These previously unseen photographs show the faceted modular structure of the Baku Crystal Hall in Azerbaijan, which was designed and completed in just eight months (+ slideshow).
The building, which was presented earlier this month at the Inside Festival in Singapore, had to be designed and constructed simultaneously to be ready in time to host last year’s Eurovision Song Contest, so German firm GMP Architekten collaborated closely with contractors Alpine Bau Deutschland and Nüssli throughout the process.
Conceived as both a concert hall and a sports stadium, the 25,000-seat stadium comprises a lightweight steel structure with a faceted membrane facade intended to resemble cut crystal.
According to Nussli’s Claus Kruppa, it was originally planned as a temporary structure, but was subtly altered during construction to enable it to remain in place for longer.
“A small change in the drawings, and now it’s going to be there for 30-40 years,” he said.
The building is located on a peninsula outside the centre of Baku. Its facade is covered with 9500 LED lights, which bring the structure to life after dark.
Mount Fuji Architects Studio ont imaginé ce superbe studio appelée « Geo Metria ». A la fois moderne et d’une grande simplicité, cette structure située à Hakone au Japon propose de jolis espaces, avec notamment des structures en bois pouvant servir de bibliothèque. Plus d’images de ce projet charmant dans la suite.
Dezeen and MINI World Tour: Colin Seah of Ministry of Design shows us examples of how Singapore is responding to the challenge of housing a growing population without sacrificing its green spaces in our second movie from the city.
“It has been a perennial issue,” says Seah. “How do you house five to seven million people on an island that would fit into Lake Geneva?”
“The government could have just said: ‘let’s not control it, let’s have sprawl and have more people living in houses’. But the strategy instead was to protect public spaces and green areas.”
The Pinnacle@Duxton, Singapore, by Arc Studio
Seah takes us to three of his favourite architectural projects around the city, which each tackle the challenge in different ways.
The first is The Pinnacle@Duxton by Singapore architects Arc Studio, a vast public housing complex comprising seven 50-storey tower blocks connected by large bridges and a sky garden at the top.
The Pinnacle@Duxton, Singapore, by Arc Studio
“It’s amazing because on the same piece of land that housed 150 houses [they have built] up to six or seven times the number of family units,” says Seah.
The Pinnacle@Duxton, Singapore, by Arc Studio
“The top level is open to the public, because it is public housing after all. You have a 360 degree panorama of Singapore.”
Next Seah takes us to The Interlace, a new private housing development designed by former OMA partner Ole Scheeren, who has since set up his own studio.
“Instead of having these tall vertical towers, they broke them down to horizontal towers,” says Seah of the complex, which comprises 31 six-storey blocks stacked diagonally on top of each other.
The blocks are arranged around large hexagonal communal courtyards, while the roofs of the lower blocks provide smaller gardens for the blocks stacked on top of them.
Finally, Seah takes us to Marina Barrage, a dam designed to control the water coming in and out of Marina Bay and prevent flooding in low lying areas of the city. The machinery that operates the dam is housed in a large building alongside, which features a public park on its gradually sloping roof.
Marina Barrage, Singapore
“Instead of being a utilitarian building, there was a really fantastic agenda to infuse it with a public, park-like quality,” says Seah.
“On the weekends and evenings it’s incredibly popular with families. So for a building that just houses machines, it becomes this living space.”
Roof of Marina Barrage, Singapore
Seah concludes: “The government has been very clever to balance the need for density with more ample public space that people can share collectively.”
A black steel staircase links the six storeys of this townhouse in Tel Aviv by Israeli architect Pitsou Kedem (+ slideshow).
Pitsou Kedem designed the house for a family and added a private terrace and swimming pool on the rooftop.
“The owners wanted to create the experience of life in a private residence, but within the city,” said architect Pitsou Kedem. “The authentic urban skyline reveals Tel Aviv’s rooftops to those in the courtyard and thus realises the urban experience that the owners wanted to achieve.”
All but one of the house’s floors opens out onto a balcony or terrace.
A penthouse with sliding glass doors leads out to the roof deck and swimming pool, which are encased behind a clear glass balustrade.
The fourth floor contains a study, small living space and a spa. A combined kitchen and living room occupies the floor below and is surrounded by floor-to-ceiling windows.
