The Absolute Towers, MAD studio

Yansong Ma of the Beijing-based architecture firm MAD created this stunningly curvaceous building for the a new 50-storey condo in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada.

"Our design forsakes the simplification principle of modernism. In fact, it expresses a higher level of complexity and diversity of modern society through multiple approaches. In the meantime, it caters to (ambiguous) social needs at multiple levels...The towers talk to each other and harmonize with each other. There is a synergy between them, an aura which transcends each of the individual buildings."


The Absolute Tower
MAD studio, Ma Yansong
Mississauga, Ontario, Canada

Italian Pavillion for Shanghai Expo 2010, BiCuadro Architects

Further to the previous post of 1st prize winner Denmark Pavillion for Shanghai Expo 2010 by BIG (Bjarke Ingels Group). This is the 3rd prize winner Italian Pavillion, designed by BiCuadro Architects.

The architectural design inspired all “true expression of Italian city: the historic city layered.” with a reinterpretation of a split casing in a series of plates “stratigraphy” that back to a time sequence, a metaphor for urban training Italian.

+ more photos

Competition, 3rd prize
Italian Pavillion for Expo Shanghai 2010
BiCuadro Architects
Shanghai, China
Images © BiCuadro Architects

Skyline Residence, Belzberg Architects

"Perched atop a ridgeline in the Hollywood Hills, the presence of the Skyline Residence represents an honest approach to creating an environmentally sensitive building without sacrificing beauty nor budget. The pre-existing site presented a challenge in terms of constructability, the client presented the challenge of limited allowable expenses."

Belzberg Architects

+ more photos

Project: Skyline Residence
Design Architect: Belzberg Architects
Location: Los Angeles
Year: 2007

Denmark Pavillion for Shanghai Expo 2010, BIG

BIG, Bjarke Ingels Group has won the design competition for the Danish Pavilion at the 2010 World Expo in Shanghai, in collaboration with Arup and 2+1. The theme of the expo is to create a “Better City - Better Life”, the pavilion will celebrate various aspects of Danish culture, with an emphasis on the environment.

"The Danish pavilion should not only exhibit the Danish virtues. Through interaction, the visitors are able to actually experience some of Copenhagen’s best attractions – the city bike, the harbor bath, the nature playground and an ecological picnic."

Niels Lund Petersen, associate @ BIG

"The pavilion is designed, as a piece of Copenhagen’s bicycle track, tied as a knot. 1500 city bikes located at the roof scape, offer our Chinese hosts a chance to experience the Danish urban way. Thus, when you arrive to Expo, you visit Denmark, get a bike and explore the rest of the world!"

Bjarke Ingels, founder of BIG

BIG, Bjarke Ingels Group
The Danish Pavilion
Shanghai, China
all images © BIG

Tivoli Concert Hall, 3XN

In 2004, 3XN was awarded the prestigious task of performing the renovation and extensions of the Concert Hallin Tivoli, the famous old Copenhagen amusement park.


A new extension has been realized in a light, transparent and modern expression in keeping with the existing Tivoli pavilion architecture. Moreover, the added feature comprises improved staff facilities, a family restaurant, and a conference centre. The new building replaces the former “Winter Entrance”, which in turn has been demolished.


Tivoli Concert Hall
3XN
København, Denmark
images © Adam Mørk

White Forest KAIT kobo, Junya Ishigami

A white forest in a grey field, Junya Ishigami’s university project space in the foothills west of Tokyo is a building designed to almost disappear.

The structure presents another round in the architect’s ongoing contest with gravity. The forest comprises 305 slender steel 5m-high columns, irregularly orientated and distributed throughout the space, while the field from which they rise is a distorted square bed of concrete, 47m by 46m, slightly raised above the surrounding bitumen. A flat roof caps the space with linear roof lights, and a frameless glass perimeter seals it. The architecture ends there; its animation then takes over with furniture, pot plants and people.

Ishigami explains the evolution of the design as a painstaking investigation of the relationships between the columns – a task for which he developed custom-made software.

