The post Rolex Arts Festival – Athens was originally published on ek magazine | Architectural Publications | ek magazine – Architectural Publications.

The post New Buildings at the Utah State Art Campus was originally published on ek magazine | Architectural Publications | ek magazine – Architectural Publications.

From fluid promenade to pragmatic functionality, the project involves the rehabilitation of a Montreal cottage orchestrating a sculptural experience with an architectural dimension. Interfering in the daily life of a couple of young professionals, a system, both simple and complex, multiplies geometric interweavings and visual breakthroughs to reveal a home in the image of its owners.

Focusing as much on compactness as on organizational interrelationships, the development of the architectural system requires its users to scrutinize their habits, and question the needs related to their daily life. In this process of collaborative creation, the owners adopt the playful approach of the architects with enthusiasm, humor, and sensitivity in order to specify the character identity of the project.

Playing with positive and negative spaces, the proposal articulates a crystallization fragmenting the volumetric entity by a physical and visual permeability, altering the perceptions of dimensioning. Opting for the subtraction of floor areas in favor of spatial qualities, volumes and interstices compose a domestic ecosystem of rows and vis-à-vis. Livened up by the constant variability of color shades, enlivened by the seasons and the natural light coming from the garden adjoining the living space, the MB project manifests the expression of these external parameters on its unifying monomateriality. Associated with its urban context and the flow of dynamic interactions generated by its internal conditions, including the movements of users and their way of living, a rhythmic versatility stands out in contrast to the geometric rigor of the assemblage.

Beyond the amalgamation of domestic functions, MB proposes an intervention multiplying interrelationships to enhance the movement through a parcours revealing its spatial polysemy. From archetype to abstraction, space is transformed. From an organizational matrix to a discovery game, MB presents a place participating in the active life of its neighborhood, while generating an enveloping family haunt.

The post Cottage Redesign in Montreal was originally published on ek magazine | Architectural Publications | ek magazine – Architectural Publications.

This is the first time that a five-star hotel chooses to cater to the demanding, millennial audience, in such a straightforward manner. Onoma Hotel in Thessaloniki is a technologically flexible hotel, in tune with the contemporary traveler: Millennials control their lives through their smartphones and they are used to everything adapting to their personal interests. The technologically flexible hotel does the same and has “personalised smart staying” as its main concept.

An Original Hospitality Concept.

Through a fresh, pioneering hospitality concept relying on the digital experience, the hotel celebrates contemporary design and new hotel branding trends, to create a new experience of interaction with the visitor. Its architecture is signed by Makridis Associates (interior) and Kouloukouris Associates (exterior); the overall concept bears the mark of Hyper Tria creative agency. 

Hotel Design for the Instagram Generation

Onoma Hotel is dotted with “instagrammable” spots, neon signs, and street art, inviting the visitors to share on their social feed. The entrance is marked by two L-shaped LED screens, featuring videos and images. The hidden gem of the building is the illusion basketball court, designed in anamorphic street art style. Entering the lobby, guests are confronted with the Seeker – an iconic statue, representative of the contemporary traveler seeking new experiences, a photo booth for instant social feed uploads, and a vertical garden at the secret backyard.

The rooms are transformed into personalized experience stage sets. The visitor can upgrade to different concepts, turning the room into an experience area for Gaming, Wine Tasting, Street Basketball, Rock Music Bands. The digital interface includes smartphone lock-unlock, ambience control through tablet, and wireless charging.

The Importance of Branding in Hotel Design

To create the Onoma Hotel, Hyper Tria worked on many levels. Its main assignments were: Hotel concept, naming, brand strategy, logo & visual identity, brand manual, guest experiences, hotel guest app design, gamification design, facilities naming and logos, menus design, environmental branding, signage, merchandise design, and website design and development. All was developed through the hyper branding algorithmic concept. 

For its innovative branding strategy, Hyper Tria has been awarded with:

• 2021 Tourism Awards SILVER – Facilities & Innovation
• 2021 Tourism Awards SILVER – Souvenirs

Makridis Associates

Kouloukouris Associates

Hyper Tria

Νίκος Βαβδινουδης

The post Onoma Hotel in Thessaloniki was originally published on ek magazine | Architectural Publications | ek magazine – Architectural Publications.

The Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin is an icon of twentieth-century architecture. Planned and built from 1963 to 1968, the steel and glass structure is the only building designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in Europe after his emigration to the USA.

After almost fifty years of intensive use, the listed building required a comprehensive refurbishment. The existing fabric has been refurbished and upgraded to current technical standards with a minimum of visual compromise to the building’s original appearance. The functional and technical upgrades include air-conditioning, artificial lighting, security, and visitors’ facilities, such as the cloakroom, café, and the museum shop, as well as improving disabled access and art handling.

The necessity of an extensive repair of the reinforced concrete shell and the complete renewal of the technical building services required an in-depth intervention. In order to expose the shell construction, around 35,000 original building components, such as the stone cladding and all the interior fittings, were dismantled. After their restoration and modification where necessary, they were reinstalled in their precise original positions.

The key to the complex planning process for this project was finding a suitable balance between monument conservation and the building’s use as a modern museum. The unavoidable interventions to the original fabric within this process had to be reconciled with preserving as much of the original substance as possible. Though the essential additions remain subordinate to the existing design of the building, they are nevertheless discreetly legible as contemporary elements. The refurbishment project does not represent a new interpretation, but rather a respectful repair of this landmark building of the International Style.

David Chipperfield Architects

The post Neue Nationalgalerie was originally published on ek magazine | Architectural Publications | ek magazine – Architectural Publications.

The new art gallery is located in one of the most picturesque quarters of Piraeus, among old warehouses and workshops. Guided by the identity of the exhibition space as a “white box”, the design employs clean, austere lines, in a minimalist white background. The space alludes to a white canvas for highlighting the exhibited artworks, and the architectural composition establishes a quiet dialogue between modern and new. In this framework, the façade maintains its original appearance, and so does the century-old wooden roof, lit from below; those elements are brought into contrast with the acutely angular white walls underneath. The choice of the cool grey cement floor, combined with a few more extravagant touches in the bathrooms, further contribute to this goal. The white perforated metal sheet mezzanine and stairs, despite their modern appearance, allude to local metalsmith workshops, which had an active role in the construction of the project. This discreet architecture reflects the conversation between contemporary art, sheltered in the exhibition space, and the features of the urban surroundings.

Kokorelia Architects

The post Best of 2020: The IntermiΣΣion was originally published on ek magazine | Architectural Publications | ek magazine – Architectural Publications.

The site is located 5km east of Beijing’s CBD, in the middle of an isolated diamond-shaped land parcel, intersected by serval railroads and divided into fragments. While the rest of the city undergoes rapid development, this urban enclave, hidden between defunct industrial building,s has remained undeveloped in the past 3 decades.
The client’s long-term goal is to regenerate these spaces by attracting cultural and creative industries, connecting the surrounding neighborhoods currently separated by the railroads, and gradually building a mixed-use community of 140,000m².
The architectural design revitalizes this urban enclave by weaving together retail, recreational, F&B, and creative spaces. The Art Center was proposed in the core of the creative industry zone.

The approach confronts the question of “How to transform an industrial space for productivity, to an art space targeting public engagement”, with a rational design strategy involving a “spatial prototype shift”: This is an appropriation of the prototype of the saw-tooth shaped plant buildings, adapted to the multiple program of the art center, and then translated into a new composite spatial prototype designed to maximize the creative vitality of the urban block.

The façade features a perforated-folded metal cladding with a saw-toothed volume, growing out of the shape of the plant building, and gradually extending forward, twisting at the end as it almost touches the elevated railway, forming a sense of ephemeral levitation. It also enriches the surrounding neighborhood’s dull skyline, not only with its decisive shape but also with its ever-changing light effects.The industrial past is re-conceptualized in a contemporary context, translated into 3 threads of materiality: the metal cladding that shifts between reflectivity and translucency, interpreting the contemporary cultural sensibility; the shadowing surface of red brick wall responding the historic character of the site; the large transparent glass openings and oversize pivot doors revealing the inside of the vessel to the public.

