Hasta La Ideas

Architects Agnieszka Preibisz and Peter Sandhaus have unveiled a conceptual skyscraper for Berlin with a twisted figure-of-eight structure that curves around elevated gardens and is held up by cables.

Agnieszka Preibisz and Peter Sandhaus, who are both based in Berlin, developed the design to contribute to a new masterplan being put together for the eastern quarter of the city.

“The state of society in the twenty-first century requires that we develop new visions for living in densely populated inner cities,” Preibisz told Dezeen. “This process inherently triggers an essential confrontation of material and social values, and so there is a nascent yearning for an architecture that offers a high degree of potential for community.”

Describing the building as a “vertical garden city”, the architects have planned a network of gardens and greenhouses that would slot into the two hollows of the figure-of-eight, intended to serve a growing desire among city dwellers for self-sustaining gardening.

Residences would be arranged to encourage neighbours to interact with one another, fostering a sense of community that the architects compare to social networks.

“While in social networking, the border between the public and the private spheres is being renegotiated, architecture and urban planning of cities such as Berlin lags behind these significant social and demographic changes,” they explain.

Named Green8, the tower is designed for a site on Alexanderplatz. The architects are now consulting with an engineering office to assess the viability of the structure.

Here’s a project description from the architects:

Green8 Concept

How Do We Want To Live?

While trying to answer the query of how and where to house, many modern families today are torn between the desire for a pulsating urban life and the craving for a lifestyle in harmony with nature.

Our identification with and our desire for a free and urban life style defined by short distances to work, excellent public transportation, and proximity to cultural and commercial amenities, does not need to end with the decision to start a family or with retirement from active professional life.

Current trends towards a ‘sharing-spirit’ and a new participation in the community life counteract the anonymity and isolation in the metropolis. While in social networking, the border between the public and the private spheres is being renegotiated, architecture and urban planning of cities such as Berlin lags behind these significant social and demographic changes.

The unease with the global imperative of continued growth propagated by financial markets, seems to be spreading. Confidence in industrial food production finds itself nowadays significantly eroded. At the same time also the mass production of organic and healthier food has its limits and fails to appease growing groups of customers.

The longing for self-sustaining gardening and for knowing about the origins of what one is eating, are the most important reasons for the current boom in urban gardening.

What do these developments mean for architecture and urban planning? How do we want to live and house in the future?

As an integrative solution to this dilemma, the architects Agnieszka Preibisz and Peter Sandhaus are proposing project Green8 for a vertical garden city on Alexanderplatz in Berlin.

The residential high-rise structure is based on a business model of a cooperative collective. It envisions a self-determined community encompassing all generations. With its generous greenhouse and community spaces Green8 offers to organise not only the food production but also the sport and leisure activities, as well as the care of children and seniors.

Green8 reflects a dream come true: living in the centre of the city with breathtaking panorama views, while having one’s own vegetable garden at one’s doorstep.

Thanks to its cooperative and integrative principles, this housing concept is economically efficient. This form of home ownership is free from many constraints of real estate or land speculation, and the long term costs are lower than those of conventional homes.

Green8 is not a house. It is a life form.

The post Green8 by Agnieszka Preibisz
and Peter Sandhaus appeared first on Dezeen.

Portuguese studio DNSJ.arq has completed a cluster of three white houses on the outskirts of a small town in southern Portugal (+ slideshow).

Located just outside Aldeia do Meco, the first of the three houses was designed by DNSJ.arq as a home for the clients, while the other two function as rentable holiday homes.

Two of the houses are located on a flat section of the site close to the street and the third house is positioned behind them, slightly further up the hill.

Architect Nuno Simões said the team decided to arrange each house in a different composition, “almost like a jazz improvisation.”

“We decided to make the bigger house for our client – in the hilly side of the land with the swimming pool – and the other smaller two for rent,” Simões told Dezeen.

“The two smaller houses, which have a more congested situation, were for living mainly on the patios, while the larger house faces a small river with a glimpse of the ocean,” he added.

Each house has brick walls that coated with white render, as well as poured concrete floors. All three open out to patios on two levels and feature their own private swimming pools.

A garage connects the two smaller houses. A pathway leads to the third house, which is twice as big and boasts more bedrooms and a spacious kitchen.

Photography is by Fernando Guerra.

Here’s a short description from the architects:

Three Houses in Meco

The intervention that is proposed is located within the urban perimeter of Aldeia do Meco. It is a narrow strip towards sunrise/sunset, flat up to about half of the land and thereafter acquiring an pending until the river bordering the west.

The settlement program includes the construction of three houses, two for rent and a residence for the owners.

The first two houses are grouped together (Casa 1 and Casa 2) on the flat part and closer to the street and settled the other house (Casa 3) on the ground to the west.

This house adapts to the topography, adjusting to the presence of existing trees, and enjoying the views through a system of terraces that extend the house outdoors. Unlike Casa 3, Casa 1 and Casa 2, more exposed to neighbouring buildings, enjoy a more intimate relationship generated by a system of courtyards.

Important starting point was the impossibility of any sophistication constructive opting for current building systems.

