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News: construction is set to begin next month on the world’s tallest building in Changsha, China, which will be completed in just 90 days.

Construction firm Broad Sustainable Building (BSB), a subsidiary of China’s Broad Group, has corrected earlier reports that its 220-storey Sky City tower would take seven months to complete, telling ConstructionWeekOnline that the skyscraper will be finished at the end of March next year.

Following foundation work that will continue until the end of December, the company said its schedule to construct the 838-metre tower “will go on as planned with the completion of five storeys a day.”

“We have not issued any press statement on this and it will go on as planned… we have not said anything about 210 days,” said Broad Group senior VP Juliet Jiang, adding that the project is still awaiting approval from the government.

As previously reported on Dezeen, BSB plans to build the tower using pre-fabricated components that slot together like a Meccano toy. On completion, the skyscraper would be taller than Dubai’s Burj Khalifa and include schools, a hospital, 17 helipads and apartments for over 30,000 people. The company has already successfully demonstrated its approach on a smaller scale by constructing a 30-storey tower in 15 days.

Broad’s CEO Zhang Ye claims his pre-fabricated towers are designed with a different load-bearing structure to conventional towers so that they use less concrete and steel and can be produced in factories rather than on-site.

However, some construction experts believe the tower is simply too tall to be built with ready-made parts. Bart Leclercq, head of structures in the Middle East at WSP, the engineering firm behind The Shard in London, warned that documents for Sky City on BSB’s website make no mention of wind load.

“There are forces working on a building that tall, including the wind. It is not a minor thing at that height,” he told ConstructionWeekOnline. “By just using these simple units all put together, you are not going to get enough stiffness; this building will have an enormous storey drift, and it will sway.”

BSB has also released a composite image that compares its skyscraper with the Chicago skyline (pictured top), which emphasises its projected height next to the 100-storey, 344-metre John Hancock Center seen alongside it.

Read our previous story about BSB’s plans to build the world’s tallest tower from pre-fabricated parts, or see all our stories about skyscrapers.

Lyndon Neri and Rossana Hu of Shanghai studio Neri&Hu recently told Dezeen that their fellow architects in China are “lost” and need to stem the tide of “half-assed” building projects in the country, while Aric Chen, the creative director of Beijing Design Week, had previously warned that China needs to “slow down” and pay more attention to issues of authenticity, process and identity.

In contrast, Hong Kong-based designer Michael Young told Dezeen earlier this month that China is now “a dream scenario” for designers, with its huge manufacturing base and plenty of investment opportunities on the horizon.

See all our stories about China »

Images are courtesy of Broad Group.

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be constructed in 90 days appeared first on Dezeen.

Polish studio Ingarden & Ewý has slotted a theatre and library around the nineteenth century structure of a former horse-riding arena in Kraków (+ slideshow).

Bringing together two existing organisations, the Małopolska Garden of Arts (MGA) contains both the Małopolska Voivodeship Library and the Juliusz Słowacki Theatre that had been already been using the old building as a venue for workshops.

Architects Krzysztof Ingarden and Jacek Ewý extended the building to create a T-shaped plan, surrounded by a glass curtain wall with a cloak of chunky clay louvres.

This stripy cladding was designed with an uneven profile to mirror the shapes of surrounding buildings. Ingarden describes this as a game between “mimesis and the abstraction”, meaning that the building both refers to its context and is distinctly different from it.

The library occupies the western wing of the T-shaped plan, while the theatre stretches north to south, beside a large indoor garden filled with benches, planting beds and a maple tree.

Partially sheltered beneath a skeletal roof, this space is open to the public and was designed to “transport the gateway to the stage out onto the street” and hence entice visitors into the theatre, cinema, events room and cafe.

The library has its own entrance and contains three floors of reading rooms and study areas that face out onto a pedestrian passageway along the side of the building.

Ingarden & Ewý won a competion to design the Małopolska Garden of Arts back in 2005 and it finally opened to the public last month.

It was also recently awarded the Janusz Bogdanowski Award for making the greatest contribution to architecture in Kraków in 2012.

See more projects in Poland, including the world’s narrowest house and a sports centre with rooftop tennis courts.

Photography is by Krzysztof Ingarden.