HeyTown Art Center features an aluminum façade wrapping around the entire suspended saw-tooth volume. Instead of perusing a smooth and sleek image of a definite “newness” that the usage of metal usually bring to such a context, it was taken as an experiment on potential “natures” of aluminum: minimum angle of folding, jumping rhythm of corrugations, different ratio of perforation, extreme strength of the metal for vertical span, enhanced reflectivity. This is meant to achieve a tangible and frictional experience of the architecture that is in constant dialogue with its surroundings, and to create a tension from the site’s past towards its future.
In the daytime, the folded cladding brilliantly captures the changing light conditions with its varying angles, like a series of prismatic mirrors echoing the sky. At the evening begins, the semi-reflective volume starts to illuminate itself and the cold reflection gradually turning into warm translucency from the top to the bottom. The constant overlapping of such ambiguous light experience throughout the day, adds an elusive narrative to the spatial context. 

meta-project

The post Heytown Art Center was originally published on ek magazine | Architectural Publications | ek magazine – Architectural Publications.

Chemin des Carrières, the Quarries’ Track, is a lace undulating in the landscape, an invitation to travel as our ambition behind the reconquest of the Rosheim-St Nabor railway in Alsace, France. Ominous, sometimes hidden, the vestiges of the railway still mark the reading of the site. The desire to create a route to serve the quarries had to adapt to the undulating landscapes of the sub-Vosges hills and the very form of the tracing tells the history of the landscape and the men. The journey to discover forgotten landscapes or to take a different view on everyday landscapes is addressed to both local users and tourists. Like the old track that offered a dual function (industrial and passenger transport), the route has a double vocation where the functional must rub shoulders with the imaginary of travel. Along the 11km path goes a story, which the stops split into five chapters of different sequences of landscapes offering varied universes and highlighting remarkable sites. Unusual elements punctuate the way, aiming at awakening the visitor’s senses, and water is encountered repeatedly.

Rosheim tells the story of the past. Realized by intertwined circles in Corten steel, the pavilion has a labyrinthine character and play with irregular concave and convex interiors, which the visitors are free to roam. The train tracks are conserved in that area, benches are built, and openings are created to open or close the sculpture to chosen views of the surrounding landscape allowing for viewing, seating – reflexion and contemplation. 

Boersch tells the story of water. The river, which historically allowed connection to the world and tells about the true cleanliness of a place. It is a dynamic element in the landscape, running to the ocean. We enlarge the riverbed and build a large open space amphitheater to access the water.

Leonardsau tells the story of the land. After a long green tunnel, two large corten steel plates amplify the opening effect at the end of the forest corridor to the open landscape, embodying a gate and opening a perspective towards Mont St-Odile, which develops the idea of discovery. Ottrott tells the story of travel. Former train station, the stop materializes the history of the railway and highlight the presence of the heritage (balance, bridge, crane, pump…). In a fabric of housing buildings, the reservoir, symbolizing water, and concrete crossings connect housing to historical elements and landscape.

Reiulf Ramstad Arkitekter

Florent Michel @11h45

The post Chemin des Carrières was originally published on ek magazine | Architectural Publications | ek magazine – Architectural Publications.

Moving Dunes is inspired by the early arts. It is an extension of the temporary exhibit From Africa to the Americas: Face-to-face Picasso, Past and Present, at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA). The plastic approach of cubist painters questions the role of perspective in visual representation. Anamorphosis, which is the distortion of the subject reconfiguring itself according to the position of the body in space, is one of the methods used. Through this process, Moving Dunes introduces the public to the essence of this approach in a playful way.

 By manipulating the street surface, large ripples are generated, recalling the features of a body or a face. Reflective spheres and geometric shapes amplify patterns and multiply points of view. As the observer moves, the street transforms, shapes are reversed, the ground comes alive and destabilizes. Moving Dunes is an experiential mirage in the heart of Downtown Montreal. Along the way, the passer-by discovers the presence of spheres reflecting the different buildings of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, all unique in their architecture and history. Moving Dunes brings together the real and the virtual worlds and awakens the senses.

The MMFA animated the pedestrian area of ​​avenue Du Musée, which has become a must-see for citizens and tourists alike. The goal was to pedestrianize the street and to create a temporary signature layout. Among the challenges encountered were the development of a concept in relation to the theme of the exhibition, the activation of a pedestrian public space while allowing the passage of emergency vehicles, and the creation of an experience with high media impact on a limited budget.

