Zaha Hadid’s Island, Radical Plan for Bilbao

Image Source: ArchitectureLab

Zaha Hadid was once known as the paper architect because her works never made it off the blueprint, things started to change for the good in recent years, her work has started to mushroom across the world, the latest proposal by Hadid is a yet to be named island, the radical plans for the redevelopment would see the neglected Zorrozaurre peninsula converted into an island.

Zaha Hadid plans to cut off the peninsular that joins it to the mainland and reconnect the newly formed island to the city with eight bridges.

The newly formed island has a land area of 72 hectares (180 acres) with 6000 houses and a technology center, the total cost estimated to be at USD1.43 billion and work is expected to commence in 2010, completion date would be around 2025 – 2030.

Julia Madrazo, deputy mayor of Bilbao and regional minister for town planning and the environment, said the city did not want Hadid simply to design something beautiful. “If we had wanted just a symbol, we would have asked her for one building,” she said. “This is about more than just the image. It is about creating a city to live in. We all have dreams of how a city could be, and I believe this is the closest thing to those dreams.” – Source: Guardian

I was taught that architecture is all about responding to the surrounding site and building, not isolating them. It is an evolution process not revolution, new buildings should respond to their neighboring fabric, style and form in a contemporary manner. What annoys me is the way architects present a solution, first they create a problem then champion themselves as a hero with a solution. Food for thought? University of Porto and the opaque corridors.

Image Source: ArchitectureLab

Further Readings:

Architecture Lab
The Guardian UK

New York City – City of the Great Pyramids

Image Source: Dezeen Copyright: Jean Nouvel

A new kid on the block – the 53 West 53rd Street by Jean Nouvel.

French architect Jean Nouvel did it again; his latest groundbreaking design for Manhattan will rival the Chrysler Building in height and possibly the old bird’s iconic statues. 53 West 53rd Street by Jean Nouvel is a mixed-use tower, it will contain a hotel, luxury apartments, offices, shops, and restaurant, the restaurant and lounge are below ground level, the idea is to have the pedestrians peering in through the exterior, which is entirely sheathed in glass.

It is a bold design, something different for a change. Critics believed that “Nouvel’s exciting concept has the potential to become an international architectural design icon, this bird nest like structure appears to be the current architecture trend, probably inspired by non other than the OMA’s CCTV Tower and Herzog & de Meuron’s “Bird Nest” stadium aka Beijing National Stadium in China.

Image Source: Dezeen Copyright: Jean Nouvel

Back to the 3 West 53rd Street by Jean Nouvel, the smooth curvature from bottom to the top of the tower is not by any chance a design concept, it has something to do with the city’s ground-breaking Zoning Resolution of 1916, the resolution established the height and setback controls and designated iconic tall, slender towers that epitomize the city’s prewar business districts.

This regulation has earned New York City as the City of the Great Pyramids, the question is, where are the pyramids?

In high density districts, such as Manhattan in New York, front walls of buildings at the street line may be limited to a specified height or number of stories. Above that height, the buildings are required to set back behind a theoretical inclined plane, called sky exposure plane, which cannot be penetrated by the building’s exterior wall. For the same reason, setbacks may also be used in lower density districts to limit the height of perimeter walls above which a building must have a pitched roof or be set back before rising to the permitted height.

It’s an invisible pyramid shaped by the exterior facade of all the buildings, amazing.

Something interesting: Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie’s daughter Shiloh Nouvel Jolie-Pitt was named after him, as Brad Pitt is a fan of his architecture.

Further readings:
- New York Times, Tower Will Reach for the Stars
- Curbed, Nouvel’s Blinding Vision