De Rotterdam

DE ROTTERDAM is a building being built in the the Kop van Zuid area of Rotterdam in an effort to regenerate the area. Its is being designed by Rem Koolhaas and is scheduled for completion by the end of 2011. The project is made up of three towers that will be multifunctional with plans for corporate offices, residential apartments, a hotel, restaurants, cinema and retail shopping. The project is similar to a number of buildings that I encountered in Japan and seeks to be a bustling vertical city. While I must admit that the architecture doesn't do much for me, its got some odd angles sure but its essentially the classic glass box skyscraper. However I am a big fan of mixed use projects and this definitely fits the bill, plus its got a pretty neat video proposal video. Enjoy!


OMA fact sheet

The First LEED Platinum Museum

There was a bit of a race to the finish for it but the world’s first LEED platinum museum building has been finished. The Water + Life Museums complex in California is the first building to have been awarded the platinum certification. The museum campus is a total of 70,000 square feet and was built to the most exacting green standards. The Center for Water Education Foundation and the Western Center Community Foundation asked Lehrer Architects to design two facilities with a large outdoor connecting terrace. The museum meets the most exacting water and energy consumption standards in the world; which is all the more impressive considering the local climate where temperatures reach the triple digits in the summer and water freezes in the winter.
When the Diamond Valley Lake Reservoir was completed in 1999 by the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California and is the largest earthworks project on US soil. During the dig out of the reservoir some significant fossils were discovered. These were housed in a much smaller facility until this museum was finished. This new state of the art facility offers the museum the ability to showcase these artifacts in a fantastic building.

Community Gardening

Urban gardening seems to be in the news a bunch lately.. I just came across an article in the gazette this morning over coffee and another article on Spacing Montreal this evening.. enjoy!

New initiative to increase downtown gardening space

Via Spacing Montreal.

Surreal Estate

I came across one of the most interesting property videos today. The Luxury Property Blog has a property video by squint/opera of an Alsop renovated property in London. The Victoria House property is a mixing together of traditional and modern styles. The video is a surrealists trip through the property starting with the more traditional aspects of its architecture an moving to the more modern elements as the video progresses.

Rain City Bikes

The thing with bikes and the city is that it can be hard to haul things. Just because you live in the city and things are all pretty close doesn't make having to carry ten bags, boxes or some other packet of things home. But a company called Rain City Bikes in Vancouver has a solution to that. The Bakfiet or box bike. This puppy is a cargo bike designed to help you move whatever you need to move be it your kids, bricks, or your groceries. The bike has a low stand over and its center of gravity is very low to the ground. With a better ride then a trike and easier pedaling, they are great for lugging anything you need too around.

The bike

• alluminum alloy rims and spokes
• front and rear roller breaks
• a heavy duty rear parcel rack
• built in Axa lock
• internally geared hubs
• a springy gel seat
• a front dynamo powered light
• rear read lights
• a removable box with bench and harnesses
• a cargo cover
• a load capacty of 70kg in the front
• 30 kg capcity in the back

This bike is the answer to how are you going to haul all your stuff around town, in the summer at least.

The Bloomframe

In Urban areas space is often at a premium, small apartments in urban areas are often sort on space, connection with the outside and light an air. The debate on wether or not to use valubal square footage for a balcony an reduce your year round space is one often faced by developers and urbanites. The Bloomframe designed by Hofman Dujardin Architects is an innovative solution to this urban dilemma.
As their website states;

Bloomframe is an innovative window frame which can be transformed into a balcony. Opening the Bloomframe window offers the possibility to step outside and enjoy the outdoor space. With one simple movement, light, air, and space are added to the interior. source

This is what I call smart and innovative design. The website goes on to state that the colour and material of the Bloomframe is customizable so it can be made to fit into new and existing construction. I can think of a number of my friends who would love to have one of these attached to their apartment.

