SLIP HOUSE BY CARL TURNER ARCHITECTS

“Occupying one of four plots (a gap in a Brixton terrace), Slip House is CTA in-house development built in the bottom of the garden of a derelict house. Three simple ‘slipped’ orthogonal box forms break up the bulk of the building and give it it’s striking sculptural quality. The top floor is clad in milky, translucent glass planks which continue past the roof to create a high level enclosure for a private roof terrace.

 

Designed to Code for Sustainable Homes Level 5, it will feature ‘energy piles’ which use a solar assisted ground source heat pump integrated into the pile foundations, PVs, a green roof, rain water harvesting, mechanical ventilation with heat recovery and underfloor heating.

A prototype brownfield development offering dense, flexible, urban living – the house is a vehicle for in-house research into sustainable design, seamlessly integrating the often conflicting aesthetic requirements of architecture and alternative low energy systems.

We are working to develop this model for multiple developments and as affordable housing. Living and working (‘Living over the shop’) is something that really interests us.  We see a prototype new ‘terraced’ house, squeezed into under-utilised city (Brownfield) sites.

This flexible type of home can allow for the artisan or home-worker to sub-let or downsize.  This can enliven local communities and produce ‘homes’ which create opportunities rather than be dormitories or financial assets.

Slip House is flexible and can be used as a single home, studio workspace and apartment, or two apartments. The perimeter walls are load bearing, freeing up the internal areas of supporting columns or additional load bearing walls. The house’s open-plan layout ensures that walls / dividers are simple to erect and require minimal construction effort.

This aspect of Slip House is not only financially sustainable but also environmentally so, as it helps to ensure the permanence of the overall structure, as minimal modifications can allow the house to adapt to changing lives and living situations indefinitely.

Our approach was to model the building as a series of simple orthogonal box forms that use the full width of the site. This allows future buildings to simply adjoin the flank walls. The house takes the idea of three slipped boxes. The boxes are carefully placed to maximise light and outlook from inside while not intruding on neighbour’s outlook. The shifting planes also break up the bulk of the building and give it its sculptural quality.” Description of Carl Turner Architects.

 

Location: Brixton, London UK

Architect: Carl Turner Architects

Year: 2012

Client: Private

NATIONAL ART MUSEUM BY MAD

 

An open city for art.

“ Partaking in a 2011 international competition for a new national museum in Beijing, MAD architects’ proposal is a city-sized museum where the public space is the greatest good.

 

Since China began opening up to the world in the late 1970’s, China’s contemporary creative scene has been expanding to the stage of global confidence with added investment in its artists.

Built in 1962, the National Art Museum of China, already having one of the largest collections in the country, has been the backdrop to some of the most influential exhibitions in contemporary Chinese history.

With the planned move into a new building, the organizing committee followed a global trend: bigger, located in a designated ‘art district’ and more iconic. Situated on the central axis of the 2008 Olympic site, and part of a six mega volume masterplan, the main question became, how to design something iconic on an unrealistic and inhuman city scale.

The proposal by MAD architects for the new museum is a hybrid between an elevated public square and a floating mega building above. Organized as an open city in three layers, the result is a sequence of outdoor and indoor spaces. In these spaces, nature and function are not separated but intertwined.

This creates an architecture that achieves an understanding about one’s bodily presence among the objects that surround him, instead to a functional agglomeration of pre-defined uses.

Organized as an open city in three layers, the result is a sequence of outdoor and indoor spaces. In these spaces, nature and function are not separated but intertwined. This creates an architecture that achieves an understanding about one’s bodily presence among the objects that surround him, instead to a functional agglomeration of pre-defined uses.

MAD architects’ proposal shows how a building can bring the city and art together, creating a urban public space where people can consider their relationship between time, point of view and each other.” Description of MAD.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Location: Beijing, China

Architects: MAD

Project Team: Zhao Wei, Sohith Perera, Yu Kui, Jei Kim, Geraldine Lo, Mao Beihong

Engineer: ARUP Group Ltd

Area: 30,000 sqm

Building Area: 152,200 sqm

Year: 2011

RYERSON IMAGE CENTRE BY DIAMOND SCHMITT ARCHITECTS

An international centre for photographic arts designed to house and exhibit one of the world’s most prestigious collections opens September 29, 2012 in downtown Toronto.

The Ryerson Image Centre (RIC) completes the transformation by Diamond Schmitt Architects of Ryerson University’s School of Image Arts, renovated to accommodate gallery space, curatorial and graduate study centres, state-of-the-art storage vaults and student galleries. The new centre is designed to museum standards of the Canadian Conservation Institute. The windowless former brewery warehouse that housed the school for 50 years is now an open and legible program that engages with the campus and community.

