Hasta La Ideas

Photographer Roland Halbe has sent us some images of this town hall in Spain composed of overlapping cylinders, designed by Madrid architects Mansilla+Tuñón.

Horizontal bands of the modular glass facade are screened, giving the Lalìn Townhall a striped turquoise exterior.

A large circular void in the building’s volume creates a central courtyard, where the entrance is located.

Internally, a spiralling staircase at the heart of the building connects the ground and first floors.

More architecture photographed by Roland Halbe on Dezeen »

The following text is from Mansilla+Tuñón:

Lalìn Townhall
Mansilla+Tuñón Architects

While the present is under construction, the past and the future take new forms. Every single moment, each new action, enables a revision of what has been done, and also lends a new profile to what is about be done, modifying continously as much the collective memory as the projects to come.

Click above for larger image

In this changing scenario, with a past and a future in constant construction, PROBABILITY becomes the only appearance possible of certainty; it is the only face that allows looking into reality.

Click above for larger image

In the heart of this transformation, architecture focuses its view attention in a broader sense, considering the definition of space as only a small part of the assignment to what is called: The construction of ARTIFICIAL ENVIRONMENTS, of the ATMOSPHERE in which the actions of mankind are developed.

Click above for larger image

This is a kind of MOBILIZATION OF THE WORLD in which the principal tool is the negotiation between the parts and the OBJECTIVE is the creation of SCENARIOS OF WILLS that will encourage the collective identity.

Click above for larger image

In this way, the proposal for the Concello of Lalín oscilates between precision and probability, building an ANTIMONUMENTAL STRUCTURE in which, as in the clouds, each one can guess the changing shapes of the personal references, so that the COLLECTIVE IDENTIFICATION is the result of the diversity of each interpretation: a TECHNOLOGICAL CELTIC VILLAGE, some colored clouds, a civic palimsesto, a patterned fabric, etc.

Click above for larger image

An OPEN STRUCTURE is proposed, almost a mathematical field, that establishing a local main behavior system, impacts against the dialogue with the environment in front of indifferent autism, chosing the DISPERSED thing against the compact thing, the TRANSPARENT thing against the opaque thing and the DIFFUSE thing against the limited; finally, a social and architectural structure without any kind of hierarchie.

Click above for larger image

All in all, this is a matter of confronting what we think to be with what surrounds us, so that, what is most important is the capacity to multiply, to intensify and to diversify, the relationships between HUMANS and NON-HUMAN, otherwise it is a matter of doing present that we are nothing less but also nothing more, than a small part of a world that turns without stop, tirelessly…

Click above for larger image

Credits

Principals-in-charge: Luis M. Mansilla & Emilio Tuñón Álvarez
Location: Lalín (Pontevedra)
Client: Lalín Town Hall
Site area: 6,760 sq m
Total floor area: 2,842 sq m
Building area: 7,200 sq m

Click above for larger image

Cost of construction: 15,000,000 euros
Competition team: Andrés Regueiro, Luis Díaz-Mauriño, Carlos Martínez de Albornoz, Anna Partenheimer, María Langarita, Asa Nakano.
Model makers: HCH Models
Competition date: November 2004

Click above for larger image

Project team: Andrés Regueiro, Matilde Peralta, María Langarita, Ana del Arenal, Asa Nakano, Bárbara Silva.
Quantity surveyor: Sancho Páramo
Structural engineer: Alfonso Gómez Gaite
Mechanical engineer: Quicler-López ingenieros
Design years: from November 2004 to July 2005

Click above for larger image

Construction directors: Emilio Tuñon y Luis M. Mansilla
Construction surveyor: Sancho Páramo
Construction team: Andrés Regueiro, Sara Murado, Carlos Brage, Briony Roberts, Rubén Arend, Nuria Martínez Salas, Coco Castillón, Elke Gmyrek, Carlos Cerezo, Alfonso Gómez Gaite (structural), Quicler-López Ingenieros (mechanical)
General contractor: FCC Construcción
Construction years: from November 2005 to Febraury 2011

Click above for larger image

See also:

.

Zaisa Office Tower by Hoz Fontán	Mensa Triangle by SOMAA	Rolex Learning Centre by SANAA

Following our previous story about a labia-like staircase, these images by French photographer Stefan Tuchila illustrate the womb-like orbs created by artist Anish Kapoor in the Grand Palais, Paris.

