The Broadcasting Place is a mixed-use development near the center of the city of Leeds. Conceived as a partnership between public and private, for the group Downing and Leeds Metropolitan University, which delivers approximately 10,200 m2 of new offices and teaching spaces along with 240 student residences in an iconic building of 23 floors. A new Baptist Church completes the package at its northern end.

The buildings are designed as solid forms of a landscape that is drawn on the rich heritage of the Yorkshire Geological and sculpture. The lower buildings reach a height of three contiguous block of flats, adjacent to the buildings of five floors. Tallest buildings ranging from 8 floors to six floors before reaching the highest point in complex with 23 floors. The strong roof surface was reflected in the mass of buildings that have a triangular shaped corners and projections sculptures. Through these solid forms, the windows were designed as the flow of water cascading over a rock formation. This design seeks to be reinforced by the choice of cor-ten steel as a solid material, sculptural and temporal, built as a front generated by a display of rain.

The development overcomes the challenges of a complicated field with a master plan that considers a highway in the city throughout the land while allowing for future growth. This location is key in Leeds and a major new public space linking urban areas to form a significant landscape element.

A key success of the complex is the innovative approach for the design of each lift. We develop our own software to generate a rigorous computational analysis of each section of the building facades. The result is a varied appearance for all, optimizing daylight and reduces solar penetration.

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The North Side Copse House is a country house in West Sussex, near London and was designed by the Ecologic firm. Since its inception, the project has been driven by the idea that a design of exceptional value may become a significant asset to the area where you are. The project therefore, has developed its entirety, from concept to manufacturing and technology systems and development of design solutions.

The symbiotic relationship with the site has been explored in the plane of the facade and structural design of the house. Passive design strategies have been applied to give the house a good potential for natural ventilation and lighting, solar access, and use of thermal mass and insulation. As a result, each lift has acquired a different setting, where the qualities of the façade varies in response to specific local stimuli.

The architectural beauty design of the results thus becomes a direct reflection of their ecological value.

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The initial idea of this project is to integrate housing in the natural environment in the residential area that is, directing the superb views of lakes and tree extensions that extend the areas of urbanization.

The project evolves linked to these conditions with a resounding two-volume set, rectangular, forming a very simple scheme. In this way, solve the building with clean finishes, select materials and unique qualities.

The porches and pergolas, volumetric elements such as housing give personality to the facade. The roof disappears as such became a flat roof as an expression of the evolution of the creative process. The purity of form moves to the construction schedule, materials and environment by promoting the connection between the building and the context in which it is located.

The house, of 800m2 of surface, developed in height. The main access to adapting to an average gradient field.

Inside rooms are located as follows: entrance hall, lounge, dining room, kitchen, office, pantry, a guest cloakroom, and seven bedrooms (with their own bathrooms, two dressing rooms and a terrace.

We opted for a decoration in copper and brown tones that bring elegance and sobriety to stay more social, like the living room or dining room. In addition, original designed white lines running through the living room by providing a modern and sophisticated air to the area.

In the rear, through large windows, is living that opens onto the garden, swimming pool and the natural landscape that urbanization offers.

It‘s surrounded by an attractive landscape interventions carried composed lakes, birds and a very large tree.

The Outside of footpaths and the central garden area are incorporating indigenous vegetation in nature, resistant to the climate of the area. The fencing of the plot and planted trees and shrubs along the same, define perfectly the transition from private ownership and community.

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For its playful form and character, the Zenith music room contributes a large variety theater that created since the building built Zenith in Paris in 1984. The new Zenith building is an important project for the exhibition area in Strasbourg. This will be the new attraction that will give new impetus to the further development of city infrastructure.

The design concept based on a modular and well-balanced organization of the different elements: good views for all spectators, the best acoustics and an optimized cost management and addressed during the design phase of the design. The Zenith hall offers the ideal setting for guests and artists, performers. The building is to be understood as a unique sculpture, unified and independent. The amount of layers and the rotation of the ellipsoid metal structure of the facade, the design receive a very dynamic character. This confirmed by the translucent textile membrane, which covers the steel frame and creates magnificent light effects. These orange membranes also cover the volume of the music hall itself. This is the heart of the building: a totally enclosed and protected, creating a special atmosphere of the theater.