The mainstay of RIC’s inventory – and the impetus to create the centre – is the Black Star Collection: 292,000 photojournalistic images amassed by the New York-based Black Star photo agency from c. 1910 to 1992. The collection was donated anonymously to Ryerson University. RIC brings a new cultural destination to Toronto with an innovative program dedicated to collection, research and public exhibition of photography and related arts.

“In connecting the academic program and the Ryerson Image Centre, we sought to create a crossroads between university life, graduate study and the public realm,” explained Donald Schmitt, Principal with Diamond Schmitt Architects. “A glazed ground floor unifies both programs and creates a welcoming presence, transforming the public square where the campus connects with the city. A transparent, accessible entrance with enormous photo murals marks the entry from the square.”

RIC is a museum-quality facility with main galleries, additional exhibit space in the Great Hall, Entrance Colonnade and Student Gallery. The colonnade features the Salah J. Bachir New Media Wall, a permanent installation visible from the adjacent square. The Mira Godard Graduate Study Centre houses the growing collection of images in a temperature and humidity-controlled vault.

“Creating a state-of-the-art facility for research, storage and exhibition supports RIC in its position as one of the world’s leading centres of photography research and exhibition,” Schmitt added.

The façade has a double-skin glass cladding around the top of the three-storey building that conceals an LED lighting system. This feature won the 2012 AL Light & Architecture Design Award for Best Use of Colour. By day, this opaque glass surface provides a seamless white backdrop to bustling campus life and contrasts the centre’s transparent glazing at ground level. At night, a dynamic display of multi-coloured lights glows in separate panels or in unison, transforming the building into a work of art as a programmable and interactive light installation using an app designed at Ryerson University.

“This is a luminous façade for the 21st-Century, one that’s dynamic and colourful, can be played on with an app and a smart phone, and is made with light – the stuff of photography – to engage and represent this institute to the city,” said Schmitt.

The inaugural exhibition, Archival Dialogues: Reading the Black Star Collection, features eight Canadian artists’ interpretation of the collection. RIC Director Doina Popescu said: “Ryerson Image Centre aims to be the cultural hub of the University and a complimentary voice joining in the arts dialogue taking place in Toronto, in Canada and around the globe.”

Text of Diamond Schmitt ArchitectsPress Release.

Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Architect: DiamondSchmitt Architects

Client: Ryerson University

BUDDHISM TEMPLE BY MILIY DESIGN

Buddhism Temple project coming from the drawing board of Miliy Design studio, envisioned for a location in Chinese city of Taichang.

 

 

“It’s a contemporary Buddhism temple based on the concept of reincarnation. The essence of Buddhism’s Sutra is so called “formlessness”.

 

 

Based on this, the form searching of the architecture becomes the path from the beginning to the end.

 

 

The prototype of Buddhism’s temple is from ancient time and based on ancient tectonic and space defining logic.

 

 

With the aid of digital design and fabrication techniques, the solution will have different possibilities.

 

 

Mobius ring is used as the metaphor of reincarnation in this design. The inner surface and outer surface meets in the same point seamlessly.

 

 

This process is just like the reincarnation in Buddhism. Circulation revolves from outside to inside through the space just like the reincarnation through different life forms.” Description of Miliy Design.

 

Location: Taichang, Jiangsu, P.R.China

Architects: Miliy Design

Architect In Charge: Steven Wang,

Design Team: Jeff Ding, Chenjia Tang, Wen Zhang, Xin Qi

Project Year: 2011

Project Area: 1,200 sqm

Developer: Shanghai Kingswel Industry Group

URBAN REDEVELOPMENT PROJECT AT TAINAN MAIN STATION AREA BY MAXTHREADS

Second prize winning vision for the Urban Redevelopment Project at Tainan.

Designed by Maxthreads, their strategy attempts to contribute to Taiwan’s economic diversification from its current infrastructure lead planning system.

Tainan main station master plan is imagined as a cultural based community and nature intervention, with sustainable residential development and the potential for natural habitat areas.

It aims to be a cultural and vibrant edutainment intervention as well as a secluded haven of peace and tranquillity.

Tainan main station is conceived as a new gateway of Taiwan’s history. The proposal aims to reconcile community and biodiversity.

It will act as an eco-transitional urban device, transferring and linking the diversity of the surrounding urban districts and programmes.

The concept behind the master plan proposal derives from the area’s original function as transportation node.

The proposal will maintain the areas historical identity, whilst providing a boundary free and a self-sufficient urban planning, incorporating a number of sustainability systems.

Location: Tainan, Taiwan

Architects: Maxthreads

Project Team: Max Yang, David Millar, Samya Kako

Competition Organizers: Bureau of Development Tainan City Government, Taiwan (R.O.C.) & INTA (International Urban Development Association)

Prize: Second Prize