Monte Elbruz Building by Garduño Arquitectos, Mexico City 2008. Photos: Sófocles Hernández, Paul Czitrom. Garduño Arquitectos.

Mexico-based Garduño Arquitectos have designed a 24-unit housing development project: the Monte Elbruz building of 6 floors (local regulation) on a small site located in Polanco, Mexico City. The linear courtyard is introduced in between two linear apartment blocks.

The lot was located in a difficult area, originally classified as high-density and already fully developed, with adjoining buildings 14 to 30 storeys high. Designing a linear façade would have led to 60% of the apartments having an interior view. Taking these variables into account, Garduño Arquitectos opted for designing two side blocks within a 60 cm distance of the borders, thus generating a central courtyard to play the role of green area, access and lighting center, but that would also generate facades proportioned in terms of the project’s scale.

All apartments are two-leveled.

The first eight units are provided with a private garden and the last eight with a roof garden. In addition, all apartments are two-leveled. The street access becomes a stroll past a reflecting pool and gardens, employing 90% of the available space as green area. The project includes a rain water recycling system for irrigation and car washing. The front façade boasts two slim vertical concrete sand-colored beams separated by the volume containing the home. These pieces were cast with a double concrete face and marble grain and were later finished with a marteline, bringing out a tree that begins with the trunk at the level of the first beam and continues the trace in the second one.

Transversal Section. Exterior finish: Glass, Aluminium, Concrete.

One of the main goals of this proposal is to generate the illusion of slimmer volumes, avoid noise and incorporate and proportion the project with its environment in a positive fashion. The inner façade was designed as a city within a city, striving to achieve the residents’ movement and interaction by means of exposed circulations and aluminum panels containing glass frames and tilting vents. At the back of the building a vertical opening in the elevator cube was designed, covering it with an image of the sky that is part of a story in which a group of children invent a flying umbrella.

to Garduño Arquitectos

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Social Housing by MVRDV and Blanca Lleó. Photo: Ricardo Espinosa

In Madrid-Sanchinarro the first residents received the keys to their apartments in the just completed Celosia building. Jacob van Rijs of MVRDV and Blanca Lleó have completed the social housing block near the Mirador Building, which is an earlier collaboration. The perforated block of Celosia, commissioned by public housing corporation EMVS, comprises 146 apartments, communal outside areas throughout the building, and parking with a commercial program in the plinth all across a total floor area of 21,550 sq m.

The given volume of the city block was divided into 30 small blocks of apartments. These blocks are positioned in a checkerboard pattern next to and on top of each other, leaving wide openings for communal patios throughout the building with views to the city and mountains. 146 one, two and three-bedroom apartments are all accessed via these communal spaces. Most apartments offer additional private outdoor space in the shape of a loggia right behind the front door. The façade is made of coated concrete which was from the ground floor up constructed in a complete mould system, an efficient and clean way to cast concrete, keeping the construction cost to a minimum. The polyurethane coating allows the façade to shimmer and reflect depending on the light conditions.

A system of power efficient boilers is used in the building; solar panels on the roof heat water reducing energy consumption further.

seen @ worldarchitecturenews

HL23 by NMDA. Renderings by Hayes Davidson

Developed by Alf Naman and currently in construction, HL23 is a 14 floor condominium tower that responds to a unique and challenging site directly adjacent to the High Line at 23rd street in New York’s West Chelsea Arts district. Partially impacted by a spur from the elevated tracks that make up the High Line superstructure, the site is 40′ x 99′ at the ground floor.

NMDA's work with clients is based on a mutual need to make design a key element in solving problems and in projecting an image.

The site and the developer demanded a specific response, yielding a project that is a natural merger between found and given parameters and architectural ambition. For the client, the question was how to expand the possible built floor area of a restricted zoning envelope. For the site, a supple geometry must be found to allow a larger building to stand in very close proximity to the elevated park of the High Line. Together, the demands produced a building with one unit per floor and three distinct yet coherent facades, a rarity in Manhattan’s block structure.

