CAIRO EXPO CITY [CAIRO, EGYPT]

Images courtesy of Zaha Hadid Architects

Here's some text from the designer:

Zaha Hadid Architects’ proposal for Cairo Expo City delivers an iconic architectural vision for a unique facility for Cairo, a city for Exhibitions and Conference between downtown Cairo and the airport. The project comprises a major international exhibition and conference centre with business hotel. This will create a rich ensemble of diverse functions which caters for multiple audiences and activates the site across different times and days of the week.

Images courtesy of Zaha Hadid Architects

The urban strategy of the Cairo Expo pursues the idea of creating a homogeneous urban cluster mass that adapts to the site boundaries. Analysing the brief, we have understood the scale of the project in terms of the connectivity points and the program distribution. We have proposed a carving of the urban mass into smaller clusters that can work as individual buildings and have their own massing features, however relating to part of the overall design.

Images courtesy of Zaha Hadid Architects

This concept is driven and inspired by the Nile delta that has pumped the life in to Egypt. On Cairo Expo City site the carving and sculpturing process starts from this artery, running through the site, connecting the north to south. Secondary streams formed by crowd movements toward the site converge to the centre. The designed movement of people within these streams also start to form and adjust the building entrances on the site. The horizontal expansion of the Exhibition Centre is balanced by introducing of a vertical element, the Hotel, at the northern part of the site, overlooking Salah Salem Street.

Images courtesy of Zaha Hadid Architects

The fluidity of the landscaped spaces feed the undulating vortex forms of the Cairo Expo City buildings. In particular, vortex lines and fields of the landscape merge into the patterned skin of the individual buildings, nature resonates throughout this site.

CAIRO EXPO CITY [CAIRO, EGYPT]

Design Development 2010

PROGRAM:            Exhibition and Conference Centre.

CLIENT:                  GOIEF, Egypt

ARCHITECT:          Zaha Hadid Architects

Design                    Zaha Hadid with Patrik Schumacher

Project Directors   Viviana Muscettola, Michele Pasca di Magliano

Project Team          Kutbuddin Nadiadi, Effi e Kuan, Loreto Flores, Hee Seung Lee, Alvin Triestanto, Pierre Forrisier, Philipp Ostermaier, Xia Chun, Victoria Goldestein, Shirley Hottier, Katrina Wong Natalie Popik, Gerry Cruz

Competition team Viviana Muscettola, Michele Pasca di Magliano, Charles Walker, Tariq Khayyat, Kutbuddin Nadiadi,Ludovico Lombardi, Effi e Kuan, Loreto Flores, Bianca Cheung,Dominiki Dadatsi, Feng Lin, Annarita Papeschi, Hee Seung Lee, Dawna Houchin, Monica Noguero, Rafael Contreras, Maria Araya, Fernando Poucell, David Campos, Seda Zirek.

STRUCTURE AND M&E ENG.:             Buro Happold, London

CONSULTANTS:                                    Quantity Surveyor                 Gardiner and Theobald, London

Specialist engineering Buro Happold, London

Theatre consultant Theater Projects Consultants

Lighting consultant               Offi ce for Visual Interaction

Landscape             GrossMax

SIZE:                       Footprint                                Site 395,650 m2

Exhibition Hall 132,586 m2

Conference Centre 11,600 m2

Total Floor Area Exhibition Hall appx 154,162 m2

Convention Centre appx 38,450 m2

Advertising

ลุ้นรับ NISSAN MARCH รุ่น 1.2 V CVT สีขาวมุก จาก ensogo.com จำนวน 1 คัน (มูลค่า 514,000 บาท) 


http://www.ensogo.com/msn/bangkok_msn/invitation/?s=c6b5a320e5d63cad502a53a5acf4cc71

CapitaLand, Hotel Properties Limited and partners unveil

d’Leedon condominium along Farrer Road

Images courtesy of Zaha Hadid Architects 

Here's some text from the designer:
Singapore, 25 November 2010 – CapitaLand, Hotel Properties Limited and their partners today unveiled d’Leedon, an iconic residential development along Farrer Road on the site of the former Farrer Court. The landmark project will be the first condominium in Singapore to be designed by internationally-renowned Pritzker Architecture Prize winner Zaha Hadid. d'Leedon is being developed by a CapitaLand-led consortium that includes Hotel Properties Limited, a fund managed by Morgan Stanley Real Estate and Wachovia Development Corporation (a unit of Wells Fargo & Company).

