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| Source: rtrk.com |
Rowes Wharf, Boston, Massachusetts, USA, 1987 designed by SOM
According to its designer, Adrian Smith of Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill, the Rowes Wharf building is "a steel deck and beam frame clad with a curtain wall of brick, granite and pre-cast concrete". Its courtyard, which covers a public plaza leading to the waterfront, is topped by grand arches, and a copper-domed observatory sits atop the building, providing panoramic views of the city. There's also a free-floating stage which is often the site of concerts and other special public events, especially during the warm summer months. --
A view on cities.
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| Source: bluffton.edu |
Grande Arche, La Défense, Paris, France, 1989 designed by architect Johann Otto von Spreckelsen and Erik Reitzel
The massive scale of the Arche is most obvious in its atrium, which hosts a parasitic stretched Teflon mesh. This portion of the building was an afterthought added to the project once Paul Andreau took over the project. The innovative awning allows wind and light to permeate, while shielding visitors from the elements. This seemingly cloudlike structure is fastened by tensioned cables which clutches onto the building’s façade, and whose figure appears alien like among the sharp contours of the Grande Arche. --
ArchDaily
Paris’ Grande Arche to get €200 million Revamp --
ArchDaily
The Gateway, Singapore, 1990 designed by Pei Cobb Freed & Partners
...two identical parallelogram tower blocks each 37 storeys tall.
The twin-tower development of this site is intended to signify symbolically the 'Gateway' to Singapore. Therefore the two buildings are named 'The Gateway East' and 'The Gateway West'. Locals refer to the buildings as "two towering cardboard boxes". The buildings are detailed in a way that If you see them from a certain angle they seem to be two-dimensional. --
MIMAO
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| Source: wikimedia.org |
Gate of Europe, Madrid, Spain, 1996 designed by Philip Johnson and John Burgee
The Puerta de Europa towers (Gate of Europe or just Torres KIO) are twin office buildings in Madrid. The towers have a height of 114 m (374 ft) and have 26 floors.
Each building is 115 m tall with an inclination of 15°, making them the first inclined skyscrapers in the world. -- Wikipedia
Read a post from
ArchDaily
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| Source: wikipedia.org |
Düsseldorf Stadttor (City Gate), Düsseldorf, Germany, 1997 designed by Petzinka, Pink & Partners
the Stadttor stands guard over the city’s sunken main artery. Two 16-story towers enclose a 56m high atrium designed to allow maximum natural daylighting, a citywide building ordinance. The interior glass façade features double-pane, low-E glazed doors operable at every other bay and high-reflectance Venetian blinds. At each story, a climate buffer corridor circulates fresh air between facades allowing natural ventilation for 60% of the year. -- Inhabitat.com
A detailed case study from
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, UC Berkeley
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| Source: buildingbutler.com |
KPN Papendorp, Utrecht, Netherlands, 2008 designed by Veenendaal, Bocanet + Partners
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| Source: Frankfurt.de |
Exhibition Hall 9 “Gatehouse”, Frankfurt am Main, Germany designed by O.M. Ungers
The similarity with a gate is created by the construction of two interlocking structures (a 22-floor stone building with a large gate and a glass building penetrating this part). In this way, the Gatehouse is a symbol of the openness of the Frankfurt Trade Fair to the world, and also serves as a central contract point for exhibitors and visitors. -- Frankfurt.de
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| Source: Steven Holl Architects |
LM HARBOR GATEWAY, Copenhagen, Denmark, 2008 designed by Steven Holl Architects
The LM Project design for the dramatic new harbor entrance to the great city of Copenhagen is based on a concept of two towers carrying two bridges at two orientations all connecting back to the unique aspects of the site's history.
Each tower carries its own cable-stay bridge that is a public passageway between the two piers. Due to the site geometry, these bridges meet at an angle, joining like a handshake over the harbor. -- architect's web site
Another article from
ARCHITECT Magazine
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| Source: Andrei Mărgulescu archdaily.com |
City Gate, Bucharest, Romania, 2010 designed by Westfourth Architecture
The complex consists of two 18- storeyed towers located across from each other and creating an entry plaza to the Exhibition Complex in between. A common three level garage connects the towers under the plaza. Two three-storeyed wings are attached to each of the towers achieving larger floor plates on the lower levels of the complex.
The relation emphasized in the project, between towers on one hand, and between building wings and sections on the other, recall the concept of duality inferred by the image of «gate». -- ArchDaily
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| Source: Henning Larsen Architects archdaily.com |
Ericus And Spiegel Buildings, Brooktorkai, HafenCity, Hamburg, Germany, 2011 designed by Henning Larsen Architects
With its clearly readable figure each building has a reserved yet characteristic expression that provides a special significance in relation to creating identity for all the surrounding public spaces. The Ericus building will be essential for the completion of the large park space. Spiegel will become the gateway to Hafencity seen from the main station and Brooktorkai. -- ArchDaily
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| Source: Rocco Design Architects archdaily.com |
HKSAR Government Headquarters, Admiralty, Hong Kong, 2011 designed by Rocco Design Architects
The two wings of Government Offices are joined together at the upper level, creating the visual metaphor of an opening door. --
ArchDaily
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| Source: Herzog & de Meuron archdaily.com |
Porta Volta Fondazione Feltrinelli, Milan, Italy, 2013 designed by Herzog & de Mueron
Expected to be completed in 2013, Herzog & de Meuron’s new redevelopment project in Porta Volta, Milan will include the headquarters for the Fondazione Giangiacomo Feltrinelli.
“This undertaking by the Feltrinelli Group has an important urban dimension in that it strengthens and reinforces the city.”
“The long-limbed form, linear building refers, first, to the Gothic tradition that is expressed in important buildings in the city of Milan on the other to farms that dot the landscape of slender Lombardy,” explained Herzog. -- ArchDaily
Despite Controversy, Herzog & de Meuron’s Porta Volta Breaks Ground --
ArchDaily
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| Source: archrecord.construction.com |
Emerson Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California, USA, 2013 designed by Morphosis Architects
The gesture that makes this exploration possible is the long bar across the top of the building. It turns a pair of vertical elements—the dormitory towers—into a frame, and the building into a giant arch. That arch recalls, most obviously, the Grande Arche office building in La Defense, the district on the outskirts of Paris, a building by Johan Otto von Spreckelsen and Paul Andreu that Mayne has surely come to know well while working on the Phare Tower. --
Architectural Record
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| Source: Michel Denancé archdaily.com |
Valletta City Gate, Valletta, Malta, 2015 designed by Renzo Piano Building Workshop
The architecture of the new city gate is very restrained, giving an
impression of strength and austerity, stripped of extraneous decoration
that would undermine its timeless, honest quality. Its tapered shape and
the two great steel poles, each 25m high, are enough to lend this
breach in the wall the status of the Valletta City Gate.
The gateway is made of immense blocks of stone, delimited and framed
by the tall steel ‘blades’ that are used to highlight the junction of
old and new – steel and stone in a dialogue of nature, strength and
history. -- ArchDaily
