Sydney Opera House

This building situated in Sydney (Australia) and designed by Jorn Utzon at 1957, is one of the most famous of the XX century and was declared as World Heritage at 2007. Was opened at 1973.

The building has an expressionist design and is compound by prefabricated "shells" each one token from the same semisphere. This shells form the roof which occcupies about 1,8 hectares has 183 meters lenght and 120 meters wide and rest above 580 pillars sunk up to 25 meters under the sea level. The shells are covered with 1.056.006 tilings of 2 different colors forming a chevron and they are made to clean themselves.

The two bigger groups of vaults belong to the Concert Hall and the Opera Theater and the other saloons had the smaller vaults. The smallest vaults covers the Bennelong restaurant.

These are the theaters:
- Concert Hall  with 2670 seats and the bigger pipe organ of the world with 10000 tubes.
- The Opera Theater, 1547 seats.
- The Drama Theater, 544 seats.
- The Music Hall, 398 seats.
- The Studio Theater, 364 seats.

At september 1955 the contest started receiving 233 projects from 32 countries which challeged for a $100.000 price and the winner was announced at 1957 rewarding Jorn Utzon.

First stage: Podium (1959-1963)
Started immediately at 5th december 1959 because the government was afraid to lose the public money and that suposed problems due to the unfinished planes. That caused that a lot of columns for the roof were made with a minor resistance than the necessary and, finally, the roof musted be redefined.

Second stage: external vaults (1963-1967)
The initial construction process thought was an in-situ formwork, but the team realized that it was very expensive and then changed to the prefabricated ribs. The structural calculation was very complicated and it required one of the first uses of a computer. Finally the solution was to project all the vault as sections from a semisphere.

Third Stage: Inside (1963-1973)
This stage started at 1963 but at 1965 Utzon was fired and his job was assumed by Peter Hall becoming the main responsible for the inside design. At 1966, the acoustic counselor, Lothar Cremer confirms that the initial design from Utzon allowed only 2000 seats at the main room and the increasing up to the 3000 seats would be a disaster for the acoustic. After a lot of changes due to the Utzon's initial designs were'nt good enought for the Opera House, there were added two more theaters. Finally, at 1973, the building was finished with a total cost of $102 millions.

Project: Hotel (studies final project)

Scketchup renders

In this post I want to show you my studies final project. Althought the renders are not very good, generaly, I'm proud of this work.

 floorplan

 elevation

section

It is a hotel compuond by 12 floors, 2 undergrounds and an annex 2 floor building for the office which I'll explain below.

Starting from bottom of the main building, we find the parking in the -2 floor in which we arrive by a circular ramp and, using the same ramp, in the floor above, we find the kitchen, the dressers and the cold rooms.

The floor 0 is for the hall, the restaurant and the bar plus the corresponding wc's. The major part of the walls in this floor are made of glass to bring as much light as possible. There are and exclusive elevator and stairs to comunicate the restaurant and the kitchen between the 2 floors.

Scketchup renders

The next seven floors contain the first room class: 12 double rooms per floor with bath room and equipped with closed, table and tv.  We find a relax and reading zone at the middle of the floor with confortable seats.

The 8th floor is for the gym with a fitness zone and a swimming pool and a jacuzzi at the part of the floor covered by glass, due to this fact, it seems like the water zone is at the outside.

Scketchup renders

At the floor 9 we find the second class, the simple suite with a sitting room, bed room and bath room with jacuzzi. All the materials used in this rooms are of a hight quality. The smaller size of the floors above the gym and the bigger sizes of the rooms provoke the suppression of the comunitary reading zone at the middle of the floor but, obiously, the rooms are more confortable.

The last 2 floor are compound by the simple suites (3 of them in floor 12) and the first class suites. Three full luxury duplex with a huge terrace, sitting room and bar at the low floor and a big bed room with a big bath room at the high plant. At the floor 11 we also have an observatory for the clients.

To move between the the floors we can use two stairs cores at each buiding sides with two lifts in each core, and the service has a janitor's room with cleaning material.

Over the inning of the parking there is the annex building. We are talking about the building for the offices at the first floor and a warehouse at the the second floor.

remade renders by Revit

Project: Jenga Building

Remembering the Jenga game, the Jenga building is a residential construction with different residential uses and different target people. That's because there are three flat types that change while the building grows.

The floor 0 is reserved for wide commercial space with glass walls and independent entries from the main entry of the building.

 floorplans

section

elevation

The floors from 1 to 5 contains the first type of flat, eight lofts per floor grouped in twos. Each group has its corridor starting from the stairs and lift at the core of the construction. The last 3 meters of the corridors are made of glass to improve the light entering at the lower plants. The lofts has a big terrace, wc, kitchen and space enought for table, sofa and double bed.

The next 4 floors present the second type of flat. We are talking about four flats per floor with dinning and sitting-room, kitchen, wc, three rooms and a bigger terrace. The corridor follow the same idea from the lower floors.

The last floor has the last type, four flats with two main facades and the same stays than the flats below. This flats are bigger and its terrace are bigger too.

The roof of the stairs core are made of glass to bring the light from the outside.

The external image is conditioned by the different types of the flats with an structure that chage each few floors. This is the fact that gives the Jenga aspect to the building because the terraces look like the gaps resulting at the Jenga tower during the game.

The colours of the facades are, mainly, three: white paint for the terrace walls, brown paint for the rest of the walls of the facades and grey for the carpentry and the metallic elements.

Project: Cubic House

This project shows the development of a segregated house.

