Graduate architect Ziad El Khoury, who studied at the Université Saint-Esprit de Kaslik, Lebanon, has sent us these images of his final student project called Icon of Beirut.

The angular tower is composed of two main volumes and the lower floors extend across the site.

It is a multifunctional public building, which contains internal green spaces. According to the designer, “it attempts to focus on the real identity of Beirut.”

Below is some text from Ziad El Khoury:

–

Ziad El Khoury
My Final Project: Beirut Icon

Currently, towers are being created to mark the power of a firm or the wealth of a company or a man, and not to signal an urban event or the city in its real terms.

The contemporary tower dominates the city, but does not reflect its identity or the identity of its citizens.

This is the reason I am proposing the Icon of Beirut, which attempts to focus on the real identity of Beirut: cultural, commercial, religious, ecological and social.

This project is not a monolithic mass, but the transposition of the urban model of Beirut into a vertical scheme. This means the squares, roads, gardens etc. are transposed in a way which assures a horizontal and vertical continuity throughout the tower, and assures a relationship between open and closed, and public and private spaces.

The project concentrates the essentials of the public life of the citizens of Beirut, thus creating a multifunctional complex in its urban environment.

Above: ground floor

Above: fifth floor

Danish architects Bjarke Ingels Group have designed the masterplan for a carbon-neutral resort and residential development on Zira Island in the Caspian Sea.

Located within the bay of Azerbaijan’s capital city Baku, the 1,000,000 square metre masterplan will include seven residential developments, which the architect claim are based on the shapes of famous mountains in Azerbaijan.

The island will make use of solar heat panels, photovoltaic cells, waste water and rainwater collection, and an offshore wind farm.

According to BIG, the development aims to be “entirely independent of external resources”.

The project will be part of an exhibition called Yes is More, which opens on 20 February at the Danish Architecture Centre in Copenhagen.

See a movie about the master plan on the architects’ website.

Here’s some more information from BIG:

–

Zira Island Master Plan

Azerbaijan seeks Danish expertise in proposing Central Asia’s first Carbon Neutral Master Plan.

Zira Zero Island is a 1.000.000 m2 master plan for a carbon neutral resort and residential development on Zira Island located along the Caspian Sea. As a young post-soviet democracy, Azerbaijan is rediscovering its national identity by imagining Zira Island as an architectural landscape based upon the country’s dramatic natural setting.

Located within the crescent-shaped bay of the capital city Baku, Zira Island includes the Seven Peaks of Azerbaijan which is envisioned by its designers BIG Architects and the engineers Ramboll to be a sustainable model for urban development, and an iconographic skyline recognizable from the city’s coastline.

Bjarke Ingels, Founding Partner of BIG: “What we propose for Zira Zero Island is an architectural landscape based on the natural landscape of Azerbaijan. This new architecture not only recreates the iconic silhouettes of the seven peaks, but more importantly creates an autonomous ecosystem where the flow of air, water, heat and energy are channeled in almost natural ways. A mountain creates biotopes and eco-niches, it channels water and stores heat, it provides viewpoints and valleys, access and shelter. The Seven Peaks of Azerbaijan are not only metaphors, but actual living models of the mountainous ecosystems of Azerbaijan.”

Each of the Seven Peaks house a residential development derived from the geometry of a famous mountain in Azerbaijan. Individually each mountain becomes a principle for mixing private and public functions.

Together the mountains form an organic skyline merging with the natural topography of the island. A dense vibrant urban community connected to a series of private resort villages by a central public valley and surrounding beaches. A continuous public trekking path connects the mountains and invites visitors to scale the top of all seven peaks. In addition to the Seven Peaks the Master Plan also includes 300 private villas that take advantage of their setting with panoramic views out over the Caspian Sea.

Lars Ostenfeld Riemann, Ramboll’s Group Director, Buildings & Design: “Zira Island will be an important step into the future of urban development in Caucasus and Central Asia. By help of the wind, the sun and the waste the Island will produce the same amount of energy as it consumes. In a society literately built on oil this will serve as a showcase for a new way of thinking sustainable planning.

