Looking much like the real whales this area is known for, a new visitor center will rise from the tip of a Norwegian island 100 miles north of the Arctic Circle. “The Whale” by architecture firm Dorte Mandrup aims to be an unobtrusive addition to the setting while also drawing even more visitors to the remote area of Andøya, a prime whale-watching destination.

“The new Arctic attraction, The Whale, tells the story of the big inhabitants of this underwater world, rising as a soft hill on the rocky shore – as if a giant had lifted a thin layer of the crust of the earth and created a cavity underneath,” say the architects.

“A single curved concrete shell makes up the roof of The Whale. This parabolic form effectively transmits the forces to three support points in the corners of the building, creating a large, inner column-free room.”

The “whale tail” effect is only visible from a certain angle, but it’s still pretty cool, and the structure’s low-lying form is meant to help human visitors maintain a minimal impact on the area (though ecotourism remains controversial, as some say it’s having a negative impact and others say it helps raise crucial funds and awareness for affected species.) Other popular activities in Andenes include taking in the northern lights, exploring fjords, hiking, fossil hunting and berry picking.

The design beat out stiff competition from the likes of Snøhetta, Reiulf Ramstad and Bjarke Ingels Group, chosen for its combination of creativity and respect for the natural environment. You can see all of the proposals at The Whale’s website and judge for yourself.

Envisioned for the coastal town of Limassol in Cyprus, a wild apartment tower concept has round swimming pools sprouting almost organically from the facade on all sides. Developed by the French firm Hamonic + Masson, the Limassol Tower grants every unit in the building its own private pool.

Clusters of platforms and sun shades at ground level continue the pattern, so that from above, the complex looks like a colony of spores or mushrooms (or maybe a juggling act of dinner plates that’s dangerously close to crashing to the ground?)

“The volume’s transparency means unobstructed sea views are maximized. A sliding glass door is the only element separating living areas from the balconies, meaning the feeling of being outside is possible simply by opening the window. On the ground floor a regal entrance opens the doors to a unique living experience.”

“We seek to enhance quality of living by offering a range of amenities: an underground fitness zone illuminated by natural sunlight, an art gallery on the ground floor and a premium spa on the first floor, all with independent entrances. Wellbeing and luxury combine to create an exclusive living experience.”

The architects say they wanted to capture the “natural splendor” of the environment with their design. Rising about 180 feet into the air, the building features 19 luxury apartments, some with views of the sea.

Few people would argue with the allure of having your very own private swimming pool just outside your door, but one wonders how the engineering of this structure would actually play out. Is this a realistic concept that could actually be built, or yet another fantasy project that just doesn’t translate into real life? Feel free to chime in if you know. It’s certainly an interesting departure from the standard seaside apartment building, at least.

Just looking at the photos of these interiors, where would you guess this unusual verdant living space is located? The English countryside, maybe, or a rural land project full of experimental buildings made of natural materials? An apartment building in one of the world’s most heavily populated cities probably wouldn’t be the first thing that comes to mind, but that’s exactly where “Garden Room” is set, testifying to the transformative skills of India-based architectural studio The White Room.

Known for their propensity to experiment with organic forms and materials, even within urban settings, The White Room creates the feeling of a secret oasis in this unusual project. Sculptural in form, the space features lots of round windows, arches and hollows, with nary a straight line in sight.

Designed for “a flamboyant couple,” the “organically designed spaces seamlessly flow into each other, thinning the boundaries and bringing nature closer to the living,” explain architects Nitin Barchha and Disney Davis. “Thes paces take on a sculptural form with some wrapped in turquoise mosaic, some in mediterranean whites, while others in slate and green.”

The result feels more like a garden than an indoor living space, complete with stepping stones set into carpets of living grass. Plants are virtually everywhere you look, water cascades through multiple fountains and custom glass doors maintain views of the lush green spaces and allow natural light to penetrate the innermost rooms, like the bedroom and the incredible aqua-tiled bathroom.

“The White Room studio is built on the basic principles of exploring the bare beauty of materials. Here the focus has always been on exploring innovative ways of approaching fundamental problems of space, proportion, light and materials. The way in which a wall meets a floor, or how a door fits into a wall, flush or proud, are not mere details, they are as much architecture as the planning of a sequence of rooms in a gallery, or the composition of a facade.We consider architecture, of all the arts, as the one that most depends for its expressive power on rubbing up against the gritty constraints of every day life.”

Like the chambers of a seashell eroded over time by sand and water, the white hollows of this subterranean museum offer a series of organically shaped spaces tucked beneath the dunes. The UCCA Dune Museum by OPEN Architecture draws inspiration from both children digging in the sand at the beach and the caves that housed humanity’s earliest artworks to create an intriguing complex that interacts with the natural setting.

Daringly set back just a few meters from the water, the art museum along the coast of northern China’s Bohai Bay aims to be “a return to primal and timeless forms of space.” While some might see the development of such a structure in a sensitive natural area as an intrusion, the architects say they chose this location specifically because the presence of the museum will prevent the dunes from being leveled to make way for ocean-view real estate developments, which has already happened along much of the shore.

“A series of cell-like contiguous spaces accommodate the Dune Art Museum’s rich and varied programs, which include differently-sized galleries and a cafe,” the architects explain. “After passing through a long, dark tunnel and a small reception area, the space suddenly opens up as visitors enter the largest multifunctional gallery. There, a beam of daylight from the skylight above silently yet powerfully fills the space.”

