Courtesy of MIZIEN

Architects: MIZIEN
Location: Barcelona, Spain
Client: Gaes S.A.
Completion Date: 2011
Area: 6,500 sqm
Cost: 16,000,000 €
Photographs: Courtesy of MIZIEN

Courtesy of MIZIEN

Poblenou, a former industrial district of Barcelona, has been transformed in the 22 @ technology district during the last decade: a new model of compact city, where innovative companies co-exist with research, training and tech transfer centers, as well as housing, facilities, green areas and industrial heritage. Gaes, a hearing aid company in the 22 @, represents the case of an old Catalan industry in Poblenou that has become during the same period a multinational corporation with an industrial integrated model of research, clean production and marketing.

Courtesy of MIZIEN

A hearing aid device is very sophisticated product. Very different from old trumpets, it incorporates a customized chip adapted to each user. Production use microscopes in a white laboratory-like spaces and generates no waste: the type of industry that could be perfectly integrated into the city. The building conceptually and formally responds to these conditions of high sophistication, precision and cutting edge technology integrated into the architecture in terms of sustainability and energy efficiency. The facade is a living skin of mobile sunscreen glass louvers domotically controlled by a central system associated to weather. It is analogous to a sunglasses solar clip that dynamically protects from sun.

1st floor plan

The location of voids is one of the main strategies of the interior layout. The first one is a triple height lobby at the main entrance. A second larger void, the atrium, connects all floors. It collects light from the deck through two large skylights and leads it to the ground floor with slight reflections in the glass with different degrees of transparency and translucency. The skylights form in the top floor two suspended courtyards creating a play of reflections and transparencies between the exterior and interior.

© Inês d’Orey

The public space project by Domitianus Arquitectura of this unique urban neighbourhood comes at a time of re-foundation of the modern process, reflecting in its urban structure the main issues from the time it was done. In this housing complex, their design overcomes the idea of urban center, and instead, long sets of “bands” are adapting along the road structure, promoting advances and setbacks of buildings or misalignments in the implementation of several blocks, situations diversity, which take on greater meaning when incorporated into the structure of green frame. More images and architects’ description after the break.

© Inês d’Orey

The neighbourhood of Lagarteiro located in the parish of Campanhã in the most eastern city of Porto, borders the municipality of Gondomar. This housing complex, where about 1,300 people reside, consists of 13 blocks with 446 housing units, and its construction carried out between 1973 and 1977. The neighbourhood of Lagarteiro characterized by buildings in band, implanted around an unlevel topography, creates in their morphology, diverse urban situations.

© Inês d’Orey

The urban context of Lagarteiro’s neighbourhood presented before the intervention the typical and classic signs of disqualification of environmental and urban peripheral areas of resettlement. The term “disadvantaged areas” is associated with these areas in urban or peri-urban case, was framed in a specific Portuguese policy, called Initiative Critical Neighbourhoods. The promoter’s intervention of the neighbourhood of Lagarteiro is the Office of Public Works of the Municipality of Oporto, which structured, under public policy, an integrated program of urban renewal, dealing with the social and economic situation of the district.

© Inês d’Orey

There were scheduled 3 major axes of intervention: a first axle, predominantly material, called Urban and Environmental Rehabilitation District, a second axle, clearly immaterial, called Promotion of Active Citizenship, and last axle of an operation and management of the program, called Being Well Network. The tangible and intangible components are inextricably linked, being the own model of control established in order to contribute to the integration processes occur naturally. To reinforce the intervention plan were taken two key steps, including the establishment within the neighbourhood of a support office to the residents, and the development of public and private partnerships aimed at active participation of different stakeholders in the establishment of a strategic development to that periphery fabric of the urban Oporto city. The total value of the intervention was estimated at €€ 2,500,000.00, covering the qualification of public space through a profound restructuring of the road network, the landscaping of open spaces in the neighbourhood and the modernization of the networks of existing infrastructure.

© Inês d’Orey

The whole project represents an intervention of about 7.00 ha, whose guiding principles were: a) Introduction of crossings in the North / South and East / West, in order to promote new mobility flows. For this opened up new links between the neighbourhood and surroundings, and set up a new street in central urban core through rigorous design and precise matching of the topography; b) Ensure footpaths on access to disabled people, enabling greater social inclusion at the level of public space; c)General review of Infrastructure of the neighbourhood, particularly in terms of networks of water, sanitation, security, telecommunications and special importance, public lighting, to avoid areas that are too obscure; d)Definition of a vegetation plan composed of a diversity of tree and shrub types, taking into account the effectiveness and ease of maintenance; e)Establishment of a reduced range of materials, based essentially on granite cubes, yellowish in footpaths and gray in roads. Gaining the support walls was performed using a specially prepared formwork for this purpose, the final aspect is defined by high-reliefs of triangular section, which together produce a kinetic effect when exposed to light.

