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.

AR08042ZP-ZA’ABEEL PARK DUBAI

08 042 ZA’ABEEL PARK. DUBAI. 2008 1.000M2
Tall emblem structure competition

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Tall(2) Emblem(3) Structure(1) at Za’abeel Park

1. Structure

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Structure usually refers to any large, man-made object permanently fixed to Earth’s surface, as a result of construction. But structure is besides that, a fundamental and sometimes intangible notion covering the recognition, observation, nature, and stability of patterns and relationships of entities. The concept of structure is therefore an essential foundation of nearly every mode of inquiry and discovery in science, philosophy, and art.
A structure defines what a system is made of. It is a configuration of items. It is a collection of inter-related components or services. The structure may be a hierarchy or a network featuring many-to-many relationships.
The competition for a Tall Emblem Structure proposes a discussion about the concept of structure. This is not just about the geometry and physics of the tower itself, but about the invisible links that relate those entities, joining the structure together. The proposal presents a tower of the required height, the first entity of the structure, that houses three airships, flying entities and also part of the structure.
Both the tower and the airships, are intimally related the same way we are attached to the place we live. The tower houses the airships and, they are linked with that place they leave in the morning and go back at night. Flying plans, views, wind directions and intensities that hit the tower… the structure is made of invisible relations between those items and the surrounding environment.
The visitor will enter the lower tower levels and the Thyseen elevator, which will accelerate to bring him up to the 120m level where the cafeteria with astonishing views over Dubai stands. The visitor’s children will for sure stop one level just above, where the children library is, at level 125m. Whether or not they go to the planned conference on the 3rd level, at 130m, it’s not that important, because they’re actually heading to the floor above that: the plattform at 130m where the airship is anchored. Depending on the direction of the winds that day, the canopy around him will turn to point it and act as protection for the airship. The visitor will then be able to board the airship through its nose and leave it for a lift around the city or to higher altitudes, to have the most amazing views of the region. The structure will expand with them, following their trace, bringing it further, as far as they will bring it with them.

2. Tall

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Through centuries, the act of building has been both an action of need but also of power and perennial. Kings, popes, and heads of state have used the buildings they have promoted to leave behind them a reminder of the time they were at their positions.
Height has been one of the most desired features in the constructions man achieved through time. Rising towards the sky has been a sign of power for politics, religion, money and culture, and it has been achieved in the societies that invested in the development of the necessary technologies, to fight a temporary won battle of man against gravity.
More prosaically, the construction and use of structures separating from Earth has been used to enhance views and specially communications. From the use of mountains from which to send smoke signals, to the lighthouses and the radio antennas.
Built for the International Exhibition in 1989, as a Centennial Celebration of the French Revolution, the Eiffel Tower was the tallest structure of its time, 325m. In 1909 was about to be dismantled, but it was just kept for its communication purposes with an antenna which is still in use today.
In 1930, the tower lost the title of the world’s tallest structure when the Chrysler Building was completed in New York City. It went just one year later to the Empire State Building, also in New York, which stood as the world’s tallest building for more than forty years until the World Trade Center North Tower was completed in 1972. Afterwards the title went to the Petronas Buildings in Singapour, the Taipei 101 building in Taiwan and it will go to the Burj Dubai Building during this year 2009.
The title of “The World’s Tallest Building” is announced by the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH), a non-for-profit organization based at the Illinois Institute of Technology in the city of Chicago. They define the criterion that a construction need to meet to be the tallest building or tower and, they will hardly agree on the fact that the project is actually a proposal for the tallest manmade structure, for the airship, being the flying entity of the tower, will be able to fly until 8.000m with a total weight of 1Tn.
In fact, the Empire State Building spire was already designed to be a mooring mast and depot for dirigibles, while the 102nd floor was originally a landing platform with a dirigible gangplank. The idea was abandoned after a few attempts with airships, due to the powerful updrafts caused by the size of the building itself,
However, the project proposes the tower entity acting as a parapet, and therefore turning its aerodynamic head to point against the dominant winds and allow the docking of arriving airships.
If the Eiffel Tour was the tallest building of its time by using the latest technology developed, the steel structure, the proposed project presents its XXIst Century version, being the aerospace technology the current paradigm of the development and progress of our technology and societies.

3. Emblem

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An Emblem is an image, abstract or representational, that represents a person, such as a king, or a country. It acts like and Ambassador, representing its country or its king. They have been deployed for ages in their name. They were their word and their image.
The project proposes a structure being an Emblem in two different ways. On one side, it is a symbol of the modernity of the emirate of Dubai, and will be appreciated by the milions of tourists visiting the region every year.
On the other hand, the three airships housed in its interior will travel around the city, the country and up to 8000m, providing touristic tours for the visitors. But they will also travel beyond the borders of Dubai, to act as Ambassadors of the country, and they will be a travelling symbol going from one city to another, a symbolic object used as an identifying mark for Dubai, such as the Skyship 600 dirigible “Spirit of Dubai”, promoting the country as a leading regional hub and home for the most iconic projects in present time.

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AR08033TB-TORRE-FARO BRASIL

08 033 TORRE-FARO BRASIL. RIO DE JANEIRO. 2008 2.000M2
Tower-lighthouse. 17-storey building competition

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Undressing the ilha de Cotunduba

The Ilha de Cotunduba is excited by the proximity of the 2016 Olympics, wakes up and stretches its arms with the clear intention of reaching the sky, diving into the sea and being visible from the far distance city and by the new visitors arriving by plane.
The Ilha de Cotunduba has decided it is the time to get the finger of responsibility pointing to it and find a new position among the main attractions of Rio de Janeiro. For this new self-assigned task, the Ilha searches inspiration looking towards the people moving along the Copacabana Beach at the same time that feels that the figure of the Pao de Açúcar could be a true companion. The strategy lies on a paradoxical merging between the leisurely walking of the people enjoying Capacabana Beach, the watching and guiding position of such an icon as the Pao de Açúcar and the rhythmic character of the sea.
Beginning from the geological nature of the island itself, the structure for a Tower-Lighthouse emerges from the sea to define a pier that starts a sort of rambling that spreads the rest of the structure like an echo. Once the structure is deeply rooted on the island’s earth, greenery and rocks, the first echoes become a song that guides the rising of the steel structure emerging from the island in the fashion of a stripper that gradually removes this earth, the greenery and rocks to let room for the leisure and cultural facilities to be allocated along the tower.
The Tower-Lighthouse drags the natural elements of the island all along its height. The Tower wants to bring into accord the natural environment of the island with the new uses, avoiding the construction of a self sufficient and independent structure. The result is a movement that pretends to raise the island itself while finding a privileged view for the new facilities and uses.
The Tower is a protrude flow of natural elements that find the way to remain in their new high-rise position. A tower to see the city and a tower to be seen, from the rest of the world. In front of the Morro de Leme and between the Copacabana Beach and the Pao de Açúcar, in a strategic position to wave the ships entering the harbour or planes landing into the city airport.
The scheme is mixed and the proposal wants to integrate observation, leisure, culture and retail in a harmonious walk by clearly concentrating every use on consecutive levels and leaving the task of sewing the promenade to the observation decks and the bridges and paths that communicate them. The Tower grows calmly and irregularly like strolling upwards and having the time to stop here and there on the observation decks to get advantage of the views.

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