Architecture

We featured the Thames Town a few months ago but being the London Lover that I am - we are going to feature it again!

Click here for more photos from Scandinavian Sensation 2dogs, who quotes;

 '"Little Britain" is not just a BBC produced comedy show. It also a 'village' under the name of Thames Town and located in Songjiang District , Shanghai. I leave it to others to judge if it is a comedy or not.'

For this project in Pujiang town, Milan-based Gregotti Associatti eschewed the spurting fountains and Corinthian columns popular among China's nouveaux riches. Instead, the firm produced a stripped-down design with clean lines that bears little resemblance to traditional Italian architecture. It will house nearly 50,000 people displaced from the site of Shanghai's 2010 world exposition.

This town for 30,000 new residents in the northern suburb of Baoshan was designed by a team of architects at Sweden's Sweco. It features a strong Nordic theme with steep roofs, a traditional town square, and a park that sits on a lake shaped like the Baltic Sea. 

Designed by Albert Speer & Partners, Anting Town exudes Teutonic efficiency. It's intended to be the focal point of Shanghai's emerging auto industry, and includes a Volkswagen assembly plant and China's only Formula One racetrack. 

The 935-foot-high Tomorrow Square, another iconic work by John Portman & Assoc., transforms itself into a diagonal square halfway up, tapering to a slender tower resembling mechanical claws that could open at any moment. It boasts what's said to be the highest library in the world, on the 60th floor of the JW Marriott hotel...

Full article: businessweek.com

The design of Zhang Jiang's Hi-Tech Park Prayer Hall, by AS&P (Albert Speer & Partner) won 1st prize in the competition for a congregational building for 1,200-1,500 worshippers.

Neutrality was required to embrace all faiths. The elliptical, egg-shaped plan does not have a directional focus based on any one religion. Rows of seats are accommodated in the body of the hall and there are mezzanine and balcony levels. The structure has an outer roofed loggia which encircles the building. An encircling internal corridor is sandwiched between the outer translucent wall of glass and an opaque and solid internal wall which acoustically and visually protects the main area used for meditation and prayer.

The full height, glazed curtain wall of the enclosure hangs from the structural frame of the roof, a gridiron system of fish-bellied beams, stiffened by truss rods in two directions and clad in tinted glass. The external, thin, concrete-slab canopy to the loggia is supported on slender columns.

The result; weightlessness and height, evoking the idea of a jewel with the help of reflected light from the sky and nearby water.