Hasta La Ideas

Photographer Edmund Sumner has sent us these images of a shimmering steel visitors centre at a Mumbai museum.

RMA Architects designed the elliptical building at the entrance to the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya (formerly the Prince of Wales Museum), where historical Indian artefacts and artworks are exhibited.

Thin steel columns support a curving roof that overhangs the exterior walls of the centre to shelter a surrounding terrace.

Existing trees grow through holes in this roof, which also shelters a separate circular baggage kiosk.

The remaining portion of the visitors centre contains a 200-seat auditorium, a ticket-office, a shop, a cafe and toilets.

Edmund Sumner has photographed a number of buildings in Mumbai – see our earlier stories about a corporate office block beside a slum and a wood-clad temple.

The following text is from RMA Architects:

A visitor’s center located at the entrance of the Prince of Wales Museum, a Grade I heritage structure in Mumbai.

The contemporary structure expands upon the footprint of a previously existing multipurpose hall, and is a part of an expansion plan for this prestigious urban landmark.

The center fulfills various programmatic functions, ranging from the integration of baggage collection and storage, to ticketing and security, as well as a museum shop, two hundred seat auditorium, and rest rooms.

A lightweight, stainless steel clad elliptical roof creates a covered verandah for circulation, integrating disparate visitor programs into a consolidated and modest, yet contemporary form.

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Glass and metal surfaces exist as a visual counterpoint to stout basalt stone of local heritage structures. Reflective material planes create a paradoxical visual poetry in which archaic forms of the adjacent museum are recast and distorted in a new perspective.

The pre-defined footprint is organically punctured by existing trees that project through openings in the roof, yielding localized deviations in the otherwise low-key scale spaces.

Integration of natural textures with modern means and materials further expands the defining narrative of the center, that of a culturally meaningful intervention within a monumental historic context.

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Serpentine Gallery Pavilion by SANAA	Size + Matter by David Chipperfield	firstsite by Rafael Viñoly Architects

Bjarke Ingels Group have won a competition to convert a Basel warehouse with their design for an extension that will zigzag across the roof like a bolt of lightening.

The Danish architects propose to convert the industrial Transitlager building into offices, apartments and galleries.

The apartments are to occupy the three new upper floors and will open out onto triangular rooftop gardens.

Four storeys inside the existing concrete warehouse will house offices and galleries, facing a new public square proposed by site masterplanners Herzog & de Meuron.

Other projects by BIG on Dezeen include a power plant that doubles up as a ski slope and a centre for women’s sports – see more projects by BIG here.

Here’s some more information from BIG:

BIG Transforms Transitlager In Switzerland

BIG wins an invited competition to renovate and extend an existing 1960′s concrete warehouse situated in a Basel industrial district which is being transformed into an alternative Arts District.

Located in Basel’s upcoming Dreispitz neighborhood, which is envisioned as an attractive and inviting urban quarter in Herzog de Meuron’s master plan from 2003, the existing 18.000 m2 ”Transitlager” built in the late 1960s is to be renovated and extended by up to 7.000 m2 for residential and commercial purposes.

The development is undertaken by St. Gallen -based real estate development company Nüesch Development for the landlord, the Christoph Merian Foundation and investor the UBS (CH) Property Fund – Swiss Mixed ‘Sima’.

The winning entry which included engineers Bollinger Grohmann and HL Technik was chosen among proposals from Harry Gugger Studio and Lacaton Vassal among others.

The Transitlager’s surrounding industrial area is characterized by the geometries of infrastructures – the intersecting railways, loading docks and turning radiuses that weave through the city and create a puzzle of linear buildings with pointy corners and staggered façade lines into an untraditional and adventurous urban area consisting of galleries, restaurants and creative businesses.

The iconic character of the existing Transitlager, its generous surrounding public spaces, and connection to the city’s botanical garden makes the building a natural focal point of the Arts District.

By re-programming and extending the former warehouse into a multifunctional series of floors for various uses, BIG proposes a cross breed of art, commerce, working and living.

Two distinct buildings on top of each other form a mixed-use hybrid with activity and life 24 hours a day.

