VOLIDO
Volido is lead by Max Sanjulian and from its base in NYC operates responsibly in the context of contemporary urban culture. Working from urban planning to industrial design in a competitive combination of traditional old school practice, American pragmatism and emotional personal expression. All this wrapped up in a post punk mood without complexes. Using Economy as the main conceptual currency, new complexities, new standards and sustainability are variables addressed from the austerity of one solution without options, rejecting the 90's wide-angle-big-wallet idea, everything is possible. In an old fashioned way Volido survives avoiding clients that have lost the desire to crystallize in their own world... We work for free individuals, or for the ones not yet free but with a strong desire of Freedom. Not to be read as pure manifesto but as a marketing strategy. In Volido we love Freedom and Freedom could be profitable.
Projects
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The unit is located in the historic center of Barcelona on the 9th floor with a scenic view of the city. Originally a subsidized housing unit the apartment consisted of small rooms and corridors. After a full renovation the unit gained 30% usable area with a much less compartmentalized space full of light. The kitchen/dining and living area were transformed into one luminous space with a custom-made mirror box creating a modern mirage and deconstructive division. The box is fully operable in all of its sides, contributing to the light distribution and organization of the space and circulation. The interior of the box is a storage space servicing the kitchen and dining area on one side and the living area on the opposite side. In the kitchen a custom made sink entirely carved out of marble stands on the counter as a sculptural element. The apartment has three bedrooms located at each end of the unit, one of them working as office. One bedroom has an open transparent bathroom integrated into the space. A large balcony connected to the living area was kept in its original state. Being located on the 9th floor of an elevated area of the city the apartment has an unobstructed view of all Barcelona and the Mediterranean sea.
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In close collaboration with Eyebeam Volido proposed a master-plan in 3 phases for the full renovation of the 10000 Sq. Ft Eyebeam Art and Technology center. The first phase executed consisted in moving the main entrance of the building to the former garage of the existing gallery in order to provide a flexible public entrance to the main 7500 Sq. Ft multipurpose hall. This new entrance had to serve as the storefront of the institution, with the art bookstore, a reception/gathering area with a cafe able to host small lectures and performances. With the need to respond to many programmatic unconventional situations and with most of de budget addressed to new flooring and re-cladding the large exhibition walls Volido proposal concentrates all the functional elements in only one piece of nomadic furniture. This element contains the store, the merchandise and all the furniture necessary on the public areas of the gallery. This nomadic element is a perfect cube of 6 Ft x 6 Ft x 6 Ft made of wood, on wheels, able to open as a Swiss knife and travel like a voyager spacecraft. The box can be operated by one person and moved away leaving large or small areas of empty exhibition space if needed. When hermetically closed, the content of the store is safe and not accessible but keeping the possibility to pull out the seating and the bar in order to accommodate lectures and small presentations. Once the box is opened a full bookstore unfolds exhibiting the art books and magazines and organizing the space around on different programmatic hybrid conditions. Besides the furniture element walls and flooring Volido proposal includes a system of movable textile partitions and projection screens. This project was fully crow-funded and build with recycled materials.
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Art and Nature spinning around, conglomerating and binding the complexity and diversity of the program. People, Art and Nature as a binder for a new Complex Norwegian Society. The Program includes the government in the middle of the structure and the museum spinning around, up, in a double spiral, to the roof where the forest is with a view of the fjord. One spiral connects the different exhibition areas, the other spiral is an ascending garden that provides outdoor space to the museum. the museum in its ascension liberates the border on the ground floor to let the people connect with the different levels of the city in the border of the lot. The government building jumps up offering the center of the ground to the city. It will be the space for a acclimatized plaza, a multipurpose urban agora where Oslo meets Oslo and the Norwegian cultural Scene finds a new engine. The Nobel Peace Center is integrated as part of this complexity, articulating the entrance to the museum and filtering the urban space that moves through the building at street level. The building starts with Oslo in the ground...with the Norwegians and finishes with Norway ...on the roof..with the Fjord.
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One 8'x4' plywood board cut in 2'by 2' modules, joined with metal finger joints and organized in 3 independent self-supporting wood elements. The elements work structurally when compressed to each other with a nylon tighten cable. Pyramidal sound-proof foam is used as cushion. No nails no glue no screws. âHis gaze those bars keep passing is so misted with tiredness, it can take in nothing more. He feels as though a thousand bars existed, and no more world beyond them before. Those supply-powerful paddings, turning there in the tiniest of circles, well might be the dance of forces round a center where some mighty will stands paralyticly. Just now and then the pupilâs noiseless shutter is lifted.â Then an image will indart, down through the limbsâ intensive stillness flutter, and end its being in the heart.â Rainer Maria Rilke
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Maillard custom made 8' diameter balloon. 23% helium solution to neutralize gravity. For lateral forces And equilateral structure and ring of 0.25mm à nylon clear illusion cord detached from the balloon. The project was originally thought as an indoor pavilion to present a collection at New York Fashion week. The process brought new potentials in flirting with the bottom LIMITS of the transition from a Building to something else... Frozen BIRD Floating with the perfect balance of air and helium, no up not down ... ABOVE, containing everything around in its bending reflections. Below SPACE.. beetween a Territory and a Roof... HOUSE...NO?