Formed of three 35 metre-high interconnected balloons, the Leviathan sculpture has a dark purple skin and a translucent red interior.

From inside, the silhouette of the palace ceiling is visible through the bulbous red rubber.

The sculpture was designed for the fourth Monumenta exhibition, which closes imminently.

See our earlier story on the ArcelorMittal Orbit by Anish Kapoor »

See more images of this project on the photographer’s website.

The following information is from the press release:

MONUMENTA 2011
Anish Kapoor at the Grand Palais
Leviathan from 11th May to 23rd June 2011

Each year MONUMENTA invites an internationally-renowned artist to turn their vision to the vast Nave of Paris’ Grand Palais and to create a new artwork especially for this space. MONUMENTA is an artistic interaction on an unparalleled scale, filling 13,500m2 and a height of 35m.

The first three MONUMENTA exhibitions were hugely successful, drawing in 150,000 visitors over five weeks. In 2007, the first challenge was met by German artist Anselm Kiefer, who resides in France, followed by American artist Richard Serra in 2008 and French artist Christian Boltanski in 2010.

For its fourth incarnation, the French Ministry for Culture and Communication has invited Anish Kapoor, one of his generation’s greatest artists, to produce a new work for the Nave’s monumental space, from 11th May to 23rd June 2011.

Thirty years after his first exhibition in Paris, MONUMENTA marks Anish Kapoor’s return to the French capital. He is considered as one of the most important sculptors of our time. His work has profoundly enlarged the scope of contemporary sculpture, as much by his mastery of monumental scale as by the colourful sensuality and apparent simplicity emanating from his works. All this contributes to the fascination they hold for the public at large, as demonstrated, for example, by the popular success of Cloud Gate in Chicago.

Born in Bombay in 1954, he has lived in London since the 1970s. His work rapidly gained international recognition and has been awarded numerous prizes, including the famous Turner Prize, which he won in 1991. His career has been the subject of a number of solo exhibitions at the world’s most prestigious museums, including the Louvre, the Royal Academy, Tate Modern, etc. Recently, he has been commissioned to design the key landmark for the forthcoming Olympic Games in London: a 116-metre-high sculpture entitled « Orbit ».

The artist describes the work he is creating for MONUMENTA as follows: “A single object, a single form, a single colour.” “My ambition”, he adds, “is to create a space within a space that responds to the height and luminosity of the Nave at the Grand Palais.

Visitors will be invited to walk inside the work, to immerse themselves in colour, and it will, I hope, be a contemplative and poetic experience.”

Designed using the most advanced technologies, the work will not merely speak to us visually, but will lead the visitor on a journey of total sensorial and mental discovery.

A technical, poetic challenge unparalleled in the history of sculpture, this work questions what we think we know about art, our body, our most intimate experiences and our origins.

Spectacular and profound, it responds to what the artist considers to be the crux of his work: namely, “To manage, through strictly physical means, to offer a completely new emotional and philosophical experience.”

The awe-inspiring strength of Anish Kapoor’s work is a fertile ground that favours the democratization of the access to contemporary art.

Through this series and subsequent exhibitions, the French Ministry for Culture and Communication hopes to appeal to the widest possible audiences.

To exceed the visitor’s expectations, artistic educators, whose knowledge and teaching abilities multiply the possibilities to access and understand the artwork, will be on hand throughout the exhibition to talk to visitors, widening their understanding of contemporary art at no extra cost.

School groups will have their own special programme developed in collaboration with the French Ministry for National Education.

Multidisciplinary and fun, the programme is designed for young visitors, ranging from nursery school to high school, one highlight being dance workshops in partnership with the Théâtre National de Chaillot.

There will be learning activities on the internet, making it possible to link the artist’s work to school programmes.

Themed cross-generational tours will also create a link with Anish Kapoor’s creation.

In addition, tours for the disabled will be available, in order to facilitate access to today’s heritage.

Finally, throughout the exhibition, an events programme will propose a dialogue between word, music, dance and Anish Kapoor’s work and the creations it shelters, in order to uncover new aspects of his creation.

