Hasta La Ideas

An assortment of building typologies appear to be stacked on top of one another at this housing block in Middlesborough, England, by London architects FAT (+ slideshow).

The Community In A Cube (CIAC) building was first conceived as part of a larger masterplan drawn up by architect Will Alsop in 2004 for a site beside the city’s old docks. Other ideas for the development included a building shaped like a toaster and an apartment block resembling a stack of Jenga pieces.

The crash in the economy stalled almost all of these projects, so nearly ten years later FAT‘s cartoon-like building is the first and only project to complete. FAT director Sean Griffiths told Dezeen he is confident it won’t stand alone for long: “The developers were trying to add a bit of of pizazz and glamour, which I think was a great idea and I think it will in time spark more development.”

The nine-storey building comprises three tiers. At the lowest level, a gabled timber chalet sits alongside a row of shop units, which together support a six-storey apartment block in the middle section. Above this, two vernacular houses appear to be sitting on the roof.

“The idea was that it was like a little urban village,” said Griffiths. “It was about assembling disparate elements you would think of as incongruous into a collage that has an expression of community.”

He continued: “You have a thing that looks like a Swiss chalet on the ground floor, which was going to be the the local community pub. Then you have housing on the roof that taps into local culture. They’re not exactly ordinary houses, more of an aesthetic expression you’d be more likely to find in New England or Kent, but they become very odd because they sit on top on an apartment building.”

A total of 82 apartments are accommodated within the U-shaped plan and fold around a central south-facing courtyard. Balconies extend out over this space, while more are located in a large recess on the northern facade.

The architects used a variety of materials to give the building its colourful appearance. Purplish engineering bricks appear on the outward-facing elevations, while the walls flanking the courtyards and recesses are clad with timber and decorated with a black-painted lattice.

Apertures in the walls are created with a pattern of triangular, circular and square perforations. On the opposite side, the main stairwell is highlighted with geometric patterns in pink, green and blue.

“Our general philosophy about architecture is that much of it is very dull with no sense of exuberance, or any openness to a wider variety of influences and sources” added Griffiths. “This building is part of our expression that architecture should contribute something more memorable.”

The entrance to the building sits beneath a parapet of cloud motifs, where a single flight of stairs leads up to the terrace, then a spiral staircase winds up to the main access corridor on the second floor. This sequence was designed to encourage interaction between residents.

Heating and hot water for the building comes from a wood chip biomass boiler, plus the walls are heavily insulated to stop heat from escaping.

Architecture studio FAT, short for Fashion Architecture Taste, is run by three directors; Charles Holland, Sean Griffiths and Dezeen-columnist Sam Jacob. They’re also currently working on a house inspired by fairytales and recently completed a museum of copying at the Venice Architecture Biennale. See more architecture by FAT.

See more housing projects on Dezeen, including another pile of buildings in France.

Above: spatial organisation diagram

Here’s a project description from FAT:

FAT Architecture have recently completed CIAC, an £11.8M, 82 unit housing project in north east England. Designed for a joint venture client comprising developers BioRegional and Quintain, the brief was to deliver a highly sustainable, landmark housing project.

Above: site plan – click for larger image

The buildings simple block form is eroded and sliced by different housing typologies, courtyards, shared amenities, garden space and circulation routes to create a vertical community, from which its nickname ‘Community In A Cube’ is derived. The architectural language explicitly expresses the diversity of the buildings community to create a rich visual and spatial experience.

 Above: ground floor plan

Flats have generous 2.7m floor to ceiling heights, and are carefully planned to maximise dual aspect views that take advantage of the buildings waterside location. Circulation links the shared garden space with the public square below though planted terracing, encouraging a strong link between public, semi public and private space. The building addresses its surrounding public space with commercial units, a community centre and a pub to form a streetscape while its higher levels respond to the scale of the surrounding docks and city.

Above: first floor plan

Materially, the building uses a pallet of tougher brick to its exterior, responding to the industrial landscape of the old docks. Its interior court is lined with a softer, warmer timber to which graphic motifs and planting are used to add to its intimate, sheltered character.

