Hasta La Ideas

Winners of the 2011 INDEX:Award take the stage at a ceremony held yesterday at the Copenhagen Opera House. (Photo courtesy INDEX: Design to Improve Life)

Having whittled down 966 entries from 78 countries to 60 finalists, an esteemed jury (chaired by Arup’s Nille Juul-Sorensen, it includes designer Hella Jongerius and Paola Antonelli of the Museum of Modern Art) has selected the five life-improving design projects that are the recipients of this year’s INDEX: Award. The top picks in five categories—body, home, work, play, and community—were announced yesterday at a gala ceremony held at the Copenhagen Opera House (not only was it designed by Henning Larsen, it’s on an island), where the Crown Prince and Crown Princess of Denmark were on hand to congratulate the winners, who each received €100,000 (approximately $144,000).

You may recall that Yves Béhar emerged victorious in the Body category for See Better to Learn Better, a program he and his fuseproject team created in partnership with Augen Optics and the Mexican Government to design and distribute free eyeglasses to schoolchildren in Mexico. Coming out on top in the home category was another Mexico-based project: Elemental Monterrey, a new model for social housing. Along similar lines, Design Seoul bested the rest in the community category with its pioneering design-based approach to improve life in a very large city. Design for Change, a competition that gives children an opportunity to express and implement their ideas for a better world, won in the work category. And novel biking gear triumphed in the play-ing field, with Malmö, Sweden-based Hövding taking the prize for its airbags for cyclists’ heads. The sensor-embedded, invisible helmets are worn as collars and wouldn’t look out of place on the runways of Alexander Wang (when deflated) or Alexander McQueen (when inflated).

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

German studio Winkens Architekten have completed a kindergarten in Berlin that has sheltered terraces at each end.

The symmetrical building accommodates a kindergarten on one side and a crèche on the other, both of which are accessed from a central foyer.

The exterior walls of the single-storey building are brickwork, while walls and ceilings surrounding the decked terraces are clad in timber.

A square hole in the canopy of one terrace will allow a newly planted tree to grow through.

Door and window frames are painted in bright shades of red and orange.

Winken Architekten previously designed a copper-clad extension that loops around an existing house – see the story on Dezeen here.

Photography is by Marcel Klebs and Jirka Arndt.

Here are some more details from Winkens Architekten:

For a replacement building of a Kindergarden in the Waltersdorfer Street 94, 12526 Berlin.

The evangelistic Churchcomunity Berlin Bohnsdorf-Grünau provided a plot at the corner of Neptun Street to Schulzendorfer Street in Berlin, Germany.

The plots level is even and partly settled with big trees. The border to the Neptun Street is marked by a small hill which is surrounded by trees.

The architectonic concept relies on the base of the educational concept of the Kindergarden “Apfelbäumchen”.

By considering the Spacial conditions of the small hill and the trees the linear one floor building was set orthogonal to the Neptun Street along the east border of the plot.

The linear building is central opened over a row of secondary rooms. The Entry is followed by a Foyer and a multipurpose room which opens to the garden.

The Kindergarden and the creche work like apartments and each have a entry from the foyer. This strengthens the individuality of the two functions.

The arrangement of the homerooms and the multi purpose room underlines the linearity of the building.

The direct connection to the garden is one of the main focus. The multi purpose room in the center functions as a pedagogical connection of the Kindergarden.

The kindergarden and the creche have both a terrace at the end of the building which opens to the garden and helps to connect the rooms to the outside.

The facade is made in brick, and the terraces are made of wood. Natural materials are characterizing the appearance. The roof is extensively greened and partially used for solar energy gain. The building is heated with gas.

Project: New building Kindergarden
Name: Forscherkindergarten Apfelbäumchen
Location: Neptunstraße 10, 12526 Berlin, Germany
Client: Evangelische Kirchengemeinde Bohnsdorf-Grünau
Architect: WINKENS Architekten, Berlin, Germany
Team: Karl-Heinz Winkens, Marcel Klebs

Places:
Under 3 years: 22 childrens
Over 3 years: 23 childrens

See also:

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Fagerborg Kindergarten by RRA	Kindergarten Terenten by Feld72	Leimondo Nursery by Archivision Hirotani

GFA: 550 sqm
Plot Area: 6500 sqm
Building time: October 2010 – July 2011

Speaking of unwelcoming architecture, as we were in that last post, Chicago’s Navy Pier, which is visited annually by throngs of unfortunate tourists who don’t know any better, suburbanites who think its the only place safe in the city or who want to stock up on celtic-themed trinkets while wolfing down a chili dog, or very reluctant locals who are only there to see something at the NPR-affilite or catch a show at the Shakespeare Theater before hightailing it out as quickly as they can, is finally deciding to try and refresh its perception. Yesterday, its owner, the Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority and its non-profit management, Navy Pier Inc., issued a request (pdf) for plans to redesign the space, making it approachable to more people (particularly, it seems, we jaded locals). Those interested have until October 6th to submit their qualifications. From there, after a series of weedings-out are performed, eventually five finalists will be given $50,000 to create their design proposals, which will go on public display early next year. The Chicago Tribune‘s Blair Kamin writes that there’s already been some interest at some heavy-hitting firms like the local Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, so it could turn interesting. Here’s a bit about what the Pier is after:

The planning framework aims to build on the Pier’s success to assure its continued growth in coming years. A key goal is to maintain the Pier’s family appeal while drawing more adults and year-round visitors with upscale dining and entertainment options and more aesthetically appealing public spaces that take full advantage of the Pier’s unique setting.

