Friday, November 18, 2011

Cube

Source: wikipedia.org
The Ford Foundation Building, New York City, New York, USA, 1968 designed by Kevin Roche and John Dinkeloo
The building occupies the width of a block, and has facades of about 200 feet on either side, creating a near-perfect square, out of which a large volume has been removed to create a garden courtyard.  -- Wikipedia.

Source: username-guiba6 @ Flickr
San Cataldo Cemetery, Modena, Italy, 1971 designed by Aldo Rossi
Rossi’s ossuary cube is a commentary on the cemetery as a house of the dead, as well as being tied to the Jewish cemetery in positioning and proportion of enclosing structure to void.  -- ArchDaily
Watch a video from Vimeo: Aldo Rossi - Cimetière de San Cataldo Adrien Revel
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Source: archdaily.com
Exeter Library(Class of 1945 Library), Exeter, New Hampshire, USA, 1972 designed by Louis Kahn
People enter the 111′x111′ square library from the ground floor and climb up a grand set of stone stairs to the first floor. Coming up the last step onto the first floor one can immediately perceive the relationship of reference area, circulation desk, and book stacks. Kahn found this aspect to be important so that visitors can easily understand the plan of the building upon their entrance.  -- ArchDaily
Watch a video from Vimeo: Louis Kahn - Exeter Library Xavier-Pierre Denonne

Source: botta.ch
Single family house at Riva San Vitale, Ticino, Switzerland, 1973 designed by Mario Botta Architetto
The "tower", virtually defined by four corner piers and carved with geometric cuts through which the light penetrates, is organized along the vertical axis in a succession of different architectural situations and rhythms. -- architect's web site

Source: Pete Sieger
Grande Arche, La Défense, Paris, France, 1989 designed by architect Johann Otto von Spreckelsen and Erik Reitzel 
The Arche was designed to be an infrastructural canopy and is esteemed for its purity in form. The 110 meter long, wide, and tall hypercube is made of concrete and marble and features reflective glazing on the outside walls. It is supposed that the Notre Dame could fit in this carved out void. -- ArchDaily

Source: Herzog & de Meuron
Signal Box Auf dem Wolf, Basel, Switzerland, 1994 designed by Herzog & de Meuron
The building's concrete shell is insulated on the exterior and wrapped with approximately 20 cm-wide copper strips that are twisted at certain places in order to admit daylight.
As a result of the copper coiling, the building acts as a Faraday cage protecting the electronic equipment inside from unexpected external effects. At the same time, it is also able to express vividly these physical qualities.  -- architect's web site

Source: buildingbutler.com
Herz-Jesu-Kirche, Munich, Germany, 2000 designed by Allmann Sattler Wappner
employed "a sense of open-mindedness" as a theme. This sense of open-mindedness is achieved by using layers of three different materials, nesting one inside another. First, the glass layer in the large doors in the front opens toward the plaza, ushering people in. Next, the second element, the wooden layer, while opening toward the altar away from the outer wall, closes softly toward the plaza, achieving a space with a sense of open-mindedness. For the third layer, a grand choir bench made of massive concrete further heightens the centripetal effect.  -- Space Modulator No. 89

Source: wikipedia.org
Hayden Planetarium, New York City, New York, USA, 2000 designed by James Polshek
The Hayden Planetarium (often called "The Hayden Sphere" or "The Great Sphere") is a public planetarium, part of the Rose Center for Earth and Space of the American Museum of Natural History New York City, currently directed by astrophysicist Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson -- wikipedia
More details from architect's web site

2003, Source: wikipedia.org
2011, Source: MacRumors
Apple Store, Fifth Avenue, New York City, New York, USA, 2003 designed by Bohlin Cywinski Jackson
The 32-foot structural glass cube marking the store's entrance makes a bold architectural statement. Housing a transparent glass elevator wrapped by a circular glass stair, the transparent cube beckons potential customers down to the retail level below. By day it is a skylight bringing natural light underground, while at night the lighted cube is a sign.  -- architect's web site

Apple Reveals Plans for Fifth Avenue Cube
-- ArchDaily

Apple Reveals Newly Renovated 5th Avenue Store

The simplified version utilizes 15 panes of glass rather than the original 90, creating a “seamless” appearance. Each side of the cube consists of three, 10’ wide x 32’ high panels. -- ArchDaily
Snowblower Shatters Panel of Apple Cube -- ArchDaily

