AVE P MOB wins a pair of SAA Design Awards

We're excited to share the news that AVE P MOB has received a pair of SAA Design Awards (a Merit Award and a People's Choice Award).

The recently completed project is a new 41,000sf medical office building sited in Saskatoon, Canada's Riversdale District, and aims to give the community and its users a health-minded environment in every way possible. 

The building explores new programmatic territory as a result of the disassembling of the traditional medical office into a sharing-economy type program.  By removing the privacy-driven patient exam rooms from the doctor's offices and recollecting them into a state of the art shared / managed clinic, what were traditionally closed offices can effectively become open, light-filled, flexible workspaces that are tailored to user needs.  Moreover, digital management of the shared / managed clinic enables the group to drastically reduce the number of offices that previously would sit empty, while patients were not visiting or while doctors were elsewhere.  The four-story building has a public ground floor with leasable retail space, lobby, and a public cafe. The upper two floors house doctor's offices and a small amount of exam rooms, while the second floor holds the heart of the building -- a light-filled atrium space that acts as a lifted living room, allowing easy public access while maintaining some separation from the street, and offering direct access to the shared clinic spaces, which all occupy that floor.  

The project was a collaboration between Oxbow Architecture and Metaamo.

For more info on this project: http://www.metaamo.com/MOB/

Project Team: Jim Siemens, Matthew Bunza, Sarah Robertson, Sam Lock, Mason Loy, Anna Ringstrom (Landscape), Tara Reichart (Structural), Aandra Currie Shearer (Interiors).  Photo credits: Candice Epp.

Namorik Atoll Scale Comparisons

In light of our recent site visits in the Marshall Islands, we thought it would be interesting to share these comparative diagrams that we did when we first began working there with Living Islands, in order to begin understanding a place we hadn't yet been, by referencing it to places we already knew well. Those diagrams have since been supplemented by countless other efforts, and especially with our visit this week. Questions we were asking at the time: How does one's worldview change depending on the geography of their youth? For the average American, living in cities that are 95% land / 5% water, how does one even fathom what it's like to experience the opposite, of 95% water / 5% land? And how does that shifting ratio affect one's priorities, not only in terms of high level thinking, but on day-to-day decisions? Shown here is Namorik, one of the most remote atolls on the Ralik Chain, with a population under 1000, a land area of 2.8 square km (1.1 square miles), enclosing an 8.4 square km (3.2 square miles) lagoon, and surrounded by thousands of miles of open ocean.

Dispatch from Arno Atoll

We are in the Republic of the Marshall Islands this week thanks to a very generous grant from a private donor.  Metaamo is working on Climate Resilient Building Systems for a part retrofit / part ground-up School Project in Majuro, along with various Ecologically-Sensitive Development projects in the outer Atolls.  This aerial photograph from the Metaamo drone, helps put into perspective the duality of life here: it is a place of sheer, visceral beauty, yet extreme vulnerability.  

New SW Portland Residence in Design Development

Another project on the boards -- we are currently in the Design Development phase for a new 2,500 SF ground-up residence for a young family of six in SW Portland, near Gabriel Park.  The three-level house carefully conforms to the contours of the sloping site, and features airy, double-height living spaces, and an upper level sunset terrace that affords views of nearby Gabriel Park, the distant Coast Range Mountains, and the spectacular sunsets that are so common to the area.  See above photo for a taste of what that will be like!

#metaamo #house #portland #gabrielpark

New House Project in the Columbia River Gorge

Metaamo has started working on a new single-family residence on the Washington side of the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area. The house will be nestled into the hillside atop an escarpment of basalt, with views of Mt Hood, the surrounding mountains, and the river below.  Check out these gorgeous views from the site.  #metaamo #house

Stone Market Visits in Shandong Province, China

We were in Shandong Province recently visiting quarries and stone markets. #metaamo

Construction Progress - Martha House

Construction progresses on the roof covering one of the landscape terraces at the Martha House. 

#dougfir #beams #joint #architecture #pdx #metaamo

HK Office Construction Update - Demo Starts

Construction has begun on an interior fit-out we did for a multi-national financial firm in Admiralty, HK.   These photos are from a recent site visit as demolition of the existing space commences.  

Matt & Xiaonuan give Luojia Lecture @ WHU

Matt and Xiaonuan were in China on April 21 to lecture about Metaamo's recent work at Wuhan University, for the Architecture Seminar of LUOJIA Lecture Series. 

Martha House Construction Update

Cross section of a fireplace [and ode to Gordon Matta-Clark].  The result of when one asks the question, 'We can just slice the fireplace in half, right?'

This project, the Martha House, is another one that's close to the heart, and one of a handful of house renovations that we're currently doing in the Portland metro area.  

Matt Participates in "Great Cities" Urban Design Conference in Wuhan

This past week, Matt was in Wuhan to take part in the "Great Cities" Workshop, sponsored by the British Council and Wuhan Tiandi, which focused on how Architecture and Urban Design can help to create and shape great, liveable cities.  

The session Matt participated in, 'Urban Design in the Modern Era,' was a conversation between Matt, Li Baofeng (Architect, HUST, Wuhan), Catherine Pease (vPPR, London), and Albert Chan (Developer, Shui On Land, Hong Kong), and dealt with the question of how to make big cities (which are now dominated by large scale projects and high rises) more tuned to the human user, i.e. smaller scale, pedestrian friendly, and more liveable.  The discussion broached the subjects of scale, how to balance the best aspects of the old and new cities, diversity and pluralism in urban design, the need for changes in code at the policy level, and sustainability.