The parents of the family have an entire floor to themselves, with an en-suite bathroom and extensive closet space, while two more bedrooms and bathrooms are located on the level below, and belong to the children.
A guest suite consisting of a bedroom, bathroom and living space can be found on the ground floor and opens out to a small enclosed terrace.
The black steel staircase ascends through the rear corner of the house, beside a grey silicate-block wall. Exposed timber floors and wooden panelling also feature throughout.
A 270 square metre plot was used as the foundation for a Tel Aviv town house consisting of a basement and an additional 6 floors. The owners wanted to create the experience of life in a private residence but within the city.
The architect Pitsou Kedem designed an urban style courtyard on the roof and, as a result, reversed the usually, permanent, order of things. The authentic, urban skyline reveals to those in the courtyard, Tel Aviv’s rooftops and thus realises the urban experience that the owners wanted to achieve.
The architectural design was based on a cross section of the structure whilst creating a physical and visual relationship between all the floors. Each floor encompasses an area of some 100 square meters with every floor being used for a different purpose. This enables the house’s residents to create common meeting spaces alongside separated spaces that, together, maximise the usage off the space and maximise the privacy that day to day life in a home requires.
Thus, the design incorporates a separate floor for the parents living area which includes a large library, a floor devoted to children’s rooms, a common living floor and the upper floor for the pool. Wooden paneling is used around openings on the ground floor and is also used to disguise the entrance hall and a separate living unit.
The home’s internal stairwell is designed as a dramatic, vertical line. In contrast to the stairwell common in most apartment buildings which is usually designed to be hidden from view, in this design the stairwell is open and runs along a wall covered with grey silicate blocks.
Architects: Pitsou Kedem Architects Design team: Pitsou Kedem, Hagar Tzvi, Hila Sela Location: Tel Aviv Size: 610 square metres Plot size: 260 sqm Total floor area: 450 sqm Design & build : 2009-2012 Program: Single family house
A hotel comprising four prefabricated fibreglass tubes has opened near the top of Europe’s highest peak (+ slideshow).
Named LEAPrus 3912, the complex is designed by LEAPfactory, a team of Italian architects who specialise in designing accommodation for extreme environments and who previously constructed a survival unit atop a mountain in the Alps.
The hotel is located on the southern side of Mount Elbrus, a dormant volcano with an altitude of 5642 metres in Caucasus, Russia, and it offers accommodation for up to 49 mountain climbers.
Communal bedrooms and lounge areas are contained within two of the tubes, while a third houses a restaurant and staff accommodation. Toilets and showers are located within a smaller fourth block.
All four bunkers were prefabricated in Italy using a composite sandwich of resin and fibreglass. They were then airlifted to the site in pieces and assembled by a team of technicians.
The architects integrated various technologies into the structures to make efficient use of energy and to recycle available resources.
These include a system that melts snow to supply water for sanitation, a hybrid system that produces electricity and a sewage treatment plant.
“The activity of LEAPfactory is centred on the continued search for and the realisation of innovative solutions in response to the problems of creating infrastructures in the natural environment,” said the designers.
The hotel opened to the public in September and is operated by the North Caucasus Mountain Club. It is the first phase in a series of planned projects intended to encourage tourism in the region.
Photography is by the architects.
Here’s a project description from LEAPfactory:
LEAPrus 3912 is the name of the new Eco-Hotel located on the southern side of Mount Elbrus, at 4.000 metres in altitude: completed by Italian firm LEAPfactory in September 2013 it is now already open to the public.
Mount Elbrus is the highest peak in Europe, and is one of the Seven Summits, the circuit of the highest mountains in each of the seven continents. It is located at the centre of the Northern range in the Russian Caucasus, halfway between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. Mt Elbrus is a dormant volcano, characterised by twin summits of 5642 and 5621 metres, dominating all the mountains in the area, the lowest of which is at least 1000 metres. Its environmental and climatic conditions are known for their extreme severity.
