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Hello everyone, I have a vision to develop Montreal that would revolutionize the face of downtown and give an international touch to it. What I would like to do is to form a small group to develop a few schematics/drawings of my idea and present it to the city developers and some business people. Anybody that has the skills necessary on this forum willing to put some time in it? Let me know

Close Up on [FURNI] VBS.tv did a small video interview on Mike Giles of Furni. He does a lot of wood work. I had a chance to work at Furni for a day and use the laser cutter. Seeing he is good friends with the person I am doing my internship with. Blog So if your in the mood, buy one of their clocks for yourself or a present for someone Please check him out. INSIDER INFO: He is also working on Hi-Fi headphones. It is a concept form at the moment. I will tell you more or post pictures when I see the finish product. All I can say, the idea will be similar to GRADO's GS1000i but far less expensive.

The office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) has been commissioned to design a large-scale residential complex in Singapore. The project will be located on an expansive 8 hectare site bounded by the Ayer Rajah Expressway and Alexandra Road, in a central position between the National University and downtown Singapore. With 170,000 m2 of built floor area, the development will provide over 1,000 apartment units of varying sizes with extensive outdoor spaces and landscaping. Instead of creating a cluster of isolated, vertical towers – the default typology of residential developments in Singapore – the design explores a dramatically different approach to the issues and challenges of living and social space. 32 apartment blocks, each six-stories tall, are stacked in a hexagonal arrangement to form six large-scale permeable courtyards. The interlocking volumes form the topography of a “vertical village” with cascading sky gardens and private roof terraces vertically extending the landscape of the courtyards. Extensive communal facilities which are embedded in the lush vegetation offer multiple opportunities for social interaction in a natural environment. While maintaining the privacy of the individual apartment units through unobstructed views and generous spacing of the building blocks, the horizontal and interconnected volumes create an explicitly social network of outdoor spaces within the green terrain. The site completes a green belt that stretches between Kent Ridge, Telok Blangah and Mount Faber Parks, while the stacked volumetric relationship of the apartment blocks extends the landscape and forms a mount/hill that relates to the surrounding topography. Beyond the extensive presence of nature and collective space, the project will be designed to respond carefully to the tropical climate and address issues of sustainability through incorporating multiple features of energy-saving technologies. The project is lead by Ole Scheeren, Director of OMA Beijing, together with Eric Chang, Associate. http://www.worldarchitecturenews.com/index.php?fuseaction=wanappln.projectview&upload_id=1943

I'm creating this thread mainly to comment on the long-form census controversy from a non-political point of view. As a mathematician who probably cares and knows less about Canadian politics than anyone else in this forum, this is my opinion: A voluntary survey is completely USELESS, and even more so after it became the subject of a nationwide political debate. An anti-conservative friend of mine wrote last week on facebook that he returned the short form and demanded a long form be sent to him. He thought he was making some kind of statement, but he is actually helping to make the survey even more useless. I don't really blame him, since there is no way to make the long-form data meaningful anymore. It's better if we just forget about it, but I still have a question: how does this happen in a country full of smart people like Canada? I find it a bit scary actually. I would love to know your opinions on the subject.

http://www.thestar.com/article/845013--siddiqui-harper-s-ottawa-becomes-republican-la-la-land

