building – Quercus Architecture

4 December 2014

Snøhetta Unveils Final Design for Calgary’s Central Library

Snøhetta and DIALOG have released the final design for their competition-winning New Central Library in Calgary.

Planned for a vibrant intersection between Downtown Calgary and the East Village, the new library aims to fulfill the city’s vision for a “technologically advanced public space for innovation, research and collaboration.”

The exterior’s fritted glass openings are strategically transparent in library’s most public areas as an attempt to encourage pedestrians to enter.

The encapsulation of the existing Light Trail Train is currently underway, and the new Calgary Public Library is expected to be completed in 2018.

At its mid-section, the building lifts to form an arched, wood-clad entry that serves as a new public plaza and directly connects pedestrians through the site from the neighboring communities.

3 December 2014

Ordos Art & City Museum by MAD Architects

Conceived as a reaction to the strict geometry of the master plan, the Art & City museum by MAD Architects is an amorphous building that seems like it has landed on the earth.

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Although it has contemporary presence, there is a chance to think over what the term “local culture” means, where it is rooted and what it can become in the future.MAD Architects

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Courtesy of © MAD Architects

3 November 2014

In Progress: Conrad Hotel by MAD

But far from the ambition of more than one hundred year ago, when people tried to challenge themselves with modern technology and future dreams, the contemporary CBD buildings are the concrete machines, copy of the copy in mass production.

The whole building is turned into a melting box, a starting point for the urban grid to change from the solid efficiency into the liquid idea.

Donec sodales eros sed metus consectetur, ac dapibus felis gravida. Morbi vestibulum lorem non metus pulvinar tempus. Ut non ligula ut odio ultrices tincidunt. Morbi sed hendrerit nulla.

Vestibulum tincidunt, dolor sit amet placerat facilisis, ipsum ex faucibus tortor, at pellentesque turpis ipsum nec arcu.

Quisque non arcu vehicula, cursus augue in, ultrices arcu. In tortor neque, euismod a purus ut, feugiat suscipit mi. Donec vitae aliquet arcu.

News via Archdaily

12 October 2014

The Barcelona Pavilion

The Barcelona Pavilion was designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe as the German National Pavilion for the Barcelona International Exhibition, held on Montjuïc.

The Barcelona Pavilion, an emblematic work of the Modern Movement, has been exhaustively studied and interpreted as well as having inspired the oeuvre of several generations of architects.

Means must be subsidiary to ends and to our desire for dignity and value.
Mies Van Der Rohe

After the closure of the Exhibition, the Pavilion was disassembled in 1930. As time went by, it became a key point of reference not only in Mies van der Rohe’s own career but also in twentieth-century architecture as a whole.

Given the significance and reputation of the Pavilion, thoughts turned towards its possible reconstruction.

In 1980 Oriol Bohigas, as head of the Urban Planning Department at the Barcelona City Council, set the project in motion, designating architects Ignasi de Solà-Morales, Cristian Cirici and Fernando Ramos to research, design and supervise the reconstruction of the Pavilion.

Work began in 1983 and the new building was opened on its original site in 1986.

The Barcelona Pavilion via Fundació Mies van der Rohe.