© Inês d’Orey

So far the results of the intervention are positive and there were no difficulties in implementing the general objectives of the intervention. The success of the intervention assignment has to do with previous desire, expressed by residents, by a rehabilitation intervention of public space and buildings of Lagarteiro’s neighbourhood and also the social work able to mobilize residents to the proposed changes. Despite having been completed the basic objectives by opening the quarter Lagarteiro to its surroundings, there are some adapting difficulties to a few residents to the new paradigm introduced. Although residual, the points where resistance can be observed are the improper parking on footpaths in order to have the car next to the door, and the misappropriation of public space with poor facilities in an attempt to extend the private area at the expense of public good.

site plan

The design, the materials and constructive solutions enable a dilution of the impact of acts of vandalism that may occur; being the best example of this intention the strong expressive identity of the concrete walls, where there is the expectation that their uneven surface can support all sorts of paintings or misappropriation.

Architects: Domitianus Arquitectura
Location: Oporto, Portugal
Promoter: Office of Public Works of the Municipality of Oporto
Lead Architect: Paulo Tormenta Pinto
Team: Rosa Maria Bastos; Collaborators: Ivone Gonçalves and Pedro Baptista Coelho
Landscape Architecture: João Nunes – Proap, lda
Structure: Miguel Villar – Betar, lda
Water and Sewage: Andreia Cardoso – Betar, lda
Electricity: Luís Gonçalves- Joule, lda
Date: 2008-2011

© Gordon Mackenzie- Kennedy

Architects: Rethink Studio
Location: Pereybere, Mauritius
Client: Private
Project Team: Nitish Chummun, Michael Leclezio, Verity Nesbitt, Yannick Goldsmith
Engineers: Dawn Engineering Ltd.
Project Year: 2011
Project Area: House 01 aprox. 250 sqm, House 02 aprox. 200 sqm
Photographs: Gordon Mackenzie – Kennedy

© Gordon Mackenzie- Kennedy

Located at the end of the quiet beach of Merville Bay in the north of the island just outside the village of Grand Baie, the site is endowed with filtered views of the tropical lagoon beyond the lush vegetation.

© Gordon Mackenzie- Kennedy

The Client wanted to make alterations and additions to an existing old stone stables and demolish the existing concrete house adjacent to form two separate occupancies, one to live and the other as a rental property.

© Gordon Mackenzie- Kennedy

The concept for the project took on the volumes from the existing typography of the detached villas in the vicinity and extrapolated these forms as shells. A strong dialogue between the residences is generated through the use of similar façade panel materials; the “recycled” house in the form of recuperated demolition timbers of various sizes from previous buildings and the “new” from reconstituted timbers in a more uniform sustainable way.

house 01 1st floor plan

The open plan layouts and the external “skin” of this cladding to the structures meant the buildings perform well in the hot climate while the large openings allow for good cross-ventilation in the main spaces.

© FG+SG

Architects: Pinearq - Albert de Pineda Àlvarez
Location: Granollers, Barcelona, Spain
Collaborators: Juan Manuel Garcia, Gerardo Solera, Pedro Pombinho
Area: 19,500 sqm
Photographs: FG+SG – Fernando Guerra, Sergio Guerra

© FG+SG

The intervention is the construction of the new building of outpatients for the Asilo Hospital of Granollers and integration with the existing cataloged historical building. The historical existing hospital, designed as wards, is cataloged as a historical building. It was the most outstanding building of the modernist period, designed by Josep Maria Miró i Guibernau.

The extention has been projected starting with a study of the existing building, trying to solve the bad connection that exists between both existing wards and moreover expanding the area. The building is defined by a rectangular projection of (119,14×14,80) meters horizontally delimited by the block of surgery emergencies and vertically by the chapel and the old home that is further up. Because of the height it’s defined by two basements, a ground floor and 3 other floors.

© FG+SG

The different terrain levels adapt homogeneously along this new building, making the ground floor and first floors as a semi basement and leaving this way a new access on the second floor through the back.The remaining spaces produced by the new building and the existing one allow to create interior patios that ventilate and light all the rooms that surround it. The current general access is enhanced with a double height hall with a large window that looks onto the region, leaving the existing building unchanged.

© FG+SG

Also, 2 parallel blocks have been coupled, of 2 story height- perpendicular to the main block, completing the need of space of the outpatient area. The Project also contemplates the street, that gives access to the first and second floor of the new outpatients building. The reformation of the morgue service, sterilization, laboratories, pharmacy, teaching simtron, library, administrative archives and general storage.

1st floor plan

The technical circulations have always tried to be differentiated to the public ones. The vertical communications (stairs and lifts) have been strategically located wanting to maximize the function with the existing pieces. Also, the façade of the new building has been designed to be as neutral and homogeneous as possible to enhance the historical value of the existing building with the introduction of movable sliding screens.

Courtesy of Swanke Hayden Connell

International architectural practice Swanke Hayden Connell has won the international competition commissioned by Tahincioglu Gayrimenkul (Tahincioglu Real Estate) for the Palladium Tower in Istanbul, Turkey. The 49,500 sq meter tower will be situated on a 1.7 hectare site. The project is due for completion in 2014.

More after the break.

