to create Biodiversity

The vision by Maxthreads Architectural Design and Planning responds to the extending aim of positioning Taiwan in general, and Tainan city in particular, as a major historical based tourism destination, contributing Taiwan’s economic diversification from its current infrastructure lead planning system.

Tainan main station master plan is imagined as a cultural based community and nature intervention, with sustainable residential development and the potential for natural habitat areas. It aims to be a cultural and vibrant edutainment intervention as well as a secluded haven of peace and tranquillity. Tainan main station is conceived as a new gateway of Taiwan’s history.

The proposal aims to reconcile community and biodiversity. It will act as an eco-transitional urban device, transferring and linking the diversity of the surrounding urban districts and programmes. The concept behind the master plan proposal derives from the area’s original function as transportation node. The proposal will maintain the areas historical identity, whilst providing a boundary free and a self-sufficient urban planning, incorporating a number of sustainability systems.

Project Team: Max Yang, David Millar, Samya Kako

asymptote Architecture

Adhering to the rising trend of skybridges and twin tower design in the Yongsan district, Asymptote Architecture‘s design for the Velo Towers creates social environments through the stacking of a series of rotated oblong volumes.  Uniquely oriented to views of the Han River and the adjacent Yongsan park, residents of the eight residential units can access public housing amenities and green roof spaces through light filled atrium spaces and two bridge structures. The base of the towers offer a communal landscape over a raised plinth, and a Skybridge soars thirty stories to provide access to cafes, pools, lounges, recreational centers, housing fitness, and a sky garden with spectacular views of the city.

A similar breakdown in volume and materiality is observed in the prefabricated faceted facades of the Velo Towers, which have helped this proposal be realized. Presenting materials and digital fabrication prevalent in automotive, aerospace and marine industries, the towers’ mixed  use units consist of large pre-fabricated components made of glass within custom molded composite shells finished in pearlescent automotive paint. The project is to be completed in 2024, and is to be located next to MVRD’s Cloud Towers and BIG’s Cross T.
 

Oscillation Realms

This proposal by Emergent is based on creating a complex visual oscillation between two and three dimensional realms. Somewhere between the disciplines of sculpture and painting, the piece registers as a mass but also as a graphic. Loopy, spotted patterns flow over manifold surfaces, simultaneously dissolving the mass and re-establishing it. Transparent zones allow people to view deep inside the object, their gaze pulled into involutions in interior surfaces. They can see the inside of the mass-painting.

The human brain, recent neuroscience suggests, is not engaged in “seeing” space, but in actively “modeling” space1. Residing on multiple ontological levels, this project is an attempt to force the brain to hedge and guess in its “modeling” of physical reality.

The colorful pattern language, while fanciful at first glance, is not simply a visual phenomenon. It is the result of intersecting a map of structural stresses with a painterly sensibility. The loopy mass is analyzed as a composite shell structure, revealing areas of low and high stress. The resultant color-gradient map is manipulated to produce certain visual effects but also broken down into layers of variable thickness and material strength. Color and pattern therefore only partially index material forces; the piece exceeds simple material expression towards something which correlates nature and culture.

Finally, layers of super-thin technology are embedded into the structurally sedimented fiber composite shell. Thin film solar tape is tucked beneath the outermost layer of the shell, while organic LED  lighting film is embedded on the inside of the shell, in accent layers. The solar tape creates micro-patterning which breaks down large surfaces and generates energy to power the lighting system. At night, mysterious graphic and silhouette effects are produced, heightening the dimensional play of the piece.

applied Sciences

The “Vertical Ground” project reexamines the “norm” for the organization of college campuses. Students today want proximity to the culture, activities and networks available in urban settings, but typical campuses are horizontally oriented and require large swaths of land for development, which are increasingly rare in desirable urban areas. By orienting a college campus vertically instead, colleges can locate in dense areas and perhaps even better facilitate social communication amongst students and faculty.

20,000 students are located on a campus complex that is comprised of several towers that occupy a small city footprint, and are connected at varying heights by sky bridges. By spacing programmatic needs properly throughout the towers, the vertically orientated campuses can give students both space for privacy and opportunities for dynamic interactions with others. The campus tower typology is composed of series of clustered departments and open spaces that are located amongst the college’s three schools: Applied Sciences, Design, and Social Sciences schools.

