distinctive architecture. The campus is home to buildings designed by everyone from Eero Saarinen and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe to Rafael Viñoly and Tod Williams and Billie Tsien, whose 184,000-square-foot Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts opened last year. And in a few years, some 800 undergrads will get to live (and eat) in a dorm designed by Chicago’s own Jeanne Gang.
The university has selected Studio Gang Architects to design a major new residence hall and dining commons on the north end of the UChicago campus. The firm will work with Mortenson Construction on the project, which is expected to open in 2016 and will shoot for LEED Gold certification. “We are excited to develop our design that focuses on creating vibrant student communities within the residence halls, connected to a series of new, active public green spaces and environments,” said Gang in a statement issued Tuesday. continued…
During Nike’s recent Nature Amplified summit at their Beaverton, OR headquarters, we were presented with a series of innovations that comprise the next palette for product development from the sportswear giant. A visit to the Nike Sports Research Lab meant a deep…
L’artiste Henrique Oliveira envahit le palais de Tokyo avec sa gigantesque installation Baitogogo : structure végétale, elle s’oppose à l’espace urbain dans lequel elle s’inscrit. Réflexion sur l’expansion sauvage et spontanée des villes brésiliennes, il suggère que les constructions humaines se développent organiquement.
The Yongjia World Trade Centre aims to create a new image for the WTC brand as well as a unique symbol for the new riverside city of Wenzhou. Set in the dense economic zone along the coast of Southeast China, next to the Yangtze River Delta region, the riverfront landscape is the unifying element in the overall design. The 5 towers that make up the center include top-floor residences, hotel suites, shopping/commercial areas, and of course, high-end offices for trade and businesses.
The notion of precious objects on a tray drives the main design concept, where the continuous podium landscape occupies the entire site and serves as a tray-like, green plain for the towers. The harmonious composition of the towers affords a unique image of the development from all different views. The composition will interweave with its surroundings, yet will remain recognizable as family of objects. On the tower scale, “frames” underline the concept of neighbourhoods in the sky which create unique locations with distinct identities. So-called “eyes” are located where the frames overlap. These are commonly used spaces such as sky gardens and lounges for use by residents, or social gathering places for office areas that afford the best views towards the river and Wenzhou city center. Both the frames and the “eyes” enhance the character of this future city symbol.
Aerial photographs reveal the angular geometries of this rooftop swimming pool in Bangkok by Thai landscape architects T.R.O.P. (+ slideshow)
The swimming pool is positioned over the podium of a 42-storey residential complex close to the city’s main station. Both residents and passing travellers look down on the pool from above, so T.R.O.P. added a canopy of concrete frames that appear from above to slice the water up into different sections.
“Most pools in Bangkok […] are called ‘Sky Pool’, because of a location on top of the roof,” said designer Pok Kobkongsanti. “The first couple of ones sounded very exciting, but, after a while, it got boring.”
He continued: “To make our pool different than the others, the ‘Skeleton’, a light cladded structure, was proposed to frame the swimming pool three-dimensionally.”
The outline of the pool is made up of straight lines with curved edges. The team avoided perpendicular lines where possible and arranged wooden decks and planting areas around the perimeter.
“Instead of a typical rectangular pool deck, we proposed a series of smaller terraces integrated with the swimming pool,” added Kobkongsanti.
Low-level lighting lines the edges of the space, creating a welcoming environment for nighttime swimmers.
Bangkok has changed. So have her people. In the past, we may prefer to live in small houses outside the city areas, and commute in and out the city daily. Not anymore. To fit the present time’s fast life style, New generation keeps moving in many condominiums inside the developed areas instead. Horizontal living is out. Vertical one is the thing to do.
As a result, Thai developers are competing hard for the perfect plots of land in town. No, they do not care much about how big the plot is, or how great the view it would get. As long as it is right next to the BTS (Bangkok’s Sky Train) station, it is perfect. In 2010, Trop got a commission to design the Pool of Pyne by Sansiri, a high-end condominium in Bangkok. Its site is ideal. Located right in the middle of busy urban district, just 5 mins walk from the city’s biggest shopping malls, the plot is about the right size, 2,900 sqm. To make it even better, it also has a BTS station right in front of the property.
Architecture-wise, most condominiums in Bangkok are quite similar. The residential tower is built on top of parking structure. Normally the parking part has a bigger floor plan than the tower, leaving the left over area as its swimming pool. The Pool @ Pyne by Sansiri is no different. It is designated to be on the 8th floor, which is also the roof of the parking structure. The area is a rectangular shape terrace, around 370 sqm.
Having the train station right in front really helps selling residential units (sold out in 1 day). However, space-wise, the station is a nightmare for designers. It is designed as a huge structure, about a hundred metre long, 3-4 storey high. Basically, it is like placing a huge building right in front of your door steps. Together with other surrounding old buildings, our project is trapped among concrete boxes by all 4 sides.
In order to get rid of that boxy feeling space, our first move is to create a “loosed” floor plan. Instead of a typical rectangular pool deck, we proposed a series of smaller terraces integrated with the swimming pool. Perpendicular lines were avoided, replaced by angled ones with round corners. A series of “green” planters were also inserted here and there, combining all 3 elements, water, terraces and plantings seamlessly.
Again, most pools in Bangkok share the same name. They are called “Sky Pool”, because of a location on top of the roof. The first couple of ones sounded very exciting, but, after a while, it got boring. Our design task was not only to design a pretty swimming pool, but we also wanted to created a unique landscape feature that can identify the character of our residents.
To make our pool different than others, the “Skeleton”, a light cladded structure, was proposed to “frame” the swimming pool 3-dimensionally. Before, the so-called sky pool is just flat piece of water on top of the building. Sure, swimmers can enjoy a great prospect view outside, but, looking back to the building, nobody recognise the presence of that pool from below. With the “Skeleton”, the pool was fully integrated into the architecture. Now the BTS passengers can look up and see the special space inside the frame. At night, the “Skeleton” glows, giving the architecture some “lightness” it needs badly in the crowded surrounding.
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