Here’s more information from Ingarden & Ewy

The building of the Małopolska Garden of Arts (MGA) has been constructed according to a competition-winning (Union of Polish Architects, SARP 2005) design by Ingarden & Ewy Architects. The initiative of establishing a new cultural institution in Kraków was proposed a year earlier by Krzysztof Orzechowski, Director of the Juliusz Słowacki Theatre and Janusz Sepioł, at the time the Marshal of the Małopolska Region. It is no coincidence that the building was raised in the vicinity of ul. Karmelicka – a street popular with students and locals alike – opposite the building of the public library, with the aim of ensuring its smooth inclusion into the “bloodstream” of the city.

The building of MGA introduced new spatial order to the old backyards and ruined buildings in Rajska and Szujskiego streets in Krakow. The starting point was a multifunctional hall, which was entered into the outline of the old, 19th-century horse-riding arena, used in the last years of its history as workshops and storage space for the Juliusz Słowacki Theatre in Kraków.

The Małopolska Garden of Arts is a cross between two institutions: the Juliusz Słowacki Theatre and the Malopolska Voivodeship Library. The wing on Szujskiego Street holds a modern art and media library, with multimedia books and music, while the section standing on ul. Rajska has been developed by the theatre, and is equipped with a multifunctional events hall. The new hall – operating, as a studio theatre, conference room, concert hall, and venue for banquets and exhibitions – holds retractable stages for 300 people. State-of-the-art stage technology is present overhead: fixed on hoists and cranes to the steel ceiling girders. This allows dramas and concerts to be performed, and exhibitions, film screenings, symposiums, conferences, art auctions, fashion shows, and many more events to be held. Altogether, the space of about 4300 sq.m houses a theatre together with a cosy cinema with 98 seats, a café, and premises for the organisation of educational, art-related activities.

Honing the form, the architects focused on interaction with the future recipients, which is why the entire spatial form of the symbolic, openwork roofing raised over the garden from the side of Rajska Street – though not functioning as an actual roof – is there to transport the gateway to the stage out onto the street. In this way, the building delicately nudges passers-by with the skilful manipulation of the form, already at first glance giving the onlooker the impression of going beyond the borders of a garden, where culture is grown in evenly planted rows. Further proof of the sophisticated play with the space is the garden itself. Imitating flower beds, the equal bands with low greens are a metaphor of a garden: as much as the architects could afford here. A notable fact is that historically “ulica Rajska” – literally “Paradise Street” – led to the Garden of Paradise, which was later replaced by the developments of the Tobacco Works.

Architect Krzysztof Ingarden (collaborating with Jacek Ewý), claims that the form of the building is a contextual game between “mimesis and the abstraction”. In practice, this means that the building is by no means a simulacrum of the context, but rather draws inspiration from the code of contextual forms by making references to the geometry of the roofs and tissue of the neighbouring structures applied for the abstract geometrical compositions of the façades. The building fits the scale of its environment perfectly by maintaining the lines of the roof and divisions of the façades in line with the composition and linear solutions of the neighbouring buildings.

The final impact is the result of the designers’ sensitivity to signals coming from the environment. For example, the opening in the perforated roof of the garden was formed, especially for the maple tree that grows there. In recognition of its exquisite sense of spatial composition and creative form in historical context, the building was awarded with the Professor Janusz Bogdanowski Prize, for the best architectural achievement in Krakow in the year 2012.

In this place, the cultural life of the Kraków’s young artistic set will blossom under a shared roof. Modern ballet, contemporary theatre forms, audio and video arts, concerts, and all and any other artistic pursuits will find their home here.

Above: computer rendering

Above: basement plan

Above: ground floor plan

Above: first floor plan

Above: section A-A – click above for larger image

Above: section B-B – click above for larger image

Above: section C-C – click above for larger image

Above: section D-D – click above for larger image

Above: section E-E – click above for larger image

Above: west elevation – click above for larger image

Above: south elevation – click above for larger image

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by Ingarden & Ewý appeared first on Dezeen.

The trend for extreme cantilevers continues with this house in Croatia by architect Idis Turato, where one floor dramatically overhangs the other.

Nest and Cave House overlooks the sea in the Opatija Riviera, where houses typically follow a vernacular style with gabled profiles and clay roof tiles, but Idis Turato wanted to create a building with more of a dominance over the hillside.

“The main question is how to control the space encompassed; and subsequently how to develop selective control of encompassed space,” Turato says, explaining his concept to frame parts of the landscape using architecture.

