Studio Shift’s 3,000 seat Sports Center in Miyi County provides a multi-purpose venue to accommodate sporting events such as badminton, table tennis and basketball. The main center is connected to smaller venues that feature a 200-seat tennis court, a diving/swimming pool, and several badminton and table tennis courts. To unite the disparate collection of venues, an undulating metal roof encapsulates the program and defines the external boundaries of the building as it wraps down towards the ground plane.
California-based Studio Shift completed their concept phase of a new Aquatic Center in the Sichuan Province of China. Expected to be completed in the spring of 2013, the center will connect adjacent public infrastructures, such as a riverfront promenade, as a circulation system which will become “the connective tissue linking the disparate program elements and site edges, ultimately, delineating the overall programmatic organization of the structure.”
More images and more about the Center after the break.
ROW Studiodesigned a new luxury apartment complex in a heavily wooded area in southern Mexico City. The buildings are placed around the existing trees and all facades are covered with plants to conceal the structures. This strategy gives the interiors “the sensation of living in the treetops”. Parking and service areas are located below the buildings to maximize the porosity of the soil and to avoid any visual obstruction on the ground level. There is a visual continuous garden, from the entry of the complex to the back of the site, as greenery flows from the ground level, up the facades of the buildings and into the surroundings. The ground level apartments are protected with a “land fold” of bushes for privacy which also screen their private patio. Wooden rooftop decks provide great areas for gatherings, meals, parties or to just simply enjoy garden views.
The Office of Architecture in Barcelona, OAB, just finished the Azahar Group headquarters in the Castellon region of Spain. Since the Azahar Group is very active with recycling, waste-treatment plants, and the like, the building intends to serve as a manifesto, in a way, to showcase their ideas of the importance of maintaining a relationship with nature.
More about the headquarters and more images after the break.
Frédéric Haesevoets, a Beligan architect, recently won a competition for his design of a new city hall for Herstal. The international competition asked participants to design a new city hall to accommodate office spaces for central administration, archives and mixed use areas. The project is divided into two major forms that bookend a public open courtyard. Connected by a bright red bridge, the two arms house the major program areas and open to a landscaped area for the public to enjoy. The geometric form offers a break from the surrounding structures, emphasizing the importance of this communal structure. The faceted facade fuses the natural and the synthetic as sections of greenery are scattered among sections of glass. Inside, bright warm colors greet workers, a drastic change from the typical office color palette.
In five days, a new type of spa exhibition will be on display during the “Architecture of Consequence” in the Netherlands. Studio Noach, along with Anne Holtrop, developed a floating spa that seems to be a “construction of a landscape”, an extension of the land into the water to create a serene environment. Using recycled polystyrene and Patrick Blanc’s “living wall” ideas, the architecture of the spa makes the walls and ceilings the outer for hills and valleys while the interior follows the counter form of the landscape.
We recently featured Preston Scott Cohen‘s Nanjing Performing Arts Center and, now, we share his winning competition proposal for the Taiyuan Museum of Art. Currently under construction, the building’s strong dynamic form is a geometric spin on the agricultural landscapes native to the Shanxi Province. The tessellated surfaces respond to contemporary technologies for controlling natural and artificial light, in addition to producing unexpected spatial conditions as the user circulates through and around the building.
EXH Designwas hired to redesign the façades of high-rises in one of the most active urban areas in Shanghai. With the plans of the buildings already halfway through government approval, EXH was allowed little leeway in trying to change the existing plans. Instead, EXH turned their attention to “sculpting” the building’s surface. Taking a geometrical approach, the new façade aims to create a dynamic effect that will become a strong architectural expression for the surrounding areas.
Cerver Design Studioshared with us the design of a new transportation hub in Cleveland that will cohesively integrate pedestrians, cyclists, and automobiles. To maximize sun exposure, the façade’s structural glazing system has panels of fins where the number and density of such fins can be modified to create an efficient balance between active and passive solar. The active fins are cylindrical solar tubes that collect energy while also mediating solar heat gain in the interior spaces. In addition to the state-of-the-art trains and station facilities, a new park space will float above the rail station to connect Cleveland Convention Center to the Lake Front Station. ”The new hub will re-activate the flow of the entire Lake Front area and create a cohesive link to this dynamic site,” explained the architect.
