Constructed in the nineteenth century, the building previously featured a series of outdoor paddocks and a large courtyard, used for storing livestock before the slaughtering process. As part of the renovation, Sol89 has extended the building into these spaces to create kitchens and classrooms.

Like most of the town's architecture, white-painted walls surrounded the perimeter of the slaughterhouse site and now enclose both the new and old sections of the building.

The original pitched roof is clad with traditional clay tiles, but the architects used modern flat ceramics to give a vibrant red to the asymmetric gables that make up the roof of the extension.

"If we observe Medina-Sidonia from a distance, it seems to be a unique ceramic creation moulded by the topography of Medina," explain architects María González and Juanjo López de la Cruz. "The Professional Cooking School uses this idea of the moulded ceramic plane to draw its geometry. This roof lends unity to the built complex and interprets the traditional construction of the place."

The original arched doorway remains as the entrance to the school and leads in via the old structure. Inside, the architects have replaced the original flooring with exposed concrete that skirts around a set of historic columns in the main hall.

The kitchens are lined with tiles on the floors and walls. High level windows help to bring light in from above, while small glass courtyards are positioned at intervals to provide areas for students to grow vegetables and herbs.

A few slaughterhouses in Spain have been converted to new uses in recent years. Others we've featured include an office and event space in Madrid and a cinema in the same city.

See more architecture projects in Spain, including the restoration of a coastal landscape in Cadaqués.

Photography is by Fernando Alda - see more pictures of this project on his website.

Here's some more information from Sol89

Medina is a historic town in the hills in Cadiz. Its houses are known for their whitewashed walls and their ceramic roofs. The project involves adapting an ancient slaughterhouse, built in the XIX century, into a Professional Cooking School.

The ancient slaughterhouse was composed of a small construction around a courtyard and a high white wall that limits the plot. If you are going to act in the historic city you must adapting, taking shelter, settling in its empty spaces. The density of the architecture of the ancient slaughterhouse, where brick walls, stones and Phoenician columns coexist, contrasts with the empty space inside the plot, limited by the wall. The project proposes catching this space through a new ceramic roof that limits the new construction and consolidates the original building.

If we observe Medina Sidonia from a distance, it seems to be a unique ceramic creation molded by the topography of Medina. The Professional Cooking School uses this idea of the molded ceramic plane to draw its geometry. This roof lends unity to the built complex and interprets the traditional construction of the place, ceramic roofs and whitewashed walls. Some little courtyards are inserted, working as ventilation shaft, and are cultivated with different culinary plants which are used by the students to cook.

At the original building, ancient floors were replaced by slabs of concrete with wooden formwork that recognise traditional building forms, walls are covered with white and rough lime mortar which seeks material memory of its industrial past, and the existing Phoenician columns, displaced from the disappeared Temple of Hercules, have been consolidated. All of those materials, even the time, built this place.

Architects: María González y Juanjo López de la Cruz. Sol89
Team: George Smudge (architecture student), Jerónimo Arrebola (quantity surveyor), Alejandro Cabanas (structure), Insur JG (building services), Novoarididian SA y Rhodas SL (contractors)

Client: Fundación Forja XXI
Location: C/ Rubiales S/N, Medina Sidonia, Cádiz, Spain
Area: 751 sqm
Completion date: 2011

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Ancient Slaughterhouse by Sol89 appeared first on Dezeen.

Tony Fretton Architects collaborated with Dutch firm Geurst en Schulze Architecten to design 16 houses for the Molenplein site, as part of a wider masterplan by West 8 that centres around the redevelopment of the town's former navy base.

Three-storey houses stretch along the front of the site, facing out across the dockyard, while a row of smaller two-storey residences run along behind and are separated by private gardens.

Drawing inspiration from canal houses of the early twentieth century, the houses feature a mixture of linear and gabled profiles, and present both exposed and painted brickwork facades.

Bright yellow doors and ornamental marble panels mark the entrances to each house, plus the windows come with chunky wooden frames.

Each of the 16 houses has one of four standard layouts. There are few internal partitions and finishes, as the architects wanted to give residents the opportunity to design their own interiors.

Tony Fretton Architects is led by Fretton alongside partner James McKinney. Past projects by the firm include a Stirling Prize-nominated museum of fine art in Denmark and the Vassall Road housing project in south London. See more architecture by Tony Fretton Architects.