Is Montreal the real art capital of Canada? SARAH MILROY From Saturday's Globe and Mail May 30, 2008 at 11:07 PM EDT MONTREAL — Is Montreal the new Vancouver? I've heard the question floated the last few days following the opening of the Québec Triennial at the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal last weekend. It's a major exhibition – 38 artists showing 135 works of art – and it presents a new generation of Quebec artists, emerging into view after a long period of relative seclusion and quiet growth. There are many, many discoveries to be made, particularly for gallerygoers who live outside of Quebec. The curators took risks. (The show was organized by MACM curators Paulette Gagnon, Mark Lanctôt, Josée Bélisle and Pierre Landry, now at the Musée National des Beaux-Arts du Québec.) They set out with no declared curatorial theme, which so often serves as a diversion from the brutal sheep-and-goats sorting that such a show should be all about. The exhibition's title, Nothing Is Lost, Nothing Is Created, Everything Is Transformed, was arrived at after the fact, borrowed from the writings of a Greek scientist and philosopher named Anaxagoras of Clazomenae (500-428 BC). It's a title that would suit many of the big roundup shows this year (for example, Unmonumental at The New Museum in New York, and the Whitney Biennial), having about it both the celebratory and the apocalyptic flavour of the moment. These days, the artist often seems to perform a kind of sampling role, picking through the churning deluge of information and imagery that makes up the contemporary visual environment. But where some of these larger international shows seem chaotic in sympathy with their subject (the current Whitney being the odious example), the Québec Triennial is tightly considered and expertly installed. A focus on the news Enlarge Image Among the big names are Michel de Broin, who won last year's Sobey Art Award and is a significant force on the Quebec scene. (Ellen Page Wilson) There were obvious big names missing from the lineup – such as Montrealers Pascal Grandmaison and Geneviève Cadieux or the Quebec City artist collective BGL, which has been showing up a lot in Toronto – and the curators may take heat for that on the home front. But instead of received ideas they have delivered us news. One of the most startling discoveries is the video work of 36-year-old Patrick Bernatchez. Here, he is showing two mesmerizing projection pieces, both set in the Fashion Plaza in the Mile End former garment district of Montreal, a part of the city currently being re-gentrified by the arts community. In I Feel Cold Today, we enter a 1960s-style office tower and ascend the elevators to the sound of a lush soundtrack (the artist's remix of fragments of classical music and film scores), arriving at a suite of empty offices that gradually fill with billowing snow. It's a mystical transformation. The cinematic precedent is the famous snow scene from Dr. Zhivago, where the accumulation of snow in the abandoned country house bespeaks the loss of a way of life, and the passage of time. Here, it is modernism that is mourned and, more particularly, the go-go optimism of Quebec in its Expo 67 moment. Bernatchez's other work, Chrysalide: Empereur, is without such obvious precedent, drifting in a realm of its own. All the camera shows us is a car parked in a grimy garage. In it sits a man in a Ronald McDonald clown costume, smoking a cigarette behind the wheel as water gradually fills the interior of his car. The sun roof is open (we see his party balloons escaping), so this man is not trapped, yet he makes no effort to escape as the water rises. This seems to be a suicide, yet he does not die. Breathing in water, is he returning to life in the womb, a place of deep privacy and seclusion? I found myself reminded of Bruce Nauman's famous videos of clowns in extremis (his dark and distinctive blend of comedy and cruelty), and the sense of violent threat in Matthew Barney's Cremaster Cycle. If these have inspired Bernatchez, he has wrung from these precedents a new comic/tragic resonance. One of the few big names in the show is David Altmejd, who also hangs out on the borderline between beauty and horror. His two giant standing figurative sculptures in this show continue his investigations of decay and regeneration. One, titled The Dentist, is a stylistic departure for the artist : a mammoth monolith in the shape of a standing man that is made entirely from faceted mirrors. This colossus houses a number of quail eggs in its sides, and its surface is shattered here and there with what look like bullet holes, some of which sprout animal teeth. Despite the evidently fragile material from which it is made, the sculpture embodies a kind of brutal force. This is the sort of material conundrum that Altmejd loves to explore. An inspired juxtaposition In one of the most effective installation decisions in the show, Altmejd's mirrored sculpture stands within hearing range of Gwenaël Bélanger's video projection featuring the sound of a shattering mirror. The camera spins in the artist's studio, the rotation recorded in myriad stills spliced together to create a stuttering visual effect. Every five minutes, a pane of mirrored glass shatters as it is dropped on the floor with a sound like church bells, the phenomenon