
[OUR SELECTION]
'Selected projects' contains a significant part of International Architecture Development's work in recent years. Chronologically organized projects show the progression of the creative processes of Stéphane Cottrell & Jérôme Michelangeli, focused on a dialogue between ergonomics and contextuality. This architectural database is a living and growing organism to be updated regularly, in order to best represent IAD's most important architectural work.
[SECTOR LLEVANT]
Mixed-use building. Palma de Mallorca 2010.
Total area_62 300 sq.m
[7TH OF APRIL UNIVERSITY CAMPUS]
Zuwarah, Libya 2010.
As an experiment in multidisciplinary design, IAD (International Architecture Development) has undertaken the delivery of this Design & Build project for a brand new 90-hectar university campus comprising 93,000m2 of educational and administrative buildings. A total of 13 singular pedagogical edifications make up the masterplan. Total area_95 000 sq.m.
[MADRID DESIGN CENTER]
San Sebastian de los Reyes_Madrid, Spain.
This project has been entirely conceived and optimized in close collaboration with Arup Spain within a framework of sustainable design. The semi-open interior patio’s advanced roof structure naturally resolving convection- related passive cooling and heating and the large area of interior spaces acting as a low-inertia energetic mass. The sculptural play of blind forms towards the south combined with the various greenhouse spaces and trombe walls of the west façade create a showcase example for environmentally sensitive design. Total area_78 000 sq.m.
[CASTELLANA 36-38]
Office building. Madrid, Spain 2009.
Located in the heart of the capital city of Madrid, the building at Castellana 36-38, one of the flagship buildings owned by Spain’s principal insurance company Mutua Madrileña, is currently undergoing a deep metamorphosis of it’s interiors and facades. Using it’s proven methods of contextual and functional investigation, IAD proposed the revitalization of the building’s architectural aesthetics. The objective of Mutua Madrilena: to make it reappear in the exclusive and iconic profile of the city’s main boulevard “Paseo de la Castellana”. The defined geometry of this building, marked by the epoch in which it was built, offers a huge range of possibilities. It is comprised of an imposing architectural framework which is, at the same time, very discreet, very functional. This geometric clarity, contrast, motion management, identity and pluralism are the vectors of development in this project that actively seeks to be different. Total area_16 900 sq.m.
[AL DAICEL]
Mixed-use building. Doha, Qatar.
Total area_254 000 sq.m [THE FRAME]
Sky Gardens Hotel | Villamoda Galleries. Dubai, UAE 2008.
High-rise living in and amongst the trees... The first step consisted in defining a visual and constructive frame for the building. This frame would determine not only the exterior facade of the hotel but the physical limits of built-up areas. The response to such a simple formal approach was to create a complex dialogue between each separate architectural or landscaping element.Hotel / Sky-Gardens: An urban and vertical garden has been the response to the massive hotel building, as an inverse piece, a friendly opposite that complements and allows the dark prism of the hotel to breathe.
Structure / Skin: The skin respects the plant-like structure and plays with it. It is cut along the branches of the structure and passes before and behind it, a movement generated by the programmatic organization. In this manner, the structure disappears, allowing the fenestration patterns of the curtain wall to be seen in the tourist section of the hotel, only to reappear and reaffirm itself as structure in the area corresponding to the immense executive hotel atrium.
Skin / Passive Solar Protection: The passion for cinematographic arts, film sequences, fragmentation, and repetitiveness have led the project towards a clear rationality, in this case manifest by perpendicular planes of solar protected dark glass that travel the whole height of the facade, creating this desired dynamic parallaxical vision.
Passive Solar Protection / Sky-Gardens: We return to the essence, the garden... These perpendicular planes used as protection adapt to become supports for dense climbing plants as well as architectural barriers that determine pathways among the vertical gardens.
Total area_120 000 sq.m.
[AL MANA]
Al Mana Group headquarters. Doha, Qatar 2007.
Total area_40 000 sq.m [TECNOPARC]
Conference Center. Reus, Spain 2008.
The generation of a singular building is always related to the treatment of dual concepts. 1_dimorphism: Tecnoparc exists as a landmark in itself albeit in close relation to its context. The building serves as a dynamic anchor in a triangular lot whose limits define the plane of its façades. 2_movement / immutability: Tecnoparc is a dynamic object that dialogues with its surroundings although it tacitly implies notions of movement, of activity, of future. Notwithstanding, its role as a public infrastructure confers it with the stativity and immutability of a monument, a multi-nodal platform, a nucleus of civic life. Total area_30 000 sq.m
[LEX]
Mixed- use building. Walsall, UK 2008.
How does one generate a fragmentation great enough to create this permeability, these places of circulation and “staying” – and why? What is the ideal programmes to give order to our dear voids? It is obvious that this tool - this public building for Walsall - will have the capacity to live autonomously. We are reminded of Le Corbusier’s “La Cité Radieuse”, this vanguard vision of life in community integrating the necessities and realities of post-war France - a vertical “village” of more than 1600 inhabitants including all sorts of activities, services and accommodations. “ Total area_30 500 sq.m
[SILEX]
Cultural & Sports Center. Albacete, Spain 2008.
