Courtesy Baraka

Courtesy Baraka

The 6.000 m² plot is located on the edge of the city of Istanbul on the exact interface between the city and the surrounding forest. The first input for the housing complex was the location itself. This spot has been an important dynamic. It is where the urban texture starts to dissolve and the built environment becomes almost undefined and sparse. Another major factor was the building code, with a quite high floor-space index and a height limit of six floors. All these facts lead us to use an architectural language with a smooth transition between the building and its surrounding, unlike the neighbouring buildings.

Courtesy Baraka

Courtesy Baraka

The housing complex is made up of four building blocks which contain 70 flats, 2 retail units and social facilities. The social facilities itself, with an open air swimming pool and rooms for various leisure facilities is differentiated from the rest of the complex by means of ramps and amphiteaters. This leads also to the contextual differentiation between public, semi-public and private space.

The linear wooden elements of the facade are thought to act occasionally as sun shading elements, railings and cladding.

+ Project facts

Architects: Baraka
Location: Istanbul, Turkiye
Design Team: Abdurahman Çekim , Sevilay Çekim , Fatma Savgan
Project Year: 2012
Project Area: 6.000 m²

+ All images and drawings courtesy Baraka

Image © Olivier Amsellem

Image © Olivier Amsellem

This project is part of the scheme to reconsider urban identity in the Centre Urbain, the new neighbourhood that is the emblem of the future Evry. Rows, set back buildings, an interplay of terraces, and "urban windows" create an openness towards the heart of the small island.

The heart of the development is a landscaped private garden that unifies the architecture. Designed to be in dialogue with the two other buildings on the lot, the project is resolutely contemporary in its response.The facades of the three buildings form a graphic composition that is unified and generous. A style affirms itself: inertia. The rhythms of the austere openings create a graphic interplay outlined in colour.

The apartment interiors respond to specific compositions, both near and far, drawing the eye towards the landscaping and the emblems of the town, particularly Evry Cathedral. Refusing to be constrained by stylistic archetypes, the buildings embody a new urbanism, environmentally and socially friendly, a quest for quality in response to new ways of living.

Image © Olivier Amsellem

Designed by Beckmann-N’Thepe Architects, this is a three-storey private house with basement, facing east/north-east on the rue de Nice and west/sout-west across its courtyard. It is clad in puttycoloured concrete from top to bottom, which makes it look as if it is cut from a single block. Its colour, echoing that of the stone or rendered façades of the neighbouring buildings, makes it blend in with its surroundings. Two wings at the rear frame a small courtyard.

Image © Olivier Amsellem

The building shares a courtyard with the neighbouring building on 10, rue de la Petite-Pierre, and planning regulations restricted its height to 15 metres.As neighbouring buildings are on average 21 metres tall and the plot quite small, the new building is very hemmedin. Most of the design solutions arise from this constraint.

To offset the hemmed-in effect and make the most of the available light, we gave the courtyard side a funnel shape that captures maximum sunlight.The raked terracing and oblique planes of the east façade have a deconstructing effect. This façade also has striking stairways that form a key feature of the house. They are designed to look like crossed arms, facing towards the interior of the building. They largely determine the design of the rear façade, following the concrete wall that runs along them. Now comes the final key element of the façade: a glazed strip running from the ground floor to the roof. With its oblique folds, it brings south-west light into the house without affecting the privacy of the main living areas.

Image © Olivier Amsellem

On the street side, the façade's main feature is a double-height terrace leading off the living room and bringing more light into the first and second levels. The terrace windows, like the others, have opening panels 75 centimetres wide and fixed panels of different lengths. Bronze-coloured reflective glass punctuates the northfacing windows and echoes the dark brown brass fittings. Brass has been widely used throughout: 10 centimetre thick brass frames, standing slightly proud of the façade, surround the windows; the frame of the terrace with its sloping front juts out over the pavement. The use of a double front door means that it has been possible to build it seamlessly into the concrete façade. The rest of the ground level is designed in a completely different way, reflecting its intended use. A long window, reminiscent of early twentieth century Parisian workshops, is set back from the façade. The roof terrace has an oblique triangular 'fin' that offsets the rectangular outline of the streetside façade and gives the building a tapered effect.

Courtesy Kokaistudios & Etc, New & Old Studios

Kokaistudios designed the two thematic Etc Wine Shops, a new brand created by high end wine distributor Altaya in Hong Kong, China. The intent of the brand is to create an innovative way to support wine culture in Asia where the fast rising interest in wine has led to a proliferation of wine retailers characterized by very traditional cliché designs.

Courtesy Kokaistudios & Etc, New & Old Studios

Etc retail shops are organized as dedicated outlets that focus each on one family of wines only (Reds/Champagnes) so as to be able to reach a deeper cultural understanding for each wine variety. Kokaistudios  started by analyzing the range of retail options for wine products from a local market up to worldwide base in order to provide design solutions that match the strong commercial and at the same time chic background of Hong Kong.

Courtesy Kokaistudios & Etc, New & Old Studios

Inspired by the three key element of wine appreciation; endear, tease and cultivate, where the ETC name comes from, both shops feature a warm environment that welcomes novice wine drinkers and connoisseurs alike, coupled with a unique and personalized retail experience that takes the customer from browsing, tasting and purchasing.

