EUR CONGRESS CENTER BY FUKSAS

Fuksas' project is the response to a competition held in 1998 by the Council of Rome to reinforce the international image of the Italian capital in the panorama of congress and international meetings.

The building will surface at the junction of 4 major roman arteries on a vacant parking lot. It will present itself as a translucent parallelepiped, 39 metres high, 75 m. wide and 198 m. long. On two sides squares will open to the neighbourhood and the city and offer natural gathering spaces for the site users.

The simplicity of the exterior shape pays tribute to the linearity of rationalism in architecture, the movement that in the 1930’s produced the iconic buildings that still characterize the horizon of the EUR business district and the nearby Conference center designed by Adalberto Libera.

“The idea came to me in a very special moment. I was at the seaside, a group of clouds where being blown quickly across the sky by a strong wind. As I looked at the clouds I remembered a dream I had had, which involved constructing a building that had no crystallized form at all" says Massimiliano Fuksas.

The building is an translucent container that extends lengthways, on each side a square opens on to the immediate area and the city. The first converses directly continuously with the local area and can be crossed from viale Europa to viale Shakespeare.

Inside the container, a 3500 sq m cloud of steel and glass fibre is suspended on a surface of 10, 000 sq m: it will be the home of an auditorium with a capacity of 1800 seats. The cloud will be held in place by an orthogonal grid of woven beams: suspended between the pavement and the ceiling of the big congress hall it will exclusively rest on three vertical elements.

When the cloud, supported by a thick network of steel cables and suspended between the floor and the ceiling of the main conference hall, is lit up, the building seems to vibrate. The construction also changes completely depending on the viewpoint of the observer.

The New Centre of Congress will also house 2 conference rooms of 5000 and 3000 sq m each. In addition the center will also contain three halls and spacious foyer, cafè and restaurant areas, covering a total multi-functional space of 15.000 square meters. A grand stair will link the building to the outside plaza. An independent building called the 'blade' will house a hotel with 441 rooms.

 

 

EUROMED CENTER BY FUKSAS

  

A distanza di 6 anni dal progetto, presentato al Salone Immobiliare di Cannes, è stata posata la prima pietra dell’ Euromed Center di Marsiglia, vincitore del concorso internazionale bandito dall’Euroméditerranée.

Una lunga gestazione per un intervento di otre 70.000 mq per la realizzazione di un hotel Marriott di 4 stelle con centro benessere e un multiplex con 16 sale cinematografiche di proprietà del produttore Luc Besson.

A corredo dell’intervento sono previsti spazi commerciali, un centro congressi, parcheggi per 1000 auto e un parco urbano di 4000 mq disposti lungo il boulevard del litorale che si apre su Place de la Méditerranée, nel cuore del quartiere direzionale La Joliette.

Il progetto del centro Euromed rientra nel programma di sviluppo “Cité de le Méditerranée” che prevede la sistemazione dei docks da parte di Eric Castaldi, la torre di Zaha Hadid per la nuova sede della CMA CGM ed il MUCEM il museo della civilizzazione dell’Europa Mediterranea.

Un piano ambizioso che vede la città di Marsiglia impegnata in un programma di rinnovamento urbano, a partire dalle aree portuali dismesse, finalizzato alla promozione internazionale dell’area metropolitana con l’inserimento di importanti aziende francesi ed europee, tra le quali l’italiana Telecom.

Nel 2013 Marsiglia sarà la capitale europea della cultura e verrà celebrata anche con l’inaugurazione del MUCEM, prevista per il prossimo giugno, e con l’inizio dei lavori di tutte le opere previste no ancora finite.

Il centro Euromed, che sarà ultimato per il 2015, costituirà la piattaforma di scambi e incontri, di cultura e di economia, a carattere internazionale, con una architettura che si propone come un “segnale urbano” per la città non solo di tipo architettonico.

Il complesso si identifica come un vero “polo di animazione” della città con  esposizioni, incontri culturali, manifestazioni temporanee come vernissages, atelier, cocktail per le anteprime del Multiplex, eventi sportivi e altro.

L’architettura di Fuksas si ispira alle forze naturali del mediterraneo con forme fluide che sembrano scolpite dal vento e dal mare ma che nello stesso tempo simboleggiano il movimento come elemento di trasformazione e generatore di urbanità.

NINGXIA INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE CENTER BY TVSDESIGN

The new conference center broke ground early this year and is expected to open by September 2015, in time for the Forum's 6th annual meeting.

