The Risco Architects, recently shared their newest project Arena Dragão Caixa, a pavilion for Porto Football Club. The project was completed in 2009 and has an area of 13,900 m2. Here are a couple of images to blow your mind. Enjoy

[via]

Tested Matrix Platform | A Revolutionary Project in Romanian research. Welcome to the Future!

Concept and proposal for the project – Winning Project

Icube - Final Render

You might have seen this only on CSI, and yes there is one like that in Romania, Cluj Napoca too.

Matrix, Avalon, Star Trek – Holodeck, Nautilus, Data are a few names borrowed from the movies and books of Science Fiction.  These are also a couple of names for the most revolutionary romanian research project in psychology. Officially, the Matrix Platform, a platform for diagnostic, therapy and research in virtual reality was opened on 9th of February 2010.

We have a couple of details from VoxPublica since they’ve already got to see the testing of the new “toy”. [I will visit the VR cube in the next couple of weeks and I'll bring you updates on the project, until then I will share with you VoxPublica's impressions on the matter]

What you are about to see it’s not fiction. It’s as real as it can gets. In the city of Cluj, Romania in the yard of the “Babes-Bolyai” University for Clinic Psychology. So, welcome to the feature!

There are a couple of images from the site.

Main Facade - AVALON Building

The Matrix platform is hosted by the Avalon Building (Advanced Virtual Applications Laboratories of Napocensis) that you can see up there, or the Sunk Building. The building as you can see rises from the ground and as you can see in the first render it will have a green terrace roof. It has a futuristic design with one facade out of the ground, adapted for the activities and the most modern tools that it uses. Therefor, the building, it’s premises and the platform labs are all named after characters in the field, or after cultural events that have influenced the paradigms through which humanity defines it’s place in the world. Labs such as  ”Stress Control”, ”Virtual Classroom”, ”Pain Control”, ”Star Trek – Holodeck”, ”Data” and ”Neo – Cube” (Virtual Cube – The Proud and Joy of the Matrix Platform.

The facade is not yet finished, because the weather doesn’t allow it, but as soon as we have images with the final look and feel you will be able to see it.

Until then, have a glimpse at what the Future Looks like:

The architect David Tajchman designed this multi-storey timber tennis centre for a competition organised by a Swedish timber company.

The complex features five floors of courts stacked on top of each other, contained within a timber structure.

The eye-like openings in the structure are inspired by knots in timber.

“My proposal expresses the company’s savoir-faire while working on wood at different scales, the wood knots serving as big frames is an example,” says Tajchman.

The competition, for Vaxjo in Sweden, was organised by timber company Södra.

The competition was won by Kent Pedersen Arkitektfirma of Denmark.

via Dezeen

Architect: KOZ Architectes / Christophe Ouhayoun – Nicolas Ziesel
Location: Saint-Cloud, France
Project team: Ambrus Evva, François Kharatt
Structural Engineers: EVP Ingénierie
Contractor: Delta Fluides
Acoustic Consultant: Delphi Acoustique
Budget: $3.8M Euro
Project Area: 1,600 sqm
Project year: 2007-2009
Photographs: © Stephan Lucas

Non Conformist and Bold

This building is not lacking in self-confdence. As proof, you only have to take the second left along the Avenue de Longchamps from the Les Côteaux tramway Station in Saint-Cloud. No sooner have you left behind a quiet row of smart private houses in the traditional millstone grit Parisian style with front steps and plane trees than you come face to face with an odd-looking building, imposing but also childishly simple, more cubist than cube-shaped, decidedly “fashy”, evoking happy memories of a child’s toy.

An appealing, totemic building that you sense is designed for festive celebrations and young people, and that you might expect to fnd in Rotterdam rather than the uber bourgeaois St Cloud neighbourhoods. Even if it is only 300 meters away from OMA’s Villa Dalll’Ava.

