Best House and Apartment Design #2

” A farewell chapel is located in a village close to Ljubljana. The site plot is next to the existing graveyard. The chapel is cut into the rising landscape. The shape is following the lines of the landscape trajectories around the graveyard. Three curved walls are embracing and dividing the programs.

External curve is dividing the surrounding hill from chapel plateau and also reinstates main supporting wall. Services such as storages, wardrobe restrooms and kitchenette are on the inner side along the wall. Internal curve is embracing main farewell space. It is partly glazed and it is opening towards outside plateau for summer gatherings. Roof is following its own curvature producing external porch. Catholic sign is featured as laying cross positioned on the rooftop above the main farewell space. It also functions as luminous dynamic element across the space during the daytime and lighting spark in night time. Materials are polished concrete, larch wood, glass.”
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Project Details:
Architects: kadawittfeldarchitektur
Type: Education
Location: Sighartstein, Land Salzburg (AT)
Construction Volume: GFA 957 m², cubature 3962 m³
Client: Stadt Neumarkt
Realization: 2007 -
Competition: 2004 – 1st Prize

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Project Description:

“The concept of the “kindergarten-in-motion” includes the surrounding area of unspoilt nature. The building can be explored in different ways by a vertical and horizontal three-dimensional network. The design of the building is developed from two horizontal layers that surround a central hall and courtyard. The two L- and U-shaped levels result in an open, multilayer structure.

They become the floor, ceiling, roof and gallery for the rooms of the kindergarten, and outside they form a terrace and playground “ramp.” The spatial structure creates new views and invites the children to move within indoor and outdoor areas. The central hall is multifunctional, and the patio and the dining hall can be opened so the outdoor area can “flow” deep into the building.”

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0300TV presents a video of Island City Central Park GRIN GRIN in Fukuoka designed by Toyo Ito.

Project Details:
Building Island City Central Park Grin Grin
Architects: Toyo Ito & Associates Architects
Project Team: Toyo Ito, Toyohiko Kobayashi, Hiroyuki Shinozaki, Maya Nishikori, Yoshitaka Ihara
Structural Engineers: Sasaki Structural Consultants
Program: Cultural Building
Client: Fukoka City
Constructed Area: 5000 sqm
Completed: 2005
Location: Hakata Bay, Island City, Fukuoka, Japan

photo credit: ©Screen ID

Project Description:
Like a crystal growing from rock, a dramatic structure emerges from the ground. The Villa,Daniel Libeskind’s first signature series home, creates a new dialogue between contemporary living and a completely new experience of space. Built from premium materials, this German-made, sculptural living space meets the highest standards in design, craftsmanship and sustainability. It is unique at every turn, offering maximum insulation and durability, cutting-edge technologies and compliance with some of the toughest energy-saving standards across the world. Studio Daniel Libeskind worked with proportion GmbH on this project.

Libeskind’s Villa awakens the senses: light floods through glass expanses, clean lines invite calm, elegant halls and staircases offer seamless transitions. Symbolically and physically, the Villa’s connection with nature is uninterrupted, offering ample natural light and open spaces.

A trio of interlocking architectural bands envelop the Villa in striking angles, creating a dramatic, asymmetrical interior of spiraling, two-story peaks and smooth transitions to secluded terraces. The impressive entrance hall leads to an elaborate Grand Room which highlights the geometric space. Design details reveal style and functionality: A balcony adjacent to the master bedroom is adorned with elaborate metalwork; light wells direct daylight into a sauna; and recessed wardrobes streamline dressing spaces.

High-tech façade
Mimicking the Jewish Museum in Berlin and other architectural masterpieces by Daniel Libeskind, the Villa’s exterior is enveloped by an elegant standing-seam zinc façade, which enables the use of 21st Century technologies such as a solar thermal system and a rain water harvesting system. The zinc cladding is available in two hues that resemble naturally aged zinc: the popular pre-weathered blue-gray, and the elegant graphite-gray, both made by leading German zinc manufacturer Rheinzink.