The installation of LEAPrus 3912 was developed on behalf of the North Caucasus Mountain Club, a Russian company which is responsible for the development of tourism of the mountainous region in the North of the Russian Caucasus; LEAPrus 3912 is the first stage in the complete reorganisation of hospitality on Mount Elbrus. The entire region has a great potential for tourism: the vastness of the unique natural landscapes and the ancient troubled history of its peoples are the centrepiece of a great potential interest.
The complex is situated on the normal ascent route of the mountain, on the immense southern glacier, a few hundred metres from the historic refuge Priut 11, destroyed by fire in the 1990s and never rebuilt.
The new station accommodation is structured with four completely prefabricated buildings. The modular structures were designed and manufactured in Italy by LEAPfactory, and then transported to Russia. The installation on the slopes of the Mount Elbrus took place in a few days in July; the modules were transported by helicopter and assembled by a team of highly trained technicians from the company.
In the first days of September, after the final set-up of the technological systems the Eco-Hotel has been opened for activities.
LEAPrus 3912 in brief » altitude: 4.000 metres above sea level » 49 beds, living area, restaurant with kitchen, toilets, reception and staff accommodation » 3 separate LEAPs1 units, with synthetic composite shells » 2 newly designed s2 type units, with natural composite shells, in which the toilets, the biological depurifier and the sophisticated technological systems are housed » timing for the project realisation: 10 months in total, just 20 days after positioning “in situ” before the opening to the public
The structures of the new alpine station are made with durable materials of the highest quality, using cutting-edge technologies in the field of environmental sustainability.
Getting the best possible performance in terms of energy efficiency and home comfort was the main goal along with the achievement of maximum self-sufficiency of the new settlement on the highest mountain in Europe.
» the high efficiency structural shells contribute to the dramatic reduction of the energy requirement which supplies lighting, heating and indoor air treatment, hot water and a system for monitoring and remote management of all devices » a stand-alone hybrid system for the production of energy, with high efficiency and integration of the various sources used, with an innovative park for the ecological accumulation of sodium » a specific internal air circulation system with heat recovery » LED lighting » underfloor heating designed to work at very low outdoor temperatures » a system for melting of snow for the supply of water to the sanitation services » a sewage treatment plant (LEAPecoR) specifically designed to work at high altitude that permits the centre to almost completely overcome the dispersion of organic pollutants into the environment » the whole system is regulated and controlled, also remotely via satellite, facilitating effective management of the structure throughout the year
The interiors and the architectural design of the units are unique in the panorama of buildings at high altitude: there is a close visual relationship with the surrounding landscape, they have elegance, functionality and durability – and are carefully designed to provide users with real comfort. The Italian company that designs and manufactures modular prefabricated buildings with minimal environmental impact, LEAPfactory has realised already the successful of Nuova Capanna Gervasutti (Mont Blanc, Courmayeur, 2011). The activity of LEAPfactory is centred on the continued search for and the realisation of innovative solutions in response to the problems of creating infrastructures in the natural environment.
Main Technical Partners: ACTIS, CICLES, CLEAF, FIAMM, GEMAP, GERFLOR, GIOCOsolution, GP Tecno, GVM arreda, HOVAL, LCM group, NAYLcomposite, NDA nova design automazioni, NORDCOMPENSATI, SALT, VABER
Leap on site equipe: Alberto Altavilla, Gabriele Basile, Saverio Crocco, Emanuele Foglia, Giorgio Garzena, Luciano Pisu, Stefano Quaranta, Andrea Sasso, Paolo Sasso, Alessandro Simeoni, Roberto Toffanin, Luca Tomatis
What does a studio—one that turns out a broad range of projects that require attention to the most finite details as well as broad strokes and big picture ideas—need? Balance. And after what The Principals founders…
News: here are images of Foster + Partners‘ latest design for the new $5bn Apple Campus 2, which was unanimously approved by Cupertino City Council last night (+ slideshow)
Commissioned by late Apple CEO Steve Jobs, the 260,000 square-metre building, by British firm Foster + Partners, will take the form of a gigantic glass-and-steel hoop when completed in 2016. Parkland will both surround the building and fill its hollow centre.
“Steve [Jobs] transformed Apple into one of the most innovative companies in the world and we understand the responsibilities that come from carrying his legacy forward with this project,” Apple’s head of real estate and facilities Dan Whisenhunt told the city council in a planning meeting last night. “We’ve designed it with the same care and attention to detail as we do with all Apple products.”