With its cheerfulness and nonconformism, the building contrasts strongly with the urban development zone in which it’s located, behind a new block of private apartments and next to neo-Haussmannian offces and a day-nursery in a similar style. It is with the facing 1930s infant school that it empathises, extending the metaphor of the balcony courtyard, the passageways, the brick colour and the forecourt. As for the 1970s infant school next door, it maintains an obvious affnity with it in terms of shapes, only to dynamite the whole lot.

All in all it’s an odd little castle and cubist mountain, that owes its existence to the boldness of the Saint-Cloud Town Council, which has thereby acquired facilities that have revitalised its image and opened it to the most contemporary and positive architectural thinking.

Superimposed but not Separated

This brief provided a real headache: how to accommodate two autonomous programs on a narrow plot of land. KOZ chose to:

- Extrude the available area to the maximum height and hollow it out as with canyons that bring a clear and massive outdoor light deep inside the block.

- Superimpose the two programs without isolating them, by creating visual links between activities and applying the same principles on all facades and in all spaces.

The spaces are superimposed without being separated. They communicate via visual glimpses: you see each other on all sides, you ‘feel’ each other, you can easily fnd your bearings in a building with a spatially fuid but unfamiliar layout. Nevertheless, the functional and administrative autonomy of the two activities (separate entrances and different operational timetables) is respected.

A Pure Colour Scheme

The building uses colour very openly and assertively, with a wide palette ranging from red to green, by way of yellow, pink and orange. These colours cover the façade in wide stripes. Inside, the same colours are systematically repeated, like stepping in an oversized graffti.

Coloured Façades

The main facade is made of tinted glass with a colour gradient from red to green. The other 3 facades are more homogeneous, albeit coloured too.

A Sustainable Project

KOZ is part of the “environmentally aware” generation. The openings in the roofs and the glass facades bring maximum natural lighting everywhere to limit electrical consumption.

Concrete was chosen for the reasons mentioned above but the preference was for prefabricated concrete, generating less waste and spill.

The tinted glass facades provide good protection against setting sun and long-lasting colour. And of course all hot water is solar heated.

via ArchDaily

Architects: C.F.Møller Architects
Location: Oslo, Norway
Collaborators: Multiconsult AS, SWECO AS, Hjellnes COWI AS / Interconsult ASA, Ingemannson Technology, Nosyko/Erstad og Lekven
Client: Helse Sør-Øst RHF
Landscape: Bjørbekk & Lindheim AS, Schønherr Landskab A/S
Artists Involved: Troels Wörsel, Gunilla Klingberg, Mari Slaattelid, Knut Henrik Henriksen, Jan Christensen, Tony Cragg, Birgir Andrésson, Petteri Nisunen, Tommi Grönlund, Julie Nord, Per Sundberg, Vesa Honkonen, Janna Thöle-Juul, Kristine Halmrast, Mikkel Rasmussen Hofplass
Project year: 2000-2008
Constructed Area: 137,000 sqm
Photographs: Torben Eskerod & C.F.Møller Architects

The new university hospital is not a traditional institutional construction; it is a friendly, informal place with open, well-structured surroundings which present a welcoming aspect to patients and their families.

Akershus University Hospital has been designed to emphasize security and clarity in experientially rich surroundings, where everyday functions and well-known materials are integrated into the hospital’s structure.

Wholeness and variation

Although the individual parts of the development each have their own material expression and the material expression of the development varies, nonetheless it is united into a whole by means of a general architectural theme centred on panels and transparency. In this way, a unity is created between the individual parts of the complex, which thereby receive a subtle effect of transparency and depth.

Treatment department

Facades in glass, plaster and aluminium panelling, with white-lacquered sinusoidal aluminium panels in the courtyards

Wards

Facades in dark screen tiling
Children’s department
Facades with wood cladding

Chapel

Facades clad in oak panels and tombac (an alloy of zinc and brass)

Front building and main arrivals area

Facades in glass, plaster and glass tiling

Structured like a town

A glass-roofed main thoroughfare, in which wood is the dominating material, links the various buildings and departments. The ’glass street’ begins in the welcoming foyer of the arrivals area, where the main reception desk receives visitors, and concludes in the foyer and separate arrivals area of the children’s department.

