Hasta La Ideas

Beijing’s 798 Art District gets a design store

The Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (UCCA) is the most dynamic art center in Beijing’s 798 Art District, and since 2007 its UCCAstore has been a small temple for vanguard design within the gallery. The original store, now UCCA @ ART.BOOK, is still offering a glut of Chinese art…

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Construction is underway on a Olympic-themed museum in Tianjin, China, comprising five connected rings.

Designed by Dutch architects HAO and Beijing studio Archiland, the museum will commemorate the legacy of Juan Antonio Samaranch, who was president of the International Olympic Committee from 1980 to 2001 and an influential promoter of the games.

Exhibitions dedicated to Samaranch’s work will be housed in a figure of eight-shaped building that will loop around an entrance courtyard and garden in the two largest rings of the complex.

The three smaller circles will contain sunken courtyards, providing spaces for temporary exhibitions, administration and research.

The Samaranch Memorial Museum is due to complete in 2013.

See stories about this year’s Olympic games here »

Here’s a project description from HAO:

The HAO / Holm Architecture Office + Archiland Beijing design for the Samaranch Memorial Museum in Tianjin, China is under construction.

After adjusting the design of the competition scheme, the Samaranch Memorial Museum construction is well under way. The museum is expected to be completed by the end of 2013.

Concept diagram – click above for larger image

Project Information:

Juan Antonio Samaranch, the president of the International Olympic Committee from 1980 to 2001, devoted his life to the Olympic. Throughout his presidency he advocated for reform and inclusion and was a strong supporter of Chinas bid as host city for the 2008 Olympic Games.

The five interlocking rings of the Olympic Logo serves as the foundation for the buildings design.

By re-arranging the rings and varying the scale we are proposing a museum consisting of two rings above ground and with 3 sunken courtyards.

The two main rings serve as counterparts in the story of the life of Juan Antonio Samaranch.

The first ring lifts and invites the visitor in through a public courtyard. This ring focuses on the legacy of the work Juan Antonio Samaranch did with the Olympic Committee and the impact it has had on China and the world. The second ring encloses a lush garden and focuses on the life and work of Juan Antonio Samaranch, serving as a memorial to his achievements.

Together the two rings create a continuous loop taking the visitor through both the exhibition and memorial areas.

The surrounding park design is includes art and activity zones anchored by a new lake.

The Samaranch Memorial Museum is designed to take full advantage of green technologies. Solar cells is designed to be installed on the buildings roof and geothermal heating and cooling will provide climate control.

“With the design of the Samaranch Memorial Museum we propose to merge two existing typologies: the memorial and the museum. This new combination allows the building to both honor the life of Juan Antonio Samaranch while simultaneously creating a place which focuses on the true legacy of the Olympics: creating opportunities for people to meet and celebrate across cultural and geographical boundaries.” Jens Holm, Founder, HAO

Name: Samaranch Memorial Museum
Program: Museum and Landscape
Type: Competition
Size: 15.000 m2 building, 80.000 m2 landscape
Client: City of Tianjin
Collaborators: Archiland Beijing, Krag & Berglund, Cowi Beijing
Location: Tianjin, China
Status: Completion 2013

The post Samaranch Memorial Museum
by HAO and Archiland Beijing appeared first on Dezeen.

This renovated office in China by Vector Architects features plant-covered walls and a bright orange glass meeting room (+ slideshow).

Perforated steel panels surround a staircase that connects each of the three office floors.

Plants sprout from the walls behind the staircase and stay watered through an inbuilt irrigation system.

Curved walls of orange glazing outline the small meeting room on the upper floor, where diffused light seeps in through a translucent ceiling.

Other buildings with green interior walls include a house in Amsterdam and a shop in Seoul.

See all our stories about green walls »

Photography is by Shu He.

Here’s a project description from Vector Architects:

Taoyuanju (Tianjin) Office Interior Renovation Design

In the summer of 2010, we were invited by the client to design their 1200 m2 interior work space in Tianjin. The existing space, which is an individual office building, is evenly divided into three floors, connected by an enclosed staircase and an elevator.

The design challenge is how to instill a provoking and active energy to such a mediocre and static structure. Instead of the conventional office pattern, which all the program units connected by corridors, we try to establish a continuous space system that the most of the office public and sharable activities could take place in, such as displaying, casual meeting and gathering, chatting, thought exchanging, waiting, having coffee or tea, relaxing, reading and etc.

