Folding façade

The Art & Design Museum, situated at the heart of Shapu Art Town in Shenzhen's Bao'an District, is designed as a cultural hub and landmark for a new neighborhood built on a previously undeveloped plot of land. The Museum anchors Art Town—a group of recently built spaces for the arts—linking the cluster of studios, galleries, art schools, and exhibition spaces into a unified cultural district.   By introducing a vibrant mix of uses and fostering community, the Museum and Art Town generate the rich sense of place that typically arises as neighborhoods develop over time. Together, they define the district—which had no history or sense of identity—as a major destination for the arts. To create a core for the p... More

Fish and chip shops from around the UK were 3d scanned by London and Hong Kong based creative studio Unknown Works, and digitally replicated to form the active, unfolding facade of this concept restaurant in Chengdu, China.   When Xi Jinping visited Scott’s Fish and Chip shop in York in 2015, the restaurant gained a new and international audience and a deal was struck to take the chippie to China, making it the first of its kind in the country.   The tiny 33sqm restaurant sits within Taikoo Li, an upmarket shopping district in the heart of Chengdu, China’s fourth largest city. The site is located at a prominent corner junction within the Swire Properties owned estate. With the interior space being so limited for di... More

In 2015, research reports revealed that all educational buildings in the Eemsdelta region of Groningen were exposed to safety risks due to earthquakes caused by natural gas extraction. The new Eemsdelta Campus in Appingedam is a groundbreaking project that includes three secondary schools, a vocational training program, and a sports cluster. This integrated learning landscape spans 4 hectares of outdoor space, designed to meet the educational needs of all schools while fostering natural interaction with the environment. The campus accommodates 1,700 students and is energy-supplying, circular, and earthquake-resistant. Egbert De Boer The layout of the school campus was inspired by the historical “wierden”, artificial dwelli... More

A beautiful expression of light and glass The design for Cbus Property and Charter Hall’s 171 Collins Street has been developed directly out of the richness of its inner city location and showcases large open floor plates with unsurpassed views across Melbourne’s river corridor. Opened in June 2013, the crystalline tower glistens on Melbourne’s skyline. With its gently folding facade, 171 is Collins Street’s first Premium Grade office building in 20 years. The building consists of 17 large campus-style floor-plates in a side core configured tower. The lower levels incorporate a business centre and high-end retail space including restaurants facing Flinders Lane and a luxury fashion retailer addressing Collins Street. The design conc... More

VfB Stuttgart is the tradition-steeped football club of the state capital of Baden-Württemberg. The club, founded in 1893 as a “club for movement games”, has its home in the city district of Bad Cannstatt. In the immediate vicinity of the stadium is the club’s restaurant. A change of tenant presented the opportunity for a complete refurbishment of the building. List&Scholzare the young restauranteurswho have taken over the restaurant. “CannstatterJungs”and VfB fans themselves, they commissioned Ippolito Fleitz to design a clubhouse that can hold its own at the top of the first Bundesliga. The »1893« is designed as a meeting place for fans after the game, the best place to watch live footballon TV, while at the same time establishing itse... More

(Hong Kong, December 2015): spatial practice 3rd place shortlisted design proposal for Varna Public Library in Varna, Bulgaria spatial practice design for the Varna Public Library Competition has been shortlisted and selected 3rd place among the winning entries. The design of the 28,000sm public library was selected among 370 entries. Today, the impact of virtual and digital influence is quite often celebrated through social media and other mediums, we live in a world today that aspires to be more connected and exposed. The role of public space is being redefined. No more traditional mono-functional spaces that allows one program to manifest, rather platforms that allows anything to happen is the real tool of design in the urban re... More

In the context of the IJdock complex, where the building volumes result from cutting sightlines out of a rectangular mass, we have merged the obvious associations with ships, rocks or the strange forms of building block in the traditional city into one building, without being too literal. The design and materialisation of the apartment building reflects the specific scale and location of the project. The apartments have two sides: one is opening to the water, while the other facing the street, is more enclosed. On the water side, a 7 metre wide folding facade offers the living spaces maximum contact with the water: not just the view, but also the wind, the sound and the smell. At the other side the facade is build up out of doors, windo... More

Project: Central Plaza Lardprao Location: Bangkok, Thailand Type: Master Plan, Retail & Offices Size: 130,000 m2 Client: Central Pattana Architect: Mauro Resnitzky Design: Girimun Ltd 2009 Opening: 2010 The very first South East Asian mixed-use complex of shopping, offices, hotel and convention centre built in the 70’s has gone through a major expansion and repositioning. With an entirely new face and content, its 6-storey shopping mall component has expanded to incorporate former parking areas and lower office floors in a total of 130,000 sqm of inside-out refurbishment. The new eye-catching folding façade wraps around the building with new entrances, display windows and digital screens. Girimun Architects： http://girimun.c... More

The project is the redevelopment of the Luk Hoi Tong Building which is well-known as a by-gone cinema landmark in Central for fifty years. The new development will be a complex building of contemporary standards with new office spaces, retail shops and restaurants. Situated at a prominent corner and abutting the pedestrianised Theatre Lane, the design focuses on a highly dramatized folding façade system as the main feature on the elongated side of the building that wraps the podium and the tower portion in a formal continuum. The result is a dynamic and engaging interface with public movement along Theatre Lane, as well as a subtle and conceptualized reference to the theatrical history of the site. More

Solid as a rock yet light and open in appearance, this house sits in the rugged landscape of the Wapiti Valley in Wyoming, USA. Architects Brett Nave and Lori Ryker of architects’ office studio.bna from Montana in the North West United States of America designed a building where the interior layout gave shape to the exterior form. They took inspiration from the rock formations, colours and shapes of the surrounding austere landscape. The clients were not interested in the classic ranch-style wooden house which is typical of the region. Rather, they wanted a comfortable hideaway that interprets nature in the language of 21st century architecture. The result is a bright, open building with panoramic views of the great expanse of landsca... More

Apeldoorn with its 160,000 inhabitants is situated in the Dutch province of Geldern and is regarded as a garden city offering high quality living stan-dards. Since its economic boom years in the early 60s, the city has seen great changes in its architectural environment. In the district of Zevenhuizen in the North-Eastern part of this sprawling city a considerable number of residential blocks that originated from this period have been handed down. Since the beginning of 2007 here, as everywhere in the city, extensive renovation and modernisation projects have been taking place with the aim of upgrading the out-of-date accommodation - not least in or-der to prevent the area from becoming run down. The entire residential area to be renovat... More

The exclusive residential project “Boston“ at the Eastern waterfront of Amsterdam is a prime example of the successful adaptive re-use of existing building fabric and the modern refurbishment of derelict in-dustrial buildings. In the course of last year old empty warehouses were turned into luxury “Loft” apartments with modern facilities and charming views onto the harbour and the close-by old City. Kitchens, bathrooms, sitting and bedrooms are open plan so that residents can arrange the inner layout in a flexible manner by means of partitioning walls. The project “Nieuw Amerika“ comprises the Boston block and the new Detroit and Chicago buildings and should be completed by 2007. All three buildings are connected underground by a two-tie... More