Images courtesy of Zaha Hadid Architects 

A total of 1,715 units – comprising 1,703 apartments and 12 exclusive semi-detached houses – will be built on the expansive 840,049 sq ft site. The apartments are spread over seven residential towers, with each enjoying a cluster of facilities tailored to the lifestyles of the respective groups of residents. The residential towers occupy only 22% of the site, freeing up a vast landscaped area of over 650,000 sq ft dedicated to lush greenery and recreational facilities.

Images courtesy of Zaha Hadid Architects 

Rising majestically above the surrounding good class bungalows and low-rise condominiums, the project’s seven 36-storey residential towers will offer unobstructed views of Singapore’s skyline as well as breathtaking views of large expanses of greenery such as Botanic Gardens and the Bukit Timah Nature Reserve. d’Leedon is within walking distance to the Farrer Road MRT Station on the Circle Line, and close to highly-sought-after top schools like Nanyang Primary School, Raffles Girls' Primary School and Hwa Chong Institution, as well as popular lifestyle hubs such as Dempsey Hill, Holland Village and Orchard Road.

Images courtesy of Zaha Hadid Architects 

The first preview sales to former owners of Farrer Court will be held this weekend, followed by the public launch. This first launch will be for 200 choice units located across all floors in two residential towers, with unit types ranging from one plus study- to four-bedroom units. The average price of the units is S$1,680 per square foot.

Mr Wong Heang Fine, CEO of CapitaLand Residential Singapore, said: “High-end projects, as well as projects with strong location attributes, continue to be attractive to Singaporeans as well as foreigners. The foreigners appreciate Singapore's dynamism and vibrancy. Given its prestigious District 10 location and striking Zaha Hadid design, we are confident that d’Leedon will be well-received by investors and discerning homebuyers who appreciate living in a beautifully-designed architectural icon. We are excited to play a part in shaping Singapore’s landscape with this striking landmark.”
Mr Christopher Lim, Group Executive Director of Hotel Properties Limited, said, “d’Leedon has been a closely-watched development, and that is not unusual if one considers its prestige, scale and location. We are pleased to create a new benchmark in Singapore’s residential development scene together with our partners and world-class architects.”

Ms Zaha Hadid, Founding Partner of Zaha Hadid Architects, said: “This project has presented an opportunity to continue exploring the architectural language of fluidity. For d'Leedon, our first residential project in Singapore, we have been inspired by the site's unique spatial qualities, allowing us to introduce innovative new design concepts.”

Ms Hadid added: “The design for the project was generated by detailed studies of the site’s location, topography and surroundings. The residences are organised into seven towers which emerge from d'Leedon’s garden landscape to cut a striking presence in the park. The lower floors taper inwards, providing a dramatic visual silhouette, while also maximising open areas for private gardens. The floor plan of each tower is arranged into a “flower” that is subdivided into “petals” according to the number of units per floor. These organic design principles are evident in all seven towers, generating a diversity between each building yet giving d'Leedon the natural elegance of coherence.”

d’Leedon features a cluster of 80 units specially-designed to be elderly-friendly. This is to encourage multi-generation families to live close to one another within the same development but not necessarily in the same unit. The elderly-friendly units, which are located from the 3rd to 10th levels in one residential tower, have incorporated features such as infrastructure for the installation of panic buttons in future and space provisions for grab bars. To enable residents to move around with ease, the units will also not have any steps leading to the bathrooms and wet areas, thereby maintaining the same floor level throughout the apartment. The elderly-friendly units will be made available to interested homebuyers during the initial phases of the public launch.

