Mirage House-Supersudaka

The plot is 5000 m2 and the client didn’t know what to put on it, so he changed his mind constantly.

We proposed to invent an infinite context, a promenade where he could add program for ever in time without affecting each other. A necklace with more -or less- valuable jewels attached.
In the intersection of the “eight” loop the house is situated, and the interior of the circles crops are suggested to pay less taxes.

The house organization also works as an infinite loop.
The façade reflects the same idea: a mirage…

A very interesting project by Supersudaka. A different way to control and dialog with th sourroundings. Worth a look!!

Singapore’s Energy Efficient Green Heart Center

The very heart of Singapore beats green, thanks to the new design for the National Heart Center by multinational firm Broadway Malyan. The ambitious 35,299 square-meter building at the center of Singapore General Hospital's Outram Campus redevelopment plan will hopefully score high green marks with its unique design that places people first. Recognizing that the medical world advances quite quickly, the design incorporates modular building methods to ensure that the structure of the building remains flexible and adaptable both internally and externally, easily and efficiently allowing for future growth.

Singapore's Energy Efficient Green Heart Center

Selgas Cano Architecture Office by Iwan Baan

The photographer Iwan Baan show us a the dream workplace of Selgas Cano.
Dream workplace, or...Let the users say the last word.

Once again, Iwan Baan amaze us with this great project between the woods by Spanish practice Selgas Cano: Their own architecture office.

You can see some other photographs after the break and the complete photoset over here.

 

New Tamayo Museum by Rojkind Arquitectos and BIG

Rojkind Arquitectos and Copenhagen architects BIG have won a competition to design a museum overlooking Mexico City.

via Dezeen

Impromptu Arquitectos

Porto, Portugal-based Impromptu Arquitectos, together with their British partner Sergison Bates, have won the "Make Me a Home" competition to design the family homes at Tees Valley Regeneration's flagship scheme on North Shore in Stockton-on-Tees, England. Developers Urban Splash and Muse Developments, in conjunction with BD Magazine and the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), held this competition which challenged architects to shape the future of family homes. They were asked for concepts which broke convention and delivered a new typology in housing design.

Competition-winning housing scheme by Impromptu Arquitectos

More than 100 entries were received and six finalists hailing from across the globe had been selected. Two practices were from London, together with firms from Liverpool, Italy, Portugal and Germany.

Submissions were judged on the design of the homes and the layout of the buildings on the site to take full advantage of its south facing position on the banks of the River Tees.

It is anticipated that at least 250 family homes will eventually be built on the £300m North Shore mixed use site and that the development will also provide between 2,500 and 4,600 long term job opportunities.

Impromptu partner Nuno Rosado said: "We're very proud to be part of the project. It's a very important development, and a fantastic site. Impromptu and Sergison Bates have a very similar understanding of how to tackle architectural problems."

Urban Splash development manager Mark Latham said: "They're a fantastic team, with great design ideas. It was a combination of being a flexible typology - a uniform plot size that could be a two-, three-, four- or five-bedroom house, coupled with what Christophe Egret, one of the judges, described as a poetic approach to the masterplan."

Joe Docherty, chief executive of Tees Valley Regeneration, said: "To achieve this level of interest in North Shore from architects across the world is fantastic. It is a huge vote of confidence in the scheme and the Tees Valley."

Matt Crompton, joint managing director of Muse Developments said: "The judges were looking for designs that did justice to the Home Zone's riverside site, given its proximity to the new Infinity Bridge and the proposed new university campus. As part of a substantial mixed use scheme, which will include offices and leisure amenities, public space and deliverability were equally important."

Jonathan Falkingham, chief executive of Urban Splash, said: "We're questioning the typology of the family home, but at the same time trying to be provocative."

All the entrants' proposals will be exhibited at Newcastle's architecture center, Northern Architecture, as part of its North East Festival of Architecture.

Prayer & Meditation Pavillion / Studio Tam associati

Small Things, worth a look!

Architects: Studio Tam associati
Location: Khartoum, Popular Republic of Sudan
Client: EMERGENCY ngo
Site Engineers: Roberto Crestan (EMERGENCY ngo)
Program Coordinator: Pietro Parrino (EMERGENCY ngo)
Photographs: Raul Pantaleo & Marcello Bonfanti

The prayer and meditation pavilion is an integral part of the recently realized Cardiac surgery centre in Sudan, built by the Italian humanitarian organization, EMERGENCY NGO. The complex, planned and designed by Tamassociati architecture studio, is the only one of its kind to provide free health-care to patients in an extensive area within a ten million square km. radius and counting three hundred million inhabitants.

The Popular Republic of Sudan is a country that, over the past twenty years, has been scourged from numerous Inter-ethnic as well as Inter-religious wars.

The Arab Ethnic group constitutes 39% of the population and 61% of Africans; and in terms of religion, 70% of people in Sudan are Muslim, while the remaining 30% are Christian or belonging to other religious faiths ("Human Rights Watch": Q&A: Crisis in Darfur 05/05/2004).

We needed to think of a place that could accommodate prayer, as customary in any place of health-care, so we had to deal with the difficult dilemma of thinking of a space that could host the spiritual complexity of this country.

Our choice was not to privilege any specific religion, but to create a space that could accommodate the prayer and meditation of all faiths.

The outside hosts a large water pool, as a strongly symbolic image in this sub-Saharan zone. The pool creates a spiritual separation between the external macrocosm of the hospital/world and the ventral microcosm of the building formed by two unaligned white cubes, which are connected by a semi-transparent cover of palm leaf stalks.

The inner parts of the two cubes contain two trees, which render these profane spaces sacred with their presence, as natural elements inside artificial spaces.

We obviously had to seriously consider the Muslim faith, which is the religion of the majority of the Sudanese, along with the religion's rules (ablutions, separation of men and women), but we decreased the contextual impact of those rules in order not to make them appear dominant. This was made possible by concealing all symbols and elements that are specific to only one religion. For example, the ablution area is nothing more than a higher water spray that, before entrance, allows for washing without connoting a strong religious symbol, and it is simply perceived as an element of the water pool.