Infant School Student by Rueda Pizarro Arquitectos

Architects: Rueda Pizarro Arquitectos
Location: Leganés, Madrid
Architect In Charge: María José Pizarro, Óscar Rueda
Year: 2012
Photographs: Courtesy of Rueda Pizarro, Miguel de Guzmán

Parallelism with the famous novel “Alice in Wonderland” by Lewis Carroll is immediate. It transports us to a world of mixed feelings where imagination and reality, work and play, fun and responsibility are combined. A world of sensations, experiences, sets of scales and color are perceived by the eyes of children, coexisting with adults, making necessary to use a dual scale adapted to each of them. But not only the scale must be adapted, also the space perception. Due to this reason, we consider essential thinking from inside the building. First of all, the central space works as a public space covered where you can access to all classrooms. It is a smooth space with items that enhance visual and tactile perception: the circular courtyard, that introduces outside to inside; the deep cover skylights larger than 2 meters of height that introduce a world of color; the access to the classrooms with partitions unfolded and deep windows that work as a individual spaces and allow to the children enter inside. These are resources that enhance haptic space against a purely visual space.

Therefore there is an absence of elevations and we choose the circular figure where prevailing a space conceived topologically. This decision also allowed to adapt the area required to a triangular plot very difficult to utilize. And this allowed another key resource: to resolve a bad orientation where the school itself cast shadow on the playground. Due to this, we placed the playground on the deck. The access becomes a play to introduce children in a vertical passage that ascends slowly, a ramp that runs along the perimeter of exempt cylinder that contains school facilities.


















The layout of the program inside the school attends to circulation and orientation criteria. The classrooms are located in the southeast to get the most sunlight. The administration, offices and facilities are located in the northwest where movement and access are independent. The main space is the great central hall, a covered meeting space for children’s events that allows direct access to all classrooms.

Resource : archdaily

Schönberg Residence by Dialect Design

Architects: Dialect Design
Location: Charlotte, NC, USA
Project Year: 2009-2010
Photographs: Armando Bellmas

Slowing down traffic with curiously hovering red boxes tickling the traditional sensibilities of an urban tree-lined neighborhood, Charlotte’s latest architectural triumph of contemporary design is breaking all conventions.

Via a modern climbing library that immediately evokes adventure, stylish comfort, and the intimacy of reading, Dialect Design, a design + build firm, has created an ingenious and refreshingly unexpected space. The Schönberg residence second story addition bears the mark of all things classically Dialect – a sophisticated use of color that effortlessly runs from the coolly subdued to the richly dramatic; an expert and unconventional approach to materials and construction; and an eye for detail so subtle the soul of the design is upon you before you know it.

Upon entering the library, “finesse” and “order” make a great first impression. The “boxes within boxes” construction of recessed shelves reveals shadow lines that seemingly float the shelves inside the library walls. This simultaneous directional and uncluttered use of reveals is beautifully intended. Throughout the space, as steel, concrete, glass, aluminum, acrylic, fabric, and wood engage, their reveals provide a sense of separation, definition, movement, and harmony that yearns to be lived in. From the walls to the floors, doors, and windows, the entire renovation is a study in clean functionality, flush meetings, and visual ease. Additionally, the ordered elegance of the library’s interior shelves is echoed to dramatic effect with the protruding iconic red boxes that stop traffic and define the space’s exterior.

Pinwheeling around the library are three exceptionally appointed bedrooms and the swankiest shared bath three siblings could wish for. The inhabitants are Caroline and Matthias Schönberg’s 4, 7, and 11 year-old daughters. With its translucent acrylic counter, deeply red stained cabinetry, ubiquitously running glass and ceramic tile, and the perfect touches of whimsy, the bath is a fete of serious design and young lady appropriateness. Whether the light rich second floor is filled with the blush of day or night sky it is clear these young ladies provide a vibrancy and energy even the space’s solar paneled roof can’t match. Dialect has deftly created a sophisticated space that encourages the electrifying resonance of children while inspiring adults to inhabit it as well. According to Caroline Schönberg, it’s no wonder that upon climbing the library’s heights everyone is compelled to tell their best tree house stories.

Resources: www.archdaily.com

The Cave in Pilares by Greenfield architects

Architects: Greenfield
Location: Coahuila, Mexico
Architect In Charge: Kenji López
Area: 260 sqm
Year: 2015
Photographs: Documentación Arquitectónica. Adrián Llaguno

In this context emerges “The Cave”, an architectural project that materializes the idea of creating a neutral space, one for socialization and contemplation, with a strong relation to the wild of a zone where the deer, the black bear, the bighorn sheep, the antelope and the american indian transit freely like if time follows it’s own rules there.

Like in vernacular architecture, the building responds directly to the site where it’s emplaced, with basic and even primitive volumes that rise with materials from the region, gaining color and texture right from the landscape. The feeling while visiting the project resembles to that of a cave, partially buried into the ground, providing a shelter from the exterior and allowing the user enjoy it from the warming interior.

Like in vernacular architecture, the building responds directly to the site where it’s emplaced, with basic and even primitive volumes that rise with materials from the region, gaining color and texture right from the landscape. The feeling while visiting the project resembles to that of a cave, partially buried into the ground, providing a shelter from the exterior and allowing the user enjoy it from the warming interior.