Courtesy of Swanke Hayden Connell

The office building was designed with office spaces arranged around a central core with floor plates between 900 and 1100 sq meters. Each level includes a naturally ventilated landscaped atria. A two-storey reception lobby is situated off a landscaped drop off area and is connected to meeting rooms, fitness, sauna, spa and cafeteria areas. Parking is provided below ground.

The facade maximizes daylight, while insulating against heat gain. Horizontally oriented colored glass gives an uninterrupted panoramic views of the Bosphorous Sea. Nick Birchall, head of Swanke Hayden Connel says, “The tower has been split by the landscaped atria zones into a composition of elegant stacked forms, working with orthogonal geometry to ensure floor plate efficiency and overall building economy. Façade colour adds interest and expression, whilst external illumination emphasises the building’s composition at night.”

© Jorge Crooke Carballal

Architects: Estudio Gonzalo Moure – Gonzalo Moure Lorenzo
Location: Escuelas Pías de San Antón, Madrid, Spain
Design Team: Myriam Pascual Luján, Pedro Barranco Vara, Jose María Cristobal González, Marcos S. Gutiérrez, Fernando Ruiz Martínez, Enrique Carreras Rufín, David Torres Barrón, Pablo Matilla Pérez, David Manso Pulido, Verónica San José González
Structure Consultant: Juan Carlos Salvá
Installation Consultant: Ignacio Menéndez-Azcárraga, Integral Ingeniería
Photographs: Jorge Crooke Carballal

© Jorge Crooke Carballal

On February 15 2005, an agreement was signed between the City of Madrid and the Colegio Oficial de Arquitectos de Madrid (COAM) to coordinate a set of actions towards the restoration of the complex of Escuelas Pías de San Antón, that had suffered a fire few years before. It included an architectural competition and the subsequent development of the winning project.

The main goal of such agreement was to impulse the restoration and insertion of a mixed-use program of social interest, one that would revitalize Escuelas Pias’ urban context. Such program included the new headquarters for COAM and the COAM Cultural Foundation, a nursery, a day care and senior center, sport facilities and a music school. Extensive underground parking space was also to be built, covering both the needs of the new buildings and nearby residents.

© Jorge Crooke Carballal

All of this should be done without interfering with the religious services that take place in the church of San Antón, included in the complex, and which is object of a restoration as well. As an indispensable condition, a public-access, green open area is set as core of the complex. The program is regarded as an opportunity to consolidate a very diverse array of activities and interests in a single architectonic response.

The total built area for Escuelas Pías de San Antón is 5878 sqm, of which 628 belong to the baroque church of San Antón, a declared “Building of Cultural Interest” by architect Pedro Ribera that is completely embedded within the complex an constitutes the only part that didn’t suffer the progressive ruination that affected the rest of the lot.

© Jorge Crooke Carballal

The value that the project seeks is to create a serene -yet full of lively contentment- atmosphere. New ledge continuity in the preserved facades is also proposed, as the complex never had it, thanks to a loggia-balcony that dematerializes during the day and transforms into a vibrant lantern at night, hovering over the city,…above a garden. A place of quietude, of serenity, that embraces life,…a place for reunion. A surprise, an “accent” to the city.

elevation

A secluded space with an open character. A place where trees are discovered through transparency at street level. A garden in this dense part of the city…an open space that allows to breathe, where life unwinds naturally. Architectural atmospheres with a whisper-like quality to them; honest and clear construction; a doric attitude, an approximation to essence where matter reveals its natural values…the understanding that, “in architecture, honesty is an intellectual position“.

plan 01

It is predominantly built with just concrete, steel, glass and golden granite. “The shade of a tree” is here regarded as a space of unparalleled value. The true transformation of an urban space is produced both through its buildings as well as its trees. If we are able to pass on a garden with trees in this part of the city as inheritance to our children, we will have built valuable urban heritage.

© Elias Chandelis

Architects: React Architects – Yiorgos Spiridonos, Natasha Deliyianni
Location: Paros Cyclades, Greece
Project Manager: Yiorgos Spiridonos, Architect
Civil Engineer: MFP consulting engineers
Mechanical Study: Gregoriades Dimitris, Mechanical Engineer
Area: 450 sqm
Plot Area: 9,000 sqm
Completion: 2010
Photographs: Elias Chandelis

© Elias Chandelis

Purpose of the study is to design two summer homes with guest houses, overlooking the sea and neighboring island of Antiparos. The residences located on the highest point of the lot. The courtyards constitute the conjunctive element of residences. Wide stairs lead to landings in the large viewing “plateaus”, traversing indoors and outdoors spaces. Planting is enhanced on roofs and intermediate yards.

© Elias Chandelis

In the north and south sides of houses openings only appear in courtyards. The east side is dominated by planting with local vegetation and the sight of the transverse walls.

© Elias Chandelis

The basic principles of the whole design procedure are:
The use of the archetypal form of the wall element familiar in Cycladic landscape, sometimes used as a limit and sometimes as an element of habitation. Adaptation to the environment and dissolution of boundaries between lived and natural spaces. Integration of the interior of the building with the courtyards, the accesses and the stairs.

