Look closely, this is an all glass building!
In the home town of Winy Mass, a founder of MVRDV, the market square had suffered WWII damage which had destroyed some of the buildings. The resulting open space was too large and lacked the facilities that helps to keep such town squares activated.
MVRDV were invited to fill-in the gap with a new building, but the local people wanted vernacular architecture, something the practice is not known for doing! Seven proposals later, and a solution was found that borrowed a barn form from local historic farm buildings. The barn-like enclosure was then created with an all glass envelope which was then printed with images of the original town square architecture at 1.6 times real-life scale.
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Photo credits: 2by4-architects.
This small recreational house designed by 2by4 in the Netherlands has a traditional pitched roof exterior form with an unusual fully glazed end wall. The glass wall slides open, whilst the wooden wall also folds back producing a vanishing corner and meaning that the wooden floor of the interior goes right to the edge of the lake.
In the main space is a suspended fire pod that can be rotated towards the external decking so can be used internally or externally to keep away the chill on late summer evenings. Read more
Photos: Mecanoo.
It is not surprising that Kaap Skil, the Maritime and Beachcombers Museum, on the island of Texel, in the Netherlands, has been nominated for the Wood Architecture Award 2012.
Mecanoo, the designers, used wood in its façade, acting in part at least as a sun shade. It is also a good example of recycling as the timber was recovered from hardwood sheet piles used in the North Holland Canal.
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Photos: UNStudio
This building, designed by UN Studio, has received a Gold Certification from the German Sustainable Building Council. The building is essentially an office building but it aims to expand “contemporary understandings of new working environments and affect a design approach that creates working environments which stimulate communication, experimentation and creativity…”
We are also told: “The traditional office grid and the separation of work spaces is replaced by the incorporation of extensive visual connections, spaces for incidental and planned meetings and flexible office ‘laboratories’ with shared work stations.“
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Images: Paul de Ruiter Architects.
The search for inspiration is as old as the human species itself. Paul de Ruiter Architects has won an invited competition that gives the practice an opportunity to institutionalise that eternal search. The form will be an architectural one, located on the Brouwers Dam in the Grevelingen area of the Holland. Will the building become an new archetype? Read more
