This office and mixed-use block building by Andrej Kalamar in Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia, attempts to restore a sense of urbanity to the historic city center, much of which was demolished to make way for the object buildings and grand traffic engineering of socialist modernism. Its site was formerly a meaningless and unused space in front of an office block. The Lev Office Building stands on the corner of the busiest traffic intersection in the city, a modest contribution to city life.

The visible part of the Lev Office Building houses offices and retail spaces, but it only represents third of the whole structure, while below ground there are three underground levels accommodate parking for 100 cars and additional programs for the adjacent hotel. As the impact from heavy traffic intersection and diversity of physical space, the building is oriented away from the busy roundabout. Together with adjacent buildings it forms an open atrium on the inside of its curve to a new public outdoor space which enjoys relative quiet and fume-free air, a nucleus of public activities.

Read the rest of this entry »

Stepping from the original 1950’s post-and-beam house in a suburban area of Mexico City, Anexo D is the extension’s name. It has the sense of crossing limits: historically, from one century to another in terms of architectural design, and psychologically, to a space where the children are independent of the family unit. The volume of Anexo D is contrasted with the existing building, while its space is continuous and unlimited. Inspiration for the extension derived from various sources, most obviously a snail shell, but also from topography and even bodily organs.

It is conceived as a protective cocoon that counterbalances the linearity of the existing building. Anexo D provides an intimate interior space for the children and the bottom skin opens towards the garden by folding back on itself, with a stepped winding ramp progressively linking interior and exterior. The curving facade is mainly blind with minimal light-apertures, to accentuate the sense of an enclosed space. The result is a charming, if unusual, fungus-like growth protruding from one of the facades, its volume mushrooming into the garden.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Rural Studio of Auburn University designs and builds one community project every year in Hale County, deep in the Alabama, one of the poorest regions of the USA, where 40 percent of the inhabitants live far below the poverty line. Home to four extended families, it epitomizes the shaming and disregarded depths of rural deprivation in the American South. Most of the 150 inhabitants live in decaying trailers or very basic houses, and there are no indigenous community facilities.

Designed and built by a team of fifth year students, the new building is a bold, vigorous and optimistic presence that attempts to mitigate the grim, grinding impoverishment of its surroundings. Rural Studio projects require students to be resourceful and use ingenious building techniques to construct their projects with whatever materials can be found, recycled or donated in an adaptive design-and-build process. Mason’s Bend Community Center is on a dusty, unpaved road lined with shanties and caravans.

Read the rest of this entry »

In the former harbor of Borneo Sporenburg, on the river Ij near the center of Amsterdam, the grey, lopsided Whale Residential Complex offers an outstanding instance of contemporary town planning, incorporating a commercial and residential complex. It is not difficult to see where this building gets its name, because of the unusual shape of its roof, reminiscent of the profile of a huge whale diving under the water and then surfacing.

The scale, the angular forms and the facade of Whale Residential Complex have won an iconic status in the redeveloped harbour district. It contrasts with the surroundings, as it is one of three large-scale buildings within a development mainly consisting of low-rise architecture, like a meteor fallen from the skies. The building, with impressive size, incorporates a great variety of housing and spatial typologies. The block contains a total of 214 apartments distributed over thirteen floors, commercial space, a semi-public interior courtyard and an underground car park.

Read the rest of this entry »

The 120 Blondo Building by Randy Brown is the prairie’s response to Santa Monica, a collection of composed fragments located at a busy intersection of two arterial roads. Here, there are law offices arise in modernist relief along a typical suburban street. The project is a response to the surrounding banal office buildings that populate urban areas in cities all over the country. Designed only to be functional and cost-effective, these buildings generally lack even a modicum of design input that might elevate them to the status of positive contributors to the urban landscape.

When commissioned to design offices for a law firm for 120 Blondo Building’s main program, Randy Brown took the opportunity to design a working solution to this suburban blight, and to make people question the quality of their built environment. If a conventional office immediately reveals its size and form, this building’s structural elements are designed to conceal the nature of the area beyond, so that the space unfolds as the visitor moves through it.

Read the rest of this entry »

In 1999, the Museum of Modern art undertook a major $858 million expansion of its historic Manhattan facilities. The museum needed to create a temporary space to house the museum’s collection that would maintain its identity and membership loyalty while its permanent location closed for renovation and expansion. MoMA QNS would serve as a temporary exhibition space in a visually inventive way, but be able to quickly convert back to its original program as a site for museum support, preservation, and collections storage.

