While at Foster & Partners, the founders, who formed this practice in 1997, worked on large scale projects such as the Commerzbank HQ in Frankfurt, the Millennium Tower in the City of London, the Reichstag in Berlin and Hong Kong Airport at Chep Lap Kok.
Projects range from a 92-room hotel in Stratford, east London, to a holiday home for Sir Stirling Moss, This low-energy house will feature a number of devices intended to allow the building to be controlled from anywhere in the world. It can be dismantled and relocated wherever necessary.
The practice’s primary objectives include using leading edge technology to demonstrate and communicate design proposals and it believes that new buildings should, where practicable, embody the best in energy-saving and low-maintenance practice.
The energetic approach of m3 partners – Nadi Jahangiri and Ken Hutt – focuses on what design can do for either the client or the site. This is then executed in a clear and modern style.
Its residential projects demonstrate its use of design as an agent for lifestyle change. The same approach can be seen in what it describes as its “project making” endeavours. For example, its 108-storey Ecotower or its unsolicited proposal to redevelop the forecourt of King’s Cross Station in central London. Clearly an ambitious and capable outfit.
Contemporary Houses of the World
Holly Bush House
A house which has existed since 1930, located on Holly Bush Hill to the east of London, needed to be expanded by 50% in order to fulfil the requirements of its owners, thus avoiding an otherwise inevitable change of residence. Nadi Jahangiri proposes “cutting away” the back of the house, in order to make room for an attractive glazed 3-level structure. Platforms on the different levels provide greater spatial integration with the garden: one such platform at roof level generates enticing views over the garden while another on the ground floor joins the kitchen directly to the green spaces.
The Sunday Times
Tech it to the limit
The architect Nadi Jahangiri wanted to load the house with the latest technical wizardry, but Sir Stirling Moss resisted. “If you propose all the systems at once, clients are overwhelmed”. What Moss wanted was to avoid arriving at a cold, unwelcoming house. Jahangiri’s answer was to program the heating and security systems into his mobile phone – one call from the airport is all that it takes to “wake up” his home before his arrival.
House PLUS
Phyllis Richardson
Thames & Hudson
Newsweek
Who says size doesn’t matter?
THE UNOFFICIAL COMPETITION TO CONSTRUCT THE WORLD’S TALLEST BUILDING IS gaining momentum. From Chicago to Melbourne, plans to surpass the current record holder, Kuala Lumpur’s Petronas Towers, are in the works. These newfangled designs promise the latest in state-of-the-art technology and engineering. A look at the contenders: Citygate Ecotower London, England. Height: 460m. 108 floors. Eco-friendly: solarcell cladding, ventilated facades and wind turbines.
Skyscrapers – The New Millennium
Citygate Ecotower, London, England. The project’s principal Nadi Jahangiri, worked previously on the London Millennium Tower and Commerzbank, Frankfurt/Main, Germany, with Foster and Partners. The 1,495-foot (456-meter) high building is intended for mixed uses that include transport interchange, offices, and residential accommodation. The suggested site is along the eastern approach to London. The firm states that it seeks to unite its interest in the high-rise type with low energy building design. The tower, which resembles a great sail, includes wind slots which prevent turbulence at its base and harness the wind to drive turbines-which coupled with 50% photovoltaic cell coverage of the facade provide up to half of the overall power consumption of the building. A three-story, ventilated facade section eliminates the need for conventional air-conditioning systems.
Wallpaper
Architects Directory
Got a vision for your pad but not sure whose aesthetic judgement to trust? We’ve taken the time to find the best new architectural talent and here’s who we recommend for the job.
Flying the high-tech flag for a new generation, M3 was founded by Nadi Jahangiri. As well as vast visionary schemes like the £460 million Ecotower for London’s East End, M3 are currently working on a Florida holiday home for gadget freak racing driver, Sir Stirling Moss, and a 3 storey all glass extension for a London villa.
Spacecraft – Developments in Architectural Computing
David Littlefield
RIBA Publishing
100 Great Extensions
Philip Jodidio
Images Publishing
Financial Times
The bain of one’s life
“We always face the dilemma of how much space we take from the room to make into a bath-room,” says architect Nadi Jahangiri. “It becomes an exercise in moving the partition back and forth.” This got so tedious that he decided, in a recent loft development, to do away with the wall altogether. He sank the oversized bath into a raised platform made of African hardwood with storage space underneath (the loo and hand basin are discreetly hidden behind a frosted cube).
The crowning touch of modern bathroom design is the tap – a critical fashion accessory which everyone from Philippe Starck to Arne Jacobsen has had a go at. It’s the design version of the Fendi clutch bag (a pair of Dornbracht’s trendy Tara taps costs about the same). “It used to be door handles,” says Jahangiri. “Then it was tables and chairs. Now it’s the tap. You have to design one. It’s the law!”
