The Shard, London
London's biggest, newest, most controversial skyscraper has critics divided.
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London's biggest, newest, most controversial skyscraper has critics divided.
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The Dutch Dock and Shipbuilding company docks have a new architectural highlight – a highly transparent office building shaped like the funnel of a ship. The asymmetrical, 6 floor structure by designer Ed Veenendaal and architect Oever Zaaijer is right on the harbor, and its unique profile is visible from the center of the city. Metal construction specialist Octatube was responsible for implementing the challenging structural glazing façade: sloping triple panes up to five metres long, each with a unique shape and some weighing more than a tonne. The solar control glass ipasol neutral 50/27 with additional iplus E thermal insulation coating ensures a light-flooded interior, excellent protection from the summer heat and effective thermal insulation.
Frank Gehry’s recently completed, and long-awaited, New York by Gehry is the first of its kind to be designed by the famous architect. At 76 stories high, the multi-use residential complex is the tallest in the Western hemisphere and nestles well within Manhattan’s rich skyline. Soaring above a pocket of low-rise buildings that fill the outskirts of New York’s financial district, New York by Gehry stands in charming dialogue with the nearby New York City Hall, Woolworth building and Brooklyn bridge; paying homage to the great city’s past and future.
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Pixel, designed by studio 505 for Grocon, is the first carbon neutral office building in Australia and has achieved a perfect score of 100 in Australia’s Green Building Council rating system, the highest score ever achieved. Located on the former Carlton Brewery site, the building is an ambitious and distinctive addition to the key urban area which is undergoing development. Pixel consummately fulfils the brief to provide a 6 Star Greenstar Carbon Neutral development office for Grocon’s development team and sales offices, a display suite area and a green roof top viewing area, for the duration of the development’s construction and sales phase. Grocon intends to turn the Carlton Brewery site into a vibrant, mixed use precinct including retail, residential and commercial spaces. Pixel’s outstanding eco-credentials will inform the rest of the development – for Grocon, Pixel is the prototype of the “office of the future.” It is an exciting, forward thinking structure, which upholds standards that are set to become increasingly necessary as we respond to the need to limit our carbon footprint and increasingly focus on energy efficiency. The building coherently weaves together a series of integrated environmental systems to form an unprecedented whole. According to Green Building Council Chief executive Romilly Madew, “The Pixel Building, having achieved the maximum Green Star points ever awarded under Green Star, could arguably be said to be Australia’s greenest building and is quite possibly the first building on its kind in the world. This building will redefine the way buildings are built in the future.”
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Architecture has the potential to artfully blend cultural identities with modern aesthetics, and this is true for the Botswana High Commission in Canberra. Designed by Guida Moseley Brown Architects, the building showcases the traditional art and craft of the country within a refined, celebrated architectural framework.
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In response to the south precinct masterplan of the Brindabella Business Park, 25 Brindabella consists of a sympathetic and thoughtful design approach to maintain quality and consistency of material found throughout the Business Park, applied to achieve a dynamic aesthetic.
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Now in its third year, the World Architecture Festival has become the platform for the world’s biggest architecture contest that attracts architects worldwide to battle it out in Barcelona. From November 3–5 this year, over 500 entries from 65 countries competed for awards in just 15 completed buildings categories, with three Australian practices emerging victorious. International superstars met the industry’s unsung, with each to have gone head-to-head in front of a jury of architecture luminaries to take out the grand title of 2010 World Building of the Year. We take a look at some of the winners from this year’s Festival.
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The International Highrise Award is as prestigious to architects as an Oscar is to Hollywood’s acting elite. In Frankfurt, Germany, an international jury of architecture luminaries recognised 27 projects from 16 countries fulfilling the competition’s criteria based on pioneering design, technological innovation, efficiency, sustainability, and integration into urban context. As the judges have selected and named the top five finalists, we take a look at the ideas of those towering schemes that have reigned supreme.
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Tall office buildings are synonymous with the 20th Century – architectural marvels marking an age of modernity reflected in glistening curtain walls, stacked floor plates and structures that soar to dizzying heights. In Sydney however, a new kind of highrise has emerged, with the completion of Rice Daubney’s Ark, a structure representing a set of firsts for New South Wales that is both innovative and thoughtfully respectful.
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Barcelona architects, Xavier Vilalta Studio have defined a new wave in innovation for the skyscraper archetype, having won a competition to design a tower for Doha, Qatar. Called Alpha Project, the design is completely self-reliant with its façade detailing based on the patterns of ancient Arabic tiles. Sensitively capturing the essence and culture of Doha city, it blends ancient design traditions as the basis of the plan and modern building technologies as a tool of expression. Its passive design is inspired by the local vernacular applied to a gigantic scale. The overall scheme provides stable conditions in the harsh Doha climate and utilises the surrounding natural resources to the full extent, harnessing energy from the wind, water and sun, becoming a sustainable development that combines both passive and active systems. With all the right ideas, Alpha Project strikes a fine balance between advanced, sustainable building design and historical antiquity.
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