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7/31/08

Museum of Liverpool, UK


The aim is for this gentle, sculptural building built on the prominant Liverpool harbor to become the word's top museum about a city. It will showcase the city's musical and artistic achievment, expecting to draw 750,000 visitors a year, making it one of Europe's top tourist spots. The expensive project had some hiccups, but some large finacial grants have kept it going.

Currently under construction, Museum of Liverpool doesn't compete with the skyline, but rather sits low and uses the city's classic British architecture as a back-drop. Common to the area, the building uses natural stone and no greenery. The opposing sweeping structures (they remind me of a building I came up with in school) create interesting indoor and outdoor areas, and gesture the visitor toward important sites in the city.

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Druk White Lotus School in India

In the spirit of the Olympics, let's look at a spectacular Tibetan project. Also by Arup Associates, in a remote region high in the Indian Himalayas west of Tibet, Ladakh India. Built under the patronage of the Dalai Lama, this school has enormous cultural and regional significance, as well as environmental standards and international cooperation.

The school is practically self-sustainable and is regionally designed to sit in comfortably with its spectacular mountainous surroundings. More significant, however, is the social impact. The subject of PBS reports, the school seeks to increase the education of a third-world area, educating an illiterate population and supporting industry. In addition to teaching international skills such as the english language, it also includes spiritual teachings of Buddhism. Students grow gardens in solar powered facilities. The latrines recycle grey and black water. The school is built for 800 students and will be totally completed in 2009.

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Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City


Juxtaposed to the old 1933 "Temple to Art" in Kansas City is a new addition by Steven Holl Architects, called the Bloch building. As one proceeds from the old building, five glass lenses manipulate the visitors' field of vision. The transulcent walls were carefully designed to incorporate the art with architecture, to provide an appropriate illuminance level while providing a dynamic relationship between the architecutre, landscape, and light. The relationship between inside and outside is magnificant, particularly at night.

This also establishes an interesting hierarchy, as the New York Times remarks. The building does no more than focus the visitors' view, which is quite profound itself. It defers to its neighbor's classical architecture and incorporates the natural scenery as well, a park which wraps all around the structure. It also provides a midway between the stone temple and the outside Sculptural Park. Ove Arup & Partners helped engineer this $200 million project.

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7/30/08

Ian Thorpe Aquatic Centre in Sydney


The Australian Institute of Architects’ awarded this project and remarked it is “a careful reworking of a significant modernist building..." and “This is a strong reworking of an important building and shows how existing building stock can be successfully rejuvenated.”

Located off Darling Harbour, the wave-shaped roof in a pleasant minimalist style uses materials carefully to give a wonderful architectural expression and city skyline. By Harry Seidler & Associates, Sydney, the Ian Thorpe Aquatic Centre is also noted for its lighting, careful intetagration of natural skylights and window facades with articifial lighting.





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Voxel House in Tokyo

Plenty of shelf space. Here's a great example from ISSHO Architects of pushing function to create an aesthetic. Instead of open blank walls, why not have shelving that you can put stuff on? Built for a university professor in 2003-2004, kitchen, refrigerator, washing machine, bed, counter table, sofa are compartmentalized into the shelving.

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Atkinson Hall in UCSD


The UC campus in San Diego has some amazing architecture. The Atkison Hall, a high-tech research home for the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2) opened in 2005 with 900 researchers and staff from 20 different departments in science, engineering and the arts. The six-story office tower rests atop a soft first floor. The floor plan is "S" shaped and the facade materials and organizations are fluid and natural. The propagation-transparent windows allow interaction among students and help line-of-sight strategies and circulation.



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PJ Trade Centre in Malaysia

One of Malaysia's more exciting large projects, the PJ Trade Centre in Petaling Jaya looks to traditional Malaysian materials and techniques that are appropriate for their climate and cultural context. There are 12 sky terraces and large plazas with plantings at the base. Natural ventilation through the lobbies and offices are helpful for the climate, and the distinctive sun screen further cuts costs.

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Shanghai Grand Center

SOM's latest project in China, the Shanghai Grand Center will be 170m and 41 stories tall. Located in the financial and business district it will certainly be office space. Not much info yet.

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7/29/08

The Copper Palisade in Berlin


Alfred Berger & Tiina Parkkinen out of Vienna conceived of cooperation among various embassies in Berlin by combining structure and organization into an overall plan with Nordic overtones. Five embassies are organized in a star-shaped plan, according to their geographic location with Germany, and an information center. The complex is surrounded by a secure palisade enclosure They relate with common undulating metal facades that manipulate according to the surroundings, turning soft and green near the Tiergarten. Operable louvers afford flexibility in opening views and sunlight. Each country employed its own architect for individual buildings. It opened in 1999.









