Hasta La Ideas

This 27-storey Barcelona hotel by Ateliers Jean Nouvel is punctured by windows shaped like palm fronds and contains a huge atrium filled with palm trees and tropical vegetation (photos by Roland Halbe).

The firm led by French architect Jean Nouvel teamed up with local studio Ribas & Ribas to design the Renaissance Barcelona Fira Hotel for the Marriott hotel chain, and it is located in a part of the city that hosts a number of major trade fairs.

The building comprises a pair of 110-metre towers that are joined at the top by a rooftop restaurant, terrace and swimming pool. The space between is enclosed by glazing, creating greenhouse-style atrium where staircases are interspersed with greenery from five different continents.

The leaf-shaped windows are positioned in front of some of the hotel’s 357 rooms, most of which feature simple interiors with white walls, bedding and furniture, plus bathrooms lined with lime plaster.

In addition to the rooftop restaurant, a Mediterranean restaurant is located on the fourteenth floor amidst the trees, while the ground-floor lobby offers a cocktail bar.

One floor of the building is given over to flexible meeting rooms, offering space for up to 1000 people. Other facilities include a heated whirlpool and solarium and a fitness centre.

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windows and a plant-filled atrium appeared first on Dezeen.

The spiky modules used to build this curving pavilion in Stuttgart, Germany, are made from a bioplastic containing over 90 percent renewable materials (photography by Roland Halbe).

Students and professors from Stuttgart University’s ITKE (Institute of Building Structures and Structural Design) designed the freeform facade to demonstrate the structural properties of a new bioplastic developed specially for use in the construction industry.

“Thermoformable sheets of bioplastics will represent a resource-efficient alternative [to oil-based plastics, glass, or metal] in the future, as they combine the high malleability and recyclability of plastics with the environmental benefits of materials consisting primarily of renewable resources,” explained the project team.

The pyramidal modules are made by extruding bioplastic granules into sheets before thermoforming them to create the faceted shapes and trimming off the excess material.

The double-curved skin is formed by linking the pyramids together, with bracing rings and joists helping to create load-bearing walls.

CNC-milling was used to remove sections from some of the modules, creating apertures in the facade. The waste material from this process can be re-granulated and fed back into the production process, while the plastic sheets can be composted at the end of their life.

Here’s some more information about the project:

Mock-Up: The bioplastics facade mock-up was created within the framework of the Bioplastic Facade Research Project, a project supported by EFRE (Europäischer Fonds für Regionale Entwicklung / European Fund for Regional Development). It demonstrates one of the possible architectural and constructional applications of bioplastic materials developed during the course of the project. The blueprint is based on a triangular net composed by mesh elements of varying sizes.

Bioplastic Façade Research Project: The ITKE has many years of experience in teaching and research in the fields of computer based design, simulation, and production of cladding for buildings with complex geometries. Currently, materials made from oil-based plastics, glass, or metal are mainly used to encase these structures. Thermoformable sheets of bioplastics will represent a resource-efficient alternative in the future, as they combine the high malleability and recyclability of plastics with the environmental benefits of materials consisting primarily of renewable resources. The interdisciplinary group of material scientists, architects, product designers, manufacturing technicians, and environmental experts was able to develop a new thermoformable material for facade cladding made primarily from renewable resources (>90%).

Developed by project partner TECNARO within the framework of the research project ARBOBLEND®, a special type of bioplastic granules was employed, which can be extruded into sheets and further processed as required: the sheets can be drilled, printed, laminated, laser cut, CNC-milled, or thermoformed to achieve different surface qualities and structures and eventually produce various moulded components. The semi-finished products serve as cladding for flat or free-formed interior and exterior walls. The material can be recycled and meets the high durability and flammability standards for building materials. The goal of the project was to develop a maximally sustainable yet durable building material while keeping the oil-based components and additives to a minimum. The ecological audit was completed by project partner ISWA (Institute for Water Engineering, Water Quality, and Waste Management). Furthermore, the material’s resistance to microbial degradation was also determined.

Innovative Character of the Research Project: This research project marks the first occasion for the development of bioplastic sheets primarily based on renewable resources. The sheets can be freely formed, are designed for applications in the building industry and are specifically meant for building exteriors and cladding. At the beginning of the project such product was not available on the market. The conception of this material as flame-retardant sheet material also aims at applications for building interiors (spek DESIGN).
With this new development, we can therefore soon offer a product that addresses two trends: – the increasing demand for resource-efficient and sustainable building materials – the increasing development of buildings featuring double-curved geometries and planar facade components with 3D effects (relief).

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bioplastics by ITKE appeared first on Dezeen.

