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© LNA

Architects: Atelier d’Architecture Baudin & Limouzin, La Nouvelle Agence / Aït‐Mehdi Samira, Latizeau Sylvain
Location: Bordeaux, France
Project Year: 2008
Project Area: 2.117 sqm
Photographs: LNA

Build in the footprint of an existing wine warehouse, the sport hall fits in the characteristic ‘lanieres’ (long shaped plots) of the Chartrons neighborhood in Bordeaux, France.

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The project gives some of its little available ground back to the public space. The long facade becomes the primary one, the entry, a passage and a waiting space. The street facade blends in with the existing neighbor building, giving visual priority to the new main facade.

Elevations

The closed buildings is covered with a second skin of wood, unifying the facade and filtering the light when needed. That skin folds up over a passage going from the street to the river quays. Inside, different skylights provide for proper light in the different parts of the building.

© LNA

Courtesy of Symbiosis Designs LTD

Symbiosis Designs LTD recently won the design competition to build Techno Group Headquarters in Amman, Jordan. The building massing concept creates a negative space that would be a certain interruption to the continuous street frontal façades, hence a specific and differentiated visual field is announced where the void becomes a captive. More images and brief project description after the break.

Courtesy of Symbiosis Designs LTD

The negative field is the primary focal point staging majestic trees. Through the building’s homogenous material expression, the steel structural skin is also a grounding continuum and an assurance of rigor, visual noise reduction and simplicity.

Courtesy of Symbiosis Designs LTD

The austerity of the building exterior is quickly balanced by the softness of the floating and humming wooden clouds on the inside. The visitor’s path is treated as a celebratory narrative or scenographic revelation of the con- tents and values of the client. The building interior is constructed to offer pure and simple working halls that balance light and shade and drive at reducing visual noise, offering pensive spaces and very synergetic working environment.

Courtesy of Symbiosis Designs LTD

The building concept brings all building elements into a rigorous concealed framework. Redundancies are collapsed into single expression tidy within the structural skin and floor assembly reducing unnecessary articulations. Its seamless assembly stands representative of a sophisticated design and fabrication industry, that of the client. A unique resonating form along with a captive void and prevailing balances were the sought after expression.

Architect: Symbiosis Designs LTD
Location: Amman, Jordan
Client: Techno Group
Project team: Khalid Nahhas, Ramiz Ayoub, Abed Al-Qader Tarabieh, Rasem Kamal, Rami Naffa’
Land area: 2,000 sq. m
Built-up area: 12,000 sq. m
Project year: 2011

Courtesy of Studio NOA

Architects: STUDIO・NOA Architect & Associates
Location: Tokyo, Japan
Project Area: 55 sqm
Project Year: 2011
Photographs: Courtesy of Studio NOA

An exterior wall has an obvious yet important role, separating the inside from the outside. In many wooden structures, exterior walls are divided into many layers, each with various purposes. The outer layer is made to protect against weather, dirt and fire, while inner layers need fireproofing as well as aesthetic attributes. As a result, the total thickness can be 20 cm thick.

Courtesy of Studio NOA

For this project we developed and added one more layer to it. Raised from the face of the unit, the translucent cladding softens incoming light and blurs the visibility of both passerby’s and inhabitants. The milky surface extends over the windows to obstruct the view of neighboring structures and street-level traffic, while other less-compromised views and openings remain exposed.

Longitudinal Section

© Hufton+Crow

Architect: Stanton Williams
Location: Cambridge, United Kingdom
Client: The University of Cambridge
Main Contractor: Kier Regional
Civil and Structural Engineer: Adams Kara Taylor
Building Services Engineer: Arup
Landscape Architects: Christopher Bradley-Hole Landscape and Schoenaich Landscape Architects
Project Area: 11,000 sqm
Project Year: 2010
Photographs: Hufton+Crow

Cambridge University Botanic Garden was conceived in 1831 by Charles Darwin’s guide and mentor, Professor Henslow, as a working research tool in which the diversity of plant species would be systematically ordered and catalogued. Completed in December 2010, the Sainsbury Laboratory develops Henslow’s agenda in seeking to advance understanding of how this diversity comes about. Its design was therefore shaped by the intention that the Laboratory’s architecture would express its integral relationship with the Garden beyond.