Photography is by Christian Richters.

Read on for more information from Tony Fretton Architects:

Houses in Molenplein, Den Helder, the Netherlands

Tony Fretton Architects has completed a new development of houses in the Dutch town of Den Helder.

Commissioned by Dutch developer Proper-Stok the development comprises 2 and 3 storey houses designed by Tony Fretton Architects and Dutch practice Geurst en Schulze Architecten configured within a masterplan designed by West 8.

Molenplein occupies a long site between two canals, the Helderskanaal and Werfkanaal, where it looks out onto Den Helder's former Napoleonic naval yard. The development is part of a regeneration strategy by the municipality to attract middle-income people to the area following the relocation of the Dutch navy base. The Napoleonic dockyard has also been redeveloped, providing places for business and culture.

West 8's masterplan for Molenplein preserves the character, scale and diversity of the city fabric along each canal; the plan comprises large three-storey houses facing the dockyard and compact two-storey houses to the rear, with private gardens in between, and intersperses designs by Tony Fretton Architects with those of Geurst en Schulze Architecten.

Houses designed by Tony Fretton Architects are distinguished by a simple profile and generously proportioned windows and entrance doors. The designs are abstracted versions of typical canal front and back houses and aim to reproduce the generosity of scale and abstraction seen in Dutch architecture from the Golden Age and early Dutch modernism. Materials comprise wooden window frames in facades of white painted brick or rose coloured brick with white pointing. A measure of ornament is given through the use of discreet panels of Belgian marble at eye level. In contrast the Geurst en Schulze houses have finely elaborated detail and provide punctuation in the terrace.

Inspired by the openness and energy that the practice observed in an earlier development they designed - De Prinsendam in Overhoeks, Amsterdam - where owners radically personalised their interiors, the houses are presented with unplanned interiors and carefully positioned service risers, fenestration and staircases that support a wide range of possible internal configurations.

Location: Den Helder, The Netherlands
Client: Proper-Stok
Gross external area: 2,300 sq m approx
Internal area: 3,200 sq m approx

Architects: Tony Fretton Architects
Design team: Tony Fretton, James McKinney, David Owen, Chris Snow, Chris Neve
Project Associate: David Owen
Project Architect: Chris Snow
Executive Architects: Geurst en Schulze Architecten
Masterplan & landscaping: West 8
Structural Engineers: Ingenieursbureau Dijkhuis bv
Services Engineers: Wolf Dikken adviseurs
Main Contractor: Tuin Den Helder bv

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Tony Fretton Architects appeared first on Dezeen.

Nendo arranged the shoes in a regimented pattern across every wall, intended to look like they are "walking on air". Each identical shoe is a replica of the Camper Pelota, the brand's most iconic footwear collection, and is made from white resin.

"When designing such a big space you have to face the challenge of how to use the upper half of the walls to display the shoes in areas with such high ceilings," says Nendo. "Our new approach involves making models of the Pelotas shoes and decorating the walls with them to fill the space and create the feel of an orderly stockroom."

There are a handful of openings at the base of the walls for displaying the current collections, which can easily be spotted due to their stand-out colours.

More shoes are displayed on white platforms in the centre of the store, while recessed openings house the brand's sock and bag collections.

Nendo developed a similar concept for a store in Osaka, where shoes appear to walk around the store on their own. The designers also previously completed a stand covered in books for a Camper exhibition in Barcelona. See more design by Nendo.

Located on Fifth Avenue, this is the fourth Camper store to open in New York, following one by fellow Japanese designer Shigeru Ban where shoes are hidden within a zigzagging wall. Other interesting Camper stores include one in Lyon with never-ending staircases and one in Malmö based on ice cream colours and lolly sticks. See more Camper store designs.

Photography is by Jesse Goff.

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by Nendo appeared first on Dezeen.

Named One Thousand Museum, the building will be located on Biscayne Boulevard in downtown Miami.

The 215-metre-high tower will have a concrete "exoskeleton" structure.

"I really love Miami, but I don't think the architecture matches the city," Hadid told the Wall Street Journal earlier this year. "It's a bit too commercial."

"We wanted to avoid that generic, modernist typology," she added. "We were interested in the idea of the tall building, and how it lands on the ground, how the structure is manifested."

The interior images of the tower include items of furniture designed by Hadid.

