HBB architectural design intercepts the atmosphere of the Venice Arsenale: a sequence of void spaces temporararily occupied by objects (the ships) which had to be built, repaired or were simply housed.

Harbour Brain Building, drawing courtesy C+S associati

The program for the building is that to become the harbour station housing the computers which control the seaport trafic at the new Venice openings following the atcuation of the MOSE project, a kind of brain to manage the trafic, exactly what we called the HBB. Habour Brain Building.

Harbour Brain Building, image courtesy C+S associati | Photo by Pietro Savorelli

Despite for some meeting rooms and offices, the real inhabitants of this space are the computers, able to manage the trafic during the opening or closing of the port openings.

A hulk made of corten iron is designed inside the square space of the original existing ‘teza’ of the Arsenale after demolishing the internal partitions and compressing all the techniological and terminal installations inside the new volume and in an underground space.

Harbour Brain Building, image courtesy C+S associati | Photo by Pietro Savorelli

The void of the 19th century preserved space starts to tell the story of its thresholds: the textures of the walls which are still visible under a thin layer of plaster following the brick surface. This texture is able to capture the light in different ways playing with the wood texture of the different layers which compose the roof structure (trusses, beams and tavellas) which has completely been refurbished.

Harbour Brain Building, image courtesy C+S associati | Photo by Pietro Savorelli

On the original system the new designed elements are glazed. The glazed vertical panels are designed by very thin structural wood elements able to divide the void space in different rooms though maintaining the atmosphere of the entire space of the ‘teza’, but enriching the complexity of reflexes on the different materials which stratify and bounce on the existing surfaces.

A part of the roof becomes a contemporary 'lantern of light' made of photovoltaic cells (for the first time used for a reurbishment project in Venice, Italy, together with geothermal pumps) which work as energy producers for the HBB and become the contemporary layer able to play with the lights and the shadows of the existing space but using the most sophisticated technological devices of sustainable architecture.

Harbour Brain Building, image courtesy C+S associati | Photo by Pietro Savorelli

The technological solution, more than being an opposing and foreign object inside the existing space, try to put itself inside the 'memory of the building', it melts with it, it moulds with matter, materials, colors, light as a new layer of the memory process which for century has stratified the space.

The texture of the photovoltaic cells is able to cut the light in small parts in the same way as it happens for the leaded glass of the windows of the venetian 'salone' or the small colored stone pieces of the ancient venetian floors. The photovoltaic cells act both as energy productors (the maximum power is 4,8 kWp) as well as brise-soleil.

For the climatization of the ground floor there is a central installation with heating pumps linked to geothermy (60 meters deep) experimented in Venice for the first time.

The installation project is able to preserve the void space: the technological installation become as silent as possible in this project appearing just as small round brass spots on the wood floor which in fact are electrical terminals able to be opened to link to.

Harbour Brain Building, image courtesy C+S associati | Photo by Pietro Savorelli

The air treating is made by two small power stations in the underground floor. The air canals are setlled under the floating floor with the air outgoing placed along the walls and the air incoming on the edge of the corten volume.

The server computer room is located underground, due to the strict climatic condition required from the devices (22 °C e 45% of humidity). These specific conditions were obtained by a special close control apparatus, with high specific power called CRAC, with warm and cold air distribution corridors passing through the floating floors.

Harbour Brain Building - Exploded axonometric, drawing courtesy C+S associati

+ Project credits / data

Client: Magistrato alle Acque di Venezia tramite il suo concessionario Consorzio Venezia Architectural design and artistic supervision: Carlo Cappai, Maria Alessandra Segantini_C+S ASSOCIATI
General design, structures and installations: Thetis S.p.A.
Site Supervision: Giovanni Zarotti, Thetis S.p.A.
Construction: ICCEM, Venice
Photos: Pietro Savorelli
Design: 2009
Completion: 2011

+ All images and drawings courtesy C+S Associati | Photo by Pietro Savorelli

If you are now in Hong Kong, let’s take the chance to visit the new exhibition of West Kowloon Cultural District plans. The Plan is based on Foster + Partners’ City Park conceptual plan which earned enormous public support and was selected by the Board of WKCDA in March 2011 as the masterplan for the development of the West Kowloon Cultural District (“WKCD”). This is the third and final public engagement exercise and will last for a month, after which the scheme will be finalised for submission to the Town Planning Board around the end of 2011.

Once again, we have listened to the people of Hong Kong and the design has evolved as a result. We have incorporated the spaces and features that matter most to them – their input is vital to make the new cultural quarter a success long-term. We have been equally inspired by everything that makes Hong Kong such a great place – its energy, the shape of the streets and their rich mixture of activities. In this way, the new quarter will be a familiar extension of the city, but will offer so much more to Hong Kong's cultural life.

