well done to supercolossal, who have just won the competition to design the Australian Peacekeeping Memorial. Supercolossal overpowered 3 other finalists to win the commission. The proposal includes two monolithic forms separated by fiercly lit space through which visitors may pass in order to enter a calm space for ceremony and contemplation beyond… read more
Langdon Reis Architects have been awarded a special mention in the International competition for the renovation of Tabakalera in San Sebastian. Following is a short summary of our text and images from the competition submission. More information can be found on the Tabalalera Website.
Concept:
The Tabakalera has become a valued ICON inextricably linked with the city of San Sebastian. Its renovation means taking into account its HISTORY in order to define accurately its present and future place in the local community and further afield.
Once emblematic of industrial progress, the new Tabakalera will be the twenty-first century factory of social and cultural enhancement.
Tabakalera has to become a place of ACCESS to culture and ideas, a place of DEBATE, a place where PEOPLE as USERS and ACTORS can learn, communicate and express their ideas and will locally and globally.
As a local icon, the meaning and physical envelope of the renovated Tabakalera is also weaved into the singularity of the Basque cultural environment. I will act as a PLATFORM of interaction, a point in a wider NETWORK where identities are flexible and multilayered, here and there, locally and globally, where one can be Basque, citizen of the world, and European at the same time and anywhere.
Action:
A new urban street is carefully cut through the Tabakalera, maximizing transparency and interconnectivity, whilst minimising disturbance to the existing structure. The internal street becomes a new CULTURAL AGORA.
The four existing courtyards become stages for display, performance and interaction. The street is both an extension of the spectacle within the display/production spaces and a service spine, providing amenity and respite.
Activity flows seamlessly between enclosed and open spaces. Blurring the boundaries between public and private.
Design Team + Credits:
Architecture: Langdon Reis Architects Ltd
Project Leaders: Ross Langdon, Ana Reis
Assitants: Naofumi Takaoka, Moeko Yamagata
Engineering: Ove Arup + Partners
Environmental Engineer: Becci Taylor
3D Rendering: Rock Hunter
Christiaan Klaassen (Internal street image)
Hi everyone,
Just an update as to why i have been so absent over the past few months…and will continue to be for another few weeks. I have been absorbed by the competition in Norway, we are due to submit in December…. Some longs nights ahead… We have also just won a prize in another competition: The Tabakalera Culture Factory in San Sebastian. See the website. I will show post some images and text once the final winner has been announced. Until then……
A giant Kandinsky replica……..”People walk across a copy of Russian-born expressionist Vassily Kandinsky’s painting “Weilheim-Marienplatz” on the pavement of the market square in the southern Bavarian town of Weilheim, Germany, on July 28, 2008. About 500 pupils and Weilheim citizens painted the 2,100-square-meter area, with about 8,000 paving stones, to produce the world’s largest copy of a Kandinsky painting” source: activate. via julie.
The result of a RIBA competition in 2005: here is Charles Barclay Architects finished product. very beautiful, love the rotating turrets!
see more at dezeen
Well it has been a long time between drinks so to speak. However i have some exciting news for you all.
I have a new website for starters….www.langdonreiszahn.com which will complement rosslangdon.com with a few of my own projects.
The new site has come about through the formation of a new collaboration between myself, Ana Reis from Porto and Matthias Zahn from Hamburg. Together we have formed a collaborative studio focussing on architecture, design and research projects. Our first major collaboration has resulted in the joint first prize win in an open international ideas competition for a new cultural centre in Bodo, Norway.
The competition will take on two phases. The first was intended to clarify the location, massing and articulation of the built forms, composition and urban design of the adjacent site areas and public spaces.
In the second phase three of the winning teams from phase one (Langdon Reis Zahn-london, drdh ARCHITECTS-london and General Architecture-sweden), will compete against three other competitively selected participants to design and construct the new cultural buildings.
The new cultural centre is projected to be approximately 11,700 sq.m. (126,000 square feet) with a construction budget of NOK 630,000,000.
More information can be found at the following websites:
www.arkitektur.no
www.deathbyarchitecture.com
more images of the competition will be available soon!
just an old image i stumbled across. graffiti with a sense of humor….. i can imagine this in london….. but the netherlands?
I have been pondering the influence of climate change on borders, migration patterns and massive social change lately……. and having read a very interesting article in the guardian on saturday about the maverick scientist James Lovelock. Originator of the Gaia Theory, which is essentially the hypothesis that proposed living and non-living particles of the earth are part of a complex interacting system that can be thought of as a single organism….I remembered this image (spotted at supercolossal) and thought it provocative and relevant as an approach towards climate change. It is also symbolic of the human desire to control nature; build a beach house that looks like a fortress with an observation tower in the most remote location possible, where it will obviously be subjected to the full force of the ocean. Occupants can lounge in the observation tower oblivious to the turmoil that surrounds them, and when nature allows they can venture beyond the fortress walls to dip manicured toes in the water….. It is the Sam Bell beach house in California, designed in 1965 by Dale Naegle.
Six international names have been selected to compete for the redevelopment London’s iconic Commonwealth Institute. Designed in 1960-62 by Johnston-Marshall and Partners the existing building is grade II listed, its complex roofscape is constructed from equilateral and ‘bastard’ hyperbolic paraboloids……… OMA, Rafael Viñoly, Make, Eric Parry, Rafael Moneo and Caruso St John have been selected by Chelsfield Partners’ deputy chairman Stuart Lipton and his architectural adviser Ricky Burdett. Read the full article at bdonline….
image: view images
I couldn’t help poaching this image of Cedric Price’s 1960-61 project for a funpalace in East London. Read some more in a great article on Price over at things magazine.
