This 16 storey tower in Barcelona completed by Spanish studio R+B Arqts contains 75 social housing units and has a facade of vertical panels and aluminium brise-soleil.

The building's exterior reads as five sets of 10m-high stacked frames, which group sets of three storeys together and create balconies every third floor.

The tower is one of of 26 new towers planned around the Plaça Europa, a new public square.

In the foyer area of the building are timber-panelled walls and high ceilings.

Photography is by Jordi Surroca.

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Here is some more information about the project from the architects:

From 3 to 3

The tower E.I.O.5 is a project of social housing promoted by Incasol and it is located in a new central zone known as Plaça Europa (Europa Square). The Europa Square, according to Albert Viaplana’s Project, it is shaped as the last nude in Llobregat’s direction of the squares sequence that, approximately each kilometer, marking the Gran Via de les Corts Catalanes.

The urban model of the Europa Square is a generous public space opened to each side of Gran Via which concentrates, with other buildings, 26 towers of tertiary and residential uses, public and privates, between 15 and 20 floors. Tower 5 is located in the farthest crown from the Gran Via which runs half- undergrounded. For all the buildings of this last ring, most of them public housing promoted by different clients, distribution laws in the master planning fix a maximum floor dimension of 24x24 m, as well as height in which should be located the first floor structure (slab) and the crowing point of the towers.

The piece we had built was an object of public client’s competition in February 2005. In our proposal, rescaling the tower according to its position as a piece in the limit with the consolidate fabric of Hospitalet trying to visualize with the building a movement between Europa Square and the blocks of 5 floors that form the surrounding.

Grouping together floors from 3 to 3, the image of the tower, perceived in some kind of cinematographic long plan, could approximate to a building of 5 floors of height. Consequently the scale of the windows, according to that law of grouping them, is also transforming in frames of 10 meters height and different thickness. In order to be more accurate, the facade and windows, this last ones with a sequential number and modulated in pieces with similar dimensions to a door (0.8 x 2,10 m), succeeding in different planes with a depth that range between 50 cm and 1,2 meter and emphasises the concept of big inverted tribunes. In each section of the tower the first floor of every serial of 3 is a balcony.

As some of the images in a “short plane” we have done for the competition show us, this frames avoid vertigo impression because between the interior and the outside of the apartment there is always an intermediate element: balconies, jambs, or the lintels of this big holes.

Click above for larger image

The election of the elements for the facade’s assembly has been done paying attention to a comparative study of several constructive solutions which evaluated the origin of already recycled materials, its natural origin and the capacity for being recycled at the end of its useful life. Likewise, was also valuated the expense of fabrication energy and the recovered politics of the surplus energy generated during the production process.

Click above for larger image

Materially, the facade is constructed with a 8mm thick HPL pannels hanging of hidden structure of recycled aluminium perfiles. Black frames are made of 4mm thick aluminium composite panels which brings equal resistance with a lower weight per m2 to any other material with the same features. Synthetically, all materials used in the tower’s construction are 100% recyclable and specifically the ones used in the facade come from a 65% and 100% already recycled materials.

Click above for larger image

The tower is set in floor plan as two towers with T form circulation corridor and two scales in the extremes across the one illuminates the interior in the circulation zone. Every tower has two apartments of 69 m2 in the extremes and one of 56 m2 in the central position. Totally, the program is of 75 units.

Project Name:  Social Housing Tower of 75 Units in Europa Square - E.I.O.5- Incasol - l’H - Barcelona
Project date: February 2005
Construction start: October 25th, 2007
Construction end: May 19th, 2010

Architects: José Miguel Roldán Y Mercè Berengué | Roldán + Berengué, arqts |
Collaborators:
Architecture: Vicenç Sanz | Zana Bosnic
Structure: Manuel Arguijo
Installations: Manel Comas | Javier Mateos
Technical architect: Joan Rovira i DuranPromotion type public | Sale - Incasol
Total build up area: 10.312,98 m2

Total build up area, apartment units: 7.660 m2
Apartment units: 75 units | 49 units of 3 bedrooms s.U. 69m2 | 25 units of 2 bedrooms s.u. 56m2 | 1 residence of 7 bedrooms s.u. 196m2
Commercial: 1unit s.c. 280,11m2
Parking: 82 units s.c. 2.660,65m2
Budget |PEM| 7.912.000 € | 767 €/m2
Construction company: CRC obras y servicios

See also:

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Housing 137 by H Arquitectes	Baufeld 10 by LOVE architecture	Future Towers India by MVRDV

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by R+B Arqts appeared first on Dezeen.