In the glass street, the central element in the development, the various materials are united in an overall composition, in which the large coloured panels designed by the Icelandic artist Birgir Andrésson form a natural element and provide a ’palette’ for the colour scheme of the hospital.

The glass street has a town-like structure, with public and semi-public zones defined as squares and open spaces, offering the everyday functions of a town: church, pharmacy, hairdresser, florist, café and kiosk, as well as traffic nodes and other services for the benefit of patients, relatives and staff.

In natural continuation of these functions, a number of other services, such as health information, polyclinics and out-patient surgeries, are located near the street level of the thoroughfare.

Centred on the patient

The hospital’s structure helps to ensure that the patient remains the natural focus in the physical design, despite the strict and demanding logistical requirements which underlie all hospital constructions. Just as the overall complex is made up of clear and comprehensible units, so the individual wards are built up from smaller elements.

The wards are centred around four so-called courtyards which ensure a well-defined daily life for the patients, with a manageable level of social contact, assisted by a clear staff interface.
The wards of the children’s department are equipped with windows which give the children and young people individual views of both the sky and the surrounding greenery from their beds. The well-equipped facilities for parents secure excellent contact between the children and their families.

via Archdaily

When the Jurmala City Council asked Substance to build a sports venue for the popular Latvian sea resort, the firm designed a structure that could be open all year long in any weather.  Inspired by the amber – crystallised resin of pine typically washed up on the Baltic coast, the venue’s form incorporates translucent polycarbonate cladding inside a structural framework to accentuate the building’s varying height.

Located opposite the Majori primary school, now an abandoned market place, the venue preserves the historical content on the marketplace by incorporating the existing shed into the new project.  The shed sits on one side of the building and serves as changing rooms for teams and coaches, sports inventory storage and rent, and public vestibule with administrator’s workplace.  The other side of the building opens toward the river.  A synthetic covering is laid on the floor during the warmer months that makes the space suitable for basketball, volleyball and handball.  In the colder months, the floor is converted to accommodate activities like hockey and ice-skating by adding an artificial layer of ice.

The sports venue occupies a prime location in Jurmala as anyone using the main street, walking along the river, or riding the railway can catch a glimpse of the structure.  Thus, the building is a “significant accent in the city’s overall landscape, and consequently its shape and silhouette are especially important. For that reason, we looked for symbols typical for Jurmala and found amber – crystallised resin of pine.”

In addition to the building’s central placement, the project is also a rather prominent volume when compared to the surrounding 1-2 storey buildings.  Substance attempted to integrate the project into the existing landscape by reducing its height. The varying height ”is a peculiar compromise” as the space inside needed to provide ample room for the sporting activities while still blend in with the shorter surrounding buildings.  “The height of construction shape and the rhythm of framework constructions ensures that the object has a dynamic image,” explained the architects.

The broad-span roof structures results in a “clear and dynamic interior, while the external open-work frames significantly reduced bulkiness of the building.”  The polycarbonate used in the building is 60% transparent and becomes ”an original screen of light accenting its shape in the city’s landscape” during the evening.

As seen on Arch Tracker.

Project: Majori Primary School Sports Hall
Architects: Substance
Arnis Dimins, Brigita Barbale
Collaborators: Krisjanis Leitis, Guna Priede, Ieva Dimante
Location: Jurmala, Latvia
Client: Jurmala City Council
Project: 2006
Constructed: 2007 / 2008
Building – 305 m2
Shed – 3252 m2
Spectators’ stands – 306 seats
Photos – Substance, Martins Kudrjavcevs, Maris Lapins

Via ArchDaily

Architects: Gonzalez Goodale Architects
Project team: Armando L. Gonzalez, FAIA, Project Principal, David L. Goodale, AIA, Design Principal, John Ferguson, AIA, Project Manager, Gerda Buss, Interiors/FF&E
Mechanical / Plumbing: Khalifeh & Associates
Electrical: N.A. Cohen Group Inc.
Structural: Englekirk & Sabol
Food service: Ricca Newmark Design
Acoustical: McKay Conant Hoover
Landscape: EPT Design
Signage: Biesek Design
Area: 40,000 sqm
Construction: 2007-2009
Photography: Magnus Stark Photography

Program Context

It was determined in the early 2000’s that a new 40,000 square foot Campus Center would be built north of the existing gymnasium at the intersection of C and Second Streets near the center of the campus.

