Situé à l’intérieur du W Hotel Montreal, ce « Wunderbar Lounge » est un espace de détente pensé par BPC. Avec d’excellents choix de design ainsi qu’un jeu de couleurs du plus bel effet, cette création inspirée par les quatre saisons est à découvrir grâce aux clichés de Stéphane Groleau dans la suite.
Walls surrounding this property showroom in Chongqing, China, were designed by architects PURE Design as triangular planes with origami-like folds (+ slideshow).
Located on the side of the hill within the Hong’en Temple Forest Park, the Chongqing Greenland Clubhouse comprises two storeys, which include a boxy lower level with transparent glass walls and a more sculptural upper level clad with zinc.
The sloping ground allowed PURE Design to add entrances on both levels of the building. On the lower floor, visitors arrive at a reception area for the sales centre and offices, while the upper entrance leads into an exhibition gallery.
A river runs past the south elevation, so walls are glazed on both levels to afford views out across the water towards the city skyline.
A spiral staircases connects the levels, plus the lowest floor opens out to a patio seating area on the east side of the building.
The building will initially function as a sales centre for the Chongqing Greenland Real Estate Development Company, but could be converted for use as a restaurant and clubhouse in the future.
Construction in and around China has led to the construction of a number of new showrooms for property developers that we’ve reported on, including an extremely pointy pavilion in Tianjin and a building with a rampart-like facade in Singapore.
See more new architecture in China, including a 300-room hotel in one of the country’s oldest cities.
Photography is by Shu He.
Here’s a project description from PURE Design:
The clubhouse is located halfway up the south side of the mountain in Hong’en Temple Forest Park, Chongqing, facing the Jialing River. It is one of twenty-three commercial buildings, initially used as a real estate sales centre for the Greenland Bund Center project. Designed as a medium for dialogue between the river and mountain, the spatial experience through the building reflects the unique qualities of the dynamic terrain.
Due to the one storey height difference between the mountainside entrance and the terrace overlooking the river, the building is composed of two floors. The second level consists of the main entrance, and is primarily used as the real estate exhibition space, containing multimedia presentations and a river view experience. The first floor functions as a sales centre, containing models of the properties and sales spaces. It is also connected to the model homes.
In terms of architecture, the form of the first level is conceived from a glass box, pristine and sturdy. On the second level, the side facing the mountain utilizes stretched triangular shapes to create an undulating contour line, echoing the silhouette of the mountains. Additionally, the heavy gray colour of the external zinc cladding integrates the architecture with the city. In contrast, the surface facing the river is tranquil and lithe, reminiscent of a crystal case; its translucency presents little disturbance to the river scenery while allowing a complete view of the river from the interior of the building. On this basis, the visitor is led on a winding path containing seven different experiences from the second floor entrance to the first floor terrace. Let each visitor experience the beauty of the medium between the site and its surroundings, composed of an infinity pool, river, triangular form, courtyard, and crystal case.
Above: exploded axonometric diagram
Project: Chongqing Greenland Clubhouse
Location: Chongqing, China
Completion: September 2012
Area: 1100m2
Client: Chongqing Greenland Real Estate Development Co.
Design Firm: PURE Design LLC.
Structural Engineer: Shanghai Baoye Construction Group Corp.
Landscape Design: Collective Landscape Design LLC.
Interior Design: MoHen Design International
Above: site plan – click for larger image
Above: lower level plan – click for larger image
Above: upper level plan – click for larger image
Above: long section – click for larger image
Above: cross section – click for larger image
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by PURE Design appeared first on Dezeen.
News: Facebook asked Frank Gehry to “tone down” his original plans for its new Silicon Valley campus, according to a partner at the architect’s firm.
Early proposals for the campus, which was given the go-ahead by Menlo Park City Council last week, envisioned a bold, curving facade reminiscent of well-known Gehry buildings such as the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao.
“They felt some of those things were too flashy and not in keeping with the kind of the culture of Facebook, so they asked us to make it more anonymous,” said Craig Webb, a partner at Gehry’s practice.
“Frank was quite willing to tone down some of the expression of architecture in the building,” he told the Mercury News, explaining that they plan to disguise the white stucco building with a rooftop garden: “Our intent is that it almost becomes like a hillside, with the landscape really taking the forefront.”
According to one Facebook employee, the 40,000-square-metre building will house 2,800 engineers in a single warehouse-like room.
“Just like we do now, everyone will sit out in the open with desks that can be quickly shuffled around as teams form and break apart around projects,” said Facebook’s environmental design manager Everett Katigbak in a blog post.
