Hasta La Ideas

News: Kengo Kuma’s latest proposals for a new outpost of the V&A museum in Dundee, Scotland, have been granted planning permission, following a redesign to reduce costs (+ slideshow).

Planned for construction in Dundee’s Craig Harbour, Kengo Kuma’s competition-winning design for the V&A at Dundee first gained approval in autumn 2012, but spiralling costs forced the architect to redesign the structure so that only its prow projects over the edge of the water, rather than the whole building as originally intended.

The £45 million building will be constructed on the site of a former leisure centre and will feature an angular body with thick horizontal striations, creating exhibition spaces that are naturally lit and ventilated. It is set to become the leading centre for design in Scotland.

Philip Long, director of V&A at Dundee, commented: “Kengo Kuma’s fabulous design will give Dundee and Scotland a wonderful space to enjoy outstanding international exhibitions, and to learn about and get involved with Scotland’s remarkable history of design creativity. I believe it will attract visitors from across the world.”

Detailing the timeframe for construction, he said: “The projected date for the main fabric of the building to be in place is the end of 2015. Its completion, the interior fit-out and installation of the first exhibitions and displays will follow throughout 2016.”

Kengo Kuma and Associates is working with Edinburgh studio Cre8 Architecture to deliver the project. The two studios won the original design competition back in 2010, seeing off competition from a shortlist that included Steven Holl Architects, Snøhetta and Delugan Meissl Associated Architects.

Other recent projects by the Japanese studio include a timber-clad art and culture centre in France and an experimental house in Japan. See more architecture by Kengo Kuma »

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redesigned V&A at Dundee appeared first on Dezeen.

Portuguese architect Eduardo Souto de Moura has completed a cultural centre in Viana do Castelo, Portugal, which is designed to look more like a machine than a building (+ slideshow).

Positioned alongside a library by Álvaro Siza and a leisure centre by Fernando Tavora, Eduardo Souto de Moura’s three-storey building is the final addition to a stretch of land between the Limia River and a new tree-lined public square.

Huge aluminium pipes and services clad the upper walls of the building, intended to reference the nautical aesthetic of the Navio Hospital Gil Eannes, a 1950s ship that is anchored nearby and used as a museum. Meanwhile, the recessed ground-floor elevations are glazed to allow views through to the river.

The plan of the building centres around a large multipurpose hall that can be used for sports, music performances, talks and other events.

This space is located at basement level, but is surrounded by wooden bleachers that lead up to the entrances and viewing corridors on the ground floor. Additional stairs and lifts lead up to administrative areas on the first floor.

The completion of the building marks the end of a five-year construction period. The two original constructors suffered bankruptcy and funding had to be subsidised by the local authority.

Eduardo Souto de Moura was awarded the Pritzker Prize in 2011. His previous buildings include the red concrete Casa das Histórias Paula Rego museum and the Casa das Artes Cultural Centre in Porto.

See more architecture by Eduardo Souto de Moura »
See more architecture in Portugal »

Photography is by Joao Morgado.

Here are some extra details from the design team:

Multipurpose Pavilion in Viana do Castelo

The building is implanted in the zone foreseen in the plan, aligned in the south side with one of the buildings projected by architect Fernando Távora.

In front of the north elevation it is foreseen an arborised square with alleys that mark the entries of the Pavilion. In this square will exist a slope that will make the access to level -1.

Formally the building is defined by a table where an aluminium box and every necessary equipments to the function of the different activities promoted in its interior will be placed. The whole image intends to be associated with the naval architecture, existing a relation with the image of the “Gil Eanes” ship.

The multipurpose pavilion will be a space directed to cultural and sport events. The main accesses will be situated in the north and south extremities. The service entrances will be made in the other elevations.

Its interior will be ample and permeable, existing the possibility of viewing the sea from the entrance floor. It is pretended that its transparency will be able to make it as lighter as possible in relation to the other buildings.

Author: Eduardo Souto de Moura
Locality: Viana do Castelo
Client: City Hall of Viana do Castelo
Collaborators: Diogo Guimarães, Ricardo Rosa Santos, João Queiróz e Lima, Jana Scheibner, Luis Peixoto, Manuel Vasconcelos, Tiago Coelho
Structural consultants: G.O.P.
Electrical consultants: G.O.P.
Mechanical consultants: G.O.P.

