Style of Design

The San Francisco office of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP (SOM) has received a 2010 “Good Design is Good Business” China Award for the new U.S. Embassy Complex in Beijing, China. Architectural Record and McGraw-Hill Construction recognized 17 projects with their third bi-annual program. The awards celebrate projects that demonstrate the power of design in the advancement of business and civic objectives.

The U.S. Embassy in Beijing, which opened for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, received its award in the Best Public Project category. Working with the U.S. Department of State, SOM responded to the building’s diplomatic role by creating a space that is welcoming, secure, and respectful of local traditions. As a sovereign U.S. presence on Chinese soil, the Embassy reflects American cultural, social and political values while paying respect to the host country’s ancient and extraordinarily vibrant culture.

More images and information after the break.

The awards jury included editors from Architectural Record, Bloomberg BusinessWeek, and Time+Architecture. “Wrestling with tough security requirements,” they said of the Embassy, “the architects used the Beijing traditions of walled compounds and garden design to create a place that represents American values of transparency and cultural diversity.”

The Embassy will be honored at a gala event and conference in Shanghai on March 12, 2010. SOM Design Partner Craig Hartman, FAIA will present the project, and Jay Holleran, Design Manager at the Department of State, will participate in a panel discussion. One “Grand Winner” from each category will be announced at the event, as will one “Project of the Year” and one “Best Client,” selected from among the winning projects.

All of the 2010 “Good Design is Good Business” award-winning projects will be published in the June issue of Architectural Record China and on-line at ArchitecturalRecord.com and BusinessWeek.com.

The U.S. Embassy – Beijing was previously honored by the American Institute of Architect’s San Francisco Chapter with a 2009 Excellence in Architecture Award.

The San Francisco office of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP (SOM) has received a 2010 “Good Design is Good Business” China Award for the new U.S. Embassy Complex in Beijing, China. Architectural Record and McGraw-Hill Construction recognized 17 projects with their third bi-annual program. The awards celebrate projects that demonstrate the power of design in the advancement of business and civic objectives.

The U.S. Embassy in Beijing, which opened for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, received its award in the Best Public Project category. Working with the U.S. Department of State, SOM responded to the building’s diplomatic role by creating a space that is welcoming, secure, and respectful of local traditions. As a sovereign U.S. presence on Chinese soil, the Embassy reflects American cultural, social and political values while paying respect to the host country’s ancient and extraordinarily vibrant culture.

More images and information after the break.

The awards jury included editors from Architectural Record, Bloomberg BusinessWeek, and Time+Architecture. “Wrestling with tough security requirements,” they said of the Embassy, “the architects used the Beijing traditions of walled compounds and garden design to create a place that represents American values of transparency and cultural diversity.”

The Embassy will be honored at a gala event and conference in Shanghai on March 12, 2010. SOM Design Partner Craig Hartman, FAIA will present the project, and Jay Holleran, Design Manager at the Department of State, will participate in a panel discussion. One “Grand Winner” from each category will be announced at the event, as will one “Project of the Year” and one “Best Client,” selected from among the winning projects.

All of the 2010 “Good Design is Good Business” award-winning projects will be published in the June issue of Architectural Record China and on-line at ArchitecturalRecord.com and BusinessWeek.com.

The U.S. Embassy – Beijing was previously honored by the American Institute of Architect’s San Francisco Chapter with a 2009 Excellence in Architecture Award.

The San Francisco office of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP (SOM) has received a 2010 “Good Design is Good Business” China Award for the new U.S. Embassy Complex in Beijing, China. Architectural Record and McGraw-Hill Construction recognized 17 projects with their third bi-annual program. The awards celebrate projects that demonstrate the power of design in the advancement of business and civic objectives.

