Tussols

Project: Tussols-Basil Track and Field Stadium

Landscape Architecture: RCR
Rafael Aranda, Carme Pigem and Ramón Vilalta
Client: Ayuntamiento de Olot / Consell Català de l’Esport. Generalitat de Catalunya
Collaborators: M. Tapies, A. Saez, M. Bordas, BRUFAU, OBIOL, MOYA
Constructor: Coempco S.A.
Completion date: 2002
Site area: 67,693 sqm
Location: Olot, Catalunya (Spain)

This entry was written by admin, posted on March 30, 2010 at 12:24 am, filed under Parks and tagged Gerona, Spain, Sport. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.

Dzintaru Mežaparks

Park Design: Substance (Architects: Arnis Dimins, Brigita Barbale,
with the assistance of Guna Priede, Krišjānis Leitis, Ieva Dimante, Rihards Vietrins)
Project: Dzintaru Mežaparks - Reconstruction of Forest Park
Area: 131108m²
Client: Jurmala City Council
Project: 2003 / 2005
Builder: SIA Taders
Construction: 2007 / 2008
Photos: Ansis Starks

Substance: “A 200-year-old pine-tree growth and bilberry bush (protected biotops) are the greatest treasures of Dzintari forest park which has a total area of 13 hectars. The newly created infrastructure regulates visitors’ interaction with nature to reduce the impact of human activity on the environment. Architecture objects are located throughout the park and are connected with wooden board foot-path raised above the ground. The most important active recreation element is the inline skating track in the middle of the park. Pedestrian bridge separates skater and pedestrian paths. The park also accomodates skate-board and street-ball grounds, a children playground, cafes, sports inventory rental, toilets and other buildings. Nature elements served as prototypes of architecture objects. Also, the vertical division of glass facades creates dialogue with the surrounding pine trees.”

This entry was written by admin, posted on March 23, 2010 at 4:58 pm, filed under Parks and tagged Jurmala, Latvia. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.

Beth Dow /Photography

Photographer: Beth Dow

This entry was written by admin, posted on March 22, 2010 at 8:10 pm, filed under Artscapes and tagged Photography. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.

Vaartkom Leuven

West 8 in collaboration with Snoeck en Partners, Bas Dirk Jaspaert, ERM and Tritel, has won the competition organized by the City of Leuven, for the revitalization of the former industrial site Vaartkom in Leuven, Belgium.

West8:  The Vaartkom is a unique location close to the water’s edge and within walking distance from the historical city center. Already this district offers an exceptional urban landscape, with its remnants of a rich industrial past. Inspired by these industrial artefacts, West 8 proposes a vibrant new urban center where living, working and production function in a healthy balance.

The area of the Vaartkom is characterized by a fascinating variety of features and scale. The original port operations are almost completely gone, what remains are the remnants of a rich industrial past. An attractive district will emerge where living, working and production function in a healthy balance. This shift to a more human use also requires an adjustment to the design of public space. The accessibility of many homes and commercial spaces should be ensured, so the area will be better connected to the surrounding technical structures. The public space around the Vaartkom transforms from an industrial to an esplanade wharf, a lounge with numerous terraces.The hardness of a port makes room for warmth, for green, for a human habitat.

The Engelsplein is an important part in this transformation. The square plays a qualitative role as transit space. The presence of the viaduct, the busplatforms and the entrance ways to the public parking define the public space.  A maximum green character is created by gathering the necessary ‘hard’ surfaces under the viaduct. It is people and green who get all daylight.

This entry was written by admin, posted on March 10, 2010 at 12:19 am, filed under Competitions and tagged Belgium, Leuven. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.

Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe

© Berlin Partner GmbH/FTB-Werbefotografie

Design: Peter Eisenman, architect and Buro Happold, engineer
Location: Berlin, Germany
Competition: 1997
Construction: 2004
Area: 19,000m²
Cost: €25 million.

