Reassuring renovations
An overview of projects, products and exclusive articles about reassuring renovations
Project • By GSE Ingenieur-Gesellschaft mbH Saar, Enseleit und Partner • Exhibitions
Museum of Art Moritzburg
Can an image implicitly contain a space or an architectural idea? Can it hide the project that one day will have to transform that which it represents? Like some paintings that are represented themselves on the canvas, or like a book of books that could be the matrix of literature as a whole: can an architectural work act as a mirror of another work that it seizes? Our intervention in an old German castle stemmed from this strange fiction: an architecture as a text written (built) by others, in another time, for other uses, that nonetheless contains the laws for its own transformation. Two works displayed at the Moritzburg Museum marked the project’s start: an 1850 oil painting by Carl Triebel depicting the walls of the fortress in ruins, a... More
Project • By Vocus architecten bna • Offices
Bussum Water Tower
On 8 September 2010, Mayor Milo Schoenmaker opened the most sustainable office in the Netherlands: the Bussum Water Tower.
The project comprises the renovation of the former water tower from 1897 and linked to that, a new office building with a total of approximately 3,500 m2 of gross surface area.
The initiative was taken by professor Michiel Haas of the Dutch Institute for Building Biology and Ecology ("NIBE") and ir. Bob Custers of VOCUS architecten bna in 2004. Together with their property advisor mr. Maarten A. Smits MRE of Sixpence and investor Meeuwsen Ten Hoopen (MTH) represented by drs. Sjoerd Riedstra and drs. Rutger Kuipers, the project has turned into a big success.
The belief in sustainability, vision and decisiveness has pr... More
Project • By Ghigos Architects • Restaurants
River Club
A European chef arrives in Peking: not a magnificent journey for exotic recipe books or an exploration along the roads of taste. This time the geographies of the Sacco family have reached as far as Peking to open a restaurant, the River Club. Designed by the Ghigos Ideas studio, the River Club is a place for meeting and exchange, comparison and storytelling between ancient thoughts and knowledgeable research: a conscious attempt to achieve excellence for the gourmands of the world.
The internal fit-out continues the exchange of ideas between the chef and the architects in the project to renovate the historic Piccolo Lago restaurant belonging to the Sacco family in Mergozzo and with the design of “il milione” (the million) dish, initial r... More
Project • By Nacházel Architekti • Housing
Orchard House
A conversion of one of the oldest homesteads placed in the middle of an fruit orchard into a contemporary holiday home for a married couple with two children. The house retains its traditional rural character by keeping it single-storey and by preserving solid stone walls of an otherwise ruined house. On the facades there are preserved traces of the house development which are newly unified (both the retained masonry and the new openings) into a single paint. Openings in each of the facades are oriented toward the garden and provide plenty of light and openness during the daytime. New large openings in the west elevation shift the house into a heart of the fruit orchard. At night or when the house is not in use, it can be easily secured wit... More
Project • By Bonsar architecture studio • Showrooms
Furniture showroom and warehouse
This project is the result of the rehabilitation of an old cotton warehouse built over 50 years ago, and its transformation into a furniture showroom and warehouse. The reviving essence of the project led the design team to take a restoration approach, in spite of no financial limits and the possibility of demolishing and constructing a new building. In addition to the physical restoration, enlivening the spatial memories was taken into consideration as the most prominent goal in the rehabilitation process. Careful attention was paid that every addition to the building acquire a contemporary tone, and the remainder be restored as elements of the spatial memory. The reminiscence of light penetrating into the dark space of the old hall, turne... More
Project • By Taylor Smyth Architects • Apartments
ARMSTRONG AVENUE RESIDENCE
Originally constructed in 1912 as a dairy, this laneway building was converted to a residence in the mid 1980’s. The exterior has been basically untouched, allowing for the delightful experience that comes from the discovery of the contemporary light filled interior when compared with the raw, industrial exterior.
