Hasta La Ideas

Folding steel shutters and bullet-proof glass protect the new reception of the Belgian Embassy in Athens by Buerger Katsota Architects.

The renovated entrance foyer is open to the public by day and leads up to a reception counter and security checkpoint behind a cement panel-clad wall.

Coloured lights line the edges of the glazed facade and reflect onto blinds that fold down for privacy.

The architects won a competition in 2009 to renovate the embassy, which was originally constructed as an apartment block in the 1960s.

We’ve featured a few embassy buildings on Dezeen – see them all here.

Photography is by Charalambos Louizides.

Here’s some extra text from Buerger Katsota Architects:

Embassy of Belgium
2009-2012
Athens, Greece

The Belgian Embassy in Athens is housed in the three lower levels of a prestigious, late 1960’s apartment building. The proposed scheme aims at creating a ‘Storefront’ for Belgium in the centre of Athens.

The new façade is open, transparent, interactive, as well as protective. Behind the full height, clear structural glazing with its stainless steel foldable protective screen, a lighting strip negotiates the transition between outside and inside. During after hours, the illuminated façade marks the embassy’s presence and literally render the arcade with the colours of Belgium. Technically, the entire glazing is designed to withstand acts of vandalism and security threats.

The proposed reorganization of the interiors aims at creating a welcoming, open, well defined public space to flexibly cater for various events and uses. The main elements of the proposed plan are: the front entrance area -the Vestibule- which is intended as a multifunctional public space, the second threshold, the ‘grey box’ incorporating the space for the Receptionist’s Office and the Security Portal, and the staircase area with the lift lobby.

The materials have been selected for their quality, durability, performance and elegance, with their list being purposely limited: white marble for the flooring with reference to the existing. Grey ‘Eternit’ panels for the Receptionist Area and the Security Portal, for its crispness, lightness, ready-made quality and easy assembly. Clear bullet proof glazing, for security reasons and stainless steel finishes for the architectural ironmongery for their elegance, durability and material expression.

Project description: Renovation of the Chancellery of the Belgian Embassy Athens invited competition – 1st prize
Location: Athens, Greece
Built area: 150 m²

Design team: Stephan Buerger, Demetra Katsota, Tasos Govatsos, Flavian Lekkas, Mladen Stamenic
Consultants: A P Kryfos AE (m/e engineering)
Client: Kingdom of Belgium, Federal Public Service-Foreign Affairs

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Buerger Katsota Architects appeared first on Dezeen.

Dezeen Wire: the organisers of the London Festival of Architecture have announced that the summer fair will now take place every year.

This year’s instalment of the formally biennial festival concluded last weekend and featured 16 days of exhibitions, lectures and events that took place in locations across the city.

See more details in the press release below:

The London Festival of Architecture to become an annual summer fixture

The organisers of the London Festival of Architecture, the city-wide celebration of architecture and architectural talent, have announced plans to hold the popular summer showcase on an annual basis beginning in summer 2013.

Previously organised as a biennial event, with the most recent edition concluding last weekend, the Festival is due to return for another three weekend / two week run next year from 22nd June to 7th July 2013.

This year’s event, which saw the adoption of both “The Playful City” theme and the pineapple – a symbol of welcome and hospitality – as the Festival’s official emblem, incorporated hundreds of innovative events and attractions held in various hubs across the capital during an unprecedented summer of cultural and sporting attractions.

Peter Murray, chairman of NLA and Festival Founding Director said:
“The sheer energy and enthusiasm that has been invested in this year’s Festival, by many hard-working organisations and individuals, strongly suggests that an annual event would be well received.

“The London Festival of Architecture receives core funding from the voluntary donations of the 250 Club, but as you’d expect with any ambitious project of this nature, we will need to raise additional funding to ensure we can deliver another Festival of similar ambition and scope in 2013. Needless to say, the will is certainly there to make it happen and we’re already in the early stages of speaking to potential sponsors.”

The annual London Festival of Architecture is curated by The Architecture Foundation, British Council, New London Architecture and RIBA London. This year’s Festival saw a packed programme of events and attractions held in various hubs including the City of London and Southwark, Fitzrovia and Victoria, and King’s Cross and Hoxton.

This year’s many Festival highlights included The Developing City exhibition, which will run at the Walbrook Building until 9th September (New London Architecture); Gibbon’s Rent, the participatory creation of a permanent new pocket park, reclaiming a forgotten cut through in Southwark (The Architecture Foundation); The British Council’s International Architecture and Design Showcase 2012, which will continue to run until 23rd September; and WEATHER – IT’S RAINING OR NOT: Hoxton Square’s playful interactive parasols and a graphic display of “the Weather Yesterday” which will be on display until 9th September (RIBA London).

In addition, to satisfy the enthusiasm and interest that this year’s Festival has generated, additional events are being planned to tie in to some of the key installations over the rest of summer 2012.
This year’s Festival was sponsored by Land Securities and Berkeley Group, and supported by the Mayor of London and through public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England.

