Rethinking The Future Awards 2017 (1/3)

Rethinking The Future Awards 2017

‘Rethinking The Future Awards 2017′ competition hosted by ‘Rethinking the Future (RTF)’ has been concluded. The competition received a total of 512 registrations from over 30 countries.

1st Award – Cultural (Built) – Cocoon by Manasaram Architects

Rethinking The Future Awards 2017
Image © Cocoon by Manasaram Architects

Bridging the gap between societies through Architecture
The cocoon has been constructed as a Multi-use space that accommodates 40 persons simultaneously acting as an exhibition area for Krishi Vigyan Kendra. It is a unique project that qualifies as socially relevant because of the method in which it has been realized.

Rethinking The Future Awards 2017
Image © Cocoon by Manasaram Architects

Bamboo was required to be used for an unconventional form as it proved to be the most economically viable. Through this project a wide spectrum of participants were brought together blurring social and cultural boundaries.

Rethinking The Future Awards 2017
Image © Cocoon by Manasaram Architects

The Design Concept
The primary theme was to enable the idea of a common space for gatherings which the structure is placed along the line of the trees and the road to make a natural connection with the existing area for approaching the pavilion.

Rethinking The Future Awards 2017
Image © Cocoon by Manasaram Architects

Working with the idea of this community space, an open/transparent aesthetic has been one of the main concepts for developing this space. This aesthetic is achieved through playing with the expression of light and heavy as well as hard and soft elements giving contrast and definition between being under the pavilion or outside in the shade of the trees.

Rethinking The Future Awards 2017
Image © Cocoon by Manasaram Architects

Process Implemented
The process incorporated the architects, students of Architecture, a construction research studio, a NGO, local farmers and artisans to create a place created by the people for the people. The challenge was to convert the concept sketch into a workable design with Bamboo which was locally available and would guide the construction process. Source by Manasaram Architects.

1st Award – Cultural (Concept) – Seeking Roots With The Ghosts by Cheng Chieh Li

Rethinking The Future Awards 2017
Image © Cheng Chieh Li

Serving the oldest city of Yilan, Wushih port has been an important commercial harbor since 1826.However, a big flood in 1878 had caused the port to silt up, and in 1883, an American streamer was aground, making the harbor non-functional and abandoned completely in 1892. Through time, the silted up zone has become a wetland, providing home to a diverse ecosystem. However, in 2012, the government sold the wetland to developers for residential use.

Rethinking The Future Awards 2017
Image © Cheng Chieh Li

The once prosperous rice field and rich vernacular culture have been commoditized by the developers as selling points, discounting the fact that local farmers and fishermen are actually driven away by the rising property values from their habitats, often left without money or skills to survive.

Rethinking The Future Awards 2017
Image © Cheng Chieh Li

I want to protect my memory of hometown.
The base is the last natural area on this wetland. I attempt to preserve it and connect with the significant events of Toucheng. The festival is the core concept of the base. It is endowed with meanings of remembering the memory about this place and recovering the original.

Rethinking The Future Awards 2017
Image © Cheng Chieh Li

A contemporary museum” is a place lock the culture in the window box ,the culture is like the animals in the zoo. But culture is our daily life , isn’t it? Our living place is our culture claim , which is called “ Civic Museum”. The Civic Museum should included a market and festival, which cohesion everyone’s daily life. A market is a place not just for trading , but for communicating.

Rethinking The Future Awards 2017
Image © Cheng Chieh Li

The culture value is created by interacting among people, which can shorten their distance. It’s become a place to celebrating when the Festival. The route itself conveys our respection to religion, it provide outsiders to understand local culture by participate it, so they can have identification to the culture. Source by Cheng Chieh Li.

1st Award – Hospitality (Concept) – Infinite Forest by Yitan Sun & Jianshi Wu

Rethinking The Future Awards 2017
Image © Yitan Sun & Jianshi Wu

Back in the 17th Century, before it was an urban jungle, Manhattan was home to the Lenape Indians, who called the island Mannahatta, or “land of many hills.” Fast forward 400 years to nowadays, Manhattan has already become the most densely populated city in the U.S, and probably one of the busiest in the entire world.