The Sainsbury Laboratory, an 11,000 sq.m. plant science research centre set in the University of Cambridge’s Botanic Garden, brings together world-leading scientists in a working environment of the highest quality. The design reconciles complex scientific requirements with the need for a piece of architecture that also responds to its landscape setting. It provides a collegial, stimulating environment for innovative research and collaboration. The building is situated within the private, ‘working’ part of the Garden, and houses research laboratories and their associated support areas. It also contains the University’s Herbarium, meeting rooms, an auditorium, social spaces, and upgraded ancillary areas for Botanic Garden staff, plus a new public café.

© Hufton+Crow

The building as a whole is rooted in its setting. There are two storeys visible above ground and a further subterranean level, partly in order to ensure efficient environmental control, but also to reduce the height of the building. The overall effect is strongly horizontal as a result. Solidity is implied by the use of bands of limestone and exposed insitu concrete, recalling geological strata and indeed the Darwinian idea of evolution over time as well as the permanence which one might expect of a major research centre. At the same time, however, permeability and connections – both real and visual – between the building and the Garden have been central to its conception.

Site Plan

The building’s identity is established externally by the way in which it is expressed and experienced as a series of interlinked yet distinct volumes of differing height grouped around three sides of a central courtyard, the fourth side of which is made up of trees planted by Henslow in the nineteenth century. The internal circulation and communal areas focus upon this central court, opening into it at ground level and onto a raised terrace above in order to provide immediate physical connections between the Laboratory and its surroundings.

© Hufton+Crow

Further visual connections are created by the careful use of glazing in the building. At ground level, extensive windows provide views of the courtyard and the Garden beyond, allowing these internal areas to be read as integral elements of the outdoor landscape. The first floor is also largely glazed. Its windows are screened by narrow vertical bands of stone that imbue the elevation with a regular consistency, behind which the pattern of fenestration could potentially be altered in response to future requirements.

© Hufton+Crow

Related to the conception of the building in terms of its landscape setting is the way that its internal areas are connected by a continuous route which recalls Darwin’s ‘thinking path’, a way to reconcile nature and thought through the activity of walking. Here the ‘thinking path’ functions as a space of reflection and debate.

© Hufton+Crow

It is intended to promote encounters and interaction between the scientists working in the building, and between them and the landscape. With glazed windows facing the court on one side and internal windows offering glimpses of the laboratories on the other, it operates as a transitional zone between the top-lit working areas at the centre of the building and the Botanic Garden itself. In this respect, the ‘path’ reinterprets the tradition of the Greek stoa, the monastic cloister, and the collegiate court, all of which were intended to some extent as semi-outdoor spaces for contemplation and meetings. As a result, past, present, and future are connected. The work of the laboratories will seek to understand the plant diversity that is glorified by the arrangement of the historic Botanic Garden in which it is set and which, though pleasant to visit, continues to function as a working space devoted to groundbreaking research.

© Stephane Chalmeau

Architects: Atelier d’Architecture Brenac-Gonzalez
Location: Nanterre, France
Project Year: 2011
Photographs: Benoit Fougeirol, Stefan Tuchila, Stephane Chalmeau

Often the construction of a high school creates a shift in scale and typology of the urban tissue. The new Jean Perrin High School shelters 632 students and 32 interns in the heart of a housing district in the city of Nanterre. The design proposed by Brenac & Gonzalez integrates the urban dimension, the typology of the site and creates a special relationship with its surroundings.

© Stephane Chalmeau

The plot is a long rectangle that stretches deep into the urban tissue and tapers towards the interior; there is only one possibility to enter the terrain, on its narrowest part, on the “Goulvents” rue. The main volume of the project is a linear building that occupies the entire depth of the site and contains all the classrooms. Its asymmetrical position creates two types of exterior spaces: a service yard and two other courts. One of these spaces is related to the entry level of the building and a second one is dedicated to the students.

Floor Plan

The first court slopes gently towards the lobby, transitioning towards the interior space. The second court is home to the playground, which by its size, configuration and arrangement of buildings, relates to the proportions of a great city square (25x80metres), with its trees, benches and lampposts.