This algae-producing tower designed by Sir Peter Cook and Gavin Robotham of London studio CRAB came second in the recent Taiwan Tower Conceptual International Competition.

The project, a conceptual design for Taichung in Taiwan, features a tower with a series of steel cages attached that will be covered in algae to produce biofuel.

The competition was won by this design featuring floating observation decks attached to giant helium balloons.

The following information is from the architects:

From a field of 237 entries from 25 countries, London’s Cook Robotham Architecture Bureau will receive the $ 65,000 second prize for a tower that is based upon the growing of algae in layers of droplets.

THE TOWER OF DROPLETS
The entire tower is inspired by the creation of energy. Living energy which must be……… Visible living energy SYMBOLISING THE VISIBLE ENERGY, ENTERPRISE AND INVENTIVE OPTIMISM OF THE TAIWANESE PEOPLE. The droplets are the primary elements of this process. Their activity, presence and form resonate throughout the scheme.

Much of the tower is open to the public to view the processes at close quarters. Even from the lifts, the daily state of vegetable husbandry will be visible. A variety of different arrangements of plantation and localized environment are distributed over its length. The principal purpose of the tower is to CREATE ALGAE.

When watered and filtered the algae create BIOMASS used as food for fish and plants and for making paper and BIOFUEL for powering engines. This process takes CO2 (a known hazard in Taiwan) out of the environment.

In the basic tower we provide 10.888 M2 surface of algae which produces 3,266,400 liters of oil and produces several thousand tons of biomass in a year. The same structure could be further developed – with accumulated Income and more bags to a maximum of double the surface and thus creating 6,532,800 liters of oil.

The structure is a series of steel lattices that wind around the steel elevator cores. The droplets are steel cages with membrane skinning. There are 3 observation levels:

TOP OBSERVATION LEVEL : overlooks the mountains
MID OBSERVATION LEVEL : contains areas of hydroponic vegetation growth : enabling PUBLIC VIEWING of plants and processes
LOWER OBSERVATION LEVELS : contain aviaries and aquaria

There are 3 office zones, all are used by the City development Authority. THE MUSEUM at the base of the tower contains 5 floors On its top are viewable algae systems. At middle levels are exhibition zones based of techniques developed by the authors at the Kunsthaus Graz (Austria) and the War Museum of the North.

Tower team : Jenna Al-Ali, Nuria Blanco, Lorene Faure, Selma Johannson
Consulting Engineer : Miike Kaverne of Buro Happold

See also:

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Hydrogenase by Vincent Callebaut	Eco-pods by Howeler + Yoon & Squared Design Lab	More green sustainable on Dezeen

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and Gavin Robotham appeared first on Dezeen.

Austrian architects Coop Himmelb(l)au are to be awarded the Sustainability Award of the 2010 MIPIM Architectural Review Future Project Awards for their tower covered in a folded metal skin, designed for the Erdberg area of Vienna. 

Called Town Town, the 30-storey tower will combine a high-rise slab structure with a cylindrical tower, both wrapped in the faceted skin.

The award will be presented on 17 March at a ceremony in Cannes.

The text below is from Coop Himmelb(l)au:

For its project Town Town Erdberg, COOP HIMMELB(L)AU will receive the Sustainability Award of the 2010 MIPIM Architectural Review Future Project Awards. The distinction will be presented during a prestigious ceremony at the international real estate summit MIPIM on March 17, 2010 in Cannes.

PROJECT TOWN TOWN – ERDBERG, VIENNA, AUSTRIA (2000/2010-)

Marking the gateway to Vienna towards the east, the Town Town Office Tower in Erdberg is the main element of a developing urban zone.

Its location directly on the subway line and in proximity to the highway to the airport connects the project ideally to the city; with regard to urban development guidelines this offers the opportunity for a distinctive architectonic form.

By combining two typologies (high rise slab and cylindrical tower) and with a cleverly positioned central circulation and access core as “hinge”, the building achieves a very high efficiency. The proportion of net usable floor area to gross floor area is 86% in contrast to 82% in a conventional building.

The shape of the high rise is also optimized for the implementation of an integrated and energy-active building system, which explains its excellent performance in terms of sustainability.

The crystalline forms of the metallic skin were developed in simulations of dynamic wind forces in order to be radar compatible and climatically, acoustically and functionally optimized. The skin envelopes both the slab and the tower, thus merging them into a single hybrid form.

PROGRAM, ACCESS AND CIRCULATION

Through the main entrance from the plaza the visitors step into a multi-level lobby as communication zone with a flight of stairs, which lead to the semi-public areas like the café, event spaces as well as special areas including the double height conference area.