The irregular angle of the cantilever divides the two storeys of the house into two distinct volumes. The ground floor is a rugged concrete building set into the lawn, while the steel frame of the upper level is coated with white cladding panels that help to create a lightweight structure.

An angled chimney acts as a lightwell for a central staircase, which sits at the meeting point of the two floors and connects living and dining rooms on the top floor with bedrooms downstairs.

We recently published proposals for a wine museum that projects from the side of a mountain, which prompted a few readers to question if cantilevers are old news.

Other cantilevers we’ve featured include a periscope-like office building and a museum at a Celtic burial mound.

See all our stories about cantilevers »

Here’s a project description from architect Iva Marčetić:

Nest and Cave House
Idis Turato

The hinterland of the Opatija Riviera in Croatia is dotted with villas (built within a century and a half). Their upper, front side reveals nothing but entrances beyond which we can only imagine their spaciousness.

Their scale and relation to the bay are entirely dependent on the seafront slope (perhaps, it is the tension arising from the assumption of something hidden what gives the spatial frame of Opatija’s hinterland its appeal).

Although the Nest and Cave remains typologically and morphologically true to the surrounding space as a whole, it develops its “hidden” side through the dialectics of domination over and subordination to the landscape.

So, the house and the place it renders are not structured solely by the slope onto which they are built (as it is the case with most villas in Opatija). Instead, it actively constructs the landscape and intertwines with it by laying down the ground level (landscape) and by placing on it an upper object which hovers above as a displaced level.

Therefore, the house consists of an entrenched concrete bunker (the sleeping area) on which a steel spatial grid structure is placed and which elongates into a 17 meter long console.

Despite it being constructed within a reductive registry of functions, with only two structural elements and with its apparent division into the sleeping and living area, the house creates a wondrous, ever shifting experience and interspaces.

This is achieved by a simple dislocation of the upper segment in relation to the lower one and by inscribing it into the depth of the parcel.

Above: entrance axo diagrams – click above for larger image

The dislocated upper part and its hypertrophic console express, by alternating the shadow and the hidden with openness and hospitality, the quintessential tension of a Mediterranean house: the battle of the sun and the shadow. The Nest and Cave house becomes a reinterpretation of its heritage by achieving a full form via projecting the object (the shadow) and opening the void in the body (landscape).

Above: space usage plan diagrams – click above for larger image

The console leaves behind a shadow which (depending on the time of day) gives volume to the living area (“the heart of the house”, as the author calls it) and, by alternating the intersection of its axes (as much as the angle of the sun will allow it), it shifts around thus constantly creating yet another intimate area of the house.

Above: lower level plan – click above for larger image

Through its fenestration facing away from the road and surrounding structures and by carefully framing the landscape that penetrates and dictates the depth or flatness of the interior, the visually (and statically) dominant white shape (the aluminum covered steel grid) invites the Kvarner Bay inside.

Above: upper level plan – click above for larger image

Idis Turato, the architect, having to face such a dominant landscape, attempts to explain his raison d’être behind it in the words of Buckminster Fuller,: “(…) The main question is how to control the space compassed; and subsequently how to develop selective control of compassed space (…)” How to simultaneously capture broadness, enable intimacy, while continuously standing on the edge in front of unobstructed views?

Above: roo plan – click above for larger image

Above: section – click above for larger image

The view of the house and the view from the house are in a constant clash of inclusion and exclusion. Beneath someone’s nest and cave we are able to observe the sculptural relationship between the landscape and the house (the other place).

Above: section – click above for larger image

On the other hand, when being inside it, we become beneficiaries of witnessing the subliminal beauty enabled by the controlled landscape frames – carefully planned axes and angles successfully separate the “initial resources from the final product” *.

Above: section – click above for larger image

The control over a spatial frame allows for “passionate uncertainties of thought”, regardless of whether we are the observers or the users and of which story we are telling.

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by Idis Turato appeared first on Dezeen.

Daniel Libeskind has completed an education centre at the Jewish Museum Berlin, twelve years after the American architect completed his widely acclaimed extension (+ slideshow).

Located across the street within the structure of Berlin’s old flower market, the Academy of the Jewish Museum Berlin provides a new home to the museum’s library and archive, which has doubled in size over the last decade to accommodate both printed and digital records.

At the entrance, Libeskind has designed a roughly-hewn timber box that bursts through the exterior wall, with angular skylights and a sliced opening to invite visitors inside. Two additional timber boxes are located within the building and house the library and auditorium.