The main lines of the house simulate the interaction between four prisms. Three of them, with the same sizes, compound the floor 0 intersecting themself. The central prism is oblique and the two walls of the main facade are made of glass, bringing the natural light into the dinning room. Also, in this prism we find the main bathroom and an storage room.

floorplan

 section

 elevation

 cover plan

In the other two volumes of this floor we find: the sitting room with hearth and kitchen in one of them and two simple bedrooms and the main bedroom with wc in the other one.

This last prism also has the upstairs to the fourth prism. This is a single room situaded over the two parallel prism, thought as a light-filled office with an entire wall of glass at the main facade. From this office we can go out to the terrace above the living room.

The garden has a swimming pool which starts under the office and, once out of the this, increase its size.

The outdoor appearance is marked by clear colours at the floor 0. It could be concrete or clear brick with dark aluminum joinery.
The floor 1 prism is darker than the other floor, with brown or grey tones. 

The Empire State Building

 The Empire State Building is an Skyscraper situated at the intersection of the 5th Av. an West 34th Street, in New York. Its name derives from the State of New York and was the tallest building of the world (443 meters) for more than 40 years, from 1931 to 1972 when the north tower of the World Trade Center was completed. It was the first building with more than 100 floors and weighs about 370.000 tones.

The building was named as one of the seven wonders of the modern world by the America Society of Civil Engineers and it and its inside (with a three-floor hall) were named as monuments by the Comission for the Preservation of Historics Monumnets of New York. At 1986 was named as national monument and, since 2007 occupies the number one of the american fovourite buildings.

 

The hall

The Empire State was designed by William F. Lamb with an Art Decó style and the planes were drawn in only two weeks using previous planes. Tha main constructors were the Starrett and Eken brothers. Tha excavations started at january 22, 1930 and the construction at march 17. The building opened its doors at may, 1931 by an special way: The president Herbert Hoover turned on the light from Washington DC. converting the Empire State to the building of the lights. The constructions costs $40.948.900.

 The construction

The open coincided with the Great Depression and that's why a part of its space was not occupied. This fact derived to a many jokes naming it as Empty State Building.

At the beginning, the design includes a mooring mast and a tank for zeppelins and the floor 102 was a landing platform. A lift between the floor 86 and 102 would transport the passengers.
However, the idea was declined because it was useless and dangerous and, at 1953, a broadcast tower was added at the top of the needle.

 Floor 86

It has an office area of 200.500m2, an observatory in the floor 86 and its own zip code. With, aproximately, 21.000 employers, is the second office complex of America behind the Pentagon.

Thinking about the future, during the design, the team thought about the new needs, that's clear if we take a look into the oversized electric system.

At 1964 there were added the lights to illuminate the top of the Empire State by different colors.

 Top lights

After an energetic improvement and with $550 million of invest, the Empire State got, in september 2011, the LEED Gold certification for sustainable buildings.

The Petronas Towers

The Petronas Towers, in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, were the world tallest buildings between 1998 and 2003, since the construction of the Taipei 101, in Taiwan, finished. Actually they are the 7^th tallest building and the tallest twin towers in the world with 452 meters, 88 floors and 350.000m² of total area. They became a symbol of the city.

The towers are at the middle of the comercial and financial district, that's way they are compound by offices, and evoke the traditional islamic art, remembering the mussulman past of Malaysia. 

Are joined by a double bridge between the  floors 41 and 42. This bridge, called Skybridge, is the hightest point accessible for the visitors and a way to evacuate the towers by a fire too.

The base is the other point in which the towers ara connected with a 6 floors building with shops, a research center, the Dewan Filharmonik Orchestra theater, an art gallery and a library.

The structure is based by a core and concrete pillars. Each tower is compound by 16 cylindrical columns of 2,4 meters diameter which are joined by concrete beams.

The design of the Skybridge was difficult due to the necessity of solve the possible diference of movements between each tower. That was solved joining the bridge and the towers by three support points inverted v-shaped.

At the beginning, the towers weren't thought to become the tallest buildings in the world because the initial design was 16 meters lower than the Sears Tower in Chicago. This idea arrived during the construction. The solution was to don't increase the number of floors and add a little dome and a pinnacle integrated in the tower structure.

This solution suposed that the Sears Tower remained as the highest last floor but the Petronas Towers get the “tallest structure title” until the construction of the Taipei 101.


The 78 lifts contain a number of safety features. It is possible to evacuate people from a lift stuck between floors by manually driving one of the adjacent lifts next to it and opening a panel in the wall. It is then possible for people in the stuck lift to walk between lift cars. During an evacuation of the buildings, only the shuttle lift is allowed to be used, as there are only doors at levels G/1 and levels 41/42; therefore should there be a fire in the lower half of the building, this enclosed shaft would remain unaffected. Firefighter lifts are also provided in case of emergency.

Project: climbing wall

This project tries to convert an unused industrial building at a climbing wall.

The building was elected by the client and it has 35 meters lengh, 10 meters wide and 8 meters hight. This form is not the best to install this kind of business due to the building is too long but, after some thinking, I thought we found a good solution.

 

 Planes

Made with the initial construction, we find the offices at the first floor, obiously, these doesn't occupy all the area and are almost square (10mx10m). We will condition this floor to situate the dressers for men and women and we will use the roof of the fitness room we will construct in roof 0 as a terrace. This terrace will have views to the climbing zone.

 

 Terrace

At the floor 0, entering to the building, we will install the bar with a warehouse and a wc conditioned for disableds. If we keep walking throught the room, we will construct a fitness room (43m2) and, filling the same wall, a boulder with a cave. In front of this equipment, at the opposite wall and taken part of the back wall, we will raise the hight climbing walls, almost 30 meters to fill with equipment.

The building has 2 yards, one at main facade and the other crossing the back wall. Because of the rules, we can't construct anything at this yards so we will remain these to make some outdoor activities.

 General views