Architectural Design Competition | Paineiras Hotel Complex Rio de Janeiro | Brazil | Estúdio América

To develop a complex project inside one of the greatest urban forests in the world, the Tijuca Forest, may seem contradictory at first. A territory which is seen as one of the lungs of Rio de Janeiro should, at first sight, be untouchable. The great movement of people who, in a daily basis, have one of the “seven wonders” of modern world as their destiny, the Redeemer Christ, changes that original point of view. The question that urges is how to accommodate such an incompatibility? A response to that question appears as a positive opportunity. Besides finding a solution to a complicated tangle of distinct flows and ways of transportation, it is a chance to inform and bring awareness to the 6000 daily tourists of the forests’ richness and the importance of its’ preservation........more

Semi-outdoor indoor performance stage | Dublin's Parlour | Dublin | Ireland | Maxthreads

The objective of this project is to design a new public civic space for Dublin. The Parlour will have a strong social cultural and environmental character and have a countrywide profile for holding an intense and varied programme of music and other outdoor events including markets and monster ceils.

The design concept derived from the fl ux/ fl ow of the mass pedestrian transportation point of the O2. Aim of the project is to create a strong, sculptural element with a distinctive roof form that will be prominent when viewed from large open space. Or the near by offi ces.

Proposed pavilion is to accommodate a large semi-outdoor indoor performance stage and seating area for hosing the music and other outdoor events. At the same the pavilion acts as a device which can re-organise the fl ux of large amount of visitors and pedestrians through the central open space............more

Architectural Open Competition | Artic Cultural Centre (ACC) | Hammerfest | Norway | MDMA

Life in a sheltered atmosphere, protected from cold and snow, demands for an energy concept.
We maintain two regimes: a concentration of core functions on one hand that on the other hand is surrounded by an expanded, animated transit zone.
In case of the Artic Cultural Centre (ACC) a 140 meter long strip of theatre functions is weaved through a light-weight hula-hoop structural system. This schizoid structure is perfectly fit for wrapping a skin around and through. On lower deck a terminal for cruise ships is inserted. [...]On higher deck an assembly hall for theatre and hotel is accommodated. Subsequently the central nave is propelled in a 60-meter high hotel.
The ACC is the forward post. Behind, a large shopping mall is 'embedded' under a layer of 'cushions'. The cushions form an aerodynamic variation of the modernist cube. They will house administrative functions, headquarters in the public and private sector. Embedded beneath, the shopping mall forms the urban variation of 'almenning' or 'all-men's-ground', the typical Norwegian phenomenon of public grazing grounds along the fjords.
Observe also the Artic type of skyrise : slabs sail from pole to pole........more

Toluca Stadium | Toluca | Mexico City | Mexico | FREE

In a country where soccer is fundamental to the national psychology, we had the extraordinary opportunity to design a new stadium for one of the best teams in Mexico. The city of Toluca is located just west of Mexico City, and is capital of Estado de Mexico, with one of the most vibrant economies in the country. The typology of the arena responds to the vision of creating a multi-functional structure that not only hosts soccer matches but also supports a variety of events: concerts, recreation, shopping, and entertainment. This versatility defines the isotopic geometries that give the bleachers their rhomboid identity, which work well for both football matches and massive concerts. The building envelope is covered with ivy, providing it with a green and ecological identity.........more

Architectural Design Competition | New Castro Alves Theatre Salvador | Brazil | Estúdio América

A theatre is part of those initiatives that play an essential role in a people’s cultural life. With its public character, by definition, sites where performances take place have in fact a significant function in the structuring of cities and territories which they irrigate culturally.