Jean de Loisy is curator of Monumenta 2011. Independent exhibition curator, he has held among other positions that of creation inspector for the French Ministry for Culture and Communication, Cartier Foundation curator and curator at the Georges Pompidou Centre. He has directed and co-directed a variety of art centres in France. He has organized numerous solo artist exhibitions and memorable exhibitions such as “La Beauté” in Avignon in 2000, or “Traces du sacré” in 2008 at the Pompidou Centre. He has been working for 30 years with Anish Kapoor, for whom he organized numerous exhibitions including the 2009 retrospective at London’s Royal Academy of Arts.

The MONUMENTA admission price is 5 Euros, with concessions 2.50 Euros. The cultural programme (free with admission) proposes concerts, performances, readings and ‘encounters’ in connection with Anish Kapoor’s artwork. A bi-lingual highly documented website will help visitors to prepare their visit.

A fully illustrated album, co-published by the CNAP and the Rmn-GP publishing services, Paris 2011, and monograph, co-published by Flammarion and the CNAP, will be published in connection with this event.

Organised by the French Ministry for Culture and Communication, the exhibition is co-produced by the Centre national des arts plastiques (CNAP) and the Etablissement public de la Réunion des musées nationaux et du Grand Palais des Champs-Elysées (Rmn-GP).

See also:

.

Queens Museum of Art by Elliot White	Metropol Parasol by J. Mayer H.	Nissan Y150 Dream Front by Torafu Architects

The zig-zagging doors of this mausoleum in Murcia by Spanish studio Clavel Arquitectos can only be opened in one specific order.

The Panteón Nube tomb is contained within a faceted shell, which is revealed when the doors are rotated open.

Daylight glows through a translucent rear wall of onyx, against which a marble staircase winds upwards.

More projects relating to death »

Photography is by David Frutos Ruiz – see more images of this project here.

Here are some more details from the architects:

“Panteón Nube” in Espinardo, Murcia, Spain.

In this project we worked with two images.

The first one was the medieval unfoldable boards, which used to work as removable façades or altarpieces, and now get remade in the zigzag façade. Death inspires human beings with something between mystery and fear. To die means a transition between this world and others that nobody knows. The tomb is where this transition takes place.

According to this situation, tombs should be closed forever, and their doors should never be opened. It should be impossible to open them, even if you want, so there are no handles or locks. The doors insert themselves in the walls, merging together. Therefore, the entrances are secret, just like the transits that occur inside. In fact, the façade can be only opened in a specific way, almost a combination that only the owner knows.

Inside we find a cloud that gets crossed by sunbeams: an atmospheric situation that can be found in the nature and that, linked to our cultural references of the Divine, stimulate our spiritual side. That moment gets crystallised in the abstraction of the white cloud, the end of a way that, starting from the basement ascends to the intermediate platform and goes on until the cloud’s space, where our sight gets lost in the abstract and unreal atmosphere that fills the place.

Architect: Manuel Clavel Rojo
Collaborators: Robin Harloff, Mauricio Méndez, David Hernández
Construction: July 2010 – September 2010
Construction Company: INTERSA

See also:

.

Sunset Chapel by Bunker Arquitectura	The Cross-Gate by Ivo Pavlik	Family Tomb by Pedro Dias

Family and PlayLab have designed a floating swimming pool for New York that would filter river water through its walls. 

Called + Pool, the cross-shaped baths could be divided into four separate compartments with a lane-swimming pool, children’s area, sports pool and lounge.

The designers have launched a campaign through crowd-funding platform Kickstarter to build a full-scale prototype of one arm.

The information below is from the architects:

EVERYTHING IS BETTER WITH A POOL

+ Pool is the collaborative initiative of design studios Family and PlayLab to build a floating pool for everyone in the rivers of New York City.

The project was launched with the ambition to improve the use of the city’s natural resources by providing a clean and safe way for the public to swim in New York’s waters.

As both a public amenity and an ecological prototype, + Pool is a small but exciting precedent for environmental urbanism in the 21st Century.

NYC + POOL

+ Pool is for you, for your friend, for your mom, for your dad, for your girlfriend, for your boyfriend, for your kids, for your boss, for your bartender, for your tamale guy, for that dude over there, for New York City, for everyone.

An offshore reflection of the city intersection, + Pool both exemplifies the dense, busy character of New York City and offers an island retreat from it.