Above: second floor plan

CIAC follows the “One Planet Living” principles developed by Bioregional and WWF to promote the concepts of sustainable living and ecological footprinting addressing carbon emissions, recycling, transport, materials, opportunities for on-site food production, water consumption, biodiversity, sustainable community structure, and access to pleasant outdoor space. Exceeding an Eco Homes Excellent rating, it’s sustainable design features include a high thermal performance for the external envelope and a wood chip biomass boiler which meets 100% of the buildings demand for heating and hot water as well as providing capacity for further neighboring developments.

Above: section from north to south

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by FAT appeared first on Dezeen.

Residents taking a bath or using the toilet are on show to swimmers in the pool at this brick and concrete house in Chiang Mai, Thailand (+ slideshow).

The house was designed by local studio SO, also known as Situation-based Operation. Named Wonderwall, it comprises a series of both indoor and outdoor rooms that fold around a row of chunky brick walls.

The residence is organised over a series of split levels to negotiate the slopes of the hill. Staircases are dotted around the rooms to prescribe different routes between floors.

“The house is basically a living space,” explains architect Narong Othavorn. “[It has] a huge open plan and open space between indoor and outdoor, with the big wall cutting through the existing landform to create the sequential scenes, exposing it to different space and functions.”

The swimming pool is positioned on the uppermost storey, sandwiched between the main bedroom and bathroom. Walls are glazed on the facades of both rooms so that they face each other across the water.

“I just wanted the owner to be able to shower right after swimming,” Othavorn told Dezeen.

Louvred fencing surrounds this cluster of rooms to let in light, but also maintains privacy from the rest of the house.

“The bedroom can be seen once entering the plot, but can only be accessed at the end of the sequential scene by passing through a gallery-like living room and the swimming pool,” added Othavorn.

The “gallery-like” living and dining room is also located on the top floor, while a sheltered outdoor kitchen and living room sits on the level below.

A square terrace covers one of the rooftops and is designed to double-up as an outdoor cinema.

The architect’s materials palette included red clay bricks, exposed concrete and timber decking. Glass walls are made up of concertinaed panels that hinge open when necessary.

Other residences we’ve featured from Thailand include a Bangkok apartment with an outdoor shower room and a renovation of two traditional shophouses.

See more architecture from Thailand ».

Photography is by Piyawut Srisakul.

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by SO appeared first on Dezeen.

News: a house in New Jersey designed in 1954 by the influential American architect Frank Lloyd Wright could be sold and moved as far away as Italy in order to save it from flood damage.

Homeowners Sharon and Lawrence Tarantino, who are themselves architects, hope to sell the Bachman Wilson house to a buyer willing to dismantle and transport the house away from its flood-prone site in Millstone, New Jersey.

“We have been here 25 years and over the past couple of years the flooding has become worse. We have to do what is best for the house,” Sharon Tarantino told the Daily Telegraph.

The asking price for the residence is £1 million, which includes the building and its furnishings as well as the estimated cost of moving it to a new location.

After plans to move the house to New York fell through, the couple got in touch with Italian architect Paolo Bulletti, who three years ago organised an exhibition in Fiesole, a town near Florence where Wright lived in 1910, to celebrate the centenary of the architect’s time in the area.

“We have recognised that the Bachman Wilson House was designed after Wright’s second visit to Fiesole in 1954 and there were many similarities to the design of his Fiesole house that was unbuilt,” said Sharon Tarantino.

The Tarantinos have now signed an exclusive agreement naming Bulletti as the Italian agent to research buyers for the property.

Although he has yet to find a site, Bulletti believes the mayors of Fiesole and Florence would be pleased to have the house, given Wright’s connection to the region, though it is still unclear if planning regulations would permit the house to be used as a residence.

However, it could be “erected in protected land, a park or a garden as if it were a sculpture,” Bulletti told the New York Times.

“We want to know that it has a future if we are going to go to the trouble of dismantling it and moving it,” said Sharon Tarantino. “We feel that wherever it goes, it has to have a connection to Wright.”

We recently reported that a Wright house in Phoenix, Arizona, could be bulldozed unless a new buyer is found or the city agrees to grant landmark status to the property.

