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Dirk Somers, founder of Antwerp studio Bovenbouw Architectuur, created a “fictional, yet recognisable” Flemish city named Composite Presence for the Belgian Pavilion at this year’s Venice Architecture Biennale. More
Dutch architecture practice Kaan Architecten has concealed a minimalist wing within the existing 19th-century structure of the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Antwerp. More
O-office Architects has converted several buildings on a tea plantation near Guangzhou, China, into a cultural centre featuring a rooftop garden wrapped in bamboo screens.As part of the (Re)forming Duichuan Tea Yards project, local firm O-office Architects was tasked with revitalising three disused buildings at the plantation in the Gaoming District of Guangdong Province.
O-office Architects has converted three factory buildings into an exhibition space
The site in Duichuan Village was established as a tea plantation in the 1950s and comprises more than 300 acres of gently rolling hills dotted with small lakes.
O-office Architects was approached to help transform three factory buildings into an exhibition space in 2017, after the tea yard had been abandoned and fallen into disrepair when the demand for its tea declined at the start of the 21st century.
The buildings are decorated with bamboo screens. Photo is by Huang Chengqiang
The exhibition space is located at the heart of the reestablished production facility, which will soon begin harvesting its first new crop of Duichuan tea.
The renovated buildings now contain exhibits offering visitors a historic overview of Duichuan tea culture, alongside a fine-dining restaurant and the tea yard’s offices.
A new stone podium wrapping the buildings frames views of the landscape
The three 1980s edifices are situated on a small island in an artificial reservoir that also contains woodland, with low-rise former workers’ housing nestled amongst the trees.
Exposed concrete structures and narrow-framed steel windows were retained to evoke the buildings’ industrial heritage. The architects also sought to enhance the connection between the former production spaces and the surrounding plantation.
The complex is surrounded by several ponds and trees
“We tried to find a simple spatial prototype for the reconstruction of the site to load the envisioned cultural settlement,” said the architects in a project statement.
“The design gradually approached a concept of the mixture of ‘pavilion’ and ‘podium’,” the studio added. “We tried to evolve the prototype of the ‘pavilion’ into a settlement that encompasses production and detour.”
Roof gardens are connected by bridges
To house the main cultural and public spaces dedicated to the history of tea production, a new podium made from blocks of dark local granite was constructed around the base of the existing buildings.
This structure functions as a viewing platform and contains openings that redefine the relationship between indoor and outdoor spaces, lending the facility a more porous and welcoming character.
The podium is composed of blocks of dark local granite
New roof gardens on top of the three factory buildings are connected by bridges so visitors can traverse the site whilst taking in aerial views of the plantation.
The garden courtyards are lined with bamboo screens that also extend onto staircases at the corners of the buildings. The stairs connect the rooftop with the stone viewing platform, creating a route that leads visitors all the way around and over the site.
The factories’ original concrete structures are exposed inside
“This connection creates a vertical yet horizontal promenade that wraps around the original production space,” the architects pointed out.
“We hope this tour can evoke a sense of ‘in search of a lost time’ [whilst] at the same time acting as a response against the rapid industrialisation of modern urban and rural areas.”
O-office Architects reinterprets traditional Chinese courtyard house in concrete and steel
The blending of the industrial buildings with the plantation is enhanced by landscaping that includes several ponds and trees that reach through apertures in the stone podium.
The new podium contains public spaces
O-office Architects was established by He Jianxiang and Jiang Ying in Guangzhou in 2007. The firm works on projects across various scales, from urban design and architecture to the exhibition and furniture design.
Several of O-office Architects’ projects focus on renovation and conserving the architectural history of the Pearl River Delta. It previously worked on a residence inspired by vernacular courtyard houses found in the region.
Photography is by Zhang Chao unless stated.
Project credits:
Architect: O-office ArchitectsClient: Midea GroupDesign team: He Jianxiang, Jiang Ying, Dong Jingyu, Huang Chengqiang, Zhang Wanyi, Cai Lehuan, Wu Yifei, He Zhenzhong, He Wenkang and Peng WeisenStructural consultant: Situ Ying, Luo Qiyao and Luo JiajieM.E. consultant: Bun Cong M&E DesignV.I. Design: TheWhy art x design
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Located in a former garage space at the base of a residential block, this school for music in the Spanish city of Burgos makes a feature of the building’s existing concrete structure.Local architect Enrique Jerez and interior designer Blanca Leal were commissioned to create the Yoglar school by a client, who wanted to create a “home” for early music and piano education.
Classrooms in the open-plan extension are demarcated through orange vinyl flooring
The original trapezoidal plot in which the school is located was built in 1947 along with the adjacent residential building.
The garage faces the street while an extension with a mezzanine, which was added in 1952 to increase storage space, is located at the back. Supported by pillars, this features a barrel-vaulted concrete ceiling and covers the building’s original courtyard.
The reception features built-in birch furniture
Instead of dismantling this “disorganised” structure, the architects decided to leave the irregular, concrete shell almost untouched.
As such, the 205-square-metre school is divided into two areas. The original, trapezoidal garage space is home to an entrance hall, reception desk and toilets alongside a manager’s office and the school’s largest classroom.