Memorials in general have always been a powerful storytelling landscapes as well as a political statements, usually accompanied with conventional symbols in order to be understood by the majority. Sometimes, designers are able to find an unconventional, more advanced way to express the story behind an object of remembrance. This particular memorial is dedicated to the murdered Jews of Europe, and represents the political system of Nazism and it’s behavior towards Jews in Europe under the government of Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist German Worker’s Party. Memorial consists of 2,711 concrete slabs, arranged in a grid based system, some slabs are higher than other, some are missing at the edges, which could describe a process of spreading or decomposing at the margins. It is a cold, hard, deaf, heavy, extremely un-natural environment, contrasted with the Tiergarten park across the street. Though the memorial is a very confusing concrete landscape, and you can easily lose orientation (especially, when you are deep inside, where slabs reach a height of nearly 5 meters) you can’t hide. At every moment you can be seen from a great distance, since the paths are straight. See more photos on wiki.

image credit: Andrej Bašelj

image credit: Andrej Bašelj

This entry was written by admin, posted on March 9, 2010 at 12:50 am, filed under Cemeteries / Memorials, on the spot and tagged Berlin, germany. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.

Place de la République

Design: Josep Lluís Mateo
Restricted competition: 

2009
Site: Paris
Area: 34.000 m2

External collaborators:
Lighting concept: Artec
Landscaping: d’Ici-là
Structure / Installations: EGI (Enginyeria i Gestió d’Infrastructures)

Josep Lluís Mateo:

“Place de la République as public space

Transforming a traffic junction into an urban space means, firstly, reducing the impact of road traffic. According to studies carried out by our traffic engineers, based on available data, it is possible to reduce 7-8 lanes to 4-5. It is also possible to avoid vehicular traffic around the monument.

Having addressed the traffic, the challenge is to transform the place into an urban space.

1. Pavements and plaza
We propose a substantial increase in pavement space, concentrating all specifically urban flows (buses and taxis) around its edge. The pavement, transformed into a boulevard, would then be able to accommodate both pedestrian traffic and the kiosks and galleries that house the overflow of ground-floor businesses, as well as being a place for people to sit and rest.
The central plaza, also enlarged, would be of a different nature: a space for demonstration and representation that can coexist with the more domestic, ludic presence of nature. Monument esplanade, garden.

2. The plaza: unity and diversity
The plaza, a long space running NW-SE, takes in three different urban moments. These characteristics call for specific attention to create a figure that is designed to be unitary but also special, contextual and varied.

2 The small salon
At its north-west point (rue Boulanger, bvd St Martin, …), the plaza meets the pre-Haussmann city, with its finer grain and less geometrical monumentality. Our response is the small salon; earth makes an appearance at ground level, with emphasis on the urban continuity of bvd St Martin-rue Boulanger. The idea of the paving is to establish continuities between the city and the plaza. Traffic, though a real presence, could be studied and eliminated at certain points to ensure pedestrian continuity.

2B The centre of the monument
The centre of the place, at present a small island amid the flow of traffic, is marked by movement. We propose constructing a base for it, a podium which, with a slight slope, accentuates the volcanic composition of the object and allows people to walk around it, establish a direct relation with it and rest in its shelter.

2C The esplanade
The most abstract boundary would be on the three-pronged Haussmann layout: bvd Voltaire, République, bvd du Temple. This is the site of the big demonstrations that characterize the place. We propose the construction of a great petrous esplanade, with a 2.5% gradient, at the far edge of which people would be naturally higher (2 m) than the traffic, which would pass under foot without being seen. A break in section near the end would allow the introduction, in the English landscape tradition, of a ha-ha, an invisible railing, offering views from the esplanade of the spectacle of the vanishing points of the boulevards, with the great petrous base as the only foreground.

The great esplanade constitutes the dialectical counterpoint with the small salon, at the same time ensuring continuity with the symbolism of the monument.”

This entry was written by admin, posted on March 4, 2010 at 1:38 am, filed under Parks, Squares and tagged France, Paris. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.