Située dans les Alpes autrichiennes, cette jolie maison a été construite par le designer Peter Jungmann pour un particulier. Appelée UFOgel, fusion des mots UFO et Vogel, signifiant oiseau en allemand, cette structure sur pilotis proposée à la location dispose de grandes fenêtres et d’un aménagement chaleureux.
Chicago firm Studio Gang Architects has completed a boathouse on the northern bank of the Chicago River with a rhythmic roofline intended to capture the alternating motions of a rower’s arm movements (+ slideshow).
Located beside Clark Park in the north-west of the city, the WMS Boathouse provides a home for the Chicago Rowing Foundation. It is one of four boathouses proposed as part of a city-funded regeneration of the Chicago River, and the first of two designed by Studio Gang.
Structural roof trusses that alternate between M and upside-down V shapes give the building its jagged roof profile, which was conceptualised by tracing the time-lapse movements of rowing.
“The architecture is meant to visually capture the poetic rhythm and motion of rowing,” said Studio Gang principal Jeanne Gang, “but by providing a publicly accessible riverfront, it also reveals the larger movement toward an ecological and recreational revival of the Chicago River.”
The boathouse comprises two buildings positioned alongside one another. The first is a single-storey shed for storing rowing equipment, while the second is a two-storey structure containing offices, community facilities, a fitness suite and a rowing tank where teams can practice indoors.
The exterior of the building is clad with a mixture of slate tiles and zinc panels, which share the same silvery grey colouring.
Interior spaces are lined with timber, which also extends outside the building to wrap the inside of balconies and undersides of overhanging eaves.
South-facing clerestory windows extend up to the edge of the roof, bringing high levels of natural light through the building, but also helping to warm the interior in winter and allow natural ventilation during the summer.
Studio Gang’s second boathouse will be located on the south side of the river and is set to complete in 2015.
Read on for more information from Studio Gang Architects:
Studio Gang Architects completes WMS Boathouse at Clark Park
First of the two new boathouses along Chicago River designed and constructed by SGA state-of-the-art, 22,620-square-foot facility now open to the public
Studio Gang Architects (SGA) is pleased to announce the completion of the WMS Boathouse at Clark Park along the north branch of the Chicago River. Designed and built by SGA, the state-of-the-art facility opened to the public on October 19, 2013. It is located at 3400 North Rockwell Avenue on the northwest side of the City of Chicago.
The Clark Park facility is one of four boathouses proposed by Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel as cornerstones of his riverfront revitalisation plan, anchoring the river’s future development. Emanuel’s initiative was spurred by the provision of nearly $1 million in grant funds by the United States Environmental Protection Agency to help clean up the river and drive job creation. Studio Gang was commissioned to realise two of the four boathouses, with the second facility to be located along the south branch of the Chicago River at 28th and Eleanor Streets. It is scheduled for completion in 2015.
The WMS Boathouse at Clark Park is currently home to the Chicago Rowing Foundation (CRF). In partnership with the Chicago Park District, the CRF offers a wide range of indoor and outdoor activities year-round, including learn-to-row sessions both in tanks and on the river, youth and masters team rowing, ergometer training, rowing-inspired yoga classes, and lessons tailored to individuals with disabilities.
As the City of Chicago works to transform the long-polluted and neglected Chicago River into its next recreational frontier, Studio Gang’s boathouse at Clark Park helps catalyse necessary momentum. “The architecture is meant to visually capture the poetic rhythm and motion of rowing,” said Jeanne Gang, Founder and Principal of Studio Gang Architects. “But by providing a publicly accessible riverfront, it also reveals the larger movement toward an ecological and recreational revival of the Chicago River.”
The boathouse’s design translates the time-lapse motion of rowing into an architectural roof form, providing visual interest while also offering spatial and environmental advantages that allow the boathouse to adapt to Chicago’s distinctive seasonal changes. With structural truss shapes alternating between an inverted “V” and an “M”, the roof achieves a rhythmic modulation that lets in southern light through the building’s upper clerestory. The clerestory glazing warms the floor slab of the structure in winter and ventilates in summer to minimise energy use throughout the year.