The designers imagined two test sites for campuses within Manhattan, transforming the typical sprawling land model of a campus to one that is a super block. Lighting conditions and restrictions at ground level and in relation to other nearby buildings present new issues with which vertical campuses need to adapt. Neighborhood restrictions also pose interesting issues: Due to building requirements, a campus in New York’s Chelsea neighborhood would look different than one built in Midtown, for example, as Midtown would allow for construction with taller tower heights. This might give a Chelsea campus difficulties should it ever need to expand, but despite these issues, the designers contend that orienting a campus vertically allows for more programmatic flexibility and opportunities for dynamic interaction than a campus plan that requires an open expanse of land.
 

in Thessaloniki

The proposal by SAKELLARIDOU/PAPANIKOLAOU ARCHITECTS which received the first place in the international competition attempts the reconstruction and upgrading of the ‘Balkan Square’, in the former military camp ‘Strebenioti’, in Neapoli – Sykies, Thessaloniki. It aims at the reorganization of uses and accesses to the square, the redesign of existing facilities and the incorporation of new ones. The concept deals with the notion of hybrid space, time and place, as these coexist and express themselves in the Balkan Peninsula as a mixture of people, languages, religions, myths and traditions; as a mixture of colours and nature. It chooses nature as the active base that unifies the whole, that is continuously renewed, as a canvas, just like the balkan earth which blends people, toponyms, tales and history and binds them together in one mixture. It proposes the natural landscape as a hybrid container of multiple activities: both park and landscape and football field and theatre, as well as an event place and a space for the enjoyment of nature.

Architectural design: Rena Sakellaridou, Morpho Papanikolaou (sparch / Sakellaridou Papanikolaou Architects) Anastasia Papadopoulou, Vanessa Tsakalidou (40.22.Architects | Papadopoulou + Tsakalidou) Collaborators: Κ. Olympios, Ε. Papaevangellou, C. Karakana, Κ. Toubektsi. Students of architecture AUTh: S. Georgiou, Ε. Koumbli, Α. Niaka
Urban planning: Geochoros Meletitiki EPE, dr. A. Giannakou, dr. A. Tasopoulou, D. Zeka
Collaborator: S. Tsovras
Traffic design: K. Derpani
Collaborators: D. Samaras, G. Papandritsas

human Interaction

This building is a proposal by award-winning firm from Los Angeles, P-A-T-T-E-R-N-S, for a 120-bed student dormitory for the Pontificia Catholic University of Puerto Rico in Ponce, the second largest city of the island and the old capital before San Juan. As part of a larger master plan aiming to attract students from the whole Caribbean region and fulfill the current demand of 500 apartments, the proposal aims to create a new presence within the campus.
Articulating a vertical mass with a figural void that encapsulates the main social areas of the program, our proposal aims to induce human interaction among students and visitors in a vertical environment while enhancing unprecedented urban vistas from and to the historic center of the city just beyond the university campus.

Design Team: Marcelo Spina, Georgina Huljich, Matthew Kendall, James Vincent, Chia-ching Yang.

ink Materials

LAMBAME is a design experiment by Melike Altinisik using a ‘Handmade-Scripting’ process instead of using the digital manufacturing process but achieving the result of a digital process by handmade production.

During the design process different ink sketches have been drawn on the several layers of 3mm MDF, mirror and perspex materials. After cutting the designed patterns from different materials, several versions of the lightbox  has been composed with LED Lighting between each layer. It has a modular shape 60cm x 60cm x 5cm.
 

Love Addis Ababa

Football and athletics-loving Ethiopians will have a new FIFA and Olympic-standard 60,000 seat stadium in Addis Ababa thanks to a competition winning design combining local identity with new technology.

LAVA, the Laboratory for Visionary Architecture, and Designsport collaborated with local Ethiopian firm JDAW to win the international architecture competition for a national stadium and sports village, held by the Federal Sport Commission, Ethiopia. Chris Bosse, LAVA director, said: “We have gone back to the very origin of stadium design with a sunken arena surrounded by grandstands formed from excavated material. This man-made crater is a clever remodelling of the existing terrain and generates efficient spaces, optimises environmental performance, minimises construction costs and integrates facilities within the existing landscape. ”

Addis architect Daniel Assefa and director of JDAW said: “The design references Ethiopia’s world-famous excavated architecture – centuries-old rock churches, dwellings and cisterns. We see the sports city as a natural extension to this heritage, one that will draw many more visitors to our beautiful country.”

The façade material that wraps the stadium is inspired by the Massob, an Ethiopian communal serving basket made from woven grass, whilst the shapes of the facade system appear as coffee beans, the main source of income in Ethiopia. The roof of the stadium, an intelligent membrane, appears like a cloud on the horizon of the vast Ethiopian sky, a lightweight tensile structure floating over the formed-earth landscape.

The masterplan includes the IOC-standard stadium for FIFA matches, athletics events, concerts, religious and national festivals; and a sports village comprising indoor and outdoor aquatic centres, outdoor pitches, sports halls and arenas, dormitories and the headquarters for the Federal Sport Commission. Hospitality, retail and commercial zones will ensure that the precinct is vibrant throughout the year.

dynamic Landscapes

The research Proposal by Michael Ippolito from the California College of the Arts proposes a radical rethinking of architecture and landslides. The Marin Headlands is home to over twenty landslides. The most notable and fastest acting landslide in the Headlands is located on the Oceanside of the park between rodeo cove and Tennessee Valley. It is known as place that has been left behind and rendered a volatile wasteland. This wasteland has consumed many man-made structures including eight abandoned military buildings, and two roadways.

