*️⃣NTU Library

Architect #Ito #ToyoIto
City #Taipei
Country #Taiwan #AP

🔤Columns dominate the library in Taipei, a single-story structure designed in tandem with an eight-story building directly behind it. The taller building holds teaching facilities and forms the fourth side of an enclosed courtyard whose centerpiece is the jewel-like library.

Supporting the vertical load, the reinforced-concrete columns are arranged using a double-spiral algorithm. “Usually columns are organized with an orthogonal grid, but here we wanted a more natural way,” explains Ito.

So the column plan propagates from three centers in the ground plane. Two sets of curved lines extend outward in opposite directions, as if tracing the petals of a lotus flower.

Ito placed columns at their cross points. As the lines spin outward, the distance between intersections grows, and the concentration of columns disperses, creating pockets of open space reminiscent of clearings in a forest.

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Colour #white
Material #concrete
Function #public #library
Feature #interior
Address: No. 1號, Section 4, Roosevelt Rd, Da’an District, Taipei City, Taiwan 10617
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pics by #IwanBaan
text by Architectural record

*️⃣Minna No Mori / Gifu Media Cosmos community center

Architect #Ito #ToyoIto
City #Gifu
Country #Japan #AP

🔤Internally, the scheme is defined by large funnels in the roof plane that define various reading, resting and study zones. These curved globes are made from three-dimensional polyester shades that allow light to filter down into the spaces below.

The arrangement of furniture is also placed in circular formations, further emphasizing the helical nature of the plan

Designed to integrate sustainable technologies, the roof canopy is a composition of latticed wood, with interstitial openings allowing natural light to flood the library below. The domes assist in this, not only providing visual interest with their shape, but also by ensuring that sunlight refracts at particular angles to disperse solar gain more evenly throughout the building. #sustainability

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Material #wood #textile
Function #public #library
Feature #interior
Address: 40-5 Tsukasamachi, Gifu, 500-8076, Japan
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pics by #IwanBaan
text by DesignBoom

*️⃣Antwerp Port House

Architect #Hadid #ZahaHadid #ZHA
City #Antwerp
Country #Belgium #EU

🔤The new Port House in Antwerp repurposes, renovates and extends a derelict fire station into a new headquarters for the port – bringing together the port’s 500 staff that previously worked in separate buildings around the city. #refurbishment

Like the bow of a ship, the new extension points towards the Scheldt, connecting the building with the river on which Antwerp was founded.

Surrounded by water, the new extension's façade is a glazed surface that ripples like waves and reflects the changing tones and colours of the city’s sky. Triangular facets allow the apparently smooth curves at either end of the building to be formed with flat sheets of glass.

This perception of a transparent volume, cut to give the new building its sparkling appearance, reinterprets Antwerp’s moniker as the city of diamonds.

While most of the triangular facets are transparent, some are opaque. This calibrated mix ensures sufficient sunlight within the building, while also controlling solar load to guarantee optimal working conditions. At the same time, the alternation of transparent and opaque facade panels breaks down the volume of the new extension, giving panoramic views of the Scheldt, the city and the Port as well as providing enclosure.

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Material #glass
Function #office
Feature #heritage
Address: Mexicostraat 37, 2030 Antwerpen, Belgium
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pics by #LuisDiaz
text by Archdaily

*️⃣Pyramid of Tirana

Architect #MVRDV
City #Tirana
Country #Albania #EU

🔤The Pyramid of Tirana, originally built as a museum dedicated to the communist dictator Enver Hoxha, has been dramatically transformed by MVRDV. Reusing the concrete structure, the Pyramid is now an open sculpture in a new park. The park and the sculpture are home to an ensemble of colorful boxes, scattered in and around the original building. Steps have been added to the building’s sloping façades, allowing the people of Albania to literally walk all over the showpiece of the former dictator. #refurbishment

Since the fall of the communist regime, the building was variously used as a radio station, a nightclub, a conference venue, a broadcast center, and, during the 1999 Kosovo War, a base for NATO. The ever-changing uses left behind a patchwork of alterations that made the interior cluttered and dark.

The transformation of the Pyramid shows how a building can be made suitable for a new era, while at the same time preserving its complex history, and demonstrates that historic brutalist buildings are ideal for reuse. #heritage

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Colour #mixed
Material #rawconcrete
Function #public #community
Address: Bulevardi Dëshmorët e Kombit 5, Tiranë, Albania
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pics by #Ossip
text by Archdaily

*️⃣Galaxy Soho

Architect #Hadid #ZahaHadid #ZHA
City #Beijing
Country #China #AP

🔤Its architecture is a composition of five continuous, flowing volumes that are set apart, fused or linked by stretched bridges. These volumes adapt to each other in all directions, generating a panoramic architecture without corners or abrupt transitions that break the fluidity of its formal composition.

The great interior courts of the project are a reflection of traditional Chinese architecture where courtyards create an internal world of continuous open spaces.

The lower three levels of Galaxy SOHO house public facilities for retail and entertainment. The levels immediately above provide work spaces for clusters of innovative businesses. The top of the building is dedicated to bars and restaurants that offer views along one of the greatest avenues of the city. These different functions are interconnected through intimate interiors that are always linked with the city, helping to establish Galaxy SOHO as a major urban landmark for Beijing.

The RIBA stated Galaxy Soho in Beijing to be “distinctly urban rather than suburban, civic as much as it is commercial… Flowing bands of white aluminium and glass give the development an almost geological solidity and presence.”

Project was selected by #RIBA as the best building in international category in 2013. #award

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Colour #monochrome #white
Material #aluminium
Function #mixeduse #office #retail #mall
Address: China, Beijing, Dongcheng, Xiaopaifang Hu Tong, 小牌坊胡同甲7号 邮政编码: 100010
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pics by #HuftonCrow
text by Archdaily and architects