After six hours of debate, the entire council voted in favour of the project. The decision is final, pending a ten-day period for appeal, and will be formally announced on 15 November.
The approval follows an identical decision from members of the city’s planning commission, who voted on the proposals earlier this month after consultation with members of the local community.
The Apple Campus 2 is set to be completed by 2016 and will be located a few blocks away from Apple’s existing headquarters. It will accommodate up to 13,000 employees, providing office, research and development facilities alonngside a company fitness centre, a 1000-seat auditorium and a private park for staff.
Walls of weathered stone and timber surround this gabled family retreat by British studio McLean Quinlan Architects on the Devon coastline in south-west England (+ slideshow).
McLean Quinlan Architects located the building against a slope, in a position that offers views of both the surrounding countryside and the ocean.
Wooden panels clad the long sides of the building, while the gabled ends are constructed from stone and the pitched roof is covered with grey slate.
The architects intended this materials palette to reference the aesthetic of American summer houses. “The clients had in mind initially elements of a New England beach house, and so external materials of green oak boarding were used together with the local stone,” said architect Kate Quinlan.
A protruding stone wall marks the house’s entrance, leading through a heavy wooden door to a “mud room” used for drying wetsuits and storing wet-weather clothing such as overcoats and wellington boots.
An open-plan kitchen, living room and dining area occupies most of the ground level, and includes a children’s play area, a large larder for storing food and a laundry space.
A staircase spans the width of the house, leading up to a first floor containing five bedrooms and three bathrooms – offering plenty of space for guests. A second staircase is hidden amongst the closets, ascending to an attic with two extra bedrooms.
The house in located a small village on the North Devon Coast. It was built as a holiday home for the family, and designed to maximise the number of bedrooms and open living space.
The site is accessed down a long drive and the building is tucked up against the slope of the site to make the most of the long views down to the sea from the upper levels.
A stone gable end is the first glimpse you get of this building with a dark industrial chimney dark against grey stone.
The clients had in mind initially elements of a New England beach house, and so external materials of green oak boarding was used together with the local stone.
The resulting building is simple in form. A neat pitched volume coupled with a generous entrance porch.
This provides a formal entrance and provides direct access to a large mud room for drying wetsuits wet from days out surfing, and drying out muddy boots from walking the costal paths.
The building is split down the centre by a central stair. On entering the hall opens up to a double height space with views of the garden.
The main living space is open plan, with a separate games space for the kids and the practical necessities of a large larder and laundry.
Up the open tread stairs, on the first floor the spit volumes separate the master bedroom suite from the main bedroom wing.
Here there is a long corridor with a single pane window at the far end leads to 4 double bedrooms.
Half way along is a ‘secret stair, tucked amongst the linen cupboards, which winds up to take you to to two further attic bedrooms above.
News: British designer Thomas Heatherwick has been commissioned to design a string of metro stations for Beijing and is also bidding to develop two new stations on the London Underground.
Thomas Heatherwick, who is currently travelling with London Mayor Boris Johnson on a trade mission to China, has so far been appointed to work on two stations for the Chinese capital, which plans to add 125 miles to its underground rail network, but could develop an entire line with as many as 20 stations, according to a report in the Evening Standard.
“There will be a chance to think about the whole line as an entity, as a character and my interest would be how you could make that feel more distinctively Beijing,” he told the paper.
Heatherwick has also made an informal bid to work on the extension to the Northern Line in London, which if approved would see new stations constructed in Nine Elms and Battersea.
A woodland landscape scene is hidden within a pattern of coloured polka dots on the exterior of this house extension in Moers, Germany, by Düsseldorf studio MCKNHM Architects (+ slideshow).
MCKNHM Architects made three separate additions to the single-storey family home, adding a second storey on the rooftop, a sauna and guesthouse in the garden, plus a combined workshop and garage at the site’s entrance.
The architects named the project CMYK House as a reference to the colour model used to create the dotty facade of the roof extension and guesthouse.
The mixture of cyan, magenta, yellow and black dots give the walls a halftone pattern. At close range, the dots can be made out individually, while from a short distance they blend together in a camouflage pattern and further away they form an image of a deer in a forest.
