Belgium based structural engineering consultancy designed by Ney & Partners, is situated on the Gueen Elisabeth Avenue, connecting Knokke with Ostende in Belgium.

Situated on the Queen Elisabeth Avenue, connecting Knokke with Ostende, this pedestrian bridge full fills two functions. On the one hand, the bridge connects the sea dike with a green zone in the “Polders”, creating tourism possibilities for cyclists and pedestrians. On the other hand the bridge symbolizes the entrance into the marine city of Knokke Heist. The static model is a continuous beam with 102m length that rests on 4 supports. This creates an ideal span division of 28m/46m/28m.

The structural form was first hand sketched, then digitally processed: a software program computed the minimum amount of material required and thus the shapes of the openings. The result is an optimized shape. From a conceptual point of view, the bridge consists of welded bent steel plates of 12mm thickness, forming a structural steel “hammock” to which a concrete deck is tied. To resist shear forces, caused by the bent shape in plan, the sides of the plates are inclined at 45°, with respect to the central axis.

Photographs are made by Daylight

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Here are some more pictures of Danish Firm 3XN Architects winning proposal. The competition was to transform the former freight train halls in Aarhus, Denmark into a new and dynamic cultural center. The winning design was part of an collaboration effort with Nord Arkitekter, Hans Ulrik Jensen A/S,Exner Studio, and Søren Jensen Engineers.

Special thanks to Lise Roland Johansen from 3XN!

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Takei-Nabeshima-Architects -TNA Architects designed this country retreat some 185 miles northwest of Tokyo in Japan. The house is wrapped in rings of glass and wood and has an beautiful uninterrupted 360 view of the forest.

TNA Architects designed rings around the facade so that areas of private spaces and utilities could be met. The height of each ring was decided by the function concealed behind it. The glass between the rings allow you to look straight into the forest, so the whole house appears to dissolve into the forest.

Photographs are made by Daici ano Architectural photography

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Brazilian architect Isay Weinfeld recently won the Shopping category at the World Architecture Festival in Barcelona last week for this store for flip flop brand Havaianas in São Paulo.

Havaianas Sandals, created in 1962, drew their inspiration from the “zori”, traditional Japanese slippers made of rice straw. A product of extremely low cost, for many years they were just rubber flip-flops, a long way from the fashion icon they are today.

To design a store at one of the world’s most expensive addresses (Rua Oscar Freire, in São Paulo) to sell products that cost from € 2.30 to € 10.00 – and not more than that – was, at one time, the excitement and the joy of the work.

This is Havaianas’ first store in Brazil. Our greatest challenge was to cast onto the architecture the climate the brand inspires: freshness, casualness, comfort, ease, well-being, Brazilianness.

The shop has a very informal atmosphere and the outcome is nearly a square – a space fully opened onto the street, practically an extension of the sidewalk, without doors or window displays, with lush greenery and intense natural lighting, only covered by a metal grid alternating glass/wooden closures and openings for ventilation and irrigation.

The building develops in descending levels. At street level, just a small lounge area, a mezzanine overlooking the whole store; the store per se, one level below, occupies an ample clear span featuring double-height ceilings, marked by independent elements: a street market stand reminds of the origin of the sandals, initially sold at the city’s free markets; a container displays the ” export” models, so far unseen in Brazil; a transparent cylinder features the so-called “new products” (bags, socks, towels, etc.); and a high-tech cube tells the story of Havaianas.

Amidst all that, a lowered area for customization services and featuring displays for the children’s product line. At the back of the store, on a half-raised level, there is a small garden for exclusive use by staff; the underground houses offices and storage areas.

Here’s some more information from Isay Weinfeld Arquiteto

Photos are made by Nelson Kon

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Fabbrica, is a Italian restaurant designed by Tjep, located in Rotterdam, Netherland. After the success of restaurant Praq, one of our favorite clients commissioned a new restaurant to be located in the Rotterdam harbor, right between the boats and the cranes. Fabbrica struck us as the most convenient name for this new Italian restaurant.

Fabbrica meaning factory in Italian, we envisioned the canteen of a very special factory: a very romantic factory where pleasure is produced for guests.

