A building that needs to dialogue with the city. An organic block, which gently lands on a square … A kind of constant sensory challenge that appeals to the discovery, experimentation, to a new way of experiencing this amazing city!

Courtesy of Spaceworkers

A space where the physical boundaries of the site are diluted in the geometry of the shape and permeability zones created by the balance sheet, reinforcing the desired fluidity of the surrounding urban space.

The building looks like a massive form, modeled on the basis of foreign relations to enhance, easily seized at car speed and able to stimulate the curiosity of passersby, in a constant game of seduction between “show” and “hide”.

Courtesy of Spaceworkers

The interior is thought of as a kind of continuous functional spiral around a huge central void, exploring an idea of transparency, diluted in a lacy structure (suggesting the branches of trees in a dense forest), making the perception of different spaces possible and be a constant invitation to the movement and the discovery of spaces that are visible.

09FDIP PUBLIC BUILDING
Designer:  Spaceworkers 
Year: 2009
Size: 4000m2
Location: Lordelo | Paredes
Client: Câmara Municipal de Paredes
Principal architects: Henrique Marques and Rui Dinis
Team: Rui Miguel, Rui Rodrigues and Sérgio Rocha
Finance director: Carla Duarte – CFO

Courtesy of Spaceworkers

Courtesy of Marela Zacarias

Courtesy of Marela Zacarias

Courtesy of Jon Bailey and Erick Katzenstein

Comprised of horizontal serial sections of wood, the AA_02 : Planks + Pixels installation transforms a once socially-deprived voluminous-void into a socially activated replacement. Vacant space becomes digitally congealed, eroded and guided over time by a stream of digitally-derived excited energy particulates eroding to expose a striated mass enveloping areas for intimate social interaction to occur. The structure hosts an integrated shelving system where grooves hold the displays of past competition entrants and winners–once vacant space becomes enriched through the cultural narrative of the Anonymous. Cave-like niches within the structure are carved-away to reveal areas for a more informal social interaction whilst allowing for visual connectivity to the main circulatory path below. Central to the affect and effect of the design is the dispersion of light as it filters through a stochastic pattern of pixelated surfaces into the habitable spaces within.

Courtesy of Jon Bailey and Erick Katzenstein

Parametrically derived and algorithmically induced, the structure builds upon a series of equally spaced planes whereby digitally simulated particles emitted at the entry points attract towards points within the volume, creating fluid circulatory paths connecting to lounging niches within. The 2D planes emerge as flat cut-ready sheets to be assembled. A series of vertical structural rods at key instances within the solid volume ground the pavilion and ensures the sheets are spaced at the correct distances, thereby stabilizing the structure. Grooves milled near the edges of the planar elements create tracks where veneer-like sheets create the pixelated pattern and diffuse the light.

Courtesy of Jon Bailey and Erick Katzenstein

The entire ambient effect of the installation becomes a space created for the display, circulation, and lounging during the Anonymous exhibition. The design challenges preconceived perceptions of spaces overshadowed by overpasses—carving space to be transformed and actualized into energy-laden environments.

Courtesy of Jon Bailey and Erick Katzenstein

Courtesy of Mikou Design Studio

Programmatic elements are organized as sweeping curvilinear forms immersed within the spatial continuum of the project. The composition of elements simultaneously creates a porosity, allowing light to flood the interior, whilst delineating separate functions within the structure with strong individual identities.The façades, fabricated from undulating golden timber, express the circular motions of water, making reference to energy circulation and centripetal flux.

Courtesy of Mikou Design Studio

The facades which wrap the building a highlight of the pool complex, bringing an element of novelty to the building. Mikou Design Studio states that they,designed the building’s envelope to attenuate the linear effect of the massing and to introduce a variation in the visual perception according to the viewing angle.

Courtesy of Mikou Design Studio

All the external walls are faced with undulating golden wooden slats that recall the circular movements on the surface of water and make reference to the circulation of energy and flows: the Feng Shui. We designed the Fort swimming pool in a spirit of fluidity and openness. The development of the spaces gives priority to transparency and the depth of field associated with very good use of daylight. All the facades are open and accessible, and the various elements of the programme are organised in the form of light, coloured, rounded bubbles, floating on the project’s spatial continuum. Our design scheme emphasizes the roof as a determinant element of the Fort swimming pool providing  a solarium that is accessible via an indoor-outdoor ramp that runs along the swimming pools hall and provides access to the fifth facade.