© Elias Chandelis

The split of bigger volumes with small movements to create courtyards sheltered from the strong northerly winds. In the courtyards mulberries are planted to provide shade. Back yards exist through the whole project and through the large openings viewing to the sea is possible. To avoid the design of a single plane facade. Elongated openings piercing the transverse walls to set the sights and to create spaces with visual continuity.

plan-01

The creation of a residential complex which leaves intact the natural landscape and adapts to the slope of the plot, so that the east side is almost buried. The use of intense Cycladic light. Shades of blue and intense shadows dominate the views created while moving trough walls, spaces and landscape. The building is transformed into a viewing machine.

© Ben Hosking

Architects: Bloxas - Black Line One X Architecture Studio
Location: Melbourne, Australia
Completion: 2012
Client: Grange Road Kindergarten Association and Bayside City Council
Photographs: Ben Hosking

© Ben Hosking

Grange Road Kindergarten
This project was part of the Victoria state government’s 2010-11 early childhood development initiative, and was completed in March 2012. The approach to learning at the Grange Road Kindergarten is one of discovery through play. The educational environment utilizes internal and external spaces, so the design created unrestricted connection between the playground and the classroom. This sentiment continues throughout the new design enabling physical and visual connection to the external spaces.

© Ben Hosking

The design encompasses transitional decking and ramp, a more pronounced entry and lobby, an increase in square meterage through the re-working of an existing classroom, and utilization of interstitial spaces. On approach to the kindergarten children are invited and excited by the gradient of vibrant colours upon the low-height pailingfence which hovers over the blue gum timber ramp. Upon arriving at the kinder each day the design attempts to incite happiness and inspiration to the child’s day.

© Ben Hosking

These elements, incorporating tiered timber seating at the site’s approach, now provides a fun, light filled, transitional space, wide enough for times of heavy pedestrian traffic and informal conversations, along with the storage of bicycles and prams. Entry into the new light filled room gives direct views into the playground and the chance to look back towards the site’s access from Grange Road.

© Ben Hosking

The new front classroom is flooded with northern and eastern light. The northern elevation contains a pop-out plywood window seat offering a place for the children to sit in the morning and afternoon sun. The new ceiling line is raked, increasing both the sight connection with the surrounding tree tops, and enabling eastern light which contributes to the depth of space.

plan

The external canopy colour mimics the sun-dappled leaves, enhancing the connection with the natural environment, whilst offering shelter above theatrette style timber seating. These alterations and additions enhance the values and atmosphere the kinder community has worked to create. Interconnecting and transitional spaces remove boundaries, and create a sense of unity throughout the project and building’s entirety.

In celebration of LEG0’s 80th birthday, Danish Crown Prince Frederik unveiled the world’s largest LEGO tower in South Korea last week. Nearly 4,000 children stacked 50,000 bricks in five days to help build the 105-foot-tall tower in front of Seoul’s Olympic Stadium. The structure surpassed the previous records set last year in France at 103-feet and in Brazil at 102-feet. As reported by The Daily Mail, the record has been broken more than 30 times since the first LEGO tower was constructed in London in 1988 at a height of less than 50-feet.

Reference: The Huffington Post, The Daily Mail

© Mariela Apollonio

Architects: Corell Monfort Palacios Arquitectos – Vicente Corell Farinós, Joaquín Monfort, Salvador, José Vicente Palacio Espasa
Location: Valencia, Spain
Partnership in project and construction management: Mariano Conesa Tejada Architect
Engineering: VALNU, servicios de ingeniería
Site manager: CG técnica, José Lozano Gin
Developer / owner: Universidad Politécnica de Valencia
Manufacturer: ECSA-VIALOBRA UTE
Completion: April 2010
Total Area: 17,156.39 sqm
Photograhps: Mariela Apollonio

© Mariela Apollonio

The building, located within the grounds of the “Campus de Vera” of the UPV with its main facade faceing towards the boulevard “Avenida de los Naranjos” , groupes in a single volume the expansion of the ETSIT, the Department of Languages ??and Language Center of the UPV.

© Mariela Apollonio

Due to the extensive program that was demanded, the occupation of the total facade fronts forced. The building is divided in two parallel blocks of classrooms and offices linked to the north and south facades, and a central space occupied by circulations, openings and terraced patios which facilitates the entrance of light and generate diagonal views.

© Mariela Apollonio

A strict modulation, based on the dimensions of the basic cell type that defines the office and orders the whole structure of the building, regulating also the composition and construction of facades.

© Mariela Apollonio

Their prismatic shape is outlined by a continuous surface of concrete that frames the the facades that face north-south orientations and emphasizes the separation between the two different institutions in the building with a vertical oppening in the facade. A second layer of concrete generates the open space at ground floor that provides access to both centers and connects the square with the internal net of the University Campus.

© Mariela Apollonio

The solution of the north and south facades, meets the requirements imposed by its antagonistic orientations and the willingness to give a unified and clear image. While the north is solved by a continuous glass wall, divided by metal maintenance walkways, the south, also glass facade, is protected by special pieces of precast concrete that act as solar and climatic filter and prevent the vision of the technical utillities that occupy the upper floor.

elevation 01

The white concrete, material that characterizes and gives unity to the image of the building, is used in two different ways: executed in situ with wooden shuttering on the walls and slabs that make up the wrapping surface, and precast for the difereent concrete pieces that build up the south facade.