© Stefan Tuchila

The entry lobby, a transparent volume meant to facilitate the perception of the site’s depth, makes the transition between these two exterior spaces. Continuity and spatial fluidity is enhanced by the absence of poles in the lobby, using a bridge structure instead. Other elements of continuity is the ceiling, which extends outwards to include the exterior space and the ground material, Italian limestone, used throughout the building.

Roof Plan

In front of the classrooms building, the other side of the courtyard is occupied by the gym where the basic shape of the openings and the vertical rhythm of the façade reinforce the monumentality of the volume. Bordering the playground, the third volume is the restaurant, designed to be as transparent as possible, creating a porous border for the spatial composition and permitting views of the context. Just next to the restaurant, taking advantage of a lateral expansion of the plot, the building of the boarding school has its natural place apart, protected from the rest of the site by a green belt of vegetation.

© Benoit Fougeirol

© Courtesy of Arditti + RDT Architects

Architects: Arditti + RDT Architects
Location: Mexico City, Mexico
Client: Fundación Memoria y Tolerancia A.C.
Project Year: 2010
Project Area: 7,500 sqm
Photographs: Courtesy of Arditti + RDT Architects

The Museum is constructed using a mixture of reinforced concrete and steel in a seven level structure (three of permanent exhibit + four complimentary). It is set on a continuous colonnade of the Plaza Juarez complex, designed by Legorreta + Legorreta Architects on the site of the former “Hotel Alameda” (which fell during the 1985 earthquake).

© Courtesy of Arditti + RDT Architects

Arditti + RDT designed the Museum with the rooted belief that the only hope for humanity lies in the education of future generations. Therefore, the main force behind the conceptual idea of the Museum is sustaining the “floating” Children’s Memorial. In order to anchor this main motif of the interior atrium, the volume that contains Memory and Tolerance is displayed like two open arms embracing the Children’s Memorial. This Memorial has two interrelated intentions: remembering approximately two million children who have been exterminated in genocides, and educating our children to foster future coexistence among all people. On the interior atrium, the different functions of the building are read as independent volumes. The Museum’s Permanent Exhibits (Memory and Tolerance) are held behind the exposed concrete “L” shaped mass.

Floor Plan

A wooden box holds the Auditorium, which cantilevers over a ramp that leads towards a sunken Children’s Educational Area. At the same time, its top serves as a base to host the Temporary Exhibition Hall, which attracts visitors through a recessed transparent enclosure. The Administrative Space is held behind a dark granite element, separated from the upper main exhibition area by a glazed gap that integrates an Educational Center linked by a transparent ramped corridor to a Public Library within the colonnade overlooking the Juarez Plaza. Horizontal circulations are incorporated as superimposed balconies that provide different perspectives of the open interior space.

© Courtesy of Arditti + RDT Architects

The journey through Memory and Tolerance begins on the upper level of the Museum. Standing above the suspended Memorial, the visitor overlooks the reality of the free outside world (The Mexican Palace of Fine Arts, The Secretary of Foreign Affairs, The Plaza Juarez Square, The National Notaries Archive, Etc…) and is about to be moved from direct sunlight into some of the darkest episodes of mankind.

Section

Memory and Tolerance are contained on the top three levels of the Museum (5th, 4th and 3rd). Descending from the upper level, Memory is displayed in exhibition halls in the top two floors. Included in these exhibitions are genocides and crimes against humanity relating to the Holocaust, Armenia, Former Yugoslavia (Srebrenica), Rwanda, Guatemala, Cambodia and Darfur. Transitioning from Memory into Tolerance, the visitor is temporarily taken outside to the Atrium into the olive skinned Children’s Memorial (created in collaboration with the Dutch artist Jan Hendrix) within a naturally lit space, where a cascade of 20,000 “tears” symbolizes the victims – one for each 100 vanished souls.

© Courtesy of Arditti + RDT Architects

Exiting the Memorial, the visitor moves down a staircase above the open space and into a crystal walkway. A mural by the Mexican artist Gustavo Aceves marks the re-entry to the permanent exhibition on Tolerance on the third floor. This section is comprised of 19 exhibition halls designed to didactically reflect on topics such as stereotypes, prejudices, discrimination, hate and violence. The space is designed to create awareness of the importance of dialogue, the implication of our attitudes, words and actions; the importance of respecting and embracing social, cultural and religious differences; and the responsibility of each individual to promote peace and prevent future discrimination and intolerance.

