Photo: Simona Rota.
As the World Architecture Festival in Singapore tails off for this year, it is worth dwelling on a couple of the less well known category winners. The first feature today is the sculptural square known as Plaza España in Adeje by Menis Arquitectos.
In effect the square is conceived as an extension to The Sacred Museum. Its aim being to strengthen the relationship of the town, to the institution and the natural dramatic landscape that surrounds them. The new public space that is created is now the centre of the community hosting its celebrations.
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Photos: David Closes Architects.
It was a sad say in 1835 when the convent of San Francisco in Guardiola, Catalonia, was sacked. Its dilapidation from that moment resulted in the convent’s demolition in 2000. Only the church remained standing, but in a precarious condition. David Closes was invited to resurrect the church with a new auditorium and cultural facilities.
He approached the task from the position that the building’s decay was not to be reversed as such, but rather used to record the past, and provide a foundation to bring new meaning to the building and those that use it.
See how this remarkable transformation was made. Read more
Photos: IAAC
An experimental project from the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia has made the Endessa Pavilion part of the Smart City Expo in Barcelona, Spain. The project aims to explore how technology can create architectures that are adaptive to particular environments, and particular conditions.
This building starts with a simple premiss of a timber box with a grid façade on which modular components can be mounted. From an analysis of the building orientation and latitude, maps of insolation density can be created which allows façade components to be generated whose forms respond to the precise conditions expected at that point on the building. Moving across the façade each component will be different as its form is optimised to best meet the parameters to which it must respond. In this case that means providing shade and generating electricity from PV cells. Read more
Photos: Feranndo Guerra.
Parc de la Villette may have risen from Paris’ old slaughterhouse and meat market, but in Madrid its old meat district has had a slow evolutionary transformation. Firstly some of the disused buildings were turned in to offices and administrative buildings in the 1880s. From around 1990 work began on the Ballet Nacional de España and Compañía Nacional de Danza and was completed about 6 years later.
The most recent conversion by the architects Churticaia + Quadra-Salcedo has created the Cineteca Matadero. The building provides a centre for all aspects of audio visual production and hopes to become a centre for documentary film making in Spain. Read more
Photos and drawings: Capella Garcia Architecture.
Since at least Babylonian times, hanging gardens of significant scale have been thought of as wondrous things. But beyond the spectacle of the garden itself, is the structure within which the garden is created. Capella Garcia Architecture have designed this hanging garden or, as they tend to be known these days, a green wall, to be around for some time. The garden especially when the planting is fully mature will be wondrous if not on the scale of the ancient mystical gardens. But I imagine that many, even without the plants, would be happy to sit and stare at the structure for a while. Read more
