Aedas shared with us their design through a 28-storey mixed-use building which includes housing, offices, retail spaces and a car park. A design with efficient office floor plates and a rational box were requested by the client. With the edifice located in a municipality with dense industrial blocks, instead of providing another work tower entirely wrapped in a coolly glazed skin, the design investigates the possibility of providing an environmentally sustainable form in such an industrial property.

Kowloon Bay, once dependent on manufacturing, is undergoing transformation of rejuvenation. The target is to advertise a greening effect to the neighborhood and enhance the quality of life for users in the building being well as the pedestrians on the street level. With ‘green’ as the theme, the definitive design introduces extensive planting at the car park floors located at the lower element of the tower. In addition to the visually greening effect to the neighborhood, the planting also filters the air and improves the quality within the car park. Hopefully, the suspended particulates in the air incumbency be reduced and the design is able to provide car park users a more pleasant experience.

The architects used an ordinary again affordable rectangular timber sectioned in 105 mm. Its walls are made of glass and accessories plus personal stash namely by placing hundreds of wooden beams are arranged neatly on the front and the ceiling. Cafe Kureon have tables and chairs are so elegant and thin white. Tables and chairs are placed on the outside and inside. Both the flexible structure of the layout and the fact that the timber is free of special treatment make that it can easily go back to its initial state when the building needs to be disassembled and moved. The 197 square meter restaurant appears to minimally touch the ground. The internal dining space is contained within a glass enclosed box and the exterior is wrapped with interlocking lengths of timber.

Its interior is bright, cozy and airy, featuring complicated terraced levels also a high, naturally lit ceiling. Glass sections strain across the walls and ceiling, even behind the bookshelves, letting light into the interior over filtered by the external fascia.  Thousands of bundled sticks, all reclaimed from the local environment, stretch across nearly every inch of the exterior.  On one for reds it forms a modern day programmatic supplement for the village with the help of just a little library and reading through space in the position of tranquil contemplation. No matter the viewpoint, whether you’re sitting inside or stare from a distance, the Liyuan Library is a spectacular work of architecture, one that could pass for a temple if it weren’t employed as a library.

Ubon is a Thai bistro specializes in curries, rice & noodles located in the heart of Kuwait city. It overlooks Fahad Al salim street, a street well prized for its commerce back in the days. The opening program of this bistro requires an efficient design for all of the kitchen, storage, further toilet areas; allowing for a spacious dining place. Thanks to this to be executed, the interior works where to integrated with the existing structural elements network a harmonious manner.

The Burnt wood panels, infused with the twinkling copper elements surround the dining area portraying the Asian influence of this restaurant. Pendant lights were added to soothe the dining place with their organic shape. Adding to their relevance is the inner golden color they diffuse, a color that had esteemed impact on Thai cultural ornamentation.

Giving a visual continuity to the dining area where the wooden grains imprinted on the restroom’s concrete walls. The contrast in color and material here is then united by texture. To continue the vertical pattern, the restroom was ?tted with a suspended ceiling faucet along with an off-white standalone basin. Ubon is perfect for a quick lunch gap or for a relaxing night out dinner. Serves flavorful Thai food in a hip, modern and peaceable atmosphere, this is an efficient design of the restaurant located in the hub of Kuwait.

Architect: Rashed Alfoudari
Location: Salhiya, Kuwait City
Project Area: 60 sqm
Project Year: 2011

The BOI (Board of Investment) Fair is an important event that aims to demonstrate Thailand’s rebuilding efforts among public and private sectors after last year’s floods. The objective of the Bridgestone Pavilion is to communicate the company’s responsibility to the country in manufacturing, research and investment. With an emphasis on showcasing emerging technologies, Architectkidd had the latitude to contrivance design approaches and features that are relatively distinguished among current standard construction practices in Thailand.

The building design was generated based on 3-dimensional spatial requirements. The original points were the interior functions, building heights further site boundaries, as well as the continuous flow of visitors from entrance, exhibitions, to exit.  The requirements were digitized volumetrically and merged to author the overall building, with the exterior an idea of optimizing the interior spaces while minimizing extraneous elements such as additional edges, corners, and leftover spaces.