Building size: 8.706,7 sqm
Cost: €12.000.000,00

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by Eduardo Souto de Moura appeared first on Dezeen.

British architect John Pawson’s minimalist remodelling of a church in Augsburg, Germany, includes slices of onyx over the windows to diffuse light more softly through the space.

Slices of finely veined translucent white stone were laminated to glass and installed in the choir windows. “The effect of this is to generate the optimum light conditions, screening out direct sunlight and bathing the space in a haze of diffused luminescence,” John Pawson architects explained.

The apse is the brightest space in the church, followed by the nave where the altar sits on a new podium. Lighting in the side aisles is more subdued, where clerestory windows and carved sculptures of the apostles maintain links to the church’s Baroque past.

At night the illumination comes from LED lights concealed in the choir apse, at the base of columns in the nave and in rings round the cupola domes overhead.

The floor and altar are finished in Portuguese limestone, while the dark stained wood of the pews, choir stalls and organ provides a strong contrast with the otherwise pure white interior.

The St Moritz Church was founded nearly 1000 years ago and has been transformed many times over by fire, changes in religious practice and bombing. After the Second World War only the baroque outer walls remained and the church was rebuilt by German architect Dominikus Böhm in a simplified post-war style.

“The work has involved the meticulous paring away of selected elements of the church’s complex fabric and the relocation of certain artefacts to achieve a clearer visual field,” said the architects.

John Pawson is celebrated for his minimalist architecture and the firm was asked to renovate the church after the parish councillors visited his Novy Dvur monastery in the Czech Republic.

The studio is also currently working on the new Design Museum in the former Commonwealth Institute building in west London and 26 high-end apartments for a new leisure complex at Miami Beach.

See more architecture by John Pawson »
See more church design »

Photographs are by Gilbert McCarragher.

Here’s some more information from the architects:

The church of St Moritz has been through many changes since its foundation nearly a thousand years ago. Devastating fires, changes in liturgical practice, aesthetic evolution and wartime bombing have each left their mark on the fabric of the building. The purpose of this latest intervention has been to retune the existing architecture, from aesthetic, functional and liturgical perspectives, with considerations of sacred atmosphere always at the heart of the project.

The work has involved the meticulous paring away of selected elements of the church’s complex fabric and the relocation of certain artefacts to achieve a clearer visual field. Drawing on existing forms and elements of vocabulary, an architectural language has evolved that is recognisable in subtle ways as something new, yet has no jarring foreign elements.

St Moritz is laid out according to the clear linear principles of a Wegekirche and this spatial character, with its strong forward focus on the apse, is retained and reinforced in the current re-ordering, with the eye purposefully drawn through the nave to the apse, which is designed as a room of light, heralded by the Baroque sculptor Georg Petel’s figure of Christus Salvator.

A key gesture of the intervention is the quiet transformation of the apse windows, which must function architecturally as a source of light and liturgically as an expression of the threshold to transcendence. The existing glass is replaced with thin slices of onyx. The effect of this is to generate the optimum light conditions, screening out direct sunlight and bathing the space in a haze of diffused luminescence.

The treatment of the apse windows represents the culmination of a wider strategy for light, whose aim is to achieve a clear distribution of light, with the apse as the brightest area in the church. After the apse, the area of the nave where the liturgy is performed is brightest, whilst the side-aisles revert to more subdued light conditions. The Baroque clerestory windows, relieved of their former function of illuminating the artwork and decoration, now serve as indirect sources of light.

In line with the requirements of the Second Vatican Council, the altar is relocated to a newly created island in the nave, bringing the liturgy closer to the congregation and making it possible to site the principal liturgical landmarks – the altar, the ambo and the sedilia – on a single level.

Project: interior remodelling, St Moritz Church
Location: Augsburg, Germany
Client: Diocese of St Moritz
Project architects: Jan Hobel, Reginald Verspreeuwen
Completion: April 2013

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by John Pawson appeared first on Dezeen.

