kwame nkrumah presidential library

Image by Mario Cucinella

all information from: http://www.mcarchitects.it/project/kwame-nkrumah-presidential-library-1

                    http://aasarchitecture.com/2014/05/kwame-nkrumah-presidential-library-mario-cucinella-architects.html

Description

The Kwame Nkrumah Presidential Library was born from the dream of Samia Nkrumah, the daughter of a political leader Kwame Nkrumah who led Ghana to independence in 1957, and is now leading the political movement of the father Convention people’s party.

Image by Mario Cucinella

The design of the library, developed in collaboration with the same Samia Nkrumah, is a cultural project that promotes a model of sustainable development capable of dealing with the environmental issues and able to engage the local population through the accessibility of the educational service, the cultural offer and the comparison with the new technologies. The library is designed as a large square of knowledge: a tool for catalyst engine privileged society and social innovation.

Image by Mario Cucinella

The building is in fact organized as a mixed functional program that addresses the issue of education as a whole: they provide spaces for reading and consultation but also spaces of encounter and confrontation. There are spaces for events and conferences, workshops and activities of co-working. Workshops for the music, the visual arts and crafts. The library will become part of the network of the Ghanaian education system ranks as one key tool for the training of new generations.

Image by Mario Cucinella

In Ghana, 83% of the population does not have Internet in schools and not all students are able to have access to books. For this reason, the involvement of young people must become a fundamental element of any cultural project as a guarantee of social inclusion. It will be possible to accept graduates for internships and educational activities for children. In addition, the library will offer the opportunity to train new professionals in the field of culture and education.

Image by Mario Cucinella

The project site

You choose to locate the project at Akosombo, near Lake Volta, the largest artificial lake in the world, with approximately 8502 km ² of surface area and 148 cubic kilometers of water stored : one of the most important water reserves of the globe. In particular, the dam of Lake Volta, sponsored by the Kwame Nkrumah, produces electricity for most of Ghana and plays a vital role for the local industry. More than 2 million people live near the lake, the source of drinking water and fishing site.

Image by Mario Cucinella

Functional description of components

The library is a building of 4600m2 arranged on six levels. It consists of circular -plan floors arranged around a large central void, designed according to a flexible scheme that allows the organization mobile and diverse interior spaces. A system of ramps and walkways is the vertical distribution within the building. Through the curtain system maintains the perception continues in all directions of the surrounding landscape.

Image by Mario Cucinella

At the entrance level is the reception and children’s area. This is immediately connected to the first floor which houses space for laboratories and workshops, as well as areas for exhibitions of art and architecture and space dedicated to art of how to do, where there will be a 3D lab. The upper floors of the library are allocated for consultation and reading rooms; Here is a space dedicated to Kwame Nkruma hosting thematic texts and his personal archive.

Image by Mario Cucinella

The last level is a large panoramic floor that houses the restaurant business and leisure. In the basement is added to a 300-seat auditorium for conferences and events and has a second separate entrance so you can operate independently of the library.

Image by Mario Cucinella

Environmental benefits and sustainable technologies

The Kwame Nkrumah’s Presidential Library is a bioclimatic building able to maintain high levels of thermal comfort, visual and audible throughout the year thanks to the balance of a few elements: shape, materials and simple technologies. We use sustainable materials, promoting the use of local and renewable materials, such as wood.

Image by Mario Cucinella

In particular, will be used for building fine wood recovered from Lake Volta. Are expected photovoltaic panels in coverage for the production of electricity in order to enhance the weather conditions of the site. Installations for the recovery of rainwater guarantee saving environmental resources. The protection against solar radiation occurs encouraging natural ventilation and shading generated by the large cantilevered floors and reflecting glasses that heat build-up. The green will represent an important source of cooling.

Image by Mario Cucinella

Facts

Location: Akosombo, Volta Lake, Ghana

Architects: Mario Cucinella Architects

Project Team: Mario Cucinella, Luca Sandri, Emanuele Dionigi, Monica Luppi, Michele Olivieri, Pietro Marziali, Gabriele Motta, Giulia Pentella, Yuri Costantini (model), Ambra Cicognani (model)

Rendering: Cristian Chierici CC 79; Engram Studio

Surface: 4600m2

Year: 2013 – ongoing

Image by Mario Cucinella

Image by Mario Cucinella

Article by Marco Rinaldi

guastalla school

image by Cristian Chierici cc79

all information from http://www.mcarchitects.it/project/nido-d-infanzia-guastalla

Description 

MCA project won the Architectural Competition held in February 2014 for the design and build of the new  School in Guastalla District (Regio Emilia, Italy). The new building will replace two existed schools damaged by the earthquake which stuck the territory in May 2012 and will host up to 120 boys and girls between 0 and 3 years old.

