Australian based practice Lacoste+Stevenson and DJRD have been shortlisted for the new Marrickville library competition. Their entry is blending building and landscape and strongly refers to australian scenery. More images and architect’s description after the break.
Take a tour through the newly built Taltal Public Library, designed by Santiago based firm Murua-Valenzuela. The small town project is located opposite of the main square and close to the Alhambra Theater, which was also recently refurbished by the architects. Responding to a narrow site of 7 by 40 meters while being situated between mediators, the architects conducted a series of indoor spaces in order to “avoid the domestic condition.” The spaces of varying heights house the library activities and end with a reading room that is connected to an interior courtyard. Construction has been completed and the Taltal Public Library is already in use.
Chinese calligraphy is mainly based in three characteristics: status of mind, line and color. These tree concepts triggered ///byn original ideas for the Ordos Museum. A primary impression of non-organization is quickly overcome by a self-organized logic. Here, the museum volumes have found their own space in the park. The logics of placement come from many different aspects: orientation, functionality, targeted visuals, public space, creating a unique orchestrated sequence of spaces. More images and project description after the break.
Earlier this week, we had the pleasure of touring the Metropolitan Museum of Art ‘New Galleries for the Art of the Arab Lands, Turkey, Iran, Central Asia, and Later South Asia’ with Achva Stein on its opening day. Stein, a principal of an ASLA award-winning landscape architecture and design firm Benzinberg Stein Associates and the founding Director of the Graduate program in Landscape Architecture at the Spitzer School of Architecture at the City College of New York, was asked to join the MET’s endeavors after her noted publication, Morocco: Courtyards and Gardens, showcased her passion for and understanding of the country’s varied garden types found in regions such as Marrakech and Fez. For the new wing, Stein has created a fantastic 14th century Maghrebi-Andalusian-style courtyard that goes beyond a mere representation, and truly infuses the spirit and essence of a Moroccan court into a small interior space of the MET.
More about our trip to the MET after the break.
Shelburne Museum in Shelburne, Vermont is one of North America’s finest, most diverse and unconventional museums of art, design and Americana. Over 150,000 works are exhibited in a remarkable setting of 39 exhibition buildings, 25 of which are historic and were relocated to the Museum grounds.
Ann Beha Architects’ design for Shelburne’s new center for art and education establishes a striking presence along Vermont’s Route 7. This project is part of the Museum’s $14M capital campaign. Construction is tentatively planned to start next year with the center opening in 2013.
Jean-loup BALDACCI & Atelier BORONSKI shared with us their first prize winning proposal for the New Taipei Museum of Art competition. Their aim was to create a field of dreams; a building for the people. Its existence actually extends the park and because it merges street and park it invites a high degree of participation. It is completely accessible for people to walk and even ride bicycles all over. The public can easily ‘take possession’ of this building, even just to come and sit on the grass and enjoy the view as they picnic on these huge pieces of ‘ground’ floating in the sky. But through various openings and glazed apertures the interiors beckon. More images and architects’ description after the break.
Federico Soriano Pelaez shared with us their third prize winning proposal for the New Taipei City Museum of Art. Their aim was to design a museum which contains all museums. A museum which is the entirety of all the museums in the world. They collected 100 of the most important museums of art from around the world. It is architecture as a refined abstraction of a historic landscape. It is a recollection of generic fragments from the plans of the museums from around the world which will be inserted into the Taipei City Museum of Art. More images and project description after the break.
Movements and gestures of dancers are full of expression and tension. Dancers bring the fascinated viewer into an internal world of experience and emotion through the swinging movement of their hips, decorative arrangement of their fingers and smooth vibration of the ornamental frills. Rhythmic and dynamic music transmits the spectator into a world of incredible aesthetic feelings awakening all senses and inflaming the imagination. This is how architecture dedicated to the culture of feisty flamenco should look like as demonstrated in the proposal by MUS Architects. More images and architects’ description after the break.