The system situates at the central bay of the existing floor plate, where considered as the location of the least spatial quality for desk working because of its limited air flow and natural light gain. The public life system also functions as the main circulation spine.

In order to reinforce the visual and circulation continuity vertically, a series of square openings are cut from the existing concrete slabs during the renovation. We hope such a space system, like a container of the public activities, could consistently generate and amplify the energy of the office daily life, and eventually motivate the entire surrounding regular work area.

The public life system starts at the lobby at first floor, and ends at the waiting and chatting area under a skylight at the third floor. Its material pallet is unique from the regular work area around, consisting of perforated steel panel, self leveling concrete, prefab concrete panel and vertical green wall.

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The green wall, with an automatic water irrigation system embedded, not only becomes a unique visual character of each floor, but also consistently assists indoor air quality improvement by the large amount of vegetation growing on top of it.

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Location: Tianjin, China
Client: MG (Tianjin) Property Development Co. Ltd.
Design Institute: Vector Architects

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Partner-in-Charge: Gong Dong, Chienho Hsu
Associate-in-Charge / Project Architect: Nan Wang
Architect: Dongping Sun, Han Ling
Material: Green Wall, Self-leveling Concrete, Prefab Concrete Panel, Perforated Steel Panel, Wood Veneer Panel, Low Iron Glass, Silk Screen Curve Glass

Area: 1200 M2
Photograph: Shu He, Vector Architects
Design Period: 06/2010-04/2011
Construction Period: 02/2011-02/2012

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by Vector Architects appeared first on Dezeen.

Californian architects amphibianArc have designed a shape-shifting “transformer building” for a Chinese machinery company, with a facade that flaps like the wings of a huge insect (+ movie).

The exhibition centre, for industrial vehicle manufacturer Zoomlion, is designed to mimic the movements of eagles, butterflies and frogs.

Hinged steel and glass panels resembling dragonfly wings at both ends of the building are mounted on hydraulic arms, allowing them to open and close like Transformers.

The building is due to be built on a site at Zoomlion’s science park in Changsha, Hunan Province and will be used for exhibitions and product displays.

Other buildings that move on Dezeen include a house that slides open and huts that roll on railway tracks.

See more projects in China »

Here’s a project description from amphibianArc:

Zoomlion Headquarters Exhibition Center

The Zoomlion Headquarters Exhibition Center is located in the city of Changsha, Hunan Province of China.

The project has a total of four floors with a footprint of 3,100 square meters, a total area of 10,074.90 square meters, and a total building height of 26 meters. Zoomlion is one of China’s leading manufacturers of heavy machinery equipment and ranked top 10 globally in the heavy machinery industry. Our criteria for the design for its headquarters exhibition center are to match its forward thinking, unique, and mechanistically imaginative corporate image and values.

The most unique aspect of our project design is the building’s ability to change shape, or transform, literally. The double skin system throughout the building makes this “transformer building” possible. The inner skin takes care of the enclosure and building systems.

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The outer skin contains operable portions which can be opened or closed to mimic different animal forms. From a plain rectangular box as the initial state, the north facade transforms into an eagle and a butterfly, the south folds into a swimming frog.

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These animal forms reflect the company’s understanding of the delicate balance between nature and artificial invention, and their embrace for environmentally sound human development. Also, as a design strategy, we adopted ideographic forms to convey traditional Chinese cultural symbolism for leadership (eagle), ephemerality and fragility (butterfly) and prosperity (toad).

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The intricate pattern on the façade is originally inspired by the wing patterns on butterflies or dragonflies. To achieve the systematic and organic nature of the patterns found on the wings of these insects, we used parametric modeling tools to generate and design the façade.

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The material for the skin is steel and glass. The pattern provides a light but sturdy structure. It conceals and incorporate the hydraulics which move and hold it in place.

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The result is a beautifully laid out intricate pattern, which allows daylight to penetrate into the exhibition hall and light emanate out into the corporate campus at night.

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To bring this design into actuality and assure its functionality and durability, we have been working with renowned international engineering firms on the constructability and procurement process.