Chilean architects Mathias Klotz and Lillian Allen have renovated a castle-like residence in Santiago’s Parque Forestal to create a restaurant, exhibition space and ice-cream parlour (+ slideshow).

The building is named “Castillo Forestal”, which means forest castle, but it was actually constructed at the start of the nineteenth century as a house for the park’s gardener. Over the years the building had become abandoned, so Mathias Klotz and Lillian Allen were asked to bring it back into use.

The architects began by demolishing previous extensions to the two-storey red-brick building, then added a new steel and glass structure that wraps around the north and east elevations.

“Our proposal was to demolish the successive extensions and replace them with a single-story volume housing an intermediate space between inside and outside,” said Klotz.

This structure accommodates the restaurant, creating a glazed ground-floor dining room and a first-floor terrace overlooking the park.

Additional dining areas are provided by the two main rooms of the original house, which have been renovated to reveal their interior brickwork. The architects removed various stucco details, but left cornices intact and painted them grey to match the steel framework of the new extension.

Bare lightbulbs hang from the ceiling in rows and have been clustered into groups of three on the first-floor.

The exhibition galleries and ice-cream parlour are also housed in the existing building, while customer toilets are located in the basement and the circular tower is set to function as a wine store.

We’ve recently featured new photographs of the first major project by Mathias Klotz, which was a home for his mother. Other projects by the architect include a holiday home for a family with 11 daughters.

See more architecture by Mathias Klotz »
See more architecture in Chile »

Photography is by Roland Halbe.

Here’s a project description from Mathias Klotz:

Castillo Parque Forestal, Santiago, Chile

The so called “Forest Castle” is in reality nothing more than a modest lodging built in the Parque Forestal on the occasion of Chile’s 1910 Centenary celebrations, to house the park’s gardener.

The park, which dates from the Centenary, was inaugurated at the same time as the Fine Arts Museum on the other side of the street. Over time the house lost its original function; it was extended and occupied on a temporary basis, and gradually deteriorated until it was abandoned altogether a number of years ago. For this reason Santiago city council tendered a 30-year concession to restore the structure and find a new use for the building.

Our proposal was to demolish the successive extensions and replace them with a single-story volume housing an intermediate space between inside and outside.

The two rooms of the original structure were restored, removing the stucco and leaving the brickwork visible, with the exception of the cornices. These were painted the same dark grey as the steel structure of the new volume, in order to link the two structures together and emphasise the original building.

The new uses it has acquired are a bookstore, restaurant, ice-cream store and exhibition space.

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and Lillian Allen appeared first on Dezeen.

Rooms and surfaces are generated from a complex web of hexagons at this contemporary arts centre in Córdoba, Spain, by Madrid office Nieto Sobejano Arquitectos (photography is by Roland Halbe).

Inspired by the patterns of traditional Islamic architecture, Nieto Sobejano planned the building as a non-linear sequence of connecting rooms that open out to one another in a variety of configurations.

“We have always been admirers of the hidden geometric laws through which those artists, artisans and master builders of a remote Islamic past were capable of creating a multiple and isotropic space within the mosque,” explain the architects. “We conceived the project as starting with a system, a law generated by a repeating geometric pattern, originating in a hexagonal shape.”

The six-sided rooms create a meandering trail through the building and each room can be used as either an exhibition area or as a space for art production. Every wall and surface is concrete, intended to evoke the atmosphere of a factory or warehouse.

“Walls and slabs of concrete and continuous concrete floors establish a spatial area capable of being transformed individually using different forms of intervention,” the architects add.

Hexagonal funnels stretch down from the roof to channel natural light into concentrated spaces. Meanwhile, tiny perforations bring narrow beams of light through the facade.

From the exterior, these perforations make up another pattern of hexagons that face out towards the adjacent Guadalquivir River. At night, LED lights illuminate these shapes to present a glowing pattern across the water.

As well as exhibition space, the building also contains artists’ workshops, laboratories and an auditorium for theatrical performances, films screenings and lectures.

The Contemporary Art Centre Córdoba was completed earlier this year, but while it was still under construction a Spanish graphics studio filmed a theatrical dance performance inside. Watch the movie below, or see a larger version in our earlier story.

Nieto Sobejano Arquitectos has become a specialist in museum and gallery design in recent years. Others to complete include the subterranean Interactive Museum of the History of Lugo and the perforated aluminium extension to the San Telmo Museum. See more architecture by Nieto Sobejano Arquitectos.

Above: location plan – click for larger image

See more photography by Roland Halbe on Dezeen, or on the photographer’s website.

