Hasta La Ideas

You can’t miss this bright red psychiatric centre in Spain, where the differently pitched roofs are meant to reveal how much mental activity takes place in each room.

Completed by Spanish architect José Javier Gallardo of ///g.bang///, the new youth facility in Zaragoza connects to the existing Nuestra Señora del Carmen Neuropsychiatric Centre through an underground tunnel.

Roofs with the steepest pitches are located above shared common rooms, while shallow gables correspond to patient bedrooms and staff quarters are located beneath flat roofs.

The red powder-coated zinc sheets cover the entire exterior, interrupted only by frameless windows.

In the past we’ve also featured a mental health clinic where the doors don’t open but the walls do instead – take a look here.

Photography is by Jesús Granada.

Here’s a longer description from architects:

Young Disabled Moduls and Workshop Pavilions
‘Módulo Para El Tratamiento De Jóvenes Con Discapacidades Conductuales’

ONE CONCEPT, ONE COLOR AND ONE MATERIAL

The assignment is motivated by the need to expand the Neuropsychiatric Center Our Lady of Carmen, in Zaragoza.

In the first phase there is a new support center for youth with behavioral problems, and currently sharing facilities with the geriatric section and, by the nature of their treatment and pathology, was necessary to become independent.

In a second phase will be built the “Module for Occupational Workshops.”

PROGRAM

It has 10 single bedrooms and 8 double rooms, with toilets. The common areas of the internal are two living rooms and dining room.

The program is completed with, reception room, two offices, laundry, office, control room toilets, storage and utility room.

GEOMETRY

The floor plan is rectangular, dimensions 15.5 x 65 m. The facade has no cantilevers , but reflects the emptying of the building volume in the direction north, creating a courtyard to capture sunlight and allow controlled the patients to stay there in the summer.

The roof, for the most part, sawtooth shape, with variable slopes – very steep at some points – reflects, from the outside, the degree of internal mental activity in relation to the type of rooms they occupy: the resting or sleeping area with a slope of 60%, common areas or with maximum activity have outstanding peak of 240%.

The treatment of the spaces occupied by the medical staff and caregivers has been dealt with flat roofs.

Click above for larger image

MATERIAL/COLOR

Façade and roof are covered with red zinc coated sheet. Historically, these centers, known as asylums were unrecognizable and hidden by society.

Click above for larger image

But Hospital, “hospitare” in Latin, means “to receive as a guest” and together with the values of the Congregation and its founder, “Hospitality between people who suffer mental impairment” and “integrating the patients into society as far as possible” where the main goals… The red color is a symbol that makes them visible… that robs us of prejudice… that emphasizes the social work… makes us more sexy! The material… the shape of this whole “scene” had to be modeled nobly!

Architect: José Javier Gallardo Ortega ///g.bang///
Client: Nuestra Señora del Carmen Neuropsychiatric Centre | Hermanas Hospitalarias del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús

Type: Medical Facility
Location: Camino del Abejar – Zaragoza, 50011, Spain
Building status: built in 2011
Number of stories: 1 (+1 underground connection with the existing buildings)
Site size: 12000 m2
Site type: Suburban
Building area: 1000 m2
Budget: 1500000 USD

It may look like a giant bird’s nest but this stick-covered dome is actually a horse-riding arena in the Czech Republic.

Designed by Prague studio SGL Projekt, the Stork Nest Farm is located on the site of a former farmstead and distillery that now accommodates hotel, conference and leisure facilities.

The Stork Nest Farm was both inspired by and named after storks that resided in the roof of the distillery long after it fell into disuse.

An eight-metre-wide skylight at the roof’s peak lets natural daylight down into the centre of the timber-framed building, while concrete-framed entrances lead visitors inside.

Last year we also published a bird’s nest-like hotel in the trees – take a look here.

Photography is by Jaroslav Malý, apart from where otherwise stated.

Above: photograph is by Farma Čapí hnízdo a.s.

Here’s some more text from SGL Projekt:

The Stork Nest Farm, Semtín, Czech Republic

In 2006 we were asked to design the revitalization of a farmstead for congress, company presentation, holding of corporate events and leisure activities.

For this purpose our client bought 19th century farmstead located at a large pound. The farmstead included a distillery with it’s chimney. From 1926 there have lived storks on the chimney. It became the main reason for buying this farm.

