Los Nogales School / Daniel Bonilla Arquitectos

Posted on mayo 23, 2013 by :: noticias arquitectura ::

Architect Office: Daniel Bonilla Arquitectos
Location: Bogotá, Colombia
Design Team: Daniel Bonilla, Andrés Gutiérrez, Adriana Hernández, David Kita, Rodrigo Montoya, Juliana Lozano, Mauricio Patiño, Cristian Echeverría
Area: 1576.0 sqm
Year: 2009
Photography: Rodrigo Dávila, Sergio Gómez

The Arts Centre is building where arts and music are conceived as a pluralistic context; a meeting place, a destination and especially, an inspiring place. The project underwent numerous revisions and refinements of its content and curriculum, over several years, before arriving at its final design. The resultant building has an interesting dual relationship, where the first floor is used for music and dance, and the second floor for plastic arts. The two levels (and programmatic areas) are linked by a generous open-air (covered) grand staircase-hall-gallery that articulates itself simultaneously as a meeting, performance and exhibition space. The architectural objective of the Arts Centre was to develop a building that seamlessly integrates into the school campus (pattern and function ability), working the materiality that characterises the existing classroom buildings, with a more current aesthetic and spatiality.

In connection with the Campus and the existing Master Plan, the building is positioned as the seed of a second “quadrant” or central green space, to be accompanied (and completed) by future buildings. This generous new common area, or second quad, continues to celebrate the wonderful condition of the green college, with clusters of native trees and paths, defining a square that generates the buildings entrance.

Brick was chosen as the predominant material as the Arts Centre sought to integrate with the existing classroom buildings, with the Zapan wood of the central staircase and painted tubes (red, orange and yellow) of the upper façade completing the buildings external palette. The orchestra classrooms (which opens into a single performance space) required particular acoustical management; the entire space finished in wood – floor, walls and ceilings – with a percentage of sound absorption panels (also utilised in other music rooms). The white walls and generous sky lights of the Art rooms maximise natural light levels.

With the support of an interdisciplinary professional team, sustainability and comfort levels were implemented as key design elements. For example, in the music rooms, which were required to be sealed for acoustic reasons, an input system for natural air convection was developed (using an acoustic pipeline) injecting air through ceiling.

In detail, the building contains the following spaces: on the first floor, a dance studio, two music rooms, five test cubicles (one of which is a recording studio), and two artists studios (catering for a musician and a painter). In addition, each music room has a generous storage space, for instruments and props. The first floor also contains a lounge divisible to work with materials, and a performance hall for 200 people. On the second floor there are seven rooms for various artistic (physical) activities: including a pottery room (with an oven), a room for learning 3D industrial design, a room for engraving/painting room, two drafting rooms and a photographic room (featuring a darkroom), as well as music rooms. These spaces also have generous storage space to maintain order and care of the materials used/made and the classrooms themselves.

Los Nogales School / Daniel Bonilla Arquitectos originally appeared on ArchDaily, the most visited architecture website on 23 May 2013.

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Los Nogales School / Daniel Bonilla Arquitectos

Posted on mayo 23, 2013 by :: noticias arquitectura ::

Los Nogales School / Daniel Bonilla Arquitectos originally appeared on ArchDaily, the most visited architecture website on 23 May 2013.

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Between Yards / XXeStudio

Posted on marzo 19, 2013 by :: noticias arquitectura ::

Architects: XXeStudio
Location: Villa del Rosario, Norte de Santander, Colombia
Architect In Charge: Balmor Pereira
Design Team: Rafael Suarez, Lina Quintero
Structure: HMS Constructores
Area: 412 sqm
Year: 2013
Photographs: Alberto Moreno, Fabián Mena, Pedro Ballesteros

…between yards… placed at the frontier valley between the cool breezes of the river Pamplonita and the thermal ones of the river Táchira coming from the Andean-Venezuelan region; the place is a meadow of north-south extension where nature still has a nuance between its wildest condition and the sugar cane fields, giving rise to the entrepreneurship Hacienda Los Trapiches II, named in remembrance of the panela production in the area.

An array of relations with a geometrical rigor of two and its multiples, produces a new domestic arithmetic, in which the separation of served and servant spaces occurs through a flux collector; an organization principle that makes explicit the existence of two sides facing each other as follows: [kitchen – neutral zone], [service - auxiliary bedrooms] and [study - main bedroom], forming this way the inhabiting strip. This way, obtaining the three remaining strips as a general residue, an urban one [sidewalk], an exterior one [infrastructure] and a subsequent one as extension [of public space].

