Number of years the site stood vacant: 12
Interior design: John Pawson
Why you should know him: Recently he’s done stage design for major ballets and operas as well as a temporary exhibition in the Geometric Staircase of St. Paul’s Cathedral. See all his work.
Number of floors: 5
Square-meters: 10,000 (about 33 square-feet)
Height of peaked roof: 16 meters (about 55 feet)
Estimated annual visitors: 500,000 (double the previous amount)
Estimated cost: £80 million (about $126 million)

“It’s a true icon and example of post war modernism,” Pawson said. ”The challenge was working inside the skin of an existing building. For me it’s about retuning the existing architecture so it still feels fresh. The palette we’ll use is quite quiet and simple…and will retain and enhance the extraordinary special qualities of the building.”

click > enlarge

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Granted, this is no ordinary road. The Timmelsjoch Pass cuts through the Alps along the Austrian/Italian border. Rising to 10,000 feet, building anything up there is a feat; Can you imagine trucking construction materials back and forth along those sharp switchbacks? As you might imagine, this isn’t a museum with rotating exhibitions. Its sole purpose is to pay homage to the pass itself. There’s a model of the pass in a single glass display case planted in the center of the one-room museum. There’s also some information behind the faceted glass walls, designed to echo the structure of the one of several icy caves nearby.

Tscholl was a natural pick for this project given his origins as well as his propensity for designing buildings that often jut out precariously over steep edges. Many of his projects are situated in remote locations, which means he’s used probably used to low turnouts sat his unveilings. This is a good thing because I’ve got a feeling The Timmelsjoch Experience Pass Museum is going to hit a new low on the list of annual visitors.

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Photographs by Alexa Rainer and Werner Tscholl

The goal of making popular books available on the ground floor alongside a cafe is to encourage passersby to pop in, have a coffee and check out a new book – something people might be less likely to do if they knew they had to hike up to the top floor to browse through new releases. Or you could stay all day, “…learning in the morning, listening to a poetry performance at lunchtime, studying in the afternoon, watching first class theatre at night, and then relaxing in the cafe after that,” says Councilor Veronica Ward.

The inverted pyramid shape isn’t just a lark; Rather, it’s an incredibly creative way of meeting a design challenge. Based on their client’s needs, CZWG knew they would need to build a larger space than the site allowed for. They also couldn’t just build straight up because it would cut off the interaction between user groups on a given floor and it would have required the library to staff those additional stories – so they designed outward. Instead of going higher, they went wider and the result is a library that’s both stunning and completely unique. Piers Gough, a partner at CZWG, calls it “a futuristic Pandora’s box of possibilities.”

CZWG is producing some of the most exciting new work in architecture right now. I profiled their other recent project, a cancer treatment center in Nottingham, but readers might be more familiar with some of their higher profile work with the Smithsonian and in New York City.

As a side note, if you think this library is a stunner, check out the “20 More Beautiful College Libraries From Around the World.” Books never had it so good.





Photos by Tim Crocker

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[ frank gehry ]
Frank Gehry grew up in Canada. In his free time as a child, he would make small versions of buildings out of pieces of wood. In 1947 his family moved to the United States. That is where Frank Gehry began his university studies in architecture. He believes that architecture is art. He has said that, in some ways, he has been more influenced by artists and sculptors than by architects. This may be why his buildings often look like energetic sculptures made from bold geometric forms.

Gehry’s body of work favors the style of Deconstructivism, which is often referred to as post-structuralist for its ability to go beyond the modalities of structural definition. Its architectural application tends to depart from modernism in its absence of cultural givens such as societal goals and functional necessity. Deconstructivist structures are not required to reflect specific social or universal ideas, such as speed or universality of form, nor a belief that form follows function per early modernist structures. Gehry’s own Santa Monica residence, which he applied his conceptual studies into a reality, is a commonly cited example of deconstructivist architecture, as it was so drastically divorced from its original context, it cloaks its original spatial intention.

Gehry’s style sometimes feels unfinished using inexpensive found objects and non-traditional media such as clay and has been called “the apostle of chain-link fencing and corrugated metal siding”.

