FONTYS SPORTS COLLEGE BY MECANOO ARCHITECTEN

Sports complex of 16,500 m2 with 5 sports halls of which several meet the NOC * NSF requirements, 1 with 400 seats, a 15 meter high climbing wall, a restaurant, a library and educational facilities as a multi media centre and a sports lab, and a parking garage with 200 parking spaces

Sport encourages friendship and solidarity and serves as an inspiration. Sport is healthy, relaxing, and above all, fun. This is evident in the sports college that Mecanoo architecten was commissioned to build by the council of Eindhoven and Fontys University of Applied Sciences on the Genneper Parken ‘sports estate’ in Eindhoven. The 16,500 m² sports complex opened on Thursday 25 October 2012. The event was celebrated by many renowned Dutch sporting personalities, including recent Olympic medal winners Marleen Veldhuis, Ranomi Kromowidjojo and Marianne Vos.

The state of the art complex accommodates educational facilities for 2,000 students, five sports halls, a climbing wall, a restaurant and an underground car park with 200 parking places. Walking or jogging through the Genneper Parken you’ll immediately notice the new sports college. Sporting figures are incorporated in the dark brick walls – a swimmer, a footballer, a hockey player.

Behind a completely glass facade of the ground floor you can see students and athletes actively engaged in sport against a background of brightly coloured walls with graphics of sporting icons. The crowning glory of the building is the fifteen-metre high climbing wall with an enormous window behind which you can see the climbers making their way up. As the project architect Ellen van der Wal from Mecanoo says: “This building breathes sport from every pore.”

The building is a crucial link in the development of Genneper Parken, the sports and recreational area, confirming Eindhoven as a Sports City. Several sports facilities have already been established in this southern part of the city, including the Pieter van den Hoogenband swimming stadium and the Centre for Top Sport and Education. With its sculptural appearance and lively facades, the Sports College is the new meeting place on the campus.

Van der Wal explains: “We wanted to create a social building. Everyone is familiar with the stereotypical image of the sports hall as a dull closed box, an association we wanted to avoid.” That’s why four of the five sports halls are up on the first floor, while the fifth hall is located at street level in the centre of the building. “This means that we could make the façade of the ground floor completely transparent, creating a very dynamic appearance for the park, and contributing to social safety in the evening.”

The strict demands which the Netherlands Olympic Committee imposes on sports accommodation were an extra complication for the design. For example, no daylight can enter the halls because of reflection. Nevertheless, the new building has a very light and spacious appearance. Van der Wal explains: “When you go in you look straight through the sports hall into the canteen, which offers views to the FC Eindhoven playing field. This is what we did throughout the building – with open areas, glass and viewing points. You can see sport everywhere.”

As the building is intended both for education and for top sports and amateur sports, the architect was also confronted with a logistical challenge. In the evenings and at weekends when sports clubs make use of the building, it had to be possible to screen off the educational function. This was challenging, but the many different spaces were successfully forged to create a harmonious whole. The sports college presents itself as a powerful entity with a single theme: sport is fun.

Location: Eindhoven, Holland

Architect: MecanooArchitecten

Year: 2012

Client: Gemeente Eindhoven, Fontys Hogescholen

DQZ CULTURAL CENTER BY HAO / HOLM ARCHITECTURE OFFICE

The DQZ Culture Center sits on a site in a newly developed part of the city of Daqiuzhuang situated approximately 200 kilometers south of Beijing in northern China. A rural village in a desolated salty marshland only 30 years ago, Daqiuzhuang has grown from village to city rapidly due to its early investments in and production of the city’s main commodity: steel.

The DQZ Culture Center building occupies a redesigned plaza that mimics the historic marshland of the city in its tone and variety of plantlife, combining landscape, trees, flexible water features, and gathering spaces into a new urban center with the 20,000 M2 / 200,000 SF DQZ Cultural Center at its core.

The new DQZ building takes its form from the traditional Chinese courtyard square. By lifting the square in the diagonal corners, dual entry points to the building are created which lead visitors and locals through the building’s ground level public programs to the mid- and upper-level exhibition spaces while extending the existing North-South axis of the surrounding city.

