Dezeen Screen: in this second movie filmed by Dezeen for trade show Garden Unique, British garden designer Andrew Wilson talks about successful collaborations between architects and garden designers, including The High Line in New York and Peter Zumthor’s Serpentine Gallery Pavilion in London (above). Watch the movie »
Here are some more photographs of Zaha Hadid‘s recently completed aquatics centre for the London 2012 Olympic Games, taken by UK photographers Hufton + Crow.
Six curved concrete diving boards stick out like tongues across one pool at the end of the main hall, beneath an undulating wave-like roof.
The competition pool is also located in this hall, which will seat 17,500 spectators during the games.
Petal-shaped openings allow light through the concrete ceiling of a second hall, where a practice pool is located.
Wide glass walls provide views of pools in both rooms from connecting corridors.
More information and images by David Poultney can be seen in our earlier story.
Other completed venues on the Olympic Park include the Olympic Stadium by Populous, the Basketball Arena by Sinclair Knight Merz and the Velodrome by Hopkins, which is nominated for the Stirling Prize. See all our stories about London 2012 here.
Zaha Hadid also recently completed the Riverside Museum, which has a zig-zagging zinc-clad roof – click here to see all our stories about Zaha Hadid.
Photographers Hufton + Crow also photographed a laboratory in the botanic gardens of Cambridge University and Peter Zumthor’s recently-opened Serpentine Gallery Pavilion – see all our stories with photography by Hufton + Crow here.
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| London 2012 Olympic Stadium by Populous | London 2012 Velodrome by Hopkins Architects | ArcelorMittal Orbit by Anish Kapoor |
A sequence of horizontal steel rods resemble a barcode on the glass facade of a house extension in Washington DC.
American architect David Jameson designed the four-storey extension, which provides a new kitchen, living room, balcony and roof deck to the terraced house.
The two street-facing facades of Barcode House are transparent, composed of glass panels that infill a grid of steel beams.
The narrow barcode-like rods bridge this framework, matching the heights of eaves and window frames on neighbouring properties.
A door on the first floor is the only connection between the existing house and the extension, which has its own staircase.
More American houses from the Dezeen archive include a Philadelphia residence with a glazed interior wrapped in a curved brick facade and a New York loft with glass ceilings and walls – see more stories about projects in the USA here.
Photography is by Paul Warchol.
Here’s some more text from Jameson:
Barcode House
Barcode House explores juxtapositions between the heavy and light and the old and the new.
The work is formed by positioning the project’s diverse pressures into a unique situational aesthetic.
Brittle masonry walls of the existing Washington, DC row house governed that the addition be engineered as a freestanding structure.
Site constraints dictated a vertically oriented spatial solution.
The client’s desire for transparent living space generated the opportunity to create an integrated solution for lateral force requirements.
Structural steel rods within a glass window wall are aligned with datum lines of the neighboring building elevations. A stucco circulation tower anchors the living space to the existing row house.
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| Townhouse by Elding Oscarson | Tokyo Balconies by KINO Architects | Glass Loggia House by Allen Jack+Cottier |
Dezeen Wire: architecture graduates Lee Wilshire and Nick Varey have launched an initiative called Riot Rebuild to help repair homes and businesses in areas of the UK affected by riots in the past week.
The pair are calling on architects and building experts to donate their time for free to help communities and businesses repair themselves in the wake of four nights of violence and looting in UK cities.
Get involved on Twitter, Facebook or the project website.
Here are some more details from Wilshire and Varey:
Riot Rebuild aims to kick start rebuilding process
A new initiative has been launched to help those devastated by the recent riots rebuild their homes, businesses and communities.
Riot Rebuild: post-riot urban interventions, Riot Rebuild has brought together people with the ability, skills and know-how to get the rebuilding process underway and completed as soon as possible in all affected towns and cities across England.
They are all prepared to give up their time to help their local communities – and beyond.
“We have a list of professionals and tradespeople willing to provide their expertise and give real help free of charge to help rebuilding projects move swiftly in the right direction,” said Nick Varey. “This could be anything from getting a handyman to repair a bench outside a shop to giving advice on planning issues.”
The initiative is being launched via social networking sites twitter and Facebook. It follows the inspiring community driven twitter clean-up operation @Riotcleanup which saw hundreds of people help clean up London, Birmingham, Manchester, Salford and Liverpool the mornings after the riots of the night before.
“Following the clean-up comes the rebuild”, said Lee Wilshire. “This will be a longer, slower, more painful process and far harder for businesses and residents to get back on their feet as they struggle amongst other things with slow insurance pay-outs or the lack thereof.”