NÓS

Alex Lesage-Threefold

Raphaël Thibodeau

The post Moving Dunes was originally published on ek magazine | Architectural Publications | ek magazine – Architectural Publications.

In 2019 the freelancing sculpture artist Ms. Monika Rienoessl decided to move from the city of Vienna to the country house in which she was raised in the small village of Neuaigen in Lower Austria in order to establish her artist’s studio.

With the money she recently got from having sold her apartment, she approached the Vienna based office of Maximilian Eisenkoeck (MEA) in order to create her dream house. She envisioned constructing a minimalist, white pavilion home where she could live and display her artwork. With the experience gained in industrial construction methods, the architect developed the idea of establishing a basic structure with as few parts as possible and to use the remainder of the budget for renovation purposes of the old existing country house.

The structure of the pavilion consists of 43 tiny columns with a diameter of 60mm fixed on prefabricated concrete foundations supporting a 140mm wooden board as the roof. The interior and exterior space is only divided by an almost invisible layer of extra clear float glass. The setback of the roof provides maximum light throughout the day preventing direct solar radiation. Moreover, it removes the need for additional sunshades or cooling systems.

The old clay brick house on the main street serves as a striking contrast to the light new structure in the back. The existing house was in a very bad state of repair but it was able to be saved and upgraded with some simple but effective improvements such as the reorganization of the floor plan and some additional window openings where they were needed. Now it serves as the artist’s workshop.

The existing concrete exterior spaces were kept wherever possible. These spaces are now being used for the display of the artist´s sculptures.

Maximilian Eisenköck Architecture

The post Atelier for a Sculpture Artist was originally published on ek magazine | Architectural Publications | ek magazine – Architectural Publications.

Located in the center of the historical area, the site of the Museum is adjacent to the Imperial Kiln ruins surrounding many ancient kiln complexes.

Jingdezhen is known as the “Porcelain Capital” in the world because it has been producing pottery for 1,700 years. In the Ming and Qing dynasties, Jingdezhen exported a huge amount of porcelains to Europe.

Jingdezhen was growing naturally fitting in the valleys surrounding rivers, hills, and mountains because of the porcelain industry. The early settlements of the city developed around kiln complexes which included kiln, workshops, and housing. The street pattern was generated by nature and the porcelain industry. Most of the small alleys in between kiln complexes have always approached the Chang river in order to transport porcelain products to the river. The main streets have always been along with Chang river to bring all businesses and commerces together.

Situated on a fairly restricted historical area adjacent to the east side of the Imperial Kiln ruins, the plan of the Imperial Kiln Museum was aligned with the north-south street grid of Jingdezhen. With its entry, water pools, and bridge facing west, embracing the open file of Imperial Kiln Ruins to welcome visitors from Imperial Kiln Relic Park. Public pedestrians can wander through the forest under the green canopy, going through the bridge, flowing into the foyer of the museum.

The Imperial Kiln Museum comprises more than half a dozen brick vaults base on the traditional form of the kiln, each of the vaults is of a different size, curvature, and length. They were naturally applied to the site, carefully integrated with many existing ruins including a few ruins that were found after the construction.

The unparalleled, liner, and arched structures of the museum, like old kilns, reach below the level of the street to not only give the flexibility to adapt itself into the complicated site, but also to achieve the intimate scale of interior space. This strategy – in part also as a response to the height of surrounding historical buildings – leads to productive ambiguity in relation to the building’s horizontal datum. The “insertion” of the building into the ground of the site produces a series of public spaces at street level. More importantly, it allows for the design of a number of more intimate open vaults, and courtyards within the museum. Most of those public spaces are covered under shaded and are protected from the rain because it is hot and it rains a lot during summer in Jingdezhen. One of those open spaces, two open vaults sited in both ends, will also reveal the traces of the historic fabric on the site.