Rethinking The Future Awards 2017
Image © Yitan Sun & Jianshi Wu

Our Project, named Infinite Forest, is an unprecedented type of hotel that strives to bring Manhattan‘s long-forgotten hilled land back. By excavating one of Manhattan’s block down, the project reveals the hidden bedrocks that were buried over the last 400 years, upon which will be a new, natural park filled with trees and ponds what one would likely to only encounter back in the 17th Century.

Rethinking The Future Awards 2017
Image © Yitan Sun & Jianshi Wu

Looking outside from the guestroom, the trees will extend beyond the physical boundary and reach to infinity. At the periphery, on the newly formed cliffs, there will be ample inhabitable space that contains hotels and retail space, all with unobstructed view and connection to nature. Due to the project’s unique linear layout, all of the programs are equally facing the fantastic forest scenery.

Rethinking The Future Awards 2017
Image © Yitan Sun & Jianshi Wu

The forest serves as a natural light and noise filter, which will create a quite, unique destination right in the city center, for people to escape from their busy city life. Unlike a normal, centralized hotel building, there is no dark core or bad orientation in this project, meaning all the hotel rooms, no matter on what level, facing which direction, will get the same stunning view. The project was conceived to contrast against the city’s densely constructed building blocks and towering skyscrapers.

Rethinking The Future Awards 2017
Image © Yitan Sun & Jianshi Wu

The proposed underground forest will allow poetic wanders and relaxation on natural terrains. It is not hard to imagine this new underground hotel paradigm start to appear in other cities around the world. It not only challenges people’s conception of a city by bringing back its unique history, but also put nature back to the center stage of modern hotel designs. Source by Yitan Sun & Jianshi Wu.

1st Award – Housing (Concept) – Out Of The Box by Nudes

Rethinking The Future Awards 2017
Image © Nudes

The project “eco-machine” anaylses the role of housing as an integral component of the ecosystem where nature and building components are locked together in a complex synergised relation of energy and information exchange. In addition to several sustainable design technologies, it also advocates the role of “urban farming” revitalizing urban landscapes and addresses the need of food shortage caused by climate change.

Rethinking The Future Awards 2017
Image © Nudes

This fosters a multi-generational approach to soliciting a profound “value-based” relationship between humans and nature through the act of “seeding”, “growth” and “harvesting”. The eco-machine conceptually explores the idea of ‘erosion” as a value based proposition “injecting” into the “voids” spaces for living, growth, reflection, repair and regeneration thereby generating potentially new archetypes for social housing improving the quality of life and society at large.

Rethinking The Future Awards 2017
Image © Nudes

The key component that actuates the eco-machine are the numerous “herb-terraces” generated through the act of “erosion”. Erosion is conceptualised not as an act of absence but as a prosthetic void that reinforces the ecological balance of the design construct. These “herb-terraces” allow for individual units to have their own “micro-farms”at their doorstep, re-defining the “farm to kitchen” concept. These spaces also enable and encourage the act of urban farming as a community driven activity.

Rethinking The Future Awards 2017
Image © Nudes

Housing units are planned along the perimeter of the building receiving ample light and ventilation. This enriches an internal community between the housing units, giving life to various recreational activities such as yoga, children’s play, herb-gardening, community kitchen, community dinning and recreational spaces. Largemonoliths serve as vertical water reservoirs. This housing program is also further supplemented by green elements such as greenhouse, green-walls, light-wells and a green roof.

Rethinking The Future Awards 2017
Image © Nudes

The project is sited on a river front and plays a pivotal role in purifying and filtering the water used both for domestic purposes and for distribution. Surface water typically contains high-suspended solids content, bacteria, algae, organic matter, creating bad taste and odor. This project deploys a conventional treatment including clarification (coagulation/flocculation, sedimentation), sand filtration, activated carbon adsorption and disinfection. Source by Nudes.