Prices for the luxury apartments are expected to start at $4 million for a half-floor unit, rising to between $30 and $50 million for a duplex penthouse unit.

Zaha Hadid's Architects proposed a spiralling parking garage for Miami in 2011, following in the footsteps of Herzog & de Meuron's multi-storey car park in the city. More recently the firm won a competition to design a metro station in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia – see all architecture by Zaha Hadid Architects.

Elsewhere in Miami, Dutch firm OMA and Danish firm BIG are going head-to-head for a project to completely overhaul Miami Beach Convention Center, location of the annual Design Miami trade fair – see all architecture in Miami.

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skyscraper revealed appeared first on Dezeen.

The seven-storey Museu del Disseny de Barcelona is located on the edge of Plaça de les Glories, next door to Jean Nouvel's Torre Agbar office tower. Due to the level changes across the site, the building has part of its volume buried beneath the ground and has public entrances on two of its floors.

MBM Arquitectes divided the form of the building into two halves. The bottom section is a bulky volume with glazed walls and a grass roof, while the upper section is a top-heavy structure clad with pre-weathered aluminium panels on every side.

Set to open in spring 2014, the museum will combine the decorative arts, ceramics, textiles and graphic design collections of four existing museums, which have now closed their doors.

The main exhibition hall will be housed in the lower part of the building, while additional exhibitions will take place in galleries on the museum's upper floors. Other facilities include a large auditorium, a small hall, a public library, education rooms and a bar and cafe.

The area surrounding the museum has been made into a lake, while the grass roof serves as a new public lawn overlooking the water.

The Design Museum in London is also moving to a new home, as British architect John Pawson is developing the former Commonwealth Institute building.

See more recent architecture in Barcelona, including a modular office block by Arata Isozaki and student housing at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia.

Photography is by Iñigo Bujedo Aguirre.

Here's some more information from DHUB:

The building is the work of MBM Arquitectes, the architecture studio formed by Josep Martorell, Oriol Bohigas and David Mackay, together with Oriol Capdevila and Francesc Gual. The edifice is made up of two parts: one underground (which takes advantage of the slope created by urban development of the plaza) and another which emerges at 14.5 m (at the level of Plaça de les Glòries).

Construction below the height of 14.5m: Most of the surface area of the building is situated below the 14.5m level and is where the more significant installations are housed. They are distributed over two floors and a gallery, and include the main exhibition hall, rooms given over to management and preservation of the DHUB's collections, the main offices, Clot public library, the documentation centre (DHUBdoc) and rooms for research and educational activities, in addition to high-traffic services such as the bar, restaurant and store. Though below ground level, the basement floor receives natural light from a trench which is worked into the different ground levels and which features a huge lake, creating a dialogue with the outside. Lighting is reinforced with six skylights that look out over the public space and can also be used as showcases for the centre's contents and activities.

Construction above the height of 14.5m: This part of the building projects over the width of Carrer d'Àvila and has the shape of a slanted parallelepiped. In accordance with the general urban plan it occupies a minimum footprint, primarily in order not to reduce the space earmarked for public use, but also because the vicissitudes of plans to demolish the elevated road and change the tramline route severely limit the space available. The building cantilevers out towards the plaça, enabling the construction potential to be met while at the same time establishing a display of urban architecture over the motorway. This block will house the venues for long- and short-term temporary exhibitions, as well as a small hall and a large auditorium.

Entrance to both parts or bodies that compose the DHUB headquarters is gained through a single vestibule with two points of access: one in Carrer d'Àvila and another in Plaça de les Glòries. Passage through this part of the building is almost inevitable, as it forms a kind of corridor connecting Plaça de les Glòries, the 22@ technological district and Poblenou.

All of the services situated in the basement area can be reached from this semi-public plaza, as well as those on the upper floors by means of a system of escalators, staircases and lifts. While the different spaces have diverse dimensions and architectural characteristics, overall they form a conceptual whole in which the auditorium stands aloft as a fundamental and crowning feature.

Only two materials are used in the building's exterior, zinc plates and glass, bestowing an industrial feel with metallic accents on the building. The green carpet of the artificial flooring and bright graphics on the pavement are two of the primary components of the outside surfaces. In both cases, the elements employed (natural and manufactured) ensure sustainability and ease of maintenance. The lake, in addition to visually highlighting the work, creates a link between the different levels.

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by MBM Arquitectes appeared first on Dezeen.