When one walks on the bridge, enters the foyer, and turns left, he will pass a series of arched exhibition spaces lightly varied in size and with contradicting openness (enclosed or open to the sky) to encounter a gentle stair, in the end, flowing down to the underground level with five sunken courtyards. Meanwhile, people can obtain a three-in-one (kilns-porcelains-people) museum experience when they see those porcelain, ruins, and sunken courtyards which create manifold layers’ experiences with ancient bricks on the façade. As someone turns right at the foyer, he will respectively pass the bookstore, cafe, tea room, and finally reach a semi-outdoor area under the arch, witnessing a picturesque scene. When daytime surfaces, these arches reflect the waves of water while low horizontal gaps tempt people to sit down on the floor to see the long horizon of the Imperial kiln ruins. A similar surprise would be created when someone sees the Longzhu Pavilion of the Imperial kiln ruins through the vertical seams when he is on the way to the auditorium before accessing the foyer.

Five sunken courtyards varied in size have a different theme: gold, wood, water, fire, soil. Those five themes not only reflect old Chinese thinking about the earth but also associate with porcelain making techniques.

The overall experience of the museum tries to rediscover the roots of Jingdezhen, to recreate the past experience among kiln, porcelain, and human being.

The architect was fascinated by local ancient kiln tectonic and material. Looking in the past, craftsmen built the brick kiln without scaffolding in a very special way. Thin and light brick kiln achieved a maximum interior space with minimum materials, the brick kilns appeared in organic forms reflecting heat flow from one end to another.

The basic structure of the museum is an arch structure system, it is made up of concrete poured in between two layers of masonry brick walls. There is a small arch to be layout perpendicularly to connect two arches.

Using recycled kiln bricks to build houses and all kinds of buildings is a significant character in Jingdezhen because brick kilns have to be demolished every two or three years in order to keep a certain thermal performance of the kilns. The entire city was covered by recycled kiln bricks. Those bricks record warmth and are inseparable from the lifeblood of the city. In the past, the children would take a warm brick from the firing kilns to place in their schoolbags to keep themselves warm the whole day during freezing winter.

The materials of the museum are dominated by bricks, recycled old kiln bricks are mixed with new bricks to reflect the local culture of construction.

This interweaving of two different historical phases proposed by the combination of new and old bricks must arouse interest, curiosity, create new questions, and give new answers. These create interaction with people’s minds who inevitably evoke memories and enjoy a unique experience. The past cannot be erased but can be rewritten by recounting a new awareness and maturity, a sort of contemporary archeology.

The visitors can have a 360-degree sensory experience through the repeated contact between exterior and interior that stimulates the touch, smell, hearing, and sight and transports them into a sort of trip between past, present, and nature.

Even the light evokes active and tangible memories and is the proof of how ancient techniques can be reinterpreted and reread in a contemporary key.

The interior natural light is achieved by both skylight and sunken courtyard and is inspired by smoke holes of the ancient brick kiln. The skylight in the hollow cylinder shape is distributed on the top part of the arch to provide natural light during daytime and artificial light at night time.

Studio Zhu-Pei

schranimage

Tian Fangfang

Zhang Qinquan

The post Jingdezhen Imperial Kiln Museum was originally published on ek magazine | Architectural Publications | ek magazine – Architectural Publications.

In a beachside residential area of Herzliya, TEO (the Theodor Herzl Center for culture, art, and content) comes into view as a distinct single-story building, eminently lower than the neighborhood’s enclosed private mansions. The freestanding TEO opens up a wide panorama toward the west—the horizon over the ocean—thus rupturing the visual and social narrative of walled luxury villas this area of Herzliya is known for. The insertion of a fully exposed public cultural center as an event in the surrounding urbanscape was key to the design strategy.

TEO provides a unique functional facility to the city’s art-practicing and culture-seeking residents. The plan is designed within a 50 by 50 m² square around an offset central patio surrounded by the various programs: a music conservatory, a dance school, art and ceramics studios, a gallery, a senior recreation center, and a cafeteria. An upper partial floor houses a library complemented by a 300 m² open deck.

The uniqueness of the design lies in the coherence of a precise geometric module that is strictly enforced throughout; Concrete (on-site casts & precast units), textured glass, and metal flow seamlessly from exterior to interior surfaces. Cutting-edge sealing techniques were used to protect the building from the rain while maintaining its flat roof silhouette and tight proportions.  

The patio (292 m²) makes available a space of quiet and welcoming scale. The floated, draining floor provides a pleasing horizontal surface from which a single mature oak tree rises. Direct sunlight from above dynamically projects its presence across the patio’s surfaces, creating ever-changing visual compositions of organic against geometrical form.