…Teams submitting proposals for the Pierscape design should address conditions including, permanent and temporary installations of public art, landscaping, hardscape, interactive water features, lighting, signage and graphics, and street furniture and other urban design elements.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Tree-like lampposts emerge from a pool of pebbles in front of a metal-clad vehicle research institute in Spain by architects ACXT.

The two-storey building is situated near to the Motorland Aragón, a motor circuit and leisure complex designed by Foster + Partners.

The building sits atop an artificial mound, created from the excavation of land undertaken in the construction of the neighbouring racetrack.

On the ground floor of the institute are large rooms where vehicles can be examined, as well as meeting rooms, a lecture room, a cafe and a refectory.

A cantilevering block protrudes from the first floor, where open-plan offices are located.

Other research centres recently featured on Dezeen include a pharmaceutical research complex in India and a botanical research facility in the UK.

Photography is by Iñaki Bergera.

Here is some more text from the architects:

Instituto de Investigación de Vehículos

The building is situated in front of the Zaragoza-Castellón road, close to the area of the new circuit of Motorland.

The building stands in a site rectangle shaped of 130m wide for 116m long of 13.351 m².

The site is located in the Eastern extreme of the Technological Park of the Motor City of Alcañiz.

It holds a dominant position in a hill over the lake and the new circuit of Motorland Aragón.

The building answers this circumstance with a cantilever volume in the first floor, holding the administrating and management offices.

The sites topography shows as an artificial platform, resulting product of the accumulation of land extracted from the new circuit, at 400m above the sea level.

The city of Alcañiz can be seen to the East of the site while to the South the nearby lake is visible.

The architectural brief asked for wide open spaces, meeting rooms and offices destined to educational and management uses of the centre.

These spaces were connected with the main spaces destined to the investigation of heavy vehicles and cars.

The architectural brief was completed with a lecture room, a cafeteria, a refectory that needed to be placed in the ground floor; as well as an exterior parking and circulation space for heavy vehicles providing them a good access to investigation areas.

The design’s basic scheme consists in three pieces that combined generate a gathering point inside the Technological Park of the Engine.

Location: Parcela DP-DE, Parque Tecnológico TechnoPark MotorLand Ctra. TE-V-7033 Km1, Alcañiz (Teruel)
Developer / Client: IAF

Construction Company: UTE SACYR – CONSTRUCSA

Budget: 3,99 million €
Schedule: 2010-2011

Click above for larger image

Click above for larger image

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Sainsbury Laboratory by Stanton Williams	Van Leeuwenhoek Lab by DHV Architecten	The Hepworth Wakefield by David Chipperfield

Students at the Architectural Association in London have constructed leaf-like sculptures that curl down from a fourth-floor roof terrace to a ground level courtyard.

Top: photograph by Valerie Bennett

Strips of plywood from recycled exhibition panels were twisted into pairs and fastened together using cable-ties to create the three separate parts of the 3013 installation.

The suspended sculptures are draped over the brick walls of the AA building at Bedford Square.

Led by artist Lawrence Lek, industrial designer Onur Ozkaya and architect Jesse Randzio, students designed and fabricated the installation for a unit on the summer programme.

Temporary timber pavilions constructed outside the AA in the past have resembled logs, mushrooms and shells – see more stories about AA projects here.

Photography is by the unit, apart from where otherwise stated.

Here are some more details from the AA:

3013 Installation at the Architectural Association

In a thousand years, London will be saturated. Constrained by the green belt around it and freed from restrictions on building skyscrapers, the city will grow inwards and upwards. Within this scenario of extreme density, students at this AA Summer School unit led by artist Lawrence Lek, industrial designer Onur Ozkaya, and architect Jesse Randzio imagined how public space could evolve and adapt to smaller, vertical sites.

The unit developed a sequence of three skins to connect the upper terrace and lower courtyard at the AA in Bedford Square. The surfaces were formed from pairs of twisted plywood strips cut from salvaged exhibition panels. These were joined together at their edges to form flexible skins tailored to the site. The upper skins were suspended from above, lightly touching the existing brick walls for support; the fabric-like behaviour of the surfaces allowed their final form to be determined by how they rest naturally under gravity.

This installation revealed the hidden relationships between different levels of the building, creating temporary shelters and flexible gathering points that address how the city might be occupied today and in the future.

Students: Agni Kadi, Ehsan Ehsari, Frances Liu, Galo Carbajo Garcia, Hande Oney, Harsh Vernaya, I Ching Chu, Joaquin Del Rio, Julia Kubisty, Leonardo Olavarrieta, Marina Olivi, Masayo Velasco, Paco Alonso, Pedro Domingues, Summer Lin, Tess Zhang

The project was one of five units at the AA’s Summer School 2011 programme.

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Grompies at the AA	Driftwood pavilion by AA Unit 2	Swoosh Pavilion at the AA