Above: ground floor plan – click for larger image

Here’s a project description from Nieto Sobejano Arquitectos:

Architecture nourishes itself constantly from images hidden in our memory, ideas which become sharp and clear and unexpectedly mark the beginning of a project. Perhaps this is why the echo of the Hispano-Islamic culture which is still latent in Cordoba has subconsciously signified more than a footnote in our proposal. In the face of the homogeneity which our global civilisation imposes in all aspects of life, the Centre of Contemporary Art aspires to interpret a different western culture, going beyond the cliché of this expression used so frequently.

Above: section one – click for larger image

Distrusting the supposed efficacy and flexibility of a neutral and universal container commonly used nowadays, let us image a building closely linked to a place and to a far memory, where every space is shaped individually, to a time which can transform itself and expand in sequences with different dimensions, uses and spatial qualities.

Above: section two – click for larger image

We have always been admirers of the hidden geometric laws through which those artists, artisans and master builders of a remote Islamic past were capable of creating a multiple and isotropic space within the Mosque, a building facetted with vaults and muqarna windows, permutations of ornamental motifs with lattice windows, paving and ataurique decorations, or the rules and narrative rhythms implicit in the poems and tales of Islamic tradition.

Above: section three – click for larger image

Like those literary structures which include a story within another story, within yet another… – a story without an end – we conceived the project as starting with a system, a law generated by a repeating geometric pattern, originating in a hexagonal shape, which in turn contains three different types of rooms, with 150 m², 90 m², and 60 m². Like a combinatorial game, the permutations of these three areas generate sequences of different spaces which possibly can come to create a single exhibition area.

Above: section four – click for larger image

The artists’ workshops on the ground floor and the laboratories on the upper floor are located adjacent to the exhibition halls, to the point where there is no strict difference between them: artistic works can be exhibited in the workshops while the exhibition halls can also be used as areas for artistic production. The assembly room – the black box – is designed as a stage area suitable for theatrical productions, conferences, film screenings, or even for audiovisual exhibitions.

Above: section five – click for larger image

The Centre of Contemporary Art is not a centralised organism: its centre moves from one area to another, it is everywhere. It is designed as a sequence of rooms linked to a public walkway, where the different functions of the building come together. Conceived as a crossroads and meeting place, it is a communal area for exhibitions and exchange of ideas, to view an installation, see exhibitions, visit the café, use the mediateque, wait for the start of a show in the black box, or perhaps gaze at the Guadalquivir river.

Above: section six – click for larger image

The materials will contribute to suggest the character of an art factory which pervades the project. In the interior, walls and slabs of concrete and continuous concrete floors establish a spatial area capable of being transformed individually using different forms of intervention. A network of electrical, digital, audio and lighting infrastructure creates the possibility of multiple views and connections everywhere.

Above: section seven – click for larger image

Outside, the building aspires to express itself through one material: GRC prefabricated panels that at the same time clad opaque and perforated façades, or make up the flat and sloping roofs of the halls. The industrialised concept of the system as well as the conditions of impermeability, insulation and lightness of the material, contribute to guarantee the precision and rationality of its execution but also plays a part in the combinatory concept which governs the whole project.

Above: east elevation – click for larger image

The facade onto the river, a true mask that protagonizes the exterior facade of the building, is conceived as a screen perforated by several polygonal openings with LED-type monochromatic maps behind them. With an appropriate computer program, video signals will generate images and texts that will be reflected on the river’s surface and enable installations specifically conceived for the place. During the day, natural light will filter through the perforations and penetrate the interior covered walkway.

Above: south elevation – click for larger image

In the Centre for Contemporary Art, artists, visitors, experts, researchers and the public, will meet as in a contemporary zouk, without an obvious spatial hierarchy. It will be a centre for creative artistic processes which will link closely the architectural space with the public: an open laboratory where architecture attempts to provoke new modes of expression.

Above: west elevation – click for larger image

Some of the most recent artistic proposals linked to the most recent technologies appear to move away from materiality and submerge themselves in a virtuality disconnected from a concrete place, but perhaps through it, disagreeing with this interpretation – which has become a commonplace – we are convinced that the building itself, the Guadalquivir river, the present and the past of Cordoba, will not simply be a casual circumstance but – as it has been for us as well – will be the start of a dialogue, agreement, or perhaps rejection. For are these not also emotions which underlie the search for all artistic expression?

Above: north elevation – click for larger image

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by Nieto Sobejano Arquitectos appeared first on Dezeen.

Architects Herzog & de Meuron have positioned a scaly crown over the top of this Basel museum (photographs by Roland Halbe).

The renovated Museum der Kulturen reopened in September and exhibits ethnographic artefacts and images from around the world.

The architects added a new gallery floor to the building, beneath the irregularly folded roof of shimmering ceramic tiles. A steel framework supports the roof, creating a column-free exhibition area.

