Thursday 28 February 2013

Arrebita!Porto is recruiting members for the fifth team!


If you are interested in being part of this project on its next phase contact José Paixão through info@arrebita.org!

ARCHITECTURE REFERENCES - Bratislava Culenova New City Center Proposal, Zaha Hadid Architects

Bratislava Culenova New City Center Proposal
Bratislava, Slovakia
Zaha Hadid Architects

Proposal
Area: 150.000 sqm

Client: Penta Investments Limited
All images are property of Zaha Hadid Architects

Descriptive memory of the project's article on ArchDaily.com:
"The design for the Bratislava Culenova New City Center by Zaha Hadid Architects is based on a dynamic field strategy which aims to organize the city’s new city center program along a gradient of circular and elliptical patterns. In a series of larger tower extrusions, a fluid field emerges from its underlying matrix to activate the ground throughout the whole site and provide public spaces of the highest quality. 

The underground car parking is covered by a one storey high modulated platform which is perforated at the strategic points for day-lit spaces that accommodate retailing, landscaped parks, and various points of interest such as the cultural center, museum shop, conference space, and event halls.

Towards the site’s perimeter, the platform is slightly raised at specific points to define the site’s edge and accommodate programmatic points of interest., access points to the parking below, and access to office and residential towers above. At other strategic zones, the platform levels merge with the surrounding city level to link the new urban parks and plazas with the surrounding city fabric.

The scheme creates density via efficient high rise structures while providing and generous and highly activate ground level differentiated within a three-dimensional field condition."

north elevation
south elevation
west elevation
east elevation
city center diagram
secondary paths diagram
structural detail

Wednesday 27 February 2013

Architecture in space?

"In her final days as Commander of the International Space Station, Sunita Williams of NASA recorded an extensive tour of the orbital laboratory and downloaded the video on Nov. 18, just hours before she, cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko and Flight Engineer Aki Hoshide of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency departed in their Soyuz TMA-05M spacecraft for a landing on the steppe of Kazakhstan. The tour includes scenes of each of the station's modules and research facilities with a running narrative by Williams of the work that has taken place and which is ongoing aboard the orbital outpost." - Youtube.com

Commander Sunita Williams launches several challenges to architects to improve the living conditions on space facilities on mission. With a lot of specificities and special needs, architecture can play an essential role proposing new paradigms and solutions for this scenery. 


New York city metro - East Side Access update

East Side Access is an American public-works project being undertaken by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) in New York City, designed to bring the Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) into a new East Side station to be built below and incorporated into Grand Central Terminal in New York City's Manhattan borough. It is expected to be operational by 2019.

This month it became public a new photographic update of the work on site - a work made by the photographer Patrick Cashin. All the photos presented above are property of Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

Text from the project's Wikipedia article (adapted):
"The project represents the construction effort to complete the line to Grand Central. After voters in New York approved a bond issue to provide state funds to the project, the federal government committed to provide $2.6 billion to help build the project by signing a Full Funding Grant Agreement in December 2006. The construction contract for a one-mile (two-kilometer) tunnel in Manhattan west and southward from the dormant lower level of the 63rd Street rail tunnel to the new station beneath Grand Central was awarded on July 13, 2006, to Dragados/Judlau, a joint American–Spanish venture (the American company is located in College Point, Queens). The total contract award is $430 million, and is using two large tunneling devices owned by the Spanish firm.

Dragados/Judlau created a launch chamber for tunnel-boring machines (TBM) under Second Avenue at 63rd Street using a controlled drill-and-blast method, then assembled and launched each 640-ton machine. The first TBM was launched west and southbound from the 63rd Street tunnel in September 2007 and reached Grand Central in July 2008. The second machine began boring a parallel tunnel in December 2007 and had completed its tunnel at 37th Street on September 30, 2008. Geocomp Corporation was hired to monitor the boring, using a battery of instruments to record vibration, ground settlement and any tilting or drift suffered by the TBM. The instruments include inclinometers, extensometers, seismographs, observation wells, dynamic strain gauges, tilt meters and automated motorized total stations (AMTS) with prismatic targets. The next step in construction is to back the TBMs out of the tunnels and cast-in-place concrete sections placed to create the lining. Each tunnel will be 22 feet (7 metres) in diameter and carry trains 140 feet (43 metres) beneath street level. The TBMs bored an average of 50 feet (15 metres) per day. Cross-connections between the tunnels are being created under Park Avenue, between 49th and 51st Streets, by controlled drill-and-blast.

In Queens, Pile Foundation Construction Company is building an $83 million open-cut and deck project, which is extending the tracks under Northern Boulevard into Sunnyside Yard, and creating an area that serves as both the launch chamber for soft-bore Queens tunnels, connecting the 63rd Street line to the main LIRR branches, and an interlocking and emergency exit and venting facility. Perini Corporation was awarded a $161 million contract to reconfigure Harold Interlocking, increasing its capacity to accommodate Grand Central-bound trains and accept new yard lead tracks to allow trains to enter the storage yards. On February 15, 2008, the MTA awarded Dragados-Judlau a $499 million contract to excavate the LIRR station and track wye caverns. On September 10, 2009, the MTA awarded Yonkers Contracting Company a $40.76 million contract to demolish a building at 44th Street and construct a ventilation plant and station entrance. On September 28, 2009, the MTA awarded Granite-Traylor-Frontiere Joint Venture a $659.2 million contract to employ two 500-ton slurry TBMs to create the tunnels which will connect the LIRR main line and the Port Washington Branch to the tunnel under 41st Avenue (the 63rd Street tunnel). Four tunnels, with precast concrete liners, will total two miles (three kilometers) in length. In March 2011, the MTA announced that these two TBMs would begin tunneling in April 2011.

On December 22, 2011, breakthrough was achieved in Tunnel "A" of the four Queens tunnel drives from the 63rd Street tunnel bellmouth. On July 25, 2012, all four Queens tunnel drives were complete."

Watch the September 2012's update of the work site on the video above. Other updates are available on Youtube, provided by MTA.