Thursday, December 15, 2011

House S | Roger Christ | Last Architecture

 This specific construction assignment is a central topic of today’s urban development: the roof area as building site which can be covered with independent buildings – urban compression by utilization of roof areas as valuable building land.
 Thereby the architect is always confronted with the question of how to handle with the existing building in a contemporary sense. In the case of House S a 60´s bungalow, built by interior architect Wilfried Hilger for himself and his family.
 Due to space limitations the new owners, a family of four, decided to heightening the existing bungalow and furthermore to renovate the basic structure.
 To keep the bungalow’s typical character three single boxes were placed on a cantilevered flat roof, which are connected only by a glass corridor.
 The new structure creates zones with different qualities: in the south-west a meadow with a small apple tree, in the north a stone paved courtyard with a pine tree and in the east a roof terrace with a magnolia.
 In one of the new boxes the master bedroom, dressing room and bath room is located. The two other boxes function as personal living room and home office for the landlords.
 In the first floor nearly all walls and installations were removed, so that a large living room could be created. An open kitchen was placed in the midst of that living area.
 This floor additionally includes the children’s rooms with dressing room and bath room.
In the ground floor a guest room and an additional apartment is located.
By the usage of triple glazed windows and highly effective insulation an energetically optimized building could be realized.








Project description House S | Wiesbaden
Client: Private
Design: Roger Christ
Assistants: Ronni Neuber, Julia Url
Structural Engineering: Schmitt + Thielmann und Partner | Wiesbaden
Photographer: Thomas Herrmann | Stuttgart




Materials and surfaces
Walls: facing concrete, oak rough cut, white lacquered wood, profilit glass, dry construction white painted
Ceilings: suspended plsterboard ceiling, white
Floorings: oak parquet (oiled finish), sisal wall to wall carpet
Terrace floor: timber floor
Kitchen: Bulthaup white
Face of the building: superfine plaster, glass, profilit glass, oak rough cut
Sun protection: textile screen white
Building data
Size of the plot: 873 m²
Living space: 452 m²
Start of construction: 06/2010
Completion: 07/2011

Ibermutuamur Building | DENORTE | Last Architecture

 DESCRIPTION: “A building stands in all its complexity of lines on the eye. Sometimes, given its size and proximity of the spectator who contemplates it is impossible to perceive its volume, forcefulness, and therefore perceive it as a symbol.
 Because we want buildings without coats, without haughtiness emblematic, not exorbitant budgets, buildings that speak of the people who make the company and that they relate well with others that are not part of it. Buildings, quietly, transcend, because charisma in the design found in those forms that survived their function.
 Hence, beyond the building’s skyline symbol, the building show, free avant-garde building is the building that blends with the company that hosts and the surrounding environment, with the brand it represents. It is the building that never dies, because it becomes an icon of popular ideas …”










Architects: Roberto Gómez – DENORTE
Location: , Spain
Customer: Servicio de preventión de
Ibermutuamur, S.A. Year of Construction: 2010 Constructor: Jemeca, S.A. Useful surface: 1.753,08 M2. T otal surface: 2.200,19 M2. Photographer: D.David Frutos

Wildbach- & Lawinenverbauung | KREINERarchitektur | Last Architecture

 Customer friendliness, openness and transparency, a functional floor plan solutions with offices, archives, a canteen, a meeting room and a multifunctional foyer featuring the construction of the torrent and avalanche control in the south Liezen.
 The curved building of the office building, storehouse, and the cubic orientation workshop with docked down to the impressive panorama Grimming, offering light-filledrooms and adapt sensitively to the surrounding landscape.
 The materiality of the ensemble takes clear content related to the Torrent and Avalanche Control: from untreated larch wood, glass, raw stone, concrete and waterradiate authenticity, sustainability and love of nature. Seating for the light, translucent, filigree wooden body of the upper floor firmly on the “base” of slate-green serpentinite -stone gabions on – penetrated only by the glass portal that is the view onto the pond, thewave motion in the evening sun on the natural exposed concrete walls of the foyersreflects.
 The wooden, timeless purist hall, glazed front side, bordering the ensemble in its expansion to the south. The curved roof of the office complex symbolizes wood shingled from far away the “wave” as an architectural brand and symbol of progress and future orientation







Architects: KREINERarchitektur ZT GmbH
Location: A-8940 , Schönauerstraße 50,
Completed:
2007 Photographs: Mirja Geh

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

South Mountain Community Library | Richärd+Bauer | Last Architecture

 Academic libraries and public libraries have very different missions. The first are the home of term papers and cramming for final exams, the latter have story time and need to stock the latest John Grisham novel. They even “tend to be very different in what materials they collect and how they go about things,” says James E. Richärd, AIA, of Phoenix-based architecture firm Richärd+Bauer, down to the fact that “academic libraries do everything on the Library of Congress system, and the public libraries use the Dewey Decimal system.” But in Phoenix, the two have been combined in a new joint venture between the South Mountain Community College and the Phoenix Public Library system.