The extension is nicknamed “the forest” and houses a menagerie of plants
The former courtyard area is now nicknamed “the forest” and houses two irregularly-shaped classrooms. One of these is enclosed within a house-shaped volume, which was sound-proofed with the help of three-centimetre-thick cork panels.
The second classroom is located within the larger open-plan space and is delineated by its orange vinyl flooring.
A spiral staircase made from blackened steel leads up to the mezzanine level, which has retained its original function as a storage space.
The spiral staircase is made from blackened steel
Natural light is funnelled into the school through two sets of glass doors at the back of the space that open onto a small patio.
The floors, walls and ceilings throughout are finished in polished concrete to bring a cohesive feel to the different spaces while enhancing the acoustics.
The designers also added built-in birch furniture to bring some warmth to the otherwise cool concrete space.
Primary school children create Mega Maker Lab in former London fire station
“Our aim was to design a place both unique and functional, which could foster children’s creativity while achieving clear results in their music development from zero to 12 years,” said Jerez and Leal.
The floors and walls are finished in polished concrete
In the Czech Republic, architecture studios FUUZE and Public Atelier recently converted a series of old church buildings into a modern primary school with the help of brightly coloured interventions.
The project involved building new classrooms and restoring the decaying roof trusses of the original church complex back to its former glory.
Images are courtesy of Javier Bravo.
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US firm Trahan Architects has renovated the Coca-Cola Stage at the Alliance Theater in Atlanta, Georgia, using steam-bent timber to form an undulating auditorium.Constructed in 1968, the 650-seat Alliance Theater is part of the Woodruff Arts Center campus in the state capital of Georgia.
The 1960s theatre was gutted and refurbished
For the renovation, Trahan Architects stripped the interiors of the lobby, theatre and backstage areas back to the original concrete walls.
New York-based, steam-bent furniture designer Matthias Pliessnig collaborated on the design of the wooden elements, which were made by fabrication specialists CW Keller Associates.
Steam-bent timber curves around the seating. Photo by Trahan Architecture
Pliessnig created a 1:1 scale mock-up of the Coca-Cola Stage at the Alliance Theater and shared his expertise in steam bending wood, a process that involves heating wood to make it pliable and bending it by hand.
Revolving auditorium is showpiece of Boulevard theatre by SODA
“The result is a series of beautiful steam-bent millwork guardrails and balconies that merge handcraft with mass production,” said Trahan Architects.
“The synthesis of acoustic performance, hand-driven artistry, and sophisticated laser positioning are all carefully choreographed to execute the complex steam-bent millwork without the need for wasteful CNC moulds.”
All of the seating zones are connected in the theatre
The seating is now 10 feet (three metres) closer to the stage than before, and the seating of the stalls abuts the orchestra pit.
Seating stacked around and above the stalls in the balconies are defined by curving wooden elements but are not separated.
The architects said this design decision was a symbolic one to draw on Atlanta’s history. The city was America’s most racially segregated after 1865 when slaved were freed in the US, right up until the 1960s.
During this period, black people were barred from eating at certain restaurants or attending certain cinemas reserved for white patrons or were forced to sit in separate seating.
Trahan Architects worked with a sculptor on the wooden design
“The design team felt a responsibility to remove the separation between balcony and orchestra – challenging historic notions of segregation and discrimination,” said Trahan Architects.
“All seating zones can be accessed from every entrance within the chamber.”
Steam-bending timber created less waste than CNC cutting the wood
Based in New Orleans and New York, Trahan Architects was founded in 1992 by Trey Trahan. Previous work by the practice includes a visitor centre for an 18th-century plantation in Louisiana.
The Coca-Cola Stage at the Alliance Theater is shortlisted for Dezeen Awards 2020 in the civic and cultural interior category, along with a museum in Pittsburgh built in a ligtening-struck library and a museum of architecture models in China.
Photography is by Leonid Furmansky unless otherwise stated.
Project credits:
Architect: Trahan ArchitectsDesign team: Trey Trahan, Leigh Breslau, Brad McWhirter, Robbie Eleazer, James Babin, Scott Melançon, Conway Pedron, Ayesha Husain, Sarah Hussaini, Wenyun Qian, Andrew FuArtist collaboration: Matthias PliessnigMillwork fabrication: CW Keller AssociatesTheatre consultants: Theatre Projects ConsultantsAcoustics: Talaske GroupStructural engineer: Uzun + CaseMEP: DLB Associates Consulting EngineersLighting designer: Fisher Marantz StoneGraphic design: ThirstLife safety: Jensen HughesProject and cost management: Cost+ Plus VerticalTransportation: Lerch Bates
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The Church of Pope John Paul II in Páty, Hungary, is a crescent-shaped building featuring skewed angles and whitewashed concrete that aims to turn “passive observers” into active participants of worship.Local practice Robert Gutowski Architects filled the church in the village of Páty in Budapest with modern takes on traditional aspects of Medieval, ecclesiastical architecture.
The intention was to shift the emphasis towards the altar and the congregation to make the act of worship more engaging.