The 2300-square-metre centre will be used as a venue for educational workshops, lectures and conferences, and will also offer a meeting place for the 7000 guided tours run by the museum each year.

The Jewish Museum Berlin is one of the largest museums of Jewish history in Europe and opened to the public in 2001, following the construction of Libeskind’s extension to the original 1930s building.

“My ongoing collaboration with the Jewish Museum Berlin is a source of tremendous professional and personal pride,” said Daniel Libeskind. “Each project offers a fresh chance to illuminate Jewish history and culture, to understand the tragedies and the triumphs, and to celebrate the resilience, creativity and erudition that have been Jews’ enduring legacy.”

This year Libeskind was also selected to design a peace centre on the site of a former prison in Northern Ireland and completed a family of curved towers in Singapore.

See more stories about Daniel Libeskind »

Photography is by Bitter Bredt.

Here’s some more information from Studio Daniel Libeskind:

The Academy of the Jewish Museum Berlin Will Be Forum for Research, Discussion and Education

Roughly a dozen years after Daniel Libeskind’s extension to the Jewish Museum Berlin opened to great acclaim in 2001, the museum has unveiled its latest collaboration with the architect, the Academy of the Jewish Museum Berlin.

The 25,000-square-foot, one-storey Academy stands on the site of Berlin’s one-time flower market, whose shell undergirds the new structure. Located across from the museum proper, the Academy brings together its library, archives and education center and offers additional office, storage and support space for the museum.

Since the museum’s reopening in 2001, its public and educational programs have more than doubled. In addition to 7,000 guided tours each year, the museum offers more than 400 educational programs ranging from workshops for children to training courses for museum professionals. The new facility will house these programs as well as symposia, conferences, lectures and seminars.

The museum’s library and archives have also moved to the Academy. The archives, which contain both printed and audio-visual materials, have also doubled in size over the last decade while the library’s holdings have tripled.

In-Between Spaces

Daniel Libeskind’s design for the Academy of the Jewish Museum Berlin links the building to the museum’s other structures and open spaces, both thematically and structurally.

One of the first things visitors see upon entering the piazza leading to the building are the words of the great medieval Jewish scholar and philosopher Moses Maimonides. His famous adjuration, “Hear the truth, whoever speaks it,” is splashed across the left side of the façade, a reminder that those who delve into history must be prepared to accept what they find regardless of the source. The five languages in which the charge is given – English, German, Hebrew, Arabic and the original Judeo-Arabic of medieval Spain – reinforce that message while also suggesting the universal nature of truth.

On the right, a large downward-sloping cube bursts through the façade. Its unusual contours echo the jagged shape of the museum’s 2001 extension, designed by Mr. Libeskind and visible across the street. That shape is also a variation on a theme found in the museum’s Garden of Exileand Glass Courtyard, also designed by Mr. Libeskind and opened 2007 and 2005, respectively.

Two large skylights, visible from the piazza, rest atop the cube. Shaped like the Hebrew letters Alef and Bet (A and B), they are another reminder of the importance of learning and knowledge to the human experience and of their centrality to Jewish life.

After passing through a large gash in the cube that serves as the Academy’s entryway, visitors are decanted into transitional space comprising two more huge cubes. Thrust forward at odd angles, the cubes, which house the library and the auditorium, form a jagged triumvirate with the rear end of entrance cube.

The movement and interaction suggested by the cubes’ shape and placement and by the seemingly rough-hewn timber (actually radiate pine timber) used to fabricate them suggests the sort of crates used to transport precious objects, including books. They also suggest Noah’s Ark, which preserved the most precious thing of all – living beings, in all their splendid variety – during the most important voyage in biblical history.

“In-Between Spaces,” Mr. Libeskind’s name for his design, describes the transitional area among the three cubes. It also alludes to the different perspectives offered by that unique vantage point. Standing on that spot, looking into the hall and out on to museum’s other structures and spaces, visitors are ideally placed to reflect on the museum’s larger purpose and their own experience of it.

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by Daniel Libeskind appeared first on Dezeen.

Situé à l’angle des rues Kenmare et Elizabeth à New York, l’Hôtel Nolitan est un splendide hôtel de luxe dans NoLiTa. Cet hôtel de 55 chambres propose également un restaurant et une terrasse sur le toit. Un design et une architecture très inspirante réalisé par Grzywinski+Pons à découvrir dans la suite.