The pierresvives building, in Montpellier, France, is the new home of three institutions for the department de l'Herault: the archive, the library, and the sports office. Designed by Zaha Hadid Architects, the four-story building is clad in concrete and glass, with horizontal gold-colored fins highlighting portions of the glazing.
The 35,000-square-meter (376,000-square-foot) building is clearly perceived from a distance as a single structure, and from close up, three parts can be discerned in the facade. Dynamic ribbons of glazing, detailed with Hadid's iconic branching-lines motif, serve to separate portions of the facade, which is predominantly finished in concrete. This glazing is expressive of major circulation elements, including corridors and atriums, and plays some role in suggesting boundaries between the three major pieces.
An upper-floor lobby inside the pierresvives building, near the auditorium volume. Photo: Iwan Baan
Hadid uses the metaphor of a tree laying on its side to describe how the facade expresses the building's programmatic disposition, and this is where the branching lines in the glazing help to reinforce the comparison.
Safdie Architects has designed the new home of the Sir Zelman Cowen School of Music in Melbourne, Australia. Image: Courtesy Safdie Architects
Safdie Architects has revealed its design for a new Music Conservatorium building at Monash University, in Melbourne, Australia. The four-story building, home to the Sir Zelman Cowen School of Music, will include a 500-seat recital hall, a multipurpose hall, amphitheater, a recording studio, 40 individual practice rooms, a jazz club with cafe and restaurant services, and music department offices and support spaces.
Composed of glass, precast concrete, and stainless steel, Moshe Safdie's design for the building is composed of two major building elements. The Conservatorium's more staid, rectangular portion, with a skylit central atrium, contains the building's office and classroom spaces. The second component is a large performance wing that contains the recital hall. This wing splits, culminating in two performance spaces whose end walls are a series of stepped, curved-shell light scoops that will wash diffuse daylight into the rooms.
Two-minute virtual walkthrough of the Music Conservatorium. Video: Courtesy Monash University
Inside an upper-floor node of the newly renovated Tripolis building, originally designed by Aldo van Eyck and remodeled by Moriko Kira Architect. Photo: Christian Richters
Moriko Kira Architect has redesigned the interior of Aldo van Eyck's Tripolis building in Amsterdam-South. Built in 1991, Tripolis is now the headquarters of Nikon Europe, a regional division of the Japanese electronics company.
The five-story building's original plan is a series of four interconnected volumes whose form is based on an octagon, although alternating facets of the octagon are expressed as large protruding bays. The volumes are linked together in a T-shaped plan and at the lower level, two curving wings help to enclose a pair of octagonal courtyards on either side of the central axis.
One of the newly opened office areas in the Tripolis building. Photo: Christian Richters
The Haus am Weinberg, in Stuttgart, Germany, was designed by UNStudio. Photo: Iwan Baan/ Courtesy UNStudio
Built on the site of an ancient hillside vineyard east of Stuttgart, Germany, the Haus am Weinberg is a large, white modernist composition poised on its site. Designed by UNStudio, the 618-square-meter (6,650-square-foot) four-story home overlooks river-valley farmland and stands in stark contrast to the brick and wood buildings that surround it.
Haus am Weinberg is generally rectangular in plan, and extensively glazed. From the outside, the three-level home's structure appears to be a series of counterweighted surfaces that cantilever to shade the glass walls that separate inside from out. At key points, the home's solid horizonal surfaces fluidly into transition walls, connecting each floor or roof plane with the one below and deftly balancing the building on its sloped site. At one corner, the second floor plane smoothly bends upward to join the roof.
