The Bionic Arch – Taiwanese Green Architecture
The 100th anniversary of the creation of Taiwan was celebrated with the Bionic Arch. The Bionic Arch is a futuristic new concept commissioned by the Taichung City Government. The building is meant to symbolize the advent of a new country and rejoice in the development that is has accomplished in the last century.
“The innovative building concept by Vincent Callebaut Architecture looks to usher in an era of green buildings in the country, and seeks to establish the heart of Central Taiwan as a hub for innovative and groundbreaking architecture, modern lifestyle, and a future urban center that could sustain bio-diversity within the metropolitan environment.”
Kingdom Tower – Saudi Arabia
Having the bragging rights for the world’s tallest building is no mean feat, currently this accolade is held by the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. The Burj Khalifa was officially opened in 2010, measuring a staggering 828m tall one would think that its record was safe for quite some time. However it is has recently been reported that Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture is designing a building that will be even taller. Supposedly called the Kingdom Tower, it will be located in Saudi Arabia and stand over 1,000 meters. The Kingdom Tower will have a total construction area of 530,000 square metres, and cost an estimated $1.2 billion USD. Featuring a luxury hotel, apartments and of course office space this will no doubt be one luxurious development.
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Indian Architecture – Spiretech Campus
A new IT campus in the Noida region of India has recently been designed by STL, a building which has the potential to be a true bastion of modern Indian architecture. STL is a Chicago based architectural firm and design studio and they called the new campus Spiretech.The inner space of the project serves not only as the civic heart of the complex, allowing for congregation and public functions, but also the green hub too. This is because the interior is lined with a lush garden that rises 20 stories up. The wall incorporates a variety of plants and flowers and looks absolutely stunning.
We think this is Indian architecture at it’s best and we can’t wait to see more such projects crop up over time!
Ecological Office
Stanislaw Mlynski designed this Ecological Wall as a project for a competition organised by the National Taipei University of Technology School of Architecture. The building is essentially an ecological Office block. The competition was international in scope and so the submission had to be something quite spectacular. The structure is covered with organic vegetation, allowing it to absorb CO2 and move it into the plants.
According to Mlynski:
“I proposed to create structural wall using organic waste containers. I believe that arrangement of elements, as well as their shape have potential to create shelters for animals, gather water, reduce CO2. The solar system has the aim to ensure energetic independence.”
In essence the Ecological Wall aims to accommodate vegetation into everyday life. It creates an organic space within the urban setting, allowing everything from the food and water we consume to the very fabrics we use to develop all around us. This design is truly inspiring, not only does it look beautiful but it creates a vehicle by which we can incorporate organic materials more into our daily lives, allowing us to live in both an urban and environmental surrounding!
Trump Tower – Chicago
The Trump Tower Chicago is a 98-story skyscraper in down-town Chicago. The building reaches a height of 1,389ft and was designed by Adrian Smith of Skidmore, Ownings and Merill. When finished in 2009 the building was the second tallest sky-scrapper in the United States, with first place going to the Willis Tower also in Chicago. The tower houses a 339 room hotel, a restaurant on the 16th floor and a mixture of retail and residential space. Until the Burj Khalifa was finished in October 2009, the Tower held the record for the highest residence above ground level. A very prestigious record indeed!
It is also well known for the fact that the winner of the first season of The Apprentice, a highly successful American reality show, was chosen to manage its construction.
The Shard – London Bridge
The Shard London Bridge, which is currently under construction, will be located in Southwark central London. It is due to be finished some time in 2012. Upon completion the Shard will be the tallest skyscraper in the EU, and the 45th tallest in the world.
The Shard is replacing the 1970’s Southwark Tower. It is the creation of the Italian architect Renzo Piano, who worked in conjunction with the architectural firm Broadway Malyan when planning the project. Piano’s vision for the building was to create a vertical ‘City in the Sky’. The development will be a mix of office space, residential accommodation, a hotel, several restaurants and a viewing platform. The Hotel will be the first ever Shangri-La Hotel in the United Kingdom, and will be located between the 34 and 52 floors.
