For decades, this area has no longer served its purpose as a port system, since the waters are too shallow for modern ships. It grew derelict over time and felt disconnected from the community. Today, it’s becoming a lively destination full of interesting architecture that combines older existing buildings with new construction. Project Harbour Club is one of those buildings, boasting three massive salvaged wine silos converted into rooftop homes as its defining feature.

Dutch firm LEVS architecten turned the original low-lying 1901 dock terminal facility and wine warehouse into a nightclub and restaurant that connects to a new six-story L-shaped residential building, which hugs it on two sides. The project offers 81 starter homes, three luxury townhouses, and five live/work homes, as well as the event spaces. Placing a booming club adjacent to housing might seem like poor planning, but the architects integrated a ton of soundproofing as well as buffer spaces in between, reducing vibrations and sound.

The architects explain that “the Harbour Club’s new event space is located on the lower three floors on the Cruquiusweg. Using the box-in-a-box principle, the space has been completely disconnected from the other functions in the building in order to prevent noise nuisance. The box with its own foundation consists of a steel frame with precast concrete. Above it, houses with a through lounge float, supported by four 16-meter-long beams. A second, glass skin also forms a buffer zone and serves as a foyer.”

During renovations to remove an adjacent 1990s industrial hall, the architects uncovered the original brick facade of the building, which lends a sense of age and texture to the restaurant along with the wine warehouse’s old wooden beams. The preserved porthole-style windows enhance the building’s connection to its shipping industry history. Planted with mossy sedum, the roof of this structure is now a shared outdoor space for residents of the building.

Naturally, those huge industrial wine silos are the star of the show. They once stored wine destined for the Dutch market, and they had to be decontaminated and lifted over a line of trees to be installed. “They have been preserved as icons of the island’s history and have been given a new function as elevated luxury town houses,” the architects add. “The three-story dwellings stand on a communal roof terrace in a green landscape. They are rotated slightly to provide the best possible view from the new panoramic window.”

The residents of these luxury units might have the best views of all, but the “starter homes” definitely aren’t bad, either. Some are studios set above the event hall, and others cantilever 16 feet over the old warehouse on the restaurant side. Their half-covered balconies offer privacy while overlooking the harbor and green roof.

“Harbour Club is a multi-level challenge: technically, programmatically, and architecturally,” the architects say. “The combined necessities of affordable densification, restoration of monuments, [and] climate mitigation and adaptation need to be addressed simultaneously. Harbour Club is a contemporary answer, characterized by unconventional solutions.”

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In 1973, Spanish Architect Ricardo Bofill stumbled upon a derelict cement factory located just outside of Barcelona that dated back to the first period of the industrialization of Catalonia. The building stood as a dilapidated reminder of the devastation that WWI brought to Europe, as it sunk into it’s crumbling structure, consumed by a harrowing emptiness and forsaken now to the aging effects of nature. Amid all the destruction and ruin, Bofill came alive with the notion of opportunity.

The Architecture

The building was erected in several stages; a series of additional structures were clearly added to the original. Incredulous in its size, Bofill and his team studied the aesthetics of the structure, noting the post war interior trends that were abundant in its architecture. Surrealism was consistent in the buildings paradoxical stairs that lead to nowhere, and abstract spaces that appeared unnecessarily vast and weirdly proportioned—though these are the same intense features that seemed to bring about a sense of phantasmagorical disproportion, a notion that Bofill found instantly endearing.

Seduced by the ambiguity of the raw and broken structure, Bofill decided to retain and modify it into his finest masterpiece yet. Featuring four kilometers of underground tunnels, machine rooms, giant silos, and a tall smoke stack, this was going to be no simple task.

From Ideation to Production

Under a kaleidoscope of avant-garde ideas, La fábrica was born. Bofill fell in love with the curious atmosphere that exuded the building and became determined to transform the hollow shell into a space worthy of continually elating his creativity, whilst also housing him and his family comfortably.