The NTCA will become a place where Bahia’s art history and cultural production will be exposed. There will be flows of people through galleries that will function as a didactic space by exposing the production and development made to the building. By creating a link with art, the NTCA will replicate its actions to other places, becoming a cultural diffuser promoting endless activities: a synergy camp, open to different art expressions, containing areas dedicated to performances and production; it will be multifunctional and well equipped......more

Mixed Use Development | Binlamdoun | Fez | Morocco | Klingmann Architects

This locally-inspired design enhances the relationships between visitors, artisans and residents by connecting Place Lalla Yeddouna on the western side of the River Fez with two new plazas on the eastern side, creating much needed public spaces within the old Medina. The activation of existing public spaces along with the provision of additional green spaces provide better accessibility. A continuous river walk connects the adjacent neighborhoods to the site and creates a vibrant waterfront.........more

World Expo Shanghai 2010 | Pabellón de México | Serrano Monjaraz Arquitectos

The concept of flag based on the selection of major Mexican icons in a contemporary interpretation to generate a distinctive grid facades in combination with a significant presence of natural elements. The interaction between these two elements catch the eye of the visitor and invites him to discover inside. The vertical garden also has the function of absorbing sewage and external noise insulation becoming a filter that helps to purify indoor air..........more

Mixed Use Development | Los Angeles | B+U

The proposal for this mixed use office building in Los Angeles, California creates a world-class landmark building aiming to enhance the cities vision as the premier quality city in the southeast area of Los Angeles County and to revitalize the industrial landscape of the site into a vital urban environment.
The project is characterized by its response to the urban setting, its vision for a unique office work environment within a highly sustainable building design, and by its formal and structural elegance.............more

Taipei Pop Music Center | Taipei | Taiwan | Mario Bellini Architect

The proposed design for the Taipei Pop Music Center unfolds against the disjointed urban skyline in a conscious blend of the architectural qualities typical of a large scale project and the features which characterise the surroundings and landscape of the site between the Green Belt to the north and Nangang Mountain to the south of Zhongxiao E. Road.
Imagining the new TPMC, meant condensing the diverse yet interconnected functions comprising this complex dedicated to Pop Music into a single architectural concept in order to define a unified organism draped in a plastic 'green mantle' capable of implementing the iconic valency of the design.
The main objective of the design concept is to create a space which will inspire the citizens of Taipei and define a cultural hub dedicated to music where nature and architecture blend seamlessly and research, education and performance come together effortlessly to create a stimulating, creative environment...........more

Architectural Competition | New Foreign Ministry of Vietnam in Hanoi | Peter Ruge Architekten

Set in unique park-like scenery, the complex of the New Foreign Ministry of Vietnam alludes to the culture and traditions of the city of Hanoi and incorporates them in the design.

A multifunctional urban space serves public ceremonies, events and the official approach, with a direct entrance to the secured area. An additional staff entrance separates the building into security zones.

The office spaces for 2.500 workers enclose two interlocking atria that contain the meeting rooms, reception areas, restaurants and lunchrooms. These atria protect the building’s interior from the consistently hot climate.

The energy, air conditioning and lighting concept is designed as a single integrated Low Energy Concept, which aims to realise and maintain a sustainable ecological complex during its entire lifecycle......more

Monument of freedom and unity | Berlin | eins:eins architekten

A monument to the freedom and unity of Germany must make one thing: that with him a happy
Tradition of German history is remembered, and so also can continue their work.

1848 for the first time that a democratic constitution has been fought, remains as the civil rights movement in 1989 brought about the fall of the Berlin Wall, a stroke of luck remembered. Experienced these events were not modified as a reclamation of public space.

The monument to this, in the form and effect, about the symbolism of the shape of the foot traffic make more accessible.

The figure is with respect to the immediate context, restrained dimensions, their orientation binds them in the broader spatial context to the Old Town Museum..........more

Nam June Paik Museum | Kynoggi | Korea | B+U

The Nam June Paik Museum is designed to exhibit the artist's creative oeuvre and promote the Province of Kyonggi as an international center for Art and culture. In addition being a museum for video art and sculpture, the program also includes an artist in residence program, an auditorium, and research and educational facilities. Located just south of Seoul in a public park close to the Kyonggi provincial museum, the site is well connected to the infrastructure system of the city.
We took a unique approach in designing this museum by experimenting with magnetic forces as a design concept, and drew a direct correlation to some of Nam June's own work in which magnetic forces are used as tool to create his art................more

Shanghai Subway Stations | Shanghai | China | Praud

The stations presented is an example of the repetitive system used to house subway stations and exits across the city of Shanghai in order to create a new typology. The building becomes recognizable as a subway exit by means of its architecture rather than its symbols. The structural system used is also a repetitive system that can be adapted and fabricated depending on the scale of the site. Some sites present the opportunity for larger buildings, others allow only for a subway exit pavilion.......more