The inner courtyard of the building creates a protected lush landscape with cherry trees and terraces, which can be used as an outdoor venue for local theater and festival events. The central exhibition space of the building opens up visually through glass facades to the courtyard connecting the interior spaces with the exterior courtyard.

Celebrating the history of the city’s growth, the DQZ building’s facade is made of perforated steel plates. This allows for natural ventilation as well as the integration of the building’s signage into the facade itself. The building is designed to integrate geo-thermal heating for heating and cooling as well the integration of PV cells in parts of the roof and in areas of the public plaza.

“We are exited for the opportunity to work with the city of Daqiuzhuang. With the DQZ building we wanted to generate a design that unites past and present in one building. It simultaneously integrates much needed public functions for the expanding city from kindergartens to areas for community gathering and cultural exhibitions while celebrating the history of the area through the use of steel in the building façade and structure." - Jens Holm, founder HAO / Holm Architecture Office.

Location: Daqiuzhuang, China

Architect: HAO /Holm Architecture Office

Project Team: AI, Kragh & Berglund

Area: 30,000 Mq

Year: 2012

MUSEUM OF OLD AND NEW ART BY FENDER KATSALIDIS

The Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) in Tasmania designed by Fender Katsalidis Architects won the Sir Zelman Cowen Award for Public Architecture.

The architects said: "Briefed by our iconoclast client as functional receptacle, not architectural spectacle, MONA is carved into a peninsular of Hobart’s Moorilla Estate, where its waffle concrete and Corten steel container will weather inexorably into the landscape."

Jury citation: "MONA is the result of a unique collaboration between David Walsh, self-styled art collector and philanthropist, and Fender Katsalidis Architects. Together they have created a powerful and entertaining experience for displaying and engaging with art, and by extension, one of the best examples in the country of the benefits of cultural tourism.”

Opened in January 2011, the new Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) is a stunning intervention on a superb headland site overlooking the Derwent River near Hobart, the capital city of Tasmania. Conceived and funded by a private client David Walsh to house his private art collection. 

The volume is expressed through a bold geometry of waffle concrete and Corten steel — a material palate appropriate to the duality of its land/sea context, and one that will weather gracefully, ensuring the facade is ultimately subsumed by the landscape.

A green roof with a series of sculpture terraces top the building container and reestablish the land’s original height around the Roy Grounds ‘Courtyard House’, which is re-purposed as the museum entrance. The roof is accessible by both land and water: the former via an adjacent on grade car park; the latter, via a private ferry landing and external staircase cleft through bedrock.

Descending a spiral staircase, visitors arrive at the lowest gallery level, where a slender rock hewn corridor leads to the museum’s principal organising space – on one side, the three levels of gallery chambers; on the other, full height exposed sandstone.

Such raw materiality continues throughout the interior — the building’s internal structure left exposed, and its sculptural envelope expressed — connecting inside with outside in a way that defies the absence of windows.

Interconnection between gallery chambers and levels is unconventional — not complicated, but visually complex. Indeed, the museum as a whole is never clearly seen, but discerned in pieces. Art is thus revealed with a sense of exploration: each visitor experiencing an individual journey of discovery, rather than a preordained circulation strategy.

Also outside the norm is the museum’s approach to energy conservation. Its underground situation, design and materiality enable the building mass to act as a highly efficient thermal stabiliser. Once reached, its internal temperature is thus maintained with a relatively small amount of energy.

Location: Hobart, Australia

Architect: Fender Katsalidis Architects

Project Team: Nonda Katsalidis, Robyn Bartley, Milena Beames, Roland Catalani, Man Ching Chan, Coen Chin, Karl Fender, Daniel Goldin, Kathie Hall, Ashley Hunnisett, Andromeda Hutchins, Nicolina Iuliano, Shem Kelder, Wayne King, John Lamb, Jessica Lee, Andrea Mancuso, James Pearce, Falk Peuser, Anne Sophie Poirier, Tom Robertson, Rochelle Rosenwax, Eve Sayer, Natalie Stone, Andrew Walter,

Area: 9000 mq

Year: 2011

Award: WAF Entry2012

PUUR PAVILION BY EMMA ARCHITECTEN

Fort Diemerdam è uno dei 42 forti e batterie che fanno parte della “Stelling vam Amsterdam” una linea di difesa eretta tra il 1880 e il 1920 a protezione della capitale olandese.

