Calvin Harris - Feel So Close

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Just a Hobby pt.5

Dreaming to Fly

Twister

sobre exposicion

sobre exposicion

Traffic City

Musical City

The Welcoming

The End

The End

Highway Light

Carbon

Alien

Glasses

Careless Executive

Alien

Helix Hotel

New York design firm Leeser Architecture, have won a competition to design a hotel in the Zayed Bay district of Abu Dhabi, UAE.

Called the Helix for its spiraling floors, the hotel is located in the bay and sits partially over the water.

The building includes a glass-bottomed swimming pool on the roof, visible eight floors below, and a running track on the fifth floor.

It will be part of a new waterfront development in Abu Dhabi, adjacent to the Sheik Zayed Bridge by Zaha Hadid Architects that is currently under construction.

Here’s some more information from Leeser Architecture:

Iconic design and state of the art technology create dynamic mini-city in the UAE

Leeser Architecture, an internationally recognized design firm, has won an invited competition for a five-star luxury hotel in the Zayed Bay in Abu Dhabi, UAE. Called the Helix Hotel for its staggered floor plates, it rests in the bay, partially floating in the water and adjacent to the serpentine Sheik Zayed Bridge currently under construction by designer Zaha Hadid. With the Helix, Leeser Architecture has devised a new way to consider hotel culture in the Emirates, highlighting elements that are usually unseen, and playfully enlivening those parts that traditionally remain static and mundane.

LEESER ARCHITECTURE WINS DESIGN COMPETITION FOR FIVE-STAR HOTEL IN ZAYED BAY, ABU DHABI

The commission was the result of an invited competition held by Al Qudra Real Estate in partnership with QP International, both local Abu Dhabi holdings groups with projects featured across the UAE. Zayed Bay will be a comprehensive development built along a new road, and the site will include office buildings as well as condominiums and retail along the water. The Helix is the centerpiece of this new development.

With 208 guest rooms and suites arranged around a helical floor, the hotel immediately dispenses with the idea that visitors must engage in the stale paradigms of rigid hallways and atria that characterize a typical hotel stay. The floor constantly shifts in width and pitch as it rises to the top floor, keeping public spaces always in flux. No two rooms positioned across from each other have exact views to the other side, already pulling the visitor out of the pedestrian and into the hotel’s uniquely urban world. As the helix winds upward, programmatic elements change from lounges and restaurants on the bay, to meeting rooms and conference facilities, to lounges and cafes, to the luxury indoor-outdoor health spa on the fifth floor, to, finally, the upper pool deck on the roof. The running track on the fifth floor represents the only moment when the ramping ceases and a flat surface prevails – a sleight of hand on the architect’s part, and an unexpected luxury that fit vacationers can enjoy in the cooler months.

Conceptually, the Helix Hotel participates in a critical dialogue between opulence and urbanness, between the variety of services offered by a small city and the demands of a five-star hotel guest. The floor suggests the curves a winding street would take through a bustling town, and many programmatic elements are open to views from across the central void. Though the void seems to offer unmitigated visibility, there are enclaves for private meetings and guest privacy. It is designed so that one activity feeds into the next rather than affecting sharp separations between each activity. In this way it develops a feeling of being free to whimsically experience all aspects of the hotel without having to decide on an agenda in advance.

On the luxury side of vacation culture, there are playful elements that make the hotel a designer destination in an iconic setting. From the outset, it is as much a showplace for the abundance of opulent life as it is a fully incorporated urban experience. For example, the building has a functional reverse fountain, which drops water from the ceiling down through the void to the lower lobby. At the entry, valets drive clients’ cars into the car park, which, rather than being predictably above ground or underneath the hotel, is situated instead under the bay. Cars are literally driven into the water.

As guests make their way up to their suites, remarkable views out onto the Zayed Bay become even more dramatic on the upper floors. At the top of the Helix, the rooftop pool deck features a full sized swimming pool with a glass bottom, with the water and swimmers visible from eight floors below at ground level. In the restaurant below the lobby, the bay’s waves are so near to the floor plate that they lap up onto the edge of the restaurant inside of the glass curtain wall. The wall retracts, revealing a sweeping breeze.

While focusing on unique design, Leeser Architecture is also committed to sound sustainability practices and worked with consultant Atelier Ten to determine the best possible conditions and materials for heat and energy conservation. The indoor waterfall allows for the accumulation of heat inside the hotel to be minimal by filtering cool water back up into the system as it falls through the void. In the sub-lobby, a dynamic glass wall is built from the base of the second floor down into the water. The wall acts as a curtain would, opening when the weather is cool enough and closing when it is too hot for exposure to the desert air. Portions of the outside surface are clad in panels made of a new material called GROW, which has both photovoltaic and wind harnessing capabilities.

Consultants on the project include ARUP (structural and mechanical design) and Atelier 10 (environmental and green design).

Gravity Defying Homes From Around the World

Ingenious engineering and the will of slightly crazy homeowners, brings architecture to new heights.

The expression "living on the edge" is about to take on a whole new meaning. Homes dangling from trees, balancing on sticks, hanging upside down, rotating around a spit, are just some of the residential wonders in our roundup.