On the existing storeys the architects extended a selection of windows down to ankle-height and removed a floor to create a new double-height gallery. The entrance to the museum is relocated to the rear, where a courtyard slopes downs to lead visitors inside.

Dezeen visited Basel back in October and talked to Herzog & de Meuron partner Christine Binswanger about the recently opened museum – listen to the podcast here.

Click here to see more stories about Herzog & de Meuron.

Here’s some more text from the architects:

The Museum der Kulturen Basel goes back to the middle of the nineteenth century. Replacing the Augustinian monastery on the Münsterhügel, the classicist building by architect Melchior Berri opened in 1849. The “Universal Museum,” as it was then called, was the city’s first museum building. Designed to house both the sciences and the arts, it now holds one of the most important ethnographic collections in Europe thanks largely to continuing gifts and bequests. In 1917, with holdings of some 40,000 objects, an extension by architects Vischer & Söhne was added. A second extension was projected in 2001 to accommodate what had, by now, become holdings of some 300,000 objects. Modifications would include an entrance especially for the Museum, thereby giving it a new identity.

Extending the building horizontally would have meant decreasing the size of the courtyard, the Schürhof. Instead the Vischer building of 1917 has been given a new roof. Consisting of irregular folds clad in blackish green ceramic tiles, the roof resonates with the medieval roofscape in which it is embedded while functioning at the same time as a clear sign of renewal in the heart of the neighbourhood. The hexagonal tiles, some of them three-dimensional, refract the light even when the skies are overcast, creating an effect much like that of the finely structured brick tiles on the roofs of the old town. The steel framework of the folded roof allows for a column-free gallery underneath, an expressive space that forms a surprising contrast to the quiet, right-angled galleries on the floors below.

Up until now, the Museum der Kulturen and the Naturhistorisches Museum shared the same entrance on Augustinergasse. The former is now accessed directly from Münsterplatz through the previously inaccessible rear courtyard, the Schürhof. The courtyard, in its patchwork setting of the backs of medieval buildings, has now become an extension of the Münsterplatz. Part of the courtyard has been lowered and an expansive, gently inclined staircase leads down to the Museum entrance. Hanging plants and climbing vines lend the courtyard a distinctive atmosphere and, in concert with the roof, they give the Museum a new identity. We look forward to having the courtyard become a social meeting place for all kinds of Museum activities and celebrations.

The weighty, introverted impression of the building, initially concealing its invaluable contents, is reinforced by the façades, many of whose windows have been closed off, and by the spiral-shaped construction for the hanging vegetation mounted under the eaves of the cantilevered roof above the new gallery. This is countered, however, by the foundation, which is slit open the entire length of the building and welcomes visitors to come in. These architectural interventions together with the vegetation divide the long, angular and uniform Vischer building of 1917 into distinct sections. The white stairs, the roof overhang, the climbing plants, the series of windows in the “piano nobile” and the glazed base lend the courtyard direction and give the building a face.

The windows were closed up not just to enhance the weight and elegance of the building; the additional wall space provided by this measure was equally important. The few remaining openings have been enlarged and now extend to the floor. The window reveals are so deep that they form small alcoves that look out onto the old town.

The sequence of rooms follows the same pattern on all three gallery floors. Only two rooms stand out: on the second floor, directly above the entrance, a large room with windows on one side faces the courtyard. Further up, a ceiling has been removed, creating a two-story room with a narrow window slit, where larger objects in the collection can be displayed. Visitors can look down on this new anchor room from above, much like the room containing the Abelam House, thus also providing orientation within the Museum.

The renovation of the galleries followed similar principles throughout. The older rooms have classicist coffered ceilings; those added later have concrete beams in one direction only. With the goal of restoring the original structure of the rooms, dropped ceilings were removed and technical services integrated as discreetly as possible into existing architectural elements.

Project Name: Museum der Kulturen
Address: Münsterplatz 20, 4051 Basel, Switzerland
(formerly Augustinergasse 2)

Project Phases: Concept Design: 2001-2002
Schematic Design: 2003
Design Development: 2003-2004
Construction Documents: 2008-2010
Construction: 2008-2010
Completion: 2010
Opening: September 2011

Project Team 2008-2010 Partner: Jacques Herzog, Pierre de Meuron, Christine Binswanger
Project Architect: Martin Fröhlich (Associate), Mark Bähr, Michael Bär
Project Team: Piotr Fortuna, Volker Jacob, Beatus Kopp, Severin Odermatt, Nina Renner, Nicolas Venzin, Thomas Wyssen

Project Team 2001-2004 Partner: Jacques Herzog, Pierre de Meuron, Christine Binswanger
Project Architect: Jürgen Johner (Associate), Ines Huber
Project Team: Béla Berec, Giorgio Cadosch, Gilles le Coultre, Laura Mc Quary