Further special areas like the canteen and the IT center can be reached via the two elevator groups, which also connect to the standard floors with offices: one group with four elevators accesses the first 16 floors of the high rise, the other group with three elevators is reserved for the floors 16 to 26.

On the 16th floor at 70m of height - at the joint of slab and tower - the Sky Lobby with roof terraces, and on the 26th floor at 105m of height the two story Sky Lounge with a gallery are situated. Both areas serve as communication zones and offer internal meeting areas with a panoramic view towards the landscape of the Danube in the east and the urban landscape of Vienna.

Supply and disposal for maintenance of the building is provided for on level N-2 via a private street, which is only used by the Town Town complex. In the two basement levels the server and other technical spaces, archives, and storage rooms are situated.

BUILDING SERVICES AND TECHNICAL SYSTEMS

The notion of sustainability has become a new paradigm for technological progress, and as a consequence all efforts concentrate on reducing the consumption of non-renewable fossil fuels in the construction and maintenance of buildings. Behind the concept of a high rise with an energy-active building system lies the ambition of an energy efficient, environmentally intelligent building design, with the aim of introducing both proven and innovative low energy consumption systems, environmental control systems, and newly developed energy harvesting systems, and at the same time to enhance the user comfort. This reduces the necessary investment in building technology and decreases the maintenance costs.

All office spaces of the thermo-active building can be naturally ventilated through operable windows as well as by optimization of the climatic skin; district heating is used for additional displacement ventilation.

FAÇADE

Essentially, the tower façade consists of folded sheet metal elements. Both the façades of the slab and the tower are composed of external façade elements, which are mounted at varying angles in front of the standard façade behind, which is fitted with fixed and operable elements. The outer skins of the Lobby at street level as well as of the Sky Lobby and the Sky Lounge are glass façades with a post and beam structure.

Since the building is located on the approach path of the Vienna Airport, another property of the façade proves beneficial: due to the three-dimensional folding of the exterior skin it is radar compatible, which means that it has maximum radar absorption and diffusion on all sides (“stealth effect”).

ENERGY-ACTIVE BUILDING SYSTEM

The building produces electric energy in two ways: on the one hand through wind energy by means of a large turbine on top of the tower in a bar-shaped construction, which is optimally oriented with respect to the locally dominant wind direction. On the other hand the façade panels are provided with a photovoltaic lamination, which produces electric energy through the sun. According to the tests and studies, the façade and the turbine together produce more energy than the building actually consumes.

In contrast to a standard office building of comparable size, which uses 2,000 to 4,000 MWha, but does not produce energy, this office building achieves excellent values: depending on the net consumption, the energy gain of 2,000 MWha improves the energy balance – the surplus energy can be sold back to the utility company. This means in other words also that the break-even point of efficiency will be reached much earlier. For the same reason the eco-balance regarding the building operation shows a saving of a total of 1.100.000 kg CO2.

The different technical and design elements work together synergetically as an Energy-Active Building System, as the following summary demonstrates:

1. Through analysis of wind flows and sun trajectories the overall shape of the building skin is generated: the exterior form of the high rise is developed in a simulation process based on climatic site conditions in order to achieve the most advantageous geometry for the Energy-Active Façade.

2. Wind absorption by the façade elements: the windows can be opened at all levels of the high-rise.

3. Sun and glare protection: vertical closure of the panels creates optimum work conditions. The technically optimized ratio of glass to opaque panel elements is 60:40. Sun and glare protection as well as louvers are integrated in the operable window elements. Cleaning can be carried out from inside.

4. Illumination / Lighting / outside view: naturally lit office work places at the façade and a view to the outside also in special areas, like conference zone or Sky Lounge. Optimization is achieved through vertically tilted panels on the north side.

5. Photovoltaic energy – enhanced building efficiency: the whole building envelope maximizes energy generation through photovoltaic lamination using thin-film-technology on the perforated sheet metal panels of the energy-active skin. The solar harvest amounts to a total of 264 MWha. This allows saving 165.000 kg CO2.

6. Façade Update: a simple and rapid change of façade elements can be carried out from inside, if future technical improvements can contribute to further cost effectiveness and sustainability.

STRUCTURAL CONCEPT

The high rise is conceived as reinforced concrete construction with concrete slabs and composite steel concrete columns. A continuous inner concrete core containing the elevators, the escape stairs and the technical shafts provides for the rigidity and seismic safety of the structure. The inner columns transfer the loads vertically. The exterior row of columns of the tower follows the form of the building and transfers their loads in general directly via the load distributing foundation plate and the pile foundation in the ground.

