Article source: Helin & Co Architects / Pekka Helin, Ritva Mannersuo
A small remote island in the Gullkrona Archipelago offers a panorama of changing seasons in the northern Baltic: late sunsets fill open skies and early sunrises dramatise rocky islands. In spring, constant birdsong greets the end of severe winter. Warm calm midsummer days are filled with scents of pine and juniper. Autumn storms drive huge waves over the rocks to freeze gradually, generating abstract formations of drifting ice. Finally, all is covered with snow. The villa is built to experience all this and counteract periods of urban hard work.
The project – a 200 square meter small chapel, is located in Wanjing Garden along Nanjing’s Riverfront. Hosted by priests from Nanjing Union Theological Seminary, it supports religious activities like worship and wedding services. This wood and steel structured chapel has gentle exterior shape as well as strong interior space infused with mysterious religious power. Its plain material doesn’t fail in expressing the delicate construction logic.
This loft apartment located in a late 19th century house presents an interesting challenge: how to recover the graceful proportions of the living room while taking advantage of the possibilities offered by an earlier alteration which had inserted intermediate levels.
AKBANK is the new Netherlands Headquarters of the AKBANK in the Rembrandt Tower in Amsterdam.
The key element for the design is the concrete core of the building. The architects focused on creating a sculptural furniture element around the core, transforming it into the “core object”. The design targets to activate the spaces around the core by using a generic order. The “windmills”, a conception based on generic design, generate endless rotations around the core. The windmills are used on two levels, an upper and a lower level on which they rotate in opposite directions. The dimension of time, i.e. in this case the motion of the user causes with each new perspective unique impressions of space. The space becomes actual space. The repetition of the concept on all of the four walls and the short distances cause the intuitive will to explore the sculpture.
This project is the effect of the work done on the 140 m2 space, which changed into a luxurious interior, becoming an alternative to the impersonal hotel rooms. The flat belongs to a businessman, who visits Warsaw for business very often. The guidelines were very clear: it was supposed to be comfortable and elegant. Not necessarily the designer style, but rather classy and functional features is what counts here. The apartment, located in the downtown area of the city, is at the same time a quiet place for resting and a foyer to the big city fun.
email
Facebook
Twitter
RSS Feed
