The Barclays Centre by SHoP

The Barclays Centre, which is located in one of New Yorks metro areas is a great example of how a form works well with a busy urban street. The building still manages to hold its purpose and keep its visitors and neighbours happy.

The main public areas of the building are glazed at ground level to invite its visitors into the building.  Including a welcoming green roofed entrance to the subway.

SHoP did do an alteration to the design to make the entrance of the main building more accessible to the passers by. They also made the space more useful for the community and even designed it so it could be used as a farmers market.

The building is planned to be opened in 2012 and planned to cost around $800. 

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The Museum of Energy

The Museum of Energy in Spain contains a lecture room, meeting rooms and an exhibition hall. The building has two curved terraces, which are cladded in translucent polycarbonate.

The architects for the project were Girona studio Arquitecturia. The architects use vertical lengths of black-painted steel, which work well with the polycarbonate.

At night, the lights from inside the building light up the outside curved wall to give the front façade a warm glow.

The large full-length window, which breaks through the façade, really frames the double-height spaces inside the building. 

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Bringing Green to the City

In Paris, Architects SOA are trying their best to make their high rise tower as green as possible. They believe there should not be a parting between the town and country, urban and natural.

The idea of the living tower or “Tour Vivante” is going to allow people to grow their own food in the comfort of their own tower block.  The tower will allow tomatoes, rice plants and lettuces that will flourish behind the windows of the tower. They have estimated 63,000 kg of tomatoes, 37,333 feet of salad and 9,324 kg of strawberries per year.

The great thing about this building is its energy. We can look at the travelling distance that people make between urban and extra urban territories for crops. This is a distance that people can cut out if they could live in a building with a vertical farm such as this.

If we look at the building in terms of energy use, located at the top of the tower is home to two large windmills. Taking advantage of the buildings height, the windmills produce around 200 to 600 kWh per annum. These windmills also have a pumping action which allows circulation and the recycling of rainwater which is recovered on the roof and ground.

Photovoltaic panels are also included into the facades of the tower, which again is another natural way of producing energy for the buildings. So with the photovoltaic panels and the windmills there is enough energy to make the tower self-sufficient.

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Central Village Liverpool

Found in the heart of Liverpool city center, is one of the most famous streets in Liverpool, Bold Street. Behind this street is the new 160 million pound development driven by Merepark. Central Village is aimed to be a village in the heart of the city.

The village will be home to both retail and leisure including a 6 screened Odeon Cinema, 442 hotel rooms covered by 3 hotels, 160,000 sq ft of prime space which shall be let to big brands such as Costa, Subway, Handmade Burger Co and many more.

There shall also be 500 parking spaces run by Q-Park and 80,000 sq ft of office space within the development. Towards the city end of the development is Central Station which shall be fully redevelopment alongside the Central Village.

The main buildings within the Central Village shall be two high rise blocks one been 25 stories and the other 20 stories. 

The project is due to be completed in 2013 and will give in total around 3,000 jobs. 1000 of which in its construction and the remaining 2,000 being in the running of the completed project.

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For more information on Central Village visit http://www.merepark.co.uk/

Balancing Barn

The design brief for most holiday homes is very simple: a clean and comfortable temporary home with a good location. MVRDV on the other hand think that this brief is not good enough. They believe that it is there job to “encourage the general public to reconsider their perspective on both modern architecture and the countryside”.

The Balancing Barn is one of five holiday homes, all of which have a unique architectural twist. The feature that makes the Balancing Barn standout as a piece of architecture is the 50% cantilever. You enter the building from ground leave through the large kitchen and dining room. Leading on from here is a long corridor with 4 double bedrooms on the left-hand side. All of which with en-suites.

At the end of the house, which is the cantilevered part you will find the large living room. With a picture window and a 5.8m glass floor panel it really is an interesting space to be in. From the glass floor panels you can see the swing which is attached to the end of the cantilever on the outside.

With fun galvanised steel cladding and massive cantilever this really is a bold piece of architecture that really uses its natural topography to its best.

For more information please go to http://www.mvrdv.nl/#/news

Gareth Pugh's Relationship with Architecture

For people that what a perfect match of how fashion mixes with architecture you shouldn’t look any further than Gareth Pugh. The young British designer started off at the young age of 14 as a costume designer. From there Pugh has blossomed into a unique design who leaks out architecture into all of his designs.

Pugh’s designs come with deep meanings with descriptions such as “a flower looks amazing just before it dies”, and the use of the white colour trying to escape from the black.

You can relate architectural proportion to most of his clothing in terms of the size and geometry. Even down to his makeup, for spring 2009 he hired makeup artist Alex Box. She still worked to keep the 3 Dimensional architectural forms that Pugh was trying to get across. By using eyelashes that had a solid 3 dimensional form and black colour on one side and white on the other.

A growing trend with architecture is to expose structure of the building, yet another architectural link to fashion and architecture. Pugh has celebrated the structures/ skeletons of the garment and expressed them on the outside instead of hiding them.

