March 10, 2013

PHOENIX OBSERVATION TOWER USA - DESIGN BY BIG ARCHITECTURE




PHOENIX OBSERVATION TOWER USA  –  DESIGN BY BIG ARCHITECTURE




PHOENIX OBSERVATION TOWER USA  –  DESIGN BY BIG ARCHITECTURE
Located in downtown Phoenix, the 70,000 sf Observation Tower shall add a significant structure to the Phoenix skyline from which to enjoy the city’s spectacular views of the surrounding mountain ranges and dramatic sunsets. Phoenix-based developer Novawest, commissioned the team to create a destination event to provide tourists and citizens of Phoenix alike the chance to enjoy the unique features of the Valley of the Sun.
 “This is the right place and the right time for a signature project for downtown Phoenix and we knew the design needed to be something extraordinary. BIG has delivered something exceptional, blending form and function in a way that will change the local skyline forever and will give visitors a once-in-a-lifetime experience.” Brian Stowell, Novawest.
Courtesy of BIG
The future observation tower is conceived as a tall core of reinforced concrete with an open-air spiral sphere at its top, resembling a metaphorical pin firmly marking a location on a map. The spiraling sphere contains flexible exhibition, retail and recreational spaces which are accessed via three glass elevators that connect the base with the summit and offer panoramic views of the city and the tower’s ,programs as visitors ascend or descend.
Courtesy of BIG
Walking downwards from the top through a continuous spiral promenade, the visitors of the observation tower experience all of the building’s programs in a constant motion, while enjoying dynamic 360 degree views of the city of Phoenix and the Arizonian landscape.
“Like the monsoons, the haboobs and the mountains of the surrounding Arizonian landscape, the Pin becomes a point of reference and a mechanism to set the landscape in motion through the movement of the spectator. Like the Guggenheim museum of New York offers visitors a unique art experience descending around its central void, the motion at the Pin is turned inside-out allowing visitors to contemplate the surrounding city and landscape of Phoenix. Like a heavenly body hovering above the city the Pin will allow visitors to descend from pole to pole in a dynamic three dimensional experience seemingly suspended in midair.“
Bjarke Ingels, Founding Partner, BIG.
The spiral layout combines the different programmatic elements and the circulation into a continuous dynamic twirling space which is proportioned according to the movement of the visitors, producing a unique viewing experience of the surroundings. Instead of a constant width, the spiraling promenade starts from zero at the point of arrival, reaches its maximum width at the middle, and shrinks back to zero at the point of departure.
Separation between the programmatic elements within the sphere happens not through physical vertical barrier-walls, but softly through the slope and the height difference to preserve a total continuity and create a flexible space for exhibitions and events.
Once the visitors reach the middle of the sphere, they can choose to either conclude their journey by taking the elevator back to the ground, or continue to the restaurant levels at the lower hemisphere. The motion resembles a journey through the center of a planet, and a travel from the north to the south pole.
The base of the tower will serve as a public plaza offering shade, water features and a small amount of retail together with a subterranean queuing area. The tower will serve as a working model of sustainable energy practices, incorporating a blend of solar and other technologies.
http://www.archdaily.com/310374/phoenix-observation-tower-big/
You may visit Bjarke Ingels’s projects of Kistefos Museum and Lego Visiter Center in my blog to click below links.
http://mymagicalattic.blogspot.com.tr/2015/10/kistefos-museum-design-by-bjarke-ingels.html

http://mymagicalattic.blogspot.com.tr/2014/03/lego-visiter-center-design-by-big-raa.html








































