Style of Design

ROW Studio designed a new luxury apartment complex in a heavily wooded area in southern Mexico City. The buildings are placed around the existing trees and all facades are covered with plants to conceal the structures.  This strategy gives the interiors “the sensation of living in the treetops”.  Parking and service areas are located below the buildings to maximize the porosity of the soil and to avoid any visual obstruction on the ground level.  There is a visual continuous garden, from the entry of the complex to the back of the site, as greenery flows from the ground level, up the facades of the buildings and into the surroundings.   The ground level apartments are protected with a “land fold” of bushes for privacy which also screen their private patio.     Wooden rooftop decks provide great areas for gatherings, meals, parties or to just simply enjoy garden views.

More images after the break.

Architects: ROW Studio – Álvaro Hernández Félix, Nadia Hernández Félix, Alfonso Maldonado Ochoa.

Use: Luxury Apartments Complex and Offices.

Client: Fundacion Acapulco

Architect of Record: INMOSUR SA de CV – Arch. Álvaro Hernández Cabada.

Location: Mexico City

Contributors: Alejandro Maldonado, Ana Mancera, An­tonio Scheffler, Ildefonso Navarro, Gloria Maldonado, Patricia Suárez.

Project Date: August 2009

ROW Studio designed a new luxury apartment complex in a heavily wooded area in southern Mexico City. The buildings are placed around the existing trees and all facades are covered with plants to conceal the structures.  This strategy gives the interiors “the sensation of living in the treetops”.  Parking and service areas are located below the buildings to maximize the porosity of the soil and to avoid any visual obstruction on the ground level.  There is a visual continuous garden, from the entry of the complex to the back of the site, as greenery flows from the ground level, up the facades of the buildings and into the surroundings.   The ground level apartments are protected with a “land fold” of bushes for privacy which also screen their private patio.     Wooden rooftop decks provide great areas for gatherings, meals, parties or to just simply enjoy garden views.

More images after the break.

Architects: ROW Studio – Álvaro Hernández Félix, Nadia Hernández Félix, Alfonso Maldonado Ochoa.

Use: Luxury Apartments Complex and Offices.

Client: Fundacion Acapulco

Architect of Record: INMOSUR SA de CV – Arch. Álvaro Hernández Cabada.

Location: Mexico City

Contributors: Alejandro Maldonado, Ana Mancera, An­tonio Scheffler, Ildefonso Navarro, Gloria Maldonado, Patricia Suárez.

Project Date: August 2009

© Julian Weyer

Architect: C. F. Møller Architects
Location: University College Vitus Bering, Horsens, Denmark
Client: University College Vitus Bering Denmark
Landscape architect: C. F. Møller Architects
Engineers: Grontmij | Carl Bro
Contractor: Pihl & Søn A/S
Project Area: 8,000 sqm
Project Year: 2008-2009
Photographs: Julian Weyer

Teaching and entrepreneur start-up office facilities side by side – that’s the philosophy behind the distinctive extension to the existing 1970’s structure of the University College Vitus Bering Denmark in Horsens. The new Innovation building is designed to sit on a brick base, which is a direct continuation of the existing complex’ architecture, but from there on it is distinctly different and unique.

site plan

The building’s dynamic and innovative character is expressed via its spiral shape. On the facades, the movement is seen in the glazing strips that stretch towards the sky across the six storeys of the building and create the impression of a spiral sequence, while internally it is expressed via the main staircase in green fibre cement, which runs in a spiral form between the storeys in the unifying internal atrium. The inclined forms of the building also have the practical advantage of allowing a necessary fire escape route to be cut through the building.

© Julian Weyer

The basic floor plan of the building is a simple and flexible layout, to allow the integration of numerous uses and adaptations. The large and dynamic green stairway element leads to common meeting facilities and a roof terrace with a beautiful view of the Horsens Fjord. The stairs land in a different position on each level, thus activating the entire atrium as the central hub of the building. The atrium is covered by a dynamic, diagonally split roof-plane with circular skylights, of which one half forms the common roof terrace.

section

The Vitus Bering Innovation Park is one of the first office complexes in Denmark to be classified as low-energy class 1, which means that its energy efficiency is twice that of the minimum required by the Danish building regulations. The low level of energy consumption is achieved through such factors as highly insulating windows and extra insulation on all of the building’s external surfaces. Another feature is the building’s intelligent air conditioning system, which adjusts itself according to the number of people present in each individual room.

