Thomas Heatherwick, designer of the London Olympic Cauldron as well as the British Pavilion at the 2008 Shanghai Expo, has unveiled renderings for a garden-filled pedestrian bridge across the Thames. Though more than £60 million in funding must still be found to make the project a reality, Heatherwick will proceed to submitting plans in the …Continue Reading
Archivo de la etiqueta: Landscape
Thomas Heatherwick Designs Garden Bridge Over The Thames
Thomas Heatherwick, designer of the London Olympic Cauldron as well as the British Pavilion at the 2008 Shanghai Expo, has unveiled renderings for a garden-filled pedestrian bridge across the Thames. Though more than £60 million in funding must still be found to make the project a reality, Heatherwick will proceed to submitting plans in the …Continue Reading
Name Observatory, Birdwatching Circuit / Mauricio Orlando Rojas Riquelme
Architects: Mauricio Orlando Rojas Riquelme
Location: Cauquenes, Chile
Guide Architect: Gregorio Brugnoli Errázuriz
Area: 78 sqm
Year: 2012
Photographs: Mauricio O. Rojas Riquelme
Materials: Wood, Bamboo
Total Cost: $1.586.679 ($20.161/m2)
Coordinates: Lat 35° 44’52.14”S, Long 72° 13’07.02”O
Located at the “Cienaga del Name” lagoon banks, it’s placed within a private property with the same name.
It is located on the south hillside of an esplanade that falls down towards the wetland.
The project is originated from three fundamental aspects that links owners, territory and material.
The first one is the premise that the owners of the land will not intervene the terrace, this only condition makes the idea of living the slope, and to use the terrace only as the way of acceding to the project. Using the height over the lagoon and it landscapes possibilities.
The second aspect is from the point of view of the landscape, which due the own local qualities, depending on the position of the observer, is possible to identify the different environmental units.
And this way, being able to estimate what the wetland characterizes as prior site of the conservation, which is it extension, ecological diversity, eventual threats and potentials of development.
And the third aspect refers to being able of standing unnoticed in the environment, using the properties of camouflage and concealment that the animals that lives in the lagoon use.
Using material that go with the rural image and its natural environment that has the sensitivity of talking between the natural and, therefore “random” with the elaborated and rationalized.
Name Observatory, Birdwatching Circuit / Mauricio Orlando Rojas Riquelme originally appeared on ArchDaily, the most visited architecture website on 16 Jun 2013.
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Redevelopment of the New Coast of Thessaloniki / Prodromos Nikiforidis – Bernard Cuomo
Architects: Prodromos Nikiforidis – Bernard Cuomo
Location: Thessaloniki, Greece
Architect In Charge: Prodromos Nikiforidi, Bernard Cuomo
Area: 28,000 sqm
Year: 2009
Photographs: Courtesy of Prodromos Nikiforidis – Bernard Cuomo
Consulting: Paraskevi Tarani , Efi Karyoti
Collaborators: I. Dova, E. Zografou, D. Pavlopoulou, N. Karakosta, N . Biskos, S. Nikolakaki, G. Skiadopoulos
Structural Engineering: Iakovos Lavasas, Maria Stefanouri
Irrigation, Mechanical/Electrical Study: Dimitris Bozis, Panagiotis Kikidis , Gerasimos Kambitsis
As more and more people are accumulated in big cities, the constantly expanding urban environment, becomes as valuable as the threatened natural environment of the planet and demands the same balanced management. The cities worldwide seek for viable strategies of recreation; seek for balance between the natural and the built, exploiting their natural advantages (sea waterfronts, lakes or rivers, forests around cities and landscapes of natural beauty). The design of the public space of cities, the urban parks and the big voids of the urban fabric, become ideal landscapes for the pursuit of balanced solutions that respect equally the citizen and the environment.
The intention of the Municipality of Thessaloniki for the redevelopment of the New Coast and the announcement of the relevant competition, gave us the opportunity to experiment on this organizational logic of the city’s public space. Where the architectural design, encounters the options of the formation of an overall micro-ecosystem, with the interactions, the variation, the heterogeny but also its coherence. The design, the choice of materials, the choice of plantation, the lighting, they all have to contribute not only to the construction of a high quality public space but mainly to the organization of a space that is “inscribed” smoothly to the existing urban landscape and its management and maintenance do not demand the waste of valuable resources. Recognizing the multiple factors that are inherent to the attempt of redesigning an urban space with multiple meaning for the city, we made an effort to study the area globally. Our basic purpose was the complete approach of the topic, aiming at proposed operations that present continuity and coherence to a unified architectural proposal, and at the same time contribute to the regeneration of the ecosystem at the borderline between sea and city.