Large floor-to-ceiling windows create dazzling displays of sunlight and transparency inside the house. The aluminum façade, adorned with mullions and concealed fittings, offers maximum thermal insulation, noise reduction and weather resistance. Homeowners may choose from double or triple low-E glazing, as well as different surface colors and finishes.

Casual style interior
The dramatic look of the Villa’s exterior is matched by a luxurious interior. Among the exquisite amenities is the stunning kitchen ensemble, situated in the Grand Room, with a custom made island designed by Daniel Libeskind – an attractive focal point for cooking, dining and entertaining.

Elegant smoked parquet flooring, slim stainless steel staircases, and soft, bright manufactured stones in the bathrooms distinguish the Casual Style, which evokes a sense of warmth and comfort. Plush lounges, intimate lighting and warm colors, best suited to the Casual Style, create a striking contrast with the exterior architecture and more stylistic elements of the Villa.

Design and Materials
Sustainable materials are at the heart of Libeskind’s design. While not apparent from the exterior, the Villa is largely constructed of wood, a renewable resource that is making a strong comeback as a key building material for the 21st Century, due to its impressive carbon-storing capabilities.

The wooden core offers maximum thermal insulation, and thus efficient operation. With more than 360 mm of recyclable wooden fibers and a heat transition coefficient of 0.11 W/m²K, the insulation of the Villa’s exterior walls matches that of passive houses.

Onsite Renewables
The Villa employs onsite renewable energy sources for heating, electricity and water. Its standard configuration includes a solar thermal system which is invisibly integrated into the zinc façade, as well as a geothermal system with a high-efficiency heat pump.

In addition, electric power may be generated from photovoltaic thin film, while rain water can be harvested from the rooftop for use in the garden’s irrigation system.

Energy Saving Standards
As a result of its high thermal insulation capabilities and renewable energy sources, the Villa is classified as a low-energy structure. Indeed, it complies with some of the world’s toughest energy-saving standards, such as Germany’s KfW40 code, which indicates a thermal energy consumption of less than 40 kWh/m²a.

A new era of luxury
The Villa can be shipped to almost any location in the world within months, and will be assembled on location by a team of experts within weeks.”
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Project Details:
Project: The Villa – Libeskind Signature Series
Completion: 2009
Client: proportion GmbH
Building Area: 515 sq m
Building Footprint: 26m x 22m, max height 11m
Building Details: Spacious room layout with a grand central room, 4 bedrooms, family room, multiple bath and restrooms, office and multi-purpose rooms in basement
Structure: Wood frame construction with maximum thermal insulation and noise reduction

Credits:
Structural Engineer: Martin Augenstein, Werner Zuber
Building Engineers:Hans-Dieter Hammer, Roland Jockel
Consulting Architect:Achim Dannenberg
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photo by: ©Screen ID

photo credit: ©SDL

photo credit: ©Screen ID

photo credit: ©Screen ID

photo credit: ©Screen ID

photo credit: ©SDL

photo credit: ©SDL

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Project Details:
Location: Tokamashi, Japan
Architect: R&Sie(n)… Paris
Creative team: François Roche, Stéphanie Lavaux, Jean Navarro, Pascal Bertholio
Key dimensions: 300 m2
Client: City of Tokamashi, Art Front Gallery
Cost: 0,7 million USD
Text: Creation of an outdoor exhibition space inside a car park
Program: 20 parking places, 300 m2 exhibition room, public facilities
Scenario:
1) Asphalt Drop on the site
2) Twisting the black surface of the car park to integrate indoor/outdoor rooms (cellar and facilities)
3) Visitors are tempted to drive or walk up the slope as a way to handle their own disequilibrium.
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Article by By JIM LEWIS from New York Times
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“Go ahead and say it; everyone does. Certainly I did. Here’s a striking building, perched on a slope outside the small Austrian town of Leoben — a sleek structure made of glass, wood and concrete, stately but agile, sure in its rhythms and proportions: each part bears an obvious relationship to the whole. In the daytime, the corridors and rooms are flooded with sunshine. At night, the whole structure glows from within. A markedly well-made building, and what is it? A prison.