@ Julio Barreno

Architect: Julio Barreno
Location: Ubrique, Spain
Technical Architect: Rocío Román Aguillar
Project Year: 2009
Photographs: Julio Barreno

Taking a look to an aerial view over the historical centre on the city of Ubrique, it advises us about the importance of the patios in the traditional typology of this city. The existence of these patios makes fluffier the high density of the historical centre of these cities in the south. This is very important to protect the people from the hot weather.

@ Julio Barreno

This proposal in Colon square is a restoration of an old building with traditional character.

The works on the façade were only a process of cleaning or rubbing a lot of ornamental elements that made it a bit dirty. I decide to simplify the appearance using two or three elements from the original façade; the wholes (wooden windows), the balconies, with the original railings; and also the number above the main entrance.

@ Julio Barreno

The colour used in Ubrique for the facades is fundamentally the white one; this is something that the authorities force to.

Using this white colour in our proposal we found a way to get that several traditional elements construct a new abstract language, specific for this building. Some of the figurative traditional elements are able to design a new appearance for this new element in the city.

The program is a singular housing in the upper floors and a local in the ground floor.

@ Julio Barreno

The patio in the original house was another important green point in the Ubrique´s map. In the new proposal the patio is considered always as a GREEN ELEMENT, a NATURAL ELEMENT. This is the origin of the design of the rest of the elements that complete the building. This is why the wood used for the design of the windows that delimit the patio has a natural appearance as well as the steps of the stairs that link the first and second floor.

floor plans

The floor is constructed using compressed soil, because that is what beige marble is at last.

The ceilings are also treated as natural elements, probably trees, covering different areas inside; one of them controls the space above the stairs and the other one distinguish the dinner area from the living one.

@ Julio Barreno

I like to see this as a NATURAL LANDSCAPE INSIDE.

The fluency of the floors is the most important theme in this project. We have to talk about just one space that is composed of different areas delimited with light glass walls and mobile elements.

@ Julio Barreno

In this house you live around a patio, this is the structural topic of the house. Here you need to move across this landscape, around the patio, to understand the house, to live in it, organizing the program you live in a sequential way.

During the day the patio is the main space, through it, the house receives a lot of light and sun, and it fills up of life. At night, it becomes a singular element that links visually different rooms in different floors.

EXH Design was hired to redesign the façades of high-rises in one of the most active urban areas in Shanghai.   With the plans of the buildings already halfway through government approval, EXH was allowed little leeway in trying to change the existing plans.   Instead, EXH turned their attention to “sculpting” the building’s surface.  Taking a geometrical approach, the new façade aims to create a dynamic effect that will become a strong architectural expression for the surrounding areas.

More about the facades after the break.

“We retained the separate identities of the residential and office spaces and, instead, adjusted the language to create a cluster of five unified yet differentiated towers,” explained the architects.

Inspired by an endless column sculpture, “a continuous growing impression created by cutting the existing volumes on the corners,” the façade touches very little of the “existing” structure, and yet creates a tremendously powerful exterior and interior space.  Natural ventilation is achieved through the use of slits cut into the south façade which are covered with metal plates.

Architects: EXH design

Client: Shanghai Guangwan real estate

Location: Shanghai

Project Team: Erich Diserens, Xi Zhang, Kenan Liu

© Eriksen Skajaa

Eriksen Skajaa Architects shared with us their awarded proposal for Europan 10 with their design of the Haugerud Center, entitled Shuffle.   Haugerud, originally an area born from the utopian ideals of the Modern Movement, now struggles to a have a clear sense of what it stands for.  Shuffle aims to rediscover Haugerud’s lost identity by exploring low rise/high density urban planning.  The buildings create a village-like atmosphere with multi-functional structures that can be used for housing as well as public functions.

More images and more about the project after the break.

“Grid orientation, formal characteristics, facades and construction methods where determined by the passive house standard. The shaping of the volumes brings light in between the streets and to the solar facades, but it also gives houses individual character. Through this process we have developed a clear urban typology consisting of a relatively small scale urban unit that is combined in a dense configuration,” explained the architects.

An extended network of forested paths form interconnections and permeability, both through the new development and through existing homogeneous.  Buildings are flipped to focus toward the public by removing most of the existing center and making the facades open up toward the new public space.

Within each unit, there is enough flexibility to develop a wide range of housing solutions ranging from individual houses to blocks of flats. The ground floors share that same flexibility as they can shift between housing and retail functions.

“Through a high degree of fragmentation we open up possibilities that the large scale existing structures can’t cater to. We foresee in the beginning that a few small scale shops could function in the area, but we also see that this can be the framework for a development where retail and recreation colonise the entire development. This is the concept we call shuffle.”