The boutiques design is conceived in defining a contemporary and timeless style that avoids any traditional and romantic approach to this specific retail theme, offering instead an elegant combination of sustainable and handcrafted materials used with an extreme modern interpretation.

Courtesy Kokaistudios & Etc, New & Old Studios

The challenging in the design comes from the innovative retail strategy in which each retail location is offering one wine type only, requiring the designers to customize each time merchandizing and display system but maintaining at the same time a strong brand identity by using same architectural and main material composition.

Courtesy Kokaistudios & Etc, New & Old Studios

Particular attention have been given to sustainable lighting system based entirely on LED and to customization of innovative solutions of interaction between customers and cultural instruments, using touch screens multimedia instruments and contemporary reinterpretation of traditional wine tasting stations.

Etc brand received immediately very positive feedback from the sophisticated clientele in Hong Kong by delivering a completely different message from the other existing products on the market and creating an original identity.

Courtesy Kokaistudios & Etc, New & Old Studios

+ Project facts

Design
Kokaistudios

Interior
Filippo Gabbiani, Zoe Lee,
Mark Shen, David Liu

Client
Altaya Wines Limited

Location
Hong Kong, China

Area
240 sqm

Completion
May, 2012

Photograph
Etc, New & Old Studios

The new levitated superstructure contains exhibition space, a restaurant, a shop and the new entrance. Arup is responsible for the structural design and the lighting design.

Image courtesy Arup & John Lewis Marshall

Designed by Benthem Crouwel Architects, the new building, popularly called 'the Bath Tub', adds over 9,000m2 to the historic museum building. This includes programme space as well as 3,400m2 of exhibition space. There is an area located in the basement which is suitable for many forms of contemporary art, being free from daylight.

The Stedelijk Museum is the first of many museum projects that Arup in the Netherlands is involved in and we are very happy that the doors will open to the public this weekend.

Joop Paul, Project Director at Arup

Image courtesy Arup & John Lewis Marshall

The Stedelijk Museum is now orientated towards the Museum Square, connecting the institute to the illustrious neighbors: the Van Gogh Museum, the Rijksmuseum and the Concert Hall.

With this reopening the Stedelijk Museum repositions itself as one of the leading arts institutes. It puts Amsterdam in the spotlight as center of artistic renewal and brings new life to the Museum Square, one of the most important cultural landscapes in the world.

Ann Goldstein, Director of the Stedelijk Museum.

Image courtesy Arup & John Lewis Marshall

The museum maintains a collection of modern contemporary art and design of 90,000 objects dating from the seventies of the nineteenth century to the present.

The historic part of the museum houses the permanent collection, including art from the oeuvre of Karel Appel, Marc Chagall, Vincent van Gogh, Henri Matisse, Jackson Pollock and Andy Warhol. In addition, the museum offers a permanent design presentation including industrial design, graphic design and applied art. The new building offers temporary exhibitions.

The museum is open to the public today.

Image courtesy Arup & John Lewis Marshall

Courtesy OOIIO Architecture

Madrid-based OOIIO Architecture has developed a large Masterplan Project to organize the future growth of Linkoping, a 100.000 inhabitants city in the South of Sweden. Linkoping is well-known for its Technological Industries and for its university, with more than 30.000 students. This is why the local authorities wanted to develop a new kind of Masterplan, to experiment and explore about new ways of designing cities, with all the complexities, sustainable construction systems and social cohesion aspects that a XXI st century city needs.

Courtesy OOIIO Architecture

OOIIO Architecture started the design process of the new town area looking for opportunities that the proper building area could provide, and this is why, OOIIO decided to generate a big green ring connecting the old town center with the University, other spread housing areas, and the proposed construction area. An existing and damaged water canal, that would be recycled, will become the main spine of the Masterplan ring, linked with a succession of parks and open areas.

All the zone would be divided for an imaginary 6×6 meters net that is going to organize both, the public space and the private constructions. Following several factors like density, sun orientation, average winds direction, existing forests, existing lakes, connections to the natural surroundings and the old city, etc. there will be build naked 6×6 structures to be bought for citizens, or city, depending on the studied Masterplan zoning, and then they could later go to a special designed catalogue where they can choose all the prefabricated ecologic panels to plug in their own structure area.

Courtesy OOIIO Architecture

With this special growth and construction system we can generate a new kind of city, based on the personalization of every space, a better and controlled administration of natural resources, high flexibility and space recycling possibilities, a clean and cheap low cero emissions constructions and over all a new way of understanding contemporary city, were thanks to a controlled 3 dimensional grid people can colonize and design their own spaces, like for example they create their own facebook profile, leaving the XX st century idea of mass homogenization, and following the XXI st century idea of claim of the individuals.

Courtesy OOIIO Architecture

This is the contemporary city, PATCHWORK CITY, were the architects and engineers define the rules for the best structures allocations and design the cleanest and most local clime appropriate construction pieces for the catalogue, the government and promoters provides the space and look for the good use of the rules, and the inhabitants colonize and personalize their own structure as they wish, crocheting their own city piece… generating all together a big PATCHWORK.

+ Project facts

Designed by OOIIO Architecture
TEAM: Joaquin Millán Villamuelas, Cristina Vicario, Belen Gomez, Lurdes Martinez, Beatriz Cerratos, Estíbaliz Ortiz de Zatare
Location: Linkoping, Sweden
Area: 22 ha (220,510 m2)

+ All images and drawings courtesy OOIIO Architecture