Designed by Josef Hohensinn, this complex — which includes a prison and a courthouse — opened late in 2004, in Leoben, a small Austrian town. The prison currently houses around 200 inmates.

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Everybody says this, or something like it: I guess crime does pay, after all. Or, That’s bigger than my apartment. (New Yorkers, in particular, tend to take this route.) Or, Maybe I should move to Austria and rob a couple of banks. It’s a reflex, and perfectly understandable, though it’s also foolish and untrue — about as sensible as looking at a new hospital wing and saying, Gee, I wish I had cancer.
To be more accurate, free people say these things. Prisoners don’t. Nor, for the most part, do the guards, the wardens or the administrators; nor do legal scholars or experts on corrections; nor does Josef Hohensinn, who designed the Leoben prison. They all say something else: No one, however down-and-out or cynical, wants to go to prison, however comfortable it may be.

The entrance to the prison, which is made of glass, wood and concrete. Photo: Alfred Seiland for The New York Times

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Still, the argument goes, the place must be a country club for white-collar criminals. (No, it holds everyone from prisoners awaiting trial to the standard run of felons.) Then it must cost a fortune. (A little more than other prisons, maybe, but not by much — as a rule, the more a corrections center bristles with overt security, with cameras, and squads of guards, and isolation cells, the more expensive it’s going to be.) And that’s glass? (Yes, though it’s shatterproof. And yes, those are the cells and that is a little balcony, albeit caged in with heavy bars, and below it is a courtyard.) The whole thing seems impossible, oxymoronic, like a luxury D.M.V., and yet there it is.
One gray day in February, Hohensinn drove me from his office in Graz down to Leoben, an hourlong trip through a region isolated by mountains and still transitioning out of an industrial economy. He is a compact man in his early 50s, with bushy eyebrows, a gappy smile and an air about him of cheerful confidence, mixed with a kind of Alpine soulfulness. Before the prison opened, late in 2004, he had a solid career building public housing. Now he is the Man Who Built That Prison, a distinction that dismays him slightly, if only because, as he says, “One always has mixed feelings about having one work singled out for attention.”

The prison's courtyards and exercise areas. Photo: Alfred Seiland for The New York Times

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Leoben has received quite a lot of attention. In America, its public profile has been limited to a series of get-a-load-of-this e-mail messages and mocking blog posts (where the prison is often misidentified as a corrections center outside Chicago), but in Europe, Hohensinn’s design has become more of a model — not universally accepted, but not easily ignored either. It is the opening statement in a debate about what it means to construct a better prison. Already there are plans to build something like it outside of Berlin.
The day Hohensinn and I visited, Leoben was dreary, and there were traces of sleet in the air; as we approached, the building looked both idle and inviting, like a college library during winter break — or it would have, anyway, were it not for the razor wire coiled along the concrete wall of the yard and the sentence carved below it, a line from the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (which the United States signed and ratified) that reads: “All persons deprived of their liberty shall be treated with humanity and with respect for the inherent dignity of the human person.”
Inside the prison it felt like Sunday afternoon, though in fact it was a Tuesday. There was a glassy brightness over everything, and most surprising, an unbreakable silence. Prisons are usually clamorous places, filled with the sound of metal doors opening and closing, and the general racket that comes with holding large numbers of men in a confined space. Noise is part of the chaos of prison life; Leoben was serene. I mentioned as much to Hohensinn, and he smiled and pointed to the whitewashed ceilings. He had taken great care to install soundproofing.