Norman Foster

Render courtesy Foster + Partners

Foster + Partners' masterplan is a framework for a sustainable new urban quarter focused on 17 core arts and cultural facilities. The views expressed by the public during the previous exhibitions have been incorporated into the design – the result is a more diverse sequence of urban spaces, including three new squares along the quarter's main artery, The Avenue: Xiqu Square, Central Square and Artist Square.

Section, drawing courtesy Foster + Partners

In response to stakeholder demand, West Kowloon Cultural District now includes a Freespace with a 150-seat Music Box; a variety of different Arts Pavilions; installations of public art across the district; and, subject to relevant statutory provisions, a floating arts pontoon along the waterfront and piers for water access.

Render courtesy Foster + Partners

There is an even richer mix of activities – new arts education facilities, resident company centres and arts and crafts studios, all connected by a new ground level public transport system. Some of the cultural buildings have also been renamed and relocated. The Xiqu Centre has been moved from Central Square to Canton Road, in order to establish better synergy with the neighbourhood. M+ has been relocated from Canton Road to the headland of the Great Park, the focal point of Artist Square. The Concert Hall, now called the Music Centre to reflect its wider function, becomes the focal point of Central Square, together with the Centre for Contemporary Performance, which was formerly a cluster of black box theatres.

Render courtesy Foster + Partners

+ About West Kowloon Cultural District

West Kowloon Cultural District – the largest cultural initiative of its kind in the world – will establish a major centre for music, performing and visual arts on a dramatic harbour-front site in the heart of Hong Kong. The seventeen new cultural venues include a Great Opera House; 'M+' museum of modern art; concert halls; and a 15,000-seat Arena with an Expo Centre below and will support everything from traditional Chinese theatre to pop concerts and opera. Equally important are 30,000 square metres of arts education facilities that will encourage home-grown artistic talent and ensure that the district provides long lasting benefits for the people of Hong Kong.

Render courtesy Foster + Partners

Bringing together places to live and work, with galleries, studios, shops, cafes and restaurants, the mixed-use district is designed to capture and recreate the energy and unique urban character of Hong Kong, integrating the cultural venues with the everyday life of the city. West Kowloon's familiar street pattern is reflected in a rich mixture of colonnades, alleyways, lanes and tree-lined promenades – streetscapes that recall the bustle of Lan Kwai Fong and Shanghai Street. The district features a magnificent 23-hectare public park – its sculpted terrain, with dense tree planting, will provide shade and shelter and bring the countryside into the city, while a series of outdoor terraces and promenades will link the cultural buildings to the waterfront with vistas to Hong Kong Island.

Render courtesy Foster + Partners

An uninterrupted two-kilometre-long harbour-front promenade will give the people of Hong Kong their first chance to look back at the city's iconic skyline and the needs of pedestrians and cars are balanced by sinking the main vehicle route below ground level. A social focus is created along a new central avenue, which extends through the quarter from Canton Road in the east to the Harbour Tunnel mouth in the west.

Render courtesy Foster + Partners

Render courtesy Foster + Partners

City Park is designed to achieve a carbon-neutral rating, using a synergistic system of high-efficiency and low-consumption infrastructure. The low-energy design includes district cooling and heating, grey water recycling, energy recovery systems for sewage, waste recycling, a waste-to-energy scheme and the generation of local, low-carbon electricity. There is also provision for solar and wind energy generation.

Render courtesy Foster + Partners

Veronica Morales shared with us her photography of the residential tower in Manhattan by world-renowned architect Frank Gehry. The tower features 265 metre-high and is now the eighth tallest building in New York (the tallest residential building in the Western Hemisphere).

+ Photography: Veronica Morales | http://www.veronicamoralesangulo.com/

+ All images courtesy Veronica Morales

New York Tower, image courtesy Veronica Morales

New York Tower, image courtesy Veronica Morales

New York Tower, image courtesy Veronica Morales

The ONE HOTEL in Dalmine (Bergamo), designed by the Alvisi Kirimoto + Partners architecture studio, is located in a strategic position close to the A4 highway, Orio al Serio international airport, and the historic city of Bergamo. Oriented toward business travellers requiring hospitality services for varying lengths of time, the hotel offers comfortable, graciously fitted out rooms, elegant and functional facilities for conventions and meetings, as well as a bar/bistro, restaurant, and fitness center.

