Archivitamins

Paper Architecture | Ingrid Siliakus

admins — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 15:14:58 +0000

Ingrid Siliakus first discovered paper architecture by seeing work of the originator of this art form Prof. Masahiro Chatani (architect and professor in Japan). He developed this art form in the early 1980′s. Ingrid was instantly fascinated by the ingenious manner in which these pieces were designed and by the beauty they radiated. Ingrid studied the originator’s work for some years and than started to design herself. Ingrid states that working with this art form has given her personal means of expressing. Her designing skills have grown over the years. Her specialties are buildings of master architects and intricate abstract sculptures. Her source of inspiration by these abstract sculptures are works of artists like M.C. Escher. With buildings she feels attracted to work of Berlage and Gaudi.

Bar in the Caves of Porto Cristo | A2arquitectos

admins — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 10:27:26 +0000

The great natural entrance to the Caves of Hams in Mallorca houses a lush botanic garden. It is in this entrance that the bar is situated and made up of a piece of backlit glass of 10 metres in length.
The counter of the bar, the most important element of the project, is fitted into a concrete cavity made up of straight lines, designed to contrast with the organic forms of the cave and can be closed under a transparent cover.
The bar is built of glass, a material which is the opposite of the heaviness and opaqueness of rock, and it stands out from its surroundings thanks to the fact that it is backlit, which also aids any disorientated visitors to find their way to it.
At night, the light which is given out by the bar, aided by the indirect lighting which is fitted around the rocks of the cave, is enough to illuminate the whole space of the entrance.
The bar is decorated in Green tones, in consonance with the predominant color of the abundant vegetation in the surroundings, generating a new dialogue between the natural and the artificial.

Residence of Daisen | Keisuke Kawaguchi+K2-Design

admins — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 08:24:10 +0000

Sensitive dialogue with the site is requisite to building a house that lies in coexistence with nature. Our building plan was drafted according to this idea.
We arranged the house with most surrounding trees untouched and ensured the living space in the aperture to a maximum extent. A style coexisting with the forest is the keystone of our design, so we carefully surveyed and analyzed the lot for building, and designed a way to connect each function space of the house by short connecting passages. Differently-pitched roofs snuggling up to the extension of branches and foliage made it possible to take in sunlight effectively.
In Daisen we have almost two meters of snowfall in winter, so we adopted a piloti style with living spaces on the second floor in order to allow ample cross-breeze, while also reducing moisture and heat rising from the ground in summer. These considerations made it possible to maintain comfortable living conditions in all seasons.

High School Jean Lurcat | mikou studio

admins — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 11:13:24 +0000

Jean Lurçat Collège in Saint Denis is at the junction of two basic fabrics (one landscape and one cityscape).It is both in the middle of nature surrounded by greenery and very near to the low-rise housing around it. The challenge with this building is that it must be integrated into the site without masking the park landscape, while linking the domestic scale. We designed the school as a series of separate but linked blocks or wings in a park. They are unified by buffer areas open onto planted patios that allow transparency
of the view onto the sports park and by an undulating folded metal roof that protects the patios from risks of overheating in summer and creates a microclimate in the terraced gardens. The configuration of the scheme in separate blocks identifies each of the teaching buildings while creating visual bearings and several different viewpoints from inside the school.

Hill House | Johnston Marklee & Associates

admins — Fri, 07 Jun 2013 12:48:57 +0000

Designed for an irregular hillside lot in Los Angeles, the form of this 3,600 square foot single family residence results from two economically driven demands — to maximize the allowable volume permitted by the zoning code, and to minimize the amount of foundations and subsequent footprint of the house. The resulting structure adopts a site specific form by registering the zoning envelope and optimizing the building volume’s performance on an inclined plane. Window quantities are minimized for privacy while window sizes are maximized for views and ventilation. The overall cladding strategy seeks to minimize distinction between roof and wall planes while maximizing the differentiation between interior and exterior.

Cinématheque Suisse | EM2N

admins — Fri, 07 Jun 2013 09:38:08 +0000

Until recently the home of the national film archive was presented as a simple utilitarian accumulation of sheds. The existing structure, consisting of buildings arranged in a linear relationship to each other, is translated in the expansion project by means of new additions and remodeling into a composed, ambivalent form of parallel volumes of different lengths. Only the end situation is marked by angled cuts. The principle of layering is also to be found in the interior. The three circulation systems above one another penetrate the parallel cross-walls vertically, allowing the serial organization to be directly experienced. Whereas the public areas are concentrated in Penthaz I, the archive itself is on the far side of the road in Penthaz II, which is conceived as a completely underground storage space that provides optimum protection for the culturally valuable artifacts.

Street furniture billboards | IBM + ogilvy & mather france

admins — Fri, 07 Jun 2013 08:36:09 +0000

Working together to spark positive change with the ‘people for smarter cities’ cities initiative, IBM has teamed up with creative consultancy ogilvy & mather france to create outdoor advertising with a purpose: a bench, a shelter and a ramp that would be useful to city dwellers. the campaign believes that fundamental services – such as roadways, mass transit and utilities – make a city and neighborhoods more desirable to live in. conceived in three different color variations, the graphic components of the different advertisements reference typologies such as wood slats and protective awnings similar to that its physical counter-part.

Transformer apt. | Vlad Mishin

admins — Thu, 06 Jun 2013 11:50:11 +0000

The apartment is divided lengthwise by sculptural structure, which also defines borders of a space. It consists of several transforming blocks, made from black metal framework and plywood. The shape of sharp bends is not random, it was specified by technical characteristics of blocks. Various placement of the transforming elements defines function and purpose of rooms.

Main part of transforming blocks creates space of a common room. It is three rotating blocks, main one has tv-panel. Block rotates on its axis and it makes possible to look tv from different places- bedroom, kitchen and common room. Two other blocks are folding and auxiliary, they also serve as door opening to bedroom.

Hotel Castel dels Hams Mallorca Indoor Pool | A2 + Arquitectos

admins — Thu, 06 Jun 2013 08:36:59 +0000

The work centred on replacing the covering and enclosure of the existing heated pool.
The main pool area is adorned with a series of square openings for windows in the roof that allow the light to flood into the area, this interplay of window holes in the roof creates a beautiful dance of light reflections inside.
The challenge of the project was not only to stop the new area from being used as secondary features, but to ensure they were used to highlight the hotel’s sunniest facade.
The existing pool has got new facades and a new green roof, which is dotted with a series of square openings. This interplay of window holes creates a beautiful dance of light reflections in the building.

Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2013 | Sou Fujimoto

admins — Tue, 04 Jun 2013 16:17:25 +0000

Occupying some 357 square-metres of lawn in front of the Serpentine Gallery, Sou Fujimoto’s delicate, latticed structure of 20mm steel poles has a lightweight and semi-transparent appearance that allows it to blend, cloud-like, into the landscape against the classical backdrop of the Gallery’s colonnaded East wing. Designed as a flexible, multi-purpose social space – with a café run for the first time by Fortnum and Mason inside – visitors will be encouraged to enter and interact with the Pavilion in different ways throughout its four-month tenure in London’s Kensington Gardens.