image by Cristian Chierici cc79

MCA project is thought to stimulate the child's interaction with the surrondings space according to a vision of "teaching" in which nothing is left to chance, from the distribution of educational areas to the choice of materials of construction, up to the integration between indoor and outside space.

image by Mario Cucinella

The structure involves the use of natural and recycled materials with low environmental impact. In particular, the suporting structure is made up of wooden frame: a safe and ideal material to keep the thermal insulation of the building.

image by Mario Cucinella

The hight insulation, the optimal distribution of transparent surfaces, the use of advanced systems of rainwater harvesting and insertion of a photovoltaic system on the roof, will allow the building to minimize the use of mechanical equipment to meet the energy needs of the school.

image by Mario Cucinella

kuwait school

image by Mario Cucinella

all information from http://www.mcarchitects.it/project/palestine-school 

                                  http://www.buildingreenfutures.org/gaza-green-school

THE PARTNERSHIP BETWEEN MCA AND UNRWA

The Kuwait School in Gaza is the result of the partnership between UNRWA and Mario Cucinella Architects (MCA). The project-design has been developed and refined over a period of two years (2011-13) in close consultation with UNRWA. It has benefited from essential inputs and recommendations by engineers in Gaza Field Office, and by architects in the Infrastructure and Camp Improvement Department in Amman.

image by Mario Cucinella

Building Green Futures will coordinate the knowledge transfer components and facilitate the coordination between UNRWA engineers, MCA and a group of companies, which have agreed to provide technical support to the project.

LOCATION OF THE SCHOOL

Once completed, the school will provide an education for 2050 children in the Khan Younis refugee camp which is located about two kilometers from the Mediterranean coast, north of Rafah. It lies West of the town of Khan Younis, a major commercial centre and stop-off point on the ancient trade route to Egypt.

image by Mario Cucinella

STRATEGIC OBJECTIVES OF THE PROJECT

The “Kuwait School” in Gaza is a project which intends to address three main strategic objectives:

Provide students in Gaza with a more conducive learning environment resulting from architectural solutions that guarantee better ventilation, insulation and visual comfort;

Ensure equitable and sustainable access to electricity and clean water through green technologies, rain harvesting and water recycling systems;

Encourage the adoption in Gaza of more sustainable building practices through processes of knowledge transfer benefiting UNRWA engineers and Gazan construction sector;

Pilot passive design solutions and green technologies, which, at a later stage, might be mainstreamed in office buildings, schools and health clinics across UNRWA’s five fields of operations.

image by Mario Cucinella

ENVIRONMENTAL STRATEGIES

The “Kuwait School” in Gaza is a building with a climate responsive design, capable of maintaining high visual and thermal comfort throughout the year only by means of passive design solutions and simple technologies.

The expected benefits:

In summer classrooms’ temperature is cooled down through thermal mass and natural ventilation.

In winter classrooms are heated by solar powered air conditioning.

Electricity is supplied 24-7 through photovoltaic panels placed on the school roof.

Water demand from municipal network is reduced by 60% through rain harvesting and water recycling systems. 

Passive design solutions:

Roof overhangs and vertical panels placed by the classrooms’ windows. Their function is to shade the facades in summer and to increase solar gains in winter. Moreover the corrugated metal sheet (light color) of the roof shades the upper concrete slab and avoids the overheating of the interiors.

The inner green courtyard, the openable windows and the solar chimneys increase natural ventilation and the extraction of exhaust air.

Thermal mass to increase inertia and minimize temperature swing of interiors created by the following structural elements: concrete slabs, concrete pillars with an external diameter of 2,2 mt and an inner cavity filled with excavation ground, earth-brick walls used as partitions between classrooms and as external opaque facades.

image by Mario Cucinella

 Green technologies:

457 m2 of amorphous photovoltaic cells integrated in the metal roof provide green energy for all electrical devices and lighting systems of the school.

101 m2 of evacuated solar heaters integrated with the metal roof provide hot water for the heating coil located in the technical rooms. The air pipes located beneath the slabs channel the hot air (or the cold air in summer) into the classrooms.