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Located at the border of the old town of Barcelona, the proposal for the New Central Library flies toward the silence and the light that illuminates the reading areas and provides the energy for its self-sufficiency. The building, with this jump, liberates the ground floor giving a public plaza to the city. This new public land is located in the interstice of surrounding territories historically considered as residual dead ends and never solved in the different urban plans done in the area in the last 200 years. The library is energetically self-sufficient and performs as hyper-connector between the Historic Center and the seafront, un-accessible from this part of the town.
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In one of the trendiest areas of Manhattan. bordering East Village, Greenwich Village and Soho, Volido was asked to re-design a typical New York grocery store located on Bowery . The program was to create a contemporary space for a fashion boutique representing emerging fashion designers. Volido, running away from a traditional approach of high-end fashion retail space chose to treat the space with minimal and in-expensive intervention. Raw and fast, Eva Store merges with its surroundings. Over the years 355 Bowery, designed by Volido has remained untouched while different programs, as art gallery, events space, fashion store again, has entered and left leaving the space untouched.
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Following the language of the traditional Chinese Buddhist Architecture, the facade isolates the building in the upper floors with a continuous lattice that disappears completely on the ground floor allowing the street to expand into the temple and facilitating maximum public access to the worship area. On the floors above, where the cells of the monks are located, the building isolates himself from the street and opens the roof to the sky in order to allow the sun-light to slide into the privacy of the monastery.(more) The building is located on Eldridge street in the heart of Chinatown New York. The program is organized into 5 main areas; worship area on the ground floor, charity and dining in the basement, the school on the second floor and the residence cells on the third and fourth floors. The roof becomes a terrace to the city.
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8 floors of mixed use building working as a private residence and an art foundation on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. The project aims to provide high-end green residential combined with maximum economy of construction and maintenance and maximum performance of the square footage available. Contradiction of the skin and structure respects the built environment and will claim the Manhattanism of the operation; confronting the tendency of contexstualism in the New York city zoning code. (more) As one private residence, the building's program will be distributed in 8 floors. The entrance will be through an open plaza-LED-scape-coffee terrace organizing the access to the art foundation on the ground floor and to the residential area located on the floors above. In the residential, four 1000sqf loft style apartments and a 6000 sqf penthouse that will occupy the 4th, 5th and 6th floors with direct acces to the rooftop where the vegetable garden and rainwater collection tank will be located. The geothermal system for heating and cooling in combination with the design of the low cost skin and the LED lighting system will make it the most energy & cost efficient building ever built in the United States.
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One school in a shipping container...to be shipped anywhere necessary. In a boat, in a truck in a helicopter... In the interior, there are Colors...Colors they have never seen before... four different modules generating seating, tables and castles. The kids move the pieces up and down, right to left to build a new place every day, every hour, every second...the kids don't sit in a row...the don't even sit... they fly they don't have chairs or a uniform ... actually nobody in their town uses chairs or shoes...or maybe yes...but not in this school. The pieces made in high density rubber foam are dense enough to be used as a table and soft enough to be hugged...light to be carried...from inside to outside, like a gigantic Lego to conform a new outdoor classroom where the teacher will tell another tale of their country....and afterwards, the pieces will come back to the container...to sleep, until the next morning's light, when the kids and the pieces will again rebuild the school.
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21'(6.4m) feet tall heart traveling through the Black Rock desert of Nevada attached to the back of an old double-decker bus from London... at the end,more than 35' (10.7m) of nomad structure pumping with beats of 150.000 WATS of sound, Wired in LED lighting system the heart beat even stronger with millions of colors in the dark nights of the desert.
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Landscape element of 1.5 tones of concrete is designed to stop a car bomb attack in lobbies,commercial centers and government buildings. With a continuous slope, one piece engages with the next, allowing the piece to be walked on, or to be used like a comfortable chaise lounge in the park or provide sitting at launch time...
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Mall, Opera House, multiplex cinema, parking for 1200 cars, Hotel and Spa. Located in the town of Denia on the Mediterranean coast of Spain. The program fills the hole of an old quarry and the facade reconstructs the profile of the mountain as it was before the quarry existed. The skin-facade wrinkles in 3 different scales allowing the paths of the passerby in their transit form one part of the building to the other and re-connects the the town, in the bottom with the top of the mountain, where the main monument of the city ,the Moorish castle is located. The new skin-landscape -facade is made from the repetition of a prefabricated geometry and is based in an hexagonal pattern.
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Contact
Volido — Max Sanjulian, Architect
NEW YORK NY 10002
+1 347-603-4315
Inquiries: INFO@VOLIDO.COM
Internships and Jobs: ADMIN@VOLIDO.COM