Spa House / Metropolis Design

Architect: Metropolis Design
Location: Hout Bay, Cape Town, South Africa
Project Team: Jon Jacobson, Jenny Bath, Shani Schabort
Client: Cape Dream Stay
Structural Engineer: Sutherland and Associates-Michael Bennet, Justin Arendse
Contractor: Batir Construction
Project Year: 2011
Photographs: Courtesy of Metropolis Design

Building: A multi-functional building with residential, recreational and spa facilities, annexed to a larger residence.
Spa House: Mountainside home integrated into its powerful natural surroundings
Set on the mountainside on the urban edge of Hout Bay, overlooking the bay and harbour, surrounded by weathered sandstone formative. The primary design intention was to integrate the building with the powerful landscape and to derive its poetics from the qualities of its surroundings. The Spa House is separated from the principal residence by a berm, and is connected to it by foot paths.

The brief called for a place of entertainment and relaxation both for the client and his occasional guests, who would also be accommodated there. It incorporates swimming pools, guest accommodation, spa facilities and general living and poolside areas. The house is conceived of as a hovering set of elements, suspended over a large waterscape, which forms an extended terrace on the mountainside.

Water constitutes the primary experience of the building. The floor planes are arranged to provide contrasting experiences of water, and the underwater spa with large viewing windows into the pool has a sense of stillness and mystery. The guest accommodation block hovers dramatically over the water and projects into space towards the mountain and sea. The dining area is submerged below water level, and pool decks are arranged as islands in a sea of water, connected by a bridge.

The building masses are arranged in a dynamic composition, across and counter to the contours of the landscape. The building acts as a windbreak, protecting the pool from the south-easterly winds raking down the mountainside in summer. The ground floor opens up entirely to the landscape and the interior and exterior finishes are continuous, to minimise the distinction between inside and outside and enhance the experience of the building as a light platform in a vast landscape. Formally, the building comprises a number of separate sculptural forms in a dynamic composition. The base of the building, incorporating pools, relaxation rooms and guest accommodation is entirely of concrete. The superstructure is of steel construction, which is clad in afromosia shiplap boards on timber studwork.

Reference : http://www.metropolisdesign.co.za/

http://www.archdaily.com/201692/spa-house-metropolis-design/

 — en Hout Bay Beach.

Express Rail Link West Kowloon Terminus / Aedas

Designed by Andrew Bromberg of Aedas, the Terminus is a 430.000 square meter structure, equipped with 15 high speed rail tracks that connect Hong Kong to Beijing. The project won the Best Futura Mega Project in MIPIM Awards 2012. Construction will be completed in 2015.It will be the largest bellow ground terminus station in the world. Situated in Hong Kong, the building acts more like an international airport, as it includes custom and immigration controls for departing and arriving passengers.
“Being a gateway to Hong Kong, the Terminus was designed to be an architecture that connects with the surrounding urban context as much as it makes visitors aware of the city’s character whether arriving or departing. To achieve this, the design efficiently compacted all of the supporting space to allow for a large void down into the departure hall below, with added apertures going down to the track platforms. The outside ground plane bends down to the hall and the roof structure above gestures toward the harbor. The result is a 45 meter high volume which focuses all attention to the south façade with views of the Hong Kong Central skyline, Victoria Peak and beyond.”

Reference: http://www.aedas.com/

http://www.evolo.us/architecture/express-rail-link-west-kowloon-terminus-aedas/

 — en Pekín.

Vertical Village / GRAFT Architects

Designed by GRAFT Architects, Vertical Village is a residential, hotel and entertainment development in Dubai that harnesses the most powerful renewable energy source in the desert, the sun. Organized to reduce solar gain and maximize solar production, the buildings are massed as self-shading slabs at the north of the site on the east-west axis to reduce low-angle sun penetration. At the southern end of the site, a vast solar collector array optimally angles itself toward the sun and faces the main public strip as a potent gesture to the developments sustainable intent and minimum LEED Gold rated performance.

The solar roof behaves much like a leaf, with veins that break the solar field up into serviceable units to provide structure but also transport energy, in this case hot water, back to the building where the energy is used to significantly reduce air conditioning consumption and provide hot water. Beneath the roof lies an urban scale entertainment district of cinemas, restaurants, shops and a theatre that shifts in degree of privacy and scale between the main entertainment strip to the south and the residential and hotel towers to the north.

The residential and hotel buildings have been sliced and leaned to firstly create large scale focal points, giving a unique address to each slab, and also to create a powerful and constantly shifting skyline as one drives by. Spaces captured between the slabs open up, interlock, disappear and then reappear as one approaches the building, offering a theatrical play of volumes that gesture towards the development’s entertainment and theatre program.

Reference: http://graftlab.com/

http://www.archdaily.com/225687/vertical-village-graft-architects/