The 22,620-square-foot complex consists of a two-story mechanically heated and cooled training centre, one-story boat storage facility, and a floating launch dock. The main building houses row tanks, ergometer machines, communal space, and an office for the Chicago Park District. Boat storage accommodates kayak and canoe vendors and includes office space, as well as clear span storage for rowing shells and support equipment.
The total building cost is $8.8 million, with $3.2 million in private funding—including $2 million from WMS, $1 million from North Park University, and $200,000 from the Chicago Rowing Foundation—and $1 million matched by Alderman Ameya Pawar (47th ward) with TIF funds.
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News: following the announcement last month that London architecture studio FAT is to disband this year, founding member Sean Griffiths has been appointed professor of Architecture at the University of Westminster.
Griffiths is an alumnus of the University of Westminster and has recently held posts there as a teacher and researcher at the Department of Architecture.
“In my new role I want to highlight alternative forms of practice, exemplified by firms such as FAT, which emerged from the University of Westminster, as well as draw attention to the huge variety of activities in fields such as fine art, journalism, property development, social activism and arts consultancy that a number of prominent former students currently undertake,” said Griffiths. “This is particularly important in light of the ongoing debate about the value of architectural education.”
“I’m particularly pleased that the Professorship is at the University of Westminster, which was the springboard for the formation of FAT and has been a fantastic workshop for ideas that have found their way into my practice work, a process that will no doubt continue,” he added.
Alongside his position at University of Westminster, Griffiths will continue his current work as an architect, designer, artist, writer and teacher.
The appointment follows the news that London studio FAT, which Griffiths co-founded in 1995 with Charles Holland and Sam Jacob, will close down this summer.
Renowned for its playful, postmodern approach to architecture, FAT announced in December that it would disband following the completion of two major projects – the curation of the British Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2014 and a fairytale house it designed in collaboration with artist Grayson Perry for the Living Architecture series of holiday homes.
Photograph by Tim Soar.
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Sean Griffiths as Professor of Architecture appeared first on Dezeen.
News: the Williams and Tsien-designed former American Folk Art Museum in New York will be demolished just 13 years after it was built to make room for an extension to the neighbouring Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), despite an outcry from architects, conservationists and critics.
In a statement last night, MoMA director Glenn D. Lowry said the museum will move forward with designs by Diller Scofidio + Renfro to extend its existing building over the site of the former folk art museum designed by American architects Tod Williams and Billie Tsien and completed in 2001.
The decision follows a six-month study that investigated options for its retention. “The plans approved today are the result of a recommendation from the architects after a diligent and thoughtful six-month study and design process that explored all options for the site,” said Lowry.
“The analysis that we undertook was lengthy and rigorous, and ultimately led us to the determination that creating a new building on the site of the former American Folk Art Museum is the only way to achieve a fully integrated campus.”
Williams and Tsien have described the move as “a missed opportunity to find new life and purpose for a building that is meaningful to so many”.
“The Folk Art building was designed to respond to the fabric of the neighbourhood and create a building that felt both appropriate and yet also extraordinary,” they said.
“Demolishing this human-scaled, uniquely crafted building is a loss to the city of New York in terms of respecting the size, diversity and texture of buildings in a midtown neighbourhood that is at risk of becoming increasingly homogenised.”
The bronze-clad museum first opened its doors in 2001 to exhibit a collection of paintings, sculptures and crafts by self-taught and outsider artists, but relocated to a smaller site on Lincoln Square, further north in Manhattan, after the building was sold to MoMA in 2011 to pay off a $32 million loan.
However, Williams and Tsien believe the building already holds a “powerful architectural legacy”.
“The inability to experience the building firsthand and to appreciate its meaning from an historical perspective will be profoundly felt,” they said.
Diller Scofidio + Renfro‘s expansion will add approximately 3700 square metres (40,000 square feet) of new galleries and public spaces to the museum.
It will extend across two sites west of the museum’s midtown Manhattan building, including both the folk art museum site at 45 West 53rd Street and three floors of a new residential tower underway next door, allowing the existing lobby and ground-floor areas to be transformed into a large public space.