Prisoners live in one-person cells with private bathrooms, kitchenettes and floor-to-ceiling windows that open onto balconies. Photo: Alfred Seiland for The New York Times

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An assistant warden accompanied us on our tour, one of three guards on duty tasked with watching more than 200 inmates. On one side of the prison there was a block of prisoners on remand; on the other side were the convicts, living in units called pods — groups of 15 one-person cells with floor-to-ceiling windows, private lavatories and a common space that includes a small kitchen. We came upon one prisoner cooking a late lunch for a few of his podmates; we stood there for a bit, chatting. They were wearing their own clothes. The utensils on the table were metal. “They are criminals,” Hohensinn said to me, “but they are also human beings. The more normal a life you give them here, the less necessary it is to resocialize them when they leave.” His principle, he said, was simple: “Maximum security outside; maximum freedom inside.” (The bars over the balconies are there to ensure the inmates’ safety, Hohensinn said; the surrounding wall outside is more than enough to make sure no one gets free.)
We walked around some more. There was a gymnasium, a prayer room, a room for conjugal visits. I asked Hohensinn what he would do if, contrary to fact, it were conclusively proved that prisons like his encouraged crime rather than diminished it. Would he renounce the design? He shook his head. “The prisoners’ dignity is all I really care about,” he told me.

Hohensinn's design principle is simple: "Maximum security outside; maximum freedom inside." Photo: Alfred Seiland for The New York Times

The facility has a gymnasium, a prayer room and a room for conjugal visits. Photo: Alfred Seiland for The New York Times

Inside the visitors' area. Photo: Alfred Seiland for The New York Times

Along the prison's concrete wall is an inscription from the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which reads, "All persons deprived of their liberty shall be treated with humanity and with respect for the inherent dignity of the human person." Photo: Alfred Seiland for The New York Times

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Suppose we can’t bring ourselves to be quite so magnanimous. Suppose all we’re interested in is reducing crime. If you trust a criminal with a better environment, will he prove trustworthy? As far as Leoben is concerned, it’s too soon to tell. The place has been open for only four years. But I noticed something as we were leaving, and in the absence of any other data it seemed significant. In the three or four hours we spent roaming all through the place, I hadn’t seen a single example of vandalism….”

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The multi-award winning Imperial War Museum North (IWMN) in Manchester, UK has selected a preferred design team to develop the external spaces of the Museum following an RIBA international design competition and public consultation with visitors and key partners.

Winning design for external spaces at Imperial War Museum North by TOPOTEK 1
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The proposed scheme was the one which, in the opinion of the selection panel, best addressed a complex brief asking for zones of contemplation, creativity and play which would complement the Daniel Libeskind building. Jim Forrester, Director of IWM North, said: „Having taken submissions from UK and international design teams, the selection panel felt that Topotek 1, based in Berlin, had come up with a great initial concept and were ready to adapt their imaginative ideas to suit the fast-changing environment around the museum. We are very confident that we can work with the Topotek 1 team to arrive at an excellent scheme which will enhance the whole Quays’ experience.”

Topotek 1’s original submission stated: “The camouflage patterns used by the military are an abstraction of landscapes of combat. These patterns represent a visual average of the natural environment: the muted green, brown, and ocher hues of typical camouflage are a graphic summary of wild and cultivated places. We wish to confront the global scale of war represented by the building with the local scale where battles are fought. War does not only re-configure lines on a world map, but changes everyday landscapes.

We have selected four themes that represent the British landscape: stone, fields, water, and forest. Like the camouflage pattern, these landscapes are condensed into their essential character, and reconfigured in a system of gently tilting planes. This system provides a soft, horizontal, and continuous base for the museum; subtle shifts in elevation and angle accommodate a variety of programs in a relatively small area. The landscape forms a collage of dignified spaces for reflection, gathering, and play that complements the gravity of the museum’s content.”

The sense of experimental design that is enshrined in the architecture of IWMN continues to be an important consideration for the museum and the development of the external spaces. The new design will include:

* a new quayside walkway with 24 –hour access across the water frontage
* a landscaped garden built over the car-park to give elevated views of IWM North and MediaCity:UK beyond
* a children’s play area including sensory and kinetic elements
* spaces for future exhibits and art installations
* a water-sculpture as a focus for contemplation and reflection.

