Archinect - News

Manuel Herz Architect's rural hospital expansion in Senegal

2018-06-05T16:12:00-04:00

The Switzerland-based firm Manuel Herz Architect has been selected to design an important new expansion for a rural hospital in the Tambacounda region of Senegal. Conceived and funded by the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation and Le Korsa, the facility's expansion will help alleviate a current overcrowding issue.

Connection between the existing buildings and the new extension. Image by Play-Time, © Manuel Herz Architects.

The hospital currently serves 20,000 patients per year from the surrounding area and is in desperate need of more space to accommodate these numbers.

View of the corridor and the brick screen. Image by Play-Time, © Manuel Herz Architects.

Manuel Herz’s design aims to sensitively address the brief with a focus on greater coherence and comfort within the space. The design consists of a winding curvilinear building with lattice brickwork to help alleviate the region's extreme temperatures.

View of the building from the east. Image by Play-Time, © Manuel Herz Architect...

Olafur Eliasson completes his first building, Fjordenhus, in Denmark

2018-06-01T19:45:00-04:00

Fjordenhus (Fjord House) is the first building designed entirely by Olafur Eliasson and Sebastian Behmann with Studio Olafur Eliasson. Located in Vejle, Denmark, Fjord House is set to open on June 9th. The structure rises out of Vejle Fjord and can be accessed through Havneøen (The Harbour Island).

Fjordenhus by Olafur Eliasson and Sebastian Behmann with Studio Olafur Eliasson, located in Vejle, Denmark. Image: Anders Sune Berg.

The building was commissioned by KIRK KAPITAL as the company’s new headquarters and includes site-specific artworks by Eliasson with tailored furniture and lighting.

Fjordenhus by Olafur Eliasson and Sebastian Behmann with Studio Olafur Eliasson, located in Vejle, Denmark. Image: Anders Sune Berg.

Fjordenhus by Olafur Eliasson and Sebastian Behmann with Studio Olafur Eliasson, located in Vejle, Denmark. Image: Anders Sune Berg...

Studio Gang's first LA project will be a wavy high-rise in Chinatown

2018-04-19T14:39:00-04:00

Chicago-based architecture firm Studio Gang has signed on to design an eye-catching 26-story apartment and hotel tower in Chinatown. The widely-respected firm has designed numerous projects in Chicago, San Francisco, and New York, including the expansion of the American Museum of Natural History. This would be its first in Los Angeles.

Studio Gang has released plans to design a high-rise in Los Angeles' Chinatown, a space near the rapidly evolving Arts District downtown. The developer Compagnie de Phalsbourg, a French real estate investment company, brought on the firm to design the mixed-use building.

The new project will house 300 apartments, 149 hotel rooms, as well as shops and open public spaces. The site is planned for 643 North Spring Street with the building rising 26 stories, yet only measuring 55 feet wide. This narrow design allows for each unit to receive air and sunlight, as well as preventing the building from feeling like a wall.

NOARQ creates a curved house for a triangular lot in Portugal

2018-01-23T15:59:00-05:00

A new project titled CASA ED & JO features a clean and curved design by NOARQ. The renovated house is located in Famalicão, Portugal with tucked away patios inside a triangular urban plot.

CASA ED&JO by NOARQ located in Famalicão, Portugal. Image: João Morgado.

The lot is highly exposed due to different topographies between the adjoining streets. For this reason the house is closed on the north side to create more privacy. The house opens up on the east side where light enters the kitchen and the whole of the south facing front is open under a curved shade cover.

CASA ED&JO by NOARQ located in Famalicão, Portugal. Image: João Morgado.

The house consists of two floors rehabilitated from the original structure. The first floor was expanded to preserve the garage, entrance, and vertical access storage area.

CASA ED&JO by NOARQ located in Famalicão, Portugal. Image: João Morgado.

The second floor functions as the main area of the house consisting of open lounging rooms and the more p...

The house that a "calculus rock star" built

2015-10-06T14:45:00-04:00

[The Canadian mathematician James] Stewart was...an unlikely architectural trailblazer. He devoted many years of his life, and much of his income, to building his dream home in an upmarket Toronto neighbourhood. Integral House – named after the 'integral', a concept in calculus – is a shrine to calculus, the mathematics of flowing change. Stewart died last December, aged 73, and Integral House is now for sale at £11.4m [approx. $17.4 million]

More about mathematical design on Archinect:

The Golden Ratio: Relevant or not?

Mesmerizing Mosque Ceilings built by Muslims

Win a copy of MORPHING by Design Topology Lab founder Joseph Choma

Museums Avoid the Four-Corner Effect

2014-05-15T13:37:00-04:00

At the Barbican Center in London, the Curve gallery is an example of an unusually shaped art space in the middle of a traditional, rectiform center. Its 90-degree curved design, wrapping around the back of the performing arts center's main hall, has been by turns a challenge and a blessing, and its function continues to evolve even after 30 years' experience.

Do these buildings turn you on? The psychology of curvy architecture

2013-11-26T12:34:00-05:00

Oshin Vartanian and his colleagues slipped a group of people inside a brain-scanning machine and flashed hundreds of interior designs -- some curvy, some angular -- in front of them. They then had the choice of describing each room as either "beautiful" or "not beautiful." The study found that participants overwhelmingly preferred interior spaces with curving coffee tables, meandering sofas and winding floor patterns to rooms filled with angular furniture and rectilinear design.

J. Mayer H. Completes Schlump One in Hamburg

2012-10-24T17:23:00-04:00

J. Mayer H. Architekten has completed the "Schlump One" project in Hamburg, Germany. The architects took on an administrative building originally built in the 1950s and gave it the curvy JMH trademark update.

UK Government bans curved, glass and folding walls and orders concrete ceilings and render cladding to cut costs

2012-10-02T19:09:00-04:00

Curves are to be banned in a new generation of no-frills school buildings, according to a government crackdown on what it believes is wasteful extravagance in educational architecture. Design templates unveiled for 261 replacement school buildings also prohibit folding internal partitions to subdivide classrooms, roof terraces that can be used as play areas, glazed walls and translucent plastic roofs.