MUNCH MUSEUM AND STENERSEN MUSEUM COLLECTIONS | Oslo, Norway | REX

MUNCH MUSEUM AND STENERSEN MUSEUM COLLECTIONS
Oslo, Norway
CLIENT: HAV Eiendom, Oslo Kommune
PROGRAM Art museum housing the Munch and Stenersen Collections, self-produced and travelling exhibitions
AREA: 16,585 m² (178,520 sf)
BUDGET NA
STATUS: Limited competition, second prize, 2009
ARCHITECT: REX
KEY PERSONNEL: Lee Altman, Haviland Argo, Gabrielle Brainard, Keith Burns, Alex Diez, Jeffrey Franklin, Javier Haddad, David Menicovich, Joshua Prince-Ramus, Jacob Reidel

CONSULTANTS: Lord, Magnusson Klemencic, Transsolar

Oslo recently celebrated the opening of its world-acclaimed Opera House, an important step in the city’s commitment to developing Bjørvika and to unifying Oslo’s eastern and western centers. With four more significant projects under development within the district—Oslo Central Station, the Barcode, the Deichman Axis, and the Munch Area—Oslo must be wary of overwhelming Bjørvika with too many strong visual landmarks. Such a constellation would undermine the Opera’s iconographic power, and dilute the identity of the city as a whole.

To best complement the Opera, the Munch Museum should forge a new kind of iconography—one based on innovative building performance, not signature form—to command a significant place within Oslo’s mental landscape. Where the Opera is strong, the "Yin Yang" proposal for the new Munch Museum is strategic, establishing itself as a worthy counterpart by radically addressing two cardinal challenges facing contemporary museum design.....visit REX

Cinerama Redevelopment Rotterdam, Netherlands By Group A

Cinerama is a design proposal for the redevelopment of a former movie theatre in Rotterdam. In this redevelopment the cinema's entry and foyer from the 1950ies will be reused, while a new mixed-use tower will be built behind the existing building. The building will be host to a number of functions, including apartments, a hotel and a parking . We feel, however, that it is important to maintain the movie theatre's cultural, public role for nthe inner-city of Rotterdam. We therefore propose to add a supporting cultural program, comprising multifunctional auditoria, an art gallery, a record shop, bars and a restaurant. One of the auditoria will be situated on the rooftop, providing great views of the skyline of Rotterdam. The different public functions will share the entrance and the foyer. Functions and spaces can be used together or separately. This is one of the mayor assets of the design, and increases the chance for the Cinerama tower to be a success.

The Cinerama redevelopment will be located on one of the cities main roads, surrounded by a number of uninspiring high rises. Therefore the appearance of the tower has to be recognisable and inspiring. The tower will be situated in a courtyard, and ill be rather large in comparison to the surrounding building. The façade will either be been seen from large distances, or from inside the courtyard, and therefore has to have a sculptural, vivid yet at the same time 'soft' feel. GROUP A strongly favours an approach that creates an natural transition between between the existing and the new. The office feels that the original foyer and the new tower are both part of the same design, a smooth movement with a sculptural feel.

This design was submitted for the 'Tweede leven? Eerst een idee?' exhibition organised by Rotterdam-based architecture Institute AIR...more

Airport Terminal Shenzhen, China By David Jaubert

Shenzhen, China - This project is an investigation of the shed typology and the inherent implications of repetition in relation to the airport concourse. The project asserts that a modular flexibility can extend the intelligence of the shed through a methodology in which variation responds to a set of architectural criteria through various systems of correspondence. The issue of variation is addressed through the identification of two structural systems and the concourse's ability to benefit from their different performances and affects. Through the use of a flexible folded-plate hybrid base unit that can vary to transmit structural loads in both one-way and two-way directionalities, the project seeks to find congruencies between the two systems which are similar but posses inherently different topologies. A cohesive whole is achieved through a system of propagation that employs the iterative variation of parts to mediate between the two systems.

