Contemporary

The building that MAP Architects designed in Borneo dock, Amsterdam, resolves the envelopes in a very appropriate way at all scales.

It is a great pleasure to share this amazing example of good architecture with all Facad3s followers. There is no formal boasting, no latest generation materials, no added gadgets for energy production, no raw land or straw. The building manages to be attractive by being clever, and sustainable by being reasonable.

Pay attention to how this elegant wooden curtain wall resolves the front of the slab, ensuring the appropriate fire sectorisation and minimizing the need of transoms. A simple wooden rib closes from the inside the gap between the pavement and the glass.

We love those examples that shake the taxonomical tool that organizes this website. In this occasion, the case does not question the order at the taxonomy but thins the rotundity of the lines between areas.

B720 architects propose a stick wooden curtain wall where mullions and transoms reach the building site already assembled in a big format component. We cannot say it is a unitized system, it is just a frame composed by complex profiles.
 

Interesting and well resolved wooden stick curtain wall, mostly for the students of architecture consulting this website. In this curtain wall façade “everything happens”: we have a shading device anchored to the mullions; an exterior catwalk; a corner opening without mullion; a big offset from the concrete slab to the curtain wall starting; a watertight continuity situation with a brick parapet. Understand it all, you will learn a lot!!

A highly prefabricated system reproducing the image of a traditional brick work. (Like in case Light prefabricated “brick” work).

The challenge is erecting a new building in an old neighbourhood being respectful with the image and material character of the surrounding buildings.

The brick work wall builds a massive plinth that sits the building in the place.

From this plinth emerge a series of isolated volumes defined by a clearly different material character.

The construction with large-format prefabricated panels contrasts with the craftsmanship that accompanies the execution of the brick work wall.

Technique, system and image. Example of great coherence.

Related cases:

Elegant and well-resolved contemporary conventional façade solution where the main sheet, the exposed brick masonry wall, passes in front of the slab fronts.

Very astutely, the architects decide to support this wall over the window openings, thus avoiding having parts of the wall supported on two different levels, the slab and the lintel.

The solution is simple, clean and coherent.

Related cases:

An unusual solution in Mediterranean latitudes, to be considered at a time of a wood boom.

Like cross laminated timber panels, this system enables the construction of wooden wall structures. Some of these walls constitute the main facade layer.

An important difference between CLT panels and this system is in the format of the assembled elements. Cross laminated timber beams are smaller than panels and therefore lighter; they can easily be moved and hoisted without a crane.

Often throughout history, new construction systems or techniques have tried to reproduce the image of traditional architecture. In this case, neither the technique nor the final image are dislikeable but their combination could be. The brick image is related with mass, thickness, weight; just the opposite the technique being used provides.

The same happened in the 18th and 19th centuries with the mathematical tile*! This old technique permitted erecting light-weight enclosures looking like brick walls.