© Andrea Tognon

Architects: Andrea Tognon architecture
Location: Teolo, Italy
Collaborator: Roberta Cazzaniga
Design Year: 2008-2009
Construction Year: 2009-2010
Photographs: Andrea Tognon

The building we were call to refurbish was built in the 70’s as an imitation of vernacular architecture of the Veneto countryside area. Was looking pretty fake. The floor plan was a square with a missing corner (so was an L shape). The roof was a concrete slab outing out in a very inelegant and with bad proportions.

ground floor plan

© Andrea Tognon

So we decide to add the missing corner to complete the square floor plane. Because the total redefinition of the insulation parameter we reshape the building profile, cutting the old roof edge and redesigning the junction between roof and perimetral walls. The entire interior layout was redesign, all the walls and roof insulated, the heating system switched to solar energy.

Architects: Nevzat Sayin
Location: Istanbul, Turkey
Project Team: Ebru Tabak, Onur Eroguz, Bahar Unlu, Ibrahim Eyup
Structural Engineer: Gokhan Dedeoglu (Concrete) / Hudaı Kaya (Steel) / Alper Ilkı (Academic Advısor) / Nahıt Kumbasar (Academic Advısor)
Electrical Engineer: Cedetas / İpekler Elektrik
Mechanical Engineer: Serper Gıray / Kipas
Client: Umur Inc.
Project Area: 43,000 sqm
Project Year: 2003-2008
Photographs: Courtesy of Nevzat Sayin

original building

Transforming a steel production building, this already was started to construct, to a printing building, by almost doubling the usage area.
The project can be defined as reinforcement of the existing building and enlargement with annexes for needed capacity. This work is a good example for dealing with the complex program of a press industry in an already existing construction mend for another function. The new underground parking on the southside, the steel-glass prism addition on the main building, the supporting buildings on the west and the east side and the added steel office levels on top are together 30,000 sqm. Every added unit is designed for his special utilization.

floor plans

Here the most important question is the possibility to transform this big, bad building into a good one. Living in a country that thousands of bad buildings being erected every day, such real or adapted problem rises. There are lot of critical points such as; feasibility, financial issues, usage and finally the doubt for the finished work that it would be worthy of all efforts?

We made minimum intervention to the existing building. Instead of interventions compelling big scale construction, we have rather preferred to be added on the top and sidelong of the main building after the mandatory reinforcement. We have placed loaded functions such as stairs, elevators and entrance hall to the annex. We have succeeded to obtain a big whole of a 4 pieced building by binding them with proper interfaces.

Taking the interfaces as the main components for this building, we may attribute a priority to the façade of the entrance hall. Having taken over the construction rights for this half-completed structure, four meters outside the front wall we built a light and airy ten-meter high façade of aluminum-frame sheet glass and steel, forming a corridor 40 m long through which all visitors to the building pass. With a southeastern exposure, it is filled with light from the early morning hours throughout the day. Tinted glass has transformed this entrance hall into a world beyond.

In a large open office space, the feeling of a wall aligning the floor with the slanting angles of the roof truss. A “wall” of louvered windows shields office space from the shafts and pipes that extend the height of the building.

This collective voting will harness the group’s intelligence and interests and hopefully catalyze a discussion within the participating group which will be formally continued in a live event in New York City. The event will be held in collaboration with Columbia University’s Studio-X in downtown Manhattan and will coincide with the announcement of the competition winner(s).

They have recently launched the first one. Details, after the break.

New Year’s Day 2010. Welcome to the future. Y2K is ten years behind us, and 2012 is at our doorstep.

The promises and terrors of our previously projected futures have both manifest and been forgotten. We are not living in a world of flying cars, intergalactic civilian travel, hovercraft skateboards, or robot assistants. No, but we have real-time video chat, the Hubble telescope, maglev trains, and smart phones. We are not living in the wasteland aftermath of nuclear war, but global warming is melting the arctic.