D’LEEDON [SINGAPORE]

2007 - TBC

PROGRAM:             7 high-end residential towers, 12 villas and landscape deck

CLIENT: CapitaLand and Hotel Properties, Singapore

ARCHITECT:           Zaha Hadid Architects

Design     Zaha Hadid with Patrik Schumacher

Project Architects Michele Pasca di Magliano, Viviana Muscettola

Project Manager Charles Walker

Project Team Ludovico Lombardi, Clara Martins, Loreto Flores, Stephan Bohne, Amita Kulkarni, Soomeen Hahm, Yung-Chieh Huang Kanop Mangklapruk, Marina Martinez, Andres Moroni, Juan Camilo Mogollon, Michael Rissbacher, Luca Ruggeri, Luis Miguel Samanez, Nupur Shah, Puja Shah, Muhammed Shameel, Shankara Subramaniam, Manya Uppal, Katrina Wong, Kutbuddin Nadiadi, Effie Kuan, Helen Lee, Hee Seung Lee, Annarita Pape schi, Feng Lin, Bianca Cheung, Dominiki Dadatsi, Kelly Lee, Jeonghoon Lee, Hoda Nobakhti, Judith Wahle, Zhong Tian, Akhil Laddha, Naomi Chen, Jee Seon Lim, Line Rahbek, Hala Sheikh, Sevil Yazici, Sandra Riess, Federico Rossi, Eleni Pavlidou, Federico Dunkelberg, Evan Erlebacher, Gorka Blas, Bozana Komljenovic, Sophie Le Bienvenu, Jose M. Monfa, Selahattin Tuysuz, Edward Calver, Yung-Chieh Huang

Concept Team Michele Pasca di Magliano, Vivivana Muscettola, Ta-Kang Hsu, Emily Chang, Helen Lee, Kelly Lee

CONSULTANTS:     Local Architect RSP, Singapore

Structural Engineering AECOM, Singapore

M&E Engineering BECA, Singapore/ Max Fordham, London (Concept)

Quantity Surveyor DLS, Singapore

Landscape Architect GROSSMAX, Edinburgh (Concept) ICN, Singapore

Lighting Design LPA, Tokyo

Acoustic Engineering Acviron, Singapore

SIZE:       Gross Floor Area     220.000 m2 towers + 70.000 m2 basement

Height                                      150m

HEROLD SOCIAL HOUSING

PROGRAM OF 100 SOCIAL APARTMENTS
ANCIENT SITE OF HOSPITAL HEROLD, PARIS 
BY JAKOB + MACFARLANE                             

 

Concept

PROGRAM AND CONCEPT                            

The program is for a combination of different-sized apartments, the ground floor being designed for handicapped persons, and some shops at street level.

Site Plan

In this project we had to create three separate buildings on fragments of left-over land that had been created from a series of different factors, such as site views, Hausmannian setback rules, preservation of ancient trees, unbuildable land rules...

After understanding how difficult these requirements would be and how they would impact on the site, we decided to create these buildings more as resultant elements from the urban space.

Conceptually we proposed a huge urban matrix in three dimensions, with the imagined floors generating the increment, we then went through a careful cutting and coring of this matrix with the above series of forces acting as provocative devices until defining the finished project.

A series of filters on deep planted loggias, permit wind or sun protection.

Photo © James Ewing

ENVIRONMENTAL CONCEPT

In this project we followed as the environmental procedure Qualitel with the label Habitat and Environment, profile C, Cref-8.

The apartments are facing several orientations, with double orientation most of the time and similar in superposition in all of the levels.

The apartments are distributed by large exterior walkways which offer by extension, a new public space for each apartment.

The apartment type is adapted to a bioclimatic concept adapted to the different seasons. The rooms orientated to the north have small openings and a greater thermal isolation to the outside. Facing south the living rooms and bedrooms are glassed floor to ceiling giving to a generous balcony protected by the overhang of the balcony above by at least 2m.