Source: Ramiro Schere archdaily.com
Roblas Cube, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2007 designed by Moscato Schere Todo Terreno
Given the scarcity of resources for construction, compactly resolved in a cubic array of 6.20 x 6.20 x 6.20 m. About the volume, fully resolved “plane” and edge, different operations are succeeding and joints between wall and vain, they develop according to their position relative to the programs, the garden and the “language game” itself. -- ArchDaily

Source: Kouji Okamoto archdaily.com
House with Square Opening, Fukutsu, Fukuoka, Japan, 2008 designed by NKS Architects
Through the various square openings perforated on exterior walls, they got the view to the sea, the forest, and the garden. -- ArchDaily

Source: construction.com
Copenhagen Concert Hall, Copenhagen, Denmark, 2009 designed by Ateliers Jean Nouvel 
From the outside in bright light, it looks like nothing more than a large rectangular box that for some reason is swathed in electric-blue scaffolding net and plopped down in an industrial landscape. When the sun goes down, it is transformed into an ethereal, dematerialized object with images of musicians eerily flitting across the screens of glass fiber with a PVC coating.
Seating 1,809 and raised above the lobby, it looks in section like some giant clam caught among pilings within a huge (190 by 315 feet) blue cage, 148 feet high.  -- Architectural Record

Source: A2Rc Architects archdaily.com
Square – Brussels Meeting Centre, Brussels, Belgium, 2009 designed by A2RC Architects
An audacious architectural proposition to the city offers a newfound visibility to the former “Palais des Congrès” by means of a poetic emblem embodied in the glass cube that forms the principal entry to SQUARE, Brussels Meeting Centre.
Its treelike structure and an aesthetic based on transparency and light, irresistibly evokes landscape architecture, takes root in history and projects the « Mont des Arts » into modernity. -- ArchDaily

Source: Nikolaos Zachariadis,
Frog Queen, Graz, Steiermark, Austria, 2009 designed by SPLITTERWERK
The building form approximates a cube, measuring 18.125 x 18.125 x 17m, wrapped on all four elevations with a pixilated pattern of square panels. From a distance, these panels appear to be painted in a range of ten values of grey tone, together dematerializing the volume of the building against both the trees of the surrounding site and the clouds and sky. Thus the cubic building is at once monumental in its objecthood in the open landscape – scale-less and immaterial – and yet utterly non-iconographic in its overall form.  -- ArchDaily

Source: Tim Griffith archdaily.com
Tea Houses, Silicon Valley, California, USA, 2009 designed by Swatt | Miers Architects
Each tea house is designed as a transparent steel and glass pavilion, hovering like a lantern over the natural landscape. Cast-in-place concrete core elements anchor the pavilions, supporting steel channel rim joists, which cantilever beyond the cores to support the floor and roof planes. With its minimal footprint, the design treads lightly on the land, minimizing grading and preserving the delicate root systems of the native oaks.  -- ArchDaily

Source: Åke E:son Lindman archdaily.com
Moderna Museet Malmö, Gasverksgatan 22, Malmö, Sweden, 2009 designed by Tham & Videgård Arkitekter
Seen from the exterior a new extension marks the arrival of the new museum. The extension provides a new entrance and reception space, as well as a cafeteria and a new upper gallery. Its perforated orange façade both connects to the existing brick architecture and introduces a contemporary element to the neighbourhood. The perforated surface gives the façade a visual depth, and is animated through the dynamic shadow patterns which it creates. The ground floor is fully glazed so that sunlight is screened through the perforated façade. -- ArchDaily

Source: construction.com
Dee and Charles Wyly Theatre, Dallas, Texas, USA, 2010 designed by REX/OMA
With its rippling aluminum facade and crisp cubic form, the Dee and Charles Wyly Theatre is an edgy presence in Dallas’s refined brick-and-stone Arts District. Corners peel back to expose massive X braces; floors cantilever at gravity-defying angles. Instead of flowing out like a traditional theater, with the stage in the center and support spaces to the sides, the Wyly pushes up, nine stories, with the lobby in the basement, the stage on the street, and rehearsal studio, costume shop, offices, and classrooms snapped together above like a transformer. The “vertical city” meets the Texas prairie.  -- Architectural Record