Invited Competition Second Place | National Archive Museum | Mexico City | Mexico |

How do you rehabilitate a space originally designed to guard and punish into a center for knowledge and culture? How can you expose, resign and facilitate the access to an enclosed archive? In this project the space previously reserved for the look of only one person, is opened for the gaze of everybody. Through an ambulatory we create a new democratic experience. We preserve the principle of the panopticon from its inverse: restoring force to the social gaze, descending the axis of the ensemble to its radial base, opening way to an integrated cognitive experience; articulating the architectural space from transparency and fluidity. The cultural center is designed as an archive of archives: their walkway becomes a multi-sensorial and haptic experience. The project does not only add new ways for reinterpretation of the acquis to the original program, it also provides resources for its sustainability. Museums, galleries, gardens and collections have been re-conceived as an expanded archive to attract and create new audiences to stimulate their urban environment. That purpose is achieved through three key elements: the architectural design, landscape architecture and museology........more

International Architecural Design Competition | Sheik Zayed National Museum | Abu Dhabi | UAE | Mario bellini Architect

A competition by invitation to design the Museum dedicated to the character of Sheikh Zayed. The project involves telling an architectural story, which, by means of a cognitive path, manifests the heritage of that figure who expressed the values of belonging and common identity shared by the
seven cities of the United Arab Emirates.
The project locates the emotional heart of the Museum, meant to be a common house, in the shelter of the generous shade provided by the majestic roof studded with shards
of blue majolica, which, like a tent in the desert with the wind from the Gulf blowing through it, protects the memory left as a heritage by the Sheikh. Above the roof rise seven towers seventy-seven metres high. These are symbolic interpretations of the theme of the minaret, the lighthouse in Islam (manar).........more

Taipei Performing Arts Center | Taipei | Taiwan | B+U

Urban Concept
The proposal for the Performing Arts Center in Taipei creates a world-class institution which is characterized by both its response to its urban and cultural environment, and by its formal and structural elegance. The project embraces the concept of a Grand Plaza as being a center hub between the Shilin night market and the TRTS Jiantan station. This is achieved by lifting the multiform theater off the ground and creating a covered outdoor linkage space between Cheng De Road and Wen Lin Road. This linkage space is the center access to the grand foyer and all three theaters..............more

Korean Prime Minister's House | Sejong City | S.Korea | Praud

The site has a strong advantage of having natural topography and scenary. It has been developed as stepped farmland and existing buildings are sitting on the site with in a relation to its topography. It is a very typical siting logic in Korea which puts topographical lines into more important criteria than absolute direction.
Like traditional temple in Korea,this siting logic is possible because each building has a small footprint and is able to move its axis freely.
Thus, in this project, we first decided to group required programs into four categories so that we can play around those smaller size masses...........more

Marine Culture and Pop Music Center | Kaohsiung City | Taiwan | STL

Both the music box and the landmark tower have been treated as two large iconic elements, that will frame the new center and provide the entire bay with a renewed and iconic identity. The volumes have been treated similarly to express intent of unison through the use of a double skin structural system. The structure resonates with the industrial, mercantile reality that surrounds the bay while offering a new expression of its engineering as a new symbol for Kaohsiung.The music box performance hall and the outdoor performance area complement one another: supporting the diversity of the Tai-Pop industry, the performance halls will also serve the televised entertainment industry while also welcoming events from classic theater. This state of the art venue has every opportunity to become a crown jewel for East Asian music and entertainment industry, with the capability to adapt to varying audience and event sizes..........more

Architectural Competition | Community Center | Innertkirchen | Gramazio Kohler

The new Innertkirchen community center presents itself as an incisive, crystalline volume that offers a contemporary interpretation on wooden shingle cladding. Thanks to its crystalline form, it is both apparent and well integrated into the landscape and existing place, marking the center of the town.