Like in the canteen of a factory you will find long tables and benches at Fabbrica, but than colored in Italian ice-cream shop style colors: pink and pistachio green. The oven is placed in a huge tank, covered with italian mosaic. A large wall composed of crane elements is used to store wood to fire the oven.

Every detail combines industrial sturdiness with soft colors or decorative elements. We chose not to intervene with the authentic industrial character of this nineteenth century warehouse so we left all the structures in original state. The walls for example are left intact, in several places large glass panels were placed in front of them covered with Italian wallpaper patterns.

The result is that the patterns seem to float in front of the wall in a complex game of reflections. Lovers get to sit in a train structure that floats in the center of the space. The logo of Fabbrica is based on a font in which the point on the i resembles the beautiful shape of a hand made pizza, but one can also see a full moon, as it enlightens Fabbrica at night.

Photographes are made by Daniel Nicolas

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3XN has won an Architectural Competition to transform the former freight train halls in Aarhus Denmark into a new and dynamic cultural center.

A new cultural hub for scenography, visual arts and literature will soon be constructed within a historical framework in Denmark’s second largest city, Aarhus.  The new cultural center is meant to be an inspiring setting that stimulates production of the arts and facilitates the interaction amongst the various artistic metiers, business and education.

3XNs proposal adds elements of nature, with green spaces injecting a natural raw quality which plays up to the historic nature of the existing halls which were used for rail freight in the past.

The jury’s decision on the winning proposal was based on the project being a ’facilitating link, historical, functional and comprising an architectural spatiality’.

The building is expected to be a flexible space with optimal usage of more than 9,000 m2.  The project is comprised of the renovation of the existing freight halls along with a new building with rooms and large scale auditoria.  The roof of the building will appear as an extension of the green space – and indeed will take the form of a green ‘carpet’ over the new building.  There are a number of other green initiatives that will be brought to the project – primarily with a view to reducing the building’s electricity needs for ventilation, pumps and lighting.

The Cultural Production Center is expected to be completed in 2012 and is a collaboration between the Municipality of Aarhus, Denmark and the Realdania Foundation.

The winning team was comprised of 3XN Architects, Hans Ulrik Jensen A/S, Exners Studio, Nord Arkitekter and Søren Jensen Engineers.

Soon more pictures! Special thanks to Lise Roland Johansen from 3XN!

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Chile-based architect Veronica Arcos has completed an angular house in Santiago, Chile. The Casadetodos villa is a project that arises from a single family house commission, at the high region of El Arrayán, Santiago.

The project is articulated from the intention of exploring potentials in non conventional structures; the generation of complex surfaces and ensuring views towards the mountain.

The structural strategy consists in positioning four metalic frames on each axis. Each frame is conceived as a single architectonic piece which varies according to the programmatic needs, creating ruled surfaces, making a loft through them.

The frames are in this way understood as a series of `components´that repeat and variate in the project benefit. These components try to express the structural efforts as much as they can, leaving them naked, at the interior and exterior of the house. Those are inspired on hanging bridges, aiming to get a slender structure of evident structural efforts by built vectors.

From here big cantilevers are generated which give lightness to the hanging volumes, and create a covered terrace bellow. Each room, excepting the service zone is opened to the mountain. Considering the south facade , the rooms are therefore illuminated from the north with an interior patio and skylights above the rooms on the second floor – remember in the south hemisphere we get the sun from the north. The north facade is completely blind, because it is exposed to the street which is on a higher level.

To get a degree of intimacy on the second level, a double curved surface is constructed; it will be a visual protection and also part of the beach-terrace on the rooftop. In the Casadetodos, the leisure spaces are privileged, spaces that enable a direct relation with the nature in either intimate spaces, or dramatically opened ones towards the mountain.

Photographs are made by Gonzalo Puga, the construction photographs are made by Verónica Arcos.

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Called Loft L by German based architects Adawittfelarchitektur, is a extension to a house that is located in Aachen, Germany. Loft L is a mixed context of detached 1-3 story dwellings and single-family homes.

The building extension consists of prefabricated timber framework elements placed on top of an existing house from the late 50s. The specific shape was generated according to zoning constraints existing on site. The extension has generated additional living space, a “parent floor” for a young pair with two children. The project and its construction was featured on local TV, and with its unique shape, selection of materials, and the new “view” created, the building can be seen as a role model for similar rooftop extensions.

