Bio-Lake Reception Center | Wuhan | China | Zephyr Architects

This reception center houses exhibition space, conference rooms and administration offices for Bio-lake campus. Next to the entrance plaza and adjacent to the central lake, the building is the symbolic heart of the Bio-lake campus currently under construction.
The overall form and proportions of the building correspond to the program arrangement, which includes a central atrium, models and media exhibition room, and ramps and stairs connecting different floors. The architectural massing of the reception center rises about the elevated plinth. The stone are cladded in such a way to following the geometry line and wrap around the entire building, giving the impression that the building is floating above the ground. ............more

Exhibition Grounds of the Estonian Road Museum | Estonia | Salto

The open-air exhibition grounds of the Estonian Road Museum is a mixture of many layers. Not only does it operate on an informative level, it also incorporates opportunities for leisure activities and for experiencing artificial and natural landscape in a compelling dialogue. The concept of the exhibition grounds is based on a road – while passing by, your route will be surrounded by different landscapes. The solution forms a long 8-shaped path, where functions with different character and scale are placed in succession like a comic strip. All space necessary for the museum is scooped into the hilly South-Estonian landscape, leaving rest of the environment as natural as possible: natural and artificial landscape is clearly separated, yet treated equally........more

Pop Music Center | Kaohsiung Taiwan | Emergent

This design is intended to re-invigorate the Port of Kaohsiung as a cultural destination through world class public attractions, cutting edge music infrastructure, green energy technology, and lush landscaping. The design is based on creating two buildings located at anchor points on the site-- one lifting into the air and the other embedded in the ground. By lifting partially off the ground, the Pop Music Center creates a huge shaded public plaza underneath the building. It also creates a protected space for the 12,000 seat public amphitheater, so that events can be planned year-round and in various weather conditions. The nine Performance Halls are organized inside bubbles nested between skin layers.......more

Zaha Hadid | Fluidity & Design | Shaikh Ebrahim bin Mohammed Al Khalifa Center for Culture and Research, Bahrain

17 February 2010 - For her inaugural exhibition in the Gulf, Zaha Hadid - Fluidity & Design, the Pritzker Prize winning architect presents her practice’s continued exploration and research towards a new architectural language of fluidity that encompasses all scales of design – a built manifesto informed by originality and innovation. Evolving from the demands of greater complexity and variety in contemporary society, this new language is driven by the latest advances in computational design processes and stateof- the-art fabrication technologies.
Zaha Hadid views the fields of urbanism, architecture and design as inherently interrelated, with the fluid sensibility of her design projects impacting our own perception of space. In a dialogue of complex curvilinear geometries - each design morphologically conceived and shaped further by typological, functional and ergonomic considerations - Hadid reinvents the balance between object and space – establishing a direct discourse with the Cartesian galleries of the Shaikh Ebrahim Center and presenting the unbounded possibilities of her formal repertoire.

Showcased in the Bin Matar House, one of the traditional Bahraini houses restored by the Shaikh Ebrahim Center, Zaha Hadid – Fluidity & Design reveals the spatial complexity of Hadid’s visionary creations. The exhibition brings together a selection of works that articulate our immediate tactile environment, demonstrating Hadid’s radical reinterpretation of the space we occupy. The works included within the exhibition range from jewellery to large-scale furniture pieces, each produced as unique or limited edition pieces, giving the visitor a true overview of the range of Zaha Hadid’s design practice.
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New 4th Army Jiangnan Headquarter Exhibition Hall | Atelier Zhanglei

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Situated in Liyang, the city 70km southeast of Nanjing, New 4th Army Jiangnan Headquarter Exhibition Hall was built to memory the history of New 4th Army leaded by Communist Party during last 30's. Fragmental granite is used here as façade cladding for the pure cubic volume which expresses very strong the monumental function of this project. The courtyard turns from internal volume to external façade, exposes itself in dramatic red section, presenting its revolutional feature of this project strongly supported by local government.

Structural & Material: Concrete, Brick, Stone
Floor Area: 4200 Square Meters
Design Period: 2006.03-2006.06

Texts and Images: Atelier Zhanglei

Herzog & de Meuron | Schaulager | Basel Switzerland

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The architects Herzog & de Meuron designed an unusual space for Schaulager. Their task was to design a warehouse for the open storage of contemporary art that had optimal climatic conditions and was available by appointment. The building was also intended to be a site for conservation, research and dissemination. Rather than an anonymous warehouse, the spacious building was to be conceived so as to produce a specific and unique place.

