Martha Schwartz Partners was one of nine international landscape design firms to be invited to design a small master garden installation on the theme of “the harmonious co-existence of nature and the city” at the 2011 International Horticulture Exhibition in Xi’an, China. The owner’s brief specified that the designer should consider the limitations of local building materials and methods, and that the garden should be accessible to a Chinese point of view.
City Living is a contemporary garden on several levels imagined in a typical urban apartment block. While these dwellings are often cold and slightly forbidding in appearance they could easily be transformed with the addition of attractive green outdoor spaces for residents use with comfortable and sheltered seating areas surrounded by appealing planting and tranquil water features.
Designed to fully exploit this exceptional location, Ilot Queyries’ facades adapt to their opposite views towards the River Garonne and the historic city. The plan aims to reflect the qualities of Bordeaux World Heritage Site city centre whilst adding new qualities. Emblematic of the masterplan are facades with 45° angles which are used as a tool to generate maximum ventilation, daylight and sun. These angles have also opened the possibilities to create innovative housing. The larger building at the riverfront will have a distinct gold-splashed façade, whilst different shades of ceramic tiles, give a textured effect from top to bottom. The glass-fronted rooftop restaurant offers panoramic views of the historic city and river. At the heart of this collective dwellings is its large public courtyard with a garden of alder, birch and high grasses.
Design team: Winy Maas, Jacob van Rijs. Nathalie de Vries with Jeroen Zuidgeest, Nils Christa, Marie Saladin, Thomas Boerendonk, Roxana Aaron, Marco Gazzola, Adam Mierzwa, Florian Hoanen and Antoine Ceunebroucke
Vizulisation: Antonio Luca Coco, Paolo Mossa Idra, Kirill Emelianov, Tomaso Maschietti and Constanza Cuccato
A neighbourhood family had a redundant piece of land, and offered that to “Het Da Vinci College” , a school for animal care and gardening, with pupils who require additional support. They didn’t know where this would end, because there was a plot, lots of enthusiasm, involvement, from the school, neighbourhood and city council, but neither the skills, nor the money to realise the project. That’s where RO&AD architects stepped in. With help of the Province of Noord-Brabant, Visavis Landscape designers, who gave a small budget, they designed a plan which made it possible to be made by the teachers, the pupils, and the neighbourhood themselves. It is a 6 meters wide and 100 meters long timber structure, with relatively easy to make trusses, which are held together by nail plates. All rooms, like the classroom, animal room, greenhouses etc are placed in a row, without any room and money devouring things like halls or hallways. When Rini, a teacher at the school, saw this, he became so enthusiastic, that he offered to make the building himself. And that is what happened. He postponed his retirement for 2 years, and together with neighbours, students and lots of other people he started to work. Under the guidance of a contractor and the architects, he built the school, and the garden in 1 ½ year’s time. And it works! Neighbours are taking down their fences to get access to the school garden. They take care of the plants and the animals during the holidays, and the students finally have a place where they can be proud of to work on.
Keukenhof finally has a proper main entrance. Mecanoo designed an elegant gatehouse to welcome the large flows of, mainly international, visitors to the world famous gardens. A striking timber roof leans on two volumes, forming an impressive gateway to the park. The stepped roof structure of interwoven isosceles triangles provides shelter, whilst creating an ever-changing play of light and shadow.
The Watergarden Project located in Atasehir district of Istanbul, is a recreational center focusing only on gastronomy and entertainment. It is designed by the Dutch design firm, T Concept and the spatial organization as well as the interior design is undertaken by Gorkem Volkan Design Studio.
The main focal points are specialized for refreshments and recreational functions in the project, which has a balanced spatial organization in open, semi-open and closed spaces. There are various units in relation but different from each other, spreaded over a site of 165.000m2, and designed for various activities. The performance pool of covering an area of 5000m2 is aimed to be the project’s visual and functional center and different areas around the pool are designed to have different atmospheres related with the user profile. Additionally, the City Park, designed by DS Architecture, is an important part of the project that is surrounded by plants and trees and covers a 15.000m2 of land.
Article source: Ricardo Bofill Taller De Arquitectura
I found enormous silos, a tall smokestack, four kilometres of underground tunnels, and machine rooms in good shape. This was twenty five years ago and it was my first encounter with the Cement Factory.
I already imagined future spaces and noticed that the different aesthetic and plastic tendencies that had developed since World War 1 were present in this factory.
Lemay has won the prestigious international competition to redesign the corniches of Morocco’s Casablanca coast, which include the new seaside promenade of the Hassan II Mosque and the Ain Diab corniche. This win reinforces Lemay’s international presence and once again showcases Quebec’s creativity and design abroad.
“This new achievement confirms our exceptional expertise in integrated design as well as the international demand for a design offering that directly impacts communities’ current and future well-being,” said Louis T. Lemay, president and excellence facilitator.
Masseria Grottone, part of Masserie Maresca Farm-Hotel, built between 1812 and 1860 is an agricultural complex a few miles away from Ostuni. Dipped in 40 acres of centenary olive trees and Mediterranean scrub: a natural context of extraordinary richness.
Abandoned for several years, the restoration and extension project has been assigned to the firm Schiattarella Associati having a long history dating back to 1970s and a know-how linked to some of the most significant projects of the last years such as the Seoul Metropolitan Museum, the Children Museum in Kyonggi, the Art Center in Addirriyah and many relevant projects in Italy as well such as the Spanish School of Archaeology, the Cube House in the Olympic Village and the Pediatric Ward of the Umberto I Hospital in Rome.
The opposition between cities and countryside in Flanders has increasingly become a mental rather than a physical one. A long-standing anti-urban policy has led to a thorough contamination – i.e. urbanization – of the Flemish countryside. Multiple networks connect locations irrespective of their urban or rural status, enabling ever more frequent movements, eroding physical boundaries, merging it all into a semi-urban pattern we call the Nebular City. Inside this Nebular City, rurality has become less a fact than a choice, less a self-evident tradition than a mental construction. It is the architect’s task to design this mental construction.
Tags: Belgium, Sint-Martens-Latem Comments Off on VILLA BRAECKMAN-STAELS and GARDEN COTTAGE in Sint-Martens-Latem, Belgium by De Smet Vermeulen architecten
email
Facebook
Twitter
RSS Feed