Una linea d’acqua ad anello lungo 135 chilometri disposta intorno al centro della città, distante tra i 10 e 15 chilometri, composto da terreni allagabili per impedire l’avanzata nemica e difendersi dagli avamposti armati di cannoni. Una soluzione nata obsoleta, vista la crescente tecnologia bellica e l’uso di aerei da combattimento nella prima guerra mondiale.

La “Stelling vam Amsterdam” non venne mai usata e nel 1996 è stato inserita tra nella lista del patrimonio mondiale dell’UNESCO. Oggi è un’attrazione turistica con percorsi ciclabili ed escursioni nella cintura verde e nei forti visitabili e riutilizzati a fini cultuali, sociali e promozionali.

Nel 2006 fu avviato un piano di ripristino degli edifici esistenti come nel caso di Fort Diemerdam, con una ricostruzione storicistica che rispettava le forme ed i volumi originari.

L’idea fu abbandonata a favore di una riqualificazione con uno sguardo rivolto al contemporaneo attraverso un progetto che reinterpretasse la storia del luogo con un adattamento più consono ad un uso culturale, ricreativo e per eventi anche all’aperto.

Il progetto di Emma Architecten reinterpreta l’impronta del passato, dell’avamposto militare, nel luogo esatto d’origine con un nuovo spazio che prende spunto dal paesaggio circostante e si ispira alla legge dei cerchi o “kringenwet” che imponeva a tutti gli edifici entro un chilometro dalla linea difensiva di essere costruiti in legno in modo da poter essere bruciati in caso di necessità.

Riferimenti che emergono da una ricerca archeologica ed interessano anche la struttura architettonica come l’abbassamento di 60 cm, dalla quota del terreno circostante e le strutture in legno a costole che rivestono l’edificio.

Un edificio che coniuga passato e presente in grado di divenire un luogo d’incontro, con sala eventi e mostre, e punto di ristoro con bar e cucina con una perfetta integrazione con il contesto da cui trae colori e sfumature adattandosi alla luce naturale.

 

 

Location: Amsterdam, Holland

Architects: emma Architecten

Year: 2012

Photographs: John Lewis Marshall, John van Helvert

THAMES HUB BY FOSTER + PARTNERS

London Mayor Boris Johnson supports a new Thames Estuary airport while architect Lord Foster has submitted his own estuary airport plan, considers the proposed Thames Hub, an integrated infrastructure plan for Britain, inspired by the lessons of nineteenth-century pioneers.

Further studies have been undertaken into the proposed Thames Hub, which includes: a £20bn high-speed Orbital Rail line around London; a new £6bn Thames Barrier and crossing; and a £20bn international Estuary Airport, with annual capacity for 150 million passengers.

All of this takes place in the context of a comprehensive environmental management strategy that minimises the impact of development and provides opportunities to create significant new wildlife habitats to more than offset losses elsewhere. The total estimated cost of the project is £50bn.

Critics of the Thames airport proposals have said that building an airport in the estuary, off north Kent, could take decades. But Huw Thomas, from Foster and Partners, said the time from starting work to opening would be seven years. He said the key advantage to the site was that it could be reached from three sides by sea.

Thomas told BBC Radio Kent: "You've got really good connectivity from land. You've got access to ports for delivering material. "In terms of doing the landfill, you've got easy access to the dredge sites that will provide the material - so you're creating a greenfield site.”

"You've got to move a motorway junction for the primary access. You've got to suppress the roads. You've got to demolish all of that infrastructure. You've got to reconfigure the whole of the airport in order to get to that third runway."

The three plans to build airports in the Thames estuary comprise a floating airport designed by architects Gensier, another known as ‘Boris Island’ after it was backed by London mayor Boris Johnson, and proposals for a hub airport on the Isle of Grain designed by architect Norman Foster. Proposals for increased airport capacity in the southeast have also included the expansion of Gatwick and Heathrow and more use of regional airports.