Other participants included Hisham Elkadi (Dean, SBE, University of Salford), Thomas Jefferies (Head, Manchester School of Architecture), Cheng Shidan (Wuhan University), Satoshi Ohashi (Zaha Hadid China & Asia), and Nick Whittingham (the British Consul General), et al.  

Jinan Urban Design Project Featured in Planning Practice Publication

A low-carbon city project we worked on with MIT and Tsinghua University in Jinan was recently published in the book "Planning Practice: Studios + Workshops 2005-2015" from SA+P Press. The project dealt with Transit Oriented Development (TOD) and urban agriculture, and sought to suggest new building typologies that integrated the vibrancy, flexibility, and community-focused aspects of traditional "villages" into high density, modern developments.

http://dusp.mit.edu/news/planning-practice-studios-workshops-2005-2015

Metaamo receives Gold Prize in Guangzhou

Matt and Xiaonuan were recently in Guangzhou for the Liang Sicheng Cup awards ceremony, where we were presented with the Gold Prize, the highest honor in the international competition, for our proposal for a Cultural Center at a UNESCO Heritage Site in Kaiping, China.

The Prize was presented by Ms. Tang Wensheng, who was born in New York, and was once aide to Chairman Mao Zedong and Premier Zhou Enlai (When US President Richard Nixon first came to China in 1972, Tang Wensheng served as translator in that historic meeting).

Following the ceremony, we were honored to have met with Liang Sicheng's grandson, in a wonderful conversation, also translated by Ms. Tang Wensheng. Among the topics, we discussed the foundational role that his grandfather's scholarship played in bringing knowledge of East Asian architecture to the US and the West, and in how his formal recommendations to Allied leaders helped to save the cities of Kyoto and Nara from bombing in World War 2. Coincidentally, Liang Sicheng's first books in China were published by Tsinghua University (where Xiaonuan is an Alum and Matt was a Visiting Scholar), while in the US, his famous first English language work about Chinese Architecture was published by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's MIT Press (where Matt is an alum and former faculty member).

New Commercial Office Work in Hong Kong

Metaamo is working on an interior fit-out for a multi-national financial firm in a skyscraper in the Admiralty / Central District of Hong Kong. These views of Central and Victoria Harbour are from a recent site visit.

Metaamo receives five new commissions in Southern China

Metaamo has received five commissions to design new municipal buildings among the dynamic topographic landscapes of terraced rice fields, just outside the city of Kunming, China. We were in Yunnan Province this week visiting these incredible and diverse sites (one shown below) and are greatly looking forward to collaborating with these communities.

Sneak peek of a recently completed P+M House

We are very excited to share a little sneak peak of the P+M house, a new 2,700 SF residence for a wonderful young family which was recently completed in Canada. This bank of south facing, triple-glazed windows brings the full canopy of a row of American Elms right into the heart of the house. Look at those leaves!

Metaamo wins Gold Prize in Liang Sicheng Cup for UNESCO site

We're happy to announce that our project, "Dialogue Between Wind and Earth," has won the sole Gold Prize in the Liang Sicheng Cup, the highest honor in a global architectural ideas competition for a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Kaiping, China, for the preservation and celebration of Diaolou, a unique tower structure created by local Chinese who had travelled abroad and returned home to build with a mix of Western and Eastern influences. 

http://www.lscbadc.com/goods/?atd=show_0_18_1_0

Remarks from the judges:   "At the graphic level, this design proposal utilizes a vertical tower unit (Diaolou) and a horizontal, courtyard housing group. Woven together to generate the spatial framework of a rural cultural center, the library and museum’s two rectangular massing blocks superimpose, while cleverly resulting in an interstitial path linking the adjacent villages. Through a simple floor plan, the modulation and combination of spatial cells results in spatial variation, a rational distinction between main and service space, and rainwater collection tanks that are neatly organized into the plan grid. A continuous, pitched roof is constantly cut by courtyards and light wells, creating an interior space rich with light and shadow, while simultaneously reproducing the form and scale of the traditional courtyard houses. The programmatic form of the towers (Diaolou) not only reproduces their historical memory and becomes a sign of the cultural center, but also reflects the flow of energy by using the towers for wind capture. Across historical and present time dimensions – as well as between the cultural and natural character of architecture – the authors have created an organic joint, and an interesting translation. An excellent design should not only have an interesting concept, but the key lies in the usage of rational logic derivation, poetic spatial imagination, as well as the ability to efficiently convert those ideas and actually construct them.  There is no doubt that this team conducted a successful attempt."

The competition was sponsored by the Guangdong Housing and Urban-Rural Department, and supported by Tsinghua University, Tongji University, and Hong Kong Polytechnic University, among others.  According to the competition website, after the announcement in November 2015, they "received a total of individuals, teams and organizations from more than 10 countries and regions, [including] nearly 400 group registrations, and a final harvest of nearly 200 entries."  

 

P+M Construction Update

A trio of slot skylights over the living room, during framing in the P+M house.

Site Visit for a new house in Cannon Beach, OR

Metaamo is starting work on a 2000 sf, new construction beach house in Cannon Beach, Oregon.  The project site -- which is a short walk from the water -- has potential ocean views and abuts a wooded ravine with a pristine stream and mixed forest.  

P+M Interiors Update

Here's a bi-seasonal glimpse into the interior of one of our current house projects, P+M, currently under construction up north. The fourth wall of the living room is the changing canopy of a mature row of American Elms, here shown in autumn and winter through a custom window system.