In 2014 we received an invitation from Area 17, an architectural firm with offices in China. We were invited to bid on a large residential development in the city of Shenzhen, 30 minutes from Hong Kong in China’s Guangdong province.
At the end of the seventies, Shenzhen was a small market town of less than thirty thousand people. By 2016 it was a megacity of 12 million.
Surrounded by the forest on the north and the seaside at the east, our project is aimed at being one of the best example of integration in its natural context. Situated on Bodrum peninsula, this summer housing complex needed a Beach Restaurant which would be flexible enough to host a project information centre at first and being built very fast with a minimum of impact in its environment.
This old house in the centre of Reus was acquired by the association with the will to create one of these day centres. Firstly, it was proposed to reform it and create a small extension with a new concrete volume on the ground floor, placed in front of a garden/patio and facing the northern part of the lot. It becomes the centre of the group activities. This gesture also requires a new access to the complex and helps organizing the rest of the classrooms, kitchen, offices and toilets placed in the old building. Constructively, the materials (concrete and wooden panels in windows and furniture) seek to create a certain warmth, while the long-glazed panels allow a correct visualization and control of the interior/exterior spaces. The white colour encourages in these people the creativity and tranquillity they need in their day to day and in allows a better lighting of the workspaces. To homogenize the whole project, the old building was painted in grey tones and new exterior joinery and protection slats in pine wood were also placed.
In Essen (Germany) the last two blocks of a homeless shelter were handed over to the users in 2018. The three clearly structured, parallel buildings characterised by exposed concrete and sky-blue glazed bricks are the result of an invitation to tender issued by the City of Essen. What was sought were new buildings for a homeless shelter for 119 people, as well as office space for 2 social workers and 2 housing administrators. RKW Architektur + won the public tender with its modular concept. Despite or precisely because of the tight budget, the architects were able to deliver a complex of noticeable architectural quality.
This student focused multifamily project occupies a complex Ozark site adjacent to the University of Arkansas in Downtown Fayetteville. Extensive site topography defines the building characteristics in stepping massive forms and angular geometries that are the resultant of Center Street diagonally slicing the hillside, which creates an unusual trapezoidal block. These native characteristics drove the architectural concepts and delivered in built form a stark contrast to the most normative of all student-housing typologies: the Texas Donut. We argue that the Arkansas Bear Claw is a more adept model of dense multifamily living.
With their design of the Perlach Plaza, AlleswirdGut provide an important puzzle stone in the urban development of the new “KulturQuadrat” quarter on Munich’s Hanns Seidel Square. An urban mixed use of retail and service businesses, restaurants, residential units, and a hotel make Perlach Plaza the calling card of the new Neuperlach neighborhood.
At the heart of the master plan is a roughly 5,000 square meter central park enclosed, and shielded, by buildings. On a total gross floor area of 50,000 square meters, high-quality usable floor space is being developed in the mixed-used complex of Perlach Plaza with direct connection to the subway system, the cultural center on the north side, and the park through a transit floor.
Competition Team: Anna Kapranova, Christine Bödicker, Daniel Pannacci, Felix Reiner, Jonas Wehrle, Marko Acimovic
Project Team: Christine Bödicker, Eva Birova, Ferdinand Kersten, Jan Fischer, Johannes Windbichler, Julia Stockinger, Kerstin Schön, Lena Waldenberger, Marko Acimovic, Markus Stürzenbacher, Michal Stehlik, Ondrej Stehlik, Patrick Tinauer, Till Martin
Danish architecture studio CEBRA has completed an adult education centre in the heart of the city of Odense, Denmark. Located next to the central station the HF & VUC Fyn complex marks an important step towards the realisation of a new city campus that ties the inner city and the harbour together. By combining elements from its coarse industrial neighbours with an embracing and transparent interior organisation the HF & VUC Fyn aims at bridging between the scale of the harbour and urban life. The building’s robust and unassuming exterior is contrasted by an inner spatial diversity of rounded forms that create a varied learning environment for 1.300 students – an inspiring and vivid school that continuously suggests new ways of use and makes room for individual learning needs in a collective building.
Mecanoo’s Social Housing philosophy focuses on the development of affordable living spaces defined by flexibility, the right balance of private and communal spaces, mixed housing types, connection with the environment and identity. The housing complex in Kaohsiung will host 234 units between 25 and 75m², designed for a large variety of users, from students, young couples to families with children, as well for elderly or people with special needs.
A series of new photographs of Shenzhen´s SBF Tower has been unveiled by O.H.A, showing Pritzker Prize winner Hans Hollein and Christoph Monschein’s design nearing completion in the Futian district of Shenzhen.
Commissioned by the duo of Southern and Bosera Funds back in 2010, the project was envisioned to contrast any high-rise in the vicinity because it is different. With its memorable design, based on an early sketch drawn by Hans Hollein in his time in Chicago, how skyscrapers should look in the future, it becomes a dominant statement within the high-rises, in an exposed corner position of the cluster. The office tower has a strategic position within the texture of the city. Adjacent to the Town Hall and its main North-South axis, and located on East-West oriented Shen Nan Avenue, it has the pole position in the central quarter in Shenzhen, where in midst the stock exchange building dominates.
With the contribution “Forum am Seebogen” the architectural studio heri&salli was able to win the concept competiton for the “Townhouse open to different usages” in Aspern-Seestadt. The building complex will emerge on the 800 m2 building site H7A in the quarter “Am Seebogen” in the new Vienna district “Seestadt”.
In collaboration with a company that builds family homes, art:phalanx-agency for culture and urbanity, landscape architecture Paisagista Liz Zimmermann, Werkraum Ingenieure und Marles , a heterogenic project, where living, working and imparting of culture form a fruitful symbiotic relationship, was developed.
With a special focus on the potential of modular system design, a contemporary prototype was created. The objective is to build in a short construction time and with relatively low cost a high quality living space.
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