#archizinc trophy

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Prize-winners in the 8th edition of the ARCHIZINC TROPHY by VMZINC

The winner of the Commercial Building Category: Regional blood donation centre, Coimbra (Portugal) by Mr JOSÉ MATEUS  (ARX ARQUITECTOS)

GUIDED BY NATURE

Equipped with the most modern high tech material, this blood treatment centre blends seamlessy into the surrounding woods.

In Portugal, blood donation was reorganised around four regional hubs. The ARX architecture firm designed two donation centres: one in Porto and one in Coimbra, in the centre of the country. The new modern building houses services and laboratories formerly located in confined premises in the city's hospital.

The quest for “nature” guided the architects throughout the project. The centre occupies a large wooded plot. Despite the presence of numerous constructions in the surrounding area, the prevailing impression is that of being in the middle of the countryside. No roof, no facade, just an elongated volume with rounded corners, clad with QUARTZ-ZINC®, which makes it look like a large bark or a rock. The centre appears like a natural element through the trees, its plan blending with the contours of the landscape. Some visitors have compared it to a large snake, with its elongated form and skin of scales, punctuated by the rhythm of the horizontal and vertical standing seams.

A glass facade awaits at the gable. The building's recessed and overlap openings are horizontally aligned with the zinc strips, conspicuously departing from the urban window typology and its logical sequencing. Inside the building, these openings provide beautiful panoramic views of the forest.

Jury's assessment: Thanks to an organic form clad in zinc, an unexpected amalgamation with nature for a programme of this type.

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Private House in Sydney (Australia) by Fox Johnston

With a view across the ocean to the horizon, and set in a perfectly landscaped garden, this house (which is permanently occupied) has everything the heart could desire. It is designed to please the senses, but is also practical, built with solid, durable materials which require minimum maintenance and take on the patina of time. Bluestone, glass and wood are combined with ANTHRA-ZINC® on the building envelope and in the structure of the interior spaces. These choices reflect the environmental requirements of the owner, who asked the architect to install broad sun screens and high-performance insulation in the roof and walls, particularly on the upper storey, where the insulation is encased in the zinc cladding.

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Zinc, bricks and concrete

Engineering School in Orsay (France)

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Interior adventure

 Monumental and opaque, house B3 seems to be sculpted from a freshly quarried block. Its strong presence borders on hostility, which the architects explain by referring to the uncertain nature of the site, a “no-man’s land”, like so many others in the residential outskirts of cities, a contemporary non-place, with slack roads stretching into the distance, an unkempt place.... The house is in fact located in an estate built around a mini roundabout. As it cannot draw support from its environment, it is closed in on itself like a fortress, and becomes a base from which to re-conquer its location. An inner world takes over from the outer world: discreet micro-gardens settle into excavations in the ground and spaces scooped out of the house’s massive volume. Large windows, invisible because they are set back from the main facade, make it possible to take full advantage of these outside spaces from the living areas situated on the ground floor, or from the rooms on the first floor. 

The zinc cladding that surrounds all the outer facades gives this monolithic house a rough, solid aspect.  The layout is arranged in a crosswise geometry, and repeated in an almost obsessive, radical manner.  Only on closer observation of the house does the single block soften, to become a precious object that has been as carefully crafted as a piece of furniture.  The crevices formed by the recess of the cross are occupied by windows and their walls are covered in wood. This softer material was the perfect means for the architects to express the duality between inside and outside that is the leitmotiv of this entire piece of architecture.

Individual House «CASA B3», Pamplune (Spain) by Vaíllo y Irigaray + Galar

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