Interior Design Sense

With the sidebar links of the main page ever growing and growing, it was time to relegate some of them to this “sidebar graveyard.” Here you’ll find web pages that still exist but that have not been updated in six months or more. More will be added over time, as needed, and pages will be removed from here if and when they disappear completely from the internet. If you administer one of the pages below and feel that the inclusion here is incorrect, that it should be moved back to the sidebar, please leave a comment; please do the same if a web page resumes updates.

BLOGS:

:: Arch | Diaries
:: Architectural Prozac
:: Architecture Sketches
:: Architectook
:: Archizoo
:: ArkiBlog
:: Arquitecblog
:: Arquitectearte
:: Beyond Brilliance, Beyond Stupidity
:: Bird to the North
:: blog like you give a damn
:: Built Environment Blog
:: City Bites
:: Developing News
:: Do You Want Some Coffee?
:: food for design
:: Future Feeder
:: Gehry: Contemporary Master
:: LEED Boot Camp
:: MEGAblog
:: New (sub)Urbanism
:: pointingit
:: Polis
:: PRADE
:: terra non firma
:: Transfer
:: twobo arquitectura
:: The Urban Commons
:: Walking is Transportation

ARCHITECTURAL LINKS:

:: AIA Journal
:: ArBITAT
:: Archfarm
:: Architecture Ink
:: Architecture Talk
:: Building the Ultimate House
:: Chicago Uncommon
:: Fotos de Arquitectura
:: Hello Beautiful (WBEZ)
:: in the CAUSE of ARCHITECTURE
:: Joseph Giovannini
:: KATARXIS
:: Looper
:: Studio Popcorn
:: The Urban Reinventors

My weekly page update:

Mountain Dwellings in Copenhagen, Denmark by Bjarke Ingels Group.

This week’s book review is DBOOK: Density, Data, Diagrams, Dwellings, edited by Javier Mozas & Aurora Fernandez Per.

Some unrelated links for your enjoyment:

Naomi Stead
Blog of Sydney-based architecture academic and writer, devoted to architecture, art and design criticism. (added to sidebar under blogs::architecture; via Super Colossal)

Reduce Footprints
“Easy ways for each of us to reduce our footprint on the earth.” (added to sidebar under blogs::sustainability; via amnp)

The Loss of Silence
Architecture, design, music and more from an architecture student in Scotland. (added to sidebar under blogs::architecture)

The seventh anniversary of the attacks of September 11, 2001 saw the opening of the Pentagon Memorial in Arlington, Virginia, from a competition-winning design by Kaseman Beckman Advanced Strategies.

[competition rendering | image source]

The location for the commemoration of the 184 victims of the attack is the actual site of the crash of American Airlines flight 77, on the west side of the five-sided building (the building in the plan below “points” northeasterly). The memorial is reached by foot from either the Metro Station on the building’s east side or from a tunnel under I-395, after which one must traverse a large surface parking lot.

[location plan | image source]

While the given site for the competition makes the foot approach and ambience of the adjacent traffic less than ideal conditions for a memorial, the specificity was inspiration for the winning team. Julie Beckman and Keith Kaseman’s design uses the trajectory of the aircraft as a device for what is in effect a visual display of data: age, represented by rows of “memorial units” that correspond to year of birth (further defined by the height of the units), and the presence of the victim in the plane or in the Pentagon, represented by the directionality of the units.

[site plan | image source]

These “memorial units” appear like strips of pavement peeling up to form benches. The cavities below are filled with water that is then illuminated, making the nighttime effect of the 24-7 memorial particularly strong. Each unit is a personal marker to a victim, with the individual’s name engraved into cast aluminum on the underside of the bench. The prefabricated units are very elegant, if overly stylish; their forms relate to the movement of the plane but also the shape of its wings.

[the memorial after opening day | image source]

The objective, statistical derivation of the memorial’s design is its most controversial aspect — lacking meaning in one critic’s opinion — as is the site’s resemblance to a graveyard. Like any memorial that must address destruction on such a scale, the designers faced the difficulty of expressing individual loss as a part of something greater. Their decision to essentially treat each victim as an equal (in form, treatment, illumination, everything but location) units them in the common bond of the tragic act. Individuality is not lost, it is played down in favor of something that approximates a field in physics, where particles are under the influence of a force. Here the force is obvious.

[the memorial after opening day | image source]

An important piece of the memorial design that should improve the experience of the place over time are the trees that will mature to create a canopy and provide intimacy and hopefully relief from the adjacent highway. By locating the memorial units in a system that disperses them fairly equally, if randomly, the personal grief that a memorial should help foster is lacking. Enclosure is required to bring one closer to the deceased, in an intimate and fairly private setting, as merely sitting on a bench marker seems insufficient. But for the canopy to resemble the drawing below it will take a long time, too long for those striving to find something personal within the abstract.