Redefine the relationship between yards is an attempt to create seven conceptual layers of the house. The outdoor yard is proposed as an exchange yard, a sort of information collector about the outside world [infrastructure], the subsequent yard is presented as a public extension of the house [public space], the five remaining yards distributed in the central area, illuminate from above and are presented as part of the outdoors internal space, operating as mandatory pass flow channelers and imposing its presence over the one of the box [black boxes].

The geometry is the result of the need to optimize the living surface to a single floor and around the seven yards. At the same time, the almost arithmetic strict modulation enhances the rigor of the floor and neutralizes the visual impact of the box against its immediate environment.

The total height of 3.30 meters corresponds to the intention of producing some sort of…horizontal symmetry… through which it could be seen that the house breaks with prevailing male standards in its surroundings due to the location of the horizon line being just in the middle, at about 1.65 meters height. The floor, assumed as the inner roof plane that has its same materiality and color, reinforces the fact that the box, dominated by its horizontality, imposes itself breaking the vertical plane surrounding to be displayed as a feminine house.

Emulating the wine glass [form - structure - container], the aspects are merged into a box as a single piece, in which the spaces materialize by the sequence of horizontal and vertical planes. At the extremes, the slab is supported by slender steel columns arranged with geometric rigor within a modulated array of 2 x 2 meters, containing seven interior partitions which have no structural function [therefore removable] and embodying the concrete piece.

The material is given by an exposed concrete box, inside which the separation of vertical and horizontal planes is implied by fine lines. Seven yards partially drill the box from above, giving rise to the crystals which descend vertically from the interior of the slab until they get embedded in the ground. A subtle blend of wood and natural steel gives a tinge of nobility and brightness by contrasting with the concrete cave.

A box perforated by a constellation of north oriented voids, through which all the exchanges with the exterior environment, the entry of natural light, the climate control and the energy harvesting are made. The inclusion of outdoor nature is possible through all the voids now converted to yards.

…family member that “project-planning-in-the-making” I learned from the master … from putting together the things that Mies had…, simple self-imposed rules that show a clear intension in the doing: to join two materials it is required a third one; to join two flat levels it is required to dilate, the inability to use paints and the “grey work” is “white work”.

When viewed as a one level box, pierced by five yards and with multiple visual perspectives that cut across, the experience of the interior space is always in relation to the surrounding yards; its depth nuanced by the reflections on the glass becomes a fun game of false labyrinths. Outside, a neutral box transforms until it materialize itself as a fog container.

Between Yards / XXeStudio originally appeared on ArchDaily, the most visited architecture website on 19 Mar 2013.

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Kick Off: Top 5 Sports Venues

Posted on febrero 1, 2013 by :: noticias arquitectura ::

Photo: Marcus Bredt

Americans will be glued to their television sets this Sunday for the greatest (American) sports event of the year. Super Bowl XLVII—that’s “47″ for the Roman Numeral illiterate like myself—will kick off promptly at 6:30, at which point the 49ers and the Ravens will clash for the ensuing three hours over a gold trophy and salary bonuses. Of course, the game itself is almost secondary to the Super Bowl “experience,” that delirious mix of joy, community, and stomach aches that comes with conspicuous consumption of beer, nachos, and asinine television commercials.

What I’ll be watching is the architecture, mostly because I know next to nothing about football and because I happen to have a soft spot for the Mercedes-Benz Super Dome (née Lousiana Super Dome). Designed by architects Curtis and Davis in 1967, the building is severe to say the least, and there’s no denying that the blank steel walls are a little drab—perhaps too drab for the night’s celebratory event. As an alternative, these five sport venues are as exuberant as the sporting events they host (or hosted). Click through for the slideshow!

Kick Off: Top 5 Sports Venues

Posted on febrero 1, 2013 by :: noticias arquitectura ::

Photo: Marcus Bredt

AECOM Announces Student Finalists In Humanitarian Urban Design Competition

Posted on enero 9, 2013 by :: noticias arquitectura ::

A slum in Kibera, in Nairobi, Kenya. Photo via the Affordable Housing Institute Global giant AECOM has announced the finalists for its fourth annual student competition Urban SOS, which addresses how design can alleviate urban distress. This year’s edition, called “Frontiers,” focuses on fringe neighborhoods that face chronic liveability challenges that are largely the result

Educational Institute La Samaria / Campuzano Arquitectos

Posted on diciembre 19, 2012 by :: noticias arquitectura ::

Architects: Campuzano Arquitectos
Location: Pereira, Risaralda, Colombia
Design Team: Gabriel Campuzano Otero, Carlos Campuzano Otero, Carlos Campuzano Castello
Collaborators: Juliana Zuluaga, Julio Angulo, Oscar Ruiz, Diana Galvis, Alejandro Rodriguez
Strucutral Design: Devaldenebro Ingenieros
Consultant In Sustainability: Jorge Ramirez
Year: 2012
Photographs: Courtesy of Campuzano Arquitectos

This particular public educational institution is located on the southern border of the city of Pereira on the Colombian central mountain range. Its geographical situation at the limits of the city promotes a new pole for urban development with a growing population that demands public facilities.

