ArchShowcase Sumit Singhal
Sumit Singhal loves modern architecture. He comes from a family of builders who have built more than 20 projects in the last ten years near Delhi in India. He has recently started writing about the architectural projects that catch his imagination. Le Monolithe in Lyon, France by MVRDVNovember 23rd, 2011 by Sumit Singhal
Article source: MVRDV This project concerns the construction of a 30,000 m2 block in the Confluence redevelopment area – in the south of Lyons, where its two rivers meet – to group housing, offices and shops. Both the developer and the municipality wanted a blend of architectural designs and programmes, composed by five different architects, each team handling one part of the whole. Given the desired high density, the first objective was to imagine a site plan that would federate the urban and architectural issues in a coherent set endowed with strong visual identity.
Once this overall volume was defined, each architect would be free to exercise his or her personal creativity on one of its ‘slices’. Our particular ‘slice’ – the centrepiece – contains offices in a hollowed-out volume designed as a huge cantilever over an interior street. The opening faces a large park central to the site, as if to breathe it in. All the elevations and even the underside are clad in sheets of shiny steel, the uppermost shaped in scrolls that call to mind flowers, a reminder of the park to which they open. The mirror surfaces reflect the surroundings and animate them, conferring a weightless feel on the overhang, which vanishes amidst reflexions and kaleidoscopic patterns, and adding a touch of fantasy to a rigorous architectural set. Contact MVRDV
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