AP the Architect

From Firm's Website:

Celebrated French fashion house Hermès commissioned Renzo Piano to design a building for their Japanese headquarters in 1998. Its location at the heart of Tokyo’s densely built, neon-lit Ginza shopping district, and the stringent building regulations regarding earthquakes and fire, have influenced a compact and unique building with a distinctive glass façade. The building contains a shop, offices, an exhibition space and access to the underground station below Harumi Avenue.

The slim building, only 10m wide on its Harumi Avenue frontage, runs back 56m along a quiet side street, and rises 10 storeys high. It has a unique glass façade made of 13,000 bespoke, 450mm-square glass blocks (with special smaller, curved glass bricks at the building’s corners). Much larger than standard glass blocks, these were especially made by Vetroarredo in Florence, Italy and had to meet stringent fire and earthquake regulations. Their stamped textured glass finish means they are translucent rather than transparent, the overall effect of the facade being somewhat like a contemporary version of the traditional Japanese screen.

Hung from the structure on steel arms, the glass block facade is designed to act like a curtain in the event of an earthquake, allowing it to move via the flexible seals between the blocks by as much as 4mm, absorbing rather than resisting seismic shock.

This translucent membrane is unchanging as it screens the office floors and upper levels of the shop, wrapping the building all the way down to the ground. Only at ground floor level, along the longer side-street elevation do you find the occasional clear glass brick framing a precious display of Hermès products. The tiny Harumi Avenue frontage is the sole place on the building for more conventional, full-height shop display windows.

Inside, the shop extends over four floors from ground floor to 3rd floor, with ateliers and offices above, and a double-height exhibition space on the 7th floor. A planted courtyard garden open to the sky tops the building but remains screened from the street by the glass block facade.

Services and circulation are housed at the back edge of the building in an opaque strip along the party wall. The glass facade stops short of this with a curved edge, revealing the escape stair and helping to define the edge of the building.

From article:

Danish Maritime Architecture Studio MAST has unveiled plans to transform the abandoned Portuguese salt production area into a new hotel concept with a cluster of Stilt Houses hovering over the shallow lagoons.

Set among a landscape of Atlantic pine forests and rice paddies, the ‘salina’ has a history of salt production dating back at least three hundred years but was abandoned in the early 2000’s and has since become overgrown by saltbush and other halophytic vegetation.

The channels and ponds which wind around the 50ha site have since become breeding grounds for brine shrimp which in turn attract flocks of flamingos and oystercatchers.

Central to the project are the timber stilt houses, small cabins inspired by the traditional fisherman’s huts and jetties which dot the lagoons and rivers of Southern Portugal. The cabins are accessible by foot via winding elevated walkways or by boat or kayak. The cabins will be prefabricated off site from Portuguese CLT reducing the impact of the construction on the delicate landscape.

MAST’s vision for the site also includes the transformation of a dilapidated salt production building into a restaurant and spa and the introduction of a new cluster of agricultural buildings which are inspired by traditional Portuguese wooden salt storage warehouses

These new agricultural buildings will service a section of the site which will be returned to operation and produce small batches of artisanal salt. This process, dating back millenia, involves channeling saltwater through a network of narrow channels, where it slowly evaporates until it settles in large ponds, leaving behind mineral rich salt deposits.

A public wooden walkway encircles the site and connects the different buildings along with a large section of the site which will be preserved as a wildlife refuge. The walkway will connect to a network of public trails and will include a spiraling birdwatching tower providing views across the wetlands and coast beyond.

From article:

The Spanish firm estudioHerreros, which built the Munch Museum, now presents a floating sauna pavilion close to it. The Norwegian name Trosten refers to the thrush that migrates every year between Spain and the Nordic countries, the arrival of which, according to tradition, augurs good luck.