Meanwhile, a New York and Athens-based architecture firm provoked ire from commenters last month with its proposal to add 13 floors to Wright’s famous spiralling Guggenheim Museum in New York – see all news about Frank Lloyd Wright.

Photographs are by Lawrence Tarantino.

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shipped from US to Italy appeared first on Dezeen.

Architect Renzo Piano has replaced the auditorium destroyed during the 2009 earthquake in L’Aquila, Italy, with a flat-pack building comprising three wooden cubes.

Located in the grounds of the city’s medieval castle, the new Auditorium Aquila contains a 238-seat concert hall that opened its doors to the public at the end of last year.

Renzo Piano Building Workshop designed the building with an entirely timber construction. The wooden components were pre-cut and delivered to the site as a flat-pack, before being screwed and nailed together.

The auditorium is located in the largest of the three cubes, which is tilted forwards to create a tiered bank of seating inside. Acoustic panels are fixed to the walls and ceiling to help sound resonate through the room.

The two smaller cubes are positioned either side of the hall. One functions as a foyer, with a refreshments area, cloakroom and ticket desk, while the other contains dressing rooms and a “green room” for performing musicians.

Glazed corridors connect the three cubes and glazed stairwells run up the exterior walls.

The larch panels create horizontal stripes across the exterior of the building and are painted in an assortment of colours. The architects also planted 90 new trees nearby to offset the wood used for the construction.

A public square in front of the structure can be used for outdoor events and performances, when big screens can be hung across the facade.

2012 was a busy year for Italian architect Renzo Piano. Other projects to complete include London skyscraper The Shard and the Astrup Fearnley art museum in Oslo’s harbour.

See more architecture by Renzo Piano, including an interview with Piano from before work started on The Shard.

Photography is by Marco Caselli Nirmal.

Here’s some information from Renzo Piano Building Workshop:

A Stradivarius in Parco del Castello

Three wooden cubes

The auditorium is formed of three wooden cubes that look as though they have somewhat haphazardly tumbled down and come to rest leaning against one another. The central, biggest cube, corresponding to the auditorium itself, seems to be tilting forward, as though about to topple over in an allusion to its instability. There is actually a specific reason for the slant: one of the two lower sides is sloped at the same angle as the stepped seating inside. The cubes may look abstract, but they conceal the presence of a real building. They are ‘non-forms’, or, rather, pure forms, that contrast with the 16th-century fort’s taut, compact mass as inconspicuously as possible.

All three cubes are made entirely of wood, a material that makes no pretension of being anything but ephemeral but is actually eternal. The choice is dictated by the building’s acoustic function, which is to sound like a musical instrument, but also by the context: the timber structures are actually highly earthquake resistant, and the wood’s materiality ‘naturally’ contrasts with the castle’s stone. What’s more, wood is a renewable and therefore ecologically sustainable material: that is why 90 trees were planted near the Auditorium; eventually they will be able replenish to the timber used to build the cube.

The Auditorium can be thought of as a huge Stradivarius laid out in the park. The meticulous, intelligent building technique recalls the craftsmanship of master lute-makers and of building well. It is pleasant to think that larch from Val di Fiemme, in the Trentino, where the most highly-valued wood used by Cremona’s 17th-century master lute-makers, Stradivarius being the most famous, traditionally came from, was used to build it.

The building technology, and the use of cutting-edge earthquake-proof construction techniques in L’Aquila, is an example of building well that can also be used for the old town’s reconstruction.

Above: site plan

The facades’ architectonic slope

The cubes’ outer sides will be clad in larch tiles around 25 centimetres wide and four centimetres thick. The tiles are protected with special treatments aiming to guarantee correct aging due to homogenous oxidation processes. The 16 sides of the cubes that can be seen — two corresponding to the bases supporting the two service buildings — are not all equal but vary depending on various, alternating architectonic criteria that give the structure a light, lively, and vibrant look.
Various colours also provide visual interest.