Elevation

Enabling to make a final reflection, a secluded, quiet introspection space was created in collaboration with the late Mexican artist Helen Escobedo (recipient of the National prize of Art and Science 2009). The space is a minimalist room of tall proportion where a suspended ceiling/platform moves constantly downward and upward, with an oppressing and liberating sensation.

© Courtesy of Arditti + RDT Architects

Since the overall exhibit is not apt for children under 12, a specific sunken area was conceived where through workshops, games and stories, children are shown the value of tolerance, respect and diversity. The Museum also contains a cafeteria and a store. As one ends the journey, a final window frames the exterior view across the street towards the Benito Juarez Memorial, where the great Mexican leader who advocated for freedom is remembered. His famous words will never be forgotten: “Among Individuals, as Among Nations, Respect for The Rights of Others Is Peace.”

© Courtesy of Arditti + RDT Architects

Courtesy of Simon Takasaki

Simon Takasaki shared with us his competition entry for a monument in Duhamel, Germany. Holding the path of the history of the place and its use to its open, undefined future, the 30 meter high walk-in sculpture is characterized by the special treatment of the history of the site and the end of the mining industry. More images and architect’s description after the break.

Courtesy of Simon Takasaki

As a memorial, the sculpture offers the viewer a path within a mountain landscape appearing topography. Thus, this path leads over a natural base of broken bricks, boulders and a harmonic changing landscape into a cavernous, but light and airy, almost nature-sacred main hall.

Courtesy of Simon Takasaki

This space is in its very nature contemplative and inspiring at the same time. It serves for exhibitions or smaller events such as chamber music, a reading or a play. The light and airy space tries, in its nature, not to distinguish itself from the outside world, but it wants to project the character of the mining industry from the depths of the mountain onto the surface. The geometry is the impression of being in a cave and at the same time communicating in an integrative blend with the outside world. The syncretic inversion of the mountain surrounds the visitor as a space continuum and extends to the observation deck.

Courtesy of Simon Takasaki

Seen from outside, the sculpture seems to be formed by invisible forces of nature to an amorphous entity. On the one hand, strong winds have been compressed and form a dynamic, harmonious formation. On the other hand, destructive forces and dissonances are at work and fragment the choreography of the monument. Following the chronology of location, the sculpture grows in a dense language from the earth in the past in order to dissolve completely and split at its ends to the future. EVERREST is the monument to the end of mining in the heap Duhamel. If we have come to the peace, we can come to rest.

© Chris Cooper Photographer

Architects: Fiedler Marciano Architecture LLP
Location: Syracuse, New York, USA
Project Year: 2011
Project Area: 18,300 sqf
Photographs: Chris Cooper Photographer

Sight and Sound

Large storefront windows that create a dialogue between the studio and the urban environment open up the primary facade. Unlike most recording facilities, which are sealed acoustic boxes, passersby can peer into live recording sessions at SubCat Studios from the sidewalk.

© Chris Cooper Photographer

Closing the Gap

The new glass-enclosed lobby addition projects from the historic building and counterbalances its solidity. The transparent structure brings light into the lobby and café, which serve as a public gathering place shared by the Red House Arts Center and the tenants of 219 West.

© Chris Cooper Photographer

Best face forward: The renovation opens up the building to downtown Syracuse and the SALT District and establishes a presence on both the front and back facades. Two design elements – the elevator tower clad in corrugated metal panels and the glass addition – combine with the historic architecture to create a straightforward and contemporary composition.

Plan

Scene and be seen: The exterior design emphasizes transparency and openness, which contrasts with the strict acoustic and vibration requirements necessitated by the recording studio. Inside the building, the architects replaced the existing floor framing with floating concrete slabs to buffer sound and vibrations from passing trains.

© Chris Cooper Photographer

Community Culture

The diverse program for the building draws in the community and encourages local residents to engage with the facility. The center contains an array of functions that can be enjoyed by Syracuse residents and university students.

© Chris Cooper Photographer

Home Away From Home

To create a 24/7 community, the building includes residential units that accommodate recording artists, performance artists, and theater, dance and musical troupes. These units serve as alternatives to long-term hotel suites, and allow artists to create a home-away-from-home.

© Chris Cooper Photographer