CN11002CC-CENTURY CITY

11 002 CENTURY CITY. 2011 218.890M2
Multifunctional bloc competition

Storey buildings in the Century City Area

Hangzhou is striding from the West Lake Era to the Qiantang River Era. The New Century City, together with the Qiantang Central Business District, aim to become the new centre of a large Metropolitan Hangzhou, as a result of the integration of Binjiang, Xiaoshan and Xiasha Districts with the present city.
The new Wanxiang Multifunctional Block will be a new focal point on the Century City Area and one of the new landmarks of Hangzhou new city centre, an icon amongst the different expressions of verticality of the new district.
The three towers are placed in the south cross of Shixin and Shizheng Road, and connected to the Subway exit. The connectivity of the project with the complex urban flows is one of the main premises to take into consideration.
The floor plans are designed to maximize efficiency and versatility to hold the different program requirements –office and hotel. As a result, the three buildings are rectangular shaped refusing formalism and design gesture.
The iconic value is given by the treatment of the facade, based on the idea of a vanishing tower that dematerializes upwards fading the limits of the building with the sky.
A screen printed glass facade gives shape to the dematerialization by losing density from the ground upwards, turning the buildings from a bright-white, abstract skin on the lower levels into a glass facade that fades with the sky at its top.
The white stripped printed glass pieces are arranged with different densities, from a 50% transparency at the lower levels until 100%. To reinforce the effect of dematerialization, the facade overtakes the height of the building with a light glazed veil that blurs the tangible limits of the building.
The public sky yards and other public areas are shown as a series of transparent areas carved out of the building mass, introducing some variations in the facade.
At night, the white stripes are light with a system based on LED technology, expressing the effect of dematerialization from the bottom to the top.

AR10023BI-BINJIANG CENTURY AV

10 023 BINJIANG CENTURY AV. 2010 60.192M2
Multifunctional bloc competition

BOEE Multifunctional block

BOEE Multifunctional block will be one more of the new towers in project for the New Century City Area, south-east bank of Qian Tang River, in front of Hangzhou new Central Business District. The two banks of the river aim to become the new center of Hangzhou city, where recent high rise buildings and new facilities projects are trying to inject new life. Our proposal consists on the rising of an alternative icon to be unique amongst the different expressions of verticality of the new district. BOEE Urban Incubator will be a new focal point on the area together with the two highest landmarks set up with that purpose on the Century City Urban Plan.
The stacked boxes of the new BOEE Urban Incubator are an expression of the programmatic complexity for the new mixed use development: offices, shops, luxury apartments, facilities and BOEE new headquarters. Each program parcel is contained in a different box and stacked in a position determined by its particular views, orientation and representativeness requirements: the apartments are placed in the higher levels, taking advantage of the views and orientation, while retail and offices are placed in the lower levels. BOEE Headquarters are stacked over the public offices, offering the representativeness needed by the developer company.
Offices allow flexible partitioning to suit market trends and customer needs, ranging from 50sqm offices to over 300sqm. The smallest units are placed along the north facade while the medium and larger offices face south orientation. Apartments are arranged in four different configurations –TP1 to TP4-, offering five different 400sqm apartment types, each one divisible in smaller units. All the living rooms and master bedrooms face south-west and enjoy river views. The luxury Club House in the 11th floor creates a leisure space of exclusivity for the owners, providing facilities such as fitness center, swimming pool, SPA, club bar, kindergarten and business center. The Club House can be opened also to the users of the offices and the Headquarters, offering the rental of meeting rooms in different configurations, ranging from 16 people boardroom to 50 people classroom and cocktail style rooms.
Chinese traditional architecture is present on the facades layout, consisting on a latticed structural system that links the shared Chinese and Spanish tradition of the lattice and the contemporary demand of a new urban icon. The galleries, pointed also as one of the most characteristic elements of traditional Chinese architecture, are used on the Headquarters, apartments and club house areas to provide a buffering zone between the inside and the city. Galleries help the users to control the solar irradiation and the noise, as well as they offer multiple circulations and filter areas such as tea rooms and verandas in the apartments or resting and meeting areas in the offices. The latticed facade confers a unitary image to the whole block, expression of the versatility of the different boxes. The structural system consists on a central concrete core where elevators and stairs are placed, combined with the concrete latticed facade, without any interior columns. The concrete structure is tiled with natural stone cladding. A big porch is used as the reception area in the first floor, and provides access to the main obbies of towers I and II. The nine meters high lobbies contains reception and lounge areas. The commercial arcade is designed in accordance with the rest of the building. Besides the shopping areas attached to the lobbies of towers I and II, two low rise buildings contain the main retail area and are used to shelter the access ramps to the parking placed in the three basements. Shops areas range from 150sqm  to 500sqm.
A landscaped plaza, opened to the adjacent streets, combines green and water areas within a modern original pattern in keeping with the blurry effect created of the latticed facades. A central shallow lake occupies the core of the landscape area articulating the cars circulation, while several scattered gentle slopes are used to filter the relation with the surrounding roads and to provide a natural atmosphere to the opened plaza. A striking multicolored pavement is used to arrange both cars and pedestrians circulations.