The part-to-whole relationship informed from a bottom-up approach allows for a library of units, each with unique characteristics, to be applied to different areas of the concourse. By identifying all of the performative and affective conditions beneficial to the concourse such as orientation, viewing, natural lighting and structural span, a taxonomy of base units is developed that can be combined together to form derivative units that respond simultaneously to different conditions. The systems of correspondence allow for a terminal in which a cohesive and synthetic relationship is formed through the resultant concourse's ability to adapt and respond through variation to given sets of performative and affective conditions....visit David Jaubert

Competition Entry | Porous Office Building,Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam By Leong Leong

In Collaboration with MADA Spam

This design rejects hi-tech environmental solutions in favor of low-tech passive environmental principals achieved through a porous building mass. The design offers an open-type passive office building with a minimized environmental load, capitalizing on the tropical environment of Ho Chi Minh City. Porosity offers efficient ventilation in both the horizontal and the vertical direction. The individual tubes act as air channels that capitalize on pressure differences, introducing fresh air in the building and exhausting stale air...visit Leong Leong

Preston Office, Preston, UK | Proposal By MAXWAN

PRESTON OFFICE
PRESTON, 2007
Preston Eye is the result of a competition with a remarkable brief. The client is spending a generous amount of money in order to acquire the best office building in Northern England, and the best working conditions for its employees.
Although the brief suggests a 4 story building with a logistics core at its centre, we designed an office layout with two levels and an open air garden court. All employees enjoy natural daylight, fresh air and views to the outside. The curved, double skin glass façade is esthetically stunning for its simplicity, its play of transparency and reflections. The Preston Eye combines the advantages of an intimate small scale office (concentrating, thinking, reflecting), with the qualities of a larger open plan office (social interaction, improved communication, sharing of information). Shortlisted.

Credits:

program :40'000 ft2 office space
client :private investor
country:United Kingdom
city:Preston

site area:3300 m2
total floor space :4'000 ft2
partner in charge:
Rients Dijkstra, Hiroki Matsuura
team
Artur Borejszo , Eun Kyung Lee, Rene Sangers, Arjan Scheer, Harm te Velde, Franziska Wien
awards
shortlisted for second round.....more at MAXWAN

The Taipei Pop Music Center Competition Entry By Studio Gang Architects

The 21st century is an age of electronic connectivity that radically expands pop music's audience, but simultaneously threatens its economic viability. The Taipei Pop Music Center challenges the notion by making real space and live experience more exciting and more enduring than their virtual counterparts.

Two primary venues compose the building: the one-of-a-kind Oculus (which accommodates 13,000 fans under a giant void that opens to the sky) and the Indoor Main Hall (which can hold 5600 fans in a range of configurations). Leading to the Main Hall are the "Famous Steps,” whose amphitheatre-like topography creates opportunities for spontaneous performances and social gatherings. Additional program—including restaurants, retail kiosks, and recording booths—is connected by the “Public Loop” that culminates at the Hall of Fame on the building’s third and highest floor. The building's compact design preserves the majority of the site for use as a vibrant urban park, serving the many outdoor music festivals of Taipei while adding important green infrastructure to this rapidly-developing neighborhood of Nangang.....more at Studio Gang

Lead Architect: STUDIO GANG ARCHITECTS
Associate Architect: J.J. Pan & Partners
Structure: Arup Beijing
FP/MEP/BP: Arup Hong Kong
Acoustics: DHV
Scenography: dUCKS scéno
Landscape: West 8
Graphics/Exhibits: C&G Partners
Renderings: Labtop
Owner: Taipei City Government Department of Cultural Affairs
Location: Nangang District, Taipei, Taiwan
Design Completed: 2010 (2nd-place winning design in open international competition)

Hiroshima Stadium By Architecture W

"Our proposal for this 30,000 seat, open air baseball stadium, designed in collaboration with ArupSports, Atelier Dreiseitl, and Ziba, explores the synergy between a state of the art sports facility and substantial hotel, restaurant and office components that surround the actual playing field.".......Architecture W

Competition Entry for Museum of Polish History,Warsaw, Poland by Paul Preissner

LOCATION:Warsaw, Poland
CLIENT: Museum of Polish History in Warsaw/Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of Poland
PROGRAM: Cultural History Museum / Site Design
AREA 10,000 SM
COST: Euro87 million (US$130 million)
STATUS: Design 2009 (Competition)


DESIGN INTENTIONS
For this project for a country and historic culture of nearly 40 million citizens, we have put forth a design solution that understands the significant role of history in the development of a country, but more importantly, recognizes the intricate and directional relationship to its future. The Museum of Polish History and its surrounding development site stands not just to signify and remember the path to the present, but also provides a literal platform for the continued progressive development of Polish culture.
Using a policy to promote cultural and educational activities, our proposal performs as an central character in the play of Polish culture, not only for the users of the facility and its surrounding park, but also for the entire culture of Poland; becoming a new Center for the discovery and empathetic learning of history.