1st Award – Institutional (Built) – Amanenomori Nursery School by Aisaka Architects’ Atelier

Rethinking The Future Awards 2017
Image © Aisaka Architects’ Atelier

 We designed the circular ring shaped structure that provides enjoyable playground for children and easy access to escape route in case of emergency, having the courtyard in the middle, planting trees along the outer edge, and installing the deck, slopes, stairs, and the bridge along the circle between them. Covered with the solid wall and roof outside, its overall structure achieves to protect children’s pleasure with its strength.

Rethinking The Future Awards 2017
Image © Aisaka Architects’ Atelier

Its O-shaped building surrounding the courtyard with outside corridor with eaves for weather protection also provides comfort and a sense of safety to adults. This structure helps busy parents to drop and pick up their children quickly without taking off shoes and nursery staff to help each other on the other side. Outer space of each floor provides not just open space outside, but also various changes, so that children to spend the whole year here do not get bored.

Rethinking The Future Awards 2017
Image © Aisaka Architects’ Atelier

The half-circle-shaped spot garden to help ventilation also nurtures children’s affection to the nature by planting greens in the center. From the perspective of dietary education to develop children’s appreciation and interest toward food, we place the vegetable garden on the rooftop and glass-walled kitchen on the first floor. The floor level of kitchen is settled lower to let children look into kitchen, in the same time, it is able to keep an eye on the courtyard in a cross shape to compensate for blind spot from the office.

Rethinking The Future Awards 2017
Image © Aisaka Architects’ Atelier

For thorough energy saving, we adopt the eaves to control sunlight, the spot garden to improve ventilation, the rooftop deck and vegetable garden for heat insulating of rooftop, Earth Tube heating system to use geothermal heat, the river and the pond to reuse the rainwater, and solar panels to produce circulating power. Watching these structures in daily life, children can learn about “the nature” including phenomenon about plants or the wind and rain.

Rethinking The Future Awards 2017
Image © Aisaka Architects’ Atelier

Round chamfering was done for walls and railings necessary for safety reasons and also for the edge of light and skylight in every part of the building using it as a motif of design. In order to give children the opportunity to learn the name of materials with feeling its original texture in the same time, we try to use “wood as wood-like, steel as steel-like and stone as stone-like” to keep the original texture of each material.  So, we didn’t use the primary colors. Source by Aisaka Architects’ Atelier.

1st Award – Institutional (Concept) – Horoshkola by Krost

Rethinking The Future Awards 2017
Image © Krost

“Horoshkola” project is a part of the complete renovation of the residential district. The site restrictions shaped the volume of the school, making it quite high but discreet. Russian building code allows only for 4 floors for educational facilities. The school is intended for 336 students from 5th to 11th form.

Rethinking The Future Awards 2017
Image © Krost

The school will provide everything for the children to grow up and develop all the relevant skills while their parents can rest assured their kids are safe and in good hands. Horoshkola aims to foster a well-rounded person. Together with the client we established 3 key skills to develop in the students: IQ – intellectual skills, EQ – emotional development, and VQ – vitality, required to make things happen.

Rethinking The Future Awards 2017
Image © Krost

This educational concept is reflected in the architectural concept. We put more emphasis on social spaces, which create a framework for all the other functional areas. We increased the size of corridors and lounge areas to create cozy environment for socializing. The core of the school is the 4-floor high open atrium, which allows for daylight in the lounge areas and makes educational processes more transparent.

Rethinking The Future Awards 2017
Image © Krost

Students will not be divided into forms, but rather learn together, utilizing a set of classrooms varying in size (intended for 5 to 50 people). Main learning areas are oriented towards east and south. Configurable partitions provide flexible learning environment. To ensure the highest educational standards, learning is mostly focused on STEM disciplines. The school will also have areas for robot sciences, 3D modelling and physical and chemical labs.

Rethinking The Future Awards 2017
Image © Krost

Custom-made fiber concrete panels serve as facades cladding. German formwork helped create travertine imitation. The wood graining was achieved through brushing of the actual wooden panels that served as formwork for the facing layer. The atrium is topped with a large 24×12 glass piece 20 meter above the floor level. The construction works are almost completed now, on September 1st 2017 the school will be ready for its first students. Source by Krost.

Images Courtesy of Rethinking The Future.

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