So much for private sanctuaries: bathrooms have become places to see and be seen, and if dispensing with modesty is the price we pay, then so be it.
House Design
Various
daab Publishing
RIBA Journal
Independent on Sunday
Pane and Pleasure
They’re not really conservatories. And to call them extensions seems demeaning. But however you describe them, there are suddenly a lot of them about. At the home of Alastair Gayne and Frances Wright in London’s Islington, you can see a perfect specimen. There, on the back of their house, is a gleaming glass and steel box which, when lit at night, is like a beacon of good design.
Nadi Jahangiri agrees these bold, glass structures are a trend, if mainly for the “young, bright, visually literate – and wealthy”. But it’s not just outer beauty at stake here, Jahangiri is keen to point out that under the canopy a total reordering of this Victorian house has taken place. It’s one the architect claims makes the house relevant to a modern way of life. “It’s about making the home less formal, more relaxed,” he says. But how do you satisfy planners if you are adding a glass and steel extension in a conservation area? By virtue of the design. Although this extension makes quite a statement, it’s sympathetic to its surroundings. There are no architectural nourishes to detract from the clean, angular lines that replicate neighbouring buildings. It doesn’t blend in unnoticed, but you spot it for the right reason – its good looks.
Elle Decoration
Lofty Ideas
Nadi Jahangiri maximised space by opening up the roof and the views. ‘Our idea was to introduce as much natural light into the roof space as possible, creating additional volume at the same time opening up the views to the South. To do this we installed a full-length, horizontal ‘glass beam’ in the pitched roof on the south side and introduced two triangular glass sections or ‘fingers’ to the north end. A silver, external motorised blind can be operated to reduce direct sunlight and temperature if necessary. We kept the number of different materials to a minimum. A plywood “shell” with curved corners was inserted to soften the volume and make it feel less like an attic space. The floor is made of a poured resin that is seamless, hard-wearing, warm and easy to clean; this material is also used on the metal staircase that leads up to the loft. Underfloor electric heating removes the need for radiators, leaving an empty floor space. Large storage areas are provided within the eaves and in floor-to-ceiling cupboards built in front of the party wall. This bank of cupboards also hides the chimney breast and incorporates a built-in sink.’
Highbury & Islington Express
The Eco-maniacs who believe in Tower Power
At an age when contemporaries dream of, say, integrated transport policies while drawing up plans for yet another flat-roof extension in Tufnell Park, Nadi Jahangiri is working on his first major tower block. Yes, tower block. As one of the hottest young architects in Britain today he is doing as much as anyone, save perhaps his old boss Sir Norman Foster, to rescue those two words from opprobrium and suspicion.
Scientific American
Extreme Engineering
New Civil Engineer
Winner of emap Millennium competition
Highbury & Islington Express
Architect Tower over Millennium
ISLINGTON architects have achieved a major coup by winning a national architecture competition to commemorate the millennium. Nadi Jahangiri set to work with Charlie Hussey and Charlie Sutherland, of Sutherland Hussey, to win the £10,000 Millennium Construction Tower competition. The 100ft tower – made of 2,000 sheets of glass to mark 2,000 years of Christianity – will be built at the entrance of Birmingham’s National Exhibition Centre. Mr Jahangiri, who said that he was very pleased to win what had to be “a light celebration of the millennium”, explained that an additional feature could be added.
“One of the ideas is that for every 100 or 500 sheets of glass marking 100 or 500 years we will put in a silk screen print of a building that was built at that time. The two practices, based at Highbury Corner and Thornhill Crescent respectively, beat 80 competitors in a competition judged by a panel including Sir Norman Foster, who designed Stansted Airport, and the sculptor Sir Anthony Caro.
Sir Norman said of the architects’ creation: “It is a great scheme. It deserves to be built.”
FX magazine
The Citygate Ecotower was one of the star attractions at a major new exhibitions Skyscrapers: The New Millennium. The show, which took place at the Art Institute of Chicago on the 18th August, looked at issues surrounding the design of high-rise buildings. It also featured work from the likes of Lord Rogers and Lord Foster, and will move to San Francisco before closing in Washington DC in 2002.
Building Design
London’s tall buildings policy is to be tightened up following a rash of applications for skyscrapers including a proposal for a 460m tower – the world’s tallest.
In a week when William Hague’s mini-manifesto proposed demolishing more tower blocks, skyscraper schemes by Foster, Rogers, Piano, Marks Barfield and Grimshaw are among those on the up – in addition to the world-beating Ecotower bid in the Square Mile.
Architects’ Journal
The Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition – which opens to the public on Monday 2 June features a special display curated by Lord Foster, dedicated to the design and construction of tall buildings.
The ‘Sky High’ exhibition will feature a series of tall building models including the 460m-tall Ecotower, an ‘ecological vision’ designed for Aldgate High Street in London.
Zoo 8
