News: international architecture firms IND and Powerhouse Company have won a competition to design a 100-metre-tall broadcast and observation tower in Çanakkale, Turkey, with a design that resembles a continuous ribbon.
Planned for a forested hilltop on the outskirts of the historic city of Çanakkale, the proposal by IND (Inter.National.Design) and Powerhouse Company is based on an undulating loop that rises above the ground and stretches upwards to create the tower.
The competition brief called for a building that provides recreational facilities including exhibition spaces and observation decks, as well as the communications mast.
“The design of the new Çanakkale Antenna Tower resolves these paradoxes by uniting all the different functions and spatial requirement into one spatial gesture,” said a statement about the winning design.
Visitors will be able to wander along a raised path that will loop around the site and lead to the visitor centre, which will be built above the treetops on the edge of the hill facing the city.
The tower is deliberately located away from the visitor centre to reduce the danger of radiation from the transmitters fixed to its surface affecting visitors or staff, and is designed with a simple form that will enable it to accommodate future technologies.
“The antenna tower is formed by joining the two vertical paths, creating a gracious gateway under which the visitors enter the premises,” added the statement. “This gesture creates a strong visual identity; an iconic appearance from afar that is transformed into an elaborate scenic experience when up close.”
By lifting the structure off the ground, the architects aim to minimise its impact on the surrounding forest. The space surrounded by the looping pathway will be dedicated to use as a park that visitors will be able to access at points where the path touches the ground, and from a staircase beneath the viewing deck.
The architects collaborated with infrastructure and engineering firm ABT on the design of the winning proposal.
Les architectes suisses Daluz/Gonzalez ont imaginé la Casa Mi pour son projet de construction à Herrliberg en Suisse. Avec ses 3 étages face à un lac, la maison mélange le béton et le marbre sous une forme très originale privilégiant l’espace. Une bâtisse minimaliste qui est à découvrir dans la suite de l’article.
News:architects have “nothing to do with the workers” who have died on construction sites in Qatar, according to Zaha Hadid, whose Al Wakrah stadium for the FIFA World Cup 2022 is under construction in the gulf state.
Over 500 Indian migrants and 382 Nepalese nationals have died in the country since it won the right to host the football tournament, according to an investigation into conditions in the Qatari construction industry by British newspaper The Guardian, prompting an outcry from human rights groups across the world.
“It’s not my duty as an architect to look at it,” Hadid said yesterday at the reopening for her Olympic aquatics centre in London. “I cannot do anything about it because I have no power to do anything about it. I think it’s a problem anywhere in the world. But, as I said, I think there are discrepancies all over the world.”
Hadid‘s Al Wakrah stadium is one of five new venues under construction for the tournament but the architect says it is the responsibility of the Qatari government not architects to address issues relating to worker deaths.
“I have nothing to do with the workers,” she said. “I think that’s an issue the government – if there’s a problem – should pick up. Hopefully, these things will be resolved.”
Asked if she was concerned about the deaths, Hadid commented: “Yes, but I’m more concerned about the deaths in Iraq as well, so what do I do about that? I’m not taking it lightly but I think it’s for the government to look to take care of.”
The 40,000-seat stadium is currently under construction in Al Wakrah. Its curvaceous form was based on a type of Arabian fishing boat, but the design came under fire shortly after release when critics compared it to a vagina.
Créée pour le project « Solo Houses » de Christian Bourdais, l’architecte Didier Faustino, basé à Paris et à Lisbonne, a conçu la « Big Bang House », une bâtisse futuriste et dynamique qui semble exploser au milieu de la nature. Elle devrait être construite à Matarrana en Espagne à côté de 11 autres maisons de vacances.
An aluminium canopy speckled with triangular perforations shelters the space between old and new buildings at Mexico‘s National Film Archive and Film Institute, recently renovated by Rojkind Arquitectos (+ slideshow).
Mexican firm Rojkind Arquitectos was tasked with upgrading the existing facilities of the campus in Xoco, south of Mexico City, as well as adding extra cinema screens, an outdoor amphitheatre and additional storage vaults for the film archive.
Rebranded as Cineteca Nacional Siglo XXI, the complex is used a cut-through from a local metro station, which prompted the architects to create a sheltered space at the centre of the campus that functions as both a public gathering area and a lobby for the buildings.
“We didn’t want it to feel like you’re in the lobby of a commercial cinema, we wanted it to feel more like a university campus, with everything floating in a park” said studio founder Michel Rojkind.
The aluminium-clad canopy curves downwards to form the facade of a pair of new buildings. These accommodate four extra screening rooms, bringing the overall total up to ten, and create a two-storey zone for shops, cafes and seating areas.