Renderings by Hayes Davidson, London / copyright 2008

With a custom non-spandrel curtainwall on the south and north facades, and a 3D stainless steel panel facade on the east facing the High Line, the project’s geometry is driven by challenges to the zoning envelope on the site and by NMDA’s interest in achieving complexity through simple tectonic operations.

to NDMA

The new project on the roof of the Palais de Tokyo, Paris

Nomiya restaurant is replacing the Hotel Everland on the roof of the Palais de Tokyo for one year. Designed by the artist Laurent Grasso, the glass cube is part of the ‘Art Home’ culinary project by Electrolux and the Palais de Tokyo.

Nomiya

Nomiya owes its name to the Japanese micro restaurants. In the kitchen star chef Gilles Stassart, former manager of the Transversal au Mac/Val, demonstrates his skills. Nomiya was created in cooperation with the architect Pascal Grasso. The programme offers tours and cooking ateliers, workshops and breakfast and dinners with breathtaking views of France’s capital city.

View over Paris from the restaurant

continue article @ Architonic

Passive Solar Design House in Otake, Japan, by Suppose Design Office

The Otake house is located in the West of Hiroshima prefecture, on a high plateau that neighbors the Kamei Park of the Kamei Castle Ruins. To the South is an industrial region and a beautiful mountain range, and to the North a remarkable view of the Seto Inland Sea and Miyajima. Japanese architects from Suppose Design Office created a design fitting to these two contrasting and beautiful scenes. Structurally they divided the area between load bearing zones and free zones to make a place that could have two personalities at once.

Suppose Design Office created a design fitting to two contrasting and beautiful scenes.

The North side is open even while closed, with the bedrooms, kitchen, dining area, and wide apertures to view the distant scenery, which at the same time are functional as load bearing parts of the structure. Suppose Design Office wanted the South side to be as close as possible to being outside, eliminated some structural elements and designed a living area and terrace with a 6 meter eave, treating the terrace and living area as equal to create a free space with no division between inside and out. By covering the entire building with water proof material used in ship construction the unique and detailed building doesn’t require sealants or tiling. Furthermore, because the glossy, water proof material wraps around the building inside and out uninterrupted, a nature-like space is created where you can take in the outside scenery and the building and surroundings seem to blend together.

Rethinking standard practices in structure, utility, form, materials, interiors, and exteriors.

Suppose Design Office mentiones: “By rethinking standard practices and personal opinions about structure, utility, form, materials, interiors, and exteriors, we think we can find new possibilities for materials, the relationship of form and space, and the building and its surroundings, in a planning environment that opens up new wonders not found in traditional buildings. By combining traditional values and new, and breaking down not just the border between inside and out but between the values themselves, we hope to create the buildings of the future.”

to Suppose Design Office

Pyramide in Saijo, Hiroshima by Suppose Design Office

In the nine year existence of Japanese Suppose Design Office they have built more than 50 works of architecture, almost all single-family homes. In Saijo, a town known for it sake, a jet black pyramid unexpectedly stands out; when first seen it seems as if it’s a house from the future. On the contrast, it’s actually inspired by the earliest house in Japanese architecture; the pit dwelling or the “tateana jukyo”. Constructed during the Yayoi era (200 B.C. – 250 A.D.), pit dwellings were built by digging a circular pit (or rectangular one with rounded edges) fifty or sixty centimeters deep and five to seven meters in diameter, then covering it with a steep thatched roof.

Inspired by the earliest house in Japanese architecture

According to Makoto Tanijiri, chief architect of Suppose Design Office, the clients, a young couple and their three children wanted a unique house, in which the open public part would preserve privacy. The site which was formerly an open field was excavated and the house was sunk a meter into the ground. The soil from the excavations was used to create a protective barrier around the perimeter of the site, and acted as the organic base of the house. The barrier formed is both visual and physical and was planted to create a lush landscape.

The soil from the excavations was used to create a protective barrier around the perimeter of the site

to Suppose Design Office

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Dancing Living House by Junichi Sampei

Japanese architect Junichi Sampei of A.L.X. (Architect Label Xain) came up with a new house that can combine the needs of a home with those of a dancing studio.