Images of our present future have historically been either utopian or dystopic. The technologies that were going to save us or destroy us have arguably done both to some degree, creating our greatest problems and our most significant solutions. We have more information at our fingertips than ever before and fewer critical tools to navigate that information with discrimination. We are more connected through our myriad telecommunications and more disconnected due to a growing class divide. The future is more complex than could’ve been predicted. It is more nuanced and diverse than Huxley, Orwell, Le Corbusier, or Nostradamus knew.

Times of crisis and calamity, like today, always put ideas in high demand: big ideas and big dreams to foster the next wave in invention and innovation on our way toward tomorrow.

We are living in what has historically been the future. Now that we are here, what is next? What is our future? This an open call for visionaries.

Answers to this question can take many forms: renderings of future imagined cities, advertisements, photographs, collages, maps, etcetera. There are no limits on content, only limits on format. All submissions must be formatted as a single letter sized (8.5 inch by 11 inch) landscape image, which contains no more than 100 words of text.

You have two weeks to respond. Submission closes at 11:59PM EST on January 15th, 2010.

For more information, please go to the competition’s official website.

Architecture: Hutchison & Maul Architecture
Location: Seattle, Washington, USA
Structural Engineer: Perbix Bykonen
Contractor: Raven DB
Project Area: 242 sqm
Project Year: 2008
Photographs: Hutchison & Maul Architecture

floor plans

This residence for a couple and their two children utilizes the foundations and walls of an existing single-story post-war bungalow. The traditional placement of private spaces above public spaces is inverted, with bedrooms and bathrooms placed at the main floor level, while a new second story places the kitchen, living and dining spaces into one large communal room with views overlooking Cascade mountain range. A large operable skylight marks the center of the room.

© Fabio Mantovani

Architects: ccd studio
Location: Comune de Vignola, MO, Italy
Architects in Charge: Luca Ciaffoni, Michele Ciutti, Antonio Di Marcantonio
Project Team: Alessandro Di Remigio, Dario Di Francesco, Fabiana Petrella, Marta Gaudieri, Nicole Balassone
Structural Engineering: Umberto Cianci, Marcello Di Domenicantonio
Site Area: 5,600 sqm
Project Area: 1,158 sqm
Project Year: 2008-2009
Photographs: Fabio Mantovani

The project of Kindergarten “Barbapapà” was designed to a notice competition for project financing, in 2006, proposed by Vignola’s municipality. The program consisted in the space for 60 children divided in four classroom. The area is located on the border of urban development, on the hill up the city, not so much far to the historical centre. The natural environment induced specific assessments to preserve this atypical part of the landscape in the Emilia Romagna’s region. The project aimed to be an architectural expression of mature consciousness about the sustainable themes. This value was found in the all possible relationships with surroundings. The architectural project start to this point and express this principal theme in all his part, to transmit the sustainable value to all his young guests.

© Fabio Mantovani

plan 01

Reduce the impact of the volume

A green vegetable plan was raised from the ground to accept below it, the protected spaces for the children, and to reduce the visual impact of the volume, entered in the hill, from the urban street below.

© Fabio Mantovani

Control the comfort inside

The green deck ensures to maintain a good thermal insulation, to preserve the environmental comfort with a terrain package placed on top of the roof’s wood structure.

Capture energies from the environment

The satisfying of daily needs is pursued through natural resources. The appropriate glass’s openings, used for all the length of the facade, are studied to permit at the filtered sun to enter properly during different times of day and to heat the space inside.

© Fabio Mantovani

Other resource heat was captured by two different devices: geothermal probes placed inside bulkhead trigger an heat exchange between the ground and thermal pump;

Photovoltaic panels are putted in a compartment on the metal roof in copper that cover the other spaces of the kindergarten;

Other resource is the rainwater that is collected in to special tank, reused for the irrigation and for the sewage water in the bathrooms.

Colors, materials, design of the spacial shape were studied and used in this building to express all sustainable system in a consistent contemporary architectural language.