Highways in the Sand

I came across an interesting post on the worlds longest highway that goes through a desert and the actions that they are taking to keep the surrounding dunes from migrating across it and burying it. Its an interesting post and bears a reading. Thanks to Dark Roasted Blend for the link and Fogonazos for the article.

Where's Yo Money

Every Urbanite has an opinion about graffitti, some say its is nothing more then vandalism, some say its an artform. Me, I am somewhere in the middle, I detest tagging yet good graffitti, that would be considered a drawing or a doodle if it were on a peice of paper, that I like. I am also a fan of graffitti that makes me smile. Here in my neighbourhood there is an artist with an penchant for phrases. I enjoy them everytime I come accross them.

The Bicycle Vault

New Urbanists, bike enthusiasts and pedestrians would love to see more and more of us switching from private vehicle use to mass transportation and bicycles. In order to cut down on the pollution caused by cars and eliminate so many of the parking lot wastelands that are a part of our cities. One of the problems that can come with this is where do we put all these bikes. Anyone who has walked around a major Japanese city, or even Amsterdam can understand that these multitudes of bicycles can be a bit of a jumble to wade through. Well leave it to the Japanese to come up with a high tech way of dealing with them. Meet the computerised bicycle storage vault, you drop off your bike at the computer valet station and it whisks your bike away until you come back to retrieve it.


While it is definitely not practical for North America where we have way more space, it could be the shape of things to come.

Crosswalks of the future

Hanyoung Lee has come up with an ingenious new crosswalk design which creates a virtual wall using 'plasma lasers.' The lasers are at a low enough strength so as to not burn holes through cars or pedestrians, and project an image of people crossing the street in red. The virtual wall has an increase ability to slow drivers down and stop. The barrier causes what could be called an "I don't want to drive into a wall" effect.

While its definitely going to be a while before we see any thing like this in our cities it is a look at what cross walks of the future could look like.

Anarchy in the City

Life in the city has its hazards, crime, pollution and in some cases rioting. This week in Montreal the down side of city life was on display, the Montreal Canadians won the first round of the Stanley Cup play offs and celebrated long into the night. While they were celebrating the Wu Tang concert let out and those drunken fans met up with the drunken hockey fans and madness ensued.

Evil Gentleman over at citynoise has put together a collection of photos taken in the aftermath of the 'party.' Sometimes Urban life isn't pretty.

For the Citynoise article click here.

Tapestries in Glass

While I have not intention of making this blog simply about real estate I do want to make another apartment post. As I mentioned in the 200 Eleventh Ave post a number of new buildings are springing up in the area around the highline and the new residences by Jean Nouvel are part of the regeneration of this area. The marketing write up for the new residence hails it as, “a vision machine,” while I wouldn’t go so far as to call it that it is a very unique building in that it has over 1,700 different and distinct pieces of glass that make up the façade of the building. The building’s web site explains it as such;

“The buildings gently curving curtain wall of different sized panes of colorless glass – each set in a unique angle and torque – will sheath one of the most meticulously customized, high performance residential addresses in the nation. This dazzling window pattern will frame splendid views from within the tower while producing an exterior texture that serves as a poetic analog for the vibrancy, density and changeability of New York City.” source

The building is designed with a number of staggered terraces and uses large single pane punched through windows to highlight certain areas. Nouvel has designed a six story vertical garden within the core of the building with built in planter boxes designed to allow plants to fill the interior space.

For more information on the building see the site here.

Bio Buildings

Right now in Urbanist circles green roofs are becoming a major plus for new urban design and making our cities more sustainable. Well here we have the next step Bio Buildings, while this firm isn't the only one out there doing this, it is the first firm to have crossed my web wanderings in search of fun urban factoids.
TR Hamzah & Yeang is an Architectural Firm based in Kuala Lumpur and has been around for three decades, they have an interesting portfolio with a couple Bio buildings including the two that you can see here. The firm has a pretty pro sustainability mission statement and is worth a look over to see some of the stuff they have in the hopper.

