Hasta La Ideas

Construction is underway on a Olympic-themed museum in Tianjin, China, comprising five connected rings.

Designed by Dutch architects HAO and Beijing studio Archiland, the museum will commemorate the legacy of Juan Antonio Samaranch, who was president of the International Olympic Committee from 1980 to 2001 and an influential promoter of the games.

Exhibitions dedicated to Samaranch’s work will be housed in a figure of eight-shaped building that will loop around an entrance courtyard and garden in the two largest rings of the complex.

The three smaller circles will contain sunken courtyards, providing spaces for temporary exhibitions, administration and research.

The Samaranch Memorial Museum is due to complete in 2013.

See stories about this year’s Olympic games here »

Here’s a project description from HAO:

The HAO / Holm Architecture Office + Archiland Beijing design for the Samaranch Memorial Museum in Tianjin, China is under construction.

After adjusting the design of the competition scheme, the Samaranch Memorial Museum construction is well under way. The museum is expected to be completed by the end of 2013.

Concept diagram – click above for larger image

Project Information:

Juan Antonio Samaranch, the president of the International Olympic Committee from 1980 to 2001, devoted his life to the Olympic. Throughout his presidency he advocated for reform and inclusion and was a strong supporter of Chinas bid as host city for the 2008 Olympic Games.

The five interlocking rings of the Olympic Logo serves as the foundation for the buildings design.

By re-arranging the rings and varying the scale we are proposing a museum consisting of two rings above ground and with 3 sunken courtyards.

The two main rings serve as counterparts in the story of the life of Juan Antonio Samaranch.

The first ring lifts and invites the visitor in through a public courtyard. This ring focuses on the legacy of the work Juan Antonio Samaranch did with the Olympic Committee and the impact it has had on China and the world. The second ring encloses a lush garden and focuses on the life and work of Juan Antonio Samaranch, serving as a memorial to his achievements.

Together the two rings create a continuous loop taking the visitor through both the exhibition and memorial areas.

The surrounding park design is includes art and activity zones anchored by a new lake.

The Samaranch Memorial Museum is designed to take full advantage of green technologies. Solar cells is designed to be installed on the buildings roof and geothermal heating and cooling will provide climate control.

“With the design of the Samaranch Memorial Museum we propose to merge two existing typologies: the memorial and the museum. This new combination allows the building to both honor the life of Juan Antonio Samaranch while simultaneously creating a place which focuses on the true legacy of the Olympics: creating opportunities for people to meet and celebrate across cultural and geographical boundaries.” Jens Holm, Founder, HAO

Name: Samaranch Memorial Museum
Program: Museum and Landscape
Type: Competition
Size: 15.000 m2 building, 80.000 m2 landscape
Client: City of Tianjin
Collaborators: Archiland Beijing, Krag & Berglund, Cowi Beijing
Location: Tianjin, China
Status: Completion 2013

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by HAO and Archiland Beijing appeared first on Dezeen.

This cross-shaped chapel in Brazil was designed by architect Gustavo Penna (+ slideshow).

Unlike a cruciform, the concrete cross on the front and rear facades of All Saints Chapel is wider than it is tall.

Sunlight seeps into the chapel though a skylight that runs along the uppermost point of the cross.

Clear glazing surrounds the sides of the building, while the interior is lined with timber.

A pool of water is positioned just in front and aligns with the centre of the cross.

See more chapels on Dezeen here, including one with skeletons in its basement.

Photography is by Leonardo Finotii.

Here’s some more information from Gustavo Penna:

All Saints Chapel

First, the baptismal font.

A source of pure water – the origin of everything.

Through the two river banks, one reaches the third – religare; the symbol/synthesis, the cross

Sky and earth – the vertical line

All men – the horizontal line

The internal space is created by displacing the sacred form.

The space is the movement.

The wood shelters, cuddles, protects.

Nature is around participating in solidarity.

Project name: All Saints Chapel
Architecture: Gustavo Penna, Laura Penna, Norberto Bambozzi, Alice Flores, Alyne Ferreira, Catarina Hermanny, Natália Ponciano, Priscila Dias de Araújo, Vivian Hunnicutt
Management and Planning: Isabela Tolentino e Rísia Botrel
Location: Martinho Campos – Minas Gerais – Brazil
Year designed: 2010
Year completed: 2010
Projected area: 160m²

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by Gustavo Penna appeared first on Dezeen.

A staircase is extruded from the wooden shelves of a bookcase at this renovated house in Tuscany by Italian architects Sundaymorning and Massimo Fiorido Associati.

Named House in a Pine Wood, the single-storey residence was first constructed in the 1960s on a sandy site that is closely surrounded by pine, oak and myrtle trees.

The architects re-clad the exterior of the house in travertine marble and constructed a wooden deck around the perimeter.

Windows are deeply recessed and some are hinged at the centre so that they swivel open.

This is the second house in Italy we’ve featured in the last week, following a gabled house with boxy windows.

See more projects in Italy »

Here’s some more text from Sundaymorning:

Context

The pinewood of Marina di Castagneto Carducci was born early last century as a result of a process of reclamation of the coastal dune belt.

In the late Fifties architect Giancarlo De Carlo draw up an urban development characterized by the large presence of the landscape, in which buildings, surrounded by dunes dotted with pines, oaks and myrtles, with strong character and individuality are connected by paths that follow the free conformation of the landscape.