The U.S. Embassy in Beijing, which opened for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, received its award in the Best Public Project category. Working with the U.S. Department of State, SOM responded to the building’s diplomatic role by creating a space that is welcoming, secure, and respectful of local traditions. As a sovereign U.S. presence on Chinese soil, the Embassy reflects American cultural, social and political values while paying respect to the host country’s ancient and extraordinarily vibrant culture.

More images and information after the break.

The awards jury included editors from Architectural Record, Bloomberg BusinessWeek, and Time+Architecture. “Wrestling with tough security requirements,” they said of the Embassy, “the architects used the Beijing traditions of walled compounds and garden design to create a place that represents American values of transparency and cultural diversity.”

The Embassy will be honored at a gala event and conference in Shanghai on March 12, 2010. SOM Design Partner Craig Hartman, FAIA will present the project, and Jay Holleran, Design Manager at the Department of State, will participate in a panel discussion. One “Grand Winner” from each category will be announced at the event, as will one “Project of the Year” and one “Best Client,” selected from among the winning projects.

All of the 2010 “Good Design is Good Business” award-winning projects will be published in the June issue of Architectural Record China and on-line at ArchitecturalRecord.com and BusinessWeek.com.

The U.S. Embassy – Beijing was previously honored by the American Institute of Architect’s San Francisco Chapter with a 2009 Excellence in Architecture Award.

Copyright© fdo h – http://www.flickr.com/photos/herrera/

10,000 pictures are available through our Flickr Pool! We’ve already features six selections that you can check right here. As always, remember you can submit your own photo here, and don’t forget to follow us through Twitter and our Facebook Fan Page to find many more features.

This picture was taken by fdo h in Beijing, China. Check the other four after the break.

Photo by d.teil / Beijing, China:

Copyright© d.teil – http://www.flickr.com/photos/7468702@N02/

Photo by Vesper Hsieh / Taipei, Taiwan:

Copyright© Vesper Hsieh – http://www.flickr.com/photos/vesperhsieh/

Photo by pedro kok / Barcelona, Spain:

Copyright© pedro kok – http://www.flickr.com/photos/kuk/

Photo by picturenarrative / Toronto, Canada:

Copyright© picturenarrative – http://www.flickr.com/photos/picturenarrative/

Copyright© fdo h – http://www.flickr.com/photos/herrera/

10,000 pictures are available through our Flickr Pool! We’ve already features six selections that you can check right here. As always, remember you can submit your own photo here, and don’t forget to follow us through Twitter and our Facebook Fan Page to find many more features.

This picture was taken by fdo h in Beijing, China. Check the other four after the break.

Photo by d.teil / Beijing, China:

Copyright© d.teil – http://www.flickr.com/photos/7468702@N02/

Photo by Vesper Hsieh / Taipei, Taiwan:

Copyright© Vesper Hsieh – http://www.flickr.com/photos/vesperhsieh/

Photo by pedro kok / Barcelona, Spain:

Copyright© pedro kok – http://www.flickr.com/photos/kuk/

Photo by picturenarrative / Toronto, Canada:

Copyright© picturenarrative – http://www.flickr.com/photos/picturenarrative/

This villa is located in plot #43 of the ORDOS project.

Architects: Iwamoto Scott Architecture
Location: Ordos, Inner Mongolia, China
Principals in Charge: Lisa Iwamoto & Craig Scott
Project team: Blake Altshuler, Keith Plymale, Magda Melo, Sean Canty, Ryan Golenberg, Christina Kaneva
Projects Assistants: Jason Chang, Manuel Diaz, Ashley Li, Alan Lu, Doron Serban, Wei Huang, John Kim
Design year: 2008
Construction year: 2009-2010
Curator: Ai Weiwei, Beijing, China
Client: Jiang Yuan Water Engineering Ltd, Inner Mongolia, China
Constructed Area: 1,000 sqm aprox

