Kokuy Architecture – Housing
Special Mention - 2007 Housing Competition
Project by: Larisa Kuvtyreva
Kokuy Housing
This project is a redevelopment idea for the waste grounds in the suburbs of the Russian city of Kokuy. The majority of the existing houses will be restored and three new egg-shaped buildings will provide the new necessary housing. These structures will be covered with solar panels that will move according to the sunlight. Movable screens cover the entire outer skin and are used to regulate the temperature and the illumination. The main structure is formed by four columns that support a secondary structure around the ‘eggs’.
The project will be constructed in four stages and will accommodate recreational areas for the community. A new transportation system will communicate the new development with the city in less than ten minutes. Artists will be invited to decorate the facades and contribute to exhibitions in the new galleries.
Kyoai Gakuen University in Gunma, Japan / BAKOKO
Kyoai Gakuen University sought proposals for a new building on part of the campus’ recreation grounds. BAKOKO design response was to not to build over this existing amenity space, but to lift it to a higher level, supported by the building underneath. The site is also located adjacent to the school’s sports field which currently lacks spectator seating. By sloping the roof in this direction, the proposal could provide additional value by providing seating for sports events.
In addition to being a valuable leisure space, the green roof has numerous sustainable benefits. Soil and biomass help to insulate the building, reducing the level of mechanical heating and cooling. Rainwater runoff is reduced and biodiversity is fostered within the roof’s trees and natural vegetation.
Supporting the green roof is a grid of perforated concrete vaults. The curved form optimizes its compressive strength whilst being permeable to air and light. Similar structural strategies may be observed throughout biology – such as the intricate mineral skeletons that protect microscopic protozoa called radiolaria.
Wind catching caps are placed over certain openings to draw fresh cool air and natural daylight into the interior of the building. In bays without wind catchers, artificial light is reflected and diffused by the double-curved ceiling panels. The columns supporting each vault may appear massive, but the upper-half is in fact hollow. These water-tight depressions contain enough soil to support larger species of trees and vegetation than typically possible on green roofs.
The choice of a vaulted structure seemed particularly apt in light of the school’s Christian affiliation and plans to build an adjacent chapel in the near future. The facade cuts cleanly through the structural grid, forming glazed arches facing onto the campus’ main thoroughfare and public plaza. Two opposite corners are cut through the top intersecting arches, creating cantilevered porches to protect the building’s main entrance.
Soup City – New Urbanism for Tokyo
Designed by Thomas Shingo Nagy
Over the past two decades, Tokyo has invested in the development of Odaiba, a landfill site along the waterfront district, as part of a larger effort to attract businesses away from the congested downtown area. In contrast to the multi-layered and self-organized urban centers of Tokyo, Odaiba was master-planned to accommodate an array of skyscrapers connected by a transportation network and green space. Although the site offers vast territories unprecedented in Tokyo, development by the private sector has been slow primarily due to its significant scale. The lack of human scale places significant risk upon investors and discourages small businesses to move in, resulting in less programmatic diversity and an ineptitude in being able to adapt to the needs of an ever changing society. In order to create a viable environment for a wide array of businesses to coexist and flourish, Soup City draws inspiration from the field-like urbanism of Tokyo as a model for successful development.
The recipe for Soup City consists of three urban ingredients found in Tokyo: active programs; open programs; and transportation infrastructure. Each ingredient is organized into a continuous ribbon, anchored on both ends to the surrounding context. These ribbons come together to form a knot, as they interweave, bundle, and shoot out like noodles in a cup of soup. The “active ribbon” contains a series of service and entertainment programs such as retail, theaters, hotels, etc, which serve to attract various visitors into the complex. The “open ribbon” is resizable rentable floor space, capable of accommodating small to large offices and private apartment blocks. Lastly, the “transportation ribbon” provides a means for servicing goods and moving visitors to and from specific locations within the complex. It also provides parking spaces along its length. Unlike the stacked floor configuration of a conventional skyscraper, the linear organization of each ribbon allows for various components to grow or shrink without compromising the original structure.
