Interior Design Sense

Architect: Massimo Mariani
Location: Livorno, Italy
Project Team: Elda Bellone, Roseda Gentile, Alessandro Mariani
Project Year: 2007
Photographs: Alessandro Ciampi

The project concerns the redesign of a building at Donoratico (in Livorno) located next the head office of the bank “Banca di Credito Cooperativo di Castagneto Carducci” (also designed by architect Mariani in 2002).

The building is on two levels. From the functional point of view the ground floor houses the areas most strictly connected with the banking business like the big hall with counter and advisory services for customers. The branch management offices as well as the loan management and administrative offices are encapsulated inside a long slice of coloured bureaus on the right of the entrance.

A number of other banking offices, safe deposits and services areas (vault, archives, etc…) are in the basement.

Inside the hall, upper the round waiting seat, there is a plasterboard ceiling randomly perfored. Like a big drop, it comes out from the elongated corridor giving light to directional bureaus, services offices and common spaces.

A single graphic sign features all public spaces which are accessible to customers. All the furnishings and wooden wall are designed with vertical strip in red, blue, yellow and green.

In this way areas that in banks have traditionally been some what staid and “bleak” have been reinvented to give then an amusing and more optimistic look.

Architects: Vaillo + Irigaray / Antonio Vaillo + Juan Luis Irigaray
Location: Pamplona, Spain
Project manager: Daniel Galar Irurre, architect
Lighting: Anton Aman – ALS LIGHTING
Builder: Ignacio Huarte – Construcciones CLEYS S.L.
Client: Danieli Joyeros
Project year: 2006-2007
Photographs: Jose M. Cutillas

Project picks archaic magical conception of the universe that surrounds the value of jewelry and the odd propose -against the usual crowded shop filled with jewelry, a wrapper which exposes the valuable pieces, as unique, exclusive. This creates an mysterious, strange, hollow, weightless, while eastern and Baroque atmosphere.

Originated through a geometry that surrounds and a chest like a jeweler, able to accommodate with the delicacy and mystery that requires valuable pieces.

There are some theatrical resonances, treatment of the vault, dark backdrops, lighting and staging that emphasizes scores only.

A narrative slideshow that depicts a day in the life of a Berkeley architecture student (played by Chris Torres). Photography and editing by Peter Hess. Music by Nine Inch Nails.

Thanks Brian for sharing this with us!!!

Dutch practice, Sponge Architects sent us their latest residencial project: Villa Panorama, where you can “enjoy the country life in a home where your dream landscape reveals itself before your own eyes”, as they say.

See some more images and drawings after the break.

Inspired by the broad horizontal lines of the Dutch landscape Björn van Rheenen of Sponge Architects designed Villa Panorama. These horizontal lines are translated into an open design which blends into its environment perfectly.

The large glass façade and the long small pond that optically comes straight from the garden into the spacious living area makes sure that there is an optimal contact with the garden. The green meadows will be continued onto the flat roof construction. By doing so the architect ensures a perfect and smooth merge between his interior and design.

The garden design is also inspired by the landscape. There is an optimal sensation of the seasonal changes. The cottage villa is built from local building materials such as reed for the thatched roof, wood and local bricks which makes this villa a part of its surroundings.

Villa Panorama is suitable for various types of housing: a family home, seniors housing or even a home-office is possible.

Sustainability was a very important issue when designing Villa Panorama. By using environmentally-conscious designing techniques Villa Panorama is contributing to the increasing demand for sustainable architecture.

Villa Panorama is a project of Sponge Architects Amsterdam in cooperation with Scope Bouwmanagement BV., Almere.

Architects: Izquierdo Lehmann – Luis Izquierdo W., Antonia Lehmann S.B.
Location: Punta Caracoles, IV Region, Chile
Structural Engineering: Luis Soler P. y Asociados
Services: Kenneth Page (PVT)
Constructed Area: 350 sqm
Project Year: 2005
Construction Year: 2006-2007
Main Materials: Concrete, Stone,Glass
Photographs: Izquierdo Lehman

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This Thursday, the chilean government presented the design for the Chilean Pavilion at the Shanghai Expo 2010. The 2000sqm pavilion, named “Sprout of a New City” was designed by Sabbagh Arquitectos.

This was the first Latin American country to sign their participation on the Expo with their own pavilion.

The government emphasized that this pavilion will strength the relation between both countries, current commercial partners exchanging over US$17 billion.

More images after the break.

The Docks de Paris project by Paris based architecture studio Jakob + MacFarlane is nearing completion. The building was first designed in 2004 for a competition held by the city of Paris. Jakob + MacFarlane’s entry eventually won the competition and has been underway since 2007.

The project is actually a renovation of a concrete shipping depot originally built in 1907, which the architects chose to keep for the base of their new design. The architects are calling their design a ‘plug-over’ as the new structure is a new external skin that enveloped the existing site on the sides and on top. The river facing façade features a glass covered steel tube structure that is inspired by the flow of the river and its pedestrian promendades. The roof has also been developed using wooden decks and grassed areas. The front façade addition serves as the buildings circulation system allowing visitors to move between levels. Inside the new building will feature a variety of programming including galleries, retail shops, the french fashion institute, and cafes.

Seen at designboom. More images after the break.

Architects: Wheeler Kearns Architects
Location: Chicago, Illinois, USA
Client: Withheld
Construction: Norcon, Inc.
Structure: Thornton Tomasetti
Consulting Engineer: James Carpenter Design Associates
MEP Engineer: IBC Engineering
Interiors: Leslie Jones & Associates
Lighting: Charter Sills
Acoustics: Acoustic Expertise
Landscape Architects: McKay Landscape Architecture, Xavier Vendrell Studio
Completed: 2007
Photographs: Hedrich Blessing (Steve Hall, Jon Miller, Craig Dugan)

A broad, introverted, opaque volume of private spaces floats above a fully transparent, extroverted space at grade that extends, below the canopy of the volume above, into the garden.  This urban residence is a warm, intimate home for a family of four that can transform into a place of assembly as needed and has an integral connection between interior and exterior experiences.

Light and air courts, terminating in a series of reflecting pools, perforate the volume and extend vertically through the house to distribute reflected light, and activate the interior with rain and snow; further reinforcing the blurred boundaries of interior and exterior space.

A collaborative design process led to architectural and structural innovations that include vertically post-tensioned concrete thermal mass with forty foot cantilevers; pultruded fiberglass wide-flanges, filled with closed cell spray foam insulation, sheathed in aerated autoclaved concrete and pigmented cement stucco; thermally broken floor to ceiling glass curtain wall and sliding door system.

Architects: Pushak
Location: Nordkynnhalvøya, Finnmark, Norway
Project Year: 2007
Program: Roadstop, benches
Photographs: Pushak

The site is in a steep slope with views to the Torskfjord valley and the fjord in the west. The siting area is on a lower level than the road and parking. The back of the bench is shielding from the winds blowing from the mountain in east.

The Macau Pavilion at Shanghai World Expo 2010 will take the shape of a jade rabbit lantern. Designed by Chinese firm Carlos Marreiros Architects the pavilion will be wrapped with a double-layer glass membrane and feature fluorescent screens on its outer walls. Balloons will serve as the head and tail of the ‘rabbit’, which can be moved up and down to attract visitors.

The building will be constructed with recyclable materials and consists of solar power panels and rain collection systems. The design was inspired by rabbit lanterns popular during the mid-autumn festival in south China in ancient times.

Seen at designboom. More images after the break.