Resources: archdaily

The White Tree

Project Name: L’Arbre Blanc (The White Tree)
Architects: Sou Fujimoto Architects, Nicolas Laisné Associés, Manal Rachdi Oxo architects
Location: Montpellier, France
Area: 10225.0 sqmPhotographs: RSI-studio


The new multipurpose tower called L’Arbre Blanc (The White Tree) is designed for housing, a restaurant, an art gallery, offices, a bar with a panoramic view and a common area. From the project’s concept phase, the architects were heavily inspired by Montpellier’s tradition of outdoor living. The tower is strategically located between the city centre and the newly developed districts of Port Marianne and Odysseum, midway between the ‘old’ and the new Montpellier.


It is also situated at the crossroads of several thoroughfares: the Lez River, the motorway and the pedestrian/cycling path along the banks of the octroi de Montpellier, or land grant. The project will kick off with a grand gesture to extend a landscaped park along the Lez and stretch out the length of Christophe Colomb Place. The eastern face curves along the edge of the roundabout while the western side on the Lez is convex to create the widest panorama possible. The curvature serves two purposes because this part of the facade offers the best exposure and viewpoint but does not block the view for neighboring residences.
The building was sited to meld with and defer to its surrounding environment, yet gives it just the right added flair. Arching like a pair of wings hugging the contours of the Lez River down to Pompignane Avenue, Arbre Blanc was intentioned as a natural form that was carved out or sculpted over time by water or wind. It perfectly mimics a tree reshaping itself to grow into its environment yet simultaneously enhancing it by offering much-needed shade.

Despite the name “white tree,” this is by no means an ivory tower. A beat integral to the urban song, the building is destined as a public high-rise built for every soul in Montpellier. The edifice will extend its limbs to all the city’s residents and visitors, from the ground floor restaurant and art gallery to the penthouse bar serving as vista point. This attainable passage will make the tower that much more attractive as a source of pride for Montpellians and a point of interest for tourists.
Resources: 
archdaily

Stone Art Gallery by O- Office Architects

Architects: O- Office architects
Location: Guangzhou, Guangdong, China
Area: 1270.0 sqm
Year: 2013
Photographs: LIKYFOTO , Courtesy of O- Office

From the architect. For the past decades, the Pearl River Delta Area (PRD) has experienced the ever fastest urbanization and grown into the so-call World Factory, producing more than 70% of the world’s daily products. Due to the large-scale urban sprawl plus the pressure from rapid industrial transition in this region, many of the former state industry were moved from the city to the outskirt of PRD.

These abandoned industrial sites soon became some form of postmodern relics around PRD’s urban area, especially in its core city, Guangzhou. The Stone Art Gallery was one of the architectural experiments responding to the above reality. EMG Group, a local stone trading firm, collaborated with the architect to attempt
to transform the 39^th building of YJQ Food Factory, a former state industrial site on the north bank of Pearl River to the east of downtown Guangzhou.

In order to preserve the historic collective industrial memory of the state-planning economic era, the building and site context of the YJQ building was fully respected and maintained in the design scheme. The implanted mechanism that the architect projected grows with the original spatial logic.

Resources: archdaily

The Survey Results

Thanks to all the viewers who made an effort, and did the blog survey.
Here are results that we found of your responses.

1. Which of these buildings do you like the most?
 
Leaning Tower of Pisa : 8 people
Villa Savoye : 3 people
Falling Water : 9 people
The Guggenheim Museum : 1 person


2. Which architect's works do you like the most?

Frank Lloyd Wright : 9 people
LeCorbusier : 6 people
Frank Gehry : 6 people


3. What type of buildings do you like us to post on our blog?

Historial palaces, and buildings: 8 people
Skyscrapers: 9 people
Cultural, Religious buildings : 5 people


Thanks for everything people.

Fondation Louis Vuitton by Gehry Partners

Architects: Gehry Partners
Location: Bois de Boulogne, 75016 Paris, France
Design Partner: Frank Gehry
Area: 11700.0 sqm
Year: 2014
Photographs: Iwan Baan, Todd Eberle


Constructed on the edge of a water garden created especially for the project, the building comprises an assemblage of white blocks (known as “the icebergs”) clad in panels of fiber-reinforced concrete, surrounded by twelve immense glass “sails” supported by wooden beams. The sails give Fondation Louis Vuitton its transparency and sense of movement, while allowing the building to reflect the water, woods and garden and continually change with the light.

The ground-level entrance hall serves as the entry to both the museum and the Jardin. It is designed as an active social space, featuring a restaurant and bookstore. The large, multi-purpose space directly adjacent to the entrance hall may be used as an auditorium accommodating 350 persons, an exhibition space, or event venue.

As visitors move from gallery to gallery within the building, the large expanses of glass provide picturesque views of the gardens, integrating the landscape into the experience of the museum. Visitors are able to climb exterior stairways underneath the glass sails to reach roof-top gardens and exhibitions.

The structure of the glass roof allows the building to collect and reuse rain water and improves its geothermal power. Besides, the Fondation has attained its overall goal to reach HQE (Haute Qualité Environmentale) certification noted as Très Performant. The steps taken to achieve this level of certification could be considered equivalent to LEED Gold.

Resources: archdaily