In winter time, the balconies can be used as WINTER GARDENS, by an exterior transparent store made of ETFE. This system is conceived to entrap the free calories produced by the sun and thus warm the rest of the apartment space.

SOLAR THERMAL PANELS mounted on the roof, produce 65% of the hot water for the bathrooms.

The landscape space is conceived in three layers i.e : ground floor public garden, private balcony garden and facetted roof scape integrating solar panels.

Photo © Nicolas Borel

The project is thus the result of urban and ecological rules taken as the conceptual starting point and alternative determinators in the creation of a new urban housing response.

Jakob + MacFarlane 

Alexandre Tabaste photographer

Competition News

The Taichung Gateway Park International Competition has been re-announced on 2011/4/1.

Calling all landscape design firms

From former airport to Gateway Park

In search of a master landscape design firm

To envision an eco-park that’ll inform Taichung’s new urban landscape!

Invitation
Taichung City Government has been actively pursing the planning work for Taichung Gateway City in response to globalization trends, anticipated growth of Taiwan-China trade, Central Taiwan development objectives as well as Taichung’s own vision to become a livable international metropolis. The goal is to create a visionary, innovative and international urban environment while at the same time establishing close links between Central Taiwan and the rest of the world.

Taichung Gateway City covers an approximately 254-hectare area that includes the former Taichung (Shuinan) Airport and its vicinities. According to Taichung’s municipal urban plan, at the center of Taichung Gateway City will be an expansive green space—Taichung Gateway Park—that meanders from the north to the south of the entire development area with approximately 68-hectare. Areas surrounding the park will be divided into four districts according to their features: Eco Residential District, Gateway District, Cultural Business District, and Innovation R&D District. In addition, Taichung Movie City, Taiwan Tower and Taichung City Cultural Center will all be integrated into Taichung Gateway Park. Therefore, the development of the park will become the most significant milestone for Taichung Gateway City.

Besides offering extensive and winding green open space, Taichung Gateway Park will be developed as an eco-park. Utilizing renewable energies and an intelligent park management system, Taichung Gateway Park will play a pivotal role toward a successful the overall development of Taichung Gateway City. To this end, an international competition is being held to solicit visionary and innovative planning and landscaping proposals from the best design firms home and abroad.

The Taichung City Government cordially invites outstanding local and international landscape design firms to propose your vision and participate in this competition!

For more information, please visit: www.TGPark.com.tw
Total Construction Budget:
About NT＄2,720,000,000. (Approximately US$ 85,000,000. Subject to the approved budget by city council.)
Service Fee:
The service fee for this project is 10% of the total construction cost.

THE ORANGE CUBE

JAKOB + MACFARLANE ARCHITECTS

© Nicolas Borel photographer

Here's some text from the designer:

The ambition of the urban planning project for the old harbor zone, developed by VNF (Voies Naviguables de France) in partnership with Caisse des Dépôts and Sem Lyon Confluence, was to reinvest the docks of Lyon on the river side and its industrial patrimony, bringing together architecture and a cultural and commercial program.

These docks, initially made of warehouses (la Sucrière, les Douanes, les Salins, la Capitainerie), cranes, functional elements bound to the river and its flow, mutate into a territory of experimentation in order to create a new landscape that is articulated towards the river and the surrounding hills.

 

© Nicolas Borel photographer

The project is designed as a simple orthogonal « cube » into which a giant hole is carved, responding to necessities of light, air movement and views. This hole creates a void, piercing the building horizontally from the river side inwards and upwards through the roof terrace.

The cube, next to the existing hall (the Salins building, made from three archs) highlights its autonomy. It is designed on a regular framework (29 x 33m) made of concrete pillars on 5 levels. A light façade, with seemingly random openings is completed by another façade, pierced with pixilated patterns that accompany the movement of the river. The orange color refers to lead paint, an industrial color often used for harbor zones.

In order to create the void, Jakob + MacFarlane worked with a series of volumetric perturbations, linked to the subtraction of three “conic” volumes disposed on three levels: the angle of the façade, the roof and the level of the entry. These perturbations generate spaces and relations between the building, its users, the site and the light supply, inside a common office program.