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to go annual appeared first on Dezeen.

Californian architects amphibianArc have designed a shape-shifting “transformer building” for a Chinese machinery company, with a facade that flaps like the wings of a huge insect (+ movie).

The exhibition centre, for industrial vehicle manufacturer Zoomlion, is designed to mimic the movements of eagles, butterflies and frogs.

Hinged steel and glass panels resembling dragonfly wings at both ends of the building are mounted on hydraulic arms, allowing them to open and close like Transformers.

The building is due to be built on a site at Zoomlion’s science park in Changsha, Hunan Province and will be used for exhibitions and product displays.

Other buildings that move on Dezeen include a house that slides open and huts that roll on railway tracks.

See more projects in China »

Here’s a project description from amphibianArc:

Zoomlion Headquarters Exhibition Center

The Zoomlion Headquarters Exhibition Center is located in the city of Changsha, Hunan Province of China.

The project has a total of four floors with a footprint of 3,100 square meters, a total area of 10,074.90 square meters, and a total building height of 26 meters. Zoomlion is one of China’s leading manufacturers of heavy machinery equipment and ranked top 10 globally in the heavy machinery industry. Our criteria for the design for its headquarters exhibition center are to match its forward thinking, unique, and mechanistically imaginative corporate image and values.

The most unique aspect of our project design is the building’s ability to change shape, or transform, literally. The double skin system throughout the building makes this “transformer building” possible. The inner skin takes care of the enclosure and building systems.

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The outer skin contains operable portions which can be opened or closed to mimic different animal forms. From a plain rectangular box as the initial state, the north facade transforms into an eagle and a butterfly, the south folds into a swimming frog.

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These animal forms reflect the company’s understanding of the delicate balance between nature and artificial invention, and their embrace for environmentally sound human development. Also, as a design strategy, we adopted ideographic forms to convey traditional Chinese cultural symbolism for leadership (eagle), ephemerality and fragility (butterfly) and prosperity (toad).

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The intricate pattern on the façade is originally inspired by the wing patterns on butterflies or dragonflies. To achieve the systematic and organic nature of the patterns found on the wings of these insects, we used parametric modeling tools to generate and design the façade.

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The material for the skin is steel and glass. The pattern provides a light but sturdy structure. It conceals and incorporate the hydraulics which move and hold it in place.

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The result is a beautifully laid out intricate pattern, which allows daylight to penetrate into the exhibition hall and light emanate out into the corporate campus at night.

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To bring this design into actuality and assure its functionality and durability, we have been working with renowned international engineering firms on the constructability and procurement process.

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Their experience has shown how a cross disciplinary effort can increase the efficiency and quality of the product. Kinetic and static structures are separated as engineering services.

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Engineers in coordination with architect and client will provide a set of system specifications for both static and kinetic structures, similarly to product specification.

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After the schematic design phase all documents are given to a specialty fabricator with engineering capability to design, fabricate, install and warranty the final product, overseen by the original engineer. This streamline process starts communication early, allowing each team to interject into the process in time to provide their strength and assure the highest quality result.

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by amphibianArc appeared first on Dezeen.

Shimmering brass walls surround this arts centre that Portuguese firm Pitagoras Arquitectos have just completed in Guimarães.

The new two-storey structure comprises a series of irregularly stacked volumes that extend out from a refurbished row of existing buildings on the edge of an old market square in the city centre.

Rows of rectilinear brass pipes give the centre its ridged golden facade, while mirrors clad the underside of cantilevered rooms on the first floor.

Two underground levels are located beneath the square to provide galleries, an auditorium and a car park, plus the building also houses creative workshops and offices.

The opening of the centre ties in with the city’s status as European Capital of Culture for 2012 and will showcase a permanent collection of works by local artist Jose de Guimarães.

Buildings with golden exteriors have been popular in the last year and so far we’ve featured a library, a pavilion, a museum and a wedding chapel with golden walls.

See all our stories about golden projects »

Photography is by Joao Morgado.

Here’s some text prepared by the architects:

Platform of Arts and Creativity
International Centre for the Arts Jose de Guimarães
Guimarães, Portugal

The buildings that make up the Municipal Market and the space defined by them, commonly referred to as “the square”, a name inherited from market square are, as a unit, characteristic elements of the urban landscape of the city of Guimarães.

The grounds of the old municipal market boasted a privileged and very central location with excellent accesses, very close to the Toural Square and the historic center.

With this project, the transformation of the marketplace into a multifunctional space dedicated to artistic, economic, cultural and social activities within the scope of European Capital of Culture 2012, allowed for the physical and functional reintegration into the urban fabric, to become a reality and so, to recover one key area of the city space.

In addition, the operation extended to adjacent plots, enabling the regeneration of the interior space of the block, which was completely uncharacterized, as a result of its occupation by a marble processing industry.