The Church of Pope John Paul II features an elliptical layout
Traditional churches typically have a rectangular floor plan and are made up of a nave – the central part of the church – and an apse – the semicircular or polygonal area at the end of the aisle, usually located behind the altar.
The Church of Pope John Paul II, however, has an elliptical layout, made up of the crescent-shaped building of worship that wraps around an adjoining oval-shaped outdoor space.
Therefore what would typically be the nave of a conventional church functions as the churchyard or garden, while the liturgical space is situated where the apse would be.
The church interior features whitewashed reinforced concrete ceilings and walls
As studio founder Robert Gutowski explains, this layout was designed to place more emphasis on the communal experience of the Eucharist and to “invite people closer to the holy act” at the altar.
“If you like, we invite people into the apse, surrounding the altar, forming a community,” the architect explained. “It is also similar to the liturgy of early times, when Paleochristians simply surrounded a table in their own home – what is known as Domus Ecclesiae.”
The design aims to place more emphasis on the Eucharist and the altar
“The church clearly defines its purpose: while the Creator and the almighty God are at the centre of traditional liturgy, modern liturgical efforts have shifted emphasis to the recreator God, the image of a perpetually redeeming Christ,” Gutowski added.
“The Church of Pope John Paul II represents a conscious response to liturgical changes in recent decades, rendering it a model church experiment in contemporary church architecture,” he continued.
“Emphasis is shifted toward the active involvement of worshippers.The community is not a passive observer of events in a sanctuary, but rather actively experiences the holy act.”
The church building itself has a crescent-like shape
Several rooms lead off of the central, liturgical space, including a communal room, a service room and an office on the ground floor, and an educational room, guest room, the priest’s living quarters, and access to the bell tower on the first floor.
Each of these rooms are enclosed in one, whole elliptical floor plan – a form chosen to symbolise “perpetuity” and to create a holistic space.
“The concept is that when we say ‘church’, this does not refer only to the part of the chapel, but rather to the whole community building in one singular form,” explained Gutowski.
Angled walls and off-centre details represent the broken body of Christ
The two ellipses formed by the crescent-shaped church and the adjoining yard have been set at different axes. This is following the historically “inaccurate” layout of traditional churches, wherein the nave and the apse tend to be slightly off-centre of each other.
“We cannot name one single church that sits on the same axis, because pretty much all of the historical churches in Europe have this tiny ‘mistake’, which actually became a symbol of the broken body of Christ,” added Gutowski.
This symbol of Christ’s broken body has been extended to the church interior, which features walls set at slanted, uneven angles.
Spotlights and skylights illuminate significant spaces in the church
The domed ceiling, made from reinforced concrete, is lined with spotlights that illuminate various sacral functions such as the area of the altar and surrounding alcoves filled with religious artworks.
A rectangular cutout in the ceiling also fills the room with natural light, which is directed particularly at the centre towards the altar.
The altar is carved from a single block of deep green stone
While the majority of the interior has been painted white – bar the natural-wood pews – the altar is carved from a single block of deep green onyx stone, standing out from its surroundings to serve as the focal point of the space.
The structure itself is symmetrical but every detail is asymmetrical, such as the alcoves. The altar is the only element that sits on the main axis of the building.
Steps made of white Carrara marble lead up to the altar, which have trapezoid-shaped surfaces with rounded corners to allow gathering around the sanctuary space.
A curved staircase leads up to the first floor
The design and construction of The Church of Pope John Paul II was carried out with the help of the local community. The church was built mainly using donations, and was consecrated in 2019.
The church has been shortlisted in the civic and cultural interior project category of this year’s Dezeen Awards.
Crematorium Siesegem by Kaan Architecten rejects “pompous monumentalism”
Other projects in this category include a crematorium in Belgium designed by Rotterdam-based studio Kaan Architecten, which is made up of one rectilinear volume made from blocks of unfinished concrete.
A museum for children in Pittsburgh has also been shortlisted in the civic and cultural interior project category, which US firm KoningEizenberg Architecture renovated from the remains of a historic library that was struck by lightning.
Project credits:
Architect: Robert GutowskiDesign team: Ákos Boczkó, Gáspár Bollók, Barnabás Dely-Steindl, Hunor László Kovács, István Kövér, Attila Révai, Béla Ákos SzokolayArtworks: Csaba Ozsvári, István Böjte HorváthLandscape design: Attila PállEngineering: Zoltán Klopka, András Lantos, Gáspár Sándor, Gellért Mérő, János MészárosPhotography: Tamás Bujnovszky
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New York studio LTL Architects has designed minimal grey interiors that contrast white neoclassical pillars for the USA’s first major museum dedicated to the history of posters. The museum, called Poster House, is on the ground floor of an existing 10-storey building near Madison Square Park on the border of the New York’s Chelsea neighbourhood. […] More
US firm Koning Eizenberg Architecture left worn-looking ornate walls, brickwork and columns inside this museum for children in Pittsburgh, which occupies a historic library that was struck by lightning. Koning Eizenberg Architecture (KEA) designed the transformation of the damaged library into MuseumLab for the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh. It forms an extension of its campus […] More
