-
Student Housing
How do you house students at a new university? This was the dilemma that faced architects Te Kiefte Architecten when asked to provide temporary student accommodation for a new university that was founded at The Hague in the Netherlands. Eventually the university will build permanent accommodation but for the present it needed studio rooms for 122 students – plus some common facilities – with a planned lifespan of five years.
Architect Te Kiefte Architecten Borne Location The Hague - The Netherlands Company involved Grupo Andalucia Website http://www.grupoandalucia.org -
Crown Metropol Hotel
Dark aluminium fins on the facade of the Crown Metropol Hotel in Melbourne, Australia play a vital but subtle role in giving a sense of excitement to a building that has to fit in a complex environment and also help define that environment. The sinuous 28-storey hotel is one of three on the city’s relatively new Crown Entertainment Complex. Sitting to one side of the complex, and linking to the entertainment facility and also to a congress centre, on one side it overlooks a relatively rundown area of small industry, ripe for regeneration.
Architect Bates Smart Location Melbourne - Australia Company involved 3A Composites (ALUCOBOND®) Website www.alucobond.com -
Two Housing Blocks
The housing designed by Dubosc & Associes in Montargis, France, is certainly uncompromising. Clad entirely in metal, it eschews any of the conventional domestic touches but it does so in a manner that is refreshing and bright. The only punctuation to the neutral metallic colour comes from the front doors in a cheerful red, with large painted numbers, and sensibly generous vision panels. There is no chance here of forgetting where you live, and the sloping external staircases are both inviting and, argues Eric Dubosc, important places of social interaction. ‘People never talk on internal staircases,’ he says. ‘Here they are out of doors, so they talk and their children play together.’
Architect Dubosc & Associes Location Montargis - France