The banality of the building grew into a minimal architectural lexicon composed of white unequal volumes, but similar in nature. This game was complemented with the austerity of the chosen materials.

The post Three houses in Meco
by DNSJ.arq appeared first on Dezeen.

Brazilian architect Isay Weinfeld designed this apartment block in São Paulo as 62 “houses with yards”, which are stacked on top of one another like the blocks of a Jenga game (+ slideshow).

The 360º Building, which was presented at the World Architecture Festival earlier this month, is a 20-storey tower block located at the peak of a ridge between the neighbourhoods of Alto de Pinheiros and Alto da Lapa in the west of the city.

Isay Weinfeld wanted to avoid the typical São Paulo typology of compact apartments with little or no outside space. “We have strived to introduce 360º Building as an alternative to the vertical multi-family housing model, which, in its commonest form, merely stacks up apartment units,” said the studio.

Rather than adding small balconies, the architect gave each home its own terrace. These spaces are all tucked between apartments, offering shelter from the elements and a degree of privacy.

Apartment sizes vary from 130 to 250 square-metres in area, and there are between two and four homes on each floor.

These specifications provide a total of six different floor types, which alternate to create a volume reminiscent of Jenga – a children’s game where wooden blocks are removed from a tower and placed back on top.

The base of the building is set into the hillside. Residents enter via a suspended walkway at first-floor level, bridging a swimming pool that runs around the perimeter.

Communal lounge areas and laundry facilities are located on the ground floor, while three floors of parking are housed in the basement.

The project was shortlisted in the housing award category at the World Architecture Festival, but lost out to an apartment block inside a former YMCA building in Los Angeles. One year earlier, Weinfeld’s Fazenda Boa Vista Golf Clubhouse topped the sports category.

Photography is by Fernando Guerra.

Here’s more information from Isay Weinfeld:

360º Building

360º Building will be erected in São Paulo, the largest city in Brazil, where currently over 10 million people live spread over 1,525 km2. In this setting, unfortunately the “norm” is to live not at one’s best, but crammed and confined, and to commute long distances everyday between home, work and other commitments, by car, bus, or subway. The time left for leisure is scarce, and few are the options to enjoy activities in the open air.

Mindful of the urban reality in São Paulo, of the market and of the client brief, we have strived to introduce 360º Building as an alternative to the vertical multi-family housing “model”, which, in its commonest form, merely stacks up apartment units – ordinary, compact and closed onto themselves.

360º Building, rising on top of the ridge separating the districts of Alto de Pinheiros and Alto da Lapa – a geographic location that will offer privileged sights of the surrounding area and the city -, will feature 62 elevated “homes with yards”: real yards, not balconies, designed as genuine living spaces, wide, airy and bright. It will present 7 types of apartments – either 130, 170 or 250 m2 – combined in sets of 2, 3 or 4 units per floor, in 6 different arrangements.

Leaving the street and past the reception, a suspended walkway will lead to the building’s lobby, surrounded on all sides by a reflective pool. Down one floor, on the ground level, entertaining areas and other facilities – gym, lounge, party room and laundry – will be located, as also the janitor’s living quarters. Further down, there will be 3 parking levels, and, on the lowermost level, employees quarters, storage and engine rooms, in addition to a sauna and an outdoor swimming pool. The land, a steep downwards slope, allowed the lower levels to be semi-subterranean, always keeping 2 sides open to the light and to ventilation.

The building projects to all sides showing no distinction between main and secondary façades.

The post 360º Building by
Isay Weinfeld appeared first on Dezeen.

News: architect Norman Foster has revealed how late Apple CEO Steve Jobs called him “out of the blue” in 2009 to invite him to design the Apple Campus 2 with the words “Hi Norman, I need some help.”

“For me this project started in the summer of 2009,” says Foster in a movie published this week by Cupertino City Council. “Out of the blue a telephone call. It’s Steve: ‘Hi Norman, I need some help.’ I was out there three weeks later.”

The movie documents a planning meeting held in the city on 1 October, at which representatives of Apple, Foster + Partners and others presented details of the $5 billion project to create a new home for Apple in Cupertino. The building was granted planning permission last week.

Foster says in the movie: “One of the most memorable things and perhaps vital to the project was Steve saying, ‘Don’t think of me as your client. Think of me as one of your team’.”

The architect adds: “The first point of reference I think for Steve was the campus at Stanford, his home territory. And also the landscape he grew up with; the fruitbowl of America.”

Elsewhere in the movie, members of the project team give details of the ring-shaped, 280 million square-foot building, which will have one of the largest photovoltaic solar arrays in the world and feature a parking garage for electric cars with over 100 charging stations.

“We have a building that is pushing social behaviour in the way people work,” adds Stefan Behling, an architect at Foster + Partners, while Dan Whisenhunt, Apple’s senior director of real estate & facilities, says the building will be “one of the most environmentally sustainable projects on this scale in the world, creating a new home for 13,000 employees.”

Whisenhunt adds that Apple would “like to keep engineering and creative groups together on our new site,” referring to the company’s recent moves to integrate the previously separate design and technology departments.

