Article source: Shanghai United Design Group Co., Ltd. (UDG)
Fall in Love with a City for a Flower
The project breaks away from the rigid image of conventional civic buildings. By blending the building into nature, and art into life, the architects created a public cultural landmark that is graceful, romantic, unique, and exclusive to local citizens.
The new town hall in Remchingen, on a prominent site between federal highway B10 and the green space along the river Pfinz, is conceived as a new center for encounters and communication. Its immediate vicinity is dominated by the Remchingen Cultural Center and a nursing home, which are discrete, self-referential freestanding buildings that do not form an urban spatial relationship to each other.
Del Mar’s new Civic Center resolves this seaside village’s longstanding need for a centralized venue where people can come together to celebrate community and exercise civic engagement. Prior to this development, Del Mar’s public activities were scattered throughout the city, often occurring in private-sector spaces. The new Civic Center consolidates primary public functions in one location, and places them at the heart of the Village.
“City Halls have evolved into being much more than places representing civic gravitas. They are a public investment in the infrastructure for the social aspects of community, where civic identity is formed through the ritual of public gatherings that are made possible by these spaces,” notes Mike Jobes, design principal for the project.
Architects: Miller Hull Partnership (Jeffrey Troutman, Kurt Stolle, Judith Rodriguez Lambotte, Kelley Ross, Jessie McClurg, April Ng, Steve Doub, Kevin Carpenter, John McKay)
Project: Del Mar Civic Center
Location: California, USA
Photography: Chipper Hatter
Architect of Record: The Miller Hull Partnership, LLP
Design Architect: The Miller Hull Partnership, LLP
The Comprehensive Well-being Plan emerged in the middle of the Ad Portas Building as the conclusion to a qualitative anthropological study undertaken by Beatriz Turbay on the La Sabana campus. We prepared a master plan for the civic space and set about building a campus to suit students’ needs. To achieve this, we laid out a system of pergolas that accompanies the façades, plazas and walkways, and structures the footpath network of the community. The furnishings were meticulously designed to provide maximum comfort. This concept, which also balances landscape and infrastructure values, also includes the new classrooms, which function both as venues for teaching and open and spontaneous civic spaces. In the future, the planting of the campus will resemble that of a botanic garden.
Project: Comprehensive Well-Being Plan, University of La Sabana
Location: Chía, Cundinamarca, Colombia
Photography: Alejandro Arango Escobar
Supervising Architect: María Paula Rico
Design Team: Carolina Zuluaga, Camilo Betancur, Daniel Molina, Felipe Delgado, Juan Pablo González, Juan Camilo Solís, Melissa Ortega, Juliana Arroyabe, Stefanía Palacio, Angélica Gaviria, Daniel Rojas, Interns Nicolás Barón, Alejandro Muñoz, Oscar David Pachón, Juliana Pérez, Antoine Piketty
Architectural Supervision: Juan Pablo González, Oscar David Pachón, Alejandra Rincón
Brett Farrow Architect has designed the new headquarters for C3 Bancorp in the Southern California coastal community of Encinitas.
The locally owned bank was designed as a combination retail branch, corporate offices and semi-civic space. Facing directly onto Coast Highway 101, the building uses custom white concrete to echo the nearby coastal bluffs while large operable glass areas create a transparent connection between the interior work spaces and lushly planted courtyards and atrium.
Marine grade stainless steel cladding was custom tinted and combined with western red cedar at the ceilings and eaves.
The covering in corten was the last phase of the renovation of “Chiavicone Bondanello”, started in 2009. The building was constructed in the XVI th century and the actual aspect derives from a renovation in 1900. Furthermore in 1960 the building partially collapsed after the river overflow and it was reconstructed. A new reticular steel structure with polycarbonate wall replace the volume that was destroyed; inside there is a polyfunctional space with the environment center of the Secchia river park. The new covering in corten linked the restored facade with the new volume and show the stratification of the interventions. The perception of the facades is dynamic and changes from every different angles, emphasizing the historical facade, the relation with the contemporary intervention or also the strength of the oxidised steel. The polycarbonate wall during the night works like a lamp that emphasize the social function of the building and make it a signal in the landscape.
Futian is one of the oldest and densest districts of Shenzhen. Recent urban regeneration efforts aim to breathe new life into this urban centre, which lacks urban quality and is crowded with residential and commercial high-rises.
The new Civic Cultural Centre plays a major role in this effort and will house cultural programme and social spaces for stimulating urban activity. Public life in Shenzhen, as in other subtropical cities, thrives in semi-open spaces. Our proposal is therefore a building that breathes: open to daylight and natural cooling breezes, and filled with greenery.
The completion ceremony of the Nanshan Technology Finance City in Shenzhen was held recently. The masterplan and the entire complex of buildings was designed by Foster + Partners, establishing a new destination for the city and a new benchmark for sustainable architecture in China. The design creates an integrated mixed-use community – unified by a series of ‘ribbons’ that define the routes, landscape and buildings – bringing together offices, a hotel and a dynamic public realm, animated by shops, restaurants and a range of new civic spaces.
Paris, Lisbon and Shanghai-based practices Jacques Ferrier Architecture and Sensual City Studio have turned what could have been an ordinary ‘office plus car park’ into an opportunity to radically reassess the surrounding urban district of Xujiahui in Shanghai.
A radical reimagining of a densely urban site on Shanghai busiest intersection
The project features elevated planted pedestrian walkways above the street
An ‘urban oasis’ from which to observe the dynamic scene below
The resulting structure, on the site of a former hotel, combines office, civic, commercial and cultural space with green ribbons of public walkways, connecting the streets and buildings of China’s busiest intersection with peaceful arteries from which to escape the tumult.
The Civic Center in Lohr am Main, Germany, occupies an important urban site at the entrance to the town, creating a cultural destination for music, theater and conference events.
The Civic Center is a seven-cornered polygonal form. Due to the polygonal shape, a house without a back is created, which can respond individually to the diversity of the adjacent urban spaces. Still, a public plaza orients the building towards the town center.
email
Facebook
Twitter
RSS Feed