 By Matt Davis

Courtesy of Mikou Design Studio

“OLIVOMARE is the last born belonging to the well known London brand OLIVO, and is a restaurant serving seafood. Apart from his name, such peculiarity is highlighted by the formal and decorative language adopted here to focus on its aspect using more or less clear references to the sea world and environment. The most explicit among them undoubtedly is the wide wall that characterizes the main dining room, entirely covered by a large cladding featuring a pattern inspired by the works of the visionary artist Maurits Escher, in which each single portion of colour is laser cut out of a sheet of opaque laminated plastic and juxtaposed on the vertical surface exactly as if it was a huge jigsaw puzzle.

Courtesy of Pierluigi Piu

To counterpoint it, in this same room, from a channeling recessed in the fake ceiling drops down a linear sequence of tubular luminescent tentacles (made out of an extra thin nylon net) evoking a stray shoal of jellyfishes or of sea anemones, while in the wide lozengy glazed partition dividing this room from the entrance lobby somebody could vaguely recognize the meshes of fishers’ nets. In the small dining room at the rear (flooded by natural daylight copiously dropping down through a wide skylight expressly open in its roof), the cladding of its only continuous wall – which also includes a large curve – is characterized by a wavy relief meant to evoke the sandy surface of the beach when moulded by the wind, while in the toilets lobby the intricate branches of a coral reef closes in around any visitor coming from the bright and open adjacent room.

Courtesy of Pierluigi Piu

Such decorative pattern is obtained by engraving a double layer (white and red) of thick opaque laminated plastic laid onto either walls and ceiling, and its entanglement, when combined with the hidden doors giving access to the toilets, adds a sense of momentary disorientation to its aesthetical surprise.

Courtesy of Pierluigi Piu

A sea of white colour has been used to enhance and link all these elements, flooding all surrounding parts, from walls to ceiling, from the resin floor to the Corian® made bar counter; a white sea working in this environment as an undifferentiated neutral background that intentionally disappoints any predictable expectation for blue colour.”

By Danya Hakky

Courtesy of Pierluigi Piu

Courtesy of Archea Associati

Here, the architects Archea Associati, sought to meld architecture with landscape, not for the sake of hiding the construct away, but amidst aims to create a unity between beauty- built and grown- and functionality. Approaching the property from below the hill atop which it sits, the rounded form of the winery appears as a sentinel, poised unobtrusively, overlooking its crop. Throughout, the sky is brought down into the various volumes by way of strategically placed circular openings. They wax and wane in size as per the needs of the spaces they access, reaching a maximum along a promenade overlooking the landscape below. Here, a majestic spiral stair, its form stretched to create a momentum of form, elegantly falls through the opening, lending access to three of the vinery’s four floors.   The architects have provided a further description of the work which follows below.

Courtesy of Archea Associati

  The site is surrounded by the unique hills of Chianti, covered with vineyards, half-way between Florence and Siena. A cultured and illuminated customer has made it possible to pursue, through architecture, the enhancement of the landscape and the surroundings as expression of the cultural and social valence of the place where wine is produced. The functional aspects have therefore become an essential part of a design itinerary which centres on the geo- morphological experimentation of a building understood as the most authentic expression of a desired symbiosis and merger between anthropic culture, the work of man, his work environment and the natural environment. The physical and intellectual construction of the winery pivots on the profound and deep-rooted ties with the land, a relationship which is so intense and suffered (also in terms of economic investment) as to make the architectural image conceal itself and blend into it.

Courtesy of Archea Associati

The purpose of the project has therefore been to merge the building and the rural landscape; the industrial complex appears to be a part of the latter thanks to the roof, which has been turned into a plot of farmland cultivated with vines, interrupted, along the contour lines, by two horizontal cuts which let light into the interior and provide those inside the building with a view of the landscape through the imaginary construction of a diorama. The façade, to use an expression typical of buildings, therefore extends horizontally along the natural slope, paced by the rows of vines which, along with the earth, form its “roof cover”. The openings or cuts discreetly reveal the underground interior: the office areas, organized like a belvedere above the barricade, and the areas where the wine is produced are arranged along the lower, and the bottling and storage areas along the upper. The secluded heart of the winery, where the wine matures in barrels, conveys, with its darkness and the rhythmic sequence of the terracotta vaults, the sacral dimension of a space which is hidden, not because of any desire to keep it out of sight but to guarantee the ideal thermo-hygrometric conditions for the slow maturing of the product.

