*️⃣Xi’an CCBD (Centre Culture Business District)

Architect #Heatherwick #ThomasHeatherwick
City #Xian
Country #China #AP

🔤The outdoor streets of the district converge at the central plaza where the Xi’an Tree, a vertical park, creates a natural gathering point. Visitors can ascend its 56 elevated ‘petals’, or terraces, where a sequence of cascading gardens follows the biomes of the ancient Silk Route from the alpine tundra to the dry steppe.

Ceramics are at the heart of the 155,000m² neighbourhood, with crafted tiles cladding the facade, columns and curving beams, a nod to the ancient capital’s famous Terracotta Army.

The district has been designed to offer visual complexity from three distances. At a city-scale, it appears as a new neighbourhood of the city with a distinctive skyline inspired by the roofs of the Chinese temples of Xi’an. At a street distance, the varying levels created by the interlocking frames and landscape terraces provide different vantage points of the central plaza as well as the city around it. Finally, at door-level, the design offers a sensory experience in its use of materials and nature, such as ceramic lift buttons and soft-edged stones in the paving patterns.

🔤
Colour #brown #tan
Material #ceramic #stone
Function #public #observation #retail #mall
Feature #greenery
Address: 5WWW+X5H Yanta District, Xi'An, Shaanxi, China

©️
pics by Yanqing Zhu
text by architects

*️⃣Oasia Hotel Downtown

Architect #WOHA architects
Country #Singapore #AP

🔤A verdant tower of green in the heart of Singapore’s dense Central Business District (CBD), Oasia Hotel Downtown is a prototype of land use intensification for the urban tropics.

Closely overlooked by surrounding towers, the tower carves out its own internal spaces and dynamic views instead of relying on external vistas for visual interest. Each sky garden is treated as an urban scale verandah, sheltered at high level by the preceding sky garden and open sided for formal and visual transparency.

Landscaping is used extensively as an architectural surface treatment and forms a major part of the development’s material palette both internally and externally. Achieving an overall Green Plot Ratio of 1,100%, the tower is conceived as a haven for birds and animals, reintroducing biodiversity into the city. This quantum of green is an exciting number, as it effectively compensates for the lack of green in 10 surrounding buildings. #greenery

Project was selected by #CTBUH as the best skyscraper of the year 2018. #award

🔤
Colour #red
Material #aluminium
Function #hospitality #hotel
Feature #skyscraper
Address: 100 Peck Seah St, Singapore 079333
Google street
Google street 2
Terrace google street

©️
pics by #Bingham and K. Kopter
text by Archdaily

*️⃣Bank of Georgia headquarters

Architect #Chakhava #GeorgiyChakava
City #Tbilisi
Country #Georgia #EU

🔤This particular project was the culmination of a fusion of several architectural influences of the Georgian past—traditional Georgian architecture roofs, metabolist utopias, and the horizontal skyscrapers of El Lissitzky. The structure has also been restored and converted—today, it serves as the Bank of Georgia's headquarters.

The design is based on a concept named Space City method. The idea is to use and cover less ground and give the space below the building back to nature. The architect's reference was a forest: the cores are like the trunk, the horizontal parts the crowns. Between the earth and crowns there is a lot of free space for other living beings, which create one harmonious world with the forest.

The concept that the landscape or nature "flows" through under the building was used by other architects, too. Le Corbusier worked theoretically on the "house on pilotis" and realized this idea for example from 1947 on in the Unité d'Habitation. Frank Lloyd Wright used a similar idea at Fallingwater in 1935.

George Chakhava was Georgia's Deputy Minister of Highway Construction in the 1970s. Therefore, he was both the client and the lead architect of this project. He could choose the site location best suited for the design himself.

🔤
Colour #tan
Material #concrete
Function #office
Feature #cantilever #retro #adminvisited
Address: 29a Iuri Gagarini St, Tbilisi, Georgia
Google street
Terrace google street #BestGS@simoderna 🔥
Moss side google street

©️
pics by #SimonaRota, Architectonic Travels and Georgia About
text by Archdaily and Wikipedia

*️⃣Florida Polytechnic University

Architect #Calatrava #SantiagoCalatrava
City #PolkCity close to #Lakeland
Country #USA #NA

🔤The exterior of the building is dominated by two #white dramatic elements, the pergola and the operable roof. The pergola is a light #steel trellis that surrounds the entire building from the ground to the roof above the corridor. It provides a perceptual ceiling to the exterior arcade and terrace, while reducing the solar load on the building by over 30%.

The operable roof consists of a series of hydraulically activated brise-soleil that provide shading to the "commons" skylight. The louvers are individually controlled and can be programmed to follow the course of the sun throughout the day. #kinetic

The "commons" is a large multi-use hall illuminated by a central skylight, that can be adapted for diverse uses such as lectures, performances, ceremonies, demonstrations, fundraisers, formal dinners and school dances. It is the heart of the building and promotes interdisciplinary interaction between students and faculty.

🔤
Function #education
Feature #onwater
Address: 4450 Polytechnic Cir, Polk City, FL 33868, United States

©️
pics by #Karchmer
text by architects

*️⃣Natural Ellipse

Architect #Endoh #MasakiEndoh
City #Tokyo
Country #Japan #AP

🔤In Shibuya, one of the busiest districts of the urban center both during the day and at night, the client wished to raise a building for two dwellings starting from a double premise: to design a peaceful house which is not entirely cut off from the busy atmosphere surrounding it.

Despite the compactness of the site — less than 45 m² — the design achieves a sense of openness through careful manipulation of light and geometry. The elliptical plan diffuses light and directs views toward the sky, producing an interior atmosphere that feels far larger than the footprint suggests.

The envelope was built on site and is made of fiber-reinforced #polymer sheet, there are thus no seams to speak of, which enhances the plastic quality of the skin.

Though this polymer sheet serves no structural function in regards to shear resistance in the steel columns. Instead, a lattice of steel bars are crossed reinforcing the columns laterally.

🔤
Colour #white
Function #residential
Address: 7-1 Maruyamacho, Shibuya, Tokyo 150-0044, Japan

©️
pics by Hiro Sakaguchi, architecture-tokyo.com and Google Maps
text by arquitecturaviva.com and architecture-tokyo.com

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