The concept of the Ningxia International Conference Center (NXCC) was developed as part of an international design competition in which tvsdesign, along with their local partner the Ningxia Architecture and Design Institute, was selected to be the design architect for the project. When finished, the NXCC will be tvsdesign's fifth convention and conference center to be built in China.

The NXCC was designed to be an architectural landmark in the Ningxia region. It embodies key influences of local Chinese culture, and conveys a strong Islamic identity common to the Ningxia province's Hui population, a predominantly Muslim ethnic group within the region, and the nearby Arab nations.

"The architecture of the Ningxia conference center was inspired by ancient Chinese metaphors and strong Islamic artistic patterns, harmoniously merging elements of both cultures," says tvsdesign Senior Project Architect Rob O'Keefe. "We designed the facility around a central outdoor courtyard, an element that becomes the nucleus of the center, where people will meet, share knowledge and develop new ideas."

“In China, the ancient coin, for example, is a strong metaphor for harmony between heaven (the circle) and earth (the square). In the Muslim culture, the combination of the circle and the square is called the Mandala motif, and is recognized as the unifying intermediary between the materialism and the spiritual world” says Architect Rob O'Keefe.

The conference center is encapsulated in a unifying and dynamic steel shell, whose curvilinear form is derived from stitching a square at the base with a circle at the top. These pure geometries have had significant influence throughout history in both Chinese and Muslim cultures.

Architects at tvsdesign worked diligently with the Arup structural engineering group to develop the unique screen structure, which is composed of an outer triangular grid surface overlaid on a hexagonal base grid to create a thin space frame consisting of more than 30,000 individual structural framing members.

The site plan is designed as a series of interior spaces around a central outdoor courtyard, which acts as a unique venue for public events and outdoor events. This organizational model was derived from various precedents of Islamic architecture.

Location: Yinchuan, China

Architect: tvsdesign

Project Area: 700,000 sq ft

Client: Ningxia Construction Bureau 

Year: 2012-2015

MAGMA ART AND CONGRESS BY FERNANDO MENIS

The southeast of Tenerife Island is a barren land – a semidesert shielded by the volcano Teide (at 3718 metres the highest peak on Spanish territory), whose sparse vegetation rather betrays the close proximity to Northern Africa than to the distant mother country.

If it was not for the booming tourism, one would have very little reason to suspect the existence of arger human agglomerations here let alone one of the most important public buildings to be built on the island for the last decades.

The 30 million Euro project MAGMA was originally planned as a pure congress centre, but during the planning phase the brief was extended to include the-atre and concert facilities as well finally a complete auditorium was added.

In the future the building is to host regular concerts by the Orquestra Sinfonica de Tenerife, which so far mainly performs in the auditorium of the island’s capital Santa Cruz that was designed by Santiago Calatrava and opened in 2003.

Last not least, due to its good traffic location MAGMA is expected to become a focal point for Southern Tenerife’s economical and cultural development: the motorway bound for Santa Cruz runs directly behind the building.

The site was partially excavated out of the slope; facing towards the sea it forms a raised platform with a number of ramps running up to it.

At first glance, the congress centre situated above the town of Adeje curiously both draws on elements of international expressionism and a certain classic, tectonic heaviness, which the Spanish architecture of recent years has rediscovered.

Fernando Martin Menis is well aware of this ambiguity of his design: He writes: ‘From a distant point of view, the building presents itself as an arrogant construction in its forms, expressive and strong, while in short istance it dissolves in the territory, blending with the environment.

Striving to label the unusual new building of Adeje with a common stylistic tag many critics have already likened it to Frank Gehry’s architecture. Just like the Californian in his best buildings, Menis also plays with the tension of solid cubes and undulating roof elements.

However, the congress centre lacks the vertical gesture of Gehry’s buildings that reach to the sky; it stays ose Previous pageLow, wide ramps lead from the town Adeje towards the forecourt f the congress centre located above.

Behind the parapet the contours of the fl at crouched building are perceptible to the right. Left The two surface materials of MAGMA are fair-faced concrete and fibre cement shingles. The front sides of the concrete walls were treated with a jack-hammer, in order to generate the appearance of weathered volcanic rock.

TopOverall elevation of the building compex as viewed from the slope above the town.  From here, the alternation of bulky concrete cores and the wave like fibre cement roofs gliding across becomes visible.

 

Location: Adeje, Tenerife. Spain

Architects: Fernando Menis, Felipe Artengo Rufino, José Maria Rodriguez Pastrana

Site Area: 27.784,47 mq

Total Constructed Area: 20.434,44 mq

Client: Canarias Congress Bureau Tenerife Sur S.A.

Cost: 28.962.181 €; 1.417,32 €/mq

Year: Built 1998-2005