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Tivoli Concert Hall in Copenhagen

The new concert hall at the Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen, Denmark by 3XNielsen, completed in 2005. This was a modernization for an historic amusement park in Copenhagen along with the circular extension for family restaurant, a new entrance, and conference center. The white lacquered, twisted alu strings create a lightness that fits in the park and presents the hall as state-of-the-art.

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7/28/08

Discovery Tower in Houston

Gensler Architects designed this $93 million project Discovery Tower in downtown Houston, near the convention center. With between 600,000 and 1.2 million square feet of office space and at least 31 floors, this tower is part of a $1 billion development across the USA by Principal Real Estate Investors. It will be LEED certified and have wind turbines at the top. Work has begun and should be completed as early as 2010.

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City of Culture of Galicia in Spain

Peter Eisenman designed this six-building complex for Santiago de Compostela, Spain. The six buildings are divided into three programs on the 173-acre site: the Museum of Galician History and the New Technologies center; the Music Theater and Central Services building; and the Galician Library and Periodicals Archive.

In this project he harps on his common theme of over-saturation from the media and information technology. To move beyong traditional sembiotic representation, Eisenan constructs a topography a Cartesian grid placed over a plan of the medieval city Santiago. The topography of the hillside augments this construct. This produces a figure-ground relationship that is often hazy. Compostela's midieval history takes an active role in the organization of urban figures that isn't explicitly tied to any one element or cultural meaning. As a site of religious pilgramage, it is appropriate that the building mingle with the landscape. The old truths are presented in new form.

Eisenman designed an urban fabric where the ground rises into and above buildings at times, reminiscent of Santiago's seashell designs.

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Garibaldi Piazza in Naples

Dominique Perrault wants to give the Campania region of Italy the urban and social status it once had. As a start, he has unveiled this plan for the Garildi Piazza, the major central transporation hub in Naples. It connects five transit stations with the city's bus sysem. He seeks to create a "lounge on the outskirts of the city" by inserting commercial centers, bars, restaurants, and surrounded the complex with steel trees, a kind of man-made nature.

Perrault wants to create something surprising and functional. Architecture effects people just as much as they effect architecture. He seeks to "shake the perception of the viewer" by drawing on the city's past architectural experience and considering population growth and demographic trends. It is due for completion in 2009 and will stretch 400 meters.

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Hotel Urban in Madrid

More a museum than an art gallery, hotel owner Jordi Clos says he just needed somewhere to put his artwork. Each room has its own priceless antique. Cirici Bassó Martitegui designed an Avant garde building of minimalist steel and glass that lets the artwork shine. The exterior is modern yet homogeneous with the classical surroundings. This hotel achieves luxury through ethnic culture and comfortable modernity. It opened in 2005 and has become one of the top hotels in Spain.

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Will Beijing's Pretty New Buildings Be Enough?

Every day there's a new catastrophe in China that we don't hear about. There was the huge earthquake that killed 60,000 because of China's poor building regulations. Then came millions of tons of algae that turned the rivers to green. Then came the locusts. Now just ten days before the start of the Olympics the air quality is three times higher than what is unhealthy. And a massive Typhoon is heading their way. There's bus bombings. On top of all this, there's the massive outrage for China's genocide against the Tibetans and Muslims, and their inhuman crackdown on free speech. It looks like it will be a dismall Olympics.

Most Olympic sponsers are losing money. But what really convinced me that China's Olympic ambitions are blowing up in their face is the news that manufacturers are leaving China because they are denying so many visas. Beijing's stock market has been plummeting the last ten months.

The architecture world is in such a frenzy over these expensive new buildings, these monuments to China's greatness. It's time to look at the societal implications, and at the entire economic situation.
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7/25/08

Federal Building in San Francisco, California


I drove through San Fransisco on hwy 80 last weekend and noticed a number of impressive new structures going up in and around the urban core of the city. One that really stood out was the Federal Building which sits on the edge of the skyscrapers as one approaches up the penninsula, a large sculptural block on the edge of a collosal gathering. It kinda reminded me of that big desert transport in Star Wars. The architecture is out of character of the city, as are other recent structures like the De Young museum, but this kind of diversity is perhaps just what San Fransisco needs.

The New York Times hails this civic monument by Thom Mayne of Morphosis as "his most powerful government work to date." Ideal for government structures, the building is permanent and solid, grandiose and setting the curve. What is remarkable, however, is the transparency. The metal cladding and environmentally sensive glass reflect the imposition, clandestiny, well-intentions, and shortcomings of our government. In an age of terrorism and secrecy, it is refreshing to see what's going on in buildings

The building carefuly handles the uncertain social and political realm with a deep amount of public hierarchty inside and out. With idealistc modernism yet honest realism, Thom Mayne inserts optimism into a tired and often frantic urban core.

Completed in 2007, the building has 18 floors. As the first naturally ventilated office building on the west coast, it consumes less than half the energy of a typical office building this size.

