In summer 2010, PizzaExpress commissioned London design agency Ab Rogers Design (ARD) to transform its Richmond restaurant into a ‘Living Lab’ combining experiential design, advanced developments in restaurant acoustics, and a reenergised approach to display and service. With an innate love of Italy and its inimitable food – not to mention the fond childhood memories of visiting his local branch of PizzaExpress with his Italian grandmother fresh in his mind – Rogers jumped at the chance.
Authors: Daniela Gojic, Michael Gattermeyer and Brigitte Spurej-Jammernegg
An architectonic punctuation at an exposed site of the city – a new and distinctive Entree to the city – a future oriented potential for development for the whole area.
The client, an Art Gallery director, asked for a contemporary home on a narrow inner city allotment. The house was to have two bedrooms plus an extra study that could be used for visiting artists to stay in, and was also to include a private subterranean gallery.
The UNStudio design for an existing loft located in Greenwich Village in Manhattan explores the interaction between a gallery and living space. The main walls in the loft flow through the space, and together with articulated ceilings create hybrid conditions in which exhibition areas merge into living areas
The only enclosure around the new school in Embelgasse is the perimeter of the block. With its large glass surfaces, the ground floor affords an insight into everyday school life, opening the inside of the block to the street. The outward appearance of the new vocational training school is characterized by openness, transparency, and through‑views.
The prominent urban site located along East Colfax Avenue was the first anchor development for the City of Denver’s Colfax Redevelopment Plan. The idea was to create a vibrant urban center incorporating anchor tenants with a focus on Music, Books and Movies. It was envisioned that the synergy created between the two retailers and the movie theatre would help to invigorate the neighborhood and work as a catalyst for the revitalization of East Colfax Avenue. A cinema was originally cast to go into the vacated historic Lowenstein Theatre, but after a programmatic change the historic Theatre was renovated to for the local bookstore Tattered Cover. This left the new building, which houses a local music venue Twist & Shout and Denver Film Center, to reinforce the urban edge of Colfax and Elizabeth streets.
Bounded by a strip mall, apartment complex, and residential neighborhood (and including an existing YMCA gymnasium), the site for this new branch library presented significant contextual opportunities. The design centers on addressing each context, as well as the library’s programming needs, through directing and screening views and considering varied levels of scale.
One Angel Lane, formerly known as Watermark Place, replaces Mondial House, a redundant international telephone exchange in the heart of the City of London, on a riverside site next to Cannon Street station. The site has an important place in the history of the Thames and is defined by the working river. The northern edge boundary is also the line of the Roman riverbank, and the ‘Steelyard’ under Cannon Street station was a Hanseatic trading post, the largest medieval trading post in Britain.
The new Health Centre is located in A Parda, a recent urban sprawl area on the outskirts of the city of Pontevedra, where the recent expansion of the urban structure is still coexisting with rural areas. The building emerges in a large lot surrounded by different kind of buildings like the new Music School, apartment blocks and some other facilities still to be defined.