To avoid floodings on typhoon season, the city of Saitama in Japan features an impressive storm sewer system. Its construction started in 1992, and its composed by giant concrete silos (65m tall, 32m wide) connected by 6.4km of underground tunnels 50m below the surface. It also has a giant tank: 25.4m tall, 177m long and 78 wide, with 59 concrete columns.
This impressive structure is opened for tourists. More pictures and videos below. Be sure to check out the truck being lifted through the sewer!.
Four concrete walls go through the building; they become thinner toward the street, forming two volumes which make up the façade. All the apartments have an irregular terrace to the front, accentuating the verticality of the walls and the depth of the facade. A large tree, which covers the west facade, plus the wide range of apparent materials result in a building with character.
The ambition is to build the entire site, maximising the footprint of the building and visually extending the living area into the external courtyards formed to each side. The geometry of the existing site is the principal generator of the building form. Approximately triangular in shape and with a pronounced curve along Richmond Place, the house adopts the site boundary line along its north and south elevations and aligns with the adjacent terrace to the east and west. The resultant form is carved twice to make two compressed entrance spaces one to the front and a smaller one at the rear. In order to maintain the low-lying nature of the block fronting to Richmond Place, the living room is sunk 750mm into the ground, following the natural fall across the site.
The house exploits its section to create a series of interconnected but separate spaces of varying height and dimension, creating a sequence of compression and release as one circulates through the plan. The main bedroom opens out into the roof-lit stairwell by means of a work desk and folding screen forming a potentially seamless flow of space connecting with the living room and kitchen below. The kitchen itself is placed at the entry level and overlooks the living space across the worktop, with the storage units opening into the living room. The concrete desk formed by extending the ground surface into the building, faces west into the courtyard and the neighbouring street beyond. Externally the house is faced entirely in brick, directly referencing the neighbouring house. Satin anodised aluminium windows are brought flush to the surface of the outer skin to accentuate the tautness of the form and emphasize the two entry points. Internally a simple palette of materials is deployed, white oak for the service areas, concrete, plaster and rubber to the living areas to give a legible uniform reading to the interior.
Hong Luo Villa district is a three-phased project. The sites for each phase are allocated along Hong Luo Lake, reflecting the grand view of the mountains sitting behind it. Hong Luo Club floats on the lake, creating an easily accessible public space at the center of the district.
A wood bridge was introduced as an access to the Club House. The house has two branches, one is a swimming pool floating on the lake, the other is an underwater platform. The architectural form is shaped by people’s circulation. Two major roads converge at the center of the house and reach all the way up along an ascending roof. The ever changing water surface joins the ascending roof, expressing the transition from liquid to solid. The space structure and the functions of the house are integrated naturally.
The main access to the house will bring the visitor to 1,300 mm under water, where people feel like walking in the lake. The access road ascends to the ground level gradually as it nears the house, which reveals the main function of the building — a gathering space. The roof shape is a projection of the linear, functional organization of the ground level’s program. The outdoor swimming pool is built into the lake, which keeps the surfaces of the natural and the artificial water at the same level. The architecture explores the city dwellers’ understanding of the nature.
Hong Luo Club House creates an ever changing space that echoes with the surroundings, where people and the nature are united. The mountain and the water provide hope and inspirations for people who live in concrete woods.
To decide the plant of the house, I recouped a traditional typology of the region. A great veranda occupies the center of the house while the remaining divisions organize themselves around it demanding its place. The simplicity and logic of the traditional typology allowed its adaptation in the time.
The house is directed towards the Valley and the Mountain range, the swimming pool stands in the opposite side, in the roof with its vegetal covering. I wanted a strong relation between the interior and the exterior but not a direct one, or either, there should be an ample visual contact but the physical transition from one space to the other could not be immediate for Nature in its entire splendor and the wild fauna imposed respect and even fear. Therefore, the big windows stand higher than the exterior level which transforms them into contemplation platforms. This level difference between the interior space and the exterior is enough to transmit comfort and security in days of absolute isolation.