captured in hundreds of frozen micro-moments cut together. Like the works of Alexandre Castonguay (not in the show) or the earlier, more overt digital composites of Nicholas Baier, Bélanger takes an artisan's approach to digital technology, showing off his handiwork in obvious ways, a different approach than the sleight of hand of Vancouver artists such as Jeff Wall or the younger Scott McFarland. Mirrors figure, as well, in the new work of Baier, another of the show's better-known figures. For this show he has installed a magisterial suite of his most recent scanned antique mirrors, surfaces that offer scars and imperfections from deep within their inky depths. But, unlike Baier, most of the artists here are little known. There's Valérie Blass, whose sculptures range from a fur-clad zigzag form that springs from the wall (she titled the piece Lightning Shaped Elongation of a Redhead) to a two-legged standing figure that looks like the Cowardly Lion in a pair of high-heeled hooves. (A sloth clings to its breast, regarding us with wide eyes, curiouser and curiouser.) This woman has developed her own completely distinct vision, each work embodying a precise material language. Likewise, the British-born artist Adrian Norvid, who is showing a giant cartoon drawing of the Hermit Hamlet Hotel, an alternative getaway for deadbeat longhairs with hillbilly affectations. (One slogan reads “Recluse. Footloose. Screw Loose. No Use.”) Norvid takes the eccentric posture of the outsider/slacker, throwing rocks into the mainstream from his lazy place on the riverbank. Painting comes on strong. Etienne Zack appears to tip his hat to Velazquez and other classical masters in Cut and Paste, a painting of a courtier slumped in a chair. In this Cubist-seeming likeness, he breaks the figure up into planes of form hinged together with masking tape (painted, not real). Zack takes as his subject the literal building up of form through paint. This is painting about painting. Michael Merrill engages in another form of homage with his Paintings about Art, depictions of his fellow artists' work in museums and galleries in Canada and abroad. (One downward-looking view of the stairwell at the DIA Foundation in New York is a compositional gem, executed in dazzling emerald greens.) These pictures document the watering holes and pilgrimage sites of the little tribe of peripatetic Canadian artists, curators, dealers and collectors. Like Manet's portraits of his contemporaries, they are images to inform a future history of art. Certainly there were things here that seemed weak by comparison. The artist collective Women with Kitchen Appliances felt like a seventies throwback. I could live without the karaoke saloon by Karen Tam, or Trish Middleton's detritus-strewn Factory for a Day. David Armstrong Six's wonderful little watercolours hold up better than his large installation work here. And Julie Doucet's collage works are always fun to look at, but they wear out fast. As well, I have never taken to the simulated theatrics of Carlos and Jason Sanchez, who are exhibiting a photo portrait of John Mark Karr (who claimed to have killed six-year-old JonBenet Ramsey) and another work showing a pair of soldiers on the battlefield (the maudlin title: The Misuse of Youth). And it was disappointing that Michel de Broin, who won last year's Sobey Art Award and is a significant force on the Quebec scene, missed the opportunity to make a new major piece for this show. But every exhibition of this sort has its hits and misses. Montreal's critical mass So, why is Montreal art so strong these days? First, you have to credit the strong art schools in Montreal and Quebec City. Looking at the CVs of these artists, one sees most of them are homegrown talents trained at Concordia University or the University of Quebec at Montreal. (Just a handful have gone on to hone their skills at places like Cal Arts or Columbia in the United States or Goldsmiths in London.) These programs, coupled with the viability of Quebec's artist-run-centre scene and the highly charged political push for cultural integrity over the past several decades – plus the critical funding for the museums to support it – have clearly given extra momentum to the province's artistic production. With all its vitality and freshness, the show leaves one with the unmistakable impression of Montreal's ascendancy. Quebec artists are emerging now knowing who they are, apparently not seeking validation from elsewhere to feel empowered. Let's note: Montreal is home to the only international biennial in Canada (organized by the Centre International d'art contemporain), something English Canada has never pulled off. And nowhere in Canada has a museum committed to a regular showcase of this sort for Canadian contemporary art. (Province of Ontario, you're getting your butt kicked here.) It's telling that the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal is the first to take the lead with its new Triennial. Refusing wannabe status, and with its leading institutions honouring the home culture with discernment and passion, Montreal is suddenly looking like the sexiest thing around. Nothing Is Lost, Nothing Is Created, Everything Is Transformed continues at the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal until Sept. 7 (514-847-6232 or http://www.macm.org).