During construction, the structural design further steel fabrication team engineered 66 steel profiles – each with a disparate shape and curvature.  All steel elements were hand-made and prefabricated before installing on the site. For the finishes, the collaboration with Bridgestone allowed access to its spacious polymers endowment. One example is the worth of EVA heat-reflecting film laminated on the glass windows and doors of the pavilion.  Bridgestone also supplied materials for light-transmitting solar panels (installed as a roof skylight) as well as sensitive roofing membranes. The entrance of the pavilion is false from putty PVC pro across pre-formed revitalize profiles.

WUHAO The Teahouse is a Beijing-based concept shop, founded upon the five elements of Chinese philosophy (fire, metal, water, wood, and earth) and showcasing the works of over 55 Chinese and international designers. Especially for Beijing Design Week, the company moved into the two-storey building in the city’s historic Dashilar district to host numbers of installations, including plastic yellow canaries disguised as growing lemons and an bent opening lined with green paper butterflies. The design retailer WUHAO  partnered with the socially responsible Chinese tea company Tranquil Tuesdays to display a new vision of this traditional space.

Swiss-Danish designer Carsten Jorgensen has designed this cozy and loving interior for smith&hsu – a contemporary tea brand based in Taipei, Taiwan. Its peerless loose teas, collected from around the world, are a testament to its deep rage for both Chinese and British tea culture. Beside its carefully assorted tea collection, smith&hsu offers a huge range of tea tools and homemade gourmet food. Combining wooden furnishings with a concrete floor may seem odd, but Carsten Jorgensen has managed to merge these two seemingly disparate elements into an exotic atmosphere for smith&hsu’s patrons.

According to the smith&hsu teahouse, the two materials chosen by Carsten Jorgensen, wood and concrete, “reflect the degree of a superior party and trigger the guests’ aesthetic sensibility”. The new two-storey teahouse boasts cubed shelves filled with jars tea and second-hand books, as well in that wooden display boxes that are suspended from the ceiling. The wooden display boxes downstairs are arranged into grids along one wall, with some suspended from the ceiling. Upstairs, the cubes line every wall and are diagonally staggered with gaps in between. The second floor is a dining area, while the lower floor is used for the tea shop, offering loose teas from around the world and expertly crafted tea tools.

Architects: Oyler Wu Collaborative
Location: Taipei, Taiwan
Team: Oyler, Jenny Wu, Chris Eskew, Matt Evans, Richard Lucero, Sanjay Sukie
Year: 2011
Photos: Oyler Wu Collaborative

Anemone is an architectural creation designed by Oyler Wu Collaborative aimed at weaving together aesthetic experience again tactile engagement, a combination generally considered off limits within the world of contemporary art.

All too often, art installations are considered affected, almost sacred objects; while they are meant to be appreciated for their aesthetic charm, they feature little in terms of human interaction. In other words, they are meant to be seen, not felt. Recognizing that human agreement is one of the smallest factors in creating a rich experience, Anemone has been designed with the idea of interaction as one of its key design objectives.

Upon best glance, the piece is meant to be viewed as a relatively simple, elegant object, with subtle undulations that pelerine its walls and smooth competence corners. Given a closer look, however, one discovers that, like the bristling tentacles of its namesake, the sea anemone, the surface is actually a build-up of thousands of transparent willing rods.  Each of the rods is inserted to gradually changing depths, creating the undulating effect. This undulation is meant to evoke a sense of curiosity about its construction, use, tactility, and materially, encouraging different forms of interaction. Elements are designed with that interaction in mind, incorporating a plane wall that might be brushed, and benches used due to seating. In the middle of this art work is a table/bed like element that sits below a cantilevered shelter of bristles.