The first perturbation is based on direct visual relation with the arched structure of the hall, its proximity and its buttress form. It allows to connect the two architectural elements and to create new space on a double height, protected inside the building.

A second, obviously an elliptic one, breaks the structural regularity of the pole-girder structure on four levels at the level of the façade corner that gives on the river side. This perforation, result of the encounter of two curves, establishes a diagonal relation towards the angle. It generates a huge atrium in the depth of the volume, surrounded by a series of corridors connected to the office platforms. The plan of the façade is hence shifted towards the interior, constructing a new relation to light and view, from both interior and exterior. This creates an extremely dynamic relation with the building that changes geometry according to the position of the spectator.

The tertiary platforms benefit from light and views at different levels with balconies that are accessible from each level. Each platform enjoys a new sort of conviviality through the access on the balconies and its views, creating spaces for encounter and informal exchanges. The research for transparency and optimal light transmission on the platforms contributes to make the working spaces more elegant and light.

The last floor has a big terrace in the background from which one can admire the whole panoramic view on Lyon, la Fourvière and Lyon-Confluence.

 

© Nicolas Borel photographer

The project is part of the approach for sustainable development and respects the following principles:

Optimization of the façade conception allowing to reconcile thermal performance and visual comfort with an Ubat < 0,7 W / m² K and a daylight factor of 2% for almost the total number of offices, a thermo frigorific production through heat pumps on the water level and the replacement of new hygienic air with recuperation of high efficient calories of the extracted air.

The building is connected to future huge floating terraces connected to the banks of the river/ quays.

TECHNICAL INFORMATION

Client: Rhône Saône Développement

Dates: competition 2005 – delivery sept 2010

Surface: 6300m²

Site: Quai Rambaud, Lyon

Program: tertiary

Cost consultant: Michel Forgue

Electrical Engineering: Alto Ingénierie

Acoustic: Avel Acoustique

Structure: RFR GO+

Façade: T.E.S.S

LO2P

DELHI RECYCLING CENTER

Text and all images courtesy of Atelier CMJN / Julien Combes and Gaël Brulé 

Problems such as global warming, pollution, depletion of the resources and health problems have gained considerable interest lately. In particular, large and densely populated cities such as Delhi tend to combine high amount of pollutants with a very high population, which results in very serious health problems.
CITY ISSUE

In the case of Delhi, traffic is a major problem. It is the main reponsible of air pollution and causes many health problems. Delhi’s communities and government have had to face a dramatic increase in pollutants resulting from the surge in personalized vehicles. Historically the city has relied largely on small, 2 and 3-wheeled vehicles equipped with 2-stroke engines, which emitted more than 70 percent of hydrocarbons and 50 percent of carbon monoxide in Delhi’s air. Overloaded, poorly maintained buses and diesel trucks are also traditional fixtures on the city streets. This combination led to a dramatic rise in pollution from total suspended particles (TSP), which reached a high of 450 μg/m³ in 1996. The city is the largest city in India by its size, the second by its population, with more than 22 millions in the whole conurbation. Delhi represents indeed:

• The fourth most polluted city in the world in terms of suspended particle matters
• 8000 premature deaths due to traffic
• 70% of the pollution is due to car traffic
• 1000 more vehicles everyday in Delhi

Since the early 1990s, India’s Ministry of Environment & Forests (MoEF) has undertaken a multi-pronged approach to solving Delhi’s air pollution problem. Officials recognized early on that vehicles contributed almost two thirds of total pollution figures and initially focused their efforts on converting Delhi’s public transportation fleet to cleaner fuels; the first Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) bus was launched on an experimental basis in 1998. Negotiations between the local and national governments and private contractors culminated in 2001 with the progressive conversion of city buses. Delhi now boasts the largest fleet of CNG-powered buses in the world, and has invested in a suitable network of CNG stations to cater for the demand. While buses account for less than 1% of vehicles on the road, they serve almost half of Delhi’s travel needs.