At 7,250 square metres, art storage on the three upper stories occupies the bulk of the total area of 16,500 square metres. There are 3,650 square metres on the ground floor and in the basement available for exhibitions. The permanent installations by Robert Gober and Katharina Fritsch occupy 260 and 390 square metres, respectively. The administration occupies 800 square metres. The art handling department and the workshops occupy another 800 square metres. The 144-seat auditorium and the seminar room occupy 250 square metres. The remaining 3,100 square metres are for technical and other facilities.

Schaulager is the home for the works in the collection of the Emanuel Hoffmann Foundation that are not currently on exhibition. It is a new kind of space for art. It is neither museum nor a traditional warehouse. Schaulager is first and foremost a response to the old and new needs for the storage of works of the visual arts. It dispenses with box storage and transforms the foyers of the exhibition halls into autonomous facilities, independent of any museum, with specific qualities and functions. It is a pilot programme that allows works of art to lead their own lives behind the curtains, a life that does not simply consist of an endless wait for public presentation.

Photographs:Margherita Spiluttini

The Design Of Exhibition and Congress Center of Ávila | Ávila, Spain | Francisco Mangado

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During the project design the guiding principles were conceptual density, generosity in the way of occupying space, and exploitation of the topographical features of the site. The landscape studded with granite pieces, both formally and spatially, provided the references needed.

The design Municipal Congress and Exhibition Center is aimed at becoming a meeting place to celebrate different kinds of events, a levelled area or plaza at the edge of the walls. The main level of this area is designed to match up with the highest point of the plot, so that its extension generates a large interior void that shall house, without excavation, the required uses.

The building is designed to take up the northern side of the new public space, delimiting along with the walls the new square. In keeping with the contours of the site, the project combines two different geometries: the most orthogonal and elongated space contains the auditorium and main halls, while the most precipitous and uneven one contains the exhibition spaces.

Location: Ávila, Spain.

Total Area: 22.000m2

Competition: 1st Prize

Text and images from:Francisco Mangado

Nathalie Djunberg at OMA's The Prada Transformer | Seoul,Korea

Nathalie Djunberg has collaborated with composer Hans Berg to create this installation. The interior of the Transformer has been covered with white felt which ripples and twists to form a highly baroque, sensual wrapping. Djunberg articulates the walls and floors using objects and projections to create a ‘cave of the unconscious’.
Images of Nathalie Djunberg's exhibition here.

Palace of trade fairs and exhibitions in Malaga | Malaga,Spain | ASENJO

Palace of trade fairs and exhibitions in Malaga

Location: Malaga
Address: Avda Jose Ortega y Gasset, Malaga Ronda West
Project construction date: 2001
Completion Date: 2003
Client: Company M. Activities and Initiatives, Business Malaga (PROMALAGA)
Contributors: ESTEYCO S.A. (Structural Engineering), Goyma (Plant Engineering) KONDO ASSOC THEO. (Lighting)
Program: Exhibition Booths, Auditoriums, Conference Rooms, Offices, Restaurants, loading and unloading, Access, Patio Central, Facilities Maintenance and Control
Built surface: 62,000


EL PALACIO DE MALAGA trade fair and conference is a determined by the architecture, the search for a multi-container for tertiary activities related to the holding of trade fairs, congresses and exhibitions. With that, the city of Malaga strengthens its capital structure on the urban area of Costa del Sol, centralize the flow of economic, social and cultural life of that had historically remained outside.

Located next to the round West, one of the main streets of urban communication, this building has become, since the construction process, an inseparable part of the landscape of the city.

To ensure this versatility, the use of the building is fortified with specific spaces for the development of complementary, types of logistics, administrative, corporate, etc, all within the framework of new technologies, as well as being characteristic of this kinds of events such as the access and parking of vehicles, ensuring the proper functioning of this deployment, according to the major influx of visitors expected.

The project idea of the need for a flexible space in the adjustment of its facilities for any type of event-related trade shows and conferences at international level.

A container building is planned in two exhibition modules interconnected by a central courtyard, with the ability to turn into the third exhibition space, while allowing the operation of joint or separate modules.

To cover these areas are selected dynamic undulating shapes, irregular edges. The metal structure that supports serve as a skeleton that gives shape to the outer volume, as a light into the interior structure, in this way becomes a key element in the project, featuring the exhibition spaces by linear elements of great lyricism, in their undulating shapes formed by the overlap of thorns, to incorporate the theme of color in the interior spaces created by architecture.

