A Green Wave | A Thermal Swimming Pool Royat | France | Vincent Callebaut Architectures

In the heart of the water city of Royat and its green mall in the confluence of the Tiretaine and Liaboux rivers, our extension project is a dynamic response to the ambition of Royat city to build a mobilization swimming pool represented by a very attractive and contemporary architecture researched by the patients of spas.

By increasing also the choice of cardio-arterial and rheumatologic cares, our architecture proposes the construction of a “planted wave” that covers the pool hall under its curve. The ecological wave projects thus its curve towards the avenue de Royat such as a new green setting, true urban signal dedicated to the welfare and laid out in the urban Northern façade of the spa site. By meeting the needs of the programme as precisely as possible, our project emphasizes three major themes as detailed below : the urban signal, the welfare of the patients and the high environment quality.....more

Estonian National Museum Building Complex | Vincent Callebaut

PROGRAM : International Architectural Competition for the Estonian National Museum Building Complex
LOCATION : The Raadi Manor Complex
SURFACE AREA : 40.000 M²
CLIENT : The Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Estonia, The Estonian National Museum and the Estonian Architects Association
PERSPECTIVES : Philippe Steels

“The ENM is an ethnologically (cultural anthropology) oriented national central museum, whose ethnological, cultural research and museology activities aid in the preservation and development of Estonian culture, keeping Estonian identity in an increasingly globalising world and fostering better understanding between different culture.”

For the hundredth anniversary of the creation date of the Estonian National Museum in 2009, the Estonian Ministry of Culture in conjunction with the Estonian National Museum and the Union of Estonian Architects, would like to build a new building complex in Tartu, the second largest city in Estonia. The Raadi Manor Complex is located on the Eastern district of the city of Tartu along the rural municipality.

At the crossing of the Estonian and Finno-Ugric History and cultures, the Estonian national Museum (ENM) presents an architecture that inserts itself as a built geography. Towards a new understanding of the place, it imposes itself like an open field of multilayer strength that compresses the nature of the city and of the dynamic processes which govern it. It is an animated matrix with compressive folds topologically open which forms a common meeting frame between the city and the rural municipality, between the site and the visitor. The museum is at the intersection of new devices able, simultaneously, to generate reactive mechanisms (operating paradoxes) and evolutional spaces (landscapes). It is an interactive field of strengths among other fields, a geography of transition.
Texts and images from:Vincent Callebaut

DRAGONFLY, A METABOLIC FARM FOR URBAN AGRICULTURE |Vincent Callebaut

2009 : 800 MILLION OF URBAN FARMERS FOR RESPONSIBLE ECO-CITIES

The world of fast-food and frozen food is over! The urban keen interest of the beginning of our Century turns toward the garden flat bringing back the countryside in our overcrowded cities fighting from now on for a community urban agriculture able to contribute to the durability of the city and to rethink the food production.

On the roofs, terraces, balconies, in the hollow of the non-built public spaces, in the interior yards and the suspended greenhouses, the eco-warrior aspires to escape from its competitive and consumeristic universe imposed by the laws of the market. He desires to cultivate its immediate landscape so as to better take root in the ground by creating his own ecologic and alimentary biodiversity. The consumer becomes from then on producer and the garden inhabitant !

From the Parisian « worker gardens » to the « community gardens » of New York going though Muscovite « vegetable squares », eight hundred million of urban farmers, i.e. more than one human being out of ten, consume nowadays chlorophyllous products from these cosmopolitan kitchen gardens. These new gardens, aware of the emergency to reduce our fuel consumption and the necessity to modify our behaviour facing the climatic changes, decrease thus their environmental impact and build eco-responsible cities on a community way.
PROGRAM : A Metabolic Farm for Urban Agriculture / Mixing Uses
LOCATION : New York City, Roosevelt Island
SURFACE AREA : 350.000 m²
HEIGHTS : Antenna=700m; Roof=600m; Top Floor=575m
FLOOR COUNT : 132
AGRICULTURAL FIELDS : 28
MODEL STUDIES : Philippe Steels
PERSPECTIVES : Benoit Patterlini
Images and texts:Vincent Callebaut