A.Lerman Architects Ltd.

Amit Geron, Nimrod Levy

The post TEO Center for Culture, Art and Content was originally published on ek magazine | Architectural Publications | ek magazine – Architectural Publications.

Carwan Gallery is a leading international contemporary design gallery founded in 2011 in Beirut, with a focus on promoting and producing cutting-edge collectible design from the Eastern Mediterranean region and beyond. Under the direction of Nicolas Bellavance-Lecompte and Quentin Moyse — both architects and creative entrepreneurs – the gallery moved from Beirut into its new space in Piraeus, located in a district of old warehouses that is rapidly turning into a creative hub.

Carwan places an emphasis on developing strong collaborations with cultural organisations, institutions, specialised press, collectors and patrons. The gallery has been invited to showcase its exhibitions at the most important art and design fairs in Dubai, Basel, London, New York and Miami, and has curated design exhibitions at numerous museums and art centers.

Thanks to its highly successful and critically acclaimed work, Carwan is considered a key player amongst the most important contemporary design galleries in the world. After nearly a decade of activities in Lebanon and its participation in more than 50 international exhibitions, the gallery opened its new space in Piraeus in September 2020.

The gallery develops exceptional cross-cultural collaborations that call attention to the region’s most compelling contemporary material culture. Carwan employs a comprehensive design approach via the plurality of its collaborations between architects, artists and designers, prompting a vital and rich exchange of ideas, influences, concepts and know-how.

Nicolas Bellavance-Lecompte
& Quentin Moyse

Giorgos Sfakianakis

The post Carwan Gallery was originally published on ek magazine | Architectural Publications | ek magazine – Architectural Publications.

Z33 belongs to the Beguinage of Hasselt, a monument and a part of the city. The historical complex resembles an island in the urban tissue, due to the exceptional size of the void and for the permanency of its border through history, an incongruous but continuous system of brick constructions. Z33 is part of this wall of buildings around the park. The park is the centre.

The design aims to promote it as a place of rest, with a different sound from the bustling of the city centre. The protection is given by the layering of the built border with its varying degrees of privacy: the park, the Begjinhof gardens, walls and gates, the plants and the herbs, the almost blind wall of the Jenever Museum and its silent chimneys, the modern severity of Vleugel’58, the solid opening of the Poortgebouw.

The house for contemporary art is one building made of two: the exisiting Vleugel ’58 and the extension building.

Vleugel’58 will remain a sequence of “chambres d’exposition”, a classical infrastructure of room with fine proportions and a certain degree of anonymity. The extension building is an ensemble of simple rooms that vary in size, proportion and light atmosphere and that overlook each other through the others: the complexity of the spatial pattern echoes the multiplicity of experiences of a city, with gradients between public and private, exposed or intimate.

The facade is the most delicate part of the project: it is the expression of the “house” towards the street.

The facade is bound to the brick architecture of the context: a continuous traditional solid masonry with variations in colour and size of both bricks and joints. It is an innovative construction of a double solid wall: an interior warm structure coupled with an exterior cold structure, which has movement in relation to temperature variations.

The design sets the goal of the construction of a solid façade in line with the traditional masonry, developing a solution, which is congruent and feasible with the technical knowledge and production possibilities of the present day.

This can be achieved by building the exterior wall of the façade as a solid composite reinforced brick-mortar wall, reducing to a mimimum the quantity of dilatation joints.

Walking along the street people experience the quietness of a long solid brick wall and a few openings from which one is overlooked by leaves and branches.

Francesca Torzo

The post Z33 House for Contemporary Art was originally published on ek magazine | Architectural Publications | ek magazine – Architectural Publications.

Junshan Cultural Center is located just outside of Beijing, in the midst of the undulating mountain ranges and meandering rivers near the Miyun Reservoir. Originally this was just a typical two-story sales building on the outskirts of Beijing; Neri&Hu was asked to transform this donut-shaped building into an iconic clubhouse and sales center. Neri&Hu took advantage of the existing courtyard typology by crafting two sequences of interlocking journeys, one for clubhouse members, and one for sales center guests. All programmed spaces are designed so that they are in proximity to nature. The layering of the primary courtyard and smaller gardens allow the architecture to merge harmoniously with nature.

