Liantang-Heung Yuen Wai Passenger Terminal Building / EDIT! Architecture

By: Lidija Grozdanic | June - 26 - 2011

The competition for the Passenger Terminal Building connecting Hong Kong with Shenzhen City closed on 21. March 2011. The two-stage competition included an online public survey in deciding on the winners. The aim was to create an urban landmark, structurally enabling the continuation of the existing traffic flow and connecting the banks of Shenzhen River.
Designed by Prague-based EDIT! Architecture, the proposal attempts to reconcile the iconic character of the building with the functional requirements of the site. Fallowing the visual imperative of fluidity, immanent to transportation structures, the design uses both horizontal and vertical transformation of rounded forms. The build­ing entrances are empha­sized by lift­ing of the vol­umes, leading to arrival and departure halls on the first floor. Offices and ser­vice spaces are located on the sides of both halls and also on two floors above orga­nized around the cen­tral atri­ums, which illu­mi­nate the inside of the build­ing and allow a visual con­tact between the dif­fer­ent lev­els. The green roof is terraced thus evoking the typical South China landscape.
The trape­zoidal cladding of the façade cre­ates an ever chang­ing appear­ance and articulates the programs within the building. The pan­els of the same size are made in the same color grade. Part of the facade is equipped with com­puter controlled open­ings that can be opened to sup­port the air cir­cu­la­tion inside the build­ing based on the cur­rent wind flow in the loca­tion.
Due to technical complication in submitting the entry package, the project was not included in the official competition. However, its strong imagery and distinct approach in creating make it a relevant.

Great Stadium of Casablanca, Morocco / Scau

By: admin | June - 23 - 2011

Award-winning architecture firm Scau unveiled their design for the Great Stadium of Casablanca. A sports facility that will serve as the home to the Morocco national football team. Designed in collaboration with local firm Archidesign, the project features massive fanned-out concrete fibre blades around its perimeter, filtering natural light and promoting cross ventilation throughout the interior. With a capacity to hold up to 80,000 spectators, the projected completion date is set for 2013.
Located on a 100 hectare quarry site, the form and composition of the circular stadium suggests an excavated mineral. The scale-like openwork structure manages the microclimate of the interior, creating subtle shade through its islamic art-influenced latticework. Direct sunlight is eliminated through careful orientation of the blades. In the interstitial space between the stadium itself and the open ‘envelope’ is a garden, serving both as a thermal buffer and an interior oasis for the visitors.

Museum of the Built Environment in Riyadh / FXFOWLE Architects

By: Lidija Grozdanic | June - 27 - 2011

The New York-based firm FXFOWLE has six active projects in the King Abdullah Financial District in Riyadh, a 55 million-square-foot, mixed-use development. Among them is the Museum of Built Environment, which aims to explore the role that social, economic, and environmental forces have played in the region’s constructed landscape, both historically and in recent times.
The 340,000-square-foot museum will be sited near a large plaza by a sunken pedestrian parkway. It will house galleries for permanent and temporary exhibitions, a 150-seat auditorium, and a restaurant, in addition to a monorail station and a network of skywalks.
Resembling a chiseled rock and partly clad in prismatic laminated glass panels, the building’s design was inspired by two UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Saudi Arabia: Mada’in Saleh, an ancient city featuring rock-cut architecture, and At-Turaif, a 15th-century complex made of adobe. The programmatic distribution is expressed in the massing by creating greater solidity and opacity on the museum’s upper levels while maintaining transparency on the lower public levels. The building’s façade on the upper levels incorporates prismatic laminated glass panels which create a varied textural quality and allow day light at select controlled locations.
Site excavation for the museum has begun, with completion scheduled for 2012.