One Hotel in Dalmine, image courtesy Alvisi Kirimoto + Partners

The Rome-based Alvisi Kirimoto + Partners studio conceived the ONE HOTEL as a dark gray parallelepiped animated by three projecting planes: the two vertical main sides of the hotel, suspended above the base; and the horizontal roof slab, faced in Alucobond® panels.

One Hotel in Dalmine, image courtesy Alvisi Kirimoto + Partners

From the first floor upwards, the long white southeast side of the hotel is protected by an outer envelope made of expanded metal mesh spaced at a slight distance from the inner façade. This element is composed of panels fixed in an open or closed position to create a rhythmic pattern while performing the function of a brise-soleil system for the rooms.

This cadenced rhythm is repeated on the ground floor, where the pillars and windows alternate in a precise order.

One Hotel in Dalmine, image courtesy Alvisi Kirimoto + Partners

The top floor, on the other hand, has broad windows that give a feeling of lightness to the long luminous hallway running the length of the building and giving access to the rooms.

The short northeast side of the building is characterized by a built-to-design emergency stairway with expanded metal mesh rails, underscoring the aesthetic idiom, somewhere between modern minimalism and functionalism, expressed throughout the structure.

One Hotel in Dalmine, image courtesy Alvisi Kirimoto + Partners

The ONE HOTEL, designed by Alvisi Kirimoto + Partners, stands somewhat lower than the road level. The pedestrian area along the main façade is separated from the roadway by a white travertine bench, contrasting with the gray bush-hammered basalt paving stones. The entrance is accented by a large gray sheet-metal canopy.

The hotel's three residential floors offer eight single rooms, forty doubles and two junior suites. The décor is characterized by a prevalence of white and ecru, with the exception of the suites, which combine dark gray and white. The private baths in the rooms are finished in travertine marble with smooth gray basalt floors to ensure continuity between interior and exterior.

With the architectural design of ONE HOTEL, using a very simple basic structure, the Alvisi Kirimoto + Partners architecture studio has created a building rich in detail and features that both give it character and make it highly functional, perfectly complementing the philosophy of the hotel itself.

+ Project credits / data

Client: Fabiani SpA
Site: Dalmine (Bergamo)
Job: design and construction of ONE HOTEL
Project site: 3800 sqm total; 2220 sqm hotel; 450 sqm underground parking facility; 100 sqm terrace
Start of work: 2008
End of work: 2010
Architectural design: Massimo Alvisi, Junko Kirimoto, Arabella Rocca, Chiara Quadraccia, Carolina Ossandon – Studio Alvisi Kirimoto + Partners.
Program: Hotel

+ About Alvisi Kirimoto + Partners

The Alvisi Kirimoto + Partners architecture studio was founded in 2002 by Massimo Alvisi and Junko Kirimoto after the two architects had participated in important projects with renowned international studios such as those of Renzo Piano, Massimiliano Fuksas, and Oscar Niemeyer.

In 2008, Alvisi Kirimoto + Partners added engineering capabilities by bringing in the partners Alessandra Spiezia and Arabella Rocca. With a staff of twelve professionals, Alvisi Kirimoto + Partners perform architectural design and engineering, feasibility studies, and project management for their own projects and for those of renowned architects such as Rem Koolhaas and Renzo Piano.

Alvisi Kirimoto + Partners have performed numerous projects in the design and remodeling of auditoriums, theatres, industrial complexes and office buildings, as well as important projects in shop and restaurant design, residential architecture and interior design, and exhibition and museum design.

Competitions and prizes:

• winner of the competition "Meno è più di 4": daycare center, civic center and library in Rome;
• winner of the international competition for the restoration and remodeling of the Teatro

Comunale of Corato (Bari, Italy), currently in progress;

• prize in the international competition for Small Railway Stations;
• prize for the design of the rowing canal in Madrid's bid to host the 2016 summer Olympic Games;
• prize for the invitation-only competition for the Giustiniano Imperatore area in Rome.

Poland-based firm OneByNine studio has recently completed the Hall in Church located in Hong Kong.

+ Project credits / data

Architect: OneByNine studio | http://www.onebynine.com/
Team: Wukasz Wawrzenczyk, Maciej Setniewski,  Konrad Grabczuk
Location: Hong Kong
Gross internal floor area: 450 sqm
Design Year: 2007
Construction Year: 2011

Hall in Church Hong Kong, image courtesy OneByNine studio

Hall in Church Hong Kong, image courtesy OneByNine studio

Hall in Church Hong Kong, image courtesy OneByNine studio

Hall in Church Hong Kong, image courtesy OneByNine studio

+ All images and drawings courtesy OneByNine studio