Friday, May 28, 2010

Aga Khan Award for Architecture - Short List

Below are some of the finalists for the Aga Kahn Award for Architecture. To see more finalists click here.

The Green School

Location: Badung, Bali, Indonesia (South-East Asia)
Architect: PT Bambu


Environmentalists and designers John and Cynthia Hardy wanted to motivate communities to live sustainably. Part of that effort was to show people how to build with sustainable materials, namely bamboo. They established the Green School, and its affiliates: the Meranggi Foundation, which develops plantations of bamboo plants through presenting bamboo seedlings to local rice farmers; and PT Bambu, a for-profit design and construction company that promotes the use of bamboo as a primary building material, in an effort to avoid the further depletion of rainforests. The Green School, a giant laboratory built by PT Bambu, is located on a sustainable campus straddling both sides of the Ayung River in Sibang Kaja, Bali, within a lush jungle with native plants and trees growing alongside sustainable organic gardens. The campus is powered by a number of alternative energy sources, including a bamboo sawdust hot water and cooking system, a hydro-powered vortex generator and solar panels. Campus buildings include classrooms, gym, assembly spaces, faculty housing, offices, cafes and bathrooms. A range of architecturally significant spaces from large multi-storey communal gathering places to much smaller classrooms are a feature of the campus. Local bamboo, grown using sustainable methods, is used in innovative and experimental ways that demonstrate its architectural possibilities. The result is a holistic green community with a strong educational mandate that seeks to inspire students to be more curious, more engaged and more passionate about the environment and the planet.











Bridge School
Location: Xiashi, Fujian Province, China (Asia)
Architect: Li Xiaodong (Atelier)


The ‘Bridge School’ bridges the two parts of the small village of Xiashi that lie on either side of a small creek running about ten metres below the village. The structure is created by two steel trusses that span the creek with the space between them housing the functions of the school. Suspended from the structure and running below it is a pedestrian bridge for the people of the village to use. Small and modern in design, with no reference to the area’s traditional building style, the school has nonetheless become the physical and spiritual centre of what was a declining village. Placed in such a way that it addresses its surroundings, the Bridge School connects the village together, providing a central, social space. The broader social aspect of the project was part of the brief, which was developed with the school principal and head of the village to answer community needs rather than simply those of a primary school. A public library separates the two classrooms and open stages at either end of the building enable performances. The result is a project that has successfully invigorated the entire community, encapsulating social sustainability through architectural intervention.











Palmyra House
Location: Alibagh, India (South Asia)
Architect: Studio Mumbai Architects, Bijoy Jain


This two-storey timber house, built as a weekend retreat, lies in the shade of an extensive coconut grove on coastal agricultural land facing the sea, near the fishing village of Nandgaon, south of Mumbai. The functions of the house are placed within two oblong masses slightly offset from one another, whose facades are predominantly characterised by louvers made from the trunks of the local Palmyra palm. The structure is made of ain wood; local basalt was used to make boundary walls, plinths and paving. Plaster finishes were pigmented with sand from the site. The development of the design and detail, which resulted from collaboration between the architect and the craftsmen, took on tested techniques, both local and foreign, and raised them to a finer construction resolution. The house is well-adapted to its environment: the louvers on the elevations enable passive cooling, as does the extensive shade provided by the coconut trees above; water for the house is harvested from three on-site wells, filtered and stored at the top of a water tower and fed by gravity to the house. The result of these measures is a quietly compelling project that is fully integrated into its landscape.











Chandgaon Mosque
Location: Chittagong, Bangladesh (South Asia)
Architect: Kashef Mahboob Chowdhury

This mosque on the suburban periphery of the port of Chittagong in Bangladesh seeks to fulfil the traditional role of a mosque as both a place of spirituality and as a gathering place for the community. The architect began by identifying the essential elements of a mosque to create a new form and articulation for a typology that goes back for a millennium and a half. The result is this monolithic and spare mosque, pared down to two identical cuboid structures. The first is the front court, its heavy masonry walls punctuated with low, wide openings onto the surrounding landscape, with a large eyelike opening above. In the second volume, the naturally lit mihrab wall is balanced by an iconic, cut dome. While the apertures give a sense of openness and draw in light and ventilation by day, by night they allow light to shine out of the mosque like a beacon. With its stark, geometric clarity, the Chandgaon mosque stands apart from many such structures that have reduced architectural features associated with the usual mosque type to the level of kitsch. It makes a definitive architectural statement in a different direction, pointing to the contemporary, to a desire to live in spaces that reflect the universal values of the present day.









Picos de Europa - Capilla-Vallejos Arquitectos

Capilla-Vallejos Arquitectos

The Picos de Europa (Peaks of Europe) forms an enormous karstic complex. Through the years, the action of water and ice on the limestone has generated spectacular canyons, glacial cirques, lakes and moraines.

La Liébana is a region surrounded and protected by the three massifs of the Picos de Europa. However, the region is located at a low altitude, and the capital of the province, Potes, is only 300 m above the level of the Cantabrian coast. Therefore, it has a Mediterranean climate, which is different from the rest of Cantabria.

The only route that connects the region with the coast is a highway that crosses the Hermida pass, created by the Deva River as it flows towards the sea. When coming out of the pass, the valley opens onto meadows and forests that ascend to the continually snow-capped peaks.

It is in these lowlands where the interpretation center is located, fixed in the old “Sotama” estate in the province of Cantabria. It is immediately surrounded by a small industrial area which houses maintenance facilities of public works machinery, an orujo distillery, a sawmill and the soccer field with its facilities.

Therefore, it was necessary to carefully situate the building in its environs in order to dilute the presence of the nearby industrial facilities, leaving them almost unnoticeable.

Its function is to welcome and educate the growing number of visitors to the National park and to announce park activities. It was required that the care of the ecosystem be made compatible with the large number of tourists.

In our understanding of these design conditions, the facility had to define its own position, with a combination of restraint and aloofness, of austerity and prominence.

It seemed important to express the architecture by means of volume without avoiding the debate between the abstractness of modern architecture and the naturalness of regional craft.

In this sense, the form of the building manifests itself as the overlapping of two simple elements.

A platform with a trapezoidal footprint lies on the land to house and protect the large exposition halls. Constructed of reinforced concrete, the elevations, platform top, and the long access ramp are rendered in fieldstone from the region.

We created a vertical rectangular volume by overlapping successive wood planks, positioned much like they are positioned in the dryers of regional sawmill. This ventilated volume protects the projection room and the administrative offices of the park and also houses the perimeter circulation ramps.

































Taken from ArchDaily.