*️⃣ The CBR Building

Architect #Brodzki #Lambrichs
City #Brussels
Country #Belgium #EU

🔤The CBR Building is designed to highlight the qualities of the material produced by Belgian cement works, its facade is made up of an assembly of 756 prefabricated oval modules in molded white cement concrete. There are no window frames and the panes, tinted orange, are set directly in the concrete which, during construction, involved the installation of a complete air conditioning system, the first of its kind in Belgium.

Constantin Brodzki saw the potential of using concrete as more than just a construction material and wanted to exploit its formal freedom to create organic shapes. It took him years, in cooperation with the CBR company and two Portuguese brothers, to be able to craft the prefabricated modules used in the facade. They started by producing dozens of different testing models which, once perfected, were used to create a mould in epoxy. This mould was used to produce the 756 modules needed, after which the construction happened very quickly.

The interior fittings and furniture give the building the "character of a total and complete work". Some of the furniture Brodzki designed himself in collaboration with his friend and neighbour, the interior architect Jules Wabbes, as well as the American designer Florence Knoll.

When in 2017 the CBR moved their headquarters, there was concern that the building would be demolished. Twenty-five architects petitioned for the preservation of the building. Rudi Vervoort, Minister-President of the Brussels-Capital Region, responded by initiating the process of adding the CBR Building to the list of protected heritage in Brussels

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Colour #reflective #bronzen
Material #rawconcrete
Function #office
Feature #retro
Address: Chau. de la Hulpe 185, 1170 Watermael-Boitsfort, Belgium
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pics by Wikipedia and #Verrecht
text by Wikipedia

*️⃣ Tianjin Binhai Library

Architect #MVRDV
City #Tianjin
Country #China #AP

🔤 An oval opening punctured through the building is propped open by “the Eye“, a luminous sphere with an auditorium. Terraced bookshelves, which echo the form of the sphere, create an interior, topographical landscape whose contours reach out and wrap around the façade.

''The Eye is the centre of the library. It ‘hollows out’ the building and creates, out of bookshelves, an environment to sit, to read and to hang out, to create an organic social space,'' explains MVRDV co-founder Winy Maas. ''In its heart is the auditorium which mirrors the environment, giving a 360 degree panorama of the space inside.'' #quote

Tianjin Binhai Library is MVRDV’s fastest realized project to date, taking just three years from the first sketch to the opening. The tight construction schedule forced one essential part of the concept to be dropped: access to the upper bookshelves from rooms placed behind the atrium. This change was made locally and against MVRDV’s advice. It rendered access to the upper shelves impossible. Until then the upper shelves of the library remain empty - with perforated aluminum plates printed to represent books – a remnant of the original design.

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Material #aluminium
Colour #white #monochrome
Function #public #library
Feature #interior #nightlight
Address: China, Tianjin, Binhai, 旭升路347號

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pics by #Ossip
text by architects, Archeyes and World Architecture

*️⃣ Odunpazari Modern Art Museum

Architect: #Kuma #KengoKuma #KKAA
City #Eskisehir
Country #Turkey #ME

🔤Odunpazari Modern Art Museum is to exhibit the owner’s collection of Turkish modern art. The site which is called Odunpazari (meaning wood bazaar) still has quite a few human-scale two- and three-story wooden buildings from the age of the Ottoman Turks in the surrounding area.

The exterior envelope of the museum is composed of timber in full extent signifying the history and memory of the place that used to function as market in trading wood.

At the heart of this project was a desire to create a link between people and art. "We wanted the building to carry the history and memory of the town, to resonate both on a human scale and with the unique streetscape of Odunpazari, which passing through is a special experience in itself. We very much look forward to seeing the public enjoy and interact with the building". -Yuki Ikeguchi (Partner) / Kengo Kuma (Founder).

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Material #wood
Function #public #museum
Address: QG7F+W4 Odunpazarı, Eskişehir, Türkiye
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pics by #Attali and #NAARO
text by Archdaily and Arkitok

*️⃣ Louis Vuitton Ginza Namiki

Architect #ASCo #Aoki #JunAoki #Shinagawa
City #Tokyo
Country #Japan #AP

🔤From the same corner siting, occupied by Louis Vuitton since 1981, the building’s highly modern appearance interprets the reflections of water as a material phenomenon. Poetic yet playful; shimmering and rhythmic. Once a peninsula extending in Tokyo bay, this evocation of water is expressed throughout as smooth, undulating surfaces – from the glass façade that transmits shifting colour to the feature staircase and fixtures.

Reflecting Ginza - Jun Aoki’s façade is at once monolithic and imbued with fluidity – his representation of a “pillar of water.” Practically seamless, the outer panes curve and ripple; their three-dimensional surface enhanced by dichroic glass that produces endless colour variations. At street level, the building reflects the dynamism of Ginza; higher up, neighbouring towers become wavy apparitions, while a skyscape sweeps across the glass, marking the passage of each day.

The façade was constructed from two layers of glass that curve and ripple like water, which was covered with a dichroic film to create a pearlescent colouring.

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Color #blue
Material #curvedglass
Function #retail #shop
Feature #adminvisited
Address: 7 Chome-6-1 Ginza, Chuo City, Tokyo 104-0061, Japan
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pics by #DaiciAno and globeglobe
text by Archdaily and Dezeen

*️⃣ SHIROIYA Hotel

Architect #SouFujimoto #Fujimoto #SFA
City #Maebashi
Country #Japan #AP

🔤An architect Sou Fujimoto has renovated an old hotel building of the '70s and created an atrium, by taking down the floors and exposing the rough concrete surface, where his staircases interact with Leandro Erlich's 'Lighting Pipes' which reminds the trace of water pipes running through the old edifice in the past. This part is referred to as 'Heritage Tower' with the respect to the site where a history of more than 300 years of hotel business continued in the past.

Fujimoto also designed a new building called 'Green Tower' with the image of the hillock, typical scenery of the region by the Tone River. #greenery

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Material #rawconcrete
Function #hospitality #hotel
Feature #interior #renovation
Address: Japan, 〒371-0023 Gunma, Maebashi, Honmachi, 2 Chome−2−15 白井屋ビル
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pics by #ShinyaKigure
text by Archdaily