Courtesy of Stantec

Stantec’s design for the DjavafMowafaghian Centre for Brain Health at UBC, in Vancouver, British Columbia in Canada is envisioned as a translational research facility defined by present and future medical practices that collaborate under research and patient care.  To achieve this, designers considered the intersections within the spatial dynamics of the facility to coordinate interactions between researchers and clinicians. The facility is 134,500 square feet and includes exam / consultation rooms, lab benches, a full conference centre, a brain tissue and DNA bank of samples collected from consenting patients, and patient and animal MRI capabilities.

More after the break.

Courtesy of Stantec

The design of the medical facility was inspired by brain synapses; the vast number of connections that the brain makes through firing electrical impulses allows information to travel and coordinate between all the parts of the brain.  The efficiency of these systems is determined by the quality, frequency and intensity of these connections.  Thus, the facility must operate under the same parameters, creating positive connections between patients, clinicians and researchers.

Courtesy of Stantec

Stantec’s approach was defined by the following principles:

• Patient-care centered:  The patient is the top priority within the facility and has control over the type of care he or she receives.
• Integration: The research of the facility is interdisciplinary and integrated in neurological, psychiatric and related rehabilitation clinical services to meet the needs of the patient population.
• Flexibility: Create and share flexible resources and adaptable spaces to enhance research partnerships, effectiveness, patient access and treatment leading to new therapies and improved health outcomes.
• Collaboration: Create a building where the environment and the design fosters and enhances interdisciplinary associations, intellectual teamwork, knowledge transfer and the generation of best practices.
• Sustainability: Build a state-of-the-art LEED® Gold Certified building that is environmentally safe, sustainable and designed to provide best practices in energy conservation management while contributing to the health of patients, staff, and the public realm at UBC.

Courtesy of Stantec

The clinical layout is crucial to the facility for patient care because brain health patients span a diverse set of needs.  The design provides many spaces for rest, as well as short corridors and simple circulation paths that minimize mental and physical stress posed by decision-making and physical exertion. Access to sunlight and garden spaces gives patients alternative moments of respite.

Section 02; Courtesy of Stantec

The orientation and site development of the facility is designed to enhance the cohesion of the UBC campus.  The facility is adjacent to the Koerner Pavilion and unifies the Health sciences precinct with a skyway that connects the Center for Brain Health with the Brain Research Centre.  The cohesion of campus will help promote future development of buildings and facilitate research and advancements in the field. The flexibility of the facility promotes collaboration between the various systems of the Brain Health Center.  Vertical connectivity between various departments and integrated structural grids creates a geometry for the facility that allows alignment of research centers and clinics.

Courtesy of Stantec

The design also takes care to address sustainability measures such as:

• Developing a landscape that targets stormwater management with green roofs, plantings, reflective and permeable surfaces, and providing open space that promotes a habitat of native and adaptive plants for biodiversity.
• High efficiency boilers and air to water heat-pumps that use heat recovery systems.
• Increased insulation of high performance glazing and shading systems that manage peak loads depending on the facade orientation.
• Decreased lighting power density and maximized lighting efficiency with motion, sound, daylight and occupancy sensors.
• Waste management and on-site recycling during the construction phase, use of low VOC materials with high recycled content.
• Education, water reuse strategies, energy reuse from neighboring buildings.

Architect: Stantec
General Contractor: Heatherbrae Builders
Interiors: Stantec
Developer: UBC Properties Trust
Landscape: Durante Kreuk
Civil: Core Consultants Group
Structural: Fast+Epp
Mechanical: AME Group
Electrical: Aerus Engineering
Plumbing: AME Group
Lighting: Aerus Engineering 

There are few organizations that would utter the words: “we need to constantly look for ways to make ourselves redundant” (46).

But Architecture for Humanity isn’t your typical organization. Since its inception in 1999, the company has put design professionals in the service of local communities, empowering these locals to the point where, frankly, they don’t need the architects any more.

And Design Like You Give A Damn [2] : Building Change from the Ground Up, written by Architecture for Humanity co-founders Cameron Sinclair and Kate Stohr, isn’t your typical architecture book. More like an inspiration design manual, Design Like You Give A Damn [2] offers practical advise and over 100 case studies of projects that share Architecture for Humanity’s mission of building a sustainable future.

Beyond chronicling inspired designs and against-the-odds accomplishments, the book importantly offers a provocative philosophy : architecture belongs, not to the architect, but to the people and the world for whom it is designed.

More about life lessons and tips from Design Like You Give A Damn [2] after the break…

In the book’s introduction, Cameron Sinclair lays out the fundamental lessons he has learned over the 12 years his organization has grown from a 2 person operation into a 2 million person network. Most striking to me, is how many of these lessons speak to the architecture profession at large, and not just in the context of “do-good,” public-interest design.

Take, for example, Lesson #1: Unless you build it, it doesn’t matter.