The Aldgate Landmark Pavilion – 2012 Olympics / EASTON+COMBS

By: Lidija Grozdanic | June - 27 - 2011

The Aldgate Landmark Pavilion designed by Easton + Combs is a temporary entrance marker to the City of London in celebration of the 2012 Olympics. The site’s importance is that it is the location of the former city gate, the Aldgate, a historically significant point of entry to the city of London that was famous for being open to all social classes when the other city gates were reserved for various elites.
As the architects state, the Pavilion serves as a symbolic greeting hall, a light filled, multicolored, transparent surface that creates a momentary envelope for the celebration of the 2012 Olympics and a spatial marker of London’s archeology of social exchange. The Aldgate 2012 Pavilion addresses the city as a multilayered set of possibilities that constitute an urban theater. As an architectural celebration of the 2012 Olympics, the structure is vibrant and porous yet asserts a sense of place and provides for a variety of possible events. Readings, music and gatherings are accommodated in the large room with a unique cylindrical inverted crown that suggests a space of performance and social exchange.
The design is based on extensive research into lightweight, inexpensive building strategies, as well as the history of temporary architecture. A fascination with chapel typologies implemented in the context of densely built urban fabric is articulated through referencing the pavilion structure to the intimate nature of domed chapels.

Taiwan Tower-The New Gateway to the East / OODA + OOIIO

By: Lidija Grozdanic | June - 27 - 2011

The project can be interpreted as an attempt to create an urban landmark and a new identity for contemporary Taiwanese architecture. As a result of collaboration between two firms, OODA and OOIIO, the design won the Merit Award at the Taiwan Conceptual Tower International Competition in 2010.
The 300 meters high tower would include offices for Taichung City Government, leisure and recreational functions, retail and educational centers and the new Museum of Taichung City Development. The three entrances are located in three separate volumes joining approximately at the middle of the rise. The main body of the structure would accommodate most of the public activities. The sky lobbies form sightseeing zones offering numerous views of the city.
Conceptually, the building integrates several design approaches:  the formal references to diamond cutting industry are linked to the structural logic and iconic significance of the Eiffel Tower. The jagged edges resemble the Origami folding processes with resulting geometry clearly evoking the Taiwan’s star-look flag. The seemingly random volumetric disposition was achieved through careful analysis of structural hierarchy and optimal insolation levels.
The design is conceived as a new gateway for Taichung area, offering ever changing perception of the building as the visitors navigate through its surroundings. The three volumes rising from the ground shelter the plaza below, creating an intimate gathering place and a pleasant resting area for the city inhabitants.

The Artificial Island Skyscraper is a Creative Response to Global Warming

By: Lidija Grozdanic | August - 6 - 2011

Designed by architect Aleksander Krasinski, the project is a floating habitable structure which would be able to endure future changes of global climate. The idea for the building could be interpreted as an answer to the problems closely related to globalization and the human impact on the environment, as well as continuity in the perdition of human rights in connection with the growing process to create a global bank and corporate influence on the shaping of international law.
It is an artificial island with adequate infrastructure, establishing itself as an independent state with its own government and economic policy. 1000 meters in height, as well as in diameter, the building has 48 floors with the maximum number of inhabitants of 52,096 persons.  It facilitates an internal sea port with ocean-going vessels dock, an airport passenger handling helicopters, a public garden, office spaces, administrative, governmental and academic centers, etc. The inner atrium of the building is surrounded by recreational and commercial services.
The planned locations for the Island include United Arab Emirates, Japan, Netherlands and the United States. on this urbanistic island it’s possible to create a whole new state with a powerful eco-system, own legislation and an advanced policy of economic structure.

Cantilevered Volumes Define a New Opera House for Busan

By: admin | September - 1 - 2011

The outstanding natural environment: the sea and the mountains are features that are reflected in this project by Ayrat Khusnutdinov, and Alexey Bychkov/ADM. These natural features, not architecture, are the prime actors in the scene; here the architecture is just a frame.
The notion that a building can be a musical instrument itself being a magnet of public activity is one of the steering wheels of the proposal. The undulating structure behaves like a ballet dancer creating different scenic effects, closing the space and opening it in its climax on the shoreline. Its dramatic pleats are synonymous with behavior of the stormy sea and crescendos of opera music.
In one gesture, this fluid surface establishes formal continuity from the park through the canal to the island, and unites project’s numerous program elements. Its different parts can simultaneously serve both roles – a stage and an auditorium, intermix of these relationships creates a feeling of play on this stage – life. The inner space of the opera house complex is a celebration of the notion what architecture should be – not an object in space but a group of objects creating the space: the space for relaxation in view of the great asset of Busan – the sea.