Lisbon architect Nuno Simões of DNSJ.arq has completed a series of staircases and walkways to allow visitors to explore a historic cave near Évora, Portugal.

The project, at the Gruta do Escoural at Montemor-o-novo in Portugal’s Alentejo region, involved replacing degraded existing temporary steps with a new steel structure with ipê timber boards.

In addition, the architects built a new anti-chamber to protect the entrance and control thermal exchange between the exterior and interior of the cave system.

The sensitivity of the limestone caves, which are noted for their Paleolithic-era rock-art and funerary graves, meant that construction techniques that might damage the sensitive historic site, such as welding or in-situ concrete pouring, could not be used.

The assignment was to build a new structure to replace the former temporary structure, which was in very poor condition, and a new antechamber,” says architect Nuno Simões of DNSJ.arq. “We decided that this structure should be opaque and black in sharp contrast with the light colour of the limestone cave.”

He added: “The main concerns of the structure to allow visitors inside the cave was to be able to run a clean and dry construction, considering the impossibility of using construction techniques that would require welding or in situ concrete and the use of enduring materials capable of withstanding the passage of time in a particularly hostile environment.”

Human remains dating back 50,000 years have been found in the caves. The earliest occupants were Neanderthal hunter-gatherers, and later it was used as a funerary site during the Neolithic era.

The project was commissioned by the Alentejo cultural department and completed in 2011.

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by Nuno Simões + DNSJ.arq appeared first on Dezeen.

Architect Frank Gehry has released images of his shortlisted entry for the competition to design National Art Museum of China (NAMOC) in Beijing – a competition thought to have been won by Jean Nouvel.

Gehry’s firm Gehry Partners was shortlisted along with Nouvel and Zaha Hadid for the prestigious project and while no official announcement has been made, the Financial Times reported in May that work was about to start on building Nouvel’s design.

Gehry’s submission features translucent stone cladding and an interior made up of a series of tall, geometric courtyards reminiscent of pagodas and temples.

“We realized the project from concept through design to a full scale mock-up [of the cladding] that we manufactured in Beijing,” says David Nam, partner at Gehry Partners. “The project was developed in depth over one and a half years through 3 stages of competition.”

Nam added: “To our knowledge the Chinese government has made no official announcement [about the winner of the competition]”.

The National Art Museum of China (NAMOC) will be the showpiece of a new cultural district being built close to Herzog & de Meuron’s National Stadium in Beijing’s Olympic Park. It will attract up to 12 million visitors per year, making it the world’s busiest art museum.

Models of Gehry’s design are on display at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles (MOCA) as part of the A New Sculpturalism exhibition of of southern Californian architecture.

See all our stories about Frank Gehry | See all our stories about Beijing

Here’s some text about the project from Gehry Partners:

NATIONAL ART MUSEUM OF CHINA

COMPETITION

Beijing, People’s Republic of China

The globalization of art is connecting the cultures of the world. Art can act as the instrument for breaking down the barriers to understanding between cultures. China is the focus of this global conversation at this moment. The Chinese contemporary art world is exploding at an unprecedented rate proportionate to the size of its population. People all over the world are flocking to experience Chinese art. This form of cultural engagement promotes cross cultural understanding and appreciation. This is the model for the future, and is central to the design of the National Art Museum of China (NAMOC).

The competition for NAMOC involved three rounds that took place between December 2010–July 2012. Round One was the concept phase. Round two was the primary design phase. Round three addressed client feedback from round two, and advanced the technical development of the project.

NAMOC will form the centerpiece of a new cultural district in Beijing. Located to the north of the city center in the Olympic Park, the district will be comprised of four museums. NAMOC will occupy the most important site facing the central axis of the Olympic Park. The primary goal of the competition brief was to create a design that addresses the concept of a 21st century Chinese architecture. We created a design that is uniquely tailored to China and its rich cultural history, evoking historical models without copying them, to create an innovative building unlike anything else in the world.

Throughout our projects we have been looking for a way to express movement with inert materials like the Greeks did with the horses and soldiers in the Elgin marbles and like the Indian Shiva dancing figures. Our effort to express subtle movement in the façade is what leads us to studying glass.

