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

The post MGO Protopapas I Office Building in Limassol was originally published on ek magazine | Architectural Publications | ek magazine – Architectural Publications.

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The post Residence in Kalamata was originally published on ek magazine | Architectural Publications | ek magazine – Architectural Publications.

The building is in a residential area in north Athens, surrounded by three calmed roads with a distinctive neighborhood feel. The new building houses eight independent units on four floors raised on pilotis, and a house with a garden on the ground level. The block is placed at a distance from the property limits and is slightly tilted to make the best of its southern orientation.

The design relies on the elaboration of a clear geometric structure, symmetrically distributed along the central vertical circulation core. The internal programmatic arrangement of each unit leads to the creation of a recessed façade, bracketing all four sides of the volume. A second façade, in reinforced concrete, is placed at a distance, negotiating the limit with the surrounding urban fabric. Further, it highlights the internal distribution of the building, underlining its spatial qualities, such as the two structural voids on the southern façade, on the first and second floors. This creates two layers of depth, allowing the perception of the structure as a single volume.

This second façade, compositionally independent, with its own proportions and geometry, is the “face” of the building towards the city.

Agis Mourelatos

The post Apartment building in Neo Iraklio was originally published on ek magazine | Architectural Publications | ek magazine – Architectural Publications.

Renaissance is a boutique residential block consisting of 4 one-bedroom flats, 4 two-bedroom flats and 2 three-bedroom flats. Inspired by the history of the area but with a modern note, the building consists of a raw podium made of arches that is presented as the base of the building.

The frame and the main body of the building are made of bare dark colour render material depicting the roots of a place, which will always exist no matter how much time passes.

Thin decorative elements consisting of arches and vertical columns embrace the building, regenerating the past which also acts as a sun shading system and gives more privacy to the tenants from the surrounding buildings.

Surrounded by flowers and vegetation, the building aims to create a new way of living to the residents, providing a distinctive experience. The boundary between interior-exterior blends smoothly as every apartment has wide openings facing the large verandas which include its own private garden zone.

The vertical landscape covers approximately 50% of the building’s façade area. This exceptional living environment is working like a natural “brise soleil”. The plants will act as a natural sun control shielding the apartments from direct sun during summer while admitting a maximum of sunlight in winter.

A variety of Cypriot climbing and spreading plants will be continually transformed by the cyclic movements of the different seasons. Old olive trees continue this vertical landscape on the ground floor of the building. It creates the link to the adjacent road and gets a part of the scenery of the area.

Kailistudio

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

Situated along the western edge of the redevelopment area, south of the bridges over Hammarby canal and beside a major road into Stockholm, the ensemble comprises a tower and a low-rise building with heights of 100 and 25 metres respectively. Together, these two distinct volumes reconcile the divergent scales and conditions of the context, at the interface between the wide arterial road and a narrow park to the west and, to the east, the new city district that lies some 16 metres lower. Between the two buildings, a sweeping flight of steps extends the local pedestrian network to provide an additional route to and from the nearby underground railway station and the new housing area by the water.

The emblematic geometry of the tower – a conical star that gradually extends its perimeter as it rises into the sky – minimises its footprint on this limited site while providing flexible office space that benefits from long-distance views and an abundance of daylight. On the two different ground levels the high rise houses commercial units while a restaurant and sky bar on the top level offer spectacular views of the city.

Sauerbruch Hutton

Αnders Βobert

The post Sthlm 01 Tower 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.

The transformation of an oversize, off–color suburban home from the 1980ies into a contemporary, multi-level twin house compound was a great challenge: Stripping the building of all post-modern features was a requirement from the outset, and so was the redesign of the roof and the removal of large segments of the existing balconies. After scrutiny into the existing structure, the need of reinforcing earthquake protection was brought to the surface, to comply with current regulations.

The chosen solution was the construction of a new façade of reinforced concrete, wrapping around the existing one, securing structural resilience. This new, 25cm-thick shell sits upon the ground and extends all the way to the upper levels and to the newly built butterfly roof. This solution is consistent with the regulations for structural reinforcement of existing buildings.

Both houses were arranged in three main levels, taking advantage of the view to the nearby mountain; the volume is divided in two equal parts, along the North-South axis. This division is extruded and highlighted with wood cladding, beginning from the entrance and the foregarden, crossing through the interior of both houses and delineating the open, sheltered spaces in the backyard.

All external facades, as well as parts of the structural frame in the interior, are built in bare reinforced concrete with a visible formwork of lightly smoothened horizontal and vertical boards. Sloping roofs finalize the volume and allow light and air into the bedrooms. The terrace accommodates light wells for the service areas.

Special attention was given to outdoor transitional spaces, such as the new metal and wooden balcony on one of the two houses’ second floor. Besides the vertical partition dividing the houses, wood has been used on the levels of the living spaces, on indoor and outdoor floors, as well as on interior dividing walls, cabinetry etc. Moreover, metal was used in the construction of the two new stairwells and elevator towers, connecting all levels.

Dimitris Issaias – Tassis Papaioannou

The post Twin Houses in Athens was originally published on ek magazine | Architectural Publications | ek magazine – Architectural Publications.

The design of an apartment building always presents a great challenge; this typology corresponds to the most common mode of living in Greece and it needs updated approaches to its architectural form.

The compound was designed in a corner property in the north suburbs of Athens, at a difficult time for the building industry and for the economy at large. It consists of three apartments: 120m², 150², and a 200m² terraced house. The project was required to keep a balance between marketability and a desired formal and volumetric simplicity.

