slit-house-by-azl-atelier-zhanglei

Even China's used almost half of world's cement alone in China, Slit house is the first real concrete building in Nanjing, the city which also built 1300 high-rise concrete structure towers in last 25 years.

Slit House
Design Team: AZL Atelier Zhanglei
Location: Nanjing, China
Status: Completion 2007

The Slit house is designed to fit into the historical context formulated in beginning of 20's in centre part of Nanjing city, China, with a new form of concrete facade. The entire structure, even the roof and facade, are made from concrete with five-centimeter horizontal wood textile strips. It is aimed to share the same scale with neighbor buildings of brick build almost 100 years ago.

Showing the transparency of the house in its public part with a deep slit, a stair is used in this project to link two parts and create visual difference. A two-floor-high living area and a lower dining area are divided unexpectedly but naturally. In this way, all the space elements are activated, and three-dimensionalized.





The use of slit is also vital in the whole design. Architectural objects have been long idealized as stable and firm. The Slit House has sent the stereotyped knowledge away and created a new illusion. The silt allows an external, essential confrontation between the main body and its environment, like a black lightning full of energy.
Slit house express itself in harmony with surroundings neighbourhood.

National Museum of Qatar by Jean Nouvel

French architect Jean Nouvel has unveiled his design for the new National Museum of Qatar.

The museum will comprise a series of interlocking discs of varying dimensions and curvatures, which will form walls, ceilings, floors and terraces.

Each disc will be made of a steel truss structure clad in glass-reinforced concrete and the voids between discs will be glazed.

This new structure will be built around an existing palace.

See all our stories about Jean Nouvel in our special category.

The information that follows is from the Qatar Museums Authority:

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QATAR MUSEUMS AUTHORITY UNVEILS JEAN NOUVEL DESIGN AND MULTIFACETED EXHIBITIONS PROGRAM FOR THE NATIONAL MUSEUM OF QATAR

Marking the next stage of its program to develop Qatar into a hub of culture and communications for the Gulf region and the world, the Qatar Museums Authority (QMA) today revealed its plans for the new National Museum of Qatar, as expressed in a striking and evocative design by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Jean Nouvel.

Embodying the pride and traditions of Qatar’s people while offering international visitors a dialogue about rapid change and modernization, the National Museum of Qatar will be the setting for a program in which entire walls become cinematic displays, “sonorous cocoons”, shelter oral-history presentations and hand-held mobile devices guide visitors through thematic displays of the collection’s treasures. Though built around an historic structure, the Fariq Al Salatah Palace, which had served as a museum of heritage since 1975, the National Museum of Qatar is conceived and designed as a thoroughly new institution, in keeping with the high aspirations that animate QMA.

Jean Nouvel’s design manifests both the active, dynamic aspect of the Museum’s program and its crystallization of the Qatari identity, in a building that, like a desert rose, appears to grow out of the ground and be one with it. Prominently located on a 1.5 million-square-foot site at the south end of Doha’s Corniche, where it will be the first monument seen by travelers arriving from the airport, the building takes the form of a ring of low-lying, interlocking pavilions, which encircle a large courtyard area and encompass 430,000 square feet of indoor space.

House Antero de Quental by Manuel Maia Gomes

Photographer Fernando Guerra has sent us his photographs of a spiral staircase lined with bookcases by Portuguese architect Manuel Maia Gomes.

The staircase forms part of a project called House Antero de Quental that involved converting the former home of a nineteenth century poet into a literary centre.

The staircase spirals up through two storeys and into a tower.

The shelves are back-lit through translucent plexiglass and will hold 6000 books.

The following information is from Manuel Maia Gomes:

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ANTERO QUENTAL HOUSE

The recovering works of this building where done to host a institution in charge of spreading the literair heritage of local and national writers, philosopher and poets.

This house where the poet and philosopher Antero de Quental lived from 1881 intel 1891, was about 30 year, ago subject to works which completely destroyed the image of its original shape.

The interior was completely demolished, remaining only part of the outer walls.

The interior walls where replaced by a structure consisting of beton pillars and beams, filled with hollow ceramic brick.

The preliminary work’s for demolition of the existing build elements has identified the foundations of the old walls, which where reconstructed in the traditional technology using granit stone.

We can conclude that de volume and partitioning of the house now restored, is close to the old building where the poet lived, except in the interior now changed, in order to obtain larger rooms while maintaining the basic domestic typology.

The building which has two levels comprises a “pseudo tower” with more two floors.

This typology is recurrent in the city which served to spot de entry of vessels in the mouth of the river.

These two floors of limited size world be taken by stairs to have his access.

Thus, our project accept this limitation and propose the installation of the library in this place with the capacity of 6.000 books, it’s spiral circular shape arrangement allows one superior distribution of the books to any other provision enhancing thereby the available space.

It also serves at the symbolic level to introduce the knowledge of the poet who has lived in this house, through the indefinitely curved line projected in the space, of the necessary reinvention of room.

We use traditional materials, stone, stucco, providing new commodities as floor heating and ventilation.

The floor are covered with recycled wood, cut from old structural beams composing one irregular brownish color of this resin wood, contrasting with the white painting used in walls and ceilings ,it gives a sense of userd space.

The structure of the spiral library is made of steel, forming one cylinder, supporting the stairs, without touching the walls.

The light comes above and behind the structure trough translucent plexiglas, by this effect the light is projected over the books as they should enlight their readers.