Source: Hufton+Crow archdaily.com
Corby Cube: Civic Hub and Arts Centre, Northants, UK, 2010 designed by Hawkins\Brown
Now completed and open to the public, the Hawkins\Brown’s striking glazed Corby Cube is the focal point of a major regeneration programme to revitalize the former steel making town in Northants, UK.
An external envelope of black and reflective glass gives the building its characteristic glistening object-like form.  -- ArchDaily

Source: construction.com
The Orange Cube, Lyon, France, 2010 designed  by Jakob + MacFarlane
the architects to create a box pierced by three large voids oriented toward the water. “The most obvious solution, from our point of view, was to take the negative space and treat it as a cutout from the whole,” says MacFarlane. “It seemed like a good of way of making something interesting out of the project.” -- Architectural Record

Source: archdaily.com
John E. Jaqua Academic Center for Student Athletes, University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon, USA, 2010 designed by ZGF Architects
the design is an extroverted box within a box, with a transparency via a glass skin that allows permeation from the outside-in, creating a sense of community. -- architect's web site
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Source: Sergio Gómez - Phase 2
Disconnected Pavilion, Medellín, Colombia , 2010 designed by Plan B Arquitectos
This was a small commission to design a pavilion for a construction fair in Medellín and to make the project more interest for us, we proposed to the client and promoters, a series of conditions:
The project must be built with donated materials from the different participant companies of the fair and put together as a mix of a same size panels distributed all over the façades, which must be able to move according to the sun orientation or the bioclimatic strategies. -- ArchDaily

Source: Sheng Zhonghai archdaily.com
Can Cube, Shanghai, China, 2010 designed by Archi Union Architects Inc
Can Cube’s facade is a system of aluminium carbonated drink cans which are enclosed in an aluminium frame. The façade saves the energy wasted during recycling processes by reusing the cans in their current form, without the need for recycling or further processes.  -- ArchDaily

Source: construction.com
OMS Stage, Winnipeg, Canada, 2010 designed by 5468796 Architecture
Located in Winnipeg’s Old Market Square, the OMS Stage is an open-air performance space in a public plaza designed by landscape firm Scatliff+Miller+Murray. In the city’s frequently freezing climate, the outdoor theater season lasts for only a few months. To give the pavilion a year-round presence, the firm wrapped a concrete stage in a perforated metal skin, which opens during performances and closes to create an illuminated sculptural cube. The form anchors the surrounding plaza and provides a glowing landmark that has come to characterize the neighborhood where 5468796 has its office.  -- Architectural Record
More from architect's web site
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Source: Make Architects
The Cube, Birmingham, UK, 2010 designed by Make Architects
The Cube was conceived as a building which would never close; crafted to open up routes and views to emerging neighbouring districts and permeable to both the users of the building and the community as a whole.  -- ArchDaily

Source: Emilio Photoimagination archdaily.com
Al-Irsyad Mosque, Kota Baru Parahyangan, Padalarang, Jawa Barat, Indonesia, 2010 designed by Urbane
The primary shape of the mosque takes the form of a square, which seems the most efficient since Muslims pray in straight rows facing a specific direction or the Qiblah.The structural columns are arranged in such way that the façade seems like it is not supported by any frame. This shape also alludes to Ka’bah, the most important structure in the Islamic world, to which all Muslims’ prayers are directed. -- ArchDaily

Source: Ken Sasajima archdaily.com
Small House, Meguro, Tokyo, Japan, 2010 designed by Unemori Architects
....the 4m×4m building that as small as I can at the center of site area 34m2 and made some space for flowing of light and wind around it. And by making the space, it’s possible to avoid setback regulation and it has the 9m high volume like a tower. The inside is simple structure what is separated by the 4 floor boards and is jointed by spiral stairway. -- ArchDaily

