Renzo Piano. Central St. Giles

map: St. Giles High Street, London, England

:   :  : ::: THE FACT

the 6 different facades are made of  brightly coloured ceramic cladding, assembled out of thousands of individual pieces. This material will barely fade and is self-cleaning in the rain, so will look much the same as it does now for decades.

:   :  : ::: THE QUOTE

"I wanted to make a building that smiles"

Renzo Piano

 :   :  : ::: THE CRITIC

"Central St Giles plays a high-risk game — it could have been nauseating — but in the end I am heartily glad that it is not another work of nondescript glass. It really does bring a new kind of energy to the neighbourhood."

Rowan Moore for London Evening Standard. Read article

:   :  : ::: THE LINKS

Piano's official site
Central St Giles official site
@ BD by Amanda Birch
 @ World Architecture News
@ skyscrapernews.com

Renzo Piano. Central St. Giles

Kazuyo Sejima + Ryue Nishizawa / SANAA. The New Museum of Contemporary Art

map: 235 Bowery, New York, New York, USA

:   :  : ::: THE FACT

When searching a firm for the planning, the aim was to find young architects that hadn't built much in New York.

:   :  : ::: THE QUOTE

“We don’t want to hide things behind gyp board, we want to show what the building is made of and maximize the feeling of openness, but do it in a beautiful way inside the parameters of the toughness. This is why the building’s structure and guts are exposed— the ducts, the sprinklers, the fireproofing material—and the view from the street includes everything on the ground floor.”

Sejima and Nishizawa (SANAA)

 :   :  : ::: THE CRITIC

"The most exciting space in the building is only four feet wide and some fifty feet high, and is tucked behind the elevators: it contains a stairway connecting the third- and fourth-floor galleries. I have never been anywhere at once so eerily narrow and so gloriously monumental."

Paul Goldberger @ The Newyorker. Read full article

"the contrast between the instability of the forms and the uniformity of the aluminum gives it a strangely enigmatic glow, evoking both a fading past and a phantom future. As you get closer, the skin becomes tougher and more industrial, echoing what’s left of the neighborhood’s grittier history."

Nicolai Ouroussoff @ The New York Times. Read full article

:   :  : ::: THE LINKS

•  info & press release at New Museum official site
• @ World Architecture News
• @ dezeen
• SANAA official site

Kazuyo Sejima + Ryue Nishizawa / SANAA. The New Museum of Contemporary Art

Frank Gehry. Novartis AG Headquarters.

map: Fabrikastrasse 15, Basel, Switzerland

:   :  : ::: THE FACT

To reduce direct solar heat gain the glass facades are coated with ceramic frits and the glass roof panels contain photovoltaic cells that generate the energy necessary to power artificial lighting for the building.

:   :  : ::: THE LINKS

arcspace
Critic by Ouroussoff for NY Times

Frank Gehry. Novartis AG Headquarters.