As the ribbons bend and turn through the complex, they produce physical adjacencies in both plan and section, providing opportunities for hybridization to occur and synergistic relationships of various programs to develop. For example, boutique stores on the “active ribbon” will attract consumers to its periphery, creating an incentive for fashion designers to work and live in the adjacent spaces on the “open ribbon” due to its proximity. In a sense, the ribbons are conceived as an extension of the city; a newly found piece of property ready to accommodate ideas from developers and users. Therefore, the system does not impose a rigid or pre-determined outcome on a holistic level. Instead, it enables the self-organization of its contents by market forces, generating a fast metabolism for businesses to grow and expand. Ultimately, these three ingredients of Soup City work in concert to yield a dynamic and field-like urbanism present in Tokyo—that which becomes replicated, repackaged and transplanted into a new skyscraper typology.
Bubbles Urbanism for Berlin
The starting point of this project designed by Patrick Bedarf evolved during the research of the ongoing conflict between different social groups and their interest in one of the most attractive pieces of land in the heart of Berlin: the Spree Riversides located between Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg.
Through iteratively distributing programmatic layers from the surrounding city fabric into the site and systematically mixing volumes of different social characteristics, the geometry of the project adopted the shape of foam clusters. The quality of formal variety as a consequence of the heterogeneity of the overall system is implied by the design methodology of functional aesthetics. The project focuses on a spatial partitioning strategy of voronoi regions featuring a gradient-driven diversity with highly functional orthogonal structures as well as distorted and geometrically complex volumes. Pointclouds, generated from early studies of programmatic foam structures, are therefore manipulated locally depending on programmatic attributes.
The emerging spatial strategy offers interesting interactions with social-territorial typologies which are described and illustrated around the area of the created hybrid-cluster that interesects the existing “Viktoria” storehouse building.
Spiral Tower – Suburbia Living in the City
designed by Philipp von Bock
Germany
The Spiral Tower is a family friendly skyscraper inspired by the advantages of living in the suburbs. Its main objective is to provide a green community in the middle of Berlin for families who desire the best of both worlds. The building is equipped with solar panels, wind turbines, and water recollection and purification systems. The housing units are stacked in opposite directions to create terraces and open spaces for every apartment. Outdoor and recreational areas are distributed throughout the entire complex.
Plug-in Skyscraper for Suburbian Homes
French architects Guihun Choe and Etienne Jaunet desire the spaciousness and tranquility of suburban living combined with the cultural and communal benefits of the city. Their architectural solution is a green skyscraper in which an open exoskeleton or structural grid allows individual housing units to plug-in. These units are custom made by each resident following certain design guidelines but with entire freedom on size and program. Owners could purchase several “lots” to build larger homes and/or gardens. The primary structure provides the basic infrastructure and communal areas such as parks, plazas, and shopping areas. The building is fully equipped with photovoltaic cells, wind turbines and recycle centers.
Solar Powered Skyscraper Cools the Environment
Designed by Kenneth Loh and Michelle Lim this project is an investigation for a new urban prototype of solar powered towers. The entire façade is covered with a thin membrane of solar cells and a water collector system. The main idea is to develop a green building with different types of programs. The building core is a hollowed cylinder that moves hot air from the surface and creates micro-climates for gardens, farm fields, and recreational areas. Residential units for low, medium, and high density are attached to a continuous ramp or street. Along the entire structure there will be ‘pockets’ of different sizes and materials for cultural and educational areas. The building is connected to an underground cistern with a power plant. Rainwater is collected, filtered, stored and used to produce sufficient energy for the entire community. A series of these towers will cool the environment and solved the housing problems of some urban settlement worldwide.
Bubble Skyscraper
The Bubble Skyscraper was designed by Iranian architects Farzad Mirshafiei, Amin Aghagholizade, Farzin Misami, and Peyman Aali.
The exterior shell was designed based on the aerodynamic properties of bubbles against cross-wind deflection during strong ocean winds. Three legs at the base and a structural braced core provide additional resistance against lateral forces.
According to the wind and solar orientations, there are gaps between bubbles at different levels. Green spaces and sky-gardens are accommodated in these gaps to provide the building and the community with social spaces - intelligent trapdoors in these areas allow natural ventilation produced by the chimney effect of the central atrium. The electrical and mechanical systems are embedded in pipes running along the facade that illuminate with different colors at night. Some of the green elements of the Bubble Skyscraper are: wave energy convertors, water recollection systems, solar panels, and wind turbines.
Inflatable Expansion to the Hirshhorn Museum / Diller Scofidio + Renfro
New York architecture firm Diller Scofidio + Renfro (DS+R) designed the museum expansion and sculpture garden to the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington DC. According to DS+R “The Bubble is an inflatable event space planned for the cylindrical courtyard of the Hirshhorn Museum. In respectful dialogue with this Modernist icon originally designed by Gordon Bunshaft in 1974, the Bubble is an architecture of air; a pneumatic structure enclosed only by a thin translucent membrane that squeezes into the void of the building and oozes out the top beneath its mass.”
In contrast to the familiar strategy of roofing over courtyards of institutional buildings, the Bubble produces a soft building inside of a hard one in which existing and new spaces, both interior and exterior are playfully intertwined. The ephemeral structure will be erected twice-yearly, allowing the museum to program its courtyard.
Completed Neutelings Riedijk’s Museum in Antwerp
On May 17th, 2010 the City Museum of Antwerp (MAS) designed by Neutelings Riedijk Architecten was completed and the international architectural press was invited to an exclusive visit of the building. The museum will remain closed to the public for one year until all the artworks and exhibitions have been completed.
The MAS is situated in the heart of the old harbour, close to the city centre. It is a 60 metres high tower of stacked exhibition spaces. Each level is twisted 90 degrees to form a giant spiral. This glazed space becomes a vertical galleria. Escalators guide the visitors to the top of the building in a journey through the history of Antwerp and trough the panoramas of the city. On the upper floor a restaurant, a conference room and a sky deck are situated. Square, docks and tower are designed to form one continuous space for exhibitions and events.
Photos: Sarah Blee / ©Neuteling Riedijk Architecten
Tel Aviv’s Design Museum Holon
The recently opened design museum in the suburbs of Tel Aviv was built in hopes of transforming the city of Holon into an epicenter of culture and education. To that end they brought in a famous architect and renowned group of international guest curators to make the museum famous. The Design Museum Holon was designed by Ron Arad Architects, led by Tel Aviv born industrial designer and architect, Ron Arad. After four years of construction the museum was inaugurated on January 31st, 2010 and its first exhibition just opened.
The structure itself is not merely a box to house works of art and design, rather it is meant to be the first exhibit visitors see when coming to the museum. Arad’s creation is most notably characterized by the metal ribbons wrapping around the building. Five sinuous bands of varying shades of Corten weathered steel form the exterior facade casting curvaceous shadows down onto an outdoor courtyard, by which the visitors enter. Inside are various exhibition halls, gallery spaces, a design lab and an archival collection for the many shows the museum soon hopes to hold within its confines.
The museum’s first show, “The State of Things: Design and the 21st Century,” is open to the public from April 3rd to May 15th, and features 100 objects that collectively reflect issues concerning the practice, consumption and cultural impact of contemporary international design. Visitors can tour the museum with state of the art technology like a touch-screen audiovisual guide to gain a better understanding of the objects they are seeing. An international group of curators, (Aric Chen, Julie Lasky, Garth Walker, led by Barbara Bloemink, formerly of the Cooper-Hewitt), was pulled together to create the show.
Galit Gaon, artistic director of the museum, says that the mission of the museum is to “educate the Israeli public about design.” The city of Holon hopes that the construction of this “iconic building” will elevate the field of design into a leading position on the Israeli cultural agenda. The design museum joins the ranks of the Holon Institute of Technology, Mediatheque and the National Israeli Cartoon Museum, which were also founded in Holon.