"I wanted to make a space with very ambiguous borderlines, which has a fluctuation between local spaces and the overall space, rather than a universal space like that of Mies" says Ishigami. "This allows a new flexibility to emerge, revealing reality rather than shaping it."

White Forest KAIT kobo

Junya Ishigami

Avra Verde, Rick Joy architects

Seven Exclusive Desert Pavilions On Forty Acres, located At The Saguaro National Park West. This project is to promote an indoor-outdoor lifestyle merging sensory experience, artisanship, and environment sensibility; to create the most unique private residence enclave in the American Southwest.

"... The simplest things can evoke the deepest feelings. The silence in great music is often more profound than sounds..." - Rick Joy

Rick Jo architects
Avra Verde
The Saguaro National Park West

Photo: © Avra Verde

Leonardo Glass Cube, by 3deluxe

3deluxe created this distinctive corporate architecture for the brand Leonardo. The integrative design concept combines architecture, interior design and landscape design into a complex aesthetic entity.

One of the design features is the multi-layerd composition of the building: The silhouette-like genetics overlay with the graphic design of the glass facade and elements on the inside.

3deluxe

Leonardo Glass Cube

Germany

Photo: © 3deluxe

Five Franklin Place, UNStudio

"...the strong horizontal cornices and decorative details of TriBeCa’s cast-iron architecture, re-formed them, and transported them onto our building in a very contemporary way that makes them truly functional but that still has a lot to do with pure surface decoration. The reflective metal bands of our building are almost sewn on, like a dress. They grow thinner and thicker, wrapping themselves around the building and generating different visual effects as they change. But they are not just graphic elements, they are three-dimensional. Sometimes these bands become balconies; other times they become sunscreens that protect the apartment interiors from excess sunlight and reflect excess heat. So they have a true function and a sustainable quality, too. These metal ribbons not only pick up the external qualities of TriBeCa through their geometries and their character as added metal elements on the surface of the structure, but they also frame the views from inside the apartments and create intimacy. We couldn’t have achieved the privacy and intimacy of the homes at Five Franklin Place if we’d made ours a fully transparent glass facade building..."

Ben van Berkel -UNStudio

Five Franklin Place

New York, USA

further information: floor plan
Photo: © UNStudio, Five Franklin Place

New Seoul City Hall, Mass Studies

'Our proposal for the city hall is not an object-based architecture that is quick to eveal all of its virtues from several kilometers away, but a spatial experience that is fully integrated into the city to be re-discovered as a 'place.' The exterior forms an appropriate composition with the surroundings, with unique and inviting urban elements as a unified whole from all sides. If the existing city hall building could be generalized as a façade, or simply, a single face...then the new proposal could be understood as a continuing array of faces whose dynamic quality would draw the people in from all directions. Once they are inside, they will be submerged into the strong, central outdoor space of the madang, re-defining the space as a dynamic interaction of public functions. Through this madang, the city hall will become one, while the exterior is composed of multiple traits to embrace different types of people, and thus interact with each of their daily lives.' more...

Mass Studies

New Seoul City Hall

Korea

more info @ drawings, design boom

Photo: © Mass Studies

Gatica House, Felipe Assadi + Francisca Pulido

Gatica House by Felipe Assadi and Francisca Pulido. A contemporary modern house in chilean countryside.

Felipe Assadi + Francisca Pulido

Gatica House

Chile

Photo: © Felipe Assadi + Francisca Pulido

United States Federal Building, Thom Mayne + Morphosis

"When architecture engages social, cultural, political, and ethical currents, it has the potential to transform the way we see the world and our place in it. It is from this intersection of broad societal currents that we approached the design for the new Federal Building in San Francisco. Our primary interest was to produce a performance-driven building that would fundamentally transform its urban surroundings, the nature of the workplace, and the experiences of the people who use it while making intelligent use of natural resources. For me, this project represents the epitome of an optimistic architecture; an architecture that synthesizes its complex forces and realities into a coherent whole."

Thom Mayne + Morphosis

United States Federal Building

San Francisco, California

more info @ arcspace, pritzkerprize, e-architect

Photo: © Nic Lehoux, Morphosis

Dubai Opera, Jean Nouvel

Building future memories...

