The first building completed within the masterplan is The Honeycomb, designed in response to the Bahamian lifestyle. Each home has a giant balcony forming an outdoor living room with a summer kitchen and a pool sunken into the floor. The floor slab dips down to accommodate the body of water. The weight of the water is carried by the four meter high partition wall between the homes below serving as a room high concrete beam. The fourth wall of the pools is made from acrylic aquarium glass. Swimmers become fully immersed in the view of the marina
The m site is positioned next to the existing urban fabric in the future development zones of the Yongsan masterplan. BIG’s design includes two elegant towers with a height of and m. To meet the height requirements of the site, the exceeding building mass is transformed into an upper and lower horizontal bar, which bridge the two towers at m and m height. The two towers are additionally connected through the arrival bar at the ground level &#; and a courtyard below ground.
Buenos Aires is a lively city with a vibrant social life, but to our surprise it only has m of public green space per person compared to the nine square meters recommended by WHO. This was something BIG&#;s design could address. As a result, the two blocks are transformed into five towers. Each tower is given a different height to eliminate the sensation of a wall. The podium is reduced into semi-sunken pavilions, turning their roofs into green slopes. The bases of each tower are eroded diminishing the footprint and allowing a public park to expand.
The proposal includes upgrades to the planned light rail by extending it to form a regional ring around Oresund connecting similar development areas, and creating a new year development perspective for a cross border region between Sweden and Denmark. Where the Finger Plan from was about connectivity from suburb to center the Loop City is linking a string of highly differentiated urban nodes, universities and working spaces in a center-less metropolitan region around a blue void.
The site includes several historic buildings which King Toronto wraps around like a new organic frame. Each building unit is set at the size of a room, rotated degrees from the street grid to increase exposure to light and air. The resulting urban volume is an alternative to the tower and podium typology prevalent in Toronto. It echoes some of Moshe Safdie&#;s most revolutionary ideas from Habitat in Montreal, but rather than a utopian experiment on an island, it is nested in the heart of the city.