The sea, sand and sky join together with the sinuous curves of the building and its ovoid openings to interplay with the artwork on display inside, resulting in a singular experience that simply can’t be recreated when the art travels to different museums. Even varying weather conditions and times of day, with their varying levels and angles of light, alter the visitor’s perception of the art and how it feels in the space.

Walking through the museum’s interiors can feel like navigating a secret network of underground tunnels, and then the contrast of dark and light, under and over, interior and exterior is revealed at the top of a spiral staircase that opens up to the sky. In the near future, a companion museum called the Sea Art Museum will rise from the water itself, visible from the dunes.

When artificial structures mimic the contours of topographic maps, which are almost sculptural in their own right, they become an extension of the land itself. The lines on the map that indicate changes in elevation, following the curves of dips and projections, easily transform into flat abstracted planes delineating the floors of a building or the levels of a stepped landscape design. Some of these built environments follow the existing shapes of the land beneath them and others create new ones altogether, reimagining the geography of the setting.

This concept model for an art gallery on UC Berkeley’s campus doubles as a bridge spanning Strawberry Creek. The design engages with the topography of the site allowing visitors to either cross or easily access the creek.#conceptmodel #architecture #ucberkeley #strawberrycreek pic.twitter.com/h1KqblfJap

— Jacoby Architects (@JacobyArch) November 17, 2017

Architects often start with 3D visual models of the terrain of a building site, which may be abstracted into layers of flat wood or foam. These artificial landscapes make it easier to envision how the new structure will fit into its surroundings, and it’s easy to see how they could have an influence on the design of the buildings themselves.

Some topographical architecture is made to blend in, presenting itself almost as if it grew naturally out of the hills that surround it. Krakow University student Adrian Kasperski designed a new natural park venue for the Island of Fogo after its previous one was destroyed by molten lava just a year after its opening, and he used the topography of the land as a guide to avoid similar catastrophes in the future and help camouflage the low-rise facility. It presents itself as a “slight cut in the caldera” with elongated plaza frames that dip down to follow the slopes.

In the Guangxi province of China, the new Suiseki Hall by Zhanghua Architects is as fluid as the body of water beside it, suggesting the shape of hills, yet there are no hills nearby. The architects actually wanted to represent a balance between the flat land and the craggy mountains, taking inspiration from the pattern of stone as it erodes beneath fast-flowing water.

Zaha Hadid Architects’ predilection for flowing organic shapes and parametric modeling naturally lends itself to topographical compositions, like the Beko Masterplan in Belgrade. Paying tribute to the region’s modernist traditions, this proposal embeds a new community into the surrounding mountains. Intriguingly, the flowing volumes seem to have been plucked and stretched right out of the more conventional building beside them, each of their floors like a rocky stratification.

In other cases, dramatic peaks project out of the ground like shards of stone, conjuring a mountain-like sense of solidity. Graphic structures like the Festival Hall in Era by Delugan Meissl Associated Architects take the shapes of natural landscape features and turn them into oversized inhabitable sculptures. The Festival Hall “developed from the topographical conditions, placing it in an adequate relationship with the existing Passionsspielhaus,” the architects explain. It works to achieve a harmony between itself and the existing historical building beside it as well as the mountains in the distance.

Projects like BC Prestige by 4M Architecture aim to create mountains where there are none, yet their silhouettes aren’t exactly natural, almost seeming like someone took a topographic map and sliced out some of the higher elevations, plopping them down elsewhere. Similarly, the Topographic House by MiAS Arquitectes is like an artificial crag overlooking the sea.

“Rising Over the Traces of History,” a design for a new governmental historic and cultural complex in Kaliningrad by ONZ Architects and Ercan Coban Architects, literally turns this concept upside-down. Its building is flat on top and along the sides, but its underbelly is curved to complement the hills and valleys of the land underneath it.

Named for the dramatic Dolomite mountain range in which it’s set, the Dolomitenblick holiday apartment building abstracts the steep slopes, making each shift in elevation into its own level. A diagonal cut offering entrance to the building slices its facade in half, almost as if the “rock” of the structure has been shaped by falling water. “Besides its functional meaning, this incision becomes the main defining element of the building” from the cut at either side a strip unfolds that forms the balustrade of a generous covered balcony and ends into the surrounding topography. Following the steep natural hillside with each floor the strips and the facade jump back,” says Plasma Studio.

Plasma is well known for “drawing landscapes into buildings,” taking natural shapes and stretching them into more geometric-looking volumes that remain organic nonetheless. This tendency is especially pronounced in projects like its Ggantija World Heritage Park proposal, the dynamic Esker Haus with its slatted timber facade mimicking a “stratified geological formation,” the similar Strata Hotel in Italy “developed as a free-flowing topography” and the Flowing Gardens project developed for the Beijing Olympics, which almost seems to recreate the look of a topographic map when viewed from above. Plasma notes that one of its main strategies is to seamlessly integrate architecture, landscape and urbanism.

Of course, it’s only natural that topographical design trickles down to landscape architecture as well. Designed with stormwater management in mind, the San Martín de la Mar Square in Cantabria, Spain by the appropriately named Zigzag Arquitectura looks like a topographic map come to life with its series of terraced platforms. The square integrates permeable paving and strips of grass to navigate a steep change in slope and make the overlook at the top more accessible to all.

Kengo Kuma’s Naturescape, a topographical landscape of stone and water created for the Urban Stories exhibition of contemporary living in Milan, interprets traditional Zen gardens in a delightfully graphic way. The layers of stone follow curves around the room, creating pathways, clusters of bamboo and pools of water.
http://www.zigzagarquitectura.com/