Sustainable House Design by H Arquitectes
This green and sustainable house was designed by H Arquitectes in the rural areas of Catalunya Spain. It is built on a platform of natural rock, designed to be extremely easy to build. What’s more, it makes use of dry building methods that save substantial amounts of water – something especially important in arid areas. This also means that the financial and temporal investment is minimal.
The inner layout of the house is based on a lineal sequence of rooms, which are all of different proportions and linked to the structure. Part of the beauty of the design is that the building can work either as an open-spaced layout if required, or alternatively as a closed one. The house’s use of natural wood for the outer shell of the building seems to be a perfect match to its surroundings, blending in seamlessly with the natural environment in which it sits.
Photos via H Arquitectes
Marina Bay Sands Building in Singapore
Marina Bay Sands is a multi use resort complex fronting Marina Bay in Singapore. The complex is supposedly the world’s most expensive standalone casino property, costing a staggering S$8 billion (Roughly 3.8 billion pounds). Apart from the casino, the resort also boasts a 2,560 room hotel, a 120,000 sqm convention centre, a 74,000 sqm retail arcade, and an Art & Science museum. The complex is topped by a 340m SkyPark, which has the capacity to accommodate 3,900 people. Lastly, there is the 150m infinity swimming pool, set on top of the world’s largest public cantilevered platform.
Marina Bay Sands has been designed by Boston-based internationally renowned architect Moshe Safdie. Safdie was invited by the Las Vegas Sands Corporation to develop a competitive design proposal for Marina Bay which would be presented to the Government of Singapore. According to Safdie “our challenge was to create a vital public place at the district-urban scale, in other words, to address the issue of mega scale and invent an urban landscape that would work at the human scale.”
Furthermore, Safdie selected five international artists to create eight monumental large-scale public art installations for Marina Bay Sands. The artists worked closely with Safdie to ensure that the site-specific commissions complement the architecture and energized the public spaces.
Strong Suit
A lot has changed since 2004, when DLA Piper hired Lehman Smith McLeish to personalize a spec building going up on a parking lot in the Penn Quarter in Washington, D.C. As the desolate neighborhood blossomed into a vibrant mixed-use hub, DLA Piper morphed, after multiple mergers, into one of the largest law firms on the planet. Leaving behind a tired 1980′s office, the expanded firm seized upon the 230,000-square-foot space to forge a new identity and work paradigm.
Debra Lehman-Smith lost no time in presenting modifications to developer Boston Properties and building architect Hartman-Cox Architects, which embraced her vision to reshape the structure, still in the schematic phase. That set the tone for an extensive and remarkably collegial collaboration and of course reduced the expenses and complications that last-minute interventions entail. The changes were hardly insignificant. Lehman-Smith completely reorganized the entry and eliminated a through-block lobby that would have bisected the building and fragmented the other ground-level spaces. This created two distinct entries, including a dedic
ated one for DLA Piper on the building’s quieter side, facing the historic General Post Office, now the Hotel Monaco.
Click to Build
The McMansion has worn out its welcome, hope for prefab is fading, and anyone with a sense of contemporary design taste shudders at what homebuilders are producing these days. But for most people who want to build a modern, “architectural” house, the price is out of their reach. That’s where Hometta, a new Houston-based company, comes in. Launched in late June, coinciding with LA’s Dwell on Design conference, the firm offers house plans designed by contemporary architects from across the country, and then guides owners to finding a way to build them.
Co-founder Andrew McFarland, and his team of four architects and designers from the Houston area (many are affiliated with or attended Rice University’s architecture school) picked the talented firms after a thorough search. Co-founder Mark Johnson, a builder based in Houston, said that their group of architects and house plans will grow much larger by the fall, which is what sets Hometta apart from the plethora of other sites offering home plans online: designer cache. That, and the sense of community the company attempts to foster through its playful, interactive site.
All projects are single family houses, and none measure more than 2,500 square feet, part of the company’s niche-oriented business plan—“If you can afford to build a larger house, and you can find an architect that you like, then you should,” said Johnson—and also a way to assure that the non-custom projects don’t overwhelm contexts. Johnson notes that if clients do want to customize the homes after buying the plans they are welcome to work with the designers.