These designs are initial concepts and IWMN will now begin the task of fundraising and seeking partners to help realise the project. Once funding has been secured, Topotek I will work closely with the Museum to develop the ideas and create the final scheme. The first phase of development of the outside areas is aimed at completion to coincide with the opening of MediaCity:UK in 2011.

IWMN is about people and their stories, about how lives have been and still are, shaped by war and conflict. The Museum is located in Trafford in the rapidly developing Quays regeneration area, and the development of MediaCity:uk on the Quays provides the opportunity to capitalise on the international focus that will soon be on the area, and to create a distinctive destination and context for the museum. The external spaces at IWMN must enhance the museum by reflecting its key message that war shapes lives, against its dramatic exterior, enhancing and expanding the visitor experience to beyond the walls of the internal spaces. There is an opportunity to do something dramatic and spectacular that will at the same time integrate with the extraordinary content and design of Daniel Libeskind’s iconic building which represents a globe shattered by conflict.

An international competition to design and develop the external spaces at IWMN was organized by the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) Competitions Office. In September 2008, expressions of interest were received from over 50 architects and landscape architects. 5 shortlisted teams were then invited to come up with design ideas in response to a brief.

IWM North Director, Jim Forrester set the scene at the outset of the competition: “Our stunning Libeskind building continues to generate much interest and argument, and now, with the next phase of the Quays regeneration underway, we are ready to make more of its setting. The challenge is to make the outside areas of the museum as striking, memorable and rewarding as the building and its displays already are. To achieve this we are looking for remarkable designers with ideas which will give even more substance to our mission”.

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from Bustler

“After presenting the design to Egyptian Prime Minister Dr. Ahmed Nazif, Zaha Hadid Architects was announced as architects of the new Cairo Expo City. Zaha Hadid Architects will be designing Cairo Expo City together with global multi-disciplinary engineering consultancy Buro Happold.

The winning design for Cairo Expo City delivers a unique facility for Cairo – a 450,000 square meter, state of the art city for exhibitions and conferences, located between the center of Cairo and the city’s airport. The project comprises a major international exhibition and conference center with business hotel. A further office tower and a shopping center are also proposed. ”

“This is a truly national project for Egypt.” said Sherif Salem, CEO of the GOIEF (General Organization of International Exhibitions and Fairs). “The current exhibition halls for Cairo do not meet the standards now required by the international conference and exhibition industry. With this exceptional design by Zaha Hadid Architects, Cairo will be among the world’s top cities for conferences and fairs, able to cater for the widest variety and size of events.”

The undulating fluid forms of the Cairo Expo City design were inspired by the natural topography of the Nile valley explained Zaha Hadid.

“As the exhibition spaces require the greatest degree of flexibility, we wanted to ensure that all the public spaces and formal composition of Cairo Expo City relate to the surrounding Egyptian landscape.” said Hadid. “Along the great rivers of the region, most particularly the Nile, there is a powerful dynamic – a constant flow between the water and the land – which extends to incorporate the neighboring buildings and landscapes. For the Cairo Expo City design, we worked to capture that seamlessness and fluidity in an urban architectural context.”

“Carving and sculpting processes have been used to divide the very large exhibition and conference areas required for Cairo Expo City into clusters of individual buildings that have their own formal composition, yet each building relates to the overall design. A main north-south artery is carved through the design, with secondary streams converging at the center to ease crowd traffic during event. The movement of people within these streams informs the building entrances on the site.”

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Zaha Hadid Architects was shortlisted with Norwegian architecture practice Snøhetta for the second phase of the competition in April. Works will begin in October this year to clear the site.