Pictures of assembling process

Photographs by Angelo Kaunat & kadawittfeldarchitektur

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I passed this building several times when it was under construction. I was suprised by seeing the pictures on world architecture news. because it was long time ago that I visited the building. The meeting center in Brussel, Belgium, is designed by A2RC Architects, a Belgium based office. Enjoy the pictures!

An audacious architectural proposition to the city offers a newfound visibility to the former “Palais des Congrès” by means of a poetic emblem embodied in the glass cube that forms the principal entry to SQUARE, Brussels Meeting Centre.

Its treelike structure and an aesthetic based on transparency and light, irresistibly evokes landscape architecture, takes root in history and projects the « Mont des Arts » into modernity. This monumentality, mild and poetic, dialogs with the image of the garden. Present and at the same time melting into the surrounding architectural landscape, it changes in materiality as the light and time of day change. The entry, in the form of a large exterior auditorium, allows an entry to the base of the cube, sliding along the exposition hall under René Pechère’s renovated historic garden. A terrace leads to the upper access situated on the « Esplanade du Mont des Arts ».

The carefully articulated cube contains ribbon shaped suspended stairs and catwalks that connect the different access levels to the complex of 50,000 sqm that optimally exploits the complex existing structure and succeeds in the challenge of increasing the capacity and the efficiency of the whole. Square now offers 27 meeting rooms of 40 to 1,200 for a total capacity of 3,538, an exposition zone of 3,670 sqm divisible in two distinct entities with a free ceiling height of 6m, a restaurant, and a « brasserie » of 420 places.

The reorganization fully exploits natural light in a building where the majority of spaces are underground. The meeting centre also benefits from the presence of prestigious works of art that decorate the foyers and position colours, which create an ambiance specific to the site.

Square therefore constitutes an attractive technological jewel at the heart of the « Quartier des Arts » and consumes the transformation of an important historic site by respect for it’s history and ambition for it’s future.

The poetic emblem of the cube becomes the urban symbol of a new site of communication with the world.

Location: Brussels, Belgium
Client: Palais des Congrès, SPF
Artist: Arne Quinze Studio
Budget: 60,000,000 €
Area: 52,000 sqm
Competition year: 2000
Construction year: (2002) 2006-2009
Photographs by A2RC Architects

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Copenhagen- and Rotterdam based architects Powerhouse Company have completed a spiral-shaped  extension to a house in Burgundy, France. Called Spiral House, the extension is arranged around a central patio, where the visitors can enter the structure.

“We want a house with a twist, a house that has something something to say.”

The Spiral house is an extension of an existing house. Set amongst a generous property covering 13.000m2, crossed by a small river and planted with a wide variety of old ornamental trees, the Spiral House rests within the pastoral charm of the Burgundy landscape.

Despite its traditional architecture the existing house struggled to inhabit and occupy the expansive garden. In contrast the Spiral House expands freely into the garden, seeking to create as many experiences of the garden as possible.

In a gentle lift from the ground floor to the roof level it creates a surprising variety of spaces that blur the boundaries between the house and the garden where the architecture and the landscape merge together.

In wrapping the house around a planted patio the Spiral House is reminiscent of a french ‘Clos’: an enclosed vineyard common to the famous landscape of the region. In the Spiral House the ‘Clos’ is transformed into an inviting gesture, the peripheral wall is lifted and twisted to create a spiral. In turn it creates a continuous invitation from outside to inside and a continuous movement from the entrance to the more intimate rooms of the house.

The patio, the covered terrace and the panoramic views serve to connect the house with the garden, inviting the guests to unwind and enjoy the garden’s tranquillity. Its geometry grew out of the internal organization of the house mixed with the particular requests of the client. Large and open rooms with high ceilings are used on the ground floor for the living room and library, while smaller, more intimate spaces are used for two guest suites. It also includes a multipurpose dorm/playroom for the kids and their friends.

Visit villa 1 by Powerhouse Company on archiDE, here

Photographs are by Bas Princen. Drawings are by Charles Bessard, architect-in-charge and partner of Powerhouse Company.

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