Convention Centre Design | International Convention Centre Barcelona | Mateo Arquitectura

The Barcelona International Convention Centre consists of a large hall (15.000 m2, 80m of structural lighting) that can be divided and a block for associated services that looks out to sea. The hall is both structure and abstraction; the exterior block talks to the sea and the sky.
The structure is a musical score of reference.

The climate, the light (and opposite, shade) and sound (and its opposite, silence) have shaped the plot.
The flows (of people and of fluids that are all similar), the masses and the architecture that appears (and frequently) disappears amid them..........more

Architectural Competiton First Prize Winner | Hangzhou Gateway | Hangzhou | China | JDSA

The concept of the building is to create a gateway in between two prominent parts of the city’s new development. By excavating a portion of our built mass we liberate a diagonal passage through our site while at the same time articulate the descent to a commercial center and below ground parking.
On the executive floors we provide a rice-field like landscape that serves as a park and as a rain water retainer to re-use natural water and cool down the building.........more

Museum Design | Dali Museum | St. Petersburg | Florida | HOK

The new 68,000-sq.-ft. Dali museum is on three floors, fronting the St. Petersburg waterfront. Spaces house the permanent collection, a temporary exhibit space, curatorial and administration offices, a grand entrance, museum shop, art vaults, library and support functions........more

Headquarters Design | Rossignol World Headquarters | Saint Jean de Moirans | France | Herault-Arnod Architectes

The image Rossignol, a historic leader of the ski, is closely tied to the mountains and snow. The project is for Rossignol's worldwide headquarters, far from the stereotypes of office buildings, refers to the nature and the peaks but also to technology, inseparable from the high performance sport. The land is located in the middle of a plain surrounded by mountains. A former agricultural field and marsh perfectly levelled, bordered on the north side by Highway Lyon / Grenoble. The architecture is tailored to Rossignol, it merges the functional and the imagination of the company in a radical expression and bare: it is based on the slides, the fluidity of movement, and also relief, snow and glaciers carved by the elements. The roof that covers the entire project is a topography in harmony with the landscape, its organic form covered with wood meets the profile of the mountains that surround the site........more

Benidorm West Beach Promenade | Benidorm | Spain | Office Of Architecture In Barcelona

The proposal for the Benidorm West Beach Promenade puts forward a radical innovation with respect to the result of the other promenades with which we are acquainted.

Normally, seaside promenades are designed with the object of building a line along the seashore to project the building a line along the seashore to protect the built-up areas from the sea breakers, at the same time as organising a transit area parallel to the coast and building the seafront façades of the towns and villages along the same lines........more

Museum Expansion Design | Police Museum | Chile | Gonzalo Mardones Arquitectos

All the façades of the new volumes are resolved with Concrete incorporating titanium dioxide and a system of phenolic molds with 5 inch wide planks.
The white walls highlighted in the abstract between the intense green of the trees and the green roofs of the buildings.......more

Entrance Building Admirant | Eindhoven | The Netherlands | Massimiliano Fuksas

Compared with the immediate surroundings, the new architecture seems to be at a first glance like a product of the distant future.
Fluid, amorphous or organic are terms which cross one´s mind.
Like an undefined celestial body, the new building appears between the building fronts. One might think that an unexpected impact in the existing structure left behind its mark, whereby the object has been stuck or frozen..........more

Auditorium Design | Teulada Auditorium | Teulada-Moraira | Spain | Francisco Mangado

The building of the new auditorium acts as a hinge between the two physical areas of the municipality. A reference that allows seeing and being seen from both spots. As far as hall types and complementary uses are concerned, the program is simple. The organization and layout of the pieces undergoes a total geometric and spatial transformation towards the southern facade that, being oriented to the sea, becomes the most singular and significant element of the project.........more

Shooping Arcade Design | Mayfair | London | OR Project

The proposal for a high end shopping arcade in Mayfair, London, will greatly enhance the currently unused potential of this prime location. Luxury retail happens on three floors, and cafes and restaurants with outdoor seating are covered by a new glass canopy across the street.

