credit: farfetch.com

There are many things that inspire many different people. The latest offering from Mia Morikawa draws from a number of influencing factors including mountains and canyons. The young graduate creates stunning designer jewellery from her home in India in a range of different materials. The designer founded her brand, Kapow Wow!, after creating pieces for her friends whilst completing a Graphic Design course. After demand increased she found the confidence to set up her own company selling her stunning creations.

It is rare to come across a brand that seems to take inspiration from so many different places. She is a self-professed warrior of beauty who takes inspiration from natural structures and emotional landscapes. This certainly comes through in her work which compliments clothing in its multidimensional form. The label mainly produces constructed textile pieces which are exquisitely crafted with care and attention to detail. The pieces would accent any jumper or designer dress, whether casual or smart. They are simple, yet offer a structural complexity, which is hard to create and find. The items fashioned by her were at first intended to come under high impact party wear, but many of her pieces can be worn on a day-to-day and you will want to.

This designer creates truly stunning pieces, which should be seen as masterpieces.

CHALLENGE: In the heart of the meat packing district in New York, turning a meat storage space into a luxury flower shop

SOLUTION: The solution was based on the juxtaposition of the program and urban changes in the area. One’s memory is carved with images of cows skinned hanging on large steel overhangs required to be conserved by New York Landmarks preservation commission and the stain of blood on the ground.

Before, courtesy de-spec

After, courtesy de-spec

The space is laid out to provide a surprise arrival to a destination and an escape from the streets. As you enter the flower shop the smell of the flowers provide a relief from the neighborhood. The store is an open space inviting multiple program and activities such as event space for weddings. During store hours, the activity of the staff, that of arranging flowers and moving around the workstations in the open space, becomes the display.

Courtesy de-spec

Courtesy de-spec

The Gansevoort addition to the flower shop connected Washington to Gansevoort Street and changed the flow of pedestrian movement. The openings on the masonry structure allow visual connection. The new façade design complied with landmark regulations and was unanimously approved by the landmark and one of the most modern solutions they have ever approved. The two entries of the store are connected by a monolithic sink and pool of 40 feet which allows for the flowers cut and destined for garbage to have a secondary decorative use.

Courtesy de-spec

Located in Perth, Western Australia, the Aldrich Residence was derived as an extension of the landscape; a landscape that opens onto the waterfront. Evoked by this view, the residence is shaped out of the supple form of the natural terrain to embrace the water. It nestles itself between the landscape and under the uidity of a single gesture, the roof. Located in Perth, Western Australia, the Aldrich Residence was derived as an extension of the landscape; a landscape that opens onto the waterfront. Evoked by this view, the residence is shaped out of the supple form of the natural terrain to embrace the water. It nestles itself between the landscape and under the uidity of a single gesture, the roof.

Photo by Brett Boardman

Concept

Utilizing computer-aided terrain modeling, the roof is a non-parallel extension of the landscape below. It has been digitally enhanced to provide a unique porous stratum in which the volume of the house exists. These volumes, in turn, act as extensions of the ground which gracefully oat out across the site. The digitally conceived roof above allows space within the house to compress and expand as it collects light and exposes views. The light is encouraged to wash over the concrete surface exposing the subtlety, elegance and delicate nature of the curves. Like a jigsaw, the roof and landscape interlock so as one moves through the house there is an ever-shifting viewpoint between solid and void. It is the juxtaposition between natural and digital through which patterns and rhythm's become activated by the property's natural setting.

Photo by Brett Boardman

Program

The three bedroom, two bathroom, two living room house branches out across the site as if the residence was a swathe of earth in the site from which it emerged. Two separate interior living areas inhabit the extremities of the residence’s arms and are united only by the uid concrete roof above. Toward the west side of the house are the bedrooms and bathrooms. Here, the private program is implanted onto the ground, acting less as a spectacle, establishing the residence’s primary attachment to its site. As one moves through the space they encounter the continuous concrete roof, oering a lens through which you can read the volumes as they unfold across the land. On top of the roof is a viewing deck. An expansive view is framed and complimented by the graceful undulation of the roof’s surface, simulating the surroundings in which it resides.

Photo by Brett Boardman

Photo by Brett Boardman

Photo by Brett Boardman

Conclusion

The Aldrich residence exposes the beauty and lyrical nature of its context. The elegance of one uid gesture, the roof, animates the inhabitable volumes below. Light collects between the graceful branching extensions of the residence creating a symbiotic dance between the interior and exterior. It is the roof that guides the project; it provides volume, movement, and continuity throughout. It is the roof that unies the Aldrich Residence to the earth.

Basement floor plan, courtesy Patrick Keane

Ground floor plan, courtesy Patrick Keane

+ All images courtesy Patrick Keane, photo by Brett Boardman

Deve architects‘  proposal for  the Rigshospital Expansion Competition in Copenhagen has been selected as prequalified alongside 6 other international teams for this project.

