Beethoven Hall in Bonn

A central priority in Zaha Hadid Architect’s urban design concept for a new Beethoven Festival Hall is linking the city of Bonn to the Rhine River promenade and leveraging that idea’s potential to enrich public life on the river’s edge.

Learning from the missed opportunities during the planning of the existing building in the 1950’s, Zaha Hadid Architect’ proposal not only incorporates a high degree of porosity in its site plan, but intensifies the connection by introducing a transparent “Rhine Foyer” into the building mass; a dramatic atrium that stretches from the City to the Rhine. With two main façades, the building presents itself in an open and inviting manner to the River and the City, allowing for deep visual links through its crystalline mass. The light Rhine Foyer will make audiences and performers feel comfortable and relaxed but simultaneously excited by the anticipation of a unique experience.

Site circulation can take place uninterrupted through various levels inside and around the building. Artificial landscape formations lead from inside the building to terraced outdoor areas, interweaving the elevated foyer levels with surrounding exterior plateaus. The stepped topography on the Rhine invites Bonn residents and visitors to informally enjoy outdoor performances. The main public route is a large diagonal passage, an ‘erosion’, running from the city through the Rhine Foyer and down a large exterior staircase to the river promenade. The promenade is sliced into curvilinear seating that gently step down to the Rhine, facing a seasonal floating performance area on the water’s edge. Illumination from within the foyer, embedded in the ground, and floating in the water will change the character of the site and building during evening performances.

Ecofriendly Residences in Corniche Bay, Mauritius

 Foster and Partners in collaboration with d’Unienville and Associates Architects have designed a discreet and environmentally friendly masterplan for a series of residences in Corniche Bay, Mauritius. The main concept was to create a contemporary architecture that blends harmoniously with the lush landscape. Fingers of tropical vegetation are inserted into the buildings that respond to the contours of the landscape and recedes into the green totality.

The buildings are equipped with green technologies such as water collectors and solar panels. All the building materials are indigenous and mostly 100% recyclable.

An interesting feature of the project is the undulating roof that allows for cross ventilation and few vertical supports.

Shell-like Café in Littlehampton / Heatherwick Studio

 Heatherwick Studio was commissioned to design a café building to replace a seafront kiosk in Littlehampton on England’s south coast. With the post-war rise in cheap package holidays having deprived the English seaside town of investment and downgraded many of them to cheap clichés, the studio’s client saw an opportunity to change this. Mother and daughter team Jane Wood and Sophie Murray, both residents of Littlehampton, were keen to do something different that might begin to re-establish the importance of the English seaside town.

The studio saw the challenge as responding to the constraints of the narrow site by producing a long, thin building without flat, two-dimensional façades. The envelope is sliced diagonally into strips which wrap up and over the building, creating a layered protective shell, open to the seafront. The elevation looking onto the sea is fully glazed, protected at night by roller shutters concealed within the building’s geometry, the 30 centimetre width of the ribbons being the dimension of a shutter mechanism.

In contrast to the conventional white-washed seaside aesthetic, the building is raw and weathered, with the structural steel shell protected by a coating that permits rust-like patination to develop without affecting structural performance. A kiosk and cafeteria by day and a restaurant in the evening, the East Beach Cafe seats sixty.

East Beach Café won numerous awards including a prestigious RIBA National Award.