Carrie Art and Design Journal: Award


Central Courtyard with hotel room windows (sources: http://www.nhdro.com)

The Waterhouse is a 19 rooms boutique hotel located at the south bund district of Shanghai, it is an old Japanese army head quarter built in the 1930’s along the Huangpu River front. The hotel total area is 28,000sm composed by two buildings: a hotel and an event warehouse with a rooftop bar and a restaurant. This refurbished project maintain the warehouse with industrial accent to recall the history of this district and a touch of modern Chinese aesthetic.
The entire designing concept of The Waterhouse was based on "a blurring or an inversion of internal & external spaces, creating a disorienting yet refreshing spatial experience for guests in search of something out of the ordinary." Quoted from Neri & Hu's description:

The interior strategy is expressed through a blurring and inversion of the inside/outside as well as public/private, creating a disorienting yet refreshing spatial experience for the hotel guest who longs for the extraordinary. The public spaces allow one to peek into private rooms and the private spaces invite one to look on to public arenas, resulting in an unexpected welcome that defines the hotel’s hospitality.

Neri & Hu receives 'Architectural Review Emerging Architecture Award 2010' by the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) for the Waterhouse

Water House (sources: http://www.nhdro.com)

Reception (sources: http://www.nhdro.com)

Entrance & Reception Area (sources: http://www.nhdro.com)

Waterhouse Entrance (sources: http://www.archdaily.com)

Roof top (sources: http://www.archdaily.com)

Restaurant Table No. 1 (sources: http://www.nhdro.com)

Restaurant Table No 1 (sources: http://www.nhdro.com)

Sources:
http://waterhouseshanghai.com/
http://www.nhdro.com
http://archdaily.com

Zaha Hadid won RIBA Stirling Prize: MAXXI Museum @ Rome

英國建築師皇家學會史特靈獎2010得主：扎哈。哈迪德

No place like Rome ...
Zaha Hadid outside her Stirling prize-winning Maxxi museum.
Photograph: Guido Montani/EPA

MAXXI, National Museum of XXI Century Arts
Rome, Italy
Architect: Zaha Hadid Architects
Client: Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities, Fondazione MAXXI and Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport
Contractor: Consortium MAXXI 2006, ITALIANACOSTRUZIONI and Società Appalti Costruzioni
Structural Engineer: Studio S.P.C., Anthony Hunt Associates and OK Design Group
Services Engineer: Max Fordham and Partners and OK Design Group
Contract Value: €150m
Date of Occupation: November 2009

Gross internal area: 21,200 sq m

The museum isn’t Rome as we know it, but is all the more exciting for that, locally juxtaposed with army barracks and industrial warehouses, but with glimpses of distant views to Roman roof tops and cupolas. Its suburban context allows it a freedom denied to architects in the centre of Rome.

This is a museum of paths and routes, a museum where the curators have to invent how to hang and place the works of 21st Century art that have been collected since inception of the project – and the century. The permeable plaza recreates routes and connections, but also forces you to consider the new context that is created to engage with the activities within. The whole building is behind a 2.5 metre high industrial aluminium mesh fence which is there to protect the outdoor art that’s planned. Its setting has echoes of OMA’s Casa da Musica, an impression re-enforced by the perched box of an upper gallery with its panoramic window, reached by an array of stairs, ramps and lifts.

The museum, for all its structural pyrotechnics, is rationally organised as five main suites. The building is bravely day lit with a sinuous roof of controllable skylights, louvres and beams, whilst at the same time conforming to very strict climate control requirements of modern galleries; the skylights both orientate and excite the visitor, but also turn them into uplifting spaces.

MAXXI is described as a building for the staging of art, and whilst provocative at many levels, this project shows a maturity and calmness that belies the complexities of its form and organization. The nature of the project means everything has to be over-specified – throughout the design process the architects had no idea what these series of rooms would be used to hang, so walls which will bear a ton of rusting steel might be graced by miniatures. In use, in addition to the innovative hanging, video projections bounce off the white curves, animating the spaces.

This is a mature piece of architecture, the distillation of years of experimentation, only a fraction of which ever got built. It is the quintessence of Zaha’s constant attempt to create a landscape, a series of cavernous spaces drawn with a free, roving line. The resulting piece, rather prescribing routes, gives the visitor a sense of exploration. It is perhaps her best work to date and shows she was right all along.

Quote from PIBA, Commenting on MAXXI, the judges said:

‘MAXXI is described as a building for the staging of art, and whilst provocative at many levels, this project shows a calmness that belies the complexities of its form and organization. The nature of the project means everything has to be over-specified – throughout the design process the architects had no idea what the series of rooms would be used to hang, so walls which will bear a ton of rusting steel might be graced by miniatures.

The museum, for all its structural pyrotechnics, is rationally organised as five main suites. The building is bravely day lit with a sinuous roof of controllable skylights, louvres and beams which orientate and excite the visitor and create uplifting spaces.

This is a mature piece of architecture, the distillation of years of experimentation, only a fraction of which ever got built. It is the quintessence of Zaha’s constant attempt to create a landscape as a series of cavernous spaces drawn with a free, roving line. The resulting piece, rather than prescribing routes, gives the visitor a sense of exploration. It is perhaps her best work to date.’

建筑师：扎哈哈迪德建筑师
客户：文化遗产活动部，MAXXI基金和基设运输部

承包商：Consortium MAXXI 2006, ITALIANACOSTRUZIONI 和 Società Appalti Costruzioni

结构工程师：SPC工作室，安东尼亨特设计集团联营公司及OK 设计室

机电工程师：Max Fordham and Partners and OK 设计室

合约价值：€1.5亿
日期职业：2009年11月
内部总面积：21,200平方米