January 20, 2009 ARCHITECTURE REVIEW | COPENHAGEN CONCERT HALL For Intimate Music, the Boldest of Designs By NICOLAI OUROUSSOFF COPENHAGEN — It’s usually considered an insult to say that an architect designs pretty packages, let alone that he borrows ideas from a dead genius. But Jean Nouvel should be forgiven for resurrecting old ghosts. His Copenhagen Concert Hall, which opened here on Saturday evening, is a loving tribute to Hans Scharoun’s 1963 Berlin Philharmonie, whose cascading balconies made it one of the most beloved concert halls of the postwar era. And Mr. Nouvel has encased his homage in one of the most gorgeous buildings I have recently seen: a towering bright blue cube enveloped in seductive images. It’s a powerful example of how to mine historical memory without stifling the creative imagination. And it offers proof, if any more were needed, that we are in the midst of a glorious period in concert hall design. Like Frank Gehry’s 2003 Disney Hall in Los Angeles and Herzog & de Meuron’s Elbphilharmonie, now under construction in Hamburg, Germany, Mr. Nouvel’s new hall demonstrates that an intimate musical experience and boldly imaginative architecture need not be in conflict — they can actually reinforce each other. The Copenhagen Concert Hall has the ugliest setting of the three. In a new residential and commercial district on the outskirts of the old inner city, it is flanked by boring glass residential and office blocks. Elevated train tracks running to the old city swing right by the building; swaths of undeveloped land with tufts of grass and mounds of dirt extend to the south. Approached along the main road from the historic city, the hall’s cobalt blue exterior has a temporal, ghostly quality. Its translucent fabric skin is stretched over a structural frame of steel beams and tension cables that resembles scaffolding. During the day you can see figures moving about inside, as well as the vague outline of the performance space, its curved form embedded in a matrix of foyers and offices. It is in darkness that the building comes fully to life. A montage of video images is projected across the cube’s fabric surface at night, transforming it into an enormous light box. Drifting across the cube’s surfaces, the images range from concert performers and their instruments to fragments of form and color. This is the intoxicating medium of late-capitalist culture. You can easily imagine boxes of detergent or adult chat-line numbers finding their way into the mix. Yet what makes this more than an advertising gimmick is the contrast between the disorienting ethereality of the images and the Platonic purity of the cube. For decades architects have strived to create ever more fluid spaces, designing ramped floors and curved walls to meld the inner life of a building with the street life around it. The ideal is a world where boundaries between inside and out vanish. Yet Mr. Nouvel’s box is more self-contained and arguably less naïve: its solid form, bathed in tantalizing images, is in stark opposition to the sterile desolation around it. That impression grows once you enter the building, where more projected images blend with real, living people coursing through it. To reach the main performance space, concertgoers can either ride up escalators directly in front of the main entrance or turn to climb a broad staircase. Just to the left of those stairs are elevators that shoot up to the lobby and upper-level foyers, whose ceilings are decorated in fragmented, overlapping panels. As video images wash over the panels, the pictures break apart so that you perceive them only in fragments, like reflections in broken glass. More images stream across the walls. The effect is a mounting intensity that verges on the psychedelic. None of this would be effective, however, without Mr. Nouvel’s keen understanding of architecture’s most basic elements, including a feel for scale and materials. The towering proportions of the lobbies, for example, seem to propel you up through the building. When you reach the upper foyers, you feel the weight of the main performance space pressing down on you. At the same time, views open up from the corners of the building to the outside world. It’s as if you were hovering in some strange interstitial zone, between the banal urban scenery outside and the focused atmosphere of a concert. This complex layering of social spaces brings to mind the labyrinthine quarters of an Arab souk as much as it does a high-tech information network. That’s largely because Mr. Nouvel’s materials put you at ease: elevator shafts and staircases are clad in plywood, giving many of the spaces the raw, unpretentious aura of a construction site. The building’s concrete surfaces are wrinkled in appearance, like an elephant’s skin, but when you touch them, they feel as smooth as polished marble. By contrast, the main performance hall wraps you in a world of luxury. Like Scharoun’s cherished hall, Mr. Nouvel’s is organized in a vineyard pattern, with seats stepping down toward the stage on all sides in a series of cantilevered balconies. The pattern allows you to gaze over the stage at other concertgoers, creating a communal ambience. Because the balconies are stepped asymmetrically, you never feel that you are planted amid monotonous rows of identical spectators. Yet Mr. Nouvel’s version is smaller and more tightly focused than Mr. Scharoun’s. The balcony walls are canted, so that they seem to be pitching toward the stage. A small rectangular balcony designed for the queen of Denmark and her immediate family hovers over one side of the hall, breaking down the scale. The entire room was fashioned from layers of hardwood, which gives it an unusual warmth and solidity, as if it had been carved out of a single block. The result is a beautifully resilient emotional sanctuary: a little corner of utopia in a world where walls are collapsing. And it underscores what makes Mr. Nouvel such an ideal architect for today. Though he is a deft practitioner of contemporary technology, his ideas are rooted in the historical notion of the city as a place of intellectual exchange. His best buildings hark back beyond the abstract orderliness of Modernism and neo-Classicism to a more intuitive — and human — time. Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company Privacy Policy Search Corrections RSS First Look Help Contact Us Work for Us Site Map

