Odyssey Office Building

Tight and specific lines create a crisp volume that floats with steady confidence above the ground. Like so much of contemporary architecture this is particularly evident at night, when light renders the element even more transparent and radiant. The range of materials and a notable absence of colour come into sharp contrast with the trees that one catches glimpses of through the façade. A deep and precise cut, taken neatly out of the original cube, is where the flora nests, providing a soft barrier between the main and secondary volumes. This is in neat contrast to the nature of the architectural volumes which are not only sharp in their geometry, they are what might be termed cold in their glass skin and the rhythm of the white shading elements. All the better for the warmth of light at night. The volume itself is held up by very little, it seems. Two trunks of hidden services providing what there is of solid at the lower, public level. These solid cylinders continue into the main volume above, providing a link between two otherwise disparate parts. A great deal of the conversation in architecture today is to do with the nature of skin and envelope. It is therefore interesting, to come across a design which has a skin that does not exclude but rather provides information. Through this it also describes the human scale and nature of the activity within the shell.