Lasting over a year and a half, the partial destruction began with using dynamite and jack hammers which consequently unveiled new spaces and hidden forms that would later become iconic features in the final product. The cement filled silos were saturated with dust, which made starting off unsurprisingly difficult—though with the help of a team of a Catalan craftsmen, the old cement factory was soon reinvented and transformed into a wealthy looking estate of functional and artistic beauty.

In the upper section of the factory, a large volume of brute cement was churned, as if by magic, into the main living area—a perfectly cubed room laced with arc windows. The “pink” room is a smaller, more intimate living area located on the middle floor, polished with a traditional Moroccan aesthetic and large fireplace dominating the space.

The ground floor hosts the kitchen and dining space, which is the pinnacle room for the family to gather. Majestically sat in the center is a rectangular marble table, balanced upon ironwork legs and encircled by Thonet chairs.

A Modern Palace

45 years later, what was once a titan of apocalyptic ruins, is now a sheer spectacle of architectural awe. La fábrica’s exterior has been woven into an illustrious garden full of vegetation and foliage, while it’s interior boasts an otherworldly modernity in it’s minimalistic styling and embellished living spaces.

“Presently I live and work here better than anywhere else. It is for me the only place where I can concentrate and associate ideas in the most abstract manner. I have the impression of living in a precinct, in a closed universe which protects me from the outside and everyday life. The Cement Factory is a place of work par excellence. Life goes on here in a continuous sequence, with very little difference between work and leisure,” says Bofill.

Though he has declared that his new home is under continuous change and improvement, the result of the masterful transformation proves that, “Function did not create the form; instead, it has been shown that any space can be allocated whatever use the architect chooses.”

The post Architect Transforms Abandoned Cement Factory into a Surreal Home first appeared on Dornob.

The impressive, bulbous glazed facades of the Silo Hotel occupy the former grain silo’s top floor, below which the museum sits. The original building was formed of 42 tightly-compacted cylindrical silos, and the new museum is spread out over 9,500 square meters, including 6,000 square meters of exhibition space over nine floors and 80 interwoven galleries, a rooftop sculpture garden, a bookshop, art storage facilities, restaurants, and reading rooms. Aside from the exhibition spaces and ancillary facilities, Zeizt MOCAA also provides Cape Town with a costume institute and centers for photography, moving images, performance art, and art education.

Heatherwick Studio’s ambitious concept for the museum has been realized with an astonishing level of care and integrity. Discussions with the museum’s curator made it clear that the building’s existing structure wouldn’t have been able to house exhibition spaces because its chambers were too small and circular in shape. Still, it was a major part of the concept that these silos would not only be preserved, but that they would also become one of the museum’s major features. Heatherwick himself has even called them the “heart” of the project.

This central idea is best seen in the museum’s atrium, which now essentially carves away massive swathes of the silos to reveal their internal structures. The result is what Heatherwick describes as a “vaulted cathedral,” but it’s unlike any other cathedral anyone has seen before. The effect of exposing the silos is almost like that of abstract sculpture: the shape of the former structures can be read easily enough, but the volumes are utterly unlike anything they were in their previous lives, having been scooped out at unusual angles to create elliptical voids with strangely amoebic properties, at once solid and fluid. The frames left from the cuts boast a double skin of polished concrete and rough aggregate, a lovely contrast in this imposing 27-meter-high space.

The project is estimated to have cost around $40 million and has taken about four years to complete since its announcement in November 2013. The V&A Waterfront is one of Cape Town’s main tourist attractions, with visitors coming to admire its unique collection of buildings and idyllic setting, which sees the iconic Table Mountain in the background while the ocean stretches out in front of it. The entire dockside complex will no doubt become an icon in its own time, and the new museum has a certain utopian quality to it, something that’s sure to stun and inspire visitors for years to come.

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A unique new hotel called The Silo has recently opened in Cape Town. Conceived of by visionary designer Thomas Heatherwick and his team at Heatherwick Studio, this luxury hotel used to be a historic grain silo on Cape Town’s V&A Waterfront. The silo, which was built in 1924 and spent the better part of the century as a key player in the Table Bay harbor trade system, was earmarked for redevelopment in 2013 when Heatherwick was commissioned to reimagine the industrial building as “a not for profit cultural institution housing the most significant collection of contemporary art from Africa and its diaspora.” While the hotel itself is spectacular, it is only the first part of the larger Zeitz MOCAA development that will soon be open to the public.