SITE DESIGN
The site is holistically looked at as both a territory to preservations, natural management of resources, contemporary intervention, and radical cultural and commercial development. Conceptually turning the site into both a museum of landscape and artifactual history and a model of progressive cultural and environmental development simultaneously. The site is divided into sections that range from complete replacement of existing conditions to utmost preservation of its historic shape and allowing the site to exist as both park and narrator.

CIRCULATIONS MANNERS
The park site is specifically developed to maximize the excitement, energy and functionality of all forms of urban transit, including automobile, bus, truck, bicycle, and pedestrian pathways. The major construction move of separating the infrastructural travel (trucks,cars and bus) from the human scale methods of movement (pedestrian and bicycle) allows for dense transportation needs in plan to be satisfied through sectional diversity. New commercial, retail, residential and cultural facilities can be accessed and serviced without prohibiting more personal and human means of circulation. The park deck connects the entire site with a universal and level network of paths that create both pleasure and opportunity in movement. MUSEUM OF POLISH HISTORY STRUCTURE
The museum’s sculptural volume is designed along conceptual terms of fluidity, velocity and lightness in order to produce a seductive and progressive artifact within the historic context of the city. The building appears like a mystical object floating above the extensive artificial landscape strip, both spanning the Trasa Lazienkowska right up at the edge of the embankment. This seemingly defying gravity by exposing dramatic undercuts towards the surrounding entrance plazas. The building does not sit as a barrier to the site, but another viewing opportunity to the historic context and surrounding city.....visit Paul Preissner

Urban Island Osaka By FRAMA Architects BDA

The strategy for the transformation of the 24-ha Umeda Cargo Station into a dynamic landscape uses architecture to facilitate a lively urban condition. Being close to the transportation node of Osaka Station, which 2.5 million passengers use daily, the design creates a synergetic model to introduce density and heighten the urban experience by directly drawing on its immediate surroundings.

Through 3D modification, the dynamic layouts of the existing cargo station train tracks are depicted through a series of volumetric adaptations. The resultant spaces extend over the landscape like fingers towards Osaka Station. These projections create a single architectural entity, further densified through the placement of three multi-use towers situated at the southern perimeter. The Triple Towers directly face the Yodogawa River and provide ample city views for visitors to enjoy.

This resulting “urban island” is therefore connected to Osaka station visa-vie a diverse new public park system situated between the dynamic volumes of the track projections. These urban gardens foster a variety of recreational, social and cultural experiences, while acting as a lung for the new complex and a mediator between the human and architectural scale. The driving concept behind this design is depicted through the relationship of the main promenade, which is sealed off from the surrounding traffic and the surrounding gardens. The public walkway therefore acts as the pedestrian circulation system and the gardens act as the attractors, inviting visitors to meander in from Osaka Station.

The design effectively takes advantage of urban diversity and dynamism through the integration of density in both the vertical and horizontal scales. The analogous architectural and spatial relationship between the infrastructural, park, and tall building system provides an iconographic image for the new city quarter....visit FRAMA

Housing Proposal | Plug Out ,Lower Manhattan,New York By Workac

This proposal was commissioned by New York’s Downtown Alliance to generate ideas for an underused site in Lower Manhattan. WORKac proposed a series of experimental new housing typologies, stacked in a 45-story building. Each housing type is expressed as an independent section, rotated around the building’s core to take full advantage of sunlight and views. Each section’s rooftop is a different ecosystem.