 Source: David Frutos archdaily.com
Music Hall, Algueña, Valencia, Spain, 2011 designed by Cor & Partners
The multipurpose hall houses 230 seats, these seats are moveable and the installations are able to accommodate different kind of functions, from a concert to a new year’s eve party, that’s why it also houses a warehouse where organize all these elements that allow use change.
the new hall is a blind box, a strange element because of its shape and dimensions. To emphasize this sensation we propose a cladding that vibrates and shines with a pearly-iridescent material. -- ArchDaily

Source: construction.com
House in Normandy, Normandy, France, 2011 designed by Beckmann-N’Thépé
A minimalist cube of 861 square feet, the house is clad in black tinted wooden panels that respond to the woodland environment. There is just one opening on each side judiciously oriented for views and light, and highlighted in white. Framed in wood, the walls of the house are lined with high performance thermal insulation. -- Architectural Record
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Source: Marc Lins archdaily.com
Mountain Cabin, Laterns, Vorarlberg, Austria, 2011 designed by Marte.Marte Architekten
Fitting into the landscape as if it were a barn, the building, which is a fine example of the homogeneous use of materials, in this case, carefully hewn rough concrete, stands out against the meadow green and winter white. Its ashy-gray colour only contrasts slightly with the heavy oak front doors and the anthracite-coloured handrails blend in with the branches of the surrounding forest. -- ArchDaily

Source: Thanlab Office archdaily.com
798 ART SPACE, Beijing, China, 2011 designed by Thanlab Office
The project base is located at the core of the 798 Art Zone and is currently a dilapidated storehouse, which may be dismantled for reconstruction. 798 today is in a transition from an art zone to a cultural and commercial tourism destination.  -- ArchDaily

Source: Roland Halbe archdaily.com
Jewelbox Houses Historic Carousel, New York City, New York, USA, 2011 designed by Jean Nouvel
The transparent jewel box centers Jane’s Carousel within a 72’ x 72’ x 27’ volume, directly beneath a circular skylight of equal diameter. The structure is supported by four, two foot diameter cylindrical steel columns set back 6-1/2 feet from the facades and tied together by four steel beams. A six foot high, concrete cellar raises the carousel floor above the flood line and serves as a passive ventilation device to cool down the building.  -- ArchDaily

Source: Jaime Sicilia archdaily.com
Porreres Medical Center, Porreres, Mallorca, Spain, 2011 designed by MACA Estudio
...a public square is opened to the front of the building with street access, and a private parking area is placed at the back of the plot. The resulting volume is almost a cube, which is modulated by dividing the width into five equal parts and the depth into three parts.  -- ArchDaily

Source: Rona Vatash archdaily.com
Samy Ofer Heart, Tel-Aviv, Israel, 2011 designed by Sharon Architects
The Samy Ofer Building was designed as a simple white monolithic cube built next to the historic Ichilov hospital building, designed in the 1960s by Arieh Sharon. State-of-the-art technologies are applied within the white architectural simplicity which historically has been the hallmark of hospitals, aiming to create a structure that is both transparent, eco-friendly and suited to the local climate.  -- ArchDaily

Stuttgart City Library, Stuttgart,Germany, 2011 designed by Yi Architects
The site for the Stuttgart City Library was chosen in Mailänder Platz, an area that is perceived to be a future city centre growing out of the location of the library. With this in mind, the architects chose to physically express the importance of this cultural centre by giving the building a grand physical presence. The building takes the form of cube with an edge length of 45 meters.  -- ArchDaily

 Source: Hector Santos-Diez archdaily.com
La Coruña Center For The Arts, La Coruña, Spain, 2011 designed by aceboXalonso studio
What today we call National Museum of Science andTechnology – MUNCYT – was born in 2001 as A Coruña Center for the Arts.  
The Center for the Arts was conceived as a single container to house two buildings of diverse nature: the new Dance Conservatory of the provincial Council of A Coruña and a Provincial Museum of ambiguous content. -- ArchDaily

Source: archdaily.com
Atriumtower Hiphouse Zwolle, Rotterdam, The Netherlands designed by Atelier Kempe Thill
Glass Tower Centralized Typology: An Alternative to the Deck-Access Typology The deck-access typology is the most common form of multi-story social housing in the Netherlands, because a large number of apartments can be connected to a limited number of stairwells. Despite the social stigma this typology has come to represent, it remains an almost inevitable solution. Due to its extreme cost-efficiency it is still being employed today in large numbers. The very compact building typology realized through the central circulation in Zwolle offers an economic and competitive alternative. -- ArchDaily