The design of Villa 043 derives from exploring certain formal/spatial/material preoccupations while engaging the pragmatic realities of the project brief. Some of Plot 043’s key site factors include substantial southerly and easterly views afforded by a raised elevation and sloping topography, as well as a high degree of exposure to adjacent public buildings and open spaces. Accordingly, Villa 043 aims to conflate two inverse spatial paradigms: the Chinese courtyard house, with its inward focus towards a central exterior space, offering sanctuary and protection; and the Western villa, with its outward orientation and potential to capture views to the surrounding landscape. During our first trip to China, we were also intrigued by the discovery in various built examples of an oblique spatiality that enriches an otherwise strict orthogonal order. Villa 043 melds and transforms these archetypal spatial concepts, evolving into an adaptational site-specific architecture.

Inspiration came as well from examples of landform and built form that merge together via the logic and materiality of masonry construction. The overall form of Villa 043 is conceived as a twisted stack of east-west oriented bricks, strategically carved out by exterior void spaces. The villa’s base geometry originates at the ground as a square footprint rotated five degrees off the recommended building footprint from the master plan by FAKE Design. This square then subtly shears counterclockwise toward the roof, resolving at the top as a parallelogram realigned with the site’s edges, and tilted in section to follow the site’s slope.

In response to the suggested use of local construction techniques, the villa’s structure is reinforced concrete, meeting local seismic requirements; and the exterior cladding material is variegated brickwork, offering a visual and tactile complexity, plus shelter from the frigid winds and snow of winter and the scorching heat and sandstorms of summer. The brick envelope’s coursing and bonding patterns adapt to the villa’s specific geometry. The technique of corbelling allows the brick to assume the supple geometries of ruled surfaces, while the bonding patterns vary according to the formal logic of the walls: the twisting south and north walls are clad with corbelled, stacked stretcher bond; whereas the vertical faces of the east and west facades receive staggered header bond, adapted to the walls’ five-degrees-off-vertical leaning edges.

Villa 043’s program is configured with large living room, dining, kitchens and study all located one level above entry, in a ‘piano nobile’ arrangement. At this raised height, views of the surrounding landscape are pulled in by the geometry of the house. The entry level contains small living room, bedrooms and the workers quarters and attaches to the garage. Each bedroom has direct southern exposure, while the master suite is distinguished through its position at the uppermost level. The pool, gym, sauna, home-theater and guest suite form the base of the villa and connect to an outdoor pool terrace to the east.

Vertical circulation wraps around the central void as a double helix that intertwines interior and exterior stairways, dynamically linking the villa’s major interior program with five interconnected exterior spaces: a central courtyard which connects all levels; a covered terrace positioned opposite the main entry to face the eastern view; a large south-facing terrace opening directly off the main living room, and forming a circuit of movement via access from the study; an open rooftop terrace above; and a small winter garden situated between dining and living rooms. These five exterior spaces also serve to bring sunlight and cross-ventilating breezes into and through the interior spaces of the villa.

This villa is located in plot #63 of the ORDOS project.

Architects: Polaris Architects
Location: Ordos, Inner Mongolia, China
Principals in Charge: Jean & Luc Larnaudie
Design year: 2008
Construction year: 2009-2010
Curator: Ai Weiwei, Beijing, China
Client: Jiang Yuan Water Engineering Ltd, Inner Mongolia, China
Constructed Area: 1,000 sqm aprox

Villa #63 by Polaris Architects is entitled Showcase Study House. The building aims to meet the expectations of an art collector, a gallery owner or an artist.

The user’s profile is described by the architects in a manifesto entitled « House for Mr. and Ms. X ». The user’s profile looks somewhat like the architects, who are themselves modest contemporary art collectors.

Some 10 European artists who contributed to the architects’ own collection kindly lent illustrations of original artworks to support the idea of a coherent private exhibition. These artworks are not part of the design by Polaris Architects and remain their respective authors’ property.