The concept of the “Plug-Out” is that a single building can provide the necessary ecological infrastructure for a neighborhood, allowing it to “plug out” from the city grid and performing what we call “urban dialysis” filtering and cleaning water and providing energy which is then fed back into the surrounding district. The tower’s core, linking the various sections with structure and vertical transportation, provides this infrastructure. The core is divided into waste and water systems moving down one side and heat-producing systems moving up the other, criss-crossing at points to generate public programs.

On the water/waste side, rainwater is harvested for toilets, irrigation, hydroponic farming, laundry, & fish farming. Grey water is cleaned in the Grey Water Wetland and reused in toilets and irrigation. Black water is cleaned and recycled in a treatment facility to be moved back up the tower into the energy systems. Heat and energy are created via composting, a “waste to power incinerator”, geothermal heating, solar powered facades, traffic wind turbines and a co-generation plant to create public baths, a hot yoga center and warmed earth for urban camping. At the top of the building is the Eco-Research school, PS 2030 (in honor of the mayor’s PlaNYC 2030).....more at Workac

FissurePort ,Port Terminal, Kaohsiung,Taiwan By Biothing

Fractals are frequently used to calculate coastline behavior, given the different degree of “roughness” and multiple orders of scale found in natural coastlines. ||Fissures plays resonates the idea of such complex articulation within the tectonics/aesthetics of the building. Algorithms driving tectonic fabrics within a project have embedded elasticity in relationship to fineness.
Fabric of architecture is highly heterogeneous, structured through rapid phase shifts, unfolding multiplicity of parallel environments within a single building. Instead of creating seamless topological continuum typical for the passenger terminal typology, traveler is exposed to a series of different experiences and protocols carried through the strong vertical fissures. Different atmospheres/programs/experiences/temperatures/light conditions…
Cliff formations found along many coastlines (including Kaohsiung outer coastline) are resonated through strong vertical fissures of the building. In order to accommodate large volume of requested program needed to be organized within a site, internal fissures _ a blade-like tectonic elements shredding through the site, are introducing internal landscape elements with various organizational and sustainable properties. These tall narrow “canyons” are simultaneously light wells for the building as well as strong shading elements, providing abundance of light throughout the building yet preventing overheating.
Waterside arrival sequence is accentuated by the strong “fissure” facade with deeper folds as receptacles for jetways for arriving and departing passengers. Tidal fluctuations and arrival of larger boats creates water movements and wave crushing against the seaside facade of the building. Passengers are transferred into the building through the first fissure sequence which is also a cooling water garden for the terminal. The proportions of extremely long and tall space with “canyon-like” glazed surfacing produces very rich poly-dimensional experience _ a crystalline fabric.
The nature and quality of different fissures as they progress from the street to the sea side changes from the very opaque (perforated metal mesh or glass-fiber reinforced concrete), through semi-opaque office fissure facades (combination of glazing and perforated metal mesh), to the very light glazed double sequence towards seaside, opening wide vistas to the sea through its wrinkled glass fabric.
High Resolution Infrastructure//Signaling::Intricacy of tectonic elements allows for embedding distributive and redundant signaling through lighting systems that can coordinate faster and more legible distribution of passengers. LED light systems embedded into floors/ceilings could be programmed to respond to increased crowd movement or time base sequences corresponding to arrivals and departures. At the same time they constitute material qualities of environments _ a slowed down lighting storms embodied into fabric of architecture or artificial weathers captured within a building...visit Biothing

YONGSAN EXPERIMENT Seoul, Korea By REX

CLIENT: Dream Hub Project Financial Investment Co., Ltd.
PROGRAM: Cultural node—including art center, arts magnet school, broadcasting studio, congress center, museum, and performing arts theater —within a 2.2 million m² (23.6 million sf) master plan designed by SOM and Field Operations, on the waterfront of the Han River
AREA: 59,800 m² (642,000 sf)
STATUS: Competition, 2008
ARCHITECT: REX
KEY PERSONNEL: Jeffrey Franklin, Javier Haddad, David Menicovich,
Joshua Prince-Ramus, Eugenia Zimmermann
CONSULTANTS: Buro Happold