The New Coast of Thessaloniki is a linear place with relatively limited depth and big length, a fact that offers to it the characteristics of the “front”, of the thin skin, that is inserted on the difficult and challenging limit between land and sea, between natural and constructed landscape. The design of this limit has to co-exist and converse with the water element, the most unstable natural form. Specifically the sea background of the gulf of Thessaloniki, constitutes this amazing scenery, where the ephemeral and the mutable elements, create a different atmosphere each time. Any intervention to this background, takes its color, exists because this exists, cannot compete with it but only co-exist and earn a little bit of its tireless glamour.
For these reasons, the basic decision of the proposal was to maintain the characteristic and recognizable physiognomy of the unified front towards the sea, the continuation and the linearity of the landscape. Believing that we have to preserve the most charming element of the New Coast of Thessaloniki, that is the unified and interesting promenade path next to the open sea horizon, there was no attempt of an extension of structures inside the sea. The “reading” of the site, the procedure of pointing out its characteristic elements and parameters that influence its identity, provide the interpretative key to understand it and design feasible proposals. For the waterfront of the New Coast, we distinguished two major characteristics, which set the principles for the basic choices of the proposal.
The walk right above the limit between land and sea, the pavement of the Coast, the open and not interrupted range of vision, the feeling of the infinity due to the intense presence of water, the line of the horizon inside the sea, that sometimes is profound and clear and other times is completely lost merging sky and sea with impressive results. The green spaces, with interspersed uses of recreation and sports, differentiate this section from the breakwater, offering shadow, soft grounds, visual isolation, interchanges of spaces. The linearity, the dynamic continuous, the open horizon, are the important advantages of the New Coast, that are stretched and strengthened with the formation of the breakwater floor.
The breakwater of the coast is an ideal place for walking, without interruptions, without distractions. The “walker” is exposed to the light, to the open perspective, and has a continuous walk on the charming limit between two opposites: the stability of the massive breakwater – the instability and lucidity of the liquid element. The paving of the coast, from the White Tower to the Concert Hall, is handled unitedly and equally, without hierarchies and alterations to its width. We propose a cast floor that will be constructed along the waterfront length and all its width, wherever now exists hard floor. The floor is differentiated only in two occassions: a. along the cycling lane, b. at the ending of the breakwater towards the sea, where we attempt to point out the land and sea limit, using a wooden deck of bangkirai.
In the inner side of the breakwater, the alternative of a shaded walk is offered. This walk with the proposed sitting-rooms among the trees, is particularly useful during the summer months mainly to elderly people. The alley functions as an intermediate limit-filter between the two discrete parts of the coast front: the paving and the green zone. It creates a quality differentiated walk, it is delimited from the trees and shapes a unified image to the view of the waterfront from the sea. At the opposite side of the linear route, 15 green spaces are formed at the inner side of the coast, as a succession of “green rooms – gardens”, each with a special thematic characteristic. The choice of this term, rooms – gardens, describes the intentions: it is about a sequence of spaces that attempt to maintain the familiar atmosphere of the private, while forming the public space. It’s not about big “parks”, but “rooms” of small size that remind of the house gardens that existed in the area and reached the natural seashore, before the landfill of the coast. The gardens, in opposition to the paving of the coastline, are protected spaces, have their own introversion. The differentiation, the interchange, the possibility of visual isolation, the shading, the surprise, the discovery or the reveal of the different, the game, the soft floors, the green: the gardens follow different ways of synthetic language, glorifying the familiar and the private, creating new collective spaces in a local scale.
The experience is transformed into a path, where the ephemeral (the interchange of seasons) and the various (the multi-centrality of the project) are appointed to dominant elements of composition and distract different feelings from the visitor – user. The myth is revealed along the path, re-determined through the natural phenomena, and creates constantly transforming visual phenomena. This tendency of the contemporary city landscape composition, aims at the creation of a space in motion that follows the change of seasons. The names of the fifteen “green rooms” follow their thematic organization as each space is signaled notionally. The names of the gardens starting from the Garden of Alexander are successively:
1. The Garden of Alexander
2. The Garden of Afternoon Sun
3. The Garden of Sand
4. The Garden of Shadow
5. The Garden of Seasons
6. The Garden of Odyssea Foka
7. The Garden of Mediterranean
8. The Garden of the Sculptors
9. The Garden inside the Sea
10. The Garden of Friends
11. The Garden of Sound
12. The Garden of Roses
13. The Garden of Memory
14. The Garden of Water
15. The Garden of Music
From these gardens, the last five have been constructed. These five gardens are located at the east side of the coast, near the Concert Hall. The construction of the first eight gardens is currently in progress. The area of the Garden inside the Sea and the Garden of Friends belongs to the Hellenic Public Real Estate Corporation. The subject of their construction is not currently evolving.