Designing is like ordering the cabinet drawers. Each work is a tidy drawer. In this case, the land situated on the edge, bordering the historic city center invited to consider more complex: not only ordering but adapting as well. Before distributing the program, dividing the floor area, there is the goal of social and public facilities. How to create a flexible space capable of hosting a sport, cultural or musical event with the same ease? How to manage the possible simultaneity of events? To IAD the answer lies in the compactness of the program work. We have worked first on the main parts of the program as the separate elements, each with its specific function, then the space between these pieces. In this case, ordering the typical square in front of public building becomes the centerpiece of the building, more equipment, an outdoor amphitheater, a concert hall that touches the sky, the lobby to guide the visitor and the significant courtyard.Total area_7 500 sq.m
[THE KISS]
United Office Tower. Jeddah, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia 2007.
United They Stand... United Trading Est., as large-scale developer, required the proposal for a mixed-use building of offices and hotel with a retail base at the entrance of the city of Jeddah. Requirements for visibility, built-up area, constructive rationality and multi- functionality were quickly deemed as the only visible criteria for the client. The United Office Building is a mixed-use development of 175.000m2 whose aim is to become a landmark for the entrance to the city of Jeddah, providing richly landscaped spaces, public shopping galleries, world-class rental offices, spa facilities and restaurants. Its technical process is manifested by apparently subtle structural and architectural features (novel façade and tower design), lighting effects (night-time illumination and the world’s largest active LED facade) and state-of-the-art building intelligence (natural ventilation, facade-cleaning, recycling, etc). The giant main structural façade (100x140m) uses Arabic tessellations to create effects of differing depths, shadows and rhythms. Total area_175 000sq.m.
[ALCALA DA GUADAIRA STADIUM]
Municipal Football Stadium. Seville, Spain 2007.
ERGONOMY _ this proposal was determined by the will to intensify the sporting event, concentrating on the spectator in surroundings that focus on the actions taking place on the playing field. Two distinct scales are present: on one hand is the monumental scale of the game, expressed in the empty field and monumental ring of the canopy; on the other hand is the human scale of the spectator present in the fragmented organization of the bleachers and the reduction of the visual impact of the building. CONTEXTUALITY _ conceived as a response to the horizontal extension of the surrounding fields and the extremity of local meteorological conditions, the Stadium proposal defines itself as a landscape-architectonic gesture with the creation of an artificial hill space - an active bump - that gently holds the playing field in its centre.
Total capacity_10 000 spectators
[UNITED HIGH RISE HOTEL]
Hilton hotel tower. Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia 2007.
Airport Highway… The entrance to the city of Riyadh, a building is erected, strangely not as a block or extrusion but as a combination of planes, thin shards, glass sheets that are supported and grow from a ‘V’-shaped base. This simple triangular form allows the building to be oriented as its hypotenuse faces the city and generates 2 imposing atriums, thus offering the best views to the common areas of this skyscraper: the lobby and hotel lounge. The congress center, commercial area, parking, services and personnel areas, loading bays are organized within the white chiseled prism that creates a dialogue with the typically horizontal urban context. This project dedicated to a large hotel chain through a private promoter had as its main challenge the integration in a peripheral, triangular site. Its rational development being associated to an international image and the compliance of the hotel program have brought us to this object, this tool of immediate use yet sophisticated perception.
Total area_80 000 sq.m
[IN+OUT ]
Administrative Courthouse at the Madrid City of Justice. Madrid, Spain 2007.
“I am not referring to the space outside the form, that surrounds the volume - where forms reside - but rather the space that forms create, that lives within them, that is more active the more it acts in a hidden manner.” This quotation of sculptor Eduardo Chillida is the departure point and leitmotif for this object that experiments with the concept of plural spaces inside a single envelope. It asks the questions: “How can one be inside and outside simultaneously?”, “How to be an observer as well as a participant?”, “How to join and separate at the same time?”. Total area_27 000 sq.m
[UNITED TOWER]
Office Building. Jeddah, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia 2007.
The urban interaction with the city, the accesses to and from the Plinth, comfort, flexibility and transparency, natural light and shadow, as well as the incorporation of nature are central factors to our design - but all of them need to be dressed by a skin, a veil- the symbol of this work. This is why we decided to take advantage of the basic configuration of the building, developing the façade as a spiral pattern around the floor perimeter. It thus permitted us to reach the most dynamic high-rise we had been involved in creating. Modern high-rise buildings frequently rise abruptly from ground level, and in that sense they can be very antisocial structures. When we came to design the preliminary schemes of the project, we saw a great opportunity in the lack of a car park area to create a generous urban space and produce an elegant and green pedestal. The self-supporting façade of the designed building is shaped with 4400 x 1600 mm modules bounded by rails for an automatic cleaning system and floor and ceiling boards. Modules are equipped with a coupling system for the outdoor LED lighting. The use of light in this unique project is established not only to efficiently illuminate a work destined to be a landmark in the city of Jeddah. The lighting design has been conceived to seek cohesion with the surrounding community, and explores a broad range of emotions, feelings and perceptions. A complex system of LED lights will cover much of the exterior of the building, marking at different levels the profile of the exterior skin with dynamic lighting of very low frequency cycles.
Total area_150 000 sq.m
[LES TERRASSES ]
Extension and renovation of Porto Pi shopping center. Palma de Mallorca, Balearic Islands, Spain 2005.
Les Terrasses is a 60.000m2 retail and leisure extension of Porto Pi, the principal shopping mall in the city of Palma de Mallorca. Taking full advantage of the perfect location on the roof of the Porto Pi building located on the city’s main seafront, and freely borrowing nautical references such as white painted steel contrasted with wood slats and serigraphic glass, the chasm cut between the two perfect prisms creates a promenade in which to freely walk and shop. The first intervention consisted of modifying the metallic / industrial look of the suspended ceilings. Total area_60 000 sq.m