Hasta La Ideas

London studio Farshid Moussavi Architecture has won a competition to design a housing complex for the western outskirts of Paris.

The building will accompany a proposed stadium arena and hotel on the Jardins de l’Arche development site, which will link the area of la Défense with les Terrasses de Nanterre.

Shops are to fill the ground floor of the building, while ten storeys of residences above will include three floors of student accommodation.

Each upper storey will be slightly rotated to create terraced balconies.

Farshid Moussavi was co-founder of Foreign Office Architects and launched her independent studio back in June as reported on Dezeen Wire. See earlier projects by Foreign Office Architects here.

Here’s some information about the proposals from Farshid Moussavi Architecture:

Farshid Moussavi Architecture has won the competition to design a new residential complex in the La Défense financial district to the west of Paris. The 11,430 m2 building is to house 7,500m2 of residential units, 2,930m2 of student accommodation and 1,000m2 of retail space.

It forms part of La Parvis Jardin de l’Arché, a large urban renewal project linking la Défense and les Terrasses de Nanterre, which also includes the new Arena Stadium as well as a hotel. The project is for client Les Nouveaux Constructeurs working with public planning authority, l’Epadesa.

The FMA design proposes a slender volume to provide dual aspect residential units. Each floor of this volume is rotated by two degrees from the one below to produce oblique balconies and loggias. These oblique exterior spaces of the apartments will enjoy uninterrupted views down the path of the historic La Grande Axe.

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Ravensbourne College by FOA	New Street Gateway by FOA	Meydan shopping square by FOA

Our top-down road test in one of the best-looking, best-performing cars available

When Mercedes introduced the SLS in 2009, the Gullwing coupe dropped jaws and turned heads with its retro inspiration and powerful guts. The move also firmly staked its claim toward the future expression of the brand. Designed at the same time but only now available, the SLS Roadster brings the thrill of a convertible to this already near-perfect driver’s car—along with a few new additions.

We had a chance to check the new model out first-hand when Mercedes invited us to France’s sunny Côte d’Azur to spend a day-and-a-half in the supercar (which I shared with good friend Jean Aw from
Notcot). Driving from Monaco into Italy, up to Col du Brouis and back down to St. Jean Cap-Ferrat made for an idyllic itinerary to experience driving with the top down at its most chic.

What’s so impressive about the car is everything. Respectful of its heritage in the coveted 1950s 300 SL Roadster, the SLS also firmly represents all that Mercedes-Benz has to offer. It incorporates some of the most sophisticated engineering and technology available, yet is both easy and an absolute pleasure to drive. The interior perfectly balances sport, luxury and comfort. Both sinner and saint, while many other cars and supercars achieve many of the same levels and worthy praise, few bring it together so seamlessly and perfectly. (Though the Ferrari FF comes to mind).

The Roadster shares all of the same technology and equipment as the Coupe. Its lightweight aluminum construction, seven-speed, dual-clutch transmission and AMG 6.3 liter 571-horsepower V8 engine all makes for the same 0-60 time of 3.6 seconds. The more rigid body is only 60 pounds heavier than the Gullwing, impressively retaining the same performance (and most of its trunk space).

New options to the Roadster are a much welcomed AMG Ride Control and a very impressive set of Internet-enabled performance functions called AMG Performance Media, which reside in a tab of the car’s on-board computer system. A kick-ass Bang & Olufson sound system is also available, and includes a 250 watt subwoofer. Another feature I liked (though didn’t need to try) is the Airscarf neck vent, which blows hot air to keep you warm for off-season, top-down driving (heated seats are also available).

Ride Control lets you select from three preset suspension and transmission variations: Comfort, Sport (stiffer, higher performance ride) and Sport+, even more firm and tuned for the highest-performance conditions. This is really helpful for traveling most comfortably from urban traffic to the countryside, freeways or track. It also adjusts the sound of the engine and exhaust from a purr to one of the best sounding roars I’ve heard—the consensus among other journalists there as well.

Want to see how many Gs you’re pulling on the track? The Performance Media option, an Android-based mobile platform, provides high-speed Internet access (when the car isn’t moving). Multiple racing-inspired screens show real-time temperatures, performance, tire pressures, lateral and linear acceleration and a host of track-related functions. This section is seamlessly integrated into the rest of the car’s system, which itself is well-designed and intuitive to use. As you’d expect, the car is highly customizable, including custom paint colors.