Following other ambitious eco-city projects like Dongtan in China and Masdar in Abu Dhabi this project will cause the carbon emissions of people living there to decline over the next decade. From an engineering point of view we are just as thrilled by the challenge of letting the design of the buildings reflect the shape of the mountains of Azerbaijan.”

ZERO ISLAND

The vision of Zira Island is to create a new development that is entirely independent of external resources – in other words a self contained island. By combining the best of the traditional Azerbaijani building tradition with the newest technology, Zira Island will provide excellent living spaces for people, with a minimum usage of resources. It will be a showcase to the world combining high-end living with low end resource usage.

SUN
The buildings of the island are heated and cooled by heat pumps connecting to the surrounding Caspian Sea. Solar heat panels integrated in the architecture create a steady supply of hot water, while photovoltaics on strategically located facades and roof tops power daytime functions as swimming pools and aqua parks.

WATER
Waste water and storm water is collected and led to a waste water treatment plant, where it is then cleaned, processed and recycled for irrigation. The solid parts of the waste water are processed and composted and finally turned into top soil, fertilizing the island. The constant irrigation and fertilizing of the island supports the lush green condition of a tropical island, with a minimal ecological footprint.

WIND
Zira Zero Island benefits from the fact that Baku is “the city of wind”. By harvesting the wind energy through an offshore wind farm, the island will have its own CO2-neutral power supply. Further by locating the wind turbines on sea, it transforms the existing offshore oil industry’s platforms & foundations in Baku into a more sustainable future of wind turbine platforms.

LANDSCAPE
The landscaping of the island is derived from wind simulations of the microclimates created by the mountains. Swirly patterns created by the wind moving its way through the Seven Peaks inform the planting of trees and the design of public spaces. Where the winds and turbulence are strongest the trees becomes denser, creating lower wind speeds and thus a comfortable outdoor leisure climate.

The Zira Island Master Plan will be a part of the upcoming public exhibition entitled “Yes is More” at the Danish Architecture Center opening on February 20th at 6:00pm.

Amsterdam architect Ben van Berkel of UNStudio has designed a pavilion for The Battery park in New York City, USA.

The pavilion will provide seating and shade and can be used for organised public events.

At night, an electronic LED system will display a continuously-changing light show.

Below is the press release from UNStudio:

–
About the Plein & Pavilion

UNStudio’s initial conceptual design for New Amsterdam Plein & Pavilion calls for a 5,000 square-foot, carefully programmed space located within The Battery’s Peter Minuit Plaza, named for the enterprising Dutch Director-General who in 1626 consolidated the early settlements at the tip of Manhattan – a grouping that came to be known as New Amsterdam. This destination is, in the words of architect Ben van Berkel, “the ideal site for a permanent commemoration of 400 years of Dutch history in New York, because it is steeped in a sense of a shared past and looks directly toward the harbour where Henry Hudson sailed, but is also entirely focused on the future by virtue of its role as a modern transportation hub within the constantly changing scene of Lower Manhattan. This is a site where history meets the future.”

To express the interplay of history and future, the landscape architects of New York City Department of Parks & Recreation Manhattan Capital Projects have conceived a stone-paved civic platform – plein, in Dutch – with walkways featuring engraved quotations from Russell Shorto’s acclaimed book ‘The Island at the Center of the World’. A carved stone map of Castello’s New Amsterdam will grace the entrance to the Plein to provide historical context.

Within the open space of the Plein, visitors will find UNStudio-designed seating and tables. These will surround a highly sculptural pavilion with an expressive, undulating roofline and curving walls – a compact little building with the authority of a major landmark, evoking a flower opening to its surroundings. The pavilion will be equipped with an electronic facade LED system that allows for a constantly changing light show at night, “an experience that will carry the animation and drama of the day into the evening,” according to van Berkel.

Van Berkel’s pavilion will offer, according to Warrie Price of The Battery Conservancy, “a superb culinary experience, great visitor orientation information and materials, and an iconic, recognizable spot for residents and visitors to rendezvous.”

New Amsterdam Plein will also feature berms and perennial garden planting beds, designed by New York City Parks & Recreation using the color palette of Piet Oudolf, who created The Battery Bosque Gardens and the Battery’s Gardens of Remembrance.