Luxembourg Pavillion
The idea “forest and fortress” comes from the literal meaning of the Chinese term for Luxembourg. The pavilion, built from steel, wood and glass, will be an open fortress around with greenery. The 15-meter-high main structure will resemble an ancient castle with large openings surrounded by medieval towers (read more…)

Switzerland Pavillion
The design by Buchner Bründler Architects, chosen out of the 104 candidates through a world-wide competition, focuses on the sustainable development as well as harmony and balance, which coincide with the Chinese philosophy of Yin and Yang. “This piece of work best shows the characteristics of modern Switzerland (read more…)

Spain Pavillion
The Spain Pavilion will have a steel structure and a wicker cover. Spanish handcrafters will weave out different patterns by using different colors of wicker, said Benedetta Tagliabue, designer of the pavilion. The wicker will be covered by a special material that is water-proof. It will also keep the pavilion at a comfortable temperature (read more…)

British Pavillion
The Pavilion of Ideas, designed by Heatherwick Studio, beat five other short-listed designs, including plans put forward by the creators of the London Eye – the largest Ferris wheel in the world – to becomes the winner. The pavilion looks like a box with thousands of spines that hover without visible support above a public square (read more…)

Belgian Pavillion
Conix Architects in collaboration with JV Realys have won the competition to design the Belgian Pavillion for Shanghai Expo 2010. The structure of a brain cell is the dominant conceptual image for the pavilion. It aims to evokes the artistic and scientific richness of Belgium and the country’s central position within Europe (read more…)

© Adam Mørk

Architects: CEBRA
Location: Gentofte, Denmark
In Cooperation with: JJW Architects and Kollision
Client: The Municipality of Gentofte
Project Area: 25,148 + 52,584 sq. ft. new building and rebuilding
Project Year: 2005-2008
Photographs: Adam Mørk

Søgaard School is one of the municipality of Gentoftes school expansion projects, which CEBRA developed in cooperation with the users of the institution. Søgaard School is a special school for socially challenged children with general learning disabilities. The project is based on the school’s value program and the needs expressed during workshops with staff and parents. It has been a goal to collect school scattered buildings in a coherent structure that enhances the natural opportunities for collaboration across school departments.

formal diagram

© Adam Mørk

The architectural intention of the project is to provide elements that link to the neighborhood – its scale and characteristics. The new building is therefore divided into sections in the plan as a duplication of the existing building’s footprint. These are shifted in relation to each other and vary in size. Each section has its own pitched roof – a recognizable form in the surrounding residential neighborhood, and by letting the pitched roofs have the same direction as the existing building, reveals a picture of several joined villas.

© Adam Mørk

German architects kadawittfeldarchitektur have shared with us their proposal for the new building of the Catholic Provost Parish Church, St. Trinitatis competition in Leipzig, Germany. Their proposal was finalist in a 2009 competition. You can see more images and architect’s description after the break.

While normally the interior space of the sacred halls is considered remarkable because of its peculiar atmosphere, here the unusual roof and its light effects – as well as the church itself and the church square with its marked urban surroundings – become especially spiritually charged. It yields a site of encounter that encourages dialogue and provides an “added value” to the notion of faith and belief.

The two-part building ensemble leans like an arch into the northern edge of the lot located along the Ring Street (Ringstrasse), creating thereby an intimate yet spacious forecourt to the church with the planned building on Nonnenmühl Lane (Nonnenmühlgasse) to the south. On the one hand, this square remains the forum of the community while offering, on the other hand, a public refuge with ideological “added value.”

[The “tree of life” from the Book of Genesis is metaphorically transferred here onto the construction site: the church abstractly represents a tree trunk basis for a widely cantilevered and visibly leafy canopy that creates fascinating and magical light-effects on the ground as well as around the community forum.]