Rumored to start around $200,000 and available at Mercedes dealerships, this beauty may be unattainable for most of us, but its exceptional design is something we can all enjoy.

Behind the sliding doors of a corrugated steel shed near Nantes, France, is an artist’s studio with a double-height atrium and translucent rear wall.

French architect Gaston Tolila and artist Benoît-Marie Moriceau collaborated to design the building, which houses both accommodation and studios for resident artists.

Daylight glows through the polycarbonate back wall and filters into the atrium that runs through the centre of the building.

Staircases lead up from here to overlooking galleries on the first floor.

Studios are located on the ground floor below the galleries and facilitate woodwork, metalwork and painting.

The building is named Mosquito Coast Factory, after a book by Peter Weir that features a metal factory in a Honduras jungle.

Other buildings from the Dezeen archive with corrugated exteriors include a film storage bunker and a house clad in red fibre-cement.

Photography is by Philippe Ruault.

Here’s a little more from the architects:

Mosquito Coast Factory

A New Factory for Contemporary Art

The Mosquito Coast Factory is an artist’s studio located in the heart of an Industrial Development Zone (ZAC) between Nantes and Saint-Nazaire, France.  It is the fruit of collaboration between the artist Benoît-Marie Moriceau and the architect Gaston Tolila of Tolila+Gilliland.

The project consists of a multifunctional space divided into multiple workspaces (metal, woodshop, paint studio) and living spaces (exposition, office, sleeping, bathing) permitting the artist to produce works of widely varying dimensions.  The entire atelier is bathed in natural light through the use of translucent polycarbonate on the north façade and for interior partitions.  The exterior is rendered voluntarily blank and monolithic, referencing the impersonal and mysterious qualities of the factory.

The Life of the Atelier

The Mosquito Coast Sessions are based on the desire to create an atelier, a place for experiences and research open to different conceptions and exhibition practices.  Thought of as a kind of laboratory, this building is dedicated to receive, each year, curators and artists for exchange, experimentation and collaboration.

The Mosquito Coast Factory also refers to a fictive architecture drawn from the eponymous novel by Paul Theroux (1981) and brought to the screen in 1986 by Peter Weir.  The story features an inventor who flees the United States for Honduras to found a utopic society.  He leaves with his entire family to the “mosquito kingdom” and builds, in the heart of the jungle, a metal block housing a vast ice factory intended to revolutionize the lives of the indigenous population.  This stage piece, a sort of projection for creative reflection and of the fantasy of a new society, here becomes a source of architectural interpretation, support and tool for potential dreams and fictions.

Technical Information:
Area (SHON): 517 m², Materials : Structure and cladding in galvanized steel. North Facade in polycarbonate panels (Danpalon), floors in waxed concrete.

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Art and Architecture Faculty by Lobo and Trindade	T Bailey Office by Tom Kundig	Multi-Level Parking Voestalpine by Xarchitekten

Swiss architects HHF and French architects AWP have won a competition to design a series of follies for a new park outside Paris.

The proposed pavilions include an observatory of stacked timber huts that overlooks the Seine.

Elsewhere, clusters of timber sheds will house a visitor’s centre and restaurant, while smaller follies will be scattered around the 113-hectare park.

Each pavilion will be designed around a standard module size to reduce the cost of construction.

Landscape architects Agence TER prepared the proposals for the new riverside park, which is to be located in Carrière-Sous-Poissy, north of the city centre.

HHF Architects also designed a circular pavilion along La Ruta del Peregrino, a pilgrimage route in Mexico – see the project here and see more pavillons along the route here.

See also: more stories about projects by HHF Architects.

Here’s a few more details from HHF and AWP:

Carrière-Sous-Poissy
Architectures in the Parc des bords de Seine
AWP + HHF

The series of a pavilions with different public functions and programs are part of a future 113 hectare large public green space along the Seine river, in Carrière-Sous-Poissy, at the end station of the RER line A and close the renown Villa Savoye from Le Corbusier. The Park designed by the Paris based landscape architects Agence TER will be a public park and ecological showcase for local residents and a leisure destination for people living in and around Paris.