Copenhagen Rigshospital Expansion, render courtesy Deve architects

Potentials

The Rigshospital is well-defined by Fælledparken and Amorparken at it’s boundaries, and due to these park areas, the hospital campus exudes a unique ‘green’ potential. The buildings serve as an intermediary between the dense urban fabric on Blegdamsvej and the open natural areas to the north of the site. This interconnectedness strongly influenced the concept and form of this scheme, leading to what could eventually become a hospital nestled within a lush, green, natural environment within the bustling urban center of Copenhagen.

Copenhagen Rigshospital Expansion - Diagram, drawing courtesy Deve architects

Challenges

It is important that the Hospital embrace the natural and healing nature of the surrounding parks, but also that the new addition to The Rigshospital also addresses the built context in an appropriate manor. A good hospital expansion must function seamlessly and efficiently with the existing facilities, and should be accessible from all directions. Scale, traffic, and material are concerns that also affect the neighboring buildings, some of which include shops, offices, schools, and housing. The two main development sites for the hospital expansion offer several special challenges that require especially unconventional approaches. The largest site to be developed on the new campus lies at the corner where park and city meet, and there are other points at which access and circulation become crucial. In this scheme, we hope to satisfy each requirement, while injecting the entire area with nature, helping The Rigshospital to become a comfortable, healthy, and sustainable environment.

Copenhagen Rigshospital Expansion, drawing courtesy Deve architects

Visions

We believe that The Rigshospital will play a very significant role in the development of Nørre Health and Sciences Campus. The expansion of the hospital will provide valuable area and facilities for the education of Denmark’s future doctors, and the injection of nature throughout the area will greatly contribute to the environment where people are learning, healing, and recovering. In order to achieve these two goals simultaneously, the points at which the functions overlap are shaped with special care.

This project’s vision is to allow the research and education facilities to function alongside the new park spaces, creating an open and transparent look into our universities, while also providing a comfortable and productive learning environment. The ground level of The Rigshospital campus will become an extension of the surrounding parks, and specific social and educational nodes will be established at points around the park where the new buildings are able to touch down.

Copenhagen Rigshospital Expansion, render courtesy Deve architects

The green hospital

The building footprint is heavily restricted at the largest development site, due to an existing radiology wing operating underground that must be preserved. Most of the great mass of this section of the hospital must bridge over parts of the existing radiology department, without seeming so enormous that it dominates the more regular context of the neighborhood.

Because we are choosing to draw the park into the site, having to lift the buildings actually helps make that gesture even more powerful. The green areas that flow into the hospital campus help to create relaxing and healing natural areas for the patients and staff, blurring the line between institution and recreation.

The new buildings provide open and inviting entrance points, but the primary masses of the new buildings also promote an openness as well. Rather than being closed courtyard blocks, the different wings open out towards the park and the city, allowing light and views for the patients that occupy the upper levels.

The idea of open and green spaces is applied to a number of other sites throughout the new campus expansion, and will help make the entire hospital a very positive and green environment for the patients, staff, students, doctors and visitors.

Copenhagen Rigshospital Expansion, render courtesy Deve architects

The main building

While there are points where this building touches the ground and holds education facilities, the main mass of this building is lifted one level above the ground. There is also a vast technical layer tucked within the truss bridge structure that spans over the newly established park level, and pre-op, post-op, and surgery functions occupy the next two floors.

Bedrooms and treatment areas are considered to be private spaces. Because of this relative vulnerability, these areas are lifted several floors above the ground level, on top of the operation levels. That also ensures that people who have to spend extended periods in the hospital have access to plenty of sunlight and that their rooms will look mostly towards a dense, peaceful layer of trees and foliage. The patient levels have thinner cross section than the surgery levels below. This means that while they can all look out to the nature from their rooms, the patients and visitors can also go out onto a terrace that runs around most of the building, to experience the park without having to go down to the ground level.

Copenhagen Rigshospital Expansion - plans, drawing courtesy Deve architects

Research center

The research center, a series of laboratories and offices continues an extended axis from the Panum Knowledge Bridge, through the existing hospital buildings and into the surgery and education areas of the new wing of the hospital. A large auditorium on Blegdamsvej, at the same scale as the surrounding urban context, terminates the long axis at a plaza carved out of the park at street level. This plaza exists as the primary entrance to the new educational portion of the hospital expansion, and also provides cafe space that contributes to the social role of the hospital in the neighborhood.

Symbolically, the long axis of research and education serves as the spine connecting the new treatment areas to the old. This connection, over and through a continuous green area, expresses the importance of fusing the educational and treatment functions of a hospital with the calming and healing aspects of the natural environment.

Ambulatory building

The ambulatory building is located at the point where the research axis bends towards the new main extension. This building is a place where people come for appointments, so it requires independent access from the rest of the hospital. At the same time, it may be important to transfer people from this area of the hospital to the more critical care facilities in the hospital, so its placement along the different connecting bars of hospital is very important.

+ Project facts

Project: Copenhagen Rigshospital Expansion
Type: Prequalified Competition Entry
Location: Copenhagen, Denmark
Year: 2011

Team:
COWI A/S
WHITE Arkitekter A/S
DEVE Architecture ApS
LAND+ Landskabsarkitekter, Aps
Lyngkilde A/S

+ All images and drawings courtesy Deve architects