The façade is clad with a new material developed by Gehry Partners – translucent stone.  Evocative of the most precious Chinese materials, it has the qualities of jade. Of all the materials we explored, we found glass to be the most transcendent and symbolic of Chinese landscape paintings, of moving water, of the mountains covered in mist.   It has gravitas that creates an emotional impact on visitors.  It gives the building a stately and noble appearance, appropriate for a national museum.

We experimented with the translucent stone in many different conditions and configurations, looked at it in various lights, and found that it has the ability to project movement. It changes beautifully with the light, becoming ephemeral, and allowing for different effects with artificial lighting, banners and projection.  The glass allows the building to easily transform throughout the day and the seasons, as well as for festivals and for changing exhibitions.

The translucent stone is part of the innovative sustainable façade concept that incorporates a ventilated airspace to reduce the heating and cooling loads of the building.  In addition, the airspace is used to display art banners and projections, which provides the ability for the building’s façade to change and remain current far into the future, even becoming a canvas for artist projects.

The building’s entries and interiors have been organized to accommodate an unprecedented number of patrons expected to visit the museum. The building has been designed to efficiently and comfortably accommodate 38,400 visitors per day and approximately 12 million visitors per year, enabling NAMOC to have the highest attendance of any museum in the world.  Four distributed entries at each corner of the building facilitate the processing of a large number of visitors, and minimize any queuing of visitors.  Each of the four entries is connected to one of four escalators systems that provide fast and efficient distribution of visitors to all parts of the museums.  A ceremonial entrance is placed in the center of the west façade, facing the Olympic Park. The articulation of this entrance evokes the silhouette of a Chinese temple.

The building interiors are organized around a series of large public spaces, connected vertically by escalators. These spaces are inspired by pagoda and temple forms- rendered as occupiable voids; the shapes are only legible from the inside. The public spaces provide an orienting device for visitors to easily navigate the large museum, and establish a formal continuity between the shapes of the building façade and the interior of the museum. In addition to providing access to galleries, the public spaces provide opportunities for large scale art exhibit spaces and events.

The organization of the galleries was developed through discussions with NAMOC.  Sixty percent of the galleries are dedicated to the permanent collections of 20th century Chinese art, Chinese calligraphy, Chinese folk art, and international art.  The permanent collection is housed on the second, third, and fourth floors in gallery types to align with the requirements of the art.  The ground floor, fifth floor, and roof top galleries are dedicated to changing contemporary art exhibitions.  They are taller in height and have a greater variety of shape and scale.

The museum includes a full complement of supporting functions.  An art academy, an art research and conservation institute, five auditoriums, retail stores, restaurants and cafes, and large art storage areas have been incorporated into the design of the museum.

The design for the museum was developed with an integrated sustainability concept.  The design is based on a high comfort-low impact strategy that includes concepts for load reduction, system optimization, and renewable resource substitution.

• The innovative façade design reduces the heating and cooling loads for the building.
• Extensive daylighting of circulation spaces is used to reduce artificial lighting requirements.
• Photovoltaic cells are incorporated on the roof, and generate enough electricity to power 100% of the lighting electrical loads for the building.
• Geothermal wells incorporated with the building’s foundation system are used to satisfy 100% of the heat rejection requirements of the heating and cooling system, eliminating the need for cooling towers at the roof of the building.

The calculated impact of the integrated sustainability concept is a 57% reduction in energy use and carbon emissions over a standard museum, the equivalent of 275 Beijing households.

Gehry Partners developed a larger landscape and master plan design for the museum’s surrounding areas to link with master plan for the cultural district.  A revitalized waterfront park to the west provides new public open spaces and ground level retail areas, and a visual foreground to the museum as viewed from the main axis of the Olympic Park.  A connection to the subway is provided at the first level below grade that links directly to the museum.  A new park to the east of the museum offers additional public open space and sculpture gardens as an extension of the museum.  The roof of the museum has a public garden that allows visitors views to the Olympic Park beyond, and provides a key fifth elevation to the museum when viewed from above.

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entry by Gehry Partners appeared first on Dezeen.