The 54,000-square-foot South Mountain Community Library, which was designed by Richärd’s firm and opened this fall, is located on the eastern edge of the college’s campus. The two-story structure is clad in a copper rainscreen and capped by five glazed volumes that serve as lanterns after sunset. “From the site perspective, the library needed its own identity,” Richärd says, “a place where the public could come and not feel like they were being buried in the middle of campus.” To that end, the library is sited just off 24th St. and is oriented so that the public can approach without ever entering campus proper.
The vertically striated skin—the pattern of which was influenced by the look of a bar code—is more than just a pretty face. The active rainscreen hides integrated gutters and downspouts to shed water runoff and all of the building’s lateral bracing. As it weathers, it will retain its metallic tone. In many climates, copper would weather to green, but in Arizona, Richärd says, “it patinates to a soft, dirty penny kind of a color.” And though based on a square volume, “at the edges we pull, push, and plug in different elements to attenuate the basic building block for views, for access, and for … [onsite] courtyards.”
 Inside, the program had to be carefully distributed to serve both the students and the area residents. Public-library functions—including a children’s area, teen area, and multipurpose room—are confined to the first floor. The community-college functions—100 computer terminals, periodicals, and research stacks, along with multimedia classrooms and a digital-production studio—are upstairs. The goal was not to duplicate functions, but to create an integration between the academic and public library spaces—“a permeability to the floors,” Richärd says.
 There are two main entrances, one through the public façade, the other on the campus side. The copper skin continues inside to mark the vestibules, and the floors are polished terrazzo with crushed mirror aggregate that reflects the sunlight that enters through shaded widows. Four large staircases—with mill-finished steel panels supporting the handrails—mark the quadrants of the building. Starting at the landings, water-jet-cut aluminum panels overlay the steel, with a different pattern for each stair. The four motifs are abstractions of asters, citrus, sorghum, and cotton, the four major crops grown in the area’s not-too-distant agricultural past. The patterns continue on the glazed balustrades of each quadrant of the second level as transparent vinyl appliques.
 To bring warmth to the largely glass-and-metal interior, the designers introduced a wood ceiling. Small wood planks of varying thicknesses and depths are nailed individually to the ceiling—“It’s easy to make something random,” Richärd says, “it would be a lot more difficult if we were asking someone to create a slick surface”—and spaced slightly to expose an acoustic material that allows the sculptural ceiling to double as a sound-soak. Snaking across the ceiling plane is a light trough that contains all of the utilities for the building, including mechanical, electrical, and data. Fluorescent strip lights are directed to bounce off of the ductwork. This creates a diffuse glow that filters through frosted panels and provides all of the library’s ambient light.

Daylight filters through the lantern volumes overhead. Triple-glazed frosted panes allow daylight in without contributing to glare; the system also ventilates hot air to minimize heat gain.
The layering of function and space works: Children lining up for story time don’t bat an eye at students hunkered down in group study rooms. And while the combination of library functions may be unique, at its core, the building “is about providing the spaces for people to interact,” Richärd says, “both with each other and with information.”








Project Credits

Project South Mountain Community Library
Client Maricopa County Community Colleges District and Phoenix Public Library
Owner Representative Arlen M. Solochek, AIA
Architect Richärd+Bauer, Phoenix—James E. Richärd, AIA (designer and principal-in-charge); Kelly Bauer (project manager and interior design); Steve Kennedy, AIA, Andrew Timberg (project architects and construction administration); Will Craig (construction administration); Mark Loewenthal, Brant Long, Lee Swanson, AIA, Alex Therien (staff architects); Stacey Crumbaker (interior design and signage); Claudia Saunders (interior design); Melissa Pulsifer (graphic design and signage)
M/E/P Engineer Energy Systems Design
Structural Engineer Rudow + Berry
Civil Engineer Dibble Engineering
General Contractor Haydon Building Corp.
Landscape Architect Kimley-Horn and Associates
Acoustical Consultant McKay Conant Hoover
Lighting Design Roger Smith Lighting Design
Library Building Consultant Drew Harrington Associates
Size 54,000 square feet
Cost $16.2 million

Materials and Sources

Access Floor ASM Modular Systems asmproducts.com
Building Management Systems Johnson Controls johnsoncontrols.com
Carpet Tandus Flooring tandus.com; Masland Contract maslandcontract.com
Ceilings Stradlings Fine Cabinetry (western red cedar) stradlings.com; American Acrylic Corp. (Lumasite) americanacrylic.com
Copper Skin Progressive Roofing progressiveroofing.us
Furniture Knoll knoll.com; Allermuir allermuir.com; Kimball International kimball.com; Bernhardt Design bernhardtdesign.com; Herman Miller hermanmiller.com
Glass ACI Glass Products vitroamerica.com; Arch Aluminum & Glass archaluminum.net
HVAC Temtrol temtrol.com; Seiho International seiho.com
Lighting Lithonia Lighting, an Acuity Brands Co. lithonia.com; Axis Lighting axislighting.com; Waldmann Lighting waldmannlighting.com
Lighting Contols Crestron Electronics crestron.com
Millwork Stradlings Fine Cabinetry stradlings.com; Kirei USA kireiusa.com; IceStone icestone.biz
Paint The Sherwin-Williams Co. sherwin-williams.com
Terrazzo Arizona Concrete Repair acriepoxy.com
Walls Stradlings Fine Cabinetry (western red cedar) stradlings.com
Window System Arcadia arcadiainc.com