SOM and Field Operations’ Master Plan for the Yongsan Economic Zone proposes a centralized, cultural node that complements the draw and mass of SOM’s Yongsan Landmark Tower. By balancing the Landmark Tower on one side with cultural programs on the other, the matrix of office and residential buildings is energized between commercial and cultural poles. REX was tasked with designing all the cultural venues, and in only two weeks.
As individual elements—including an art center, an arts magnet school, a broadcasting studio, a congress center, a museum, and a performing arts theater—the cultural programs are too small to generate critical mass; a field of cultural “confetti” hardly constitutes a node.
REX’s response therefore combines the cultural projects into a powerful, synergistic element: a Tower of Culture.
It would be inappropriate for a single architect to design every cultural institution for an urban development of 2.2 million m² (23.6 million sf). Design beyond a certain scale thrives on—if not outright demands—multiple authorship and expertise. The single-authored alternative all too often yields oppressive homogeneity.

REX therefore determined the Tower of Culture’s concept, infrastructure, and overarching iconography, but in the interests of genuine multiple-authorship, required each cultural component to be designed by other architects. Of the cultural programs, REX “designed” the arts magnet school and congress center to provide the backbone for the Tower itself. Elevators, fire stairs, and MEP risers form the Tower of Culture’s three structural cores. A “waterfall” of structural plates forms the auditoria of the arts magnet school and the congress center, while also serving as a spiral of slow, meandering circulation.
The remaining programs form barnacles to be designed by other architects... To respect the intellectual property rights of other architects, REX used several of its own designs as barnacle placeholders—namely, the Kunsthaus Zürich, the Dee and Charles Wyly Theatre, the Vakko Headquarters, and the Seattle Central Library.
The Tower of Culture’s infrastructure and overarching iconography is maintained—as is the cultural node’s critical mass—regardless of what cultural programs (or their architects) are ultimately chosen.....visit REX

Chongqing Grand Theatre, China By HASSEL

Client:Chongqing Grand Theatre
Discipline :Architecture
Scale: 48,500 sqm
Completion Date :2009
Location :Chongqing, PR China

HASSELL was invited to take part in a limited invitation international design competition for the new Chongqing Grand Theatre in central mainland China. The HASSELL design created a new gateway for Chongqing and the Jiangbei master plan. The design consists of an 1,800 seat grand theatre and 800 seat recital hall. These two primary venues are linked with a plaza and glazed roof to form a vibrant public space. Terraced, naturally ventilated interior lobby spaces have expansive views out to the Nan Mountains, Jialing River and Yangtze River. The two theatre buildings and linking roof straddle a new and vital pedestrian link from the Jialing River Quay to the new Jianbei central business district.

The buildings forms are designed to facilitate pedestrian movement in and around the complex. The design integrates the existing landscape, historic buildings and ancient city wall, and provides clear views to and from the existing Mingseng central business district.....HASSEL

Unbuilt Work By OFL | ENOKI ROME ECO CITY

Location: Everywhere
Client: Private
Phase: Research
Area: 10.000 sqm
Construction budget: Unknown
Year: 2010
Design team: Francesco Lipari

Enoki rome ecocity is a project born from the desire of investigate the possibilities for future housing. The achievements in material science, energy conservation, aerodynamic and environmental solutions allow designers to experience new housing typologies that can be housed in self sufficient and highly innovative building envelopes. Paying homage to the new millennium and to the city of Rome with the intention of stimulating and supporting the contemporary city. The Enoki project is installed above the actual city of Rome and it integrates itself with the historical part of the city. It draws its’ lifeblood from parks, green areas and water courses to push itself upward. They are small self-contained cities with residences, commercial spaces, green areas, spaces for community activities, sport and cultural activities. The outer skin, made with steel diamond-shaped panels, appropriately follows the main cellular structure of the enoki made from steel and glass and having a molecular shape. A thermoformed glass surface provides a lucid and static resistance with the possibility of infinite curvatures with lower costs.

The Enoki project consists of 150 stories. The classic lifts are replaced by flying shuttles that run outside the enoki bringing inhabitants to and from different levels of the building and the old city. Enoki can accommodate up to 6,000 residents with an area of 240,000 square meters and 300,000 square meters for recreational activities for the "new city"....visit OFL for more