The Campus Center is viewed as instrumental in consolidating disparate student life activities across the campus, and equally key to increasing recruitment and retention of students and faculty on campus.

site plan

Design Concept

The narrow footprint of the site suggested, early on, that the facility program of 40,000 square foot would need to extend vertically to a mass which would have a significant portion at a three-story height.

There is significant vertical interpenetration in the Campus Center, the planning and the volume conceived very much in concert; according to the following strategies:

• Identity , View, and Massing. The axis of C Street penetrates into the westerly third of the site, providing a dramatic view into the site from as far as Bonita Avenue, and providing an even more dramatic view out to the San Gabriel Mountains. The presence and force of this connective axis led to several early planning and massing decisions:

- The main entry to the building was planned at the termination of this axis. This entry consists of a linear, 2-story gallery of “Mixing Hall”, off of which are immediately located Reception, Student Recreation, Student Life Offices, and Cafe on the Ground Floor; and Classrooms along the Second Floor balcony – the flexible non-specialized classrooms an intentional addition to program to insure the movement of a maximum number of students and faculty through the Campus Center.

- The three-story portion of the facility is also massed with its centerline on the street axis, at the westerly third of the site. This third story consists primarily of a multi-purpose Banquet Room directly above the entry gallery area, with a ‘Pre-function Porch’ sheltering the long entry wall, cantilevering out 15 feet over the sidewalk. With sight-lines at some 35 feet above grade, both the banquet room, (with glass wall and doors to the north), and the Pre-function Porch, (also with continuous French doors and glass handrails), have panoramic views of the mountains framed between the campus’ oak tree-tops and the sky.

- With the three-story mass established as the building’s center of gravity, the building tapers steps down to two story glazed linear offices to the east, and the curvilinear two story Café to the west. The roof of this Café serves as an outdoor extension of the third-story Pre-Function Porch, with a gathering view-deck surrounded by a green roof.

• Transparency and Daylight. Fortuitously, the entry wall of the building that faces the connective axis of C Street is oriented virtually cardinal north. Except in high summer, this wall is free of direct sun, and thus was designed as a continuous glazed curtain wall to maximize the penetration of glare-free day-lighting deep into the narrow footprint of the building. This strategy contributes significantly to energy savings and to the building’s Silver LEED rating.

Additionally, the north-facing curtain wall makes a statement, of maximum transparency of Campus Center activities – literal window onto the life of the campus. Day and night, a student or campus visitor will be able to ‘read’ the building’s activities and occupants from the exterior of the building, whether driving of walking. This celebrative legibility of Campus Center activity will be exposed on all three levels, its visible Mixing Hall encouraging campus social sharing, academic collaboration, recruitment, and retention.

• Mixing Hall. In addition to the long two story gallery providing internal view and interaction among Campus Center visitors, two anchor-points at either end of it will further that goal:

- To the west, a 2-story café terminates the linear form of the building in a glass-walled curvilinear room that wraps a full-service open kitchen and café table seating. With the café’s west exposure, the double-glazed wrapping wall is heavily fritted in a white dot-tone for sun-shading. Additional café seating is provided on an outdoor patio west of the building, with rich opportunities for people-watching re: campus circulation patterns.

- To the east of the linear entry gallery is a three-story “Circulation Lounge,” with a ceremonial open stair to the second floor gallery and the third-floor Pre-function Porch. Wrapped in a curved fritted glass similar to the café’s wall, this Circulation Lounge juts out over the sidewalk, and additionally provides discrete gathering and study areas that are an integral part of the Mixing Hall concept.