Cleaned up? Not so much One-Quarter of Montrealers see problem behaviour in their neighbourhoods The view on St. Antoine St. W. Almost a quarter of Montrealers said social incivility in one form or another is a problem in their neighbourhoods. Fifteen per cent mentioned drug use and five per cent specified prostitution. CHRISTOPHER MAUGHAN, The Gazette Published: 20 hours ago Montreal has been known as "sin city" for the better part of a century, ever since Americans started coming here to drink freely during the Prohibition era. A new survey suggests little has changed since. Researchers at Statistics Canada asked people living in big cities how often they witnessed incidences of social and physical incivility - that is, drunkenness, drug use, prostitution, vandalism, littering and the like. Montreal ranked second in almost every category. Twenty-four per cent of Mont-realers said social incivility in one form or another is a problem in their neighbourhoods. Fifteen per cent specifically mentioned drug use and five per cent mentioned prostitution. The view on St. Antoine St. W. Almost a quarter of Montrealers said social incivility in one form or another is a problem in their neighbourhoods. Fifteen per cent mentioned drug use and five per cent specified prostitution.View Halifax and Vancouver were the only cities to report higher rates of social incivility, at 25 and 26 per cent respectively. They were also the only cities to report higher rates of drug use at 19 and 17 per cent respectively. As for prostitution, only Vancouver had a higher rate, with eight per cent of residents describing it as a problem. People in 12 cities participated in the survey, the results of which came as no surprise to people downtown yesterday. Guillaume Fontaine, 27, works at a club near the corner of Ste. Catherine St. and St. Laurent Blvd. He said he sees drug users hanging around all the time. "Right in front of us across the street, in this area outside the doors there, they sit down and smoke their crack." It's a routine they seem to have been allowed to slip into. Fontaine said he sees drug users "on an everyday basis" ever since he took a job in the area two years ago. Others who work near the city's most notorious corner had similar complaints. "You can see the prostitutes and drug dealers working all the time, even early in the morning," said Hélène Dumont, 49. Montreal executive committee member Marcel Tremblay said police have behaviour like drug use, prostitution and vandalism under control and residents need not worry about the survey's results. Tremblay said Montreal's rates of drug use, public drunkenness, vandalism or prostitution may be high for Canada, but aren't through the roof by any means. "If you go all over North America, or all over the world, you'll have exactly the same thing." And Tremblay was quick to point out that Montreal does quite well in preventing violent crimes. "Have you seen the figures on security? We're (among the cities) with the least killings in Canada. We're able to go out 24 hours a day," he said. But implementing community policing initiatives is just a part of what needs to be done to keep pushers, pimps and vandals off the streets, said Irvin Waller, director of the University of Ottawa's Institute for the Prevention of Crime. "The solution ... is some combination of law enforcement and social services that tackle the roots of the problems," he said. "These social problems have been made a lot worse because of the large cutbacks in housing and mental hospitals in Canada in the 1990s. Montreal had a particularly bad time of that." Most people on the street yesterday agreed with Waller, saying Montreal needs better social outreach programs rather than more police officers. "It's obvious some of the people hanging around here are high, just look at them. But I think that's just the way it is in a big city," said Karima Lachal, 32, gesturing toward the UQÀM-Berri métro station. Just then, a short, thin man with greasy, matted hair and a few days' stubble staggered over to ask if she had any change. Lachal politely brushed him off. "There's a living example of what I'm talking about," she said. "Anyway, I think the police are doing their job, it's just that these people need more help on a social level." [email protected] © The Gazette (Montreal) 2008

