Family Box by Crossboundaries Architects

“We have learned that to raise a happy, healthy and hopeful child, it takes a family, it takes teachers, it takes clergy, it takes business people, it takes community leaders, it takes those who protect our health and safety, it takes all of us.Yes, it takes a village to raise a child.”--Hillary Clinton

Family Box
Design Team: Crossboundaries Architects
Location: Beijing, China
Status: Completion December 2009 (1st phase)

The slogan for the new children day care centre ‘Family Box' is taken from the US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton. The program comes from Great Britain and its architectural design from Crossboundaries Architects. The building is located in the northwestern outskirts of Beijing. Family Box is something between a playground and a kindergarten, being used both by children ad adults. It hosts different kinds of activities, from swimming, playing games to various classes ranging from music and crafting to cooking. Further more there is a big playframe, a bookshop and a generous café area.

For Family Box, the architect designed two types of space, one for the parents and the other for the children with concerns of a kids-scale space and an adult-scale space.




When Crossboundaries Architects took over the project, the building was already under construction, designed for a different function- an existing structural system and column grid and also the building footprint – due to the involvement of another design firm in an earlier project stage. The rigid concrete structure of the building did not seem the most suitable for the purpose, so Crossboundaries Architects decided to counterbalance that in different ways.

Crossboundaries Architects was lucky that the two upper floors where not yet constructed – an opportunity for them to make the building more kids’ friendly: the architects decided to shift floor plates up and down and also cut out the floor in some areas to allow views between the floors.





The various activities are enclosed in freestanding boxes: this allows them to run parallel and it offers the most suitable environment for each. Their layout is meant to break the rigid layout of the concrete columns, which is also camouflaged with a series of arches that give a different rhythm to the environment.Visually, the common areas are treated with low contrast finishes in order to enhance and balance the space and equipments for the children.

The glass facade has a printed pattern. The graphic motif is reversed: the background is translucent and the drawing is transparent. The surrounding landscape is designed using pre-fabricated concrete tiles. Their displacement follows the facade grid creating a continuity between vertical and horizontal surfaces and merging smoothly the access path to the park. They do not follow a flat surface, since placed on a hilly ground.






via Crossboundaries Architects

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N4A Exhibition Hall by AZL Atelier Zhanglei

The new 4th Army Jiangnan Headquarters Exhibition Hall in Liyang demonstrates an almost geological response to material, with strata-like façades rising up from the bare earth.

Jiangnan Headquarter of New Fourth Army Exhibition Hall
Design Team: AZL Atelier Zhanglei
Location: Liyang, China
Status: Completion 2007

Situated in Liyang, the city 70km southeast of Nanjing, New 4th Army Jiangnan Headquarter Exhibition Hall was built to memory the history of New 4th Army leaded by Communist Party during last 30's. Taking a pragmatic problem-solving approach to architecture is the AZL signature. 'Design should be concerned with solving problems with the most reasonable and direct way of construction,' says Zhang explaining that this strategy should be applicable to everything from small houses to the large-scale urban expansion. Mindful that the consumption of resources also needs to be kept in check, AZL's work uses 'ordinary materials like brick and concrete in their specific context and location.'

Fragmental granite is used here as façade cladding for the pure cubic volume which expresses very strong the monumental function of this project. The courtyard turns from internal volume to external façade, exposes itself in dramatic red section, presenting its revolutional feature of this project strongly supported by local government.

The new 4th Army Jiangnan Headquarters Exhibition Hall is 4200 square meters in total area.





via azlarchitects

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Madison Avenue (DOLL) House by REX

Suspended in air, the doll house remains a freestanding residence while capitalizing on underutilized urban space. Undeniably frivolous, the Madison Avenue (Doll)House nevertheless contains a kernel of an idea for accommodating growth in rapidly-densifying cities.

Madison Avenue (DOLL) House
Design Team: REX
Location: New York, USA
Status: Completion 2008

Calvin Klein’s Senior Vice President for Creative Services approached REX to design a concept house showcasing pieces from the company’s apparel, accessory, and home lines. The catch: the house would be realized in miniature and displayed in the main window of Calvin Klein’s Madison Avenue store during the 2008-2009 holiday season. REX dubbed this fusion of concept house and doll house a “(Doll)House.”

A response to two markedly different scales and purposes, the (Doll)House had to reconcile—in one design—the contradictory constraints of a concept house and a doll house. By siting the concept house in the ‘landscape’ above a Manhattan intersection, the competing demands of the two scales begins to reconcile. The conflicting constraints that remained unresolved by the selection of the concept house’s site are reconciled by the (Doll)House’s design itself. The design begins as four, minimalist floor plates (dining room, living room, bedroom, and rooftop pool terrace) following the precedent set for Calvin Klein by John Pawson, the store’s designer.





The plates are then shifted to maximize visibility into the doll house, and to provide views out for the imagined occupant of the concept house.

To balance the opposing desires for views and privacy, the (Doll)House is wrapped in a cocoon of
translucent white textile. Conceptually, this fabric layer operates as a sunshade, outboard of a glass façade.

The interiors and roof terrace are furnished with miniature replicas of pieces from the company’s apparel, accessory, and home lines. These items were designed by the company’s creative directors: Francisco Costa, Calvin Klein Collection for Women; Italo Zucchelli, Calvin Klein Collection for Men; Ulrich Grimm, Calvin Klein Shoes & Accessories; and, Amy Mellen, Calvin Klein Home.

Meanwhile, elevated and freestanding within the storefront, the doll house can be seen closely in the round and from afar, and can be opened from all sides for play.







via REX

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Airspace Tokyo by Faulders Studio

Inspired by the abundant greenery that previously occupied the site, the screen façade comprises four different overlapping organic patterns.

Airspace Tokyo
Design Team: Faulders Studio with Proces2, Studio M
Location: Ota-ku, Tokyo, Japan
Status: Completion July 2007

Located in the Kitamagome Ota-ku district, the site was previously occupied by the owner's family with a residence uniquely wrapped by a layer of dense vegetation. Since the entire site was razed to accommodate construction for the new larger development, Faulders Studio has created an exterior building skin that performs with similar attributes to the demolished green strip and creates a new atmospheric space of protection.

Conceived as a thin interstitial environment, the articulated densities of the porous and open-celled meshwork are layered in response to the inner workings of the building's program. AirSpace is a zone where the artificial blends with nature: sunlight is refracted along its metallic surfaces; rainwater is channeled away from exterior walkways via capillary action; and interior views are shielded behind its variegated and foliage-like cover.

The screen façade provides privacy from the street to occupants living in the open-plan private residences, and buffers the weather from exterior walkways and terraces. Architecturally, the screen façade unifies the separated Living Unit blocks on the top floors with the commercial spaces and landscaped areas below.





Separated by a 20 cm air gap, the double layer screen is derived from a compressed combination of unique patterns generated with parametric software, and is constructed using a composite metal panel material used for billboard backing and infrastructural protective coverings. To allow the cellular mesh to visually float, a matrix of thin stainless steel rods is threaded from top to bottom, to which the panels are affixed.

The screen was commissioned by Hajime Masubuchi of Studio M, the architect responsible for the four-storey multi-function building. Containing a series of studios, or ‘air spaces’ as blank as a clean sheet of white paper, the structure’s naturally lit spaces are intended for professional photo shoots.






via Faulders Studio

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