-
Maas Tower
On a misty day in Rotterdam, the taller of the two towers that make up the Maas Tower development seems to disappear into the sky. Oddly, on a clear day, the effect is not entirely different. Although the light silvery colour of the tower stands out sharply against a blue sky, there is a fading away at the top that cannot just be put down to the diminution that comes with distance.
Architect Diederick Dam (Dam and Partners) Location Rotterdam - The Netherlands Company involved Euramax Coated Products & Hunter Douglas Website http://www.euramax.nl -
IT Fornebu
You can’t miss the portal building at IT Fornebu. Set between four intelligently designed but monochrome office blocks on the site of the former Oslo airport in Norway is this brilliant shock of orange, a building that manages to be arresting without being garish, to stand out without seeming incongruous.
Architect a-lab Location Fornebu - Norway Company involved 3A Composites (ALUCOBOND®) Website www.alucobond.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