Cool in Architecture... Matters!

Helix Hotel - Get Your Credit Cards Ready

2010-10-12T20:59:00.000-07:00

New York design firm Leeser Architecture have won a competition to design a hotel in the Zayed Bay district of Abu Dhabi, UAE.

Called the Helix for its spiraling floors, the hotel is located in the bay and sits partially over the water.

The building includes a glass-bottomed swimming pool on the roof, visible eight floors below, and a running track on the fifth floor.

It will be part of a new waterfront development in Abu Dhabi, adjacent to the Sheik Zayed Bridge by Zaha Hadid Architects that is currently under construction.

Here’s some more information from Leeser Architecture:

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LEESER ARCHITECTURE WINS DESIGN COMPETITION FOR FIVE-STAR HOTEL IN ZAYED BAY, ABU DHABI

Iconic design and state of the art technology create dynamic mini-city in the UAE

Leeser Architecture, an internationally recognized design firm, has won an invited competition for a five-star luxury hotel in the Zayed Bay in Abu Dhabi, UAE. Called the Helix Hotel for its staggered floor plates, it rests in the bay, partially floating in the water and adjacent to the serpentine Sheik Zayed Bridge currently under construction by designer Zaha Hadid. With the Helix, Leeser Architecture has devised a new way to consider hotel culture in the Emirates, highlighting elements that are usually unseen, and playfully enlivening those parts that traditionally remain static and mundane.

The commission was the result of an invited competition held by Al Qudra Real Estate in partnership with QP International, both local Abu Dhabi holdings groups with projects featured across the UAE. Zayed Bay will be a comprehensive development built along a new road, and the site will include office buildings as well as condominiums and retail along the water. The Helix is the centerpiece of this new development.

With 208 guest rooms and suites arranged around a helical floor, the hotel immediately dispenses with the idea that visitors must engage in the stale paradigms of rigid hallways and atria that characterize a typical hotel stay. The floor constantly shifts in width and pitch as it rises to the top floor, keeping public spaces always in flux. No two rooms positioned across from each other have exact views to the other side, already pulling the visitor out of the pedestrian and into the hotel’s uniquely urban world. As the helix winds upward, programmatic elements change from lounges and restaurants on the bay, to meeting rooms and conference facilities, to lounges and cafes, to the luxury indoor-outdoor health spa on the fifth floor, to, finally, the upper pool deck on the roof. The running track on the fifth floor represents the only moment when the ramping ceases and a flat surface prevails – a sleight of hand on the architect’s part, and an unexpected luxury that fit vacationers can enjoy in the cooler months.

Conceptually, the Helix Hotel participates in a critical dialogue between opulence and urbanness, between the variety of services offered by a small city and the demands of a five-star hotel guest. The floor suggests the curves a winding street would take through a bustling town, and many programmatic elements are open to views from across the central void. Though the void seems to offer unmitigated visibility, there are enclaves for private meetings and guest privacy. It is designed so that one activity feeds into the next rather than affecting sharp separations between each activity. In this way it develops a feeling of being free to whimsically experience all aspects of the hotel without having to decide on an agenda in advance.

On the luxury side of vacation culture, there are playful elements that make the hotel a designer destination in an iconic setting. From the outset, it is as much a showplace for the abundance of opulent life as it is a fully incorporated urban experience. For example, the building has a functional reverse fountain, which drops water from the ceiling down through the void to the lower lobby. At the entry, valets drive clients’ cars into the car park, which, rather than being predictably above ground or underneath the hotel, is situated instead under the bay. Cars are literally driven into the water.

As guests make their way up to their suites, remarkable views out onto the Zayed Bay become even more dramatic on the upper floors. At the top of the Helix, the rooftop pool deck features a full sized swimming pool with a glass bottom, with the water and swimmers visible from eight floors below at ground level. In the restaurant below the lobby, the bay’s waves are so near to the floor plate that they lap up onto the edge of the restaurant inside of the glass curtain wall. The wall retracts, revealing a sweeping breeze.

While focusing on unique design, Leeser Architecture is also committed to sound sustainability practices and worked with consultant Atelier Ten to determine the best possible conditions and materials for heat and energy conservation. The indoor waterfall allows for the accumulation of heat inside the hotel to be minimal by filtering cool water back up into the system as it falls through the void. In the sub-lobby, a dynamic glass wall is built from the base of the second floor down into the water. The wall acts as a curtain would, opening when the weather is cool enough and closing when it is too hot for exposure to the desert air. Portions of the outside surface are clad in panels made of a new material called GROW, which has both photovoltaic and wind harnessing capabilities.

Consultants on the project include ARUP (structural and mechanical design) and Atelier 10 (environmental and green design).

Dynamic Architecture - Dubai Has To Much Money

2010-10-11T21:45:00.000-07:00

This Dynamic Architecture building by David Fisher will be constantly in motion changing its shape. It will also generate electric energy for itself. more at http://www.dynamicarchitecture.net

Check This Out New York - Rising Currents

2010-10-11T21:14:00.000-07:00

MoMA and P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center joined forces to address one of the most urgent challenges facing the nation’s largest city: sea-level rise resulting from global climate change. Though the national debate on infrastructure is currently focused on “shovel-ready” projects that will stimulate the economy, we now have an important opportunity to foster new research and fresh thinking about the use of New York City's harbor and coastline. As in past economic recessions, construction has slowed dramatically in New York, and much of the city’s remarkable pool of architectural talent is available to focus on innovation.

An architects-in-residence program at P.S.1 (November 16, 2009–January 8, 2010) brings together five interdisciplinary teams to re-envision the coastlines of New York and New Jersey around New York Harbor and to imagine new ways to occupy the harbor itself with adaptive “soft” infrastructures that are sympathetic to the needs of a sound ecology. These creative solutions are intended to dramatically change our relationship to one of the city’s great open spaces.