Pugh’s label is still growing. He opened his first boutique in Hong Kong last year and is still dressing the big celebrity names such as Kylie, Beyoncé , Ashlee Simpson and Lady Gaga.  

The People's Building

As shown in the imagines below the People’s Building in Shanghai is based upon the Chinese sign ‘Ren’ which can be translated to ‘People’.

The two part building is a hotel, sports and conference centre for the World Expo 2010 in Shanghai. One side of the building which emerges from the water is home to the sports centre. The second part of the building which emerges from the land is a conference centre. There is also a 1000 room hotel located where the two parts meet. 

For more information go to http://www.big.dk/

The Floating City

As sea levels are rising, Vincent Callebaut Architects think they have the solution in terms of housing for the future. They have come up with the idea of floating cities, each holding 50,000 people.

As stated in the title of the project, the designs are based upon a lily pad. The purpose of the project is to re-house people that would lose their homes due to the rise in water levels.

The “Lilypad City” is designed to float on the oceans and be fully self sustainable. The cities offer three marinas, artificial mountains and a lake in its centre to collect and purify rain water.

The island will be power only on renewable energy sources including wind turbines, solar panels attached to the side of the mountains and a power station that harnesses energy from the waves.

The architect, who has yet to estimate a cost for his design, added: 'It's an amphibious city without any roads or any cars. The whole city is covered by plants housed in suspended gardens. 


For more information please visit
http://vincent.callebaut.org/page1-img-lilypad.html

Eva Jiricna Staircases

Eva Jiricna is an architect known for her steel and glass staircases among another thing. Eva Jiricna projects range from public buildings, retail, exhibitions, bridges and more. 

One of her well known pieces is her design for the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. EJAL won a completion to design a new gallery at the museum which was to hold 3,500 pieces of Jewellery. The gallery is split in two leaves which are connected with one of her well known circular, steel and glass staircases.

Another typical staircase is located in Joan & David Shoes on New Bond Street, London. The staircase is the main feature of the shop as are most of her staircases. The staircases leads down to the basement with a glass landing on the ground floor.

For more information on any other projects please go to http://www.ejal.com

The building with no shadow

Le Project Triangle will be Paris’s first high-rise approved building since 1977. This was due to the recent lifting of the 31 year old bad on high-rise buildings within the city.

The architects Herzog & de Meuron say that there building shall be “optimum solar and wind power generated”. The shape of the building can be very convincing to be a pyramid, this however is wrong. By looking at the building from one side, the eye shows a pyramid shape whilst a slim line shape, which is similar to a sharks fin from another.

By the shape and orientation of the building the architects claim that the building will cast no shadows on the surround buildings.

The ground floor of the building shall be occupied with shops and restaurants. Also open public space and Parisian rooftops with visions over the romantic city. The high rise is due to be completed in 2014.

Manchester Square Offices by SHH

The architects down at SHH in London have design some very elegant, modern yet traditional interiors for some offices. Normally the client list consists of Pizza Hut, McDonald’s and Adidas, but here is there work in a Georgian office block which is located in a five story townhouse.

The classic yet modern furnishings within the offices are mostly limited edition pieces or pieces that have been custom made for the project. By looking through at the rooms, eyes get caught at both mixtures of the old and new, with glimpses of dramatic lighting, delicate cornicing and beautiful fireplaces. These features including the marble mosaic titles are all features that where saved from the previous tenants.

Since the offices have been built they have won many awards for this project such as the international property Awards 2009, UK Propery Awards 2009 and the ICIAD Ring Awards 2008. 

For more information visit their website at http://www.shh.co.uk/

Oskar Zieta Seating

This family of stools designed by Oskar Zieta have a unique design with a playful look. The family of stools come in three sizes; a mini stool, standard stool and finally a kitchen stool. This allows the seating to be accessible to all.

These stools have been created by using FIDU technology. This technology is basically “blown up sheets of metal”. By welding two sheets of thin steel together around the edge, this gives the material an opportunity to be inflated using high pressure. This then gives the metal a unique 3D shape.  bearing in mind the shape of the stool it is still only made up of the steel, therefore making it light weight and sturdy.

Since the family of stools have been first show in the Young Creative Polish Designers in September 2009, they have been shown in many exhibitions and won many prizes. Prizes include Forum AID Award 2009, German Design Council Award 2008 and Red Dot Design Award 2008.

Oskar Zieta also has other ranges of seating created by the same technology.

For more information go to the Zieta Prozessdesign homepage

http://www.zieta.pl/home

Kissing Bridge

This amazing Rolling Bridge by Thomas Heatherwick is located at the retail quarter of the Grand Union Canal in Paddington, London.

The bridge is made from both steel and timber and it described to have a “basic look”. Heatherwick was focusing on the opening of the bridge and focused more on how the bridge worked instead of what it was.

With the bridge been 12 metres long, it curls up unnaturally into the air by hydraulic rams. Eventually after the slow process, the two ends of the bridge end up “kissing” and sitting on the side of the canal in a circular form. 

The bridge has won many awards from the Emerging Architecture Award to the Structural Steel Award. You can see the bridge in action very Friday at noon.