“The exterior takes into account the local architecture so that it fits in well with its surroundings. We’re planting a ton of trees on the grounds and more on the rooftop garden that spans the entire building,” he added.
An underground tunnel will connect the Gehry-designed building with Facebook’s existing campus over the road.
Gehry was brought in to design the campus last summer, with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg stating at the time that he wanted an office with “the largest open floor plan in the world”.
The social networking site’s former Palo Alto headquarters was completed by San Francisco firm Studio O+A in 2009.
Facebook isn’t the only Californian technology company expanding into larger headquarters currently, with construction now underway on Apple’s ring-shaped campus in Cupertino designed by Foster + Partners, while Google recently revealed plans for a 100,000-square-metre campus in San Francisco Bay.
Images are by Gehry Partners LLP.
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“more anonymous” headquarters appeared first on Dezeen.
Les équipes de Tense Architecture Network ont imaginé en Grèce ce projet impressionnant appelé « House in Sikamino ». Avec une structure en béton partiellement enfouie dans le sol, cette résidence d’une longueur de 60 mètres de longueur se dévoile dans une série d’images dans la suite de l’article.
Japanese studio General Design constructed this two-storey house in Tokyo as the prototype for a series of urban housing templates that can be replicated in any Japanese city (+ slideshow).
“The clients simply asked for a basic house for themselves and their two children, so we regarded this project as an opportunity to work on urban house prototypes,” says General Design.
The building comprises a simple two-storey volume with a gabled roof and a plaster-covered exterior. There are no windows on the front facade, but a sky-lit atrium and private courtyard are contained behind the walls.
Skylights are dotted along the roof on both sides, bringing natural light into the house from different angles. There’s also a square window in the top-floor living room, offering a view out across the neighbourhood.
A large living and dining room spans the length of the building and folds around to a kitchen at the back. The glazed courtyard sits on the left, while an extra room at the front provides an office that allows residents to work from home.
An industrial staircase spirals up to the first floor, where a second living room leads through to three separate bedrooms.
General Design is led by Japanese architect Shin Ohori. Other projects by the studio include the bare concrete and steel headquarters for clothing brand Neighborhood and the windowless concrete flagship for Lad Musician. See more architecture by General Design.
Photography is by Daici Ano.
Here’s a project description from General Design:
Prototyping UH
The site is located in a typical urban site in central Tokyo, where low-rise wooden houses and light gauge steel apartment buildings are densely built up in narrow quarters.
The clients simply asked for a basic house for themselves and their two children, so we regarded this project as an opportunity to work on urban house prototypes.
This simple pitched-roof house, finished plainly with mortar, has rustic appearance like a barn.
Above: ground floor plan – click for larger image
We adopted a standard wood frame system to achieve a simple layout and low-cost construction. This prototype can be adjusted and be built on any other urban sites.
Above: first floor plan – click for larger image
Large openings are located around the small courtyard on ground floor, and a picture window towards the adjacent park is provided in additional living room on the second floor. And large skylights on the roof allows for nice breeze to flow inside, and also give contrasting effect of light and shadow throughout the house.
Above: second floor plan – click for larger image
We opened up the interior space as much as possible so that the family feels as if spending relaxing time outside, under the blue sky. We intended to turn this tiny urban lot into a place where the family members can live openly and enjoy sufficient light and wind.
Above: long section – click for larger image
Architect: Shin Ohori / General Design Co., Ltd.
Location: Meguro, Tokyo
Site Area: 120.04 sqm
Built Area: 64.33 sqm
Total Floor Area: 141.07 sqm
Structural System: Timber
Completion Date: May 2012
Above: cross section – click for larger image
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General Design appeared first on Dezeen.
Chilean architect Pedro Gubbins designed this concrete residence as a rural retreat for himself and his family and has balanced it on top of a dry-stone wall (+ slideshow).
Named Omnibus House, the long and narrow residence is constructed on the side of a hill and the wall beneath it functions as a retainer against the sloping landscape.
Gubbins wanted the house to be visually linked to the outdoor spaces of its woodland location, so he designed the concrete volume with lengths of glazing stretching across its longest facades, allowing views right through the building.
“All the issues with privacy are solved because of the slope of the location,” said Jose Quintana Cabezas, an architect at Gubbins Arquitectos. “There are neighbours, but they are far away enough to not to have visual contact, plus all the tree trunks help.”
