Rafael Viñoly Architects' expansion of the Brooklyn Children's Museum, located at the intersection of Brooklyn Avenue and St. Marks Avenue in Crown Heights, has reached substantial completion. It is slated to be New York City's first LEED Silver museum.


The museum was founded in 1899 and expanded on its current site in 1977. In 1999, it began to seek ways to increase capacity and to  create a new public presence for the twenty-first century. Rafael Viñoly Architects has achieved this by creating a distinctive L-shaped, two-story structure that differs from its context in color as well as physical form, yet remains welcoming and deferential to the  museum's existing built fabric. The plan doubles the museum's space to 102,000 square feet and is expected to expand its annual visitor capacity from 250,000 to 400,000.

© All photographs are courtesy of
Chuck Choi

Designed by Erick van Egeraat, the new building for the City Hall of Grave in the Netherland, was officially opened this summer. The municipality shares the building with housing corporation Maasland and the regional historic archive of the Province of North Brabant, BHIC.


Seen from a distance, the building presents itself as a singular ensemble. Up close, however, specific identities of the users become apparent. The three parties present themselves to the public in the main entrance hall, an open environment on the ground floor, thereby stimulating interaction among the tenants and between tenants and visitors.

Designed by the Los Angeles based firm of Oyler Wu and situated in the heart of Taipei, this project strives to rethink the typology of housing tower as a tall box with repetitive balconies, as is the case with most housing in the city of Taipei. 


This proposal utilizes geometry and materiality to accommodate the needs of the tenants but also to create a scheme that is not based on repetition.

All the illustrations are courtesy of Oyler Wu Collaborative

Last month, we introduced The Baupiloten ,  a group of students at the architectural faculty of the TU Berlin who carry out building projects under the guidance and supervision of the architects Susanne Hofmann, AA Dipl. and Dipl. Ing. Martin Janekovic.

The second project that they completed is the refurbishment of the Kindergarten Traumbaum (”Tree of Dreams”), located on Dessauer Street 27, Berlin.

When the kindergarten got new management in 2004 the somewhat perfunctory post-modern building (completed 1990) received a new, more poetic name, “Tree of Dreams”. Reason enough for Die Baupiloten to take up this imaginative thread and follow on from there. The sombre corridors and the central atrium were transformed into a light, airy and phantastic world for children. The aim has been to encourage the children to communicate and interact spontaneously and experimentally.

All photographs are courtesy of Jan Bitter

The house is designed for a retired couple with the need for guest bedroom suites and a large communal space for the living, dining, and kitchen areas.



This 2,600 square-feet single-family residence is located in Palm Desert, California. The house is located on a flat, irregularly shaped lot at the end of a cul-de-sac.  The neighborhood contains a variety of styles and references to the preferred typical suburban desert subdivision architecture.

All photographs are courtesy of Ciro Coelho

This colorful project regroups the two animal refuges in Amsterdam creating the largest pound in the Netherlands.

The plot is on fringes of the city.  Shaped like a wedge, it was apparently impossible to fit the functions of the animal shelter.

All photographs are courtesy of Luuk Kramer

 





Switch Building is a 7 storey apartment and art gallery building at 109 Norfolk Street in the Lower East Side, New York City. 


The building consists of four floor-through apartments, a duplex penthouse, and a double height art gallery on the ground and cellar levels.  nARCHITECTS provided full architectural services for the project, including all interior design.

The project’s design emerges from a creative interpretation of some of the narrow constraints imposed by zoning and the developer’s needs.

All photographs are courtesy of Frank Oudeman