–

Celebrated Dutch Architect Ben van Berkel to Design New Amsterdam Plein & Pavilion in New York City - Dramatic Public Hub at The Battery to Greet Millions and Pay Tribute to the Enduring Relationship Between the Netherlands and New York.

At a press conference with Dutch officials held to announce plans for the joint Dutch-American 2009 celebration of the 400th anniversary of Henry Hudson’s arrival in New York Harbour, New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg confirmed that Peter Minuit Plaza at The Battery will become the site of a major new public destination: New Amsterdam Plein & Pavilion will be a dramatic space where more than 5 million people a year, including 70,000 daily commuters and 2 million annual tourists, can find an extraordinary “outdoor living room” for spontaneous and scheduled activities, public markets, seating and shade, and an iconic state-of-the-art pavilion for food and information, all designed by internationally celebrated Dutch architect Ben van Berkel of UNStudio, Amsterdam. The Plein & Pavilion will be unique among the city’s many public spaces – a landscaped intermodal transportation hub of the 21st century, where bicycles, buses, the subway and water transportation intersect with cultural offerings in a singular expression of daring but lyrical design.

New Amsterdam Plein & Pavilion is made possible by a major grant from the government of the Kingdom of the Netherlands to The Battery Conservancy, as part of the NY400 celebration and in honour of the enduring relationship between New York and Holland. Handel Architects LLP, New York, will serve as associate architect, working in collaboration with UNStudio.

“It is our hope that New Amsterdam Plein & Pavilion will become a permanent Dutch legacy in New York City and a nod to the future as well as our shared history,” commented Gajus Schltema, Consul General of the Netherlands in New York. “It marks the celebration of 400 years of friendship between our nation and this great American metropolis, with which we share a passion for the values of innovation and creativity, diversity and openness, entrepreneurship and progress.”

“This 400th anniversary is an opportunity for us to join with our partners in the Netherlands to celebrate our city’s heritage,” said Parks & Recreation Commissioner Adrian Benepe. “New Amsterdam Plein and Pavilion at The Battery will enliven our celebration and focus attention on the place where the Dutch settled. I would like to thank the Kingdom of the Netherlands, The Battery Conservancy, Handel Architects and designer Ben Van Berkel and UNStudio for bringing this dynamic cultural attraction to Lower Manhattan.”

Warrie Price, President of The Battery Conservancy, said, “The Netherlands is a country that continues to regenerate itself through the professional strength of its innovative and talented designers, and through the force and beauty of the natural world. The Battery, the birthplace of New York City, began its revitalization with the work of famed Dutch garden designer Piet Oudolf, who created with us the largest perennial gardens in North America, free and open to the public. With New Amsterdam Plein & Pavilion, we are delighted to continue our mission of design excellence, and honoured to bring to New Yorkers and guests from around the world the joy of nature, the pleasure in community and the value of great modern architecture.”

About the Architect
Founded in 1988 by Ben van Berkel and Caroline Bos, UNStudio is an internationally admired, global architecture, design and urban planning firm based in Amsterdam, comprised of a forward-thinking network of architects, planners, development experts, industrial designers, engineers, art historians, philosophers, writers and researchers. According to a critic of The New York Times, UNStudio “has so far come closest to fulfilling the dream of a truly elastic world, one in which the boundaries between work and play, private and public life have all but melted away.”

UNStudio’s unique, collaborative, interdisciplinary approach has yielded acclaimed museums and cultural centres, private houses, residential complexes and commercial buildings across Europe and Asia, as well as master plans for urban redevelopments in Spain, the Netherlands and Italy. The firm’s diversity is evident not only in such landmark buildings as The Möbius House outside Amsterdam (1998), the Mercedes- Benz Museum in Stuttgart, Germany (2006), and the Theater Agora in Lelystad, Netherlands (2007), but in such disparate projects as sculptural bridges in Rotterdam and Dresden; the revitalization of the harbor front in Genoa; an 18-story flagship in Tokyo for Louis Vuitton; a spa hotel in the Swiss Alps; and revolutionary sculptural kitchen fixtures and appliances for B&B Italia and Alessi.