HISTORY + POOL

Floating pools have paralleled the development of New York City dating back to the early 19th Century. When the city’s elite used lower Manhattan as a resort in the 1800s floating spas were located just off the Battery. After the Civil War the huge influx of immigrants required bathhouses in the Hudson and East Rivers as many were without proper bathing facilities in their homes. In the early 1900s improved plumbing infrastructure and increasing water quality concerns closed the last of the river-borne pools, relocating aquatic leisure activities to more sanitized and inland sites.

In 1972, the Clean Water Act set forth the goal of making every body of water in the country safe for recreation, and in 2007 the Floating Pool Lady – a reclaimed barge now located in the Bronx – brought back the first semblance of New York’s floating pool culture in almost a Century.

Today, as the appreciation for our city’s natural resources becomes increasingly crucial, a permanent floating pool in the river will help restore the water culture so integral to New York City.

EVERYONE + POOL

+ Pool should be enjoyed by everyone, at all times, which is why it’s designed as four pools in one: Children’s Pool, Sports Pool, Lap Pool and Lounge Pool. Each pool can be used independently to cater to all types of swimmers, combined to form an Olympic-length lap pool, or opened completely into a 9,000 square foot pool for play.

WATER + POOL

The most important aspect of + Pool’s design is that it filters river water through the pool’s walls – like a giant strainer dropped into the river.

The concentric layers of filtration materials that make up the sides of the pool are designed to remove bacteria, contaminants and odours, leaving only safe and swimmable water that meets city, state and federal standards of quality.

PARK + POOL

Its universally recognizable shape and unusual offshore siting immediately position + Pool as a iconic piece of public infrastructure.

Whether as a compliment to a thriving park or catalyst for a growing one, the pool can serve as a destination for weekend visitors, an island haven for busy locals, and a symbol for the surrounding neighborhood.

TEAM + POOL

After the launch of + Pool in the summer of 2010, Family and PlayLab began meeting with waterfront organizations, engineers, urban planners, environmental experts, public and private developers and community organizations to build a team to push the project forward. Likeminded institutions like The Metropolitan Waterfront Association, NYC Swim and the Department of Parks and Recreation have all been integral in shaping both the design and process of the pool itself.

The + Pool team has been working with renowned engineering firm Arup New York to study the filtration, structural, mechanical and energy systems of the pool as well as the water quality conditions and regulations necessary for the project. The team recently completed a preliminary engineering feasibility report in preparation for the material and methods testing phase.

NEXT + POOL

Following the completion of the preliminary engineering report done in collaboration with Arup, the + Pool team is now moving into the phase of material testing to assess and determine the best filtration membranes and methods to provide clean and safe riverwater for the public to swim in.

Family and PlayLab launched a Kickstarter online fundrasing campaign in June of 2011 with the ultimate goal of generating enough support to prototype the filtration system by building a full-scale working mockup of the one section of + Pool.

Research, design, testing and development will continue through the year in conjunction with permitting, approvals and building partnerships with community, municipal, commercial and environmental organizations.

See also:

.

Synchronicity Island by Jakub Szczęsny	Urban Beach by O + A	Floating gardens by Anne Holtrop

With the surprising news from earlier this month that the NY Times‘ long-time and often controversial architecture critic, Nicolai Ouroussoff, would be stepping down to concentrate on writing a book, comes a great deal of speculation on who might replace him. Architectural Record, apparently thinking the Times will use its stature to steal away a critic from another paper or magazine, has assembled its lists of picks for the position, while also allowing you the public to vote in an ongoing poll. Will the Tribune‘s Blair Kamin give up his beloved Chicago and move to the Big Apple? Will fellow Pulitzer winner Justin Davidson take leave of New York, thus reversing the recent trend of writers leaving in the opposite direction, moving from that paper to that magazine. Most interesting, and what we believe is an incredible long-shot, is their inclusion of former staffer, Paul Goldberger, who Ouroussoff himself replaced in the critic spot. Seems like it would have to be quite the offer to lure Goldberger from the cozy confines of the New Yorker, where he’s been able to file long, flowing stories about architecture and what it all means in the grand scheme of things, but who knows? Check out the list, pick your favorite in A.R.‘s poll, and even select “Nobody,” if you believe the Times will go in a more surprising direction (like, um, hiring two relatively unknown bloggers from a site that rhymes with “MunSmeige”).

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.