One of the most prominent features of the house is a concrete staircase that cuts through its centre, connecting the rooms on the main floor with an entrance on the storey below and a terrace on the rooftop.
Corridors run along both sides of the building, while rooms are arranged in sequence between. Glazed partitions divide the living and dining rooms, either side of the staircase, while wooden boards separate the bedrooms at the western end.
The concrete walls are exposed inside the building, plus polished concrete floors run through each room.
Santiago studio Gubbins Arquitectos also recently completed a hillside house with walls of timber and concrete.
Other recent projects in Chile include an earthquake-proof house and a hotel for stargazers. See more architecture in Chile.
Here’s some more information from Gubbins Arquitectos:
Omnibus House
Life and leisure space
To break the typical areas of an urban house; kitchen, living–dining room and dormitories, this house has a double circulation that deconstructs these areas into a set of complimentary places.
This creates a way of inhabiting that moves away from a typical urban arrangement into a more playful one.
To inhabit the exterior from within
To inhabit the exterior of a holiday house does not only imply the direct interaction with the outside of the house, but also the interaction through the house.
This has been achieved through its own structure and arrangement, allowing the possibility of re-discovering new views from the terrace-roof; from the back terrace through the living room, from the corridor or galleria by the main façade or sheltered along the houses stone base.
A sustainable architecture
The north orientation of the houses main façade (23.5 metres width by 3.1 metres height) offers the possibility of becoming a large solar collector that at night time re-emits the accumulated thermal energy gathered during the day, by its walls, concrete slabs and roof.
Materiality and construction
The use of concrete as the main material, gives a sense of mass that is necessary for relating to the context.
Its colour complements the surrounding trees and allowed the used of a large span for the roofing and the use of different textures produced by the rough sawn timber formwork sold by a local retailer.
Above: ground floor plan – click for larger image
Above: first floor plan – click for larger image
Above: roof plan – click for larger image
Above: east elevation – click for larger image
Above: west elevation – click for larger image
Above: north elevation – click for larger image
Above: south elevation – click for larger image
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Gubbins Arquitectos appeared first on Dezeen.
Réalisé par le studio Jürgen Mayer H., le « Metropol Parasol » recouvre la Plaza de la Encarnación de Seville depuis l’année 2011. Le photographe allemand David Franck nous propose une séries de clichés magnifiques de cette structure atypique accueillie par les Andalous. Plus d’images dans la suite.
Le studio japonais Metaphys a imaginé ces buildings miniatures composés de jardins sur le toit, de ces maquettes très réussies. Les quatre designs Alley, Plaza, Tunnel & Zig Zag de 10 cm de hauteur composent cette collection appelée « Ienami ». Plus d’images dans la suite de l’article.
News: architects including Zaha Hadid, Farshid Moussavi and Hani Rashid have signed a petition calling for Denise Scott Brown (above) to be recognised as a Pritzker Prize laureate alongside her husband, Robert Venturi, who was awarded the prestigious prize in 1991.
The architects are among 1,720 people who have so far backed the petition demanding that “Denise Scott Brown be retroactively acknowledged for her work deserving of a joint Pritzker Prize”.
Awarding the $100,000 prize only to Venturi in 1991 was “an unfortunate oversight,” according to Women in Design, a student group at Harvard Graduate School of Design, who organised the petition.
Top: Scott Brown outside Las Vegas in 1966; photograph from the Archives of Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown. Above: Denise Scott Brown photographed by Frank Hanswijk
Hadid, who became the first woman to win the prize in 2004 and was on the jury in 2012, signed up to the petition on Sunday morning, according to an announcement on the Pritzker Recognition for Denise Scott Brown page on Facebook.
The petition has also been signed by leading figures including architects Moussavi and Rashid, MoMA senior curator of architecture and design Paola Antonelli, architecture photographer Iwan Baan, Rice School of Architecture dean Sarah Whiting, and Berkeley College of Environmental Design dean Jennifer Wolch.
The petition follows an address last week by Scott Brown in which she described her exclusion from the prize as “very sad”. She added: “They owe me not a Pritzker Prize but a Pritzker inclusion ceremony. Let’s salute the notion of joint creativity.”
Scott Brown, 81, had been a partner at the couple’s practice Venturi Scott Brown and Associates (now VSBA) for 22 years when Venturi was awarded the prize, which is considered the most prestigious in architecture. She co-authored their seminal 1977 book Learning From Las Vegas and still works at the practice while Venturi, 87, retired last year.