Drawing inspiration from its context, the architecture combines traditional northern features with contemporary architectural language and is transformed into a new interpretation of architectural expression. The building quietly rises out of the water as a brick mass with carved out spaces for programs interlocked with gardens that blur the boundary between inside and outside. On the façade, warm-toned wood- patterned aluminum panels form a veil that softens the heaviness of the brick facade. Moments of the screen connects with each interior space, creating a façade that is spontaneous and different on every face. In terms of materiality, traditional gold brick tiles form the foundation of the building mass, extending from exterior landscape into the interior “in-between” spaces. With brick and wood panels as the primary backdrop for the interior, a common theme throughout the interior is the sculpted ceiling.

Programmatically, the cultural center provides a number of luxurious and spacious amenities for its members. It includes a 100-person multi-purpose hall for events, a spacious business lounge and bar, a feature library, children’s reading room, private function room, family media room, a red-wine and cigar lounge bar and a rooftop deck. Part of the cultural center is functioning as a sales center. A double-height reception welcomes potential buyers to embark on a journey through the media room, winter garden, then upstairs across a bridge over the courtyard to a generous sales presentation lounge complete with VIP rooms, bar and children’s playroom. One of the most prominent spaces in the clubhouse is an art gallery, equipped with a series of hanging moveable walls for a flexible display system. The sculpted ceiling above gives some visual connection to the upper level, while a large glass picture window allows the space to extend into the courtyard. On the second floor, a generous yet inviting private dining room, complete with a bar and show-kitchen allows members to rent out the space for special functions. The red-wine and cigar lounge bar and rooftop deck on the third floor has an uninterrupted view of the surrounding mountainous landscape to west. Space comes alive with the many different geometric cuts carved out to interact with the sky and daylight such that each space is ever-changing when light is reflected off of the rich texture of Venetian plaster. The layering of customized furniture, refined brass metal detail, natural veins of stone accents, softness of fabric, and delicate lighting elements work together to compose a sense of understated luxury.

Neri&Hu Design and Research Office

Pedro Pegenaute, Xia Zhi

The post Junshan Cultural Center was originally published on ek magazine | Architectural Publications | ek magazine – Architectural Publications.

Shou County Culture and Art Center, located in Central China, was built in a new city southeast of the old town, on what used to be empty, flat farmland with a lack of landscape features. Many new tall, generic buildings surround the area and fail to reflect the local climate and local culture. The county government did not insist on specific design requirements but demanded the project to “be built quickly and completed next year.” The building needed to include an art gallery, cultural center, library, and archive.

Zhu Pei investigated the cultural roots of Shou County, observing old dwellings and ruins, and identifying how ancestors sought a balance between the primal force of nature and active construction without modern technologies. The inward-oriented living patterns of the vertical courtyard houses, and the narrow lanes extending out in all directions connecting houses to one another, reflect the local way of life and hint at the rules of construction for local climate conditions. Zhu Pei reimagined this living and spatial experience to help embed Shou County Culture and Art Center in the local community.

Multiple courtyards of different sizes are placed in a relatively enclosed rectangular block. They are connected by a winding, undulating public walkway, which is a public loop protected from the sun and rain. The public loop guides people over the bridge, crossing the moat into the building. The extensive front yard at the main entrance forms a public square that represents the tang wu (central room) of typical Shou County residences, while the backyard resembles the back garden of local folk houses. Each program of the building has two or three inner courtyards. From the front yard, visitors can wander all the inner courtyards without interrupting the continuity of the rooms. Walking along the protected public loop, visitors can find themselves at times on the first floor, second floor or third floor. The space is unpredictable, and light and shadow continually shift to surprise visitors, allowing them to feel the artistic spirit of traditional Chinese architecture expressed by the principles of “hide, breathe, cultivate and wander.”

The introverted concept of Shou County Culture and Art Center is a sensible choice for the unpredictable future development of the surrounding area. It also reflects the grace, inclusiveness, and vitality of the ancient city of Shou County, which has withstood the test of time.

Studio Zhu-Pei

Schran Images

The post Shou County Culture and Art Center was originally published on ek magazine | Architectural Publications | ek magazine – Architectural Publications.