The building contains 42 densely packed cylindrical silos that have been hollowed out to house the hotel and art museum. Heatherwick Studio had to work around the building’s industrial features — and the fact that the structure was never intended to be habitable — so they decided to convert the silos into a cathedral-like atrium to allow some light into the cavernous space while preserving some of its former glory.

The hotel sits above the soon-to-be contemporary art museum and is largely visible from the outside. A series of bulging windows has been set into the existing lengths of silos that span the building’s facade. Old floors and bays are marked by the structure’s original concrete divisions, whose harsh, solid look is offset by the windows’ modern geometric patterns. The building’s newfound translucency not only gives the Silo an iconic and inviting aesthetic, but will also allow it to shine as a beacon of light throughout the Cape Town harbor. In total, the hotel has been equipped with a comfortable 28 guest rooms.

Operated by hotel group The Royal Portfolio, The Silo occupies the grain elevator portion of the complex and is spread out over six floors that overlook the bay, the city, and the surrounding hills. Each room was personally designed by The Royal Portfolio founder, famed South African interior designer and Cape Town native Liz Biden, whose discerning touch is visible in every aspect of the decor, from the choice of fabrics down to the light fittings. She explains: “My goal has always been to pay tribute to luxury and [provide] comfort for our guests. This has meant balancing the stark and industrial style of the architecture with aspects of classic glamor and modern comfort.”

One of the main concepts leading the interior design was an emphasis on the contrast between old and new, or the highlighting of the building’s original purpose while simultaneously pointing towards its contemporary character. Biden has crafted a luxury experience within The Silo that is quintessentially South African, and Heatherwick has ensured that the entire complex will become synonymous with Cape Town’s skyline in the near future. It shouldn’t take very long at all for the building to become an icon considering the fact that the V&A Waterfront is one of South Africa’s most frequented tourist destinations and attracts over 24 million visitors a year.

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Like the swords to plowshares metaphor, the idea of turning oil-centric objects of design into post-pollution paradises is nothing new, but rarely fleshed out quite so well as in this proposal.

This idea by PinkCloud.DK involves turning old spherical oil silos into a new sustainable multifamily residential buildings – since they are already portable and well-sealed, the conversion is mostly additive.

With 50,000 of these sorts of structures in existence, it reminds one a bit of shipping containers: there is sufficient supply that you could imagine an upcycled solution being designed once and applied many times over, saving time and money through efficient repetition and deployment.

The spheres are also naturally optimized for things like adding solar panels and streamlined to channel or deflect winds as desired for natural ventilation purposes.

“The Oil Silo Home claims to build upon the work of Buckminster Fuller, establishing an evolution of Bucky’s Dymaxion Home. The designers believe that the sustainable Silo Home exceeds a net zero carbon footprint; it is carbon positive. They also believe that if they can build more Silo Homes, the overall quality of the global environment will actually be improved. The Silo Home is prefabricated, inexpensive, highly structurally stable, efficient to assemble and disassemble, and has the capacity for mass production.”

“The Oil Silo Home is designed on a firm belief that sustainability begins with eliminating waste. The Silo Home is an adaptive-reuse design. Abandoned oil silos are transformed into efficient, affordable, and comfortable housing for families worldwide. Our design of the Silo Home anticipates a post-petroleum world in which declining crude oil supplies eventually lead to the obsolescence of oil refineries and oil silos worldwide.”

“By utilizing existing empty oil silos as the main element of our design, waste and embodied energy are dramatically reduced, thereby conserving both cost and time. An oil silo, or LPG Vessel, is a storage container for compressed liquefied petroleum gas. There are approximately 52,000 oil silos in 660 oil refineries worldwide!”