This installation presents the proposals developed during the architects-in-residence program, including a wide array of models, drawings, and analytical materials.

Rem Koolhaas's Dubai Deathstar

2010-10-11T14:00:00.000-07:00

Proposals for buildings in Dubai, often draped in photovoltaics and covered in propellers, or twisting and turning, it is a Disneyland of architecture. Sometimes we think they are going a bit overboard, as they evolve from Disney to Lucas with buildings like OMA's Ras al Khaimah Convention and Exhibition Centre. We have used Picasso's bon mot, updated by Le Corbusier before: "Good architects borrow but great architects steal" but never was the homage so obvious. Architectspeak below the fold.

This project represents a final attempt at distinction through architecture:not through the creation of the next bizarre image, but through a return to pure form.

It is not modelled on the deathstar, but on a Panasonic radio from 1972, five years before the first Star Wars movie, calling it "the little Japanese radio that could."

Fishbowl Faucet Encourages Water Conservation

2010-10-11T13:33:00.000-07:00

Ok I know that this isnt exactly architecture, but I came across this and knew that I had to post it also.

So you’re a conservationist, eh? Can you prove it? Can you stop washing your hands before this fish runs out of water? For his appropriately titled Poor Little Fishbowl Sink, designer Yan Lu created a very direct incentive to minimize water usage – when you turn the faucet on, the water level in the fishbowl decreases. It reminds us how precious this resource is, and how our everyday actions can affect the creatures around us. It also reminds us of our childhood pet goldfish, aww. Read on to learn more about this fish-traumatizing faucet.

Read more: Fishbowl Faucet Encourages Water Conservation - Or Else

Inhabitat - Green Design Will Save the World

Vincent Callebaut’s Lilypad City

2010-10-11T13:23:00.000-07:00

Belgian architect Vincent Callebut is an award-winning designer with varied projects. This one, entitled The Lilypad, is nothing short of amazing. It’s an eco-city, floating on water, with the ability to accommodate upwards of 50,000 people. If built as designed, this structure (which uses most, if not all, available environmental technologies) would sustainably produce more power than it would consume.

Water Purification Skyscraper in Jakarta

2010-10-11T12:12:00.000-07:00

Second Place
2010 Skyscraper Competition

Rezza Rahdian, Erwin Setiawan, Ayu Diah Shanti, Leonardus Chrisnantyo
Indonesia

The city of Jakarta, Indonesia, was originally designed in the confluence of thirteen rivers which were used for transportation and agriculture. The largest of its rivers is The Ciliwung River, which has been extremely polluted during the last couple of decades, characterizes by hundreds of slums inhabited by thousands of people in marginal conditions.

The Ciliwung Recovery Program (CRP) is a project that aims to collect the garbage of the riverbank and purify its water through an ingenious system of mega-filters that operate in three different phases. The first one separates the different types of garbage and utilizes the organic one to fertilize its soil. The second phase purifies the water by removing dangerous chemicals and adding important minerals to it. The clean water is then fed to the river and to the nearby agricultural fields through a system of capillary tubes. Finally in the third phase all the recyclable waste is processed.

One of the most important aspects of this proposal is the elimination of the slums along the river. The majority of the people will live and work at the CRP which could be understood as new city within Jakarta. The CRP project will be a 100 percent sustainable building that will produce energy through wind, solar, and hydroelectric systems.

to see more competition entries visit http://www.evolo.us/category/competition/

Vetical Prison

2010-10-11T12:00:00.000-07:00

First Place
2010 Skyscraper Competition

Chow Khoon Toong, Ong Tien Yee, Beh Ssi Cze
Malaysia

Some studies reveal that post-release offenses are very high and that criminal’s imprisonment is just a temporal solution because they do not have the opportunity to rehabilitate in a desirable community.

This project examines the possibility of creating a vertical prison in the sky where inmates will have to work and live in a community that will contribute to the host city below. The prison will have agricultural fields, factories, and recyclable plants that will be operated by the offenders as a way to give back to the community. They will live “free” until they have completed their sentence and are prepared to rejoin their communities.

The vertical prison has its own transportation system which consists of different “pods” for officers, prisoners, firefighters, and other workers.

To see more competition entries visit http://www.evolo.us/category/competition/

reNEWable Times Square

2010-10-10T20:17:00.000-07:00

The final selected design shall be translated into a surface treatment by a contractor selected by the New York City Department of Transportation. The selected artist shall be awarded a design fee in the amount of $15,000 to be funded by the Mayor’s Fund.

The design is expected to be installed by mid-July. The temporary treatment will remain in place for approximately eight months and will be monitored and maintained by the Times Square Alliance. The deadline to submit proposals is Friday, April 16, 2010. Questions and answers will be posted to www.nyc.gov/dot. Details on how to submit questions are contained in the RFP.

The design competition is project of New York DOT in partnership with the Times Square Alliance. As Business Improvement District for Times Square and Broadway Theater District, the Alliance has conducted a number of studies regarding the pedestrian spaces of Times Square and produces public art projects and events. Information on these activities is available at www.TimesSquareNYC.org.

Sustainable Architecture

2010-10-10T18:54:00.000-07:00

Richard Cook on Sustainable Architecture

Posted by The New Yorker

For this month’s installment of New Yorker Currents, Paul Goldberger, The New Yorker’s architecture critic, spoke with Richard Cook, a partner in Cook+Fox Architects and the designer of the new Bank of America Tower, a Manhattan skyscraper, completed earlier this year, that is the largest building to receive a LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Platinum certification, the highest standard set by the U.S. Green Building Council. Here they discuss sustainable architecture, the use of nature in design, and the debates over the LEED standard.

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/currents/#ixzz120j5GtkY