Scroll down for the full statement from Glenn D. Lowry:
Message from Glenn D. Lowry
Director, The Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art’s Board of Trustees today approved initial details of a major building project that will expand the Museum’s public spaces and galleries to provide greater public accessibility and allow the Museum to reconceive the presentation of its collection and exhibitions. Working with Diller Scofidio + Renfro, the renowned interdisciplinary studio based in New York City, the Museum has developed a plan to integrate its current building with two sites to the west of the Museum’s midtown Manhattan campus into which it will expand: three floors of a residential tower being developed by Hines, at 53 West 53rd Street; and the site of the former American Folk Art Museum, at 45 West 53rd Street. The plans include new gallery space on three floors within the tower, and a new building on the site of the former museum.
The plans approved today are the result of a recommendation from the architects after a diligent and thoughtful six-month study and design process that explored all options for the site. The analysis that we undertook was lengthy and rigorous, and ultimately led us to the determination that creating a new building on the site of the former American Folk Art Museum is the only way to achieve a fully integrated campus.
As a major component of the Museum’s desire for greater public access and a more welcoming street presence, the preliminary concepts approved today will transform the current lobby and ground-floor areas into an expansive public gathering space, open to the public and spanning the entire street level of the Museum, including The Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden. In advance of these plans, the Museum will increase free public access to the Sculpture Garden later this year.
The extension of MoMA’s galleries to the west on its second, fourth, and fifth floors will add a variety of spaces and allow the Museum to present an integrated display of its collection across all disciplines—photography, architecture, design, film, media, prints, drawings, performance, painting, and sculpture. These carefully choreographed sequences will highlight the creative frictions and influences that spring from seeing these mediums together.
The expansion will add approximately 40,000 square feet of new galleries and public areas, providing 30% more space for visitors to view the collection and special exhibitions. The additional space will allow the Museum to show transformative acquisitions that have added new dimensions and voices to its holdings, drawing from entire collections of contemporary drawings, Fluxus, and Conceptual art; the archives of Frank Lloyd Wright; and major recent acquisitions by such artists as Marcel Broodthaers, Lygia Clark, Steve McQueen, Robert Rauschenberg, Gerhard Richter, Mira Schendel, Richard Serra, Sophie Taeuber-Arp, and Cy Twombly, among many others.
Our vision for MoMA’s next phase will be completed over the coming years, and I look forward to updating you on our progress.
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folk art museum says MoMA director appeared first on Dezeen.
Webs of red parachute cables take the place of traditional balustrades between the two levels of this office that architects Joe Fraher and Lizzie Webster have built as an extension of their London home (+ slideshow).
Named The Green Studio, Fraher Architect‘s new two-storey workplace was designed to allow its two directors greater flexibility in balancing a growing workload with raising a young family, and it is located on a compact site in the garden of their two-storey house.
The criss-crossing cables extend from the angular double-height ceiling of a ground-floor workplace to the floor’s edge of a small mezzanine office, creating two colourful nets that the architects say are strong enough to hold a person’s weight.
We wanted to keep visual permeability and wanted something that didn’t feel like a balustrade,” Webster told Dezeen. “You can sit in it to read, and if you fell onto it, it would catch you.”
The architects ensured that gaps between cables are never wider than ten centimetres to minimise the risk that someone might slip through them by accident.
“The form of the cord stretches and bridges to visually emphasise the faceted angles of the studio walls,” added Webster.
A wooden staircase with integrated drawers and cupboards connects the two storeys and was custom-made by the architects’ joinery company Fraher + Co.
Bespoke desks and shelves were built on both floors, creating a pair of desks upstairs for the two directors and four more workspaces on the ground floor. There are also pegboards on the walls to accommodate ad-hoc fixings.
High-performance glazing and thick insulation were added so that the office needs no heating, plus natural ventilation helps to keep the building cool in summer.
The exterior of the extension is clad with stainless steel mesh, while plants and wildflowers grow across the roof.
Photography is by Jack Hobhouse.
Read on for more information from Fraher Architects:
The Green Studio
Sited opposite the Butterfly House, The Studio is a garden based creative home work space for our architectural practice. Situated in the south east of London, the building was driven by the directors need to balance a young family with an increasing workload.