There are critics. Art historian Hal Foster reads Gehry’s architecture as, primarily, in the service of corporate branding. Other complains include complaints that the buildings waste structural resources by creating functionless forms, do not seem to belong in their surroundings and are apparently designed without accounting for the local climate.

Famous examples of Frank Gehry’s work include the “Dancing House” in Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic. This playful building, finished in 1996, looks like two dancers. His most famous building is the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain. It was completed in 1997. Most of the curving building is covered in titanium. It looks like a dancing metal wave sitting on the edge of a river. The curved surfaces of this building and others by Frank Gehry are so complex to build that they require computer programs.
 
Frank Gehry’s buildings are so popular that some people say they create a “Gehry effect.” This term is used for a building that attracts visitors because of the architect who designed it.

To Gehry’s credit he has an ability to conceive and execute his surreal sculptural architecture. As there are critics of flying to the moon or jupiter, Gehry’s architecture is akin to space exploration. His work does inspire and someone will figure out how to apply concepts that will be less costly and more sustainable to build. [ gehry partners ]

[ project credits ]
Project Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health, Las Vegas 
Client Keep Memory Alive 
Architect Gehry Partners, Los Angeles—Frank Gehry, FAIA (design partner); Terry Bell (project partner); Brian Zamora (project designer); Kristin Ragins, Ronald A. Rosell, David Rodriguez, Michael Sedlacek (project architects); Andrew Galambos, Eun Sung Chang, AIA, Izaburo Kibayashi, Michael O’Boyle, Mok Wai Wan, Natalie Magarian, Natalie Milberg, Nora Wolin, Sameer Kashyap, Sarah David, Yvon Romeus (project team) 
Structural Engineer WSP Cantor Seinuk 
M/E/P/FP, Security, Telecommunications Engineer Cosentini Associates 
Lighting Design L’Observatoire International 
Acoustical Engineers McKay Conant Hoover; Nagata Acoustics 
Building Transportation Edgett Williams Consulting Group 
Life-Safety Engineers Aon Fire Protection Engineering Corp. 
Climate Engineer Transsolar 
Door Hardware Finish Hardware Technology 
Landscape Architect Deneen Powell Atelier 
Civil Engineer G.C. Wallace 
Building Maintenance Lerch Bates 
A/V Engineer Spurgeon Design and Development 
General Contractor Whiting-Turner Contracting Co. 
Size 85,180 square feet (site area), 60,000 (total building area)

Designed and built by LEAPfactory, “an Italian firm specializing in modular structures with low environmental impact,” the Alpine Pod uses nautical and aeronautical fabrication techniques to create a self-sufficient structure capable of withstanding extreme weather, like 124 mph winds and 26 feet of snow.

Nothing like this has ever been attempted before, and as such it looks nothing like typical alpine structures. Luca Olivari, the project’s structural engineer, used glass-fiber reinforced plastic (GFRP), which he said is “an ideal material for extreme conditions because the fiber’s weight and orientation can be precisely defined in every area of the structure to support high-concentrated loads.”

As for the pod’s features, it’s 250 square-feet and has a kitchen as well as dining and living areas, twelve bunks, storage for gear and a weather monitoring station. Photovoltaic panels produce 2.5 Kwh of solar energy; It weighs almost 3 tons and cost about $327,000 to construct. And because it’s based on a modular structure, with “individual modules designed for specific functions like eating or sleeping,” the pod itself can actually be rearranged and expanded, should demand require it.

It’s an amazing feat of specialized building under extreme conditions. I’m anxious to follow this project to see how the pod functions after months of wear. But even if the cute sweater design gets rubbed out by wind and sleet, it’s still an oasis in a frozen, forbidding landscape for adventurers heading into the alps on foot.