When you enter the site you see the house hidden behind nature without any constructed way to the entrance which makes it look even more as an isolated element in space. The first impression we have, when we arrive at the plain of the Valley, does not show the true form of the house, then, as you walk through the land, you get to discover the rest of the house gradually and that provokes a surprise effect when you finally get to see it all. This ` surprise element ‘ (Montesquieu) contributes to stimulate the observer and its perception of the relation between the space and the house. The architectonic experience is made to the base of sensorial stimulations. This project looked for, the best way that it could, to explore sensations through the perception of space.
The entrance is a covered exterior space that gives access to the garage and to the interior of the house. The stairs lead to the entry hall that separates the veranda from the living room. In the living room we come across a great curtain that divides it in two distinct spaces, an introverted one, with the fireplace, and another one that opens to the exterior. This last one takes us by assault as the smashing sight of the mountain appears for the first time. In fact, the entire trip to the interior of the house is made with the mountain on your back, so you never get to see its beauty until then. Each space has a different relation with the surroundings which confers a unique identity to them. The opened veranda, protected by the trees, is a place of libation of nature, where we get lost inside ourselves.
The bedroom’s area consists of two identical nucleuses with a hall, two rooms and bathroom. The rooms have access to the back garden that leads to the swimming pool. Finally, to close the corridor and in coherence with the regional tradition, the kitchen and the dinning room are in the same space. It makes sense to appreciate the meal in the place where it is made, where the complexity of the flavors flow freely to create the perfect aura.
The house is made of concrete, used as a constructive and finishing element, searching a hard materiality and contrasting aesthetics with the chromatic and textural diversity of nature that encircles it. On the inside, this contrast is emphasized through the neutral color that coat walls and ceiling and by the ‘monotonous’ way that space is designed.
Shelter was a question of survival for man, a turning point in its existence, the essential to continue. This house does not intend to be more than a shelter of body and soul. Without shelter, we are rocks in the rain.
The building is set on a plot of land that is very close to the historic town centre of La Orotava and this large building blends in perfectly with, and relates to the urban lay-out, the topography of the land around and in its visual relations from the near-by listed buildings. The school has been resolved as a plinth for the buildings located on the edge of the city centre, on the axes Colegio Street - S. Francisco Street. In the implementation of the project, consideration has been given to maintenance costs by using a very elemental lay-out, primary materials and recordable installations.
The whole blends in with the pre-existing walls of the farming terraces, where it rests on them at some points and passes over them at others, letting the land flow under the building, propitiating enclosed spaces for games or for people to gather.
The plot covers a site on the slopes of the Orotava valley between 345 m and 365 m in altitude, which used to be used for growing the traditional single crops of the area, of which, the magnificent walls and stone paths that terrace the land remain as witnesses of the past.
The main access is from the south-east street, the only horizontal road of the network around the block, in order to provide the best access for students arriving by bus. It is also the road that links to the largest population of potential school children. One arrives by ascending a slight ramp up to the hall floor. The porter’s office, administration offices and the library are all on this floor. The library is placed right next to the entrance so that this space is visible to the inhabitants of La Orotava and the surrounding area, when there are no classes.
Most of the high school secondary education activities take place on the two floors immediately below the entrance level: multi-purpose class rooms facing south east towards the boundary and towards the urbanisation’s containing wall; and the special class rooms, facing the surrounding open spaces. On the floor below, one finds the science, nature and health laboratories and the sixth form computer room on one side, and, on the other, the spaces used for the vocational training programmes: class rooms, departments and work shops that have to be in contact with the ground.
At the northern end, at a much lower level, is the gymnasium or sports centre, set into the hillside. The volume is partially set into the earh, on the one hand, to minimise the size of this hall and the impact it has on its surroundings and, on the other, in order not to obscure the views over the valley and the sea from the upper terrace.
The concrete finish is softened with a degraded wash of different tones, on the one hand to blend the building in with the urban strata of La Orotava and, on the other, to blend in with the more rural nature of the south-western zones. These colour washes start from the staircase and the volume of the main access. The chromatic character of the building is important both inside and out, and it relates to the educational function of the centre.
This house is a sculptural object that lives in its relationship with light. Interaction perfect, calibrated, plastics between mass and generate a light directed by dense shadows, defined safe. The intervention is in a degraded site.
