The place affirms its liberty and appears free from the barely solemn city, only defined by a nick of water and trees who crystalize History on this very site. Nothing stands up to this geographical feature. There, a very vivid and live passage, a bridge, and the beyond — the inner city border, the one of links and connections.
Located East, in the Ferté Bernard, Sartre area, the Jean d’Ormesson media library is set in a dense urban area, at the heart of the city. The 1800m² lot is situated on the edge of the old town and the river that surrounds it.
Century-old Hangzhou Normal University builds a new campus five kilometers west of the Xixi Wetland. Here, there is a typical river network in the south of the Yangtze River. One kilometer west of the University is the Warehouse Street of nearly nine hundred years of historical heritage; Water Silk Cotton was once prominent.
“An indoor sports centre that retains the feel of playing outdoors: a space that is bathed with natural light, allows panoramic views and blurs the boundaries between inner and outer space”. This conceptual idea presented two challenges: (i) to design a space that, despite its large dimensions, was harmoniously integrated into its rural setting and (ii) the requirement to stick to a very limited budget.
The 300pyong irregular shaped piece of land near the outskirt of north eastern Seoul simultaneously faces forests and the dense urban conditions. The boundary that faces the city is walled up according to wishes of the client, who is both an avid collector of Pinocchio dolls and artifacts from around the world, and owner of a private kinder-garden. The client had a programmatic vision for a museum and galleries where her Pinocchio collections and related collections and designs could be enjoyed and experienced. The first building was envisioned as mainly as a Pinocchio doll museum with some seating areas for watching performances. There was a request for an outdoor hall where make shift arena could take place. The second building was to house many other character designs related to Pinocchio, with an emphasis on interactive program and a larger auditorium for movies, concerts and other congregational uses. The third building needed to accommodate a museum shop with a cafeteria, and some workshop space.
Located at the heart of the historic Zuiderpark, the €50m sports campus is an innovative collaboration of alliances between education, sport, sport science and the community, for both the municipality of The Hague and its private partners: the Haagse Hogeschool and ROC Mondriaan.
The owner, whose project we designed and completed 5 years ago, consulted us again to ” build an area in the school where children can develop their creativity through role playing”.
Notski is the winning competition entry for a 4660m2 upper-secondary school in Heinola by Lahdelma & Mahlamäki Architects. Aside from its core focus of learning the school also is to become a social hub for the community – housing civic activities, youth culture and community sports. Flexible learning and activity spaces pivot outwards from a core social space that links all the programmes together. The classrooms themselves, designed with pedagogic experts, are optimised to cater for the different learning situations that the students would find themselves in throughout their school career.
The project entails the refurbishment of a 940 m2 warehouse located in Móstoles (Madrid) and its conversion into a building that provides spaces for a cultural association and sporting activities for young students.
Atasehir Urban Park designed by Studio Vertebra in Istanbul, aims to to create a center of attraction for the Asian side of the city and stimulate social activities with its functional spaces on an urban green zone such as food courts, exhibition center, performance center, gastronomy center and activity areas for the children.
An old African saying says: It takes a village to raise a child. The LEGO House could be conceived as a village for playing and learning – an urban space as much as architecture. As much for Billund’s visitors as for its citizens, public without and within. We propose to approach the spaces and activities for The LEGO House through the lens of a core element of LEGO’s philosophy – Inventing the future of play through systematic creativity. As an idea, The LEGO House can be conceived as a three dimensional village of interlocking and overlapping buildings and spaces. It can be visited as a curated flow – from one building to the next – in a continuous movement. Or it can be experienced as parallel worlds of complete autonomy. Each space can be designed and used independently. Each box can have a unique light setting, a unique dimension and still be part of a flexible totality. Multiple spaces have access to an outdoor space that can be used to expand the LEGO experience to the outside. The LEGO House will be both expressive and rational. Innovative and systematic- like a Guggenheim of white cubes, combining the functionality of the modular space with the iconic character of a sculptural building.