Social Housing In Carabanchel – Architects: coco arquitectos – Jorge Martínez and Laura Sánchez; Location: Madrid, Spain (via ArchDaily)

YJP Administrative Center is a temporary building in Tianjin Binhai CBD. Enclosed verandahs are arranged around the building to afford visual access to the CBD area from within the building. This allows the occupants to survey the surrounding construction site. The size of openings within the facade relates directly to the lighting requirements for particular activities within different areas of the building. The porosity of the façade is designed to produce the required conditions for these activities. The integration of the density of the patterned façade with the various inner functions forms a key focus of the project. The façade apertures serve as view frames. Aperture size and orientation is varied in a continuous manner introducing topological difference across the façade. The whole façade is constructed from six forms, reflected to give twelve types of identical components, making the building process highly efficient. This meant that the building to be constructed in less than seven months.

The North Slope Ski Hotel is a conceptual design proposal (in search of a client) for an eco-friendly ninety five room luxury hotel, which is powered primarily by the wind and by the sun. Eight large vertical axis wind turbines are mounted on the top of the hotel, and a very large array of flexible photovoltaic cells cover the lower south facing curved portion of the structure. These wind turbines and solar cells are used to supply most of the hotels electrical needs. The entire hotel is built from the most appropriate and sustainable building products available on the market. Read more…

‘ Söhne & Partner Architekten’s lightsails project was designed as guiding symbols for the exhibition around the Millstaetter lake, Austria. The objects are abstract sails, as a “light-space-installation”. The objects are orientated to the lake. The lake Millstättersee is getting a tribune out of water, because the energy of the lake is trapped, converted and reflected as light. So the sails are working as a transmitter and receiver at the same time. The illumination is reacting to the surrounding – the more people approaching the sails the more vibrate light. The illumination is also reacting to the temperature – they are constantly changing the colour. The colder the temperature the warmer the colour if light is getting. ‘ Click here for the link.

The 2009 Serpentine Gallery Pavilion, designed by Kazuyo Sejima & Ryue Nishizawa of SANAA, has been awarded Small Projects Winner at the Institution of Structural Engineers 2010 Structural Awards, a prize dedicated to projects with a construction cost of under £1 million. The Structural Awards recognise and reward the work of the world’s most talented structural designers, their indispensable contribution to the built environment and showcase projects that lead the industry’s development. The 2009 Pavilion design by SANAA architects called for a highly polished, thin metal roof of free form shape, supported by a field of slender, reed-like columns. The unique design posed structural challenges throughout, with the majority of attention focused on the roof. An innovative solution evolved using sandwich panels clad with a bonded mirror-finish sheet aluminium skin to display the dramatic visual qualities. (via Serpentine Gallery)

Since the beginning of his career, Melee has sought to relocate the formal debates of the Western art historical tradition in the psychological realm of the suburban home. Whether he is honoring and disrupting the integrity of the picture plane, testing the limits of autobiographical reference, or telescoping Warhol’s pillage-and-burn regard for culture into an intricately-rendered personal iconography, Melee situates his practice in a place where high and low not only interact but cross-pollinate. (Continue…) (via David Kordansky Gallery)

‘ The fact that a large portion of land lies three meters below street level and the typical conformation of this urban batch 10X40 meters enabled a large open space that is straightforward and transparent. This space is defined in one side by the north face structure, a parallel free wall which houses a library containing 7,500 volumes and on the other side by a parallel block, an all closed space – a block with three stories that contains all the services, equipment and dormitories. To access this block concrete stairs positioned parallel to the south limit of the bath, to access the wall of books metal platforms connected to the service block placed in an interleaved manner. The design takes advantage from the difference between the street level and the lower level of the plot, by positioning the living room in this lower level which ensures the required privacy and maintains the view of the distant landscape through the void. This simple home adopts simple constructive solutions, reducing the actions required for its achievement. The structure of the volume is resumed to masonry walls and reinforced concrete. Installations are apparent and performed without interference. After that the finishes are simple: monolithic concrete flooring and white Portuguese Stone. The walls without finishes are ready as it built. A single exception: the wall with books, finished with time and history. ‘ Link here.

Utriai Residence – Designed by Architectural Bureau G.Natkevicius & Partners in Utriai, Lithuania. Click here for the link.

‘ Mason Lane Farm Operations Facility ‘ by American Practice de Leon & Primmer Architecture Workshop is an entry into this year’s World Architecture festival for the production, energy and recycling category. Located in Goshen, Indiana, the project is a new complex for farm equipment, servicing, re-fueling and storage on a 2,000-acre property utilized for agriculture, recreation, wildlife habitat and conservation purposes. Two separate barn structures consolidate the various programmatic elements while heavy consideration was put into the circulation and access requirements of the large-scale farm equipment. The building focuses on recycling and using locally sourced materials. (via Designboom)

Beijing-based Vector Architects designed the Momentary City project in Hefei, China. More info and photos here.