It is an almost alien presence, in terms of quality compared to the context, and is also a sign of redemption, proactive, able to witness the possibility of an alternative way to build, intelligent, sensitive to the territory in which you insert.
The ground floor houses the living area and consists of a single environment, fluid, open, designed in direct continuity with the outside areas. The upper body accepts the sleeping area. The two plans are linked in connection with a generous skylight made up of large travoni reinforced concrete on sight.
Architects: Giancarlo Mazzanti
Location: La Ladera, Medellín, Colombia
Constructed Area: 6.800sqm
Construction year: 2007
Services: Constructor AIA CONSTRUCTORES
Structural Engineer: Sergio Tobón
Materials: Concrete, Wood, Glass
Photos: Sergio Gómez
The aim is to establish a project that enables the biggest amount of urban connections and the development of public spaces. To achieve this, there are several proposals such as enabling the roofing of the building as public space, empowering meeting places and developing viewing-points which overlook the city.
The model allows the usage of communal facilities as small open spaced theatres, viewing-points, small plazas and sport fields when placing them on the rooftop, leaving plain borders as vacuums inside the lot and thus enabling their external use.
We propose a management program between the EDU and the Culture Secretariat called “Film, Music and Theatre in my quarter”. This will allow the usage of the above mentioned roofing as auditoriums so that every two weeks a cultural show can be taken to each quarter.
The place presents itself as a green viewing-point and a territory of connections between the lower and upper zones of the quarter, which are actually used as areas for sport activities. The project we propose will redefine the existing paths and empower the creation of shaded plazas on the library’s rooftop. As a result, it will not only multiply the connections because the building will be an obliged path, but it will create more and more events as people intertwine in the public spaces provided around the library. More than a transformation, we want to re-interpret the space so that it can be recreated into a symbolic place for the city.
The project will consist of a system conformed by three contained, rotated, squared modules that turn, adapting themselves to the landscape and the view and one curved module that unites and relates the other modules and that, in addition, allows other uses. The project is a landscape that gives the urban geography continuity through the paths and the building of public space on the rooftop, a landscape constituted by paths, theatres or inclined plazas, a spatial network with connection multiplicity and meeting places.
1. CONTAINER 1 - COMMUNITY CENTER - User: individual and in groups. Time: 24 hours. Multiple Salons (quarter meetings), my quarter, gymnasium, sieve, technical substation (optimizing the land cut left by housing).
2. CONTAINER 2 - LIBRARY- User: individual. Time: Attending from 8am to 8pm. Foyer, reception, catalogue, collection, reading rooms, navigation centers.
3. CONTAINER 3 - CULTURAL CENTER - User: Organized groups. Time: Scheduled events. Auditorium, workshops.
4. CURVED CONTAINER - 24 hours. Can be used as support. Exposition rooms (as obliged path for all users), cafeteria, management, bathrooms, ludotechs (will be used as kinder gardens 24 hours).
Structural system in reinforced concrete, in porches and screens.
Each container module is structurally independent from the curved connector. Modules are conformed by screens in the ends to compensate the projection afore mentioned and in the center 2 axes of rectangular columns in concrete. The connector is proposed in a reticule of metallic columns filled with concrete and a contention wall in stone gabion and concrete in the rear part.
Vinyl floors in different colors and shapes limiting pedagogic areas. Visible roofing in white concrete with inferior cake and wooden panels of 5 cm planks. White antique concrete walls. Crystal plates in sandwich with colored resin on the inside to mark and provide some color to the pedagogic areas. The mobile panels of the façade in folded cool rolled planks and curved borders with elements in teka wood.
Following this, the Container Module 1 is thought to have 3 floors, using the tilt of 12 meters left by housing.
Circulation systems crossed airs through the mentioned patios, which allow cold air to displace hot air. We propose the usage of natural air cooling systems, nurturing the inside of the library with fresh air. In addition to this, we want mobile blinds to cover the windows that face the sunset so that the effect of sunlight can be minimized. On top of the roofing-view points, we propose the plantation to trees to provide shadow.