Gangster House (Archangelsk, Russia)

Though incomplete, the “Gangster House” is believed to be the world's tallest wooden house, soaring thirteen floors to reach 144 feet (about half the size of London’s Big Ben). The homeowner or gangster, Nikolai Sutyagin, had all intentions of finishing the construction but his dream went on hold when he got locked up behind bars for his third jail sentence. Now out of jail and out of money, the ex-convict lives at the bottom of this precarious tower of wood

Credit: Courtesy of the Telegraph

Free Spirit Houses (British Columbia, Canada)

These wooden spheres can be hung from any solid surface (tree, cliff, bridge, etc.) and are accessed by a spiral stairway or a short suspension bridge. A web of rope grasps onto a strong point, essentially replacing the foundation of a conventional building. You can anchor points on the top and bottom to prevent swinging or just let it loose and enjoy the ride.

Photographer: Tom Chudleigh

Upside-Down House (Syzmbark, Poland)

This upside down design seems totally nonsensical–but that is exactly the message the Polish philanthropist and designer, Daniel Czapiewski, was trying to send. The unstable and backward construction was built as a social commentary on Poland’s former Communist era. The monument is worth a trip be it for a lesson in history or balance.

Credit:Freshome.com

Cactus House (Rotterdam, Netherlands)

Cool-looking would be a good enough reason for us, but this housing design was created to maximize each apartment’s outdoor space and indoor sunlight. The splaying stack of slabs creates big terraces for gardening and the irregular shape allows sun to enter from multiple angles.

Credit: ucxarchitects

Floating Castle (Ukraine)

Supported by a single cantilever, this mysterious levitating farm house belongs in a sci-fi flick. It’s claimed to be an old bunker for the overload of mineral fertilizers but we’re sure there’s a better back story . . . alien architects probably had a hand in it.

Credit: Microscopiq.com

Mushroom House (Cincinnati, Ohio)

So disparate in materials and shapes this hodgepodge house looks like its been welded and glued together. But this is no hobo-construction, it was designed by the professor of architecture and interior design at the University of Cincinnati, Terry Brown, and was recently on the market for an estimated $400K.

Credit: jeremystump.com

Cube House (Rotterdam, Netherlands)

Living in a tilted house is much easier than it looks—just ask the people living in these the Kijk-Kubus homes. Architect Piet Blom tipped a conventional house forty-five degrees and rested it upon a hexagon-shaped pole so that three sides face down and the other three face the sky. Each of the cube houses accommodates three floors: a living space including a kitchen, study and bathroom, the middle floor houses bedrooms and the top is the pyramid room that can act like an attic or viewing deck. These houses are quite expensive, but you can satisfy your curiosity by visiting the museum show house.

Credit: Courtesy of kubuswoning.nl

Extreme Tree House (Irian Jana, Indonesia)

The Korowai and Kombai clans carved out clearings of the remote part of the low-land forest to make way for these extreme tree houses. Unlike the typical tree houses that are nestled in branches, these dwellings are perched on the tip tops of the treesfully exposed to the elements. But we aren’t sure what’s scarier a strong gust of wind or the ladder they use to get up there.

Photographer: George Steinman

Wozoco Apartments (Amsterdam-Osdorp, Holland)

A zoning law and blueprint flub were the inspiration for this apartment complex. Dutch housing regulations require apartment construction to provide a certain amount of daylight to their tenants–but MVRDV architects forgot to plan for that. Their solution? To hang thirteen of the 100 units off the north facade of the block. The ingenious design saves ground floor space and allows enough sunlight to enter the east or west facade.

Photographer: Thijs Wolzak

Heliotrope Rotating House (Freiburg, Germany)

Green to the extreme, Architect Rolf Disch built a solar powered home that rotates towards the warm sun in the winter and rotates back toward its well-insulated rear in the summer. A house that spins in circles doesn’t sound too stable to us, but for the environment it is worth the risk.

Photographer: Winfried Rothermel

Berman House (Joadja, Australia)

Surrounded by lush vegetation and wild animals of the outback, this striking split-level cliff house hangs over a deep river cut-canyon. We don’t know what makes this house more thrilling—the looking down from the plank-like living room or all those wild animals.

Credit: Collins Design

Habitat 67 (Montreal, Canada)

Apartments connect and stack like Lego blocks in Montreal's Habitat 67. Without a traditional vertical construction, the apartments have the open space that most urban residences lack, including a separate patio for each apartment.

Photographer: Timothy Hursley

Single Hausz (Anywhere)

Inspired by a city billboard, this rendering of the pole-supported Single Hausz only needs a few feet of land to hold a home. And it can be installed in a variety of ground conditions so it can relocate to wherever your heart desires.

Credit: www.frontarchitects.pl

Pod House (New Rochelle, New York)

We assumed this oddball home was UFO-inspired, but it turns out the weed Queen Anne’s lace is where it got it's roots. Its thin stems support pods with interconnecting walkways.

Photographer: Chris Marcera

Rozak House (Darwin, Australia)

It’s pretty gutsy to build a stilt-house in cyclone country, but these residents came prepared. Even if Mother Nature knocked their house off the grid, their solar power panels and rainwater collection systems would keep them self-sufficient. Take that, cyclone!

Credit: Corrugated Iron—Building on the Frontier