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The design of Burj Dubai is ostensibly derived from the patterning systems embodied in Islamic architecture, with the triple-lobed footprint of the building based on an abstracted version of the desert flower hymenocallis native to the region. The tower is composed of three elements arranged around a central core. As the tower rises from the flat desert base, setbacks occur at each element in an upward spiralling pattern, decreasing the cross section of the tower as it reaches toward the sky. At the top, the central core emerges and is sculpted to form a finishing spire. A Y-shaped floor plan maximizes views of the Persian Gulf. Viewed from above or from the base, the form also evokes the onion domes of Islamic architecture.

The renamed Burj Khalifa marks the first time since the Middle Ages, when Europe’s Gothic cathedrals rose taller than the Great Pyramid of Egypt, that the world’s tallest building has been located in the Middle East.

Designer: adrian smith ( note: the architects are the chicago office of SOM. smith left in 2006 to open his own firm: adrian smith + gordon gill

Current records:
* Tallest skyscraper to top of spire: 828 m (2,717 ft) (previously Taipei 101 – 509.2 m (1,671 ft))
* Tallest structure ever built: 828 m (2,717 ft) (previously Warsaw radio mast – 646.38 m (2,121 ft))
* Tallest extant structure: 828 m (2,717 ft) (previously KVLY-TV mast – 628.8 m (2,063 ft))
* Tallest freestanding structure: 828 m (2,717 ft) (previously CN Tower – 553.3 m (1,815 ft))
* Building with most floors: 160 (previously Willis Tower – 108)
* World’s highest elevator installation
* World’s fastest elevators at speed of 64 km/h (40 mph) or 18 m/s (59 ft/s) (previously Taipei 101 – 16.83 m/s)
* Highest vertical concrete pumping (for a building): 606 m (1,988 ft) (previously Taipei 101 – 449.2 m (1,474 ft))
* Highest vertical concrete pumping (for any construction): 606 m (1,988 ft) (previously Riva del Garda Hydroelectric Power Plant – 532 m (1,745 ft))
* The first world’s tallest structure in history to include residential space
* Highest outdoor observation deck in the world (124th floor)
* World’s highest mosque (located on the 154th floor)
* World’s highest installation of an aluminium and glass façade, at a height of 512 m (1,680 ft)
* World’s highest swimming pool (76th floor)

Resources:
dubai architecture
eikongraphia
wikipedia
skyscraperpage.com
blair kamin – 1
blair kamin – 2

But two union funds identified by a local labor leader and a Spire spokeswoman as having expressed interest, the AFL-CIO Building Investment Trust and the union-backed life insurer ULLICO Inc., are taking a pass, according to top executives there. Representatives of two others, the AFL-CIO Housing Investment Trust and the Multi-Employer Property Trust, say the Spire isn’t a suitable investment for them.

“It’s not something we’re able to do,” says Edward Smith, president of ULLICO. “Unfortunately, these are just very difficult markets.”

The idea of putting union funds to work, to provide work not as popular in Chicago as one might think. The boo birds vocal on this one.




below: the 2,000-foot-high 150-story condominium tower has remained a large hole in the ground for over a year ever since financial woes stopped construction work.




below: the latest 3D renderings.



For $40,000,000 you can get the 10,000 square-foot penthouse condo, which by-the-way was bought by Ty Warner, creator of the Beanie Baby toys; for $750,000 a bottom-end 543-square-foot starter unit. The average per-square-foot cost of a bit under $2,000 marks a new top price point in Chicago.

below: the latest 3-D interior renderings.







above: santiago calatrava, the architect, in the Chicago Spire sales office in NBC Tower.

The Spire was supposed to be finished by 2012 and the Irish developer staged a global marketing campaign. Buyers have snapped up a third of its 1,194 luxury condominiums to date.

Calatrava has placed a lien on the building, claiming that he was owed $11.34 million. But while in Chicago last month, he said it was his “personal wish” that the four-year-old project “was not dead,” noting that some of his projects have taken up to 13 years to complete.

Full story…

Resources:
the chicago spire
blair kamin – not DOA yet
chicago architecture info
chicago real estate daily
lynn becker
savills
NYC’s top 10 crazy things that didn’t get built

more analysis from john seabrook/new yorker
more on this menu from alissa walker/fastcompany

via core77

Designer: thomas bendel architekt