Over the years, subsequent owners have left their mark on this hidden gem, the most dynamic of which was to remove the roof of an auxiliary room to create an outdoor walled garden at one end of the living room. This new transformation was designed to emphasize the inside-outside relationship by completely opening up the end wall of the living room and infilling it with three large panes of glass, the middle one sliding. In orde... More
Project • By Capoferri Serramenti s.p.a. • Housing
Colle Massari Castle
scope:
automated cladded roof-opening on swimming pool
bespoke wood windows
custom oversize windows
triple pivot window-door without permanent intermediate posts
special features:
bespoke horizontal lift&slide roof (2 partitions)
More
Project • By VINCZE + LÁSZLÓ ARCHITECTS • Housing
Estate Centre
A picturesque village of 500 people located in the centre of the Káli basin. The estate was founded in 1949 for the purpose of animal husbandry. Along the years the facility had declined, the buildings had become dilapidated. The estate has changed hands which meant that the animal husbandry ended. In the coming years the neighbouring almond farming will be the facility’s main activity. The tearing down of some ramshackle buildings and the renovation of others will gradually lead to the revitalisation of the estate. The first stage of the process is the refurbishment of a farming building erected in the 1950s with a total area of nearly 870 square metres, as well as the construction of a residential building that will house flats for the o... More
Project • By Oyler Wu Collaborative • Private Houses
The Hyperion Project
Located on a vibrant commercial street in the Silver Lake area of Los Angeles, this project involves an ongoing series of interventions and transformations to an existing 1920's residential duplex. PHASE 1The project began with the renovation of the existing building that includes the design office of Oyler Wu Collaborative, with a private residence located upstairs. The exterior of the building is an austere two-story volume clad in fiber-reinforced cement board with deep, recessed aluminum windows. The interior of the building combines exposed 1930’s wood frame construction with simple modern detailing. PHASE 2One of the primary design features of the project is an aluminum and 100% recycled composite board fence along Hyperion... More
Project • By MSR Design (Meyer, Scherer & Rockcastle, Ltd.) • Warehouses
Urban Outfitters Campus
The Urban Outfitters corporate campus, housed in five rehabilitated buildings in the historic Philadelphia Navy Yard, provides new design studio and office space for the company’s distinctive retail brands while celebrating the idiosyncratic remnants of more than 125 years of ship building. site Located at the confluence of the Delaware and Schuylkill Rivers, the Navy Yard served as a ship building and repair facility from 1868 through 1996. Decommissioned, it’s 187 buildings were abandoned. In 2004, the 1,000-acre National Historic District was master planned for redevelopment—an evolution from public ownership to private use. When Urban Outfitters, Inc., first considered the site, the existing structures were dilapidated. Despite the deca... More
Project • By MAD Architects •
Hutong Bubble 32
MAD’s proposal for the future Beijing 2050 was first revealed at its exhibition MAD IN CHINA in Venice during the 2006 Venice Architecture Biennale. Beijing 2050 imagined three scenarios for the future of Beijing―a green public park in Tiananmen Square, a series of floating islands above the city’s CBD, and the “Future of Hutongs,” which featured metallic bubbles scattered over Beijing’s oldest neighborhoods. Three years later, the first hutong bubble has appeared in a small courtyard in Beijing.
China’s rapid development has altered the city’s landscape on a massive scale, continually eroding the delicate urban tissue of old Beijing. Such dramatic changes have forced an aging architecture to rely on chaotic, spontaneous renovations to... More
Project • By Comoco • Private Houses
CN Castle
The project’s brief requested the conservation and valorization of Castelo Novo’s Castle and its surroundings. Moreover, it suggested also the creation of a space where people and visitors could enjoy it as a place of permanence. To answer these demands, the design solution created a “body” without a rigid boundary, organic, working independently of the existing structures but using them as a support. The construction was designed as a continuous abstract object, non-identifiable with a unique and specific purpose. The object changes with the characteristics of the site. While in the church’s square it acts as a volume defining the limits, in the interior of the Castle’s walls, its shape is transformed into a pavement layer with ramps and s... More
Project • By Wiel Arets Architects • Hotels
Hotel Zenden
The Hotel and Sport School Zenden is located within three monumental town houses near the river Maas in Maastricht, the Netherlands. The hotel’s history begins in the late sixties, and originally contained only a pool for swimming lessons. Over the years other functions such as hotel rooms and a Judo school were implemented into the program. Upon the facilities reaching spatial limits, a renovation and reorganisation of the program was needed.
During the renovation, the scattered program was re-crystallized into an iconographical and integrated whole. Newly created openings in the hotel’s walls allow for views between all areas of the new program, as well to as the exterior. The renovation led to an abstraction of the structure in both... More
Project • By feld72 Architects • Hotels
Million Donkey Hotel
Participative art project in the context of "paesesaggio – azione matese"
2005 – 73 % of the population of Europe lives in cities, and this figure is growing. This percentage not only means the constant growth of (in-between) cities but also and above all the disappearance of the cultural and natural landscapes familiar to us. In a complexity that we possibly are not aware of. The future of these zones threatened with extinction is also Europe's future. Migration and its consequences is also the theme of "The Million Donkey Hotel", a project by feld72 in the context of the "Villaggio dell'Arte" from the "paesesaggio workgroup". In August 2005 a group of national and international artists was invited to address questions of identity,... More
Project • By L3P Architekten AG FH SIA • Museums
Conversion Vertical Museum
The castle-tower is under historical monuments’ protection and is a distinctive landmark in the region of Zurich. The tower is 21 metres high, the walls being up to 3 metres thick, and the interior radius averaging about 3.5 m.
As old as the hills and rusty fresh: rusty steel is used for all fixtures; the archaic expression of the castle-tower is underlined.
All existing technical installations have been removed, integrated in the walls or disguised in the timber work hung with rusty wire meshing. This pacification of room lends a marked accent on the stonework of the walls and the mounted objects exhibited on them. The medieval atmosphere has been reinforced with indirect and diffuse lighting.
The exhibition wages through local histo... More