The competition brief included the construction of a visitor’s center, of a restaurant (“guinguette”), of an observa- tory plus about a dozen smaller infrastructure “follies” with different uses.

Similar to the popular wooden preschool toys in form of building blocks made of out of colorful wood, this collection of pavilions and small infrastructure «follies» is based on a modular wood system, repeating and combining different sized and different angled timber frames. This approach allows for interesting and unusual constructions, enabling a wide range of possible variations with a very limited number of elements, while at the same type staying very flexible for future adaptions and during the construction phase. This will result in unique atmospheres and spaces for each of the pavilions and infrastructure follies. In addition to that it’s a relatively low priced construction method which enables the integration of local building know how and local companies.

The site of the project is an exceptional one, for its location along the Seine river and for its “in-between”, dual nature (land/water, city/sprawl, wilderness/domesticated nature). The presence of barges, fishing huts and houseboats, which have been so far inhabiting the site has been a powerful source of inspiration. On the other side, the site boundary is characterized by suburban nondescript housing pavilions. The design springs from a process of hybridization between these two existing habitat models: the floating barge and the archetypical suburban house resulting in a new typology emerging in the park and dealing with the site’s memory and identity both spatially and socially, whilst providing a contemporary and forward-looking response.

By working along residential neighborhoods and along the river, we are invited by this project to come inhabit a large urban room worthy of Paris’ tradition of great terraced boulevards. This very active strip of land is made up of continuous docks, a large mooring space for barges, pontoons, lookouts, observatories, cantilevered terraces… These small, furtive constructions must stimulate the flow of people over the entire length of the park, and towards the water and city, as well as provide facilities for viewing the landscape: framing/unframing. They will bring an inspirational atmosphere, to encourage new experiences. We want to suggest windows for sharing this new kind of landscape, and bring the surrounding city to life by intensifying certain elements of the landscape plan: inscribe it within an urban strategy. The idea is to create conditions for viewing the space, to allow crossovers that are adapted to the buildings’ uses, users, to the evolution of their surroundings.

Location: Carrière-Sous-Poissy, Paris, France
Net floor area: 1900m2 approx.
Type of project: Public equipments. Pavilions and Follies
Planned: 2011
Client: Communauté d’agglomération des Deux Rives de la Seine Architects: AWP + HHF
Project responsible: Alessandra Cianchetta
Team AWP: Marc Armengaud, Matthias Armengaud, Alessandra Cianchetta, Miguel La Parra Knapman, David Perez
Team HHF: Simon Frommenwiler, Simon Hartmann, Tilo Herlach
Structure: EVP
Engineering / QS: GINGER
Competition: 1st prize, 2011 / preliminary studies ongoing

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Tokyo Apartment by Sou Fujimoto Architects	Museum of Contemporary Art by SANAA	Phinney Modern by Elemental Architecture

Paris architects Nadau Lavergne have completed a rusted steel winery on a World Heritage Site in the south of France.

The Chateau Barde-Haut winery in Saint-Emilion comprises two Corten steel blocks, one of which nestles between two existing stone buildings with matching pitched roofs.

A two-storey building with a chunky-concrete frame and timber cladding is concealed inside one of the warehouse blocks.

Vintage barrels of wine are stored behind glass screens on the ground floor of this internal building.

Above is a room that overlooks the warehouse floor.

Hot air pumps regulate the temperature inside the buildings.

We also recently featured a story about refurbished wine cellars in Spain – see our earlier story here and see all our stories about wineries here.

Photography is by Philippe Caumes.

The following text is from Nadau Lavergne:

Composes in time

The Chateau Barde-Haut is a 17-hectare domain situated in Saint-Emilion, at the end of the tray.

Registered in 1999 on the UNESCO world heritage, the jurisdiction of Saint-Emilion is a remarkable example of a historic wine landscape, which survived intact. In 2005, we had rehabilitated of former winery in a building of traditional stone.

Sought again in 2008 for a project of a bigger scale. The existing site is characteristic of the form of the Gironde wine landscape: an island of stone low houses of the 19th century, contain offices and the other dependences, appear from rows of vineyards. In the North of this island gets loose a volume everything in length: the wine storehouse.

The project takes advantage of this architectural context which makes the identity of the country. We would have certainly been able to work a rather linear architectural coherence, to answer the justifiable expectations of a landscape the timeless face of which is security of a tradition.