[detail section of "memorial unit" | image source]

After the Crash: Architecture in Post-Bubble Japan (2008) by Thomas Daniell
Princeton Architectural Press
Paperback, 192 pages

Architect Thomas Daniell moved to Japan in the early 1990′s, as the country’s “economy began a leisurely avalanche into now what is known as the Lost Decade.” From 1995 (the year of both the Kobe earthquake and the Tokyo gas attack) to 2005 Daniell worked at FOBA, though in that period he also contributed articles on the architecture of his new home to Archis, L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui, de Architect, Domus, Mark, and other publications. This decade coincides with the country’s “post-bubble” years, as the book title indicates, a time of formal restraint, professional creativity in terms of commissions and output, an embrace of sustainability, a rise in adaptive reuse, and other leaner considerations. Daniell’s thoughtful and thoroughly enjoyable essays culled from the above magazines capture the trends of this now historical moment, without necessarily aiming at such a thing; his essays document and critique creations when architects found themselves working in difficult times.

The collection categorizes the 25 essays into various themes (Domestic Spaces, Public Places, Revitalizing Metabolism, etc.), rather than presenting them chronologically. This tactic reduces the arbitrary nature of the latter approach, allowing the book itself to act as a study in discovering recurring and common strands in the post-bubble decade. The chapter on Nature and Artifice, for example, looks at projects by Terunobu Fujimori, Foreign Office Architects and even musician Laurie Anderson, a diverse collection that parallels the various interpretations of nature and its apparent opposite, interpretations that move beyond traditional views of nature in Japanese culture. Creative contemporary sustainability melded with apparently traditional forms is found in Fujimori’s buildings, while FOA’s extremely popular Yokohama Ferry Terminal exploits innovations in the computer’s role in design and construction, and Anderson’s project for Expo 2005 in Aichi is an experiential installation in a Japanese garden that rewards patience and increases ones appreciation of their familiar surroundings.

Born in New Zealand and finding his way back to Japan after a graduate degree in that country and a stint working in Europe, Daniell now calls Kyoto his home, but his expat status makes his view on the place and other Japanese cities a mix of experience and an outsider’s point of view. The former is clear in the importance the author places on the inhabitation of architecture, the movement and sensation of the spaces, something balanced by the latter, his intellectual rigor that is consistent across the wide-ranging essays and time period. Daniell’s study and revealing of the multiple layers below the surfaces of architectural projects is most revealing, such as how the plethora of single-family houses that litter glossy magazines relates to the transforming social conditions of the country. Ultimately Daniell does not fall prey to the typical view of Japan, mainly as a balance of the serene (temples, rock gardens) and the chaotic (Tokyo’s urban fabric, its neon streetscapes). Instead he embraces the shades in between, exploring those and finding much to be learned, analyzed and shared.

or

Architects: Takao Shiotsuka Atelier
Location: Oita, Japan
Client: Private
Project year: 2006-2007
Site area: 419 sqm
Constructed area: 132.6 sqm
Contractor: Hokoku Co. Ltd
Photographs: Toshiyuki YANO (Nacasa & Partners Inc.,)

The house is built on a hill looking down at a town area. The site’s shape has an irregular form. There is a height difference of 2m in the site. The north side is adjacent to a neighbor with this height difference. In the west and the south sides trees grow thick right next to the neighbors. And to the East, you can see the town area.

Walking to the site through a path that goes side by side, causes the scenery to change as we walk, and feels very  attractive. We arranged the building parallel to the path and saved the height difference inside the volume placed across the site.

We wanted to give the building the same variety as the complex surroundings of the site and its irregular shape, causing disorder but not confusion, on a single operation. The angle of the walls is slightly changed to add more dynamism to the spaces as the user moves. Even the relation with the surroundings, that control and distances views and light, became complex.

The outside walls and the roof have a rough concrete finish, and the openings express the thickness of the concrete that form the volume. We wanted to continue with the characteristic silence of the place, given by the surrounding concrete wall, the ancient burial mounds park and the dense trees. We thought that the appearance of a hard static concrete volume responded to the surroundings of this location.

The Burj Dubai by SOM hasn´t been finished yet, but it´s currently the world´s tallest structure. Meanwhile, the Shanghai World Financial Centre by KPF has been opened a few weeks ago, which is (as for now) the tallest building in the world when it comes to roof height with 492m (1,614.2ft). The Taipei 101 in Taiwan is 509.2m (1,670.60ft) if you count the antenna, but its roof is only at 449.2 m (1,473.75 ft).

The building took almost 11 years to be completed, delayed by the Asian Financial Crisis of 97-98 and change on design, but it was finally opened to public on August 30, 2008. You can see an interesting tour of the building on the video posted above.

The observatory on the 100th floor is amazing, with a transparent floor.

Also, I found an interesting documentary by National Geographic on the construction of the World Financial Center, posted it below. Enjoy!

Architect: Dorte Mandrup Arkitekter Aps + b&k brandlhuber & co
Location: Copenhagen, Denmark
Project Year: 2006
Project team: Dorte Mandrup, Anders Brink, Lars Lindeberg, Jesper Henriksson, Arno Brandlhuber, Asterios Agkathidis, Markus Emde, Jochen Kremer, Martin Kraushaar, Sarah Breidert
Client: Copenhagen Municipality / LOA(Danish Foundation for Culture and Sports Facilities)
Engineer: Jørgen Nielsen Rådgivende ingeniører A/S
Contractor: NH Hansen & Søn A/S
Photographs: Torben Eskerod and Michael Reisch

The schemes most pronounced feature is a large translucent membrane that stretches between the sports and culture centre arena, and the four characteristic end walls of the neighbouring public housing scheme.