AR07021SZ-Shenzhen Mocape International Museum of Contemporary Art

07 021 SHENZHEN MUSEUM. SHENZHEN. 2007 21.900M2
  Museum Of Contemporary Art & Planning Exhibition competition

AR7021SZ-01-EQUIP.jpg

In search of light and for the people: an enormous space for art
We are in Shenzen, since the late 70’s has been one of the world’s most vigorous growing cities. The eighth world’s highest skyscraper is part of the city’s skyline, and it is easily to spot quite a few more higher than 200 m. Still growing, both the city and its buildings. Shenzhen defines itself by growing. It is a city with people that lives for action.

IN SEARCH OF LIGHT
The proposal for the Museum of Contemporary Art and Planning Exhibition, MOCAPE, is a promenade of the building itself towards the light, like a metaphor of the city’s endless activity in the manner of a spiral that aims to create a space for contemplation that draws its concept from the dynamic character of Shenzhen.

PILE THE SCHEME
In Shenzhen the land is a precious asset that one needs to share. Given that, it is not a surprise the dimension of the area to be built, which is smaller than the area needed to fulfil the museum necessities. In that situation the more natural strategy seems to build upwards, piling the program. Once decided to organize the scheme overlapping floors  the next fundamental step is to decide which is the most suitable light needed and how to get this light to perform successfully in the museum.

SPIRAL AND ROOFLIGHT
In order to properly light a museum the tradition asks to use light coming from the ceiling. If you want to use roof light to pull light into a building with several levels overlapped you must find the way to connect them with the sky through the ceiling. The technique used in this proposal is to separate the different levels and treat them as independent buildings. The natural way to articulate the relation between different parts in different levels that aim to go upwards is the spiral. This proposal recalls different strategies already used in other museums, specially that of the spiral in the New York Guggenheim Museum by Frank Lloyd Wright, extending this idea to the whole museum space in the proposal for MOCAPE.
The visitors, the people, enter the building by being lifted immediately to the upper level and inviting them to gently descend through the different exhibition spaces. This type of circulation offers both the speed and maximum efficiency of the lifts and the possibility to stroll down the museum promenade style following the path of the spiral. Thanks to the lifts, every exhibition space, every ramp, can be visited independently from the other areas of the museum.

INVITATION TO THE CITY
To establish a relation with the city and its urban surroundings, the proposal for MOCAPE takes advantage of the spiral structure to ascend and at the same time offer an access for the people to enter the core of the building, which is a courtyard planted with Chinese white pine (Pinus armandii) and spotted with sculpture gardens that allow the light to access the underground areas and make an easy path to and from the car park for the visitors to use.
The façade to the city shows a casted wall, an ornamented skin that changes in its way up announcing the precious interior. The casting allows the light to create shadows that texturize the walls and helps to stress the change of the daylight.

STRUCTURE AND LIGHT
The proposal for the structure starts from a research on big span concrete structures. The exhibition spaces are devised as concrete bridges with concrete walls and a structure of concrete beams for the ceiling and floor that helps to control the light.