Interveiw with the architect , More info and images








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King Abdulaziz Center for Knowledge and Culture in Saudi Arabia

Commemorating Saudi Aramco’s 75th anniversary, the Center for Knowledge and Culture in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia will cost at least $300 billion. It is being built next to the first well in Saudi Arabia to yield commercial quantities of oil. As well as celebrating Saudi Arabia's breakthrough economy and modernization (although their society's progression still has a ways to go), the center pursues humanity through knowledge, diversity, and cross-cultural understanding.

Saudi Aramco president and CEO Abdallah S. Jum’ah said, “This company-built Center will serve the community’s needs in the fields of knowledge, culture and the arts. My hope for this project is that it will be a source of enrichment that will inspire our younger generation to reflect on the golden era of Islamic culture.” (Architecture Lab)

The center includes theatres, cinemas, a museum, a library and exhibition halls.
It's by Snøhetta Architects, out of Norway, and will open as soon as 2012. Other projects from this firm include new Alexandria Library in Egypt and the Oslo Opera House in Norway.

The pictures are pretty, but the function of this planned project are very important, particulary concerning the intentions to inspire the younger generation. The influence and effect on the Islamic culture could be positive, and the architecture could make all the difference. These pretty pictures, unfortunately, offer no clues on how positive or negative the social catalyst will be.

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[images: o d b, MEED DUBAI, AECOM Projects]
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Art and Technology Quarter in Segovia, Spain

Close to the center of UNESCO World Heritage Site Segovia, Spain, David Chipperfield plans a £118 million high-density design. Chipperfield's winning deisng proposed a low-laying art museum, technology center, and a congress center that seeks a density and identity similar to the existing old city. With narrow human corridors and little automobile traffic, the plan totals an area of 120,000 meters2.

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Separation Creek House in Australia

Precariously perched on a steep slope above the Bass Strait in Australia, the "Seperation Creek House" by Jackson Clements Burrows (JCB) Architects bravely stands like a sculptural tree. The rooms extend from a central core, some well grounded and some cantilevered. Each room interacts with a particular portion of the site and the building altogether reaches to the light and takes advantage of the views. Open and transparent living areas help cool the building in the summer and warm it in the winter months. The louvred glass is a wonderful detail that helps in this and adds to the aesthetic. Functioning as a small summer home, this openess also introduces the occupant to the outdoors, with shaded areas and play-grounds. Unassuming yet fullfilling.

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[images:mymemorysmuseumcurator]
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7/24/08

Der Spiegel Headquarters in Hamburg

Hamburg's inner harbour is receiving a new important structure. Der Spiegel, an international renown newspaper, is building its headquaters on the Ericusspitze which juts prominantly into the river. The 50.000 m2 center by Henning Larsen Architects has twin U shaped buildings. The two highrises open green space and parking in the urban plazas below. It is due for completion in 2010.

More info and images

Image 1, Image 2

[images:stelb,christoph_bellin]
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Municipal Headquarters in Ajman, Dubai

Norwegian architects A-lab won the competition for the new municipal headquaters in Ajman. The 15000 m2 contains municipality administration, housing, and on the ground floor is reception, exhibition, conference and café facilities. The exteriors have flowing water to manipulate the sunlight the comes through. The most impressive feature is the sweeping screen that flows from the building to provide shade over the entry and a 'hanging garden.' The pattern for the screen is in tradition Arabic pattern, a historical precident for shadinG, which changes light during the day.

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Biodesign Institute in Tempe, Arizona


The Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona is the first LEED platinum building in that state. Building received gold-level certification in 2004 and Building B shown above received platinum, the highest environmentally friendly design recognized by the U.S. Green Building Council in 2006. There are only 40 platinum buildings in the United States.

At 175,000ft2, Building B has large glass facades and a central atrium skylight to bring in natural light on each level and to open up views of the Sonoran Desert garden. The transparency of materials contribute to the scientific research function by promoting co-activity and connection to nature, but also achieve a wonderful aesthetic. To achieve platinum rating, the building was constructed 15% from recycled materials, 60% of construction was was put to reuse, has a bioswale for greywater, it was located near a light-rail station, and elevator use was discouraged.A 167-kilowatt solar photovoltaic system is planned for the next building.

Gould Evans+Lord, Aeck & Sargent teamed up for this project. All four buildings of the complex are interconnected for a total of 800,000 ft.2.





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7/23/08

Dallas Cowboys Stadium, Texas


The New Dallas Cowboy's Stadium by HKS Architects is schuduled to open before the 2009 NFL season and is well under way in construction. It has up to 100,000 seats and will end up costing $1 billion dollars, making it one of the most expensive sports venues ever built. The city is looking how to pay for it, and the stadium's final name will likely be sold to a sponser.

A 300 foot-heigh arch spans the stadium dome, there's a retractable roof, and doors that allow each end zone to be opened. The original design of a roof similar to the original stadium's roof was scrapped in favor of a retractable roof panel to shield rain or difficult heat conditions.

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