Hotel Puerta America, Marmo Bar + 6th floor

Hotel Puerta America, Marmo Bar + 6th floor

Madrid | Spain | Completed 2003

 

 

photographer: Rafael Vargas

photographer: Rafael Vargas

photographer: Rafael Vargas

photographer: Rafael Vargas

photographer: Rafael Vargas

photographer: Rafael Vargas

photographer: Rafael Vargas

photographer: Rafael Vargas

photographer: Rafael Vargas

photographer: Rafael Vargas

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Zaha Hadid. Expiral Tower, Barcelona.

This building will be the new iconic building in the area of Barcelona’s Forum, the Spiral Tower. This university campus will be located at the end of Avenida Diagonal, one of the main avenues of Barcelona, beside the Forum building designed by Herzog & de Meuron for the Forum of Cultures held in 2004.

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Rehabilitation of canalejas Parking. Duran Blazquez Architects.

The work involves the rehabilitation, renovation of the facade of public parking Canalejas located in the center of Alicante. (Alacant) Spain.

The rehabilitation project has been developed by the Spanish architectural Modena Architecture - Duran Blazquez Architects  in the city of Alicante in southern Spain.

The facade was severely damaged by erosion due to the ambient environment gas under very high traffic due to its location in a shopping area and downtown Alicante.

The graffiti in the lower areas of the building were making an improper image degradation of a building like this.

The intervention strengthened the front and has provided a current picture.

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Pormetxeta Square. Xpiral and MTM Arquitectos

Spanish studios Xpiral and MTM Arquitectos have completed a public square sheltered by steel trees that hold nets of boulders.

Pormetxeta Square, on a former industrial site in the Basque town of Barakaldo near Bilbao, creates a series of new thoroughfares, reconnecting the town centre with the river.

Hexagonal coloured tiles have been used to give variety to the ground surfaces, which have street furniture fixed to them by springs.

Photography is by David Frutos.

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Pormetxeta Square, in Barakaldo (Bilbao)
The new Pormetxeta Square, located close to the Nervion River, was the result of the Competition “Europan VI” developed in 2001.

The project was selected to take part in the Spanish Architecture Exhibition – On Site – that was organized at MoMA from New York in 2006; lately the exhibited model has been acquired by the museum for the permanent collection.

Industrial identity
The district of Barakaldo is located in a very steep slope territory above the Nervion River, where a complex urban planning was developed in the Sixties and was leaded by “Blast Furnace from Vizcaya”.

We have proposed to provide it with a new geography identity, by forgetting and removing the last urban planning that Urban-Galindo had created for this area.

Marrow of Urban Permeability
We modified the existing planning in order to created the New Square of Barakaldo (25.223m2), for the purpose to create to new advantages for the city: on the one hand a new access point to the urban centre, on the other hand a better fluidity and mobility from the city to the river, due to the industrial factories were shut in the permeability of the city.

Equipped Communications Arteries
The very steep slope of the plot has become in an opportunity of creation of a new urban typology. Taking advantage of the high difference between existing levels that it is 20 meters between the upper level and the bottom level of the plot, building a equipped slope, “the Pormetxeta Square”, with the next strategy:




The Pormetxeta Square and the different levels routes, that make up at the same time an unique project and also and an in independent project, due to the contrast between both intensify their purpose.


Architectura vs Urbanism
Our aim it is to build city. Understanding the public space and private space as hybridization between the city planning and the edification model, where the Architecture and the Urbanism are mixed at all times.

Click above for larger image
Consequently we have planned an urban strategy as a business and dialogue platform between citizens, creating a new social cohesion.
First of all several access and approach are linked: the railway platform, the highway connection, the entry towards the promenade river, the pedestrian and road streets, the access from the high street, the reached from the low street, the Desert Square, the school …

Secondly we have save all the space that is just under of each “Pormetxeta Ramp” in order to get 2.341m2 of commercial and service public facility.

The third advantage is working as a micro-public space: micro-squares, points of meeting, rest stands, outdoors stays, in other words building a phenomenological sequence.

And the last advantage is that it is acting as a multifunctional element, it works as a street furniture, balustrade, pergola, lantern… creating a very equipped place.

The animated square
The Pormetxeta Square appears under the long ramps. There are some holes that qualify the space with playgrounds and it is become in a unique topography. A big artificial trees of 11.5m tall, that are made of COR-TEN steel, hang boulders on the cup of the tree, they work as a parasol and under them the only things that you can feel are the laughter of children, the roller skaters, the talks…

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Q House - Asensio Mah + J.M.Aguirre Aldaz

The house is a conscious exercise in developing an alternative domestic environment to the surrounding villas of the new suburban neighborhood. The solutions for the development so far have typically been compact villas located on abruptly leveled gardens, irrespective of the complex topographical condition of their sites.

Our ambition for producing an alternative domestic atmosphere is developed by constructing a more explicit relationship between the house and garden with the existing conditions of the steep site.

This organizational strategy for the house sought to register the difference in topography within the parcel by organizing a series of terraces that configure the framework for a landscape with differentiated characters. This deliberate geometric configuration affords multiple readings of the outline of the house while facilitating a rich experiential lifestyle within its volume and landscape. Specific organizational and material strategies were developed to produce different volumetric and perceptual readings that change with the different vantage points towards and within the house.

The building is organized in three bands that are arranged around a central circulation core. These three bands maintain a prevailing orientation in the northeast-southwest direction to secure maximum daylight in every room.

While the bands configure and organize the different rooms, the circulation core underpins a switchback pattern of shifting orientations with the gradual vertical movement through the house.

The house is clad in dark “composite” panels that have been customized with digital fabrication techniques. These customized panels are used to articulate sections of the house volume in order to introduce legibility to the overall form. These panels offer a range of different surface consistencies and patterns to the house that reflect the sites changing light conditions in multiple ways, producing an ever changing range of texture and tones.

Architects: asensio_mah J.M.Aguirre Aldaz

Location: North of Spain
Project team: Diego Repiso, Jennifer Chuong, Kaizen Chen, Jon Aguirre
Construction managment: In collaboration with Satie Arquitectos S.L.
Structure: Egitur S.L
Project year: 2009
Photographs: Ricardo Loureiro

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