IDeas: Portfolio

IDeas: Portfolio: Project : Sepang Gold Coast Designers : Design Department YTS Architect ...

IDeas: Portfolio

IDeas: Portfolio: Developer: PKNS Project : Rawang Mixed Development Consultant : YTS ...

IDeas: Portfolio

IDeas: Portfolio: Developer : PKNS Project : PKNS MIXED DEVELOPMENT - SUBANG BESTARI Malays...

IDeas: The Cairns Institute, Cairns, Australia

A new way for contemporary placemaking in the tropics influenced by indigenous and traditional cultures

The design concept for the Cairns Institute grew from its mission statement ‘enhancing life in the tropics’, and is strongly centred on the belief of placemaking, rather than building-making. As a result, the proposal is sensitively located in the landscape and where a sense of the landscape is embedded in the experience of the place. The main entry aligns with the natural forms of the mountain range to the west, and integrates landscape experiences in the surrounding and courtyard gardens.

Developed by BVN Architecture and MMP Architects, the signature gesture for the design is an undulating roof form using a conventional timber gridshell structural system which unifies the concepts of organic form. The construction of this roof in sustainable timber has many levels of experience; from the powerful and exciting address it provides on approach, to the sense of anticipation in the semi-protected space of the rainforest courtyard at entry and as part of the continuing experience to the interiors.

The design is responsive and empathetic to the idea of community; in this instance a community of researchers. Traditional approaches to placemaking engage this community through the arrangement of research hubs and other spaces around a central courtyard. This heightens awareness and visibility, while promoting both purposeful and incidental interaction. The concept enhances the Institute’s culture and allows its research to develop in a healthy, positive and collaborative manner.

The concept of placemaking is further enhanced and reinforced by a proposal to adopt colours, patterns and finishes from traditional cultural activities, particularly those from communities of the tropical Far North Queensland region. For example, the external perforated sunscreen to the lower floors of the offices and research areas is derived from traditional fibre work and weaving patterns. Colours are derived from paintings and other artworks of indigenous artists from tropical regions of the world.

 Auditory Pavilions for the Dutch Centre

MIII architecten designs two satellite pavilions for 'The Mothership' in Baarn

This project concerns two new additions to the existing Pavilion P1 - built in 2000 - to inform professional customers about the specialisms and other educational matters regarding the arboriculture. The brief was to create two new pavilions as 'satellites' related to the 'mothership', that would be part of the scenery in a very natural way, but still recognisable as organic structures to fit the profile of the company and the existing Pavilion.

Both the volumes evolve from a strictly mathematical grid from various reference points in the area, such as visibility axes in the exhibition garden and historical agricultural scenery.

Also the orientation to the sun was a very important issue, both for philosophical matters like being part of the sources of life, as well as for practical matters like daylight and warmth to the inner-climate. The almost self-evident integration in the natural environment, achieved by this 3-D mathematical extrapolation of the surrounding’s analysis, lead to the creation of clear, constructive structures.

The clarity of the construction-plans remains completely visible by using glass façade panels as transparent physical separation segments. The acquired plastic effect can be seen as the result of the dialogue between the wooden construction frames and the glass fragments of the highly transparent skin.

The glue-laminated wood constructions are evidently an up-dated version of methods that have their roots in the 500 year old Dutch way of wood construction-systems. Together with the very modern glazing and cladding techniques used, the overall result is considered by ZNA as a step forward into the office’s inquiry for the edges beyond conventional perceptive enclosure of space, together with a realistic use of today’s applicable building techniques.

FIDM San Diego, San Diego, United States

Clive Wilkinson Architects completes new campus for FIDM

The latest installment of FIDM’s unique creative learning environments, the San Diego Campus, is a dynamic 'learning landscape'. Together with sister campuses in Orange County, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, the new architecture has come to represent the college’s reputation, brand, and philosophy towards education.

A variegated internal landscape is organised around the complex programmatic requirements of a school campus, all the while framing remarkable views of San Diego’s skyline and an adjacent park. FIDM’s new learning landscape is organised in three parts: a public entry zone, an educational zone and a zone for student support services and administration. A continuous path connects the different areas of the campus, taking one through specific areas such as reception, admissions, career guidance, financial services, classrooms, labs, student lounge and the library, each with its own unique spatial experience.

The warm palette of oranges, yellows and greens seen in the in the local desert vegetation compliment the rich blues of the clear desert sky. These saturated colours differentiate the 'monuments' in the landscape from the warm muted background characterised by the large oak-paneled ceiling and sand coloured quartz flooring in the public zone. The full-height wall graphics of abstracted vegetation lend visual texture to the space. Providing an environment for student socialisation, the Student Lounge offers a location for informal meeting to occur under a canopy of organic metal lanterns.

Creative Media Centre - City University of Hong Kong

Leigh & Orange and Studio Daniel Libeskind complete futuristic new Media Centre in Hong Kong

The Creative Media Centre for the City University of Hong Kong provides facilities that make the University to the first in Asia to offer the highest level of education and training in the creative media fields. The Centre will house the Centre for Media Technology and the Department of Computer Engineering and Information Technology. The distinctive crystalline design creates an extraordinary range of spaces rich in form, light, and material that, together, create an inspiring environment for research and creativity.

Studio Daniel Libeskind worked with Leigh & Orange Limited to complete the project on November 15th 2010. The project brief for the Creative Media Centre expressed two distinct requirements. First that there are very few repetitive rooms in the building and most rooms needed specific technological requirements that determine size, proportion, lighting, sound isolation and even structure and mechanical systems. In addition, there were requirements for space efficiency and cost that matched any other public academic building in Hong Kong.

The brief also required that the design of the CMC encourage creativity, collaboration and be a bold and provocative environment for the natural chaos inherent in creative endeavour. The architects balanced these two requirements through the connective public spaces on the interior and exterior that flow around the private, technical academic rooms. A line of cores runs through the center of the building. One-way beams span to the perimeter and create a 3m planning module for the rooms. Open area for circulation follows the line of cores but becomes an important space for creative collaboration through specific sculptural treatments. The sloping walls of the building create larger public spaces on the lower floors and open exterior areas on the ground.

Finally, within the private academic areas, the architects developed teaching clusters that reflect the same balance of openness and efficiency as the building as a whole. Each cluster has rooms for experimentation in their centre, offices and studios around the perimeter and flexible space for cooperation in between. These areas are asymmetrical and typically too wide for a corridor yet narrower than rooms, they are thus distinct areas specifically designed for unpredictable collaboration between teachers and students - between production and theory. The distinctive crystalline design creates an extraordinary range of spaces rich in form, light, and material that, together, create an inspiring environment for research and creativity.