Green technologies for rain harvesting and water recycling:

The roof collects rainwater and sends it to the underground rainwater tank placed in the courtyard. The collected water is then used for cleaning and personal hygiene; Wetlands enable the waste water treatment: the treated gray water coming is used for WC flushing while the black water is used for irrigation. 

image by Mario Cucinella

CREDITS

Location: Occupied Palestinian Territories, Gaza Strip, Khan Younis

Year: 2010 – current project

Build up area: 3’500 mq

Budget: $ 630 / mq; $ 2’200’00

Partnership: UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East) & MCA Mario Cucinella Architects                

Project: Mario Cucinella Architects

Team: Mario Cucinella,  Giulia Pentella (architect in charge), Alberto Bruno, Hyun Seok  Kim, Michele Olivieri, Luca Bertacchi (photographer), Fabrizio Bonatti (3D model), Luca Stramigioli, Giuseppe Perrone, Rigoberto Arambula, Marco Dell’Agli, Yuri Costantini (model maker), Luca Sandri, Monica Luppi

UNRWA technical staff Gaza and Amman             

Environmental design consultants: prof. Brian Ford, Natural Cooling; b&a associati architetture sostenibili

Structural design: Milan Ingegneria Srl

Electromechanical design: Manens-Tifs s.p.a.

Water harvesting system design: artecAMBIENTE srl

3D Renderings: Cristian Chierici-CC79

Prize: Premio Pilosio 2012

Expositions: Design Library, Fuori Salone 2012, Milano; Prototyping Architecture Exhibition 2012-2013, Nottingham & London; The Oslo Architecture Triennale 2013, Oslo

image by Mario Cucinella

image by Mario Cucinella

ARPA new headquarters for the regional agency of prevention and environment

image by Mario Cucinella

all the information from http://www.mcarchitects.it/project/arpa-agenzia-regionale-per-l-ambiente

Description

The project is the winner in the international competition for design of a new building complex for offices and research laboratories. It covers an area of 5,000 square meters. The customer required a property to be alocated to its offices that would meet the highest standards of architectural and environmental quality, and was characterized by a maximum level of environmental sustainability.

image by Mario Cucinella

The new building sourounds a central courtyard, that's the hub of the complex. The roof of the building, the so-called fifth facade, is the strongest design feature of the project. A series of chimneys give to the building a strong architectural identity while satisfying the technological requirements of the brief. The chimneys are skylights that filter natural light, promote natural ventilation and reduce the need of mechanical cooling. 

image by Mario Cucinella

Overall, the entire building works proactively with the local microclimate meeting the technological needs manifested in the brief. All the workspaces are open to the outside by the inclusion of green courtyards creating an alteration of soid void - indoor-outdoor micro-environment that break up and define the building volumes.

image by Mario Cucinella

image by Mario Cucinella

ARPT Headquarters in Algiers

image by Mario Cucinella

all information from http://www.mcarchitects.it/project/arpt

Description

The project is inspired by the Algerian desert landscape where the dunes of seem natural buildings, manufactured by wind and sand. Analysing the urban fabric, the location of the lot along a highway of great importance and especially the proximity to the new urban park Bab Ezzouar, offer the possibility to create a building highly visible and representative. An institutional building as the new ARPT headquarters should be the reference point within a neighborhood and a city where tradition and modernity merge each other to create new symbolic and cultural scenarios. For this reason the project proposal draws a highly iconic building far from the predominant aesthetics of the area and which exploits the direct contact with the new park.

image by Mario Cucinella

The desire to create a building that would work according to the principles of bioclimatic architecture and in particular by the natural cooling techniques of the past, such as the tu'rat, suggested an aerodynamic shape, convex on the North side to divert the hot winds, and concave on the South side to capture the cool breezes during the night, and thus to promote the natural ventilation of the building.

image by Mario Cucinella

Project Details

Place: Algiers, Algeria

Year: 2013

Type: International competition – winning project

Author: Mario Cucinella Architects  

Team: Mario Cucinella, Luca Sandri, Alberto Casarotto, Alberto Bruno, Giulia Mariotti, Rossana Romano, Michele Olivieri, Giuseppe Perrone, Yuri Costantini (model maker)

Rendering: MIR, Engram Studio   

image by Mario Cucinella

sieeb – sino – italian

image by Daniele Domenicali

all information from http://www.mcarchitects.it/project/sieeb-1# and http://europaconcorsi.com/projects/13124-Mario-Cucinella-Architects-S-r-l--Sieeb-Sino-Italian

Building description

SIEEB building is the result of cooperation between the Ministry for Environment and Territory of the Republic of Italy and the Ministry of Science and Technology of the People’s Republic of China. It is a platform to develop bilateral long-term cooperation between the two countries in the fields of energy and the environment and is a showcase for the potential for reducing C02 emissions in the building sector in China.

image by Daniele Domenicali

                                                                

This building has been realized on the Tsinghua University Campus in Beijing and has been designed by the architect Mario Cucinella and the Politecnico di Milano.