Looking across the dining room of the Haus am Weinberg toward the living room. Photo: Iwan Baan/ Courtesy UNStudio
An upper floor view of the Doha Tower, in Doha, Qatar, designed by Jean Nouvel. Photo: Courtesy Ateliers Jean Nouvel
The 238-meter-tall (781-foot-tall) Doha Tower, designed by Jean Nouvel, is shaded by an aluminum screen that recalls the mashrabiyya grillwork screens in traditional Islamic architecture. Located in Doha, Qatar, the tower's outline even seems to echo the shape of an Islamic pointed arch. The screen, together with a layer of reflective glazing and operable interior shading devices protects the tower's interior office space from the harsh desert sun.
The circular tower's diagrid reinforced concrete structural system is inset slightly from the perimeter, creating an open office floor plan. And rather than a traditional central placement, the building core services are offset from the tower's center and are stepped in plan, minimizing the sense of the core's size. A slender internal atrium also rises through the building's first 27 floors, exposing elevator mechanisms.
Doha Tower is 238 meters (781 feet) tall. Photo: Courtesy Ateliers Jean Nouvel
The 46,5000-square-foot (4,320-square-meter) building, which was recognized in an unbuilt category of the 2012 AIA Education Awards earlier this year, will be largely subterranean. The central rectangular meeting space, called the Forum, will feature an angled steel-and-glass prismoid skylight, whose orientation is in line with the star Polaris. The Forum's skylight tapers as it rises to a height of 105 feet (32 meters), and cantilevers at 39 degrees over the nothern portion of the building. According to the Air Force Academy the alignment with Polaris is intended to be a symbol of navigation to the cadets.
A new wood rainscreen-clad logistics center, located in Haderslev, Denmark, supplies all of the European boutiques of the clothing company Bestseller.
The Bestseller Logistics Center has been designed by C.F. Møller Architects in three parallel linear bands along a main avenue. One of the bands contains the main entrance, office and staff facilities, together with a truck-loading area, while the second contains an automated sorting facility, and the third, a fully-automated storage area. This layout provides a flexible arrangement, and allows for a possible future expansion of the logistics center to triple its present size – i.e. 150,000 square meters (1,600,000 square feet).
Overview of the Bestseller Logistics Center on its greenfield site. Photo: Adam Moerk
An overview of the Hongqiao Vantone SunnyWorld Centre, designed by Foster + Partners. Image: Courtesy Foster + Partners
Ground has been broken on the Hongqiao Vantone SunnyWorld Centre, a project in Shanghai, China, designed by London-based Foster + Partners. The project is a major new sustainable urban plan for a large-scale site in the Hongqiao central business district.
The buildings of the new center face into a park. Image: Courtesy Foster + Partners
The last project designed by Louis I. Kahn, a park on Roosevelt Island in New York City, has been completed over 38 years after the architect's unexpected death in 1974. The four-acre (1.6-hectare)Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Park occupies the East River island's southern tip, with views of both Manhattan and Brooklyn shorelines.
The triangular park pays homage to the 32nd President and his January 6, 1941 "Four Freedoms" State of the Union speech. At its northern end, a grand stair lead visitors to formal lawn, bordered by wide concrete paths and flanked by precise rows of Little Leaf Linden trees arranged in allees.
Looking south from the entry stair of the Four Freedoms Park. Photo: Paul Warchol/ Courtesy FDR Four Freedoms Park
Maison L, in Yvelines, France, is an addition to an 18th-Century orangery designed by Christian Pottgiesser. Photo: Courtesy architecturespossibles
In the corner of the rolling site of a former chateau near Versailles is a heavily restored orangery whose origins can be traced back to the late 18th Century. The building was already home to a couple with four children when they hired architect Christian Pottgiesser to expand it. Maison L, in Yvelines, France, has been awarded the 2012 RIBA Manser Medal for best new house.
The project brief called for an extension that would minimially impact the mature landscape and views from the orangery. These requirements naturally suggested the new home's rambling plan and the use of indigenous stone for retaining walls. But the home's most prominent features are a series of five three-story towers, clad in board-marked concrete, that extend from the home's rockery
Inside the cavernous living space of Maison L, looking at the base of a bedroom tower. Photo: Courtesy architecturespossibles
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