http://www.oprah.com/own-super-soul-sunday/21-Swings-How-Perfect-Strangers-Make-Beautiful-Music-Video

Recently completed Cocoon Tower makes education design as easy as A-B-C Standing in Tokyo's distinctive high-rise district of Nishi-Shinjuku, Tange Associates' Mode Gakuen Cocoon Tower stands as a symbol of innovation and exception in educational design. It is no wonder this awesome construction was recently awarded as Skyscraper of the Year by Emporis. The 50 level building contains 3 different schools: Tokyo Mode Gakuen (fashion), HAL Tokyo (IT and digital contents) and Shuto Iko (medical treatments and care). Tange Associates advise: "The building’s innovative shape and cutting edge façade embodies our unique “Cocoon” concept. Embraced within this incubating form, students are inspired to create, grow and transform." The vertical campus, which completed in October, can hold 10,000 students and incorporates a 3-storey high atrium to substitute as a 'schoolyard', called the 'Student Lounge' and multi-use corridors where communication can flourish. The tower floor plan is simple. Three rectangular classroom areas rotate 120 degrees around the inner core. From the 1st floor to the 50th floor, these rectangular classroom areas are arranged in a curvilinear form. The inner core consists of an elevator, staircase and shaft. The Student Lounge is located between the classrooms and face three directions, east, southwest and northwest. Greenery planted at lower levels brings nature and softness to the design and its elliptical form swathed in an aluminium curtain wall creates a form pleasing to the eye from every level whilst minimising the building's footprint. Tange Associates hope that the building will help to inspire a transformation in the area: "Some of the buildings in the immediate area surrounding Mode Gakuen Cocoon Tower have become old and absolete. However this area is very important to connect Shinjuku Station and the Shinjuku CBD. Our aim is to use the building to revitalize and reenergize this area and to create a gateway between the Station and the CBD." Niki May Young News Editor Tokyo Mode Gakuen Coccoon Tower 東京モード学園コクーンタワー 1-7-2 Nishi-Shinjuku, Shinjuku-ku Tokyo TKY Japan Status: built Construction Dates Began 2006 Finished 2008 Floor Count 50 Basement Floors 4 Floor Area 80,903 m² Building Uses - education - mechanical - retail Structural Types - highrise Materials - steel - concrete, reinforced Heights Value Source / Comments Roof 203.7 m Tokyo Metropolitan Government Description Architect: Tange Associates Structural: Shimizu Corporation

Jury for the “Shenzhen 4 Tower in 1” choose Coop Himmelb(l)au design The jury for the “Shenzhen 4 Tower in 1” Competition chaired by Mr. Arata Isozaki, selected Coop Himmelb(l)au's design for Tower C, the new “Headquarter of China Insurance Group” as the winning scheme. Other participants include Morphosis, Steven Holl Architects, Hans Hollein, MVRDV and FCJZ Atelier. The new “Headquarter of China Insurance Group” will be part of a lively business quarter in the heart of the Central District of Shenzhen made up of a carefully composed ensemble of unique, individual towers creating a landmark silhouette. The project is a high-rise structure with a height of approximately 200 m with 49 storeys. The footprint area has the size of 40 by 40 m. The required program is distributed vertically. A clear separation of public and private functions is given. All public functions are organized in the base building while the office program is situated in the tower. Semi public program like meeting rooms, conference center, recreation areas and gardens are concentrated in the middle of the building. This zone is designed to create a pattern of meeting facilities, gardens and recreation areas for all employees and become spaces for an exchange of knowledge and creativity and a synergy of form and function. The “Headquarter of China Insurance Group” is not only recognizable by its significant form but also by its façade. The design of the façade is driven by generation of energy. The second skin of the façade is shaped by climate conditions and inner functions. This skin includes photovoltaic cells to generate electricity and also cells to reduce excessive wind pressure, shade the sun and create multi media displays. Strategies employing the form of the building to assist natural ventilation together with the use of renewable energy sources (wind and solar power) assure an energy efficient design and reduce energy consumption and reliance on fossil fuel energy sources. http://www.worldarchitecturenews.com/index.php?fuseaction=wanappln.projectview&upload_id=11098