Redevelopment of the New Coast of Thessaloniki / Prodromos Nikiforidis – Bernard Cuomo originally appeared on ArchDaily, the most visited architecture website on 09 Jun 2013.
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Tudela-Culip Restoration Project / EMF
Architects: EMF
Location: Cap de Creus cape, Cadaqués, Catalunya, Spain
Landscape Architects: Martí Franch
Architects: J/T ARDÉVOLS S.L. Ton Ardèvol
Year: 2010
Photographs: Courtesy of EMF
Collaborators Emf: M. Batalla, M. Bianchi, A. Lopez, G. Batllori, L. Majer, C. Gomes M. Solé, L. Ochoa, J.L Campoy
Collaborators Ardèvols: Raul Lopez, Cristina Carmona.
Commission: : Ministerio de Medio Ambiente, Medio Rural y Marino. Generalitat de Catalunya.
Total Area: 90 ha
Precedents
In 1960, Club Med was constructed on the eastern tip of the Iberian Peninsula in one of the windiest and most northern exposed corners of the nation. Club Med was constructed as a private holiday village with 400 rooms that accommodated around 900 visitors in summertime. Life at Club Med was primitive, and meant to foster a relationship with nature. The settlement project is considered to be one of the most notorious examples of modern movement settlement in the Mediterranean coast.
With the rise of democracy and ecological conservation, Cap de Creus was declared a Natural Park in 1998. The cape, including the Club Med surroundings, was given the highest level of land protection because of its outstanding geological and botanical value. In the summer of 2003 Club Med was permanently closed, and in 2005, the 200 ha of property was acquired by the Spanish Ministry of Environment and a restoration project was active during 2005 and 2007.
In 2009-10, the Club Med settlement was ‘deconstructed’, its ecological dynamics revived and an innovative public use landscape project was begun for its rediscovery. Ensemble i In turn, the work became the Mediterranean´s coast biggest deconstruction & restoration project ever.
Approach
The project is related to an important aspect of what landscape architecture is about, namely identifying, unveiling and eventually transforming a site, to fit with what is already there. Revealing & celebration ‘the real’ landscape and its specificities.
Unlike the abstract, which attempts to neutralise specificity and establish the universality of the artefact, the Literal, the Real, connects with history, giving (elements or fabrics) the aura of authenticity by repetition, reflection or critique. Ian McDougall.
Indeed, the project´s goal was not to build or un-build, a landscape but to conceive the conditions for its experiencing. To do so, the process involved in-depth site reconnaissance and precise on-site cartography making. During the 5 years process, including the 14 months of work, the designers walked more than 200km on site, took and studied more than 15,000 images, and received up to 50 specialists in different fields related to nature restoration, in search for ways to optimize deconstruction, nature dynamic reclamation, and social valorization. The commission was approximated as an open process, enabling flexibility to integrate the discoveries following deconstruction. For instance the solution to enhance a ‘Pegmatite’ outcrop at the entrance was found and negotiated with the builder during work.
Constructively a minimalist approach was taken, reducing materials to those on site plus Cor-ten steel, for its landscape integration and its resistance to sea exposure, and using only few consistent construction details repeated through the site. ‘Robustness’ for a landscape that accepts little domesticities.
Tudela-Culip Restoration Project / EMF originally appeared on ArchDaily, the most visited architecture website on 23 May 2013.
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Outside-In / Meir Lobaton Corona + Ulli Heckmann
Architects: Meir Lobaton Corona, Ulli Heckmann
Location: Chaumont Sur Loire, France
Landscape Consultant: Julia Pankofer
Structure Consultant: Hector Triana
Area: 40 sqm
Year: 2013
Photographs: Fabio Ferrario
The sense we trust the most is the sense which exposes us the least. The sense that will bring us into direct contact with life is used the least. The first is to see. What we see, we believe, but it is what we don’t see that holds the truth of what is because then it remains undistorted by our interpretation.
We think that all perception is locked within our body: The sense of seeing from the eyes, the sense of hearing from the ears, the sense of smelling from the nose, the sense of tasting from the mouth, and the sense of touch primarily from the hands. Our garden, entitled ‘outside-in’, is conceived as a visual paradox, as device that enhances such conditions in order to make the audience realize how by relying only on sight we rely on imagination, that is to say, on interpretation. In other words, how the sense of vision can become a shield that precludes us the possibility of having a holistic experience of life, one that involves the entire body and that extends beyond it.
