Rabu, 14 Desember 2011

Central Los Angeles Public High School for the Visual and Performing Arts

Program and Site

The Central Los Angeles Public High School for the Visual and Performing Arts of the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) is part of phase II of LAUSD's rigorous state bond funded plan to have 155 new schools built in its district by 2012. It is located on a 9.8 acre site on Grand Avenue in downtown Los Angeles. The school will be a comprehensive High School and in addition will offer courses in the Visual Arts, Performing Arts, Music and Dance. Due to its central location on Grand Avenue the High School will be a part of the cultural facilities along the Grand Avenue cultural corridor, joining the Disney Concert Hall, Music Center, Colburn School of Music, Museum of Contemporary Art and the Cathedral of our Lady of the Angels. To fulfill its mandate to be a public facility in keeping with the spirit of the other facilities on Grand Avenue the school campus will include a professional performing arts theater for just below 1,000 visitors, a venue, which so far has been missing in the spectrum of performance facilities downtown Los Angeles. The school will house approximately 1,800 students organized in four academies, one for each discipline in the Arts. Accordingly, the campus is comprised of seven buildings, the theater building, four classroom buildings, the library and the cafeteria.

Photograpy (c) Roland Halbe

Architectural Signs - Chess Concept

COOP HIMMELB(L)AU's design concept is to use architectural signs as symbols to communicate the commitment of the Los Angeles community to Art. Inside the tower, an event, conference and exhibition space with a view across the city is planned to be located. The theater complex is placed at the corner of Grand Avenue and the 101 Freeway. The tower connects the school visually and formally with downtown Los Angeles, and together with the Cathedral's tower the twin towers will become a new landmark for the city. In addition to the tower a representational Lobby on Grand Avenue serves as the public entrance and integrates the school with the Grand Avenue corridor. The four classroom buildings form the orthogonal perimeter of the school's interior courtyards. The functional box beam buildings house one academy each as well as other shared educational and administrative spaces. Each building is organized with a central corridor which doubles as an exhibition gallery, generous open public stairways with lookout points to the exterior and expressive entrances, which serve as transition spaces between the exterior and interior. Each academy building houses its general classrooms, art studios, workrooms and satellite administration spaces.

Along Grand Avenue and at strategic viewpoints around the site large round windows are placed to create a distinct and lively exterior and to allow passers by a glimpse of the activities within the school. Likewise, students inside the buildings will have visual contact with the city with constantly changing perspectives and frames. In addition to the public entrance on Grand Avenue the seven buildings frame a second representational entrance, the main school entrance, located at the intersection of Grand Avenue and Cesar Chavez Street and facing the community. The main school entrance is formally expressed through an 80' wide grand open stair, which leads directly into the main school courtyard with the conical library in its center and theater and tower in the background. The main entrance symbolically sets the stage for the students to experience this school as a decisive stage in their life and education.

To provide opportunities for public spaces within a high school through the architecture and supported by the performing arts program is one of the main contributions of this project to education and the community, and unique in contemporary public school buildings in Los Angeles.

Type: Educational - School

Location: 450 N. Grand Ave
Los Angeles, California, 90071
United States

Building status: built in 2008

A project by: Coop Himmelb(l)au

Architecture, Interior

Photo Gallery of Central Los Angeles Public High School for the Visual and Performing Arts

Photograpy (c) Roland Halbe

Photograpy (c)

Warren Aerial Photography, Inc.; Courtesy: PCL Construction Leaders

Source: http://www.architizer.com

Luxembourg Apartment, Luxembourg

Within the framework of our project, architecture and art are found side by side, are entangled, extend and complete each other in order to create a common language, a synergy which creates an intriguing, vivid and dynamic, yet at the same time intimate, welcoming and friendly ensemble. The reflection on the relation between art and architecture is part of the concept created with the involvement of the Luxembourgish artist SUMO.

Sumo voluntarily covered the space from the ground to the ceiling with his artwork in such a way that his art, which one can consider being "post-graffiti", is subtly integrated in the built space. Architecture gave way to art which reveals itself at times under the overhanged volumes with yellow, orange and red clouds, at times in the background of the loggias of the apartments with its peculiar figures. Art emphasizes this formal game of the spaces that seem to have "slid" to give way to the organic sketches and eccentric colors created by the artist. This cooperation puts forward the idea of the existence of equilibrium between the development of our building landscape and the artistic interpretation.