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Their experience has shown how a cross disciplinary effort can increase the efficiency and quality of the product. Kinetic and static structures are separated as engineering services.

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Engineers in coordination with architect and client will provide a set of system specifications for both static and kinetic structures, similarly to product specification.

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After the schematic design phase all documents are given to a specialty fabricator with engineering capability to design, fabricate, install and warranty the final product, overseen by the original engineer. This streamline process starts communication early, allowing each team to interject into the process in time to provide their strength and assure the highest quality result.

The post Zoomlion Headquarters Exhibition Center
by amphibianArc appeared first on Dezeen.

Chinese firm Urbanus has created a cylindrical registry office in Shenzhen that looks like it’s been showered with confetti.

The architects wanted to create a more romantic environment for marriage registration, which they claim has lost its sense of ceremony due to the setting of most registry offices in China.

Wedding parties at the Nanshan Marriage Registration Centre arrive and depart ceremoniously across long narrow bridges, which oversail a pool of water in front of the building.

Small square panels speckle the building’s gridded aluminium skin to create the confetti-like exterior.

Inside the building, all the partitioning walls are curved and the metal facade is visible behind a glazed curtain wall.

Other wedding venues on Dezeen include a pop-up chapel made of cardboard and a coin-operated marriage machine.

See all our stories about weddings »

Photography is by MengYan and Wu Qiwei.

Here’s some more details from Urbanus:

Nanshan Marriage Registration Centre

In China, the marriage registration office’s image is closely linked with the Government. In reality, the Registry is an office of the civil affairs department, so it is normally perceived as a common and dull place, as part of the bureaucracy. This situation turns the supposedly romantic and exciting idea of marriage registration into a routine and boring experience.

Nanshan Marriage Registration Center is a new architectural type, for which the architects hope to bring new life experiences to new couples, and to create a medium for information display, recording of newly registered couples, and also retain for the city a permanent memory of the journey of marriage.

The site of the project is in Lijing Park in Nanshan district, located in the Northeast corner of the park, approximately 100 meters long and 25 meters in width. The main building is placed in the northern side of the site, close to the street corner.

A small pavilion on the southern side is connected with the main building by two bridges floating on a reflecting pool. The overall arrangement reveals this series of ceremonial spaces gradually. At the same time, it also makes the main building a symbolic civil landmark.

A key point of this design is to discover how to organize the personal ceremonial experience. A continuous spiral shows part of the process in the whole sequence—“arriving, approaching to the wedding hall with the focus of relatives, photographing, waiting, registering, ascending, overlooking, issuing, descending slope, passing the water pool, and reuniting with relatives”.

For the design of the building, the whole volume is divided into smaller spaces to achieve relative privacy. The remainder of the whole building is full of a flow that creates a rich spatial effect.

The building’s skin is separated into a double layer structure, with the first layer using a floral mesh aluminum to reveal the interior, and the second layer using glass walls to provide a weatherproof structure. The overall inside space and the outside facade are all white in order to show the saintly atmosphere of marriage registration.

Location: The intersection of Changxing Rd.and Nantou St.,Nanshan Distrit, Shenzhen
Design Period: 2008-2011
Construction: 2009.11-2011.10
Site Area: 3002.5m2
Floor Area: 977.5m2
Description of Structural System: Steel Structure
Principal Materials Used: Steel, Aluminum plate, Glass, Stone, etc.

Project Designers:
Design Director: Meng Yan
Technical Director: Zhu Jialin ，Wu Wenyi
Project Director: Fu Zhuoheng, Zhang Zhen，Wei Zhijiao

Architecture Designers: Wang Jun, Hu Zhigao，Yin Yujun, Li Qiang, Zhang Xinfeng
Landscape Designers: Liao Zhixiong, Lin Ting, Yu Xiaolan, Liu Jie

Collaborator: Guoqun Studio (Interior Design);
Shenzhen Keyuan Construction Group co.,Ltd (Curtain wall Design)
Client: Public Works Bureau of Nanshan District
Construction Bureau of Nanshan District

(LDI) Structure/ MEP (Mechanical, Electrical, Plumbing):
Guangzhou RBS Architecture Engineer Design Associates
General Contractor: Shenzhen Decoration and Construction Industrial co.,Ltd
Guangdong 8th Construction Group co.,Ltd