Located in a former Swingline Staples factory in Long Island City, Queens, the new facility includes the usual museum components: exhibition galleries, study centers, offices, a bookstore and a cafe, as well as research and storage facilities that will continue to be used after the new museum opens. Completed in 2002, MoMA QNS design can be seen as developing along three primary avenues of investigation. The museum’s context is a transitional landscape, with neither the traditional identity of the urban center nor of the suburban landscape.

Read the rest of this entry »

GC Osaka Building is a modern office building located in the center of Osaka, with its elegantly proportioned facade and fine glazing detailing, owes its appearance, strangely enough, to the strict requirements of its fire protection system. Following a change in the bias of Japan’s Building Standard Law from specification to performance based, Shigeru Ban has taken the opportunity to use the necessarily strict fire safety rules to drive the design solution. The method is to ensure the required fire resistance by covering the steel structure wood.

This is called ‘flammable barrier’ design, which is incorporated in the conventional steel structural frame, and then it covered with special fire-resistant timber that also acts as the external finish. By doing this the GC Osaka Building design is allowing costs and resource to be minimized. Following the results of experiments, two layers of 2.5 cm-thick particle board was used to create a tartan grid across the facades, covering the regular horizontal and vertical arrangement of floor slabs and columns.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Biosphere and Flower Pavilion was originally constructed for the six-month German Horticultural Show (BUGA) 2001 Potsdam, in the vicinity of the Sanssouci Palace. The project is located in the Bornstedter Fields, a site where it is used for the previous 100 years by the military for troop exercises and barracks. Designed by Berlin-based architects Barkow Leibinger, this building has an intended lifespan of at least 20 years, as a Biosphere and a major part the site’s transformation into a new residential district of nearly 20,000.

The architects looked at the history of the site as a conceptual basis for the competition-winning design. While used by both the Prussian and Nazi armies, it was the postwar creation of earthen berms to enclose Russian barracks. Then the design is generated by these forms of earthen berms, framing an artificial valley which is enclosed by a simple flat roof with multiple skylights. The Biosphere and Flower Pavilion is one of a number of projects that offer potent symbols for Germany’s post-reunification future, in this instance replacing barracks and a training ground with a giant greenhouse.

Read the rest of this entry »

The arrival of Italian furniture firm, B&B Italia Showroom in Brompton Cross, which is the concentration of elegant shops at the western end of Brompton Road in London, must denote something. At the very least, it must mean that the affluent British, in larger quantities than formerly, are able and willing to spend money on products by designers such as Gaetano Pesce, Antonio Citterio and Marc Newson. Designed in 2000, the B&B Italia Showroom London is the product of collaboration between three pioneers of contemporary design: John Pawson who was assigned for the new architecture, Antonio Citterio designed the striking interiors that would meet Pawson’s needs, and B&B Italia produced its own distinctive sets.

The B&B Italia Showroom London ingeniously exploits what is an exceptional space, as both Pawson and Citterio have designed collections of furniture for the Italian company and so the project is built on established working relationships and a shared vision. Seen from above, the building with its lead roof looks like a silver arrow speeding through the heart of London, culminating in a sharp point. What looks like a steep, precipitous element on closer inspection turns out to be a sort of fin, a wedge with the spine of the roof curving downward.

Read the rest of this entry »

Peckham Library is a library and community building located in Peckham in south-east London. As a part of the London Borough of Southwark’s commitment to architecture and urban regeneration, Alsop Architects’ Peckham Library is a controversial and iconic building, which has featured significantly in debates about how architecture can best serve the poorest inner-city communities. Peckham Library is a bold, imaginative, highly successful building. It is combining strong form, vivid color and a sense of wit within a design that meets the serious purpose of providing a building that really enriches local community life.

The construction cost of the Peckham Library was £5 million, including £1.25 million from the Single Regeneration Budget programme. The library was designed to be striking, to make people curious about what lies inside, and to challenge the traditional view of libraries as staid and serious environments. Visitors would be hard pushed to work out that it is actually a library. The sign LIBRARY in large bold letters on the roof signals the function of this building but it is much more than a conventional library.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Documentation Center Nazi Party Rallying Grounds (Dokumentationszentrum Reichsparteitagsgelände, Germany) is a museum in Nuremberg. It is placed in the north wing of the unfinished remains of the Congress Hall of the former Nazi party rallies. Nuremberg has been trying to deal with the Congress Hall since 1945, when its fate became the object of endless debate between those keen to remove all traces of National Socialism, and those advocating the preservation of the records of that period as a reminder and a warning.