“The added amenities have turned the campus into a favourite gathering space not only for moviegoers but also for Xoco residents and workers who have appropriated the space as if it were their backyard,” said the design team.
Two archive vaults were added to the existing four, making room for 50,000 extra reels of film, and a museum dedicated to the history of Latin American cinema was constructed.
Car parking areas previously dotted around the campus have been consolidated into a single six-storey building, creating space for planted landscaping and the new 750-seat amphitheatre.
Photography is by Paul Rivera, apart from where otherwise stated.
Here’s a project description from Rojkind Arquitectos:
Cineteca Nacional Siglo XXI
Located in the southern quadrant of Mexico City, the National Film Archive and Film Institute of Mexico is home to the most important film heritage of Latin America. Its campus occupied an underutilised site of considerable dimensions within the strangled town of Xoco. This historic town, once surrounded by agricultural land, now sits deep within the urban sprawl and faces extinction due to economic and political pressures from developers and municipal authorities which covet its privileged location.
Photograph by Jaime Navarro
The existing complex dated from 1982, when a fire destroyed part of the campus and most of its archive, and was a “temporary” facility never well suited for its purpose. Additionally, thousands of people cross the grounds daily as they walked to and from one of the city’s nearby metro station, Estación Metro Coyoacan.
Facing total renewal, Cineteca’s original project brief included the expansion and renovation of the existing complex incorporating additional vault space and four more screening rooms. But in response to the immediate urban condition, additional restorative work needed to be done to reclaim part of the site as public space, give relief to the dense new-development – filled surroundings of Xoco and accommodate the constant flow of pedestrians and casual visitors.
Photograph by Jaime Navarro
First, surface parking was consolidated into a six-storey structure freeing 40% of the site. Then the pedestrian friendly “back entrance”, located across the street from the historic town’s cemetery, was reactivated – 70% of Cineteca patrons use public transportation and arrive by foot. The reclaimed space now houses the new program organised along two axes, one perpendicular to the street of Real Mayorazgo becoming the main pedestrian entrance and the other perpendicular to Av. México-Coyoacán for both car and pedestrian access.
Photograph by Jaime Navarro
The axes intersection became a new 80m x 40m public plaza sheltered from the weather by a hovering canopy connecting the existing complex with the new screening rooms. Clad in composite aluminium panels, with varied size triangular perforations, the roof structure wraps around the new screening rooms and becomes their facade. The sheltered space functions as the foyer for the old and new screening rooms and can accommodate additional program options such as concerts, theatre, exhibitions, etc.
An outdoor amphitheatre, extensive landscaping and new retail spaces were added to the original program expanding the possibilities for social and cultural interaction and exchanges, and giving the complex a university campus feel.
The new screening rooms seat 180 each and the existing screening rooms were updated with current technology. Overall the complex can now seat 2,495 visitors in indoor theatres. The outdoor amphitheatre has a 750-person capacity. Two new film vaults were also added to the site, increasing Cineteca’s archive capacity by 50,000 reels of film. Parking capacity was also increased by 25% to a total of 528 cars.
The thousands of people that use the grounds everyday now find welcoming unrestricted public space: commuters still walk back and forth across the campus in the morning and evening, medical staff from a nearby hospital stop by to eat their lunches at noon, students hang out at the park in the afternoon, and moviegoers attend free outdoor events in the evening. The added amenities have turned the campus into a favourite gathering space not only for moviegoers but also for Xoco residents and workers who have appropriated the space as if it were their backyard.
A doorway is the only opening in the faceted concrete facade of this family residence in Tokyo by architecture studio MDS.
Kiyotoshi Mori and Natsuko Kawamura of Tokyo-based MDS wanted Shirokane House to make the most of its small site, so they designed a three-storey volume that angles outwards and upwards to create extra space and bring in more light.
“There are basic requirements for a house, where people live, such as privacy protection and ample daylight and ventilation,” they said. “It, however, takes a little ingenuity to satisfy such requirements under a given condition that a site is surrounded by the neighbouring buildings.”
Residents enter the house on the middle floor, and are led through to a double-height kitchen and dining room that receives natural light through a pair of high level windows.
One of the windows fronts a living room on the storey above, while the other sits in front of a small roof terrace.
A lightweight steel and timber staircase leads up to this top floor. Upon arriving in the living room, a steeply angled ceiling is revealed, as well as a corner window with a pointed tip.
Concrete walls are left exposed inside the house as well as outside, and are textured by horizontal markings that reveal the original timber formwork. Floors are finished in walnut.