The sides feature a series of ‘accidents’ that add variety to their wooden surfaces’ homogeneity and geometry. The ‘accidents’ include the staircase spaces contained in glazed volumes superimposed on the wooden surfaces, the blood-red surfaces corresponding to the vertical or horizontal connecting spaces, the fire escape attached to the facades where necessary, and the air-conditioning ducts, which, in the back wall of the foyer, emerge from the façade, treated with a cement finish here. On some occasions, when special musical events take place, big screens can be temporarily hung on the facades, in particular that of the Auditorium and foyer, for the projection of films and images.

Above: long section – click for larger image

The auditorium and the service volumes

The building is broken up into three separate but interconnected volumes: the central volume, which contains the actual auditorium, and the two service volumes: the public service areas, which contain the foyer, located on the town side, and the performers’ service areas, which contain the dressing rooms, located on the castle side.

The auditorium’s volume is a cube with 18.5-meter sides. Considering that part of the cube is located below ground level, the rear corner is 18.5 meters high above the ground and the front corner 9.2 meters high. The foyer is an 11-meter cube whose above-ground height is 10.9 meters. The dressing rooms are contained in a nine-meter cube with an above-ground height of 8.5 meters.

The auditorium is reached through the foyer, which contains a refreshment area, cloakroom and ticket desk. The foyer’s volume contains the public lavatories and spaces equipped for various uses on the first floor, the air-conditioning system’s technical rooms on the second floor and the power plant with direct access from outside stairs on the underground floor.

The public takes an elevated walkway, rising around one meter above ground, to reach the auditorium from the foyer. It will be glazed on the north side and protected with opaque surfaces on the south side and roof.

Above: long section through auditorium

The 238-seat auditorium has a stage that can hold around 40 musicians. Two stepped seating areas facing each other accommodate the audience; the larger has 190 seats in front of the orchestra, the smaller, 48 seats behind it: the seats’ angle ensures the best possible listening and viewing conditions. The walls’ raw wood surfaces are hung with a series of acoustic panels orientated towards the audience to reflect sound inside the auditorium. The panels, also made of wood but with a high-quality finish, ‘soar’ in space, in some cases superimposed on the vertical walls, but always remaining detached from them, in other cases floating in space, hanging from above. Two approximately two-meter-high acoustic walls flanking the stage reflect sound towards the orchestra, ensuring the best possible listening conditions. The musicians’ dressing rooms are on the side opposite the foyer and give access to the autonomous, independent room. This access, which crosses an elevated walkway similar to the one in the foyer, being directly connected with the exterior, is for the musical instruments, including large pieces such as pianos, harps, percussion instruments, etc. A ‘green area’ where the artists will be able to rest and meet one another is planned on the dressing-room volume’s ground floor; two small spaces intended for the house manager and control booth are also planned. The conductor’s and lead artists’ (soloists or singers) dressing rooms, equipped with bath and a small waiting area outside, are located on the first floor. The orchestra musicians’ dressing room and lavatories are on the second floor. The dressing room is modular: it can be subdivided into variously-sized spaces for men and women depending on the number of each in the guest orchestras.

The service volumes’ various floors are interconnected by lifts whose size allows various kinds of users to take them.

Access for means for the transport of instruments, for the provision of catering services and for the facilities’ maintenance cross the outdoor area in front of the auditorium.

Above: cross section through auditorium

The piazza in front of the concert hall

The three volumes face each other in a large outside area conceived of as a natural link between the building and park but also as an area structured to extend the auditorium’s functions outdoors in summer. The space in front of the foyer is fitted out to extend the foyer bar’s catering activities, creating a pole of attraction that will surely be a nice place for a break. The area facing the auditorium’s volume can be fitted with seating to accommodate around 500 people who will be able to attend open-air performances or follow concert activities on a big screen in summer. The outdoor area is laid out along axes springing from the sides of the Auditorium’s three volumes, which intersect, generating patterns of dimensions and geometry.

Above: concept section 

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Renzo Piano Building Workshop appeared first on Dezeen.

L’agence publicitaire JWT s’est installée aux Pays-Bas dans un bâtiment du 19ème siècle au coeur d’Amsterdam. Située près de Leidse Square, ces bureaux proposent un design très réussi et étrange qui mixe différents des univers graphiques pensés par RJW Elsinga. A découvrir en images dans la suite.