Courtesy of Archea Associati

A reading of the architectural section of the building reveals that the altimetrical arrangement follows both the production process of the grapes which descend (as if by gravity) – from the point of arrival, to the fermentation tanks to the underground barrel vault – and that of the visitors who on the contrary ascend from the parking area to the winery and the vineyards, through the production and display areas with the press, the area where vinsanto is aged, to finally reach the restaurant and the floor hosting the auditorium, the museum, the library, the wine tasting areas and the sales outlet.

Courtesy of Archea Associati

The offices, the administrative areas and executive offices, located on the upper level, are paced by a sequence of internal court illuminated by circular holes scattered across the vineyard-roof. This system also serves to provide light for the guesthouse and the caretaker’s dwelling. The materials and technologies evoke the local tradition with simplicity, coherently expressing the theme of studied naturalness, both in the use of terracotta and in the advisability of using the energy produced naturally by the earth to cool and insulate the winery, creating the ideal climatic conditions for the production of wine.

By Matt Davis

Courtesy of Archea Associati

Courtesy of  Alejandro Muñoz Miranda – Photographer Fernando Alda

The project comes off as a white massive volume with variable-sized coloured strips as windows punctuated in the mass. The centre is oriented East-West with the courtyard and main entrance located North. The courtyard, which is the playground, serves as the pivotal space around which the centre revolves as it links the classrooms and the interior circulation with the garden.

Courtesy of  Alejandro Muñoz Miranda – Photographer Javier Callejas

The administrative part of the centre (kitchen and dining areas, the administration and a gym) takes the greater part of the Eastern section whiles the South is occupied by a long corridor giving access to all the classrooms to its North. The corridor is variably coloured due to the coloured windows, which project the sunlight into the interior. The windows of the classrooms facing North however are plain and much larger laying credence to a north-south tension between both aperture systems. The spatial organization is determined by compression and decompression of the wall and ceiling sections according to the Architects. The changes in section therefore determine the use of any particular space.

Courtesy of  Alejandro Muñoz Miranda - Photographer Fernando Alda

The classrooms are differentiated by age groups typical of most education centres however with their movable partitions they can all be connected to form a whole for larger group activities. These partitions even when in place permit a visual continuity through their glazed upper parts.

Courtesy of  Alejandro Muñoz Miranda – Photographer Javier Callejas

Credits and Info:
Architects: Alejandro Muñoz Miranda
Project: Educational Center in El Chaparral
Location: El Chaparral, Albolote (Granada), Spain
Photography: Javier Callejas & Fernando Alda
Work: 2010 (design project 2005, execution project 2008)
Collaborators: Gregorio Morenate Navío y Nayra Fernández-Valencia Caballero,
Architects, Jesús Muñoz Miranda, Architect (Structure), Patricia Muñoz Arenas,
Construction Engineer, Antonio Blas Pérez García,Industrial Engineer
Client: Cityhall of Albolote
Construction Company: UCOP
Total built area: 915 m2
Total budget: 617.078,24 €
Cost/m2: 674,40€/m2

Courtesy of  Alejandro Muñoz Miranda – Photographer Javier Callejas

Courtesy of Dennis Budko, Marc Szeglat, Michael Zelensky, and xflo

The subject caves are created be a mixture of vulcanism and deep freeze, carved out by waters from a nearby hot spring. In recent years, the local glaciers which form their roofs have melted to the point of letting light seep down through the ice, creating strange displays of colour and light.

Courtesy of Dennis Budko, Marc Szeglat, Michael Zelensky, and xflo

By Matt Davis

Courtesy of Dennis Budko, Marc Szeglat, Michael Zelensky, and xflo

Courtesy of Aedas

The project, with a site area of 44,338 square meters, comprises a five-star hotel, Grade-A office and SOHO buildings as well as serviced apartments. With construction commenced in 2012, the plaza is expected to be a keyhole to the future development of the city upon completion in 2016.

Courtesy of Aedas

Aston Martin CC100 Speedster

The car was designed and built at the automaker’s headquarters in Gaydon in less than six months. The carbon fiber-intensive CC100 Speedster concept is powered by a naturally aspirated 5.9-liter V-12 that’s mated to a six-speed transmission with steering column-mounted paddle shifters. While no power or weight specs were revealed, the automaker claims the CC100 Speedster concept will reach 60 mph in 4.0 seconds and is speed limited to 180 mph.

Aston Martin CC100 Speedster

“CC100 is the epitome of everything that is great about Aston Martin… It represents our fantastic sporting heritage, our exceptional design capability, our superb engineering know how and, above all, our adventurous spirit!” ” Bez said

Aston Martin CC100 Speedster