Client: GOIEF (General Organization of International Exhibitions and Fairs), Cairo
Design: Zaha Hadid Architects
Engineering: Buro Happold, London
Quantity Surveyor: Gleeds, London
Traffic and Logistics: Buro Happold, London
Built Area: 450,000sqm (exhibition halls, conference center and mixed-use areas)
Height of Towers: 33 and 31 stories
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Images: Zaha Hadid Architects

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from New York Times

The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art: The college’s new academic building, a contemporary work designed between Sixth and Seventh Streets in the East Village.
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” We’ll have to wait to find out exactly what the end of the Age of Excess means for architecture in New York. Yes, the glut of high-concept luxury towers was wearisome. But some great civic works were also commissioned in that era. And given the hard economic times, they may be the last we see for quite some time.

The new academic building at the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art is yet more proof that some great art was produced in those self-indulgent times. Designed by Thom Mayne of the Los Angeles firm Morphosis, it is not a perfect building, but it is the kind of serious work that we don’t see enough of in New York: a bold architectural statement of genuine civic value. Its lively public spaces reaffirm that enlightenment comes from the free exchange of ideas, not just inward contemplation.

Perhaps more important, the building seems to strike just the right tone for this time in New York’s history. A wholly contemporary work, it has a bold, aggressive profile that says as much about the city we’ve lost as it does about the future we are building. It proves that a brash, rebellious attitude can be a legitimate form of civic pride.”
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Photo: Julieta Cervantes for The New York Times
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” The building occupies a contentious site at Cooper Square, between Sixth and Seventh Streets, in the East Village. The area has experienced a particularly painful process of gentrification in the past decade. First, generic glass boxes began popping up along the Bowery. Then CBGB closed. For me the final straw was the opening in 2005 of Gwathmey Siegel’s undulating glass luxury apartment tower at Astor Place, a vulgar knockoff of Mies van der Rohe’s unbuilt Glass Skyscraper project and a symbol of the era’s me-first mentality.

Mr. Mayne’s building does not shy away from this debate by trying to fade into the background. Seen from the old Cooper Union Foundation building across the street, its big concave facade is enveloped in a glittering perforated metal screen, like armor, so that it’s hard at first to get a grip on the building’s scale. A big vertical slot is cut out of the facade’s center, as if it had been ripped open.”
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“Its lively public spaces reaffirm that enlightenment comes from the free exchange of ideas, not just inward contemplation.”
Photo: Julieta Cervantes for The New York Times
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” Yet the more you look at the building, the more it looks right at home in its surroundings. From certain angles the facade’s concave form seems to exert a magnetic pull, as if it were trying to embrace the neighborhood in front of it. The curve of the corner, which lifts up to invite people inside the lobby, has an unexpected softness. Even the bulky exterior mirrors the proportions of the Foundation building — a friendly nod to its older neighbor.

The effect is tough and sexy at the same time. One of the most overlooked strengths of Mr. Mayne’s designs is his feel for material. He is not a finicky designer; you don’t look to his work for refined details. He tends instead to extract beauty from the crudest industrial materials: raw concrete, steel I-beams, metal screens. The connections between materials are always clearly expressed, never smoothed over, so that you can feel the memory of the workers’ hands. It is what makes his buildings — like the Diamond Ranch High School in Pomona, Calif. — so approachable.

This strategy is social as well as aesthetic. Here the big V-shaped columns that line the sidewalk not only support the building, but they also create small pockets of space where students can hang out along the street. Behind them the lobby is clad entirely in glass. Just inside, a narrow staircase runs along the base of the window down to a basement gallery and theater. Other views open down to the gallery from Seventh Street.”
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Photo: Julieta Cervantes for The New York Times
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” The idea is to create a series of interlocking social spaces, many undefined, and to allow for the kind of casual encounter that is a central part of urban life. And it reflects Mr. Mayne’s ambivalence over the Modernist obsession with transparency. To the Modernists transparency equaled truth. To Mr. Mayne’s generation, which formed its ideas in the 1960s, it could also mean uniformity. Like other radical architects of his age, he is more interested in the dark, hidden corners where people can loiter, get into mischief, escape from authority.