A set of wall-mounted rungs form a ladder leading up to a second terrace on the roof, while bedrooms and bathrooms are located on the lowest floor.
The small site is located in a typical Tokyo urban residential area, where houses are closely built up. A pursuit of internal spaces in this house, as a result, changes the Tokyo cityscape a little.
An area for one floor is usually desired as large as possible, in particular, in such a narrow site. For this house, the first floor area is small due to the parking space and the second floor is, instead, larger. The outer appearance is examined based on ceiling height, slant line regulations for a building shape.
There are basic requirements for a house, where people live, such as privacy protection and ample daylight and ventilation. It, however, takes a little ingenuity to satisfy such requirements under a given condition that a site is surrounded by the neighbouring buildings. For the site, the southern site across the road is “tentatively” a parking space and no one can tell what will happen in the future. The daylight is, therefore, taken in from the above as much as possible and it is brought downstairs.
The living room is on the top floor. The roof terrace facing the blow-by above the living room and the terrace connected with the living room take daylight and air in the house and the light falls on the dining and kitchen room downstairs. The irregular shape at the corner of the site allows the house continuously to keep privacy as well as daylight and ventilation.
The building looks quiet only with the entrance on the south facade, it embraces expressive internal spaces where light and shadow change by the minute.
Architecture: Kiyotoshi Mori & Natsuko Kawamura / MDS Location: Minato-ku, Tokyo Principal Use: Residence Structure: RC Site Area: 64.49 sqm Total Floor Area: 101.63 sqm
Exterior Finish: cedar forms exposed concrete Roof: exposed concrete Floor: walnut flooring Wall: plaster/cedar forms exposed concrete Ceiling: acrylic emulsion paint + plaster board
Walls of different heights and widths create a maze-like sequence of passages and entrances around the main hall of this church in the Philippines by New York architects CAZA (+ slideshow).
CAZA designed the exterior of the church in Cebu City as a complex arrangement of monolithic surfaces to give it an ambiguous form that they say represents the enigmatic nature of religion.
“We imagined it might be something mysterious, perhaps even as odd as the early gothic churches that resisted iconography, presenting their parishioners with an architectural image of a dense mass of buttresses, ribs, vaults and spires,” said the architects.
Walls with a standard thickness but different heights and widths are arranged in a staggered formation that creates multiple routes into and through the building.
“All the walls are placed only in one direction so that the building is completely opaque from one side and totally transparent in the opposite view,” the architects explained. “Anywhere in between these two states is an optical play of light and dark.”
The layered sequence of vertical surfaces creates dynamic patterns of light and shadow both during the day and when they are illuminated at night, while clerestory windows filter light into the interior.
The position of the walls was also determined by a grid based on the position of rows of pews and the space required to sit and kneel.
Additional functional spaces required by the church were integrated into the grid and the walls were constructed around them.
The average height of the walls increases towards the rear of the building to support the roof as it rises above the altar and choir stalls, which are located on a mezzanine level.
Passages around the periphery of the hall lead to the multiple entry points and are punctuated by gaps in the floor, through which trees rise from the sunken gardens below.
What should a sacred space look like today? How should it work? Is there such a thing as a contemporary idea of the sacred?
In spite of a glut of typological clues we choose an anti-form. We did not want legibility. We sought to reinforce the experience of the search. Religions are defined by their mysteries and the stories of individuals who break through.
Our contemporary condition is increasingly defined by a shared sense of exile—we are never entirely at home. The sight of a foreign object that resists iconography and presents with a furtive experience of anticipation might be a version of the architectural sacred.
Our design for the 100 Walls Church in Cebu is an attempt to think through strangeness in architecture. What would it be to see something we don’t know? Like Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane forest, we are puzzled without reason to save us. We need to wander and think through the system by ourselves.
All the walls are placed only in one direction so that the building is completely opaque from one side and totally transparent in the opposite view. Anywhere in between these two states is an optical play of light and dark. The walls are aligned along a grid that follows the spacing of the pews marking the relationship between the two: the minute scale of the individual and the cosmic scale of the universe. The monolithic quality of the walls plays off the fleeting reality of the colored light that filters through the clerestory windows. The sacred is after all inexorably linked to the fact that we are here only for a short time while our architecture aspires towards permanence.
The gothic idea of space might have been one of the most poignant statements of this conundrum. The best churches of medieval Europe sought to present parishioners with an architectural image of a dense and layered mass of buttresses, ribs, vaults and spires – God as both a mystery and a source of enlightenment.