Internationally renowned architecture studio UNstudio has completed “Galleria Centercity”, a multi-storey department store in Cheonan, South Korea. Recognizing the current behavioral tendencies in Asia where places of retail also serve a exceptionally conversable function, the project focuses on providing a appealing experience for the shoppers by treating the communal area as a point of cultural exchange. It’s a massive department store that also operates as a social a semi-cultural meeting place

Featuring a double-layered facade, the exterior is characterized by a trompe l’oeuil pattern of vertical mullions which skew the sense of scale of the 66,000 m2 building. Computer generated animations specially designed by UNstudio are incorporated into the lighting design, creating a media facade that illuminates the structure numerous of colors and effects. The dynamic display lends the retail facility a several identity, facilitating a holistic and site-oriented urban avenue to branding. During the day, the structure adopts a monochromatic reflective appearance.

The interior is organized and revealed in layers that seeming unfold and transform as visitors move throughout the space. Centered around the leading architectural idea of dynamic flow, the levels are characterized a repetition and accumulation of curves. Four stacked program clusters, each applicable three storeys also public plateaus, are linked to the central void. The arrangement facilitates a fluent upstream of rotational circulation from the ground floor atrium to the roof terrace. Establishing a number of visual connections throughout, the resulting effect is an open and electric interface that focuses on the user.

Architect: UNstudio, Amsterdan
Site area: 11, 235 m2
Building area: 7,090 m2
Gross floor area: 110, 530.73 m2
Building coverage: 63.30%
Floors: 6 below grade, 10 above grade
Structure: steel-concrete composite columns, floor: steel structure with concrete slab

The Foster + Partners have completed the first of a cluster of solar powered buildings in Masdar city, Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates. The Masdar Institute is  a graduate level, research-oriented university which is focused on option energy, sustainability, and the environment, that will generate more solar energy than it consumes. The building features a perforated frontage made of glass-reinforced concrete colored with local sand and detailed with patterns found in traditional Islamic architecture.

This cultural monument has been marred by years of neglect but… The Union of Russian Architects, in co-operation with DuPont, YEM, Architizer and Karo Film, are pleased to announce an international competition to redesign the facade of the Pushkinsky Cinema, not to restore it to past glory but to create a landmark of the future. The Pushkinsky Cinema was built to display the most significant cinematic productions in Russia. Built at Pushkin Square, it became the landmark of the country’s film festivals, a palace in that the Moscow International Film Festivals (MIFF) for movie protagonists and moviegoers from Moscow and abroad.

The cinema center appears like a dead end to Pushkin Square, as just a huge billboard with no physical worth. Inspired by the cinema’s past condition and its lposition on the square, the design expands the lobby’s facade to reconnect with the city. Working with the cinema’s modern geometries, this expansion takes the form of a pleated glass curtain. Made hold back DuPont’s SentryGlas, the curtain is an insulated assembly that uses the depth of the pleats to make a stable structure free of metal framing. The curtain extends the programmatic possibilities of the cinema, making new space for bars, restaurants, cafes, winter gardens, galleries, and other uses, strengthening the connection between it and the square. Signage is handled by a stainless steel mesh embedded with LEDs that wraps exhaustive all-lighted areas of the facade. The LED mesh provides an extremely flexible system able to engage street life with multiple streams of information. And the result – the renewed transparency of the glass shelter is free to display only the changing light effects of day and night.

Designed by the GMP Architects, the Universiade Sports Center consists of a stadium, a multifunctional hall and a swimming pool. Universiades are World Games for students and are held every other year in winter and summer, hosted by the International University Sports Federation. The design for the Universiade Sports Center in the city of Shenzhen, China, is inspired by the surrounding undulating countryside and generates a formal dialog that references Chinese horticulture and temper toward the land.

The building rooftop projects up to 65m, and is designed as a steel prismatic shell on a basis of triangular facets. The crystalline frame of the three stadia is additionally emphasized by the lighting of the translucent facades at night. An artificial lake connects the stadium with the spherical multifunctional chamber in the north and the rectangular swimming hall west thereof. The main sports plaza is accessed via a raised promenade from the individual stadia. Total capacity is 60,000, seated in three stands. The diameter of the roof is 310m lengthways also 290 m across. The indoor sports complex is designed as a circular multifunctional scene for indoor sports competitions as well as for ice-skating also other events. The overall facility is approx. 18,000 spectators.