Nevertheless, the identity of a country is not dependent on an architectural gesture which would content with reproducing the characteristics of the existing. In a time when the business of the wine becomes international, where the French production is competed by foreign wines, the wine country of Saint-Emilion remains a strong entity, both for the beauty of its landscapes and for the brilliance of its naming.

The production of the wine is a tradition multimillennium; this secularity hires it in an era today which was able to frighten the profession. Of new requirements in term of fermentation and wine making, the expectations of warned customers, a necessary export, so many signs of the inescapable modernization of the viniculture. How to reconcile from then on the identity of a ground, its exception and its stamp and the technical innovations?

The choice of contemporary architecture answers this visible contradiction. Two volumes rise on the existing site: on one hand workshops, the configuration of which in length allows to structure the entire space of the site and to redesign the roads; on the other hand cuviers and reception hall, which skip in the hollow of the space left by stony buildings. Both get dressed of sheets of rusty steel, the aspect of which metamorphoses according to climates; the volumes hurry of nuances pastels, ochre and sienna.

The choice of this material was imperative(led) with a certain evidence: the strength of the place required architecture in the asserted minimalism, the architectural presence which did not think in term of competition or rivalry, but dynamics. The existing wine storehouse and the workshops had been dug to mitigate the leveling of the ground.

A dynamic contact of the architectures.

Noting the configuration of the built, and quite particularly this space between the wine storehouse and the very dense set towards, the project thus comes to fit partly into the stony case; the welcoming volume cuviers and reception hall skips between the traditional buildings, the witnesses of a secular memory. Its facade is aligns itself with the line of built existing (wine storehouse and diverse dependences); it marries the length of the wine storehouse to present on the West a facade which fits on the width of the building. So by overlaying this volume in the pronounced lines, as cut from the corten steel, from the stony heart, we wished to open up the architectures.

This unexpected closeness of a contemporary building and one built traditional, their contact, create an interesting dynamics. An interaction which authorizes a new story; The identity of every sequence is as raised by the unusual presence of the other architectural temporality. An attention on the temporality being inspired by the alchemy which shapes the character of a wine, a mouthful of which lets guess the spring rains, the burning sun of August, the wooded accents of the oak.

The architectural lines of the project borrow their simplicity and their dynamics from wefts of the rows) of vineyards. The cover of rusty steel which dresses both buildings creates a visual coherence and declines the colors of the country. However a strong identity characterizes each of them.

Canadian wells were dug along the line of built formed by the wine storehouse, the volume contains cuviers and reception hall, and the existing stony buildings. They allow to reduce the thermal amplitudes for the internal spaces of the wine storehouse and the cuvier. Hot air pumps, settled in studios (workshops), distribute the air(sight) chill and regulate the process. Buildings (ships) are isolated around for an optimal thermal slowness.

The végétalisée roof that covers workshops has three different functions it favours the insertion of the contemporary volume in the site; it contributes its slowness by strengthening the insulation; she allows finally to filter rainwater, which are got back. Wine-producing waters are handled, managed towards a water-treatment plant. A wind turbine fixed to the roof of workshops enlightens the outside.

A volume dug in the ground.

Workshops, directed east-west, consist of 4 sequences indicated by the play of the roof, the division of which in visible accordion in facade revisits the industrial architecture of the 1950s. Inside, the first three sequences communicate between them (from north to south: workshop(studio), premises and cloakrooms(changing rooms), shelter material two high doors of panels of steel lacquered on rails open in the East. The last sequence is a huge room for vintagers, whose inside gets dressed of wood.

A wide plate glass window totally opens the space on a wooden terrace; it cuts a panoramic centring on the valley of Saint-Emilion. Half-buried in the North to mitigate the leveling of the ground, the whole building presents a favorable thermal slowness, to which contributes the presence of a vegetalized roof.

In the North, a wind turbine fixed to a hurt metallic structure allows to feed all the outside lighting. It indicates the presence of the building which seems to go out gradually of the ground. The vegetalized roof plays with the singular topography of the ground, by creating the illusion of a building dug in the ground.

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Wine Cellars for Vega-Sicilia by Salas Studio	Faustino Winery by Foster + Partners	Bodegas Protos by Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners