A city within a city, Museum Plaza is a place to showcase contemporary art, curb suburban sprawl by drawing residents to downtown, and strengthen Louisville’s West Main Street Historic District. When complete, it will encompass some 1.5 million square feet of multi-purpose space in multiple towers, the tallest reaching 61 stories. Shaped by a desire to serve and challenge the city it embraces, the iconic architecture blends
residential, retail, office, education, and leisure activities into a fascinating urban neighborhood.  And it will fund and sustain a center for contemporary art unprecedented in the region.


A homegrown dream

Museum Plaza will be constructed on Seventh Street, between River Road and Main Street, on part of the old Kingfish restaurant site. The city owns the land and is giving it to the Museum Plaza developers.
Wilson and Brown (whose family controls the Brown-Forman liquor corporation) are wealthy arts patrons who are already building 21C, a boutique hotel on the south side of Main Street at Seventh. Poe is a longtime Louisville developer and president and CEO of Poe Companies. He recently developed the 615-room Marriott hotel downtown.
The Museum Plaza building will cost $305 million, paid for with private money and with income from the hotel, offices and the sale of condos and lofts. Poe, Brown and Wilson won't say how much of their own money is going into the project. However, Bob Gunnell, a spokesman for Museum Plaza, called their commitments "substantial".
The investors are asking the city and state to pay for an additional $75 million in public infrastructure improvements at the site, including moving part of the floodwall, redirecting part of Seventh Street, and building a public park and walkway connecting Museum Plaza with the backs of other museums that front Main.
The investors are not asking for a direct contribution from government. Instead, they have requested that the city and state rebate part of new taxes generated by Museum Plaza for the next  twenty  years.
Abramson has agreed to the rebate, he said, and Gov. Ernie Fletcher is considering it.

It's 'hyper-rational'

Museum Plaza's investors -- with the help of David Mohney, dean of the University of Kentucky College of Design -- searched Europe and the United

States for the ideal firm to design Museum Plaza.
They settled on OMA, founded by noted architect Rem Koolhaas and headquartered in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Mohney has called Koolhaas

"the best contemporary architect practicing today."
Though Museum Plaza's design appears radical, Ramus, the architect, said it's actually "hyper-rational."
The architectural team concluded that Museum Plaza, in essence, would be one building composed of many smaller buildings -- a city block contained in one structure.

The structure has four legs below the island and three towers above it. All seven structures, each with varying functions, intersect on the island.
Think of it as a chair. One leg will contain the hotel, another lofts, the third a vertical elevator, the fourth the angled glass elevator. Two towers will have luxury condos, the third an office tower. The lofts will be in one of the legs and the museum will be in the "seat."
The University of Louisville is negotiating with the investors about moving its Master of Fine Arts program into Museum Plaza.
The island will be the spot in Museum Plaza where the public will be able to mingle, whether they are residents, university students, office workers or museum visitors.
The island is expected to have several gallery spaces that can expand or shrink as needed for art installations. It also will contain a swimming pool, shops and restaurants; a hotel bar; and entrances to the residential areas and office tower.
The galleries will be able to be altered so they can spill into other spaces on the island, Ramus said. An artist, for example, might want to use the pool for an installation, or the hotel bar as part of an art piece.
Unlike some architectural firms, which design buildings and then try to squeeze in the building's various uses, OMA starts with a building's purpose, then designs everything around it. That's why OMA's designs often don't resemble what many people think of as conventional structures.
A conventional building would not have worked at the site,  there simply wasn't enough space at ground level to put a museum, along with the access points needed for the hotel, condos, lofts and offices.

Funding and construction

Museum Plaza will be built to withstand earthquakes. Will be a very stable and solid structure.
Construction on Museum Plaza is expected to start in early 2007 and be completed in 2010.
A park and pedestrian plaza, also paid for by the city and state, would connect Museum Plaza to the rear of the museums along West Main, including the Frazier Historical Arms Museum, the Louisville Science Center and the Kentucky Museum of Art and Craft.
The government would issue $75 million in bonds for the improvements, with the annual debt to be covered by rebating eighty  percent of the new state and local taxes generated by Museum Plaza, Greenberg said.
Brown and Wilson also expect the building to help transform Louisville, in terms of art and architecture, much as new museums designed by star architects have done for other cities, from the Milwaukee Art Museum, designed by Santiago Calatrava, to the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, designed by Frank Gehry.
Abramson agreed.


Source : Ocurrir-Journal

When building in Iceland up to the elf hill Borgarholt it demands a special in depth understanding of Iceland’s history.
A completely new opera house for the Icelandic national opera deserves a building with presence and grace, a new cultural landmark for Reykjavik.
Arkitema and Arkthing’s winning proposal takes its concept based on these premises and has created a building both to the Opera, the elves, the capital’s residents and the town of Kopavogur in Reykjavik.




A building for the elves and other mythical beings:

Deep underground, in the highlands and under the cliffs around Iceland live the elves. Their dens are not visible from the outside, but it is believed that they live underground somewhere or other. From the outside the elves’ homes are dark and enclosed, but from the inside a radiant and crystalline space is revealed. The Opera’s expressional form with its heavy and massive lower floor level and its light and crystalline upper floor level refers to the mythical home of the elves. The heavy expression of the lower level is broken up with window openings that vary in size but which all replicate the cubic form.
Over the base the transparent shining cubic tower rises up, housing the main scene and the opera’s large concert hall which can hold an audience of up to 820 persons.
The facade of the shining cube is a glass screen with LED lights which give the facade an ever changing appearance, that through the course of a day changes in colour and strength. The characteristic cube is the Opera’s landmark that will light up Reykjavik, and from the interior be the Opera’s distinctive feature. The cube continues down through the building so that it is visible from the interior, allowing the large foyer area to look directly into the concert hall.
With the elf hill as their one neighbour and the town as the other, the Opera is situated between history, tradition, a modern urban district and a cultural landscape with a library, museum and cultural centre.




Project Description:

The Icelandic Opera reflects its location in its architectural expression. A location that is characterised by the cultural urban landscape, the Borgarholt elf hill and the church as its immediate neighbours. The initial concept for the Opera took its form from a cubic geometry that is replicated throughout the whole building both on the facade and the interior. The facade is characterised by the distinctive heavy base, broken up by the large cubic window openings. Above, in sharp contrast to the base, lies a shining and distinctive cube which continues through the entire building.
The building is flexible and simply constructed using the cubic form, which are also replicated in the concert hall, where the walls and balconies are created from various cubic forms which tie in with the building concept whilst providing acoustic regulation.
The Opera’s location next to the foot of Borgarholt hill provides a natural fall in terrain which is incorporated within the building, the entrance lobby’s two storeys rise up to the rest of the Opera building which is stretched over three storeys.

One enters the Opera from a little square, where three important cultural institutions are located. From the entrance one can either continue to the foyer area or go directly to the concert hall and restaurant. At the very top five roof gardens help to activate the building from top to bottom and provide the guests with a view across Reykjavik.


Source: Dezeen

Here are new images of Capital Hill Residence, a private house in Barvikha Forest close to Moscow, Russia by Zaha Hadid Architects.

The project, which is currently under construction, will be shown in the Russia Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale from 12 September - 23 November as part of a showcase of work by Russian and foreign architects working in Russia.

Capital Hill Residence is due for completion in 2010.



















Source: Dezeen architecture and design magazine

View of the set

Asemic Scapes - Rehabilitation Center Rainberg is concept for a medical rehabilitation centre in the Austrian Alps designed by architecture gradute Sarah Schneider.

This project is a conceptual design for a rehabilitation center for trauma and post surgery patients with a capacity of fifty beds in the Austrian Alps, in Vorarlberg.

In general rehab centers like their predecessors the sanatoriums of the 19th and 20th century are based on a dualistic set of values: they embody the belief in the healing power of technology and the healing power of nature, which is why they are mostly situated in prestine landscapes.


  Aerial view - Details covered       
                                                                                
Therefore my attempt was to develop a contemporary relationship to the landscape based on calligraphic ornamentation.

Calligraphy is adding an idea of creating variation through artistic expression to a technical matter of communication and is connected to ornamentation which generally uses natural motifs and often rules of natural growth.


Detail of the indoor

The project develops an architecture that uses rules of natural growth and connects both growth and ornament, with a landscape environment, topologically and calligraphically.

The ornament creates a symbiotic relationship with the existing environment by framing existing topographic features and at the same time giving a feedback to the landscape by creating topographical irregularities.




In the landscape the ornament starts to organize the ground by subtle terracing and it creates paths that break the clear definition of an indoor ñ outdoor boundary by running through the building, widening up to create bigger platforms and shrinking back to paths when leaving the building again.

This ornamented landscape topography develops the roof structure transforming from a plan calligraphy into a complex volumetric condition of overlay and envelope.


Details - Models



Sources: sarah-schneider              -              Dezeen architecture

In the corner of Diagonal and Pere IV, halfway between the Agbar tower of the building and Jean Nouvel Forum Herzog and De Meuron, lifting the brand-new Sky Tower Hotel Habitat, the fourth tallest building in Barcelona. Its author is the same as the of Biblioteques Nationale de France, French Dominique Perrault.
Initially, this project was based on the construction of five buildings, but by economic issues and did not find any construction to rise, the project was reduced to a single building. The building se basa en un volume at the base and another above. This provision gives two bodies in motion a whole, allows thinning, refers to the idea of the arrows of the Gothic churches. Unlike the tower Nouvel, the Agbar Tower, a building fat, Perrault, is slender and dynamic.
The most innovative architecture and emblematic of the city. The perfect place for all kinds of events, from high finance to the best romances. Equipped with the latest innovations architectural, engineering and design. A convention center of the twenty-first century. The building is designed Metallic shining under the sun's rays, with materials such as glass and metal covering the entire facade.

The hotel is aimed at building a tower of one hundred twenty meters in height that competes with neighbouring buildings: the Agbar Tower in front of the glory and the Princess hotel at the Forum. The new hotel, named Sky and Habitat category with five stars, has two one hundred and seventy-nine rooms in thirty-one plants.

Perrault designed a building that glows under foil the sun's rays, it is used for materials such as glass and metal that covers the entire facade. Another feature of the new building was a large overhang on the street Pere IV distinguishes the areas allocated to common services and hotel rooms.

It is precisely in different geometric quiebros of the building which housed the pool and a restaurant with a view.


Fuentes: arqchile.cl   -   geocities.com

To stay viable after the opening of the tunnel between England and the continent, the ferry companies operating across the channel propose to make the crossing more exciting. Not only would the boats turn into floating entertainment worlds, but their destinations - the terminals - would shed their utilitarian character and become attractions.

Building
The building crosses a sphere with a cone.
The two lowest floors organize traffic to and from the ferries with maximum efficiency; four ships can load and unload simultaneously without interrupting traffic flow.
A bus station is projected above this sorting machine; pedestrian acces is through a separate external loop. Above, two floors of parking wind in an ascending spiral culminating in a great public hall, where the panorama of sea and land is revealed for the first time.
Then the cone splits into vertical segments: a wedge of offices divides the sphere into hotel and promotional sections. The void between these two parts offers an upward view to the sky and a downward view, through a glass floor, to the depths of the parking garage.
The entire building is capped by a glass dome. Under the dome, the two halves are connected by ramps and bridges. The hotel roof accommodates the ulitmate "North Sea Casino”; an amphitheater that slopes down toward the sea can be used as a conference center.

Sign
How to inject a new 'sign’ into a landscape that - through scale and atmosphere alone - renders any object both arbitrary and inevitable?
To become a landmark, this project adopts a form that resists easy classification to free-associate with successive moods- the mechanical, the industrial, the utilitarian, the abstract, the poetic, the surreal. It combines maximum artistry with maximum efficiency.

Site
Parallel to the dike, the site is divided into incoming and outgoing bands. Waiting cars assemble in an S around a circular playground and a drive-in restaurant.
Building
The building crosses a sphere with a cone.
The two lowest floors organize traffic to and from the ferries with maximum efficiency; four ships can load and unload simultaneously without interrupting traffic flow.

A bus station is projected above this sorting machine; pedestrian acces is through a separate external loop. Above, two floors of parking wind in an ascending spiral culminating in a great public hall, where the panorama of sea and land is revealed for the first time.

Then the cone splits into vertical segments: a wedge of offices divides the sphere into hotel and promotional sections. The void between these two parts offers an upward view to the sky and a downward view, through a glass floor, to the depths of the parking garage.

The entire building is capped by a glass dome. Under the dome, the two halves are connected by ramps and bridges. The hotel roof accommodates the ulitmate "North Sea Casino”; an amphitheater that slopes down toward the sea can be used as a conference center.


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Fuente: OMA

Construction on Museum Plaza is expected to start in  early 2007 amd be completed in 2010.

 

A city within a city, Museum Plaza is a place to showcase contemporary art, curb suburban sprawl by drawin residents to downtown, and strengthen Louisville’s West Main Street Historic District. When complete, it will encompass some 1.5 million square feet of multi-purpose space in multiple towers, the tallest reaching 61 stories. Shaped
by a desire to serve and challenge the city it embraces, the iconic architecture blends residential, retail, office, education, and leisure activities into a fascinating urban neighborhood.  And it will fund and sustain a center for contemporary art unprecedented in the region.

The Sales & Design Center is located at 707 W. Main Street in Louisville.  It is open Monday through Friday from 10am to 6pm and by appointment on the weekends. 

Museum Plaza will be constructed on Seventh Street, between River Road and Main Street, on part of the old Kingfish restaurant site. The city owns the land and is giving it to the Museum Plaza developers.


Some people will be enamored of Museum Plaza's design, Abramson predicted, while others will question it.
The building will be the first skyscraper built in Louisville since the 35-story Capitol Holding Center, now called the Aegon Tower, opened in 1993. It likely will evoke strong opinions, Abramson said -- as did the Humana Building when its design was unveiled in 1982.
The mayor acknowledged that, when he first saw Museum Plaza's design in mid-December, he wasn't sure how to react.


Source: Courier-Journal

 


Unlike the traditional high-rise building, the design for the Ras al Khaimah Convention and Exhibition Centre accommodates all primary functions, such as the convention centre, hotel rooms, apartments, offices and retail space in a giant sphere.

A low-rise building adjacent to the sphere `hovers` above the ground beside the
exhibtion centre, retail and additional hotel rooms.
Access to the new buildings is provided by a new road system linking it to the
city creating a direct connection between the new buildings and the exisiting
urban structure.
What is left to be invented when it comes to the creation of a landmark?
So far the 21st century – in a desperate effort to differentiate one building
from the next – has been characterized by a manic production of extravagant
shapes. Paradoxically, the result is a surprisingly monotonous urban substance,
where any attempt at ‘difference’ is instantly neutralized in a sea of
meaningless architectural gestures.
RAK is confronted with an important choice: Does it join so many others in this
mad, futile race or does it become the first to offer a new credibility?
This project represents a final attempt at distinction through architecture:not
through the creation of the next bizarre image, but through a return to pure
form.
Invented long ago, both the sphere and the bar explicitly abandon claims to
formal invention or "originality".
Yet both geometries still continue to feed the architectural imagination: perfectly autonomous shapes, within their bounds the promise of a perfect world – made possible only by the seamless integration of engineering.
In spite of their apparent simplicity the sphere and the bar could come to
represent a milestone in the construction of the new RAK and provide it with a
powerful universal symbol: Western and Eastern, futuristic and primordial, contemporary and timeless.












Source: OMA

Frank Gehry    Serpentine Gallery 2008

The famous North American architect 79-year-old Frank Gehry, has designed the close provisional pavilion of the gallery Serpentine, in plenary session London Hyde Park.
The structure designed by Gehry in collaboration with the company of engineering Arup, it is clear of numerous plates of wood and of crystal that they form different angles and they believe a multidimensional space in appearance chaotic.

Gehry, author of the museum Guggenheim of Bilbao and the Room of Concerts Walt Disney of Los Angeles between other emblematic buildings, says of its London pavilion that " it is like an urban street " that it goes from the park up to the gallery.

Between the architects who have designed in the previous years the provisional pavilion of the Serpentine, which only is kept in foot a few months, there appear Álvaro Siza,  Rem Koolhaas, Zaha Hadid, Oscar Niemeyer, Toyo Ito and Daniel Libeskind:

-  Álvaro Siza:

Year 2005

- Rem Koolhaas (2006):



- Zaha Hadid (2007):



- Oscar Niemeyer (2003):



Source: La Tercera

Differently from the personal experience of the Japanese onsen or the sacred meaning in the Incan baths, the Roman baths or Thermae were places for social exchange and leisure.
The Baths of Caracalla were built between 212 and 217 AD. This big complex covered approximately 13 hectares and included several facilities such as libraries, stadium and gardens.
The scale of the building was monumental. The entire north wall of the complex was devoted to shops.The baths offered different temperature rooms: cold room (Frigidarium) with a huge pool (natatio), warm pools (Tepidarim), and hot rooms (Caldarium). There were two gyms or palestras and dressrooms. The libraries were located in exedrae on the east and west sides of the bath complex.
The water was provided by the Marcian Aqueduct through a smaller cannal called Aqua Antoniana. In the basement there was a complex network of tunnels, in order to conduct the pipes for water supply, sewage and wood.









At present, beside being a tourist important attraction, the thermal baths in the last decades are an incomparable scene(stage) for cultural, theatrical and musical representations.


SPANISH: LAS TERMAS DE CARACALLA

Este complejo fue iniciado por el emperador Septimo Severo en 206 D.C y completado por Caracalla entre 212-217 DC. Posteriormente, otros emperadores como Elagábalo y Alessandro Severo complementaron la obra o la refaccionaron. El edificio fue destruído por un terremoto en 847, aunque ya desde 537 no podía ser usado ya que los canales de agua fueron destruídos por una guerra.
El conjunto ocupa una extensión de trece hectáreas y se ubica al inicio de la Vía Apia.