AR7021SZ-02-EQUIP.jpg

AR7021SZ-03-EQUIP.jpg

AR7021SZ-04-EQUIP.jpg

AR7021SZ-05-EQUIP.jpg

AR7021SZ-06-EQUIP.jpg

AR7021SZ-07-EQUIP.jpg

AR7021SZ-08-EQUIP.jpg

AR7021SZ-09-EQUIP.jpg

AR7021SZ-10-EQUIP.jpg

AR7021SZ-11-EQUIP.jpg

AR7021SZ-12-EQUIP.jpg

AR7021SZ-13-EQUIP.jpg

AR7021SZ-14-EQUIP.jpg

AR7021SZ-15-EQUIP.jpg

AR07011SH-Shanghái 2010 Exhibition

07 011 SHANGHAI 2010 EXHIBITION. SHANGHAI. 2007 8.465M2
  Spanish Pavilion for Shanghai 2010 competition

AR7011SH-01-EQUIP.jpg

¿Dónde vas con mantón de Manila? Pués… La del Mantón de Manila es la historia de un viaje de ida que ahora vuelve al hilo de una canción. ¿Dónde vas con vestido chiné? Porque… el Mantón de Manila es la historia de un viaje y también es la historia de como culturas muy distantes en el tiempo y el espacio pueden comunicarse e intercambiar características. Una historia de culturas, y una historia comercial.
Mantón de Manila anuncia una sorprendente relación entre la tradición China más inmemorial y uno de los más castizos atavíos españoles. A la vez, muestra de forma auténtica cómo las rutas comerciales, las rutas marítimas que se abrieron en el siglo XV, sirvieron para mezclar culturas dejando bien claro que para enriquecer lo propio no hay como abrirse a lo ajeno.
El Mantón de Manila traza un viaje que se inicia en China quizá 3.000 años antes de Cristo, cuando, en el ámbito de la cultura Yǎngsháo wénhuà, tenemos datados los primeros trabajos con seda, y que ahora quiere desembarcar en la Exposición Universal de Shangái 2010 para, después de un periplo bien intercultural, escenificar un retorno al lugar de donde partió.
La historia de este periplo se inició con una tecnología antiquísima que sin destruirlos extrae los hilos de los capullos elaborados por los gusanos de seda. A partir de ahí una técnica artesanal convirtió esos hilos preciosos en mantones profusamente decorados con motivos florales y animales. Estos frutos del ingenio y sensibilidad humanos se convirtieron en productos que los mismos comerciantes chinos llevaron hasta Filipinas. En Manila fueron vistos por los comerciantes españoles del siglo XVI, que los describieron como compuestos de fina y no retorcida seda, blanca y de los más brillantes colores, lisas algunas, y otras bordadas con las más extrañas figuras, colores y modelos […]. De esta manera  no pudieron sustraerse a la tentación de incluirlos entre las mercaderías que seguían la denominada ruta de los Galeones de Manila. Esta travesía comercial cubría de dos a cuatro veces por año el trayecto entre Filipinas y Sevilla, vía Acapulco, en México, haciendo posible la llegada de productos chinos a la por entonces metrópoli española. Es por todo esto que una teoría defiende que el originariamente mantón chino de seda llegó a Sevilla siguiendo esta ruta. Otra teoría, un tanto legendaria, dice que llegó primero como cuadro de seda que por ser defectuoso era usado para empaquetar los fardos de tabaco. Una vez en tierra, estos cuadros eran divididos y las propias cigarreras les añadían unos insinuantes flecos para incluirlos en parte de su atuendo diario. Leyenda o no, esta segunda explicación enlaza perfectamente con otra realidad que, otra vez cantando, dice que a partir de la ópera Carmen, donde se retrata a las cigarreras sevillanas graciosamente ataviadas de mantones, ya estas prendas originariamente chinas pasarían a ser conocidas mundialmente como los mantones españoles o mantones de Manila. El mundo entremezclado y vuelto del revés, perfectamente hibridado y evolucionado… Donde los motivos florales crecen en dimensión y se adaptan a la flora autóctona con rosas, claveles, lirios, girasoles… y loto, sin perder jamás un aire oriental que le dio, da y dará ese exotismo que está en la base de su éxito. Porque, a fin de cuentas, este mantón de Manila quiere ir también a la Exposición Universal de Shangái 2010 A lucirse y a ver la verbena, y quizá no a meterse en la cama después.

AR7011SH-02-EQUIP.jpg

AR7011SH-03-EQUIP.jpg

AR7011SH-04-EQUIP.jpg

AR7011SH-05-EQUIP.jpg

AR7011SH-06-EQUIP.jpg

AR7011SH-07-EQUIP.jpg

AR7011SH-08-EQUIP.jpg

AR7011SH-09-EQUIP.jpg

AR7011SH-10-EQUIP.jpg