The consequence of this, but especially because a rapid process of tissue development built since the Sixties, is the heterogeneity of the architectural presence: buildings realized with quality, often characterized by the use of stone walls as an expressive character, with formal features that often do not disdain to look at the best Italian and European experiences of the Fifties, are counterbalanced by buildings of little value, inconsistent in their morphological and decorative devices, often the result of successive transformations and uncertain.

Opportunity

The work presented here was created by the occasion of a renovation of a summer residence built in the Mid-Sixties. The poor architectural quality of the existing building is an opportunity to think about the quality of the landscape in which the building stands on a sand dune, surrounded by pine trees located in singular points, often very close to the walls.

The project outlines a double perspective: on one hand the need to find a synthesis between the nature of the building – although still to be discovered – and the morphological and color values of the place where it is located, the other hand the desire to place the character of the interior in keeping with a trend made of comfort, domesticity, appropriateness. All this applies especially in the modulation of light and views, to the extent and shape of spaces, in the discretion of the materials.

A longitudinal ideal director, through the whole building, allowing you to find a convergence between two significant operational aspects: firstly, the redefinition of the internal space, which translates into a sequence of rooms through closely related to each other and with the landscape surrounding, and secondly the identification of the character of the building in a new morphology, at the same time natural and archetypal, finding in the horizontal sediment a new axpressive character.

From these thoughts descend the criterion of remodeling openings in the building: almost all different but built taking into account both the sequence of the interior, the relationship between the room and the external balance, the relationship mass-punching of the building.

This is especially evident in the large dining-room window, at the end of successive openings of the same size, framing a view of the dune landscape.

Matter

The emergence of the archetypal character of the intervention is manifested in the morphology of the new shape, which highlights the double-pitched roof and a certain compact terminals in the two fronts – but mitigating these formal features in the central, predominantly horizontal.

The material used for the exterior, a travertine marble, helps to read the morphology of the building as a result of an ideal unit mass made of different sediments, giving further color consonance with the surrounding landscape.

The limited range of materials – travertine marble cladding also present in the interior, plaster, teak wood, used to give continuity to the horizontal planes inside and out – helps to make a presence in the pinewood grove that thrives on a refined ambiguity: while providing a comfortable refuge from the outside world, both within himself introduces the landscape that surrounds it.

Click above for larger image

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and Massimo Fiorido Associati appeared first on Dezeen.

Découverte de ce projet étonnant avec ce labyrinthe entièrement constitué de livres. Prévu pour les allées du Southbank Centre de Londres, cette sculpture de 250 000 ouvrages littéraires en labyrinthe a été composée par les artistes brésiliens Marcos Saboya et Gualter Pupo. Plus de détails en vidéo dans la suite.

Dezeen Wire: the Royal Opera House in London has launched a competition to redesign the entrances and surrounding public spaces of its Covent Garden building, making it more accessible to the public.

London studios Amanda Levete Architects and Heatherwick Studio are among the seven firms invited to participate, alongside Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Stanton Williams, Jamie Fobert Architects, Caruso St John Architects and Witherford Watson Mann Architects.

The architect of the winning project will be announced in December and appointed to work on feasibility studies for the next phase of the project.

Here are the full details from the Royal Opera House:

The Royal Opera House (ROH) is running an invited architectural competition to ‘open up’ its public spaces to become more welcoming to visitors, provide an easily accessible insight into the work that goes on here and to improve the levels of comfort.

The aim is to make the physical entrances and street level public areas to the building more open and tantalising, and to find ways of developing existing space to assist making the work of the Royal Opera House and the associated creative processes more visible to the general public. In turn this will enhance the appeal of the Covent Garden building as a destination in itself. The Royal Opera House will be looking to reduce its use of energy and resources throughout the project as part of an ongoing strategy embedding ‘green thinking’ into all areas of ROH operations.

Tony Hall, Chief Executive of the Royal Opera House said “We are hugely excited about the ideas and inspiration the competition will generate. The Royal Opera House is looking for the team who, if we can raise the funds needed to fulfil our shared ambitions, will create the next evolution of our building. We are keen to investigate the possibilities of opening up the building even more to ensure that we have the very best facilities to welcome our loyal and existing audiences and to reach out to new ones.”

This feasibility study comes twelve years after Dixon Jones’ redevelopment of the Royal Opera House which dramatically improved backstage and technical facilities, front of house entertaining areas and included additional performance spaces. During this time, the building has become used more than ever both as a performance venue and for other activities, with more than 650,000 people coming into our building last year and a further 30,000 people coming into the building during the daytime as casual visitors.

The competition process will allow us to select an architect to carry out a feasibility study for the work. The competition will run from July to November 2012 and we will announce the selected architect in December 2012. This process is being funded completely by private supporters of the Royal Opera House.

On completion of the feasibility study, the funds necessary to move to the next phase of the project will also need to be entirely raised from private sources.

The Royal Opera House has been advised on the project by Ricky Burdett of the London School of Economics. Dixon Jones are advising on the competition and feasibility process and Sir Jeremy Dixon will sit on the final jury. The seven invited firms are: Amanda Levete Architects, Caruso St John Architects, Diller Scofidio and Renfro, Heatherwick Studio, Jamie Fobert Architects, Stanton Williams Architects, Witherford Watson Mann Architects.

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competition to redesign entrances appeared first on Dezeen.