This effort to characterize the architecture is done from the belief that the building has been configured as a single reference, in order to help consolidate the image of development, progress, technology ... Malaga which aims to portray in their environment.
The very nature of the building, understood as the result of two cover large areas covered by one set of rolling, was the germ from which the final set, finally resolved by a light cover of zinc exposure modules and boards titanium in the various volumes that make up the office tower.

The proposed solutions are already emerging in the early sketches infographics, focusing on the one hand the idea of architectural object, and secondly on the idea of technological sophistication, it is recognized that after the project by providing front-line, implemented by specialized engineering Esteyco Goyma structures and facilities.

Addressing this project has meant to the team website and Asenjo, redesign their usual working methods, to find a dynamic project according to the order, based on its unique nature and complex.

In a heterogeneous environment, with large doses of urban disorder, the building of the Palace of Fairs and congresses, it becomes a flagship computer growths can articulate your unique personality, forward planning is beginning to produce a around.
Images from ASENJO
Original Text by ASENJO translated by Design Ideas

Extension of the Kunsthall in Bremen Germany - International competition |urban environments architects

The extension of the Kunsthall in Bremen is a building that evokes a sense of mystery through its ability to seamlessly integrate with its surroundings, yet maintain a sense of architectural autonomy.

The language of the extension is articulated through the dichotomy of its main interior spaces: the open light-flooded circulation areas and the closed cubic exhibition areas. This results in a differentiated sculpture, which is wrapped by a partly transparent, partly mirroring façade. This main gesture fragments the reflection of the environment on the building exterior and on the walls of the interior exhibition cube. These distorted reflections of reality, evocative of Dan Graham’s mirrored sculptures and Andy Warhol’s camouflage portraits, stimulate the imagination of the visitors yet integrate the building into the surrounding park and existing museum.

On an urban scale, the addition is carefully planned to portray the relationship between the park and the city, through its setback from the street and museum. The building mass is carefully placed to capitalize on the urban qualities of the site and re-introduce the continuity of the green belt surrounding the city of Bremen. While its façade blends the building into the park, its engaging sculptural quality and urban setting renders the building as an attractor, inviting visitors to the new exhibition complex. The architectural language of the Kunsthall addition is such that it respects and preserves the delicate site conditions, yet adds a strong contemporary counterpart to the existing museum.
Urban Environments Architects Blog

More Design Ideas For Exhibition Centres

LITEXPO Exibition Pavilion Vilnius, Lithuania | Paleko Arch Studija

LITEXPO Exhibition Pavilion, Parodu st. 7, Vilnius

ARCHITECTS: R.Palekas, J.Garšvaite, A.Palekiene, B.Puzonas
CONSTRUCTOR: V.Guogis
COMPETITIVE PROJECT. 1st place winners
IDEA: heightening natural environment - opening green slope, possibility to continue developing of centre "Litexpo". A new triangled volume of exhibition building is joining to present pavilions. The grand hall is without columns, appropriate for various purposes. Also, a new conference hall, restaurant. Reconstructing exposition square. Horizontal character.
DECORATION: concrete, glass.
BUILDING AREA: 9 000 sqm
Paleko Arch Studija

ARS Electronica Center, Linz,Austria | AN Architects

The main area groups (Eingansbereich, Exhibition, VR theater, Futurelab (and catering sector) and all adjacent areas, are uniformly and consistently in a Body building. Since these areas a room height of 5 or 7m predominantly underground (below the space level) are seen by the object the bank as a kind of thin "Circulating volume".
This band combines all of its contents or Functional zones, including inventory object, and forms a framework of the underlying old picture and respected even more expressed. This creates a large covered Area, not only for the ARS Electronica but also for the town square in the background very important. This is an open zone, where different ARS, but also general Cultural events can take place. Thanks to its dimension, the Covered PLACES place where open-air cinema, concerts, Promotions, Out door - installations, art scenes, Summer and a Christmas market can be accommodated. A Interface to control the activity of the ARS Electronica is not isolated, but on the contrary, with the daily life of the city united.
Spaces:
Input Range
Exhibition space
Virtual reality - Theater
Training rooms
Future Lab
Restaurant, Club Lounge
Museum administration
Total net 3,410 m²
Gross area 4,205 m²
Texts and Images from: AN Architects