Source: UDG China archdaily.com
Wuxi Memsic Semiconductor Headquarter, Xishan, Wuxi, Jiangsu, China designed by UDG China
“Square” and “Round” elements are used in the design of figure and landscape composition, reflecting the ancient philosophy of yin-yang theory for the space. -- ArchDaily

Source: worldbuildingdirectory.com
Semi-autonomous Sauna, Estonia, 2011 designed by Architectural Bureau Pluss
Glass walls allow the transformation of solar energy into heat, which the stone floor and multi-layered glass in turn help maintain. This is enough to keep the interior (on sunny days at least) at ca 30 degrees above the exterior temperature throughout the year.  -- World Building Directory

Source: Gramazio & Kohler archdaily.com
Public Toilets, Uster, Switzerland, 2011 designed by Gramazio & Kohler
The public toilet in the city park of Uster has a complex facade of 295 folded aluminumstrips. The depth of the folding and the slightly different colors of each strip generate a shimmering facade that changes depending on sun angle and the observers’ perspective. -- ArchDaily

Source: archidose.org
Villa Nieuw Oosteinde, Aalsmeer, Netherlands, 2012 designed by Engel Architecten
....the house looks like it is only a cube, when in actuality it is made up of that volume and a small workshop on the side; both are linked by a glass corridor. Even as the architects describe the house as a cube, its materiality forces a reading of something else, something striated with a wood base, a tall upper story in concrete, and a band of glass in between. -- A weekly Dose of Architecture

Source: Iwan Baan archdaily.com
Perot Museum of Nature and Science, Dallas, Texas, USA, 2012 designed by Morphosis
The overall building mass is conceived as a large cube floating over the site’s landscaped plinth. An acre of undulating roofscape comprised of rock and native drought-resistant grasses reflects Dallas’s indigenous geology and demonstrates a living system that will evolve naturally over time. -- ArchDaily

Source: Pierre Berthelomeau archdaily.com
Reframe, in ‘Le Festival des Architectures Vives ’ in Montpellier, France, 2012 designed by Paul Scales and Atelier Ki
What first appears to be a simple modern cube is gradually discovered to be a more complex structure, through which architectural details, elements and facades are continuously revealed, reframed and reflected. Not only a beautiful and interesting way to contrast modern and historic architecture it also turned out to be very popular with the local kids who discovered that it was also a great object to play in. The project was constructed from 45 sheets of opal-colored 16 mm multi-wall polycarbonate and 16 steel plumbing pipes. -- ArchDaily

Source: Christina Zeibak and Daphne Dow archdaily.com
Sukkahville Design Competition Winning Exhibition: ‘Hegemonikon’,Toronto, Canada designed by Christina Zeibak and Daphne Dow
The Sukkah is simply fabricated from a stack of plywood, spaced apart and hollowed, allowing enough transparency to be inclusive yet enough density to create a sense of being. This design captures the juxtaposition between the simplicity of the plywood and the complexity of the void. As per the Hegemonikon philosophy, once you enter the space, you have left your past: it offers a space in the present where one can mediate upon their future and reflect upon their experiences. -- ArchDaily

Source: megabudka archdaily.com
Tube Pavilion, in Sretenka Design Week, Moscow, Russia designed by Megabudka
Created using one hundred lighting, or mirror tubes, at such a density of supports, the roof structure can be reduced to a minimum. If a mirror surface is used in combination with numerous tubes and a thin roof structure, a very interesting effect is created. A wide passage through the pavilion is slightly curved; thus the façade is not broken up. While 10% of the tubes glow, they are made of polyurethane with a LED strip inside. Due to the mirror surface of the ceiling and polished tubes, at night the interior fills with light, the pavilion becomes one big lantern. -- ArchDaily

Source: G.R. Wett archdaily.com
Indoor Rock Climbing, Brixen, South Tyrol, Italy, 2012 designed by W. Meraner – M. Mutschlechner
The multi-layer facade creates a moiré effect, generating always new impressions for the moving observer and both the users inside as also the viewer outside in a dynamic relationship to the climbing gym provides. In the planning of the climbing Hall, ecological aspects and sustainability were essential. -- ArchDaily