Cantilevers and trimming or framing due to functional/ spatial requirements is absorbed in the load transfer floors at level N17 and level N-1.

FIRE PREVENTION

The office high rise has two separate pressure-ventilated emergency staircases with escape exits. To one of these the required firemen’s lift, accessible at all levels, is assigned. In the slab with its construction length of more than 40m the required fire separation is established by inserting smoke compartments.

In case of emergency the building can be evacuated via the two escape staircases and the hall at ground floor to the exterior. The first attack point and the driveway for fire-fighter vehicles are located directly on the plaza in front of the building.

Two more mandatory emergency staircases for the special areas, such as the conference zone, canteen and IT center on the first three floors, are situated at the exterior as open structures, guaranteeing evacuation to the delivery level N-2, which also serves as second attack point for the fire-fighters and as parking area.

PLANNING COOP HIMMELB(L)AU
Wolf D. Prix, Helmut Swiczinsky + Wolfdieter Dreibholz
PRELIMINARY DESIGN
DESIGN PRINCIPAL Wolf D. Prix
PROJECT PARTNER Helmut Holleis
PROJECT TEAM Volker Kilian, Luzie Giencke, Alexander Ott, Marcelo Bernardi, Claudia Buhmann, Daniel Kerbler, Markus Tritthart, Penny Rüttimann, Markus Wimmer, Hannes Wohlgemuth, Matthias Eckardt, Quirin Krumbholz, Robin Heather, Sergio Gonzalez, Wolfgang Reicht, Nico Boyer, Luís Muniz Flores
CLIENT Immobiliendevelopment WIENER STADTWERKE BMG & STC Swiss Town Consult

STUCTURAL ENGINEERING Kollitsch & Stanek Ziviltechniker Ges.m.b.H., Vienna, Austria
HVAC + ACOUSTICS Dr. Pfeiler GmbH, Graz, Austria
Schmidt Reuter, Planung für Betriebs- und Gebäudetechnik Ges.m.b.H., Vienna, Austria

PROJECT DATA
SITE AREA 2,450 m²
GROSS FLOOR AREA 43.750 m²

HEIGHT 128 m
NUMBER OF FLOORS 30

START OF PLANNING 3/2000

BUILDING COSTS 66,97 Mio Euro
COSTS PER M2 1.530 EUR/ m2

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Korean architect Changki Yun (Kyungam Architects Associates have sent us images of their design for an observation tower for the city of Seongnam in Korea.

The Daewon Park Observatory was an entry for a competition but did not win.

Here's some info from the architects:

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Floating Observatory

Location : Kyeonggido Sungnam, South Korea,
GFA : 929.32ß≥
Scale : B3~2F
Use : Observatory

The dream of flight is blissful. Just the thought of floating in the sky brings enough motivation to attempt to achieve the dream. However this dream is now a reality.

For the best view "Cloud 360" alotted all its space in the sky. The ground level was left as open space and two main elevators transport visitors to the sky.

The restaurant, cafe, and mediatech are all located in upper levels of the cloud observatory. This new observatory is sure to become the new landmark of the Sungam district.

Kyungam Architects Associates Ltd

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London Design Festival 09: a temporary tower made of paper tubes designed by Japanese architect Shigeru Ban has been erected on the South Bank in London.

Called Paper Tower, the 22m structure has been commissioned as part of Size + Matter, a London Design Festival initiative which this year also features a metal sculpture by Marc Newson, also located beside the Royal Festival Hall on the South Bank.

See all our stories about London Design Festival 2009 in our special category.

Photos are by Susan Smart Photography.

Here's some info from London Design Festival:

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SIZE + MATTER
Renowned Designers To Create Ground-Breaking Sculptures For The London Design Festival

Two of the world’s most highly regarded designers and architects – Marc Newson and Shigeru Ban – have been commissioned by the organisers of The London Design Festival to create installations for its annual Size + Matter initiative.  The aims of this project are to challenge the perception of the everyday materials used, by creating dramatic temporary installations outside the Festival Hall which will be on display from 19 September, the opening date of the Festival, until mid October.

Shigeru Ban is an architect based in Tokyo and Paris.  He is best known for his disaster relief projects– in particular the cheap immediate housing made from paper and card which can be used in earthquake situations. For the London Design Festival he has designed a tower made from cardboard which will soar over the embankment walkway and be visible as a new addition to the South Bank skyline.

Made from cardboard tubes, the tower is articulated by metal joints, a system similar in design to the system used by Ban in his construction of a bridge, boathouse and various pavilions around the world. Sponsored by Sonoco, a global supplier of industrial and consumer packaging, the structure will be 22m high and once built, will become the tallest paper tower in the world.

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