Yokohama, Japan

Located in Yokohama and designed as a single-family residence combined with a dance studio, this three-story reinforced concrete building is private and open to the sky, and best of all it has plenty of parking, which comes at a premium in Japan. The concrete building has a big glass corner that invites sunlight in and features white styled futuristic exterior to enhance the dynamic mood and to bring in fresh energies all day long.

The concrete building has a big glass corner that invites sunlight in.

Construction Area: 634 square feet

^{Total Floor Area: 1,224 square feet/ 1st Fl – 185 sf., 2nd Fl – 609 sf., 3rd Fl – 430 sf.}

to Junichi Sampei / A.L.X.

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Maserati Museum by Future Systems, Jan Kaplický 2009

Jan Kaplický, who died earlier this year, was the Czech architect responsible for some of the most remarkable buildings that Britain has ever seen. Lord’s cricket ground holds the press box he built with his former partner, Amanda Levete – it was their first major project and won the Stirling Prize.

Maserati Automotive Museum, Modena, Italy

Kaplický also designed the Selfridges department store in Birmingham, 2003 and yet even more remarkable are the buildings that Kaplický designed, which the world will never see – to say nothing of his stream of ideas for solar powered vehicles, electric cars, jewellery, bikinis and double-decker buses.

Media Center at Lord's

Now the Design Museum London pays tribute to this astonishing architect showing a wide range of his architectural archetypes of buildings never to be established.

read article @ Architonic

A mixed-use complex of eight linked towers in Beijing, China. Photos: Steven Holl Architects

The 220,000 square-meter Linked Hybrid complex in Beijing, aims to counter the current urban developments in China by creating a twenty-first century porous urban space, inviting and open to the public from every side. A filmic urban experience of space; around, over and through multifaceted spatial layers, as well as the many passages through the project, make the Linked Hybrid an “open city within a city”. The project promotes interactive relations and encourages encounters in the public spaces that vary from commercial, residential, and educational to recreational; a three-dimensional public urban space.

A series of multi-functional “skybridges” connect the eight residential towers and the hotel tower.

The ground level offers a number of open passages for all people (residents and visitors) to walk through. These passages include “micro-urbanisms” of small scale shops which also activate the urban space surrounding the large central reflecting pond. On the intermediate level of the lower buildings, public roof gardens offer tranquil green spaces, and at the top of the eight residential towers private roof gardens are connected to the penthouses. All public functions on the ground level, – including a restaurant, hotel, Montessori school, kindergarten, and cinema – have connections with the green spaces surrounding and penetrating the project.

The project was named Best Tall Building 2009 in the Asia and Australia category by the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat

Elevators displace like a “jump cut” to another series of passages on higher levels. From the 18th floor a multi-functional series of skybridges with a swimming pool, a fitness room, a café, a gallery, etcetera connects the eight residential towers and the hotel tower, and offers views over the unfolding city.

continue article @ Architonic

In Progress: Conrad Hotel by MAD

The CBD of Beijing was built according to the west standard set up around the industrial revolution of the early 20th century, when high-rise building was the symbol of the capitalism. But far from the ambition of more than one hundred year ago, when people tried to challenge themselves with modern technology and future dreams, the contemporary CBD buildings are the concrete machines, copy of the copy in mass production. They are meaningless, crowded and soulless.

façade structure

Situated among those buildings, Conrad hotel is the outcome of the slow-design. The façade element, which looks like the nervous tissue, is planted into a simple cubic. It is the toxin that destroys and transforms the surface into an organic envelop. The whole building is turned into a melting box, a starting point for the urban grid to change from the solid efficiency into the liquid idea. The standard product of the production line is therefore replaced by the digital craft of difference.

works representing the worship of nature

During the architecture evolution, people of different historical time tried to create organic buildings by their hand-made crafts. Their works are the representation of the worship of nature, the courage to break the heaviness of building and the passion of life. It is the spirit of sublime that became the culture icon of the era and the city. Conrad hotel is the design that appreciates the slowness in the fast urban development in China. The product of architecture is like the growing process of urban dwellers in the city, it is the evolution of energy and identity. The new urban efficiency is the difference precisely controlled and produced by the high-tech modern industry, and it creates the new possibility for people living in the city to discover their own new experience.

seen @ Archdaily