Source: Adam Mørk archdaily.com
University of Aberdeen New Library, University of Aberdeen, Scotland, UK, 2012 designed by Schmidt Hammer Lassen Architects
The University of Aberdeen New Library functions as a meeting place and a cultural centre for the students of the University as well as the Aberdeen community. The façade of the building shimmers during the day and glows softly at night, creating a luminous landmark – a beacon – for the city of Aberdeen -- ArchDaily

Source: Diana Quintela archdaily.com
KAIROS, Lisbon, Portugal, 2012 designed by João Quintela + Tim Simon
This confront between the temporary and the eternal is something worth researching through a general view to the possibilities that our time can offer us. This prefab solution is capable to deal simultaneously with these two aspects as it allows us working with a durable and resistant material dialoguing with continuous Time, through a modular construction and an easy assembly or disassembly. -- ArchDaily

Source: Diana Quintela archdaily.com
Crux Pavilion, Lisbon, Portugal, 2013 designed by Pezo von Ellrichshausen Architects
This somehow modest yet monumental piece appears as a simple form of opposition – that substantial role of Architecture – but in a temporal and non-conclusive manner. It is a duplicated archetypical figure of two columns supporting a beam that are articulated perpendicular to each other so as to define a cross shaped plan. The dimension in section, height and span is meant to unveil the hidden asymmetry of the existing pavilion. -- ArchDaily

Source: Ricardo Oliveira archdaily.com
Modular Box, Portugal, 2013 designed by SPSS Design
Developed as a prototype, SPSS Modular Box (SBOX) intended to be an openspace for work and showroom for the pieces of furniture produced by SPSS. -- ArchDaily

Source: Shu He & Shengliang Su archdaily.com
Vanke Brand Center, Yingkou, China, 2013 designed by Vector Architects
....an observatory platform on the roof of the building, where people could enjoy the maximum view of the landscape. The climbing progress from the grade level to the top platform is the indivisible prelude of the entire spatial experience. Starting with a gentle ramp, visitors will go through a preserved gingko grove, before walking into the inner space caring out the architectural volume. After going up along a defined stair space, eventually they arrives the top level, turning around, facing the bondless ocean in the distance. -- ArchDaily

Source: Lara Swimmer archdaily.com
Tower House, Portland, Oregon, USA, 2013 designed by Benjamin Waechter Architect
It touches the ground lightly and is built up rather than out.  The house is accessed by a thin steel pedestrian bridge that meets the house at its mid level, the dining room and hub of the house. -- ArchDaily

‘The Poetics of Boxes’, an exhibition on the work of Mathias Klotz -- ArchDaily

Museum Round Up: The Box is Back -- ArchDaily
 
Source: Kim Jaekyeong archdaily.com
9X9 Experimental House, Gyeonggi-do, South Korea, 2013 designed by Studio Archiholic
The glass wall keeps in contact with outside phenomena while zigzagging along the inner courtyard. As for the outside garden situated between the inner and outside areas, the boundary between inside and outside blurs, while light comes in through the 1.2 x 1.2m porous installed on the ceiling slab and advances further inside to drape shadows for the invisible border wall, or with rain or snow. -- ArchDaily

Source: Jérôme Humbert archdaily.com
5.5m x 5.5m, Fribourg, Switzerland, 2013 designed by LVPH
The Windig project proposes to create small habitable structures scattered throughout the park. The rental of these turrets will fund the maintenance of the park. Each turret is 5,5m x 5,5m x 9m and is equipped minimally: one shower, one toilet, a small kitchen and a wood stove (the only source of heating). -- ArchDaily

Source: Digiwoodlab Project archdaily.com
HILA Pavilion, Kiikeli, Oulu, Finland, 2014 designed by Digiwoodlab Project + University Of Oulu Students
HILA pavilion is a synthesis of a three dimensional wooden lattice structure (hila in Finnish) and architecture, in which the rectangular base form is carved by a freeform inner void. The revealed wooden structure creates a lace-like appearance inside the pavilion, which is amplified by the complex shadows it forms. -- ArchDaily

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