In 1994 the city council of Nuremberg decided to establish the Documentation Center in the Congress Hall. The idea dates back when the very first plans were conceived by the Museen der Stadt Nürnberg. On this basis in summer 1998, Nuremberg city issued an architectural competition for the design. No easy task for the architects. Not only did the design brief have to fit the proposed Documentation Center in the North Wing of the former Nazi Congress Hall, but also had to find a way of dealing with the intimidating Nazi architecture on the site and the sinister ideas behind the Rally Grounds. The Austrian architect Gunther Domenig won the competition with his proposal to spear through the northern head of the building with a diagonal glass and steel passageway. Domenig, the son of a Nazi judge, confronted his own personal history in addition to the history and Nazi architecture of the project’s site.

Read the rest of this entry »

A small and heavily industrialized town in the Netherlands has received a renewed heart in a comprehensive but economical program. The Brink Center, which provides urban spaces and invigorates the existing fabric with new functions, co-opts the inertia of 15,000 sq m of shopping to instigate major surgery on the city plan of Hengelo. It is a small Dutch town shaped by an industrial past and post-war reconstruction near the German border, and was just a village at a crossroads until the railway came through in the nineteenth century. The slacked town center tried to focus on a market place, but by the 90’s this had been given over mostly to use as a car park.

Opportunity for revitalization came with the liberation of the site between market place and railway station due to the demolition of one of Hengelo’s largest and oldest factories. At first, the demolition made condition worse by left a gaping hole in the urban fabric, but it prompted immediate action. In 1995 a competition was held to repair and retrieve the town center, and Bolles+Wilson won it. The brief demanded that this be done mainly with commercial elements, including a large department store, shops, offices and some housing. Bolles+Wilson mixed use development on the site has contributed to its renewal.

Read the rest of this entry »

Millbank Millennium Pier, which located in front of Tate Britain at Millbank, has been designed by the renowned husband-wife architects David Marks and Julia Barfield, or Marks Barfield. The pier breaks new ground in the design of passenger piers. It connects Tate Britain, Tate Modern and the Saatchi Gallery, all located on the banks of the Thames River, by boat. Consequently the Millbank Millennium Pier’s aesthetic appearance was a critical requirement and the design treats it as a functional floating sculpture formed of faceted steel plates.

Already reviewed as the, “most radical landing stage ever built in Britain” by the Independent Review, the whole idea of Millbank Millennium Pier has been rethought and refined in this design. The design is highly original both aesthetically and in its engineering. The innovations have been developed in response to the pier’s functional requirements, a tight budget and to provide users and onlookers with a stunning visual experience. Marks Barfield is the architects who was also designed the well-known BA London Eye that can be seen, neatly on axis, from the Millbank Millennium Pier’s gangplank.

Read the rest of this entry »

The liveliness and freshness of this Springtecture H is located in a small park in Shingu-cho, a densely built-up area in the mountains of Hyogo Prefecture, sandwiched between new primary and secondary schools and one hour by high-speed train from Osaka. Public lavatories are required to provide convenience, based on openness, and security, deriving from enclosure. This small 119 sq m building demonstrates that prestigious architecture can be created even from a washroom, a landmark that changing the landscape around them and having their own influence on contemporary architecture.

The dramatic form grows out of the nature of the material and, once seen, seems natural, logical and economical. But the Springtecture H form is entirely new, and has mysterious echoes of the geometrical complexities revealed by modern science. As Shuhei Endo says, “Springtecture architecture is not composed of roof, wall, pillar girder and slab… it is another architecture completed by original thought.” As the functional program requires an economical ‘open’ scheme yet a formal appearance of a ‘closed’ environment to give the user a sense of security, the architectural concept was to create a link between it through the continuity of the material.

Read the rest of this entry »

The entry point to the office district of Frankfurt-Niederrad is landmarked by the image of Prisma Building. This structure, designed by Auer & Weber Architects, is representing a net total volume of about 118 million euros, introduces new technical and architectural standards with its innovative energy concept and striking appearance for a green office environment. Inside Prisma Building there is a unique “look-and-feel room” which featuring an innovative building concept.

Prisma Building is conceived as a raised angular building enveloped by a triangular climate modifying skin together, shaping a large and memorable building. Located on a sharp triangular site squeezed between two busy roads, it is represented with eleven-story administration building as a compact block construction: two massive beams and one double-skin glazed office beam surround a central atrium.