The overarching concept of the design is to bring the church, the community center, and the open-air forum under one common roof that provides an establishing identity. The funnel-shaped roof dips into the church itself. Like a horizontal church stained-glass window, its translucent panels generate reflections in the liturgical colors red, green, blue, violet, and pink, into the interior of the church as well as on the façade of the parish center and the square.

Architects: KOW
Location: Maasvlakte, Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Project Team: Hans Kuiper, John Chan
Client: Euromax
Contractor: Cordeel, Zwijndrecht
Project Area: 10,000 sqm
Project Year: 2009
Photographs: Courtesy of KOW

The design of 8.000-m2-office space and 2.000-m2 customs facilities, maintenance and access buildings is constructed with the Design and Build method; an efficient and effective building practice without compromise to built results or quality, allowing client and architect to come to a detailed architectural design quickly; followed by the contractor’s realization.

section 01

The 54 m. and 13 storeys high office tower with an upward slanting slope on the top floors has a floor space of 25 by 25 m. The solid building volume, carefully detailed and finished with special attention paid to restaurant, and boardroom on the top floor, offers phenomenal views of both the sea and the surrounding landscape. Steel construction is used for the sloped top, with curtain wall. Transparent glass panels and opaque, enameled glass panels alternate in anthracite grey aluminium casing. The building volume is anchored in its industrial landscape with canopies and the adjacent buildings.

The specific form of the Euromax Terminal office building offers a subtle variation in profile depending of the differing points of view being a powerful statement in the Rotterdam harbor.

Architects: al bordE arquitectos – David Barragán & Pascual Gangotena
Location: El Cabuyal, Manabí, Ecuador
Collaborators: Xavier Mera, José Antonio Vivanco y Estefanía Jácome
Client: Felipe Gangotena, The Teacher
Contractor: al bordE arquitectos, Pascual Gangotena, volunteers and the community of El Cabuyal
Design Year: 2009
Construction Year: 2009
Project Area: 36 sqm
Photographs: Esteban Cadena, Francisco Suarez y Pascual Gangotena

“For all of we, who belong to the Puerto Cabuyal Community, it´s been a cause of pride to have our new school. Our community is located on the beach, on the field, in a far away site, been fishing and agriculture the basis of our daily meals. Until 4 years ago there was no school in the community and because of that, most of its inhabitants were illiterate. We began with our school in a small cottage, but as the time passed, the space was got smaller because of the number of children, that’s why we undertook the construction of a new place”.

The Teacher

The Teacher with the model

geometric development scheme

Most of the schools near the area are made of concrete, with a rectangular shape, with window bars that make it look more like a jail than a school, and the level of defection is very high. That is the reason why the project is looking for solving not only immediate problems but generate long-term solutions.

It was extremely necessary to design the space according to the principles of an active school. The project must be intimately closed with the natural environment nearby. A space were kids can wake up their imagination, their creativity, their desire of learning new things, and not an space were kids feel repressed.

construction process

The project uses the same materials and building patterns the community has been using for building for years. A timber basis above the foundation piles, bamboo walls, wood structure and a roof made of knitted straw scarf or “cade”. The difference lies in the conception and conceptualization of the space. A place for education that encourages learning through action.

“A huge change in the children´s learning process has been made since the very beginnings of the school. The action of opening the entrance door is a physics lesson. The space is generous in every way, which is why the kids feel freer finding each one their own place in which they are going to develop their activities. The model and the structure transmit a freshness and imaginative environment that has favored the development of artistic and academic activities through the lessons that gives the best teacher ever, nature”

The Teacher

Now, the children and their parents are proud of their school. Proud of the change that this school has made, been a motif of union and self-esteem for the whole community. When people from outside admire it, when they see it and know it.

“In our Fisher community, It´s the prettiest thing, having a school with a boat shape in where every day, kinds jump into it and get ready to sail and discover new worlds from their very own intern world full of abilities and potentialities. In where children learn science and technology, valuing the life of the field as an starting point, through the lessons given by the best teacher of all, the nature”

The Teacher