“We propose a transformation of the Transitlager that builds on the industrial logic of the existing building and of the surrounding area. The extension doubles the size of the Transitlager and becomes an opposite twin – based on the same structure, but with a different geometry. The combined building becomes a spectrum of optimal conditions: From open and flexible plans to tailor made units, public programs to private residences, vibrant urban space to peaceful green gardens and from cool industrial to warm and refined. ” Andreas Klok Pedersen, Partner, BIG.

The wide dimensions of the former warehouse, the mix of programs, the structural limits and the sun orientation creates a typology that is neither point house nor slab – a folded geometry adapted to the specifics of the existing structure and optimized for daylight and views.

The staggered edge and pointy ends echoes the geometries of the industrial buildings of the neighborhood, creating a surprising familiarity with the heterogeneous surroundings.

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West 57th by BIG	PUU-BO by BIG	TEK by BIG

With the news earlier this week that the Guggenheim‘s planned new, Frank Gehry-designed museum in Abu Dhabi was being put on hold over contract reviews, concern has spread from if not just if that museum will get finished, but if similar issues will spread across the area. The AP reports that there is now worry that a branch of the Louvre, which was designed by Jean Nouvel and was originally slated to open on Saadiyat Island in 2012, the same spot as the Guggenheim, won’t make it to completion. The state-run organization behind the area, the Tourism Development and Investment Company, has told the AP that everything is still moving forward, but they just won’t exactly hit that 2012 deadline. Instead, it’s now been pushed way back to 2013. This, of course, does little to put concerns to bed, since push backs, albeit a normal thing for massive projects such as these, are also generally the first steps toward a development falling apart. However, the TDIC stresses to the news service that “The developer insisted that all projects on the island will be completed.” Only time shall tell.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Electricity pylons, road-signs and rusty advertising plaques steal the spotlight from the Giza pyramids in these images by photographer Manuel Alvarez Diestro.

The series was shot 20 kilometres away from the towering structures, in the outskirts of Cairo.

Unlike pictures promoted by Egypt’s tourist industry, these photographs depict the setting of the pyramids as an abandoned industrial wasteland.

Diestro previously documented growing high-rise cities in Asia for a separate photographic series – see our earlier story here.

See also: more photography stories on Dezeen.

Here’s a short description of the project from the photographer:

Pyramids

This photographic series entitled “Pyramids” is a visual interpretation of Cairo’s past and present during the times of the Revolution.

My stay in Cairo after many years was getting to an end and felt like tackling for once the subject of the Pyramids of Giza, but to be represented in a new context not seen before.

Twenty kilometers away and after hours of walking I found and photographed what I thought to be a landscape full of symbols and strong visual juxtapositions.

This place became a “perfect escape” for several days where I could disconnect from the social unrest and the violence I was experiencing in the city.

I walked along cars and military trucks and looking perplexed to an epic view.

The pyramids were in the far distance and confronted with traffic signs, semi abandoned advertisement panels and electric posts that I was encountering on my way.

However, in the outskirts of Cairo this “collage” of symbols seems to suggest an uncertain future.

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Natural by Manuel Alvarez Diestro	Heygate Abstracted by Simon Kennedy	Dezeen Screen: Bas Princen

A circle of trees will frame an hourglass-shaped hut for Milan that won’t be complete for 100 years.

Swedish architects Visiondivision and a group of students designed the two-storey study retreat, which is currently growing on the Politecnico di Milano campus.

Aptly titled The Patient Gardener, the garden structure will be shaped from a circle of ten Japanese cherry trees that will be bent, pruned and woven as they grow.

The trees will be tied to a central wooden scaffold to frame the dome-shaped ground floor, whilst branches above will be directed outwards as first-floor walls.

Two of the trees will be woven together as a staircase.

Plum tree stumps will provide chairs and an armchair will be fabricated from cardboard and grass.

Visiondivision previously designed another landscape project, this time an underwater concrete habitat for crayfish – see this project here.

Here’s a description of the project from Visiondivision:

Visiondivision was invited as guest professors by Politecnico di Milano for their week-long workshop MIAW2.