For the extension of the Shanghai Roche Pharmaceuticals building, EXH Design created a contemporary office environment with more links with light, air and outdoor space. For the first stage of site expansion, the existing office building will be extended with two new, four level, parallel wings. The building is made using reinforced concrete and has achieved the highest energy efficiency standards by using triple glazing with thermally-isolated window frames, external sun shades, a green roof, and geothermal technology. The two storey linking blocks tie the buildings together and house multi-functional traffic and communication areas such as reception spaces, cafes, post and exhibition spaces, and all meeting rooms, boardrooms and conference rooms.
HDA’s construction technologies used for the arch of the Turin Olympic Footbridge (previously featured on AD), have been further refined for their most recent award winning competition proposal, entitled Pylons of the future: Dancing with Nature. The competition, held by Terna, a private national electricity provider, asked participants to design pylons of the highest technical and aesthetic quality with a minimal impact on the environment. HDA’s design response was based on transforming the current ‘industrial soldier’ image of today’s pylons into an elegant shape whose form was inspired by nature.
More images and more about the pylons after the break.
An interesting concept for retrofitting buildings in Sydney has been shared with us thanks to Laboratory for Visionary Architecture (LAVA). This innovative plan, which is sustainable and cost effective, is known as “re-skinning”, and can easily be applied to other aging icons around the world. LAVA developed a simple skin for the University of Technology Broadway Tower that promises to transform it into a sustainable and stunning building. “The speculative project, ‘Tower Skin’, offers a unique opportunity to transform the identity, sustainability and interior comfort of the once state-of-the-art building,” said Chris Bosse, Australian director of LAVA.
More about the project, including a video, after the break.
Ginseng Chicken‘s latest competition entry for the thematic pavilion of the 2012 Yeosu World Expo in Korea explores the relationship between land, coast, ocean and people. Entitled SuperOcean, the project features a sampling of the ocean, as if a section was lifted above the surface as a way to allow viewers to explore the secrets the deep sea has to offer. ”When exploring the question of what type of form best represents the identity of the ocean, we realized that the ocean has very objective and quantitative factors such as depth, surface level and area, but at the same time is a very abstract, even spiritual entity to others,” explained the architects.
More images, diagrams and more about the project after the break.
Our friends at EXH Designshared their design of a hotel in Ordos, which is scheduled to be completed within a few months, with us. Taking inspiration from the yurt, the circular tent-like dwelling of Mongolian peoples, the team transformed the traditional scheme to meet the demands of modern life. The design “makes an accommodation experience in Ordos different from anywhere else and arouses a local cultural interest,” explained the architects.
More about the hotel and more images after the break.
EXP Architects + Archi-art + ANMAcollaborated to design the headquarters for Sonatel in Dakar. The long building is comprised of several layers and wrapped in a geometric skin. The building’s main entrance is slightly elevated making the massive form seemingly float over those who enter and colored volumes mark different activities which complement the main offices. The large masses of office areas are distributed around a center circulation hub and clad with vertical fins to shade the sun. As one moves through the building, the offices vary in style as the three levels contain double heights. The large roof provides open views of the sea for all workers to enjoy.
UR Architectswere awarded first prize for their design of a sports center in Antwerp. The center, which is intended for non-competition sports, is aligned with the existing sports hall along the main street of the new master plan development. The building attempts “to communicate” on all sides as the sports hall, dance hall and rental depot are positioned on the edge, interconnected by a T-shaped service area. This extroverted model opens the building to the community and the architecture reflects the modernism of the surrounding buildings. The roof is designed as a fifth facade to relate to the nearby housing blocks of Renaat Braem while the facades of the halls are made of multi-layered polycarbonate. Partly translucent, partly transparent, this material combines the dynamic spectacle of changing light and shade, with diffuse daylight admission and a high insulation value, resulting in a low energy building.
Currently, Amsterdam is expanding at an exponential rate with space becoming limited and streets becoming even more congested. Zwarts + Jansma have addressed the need for Amsterdam to develop a way to accommodate the growing society by taking a concept by Dutch engineering company Strukton and pushing it to new levels. AMFORA (Alternative MultiFunctionele Ondergrondse Ruimte Amsterdam – Alternative Multifunctional Underground Space Amsterdam) is a network of almost 50 km of tunnels that will be built underneath the canals in the town center to provide space for parking, and sports and leisure facilities.
Plano B‘s small cabin in Arruda dos Vinhos is an elegant, yet simplistic housing solution. Conceived as an exercise in the juxtaposition of materials to originate a new body, the project uses pre-existing materials found in a ruined structure which neighbors the site as the basic components for the new constructive system.