© Eriksen Skajaa

From Italy, Chile, Austria, Taiwan and Argentina. Here’s our second Round Up from our previously featured industrial architecture. Check our first part here!

Cabel Industry / Massimo Mariani
Just out the edge of the town of Empoli, the building is the Cabel headquarters (a company dealing in computer systems for banks), it covers an area of approximately 4.500 square metres and it is incorporated on the local industrial estate. Partially set into the ground, the building is composed of two extended floors (read more…)

Inotera Headquarters & Production Facility / tec Design Studio
The Asia Pacific region, an evolving hub for advanced technology and creative intelligence, benefits from a unique juxtaposition of hi-tech development and natural environment. We seized this opportunity, investigating strategies that integrate the latter two and bring the human being back to the center of all deliberation (read more…)

Olisur: Olive Oil factory / Guillermo Hevia
A volume of architecture simple and emphatic, which reinterprets allegorically anonymous architectures of the central valley, sits on the softer mountains of olives, looking subtly with its wooden facades and colors that stand out with the luminosity of the place. The body will mimic the geography and planning lines of trees on their facades (read more…)

Industrial Plan in Junin de los Andes / Alric Galindez Arquitectos
On a valley placed on the right margin of river Chimehuin, we can find the city of Junin de los Andes. It develops along N°234 national road, part of the Seven Lakes turistic circuit, and it is the main entrance to the National Park Lanin. The Industrial Plan´s terrain is on the roadside, and is the very fisrt building we meet (read more…)

SSC voestalpine Stahl Service Center / x Architekten
The building functions as an interface between road, rail and waterway transport. The delivery and outgoing goods sections embody the dynamism and efficiency of the company voestalpine SSC. Architecturally, the financial success of the enterprise is symbolised by the wide open access gates (read more…)

© Hisao Suzuki

Architect: Sebastian Mariscal Studio
Location: La Jolla, California, USA
Designer & Builder: Sebastian Mariscal Studio
Design Team: Sebastian Mariscal & Jeff Svitak
Structural Engineering: Omar Mobayed
Project Area: 1,546 sqm
Project year: 2007
Photographs: Hisao Suzuki

ground floor plan

Conceived as a series of town residences, SIX in La Jolla combines clear form with continuous indoor/outdoor spaces, elevating to the views of the Pacific Ocean. Stepping down the sloped site, the six town homes create a visual rhythm of contrasting volumes and projecting balconies, extending towards the ocean views. Front patios, defined with greenery, filter the street and lead to the main living/dining/kitchen spaces where full height sliding glass panels open the space completely to the exterior, creating a continuous outdoor experience. Floating above are the IPE wood clad boxes that house the bedrooms and screen the private decks, alternating with the light stone volumes that define circulation and service spaces. The protruding stainless steel viewing balconies accent the sunset washed street facades, set against the Southern California sky.

© Hisao Suzuki

Sebastian Mariscal Studio has been slowly building a portfolio of well-regarded contemporary housing projects throughout the city of San Diego. Their latest is Six, a row-house project just a block from the beach in La Jolla, one of San Diego’s most desirable and expensive neighborhoods. As with all of these projects, Mariscal is the developer, architect, and contractor.

elevation 01

Six sits on a sloping lot on a curving street, a topographic condition made subtly evident as the apparently identical units curve and drop with the terrain. The row-houses sit atop an underground garage accessible from the side street on the low side of the site; they address the sidewalk through a small gate in a hedge that provides privacy to the open units beyond.

© Hisao Suzuki

Each row-house is composed of two parts that are expressed in their finish materials. Service elements (stairs, elevators, storage, and the like) are placed in limestone-clad pylons that act as sound gaskets between the units. All living spaces are contained in wood boxes that bridge between the stone pylons. The wood boxes—clad completely in IPE—contain bedrooms at the second and third floors. Under the wood box, a large loft-like space for the kitchen and living areas extends into gardens on both ends. This connection is made seamless by the use of fold-away glass doors that completely open both ends of the room. IPE flooring runs outside as decking in both directions, connecting the garden and terrace areas to the interior. In fact, this “slipping” of inside to out is so effective that, when the doors are folded back, you feel as though you are in a covered exterior space. Six is a quintessentially Southern California housing scheme that builds on a legacy of seamless connections between house and garden. The real genius of Six is that it accomplishes this with such a deceptively simple kit-of-parts.