The studio’s shape and orientation has resulted from a detailed sunlight analysis minimising its impact on the surrounding buildings and ensuring high levels of daylight to the garden and work spaces.
The split levels and grounded form helps to conceal its mass and facilitates the flowing groundscape transition between the garden and studio. Clad in a stainless steel mesh, the terraced planter beds and wild flower green roofs will combine to green the facade replacing the lost habitat.
Carefully orientated high performance glazing combined with super insulation and a robust natural ventilation strategy means the building requires no heating or cooling. Hot water for the kitchen and shower are provided by a large solar array and thermal store.
The project was completed in October 2013 and delivered to a tight budget and deadline.
All the joinery was designed, fabricated and installed by the practice’s sister company Fraher + Co.
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at Fraher Architects’ London studio appeared first on Dezeen.
A hotel in Munich is stretched, twisted, distorted and exploded in this series of 88 manipulated photographs by Spanish photographer Victor Enrich (+ movie).
Victor Enrich, who also works as a 3D architectural visualiser, based the entire series of images on one view of the Deutscher Kaiser hotel, a building he passed regularly during a two-month stay in the city.
Some images show parts of the building turned on their sides, while others show sections of it duplicated or sliced away. Some shots show it curving into different shapes and some show it pulled it apart.
Describing the manipulation process, Enrich told Dezeen: “What I basically do is create a 3D virtual environment out of a 2D photograph. The process involves capturing the perspective, then the geometry, then the materials and finally the lighting.”
“The techniques I use are often described as ‘camera matching’ or ‘perspective matching’ and several 3D software packages provide functionalities that allow you to perform this,” he explained, but added that he tends to add do a lot of the work by hand to “reach the level of detail needed to achieve high photorealism”.
“Then is just a matter of time, much time, spent working on it,” he said.
Other images in the series include one where the top of the building is transformed into a floating orb.
There’s also one where the tower features zigzagging walls, and another where the base of the building is missing and the tower is raised up on pilotis.
Enrich previously worked on a similar series of manipulated images, called City Portraits, which adapted images of other buildings in Munich as well as structures in Riga and Tel Aviv.
“The experiment started in 2005 and I’ve done several buildings, all from cities where I’ve stayed for periods longer than a year,” he said.
“If everything goes well, there will be some new works about some American cities during 2014,” he added.
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hotel upside down and inside out appeared first on Dezeen.
Founded in 1908, Danish furniture manufacturer Carl Hansen & Son is largely known for using natural materials, relying on refined design and the unblemished beauty of raw wood, wicker and leather to tell each piece’s individual…
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Before planning your next trip, be sure to review the newly crowned winners of the Travel + Leisure Design Awards, which will be featured in the magazine’s February issue (on newsstands next Friday). The winners, announced today, range from a brilliant Nordic eatery and Tom Dixon‘s Adidas travel togs (at right) to the latest Ian Schrager-meets-Marriott project and an intimate Bhutanese getaway. Many of this year’s favorites will come as no surprise, including the Herzog & de Meuron-designed Parrish Art Museum and Jawbone’s travel-ready Mini Jambox. Meanwhile, 2013 T+L Design Champion Thomas J. Pritzker, executive chairman of Hyatt Hotels, joins past honorees such as Vitra chairman Rolf Fehlbaum, ubercollector Micky Wolfson, and Standardbearer André Balazs. Tasked with choosing “the best new examples of design” in 18 categories was a jury moderated by Chee Pearlman that included fashion designer Thom Browne, MoMA’s Kathy Halbreich, and interior designer Ilse Crawford. Keep reading for the full list of winners.
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Walls of dark brick connect the exterior and interior of this mews house in the north London borough of Hackney (+ slideshow).
Located next to the studio of its designers Form_art Architects in a traditional mews street, Blackbox house references the style of its archetypal brick neighbours but introduces light through a glazed courtyard and skylight.
“In contrast to the traditional mews architecture of solid brick enclosures with tiny windows and little daylight, this design is filled with light, but still respects the contextual language of a ‘solid box’,” explained the architects.