Projections on the outer skin create playful effects and convert the facade into a huge billboard in communicating with passers-by for upcoming events. The inner experience transmitted to the outside through the transparent skin: the building becomes a “light sculpture.”

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This may not be your idea of a house, but it is bold and fun, and it has certainly attracted the attention of the media. The 8500 square meters Casa Son Vida is cooperation between three power houses: Luxury Estates Cosmopolitan residential developer, designer and founder eclectic Dutch and Nice, Marcel Wanders, and award-winning Los Angeles based architecture Switzerland and Hong Kong.

Casa Son Vida is located in the Balearic Islands off Spain, on the island of Majorca, where humans have lived since 6000-4000 BC and, more recently, the where clause, the range of tourism assets in overcrowded each time, but Casa Son Vida Avoid Tourist kitsch and goals much higher. That is exclusive community in Son Vida, just 15 minutes from the capital Palma.

His Casa Vida is actually a renovation of a 1960s villa in the Mediterranean, but it has been transformed into a fantastic, sprawling luxury home, designed to attract young, discerning and fat, who are confident and design-savvy enough to know what they watch.

The Handiwork and Marcel Wanders is evident everywhere in the house that looks a bit like an undisciplined film together with its dinosaur bones outside staircase, and various bits and pieces that remind you of Tomorrowland, Mickey Mouse, Finding Nemo and course, Alice in Wonderland.

With its retro synthesis House happily with his clashes greenery, but inside, in serenity its white dominance is much less startling, although fun and unexpected details of the whole world lies in the space. There is absolutely nothing ordinary in this house. Everything is done in every aspect Considered one million times. It is an excellent example Considered or chaos.

This is the first of six units IT plan for Platinum Estates development, by just less than a year Cosmopolitan Estates. Plans for the remaining houses eclectic Reveal a series of large homes, radically differentiated from each other. Today’s Casa Vida is not for sale but the other five are. Dream on. Tuija Seipell

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A stream runs through the center of Seoul, dividing the city into North and South, but for three decades it was totally buried beneath a busy downtown highway. In 2003, as part of a vast urban renewal project, the highway was removed and the stream was recovered and turned into a beautiful 5.8 km urban park. Demolishing roads in favor of urban parks is is a development project we can really get behind.

The Cheonggyecheon stream was formed during the Joseon Dynasty in order to provide drainage for the city. It lasted for hundreds of years until the 1940s, when the city became so populated that a shanty town popped up around the stream and began polluting the area. The stream was gradually covered over with concrete, and by 1976 a 5.6 km elevated highway was built on top of it.

Considered an example of ‘successful industrialization and modernization’, the highway remained there until 2003, when city planners tore it down to revitalize the area and help Seoul remake itself as a modern environmentally friendly city. The Cheonggyecheon Restoration Project took two years and cost around $281 million, but it has created a thriving stretch of green public space in the middle of the city.

What was once a dividing line between the north and south parts of the city has been recreated as an urban park that bridges the gap and brings people together. Over 75% of the material torn down from the old highway was reused to construct the park and rehabilitate the stream. Now fish, bird and insects have made their way back into the urban river, and the area surrounding the park is about 3.6 deg C cooler than other parts of the city.

In addition to the restoration project, Seoul has also implemented transportation planning, rerouting traffic through other corridors and adding more public transportation. As a result there has been a decrease in the number of vehicles entering the city and bus and subway use has increased. Even though the city took away one of the major thoroughfares, they were able to redirect and decrease traffic through efficient planning and expanded public transportation. Sounds like an amazing renewal project with many, many benefits.

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Mayor Byron Brown today unveiled an effort to overhaul Buffalo’s antiquated zoning code, an initiative that may prove particularly relevant to future development efforts in the Hydraulics. Brian Reilly, the Mayor’s Commissioner of Economic Development, announced the City’s plans in an editorial in today’s Buffalo News.

Buffalo’s zoning ordinance was last updated in 1951, the year Harry Truman declared an official end to the wars with Japan and Germany, Judie Garland was singing in concerts at New York’s Palace Theatre, the UNIVAC 1 was first manufactured by Remington Rand, and the television show I Love Lucy debuted on CBS. The year Buffalo’s zoning code was written is one in which the American cultural ethos favored a future destined for cars, highways, and suburban expansion, and where the future no longer had room for the tightly-knit, walkable character of traditional neighborhoods.