Read the rest of this entry »

When the rainy, northern French city of Amiens decided in 1995 to build a new football stadium, it planned for long term project. Although its football team was a Division Two club, it targeted to move up to Division One, an elevation in rank that would require the city to expand the 12,000-seat Licorne Football Stadium to 20,000-seat. Modest in size and cost, it demonstrates a singular grace and delicacy that is the hallmark of Chaix & Morel Architects. From the southwest, the building looks like an immense greenhouse half-concealed in the hollow of a peat plain at Renoncourt, a village near the old city.

Its tall glazed walls allow views to the surrounding forest, as well as the celebrated cathedral which stands a short distance away. The design developed by Chaix & Morel Architects works from the ground up, literally. To stabilize the soil, the architects dug wells in a grid pattern under the grass and filled each with rock and gravel. Supporting the Licorne Football Stadium itself are concrete piles sunk deep into the site. The Chaix & Morel Architects imposes an image of discretion and lightness, as their design implemented a simple rectangular plan for the stadium, eliminating any complex structure and minimizing the building’s weight.

Read the rest of this entry »

Indeed, the blog crash was almost ruining my love to architecture. Approximately of 88% of the content is lost, and it isn’t different as starting from begin, again. I still don’t know exactly what the reason of the crash is, but for some quick conclusion, it does answer with my previous installed theme and recent plugins. While there’s unethical to accuse particularly of those prime suspects (I’m not totally understand PHP or something language), one I have learned: The combination of false theme and plugins could lead to deadly poison.

Anyway, as my religion teached me, a hope always lies behind disaster. In the establishment time, I decided to alter some of the Architectook concept, including correcting the title of my first posts (get ready for SE drop!), but I’m sure it will go better for long term. Second, you will not facing zig-zag image in the article, as I use image gallery (thanks NextGEN) at the bottom of the article. We never strong if we have ever weak before. Please be free to enjoy my love to architecture building.

The Sheffield Winter Garden is the second phase of the £120m Heart of the City regeneration project, following the £15m Sheffield Millennium Galleries. It is one of the largest temperate glasshouses to be built in the UK during the last hundred years, and the largest urban glasshouse anywhere in Europe. Housing more than 2,000 plants from all around the world, the garden was the most generous part of the scheme, rises from either end through glazed elliptical timber arches, and through its center the galleries appear to ripple towards the street.

The palette of materials and spatial articulation recalls the public buildings of Hopkins & Partners where both Pringle and Sharratt worked extensively, experience which allowed them to tackle such a project with ease. The measures are approximately some 70 m long and 21 m high. The building was conceived as a covered galleria an integral part of the network of pedestrian streets which together with the Millennium Galleries forms a pedestrian hub linking the Civic, Arts and University quarters of Sheffield, a cultural route through to the city center.

Read the rest of this entry »

Sheffield Millennium Galleries is a pair of inspirational, landmark buildings by Pringle Richards Sharratt Architects who won the commission in competition in 1995. The Millennium Galleries is an art gallery in the City of Sheffield, England, finished in 2001, then the Sheffield Winter Garden in 2002. They were conceived as the most important parts of the Heart of the City Project and located in the city center close to the city library, Sheffield Hallam University, and the city’s theater district, also covered links in a new pedestrian route between the station and city center, helping restore part of the urban fabric that had been unravelled by post-war road schemes and redevelopment.

The Sheffield Millennium Galleries was won through a competition based on the first of a series of masterplans for this massive central area of Sheffield. Consequently, part of the context with which the galleries were designed to work was missing at the time of completion, but the architects were determined to create a fragment of a dense urban fabric rather than a building as an object. The success of such a drastic transformation of this part of the city center was immediate, with the galleries becoming a popular destination for local people.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Svalbard Governor Administration Building was designed by Einar Jarmund and Hakon Vigsnaes, which was completed in 1998. The building is located approximately 400 m above the sea, and has a view overlooking the Advent Fjord towards the northeast, the Is Fjord towards the west and the Longyear Valley towards the east. Located nearby is the governor’s estate built in 1950, together they comprise the governor’s headquarters.

This administrative building is faced with extremes of temperature and light that would be difficult for any architect. The project is a complex for the governor of the most northerly regularly-inhabited settlement in the world. Jarmund Vigsnaes Architects has produced some exquisite private houses in rural conditions, but had not previously built anything in a wasteland like this. Not only must the building be insulated against the vicious temperatures as low as -50º C winter, but it must also respond to the sun.

Read the rest of this entry »