The Carré d'art

The Carré d'art at Nîmes in southern France houses a museum of contemporary art and the city's library. The building was designed by the British architect Norman Foster and inaugurated in May 1993.

Constructed of glass, concrete and steel, it faces the Maison Carrée, a perfectly preserved Roman temple that dates from the first century AD.

The building is a nine storey structure, half of which is sunk deep into the ground, keeping the building's profile low in sympathy with the scale of the surrrounding buildings. The lower levels house archive storage and a cinema.

The building was constructed as part of a project to refurbish the square in which the Maison Carrée stands, and provide a new setting for the ancient temple.

Citroen CG Garage

Citroen has unveiled an exclusive garage designed by London-based Neutral architecture studio for the C6 model. The transparent concrete construction features coloured LCD layers allowing for opacity to be changed by the car owner.

NRGi’s Headquarters

NRGi’s new corporate headquarters is situated in an area marked by a number of freestanding buildings. NRGi stands out from its neighbours in the surrounding area in virtue of its visually light, metallically gleaming built volume. Distinguished by an angular and distinctive façade, the building forms a crisp contrast to the mellow, scenic context. Moreover, the building is situated and oriented so as to accommodate the path of the sun, and set at an angle so that it provides sun shading – hence, energy efficiency is built into construction design.

Architect: Schmidt Hammer Lassen Architects
Location: Dusager, Aarhus N, Denmark
Client: NRGi a.m.b.a.
Ingeneering: Consult - Consulting Engineers
Contractor: H. Hoffmann & Sønner
Project Year: 2005
Construction Year: 2006-2007
Constructed Area: 5,067 sqm
Architect homepage: http://www.shl.dk/

The Atomium

The Atomium is a monument built for Expo '58, the 1958 Brussels World's Fair. Designed by André Waterkeyn, it is 102-metres (335 ft) tall, with nine steel spheres connected so that the whole forms the shape of a unit cell of an iron crystal magnified 165 billion times.

Tubes which connect the spheres along the 12 edges of the cube and all eight vertices to the centre enclose escalators connecting the spheres which contain exhibit halls and other public spaces. The top sphere provides a panoramic view of Brussels. Each sphere is 18 metres in diameter. Three spheres are currently (2008) closed to the visitors, others are easily reachable with escalator. The vertical vertex contains a lift which was considered very fast and advanced at the time of building (the speed is 5 m/s)^[1].

The Solar Ark

In Gifu Prefecture, Japan, there is an unusual solar building called the Solar Ark, built by Sanyo. It’s one of the most impressive solar buildings in the world. Passengers on high-speed bullet trains can’t help but notice the edifice as they ride past on a nearby railway line. The building was built to symbolize the goal of becoming a “clean energy society” and it houses a solar museum inside. The Ark incorporates 5,046 solar panels, and produces about 630 kW of power, which means 530,000 kWh of clean energy is produced annually by the structure.

For those interested in the exact dimension: the Solar Ark is 315 meters (1,033 feet) long and weighs 3000 tonnes. It includes 412 lighting units between the solar panels, each with 51 red, green and blue LEDs. The entire system is computer-controlled and can create a variety of images and characters.

De Brug (The Bridge)

The office building De Brug (The Bridge) in Rotterdam was built above part of the existing Unilever Bestfood Nederland buildings on the Nassaukade. The building rests on three supports, 25 m above ground level. The total project consists, besides De Brug, of a parking block integrating offices and other functions as well. Unilever Bestfood Nederland will be housed in the building.

De Brug project is characterized by two great challenges. First of all, the dimensions of the building (rectangular ca.130 m x 32 m x 4 storeys) does not make it easy to achieve maximum flexibility. The layout of the building is such that modern office concepts (e.g. movable partitioning, open-plan offices, relaxation rooms, etc) are possible. On the other hand, the design of the building offers other possibilities that a standard building lacks.

The second challenge was not to disturb Unilever Bestfood Blue Band factory operation during construction. This was achieved by prefabricating the skeleton under conditioned circumstances at a works site. De Brug was mounted on top of the existing factory, which remained in operation during construction.

The Queen Sofia Palace of the Arts

The Queen Sofia Palace of the Arts, or El Palau de les Arts Reina Sofia is a uniquely designed opera house and complex located in the city of Valencia in Spain. It is actually a part of the grand City of Arts and Sciences and the last completed structure of the said large scale design concept developed by noted Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava.

The El Palau, as the opera house is sometimes known, was first built in 1995 and was opened on October 8, 2005. the structure is composed of a huge curving roof about 230 meters in length and 75 meters tall. Under the roof, a 14-story building can be found, with an additional 3 stories built below ground. There are four auditoriums housed inside this 40,000 square meter building.