Hasta La Ideas

News: a building designed by Zaha Hadid for Beijing has been copied by a developer in Chongqing, with the two projects racing to be completed first.

Designs for Hadid’s Wangjing Soho complex (top image), consisting of three pebble-shaped volumes up to 200 metres high, were unveiled in August 2011. The project is under construction and due to be completed in 2014.

Meanwhile, in the southwestern Chinese city of Chongqing, a project called Meiquan 22nd Century (above) is being built that observers say is a pirated copy of Hadid’s design.

German news site Spiegel Online quoted Zhang Xin, head of Chinese developer Soho China and the client of Hadid’s Beijing building, as saying: “Even as we build one of Zaha’s projects, it is being replicated in Chongqing.”

According to Spiegel Online, Xin made the comments at the opening of Hadid’s Galaxy Soho complex, another project for Soho China which opened in Beijing in October last year. Xin added that the Chongqing project is being built faster than Hadid’s original design.

Satoshi Ohashi, project director at Zaha Hadid Architects, told the German website:  “It is possible that the Chongqing pirates got hold of some digital files or renderings of the project.”

Ohashi added: “I am sure that some architect is already working on another version of the Guangzhou Opera House.” The opera house, designed by Hadid, opened in Guangzhou in February 2011.

In a report on the legal aspects of the case, China Intellectual Property wrote: “Up to now, there is no special law in China which has specific provisions on IP rights related to architecture.”

The site added that Chongqing Meiquan, the developer behind Meiquan 22nd Century, had refuted accusations of copying and posted on its blog: “Never meant to copy, only want to surpass.”

The post Zaha Hadid building pirated in China appeared first on Dezeen.

A spiral staircase climbs the all-timber facade of this house in Amsterdam by Dutch studio Egeon Architecten (+ slideshow).

Located in one of the artificial island communities of Ijburg, the family house has three storeys that include living rooms at ground level, bedrooms on the middle floor and an office on the top floor.

The outdoor staircase is tucked into a recess in the front wall and leads up to a balcony on the uppermost floor, providing a separate route into the office that doesn’t trail through the house.

“The house is situated with a superb view to the south,” architect Egon Kuchlein told Dezeen, explaining his decision to place the office on this level.

Egeon Architecten laid cedar strips horizontally and vertically across the facade and also clad the window shutters so that most openings can be camouflaged.

At ground level, the rear wall is replaced with a row of floor-to-ceiling windows that open the living room out to a garden behind.

Many buildings have been constructed in the new residential district of Ijburg in recent years and others we’ve featured include a house with a glazed rear facade and a house that is partly clad with dark-stained wood.

See more houses in the Netherlands »

Photography is by Chiel de Nooyer.

Here are a few more details from Egeon Architecten:

Villa Rieteiland-oost’ – a spacious detached house on the commuting Rieteiland East, IJburg, Amsterdam

Clear almost mathematically devised private house carried out in wood and glass. Controlled elaboration, consequently carried out in interior and exterieur.

To the traditional arrangement of living on the ground floor and sleeping on the upper floors a floor is added for working from home. The ground floor has a glass facade with large sliding doors on the garden side, so that the residents can benefit most from the view. The bedroom floor is more open to the inside, the outside more closed. The floor with the office and consultation room has views all-around. Open / closed / open.

The timber frame house is built from fair and sustainable materials, has a heat pump and low temperature underfloor heating, natural ventilation, high insulation values of roof walls and floor, special heat-resistant glass, a sedum roof, attention to thermal bridging details and orientation. As a result, low level energy consumption realized.

Floor area: 225 m2, capacity: 700m3
Ground floor: living room, dining room, kitchen, sanitary, engineering.
1st floor: 3 bedrooms, bathroom, engineering.
2nd floor: office, consultation room, bathroom, terrace, separate entrance.

Above: ground floor plan – click above for larger image

Above: first floor plan – click above for larger image

Above: second floor plan – click above for larger image

Above: section – click above for larger image

The post Villa Rieteiland-oost
by Egeon Architecten appeared first on Dezeen.

Le photographe allemand Carsten Witte nous propose de découvrir cette série de clichés appelée « NYC Fractal ». Passionné par les buildings de New York, l’artiste nous propose des images de surfaces et de façades de bâtiments où formes se marient aux reflets. Plus dans la suite.

Bjarke Ingels Group a imaginé cette tour de 130m de hauteur pour la ville de Phoenix dans l’Arizona. Ce projet, commissionné par Novawest, a été pensé afin de permettre aux touristes de se rendre dans un endroit unique pour leur permettre de profiter du paysage. Plus d’images dans la suite.

A new prize offers a Pritzker-sized purse for young architects. The Harvard Graduate School of Design‘s Wheelwright Prize is a $100,000 traveling fellowship that will be awarded annually to talented early-career architects worldwide. It’s an expansion of the school’s annual Arthur W. Wheelwright Traveling Fellowship (established in memory of Wheelwright, an 1887 GSD grad), intended to encourage the study of architecture outside the United States and formerly available only to GSD alums. Past fellows include Paul Rudolph, Eliot Noyes, I. M. Pei, and Adèle Naudé Santos. Now architects practicing anywhere in the world can apply for the prize, proposing research agendas outside of one’s country of residence. If you’ve graduated from a professionally accredited architecture degree program in the past 15 years, start polishing your portfolio along with a proposal for a research project accompanied by a travel itinerary. Applications will be accepted from January 10 through February 28. The winner, to be selected by an international jury, will be named on May 15, 2013.

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