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Nothing quite says ‘urban blight’ like an abandoned, virtually windowless concrete tower sprouting up like a super-sized weed from the surrounding flat landscape. But what can you do with such a building, structurally sound but with no access to natural light and limited square footage on each floor?

The solution may sound counter-intuitive, but fits the situation like a glove:  C. F. Møller Architects retrofitted the center as a service and circulation shaft, then suspended brand new dwellings on three of its four sides (leaving a key piece of history exposed on this last surface).

“Siloetten” is seen here before its transformation, giving us insight into just how much of a change for the better this project achieved.

The resulting uneven rhythms give the visual appearance of something organically growing up alongside or out from the old structure rather than merely an additive cloak to its exterior, and the new residences within get to experience the historic center without sacrificing daylight or views.

“Many towns in Denmark have centrally located industrial silos; most are no longer in use, but continue to visually dominate the local skyline. This is also the case in the town of Løgten north of Aarhus, where the former silo complex has been transformed into a ‘rural high-rise’, with 21 high-quality residences composed as individual and unique ‘stacked villas’.”

“They are an alternative to standard apartments or to detached suburban sprawl, and are a mix of single storey flats and maisonettes, meaning that even the lower levels fully get to enjoy the views, and that no two flats are the same. The actual silo contains staircases and lifts, and provides the base of a common roof terrace. Around the tower, the apartments are built up upon a steel structure in eye-catching forms which protrude out into the light and the landscape – a bit like Lego bricks.“

“This unusual structure with its protrusions and displacements provides all of the apartments with generous outdoor spaces, and views of Aarhus Bay and the city itself. Similarly, every apartment enjoys sunlight in the morning, mid-day and evening, whether placed to the north or south of the silo structure.”

About the architects:

“C.F. Møller Architects is one of Scandinavia’s leading architectural firms, with 90 years of award-winning work in the Nordic region and worldwide. Every day we create architectural quality based on innovation, experience and Nordic values. This assures sustainable and aesthetic solutions with lasting value for clients, occupants and society.”

The post 21 New Condos Wrap Old Abandoned Silo first appeared on Dornob.

One key to sustainable design is going local, so with many old rural grain silos having already gone vacant they make for prime prefabricated old parts for potential new homes. This student project shows one way in which one could cut apart an existing storage silo and use each slide as part of a novel residential structure.

Lofted solar panels provide shade and solar energy as well as square shapes that visually offset the otherwise-round silos. In contrast to the circular cores, these are thin and rust-free, creating a cool balance between familiar rustic and rural farm materials and newer, lighter elements.

Each cylinder is dedicated to one type of primary living space: kitchen, bedroom and living room. A central courtyard connects these various volumes while the solar panel system shades and protects them from rain.

The Cornell students working on this project for the Solar Decathlon split up into architectural and interior design teams to tackle each section.

While it is a great project and certainly an inspiration to green-minded designers, it has a few (hopefully non-fatal) flaws.

First, the actual construction was done using custom-made cylinders instead of actually cutting apart a real silo. One could argue, though, that this is simply intended to be a prefab prototype – something that illustrates the possibilities of creating new houses out of old and readily-available salvage materials (recycled silos being just the start).

Second, though, if the focus is on enabling small-scale, do-it-yourself renovations, then the question of semi-circular surfaces becomes a big one. Sure, you can create custom curved siding, built-ins and so forth for one-off projects or mass-produce them if the curvature remains the same, but if one silo varies from the next it could be painful to try and replicate these parts each time.

More news, from Cornell:

“Cornell’s 2009 Solar Decathlon Team completed two years of effort on its innovative Silo House with a seventh-place finish out of 20 international entries on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.”

“The 2009 team’s strategy included a monthlong test run in August and September at the State Fairgrounds in Syracuse, including two weeks of public tours during the fair. The team tested systems, worked out transportation and other details, and honed ways to explain the house and its features to visitors.”

The post Steel Silo Turned Into a Solar Home first appeared on Dornob.