The main exhibition hall constitutes the core of the villa. All other functions are located in two wings, one on each side of the main hall. The master bedroom, dining and living rooms are oriented southward. The other bedrooms, the kitchen and the garage are located in the second wing. The underground level, open to the garden, includes an indoor swimming pool, a gym and a sauna. The garden is foreseen to serve as an additional exhibition and event space, and also features an outdoor swimming pool.

All bearing walls are made of cast-in-place concrete. The design offers a continuous envelope made of thick rigid insulation in order to achieve « low » to « passive » energy performance. The facade is strongly insulated, covered by coating and painted according to a specific pattern. The roof is made of wood carpentry, insulated and covered by zinc.

This villa is located in plot #47 of the ORDOS project.

Architects: Preston Scott Cohen
Location: Ordos, Inner Mongolia, China
Project Team: Preston Scott Cohen (Design);  Hao RUAN, David Shanks(Project Assistants); Yair Keshet(Model)
Design year: 2008
Construction year: 2009-2010
Curator: Ai Weiwei, Beijing, China
Client: Jiang Yuan Water Engineering Ltd, Inner Mongolia, China
Constructed Area: 1,000 sqm aprox

For architecture, the large contemporary house poses a problem of proportionality and character. Big houses tend to become little buildings imbued with an institutional character. Too often, they are comparable to small museums with interiors more suitable for exhibition than for dwelling.

This house at once concedes to and intensifies this tendency while proposing an alternative.  While it appears to be an unusually miniature, monumental building, it nevertheless provides interior spaces that are unexpectedly domestic in character. The surrounding neighborhood of houses does not allow a contextual sense of belonging.  Thus, the miniature building acts like a buoy – anchored and adrift – without the usual moorings of a house. In lieu of a significant architectural context, surrounded by an arid landscape and subject to severe weather conditions, the house needs to establish its own setting in order to provide an oasis within it.

Initially, the house appears to be a small, townhouse-like urban dwelling with an overgrown roof garden.  In fact, this is the least of it. Below it is a large, rambling entertainment and guest villa, organized around two courtyards.  Between the two is a tumultuous landscape-like form that unmoors the townhouse and ostensibly causes it to lean.

Inside the tower, the inhabitant will feel the tilt.  The building envelope will seem to be independent of the interior, with the stairs binding all levels from top to bottom in a coil-like fashion, leading from the lowest public living room to the garage (the garage is located between the upper and lower houses), and winding its way around the leaning tower all the way up to the private roof terrace on top.

In the villa below, the primary interior living spaces alternate with the exterior courtyards, thus overcoming the underground condition.  A railing/fence surrounds the whole house, protecting it from uninvited scrutiny. Where people are able to look down, from the driveway and entry, they will see the pool, not the living room or private bedrooms. Being skewed, the courtyards create a sense of expansiveness and drift as opposed to confinement or containment.

The house is a rough, poured-in-place concrete frame and infill structure clad in gray brick and tile.  The tower cantilevers from a reinforced concrete base frame that is supported by two large reinforced concrete structural arches and from tension rods cast in the diagonally opposite linear edges of the hyperbolic parobolas.

This villa is located in plot #58 of the ORDOS project.

Architects: Christ & Gantenbein
Location: Ordos, Inner Mongolia, China
Project Team: Emanuel Christ, Christoph Gantenbein, Cloé Gattigo, Hugo Mesquita, Sven Richter, Andrea Sauter, Kai Timmermann
Design year: 2008
Construction year: 2009-2010
Curator: Ai Weiwei, Beijing, China
Client: Jiang Yuan Water Engineering Ltd, Inner Mongolia, China
Constructed Area: 1,000 sqm aprox

The 058 villa is at the same time a simple house following the rules of the masterplan, as a surprisingly rich spatial system offering unexpected relations of the interior and the exterior, creating a private labyrinth to live in. To the outside the fragmented geometry of the volume and the mirror cladding create a distance; the house is present and absent at the same time.

