20 FENCHURCH STREET BY RAFAEL VIÑOLY ARCHITECTS

“20 Fenchurch Street is rapidly taking shape on London’s skyline, now almost fully clad, the 64,140sq m tower is due for completion next year. Today The 37-storey tower has been blamed for blistering paintwork, smashed tiles and singed fabric.

The half-finished 37-storey tower at 20 Fenchurch Street in central London, dubbed the "Walkie Talkie" due to its distinctive shape, is now being called the "Walkie Scorchie" because of its apparent ability to bounce heat from the sun on to buildings in the next street.

With such a distinctive form, this building will always divide opinion as it joins the growing number of unconventional towers now jostling for attention in the capital’s financial heartland” reports The Guardian. Viñoly maintains that the design – criticised by some as overwhelming – respects the City’s historic character by “following the contour of the river and the medieval streets”.

“The building form is drawn back from its maximum possible footprint to mirror the city street pattern while simultaneously establishing a visual connection to the emerging cluster of high-rises, receding from nearby historic buildings, and opening views through the site to contribute to the immediate public realm.” Rafael Viñoly Architects

Developers Land Securities and Canary Wharf previously said they were working to prevent the problem from taking place, and said in a joint statement on Tuesday night: "Following approval from the City of London, we will be erecting a temporary scaffold screen at street level on Eastcheap within the next 24 hours.

This solution should minimise the impact on the local area over the next two to three weeks, after which time the phenomenon is expected to have disappeared. "We are also continuing to evaluate longer-term solutions to ensure this issue does not recur in future." The developers behind a skyscraper blamed for starting fires and causing damage by reflecting the sun's rays have said they will erect a temporary scaffold screen in a bid to stop the "phenomenon".

Ali Akay, of Re Style barber's, said the position of the sun at a certain time of day caused a searing bolt of sunlight to start a small fire and burn a hole in his company doormat: "We just saw the smoke coming out of the carpet. We tried to cut the fire down, there were customers in at the time and they were obviously not happy. Customers are not going to come in if there is a fire in the front of the door."

Previously, the tower haddifficulty on the "Rights of light" that could impair the completion scheduled for 2014.Donal McCabe, a spokesman for Land Securities, said: "When we got planning consent on 20 Fenchurch Street in 2009, we did quite a lot on resolving rights of light matters, but the Heaney case has muddied the waters for all developers."

Location: London, UK

Architect: Rafael Viñoly Architects

Executive architect: Adamson Associates

Developers Land Securities: Canary Wharf Group

Structural and facade engineer: Halcrow Yolles

Contractor: Canary Wharf Contractors

Steelwork contractor: William Hare

Area: 64,140sq m

Cost: £200m

Year completion: 2014

MILLENNIUM SCIENCE COMPLEX BY RAFAEL VIÑOLY ARCHITECTS

The Penn State has a new home in the Millennium Science Complex, a 275,600 square-foot science building housing two of the University's premier research organizations - the Materials Research Institute and The Huck Institutes for the Life Sciences.

In response to an extremely sensitive research program, Rafael Viñoly Architects designed a structural solution for the laboratory facility that accommodates technological needs while creating open space and a gateway to the university’s science and research corridor.

The L-shaped building houses the departments in two perpendicular wings, with Life Sciences in the western wing and Materials Sciences in the northern wing.

Where the two wings join, they rise up with monumental 150-foot (45.7-meter) cantilevers that connect at the upper stories and shelter an open-air public plaza.

Located beneath this plaza, state-of-the-art quiet rooms and nano-mechanical labs require complete acoustic and vibration isolation, which is achieved by cantilevering the building overhead and keeping the quiet labs structurally independent.

Above-grade, open-plan, flexible Life Sciences laboratories are arranged around the perimeter of the floors for abundant natural light, with support spaces in the center. Conversely, Materials Sciences laboratories are in the center of the building where the environment can be more tightly controlled.

The second and third floors and the fourth-floor mechanical penthouse connect the two wings with common meeting and social spaces, as well as an outdoor terrace, to encourage interaction and collaboration between the two departments.

The stepped elevations simultaneously concentrate the building mass away from the streetscape and pedestrian areas to create the opportunity for large green roofs that reduce the heat-island effect and filter pollutants and carbon dioxide from the air surrounding this LEED-Certified facility

Instruments for the characterization of organic and inorganic materials will be co-located in a vibration-free quiet space, part of 50,000 net square feet of user facilities dedicated to current and future generations of characterization and fabrication tools.

Shared meeting and common areas are designed to encourage the free exchange of ideas that existed in the great corporate labs that defined physical science and engineering in the 20th century.

 

 

 

Location: State College, USA

Architect: Rafael ViñolyArchitects

Project Team: Whiting Turner Contracting Company; glazing contractor, D-M Products, Inc.

Engineering: Thornton Tomasetti

Construction: Whiting-Turner Contracting Company

Construction start: July 2008

Completion: Summer 2011

Area: 275,600 gross sq. ft.

Cost: $ 225 Milion

Year: 2012

Client: Pennsylvania State University 

Photography: Jeremy Bittermann, Bruce Damonte

121ST POLICE PRECINCT STATION HOUSE BY RAFAEL VIÑOLY ARCHITECTS

Recognizing the need for a greater law enforcement presence and the opportunity for great civic architecture, the New York City Police Department (NYPD) and the Department of Design and Construction (DDC) commissioned Rafael Viñoly Architects to design a station house for Staten Island’s first new precinct in decades, the 121st Precinct.

The design solution responds to the challenges of a sloped site with two distinct building volumes: a two-story linear bar, gently arcing in plan and gradually increasing in height as it approaches the commercial district of Richmond Avenue, and a one-story volume at the point where the site extends outward to the south.

The second floor cantilevers ninety feet toward Richmond Avenue in a symbolic gesture of community engagement that defines the main entrance and creates a visual link between the main lobby and the street.

The two building masses are distinguished by varied heights, differing surface treatments—horizontal stainless-steel cladding on the long bar, and gray brick on the one-story volume—and a skylight over the interstitial space between them, which brings natural light into the ground-floor lobby.

The long bar structure also shields the residential neighborhood to the north from the police parking lot to the south. Outdoor mechanical services are concealed within the building form and integrated into an enclosure clad in the same stainless steel.

The building program includes officer and detective work areas, administrative offices, locker rooms, holding cells and processing, muster room, interview rooms, lounges, evidence and records storage, vehicle fueling station, and screened parking. The building is designed to achieve an energy cost reduction of 25%.

Sustainable design strategies include the use of recycled asphalt pavement in driving lanes, permeable surfacing in low-traffic parking spots and five bio-retention cells that captures the rain that falls within the property in order to reduce the amount of water that enters the sewer system.

The harvested water infiltrates the soil, and once filtered of pollutants by the local plant life, is used to sustain these same plants, all of which are native and adaptive to the local climate.

As the community face of the NYPD in Staten Island, the 121st Police Precinct Station House is a model for sustainable design. When it achieves LEED Silver certification the station house will be the first police facility in the city so designated under Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s PlaNYC 2030 sustainable design initiative.

The 121st precinct will also increase police visibility on the West and North Shores and improve police response times. More than 200 uniformed and civilian personnel began working in the 121st station house.

Location: Staten Island, New York, USA
Architect: Rafael Viñoly Architects 
Costructor: Brickens Construction, Inc. 
Area: 4,830 m² 
Cost: $ 65,5 mil. 
Year: 2013 
Client: New York City Police Department (NYPD), Department of Design and Construction (DDC)