The 100 Walls Church invites us to wander around its grounds and discover sunken gardens, pockets of blue light and an enigmatic profusion of talismanic walls. The multitude of doors and passages is a reminder that there are as many paths as there are lives and that a sacred space today should draw out meaning in its inscrutability.
Location: Cebu, Philippines Completed: January 2013 Size: 8,924 sqm
These photographs show the newly converted aquatics centre by Zaha Hadid Architects for the London 2012 Olympics, which will open to the public next week without the controversial wings that housed additional seating during the Games.
Now configured as it was originally designed by Zaha Hadid Architects, the temporary stands constructed for the Olympic and Paralympic Games have been removed and replaced with glazing that fills the space between the spectator stands and the roof.
In its new “legacy mode,” the centre accommodates 2500 seats for future events including the 2014 World Diving Series and 2016 European Swimming Championships.
Two boxy temporary wings housing 15,000 temporary seats that were tacked onto either side of the building when it was originally opened ahead of the Games were removed in May last year.
In a statement released ahead of the centre’s reopening on 1 March, mayor of London Boris Johnson said: “After a post-Olympic makeover, London’s majestic aquatics centre is now flinging open its doors for everyone to enjoy, whether an elite athlete or enthusiastic amateur.”
“All of the world-class sporting venues on the magnificent Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park have secured bright futures, dispelling fears of white elephants and helping to drive our ambitious regeneration plans for east London,” Johnson added.
Aquatics centre in Olympic mode showing temporary seating
A diving pool, competition pool and training pool are arranged in a line along the centre of the building, with the training pool housed under Stratford City Bridge on the edge of the Olympic Park.
The centre’s internal layout remains largely unchanged, but daylight now enters the space through expansive glass surfaces replacing the banked seating that rose from behind the permanent stands.
As well as prestigious international events, the venue will also provide community facilities for swimming and diving lessons, fitness and family sessions, water polo, synchronised swimming, diving, triathlon, sub aqua, gym and dry diving.
Le photographe Renaud Julian nous fait découvrir New York à travers cette série de photos dédiées à cette ville emblématique. L’artiste nous offre des ambiances mystérieuses, de magnifiques couleurs, et des lumières époustouflantes de la ville. Un voyage à découvrir dans la suite de l’article.
An intricate three-dimensional lattice of narrow timber slats forms a cloud-like mass around the exterior of this pineapple cake shop in Tokyo by Japanese architect Kengo Kuma (+ slideshow).
Kengo Kuma and Associates was asked by cake brand SunnyHills to come up with a shop design that mirrors the careful preparation of the company’s trademark pineapple cakes, so the architects developed a volume modelled on a well-crafted bamboo basket.
Over 5000 metres of wooden strips were used to construct the precise 3D grid that wraps around around the outer walls and ceiling of the three-storey building. Some pieces were cut shorter than others, revealing multiple layers and reducing the overall linearity.
“Our aim was to create a forest in the busy city centre,” said Kengo Kuma. “We studied how lighting states would change in a day in the woods, and came up with a shape like a basket.”
The narrow slats are arranged at angles of 30 and 60 degrees, creating hundreds of diamond-shaped hollows, and were assembled by local Japanese craftsman.
“I consider that wood joints without glues or nails are the essence of Japanese architecture,” added Kuma. “What is characteristic about SunnyHills is the angle of the lattice; unlike the conventional 90 degrees, we tried 30 degrees and 60 degrees to combine the pieces.
“By designing with these varied angles, we were able to achieve a shape and a frame that evokes a forest,” he added.
An opening at one corner leads visitor into the shop, which occupies the two lower floors of the building. An assortment of differently sized staircase treads form a route between the two floors and are flanked by sprouting foliage.
Cork tiles provide flooring on the first floor, where the architects have also added a kitchen. The cork surface continues up to the level above, which houses a meeting room and staff office.
Here’s a project description from Kengo Kuma and Associates:
SunnyHills at Minami-Aoyama
This shop, specialised in selling pineapple cake (popular sweet in Taiwan), is in the shape of a bamboo basket. It is built on a joint system called “Jiigoku-Gumi”, traditional method used in Japanese wooden architecture (often observed in Shoji: vertical and cross pieces in the same width are entwined in each other to form a muntin grid). Normally the two pieces intersect in two dimensions, but here they are combined in 30 degrees in 3 dimensions (or in cubic), which came into a structure like a cloud. With this idea, the section size of each wood piece was reduced to as thin as 60mm×60mm.
As the building is located in middle of the residential area in Aoyama, we wanted to give some soft and subtle atmosphere to it, which is completely different from a concrete box. We expect that the street and the architecture could be in good chemistry.
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