The two-story building is spatially organized around a central circulation core. The principal rooms, the info center and its foyer, the grocery store, and the multimedia room on the first floor, occupy the three corners of the building. The sloping roof of the crystalline form is spatially activated by precisely positioned sky lights that frame views of the three surrounding mountain peaks.......more

Single Family House | An imaginary house for Silence | Dellekamp Arquitectos

This project reflects an enduring interest in creating a space that is formed by a close relationship with nature, where one can live intimately in the natural world. The house emerges from the essence of the forest, where towering trees surround and protect the body, creating a magical environment of dappled light in the quiet solitude of nature. Visual axes penetrate the space, establishing direct contact with the exterior through openings in the volumes. The interchange between closed and open creates uninterrupted views of the pristine surroundings. The horizontal organization of the volumes makes it possible to form a concentrated space that creates a range of relationships to the outside by using shadow, shelter and varying heights. The program of the house is marked by the intimate spaces of the bedrooms, which are elevated, and an open living space with big openings.
The construction materials are also chosen in terms of simplicity  while expressing qualities of purity and utility. Scroll at bottom of page from left to right.......more

International Architecture Competition | Regium Waterfront | Reggio Calabria | Italy | Mario Bellini Architect

A great new “urban beach” for the city of Reggio Calabria which, like a living Hydra with two heads, will be anchored at either end by two twin buildings, two glittering bodies charged with energy, practically on the verge of taking flight.
The entire complex has been entrusted with the task of promoting new opportunities for citizens to meet and socialize and to revitalize the indispensable relationship of the city with its sea. A relationship and opportunities long denied by the unfortunate factory and railway buildings constructed in the seventies.
Two buildings separated by space and their different uses yet connected by the same dynamic formal imprinting which exalts their common public function, broadens and strengthens the symbolic charge in a single memorable land-mark from end to end of the reborn Falcomatà seafront, from the Town Hall to the Harbour. A strategic position the centrality of which will be exalted by the twin buildings making it the avant garde seafront of the Reggio Calabria of the future.........more

ASY Mix | Istanbul | Turkey | Emre Arolat

There are some buildings, which have important places in the memory of the cities they are located in. Ali Sami Yen Stadium took place over in Mecidiyeköy which is one of the busiest districts of Istanbul for a period of half a century with all its magnitude. The stadium perceived as a large mass when it is compared to its environment although the surrounding building pattern continuously developed and increased its intensity............more

Foreign Trade Complex Convention Center | Istanbul |Turkey | Emre Arolat Architects

First phase of Technopark Complex buildings designed by EAA and located in Yenibosna where two main freeway of Istanbul are intersected, following the limited competition opened in 1997 for the whole campus, completed and opened for use in August 2000. In this 10 years time the environment where the building is placed, has witnessed serious transformation by the advantage of physical distance of Atatürk Airport and transportation facilities. Therefore Turkish Exporters Assembly has made some changes on the campus program that was determined before. So in the new project that will be composed, it is predicted to increase the possibility of exhibition and congress, to form new recreation who will serve the other complexes, eating – drinking places, enrich accommodation and office units existing in the program before, for all that instead of shopping center which is one of the important components form smaller and complementary commercial units. .........more

Hydrogenase | Algae Farm To Recycle CO2 For Biohydrogen Airship | Shanghai | Vincent Callebaut

Between engineering and biology, Hydrogenase is one of the first projects of bio-mimicry which draws its inspiration from the beauty and the shapes of the nature, but also and especially from the qualities of its materials and its self-manufacturing processes. The new green revolution is really in progress and enables us to design the air mobility of the foil after shock, 100% self-sufficient in energy and zero carbon emission! This inhabitated vertical aircraft inaugures a clean and ethic mobility to meet the needs of the population en distress touched by the natural and sanitary catastrophes, and all that without any runway! Its architecture is subversive and fundamentally critic towards the ways of living of our contemporary society that we have to reinvent totally! Let’s take off thanks to biofuels and let’s propel to the eco-responsible transport of the future!.......more

Auditorium and Performing Arts Center | Las Torres De Cotillas | Spain | STL

The building’s structure is conceived entirely of concrete. The exterior perimeter walls are designed as a double layer of reinforced concrete. Gravity loads originated by the public space in the upper level are distributed through a series of radial concrete beams forming the horizontal support assembly. Additionally a series of concentric circular concrete elements form the seating platforms for the upper public space. The interstitial space created between them provide an opportunity for the creation of a continuous clerestory ring that fill light the large ground floor public spaces............more