The farm is located 50 kilometers to the south from Prague. The surrounding landscape reminds piedmont area with large forest complexes, vast meadows, wetlands and a great network of ponds.

Since the end of the 80′s from the 20th century the farm has been abandoned and the buildings quickly decayed.

Above: photograph is by Farma Čapí hnízdo a.s.

The only solitary residents who remained were the storks on the distillery’s chimney. The Stork’s Nest became a symbol for us, which affected the conception of the riding arena and thinking about all the objects of this project.

It wasn’t a formal symbol for us. We were fascinated by stork’s fidelity. Almost 90 years generations of storks are returning from Africa to the farm and we tried to design the farm in order to bring back people here again.

These birds also fascinated us by their endurance in building their nest. After decades They construct still the same, no doubt about the shape and material, still in the same place and with no desire for originality, which bother all architects and builders nowadays. Storks don‘t look for exceptional places. They don‘t want to distinguish themselves and compete with others. Storks became a symbol for us in the approach to construction. Our design of the farm was led in humility to these bird architects.

The old farmstead consisted of an enclosed yard of an almost square ground plan and addition of a piggery. The yard contained two dwelling houses, a distillery, a barn and a stable. Valuable objects were preserved and buildings of poor quality we demolished and replaced by new ones.

The residential yard consist of a reception, a hotel, conference hall, restaurant, pool and bowling and house with private garden for VIP guests. Beside this residental yard we have built another new yard for the animals.

In this section we have placed a circular riding arena in the shape of a stork nest. It has an external diameter of 34 meters and height of 12,5 meters. The building is used for riding or for a variety of presentations, cultural and social events. Riding arena is located near the stables, and is directly connected to restaurant. The supporting structure is made of glulam timber beams. The external cladding is made of translucent polycarbonate. The oak logs, give the structure an expresive appearance and also provide shading. They were fixed to the building at the total amount of 200 tons at the length of 7, 9 and 11 meters.

At the top of the building there is a central sky-light with a diameter of 8 meters. It serves for intensive ventilation of the internal space by natural air flow. The natural ventilation of the arena provides a good climate.

The arena´s riding surface is made of sand with capillary irrigation for equestrian sport. It can be covered with plywood boards during other sorts of events. The riding area is surrounded by a protective barrier and a stand for approximately 200 people. There is VIP stand upstairs.

The Stork nest farm was completed in 2010. The riding arena became a landmark in the area of the farm and an element which attracts attention in wide neighbourhood. Later, our firm designed the center for protection of fauna to the farm and recently a large rectangular riding arena.

Location: Dvůr Semtín, Olbramovice, Czech Republic
GPS: 49°41’04.71″N, 14°39’05.51″E
Date completed: 03/2010
Lead architect: SGL Projekt s.r.o.
Ak. arch. Jiří javůrek
Ing. arch. Jaroslav Malý
Ing. arch. Irena Kozáková
Ing. arch. Jan Bouček
Ing. arch. Jakub Žák

Client / Developer: Farma Čapí hnízdo, a.s.

Civil Engineer: Ing. Jiří Starý, Starý a partner s.r.o.
Environmental Engineer: Ing. Miroslav Kučera
Lighting Consultant: Ing. Michal Kozak, Etna Guzzini s.r.o.
Structural Engineer: Němec Polák s.r.o.
General supplier: BAK a.s.

This tiny gabled pharmacy is squeezed into a narrow alleyway between two towering apartment blocks in Osaka.

Japanese architects Yasuo Imazu of Ninkipen!, Toshikatsu Ienari and Kenta Fukunishi collaborated to design the project, under the collective identity TKY Japan.

Behind the glazed facade, an exposed skeleton of wooden columns and rafters surrounds the building’s long, thin interior.

A wood and steel staircase at the back of the pharmacy leads up to a mezzanine, positioned above an enclosed office.

You can see more projects by Ninkipen! here, including a bakery with an exposed concrete counter.

Photography is by Hiroki Kawata.

Here’s some more explanation from Yasuo Imazu:

This is a new construction of a Pharmacy, in the center of Osaka city area of Japan.

The site once used to be a farm road. When the World War II ended, a small house was built on the road and stayed there illegally for several ten years. After the house was removed, the site then became a residential land.