How often do good, potentially world-changing designs, submitted to competitions or lacking the necessary resources, get lost in the ether? How often do good designs actually take form in the physical world?

As any working architect knows: too often and not often enough.

But with Architecture for Humanity projects, that’s just not an option. Design fellows live and work within the communities they are helping to develop, and as you can imagine: “Communities want results. When you live and work alongside the end use of your structure, they demand it.” (12)

Now, I’m not suggesting that architects start living in every place their current design project is located, but the idea of an architect being so engaged with the community is powerful. With the community involved in a dialogue about the design, you as the architect would have to be acutely responsive to their needs and wants. And the tradeoff: they would demand that your project come to fruition. Instead of the enemy, the community would became your greatest ally in making your vision come to life.

Lesson #2: Innovation is only valuable if it is shared.

This lesson is the most radical – the most antithetical – to the concept of design as it exists in the architecture profession today. And yet it could very well be the future.

In  2005, after receiving the TED Prize, Architecture for Humanity knew what it wanted: “to create an open-source, collaborative project management website that would empower building professionals with design solutions” (25).

Inspired by Lawrence Lessig’s Creative Commons (CC) movement, the resulting site – the Open Architecture Network, which would later become WorldChanging – allows architects to share their designs with nonprofits (for free) and with commercial companies (for a fee) who then replicate the designs all over the world.

It’s hard to imagine an architect giving up his/her design, to allow it to be built as the world sees fit.  It goes against everything many architects accept as given: the sense of ownership of a design, that it is a part of the architect himself.

But, consider again Lesson #1: the design is only as good as the building that it engenders. Really, a building belongs more to the people who inhabit it than the architect who creates it. And so, why not a design? With the world evolving more and more to the transparent sharing of information, perhaps one day architecture too will be openly shared, adapted, and reincarnated across the globe.

Lesson #10: Design Yourself Out of A Job

One of the guiding principles of any Architecture for Humanity project is that it must be  sustainable, and thus, by definition, not require the organization’s services for very long.

Perhaps with this ultimate end goal in mind, building a more sustainable future, architects will begin to take themselves out of the equation and design/share/build architecture with a greater purpose in mind: bettering the world.

Design Like You Give A Damn [2] is a great place to start.

Contents

011 Introduction. Architecture for Humanity: Lessons Learned…

048 Financing Sustainable Community Development

074 Disaster Reconstruction

122 Housing

168 Community: Gathering Spaces

188 Community: Education

208 Community: Health

220 Community: Sports for Social Change

230 Community: Sacred Spaces and Memorials

242 Basic Services & Materials

260 Politics, Policy & Planning: Arts & Culture

274 Politics, Policy & Planning: Community Development

290 Politics, Policy & Planning: Crowd Sourced Planning

296 Politics, Policy & Planning: Access to Food

304 Politics, Policy & Planning: Peace & Security

322 Project Updates, Resources & Contributors

Courtesy of AECOM

Commissioned by the Golden Harbor Group, the design for the masterplan for the Honghe project by AECOM is aimed to help Longgang, an emerging area of Shenzhen, to function positively on the city’s renovation and upgrading. Located in a new rising area, the project covers the south area of the main venue for last year’s University Games. Their design will not only become the complex of services in east Shenzhen, but will lead the development of sports and mice industries, which will also be important for Shenzhen to become the base radiation to the development of east Guangdong Province. More images and architects’ description after the break.

Courtesy of AECOM

Since the University Games were held in Longgang last year, the area, when experiencing quick development, faces the challenges of guiding its development towards high-end value chain, high-techindustry, and indigenous innovation industries, including the scientific and technological research of advanced manufacture and enterprise incubating. Additionally, the modern service industry, including the information exchange, businesses andtrade, consulting and services, technology trade and career training, will become the core industry in the future.

Courtesy of AECOM

Introducing its global resources and multi-disciplinary expertise and knowledge, AECOM will turn the area into agreen industry cluster of ecology, environmental protection and energy saving, with high-end hotels, office buildings, grand commercial center, convention and related services and luxury residential blocks planned. The area will become anew attraction and also a city name card of technology and finance to theworld.

CCTV/OMA Partners-in-charge: Rem Koolhaas and Ole Scheeren, designers, David Gianotten, photographed by Iwan Baan

Architects: OMA
Location: Beijing, China
Project Area: 473,000 sqm
Project Year: 2012
Photographs: OMA, Iwan Baan, Jim Gourley, Philippe Ruault

section BB

This past wednesday, OMA participated in the official construction completion ceremony for the China Central Television (CCTV) Headquarters in Beijing, which will start to be used later this year. Designed by OMA as a reinvention of the skyscraper as a loop, construction on the building began in 2004. At approximately 473, 000m2, CCTV – accommodating TV studios, offices, broadcasting and production facilities – is OMA’s largest ever project and its first major building in China.