An allusion to music, to rhythm... a reference to the rhythms of the past... an invitation to discovery... a mystery programmed.

"We are here above the water, at the far end of the Creek. The visitor encounters an « inhabitant » who belongs to the spirit of the time, belongs to the time inscribed in the place. It acts as a witness, a guardian, a protector and, above all else, a vision across the city and its future.Its scale is such that we can not confuse it with a vulgar hotel or an office building: it is proud, sure of its aura across the land.It can not be decoded in a simplistic or univocal manner.Its image changes with angles of view, with the lights, but it also belongs to the atmosphere, to the thickness of the air. It reveals the light. It impregnates its shadow in the water."

Jean Nouvel

Dubai Opera

Dubai, United Arab Emirates

Photo: © Jean Nouvel

Casa Da Musica, Rem Koolhaas

"Defined both visually and spatially by its faceted exterior, the Casa da Musica invigorates the traditional concert hall with its daring interior forms and innovative use of materials. Wave-like corrugated glass is used in both the 1300 seat grand auditorium and its smaller 350 seat counterpart. Material transparency allows for each space to reveal its contents to the city; making visible an array of performances and cultural events. " more

Rem Koolhaas

Casa Da Musica,

Portugal, Porto

more info hughpearman , guardian
images: © baunetz

University of Alaska Museum of the North, Hammel, Green and Abrahamson Inc.

This building has been awarded AIA Minnesota Announces 2006 Honor. Three jurors were very impressed by the strong abstract language of this project. One juror commented he would like to have known more about the process, inspiration, and changes during the project's development. The architect showed respect for the building's context that is not trying to be derivative, nostalgic, or vernacular. Instead, noted a juror, the structure has its own language... via AIA

"I wanted to capture the spirit but in an abstract way that allows people their own interpretation. This is not an intellectual process. It's strictly working with form." said Soranno - project architect

Creating dramatic architecture can be challenging in an icy climate where people prioritize function over flamboyance and where the natural environment can satisfy their desire for beauty. The state of Alaska has breathtaking vistas of mountains, snow flats, and the dancing aurora borealis, but its urban landscapes have tended to remain resilient and simple... more in architectureweek

Hammel, Green and Abrahamson Inc.
University of Alaska Museum of the North
Fairbanks

Photo © Nic Lehoux Photography

Seattle Art Museum old and new, Allied Works

" The Seattle Art Museum is in the process of dramatic transformation. It is a critically important reservoir of thought and expression for the city. The expansion will establish a new presence in the collective memory of the city... The design responds to the creative energy of Seattle and the dramatic landscape of Puget Sound. Through a phased expansion, it will grow vertically within the building volume over the period of 20 years.

This unprecedented arrangement has inspired a design solution that acknowledges and celebrates this verticality and dynamism, both in the ordering of interior space and in the articualtion of the building envelope.

In this way the museum remains open to change, influence and possiblility. Rather than an exclusive and internalized object, the building will be an open and active matrix of light, life, and art...and creating a beautiful and rich experience with the art and the city."

Expansion

Brad Cloepfil - Allied Works Architecture

Seattle Art Museum

Seattle, Washington

Photo: © Allied Works

La Philharmonie de Paris, Jean Nouvel

Architect Jean Nouvel has won a competition to design the new Philharmonie de Paris building at Parc de La Villette in the French capital, it due to open at 2012.



Jean Nouvel
La Philharmonie de Paris
Paris, French

Photo: © Jean Nouvel

Light*house, 3XN and UNStudio

Light*house
Aarhus Harbor Front
Aarhus, Denmark

"The Light*house project signals how today's individualization in society can be enriched by new forms of collectivity. From design of the district as a whole to fitting up of the individual house, the project is about bringing people
together-those who live there as well as those who like to go there. Like in a traditional city centre, but here with an extra multi-storey block dimension."

Ben van Berkel, UNStudio

"The construction appears homogenous as well as individual. As a resident, you will always know your own house from a distance with individual details such as balconies. The characteristic patterns of the facades reflect the reflections of light in water."

Kim Herforth Nielsen, 3XN

Photo: © UNStudio, 3xn