Diego Hernandez

Sayama Forest Chapel / Hiroshi Nakamura & NAP

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Architects: Hiroshi Nakamura & NAP
Location: Saitama, Saitama Prefecture, Japan
Area: 114.0 sqm
Project Year: 2013
Photographs: Koji Fujii / Nacasa & Partners Inc.

Structure Design : Ove Arup & Partners Ltd.
Contractor: Shimizu Corporation

From the architect. Sayama Lakeside Cemetery is open to various religions and denominations. It is located in a nature-rich environment adjacent to the water conservation forest, and the site itself is in front of a deep forest. I envisioned an architecture that reflects on the way of life as it lives by the water conserved by the forest, and eventually returns to this place after death. Thereupon, I found the forest to be the subject of prayer that is mutual to various religions and conceptualized an architecture that prays to the forest while surrounded by trees.

Web discoveries

Roy and Diana Vagelos Education Center / Diller Scofidio + Renfro

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Architects: Diller Scofidio + Renfro
Location: 104 Haven Ave, New York, NY 10032, United States
Executive Architect: Gensler
Area: 110000.0 ft2
Project Year: 2016
Photographs: Iwan Baan, Nic Lehoux

Diller Scofidio + Renfro: Elizabeth Diller (Partner-in-Charge); Ricardo Scofidio AIA, Charles Renfro AIA, Benjamin Gilmartin AIA (Principal Designers); Anthony Saby (Project Director) Chris Hillyard, AIA (Project Architect); Chris Andreacola AIA, David Chacon AIA, Christopher Kupski AIA LEED AP, Barak Pliskin AIA LEED AP, Kevin Rice AIA, Gerard Sullivan AIA, Mary Broaddus, Charles Curran,Robert Donnelly, Amber Foo, Yoon-Young Hur, Joshua Jow, Andreas Kostopoulos, Joseph Dart Messick, Patrick Ngo, Matt Ostrow, Stefano Paiocchi, Jesse Saylor, Jack Solomon, Hallie Terzopolos, Elizabeth Wisecarver (Design Team)
Gensler: Madeline Burke-Vigeland AIA, LEED AP(Principal-in-Charge); Kristian Gregerson AIA (Project Manager); Ambrose Aliaga-Kelly AIA (Technical Director); Joanne Fernando AIA, Jinho Kim AIA, Michelle Neary AIA, Bill DuBois, Ana Espejo, Mariano Ortiz, Henry Hong RA, Scott

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A House in Nha Trang / Vo Trong Nghia Architects + ICADA

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Architects: Vo Trong Nghia Architects, ICADA
Location: NHA Trang, Khanh Hoa Province, Vietnam
Principal Architects : Vo Trong Nghia, Masaaki Iwamoto
Area: 276.77 sqm
Project Year: 2015
Photographs: Hiroyuki Oki

Site Area: 492.00 sqm
Foot Print: 235.2 sqm

From the architect. The house is located in Nha Trang, a city in central Vietnam surrounded by the beautiful ocean and mountains. The client wanted a large house with a large garden. Answering to this request, a single roof is designed as a hanging garden to plant numerous trees and plants on it. The local building code, however, requires almost 50% of the roof area to be covered by gray or orange-color tilings and to be sloped. To obey this rule but maximize the green area atop, the roof is divided into parallel bands of greened roofs and tiled roofs in an alternating sequence.

Studios 18 / Sanjay Puri Architects

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Architects: Sanjay Puri Architects
Location: Ras, Rajasthan 306101, India
Project Year: 2016
Photographs: Vinesh Gandhi

From the architect. Situated on an undulating site in the deserts of Ras, Rajasthan, India, Studios 18 apartments are a part of an entire layout spread over 36 acres. With no buildings or development in the vicinity, this layout is being created for the working people of a new cement manufacturing plant that has commenced production nearby. Close to the site there is no existing development and there are four villages at a distance of 1 km from the site. Taking a cue from the organic layouts of the neighbouring villages near the site, the residential units are interspersed within the existing contours along organic streets that weave through the site.

The 18 residential apartments follow the organic nature of old Indian cities with houses stepping

Monastery of San Giuliano Restoration / Gianluca Gelmini

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Architects: CN10 architetti
Location: 24040 Bonate Sotto BG, Italy
Client: Municipality of Bonate Sotto, Private client
Area: 200.0 sqm
Project Year: 2016
Photographs: Gianluca Gelmini

The actual building of the former church of San Giuliano is what remains of a large and important settlement already documented in 774 A.D.

Together with the Basilica of S. Giulia, it is an important example of early medieval architecture in the territory south of the city of Bergamo. The settlement was born to manage and control the large possessions of the wealthy lombard families. During the XII century it became the site of a female Benedictine monastery, in this period the settlement lived one of its richest and most important moments, in which begin the reconstruction of the church in the Romanesque style.

Green Ladder / Vo Trong Nghia Architects

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Architects: Vo Trong Nghia Architects
Location: 16-20 Goodhope St, Paddington NSW 2021, Australia
Principal Architects: Vo Trong Nghia, Kosuke Nishijima
Area: 20.0 sqm
Project Year: 2016
Photographs: Brett Boardman

Design Team: Victor Llavata, Pham Huu Hoang, Tran Vo Kien
Plants Selection: Micheal Moran (SCAF)
Contractor: Wind and Water House JSC
Client: Sherman contemporary Art foundation (SCAF)

With green architecture in mind , the idea of “Green Ladder” is combination of bamboo ladders – a popular equipment made by bamboo – a traditional material in Vietnam. These bamboo units were assembled in Vietnam and transferred to Australia.

Bamboo is the “green steel” of 21st-century. It is an extremely fast-growing species of giant grass, grows abundantly, quickly and cheaply in Vietnam, where canes cost as little as a dollar each.

The structural elements are linked together to form a porous

MVRDV House / MVRDV

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Architects: MVRDV
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Design Team: Winy Maas, Jacob van Rijs, Nathalie de Vries with Herman Gaarman, Emilie Koch, Elien Deceuninck and Jun Xiang Zhang
Area: 2400.0 sqm
Project Year: 2016
Photographs: Ossip van Duivenbode

Contractor: Goudsesingel Onderhoud
Electrician: Croon, Wolter en Dros
Engineer: IMD

From the architect. MVRDV’s 2400 m2 interior renovation for their new offices, with 150 work spaces, had at its core the idea to capture and enhance their DNA in what is now called the MVRDV House. The new space builds on the progress made in previous offices, learns from how the team inhabited and worked in the previous building and translated these into new, more accommodating and productive spaces.

“The expanding MVRDV family needed a new house; so this is exactly what we tried to capture. Everything that the home