Designed by Luis de Garrido, and nominated the best benchmark in residential sustainable architecture.

Madrid, November 2011. The SAYAB complex has been chosen as the most sustainable residential building in Colombia, having received the Gold Medal in environmental responsibility. Recently it has been nominated for best residential benchmark in sustainable architecture in the Americas.

The prize was awarded by the prestigious “Fundación América Sostenible,” which makes SAYAB an international benchmark in sustainable architecture and social housing.

The ambitious project was designed by the architect Luis de Garrido, who has been a longstanding benchmark in sustainable architecture, and was built by the prestigious construction company IC Prefabricados.

The prize was awarded due to the unique characteristics of the project, whose objectives are summarized in the name: SAYAB means “Natural source of life” in Mayan.
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© Rafael Gamo

In the northern section of Polanco, one of the modern districts of Mexico City, an area with high growth potential and current vitality which is also to become one of the most emblematic places in the city, stands Cervantes Saavedra 639, a new mixed-use project designed by the Mexican firm ZD + A, whose leader is the architect Yuri Zagorin.

This unique piece of architecture is part of a real estate revolution, which in recent years has transformed the urban landscape of the area and includes contributions from architects such as LAR +Fernando Romero (Soumaya Museum) and David Chipperfield (Jumex Collection Museum). However, in this context the project “Cervantes Saavedra 639″ is relevant because of its unique combination of geometric purity, his chromatic audacity and contextual integration, aspects in a strong contrast against formal and stylistic extravagance of some of its nearest neighbors.
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© Lena Rübsam

The showroom of the new Light Center Speyer, situated in a factory building, was to be designed as exhibition space, consulting area and meeting place. Here, a frame generating interior design synergy effects was to be created for all latest light trends, technologies and light designs. Its sophisticated structure was to build the backbone of the entire light exhibition, but at the same time was never to overshadow the priority of the lighting objects to be exhibited. For this purpose, nature created a unifying shape as inspiration: the „twister“, a natural phenomenon with invisible forces which make nearly everything float and which, at the same time, cause new aesthetics of spiral sailing. The maelstrom of the twister, a polarizing force, magically draws almost every visitor into the middle of the exhibition and makes them, together with all the high-end light objects, completely forget the existing gravity.
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The project was initially developed to a national competition in 2006. It captured the attention of a private client in 2011 while visiting A2OFFICE’s studio. The idea that dominated the development of the project was taking to the limit the introduction of a porch in the house: the house would be dominated by the porch, it would be a “porch house (casa alpendre)”.
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The project for the expansion of the Serlachius Museum Gösta, presents an opportunity to explore a creative relationship between the existing museum and the surrounding landscape. Through a new and distinctive poetic architectural language, where the interior unfolds as a sequence of spaces, the project develops a harmonious ensemble that blurs the boundaries between existing and new.

The proposed extension will allow the museum to develop a unique cultural environment, integrating the aesthetic, functional, and economic goals of a larger and more varied institution through an extended programme of activities. Importantly, it will introduce a new informality through a series of fluid volumes that establish an exciting relationship between the house, the existing grounds and the landscape beyond. The project will provides an entrance and orientation space, the “heart” of the extended museum, that will lead to a series of dramatically lit flexible spaces for exhibitions, conferences, educational activities and other public events.
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Foster + Partners, in a joint venture with engineers, G.O.C. and Cabanelas Castelo Architects, has won an international competition to design a new high-speed rail station in the city of Ourense in Galicia, north western Spain. The design combines transport infrastructure with a new park, which will create a major new public space in the city and open up pedestrian links between the districts on each side of the tracks.
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Hyatt Hotels Corporation and Abu Dhabi National Exhibitions Company announced the opening of Hyatt Capital Gate Abu Dhabi – located at the city’s premium business address on the top floors of the iconic Capital Gate building, which leans a record-breaking 18 degrees. Occupying floors 18 to 33 of the Capital Gate building, Hyatt Capital Gate Abu Dhabi offers 189 luxury guestrooms and suites featuring floor-to-ceiling glass windows that offer sweeping, bird’s eye views of the Arabian Gulf and the city.

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The site is secluded from the urban hustle by the lush tree mass and mountain. NOA was commissioned to refurbish the existing house into a place for retreat and almost seclusive from the outer world.

The existing brick patio wall has been kept and accentuated its presence by forming a heavy plinth of the house and extended beyond threshold into interior hence blurring the boundary of inside and outside. The patio has been reorganized in a formal manner that comprised of various natural elements like water, bricks, lawn and timber. The garden is rich yet clearly zoned to serve it’s functions.
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