Leeser Architecture wins competition to design 5 star hotel in Abu Dhabi The Middle East is ushering in some of the most provocative architecture being produced today. And Helix, a bold new hotel won in competition by Lesser Architecture, is no exception. The project which gets its name from its staggered floor plates resulting in an iconic spiraling form, will rest in the Zayed Bay next to Zaha Hadid’s Sheid Zayed Bridge, which is currently under construction. With Helix, Lesser Architecture has devised a new way to consider hotel culture in the Emirates, highlighting elements that are usually unseen and playfully enlivening those parts of the program that are traditionally static and mundane. The hotel contains 206 guest rooms and suites located around a helical floor. Rigid hallways and atria that characterize a typical hotel stay are here dispensed with and replaced with flexible public and guest rooms with unique configurations. As the helix winds upwards, the programmatic elements change from lounges and restaurant on the bay, to meeting rooms and conference facilities, to lounges and cafes, to the luxury indoor-outdoor track on the fifth floor, to finally the upper pool deck on the roof. The pool will have a glass bottom visible from the lower eight floors. Other dramatic features include a restaurant situated below the lobby that is so close to the bay’s waves that they lap onto the restaurant’s edge inside of the glass curtain wall. On its interior, the floors corkscrew around a large void, resulting in a form reminiscent of Wright’s Guggenheim. Leeser says the ramped floors suggest the curves a winding street would take through a bustling town. Though the void seems to offer unmitigated visibility, there will be enclaves for private meetings and guest privacy. Sharon McHugh US Correspondent

Bitexco Tower set for Ho Chi Minh City central business district At 269 m Vietnam's Bitexco Financial Tower will be the country's tallest tower. Designed by New York architect Carlos Zapata Studio and carried forward by AREP of Paris, the design consists of 68 floors of office space, 6 basement floors of parking and a 5-floor retail podium. 100,000 square meters of commercial space will be created in the build which is set to take 36 months. Ground works have been under way for the past year. The design is inspired by the lotus petal, the national flower of Vietnam and its sleek form has a narrowed footplate and three-dimensional growth as the tower rises. On entering the building a large atrium will allow you to view the height of the tower from within. A Heliport and observation deck will be constructed on the 56th floor and a sky lounge on the 55th floor with 360 degree views of Ho Chi Minh City. The building will also have a conference room, a business center, banks, a VIP club and fitness center. Niki May Young News Editor http://www.worldarchitecturenews.com/index.php?fuseaction=wanappln.projectview&upload_id=11418

The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH) has announced the completion of the Ping An Finance Center in Shenzhen, China, according to CTBUH tall building criteria. At 599 meters (1965 feet), it is now officially the second tallest building in China and the fourth tallest in the world, behind only the Burj Khalifa, Shanghai Tower and Makkah Royal Clock Tower. Designed by Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates (KPF), the Ping An Finance Center is located in the heart of Shenzhen’s Fuitan District. The building contains over 100 floors of office space located above a large public podium, with a multi-story atrium providing retail, restaurants and transit options to the city and greater Pearl River delta region. The CTBUH describe the form of the tower as a “taught steel cable, outstretched by the sky and the ground at once. At the top of the tower, the façade tapers to form a pyramid, giving the tower a prismatic aesthetic.” The form is further emphasized by eight composite “megacolumns” along the building envelope that streamline the building for improved structural and wind performance, reducing baseline wind loads by 35 percent. The facade of the building is one the project most innovative features; its use of 1,700 tons of 316L stainless steel make the envelope the largest stainless steel facade system in the world. The specific material was chosen for its corrosion-resistance, which will allow the building to maintain its appearance for decades even in the city’s salty coastal atmosphere. http://www.archdaily.com/868015/ctbuh-crowns-ping-an-finance-center-as-worlds-4th-tallest-building

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