“When Apple Campus 2 is finished 80% of the site will be green space” says Lisa Jackson, Apple’s vice president of environmental initiatives. “We’re maximising the natural assets of the area; this area has a great climate so 75% of the year we won’t need air conditioning or heating, we’ll have natural ventilation.”

She adds: “AC2 will run on 100% renewable energy, there will be solar power, it will be one of the largest solar arrays in the world for a corporate campus. Our goal is to build a campus that has no net increase in greenhouse gas emissions.”

“This building allows us to put 13,000 engineering and creative types in one location under one roof thus creating the idea factory that will create future generations of Apple products food years to come,” adds Whisenhunt. “The parking station will be fitted with over 100 vehicle charging parking stations, there are provisions to increase that as our employees purchase more electric cars.

Construction will start soon and will take 32 months. Apple staff will be able to move into the building in 2016.

The post How Steve Jobs hired Norman Foster:
“Hi Norman. I need some help” appeared first on Dezeen.

News: two Portuguese architects want to transform Porto’s iconic Maria Pia Bridge, built in 1877 by Gustave Eiffel, into a monument by moving the disused structure from its present location on the River Douro to the city centre.

Designed by the French engineer of Eiffel Tower fame, the wrought-iron railway bridge has been out of use since 1991. However, as one of Porto’s most recognisable structures, Pedro Bandeira and Pedro Nuno Ramalho believe it could help the city establish its international identity.

“The relocated D. Maria Pia Bridge would bring a new monumentality to the city,” reads the architects’ proposal. “The bridge would be a monument of the deindustrialisation, where the materiality of the nineteenth century gives place to the contemporary immateriality.”

Bandeira and Ramalho entered the proposal in a competition seeking ideas to revitalise the Aurifícia area in central Porto. Although it didn’t win, the architects insist it could still become a catalyst for urban regeneration.

“By relocating [the bridge] to the centre of the city on a higher position, [it] would regain visibility but mostly another meaning, since it is released of the need of being useful,” they said.

According to the plans, the bridge’s latticed girder structure could be easily dismantled. It could then be re-erected over a period of five months, with a budget of less than €10 million (£8.5 million).

Local journalist Ana Laureano Alves believes the project addresses some of the most important issues facing contemporary architecture.

“Although it may seem extreme in a first moment, I believe that it is an intelligent proposal,” she told Dezeen. “On one hand it is a call for attention of the failure of the urban regeneration policies and, on the other, it is a provocation to the contemporary approach on monuments and history.”

The bridge currently spans the River Douro in the south-east of the city. With a height of 60 metres and a 353-metre span, it was once the longest single-arch span in the world.

Here’s a project description from the architects:

Relocation of the D. Maria Pia Bridge

Two architects, Pedro Bandeira and Pedro Nuno Ramalho proposed the relocation of the Eiffel’s D. Maria Pia Bridge to the city centre, exposing its actual uselessness (not in use since 1991) and drastically changing the skyline of Oporto.

This proposal was a response for a call of ideas for the urban regeneration of the block Aurifícia in the city of Oporto, Portugal, promoted by the Portuguese Council of Architects. As it seems obvious, it did not win. If at a first glance it looks like as an ironic proposal of nonsense humour, it has also a deeper meaning. This strong gesture would establish a particular identity of the city, unique, bizarre and appealing. It may seem absurd, but in some way it just reflects the absurd that the city already is: the decadent urban landscape that invites the tourists to photograph the building in ruins, abandoned warehouses and factories; a scenario that no urban regeneration policy was able to reverse.

Since 1991 the D. Maria Pia Bridge is not at use. With the two new bridges over the Douro River – the Infante Bridge and the S. João Bridge – it lost its scale and dignity; it is hidden and forgotten. By relocating it to the centre of the city on a higher position, the bridge would regain visibility but mostly another meaning, since it is released of the need of being useful. The proposal rescues the beautiful expression “work-of-art” used in some languages by the engineers to refer to the construction of bridges. The originality of the solution would contribute, in a first moment, for increasing tourism and consequently the development of other services. Aside from that, it is more significant the boost of the city’s identity, nourishing the self-esteem of its inhabitants, the fundamental actors on the revitalisation of the city. Astonishingly, the project would be easily executed, both in the constructive and in economical terms. The lattice girder structure of the bridge is light and easily disassembled. It would require around five months for the entire process of construction and a budget of less than 10 million of euros, eight times less than the costs of Koolhaas’ Casa da Música, located in the vicinity. As the Eiffel Tower, the relocated D. Maria Pia Bridge would have a significative impact, contributing for promoting the image of the city worldwide.

The relocated D. Maria Pia Bridge would bring a new monumentality to the city. New, considering it is far from the classical sense of the expression, as of institutionalisation of History. It is a transgressive monumentality that aims for its permanent actualisation meaning, reflecting the present conscious of its fragility. The Bridge would be a monument of the deindustrialisation, where the materiality of the 19th century gives place to the contemporary immateriality, where there is no space for a bridge that connects just two places. The bridge died, but it died standing, like a tree.

The post Portuguese architects want to relocate
Porto’s Maria Pia Bridge appeared first on Dezeen.