*️⃣Calgary Central Library

Architect #Snohetta
City #Calgary
Country #Canada #NA

🔤The crystalline geometry of the façade is carved away to reveal an expansive wood archway that embraces visitors as they approach. Framing the entrance of the building, the form references the Chinook cloud arches common to the region.

The triple-glazed facade is composed of a modular, hexagonal pattern that expresses the library's aims to provide a space that invites in all visitors. From these shapes emerge familiar forms: parts of the pattern might resemble an open book, snowflake-like linework, or interlocking houses, anchoring the ideas of the collective and community.

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Material #wood
Function #public #library
Feature #interior
Address: 800 3 St SE, Calgary, AB T2G 2E7, Canada
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pics and text by architects

*️⃣Beijing Sub-Center Library

Architect #Snohetta
City #Beijing
Country #China #AP

🔤The design emphasizes the book’s physicality and the act of page-turning as a primary experience within a picturesque setting of hills, trees, and the Tonghui river.

At the heart of the library is a sweeping, nearly 16-meter-tall welcoming forum off of which rise stepped terraces that follow smooth, rhythmic curves and a central meandering pathway known as the Valley. The Valley mirrors the course of the nearby Tonghui river, seamlessly continuing the experience of the landscape beyond.

Punctuating the large reading space to transition between the scale of the Valley and the books are tall, slender #white columns that mushroom into flat #steel panels shaped like ginkgo leaves—referencing a 290 million-year-old tree species native to China.

For the ginkgo tree columns, a single module type is rotated on a 9x9m grid to give the appearance of variety while being efficient to fabricate and install. These columns also house integrated technology to control interior climate, lighting, and acoustics, as well as collect rainwater for reuse. The roof has integrated photovoltaic (BIPV) construction elements for renewable energy production. #sustainability

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Function #public #library
Feature #interior
Address: China, Beijing, Tongzhou, Tonghu Ave, 76号院1 邮政编码: 101199

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pics by #YumengZhu
text by architects

*️⃣Walt Disney Concert Hall

Architect #Gehry #FrankGehry
City #LosAngeles
Country #USA #NA

🔤The exterior is a composition of undulating and angled forms, symbolizing musical movement and the motion of Los Angles. The design developed through paper models and sketches, characteristic of Gehry's process.

The building was initially set to be clad in stone, but a more malleable material was chosen following the completion of the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, the concert hall's titanium-clad cousin. Thin metal panels allowed for more adventurous curvature and could be structurally disassociated from the ground.

"When the hall is finished, if it doesn't sound good, they will blame you. If it isn't look good, they will blame me". – Frank Gehry to Yasuhisa Toyota, Founder of Nagata Acoustics International.

#quote@simoderna

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Colour #metallic
Material #steel
Function #entertainment #concerthall
Address: 111 S Grand Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90012, United States
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pics by #RolandHalbe
text by gehry.getty.edu and Archdaily

#bonus@simoderna (Get Smart movie had scenes filmed here)

*️⃣The Silo and Park ‘n’ Play at the Nordhavn

Architect #Cobe and #JAJA
City #Copenhagen
Country #Denmark #EU

🔤The transformation of Nordhavn (North Harbour) continues Copenhagen’s historic strategy of a step-by-step expansion into the surrounding sea.

A 17-storey former grain silo and the largest industrial building in the area has been transformed into “The Silo”, housing residential apartments. #refurbishment

In order to bring The Silo’s industrial concrete facade up to current standards, the exterior of the existing silo has been reclad, while the interior has been preserved as raw and untouched as possible. An angular faceted exterior facade made of galvanized steel has been installed to serve as a limate shield. This has allowed the building’s characteristic slender tall shape to be maintained.

The spatial variation within the original silo is immense due to the various functions of storing and handling grain, creating space for unique apartments with floor heights of up to 7 meters.

At Park ‘n’ Play instead of concealing the parking structure, JAJA architects proposed a concept that enhances the beauty of the structural grid while breaking up the scale of the massive façade. The grid of plant boxes on the facade is penetrated by two large public stairs, which have a continuous railing that becomes a fantastic playground on the rooftop. From street level, the railing literally takes the visitors by the hand; invite them on a trip to the rooftop landscape and amazing view of the Copenhagen Harbour.

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Colour #metallic #red
Material #steel
Function #residential #transportation #parking
Feature #district
Address: Helsinkigade 29, 2150 København, Denmark
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pics by #Hjortshoj
text by architects and Archdaily

*️⃣ParkRoyal Collection on Pickering

Architect #WOHA
Country #Singapore #AP

🔤Massive curvaceous sky-gardens, draped with tropical plants and supporting swathes of frangipani and palm trees, are cantilevered at every fourth level between the blocks of guest rooms. Greenery flourishes throughout the entire complex, and the trees and gardens of the hotel appears to merge with those of the adjoining park as one continuous sweep of urban parkland.

Perched above the open-to-all-the-elements pool deck of a five-storey podium, a twelve-storey tower forms an E plan, so that all guest rooms look north to the park and/or into the sky gardens, whilst the services and the external connecting corridors were placed on the southern elevation.

Referred to by WOHA as ‘topographical architecture’, the stratified undulating layers of pre-cast concrete wrap around, through and above the car park and the public areas of the hotel, as contour lines weaving through a modular grid of cylindrical columns. The geological metaphor – green architecture at its most elemental – is one that WOHA have used in many, if not all of their large-scale public buildings, but here the geometry and the allusions are more nuanced and more complex.

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Material #concrete pre-cast
Function #hospitality #hotel
Feature #greenery
Address: 3 Upper Pickering St, Singapore 058289
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pics by #Bingham, #SebastienNagy and #KevinOng
text by Archdaily