The workshop, playing with the metaphor of forests, aimed to generate new visions to explain the contemporary and immediate future ways of being in the spirit of green design, resilience, recycling, and ethical consciousness.

Our intention with our project was to construct a study retreat at the campus with patience as the main key for the design. If we can be patient with the building time we can reduce the need for transportation, waste of material and different manufacturing processes, simply by helping nature grow in a more architectonic and useful way. The final result can be enjoyed at Politecnico di Milano in about 60 years from now.

During the workshop we gave nature all the guidance and directions to help it grow into useful structures and objects. There are different methods and tools to guide and control the growth of trees and plants; bending, twisting, pruning, grafting, braiding, weaving and to control the amount of water and light the trees get are just some examples of these. We used almost all of these techniques in our creation, which involved creating a structural system for the building and also stairs and furniture, all made out of trees, plants or grass.

Our structural frame for this project became ten Japanese cherry trees that was planted in a circle with a diameter of eight meters with a six meter high temporary wood structure in the center that is acting as a guidance tower for the growing structure. The trees were planted with an equal spacing from each other, except for four of them that became two pairs of stairs to the future upper level.

The cherry trees were ideal to plant at that time of year and also had great features for achieving the desired structure. Thin ropes were tied around the plants and were slightly bent towards the temporary tower.

As time passes the trees will form a dome when they reach the tower, and then designated by to change its direction so the final form will be an hourglass, a suiting shape for the project and also a very practical form as we now have two rooms with different modes in the building.

The small branches on the plants that will grow into stairs are guided with wires to each other and will hopefully be useful later on. The rest of the stairs can later be grafted in the stair trees.

On the ground level we designed furniture out of grass, trees and plants. There are a dining group consisting of a table with four chairs. The chairs are plum trees where one sit at the lowest fork and the branches are guided into canopies so the future visitor can sit in the chair while at the same time eating delicious fruits. The table is made out of slender wooden pieces with strings in the structure, which forms a skeleton where hedras can grow and later take over the structure completely. A comfortable chair made out of grass are located on the other side of the ground floor. The grass chair is put together with the use of a custom made cardboard structure, shaped for maximal relaxation and that is painted with a protection coating and that is later filled with soil on site and draped with grass.

A grass puff is also made and placed in the tower where the floor of the upper level will be. The puff is a big potato bag filled with straw, soil, fertilizer and grass seed. An organic rope is placed with a third of its length inside the bag, and the bag is later sewn together. The rest of the rope is placed in water so the puff gets water and will later be covered in grass, so when the trees finally reaches this level and becomes the floor, it will already be furnished.

Together with the students we worked out a maintenance plan and instructions to future gardeners that is simple enough to actually work. On the structure, we instructed that a pattern of wood will be grafted in, leaving two spaces between the trees as entries/exits and the rest is closed in ornamental patterns with branches. On the upper level which is reached by the two staircases with exquisite handrails, is different fruit trees grafted into the cherry trees so the visitor can have a variety of fruits while relaxing in the canopy. Branches are also grafted in for security reasons between the tree trunks.

In about 80 years from now the Politecnico di Milano campus will have a fully grown building and the students will hopefully have proud grandchildren that can tell the story of the project for their friends and family.

Partners in charge: Anders Berensson & Ulf Mejergren
Curators: Laura Daglio & Oscar Bellini
Students/Architects/Builders: Rachele Albini, Giada Albonico, Jacopo Biasio, Sara Caramaschi, Elisa Carraro, Desislava Dimitrova, Cristina Gatti, Elisa Gulino, Mariya Hasamova, Nina Mikhailova, Ottavia Molatore, Joao Molinar, Azadeh Moradiasr, Mohyedin Navabzadeh Navabi, Giuseppe Maria Palermo, Riccardo Somaini, Bogdan Stojanovic
Organizers: Luca Maria Francesco & Fabris Efisia Cipolloni
Location: Politecnico di Milano
Project area: 50 sqm
Project year: 2011-2090

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South Pond by Studio Gang	KAPKAR/TO-RXD by Frank Havermans	Pavillion by Wing Yi Hui and Lap Ming Wong