The social heart of the building is a vast internal staircase, which sweeps from the lobby all the way to the fourth floor. The staircase, 20 feet wide at its base, has a classical grandeur, as if the Met’s front stairs had been pulled inside the building. The stair narrows as it rises, creating a forced perspective that exaggerates its length. A big window frames the top, allowing light to spill down into the lobby and drawing you up into the space.

From the top people will filter around to each side and climb a smaller, asymmetrical spiral stair to the upper floors. When I first looked up through this space I immediately thought of the Baroque domes of Guarino Guarini, except that the complex order of Guarini’s domes represents divine order. In Mayne’s version that world has been set off balance, as if to allow for imperfections, and it is inhabited by students.”
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Photo: Iwan Baan
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“When I first looked up through this space I immediately thought of the Baroque domes of Guarino Guarini, except that the complex order of Guarini’s domes represents divine order.
“In Mayne’s version that world has been set off balance, as if to allow for imperfections, and it is inhabited by students.”

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The building’s flaws, though, lie not in a failure of vision but in questions about its execution. The most serious of these have to do with circulation. I expect there will be complaints, for example, about the main elevators, which only go up to the fifth and eighth floors. The system is based on a design by Le Corbusier, who used it in his 1952 Unité d’Habitation housing block in Marseilles. Since it eliminated the need for corridors on every other floor, he could create big, floor-through duplex apartments with windows on both sides. But here it doesn’t make much sense, because the building is made up of standard, single-story offices and classrooms. Most students will have to walk an extra flight up or down to get to their classes.”
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“The building seems to strike just the right tone for this time in New York’s history. A wholly contemporary work, it has a bold, aggressive profile that says as much about the city we’ve lost as it does about the future we are building. It proves that a brash, rebellious attitude can be a legitimate form of civic pride.”
Photo: Julieta Cervantes for The New York Times
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“Another subtle but important problem is the depth of the treads on the grand staircase. The stairs in front of the Metropolitan Museum of Art are 14 inches deep, which is what makes them such a nice place to sit, rest, chat with a stranger. Mr. Mayne’s stairs are a standard 11 inches, like a conventional fire stairwell. They are hard to sit on, and they gave me vertigo when I began my descent from the third floor. Does this sound picky? Not in a design that is all about the informal use of public space. It is the difference between a very good building and a great one.”
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Photo: Iwan Baan
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” Still, Mr. Mayne has created a serious work of architecture. And when we look back on this era, the new academic building will stand out with a handful of other designs — the New Museum, perhaps, and the renovation of Alice Tully Hall — as projects that we, as a city, can feel proud of. They leave you with the comforting thought that even in egotistical times, a spirit of generosity can assert itself.”

Source: New York Times
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Project: High Line Public Park project
The High Line design is led by James Corner Field Operations, with diller scofidio + renfro
Location: New York – USA

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Project Description:

“The high line, in collaboration with field operations, is a new 1.5-mile long public park built on an abandoned elevated railroad stretching from the meatpacking district to the hudson rail yards in manhattan.
Inspired by the melancholic, unruly beauty of this postindustrial ruin, where nature has reclaimed a once vital piece of urban infrastructure, the new park interprets its inheritance. It translates the biodiversity that took root after it fell into ruin in a string of site-specific urban microclimates along the stretch of railway that include sunny, shady, wet, dry, windy, and sheltered spaces.
Through a strategy of agri-tecture, part agriculture, part architecture- the high line surface is digitized into discrete units of paving and panting which are assembled along the 1.5 miles into a variety of gradients from 100% paving to 100% soft, richly vegetated biotopes. the paving system consists of individual pre-cast concrete planks with open joints to encourage emergent growth like wild grass through cracks in the sidewalk. the long paving units have tapered ends that comb into planting beds creating a textured, ‘pathless’ landscape where the public can meander in unscripted ways. the park accommodates the wild, the cultivated, the intimates, and the social. Access points are durational experiences designed to prolong the transition from the frenetic pace of city streets to the slow otherworldly landscape above. ”
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