Covered everywhere from HGTV to the Discovery Channel, this decommissioned military base complex turned silo home-in-a-hole is anything but Top Secret today. Its owners boast the set of converted structures to be the “world’s most unique luxury home – An incredible balance of natural beauty and technological innovation. Pristine mountain property and panoramic views in combination with the ultimate level of security and privacy.” Indeed, would could be safer than living in a missile silo, right?

The subterranean launch control center is a cylinder surrounded by an epoxy-resin, steel-reinforced, three-foot-thick structural wall that (particularly given its depth in the ground) is essentially as apocalypse-proof as a home gets. The entire structure is suspended on springs to absorb the shock of a nuclear blast. Forget blueprints and standard floor plans: this historic house comes with its own top-secret, government-certified schematics.

2.3 million dollars might sound like a lot – even for a high-end mansion – but if you consider that the original cost of construction was around ten times that much (in 1950s dollars, without accounting for inflation) the current converted property seems a steal by comparison. Oh, and in case you were concerned: their FAQ page points out that the Russians are well aware that the silo has been decommissioned, so presumably they would no longer consider it a primary target should an all-out world war come along.

If the underground base-and-silo complex is not quite enough to sell you on it, how about adding the above-ground suite and a private landing strip into the mix? It is a simple 125-foot walk down the lower areas – well, at least it is a good way to keep in shape. And you can bet that with the military involved and the nuclear weapons-oriented intent behind the construction, there is little chance that the below-Earth components are of shoddy craftsmanship.

On-site amenities handy for end-of-the-world scenarios include four wells, off-the-grid power, septic system, phone and satellite hookups and naturally breezy soil-based temperatures that hover in the 50s and 60s essentially year-round. Not bad for a missile silo home!

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There are many plans in place to convert existing structures into new-use buildings, including shipping container homes and missile-silo houses. This design idea comes from a slightly different direction – with a plan to use cheap, sustainable and ready-made off-the-shelf components in order to prefabricate livable structures from the start.

At thirty-six feet in diameter and the potential for multi-story housing, there is a surprising amount of space in these metal cylinders – and a lot of value to have an already-built exterior shell that can be locally purchased, readily shipped and easily set up on a building site. Austin + Mergold have experimented with many variations on the essential design them, all revolving around this central, inexpensive and eco-friendly core concept.

Just as they must be weather-proof to protect grain, silos are constructed to be durable, safe and strong and are thus readily adaptable to new purposes – even with perforations for doors, windows and other necessary openings. Of course, such designs lend themselves to modular adaptation as well – they can be stacked on top of one another, joined together on the side and added to in all kinds of creative ways to form larger houses or even condo complexes or other small prefabricated housing communities.

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Like something straight from a science fiction or horror movie scene, this subterranean nuclear missile silo was once a dank, dark and deserted structure of interest to no one – until one man saw past the pooled water and cracked concrete and began to build (by hand!) the ultimate underground home for himself and his family.

Occupying only a third of the nearly 20,000 available square feet of total military base, Ed Peden and his family live in a world of weird wonder purchased for a relative pittance at $48,000 and derelict for decades when he went to buy it. On the surface, former escape hatches now look like castle turrets and a shack-like structure is about all there is to mark the entrance to this domain.

Fortunately for the family, the gigantic missile bay was an early model set horizontally in the ground – a parked rocket-loaded truck was designed to drive out, angle the rocket and fire if needed. This space has, with only minor additions and conversions, made for a vast parking and storage area.

What many people fail to realize when they see something like a run-down nuclear missile base is that (beneath the grime, water and other signs of age) the underlying materials are often of the best quality and likely to last at least a few lifetimes after being outwardly restored – from top-notch concrete to high-grade steel. Peden became so enamored with his own unique living space that he switched from a life of teaching to a profession of selling missile silos around the United States. [Edit: Video from VMS added, thanks to Matt]

While many of the interior spaces have been left as industrial tributes to the history of this silo complex, a few choice above-ground areas were turned into more family-friendly and colorful living quarters. Still, these places seem almost like a facade – the overt surface area that masks the incredible depths of the underground home spiraling outward below. (Images by Jim Merithew).

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