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Quai 9
From a distance, the outer shell of Quai 9 resembles an alien spaceship which has landed in the town of Lanester in north-western France. But on closer inspection, the facade is clearly composed of a series of triangular shapes which evoke the white sails of the boats that have been the lifeblood of this area for centuries. The name Quai 9 reflects both the maritime heritage of the region, and the fact that Lanester was established as an independent town in 1909.
Architect Cécile Moga (MOG Architects) Location Lanester, Lorient (France) Company involved Elval Colour Website www.elval-colour.com -
ROC Carolus School
The first impression of the ROC Carolus building is deceptive, and deliberately so. Passers-by and visitors see a ‘crazy’ building, a fractured and playful facade, with irregularly polygonal windows breaking up the variety of shades of grey in the prepainted metal cladding that floats above a glazed ground floor. This cladding in turn has ‘fault lines’ along it, as if the whole could shatter in an instant. It takes a moment to realise that this is disguising the fact that the building in fact consists of relatively regular blocks joined by glazing. The overall assembly is largely rectilinear, but with one end curving to a point like the prow of a ship. Far from this being an example of unexplained exuberance, careful consideration has gone into making the facade, like the rest of the building, hard working and affordable.
Architect AGS Architekten & Planners Location Nijmegen - The Netherlands Company involved Euramax Coated Products Website http://www.euramax.nl -
Swedish Pavilion - Shangai Expo
Designing the Swedish Pavilion at the 2010 Shanghai Expo was a slightly less daunting task than designing many of the other pavilions, because it had a clearly defined function. What makes these projects so difficult in general is the almost entirely open-ended nature of the brief – they have to convey something about the national character, and house an exhibition, but beyond that and the physical limitations of the site, it is possible to do anything. In the case of the Swedish Pavilion, however, there was at least a requirement to house meetings with potential trade partners, and this gave the design more of a functional programme than is customary.
Images courtesy of August Wiklund, Sweco, & Petter EldinArchitect Sweco (Johannes Tüll) Location Shangai - China Company involved SSAB Website http://www.ssab.com