The monolithic aspect of the building strongly opposes the neighboring building by its form as well as by the materials used. This aspiration stems from the ambition to set the building off from the banality of the neighboring architecture. During more bleak weather it merges with the color of the sky. Sliding panels allow the residents to be in relation with their environment. The ambition was to free the three facades of the building from the circulation spaces in order to create maximum flexibility and luminosity for the apartments. The narrowness and the exiguity of that part of land encouraged the development of 4 differently sized and individual apartments. On the first floor, a two-bedroom 80sqm apartment is designed for a family of three. A open space, is oriented towards the road. On the second floor, thanks to a 1m overhang on 3 sides of the building, we suggested building 2 studios, 47 and 48sqm respectively. On the third floor we come across a 115sqm duplex apartment. A sturdy all-glass ceiling ensure the sunshine to get through to the north-oriented kitchen and dining room

Type: Residential - Apartment

Location: Luxembourg City
Luxembourg

Building status: built in 2011

A project by: Metaform atelier d'architecture

Architecture

Photo Gallery of Luxembourg Apartment, Luxembourg

Source: http://www.architizer.com

Senin, 12 Desember 2011

Erick van Egeraat Office Tower Amsterdam, Netherlands

The Erick van Egeraat office tower, also known as The Rock, is part of an expressive high-rise urban development south of Amsterdam, named Zuidas. The ambitious programming of a vibrant, high-density mixture of offices, housing, retail and public space, designed by nine international architects, all contribute to an exceptional development of metropolitan scale. The urban concept for this location as developed by De Architekten Cie. is based on a vertical layering structure with the anatomical analogy of legs, torso and head.

The Erick van Egeraat office tower challenges this masterplan further and proposes to create an explicit tactile and emotional experience out of the stacked block structure. The lower part is transparent to allow light deep into the building and stimulate interaction with the direct surroundings. The upper part is characterised by natural stone layers composed in a façade pattern which creates a variety of openings and panoramic views. Both parts are connected by a combination of transparent and printed glass elements and aluminium panels, forming a subtle transition between the two.

Location: Claude Debussylaan, 1082 MD
Amsterdam
Netherlands

Type: Commercial - Office

Client: Mahler 4 VOF

Building status: built in 2009

Building area: 33500 m2

Photo Gallery of Erick van Egeraat Office Tower Amsterdam, Netherlands

Source: http://www.architizer.com

S-Trenue: Bundle Matrix in Seoul, Korea

The site is located near the Yoido National Assembly, in an area that has been developed since the 1980's and mostly populated with towers built according to this equation to similar height and capacity scales. Generally, the plan of this tower typology is determined by the maximum site coverage (60% in this case), and the maximum F.A.R. (800%), and is repeatedly stacked vertically tower. In this plan, a tower of 14 floors (800% 60% = 13.333) is possible. An urban environment crowded with these types of towers is often monotonous and uninteresting, while the paucity of space between towers results in an oppressive cityscape.

Photography (C) Iwan Baan

Podium Tower

Prototype 1 (Standard): This type is possible when there is enough vertical allowance. The lower four or five levels, mostly filled with high-profit commercial entities, forming a podium of maximum site coverage. Prototype 2 (L-shaped): This is a variation of the podium tower; The tower atop the podium faces the street and horizontally forms an L-shape. The tower?s visibility increases from the street, while increased distance from neighboring buildings to the rear improves the overall environment.

Bundle Matrix

The L-shaped podium tower is reorganized and transforms into three vertical elements: three slimmer towers. The central core tower, the adjoined street-side tower, the adjoined rear tower and the podium form an ?L? The core tower is of reinforced concrete construction, the other two, of steel construction. With the core tower at the center, the slimmer steel construction towers lean at varying angles that still maintain structural soundness. The interstitial spaces extend to the commercial lower four floors with an atrium garden, escalator hall and other common areas for rest and transit that enliven the space. The design may have started from a podium tower prototype, but with the division between the podium and tower vanished, the three slimmer towers and two resultant interstitial gaps create vertical urbanity. According to the 2020 Seoul Urban Basic Project Plan, Yoido will be developed as an international financial district and the center of northeast Asian finance.

High-density highrise projects such as the IFC and Park One are being developed to the site?s northeast as a link to such mid- to long-term plans. This project is at the center of a rapidly-changing Yoido?s commercial and financial center.

Main Sections

The building is comprised of 7 basement levels and 36 superstructure levels, totaling about 39.899 ? and 154.14m in height. Parking and mechanical rooms are located on basement levels 2-7, and community conveniences are on basement levels one to superstructure level four, with the remaining levels 5 to 36 being ?officetels? (live/work space). Levels 14-15, at the core of the building, contain support facilities and central mechanical rooms and mark the division of facilities.

Level 1 Plan: Street Park

A green park space will be installed along the 100m-wide street. The street-side park features bamboo and Japanese spurge landscaping and water fixtures. Mist fountains and lighting will create a distinctive urban park that adds to the site?s role as a gateway.