© Jimmy Cohrssen

Architects: Carbondale
Location: Munich, Germany
Project Team: Eric Carlson / Director, Pierre Tortrat / Associate, Valérie Vaudoyer / Project Architect
Local Architect: Jan Hehenberger, Munich, Germany
Building contractor: Gerhard P. Wirth, Nürnberg, Germany
Contractors: Franck Franjou, Paris / Lighting consultant – Abisz, Velen Germany / Furniture Contractor – Films Hors Ecran, Paris / Audio Video Consultant – Thalweg, Montreuil / Landscape Consultant, Pur-Metall, Hohenbrunn Germany / Metal
Project Area: 2,000 sqm
Project Year: 2008
Photographs: Jimmy Cohrssen

The new headquarters building for the fashion brand ESCADA will receive each season hundreds of visitors from all over the world over to unveil their latest collection. ESCADA commissioned the Parisian studio CARBONDALE to design the architectural “public face” including the entry façade, entry court, interior courtyard, lobby and furniture totaling 2,000 sqm.

© Jimmy Cohrssen

The 3 main spaces, the entry court, lobby and interior courtyard spaces are visually aligned with transparent facades to form an immense 75meter long runway that flows through the center of the building. The ground plane of each of the 3 areas is uniquely inscribed with succession of linear bands serving to unify and give rhythm to the formal entry procession. At the entry court these stripes are composed of two textures of concrete for the walkway and 4 species of flowering plants. Each plant species takes turns blossoming in correspondence with each of the 4 climatic & fashion seasons. The 4 different flowering colors, red, white, pink and violet are the first device to transform the visitor’s experience. At the interior courtyard the stripe composition alternates between bands of grass and concrete paving. The combination of mineral and vegetal materials practically allows for punctual usage without damage, yet visually when perceived perpendicularly from the lobby the courtyard appears completely green. Inside the lobby the stripes are manifested in the flooring through varying sized bands of polished concrete and polished aluminum and in the ceiling with irregularly positioned full-length lighting gorges.

floor plan

The open 600m2 lobby interior is interspersed with 5 boxes like objects extending from floor-to-ceiling varying in size, tone and function. The first “box” is the entry vestibule, lined with a white lacquer paravent, suggestive of folding screens used for changing clothes. The large central “box” contains the reception and the small 2-level box contains the public elevator. Two additional “inverted boxes” are recessed wall alcoves which signal the entries into the showroom and restaurant spaces.

© Jimmy Cohrssen

Each of these 5 box elements along with 2 central columns are wrapped in an extraordinary and inventive surface composed of vertical blades of polished, linished and brushed stainless steel mounted in an irregular zig-zag pattern. Inspired by the pattern made by dressmaking scissors, this unique triangular facetted profile is also sculpted into the custom wool carpet and leather furniture. Rather than simply applying color to distinguish the different “boxes” CARBONDALE expresses the material by tinted the stainless steel in silver, light-gold, gun metal blue, and bronze.

© Jimmy Cohrssen

Notorious for burring the limits between architecture and furniture design, CARBONDALE created the seating area in the proportions of a super-stretch limousine wrapped in matt black leather. The 12meter long seating-table element is composed of an enormous floating slab enveloped in angular undulating leather from which three seating areas are carved out and capped in a continuous serpentine backrest.

To further animate the pure geometric lobby a 4.5meter high vertical video is positioned next to the showroom alcove reflecting and fragmenting the larger-than-life runway models. The giant screen is composed of 8 vertically mounted frameless plasma screens synchronized to display a single seamless moving image.

© Jimmy Cohrssen

The robust linear of architectural surfaces create an ephemeral composition of textures and reflections that render the Escada headquarters both modern and luxurious conveying the essence of the brand.

© Paul Kozlowski

Architects: N+B Architectes / Elodie Nourrigat & Jacques Brion
Location: Morieres Les Avignon, France
Project Manager: Elodie Nourrigat & Jacques Brion
Client: Conseil General du Vaucluse
Project Area: 8,500 sqm
Budget: 13M€
Project Year: 2009
Photographs: Paul Kozlowski

roof plan

The massive stone of the implemented stone in a determinedly contemporary writing offers a complementary material and a depth to the concrete which usually can seem too smooth and cold. A real dialogue is born in the material. So buildings gets organized according to volumes registered under wide folds in concrete which roll about with it around them. The “VERS” stone establishes sides façades of folds in concrete. It offers a thermal slowness and gives rhythm to facades. The volume of the multipurpose room marks the entry of the middle school, at the end of the alignment of trees of the esplanade. It floats above the internal square serving at the same time as signal and as shelter for pupils.

© Paul Kozlowski

The middle school compound itself of different built entities which correspond to the different functions and scale of the program.