From the street, the house appears as a dark facade of slim Belgian brick punctuated with narrow horizontal and vertical windows, with the entrance concealed in an adjoining black wooden wall.
A lattice of wooden battens above the door enables daylight to reach a small brick-paved courtyard containing a birch tree and the entrance to the house.
The masonry that covers two sides of the courtyard continues across the wall that reaches into the open plan ground floor area and can be seen through the double-height glass screen that links the internal and external spaces.
A central staircase with a skylight above it allows light to spill down into the ground floor and divides the main living space and kitchen on one side from the dining room on the other.
A small landing at the top of the stairs leads to bedrooms on either side, the smaller of which is contained in a white box that projects over the dining area.
White walls and a further skylight at the far end of the living room enhance the brightness of the interior, which is intended to act as a gallery space as well as a home.
Photography is by Timothy Soar.
Form_art Architects sent us the following description:
BLACKBOX: Culford Mews London
The idea of the mews served as the starting point for Blackbox in more ways than just its physical location. In contrast to the traditional mews architecture of solid brick enclosures with tiny windows and little daylight, this design is filled with light, but still respects the contextual language of a ‘solid box’.
The design features of the entrance courtyard and staircase in this instance are key for the purpose of generating light into the heart of the house. As a result of the physical area given over to the courtyard, the ephemeral qualities created are ‘borrowed’ back so to speak.
This essentially refers to the light and views, with the staircase serving as a journey up Blackbox right through to the skylight. This can best be described as the layering of views and the ‘bouncing’ of light within the house.
Simultaneously developed as a house gallery and vice versa, the design is a continuation of Form_art’s work with artists and galleries, namely their current engagement with the Tate. The volume of space carved out by expressing the brickwork enclosure enables the inside to hold a pure white ‘floating’ box, suspended to further express the interior’s language of ‘objects’.
The project serves as a testimony to Form_art’s working ethos of generating work to test and develop ideas. This process provides Form_art with complete artistic freedom as designer and client and hence, there is an uncompromised approach from initial design through to completion.
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has brick walls inside and out appeared first on Dezeen.
News: architecture firm Snøhetta has concluded the first phase of a major overhaul of New York‘s Times Square, continuing the initiative started in 2009 to pedestrianise large sections of the popular tourist destination.
The $55 million reconstruction project is the largest redesign of the square in decades and encompasses the transformation of five public plazas between 42nd and 47th Streets, which will be entirely reconstructed to remove any traces that vehicular traffic once ran through the square along the Broadway.
Snøhetta completed the redevelopment of the plaza between 42nd and 43rd Streets just in time for the New Year’s Eve celebrations. It features flattened-out curbs that create single-level surfaces for pedestrians, as well as new benches and paving surfaces.
Working alongside engineers Weidlinger Associates and landscape architect Mathews Nielsen, the architects plan to open a second plaza by the end of 2015 and complete the entire project the following year.
This stretch of the Broadway was first closed to traffic in 2009 as part of an initiative by New York mayor Michael Bloomberg to provide additional space for more than 400,000 pedestrians who pass through Times Square every day. Since then the square has seen a 33 percent reduction in traffic-related injuries, as well a 180 percent increase in shop lets around the square.
“Since we first introduced temporary pedestrian plazas in Times Square, we have seen increased foot traffic and decreased traffic injuries – and businesses have seen more customers than ever,” said Bloomberg. “With more than 400,000 pedestrians passing through Times Square every day, the plazas have been good for New Yorkers, our visitors, and our businesses – and that’s why we’re making them permanent.”
Once complete, the restructuring will add 13,000 square-metres (140,000 square-feet) of new pedestrian space to Times Square. It will feature ten solid granite benches, as well as two-tone paving slabs with embedded metal discs, designed to reflect the neon glow from surrounding signs and billboards.
“With innovative designs and a little paint, we’ve shown you can change a street quickly with immediate benefits,” said transportation commissioner Sadik-Khan.
The project is one of 59 new public squares being developed across the city under the direction of Mayor Bloomberg. Various other public realm improvements have also taken place in the city in recent years, including the introduction of a cycle-hire scheme and the continuing extension of the elevated High Line park.
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of Times Square transformation appeared first on Dezeen.
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