WASTES =RESOURCES
The recent rise of the price of oil has raised awareness that humans had considerably tapped into oil resources and that we only had a few years left if humans kept up with the same rhythm. However, global resources in general have dramatically shrunk in the last two centuries and oil should not be the tree that hides the forest. Materials such as indium, hafnium, or antimony have between 5 and 15 years left of resources. Also, most of the manufactured products such as cars which rely on fossil raw materials are going to become obsolete when they sell out. At this time, the quantity of manufactured materials will be higher than the resources. Therefore, the current one way flow “resources to product to waste” needs to be curved and then cycled. We need a dramatic shift of paradigm: wastes are no longer wastes: they are resources.

Manufactured products such as cars mix natural nutrients (that is products that can decompose safely) and technical nutrients (that is products extremely valuable for the industrial sphere such as copper, chromium, indium, though harmful for the environment) to produce, the so called monstrous hybrids according to the cradle of cradle philosophy. For example, if we take the leather of the seats, it mixes natural nutrients (leather) that could decompose naturally in normal conditions with technical nutrients such as chromium coming from the tanning, extremely valuable for the technical sphere. By mixing them, the product can no longer decompose safely and the technical nutrients are lost for the technical sphere. Therefore, it seems that the potential now is higher in the manufactured products than in the actual resources. Therefore, we want to see wastes as resources and manufactured products as pools of useful nutrients.

CONCEPT
The project is a recycling center made of recycled cars. Because of the development of the public transportation system and the depletion of their resources, personal vehicles are going to become obsolete and their number will significantly decrease. Instead of throwing them, we will use them as resources. Composed of 74% of metal, they provide good material for construction. Therefore, manufactured products which have polluted their entire life are the base of our new environmental device. In its functioning, it uses and recycles all of its energies. It provides new materials and services to the city. It is a wonderful laboratory which experiments a new kind of project that inverts the current one way process turning resources into wastes. We dream of a project that would turn wastes back into resources, something that would looks like:

Wastes + Pollution + CO2 -> Resources + O2

We aim at reversing the flows that turn resources into wastes. Ultimately, all the products should circulate, all the technical nutrients should circulate in the technical sphere, and all the natural nutrients should be reused in the natural sphere. All the gas that are produced should be consumed somewhere else. Verticality and horizontality is over. Let’s cycle.

The monument itself is, by its shape, a tribute to cycling. LO2P is a metaphor of cycles, of the production of oxygen, of a real change of relationship with nature. The building takes advantage of all the energy it produces, makes use of all its wastes. The one way resource to waste process is over, the relationship between man and nature is here based on cycles. It combines efficient, state of the art separation processes, purifying of the air through natural processes, renewable energies and production of renewable fuel for vehicles. Finally, the whole ring cleans up the major environmental problem in Delhi: the suspended particle matters. Through a series of rotating filters, the particles are sucked up and trapped in a net, thus cleaning up the air. It becomes a major actor, an urban device which understands and helps the city.

VISION
The recycling loop aims at closing up the loop of traffic within Delhi. All the impacts of the car are tackled in this project. The materials used to produce cars are separated and purified thanks to the center powered by renewable energies that produces resources from manufactured products. The waste heat and carbon dioxide from the recycling center are used to grow plants that are transformed into biofuels, together with the natural nutrients from the wastes. The wastes become resources, unwanted gas under normal conditions such as carbon dioxide becomes valuable gas that enter into the growth of the plants. Eventually, by curving the material flows, all wastes become valuable materials and all materials enter complete cycles.

The recycling loop becomes an integral part of Delhi’s life by using the wastes, turning them into valuable materials, producing biofuels to use renewable sources of energy and cleaning up the air. It brings industrial materials to the industrial sphere and contributes to enhance the competitiveness of the local industries. It provides clean energy for the neighborhood; it permanently grows trees that are planted throughout the city in order to further clean it up. It’s the starting point of a new relationship between man and nature.