The program provided a clear concept and defined the objectives intended to achieve with this infrastructure, listing a series of skills and spaces that constitute the functional program for both the new and the existing buildings, as well as the adjacent plots of land.

For this purpose three major program areas were defined:

1. Art Center, which houses a permanent collection, in this case the Collection of José Guimarães, temporary exhibition area, a multipurpose space for additional activities, performances and shows, in addition to a series of complementary services.

2. Creative Labs (business support offices) for the reception and installation of activities related to creative industries, allowing the development of business projects.

3. Workshops to Support Emerging Creativity, consisting of workspaces and creative vocation for young creators in various areas, hoping to develop projects on a temporary basis.

Finally, the intent to recover the existing building on the eastern side, trying to promote the installation of additional commercial activities that could enhance the creation of a space with a broad scope in regards to multidisciplinary cultural activities.

The whole structure, according to the program would complement the existing equipment in the city, as well as those which are under development within the European Capital of Culture.

When interpreting the program, we aimed to allow for the possibility of each one of its components to function independently and simultaneously, creating accesses to each of the various services and support areas, as well as to the outdoor square and garden.

We opted for a methodology of intervention that involves the rehabilitation of the existing building to the east, keeping the materials and textures, but redoing the entire inside at level 0.

For the building at north, and for reasons previously mentioned, the façade towards the Avenue, which characterizes the building, is renovated, but its interior and façade facing the square were object of and almost complete demolition and redesign.

Although it is intended to maintain the scale and the existing formal relations, we propose a new solution for the building that promotes a strong relationship with the square and emphasizes the relationship of this structure with the outer space.

The new building takes a radically different language, by contrast with its surroundings, both from the standpoint of their language and image, discrete, repetitive, as well as by the succession of volumes, with full and empty, marked by the juxtaposition of contrasting surfaces.

The coatings, a grid of metal profiles in brass and glass surfaces chromatised on ventilated façades, accentuates a range of textures that is intended display, more dense and opaque in the majority of faces in the case of the metal structure, and transparent when it covertly comes to glass surfaces that intentionally conceal the few openings that the building comprises.

This series of volumes and dissonant elements, which result from decomposition of the initial volume, was originated by the need to create a variety of different spaces in the exhibition area, creating a tension evident in the volume of the building and the relationship with the space of the square, making it the main feature of its design.

For the square, we formulated a proposal with a drawing significantly more aseptic and a coating with large concrete slabs, as a counterpart to the surrounding buildings, characterized as a large reception and a multifunctional meeting area, translated into a physical platform, summing its vocation as public space by nature.

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It will be an area purposely under fitted, with the preservation of the large trees to the east, by introducing some elements of vegetation along the north building, but leaving most of the free space allowing for the development of numerous spontaneously or organized activities, in the scope of the Platform or not.

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The urban furniture used in the square comprises moveable elements, allowing for a more versatile use.

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Location: Guimarães
Date: July 2012

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Architects: Pitágoras Architects
Project team: Fernando Sá, Raul Roque, Alexandre Lima, Manuel Roque

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de Guimarães by Pitagoras Arquitectos appeared first on Dezeen.

The surrounding countryside is projected onto the ceiling of this reed-covered tower that Hudson Architects and artist Ben Coode-Adams have installed in a field in Norfolk, England.

Entitled The Great Eye, the small, temporary structure functions as a camera obscura that visitors can climb up inside using a hidden staircase.

Mirrors surround the wooden legs of the tower, so that it from afar it appears to be hovering in midair.

The structure is one of over 30 site-specific projects completed for Cley 2012, a contemporary arts festival taking place in and around a quiet village on the east coast of England.

Other projects on Dezeen from the Norfolk countryside include a barn extension with chunky chipboard walls and a mill-keeper’s house clad with charred timber.

Photography is by Raven Cozens-Hardy.

Here’s some information from the festival organisers:

The Great Eye by Hudson Architects

This is The Great Eye – a new art installation by Hudson Architects.

A camera obscura that appears to float in mid-air, it stands near the village of Cley in north Norfolk and forms part of the Cley 12 Aisle and Air exhibition project, which runs from 5 July to 5 August.

The Great Eye evokes the memory of coastal buildings that have disappeared at Salthouse and Cley – whether undermined, eroded or demolished by the sea. It also reflects on church towers that appear so frequently in the Norfolk skyline.

Seen from a distance the tower appears to be floating in mid-air, creating an ambiguous relationship with the ground that Hudson Architects intend to reflect the shifting nature of the north Norfolk coastal landscape over time.

The tower is built from timber and is clad with local reeds, supported by timber supports behind a series of mirrors that reflect the sky.

Concealed inside the tower is a camera obscura which reverses the viewer’s gaze. The Great Eye was built by artist and sculptor Ben Coode-Adams.

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and Ben Coode-Adams appeared first on Dezeen.