The experience of the garden begins when the visitor finds himself confronted with a seemingly void space, only the sound of his footsteps walking on top of the red sand surface and a minimalist white box mysteriously levitating sixty centimeters above the ground complement his experience.
The weightless, five meters wide by eight meters long, semi-cubic volume –defined by a translucent white skin– takes almost one third of the extension of the garden and works as a floating canvas where a monochrome world of shadows is casted suggesting the presence of what seams to be a tiny and inaccessible chunk of forest confined within. Only when gazing inside –either by crouching down and looking under it or peeking through one of the peepholes scattered on top of the white surface– the visitor is drawn into an illusory space in which trees and plants vanish into the distance. An effect attained by the fact that the four interior faces of the volume are covered with two-way mirrors and thus create a seemingly infinite forest reflected in all directions.
Like the scene in ‘Alice in Wonderland’, in which Alice peers through the keyhole of a tiny door onto a beautiful garden only to realize that she is unable to enter, this inverted experience of peeking inside to actually look outside, is meant to be both engrossing and frustrating. This voyeuristic experience allows for the viewer’s presence never to interrupt the tableau: the forest remains infinite and trapped inside this solipsist hall of mirrors while the visitor is confronted with the paradox of being looking inside a box where the contained space is actually larger than its container.
‘Outside-in’ is a garden within a garden, a contemplative space, a small universe where landscape and architecture are fused to create an experience capable of raising questions rather than answering them, a live mechanism whose aim is to make us reflect on the contrast between what we know and what we see, demanding us to constantly negotiate the gap between physical reality and visual perception. It is a meditation on space, light, and the possibility of infinity as seen through the limitless reflections of a trapped narrative meticulously fitted inside a world of two-way mirrors.
Outside-In / Meir Lobaton Corona + Ulli Heckmann originally appeared on ArchDaily, the most visited architecture website on 17 May 2013.
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Eggum Tourist Route / Snohetta
Architects: Snohetta
Location: Eggum, Norway
Project Team: Frank Nodland, Harriet T. Rikheim, Lars J. Nordbye, Maria Svaland
Area: 59 sqm
Year: 2007
Photographs: Jarle Wæhler, Steinar Skaar, Snohetta
Landscape Area: 5,500 sqm
Budget: 44,500 Euro
Eggum is a community which lies on the seaward side of Vestvågøy in Lofoten. The former fishing village faces directly out to sea, on a small, level strip of land between steep cliffs and the sea. There are not many fishermen left at Eggum, but a good many people still live there. During the summer season Eggum is a very popular place to come to see the midnight sun. Apart from North Cape, Eggum is claimed to be the best place for such observations. The tourists gather in the area round Kvalhausen, which lies a little way past Eggum itself. Kvalhausen is a hill which was used as a radar station by the occupying German forces during the second world war. The foundation wall around the old radar station still stands. ”The Fort” as the locals call it, is a local landmark.
In winter 2004 Snøhetta won the parallel commission at Eggum, which is part of the Norwegian Public Roads Administration’s E10 tourist route project through Lofoten. The task was to solve the traffic situation around Kvalhausen, where a fine summer night will see very many campervans, some cars and a few buses. In addition a service building was to be designed to suit this special site.
Snøhetta’s project won with its sensitive approach to the site and its strong and consistent focus on conveying the qualities of the place as an attraction rather than primarily supplying an architectural attraction.
The project consists of a service building which lies within an amphitheatre which also allows room for car parking. In two separate areas outside the amphitheatre are spaces for campervans to assemble. Gabion walls were used throughout the site to limit parking space and to create a unifying effect.
The guiding principle throughout the project has been suitability to the location and exploiting the sites opportunities. The terrain itself has determined the location of assembly areas for campervans, parking for cars and the siting of the service building itself. An existing borrow pit in the Kvalhausen hill has been used to locate the service building and car parking. The assembly areas for campervans have been located in such a way that every parked vehicle has a view of the sea.
The choice of materials has been largely determined by the site itself. All the gabions have been filled with stone from excavation for the building. Gravel and sand were separated out and used as back fill. This corresponds well with the ruins of the radar station. Those walls were also built of dressed morainic stone, although in this case set in concrete.
