Articles by Paula Pintos

This is a big coastal development project for the historic Sevkabel factory (Siemens & Halske), situated on Vasilyevsky Island. The site is located in an industrial district, placed right between the street (Kozhewennaya linia) and the Gulf of Finland. Old red-brick 19th-century buildings of the Siemens & Halske manufactory coexist with and industrial facilities of the 70s of the 20th century on the same site. These buildings are located in different Coordinate grids of the brick and concrete buildings differ from each other, and that difference creates complex, trapezoidal spaces between them. Dealing with an existing environment, we focused our efforts on the renovation and adaptation of existing buildings, as well as on the preservation of the industrial genius loci. This approach allowed us to emphasize the existing features of the site, including some of the industrial artifacts.

Studio11 has completed a new project in Minsk for PandaDoc – a company which takes up more than 1200 square meters and employs about 130 people. All employees are functionally divided into 4 large open-spaces complemented by a fifth space which is a common kitchen. From both stylistic and methodologic point of view, the project mainly fixes on principles of “the third wave” of modern architecture such as, for example, the purity of technique.

Xylem, the gathering pavilion for the Tippet Rise Art Center, has been designed by Francis Kéré as a quiet, protective shelter for the visitors of the ranch. Named to evoke the vital internal layers of a tree’s living structure, Xylem is a place where visitors may gather to converse, contemplate the views of the aspen and cottonwood trees near the bank of Grove Creek, or sit and meditate in solitude.

The village of Kirgiz is remarkable because it is removed from the main areas of attraction for vacationers in the mountainous region of Tashkent, and, unlike other mountain villages and villages in the Tashkent region, has not undergone strong modernization and Europeanization. The architecture and structure characteristic of mountainous Uzbekistan are preserved here.

TTC Elite Saigon Kindergarten is located to the west of District 3, close the city’s railway station. The new kindergarten is built upon an existing foundation inherited from the previous building. It is simply conceived in a pure geometric shape to provoke a sense of curiosity for the kids as they interact with it on a daily basis.

The villa as an architectural category has always been linked to a particular sort of escapism: the upper class of society, being tired of urban bustle, preferred a solitary yet luxurious way of living in a natural environment to densely populated and noisy city. This very essence of the villa remains unaltered despite several style changes, developing principles of design and introduction of mind-blowing paradigms such as modernist movement. ‘Tochka na karte’ (Russian for ‘a point on the map’) living room pavilion enters into a dialogue with the concept of villa and opposes the ideas of accessibility, equality and openness to the elitist, private and isolated character of modernist glass house villa which was taken as an aesthetic model for the project. Denying the vertical hierarchy, space can be described as highly welcoming and inclusive for everyone who enters it.  At the same time, the pavilion inherits the modernist desire to set a new standard of life and offers a refreshed understanding of spending the leisure time, being outside of the city and reestablishes the link between the architecture and the context of its existence.

Anchored by monumental coastal live oaks and majestic redwoods, this modest sustainably designed suburban home offers expansive living spaces that extend into the landscape. The owner brought specific criteria to the design process that would ultimately personalize its outcome.

The Nordkette is the southernmost mountain chain in the Karwendel, the largest mountain range of the Northern Limestone Alps located just north of the Tyrolean city of Innsbruck. The Hungerburg and Nordkette funiculars bring visitors directly from the city center to the Seegrube cable car station at 1,905 meters above sea level, where the Path of Perspectives unfurls in breathtaking alpine surroundings. Here, the 2.8-kilometer meandering panorama trail and its individual elements entice visitors to take a stroll up its 142-meter elevational change.