The canopy shape is a single surface structure suspended from above. The minimal surface is developed around an L-system diagram, distributing the tensile forces between the individual glass elements........more

World Expo Shanghai 2011 | UAE Pavilion | Foster + Partners

Foster + Partners’ design for the UAE pavilion draws inspiration from a sand dune, a symbolic feature of the desert landscape shared by each of the seven emirates. With capacity for 450 people and enclosing 3,000 square metres of exhibition space, the pavilion is one of the largest structures to be built for the 2010 Shanghai Expo. Responding to the ‘Better Cities, Better Lives’ theme, the pavilion is designed to showcase projects such as the Masdar Initiative, a new 6 million square metre carbon neutral zero waste community in Abu Dhabi, intended to become a centre for the development of new ideas for energy production.........more

Library Extension | Edwardian Library | Croydon | London | FAT

The project involves the refurbishment and extension of an existing Edwardian Library in Croydon, South London. FAT were originally commissioned by Croydon Council to undertake a feasibility study of the library looking at how it could be modernised to achieve contemporary access requirements. The ground floor of the building included several difficult changes in level while the lower floor and rear garden remained inaccessible. In addition the building fabric was in poor condition and the original interior detailing lost under a number of additions and modifications.........more

Mosque Design | Sancak Mosque | Istanbul | Turkey | Emre Arolat Architects

Sancak Mosque located in Buyuk Cekmece, a suburban neighborhood in the outskirts of Istanbul, aims to address the fundamental issues of designing a mosque by distancing itself from the current architectural discussions based on form and focusing solely on the essence of religious space......more

New Headquarters of Group Azahar | Castellón | Spain | Office Of Architecture In Barcelona

Azahar is a group of companies related to Sustainability and Environment, devoted to topics such as waste recycling, landscaping, plant cover, among others.
The headquarters that will host this set of companies is located in an area of 5.6 ha next to the N-340 in Castellon de la Plana.
The project contemplates three actions: a building of corridors of 5 m repeated fifty times with a sloping deck, favoring the ventilation is cutting contour adjusting to the slope and increase the height as the gap and use of space (costumes, work area, machinery, warehouses, garages, etc.).........more

Dining Facilities | Canterbury School-Steele Hall | England | BRB Architects

Dining facilities are of great importance to boarding schools, since the school community -students, faculty and staff - comes together for three meals a day in this space. Canterbury’s existing circa 1980 dining room suffered from poor lighting and minimal, slot windows. BRB’s expansion includes a glass pavilion that extends out into the sloping woods beyond, placing the dining patrons at eye level with the tree canopy to the west. BRB also provided a terrace to the south that allows for panoramic views of the campus........more

Caldicott School Performing Arts Building | Burnham | England | Henley Halebrown Rorrison Architects

The new building, comprising the main hall, three classrooms, a meeting room and common room, is sited beside the original house. The key decision was to partially submerge the building to reduce its bulk, to maintain views and mitigate any loss of light to the surrounding buildings. The newly created quad, now at the heart of the school, provides views over the grounds through the predominantly glazed walls of the hall. In this way the school grounds become, through use of the quad, central to the everyday life of the school...........more

Housing Development | Garden City | Eindhoven | The Netherlands | biq

" We have reconstructed one part of the district with houses lining a square, a court, an alley, streets and a green boulevard. The conventional urban spaces are supported by equally conventional house types. Corners and long facades are marked by special forms of living: combined living and work units, accommodation for mentally disabled and their attendants. Cars are parked within the perimeter of the blocks.".......more

Apartment Design | Marco Polo Residential Tower | Hamburg | Germany | Behnisch Architekten

Apartments are between 60 and 340 square metres in area. Generous perimeter terraces and balconies extend the living areas out into a soft play of lines, and lend the tower its distinctive image. A high degree of flexibility is offered with the possibility of increasing areas by connecting neighbouring apartments. External variations in appearance are reflected in the interiors, in that no level, or apartment, is quite like any other. Choices can range from two room apartments to large penthouses with maisonette characteristics. Load-bearing structural elements and necessary fixed services have all been reduced as much as possible, so that the residents themselves can decide where they want to sleep, cook, eat, bathe or relax. On entering the apartment one has an uninterrupted view over an open plan living room landscape, through generously sized glass panels, to the outside world and Hamburg’s roofscape..........more

Fire Station Design | Mont blanc | France | Arriola and Fiol Arquitectes

The project is organized around a central hall where the fire trucks are parked. The rest of the program, that is, the sitting and dining room, kitchen and bedrooms in the second floor, are complementary to this main working room. This concept is carried out to the spatial volume of the fire station, where the roof of this central room is extended to the whole building and to its facades. The four doors for the cars, as big spared mouths opening at different directions, reinforce the dynamism of the building. The alignments of the building and its three dimensional volume refers to the dented line of the Montsant hills in the background. From the beginning the building itself was understood more as a topographic accident in the landscape than a small nave in an industrial zone. .........more