The project deals about privacy within a dense urban settlement. Nothing reveals from the outside, that 058 is a courtyard house. The living spaces are organized around an enclosed space whose mirroring surfaces, similar to the external ones, give it an infinite appearance. The mirrors chimerically open the courtyard into the wideness of the inner-Mongolian landscape. One single tree planted in the centre is multiplied into a forest. So the 058-villa has a secret mystic private space completely different from the urban public space around the house.

The courtyard is formed by a folded façade with sharp polygonal edges, most parts consist of filled walls with a cladding of mirroring glass, other parts have floor-to-ceiling windows. The mirrors reflect the sunlight, mainly in winter, when the sun is low, into the courtyard. The floor is covered by irregular broken natural stone.

The system of the house consists of slabs of walls and windows. As the inner and outer façade are similar, and the geometry of the floor plan non-rectangular, the rooms create a labyrinth-like system of spaces. In this system the outer world, once the surrounding, once the courtyard, appear unexpectedly like images in the interior.

In a maximum contrast to the crystal-like sharp exterior, the interior is a down-to-earth-architecture: white plaster (walls), terrazzo (floor) and concrete (ceilings) are the only materials. They express the present space, the architecture’s task to create a protected space.

This villa is located in plot #28 of the ORDOS project.

Architects: NU architectuuratelier
Location: Ordos, Inner Mongolia, China
Design year: 2008
Construction year: 2009-2010
Curator: Ai Weiwei, Beijing, China
Client: Jiang Yuan Water Engineering Ltd, Inner Mongolia, China
Constructed Area: 1,000 sqm aprox

A. Design stategy

In Ordos, a desert is turned into a prosperous cityscape. In this reclaimed territory with a hostile climate we are asked to intervene. The program: a house. Our concept: universal need for shelter. Solution: a void.

In order to protect we extract mass instead of adding it. We create a negative, abstract space. This emptiness is the generator of an inverted house which organises itself in a pentagonal loop.

The Sky-house is born.

Hidden for the elements, the house is its own horizon, reflecting itself encircling a sky-well void. In doing this, it creates strong horizontal relations in between the different functions and the imaginative vertical axis. This axis is swallowing the zenith sky with all its varieties and subtle changes (daytime and seasonal).
The house, when seen from the street, is reduced to a thin signal; it is a scar in the landscape. What is visible are mere indications of a cultivated structure. No building is blocking the sight through the transparent garden. Our plot becomes visually part of the greenbelt. A fence indicates the intention of creating a private space, which is ephemeral upon the landscape, yet solid and strong underneath.

The dwelling acquires its identity from its internal space rather than from its external design.

B. Space design

In general all functions are organised around a dug-out courtyard. All functions benefit the ideal orientation and have specific relations to other functions across the courtyard.

A 5-sided (pentagonal) belt is running around this courtyard, passing through some important living areas, framing specific views. The belt is defined by the retaining wall, in which very specific spaces were created to organise Chinese kitchen, vertical circulations, Media room, Library, Office/Lobby…

Along this belt, spaces are differentiated in character, brightness and openness, alternating to the courtyard- or back side. Private rooms are introverted and have ‘specific” relations towards the courtyard and circulation, while more public spaces are extraverted in character. All functions are activated by interesting views and relationships.

As we enter the house, we drive into a cave-like space, arriving directly on the first level underneath the earth surface. From within the car we already catch a glance of the courtyard. “A private world”.

The entrance is related to an office space and lobby. Then, it opens towards the main living space, which has a inclined ceiling inviting to the outside patio At the back, a massive retaining wall carries all serving functions like a kitchen, lounge area, wine cellar, vault…

At the very end of the living area, we find a small door. It leads to a baroque staircase which develops itself from a door size to a 5 meters patio branch.

From this point on, we have arrived on the belt, being able to use it in either directions. The belt brings us to all different atmospheres from sports area to resting or entertaining places and from sleeping places to staff quarters… an endless loop.