Ecca collection

Sochi Olympic Cauldron

The centre of the circular Medals Plaza in Sochi, Russia, where the winners of the 2014 Winter Olympic Games received their medals, is occupied by a curiously shaped, glistening structure rising some 46m above the ground.

Credits: Dmitry Tararin  |  Alcoa Architectural Products^®  | Kalzip

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Multifunctional Centre Hart van Meerdervoort

When the municipalities of Zwijndrecht and Trivire in the south of the Netherlands decided to create a multifunctional centre for the Kort Ambacht Zuid neighbourhood, they initially specified a brick-clad structure. Set on an elongated site, the building needed to accommodate an elementary school, a gym, childcare centre, welfare organisation, and local housing association.

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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.

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