In front of this newly built pharmacy, there are remains of a sidewalk, which define an original function of the site used to have, thus the building is set back.

That the site was a road, and that there was a small illegally-built house, were the two historical contexts we valuated as the uniqueness of the site.

The form of the building follows the shape of the site with a gabled roof on top which realizes the simplest form of a house. The continuous ceiling which visually creates almost a linear perspective reflects the linear shape of the site, the path or the road.

Though it is surrounded by volumetric urban buildings, we kept the minimum volume of a single story house, recalling a persisting memory of the site, the little house.

The structure is consisted of simple steel-frame which allows the wood columns and rafters to be exposed, thus provides warm and intimate atmosphere to the customers.

Project name: Ogimachi Global Dispensing Pharmacy
Architect: TKY JAPAN（Toshikatsu Ienari, Kenta Fukunishi, Yasuo Imazu/ninkipen!

Use: dispensing pharmacy
Location: Osaka, Japan

Design: 2010.12〜2011.7
Construction: 2011.8〜2011.11

Site area: 96.22m2
Building area: 61.94m2
Total floor area: 61.94m2

Which states have the most LEED-certified building square footage per capita? The U.S. Green Building Council has crunched the numbers, and the results are in, with the District of Columbia leading the country in LEED-certified commercial and institutional green buildings (per capita, based on 2010 Census data). In 2011, our nation’s capital boasted more than 31 square feet of LEED-certified space per person, including the Treasury Building (how green can you get?), which happens to be the oldest LEED-certified project in the world. Of course, it helps that the District has a low residential population and all those government buildings: nearly a third of all LEED projects are government-owned or occupied LEED buildings, and the federal government alone owns and operates some 500,000 buildings. “But, hey! D.C. isn’t a state!” You say, with a disenfranchised gleam in your eye. Quite right. The top state is Colorado (2.74 square feet per capita and home to the LEED Platinum Casey Middle School in Boulder), followed closely by Illinois (2.69), Virginia (2.42), and Washington (2.18, did you know that Seattle’s Hard Rock Café is LEED Silver?). The Empire State cracks the top ten at 1.89, barely bested by California’s 1.92. According to the USGBC, there are roughly 44,000 commercial projects participating in LEED, comprising more than 8 billion square feet of construction space in all 50 states and 120 countries. Admire photos of LEED-certified buildings such as the undulating, Douglas Cardinal-designed National Museum of the American Indian, Discovery Channel HQ, and Denver’s Gold Museum of Contemporary Art on Flickr here.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

London studio (and near-neighbours of Dezeen) Raw Architecture Workshop have designed a partly submerged wooden house for the Scottish Highlands.

The three-storey coastal house is to be clad in black-stained timber and will house a schoolteacher and deep-sea diver.

The house will be prefabricated to maximise airtightness and insulation, and is due to complete in 2013.

Some other interesting projects in the Scottish highlands include a small timber house with wooden feet and an artists’ studio in a treehouse.

Here’s some more text from architect Graeme Laughlan:

RAW secures planning approval for rural house

London based practice Raw Architecture Workshop has secured planning approval for a private rural house at Camusdarach Sands, Morar, Scotland. The 150m2 dwelling will be situated on exposed, steeply sloping, former rough grazing land with views towards the islands of Eigg, Rum and Skye. Due to the nature, location and proposed building position RAW participated in an in-depth dialogue with the Highland Planning Department, during which the scheme received considerable local support.

The Client, a deep sea diver and local primary head teacher, have a strong desire that the key spaces should capture the sunset views over the islands. The proposal is a part subterranean (thermal mass), upside down house that climbs the hill, with living space on the top floor, sleeping on mid floor, and main entrance, boot room and further accommodation on the lower level. The scheme responds strongly to the immediate topography, prevailing wind, and sunpath, and will be clad in black stained timber in reference to the dark colours of the surrounding landscape.

Timber will be sourced from Highland Forestry Commission sustainably managed sources. Planting of a temporary landscape has already commenced and will be relocated to surround the building upon completion. RAW are exploring prefabricated timber panel construction to minimise the on-site exposure and programme, which will also provide very high levels of insulation and airtightness. Site start is scheduled for mid 2012, with and expected completion date early in 2013.