Sports Hall Design | Paide Sports Hall | Paide | Estonia | Salto

Paide Sports Hall is connected to the existing school complex, yet differentiates from its successive building blocks as an independent object, thus activating the schoolyard and giving it new uses. Setting a large-scale building into the schoolyard, human scale has been taken into consideration as much as possible. Lowering the edges of the hall and overall facet-like shape serve to visually reduce the bulk of the building. The building‘s position on the plot is slightly shifted to enable interesting views from all sides.........more

Apartment Design | the Rokade | Groningen | The Netherlands | Arons en Gelauf

The apartments’ façades, load bearing construction and installations have been made ready for three different layout possibilities. The present and future inhabitants will be able to determine their own ground plan in this way. The building is extra sustainable according to Groninger Residential Quality directives..........more

Regeneration Project | Barking Central | London | Allford Hall Monaghan Morris

Barking Central is one of the most successful regeneration projects in the UK. It has revitalised Barking town centre with a large mixed-use scheme of seven new buildings including a new Learning Centre, over 500 residential apartments, a 66 bed hotel, a bicycle shed for 250 bikes, nine retail units, a café, a new town square and an arboretum. Delivered in two phases over nine years, Allford Hall Monaghan Morris master planned and designed the buildings, overcoming many challenges to create a scheme that symbolises the regeneration of this Thames Gateway town........more

Cultural Centre | The Culture Yard | Elsinore | Denmark | AART Architects

The Culture Yard is located at the waterfront of Elsinore, Denmark, and unites the days of yore with a modern profile in a unified culture and knowledge centre, including two concert halls, a public library, showrooms and conference rooms.
In respect for the historic site the radical renovation of the Culture Yard preserves and underlines the original atmosphere and architecture of the site but at the same time brings the yard into the new millennium.

Substance, sustainability and experience have thus been key factors in the design process and the multifaceted facade of the building creates a clear, modern identity that contrasts and reflects the surrounding cityscape and historic site of Kronborg Castle........more

Residential Tower and Offices | The Woermann Tower | Spain | Herreros Arquitectos

The Woermann Tower is a virtual wood from which to enjoy the utopia of living immersed in a hybrid landscape. The tower will show itself to the city in complete harmony with that idea, a wood of natural and artificial shadows without scale, butv also a telamon that nods in admiration of the landscape it contemplates, and on the ground floor withdraws, providing ground to the pedestrians and, then soaring up with its public facilities to treetop height. With this vegetal and anthropomorphic conception, we aspire to represent the culture of our times. The Woermann Tower sets out to embody the illusions, desires and fantasies of a society that seeks to discover a compromise between nature and development, an intense form of life faithful to the landscape: another beauty..........more

Gymnasium Design | Krems | Austria | Caramel

Task of converting two lengthwise adjacent, 46-meter long gymnasiums into a fully functional triple gymnasium was to be quite a structural engineering feat.
The engineering firm accomplished this using only a 1.8-meter-high prestressed reinforced steel girder that absorbs the loads of both the existing gyms and the newly built extension. in keeping with the strict budget but also with the intention of clearly articulating the newly built addition as such, a light frame construction method with a high degree of prefabricated components was chosen.

Mere 16-cm-thin reinforced concrete ribs support prefabricated wooden panels; standard synthetic domes arranged in a seemingly random order provide lighting and a view of the outside.

Like a bulge in the ground the gym rises as a hull; no differentiation is made between roof and wall; the two fully glazed narrow sides, in a sense, remain open.........more

Sports Hall Design | Estonian University of Life Sciences | Tartu | Estonia | Salto

In addition to solving the simple functional program, designing a new sports hall for the Estonian University of Life Sciences also implied considering some urban issues. The building and its landscaping tries to integrate and organize the scattered campus of the university that has developed over time without no particular coherent plan. In addition, the roadside location on the very verge of the city makes the sports hall something of an entrance mark. Due to its location, one of the considerations was that one should be able to grasp the basic design idea at the first glimpse, upon driving by.

As a solution, all corners of the cubic volume are slightly stretched, and elevated ground forms a “cushion” for the slightly entrenched building. This facilitates integrating the building with landscape and lightens its overall appearance. Undulating forms continuing towards the riverside encompass outdoor sports grounds and bicycle paths. The stretched-out corners create concave lines both in plan and elevation, creating unconventional spaces inside and varying optical effects outside........more