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

Ferrari World

Accompanying the Yas Marina circut in Abu Dhabi, there is the Ferrari World, the bigger closed amusement park of the world with a budget of €700 millions.

Ferrari world was designed by Benoy Architects and builded in less than three years. With it, Ferrari became the first motorsport team with a whole amusement park dedicated to himself.

This park is situated at the Yas Island which occupies a total land area of 2,500 ha (25 km²) and have a total area of 200.000m2.

Ferrari World at Yas Island

All the park is covered by a roof inspirated by the classical double curve of the Ferrari and is similar to a three-pointed star of 2.200m of circumference with 700m of lenght and 45 meters hight. It has the biggest Ferrari emblem on top (65x48m). At the middle of the park, the roof falls down and bacomes a giant window which brings a lot of natural light inside.

 The roof and the facades

The roof is formed by hight-insulating steel and its facades were made with 29.000m2 of special glass designed tu reduce the termic loads and the glare.

Ferrari world has the largest spatial framework structure in the world with 172.000 pieces, 43.100 nodes and 12.370 tones of steel.

 The inside

The amusements:

- Bell'Italia: exhibition
- Carousel: Ferrari version of the classic carousel
- Cinema Maranello: Theater
- Driving with champions: 3D interactive show
- Fiorano GT challenge: roller coaster
- Formula Rossa: roller coaster
- Galleria Ferrari: exhibition
- G-Force: 62 meters tower
- Junior Grand Prix: amusement
- Junior GT: driving school
- Junior Training camp: playing area
- Made in Maranello: virtual visit at Ferrari factory
- Paddock: recreation of the Scuderia
- The pit wall: theater
- Racing legends: exhibition
- Scuderia legend: simulator
- Speed of magic: amusement
- V12: aquatic amusement
- Viaggio in Italia: recreation of aerial travel over Italia 

 Inaugural travel of Formula Rossa with Fernando Alonso and Felipe Massa

  

Aeropuerto Internacional de Pekin

 

A 32 km al noreste de Pekin encontramos el aeropuerto internacional o Beijin Capital International Airport (BCIA).

En 2009 este aeropuerto se convirtió en el aeropuerto con más tráfico de pasajeros y de movimientos en total de Asía. Actualmente, de este aeropuerto salen vuelos hacía 120 destinaciones.

Para absorber toda esta crecida en su volumen de trabajo, en 2008 y coincidiendo con la celebración de los juegos olímpicos, concluyó la construcción de la enorme terminal 3. Es la segunda terminal más grande del mundo después de la de Dubai y la sexta superficie construida más grande del planeta.

Visión cenital de la Terminal 3

Fue diseñada por un consorcio de NACO, Foster and Partners y ARUP.

La construcción de la terminal 3 se inició en marzo de 2004 y, dividiéndola en 2 etapas, terminó en marzo de 2008 quedando totalmente operativa y transformándose en la mayor terminal de aeropuerto construido en una sola fase con 986.000m2.

La T3 tiene 300.000m2 de centro de transporte con 7000 plazas de parking, lineas de bus, taxis y vehículos privados y una estación de ferrocarril ligero. Las dimensiones de la T3 hacen que la comunicación entre esta y las terminales 1 y 2 tenga que hacerse mediante autobuses lanzadera que salen cada 10 minutos. Los movimientos entre las terminales 1 y 2 se cubren con cintas transportadoras.

Interior de la Terminal 3

El techo de la T3 es de color rojo, el color de la buena suerte para los chinos y quiere imitar la piel de un dragón con una serie de claraboyas que ayudan a simular las escamas de esta. Este techo debía terminar con un voladizo de 65m por encima de la zona de entrada a la terminal, pero este debió de ser reducido en proyecto a unos 35 metro ya que la simulación mostraba que provocaba que la entrada a la terminal se quedara sin luz natural. 

 Techo de "piel de dragón"

Voladizo de 35 metros

Está totalmente preparada para operar con el nuevo y enorme Airbus A380 con fingers de 2 plantas para poder cargar y descargar sin problemas este imponente avión.

La construcción de la terminal 3 suponía un incremento exponencial de los pasajeros que llegaban y dejaban Pekin. Para hacer frente a todo esto, no bastaba con la red de infraestructuras de tráfico terrestre que existía hasta ese momento. Por lo tanto, la T3 conllevó la construcción de una nueva red de carreteras y de lineas de tren que llegaban directamente hasta ella.

Nuevas infraestructuras terrestres.