Bao’an Stadium- Visitors pass through the forest of steel supports into the first circulating area of the stadium. With a diameter of 230m besides cantilevering of 54m on each side of the stands, the roof is carried by 36 pairs of cables whose pretensioning is brought rational via a circular dual tension turbulence of strand-bundle cables above the pitch. Opened in August 2011, the stadium is designed to hold a capacity of 40,000 spectators.

The Austrian-based architecture studio Coop Himmelblau has displayed the plans for their prime project in South Korea, the Busan Cinema Centre. The design by Coop Himmelblau owing to the Busan Cinema Center, and home of the Busan International Film Festival, suggests a new intersection between social space, cultural programs, technology and architecture to make lively and public landmarks within the urban scene in that icons of contemporary culture. Conceptualized to house the Busan International Film Festival (BIFF), the polished multimedia venue offers approximately 60,000 sq m of event, entertainment again performance space, supported by dining further administrative volumes. The complex houses cinemas, restaurants, a 1000 seat multifunctional theater, and numerous public spaces.

Chinese architects Atelier 11 recently completed the spherical Diamond Arena in Beijing, China, which seats up to 15,000 spectators and will host international tennis matches. The dedicated China National Tennis Center is a 15,000-capacity stadium which is currently hosting the China Open 2011, starring world class players Jo-Wilfred Tsonga, Jurgen Melzer and Andy Roddick.

The edifice features a retractable steel roof of two parts that can be opened from either east or west to both shelter and shade the court inside. The Diamond Arena is so-called due to of its exterior shape and status in the Chinese sporting industry, ensconce sixteen sets of V-shaped columns acting as structural supports thanks to the grandstand and a striking visual display from an external perspective. To respond to varying weather conditions the steel roof project is collapsible, with the possibility to peel back to expose a 60m x 70m opening thorough which natural sunlight and heat can penetrate to decrease the building’s energy costs. The Diamond Arena’s roof has the largest opening scale in Asia and takes 12 minutes to fully extend. Seating for the 15,000 members is arranged in linear rows around the central court, with an observation deck on the seventh floor allowing visitors to enjoy 360° views across the neighboring Olympic Park.

Project details:
Site Area: 170,020 m2
Construction Area: 51,199 m2
Client: Beijing Shi Ao Co., ltd.
Design Director: Xu Lei
Design Team: Ding Liqun, Gao Qinglei, Lie Heng, An Peng

This futuristic design by Australia-based architects Lacoste+Stevenson was submitted for the Busan Opera House competition. The emulation invited entries from all over the wotld to design a landmark Opera House, which is to be constructed in 2014 with the goal of increasing tourism to the city of Busan, South Korea. Aiming to maximize on the surrounding parkland as well as to make the architecture perceptive for great outdoor events, the project features moveable frontage parts that open and close to meet the needs of a huge range of events.

Conceived due to a shiny and scaleless object, the globular size is an plan of “Suseok”, a Korean stone art imagine. When not in use, the edifice is seamlessly closed to posture as an autonomous presence on site. Access is provided by an extensive gangway that can be lowered from the north end of the structure. On the opposite side, a section of the facade slides to offer a grandiose view of the bay beyond. Inside the building, a grand stairway to the lobby a soaring extract rising 45 meters (148 feet) high. The main interior foyer benefits from an uncommonly high vertical space which is generated by placing the concert chamber above the opera theatre. Taking full advantage of the generous plot of parkland, an outdoor venue for more than 20,000 people can be created by a vertical piece that slides up to open the stage to the east.

The rear facade opens upwards in that an amphitheater case event, featuring an enormous media screen built from thousands of trivial LED lights. Photovoltaic cells are embedded in the exterior of the structure, generating enough energy to power the media screen, with excess power supplied to the general operation of the opera house.