The positioning of the building in the plot became the starting point for the design development; a simple, elongated rectangular bar was placed adjacent to the back limit, creating ample open-air space for greenery. The simple rectangular volume had large, dynamic, triangular cantilevered balconies attached, embracing its surrounding green space. A central staircase was introduced to maximize privacy between the apartments.

The materials chosen are consistent with the specific location and with its older architecture; stone dresses the ground floor socle, as well as supporting walls that demarcate the entrances.

A shading system at the balcony cantilevers was designed for filtering the view, using 7cm-round cedar wooden components. Those vertical elements are distributed along the facades in varying densities, interacting with the natural light into a dynamic play.

The building facades are clad in grey or black exterior insulation, the open-air space is dressed in chiseled grey marble and the verandas in iroko wood. All materials are natural and harmonize with their pine-wood surroundings.

The apartment layout is simple, and all units were designed to enjoy the same natural light and cross-ventilation; the ample balconies effectively extend the interiors during the summer months. Most apartments include three bedrooms and are equipped with an open kitchen, enlarging the lounge spaces. White and black surfaces come into interplay, mostly in the lounge areas around the fireplace, and natural wood is chosen for case-in furniture. The bathrooms are clad in grey mosaic tiles, combined with wooden fittings. The vertical metal supports in the staircase establish a dialogue with the outdoor wooden shades.

Simplicity and clear lines integrate the outer shell with the interior. The core of the building accommodates covered open spaces that create interesting shelters between indoors and outdoors. Those intermediate, protected spaces, elongated cantilevers and large openings, merging the balconies with the indoor lounges are the optimal design solution for a truly Mediterranean way of living.

Spacelab Architecture

Sotiris Hainis, Vana Krimnioti

George Messaritakis

ek magazine 240 | September 2019

The post Apartment Building in Athens was originally published on ek magazine | Architectural Publications | ek magazine – Architectural Publications.

Located in London’s Fitzrovia – where Riding House Street opens to Wells Street – sits The Interlock, a new five-storey mixed-use building designed by Bureau de Change architects for developer HGG London, a company established to commission design-driven innovative architecture.

Riding House Street hosts an extraordinary breadth of architectural styles. From John Nash’s All Souls church at its most easterly point, the street skips haphazardly from 19th Century terraces to post war commercial buildings; concrete slab structures and 20th Century apartment blocks. The street’s piecemeal aesthetic is unified by the use of brickwork which serves as the façade material of choice, at times so abundant that it forms the road surface.

The Interlock absorbs this history and responds by taking the proportions of the neighbouring 19th Century terrace and recasting its brick façade to create a building of uncertain heritage – one that is simultaneously historic and contemporary, familiar yet foreign.

Abandoning the traditional dimensions of London brick, a collection of 44 misshapen and seemingly un-stackable clay blocks were developed.

Co-founder and Director of Bureau de Change Katerina Dionysopoulou said: “We were interested in taking these very traditional proportions and in some way subverting it – like a puzzle box that seems familiar and reveals a hidden complexity that increases the more you interact with it.”

The patterns visible across the surface are informed, in part, by the interactions between materials and structure. The bricks appear to lap up against glazing, swell and bow between floors and are inset frame-like to denote the building’s perimeter. For passers-by, the bricks appear to morph and twist like cogs. By modelling the facade in 3D, each facet could be individually adjusted to meet structural and fabrication requirements without diluting the integrity of the surface form.

Staffordshire Blue Clay was selected as a contrast to the areas existing brickwork. The marl clay was set into 14 hand-crafted steel molds and fired in oxidation to create the matt blue finish. After firing, these 14 ‘parent’ bricks were divided to form the 30 ‘offspring’. Construction of the 5,000-block landscape took place over three months. The fabrication team used 1:1 printed templates that set out the number, typology and location of each brick. When collated on site, these 188 templates appeared like a construction manuscript, with each brick a different note to lay.

Co-founder and Director of Bureau de Change Billy Mavropoulos explained: “We worked iteratively with the team at Forterra – adapting and reviewing the bricks in 3D. We were walking the line of what would be technically possible, but through this process, found a point that was both buildable and produced the richness and movement we were trying to achieve.”

Behind the façade, sit three new residential units and a café at street level with gallery beneath. The regularity of the façade’s proportion and fenestration belies the complexity of the building’s volume and massing.

At the rear, the building is set out as a series of stacked boxes of varying form and size. Each floor is shallower than the last with the deepest floorplan at the bottom and the smallest at the top. Within this stepped form sits a series of deep light wells and skylights that track daylight in to the centre and edges of the building, creating internal patios on the lowest floors and light wells on others. Facing the street, the rooms overlook the busy street and on higher floors, the rooftops and domes of nearby buildings. At the rear the light is more diffused creating calm in the private spaces.

Inside, the units are finished in a simple elemental palette – terrazzo bathrooms, natural stone worktops, sprayed-timber kitchens and oak floors.

The light-filled café at the base of the building offers a counterpoint to the weight and inkiness of the façade. With every surface washed in white, the heavy-set mullions are halved and extruded from their frames to form ribbons that curve and fold over the ceiling in a style reminiscent of ornamental plasterwork. The monochromatic palette is broken only by cuts of oak that line the floor and counter tops. The floor below the café is a purpose-built gallery space hosting exhibitions, workshops and talks.

The project represents a shared vision between developer and architect to taking London’s architecture and re-approaching it in a way that brings something new to the streetscape.

Bureau de Change

Gilbert McCarragher

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