BIG IDEAS
Information Driven Design
BIG’s design process always starts by identifying the key criteria of a project: What is the biggest problem – what is the greatest potential? Rather than arbitrary aesthetic or stylistic prejudice, all decisions are based on project specific information - Information Driven Design. 
Our effort as architects is sandwiched in the window of opportunity between analysis and implementation. And our influence happens in the translation from information to material. In an attempt to increase our sphere of influence on our built environment, we have established BIG IDEAS. 
BIG IDEAS is an internal technology driven special projects unit, expanding the traditional scope of the architect into the realm of information and material. BIG IDEAS explores new intellectual territory in both the digital and material realm through three specific areas. 
As daylight analysis directly influences the building geometry and as studies of thermal exposure, conditions the building envelope, we are increasingly relying on technical simulations that would traditionally be part of the engineering scope. To speed up the feedback loop between design and analysis, between trial and error, we have internalized the environmental analysis into our own office. Daylight, sunshine, thermal exposure, airflow, turbulence, wind, space syntax and traffic flow are technical simulations we now control to enable ourselves to make designs that are literally shaped by the forces that surround them. We still collaborate with the best technical experts to tap into the cutting edge at the horizon of the profession, but we have found it necessary to educate ourselves to wield the digital tools of design. Not just building information management or digitally aided design but also environmental simulation must become part of our architectural tool kit. 
Our line of investigations from the Shenzhen Energy Headquarters to the Hanwha PV Plant to the Cité du Corps Humain, has provided us with a parametric design engine that allows us to tailor building envelopes and façade geometries to respond to different climate conditions across the globe. Our expanded parametric design tools are helping us start to formulate a vernacular architecture 2.0 through engineering without engines.
PRODUCT DESIGN
On the other end of the spectrum where the design intelligence gets manifested into the material world, we have increasingly encountered that our imagination was limited to what was already on the shelves. Through our collaboration as part of KiBiSi – our design partnership with Kilo Design and Skibsted Ideation – we have explored personal technology, urban mobility and furniture. With BIG IDEAS we feel we can close the gap and really make our interest in product design a literal extension of our efforts in architecture. 
SPECIAL PROJECT
Rather than accepting the inhibitions from the architectural scope starting too late and leaving too early – missing out on both research and production – with BIG IDEAS were are starting a new journey to explore new intellectual territory in both the digital and material realm.
In collaboration with Danish Technical University and Raket Madsen BIG IDEAS resurrected the idea of the giant smoke rings for the Copenhagen Power plant. 

http://www.big.dk/#big-ideas




BIG is led by partners – Bjarke Ingels, Andreas Klok Pedersen, Finn Nørkjær, David Zahle, Jakob Lange, Thomas Christoffersen and Managing Partners, Sheela Maini Søgaard and Kai-Uwe Bergmann.




BIG is a Copenhagen and New York based group of architects, designers, builders and thinkers operating within the fields of architecture, urbanism, research and development. The office is currently involved in a large number of projects throughout Europe, North America, Asia and the Middle East. BIG’s architecture emerges out of a careful analysis of how contemporary life constantly evolves and changes. Not least due to the influence from multicultural exchange, global economical flows and communication technologies that all together require new ways of architectural and urban organization. We believe that in order to deal with today’s challenges, architecture can profitably move into a field that has been largely unexplored. A pragmatic utopian architecture that steers clear of the petrifying pragmatism of boring boxes and the naïve utopian ideas of digital formalism.

In our projects we test the effects of size and the balance of programmatic mixtures on the triple bottom line of the social, economic and ecological outcome. Like a form of programmatic alchemy we create architecture by mixing conventional ingredients such as living, leisure, working, parking and shopping. By hitting the fertile overlap between pragmatic and utopia, we architects once again find the freedom to change the surface of our planet, to better fit contemporary life forms. In all our actions we try to move the focus from the small details to the BIG picture.














BJARKE INGELS
Bjarke Ingels started BIG Bjarke Ingels Group in 2005 after co-founding PLOT Architects in 2001 and working at OMA in Rotterdam. Through a series of award-winning design projects and buildings, Bjarke has developed a reputation for designing buildings that are as programmatically and technically innovative as they are cost and resource conscious. Bjarke has received numerous awards and honors, including the Danish Crown Prince’s Culture Prize in 2011, the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale in 2004, and the ULI Award for Excellence in 2009. In 2011, the Wall Street Journal awarded Bjarke the Architectural Innovator of the Year Award. In 2012, the American Institute of Architects granted the 8 House its Honor Award, calling it “a complex and exemplary project of a new typology.”
Alongside his architectural practice, Bjarke taught at Harvard University, Yale University, Columbia University, and Rice University and is an honorary professor at the Royal Academy of Arts, School of Architecture in Copenhagen. He is a frequent public speaker and has spoken in venues such as TED, WIRED, AMCHAM, 10 Downing Street, and the World Economic Forum.
EDUCATION
The Royal Academy of Arts, School of Architecture I Graduation 1999 I DK
ETSAB I School of Architecture of Barcelona I ES