Take Seneca Street (above), as an example. It’s a place that historically has housed a mix of many uses – theaters, photography studios, canvas manufacturers, diners, carriage factories, residential apartments, print shops, saloons, candy stores… you name it. It’s also a street whose building forms traditionally followed a few simple rules of design: buildings front the sidewalk, ground floors are permeable, parking is placed at the sides, the rear, or on the street. Instead of reinforcing historic streetscapes, the 1951 zoning code, if implemented as written, essentially calls for the following physical vision for Seneca Street:

Most of the Hydraulics is governed by a blanket M1 (Light Manufacturing) zoning category, which, as it happens, addresses specific permitted uses such as coal trestles, livery stables, and “carnival, circus or similar transient amusement enterprises.” The regulations are clearly a throwback to a bygone era. Meanwhile, the M1 designation does not sufficiently address important issues of urban design that are critical in strengthening the walkability and street life of a neighborhood, or of struggling, traditionally mixed-use districts like Seneca Street.
If development were to follow the existing zoning code accurately, Seneca Street over time would adopt the appearance of a low-value, suburban industrial park with austere buildings set back behind deep parking lots (like the example above), an outcome that is completely permissible and encouraged under M1. Existing development trajectories in the neighborhood, however, anticipate a better outcome. The Hydraulics, and much of Buffalo, is slated for planned development that aims to resurrect walkable neighborhoods, but is not yet assisted by a code that strengthens walkability. Mayor Brown is out to change that.

Instead of the uninspired future the 1951 zoning code currently calls for in the Hydraulics, imagine something like the vision crafted for a similar industrial district in Peoria, Illinois, following a new form-based code adopted in the neighborhood:

The mayor is now taking the extraordinary step of setting Buffalo on a path to 21st century urban development that embraces mixed uses, walkability, and quality urban design. A simple, intuitive form-based code, the mayor’s economic development commissioner now argues, would demystify land use regulation, thereby helping attract new investment and empowering the community to codify an achievable vision for future development. It’s good news for the Hydraulics, and it’s good news for all of Buffalo.

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Plastic, suburban houses create the foreground for a massive factory complex. The houses seem to say: “See, aren’t you fooled? This isn’t the old Buffalo. This is just like suburbia. Don’t look at those smokestacks or the man behind the curtain!” The same scene can be eyed in neighborhoods all over Buffalo where dense, immigrant enclaves have given way to grassy fields and the occasional surviving house – or, as in this case, to new houses that seem to reflect a more rural or suburban character, opposite that of the historical city. The houses depicted here are fine houses, very well maintained by caring owners, but say much about a trajectory of urban planning that favors suburbanization of the city.

Buffalo is a hearty town, full of survivors, but there also seems to be an immense insecurity in local culture about how the city is perceived by the world. The above scene appears to mask over post-industrial realities, revealing an identity crisis in a city still hurting from the collapse of steel and grain. It indicates a city that is eager to become something it has never been. It also belies an increasing awareness of the economic and cultural value of the city’s traditional neighborhoods and industrial landscapes.

As industrial heritage assets only now begin to fuel economic development and heritage tourism in the city, the painfall fallout of the city’s deindustrialization appears to be wearing off. Artists, developers, apartment-seekers, office space hunters, all seem to celebrate this industrial legacy now. The suburban lifestyle is losing popularity, and in-town living is in vogue like never before… but as older building stock continues to be demolished and replaced with “vinyl victorians” in down-on-their-luck neighborhoods all over the city, one wonders when it will finally be okay for Buffalo to be itself again.

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Check it out! The Buffalo News has the scoop:
Businessman boosts renewal program: Larkin project proves it works, Zemsky says.

By Jerry Zremski
WASHINGTON – Buffalo businessman Howard Zemsky told a House subcommittee Wednesday that the building his company renovated just east of downtown is proof that the federal Renewal Communities program is working.

“Today our Larkin at Exchange building is home to approximately 2,000 employees working for over 30 companies and organizations,” Zemsky, managing partner of Larkin Development, told the House Ways and Means subcommittee on select revenue measures. “The federal government’s investment, coupled with our own private investment, has resulted in a re-emerging and reinvigorated neighborhood, which was the goal of the renewal community program,” he added.

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