Article source: DUBBELDAM Inc. + DIALOGUE 38 + Jill Greaves Design Inc.
The historic Walper Hotel in Canada’s Silicon Valley North is the new hot spot for Kitchener Waterloo’s growing tech community. With newly opened offices of Yahoo, Google and other major tech players, as well as Waterloo’s RIM and the Perimeter Institute, this area located an hour from Toronto is proving to be one of the fastest growing communities in the country.
Downtown Kitchener’s most recognizable landmark, the historic Walper Hotel played a pivotal role in the city’s social and cultural scene since opening in 1893. Designated as a historic landmark under the Ontario Heritage Act in 1983, the list of luminaries who stayed at the hotel include the Queen Mother; many prime ministers, including Pierre Trudeau; Eleanor Roosevelt; many jazz greats including Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington; James Brown; Liberace; Rudolph Nureyev; Bob Hope; and Tony Bennett. Decades later, the heritage site’s dated accommodations were unable to meet the contemporary demands of modern business travelers and locavore millennials looking for a landing spot. The region’s burgeoning tech industry attracts a discerning clientele, and the hotel’s renewal targets these visitors, bringing the best of the old into the future. As a collaboration between three design firms, the Walper was transformed into a modern boutique hotel while celebrating its historic details and pairing them with bold contemporary design.
La Clara, a 25-storey residential tower overlooking the Intracoastal Waterway and the Atlantic Ocean, will stand as a secluded and refined oasis in one of South Florida’s most prestigious communities. With spaces created for peaceful living and perfect luxury, La Clara will feature one to three-bedroom residences that range from 1,500 to over 3,000 square feet and with three luxurious penthouse floors at the top. Most residences will have a south-east facing private terrace with panoramic ocean views that allows for plenty of natural light but still offers an ideal privacy. The masterfully imagined design for La Clara offers residents the sense of comfort that comes with a warm and welcoming home while evoking feelings of luxury and indulgent extravagance. The solid elements of the tower will be clad in white stucco while the podium levels feature Roman travertine, coral stone, and granite with bronze accents. Amenities will include a spa, an outdoor swimming pool, fitness room, club room, indoor/outdoor private dining, a bar and lounge, as well as a private tasting room.
Charlie is a tenants club located in the main building of the new residential complex Charlie Living near famous Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin. The club serves as a co-work area, a lounge furnished with a fireplace and large library, a gym and a concierge alongside various seating spaces. The urban quarter has been created by the real estate developer Trockland.
The architectural practice PleasantHouse Design has completed the extension of the Nanxianglou Art Hotel in one of the most scenic spots in the historic gankeng village in Shenzhen, China.
Nanxianglou, one of the most expecting scenic spots in the historic Gankeng Village, Shenzhen of Guangdong Province, has gained lots of reputation abroad. From the time-honored study of literature and art to today’s history-thickened hotels, visitors can have a glance of the old architecture that celebrates the culture of Southern Fujian and the Hakkas. The architecture at the heritage area features a large scale of the solid wood structure, complemented by the deep-seated culture connotation.
This Pool House and spa is built into the side of a mountain at the point where it meets the St. Lawrence River valley floor. Built for a discerning client on his rural property west of Montreal, this seemingly simple structure is intricately crafted. It’s a minimalist project, inspired by Mies van der Rohe’s 1929 Barcelona Pavilion, which established the grammar for this elemental modern architecture.
The story telling takes the architecture and the time, in which this spectacular rotunda, the administrative center of the Gerling insurance group was built, as starting point, transforming the monument into a visionary rotational body, resembling a station floating in outer space.
In 1958, during the time of the “Wirtschaftswunder“, positive utopias and the belief in technological progress were ubiquitous. Life on the moon, on mars or space platforms seemed to be close and the goal of human evolution appeared to lie in a fully engineered future.
This private residence was revisioned to embrace the surrounding woods and tranquil hillside location while also offering city views of Stuttgart from a new upper floor. In place of a double-pitched roof, a simple yet structured, open-plan floor is realized atop the house, a building from the 1930s, which had been previously refurbished in 1990. The architectural idea was to place a deliberately unobtrusive structure upon the existing building. The second floor addition stands in contrast to the massive lower level without dominating it, creating a focal point for the house via massive glazing and without disturbing views of the surrounding landscape.
The city of Xi’an was once known as Chang’an the seat of several important dynasties in ancient China; today, it is home to the Xi’an Hi-tech Industries Development Zone, a leading center of technological development. This project involved the design of the YJY Maike Centre Flagship (Store), a bookstore and commercial complex occupying 4,500 m2 on the first and second floors of an elegant building in the Development Zone. The goal of the design was to create a place for encounters between people, cultures, and books from around the world by building on three remarkable features of the site: its location in an ancient city that boasts the extraordinary World Heritage Terracotta Army as well as the origin of the Silk Road; its luxurious surroundings, including a Grand Hyatt on the upper floors; and the elegant lines of the twin building.
The daycare is located directly on the edge of the forest and is oriented towards the outdoor play area in nature. The entrance area is facing the street and the garden exits via a covered front area. A porch leads to the central play hall, which also connects all the rooms. Rectangular wooden boxes, interlocked at an angle of 45° with each other, form the basic and supporting structure of the building.
Adjacent to Suzhou Canal which has inherited the cultural context of the South of the Yangtze River for thousands of years, the project features elegant and humanistic aesthetics, and fully shows people's imaginations and pursuit of an elegant lifestyle.
The smell of books, the coordinated combination of terrazzo and wood, and subtle detailing, together create a soft, elegant and harmonious atmosphere in the overall space, with fascinating texture.
email
Facebook
Twitter
RSS Feed