“The colour scheme of the pixilated image is intentionally reflected by the landscaping, consisting of wildflower meadows,” said the architects. “From a middle distance, the human eye interpolates the colours and a shaded and textured surface of brown and green seems to appear, leading to a camouflage effect.”
The architects chose to conceal an image of a deer within the facade, as a reference to hunting trophies that were once displayed inside the house.
“The father of the client was a hunter and the house was filled with stuffed animals at the time the son took it over,” explained the architects.
The original house was built without any views of the nearby lake, so the combined sauna and guesthouse was positioned to face onto the water and opens out to a generous terrace.
The rooftop extension accommodates a small office and lounge, also with views of the lake.
A timber-clad garage and workshop was the final addition.
When the father of the client bought the plot of land besides an open gravel pit south of Moers, Germany in the late fifties, it was still unclear if the mine would be converted into a landfill of garbage or a lake. Luckily, the family ended up with a villa at an idyllic lake that is surrounded by a forest.
Because of the possible landfill at the time of construction, the house was orientated away from this now beautiful nature reserve: An existing garage was blocking the view towards the lake. The extensive paved driveway was situated between the house and the fantastic nature setting. Inside the house, none of the spaces provides a view of the lake.
Context
The new addition is set to solve these problems. The approach towards the site places three pavilions onto the park-like property. They are positioned in a way to achieve new spatial qualities in-between the old building and new additions, helping to connect the lake with the existing house.
At the same time the old house with its white plaster façade and its black double pitched roof, that evoked a sense of melancholy and displays a certain stuffiness in its German fifties zeitgeist needed a more fresh addition. Therefore, the extension is also supposed to add a friendlier and playful atmosphere.
Three pavilions
The workshop and garage is moved and situated as an autonomous pavilion towards the entrance of the site. A second pavilion accommodates a sauna and guesthouse, which is assigned to the existing house and directly orientated to the lake through an open terrace. A third pavilion is situated on top of the roof of the old house, extending the existing attic into a workspace and lounge with a beautiful lake-view.
Concept diagram
Façade
All new additions are clad with a special façade, made up from a building textile that features a colourful but also camouflaging print that was developed through a very close and intensive design process with the client. The print fulfils a number of tasks: It is an image that is very roughly pixilated by a halftone pattern, which is exaggerated in a way, that by close distance the façade only displays big dots in the Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Kay colour realm.
Concept diagram
These dots create a pattern, which is also a reminiscent to the petticoats of the fifties, adding a playful colour palette and graphic to the existing situation. The colour scheme of the pixilated image is intentionally reflected by the landscaping, consisting of wild flower meadows.
From a middle distance, the human eye interpolates the colours a shaded and textured surface of brown and green seems to appear, leading to a camouflage effect. The additions seem to blend within the colour palette of the site.
Only from far distance at the lake, the image will appear: A forest landscape with a deer, a classic and conservative German motive giving an ironic touch to the existing building and a reference to its history, as the father of the client was a hunter and the house was filled with stuffed animals at the time the son took it over.
The interior spaces are highly flexible the pavilions feature a ‘multi-wall’ that is designed as a ‘hollow’ 1,20m thick wall or woodblock, which functions as a storage that is accessible from both inside and outside. The sauna-pavilion has a ‘multi-cube’ that houses the actual sauna and also a space for technical equipment, a wardrobe and bathroom fixtures on the outside. Through these interventions, the space becomes highly flexible and also open, the space is one continuum, there are no doors separating the bathroom from the Sauna.
The concept of the building is creating a new experience on the site and adding something very playful and friendly. At the same time the building is blending into its natural environment. In this sense the addition mediates the genius loci of the existing building and the natural environment the architecture is not an alien anymore it becomes more natural.
Some measures were taken to not only blend the house visually into its context but also to provide a tactile sense of dematerialisation that is reflected in the actual construction. All building details aim to hide the physical thickness of the construction and create a very light to paper thin appearance quality. The parapet flashing is set behind the façade, visible doors and windows are encased in a metal siding which peaks to a millimetre thick tip that hides the real wall thickness, the textile façade is wrapped around the corners and has a very minimal aluminium frame.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