The building´s structure is composed of steel and timber covered with opalescent polycarbonate panels with a low U-value. This translucent cover offers excellent daylight conditions and at night the structure appears as a glowing crystal. The building will be used for a variety of daily sport and cultural activities such as concerts and theatre performances. The dynamic landscape inside allows for various activities to take place on different levels in visual contact with each other.

Architects: Parasite Studio
Location: Timisoara, Romania
Project Team: Baldea Maja, Wneczel Attila, Toma Claudiu
Project year: 2007
Constructed area: 150 sqm
Photographs: Andrei Margulescu & Magazine Architectura

The apartment is located on the first floor of a building raised in the last century in the central area of Timisoara, within an area of protected buildings.

From the first design sketches we tried to get distance from the interventions that have become „standard procedures” in the local scene of designing within old buildings. The owner, a jazz passionate, wished for an elegant and flexible apartment of high standard, with vast multifunctional areas within the living space. The apartment was supposed to serve the needs of a single family.

The design we settled upon was an intervention where the white color is dominant and plays the role of a clean and immaculate background on which the main theme of the apartment is evolving – the furniture, which is treated as a unitary contemporary insertion. The effect of the interior design is based on the contrasts between support/insertion, old/new, permanent/temporary. The basic themes of the design are the rhythm of the paneling of the furniture pieces, the cuts and the cut-outs within them that follow the rhythm and the modulations of an idea of musicality.

The furniture and partition units define areas and organize the space, ordering the whole display of activities. By its design, the furniture overcomes its state of static object within space and takes part in a dynamic manner in the definition of the apartment.

From the former structure of the apartment we maintained as a main feature the dynamic longitudinal wall that separated the two living areas (diurnal/nocturnal) – a structural element that integrated niches for depositing and passages. It is “wrapped” in the new furniture and transformed into a functional volume that takes part in the interior definition of space, a contained that plays the role of a space divider.

The initial configuration of the apartment is almost entirely maintained. The original woodwork and metalwork are entirely refurbished and integrated within the concept, endowed with a contemporary “plastic” materiality. Also the wood parquet was maintained and treated as a valuable feature of the apartment that tempers the new intervention and confers “warmth” to the living areas. The general appearance of “septic” white is counterbalanced by the paneling, the color of the niches, the lighting units integrated in the furniture and the personal objects of the owners.

Architects: Atelier Phileas (member of PLAN01)
Location: Dammarie-les-Lys, France
Client: Région Ile-de-France
Programme: Asbestos removal, heavy restructuration, extension of the workshops while in use, with temporary buildings
Consultant: ARCADIS
Renovation Area: 3,100 sqm
Extension Area: 1,030 sqm
Project year: 2007
Photographer: Stephan Lucas

The renovation project presented a major advantage as well as a major difficulty.
The advantage: the school is nested in a tree-shaded park.
The difficulty: after asbestos removal, rooms in use had to be renovated.

Due to this constraint, the architecture had to be both rigourous and structured.
During the restructuring-extension of the workshops, inherent to the new teaching programmes and modernisation of the machine tools, our aim was to harmonise both existing and new architectures, gentle conversion of an architecture which, although high-quality, was outdated.
We focused on three key points: the proportions and profiles of the facades creating a resonance with the trees in the park, the use of new materials and rehabilitation of the exterior.

The extension concerns common and administrative spaces dedicated to the workshops. The entities are connected together via the covered recreation area, a new federating space. Structured on different levels, it doubles up as an amphitheater.

The link towards the technical sections, clearly identifiable by special signing (colour code), run alongside three patios providing natural lighting and a pleasant view.

Architects: Coll-Barreu Arquitectos – Juan Coll-Barreu & Daniel Gutiérrez Zarza
Location: Bilbao, Spain
Client: Bilbao Council
Project year: 2002-2003
Construction year: 2004-2006
Constructed area: 10,350 sqm
Budget: 5,663,020 EURO (US $7,7M)
Contractor: UTE Albatros, Olábarri
Photographs: Aleix Bagué

The lot is a reduced and irregular piece of terrain, almost residual, that opens a way between the rear and unaligned facades´ heights of a a group of housings and the almost vertical wall of a natural hillside, in which there are many train tracks and highways. A new commuter train station and the metallic structure of the existent pediment determine the extremes of the lot and generate different slopes.

The sports complex is an uneven volume that complies with multiple conditions that coexist in the lot. A semitransparent fencing of black concrete and glass tries to respond to the different situations generated between the transforming residential city and natural hillside profoundly affected by industrialization.

The building generates small exterior spaces and empty interior ones to adapt itself to the complexity of the environment, to organize the accesses, to capture the natural light and to express to the users the vertical functioning of the project.

The implicit option of the project is a bare, unitary sports complex to host physical activities, which is open to the transformed nature and to the changing city.