The first picture is of their Editt Tower, it has a number of interesting features but my favorite is the 'Vertical Landscaping'

Vegetation from street-level spirals upwards as a continuous ecosystem facilitating species migration, engendering a more diverse ecosystem and greater ecosystem stability and to facilitate ambient cooling of the facades. Species are selected not to compete with others within surroundings. “Vegetation percentages” represent of area’s landscape character. Source


To the right is their 'Elephant & Castle Eco Tower'
This tower seeks to take mixed use development to another level.

The Concept - "City-in-the-Sky".The design takes the model of a general geographical area of a city, with its inherent systems, zoning and social infrastructure and inverts it into skyscraper buildings. The skyscraper and its retail and commercial base is seen as a microcosm of the city, containing within itself the inherent elements of a city block, i.e. parks, shops, entertainment centers, community facilities and housing etc. The "City-in-the Sky" concept provides for:-
•
opportunities for local employment through mixture of use, both on ground and upper levels
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A healthy mix of residents within the same building. Through "vertical zoning", resident types are grouped according to accommodation preferences (single units, family units, luxury apartments), yet common facilities (e.g. parks, shopping streets etc.) are shared.
•
close proximity to basic amenities, such as the local grocery store, postal boxes, chemist etc. These are all located within the ground development and/or within the tower.
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a healthy landscaped environment, with spatial progressions of public open spaces (parks in the sky) to semi-private (entrance courts) to private open spaces (balconies). Source

These are the type of dynamic buildings that make me want to paw through their plans, models and whatever other material I can get my hands on.

Stackable Cars

The smarty pants over at MIT have come up with a design for a stackable city car ideal for large scale car sharing programs, or integration into a city's transportation system. The City Car is a stackable two person electric vehicle that they hope will revolutionize the way that urbanites work with personal transportation.

Take a look at the Inhabit Article here.

The Technology Review Article here.

Halifax Seaport Farmers Market

While I was living in Nova Scotia I always enjoyed visiting the weekend farmers market that took place in and around the Alexander Keith's Brewery in downtown Halifax, it has a diverse array of vendors and some of the best samosas I've ever eaten. Public markets are an enjoyable place to buy food and offer their vendors a way to offer their foods at competitive prices, I have loved making use of the local street market and larger public markets both here at home and while living overseas.
The Halifax Farmers Market is out growing its current space and is looking to move a little further down the bay to the warehouse adjoining the historic and recently reopened Pier 21. The Halifax Seaport Farmers Market will be housed in a state of the art facility and be built to high performance sustainable design principles to minimize energy use to 80% of a conventional market, combining day lighting strategies, hyper-efficient envelopes, passive/active ventilation and efficient thermal systems. The market will be built to achieve LEED Gold Certification. The Halifax Seaport Farmers Market will be designed to bring together the land and sea and the rural/urban divide. Reconnecting the city with its waterfront and creating spaces for rural artisans and farmers.Shed 20 will be renovated and serve as the seawall entrance to the Halifax Port Authority's entire seaport development program. The Market will be a cornerstone for the redevelopment of the Seaport area and the adjoining Cruise Ship Terminal will showcase Halifax's goal of being a smart, healthy city with a vibrant economy and culture.The Market will have a number of high efficiency features;

Hyper-efficient envelope and glazing
Green Roof - Coastal Habitat
Daylight Harvesting and control systems
Occupancy Sensors
Passive Ventilation
Displacement delivery
Heat Recovery
Radiant hydronics
Low VOC materials
Rooftop Farming

LEED Certification: LEED Gold
Sustainable strategies:
Recycling current envelope
Reusing existing frame and roof
Storm Water Conservation/rainwater harvesting
Low flow toilets, waterless urinals
FSC certified wood productsOn site Renewables:
Built in Photovotaics BIPV
Micro-turbines
Evacuated tube solar collectors
Geothermal
Harbour Cooling
solar gain, thermal mass