The SIEEB faculty building is located on the Tsinghua University Campus. It houses a Sino-ltalian education, training and research centre for environmental protection and energy conservation, offices and a 200 seat auditorium. It has a floor area of 20.000 m2 and is 40 meters high.

image by Daniele Domenicali

                                                               

This project is the result of an integrated design process with collaboration between architects, consultants and researchers, a key issue in the design of green buildings.

Architectural Concept

The design philosophy combines sustainable design principles and state of the art technologies to create a building that responds to it’s climatic and architectural context. The design uses both active and passive strategies through the design of its shape and of its envelope SIEEB to control the external environment in order to optimise the internal environmental comfort conditions.

image by Daniele Domenicali

The building design has been assessed through a series of testing and computer simulations of its performance in relation to its possible shape, orientation, envelope, technological systems and so on, finding a balance between energy efficiency targets, minimum C02 emissions, a functional layout and the image of a contemporary building.

The design found a way to integrate tested and proven components with innovative systems.

Envelope components, control systems and technologies employed in the SIEEB represent the state of the art of the innovative Italian production in the building sector.

image by Daniele Domenicali

                                                                

The building is closed and well insulated on the northern side that faces the cold winter winds and it is more transparent and open towards the south. On the east and west sides, light and direct sun are controlled by a double skin façade that filters solar gain and optimises the penetration of daylight into the office spaces.

Attractive green spaces, gardens and terraces are distinctive elements of the project. Cantilevered structural elements extend to the south, giving shade to the terraces

Architectural form

The SIEEB building takes shape from an analysis of the site and of the climatic conditions of the city of Beijing.

Located in a dense urban context, surrounded by 10 storey high buildings, the SIEEB maximises the southern orientation of the site. The shape of the building evolves from a series of tests and simulations on solar radiation, overshadowing (studies developed by the researchers from the Polytechnic of Milan) and it is strongly influenced by its expected energy performances. The main starting points for the design team were a symmetrical U-shaped courtyard building stepping downwards towards the south.

image by Mario Cucinella

The building is inserted in a square lot that measures around 60 m x 60 m. In section the floors step back at higher levels to maximise sun penetration into the internal spaces and to give light and air to the internal garden.

image by Mario Cucinella

Vertical distribution is granted by two main staircases and lift blocks located in the west and east wings; the two blocks also contribute to the structural rigidity of the whole building.

image by Mario Cucinella

The building is symmetrical, reducing exposed areas to the north side. Due to its form, the building is conceived to be self-protected and shaded.

image by Mario Cucinella

image by Mario Cucinella

 In terms of functions, the SIEEB is divided into two different parts. The lower part from level -1 to level +1 represents the public area (main hall, exhibition spaces and an auditorium), and it is physically connected with the street and the pedestrian walkways. In order to give an easy accessibility to the building, the ground floor is designed to be permeable along the north-south axis. In the north side, a two-storey high opening façade gives access through the building and lets the internal garden be visible from the street and from the facing buildings.

image by Mario Cucinella

The lower floors are complex in shape: ramps, passages, irregular terraces and planted gardens, give the public spaces different environments and perspectives. The upper floors, (from +2 to the top floor), mainly occupied by offices and laboratories, have more regular floor plans that change at each level to give space to open south  facing terraces.

image by Mario Cucinella

image by Mario Cucinella

Envelope

image by Mario Cucinella

The external envelope of the building plays a key role in the environmental strategy in that different solutions respond to different orientations.

The building is conceived as a protective shell towards the north, instead opening south towards to the sun.

image by Mario Cucinella

                                                               

The northern facade, which has the main entrance from the campus, is designed to be almost entirely opaque and highly insulated to protect the building from the strong cold winter winds. The blue colour of the facade creates a strong architectural image for the building.

image by Mario Cucinella

Different systems of ventilated facades are used in the internal skin, facing the garden, and in the east and west outer envelope. South facades, shaded by the cantilevering floors and structures are treated to be more transparent.

image by Mario Cucinella

The east and west facades of the building are clad with a double skin composed of a simple curtain wall, based on a pattern of transparent/ opaque modules and an external silk-screen facade. Simple horizontal silk-screen lines if different densities give the building an elegant vibration and contribute at the same time to the environmental control of the internal spaces.

Due to the critical exposure to sunlight of the east and west facades, special components such as internal and external light-shelves and internal roller blinds have been introduced to control glare and maximize daylight distribution.

The inner envelope, facing the internal courtyard, has a double skin composed of a simple curtain wall system, based on the same modularity as the outer facades, and an external glass louvers layer.

The louvers are composed of reflective glass panes, tilted at different angles in order to control direct solar radiation and light penetration into the office spaces. Photovoltaic panels that produce energy are integrated into the design as shading elements for the terraces.