April 5, 2013
This project won the 2013 Architizer A+ Jury Award in the bars & nightlife category. See the full list of winners here.
Building a contemporary winery in a UNESCO-protect landscape isn’t easy. The Lavaux Vinyard Terraces have stretched along the southern shores of Lake Geneva since monks started the precarious plantings centuries ago. Yet Swiss atelier Fournier-Maccagan took up the challenge of designing a modern space dedicated to tasting and displaying wines grown on the surrounding terraces, without disturbing the valuable planting surfaces.
With nowhere left to build but directly into the rock, the architects devised a stunning contemporary facade on the cliff-face to announce the winery’s presence among the farmed terraces. The facade of ‘VINORAMA’ is covered by a sculptural steel rain-screen, designed by Swiss artist Daniel Schleapfer. It’s pixelated surface depicts grapevines, which impart a pleasant dappled light to the interior tasting rooms. Read more!
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March 22, 2013
Project: In the Rock—Fire Brigade Magreid
Architect: bergmeisterwolf architekten
Location: Magreid, Italy
Taking inspiration from the region’s many wine caves, the Fire Brigade of Magreid was inserted directly into an imposing rockface. This novel solution was highly economical for the small town—instead of taking up valuable cultivated land, the firehouse was fit into formerly inaccessible space in the cliff beneath city hall. Using a flexible tunneling technique, three self-supporting vaulted spaces were bored into the face of the rock while another was dug to connect them internally. Due to the rock’s stability, only a thin coat of insulating mortar was applied to the walls. The result? A ‘haptic’ spatial experience connecting the occupant and the ‘building’, almost entirely composed of pure Italian hillside.
Read more about this project in the Architizer database!
Images courtesy Jürgen Eheim and Günter Richard Wett Architekturfotografie
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February 21, 2013
Coming soon(ish) to New York, the “East Side Access”! Set to open in 2019, the $7 billion project is one the greatest infrastructural works currently underway in urban America. Every day for nearly seven years now, giant machines and teams of workers buried deep in the ground excavate tunnels through Manhattan’s bedrock core. These tunnels will house the future trains that will traverse the length of the new Long Island Railroad (LIRR) line, connecting Sunnyside, Queens, to Grand Central Terminal. At peak times, the line will route 24 trains per hour and ferry 162,000 trips in both directions.
At present, 5.6 miles of tunnel have already been dug. The MTA recently posted images of the construction progress, which finds workers toiling away in a giant crater beneath Grand Central. This cavernous space will be home to a large platform that will terminate the line. Click through for all the photos!
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March 2, 2012
As a Queens commuter, I am one of many New Yorkers who consider my weekend plans royally botched by the construction-related shutdowns on the 7 train. But sometimes all it takes to shrug it off (if just for a moment) are photos of what is actually going on beneath our feet as we mumble and grumble or, in my case, blog about New York’s public transportation woes. Spotted on Gothamist this morning were snapshots of Manhattan’s bedrock, bored through by the tunnel that will eventually extend the 7 line to the island’s oft-neglected West Side. Click to see more.
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February 3, 2012
The infinite void that is the screen of your iPad just became that much more fascinating: renowned Japanese photographer Hoichi Nishiyama has just released a photographic essay that journeys deep underground into Japan’s tunnels, and these breathtaking feats of engineering are available to explore as a special photography book available for iPads.
Click to see more.
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January 27, 2012
When asked to build a trade show pavilion, entrants of the Ceramics of Italy Exhibition Design Challenge last year were blessed with access to an incredible range of ceramic tiles. Utilizing CTI’s extensive catalogue, competing architects were to design a temporary space to join the ranks of ceramic experiments by Aldo Rossi and Bernard Tschumi. When commissioned to outfit the iconic tunnel-like staircase at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, Irish artist Bryan McCormack took on a wholly different base material as his launching point: condoms. More after the jump.
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