“I want this initiative to be a place to start the rebuild, linking destruction with repair and reconstruction, linking problems with the people who can solve them.”
Riot Rebuild aims to help people with either a business or residential property (owner or leaseholder) who need help either with immediate rebuilding work or down the line with architecture or planning services, and parts of the public realm, however small, that need attention and love.
For more information about how to post your project visit www.riot-rebuild.posterous.com/, follow @riot_rebuild on Twitter, or check out www.facebook.com/pages/Riot-Rebuild/
Completed in 2009 by William Rawn Associates, this LEED Silver addition and restoration is literally a shining light on the outskirts of Harvard Square in Cambridge, MA. Crudely put, the first thought that comes to mind is, “Giant Apple store!” In today’s times, an all-glass cuboid with a clean, thick, light wood interior could only suggest such. The thought is only reinforced upon entering the library; a row of desktop computers off to the right of the main entrance makes one forget, for a moment or two, that they are not, in fact, inside an Apple store.
Luckily, the prospect of having a public library inside an Apple store is not actually a revolting thought. It’s additionally lucky that William Rawn decided against an interior glass staircase and replaced it with more of a grand, colorful staircase that cuts into the lower volume of the library. I do wish he had chosen a color other than such a garish red (especially when the same color is plastered on any non-wooden surface), but at least the color contrasts with the Apple interior.
Five existing concrete kiosks in Madeira have been wrapped in volcanic basalt and overlapped by the walls of a new registry office.
The kiosk blocks have been refurbished to provide enclosed meeting rooms and bathroom facilities for the open-plan office designed by Portuguese architects Duarte Caldeira.
One block contains a staircase and lift that descend into an underground car park below.
Timber columns surround the entirely glazed building facade, landing on the roofs of kiosks that interrupt the walls.
Floors and surfaces inside the office and archive are finished in black granite, while timber panels cover the ceiling.
Other recently featured offices blocks include a translucent training centre in Italy and an office building for Singapore that resembles a giant periscope – see all out stories about office buildings here.
Photography is by Joao Morgado.
Here are some details from Duarte Caldeira:
Registrar Office of St Vicente, Madeira, Portugal – Duarte Caldeira
Situated on the northwest coast of the island of Madeira, Portugal, in an extensive river valley, it is near the centre of a small coastal rural village, nestled between the region’s natural landscape, which extends towards the area where the building is located.
Standing on top of an underground car park, the new translucent building allows an influx of natural light and the view of the impressive surrounding high and rugged green mountains.
It is a wooden and glass structure arranged on top of various rectangular shaped concrete boxes, previously used as kiosks in the urban park.
Instead of demolishing the existing small buildings to make room for the new one, it was decided to use some of them as part of the new building, and also keep the original staircase and lift which gives access to the car park located below.
The design program of this public services’ building is a simple one. It houses an open space office and workspace for the registrar office personnel, an archive area and a main private office, a meetings room and a reception counter for the general public.
The volume of the new construction is larger and taller than the others and is intersected by some of the existing volumes which are now covered in grey volcanic basalt stone, the local most common stone.
It was built as a structure of metal beams with flat cover, clad with natural heat treated wood. In the interior, the black granite flooring, window frames and counter, make a contrast with the wooden ceiling and the outdoor metal pillars which sustain the construction.
Project Name – Registrar Office of St Vicente
Architect: Duarte Caldeira
Location: S.Vicente, Madeira, Portugal
Project Team: Duarte Caldeira, Filipe Clairouin, Roberto Castro
Structural Engineers: Casca Lda
Lighting: Fernando Sousa Pereira
Project Year: 2008
Start and Completion Dates – November 2009 / May 2011
Contractor: Tecnovia S.A.
Project Area: building 420m2, site 3360 m²
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| Office Building by BOB361 | Environmental Unit HQ by Magén Arquitectos | Quarterhouse by Alison Brook |
We’re not at all upset or jealous or full of boiling rage because director Christopher Nolan has taken the Batman franchise away from us here in Chicago and moved production for the next film to Pittsburgh. No, not at all. These clenched teeth and the white-knuckled grip, pay them no heed. Those things and all the cursing are just our ways of saying how happy we are for that other “city.” To prove it, we point you to ArchDaily, who recently put this post together, highlighting the best of Pittsburgh’s architecture that might possibly be put to use, given Nolan’s penchant for using pieces of great and modern metropolitan buildings as doubles in the fictional city of Gotham. The always-shiny and reflective PPG Place, designed by legendary architect Philip Johnson, seems like it has to be a given, though they also throw out some “maybes,” like Charles Klaudner‘s ultra-gothic Cathedral of Leaning. With production beginning at the end of last month, thus far Nolan’s crew hasn’t hit up any of Pittsburgh’s notable architectural landmarks (unless you count Heinz Field, where the Steelers play, which is certainly a large building, but hardly a standard when it comes to modern architecture), and both the city and the production are keeping things on a need-to-know basis, so it’s a wait and see kind of game. If you’d like to follow along and see what gets used next, we highly recommend staying on top of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, which has nearly become the Gotham Globe of late.