The urban morphology of the city of Pereira is determined by its geography, where a chain of mountains and canyons, running from the south to the north, are intertwined and produce a special urban texture that becomes dense on the peaks.

The project is developed on one of these peaks looking to the canyon on the south and to a preexistent district on the north.

Because the geometry of the plot lets little free space, the program is developed in a three-story building that runs from one extreme to the other. The classrooms are oriented either to the north or to the south in order to privilege the long distance view of the city center or the closer view of the urban border. The main building accommodates itself on the terrain establishing a limit between the main street of the district and the school in order to protect its interior.

In this “protected interior” there are independent blocks that shelter the auditorium, the sport fields, the main patio and the pre-school classrooms around its own patio.

The main building appears like a boat that floats in the middle of the district and becomes a visual referent that promotes a new urban value.

The different levels of the project are reached by an exterior ramp connected by bridges to the auditorium’s covering which is, at the same time, the primary patio.

The scheme of the project produces a covered public plaza on the most important corner of the district, that allows joined activities among the school and the community.

Bamboo, a renewable natural material, very commonly used in the traditional architecture of the region and normally used as a structural element, is used in this case for the closing of the façade and as an element to control the sun and heat. Bamboo is a strong aesthetic and cultural referent which produces the vibration of the natural material, framed by industrial materials such as brick and concrete.

Due to the mild climate of the place, the building uses natural ventilation with the purpose of enhancing the thermal conditions in the different spaces of the project. A crossed ventilation is generated between the facades and through the roofing minimizing the use of air conditioning and providing a great energetic spare.

The first floor of the school shelters community activities, such as, the library, the auditorium, the internet room, labs and art rooms, so that the inhabitants in the district may use them on weekends. This possibility gives the school the character of a public and plural facility to serve the community and to help constructing a more equal society.

Educational Institute La Samaria / Campuzano Arquitectos originally appeared on ArchDaily, the most visited architecture website on 19 Dec 2012.

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AR House / Campuzano Architects

Posted on noviembre 13, 2012 by :: noticias arquitectura ::

Architects: Campuzano Architects - Gabriel Campuzano Otero, Carlos Campuzano Otero
Location: La Calera, Colombia
Area: 600 sqm
Year: 2012
Photography: Gabriel & Carlos Campuzano

Located in the municipality of La Calera, nearby Bogotá city; the AR HOUSE was implanted into a sloping ground and a triangular shape plot. Nevertheless, this particular feature lets the house enjoy from the eastern mountain range, as the closest view, to the far view of the Sopó Valley.

The main spaces of the program were placed in a longitudinal scheme with the purpose of link them with the farthest view. At the same time, the access floor has been bored in its centre with a courtyard, where a water surface takes place too. Through this external space, the social level and the roof are connected, in which is also possible to enjoy a 360-degree view of the surroundings, like a ship. So, the courtyard becomes the core of the house, improving lighting, warming up the indoor spaces, bringing the sky to the ground by reflections on the water and finally, taking the outdoors inside of the built spaces.

Furthermore, the building form takes advantage of the topography. This condition allows locating below the social spaces and the access level, the secondary bedrooms, an office and a spa; connected directly with the private backyard in terms of use and views.

From the street, the house seems like one floor high volume. Between the courtyard and the view of the private backyard, the social areas were organized in an open way. The living, the dining area and the kitchen; are integrated in one space, generating transparency in all directions. Over the basement, a cube rest in a cantilever where the main bedroom and its private terrace take place. This cube was inserted to the interior of the longitudinal volume, forming the courtyard and the roof terrace bounders.

Regarding some climatic conditions, the predominant winds come from the southeast. However, these conditions change throughout the day. The fabric of the south façade made of a concrete frame, glass and a rusty steel latticework; protects the house of the predominant winds. This also has privacy purposes; it reduces the view of the internal spaces from the closest neighbours and the access road. Likewise, the dug land was used to flatten the backyard and shape slopes that protect the house from the wind and the view from the outside.

The green roof has been a main feature of the house as well; the principal idea of it is to be used as a thermal insulation, providing better internal conditions regarding internal temperatures. On the other hand, it is part of the landscape design. The monochromatic and austere materiality of the house, improve spatiality, lighting and relations between indoors and outdoors, which are the protagonists.