The work of UNStudio has been prominently featured in exhibitions around the world, including the landmark “Un-Private House” survey at The Museum of Modern Art in New York, and in publications in dozens of languages.

About The Battery and The Battery Conservancy

The Battery is a 25-acre waterfront park and the cradle of New York City history. Located at the tip of Manhattan overlooking New York Harbour, The Battery hosted Dutch settlers when they arrived at Manhattan Island in 1626 and established New Amsterdam. Today with the leadership of The Battery Conservancy, a non-profit organization established in 1994 to partner with government to design and rebuild these historic acres, the park is the largest and most dynamic public place in Lower Manhattan. It is the front lawn of Downtown and a hub of harbour access and cultural tourism. Over five million people, including residents, office workers, school groups, and tourists from around the world, visit the park and its major landmark, Castle Clinton National Monument, every year.

The Battery Conservancy, with its partners at the city, state and federal levels, has raised over $101M to revitalize the park. Expansive lawns, overarching shade trees, vast perennial gardens, waterfront promenades with sweeping views and cultural programs will soon be complemented by The Battery Bikeway connecting the East and West Sides of Manhattan; the much-anticipated SeaGlass ride; and a remarkable new Battery Playspace, designed by Frank Gehry.

Many cultural institutions are within walking distance of The Battery. Attractions include the South Street Seaport, the New York Stock Exchange, the Smithsonian’s Museum of the American Indian, the Museum of Jewish Heritage, the Staten Island Ferry, and the soon–to–be–restored Pier A. They all radiate from the Battery, which has historically been called the “emerald doorstep of the metropolis”.

The Battery will become a hub of waterborne transportation for New York Harbour. Castle Clinton presently serves as a busy ticketing centre for three million passengers who annually board ferries to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. Connections between New York State Heritage Area sites, the National Parks of New York Harbour, and New Jersey’s Liberty State Park, are also in the planning stages.

Architects MOS have been announced as the winners of MoMA/P.S.1 Young Architects Program 2009, with their design for a temporary installation outside P.S.1 Contemporary Art Centre in New York.

The installation will comprise a series of chimney-like structures, made from an aluminium frame with woven cladding.

The architects aim for these ‘chimneys’ to draw cool air upwards from the courtyard’s concrete walls and water troughs, cooling the space for summer events.

Afterparty will open in June this year.

See last year’s installation by Work Architecture Company in our previous story.

The following information is from the The Museum of Modern Art:

–

THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART AND P.S.1 SELECT MOS AS WINNER OF TENTH ANNUAL YOUNG ARCHITECTS PROGRAM

afterparty
Architectural Firm MOS Presents the Urban Landscape, to Open in Late June in the Courtyard of P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center

NEW YORK, January 28, 2009—The Museum of Modern Art and P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center announce the winner of the 2009 MoMA/P.S.1 Young Architects Program: the architectural firm MOS.

This year marks the tenth anniversary of the program, which affords emerging architectural talents the opportunity to design and present innovative projects. Five finalists selected by an invited nomination process were asked to present an urban landscape for the large courtyard entrance of P.S.1, with the allotted project budget of $70,000. The architects were required to incorporate elements of shade, water, seating, and bar areas into a proposed project. MOS’s winning landscape, afterparty, will be on view in P.S.1’s outdoor courtyard starting in late June, and will serve as an immersive environment for the 2009 Warm Up summer music series.

Envisioned as an “urban shelter,” afterparty will serve as a cooling escape at the heart of P.S.1’s Warm Up music series. Before visitors enter the courtyard, a series of tall hut-like “chimneys” with dark thatched skin will be visible from the street. The interior of the conical shelter will provide shade, similar to a Bedouin tent in which the dark textile creates its own microclimate shielding from the summer heat.

Cool air from the thermal mass of the courtyard’s shaded concrete walls and concrete water troughs located in the center of the structure will be drawn up through a series of cooling chimneys by induction. This will create a breeze and a “cool down” atmosphere for the active Warm Up crowd.

In addition to MOS (New Haven, Connecticut and Cambridge, Massachusetts), the other finalists are !ndie architecture (Denver, Colorado), Bade Stageberg Cox (Brooklyn, New York), L.E.FT architects (New York, New York), and PARA-project (Brooklyn, New York). An exhibition of the five finalists’ proposed projects will be on view at MoMA over the summer. It will be organized by Andres Lepik, Curator, Department of Architecture and Design, The Museum of Modern Art.