• Support. With these social functions anchoring the three-story westerly core of the building, the easterly portion contains two floors of offices, offices and workrooms for student life on the Ground Floor; and offices for Dean of Students and Student Literacy/Career Support on the Second Floor. These spaces fall behind the continuation of the floor-to-ceiling north curtain wall and its return on the east side of the building, providing day-lighting into the core of these office spaces.

floor plans

• The Campus Plan. The University of La Verne anticipates, and has in planning, several projects on its perimeter, specifically directly south of the new Campus Center. These projects include relocation of the existing southerly baseball field, a residential building, and a formal quadrangle, which will squarely anchor the Campus Center with open space on the south. Accordingly, the Campus Center has been designed with a major southerly entry on axis with the main entry, and its southerly elevation is of a scale that anticipates a grander foreground in the future.

• Architectural Expression and Materials. Physically, the University of La Verne was a credible but aging campus, with no particularly remarkable architectural gems. The architectural expression of the Campus Center is at one with its charge to reach out to new generations of potential students and provide an iconic center for their recruitment and retention. While comfortably fit to the warm materials palette of surrounding campus buildings, the Campus Center is less about style than about embodying specific concepts of social interaction, institutional transparency / translucency, and sustainability.

This expression is focused in the building’s north wall and exposed internal Mixing Hall, where fritted and clear glass in a three-story aluminum curtain wall system work in combination with vertical copper-clad piers and horizontal copper-clad spandrel and eyebrow elements, these elements forming both a sense of overhead shelter and a metaphoric proscenium housing the rich activities within.

Two massive stone-clad stair masses anchor counterpoint the lightness of the extensive glass, and visibly anchor the building to the ground. The red Indian sandstone that wraps these masses is also revealed along the inner wall of the Mixing Hall’s gallery. Washed with light, it gives off a seductive warmth to the campus at night.

The glass and copper palette also dominates most of the Mixing Hall interior, in combination with a polished concrete floor. Glass – or translucent variants of glass – is employed in the details of the interior as well as in the variously fritted curtain walls. The gallery railings, the Circulation Lounge stair railings, and the Pre-function Porch railings are solid glass cantilevered from the floor decks. Cast channel-glass is used along the Ground Floor of the Mixing Hall Gallery to separate the lobby from Student Recreation and from Student Life Offices – this channel-glass serving as a custom-lit donor wall along a portion of its run. Backlit 3-Form translucent panels are used at both the Reception Desk and at the Café service line. This combination of transparency and translucency has its obvious repayment in a maximization of interactive views, in an overall environment of reflection, soft sparkle, and lucidity.

• Sustainability. The design took an approach to sustainability that targeted and achieved a Silver LEED rating, but emphasized major strategic sustainable initiatives over point gathering. The soft and ambient quality of the day-lighting, in all varieties – (clear and fritted glazing, channel glass, clerestory windows) – formed a dominant focus of design, as did the provision of high quality views from almost all of the occupied spaces.

Equally important was the application of a minimal materials palette, anchored in a raw, regionally-source concrete floor for the major public area. In addition to the steel content, materials rich in recycled content include the carpet tiles and the casework, clad in back-lit translucent plastic.

The roof surfaces are single-ply liquid membrane highly reflective roofing, in combination with a walkable deck and a demonstration green roof atop the Café.

Via ArchDaily

© Christian Richter

Erick van Egeraat’s extension of InHolland University in Rotterdam adds more than 15,000 square feet to the growing education center.   van Egeraat designed the original building in 2001 and now has added a volumetric addition which includes study areas, classrooms, offices and space for commercial functions.

© Christian Richter

The design’s interconnected forms include a nine-level bridge which spans 35 meters and connects a student apartment on one side and a three-level building on the other.  A higher volume cantilevers from the bridge building, offering panoramic views of the harbor.  The layout of the forms is quite flexible as users can isolate one specific area if needed.

© Christian Richter

via ArchDaily