CCTV/OMA Partners-in-charge: Rem Koolhaas and Ole Scheeren, designers, David Gianotten, photographed by Iwan Baan

CCTV defies the skyscraper’s typical quest for ultimate height. Rising from a common platform, two towers lean towards each other and eventually merge in a perpendicular, 75- metre cantilever. The design combines the entire process of TV-making – formerly scattered in various locations across the city – into a loop of interconnected activities.

facade diagram

The structure of the CCTV Headquarters, and the forces at work within it, is visible on its façade: a web of diagonals that becomes dense in areas of greater stress, looser and more open in areas requiring less support. The façade itself becomes a visual manifestation of the building’s structure.

OMA / Philippe Ruault

Rem Koolhaas commented: “I am very happy, after years of intense collaboration, that the CCTV building will soon begin to perform its role in the way it is intended.”

ground floor plan

The CCTV project was led by OMA / Rem Koolhaas, former OMA partner Ole Scheeren (until 2010), OMA partner David Gianotten and project manager Dongmei Yao in close collaboration with partners Shohei Shigematsu, Ellen van Loon and Victor van der Chijs. The design team consisted of project architects Anu Leinonen, Charles Berman and Adrianne Fisher together with a team of over 100 architects from OMA.

CCTV/OMA Partners-in-charge: Rem Koolhaas and Ole Scheeren, designers, David Gianotten, photographed by Iwan Baan

The structural and MEP design was provided by Cecil Balmond and Arup, while ECADI (East China Architectural Design & Research Institute) functioned as the Local Design Institute. Design Consultants included Front INC, Inside/Outside, DHV, DMJMH+N, Lerch Bates & Associates, LPA, Sandy Brown Associates and Romano Gatland NY.

exploded axon

During the launch of the META Project in Chile, we had the chance to interview Bijoy Jain, founder of Studio Mumbai.

Studio Mumbai is a “human infrastructure of skilled craftsmen and architects who design and build the work directly.” Together, the colleagues immerse themselves within an ever-changing environment formed by an “iterative process” where they experiment and explore their ideas through the production of large-scale mock-ups, models, materials studies, sketches and drawings.

Studio Mumbai carefully develops projects through a process that draws from traditional skills, local building techniques, materials and an ingenuity that arises from limited resources. The essence of their work lies in the relationship between land and architecture. Studio Mumbai describes themselves as being “inspired by real life conditions” as they understand complex relationships through the power of observation.

“The endeavor is to show the genuine possibility in creating buildings that emerge through a process of collective dialog, a face-to-face sharing of knowledge through imagination, intimacy, and modesty.”

Projects from Studio Mumbai in ArchDaily:

• Utsav House
• House on Pali Hill
• Copper House II
• Belavali House
• Leti 360
• Tara House
• Palmyra House

MOCA / Farshid Moussavi. Courtesy MOCA

More about the project, including facade photos, after the break. 

MOCA / Farshid Moussavi. Courtesy MOCA

Moussavi, formerly with Foreign Office Architects and now principal of Farshid Moussavi Architecture, explained, “Our design for MOCA Cleveland aims to provide an ideal environment for artists and visitors and to foster creativity and variety in exhibitions and programs.”

The museum takes its shape from a hexagonal base which ends as a square top, and the faceted volume is clad in a mirror-finish black Rimex stainless steel.  As construction progresses on the façade, Moussavi’s intentions of allowing the urban environment to be reflected in the building’s wrapper is coming to fruition.  And, because MOCA is a non-collecting institution, Moussavi’s design can capitalize on the notion of flexibility, as the building does not need to support permanent collection galleries.  Snyder added, “This building’s design is a perfect expression of the museum’s philosophy and programs. Flexibility is key to a program like ours that embraces aesthetic, conceptual and cultural diversity, and displays works in a great variety of media and genres.”

MOCA / Farshid Moussavi. Courtesy MOCA

Organized by David Norr, Chief Curator at MOCA Cleveland, the inaugural exhibition will have particular resonance in MOCA’s new building, as the architecture creates striking effects through transparency, openness, and scale. “The artists in our inaugural exhibition prompt us to consider how we physically and psychologically relate to the built world – layered with all of its cues and miscues. A common thread in the exhibition is vision and the body:  being immersed in or excluded from spaces; the tenuous boundary between inside and outside, self and other; and the disorientating effects of shifting perspectives.”

MOCA / Farshid Moussavi. Courtesy MOCA

Within the exhibition, three artists (Katharina Grosse, Henrique Oliveira and Barry Underwood) have questioned the logic of Moussavi’s creation through deliberate additions, subtractions or alterations to the architecture, to strengthen the viewers’ connection and awareness to their spatial surroundings.  For instance, Underwood’s addition will include a series of photographs documenting the building’s construction process with temporary light installations; Grosse will create a three-story tall massively scaled painting in to cover the MOCA’s elevator shaft; and Oliveira will create a cave-like environment made from materials gathered from the streets of São Paulo, suggesting organic growth or parasitic invasion.

We look forward to seeing the completed building later this summer, and hope that all in the Cleveland area will be able to enjoy the inaugural exhibition tied so harmoniously with the museum’s architecture.