It was vital to place the service building in the landscape discreetly. The building is subordinate to the landscape and ”The Fort”. The architectural expression is simple, taut and modern. It functions as a multi purpose room of 20 m2 with kitchen facilities and toilets. The building consists of two separate constructive elements: a concrete frame located into the terrain and a wooden volume which extends from the concrete frame. The toilets are located behind the main room. The concrete frame functions as both a framework for the wooden building and a back wall against the hillside.
The gabions finish against the concrete frame and connect the building with the landscaping. The wooden volume is clad both inside and outside with thick planking of driftwood gathered from a beach a few hundred metres from the building. The same applies to the roof. The planks vary in width and are untreated so as to achieve a natural patination. The interior floor of the multi purpose room is of polished and oiled concrete. The emphasis has been on using rough, natural materials and to combine these with consistent detailing.
By emphasising the site’s qualities per se and recognising the need to allow future visitors to Eggum to have the opportunity to enjoy a personal experience of this powerful landscape, we have completed a project which provides the location with the necessary functions within a taut but understated architectural framework.
Eggum Tourist Route / Snohetta originally appeared on ArchDaily, the most visited architecture website on 16 May 2013.
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Eggum Tourist Route / Snohetta
Architects: Snohetta
Location: Eggum, Norway
Project Team: Frank Nodland, Harriet T. Rikheim, Lars J. Nordbye, Maria Svaland
Area: 59 sqm
Year: 2007
Photographs: Jarle Wæhler, Steinar Skaar, Snohetta
Landscape Area: 5,500 sqm
Budget: 44,500 Euro
Eggum is a community which lies on the seaward side of Vestvågøy in Lofoten. The former fishing village faces directly out to sea, on a small, level strip of land between steep cliffs and the sea. There are not many fishermen left at Eggum, but a good many people still live there. During the summer season Eggum is a very popular place to come to see the midnight sun. Apart from North Cape, Eggum is claimed to be the best place for such observations. The tourists gather in the area round Kvalhausen, which lies a little way past Eggum itself. Kvalhausen is a hill which was used as a radar station by the occupying German forces during the second world war. The foundation wall around the old radar station still stands. ”The Fort” as the locals call it, is a local landmark.
In winter 2004 Snøhetta won the parallel commission at Eggum, which is part of the Norwegian Public Roads Administration’s E10 tourist route project through Lofoten. The task was to solve the traffic situation around Kvalhausen, where a fine summer night will see very many campervans, some cars and a few buses. In addition a service building was to be designed to suit this special site.
Snøhetta’s project won with its sensitive approach to the site and its strong and consistent focus on conveying the qualities of the place as an attraction rather than primarily supplying an architectural attraction.
The project consists of a service building which lies within an amphitheatre which also allows room for car parking. In two separate areas outside the amphitheatre are spaces for campervans to assemble. Gabion walls were used throughout the site to limit parking space and to create a unifying effect.
The guiding principle throughout the project has been suitability to the location and exploiting the sites opportunities. The terrain itself has determined the location of assembly areas for campervans, parking for cars and the siting of the service building itself. An existing borrow pit in the Kvalhausen hill has been used to locate the service building and car parking. The assembly areas for campervans have been located in such a way that every parked vehicle has a view of the sea.
The choice of materials has been largely determined by the site itself. All the gabions have been filled with stone from excavation for the building. Gravel and sand were separated out and used as back fill. This corresponds well with the ruins of the radar station. Those walls were also built of dressed morainic stone, although in this case set in concrete.
It was vital to place the service building in the landscape discreetly. The building is subordinate to the landscape and ”The Fort”. The architectural expression is simple, taut and modern. It functions as a multi purpose room of 20 m2 with kitchen facilities and toilets. The building consists of two separate constructive elements: a concrete frame located into the terrain and a wooden volume which extends from the concrete frame. The toilets are located behind the main room. The concrete frame functions as both a framework for the wooden building and a back wall against the hillside.
The gabions finish against the concrete frame and connect the building with the landscaping. The wooden volume is clad both inside and outside with thick planking of driftwood gathered from a beach a few hundred metres from the building. The same applies to the roof. The planks vary in width and are untreated so as to achieve a natural patination. The interior floor of the multi purpose room is of polished and oiled concrete. The emphasis has been on using rough, natural materials and to combine these with consistent detailing.
By emphasising the site’s qualities per se and recognising the need to allow future visitors to Eggum to have the opportunity to enjoy a personal experience of this powerful landscape, we have completed a project which provides the location with the necessary functions within a taut but understated architectural framework.
Eggum Tourist Route / Snohetta originally appeared on ArchDaily, the most visited architecture website on 16 May 2013.
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