Articles by Cristobal Rojas

‘SPONGE’ STRUCTURE

The “Ecomusée d’Alsace” commissioned us to imagine and realize a belvedere from a half-timbered resulting coming from a house of the municipality of Oberhausbergen ( 67 ).

We wanted Paris’ biggest wooden amenity to be a real public place. Playing with its volumes allows to limit its emergence and to keep it quite narrow, making it almost an inhabited hedge. Only the vertical gesture creating the hall’s « cathedral » hosting the climbing wall reveals its intense activity to the passers-by. This set-up allows a vast internal space, opened towards the Bois de Boulogne and continuous between two public gardens. It asserts itself on the boulevard and takes into account the existing pedestrian paths, welcoming everyone as a public place would.

We wanted Paris’ biggest wooden amenity to be a real public place. Playing with its volumes allows to limit its emergence and to keep it quite narrow, making it almost an inhabited hedge. Only the vertical gesture creating the hall’s « cathedral » hosting the climbing wall reveals its intense activity to the passers-by. This set-up allows a vast internal space, opened towards the Bois de Boulogne and continuous between two public gardens. It asserts itself on the boulevard and takes into account the existing pedestrian paths, welcoming everyone as a public place would.

We wanted Paris’ biggest wooden amenity to be a real public place. Playing with its volumes allows to limit its emergence and to keep it quite narrow, making it almost an inhabited hedge. Only the vertical gesture creating the hall’s « cathedral » hosting the climbing wall reveals its intense activity to the passers-by. This set-up allows a vast internal space, opened towards the Bois de Boulogne and continuous between two public gardens. It asserts itself on the boulevard and takes into account the existing pedestrian paths, welcoming everyone as a public place would.

The 2500 sqm new facilities for the Centre for Plasma Physics and Lasers CPPL, an advanced research and educational building housing sub-femtosecond lasers, are located in a magnificent area in Rethymnon, Crete. 

A couple visited the JYA office and shared their wish to build a house on a sunlit ground facing a cozy park in its south. With nice gentle smiles, they naturally displayed modesty and warmth. As to show their affection for people, they dreamed of a house that is ‘open to people’. To them, the house had both ‘internal’ and ‘external’ meanings: a place where their family and relatives get together and share lives as well as a space where their friends and neighbors casually come by and chat together. For that reason, they wanted spaces like open lounge or daecheong, a Korea’s traditional main floored room and wished to capture the characteristics of such open spaces in their new house.

The entrance to C57-4 building is through a lobby with restrained design highlighted with details in wood and forge welcoming the inhabitants and leading them towards the vertical circulations formed by lifts and service staircase. In the interior of each floor, all of the units structural level was reconditioned to generate wide corridors dominated by an inside patio —that works also as a meeting point and relaxing area— with a red brick carpet down the shade of a tree.

Located at a busy commercial intersection near Lake Michigan and adjacent to a commuter rail stop, City Hyde Park is designed to become a pedestrian-friendly hub that helps encourage the greater urban evolution of its neighborhood. When complete, the 500,000 sf mixed-use project will bring new options for living, shopping, and outdoor recreation and leisure to its full-block site, formerly an underused parking lot and strip mall.
At street level, the building’s retail arcade, multiple lobbies, and wider, improved sidewalks create a dynamic, walkable community scene. Above, a residential tower with a transparent amenity level and outdoor gardens and fitness areas rises from the plinth. Its design emphasizes its structure, with a playful array of stacked concrete panels forming columns, bays, balconies, and sunshades–creating a visually-exciting exterior and multiple opportunities for residents to socialize outdoors and connect with the surrounding city.

 The Bridge House is located two hours north of the city of Toronto, on the shores of Mary Lake in Port Sydney, Ontario.