Courtesy of Experimental Branch of Architecture

Architects: Experimental Branch of Architecture
Location: Tehran, Iran
Completion: 2011
Area: 18,000 sqm
Client: Development of Cultural Environment Co.
Photographs: Courtesy of Experimental Branch of Architecture

Courtesy of Experimental Branch of Architecture

More than 3 million disabled of natural disasters, accidents and Iran-Iraq war are living in Iran. They are so vulnerable and forgotten due to the lack of urban facilities and other special services. In 2007, Cultural-Social Administration of Tehran municipality, decided to construct a cultural-sport complex for disabled in each 22 Tehran districts, in order to increase these kinds of facilities. Thus, one physical program was prepared by initiatory consultant and was advised to all districts to have a same program for all of these complexes.

Courtesy of Experimental Branch of Architecture

The proposed site was part of a 50×100 land and just 30×100 occupation was possible. The remained area belonged to the municipality which should prepare the access to the northern part of the site. Furthermore, the municipality defined this part as public green space, separated from Cultural-Sport site. An obsolete curriery factory was located in the southern part of the site with 100 year old trees and very appropriate green space.

Courtesy of Experimental Branch of Architecture

After mechanical test it was revealed that just 2 levels can be built underground. We got the permission of locating parking sunder the public park. The site area was so limited for all of the client’s program and demands, and city managers insisted on producing this kind of space in mentioned site. So a tall building was inevitable and finally the program turns into functional boxes. These functional boxes locate and slip over each other to make voids between spaces. Thespaces which behave in relation to inside and outside of the building.

Courtesy of Experimental Branch of Architecture

Some ramps in the northern façade, connect these functional boxes together, and define special wheelchair paths that make a dynamic façade, as well. These ramps are located in a façade box opposite to interior functions. A functional façade box which is the project façade and connect different parts as well. A façade which is always changing due to its users and users are a part of architectural project. These ramps finally reach to the roof which a wheelchair Track is located on it.

basement plan

Cultural-sport complex for disabled contains these spaces: administrative sector, cultural sector contains of library, gallery, Amphitheater, media center. Educational sector contains of conference hall, training classes and workshops. Sport sector contains of pool, Steam Sauna, Hydrotherapy Pool, Table Tennis Hall, Gym, Fitness, Shooting Hall, Multipurpose Hall, Chess Room, wheelchair path. Service contains of Buffet, Public hall, place of worship, parking, utility and circulation.

To be held August 10-12, the 12th international Alvar Aalto Symposium, entitled “CRAFTED – The Ingredients of Architecture”, will discuss how architecture can rise above the ordinary. The symposium will feature 14 top experts and thinkers in their fields, offering their takes on this year’s theme. The latest addition to the list of speakers is Mohsen Mostafavi, a renowned architect who is dean and professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Design.

Mohsen Mostafavi (US) will take the slot of Richard Sennett, whose appearance was cancelled earlier. In addition to Mostafavi, symposium speakers include Kjetil T. Thorsen, founding partner of Snøhetta, the agency responsible for the design of the Oslo Opera House and the Bibliotheca Alexandrina; architect Takaharu Tezuka; and Bjarne Mastenbroek, founder of the Amsterdam-based agency SeARCH. For more information about the event, please visit here.

© DSP Fotostudio

Architects: Buro II & Archi+I
Location: Roeselare, Belgium
Completion: 2011
Area: 5,700 sqm
Photographs: DSP Fotostudio, Klaas Verdru

© DSP Fotostudio

Accent Business Park offers all the advantages of a leading, modern business park: an excellent geographic situation, easy national and international access, ample parking space, a high availability of well-trained staff and a growing market outlet. The Accent Business Park currently offers seven office buildings with approx. 26,000 m² of office space and 650 parking spaces.

© DSP Fotostudio

The new office building, with an area of 5,700 m², houses a prestigious entrance hall with surrounding offices and five floors offering workspace for 180 persons. Its flexible lay-out offers room for 22 autonomous office units, which can be merged into a single office on the same floor. One of the floors there offers a common meeting room with facilities for video conferencing and projection.

© Klaas Verdru

The plan also incorporates a lounge bar with lunch facilities and a relaxation room. On the second and fourth floors, there will be two outside terraces with green oases. Together with the developers, we opted for a combination of architectural, self-cleaning polished concrete with good insulating characteristics and a more limited glass façade.

elevation 01

In addition, the energy efficiency for the cooling and heating techniques was utilised for optimum performance. The building has heat recuperation facilities as well as solar panels. Our main goal is to achieve an E-level of 68 (in Flanders, the standard is 100).

The goal of the ARCHIVE’s CONSTRUIRE LA PRÉVENTION DU PALUDISME: Building Malaria Prevention competition is to retrofit 24 housing units in the community of Minkoaméyos in Yaoundé, Cameroon. The design of the housing units should combine the use of common sense principles and innovative ideas to minimize the transmission of malaria. Our campaign is unique in that we not only seek design excellence, but design that truly integrates architectural construction with community health improvements. ARCHIVE hopes that this campaign will raise awareness about the role of housing and environmental design by changing the way that communities deal with global health issues. While the ideas generated here will initially be locally specific, they should seek to be globally transferrable. For more information, please visit here.