KORKEASAARI ZOO

French architects Beckmann-N’Thépé and landscape designers TN+ have won a competition to remodel Korkeasaari Zoo in Helsinki, Finland.

The proposal involves creating a large glass-domed entrance and animal viewing building on the island zoo, and bringing back polar bears after a 30-year absence.

BECKMANN-N’THEPE

sarl d’Architecture

KORKEASAARI ZOO
(Helsinki – Finlande)

Programme :
Redevelopment of helsinki Zoo / Landscape / greenhouses, auditorium, nocturama, reception office, souvenir shop, technical room, restaurant.

Architects:
Beckmann-N’Thépé Agency (Paris)
Aldric Beckmann, Françoise N’thépé
Landscape design:
TN Plus Agency (Paris)
Bruno Tanant, Jean Christophe Nani
Client:
City of Helsinki (Finlande)
Area:
26,2 ha
Cost:
NC
Delivery date:

Design team:
Project manager: Wilfried Daufy
Architects: Anne-Catherine Dufros
Assistant architects: Constance Héau, Jessica Pallatier
Landscape design: Guillaume Derrien, Agathe Turmel
Zoo expert: Jean Marc Lernould

TEXT:

The zoological island of Korkeasaari will be cut off again. Its architectural interventions will be concentrated to make it wild and mysterious once more – a park / garden as a place of popular privilege, the nobility of the future city.

Architecture disappears in favour of controlled geography, like the resurgence of a neighbouring landscape. The entrance grouping the set of utilities crucial to the running of the zoo becomes a focus of visual identity, somewhere between form and shapelessness, pierced with cavities.

Above: entrance lower level. Below: entrance upper level

Like layers of skin peeled back to receive an implant, there will be an above and a below that dialogue and interpenetrate one another. Areas of light, uncertainty, reflections and depths will be developed, offering the first emotions of a visit that will play on time and the seasons through four biozones :
- Central Asian Steppe
- Arctic Pole
- Asian Temperate Forest
- Central Asian Mountain

Above: polar bear enclosure

OMA's dream

WIND ENERGY REPLACES OIL FROM THE GULF

Office for Metropolitan Architecture recently has presented a masterplan for the North Sea, claiming that wind farms in the North Sea can produce as much energy as the oil from the Persian Gulf is now. The plan was inspired by Hugo Graat, who in 1609 highlited that the sea should be a binding medium between nations, enabling communicating and exchanging ideas.

Camouflage House by Hiroshi Iguchi

Green Island

This is Tokyo Gotanda
http://www.006600.jp/

Urban Farm

via landscapeandurbanism.blogspot.com

birding hotel by Morris Architects

Olisur olive oil factory by GH + A Architects

Via Dezeen

Santiago studio Guillermo Hevia Architects have completed a factory for olive oil manufacturers Olisur, located 200 km south of Santiago in Chile.

The building comprises the company offices and factory, and is made of concrete clad in wood and glass.

The factory uses geothermic energy, natural lighting and natural ventilation. According to the architects, all materials used in production of the oil are biodegradable.

Photographer: Cristóbal Palma

Here’s some more information from the architects:

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Olisur Olive Oil Factory and Offices

Chief Architect: Guillermo Hevia
Collaborators: Tomás Villalón, Francisco Carrión, Guillermo Hevia G, Marcela Suazo

A volume of simple and emphatic architecture, which reinterprets the anonymous architecture of the coastal valleys in the center of Chile.

It poses itself above the soft tree-lined areas, peeking gently with its facades of wood and tones that highlight the luminosity of the place. The body melts down as one with the geography and projects the lines of trees upon his facades.

It employs sustainable technologies, creating a favorable mood for work and the production of quality olive oil.

The new Almazara of Olisur is located 230 kilometers southwest of Santiago (Chile) in San José de Marchigue (La Estrella, VI Region).

It is in the forefront of the Almazaras (olive oil factories) worldwide, incorporating the use of multiple bioclimatic technologies (geotermic, eolic, luminic) both in the buildings as well as in the productive process achieving a real commitment with sustaintability, energy saving, quality of life and environment protection.

Architecture is the protagonist to achieve these objectives. The simple forms of the closed principal volume are complemented by a smaller volume made of wood and glass which houses the offices and services.

They are the images of a building that belongs to the place, with an easy reading which represents nature starting from light, textures and color.

The illumination of its facades and office areas (transparent) comes alive with its shades between lights and shadows that seem to rise in the surrounding soft wooded hillock and the geography of the place. The architecture of this longitudinal building is terraced in different levels to take up the slopes.

ECOLOGICAL CHARACTERISTICS

Geothermic instead of central heating and air conditioning for the production areas and the oil barrels area, ventilated façades system in the building, passive energies to allow air to come into and go out the different areas of the offices and services (cross ventilation in the ceiling).

Evaporation from the water mirror located in the front of the office building and cone studies of shade and sun direction to determine the eaves necessary for the different seasons.

The main building uses natural zenithal light instead of artificial lighting. All materials used in this industrial complex are biodegradable.

As an architecture studio we don’t understand sustaintability as a theory, but as something concrete. We research into this concept and the most important thing is that we apply it.

Main Materials: Wood, Glass, Concrete, Prefab Panels.

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