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
The last time we called the New Yorker‘s office and asked how much they’d charge to hire out architecture critic Paul Goldberger for the day to show us around the city a bit, they hung up on us and blocked our number. Jokes on them though because now we can download the magazine’s new Goings On app for that very same phone we made that call from. Not only is it free but it features a guided audio tour through the High Line by Goldberger himself. Too bad, because on top of the fee we would have paid him, we probably would have even sprung for a hot dog too.
In something completely unrelated to both that last tidbit and really anything at all in general, artist Daniel Edwards, made (in)famous for his sculpture of a nude Britney Spears giving birth on a bear rug and later another featuring Oprah in a sarcophagus, has struck again. This time he’s captured tween-idols Justin Bieber and Selena Gomez in a piece called “Justin and Selena as One,” which features the pair conjoined, nude, and cast in bronze. If Thomas Kinkade is the “Painter of Light,” then Daniel Edwards is the “Sculptor of Things That Get Lots of Mentions on Twitter, Celebrity News Blogs, and as the Short Joke Piece That Will Close Out Your Local Nightly News.”
Finally in this cavalcade of randomness: since Barbie gets her own new AIA member-designed house, then it’s only fair that Dale Earnhardt, Jr. should get his own Hot Wheels. Granted, we understand the logical fallacy there, with Earnhardt being a real person and all, but let’s just go with it, shall we? The newly-released toy car from the famous NASCAR driver is called the “Hammerhead,” reportedly one of his childhood nicknames, and “features classic ’50s hot rod meets ’60s muscle car styling.” You can watch a selection of the design process, wherein Earnhardt himself helped, which resulted in this unintentionally sort-of funny video. It’s definitely much more funny than this branded short film for Hot Wheels featuring Jeremy Piven.
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
The golden ratio determines proportions throughout this raw concrete house in Germany.
Designed by local architects Denzer & Poensgen, the two-storey house is located in the Roman-built city of Trier.
The concealed courtyard contains a tree and pond, plus a staircase that leads to a decked first-floor terrace and hot tub.
A master bedroom on the first floor opens out onto the upper terrace, while two single rooms lead to shared balconies.
Another building designed according to the golden ratio is Batemans Row, a home and studio in London – see our earlier story.
Other recent projects on Dezeen featuring exposed concrete are a London ice cream parlour interior and a set of stools made by folding fabric that’s impregnated with cement then drenching it in water – see more concrete projects here.
See also: more projects in Germany on Dezeen.
Photography is by Rainer Mader.
Here are some more details from the architects:
Absalon
The Site:
The building is located in a new developing area, exclusively situated on a hillside, just above the city centre of Trier. The aim of this new developing area is to create examples of good buildings in an attractive landscape which is integrated in its surrounding.
The Building:
Located in Trier, one of the old German cities founded by the romans, this project connects to the old roman building culture, which is still omnipresent in Trier. The house is divided in three different volumes with an Atrium in its middle.
Developed in the “grand arts” of “ars magna”, all rooms with the façade and the interior elements are developed in the proportion of the golden ratio.
The entrance which is pushed in to the volume, underlines the “path” from the outside into the building, and leads the visitor in a different world. A world with paths, courts, passages and outside spaces, linked together with a high variety of natural lighting.
The inner organisation of the house is divided in two areas, a public and a private part. The public area includes The Kitchen, dining- and living room and opens towards the Atrium. Protected against views from the outside, the atrium works as an expansion to the living room. There is a water basin and a tree in the atrium to create a silent space of peace. From the atrium leads a staircase to a roof terrace, with a great view over Trier an its surrounding.
The private part of the building contains the sleeping rooms. Each of them expanded with a little terrace, which protects the sleeping rooms against views from the outside. The house resembles a clearly structured organism, containing streets, courts, passages, and open and enclosed spaces. The house as an image of a city.
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| House 20 by Jolson | House D by Bevk Perovic | Slit House by EASTERN Design |
Dezeen Screen: here’s an animation of the competition-winning proposals by New York architects Work AC to create a cultural hub on a St Petersburg island that has been closed to the public for over 300 years. Watch the movie »
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