Perspective: Sky Garden

In the interstitial spaces on either side of the core tower, there are 32 green spaces planned for ?sky parks.? The penthouse level (36th floor) has two outdoor spaces for every three units, with 31 total outdoor spaces that complement the building?s exterior and help formulate the highrises identity.

Type: Residential - Apartment, Commercial - Office, Transport - Parking structure

Location: 26-1 Yeouido-dong, Yeongdeungpo-gu
Seoul
Korea, Republic of

Site type: urban

Building area: 39899 m2

A project by: Mass Studies

Architecture

Photo Gallery of S-Trenue: Bundle Matrix in Seoul, Korea

Photography (C) Iwan Baan

Source: http://www.architizer.com

Minggu, 11 Desember 2011

Ribbon House in Rio Negro, Argentina

Linking distant lands, this time G2 Estudio was hired by two families from Tahiti- French Polynesia, partners in the adventure to create a holiday house in San Carlos de Bariloche - Patagonia Argentina, the one should have a wide integrated space for leisure and recreation, two master-rooms, two bedrooms for the children, and all the necessary equipment to a holiday house.

This way the house should be sufficiently dislocated in the footprint composition to ensure that each volume can achieve a particular frame of the breathtaking nature.

IDEA:

The initial idea comes from the juxtaposition of volumes, each containing different functions, on one hand the social life and in the others the private life. The morphology and materials used, were thought to achieve that the strong became in fragile, the solid in ethereal, the supported in support, the dynamic in static, and vice versa.

So the house is a search between the balance, juxtaposition, ribbon, viewing-point, vital tour, and hug.

ELEMENTS:

The sustained would be of steel-frame for the outer shells, partitions, panels, sun visors, which would be clad in wood from the area taking advantage of its warmth and lightness. For the roof panels and folded it, was used asphalt slate black color, creating color and texture contrasts.

The interiors are the result of the interpenetration of volumes compositional directions respecting convergences and materiality making a dramatic balance between the expression of forms, textures and visuals.

With Ribbon House G2 Estudio close a small cycle of evolution in the search for housing types, and launches into new spaces for these architectural exploration, arguing that every expression of architecture should be unique and unrepeatable as the users are.

Type: Residential - Single family residence

Location: San Carlos de Bariloche
Rio Negro
Argentina

Building status: built in 2010

A project by: G2 Estudio Arquitectura

Architecture

Photo Gallery of Ribbon House in Rio Negro, Argentina

Source: http://www.architizer.com

Jumat, 09 Desember 2011

The Essentials of Fabulous

I just returned from a ‘fabulous’ six days in New York. It really is a special time at Christmas with all the lights and excitement…..more of my adventures in a later post. I just wanted to share with you a must-get book for Christmas gift giving. I have just placed an order for a dozen to have on hand for last minute gifts for all the fabulous girlfriends, guyfriends, relatives, and for all the fabulous people you haven’t met yet.

“No one is born fabulous,” author Ellen Lubin-Sherman writes. “You have to decide to do it—to transform yourself into one of those amazing creatures that infiltrate our lives and ignite our dreams with their swagger, energy, pizzazz, and soigné charm.” The Essentials of Fabulous guides you to set yourself apart in this “whatever” world by paying scrupulous attention to detail. It shows you how passion, enthusiasm, attitude, superior manners, and a terrific personal style will catapult you right into the fabulous pantheon.

So I recommend that you definitely get a copy for yourself and while you are at it get as many as you can for all the fabulous people in you life.

Happy Fabulous to all of you!!

PATRICIA GRAY INC is an award winning interior design firm in Vancouver. Here we write about lifestyle and
WHAT'S HOT in the world of interior design, architecture, art and travel.
2011 © Patricia Gray | Interior Design Blog™

Seamless Collection, London, UK

The Seamless collection of furniture, featured in a 2006 London exhibition for Phillips de Pury & Company and Established & Sons, represents a dialogue of complex curvilinear geometries and detailed ergonomic research, through which Zaha Hadid sought to reinvent the balance between furniture and space.

The collection’s evolutionary lineage is easily discernable, with clear connections to earlier projects such as Z-Scape (2000), Ice Storm (2003), Aqua Table (2005), the Hotel Puerta America interiors (2005) and Elastika (2006).

The design language explored throughout the collection emphasizes the usage of complex curvilinearity, seamlessness and the smooth transition between elements. A formal integration of diverse forms allows individual furniture pieces to be considered within the overall mass of the ensemble. The pieces, initially morphologically conceived, are shaped further by typological, functional and ergonomic considerations. However these further determinations remain secondary and precariously dependent on the overriding formal language of the collection.