Barry Bergdoll, the Philip Johnson Chief Curator of the Department of Architecture and Design at MoMA, explains, “The project proposes to deal with issues of sustainability and a return to basics, working towards climate altering through passive means, even in the context of an exhibition/party space in the P.S.1 courtyard. It consists of a lightweight aluminum frame of recyclable parts clad in a weave, allowing some light and air to circulate but at the same time shading visitors from the sunlight. Its combination of forms includes tall, chimney-like shapes, heroic cones, and others that are evocative at once of the vernacular village structures world-wide and of the open ruined vaults of the Roman Forum.”

Antoine Guerrero, P.S.1 Director of Operations and Exhibitions, adds, “From the ground up, another exciting, ephemeral transformation of our outdoor galleries will leave a lasting impression on over 50,000 summer visitors who will have the chance to cool off.”

MOS architects Hilary Sample and Michael Meredith say, “Today, we are rethinking and resituating architecture—not only its conceptual and formal economies but also its inherent ability to engage and produce visceral intimate environments. This project, afterparty, is a temporary urban shelter and passive cooling station for P.S.1 and its Warm Up events, creating an escape from the summer heat and constructing a network of large, medium, and small cellular spaces that allow for intimacy and social formations to thrive.”

SELECTION PROCESS
For the Young Architects Program 2009 selection process, MoMA and P.S.1 invited outside experts in the field of architecture, including architects, curators, academics, and magazine editors, to nominate the finalists from a pool of approximately 40 candidates that included both recent graduates and established architects experimenting with new styles or techniques. After reviewing the candidates, five finalists were selected to present proposals to a panel composed of Glenn D. Lowry, Director; Kathy Halbreich, Associate Director; Peter Reed, Senior Deputy Director of Curatorial Affairs; Barry Bergdoll, Philip Johnson Chief Curator, Department of Architecture and Design; Klaus Biesenbach, Chief Curator, Department of Media; and Andres Lepik, Curator, Department of Architecture and Design, The Museum of Modern Art; and Antoine Guerrero, Director of Operations and Exhibitions, P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center.

HISTORY
This year marks the twelfth summer that P.S.1 has hosted a combined architectural installation and music series in its outdoor galleries, though it is only the tenth year of the Young Architects Program, which began in 2000. The inaugural project was an architecturally based installation in 1998 by an Austrian artist collective, Gelatin. In 1999, Philip Johnson’s DJ Pavilion celebrated the historic affiliation of P.S.1 and MoMA. The previous winners of the Young Architects Program are SHoP/Sharples Holden Pasquarelli (2000), ROY (2001), William E. Massie (2002), Tom Wiscombe / EMERGENT (2003), nARCHITECTS (2004), Xefirotarch (2005), OBRA (2006), Ball-Nogues (2007), and WORKac (2008).

ABOUT MOS
MOS is an interdisciplinary practice engaging in architecture and design through an inclusive methodology of research, expansive collaboration, and extensive experimentation. The work develops through research ranging from typology, digital production, structure, material, program and use, to larger networks of social, cultural, and environmental consideration. The scope of MOS’s research constantly shifts and expands as each individual project has the potential to engage a unique set of parameters, specific to its condition. This process of “radical inclusion” allows MOS to participate in design at different scales—from product design, to private residences, to cultural institutions to large-scale urban infrastructure.

Led by Michael Meredith and Hilary Sample, MOS is based in New Haven, Connecticut and Cambridge, Massachusetts. MOS has received the P/A award, New York Urban League Emerging Voices series, Surface magazine’s Avant-Guardian, and Architectural Record’s Design Vanguard award. Current projects include a villa for Ordos 100, Inner Mongolia, China; The Ballroom Drive-In theater, Marfa, Texas; an inflatable factory in Newfoundland, Canada; and a Teen Center, Lowell, Massachusetts. Michael Meredith is an Associate Professor at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design and Hilary Sample is an Assistant Professor at the Yale University School of Architecture.