Below: Robert Venturi photographed by Frank Hanswijk
“Women in architecture deserve the same recognition as their male counterparts,” said Women in Design. “Denise Scott Brown’s contributions were seminal to her partner Robert Venturi winning the prize in 1991.”
“Denise has suffered because she was in partnership with her husband,” wrote another signatory, architect Sarah Wigglesworth, on the petition’s website. “She was judged by a jury that overlooks collaborative effort and that recognises the male hero. Such bias needs redressing. Denise’s work has been seminal – as an architect, a planner, a writer and an educator. What more could anyone ask for?”
Jeremy Till, head of Central St Martins, wrote: “I was at a conference in Washington the day the Pritzker for Venturi was announced. Denise Scott-Brown was the keynote. Her answers to the questions at the end about the award were so dignified, furious and loving (all at the same time) that she should be awarded the Pritzker in her own right just for that.”
The Pritzker organisers said Scott Brown’s comments and the petition presented them with an “unusual situation”. Martha Thorne, executive director of the prize’s committee, told Architecture Magazine: “As you may know, the Pritzker Laureate is chosen annually by a panel of independent jurors. Those jurors change over the years, so this matter presents us with an unusual situation. The most that I can say at this point is that I will refer this important matter to the current jury at their next meeting.”
The jury of the 1991 Pritzker Architecture Prize mentioned Scott Brown’s contribution to Venturi’s work in their citation: “[Venturi’s] understanding of the urban context of architecture, complemented by his talented partner, Denise Scott Brown, with whom he has collaborated on both more writings and built works, has resulted in changing the course of architecture in this century, allowing architects and consumers the freedom to accept inconsistencies in form and pattern, to enjoy popular taste.”
In an interview with ArchDaily in 2011, Scott Brown spoke of her frustration at the way her role was perceived. “It’s hard for both of us — but particularly for me because I get obliterated,” she said. “Visitors to our office have tunnel vision toward Bob. I am seen as his assistant, not a professional in my own right, and certainly not a designer. Why that’s anathema would take a book to define.”
Zaha Hadid, who last month spoke out against “misogynist behaviour” in British architecture, became the first woman to win the Pritzker Prize in 2004. The only other woman to have won is Kazuyo Sejima, who shared the prize in 2010 with Ryue Nishizawa, her partner at Japanese architecture studio SANAA.
The row threatens to overshadow this year’s prize, awarded two weeks ago to Toyo Ito. The prizegiving ceremony for the Japanese architect takes place on 29 May at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston.
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to correct Scott Brown “oversight” appeared first on Dezeen.
Boxy wooden rooms branch out from a crooked blue spine at this family house in Sayo, Japan, in our second story this week about the work of FujiwaraMuro Architects.
Simply titled House in Sayo, the single-storey residence is located beside a car park in a sparsely populated residential district.
FujiwaraMuro Architects planned the house around a meandering corridor, contained with the deep blue volume, and it swells in two places to accommodate a living room in the middle and a dining room at the end.
“A narrow space threads through the center of this house, expanding and shrinking, curving and meandering,” explain architects Shintaro Fujiwara and Yoshio Muro. “This part of the house morphs and transforms to become a space for relaxation, study, reading or tea time.”
Timber-clad rooms protrude outwards along the sides. One functions as the entrance, while the others contain bedrooms, bathrooms, a kitchen and a traditional Japanese room.
A seating area is located within the recess cerated by one of the boxes and a small terrace is slotted between two boxes on the south side of the building.
Shintaro Fujiwara and Yoshio Muro founded FujiwaraMuro Architects in 2002. Past projects include a house with a corridor coiling around its floors and the recently completed House in Muko, which features a facade of huge vertical louvres.
See more Japanese houses on Dezeen, including a converted warehouse with rooms contained inside a white box.
Photography is by Toshiyuki Yano.
Here is a few words from FujiwaraMuro Architects:
House in Sayo
A narrow space threads through the center of this house, expanding and shrinking, curving and meandering. This part of the house morphs and transforms to become a space for relaxation, study, reading, or teatime.
We built a small room in the middle of this space. As the width of these branches changes, the purpose of this room, along with its relationship with the surrounding space, transforms along with it.
Location: Sayo, Hyogo, Japan
Principle use: single family house
Site area: 262.53 sqm
Building area: 82.78 sqm
Total floor area: 81.26 sam
Project architect: Shintaro Fujiwara, Yoshio Muro
Project team: fujiwarramuro architects
Structure: timber
Above: floor plan – click for larger image
Above: cross section
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FujiwaraMuro Architects appeared first on Dezeen.
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