The DISPENS(FILTRATOR) proposal renders the existing landslide to be inhabited by an architecture that filtrates the landscape for scientist, students, and recreationist. There are three major components of the DISPENS[FILTRATOR] ; one: the harvesting zone that filtrates boulders, rocks, soil, and water into four different levels, two: the recreational zone that dispenses recreational mechanisms such as the stargazer, climbing cage, and nature watcher, and three: the collection zone (after life) where the mechanisms are collected and jumbled into an artificial habitat where plant and animal life can thrive.

The DISPENSFILTRATOR is an architecture that curates the environment and blurs the distinction between BUILDING, LANDSCAPE, and WASTELAND. This radical rethinking of architecture and landslides allows the populations that visit these kinds of sites to experience a heightened awareness of savvy inhabitance for increasingly dynamic landscapes.

my Orange World...

Orange stained Finnish hardwoods wrap an egg shaped pavilion dubbed “My Green World” designed by 2D3D. The project took only 6 months from concept to completion using roboticly precut wood members with a resulting woven exterior reminiscent of a seed. The building was commissioned by the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs, Agriculture and Innovation for the Floriade 2012 Expo in Venlo, the Netherlands.

The self supporting wooden sphere stands 15 meters tall, 35.2 meters long, and 14.4 meters wide. Units were built as ‘cartridges’ off-site and assembled into a self supporting grid. All wood is sustainably harvested.  The timber strand beams and stained plywood skin is gridded with large windows throughout. Set to the solar south the structure is evenly daylit and illuminated by LED lighting at night. A separately supported floor is entered though an elevated bridge.

Like a great orange seed parlaying its environmental message the color reflects the Dutch’s relationship with the glowing color. Originally the color of the royal family orange has become a mark of Dutch popular society evidenced in 30’s wealthy circles to the national football team. The 1200 square meter program contains Dutch environmental innovation displays and will be turned into offices after the expo concludes.

to Mimic Rain

Atelier Brückner, an architecture and exhibition design studio based in Germany, designed the GS Caltex Pavilion for the 2012 Korea Expo in Yeosu, South Korea. The structure, commissioned by Korean oil company GS Caltex, bears programmed blades as the main feature that mimic various weather/natural conditions, such as rain, waves, fire, lightning and wind. The blades light up by touch to represent each of the elements.

The pavilion architecture presents itself as a dynamic ensemble that is reminiscent at first of an oversized rice field. 18 meters high, known as blades of grass blades swaying in the wind, sometimes they are interactive and light up when touched. In the middle of this energy field is a star-shaped, mirrored pavilion, which will be visually completely back. About lifted corners of the star, the visitor access to the entrance area is also mirrored on the ground floor. Upstairs is the center of the pavilion: a seven-meter high round room with a panoramic projection. Poetic images in black and white aesthetics reduced the willingness to take responsibility of the company give in sustainable energy concepts.

algorithmic Architecture

The objective in designing the ‘Living Bridge’ was to describe a new type of nonlinear algorithmic architecture through the design of an inhabitable bridge in Tokyo.  The chosen site integrates with the residential neighborhoods of Ginza and Tsukishima.  Through the harnessing and intensification of the discrete flows of the two neighborhoods, and through algorithmic generation of turbulent spatial and programmatic structures, a reinvention of the inhabitable bridge type is achieved.

Creating Living Bridge was a three-step process.  Using Processing, the designers identified the movement patterns of people and vehicles in the city, considered them as agent-based systems of entangled flows, and modeled their interactions as a vector field.  Next, they released decking agents to read the vector field, moving through it and creating walking, cycling, and vehicular paths.  Finally, the designers introduced self-organizing components that changed their shape and connectivity depending on the turbulence of the field.  The components thereby simultaneously create, channel, and enclose the interactions of the circulation and programs inhabiting the bridge, leading to a dynamic space that connects and activates the riverfront.

The project is the culmination of nonlinear design research by Dave Eaton, Geoffrey Klein, and Michael Wetmore from the studio Complex Phenomena taught by Cecil Balmond and Roland Snooks at the University of Pennsylvania School of Design.

Cyberpunk Culture

The urban night club project from Changpei Jang & Xie Zhang in University of Pennsylvania looks deeply into Tokyo’s robotic and cyberpunk culture as an inspiration for sci-fictional and mechanical interior design for an urban night club in Aoyama, Tokyo. And the project creates different psychedelic interior spaces as well as sci-fictional out-looking for a cultural night club. It represents Tokyo as metaphor. This is a megacity that represents hypermodernism in all its dimensions, from hyper-technology to individual alienation to the explosion of urbanization since1990s, it is an urban club as an urban fair tale to Tokyo’s psychedelic urban situation: it is a mega-city in which its realities are more or less intentionally detached.

Curvaceous Shadows

The recently opened design museum in the suburbs of Tel Aviv was built in hopes of transforming the city of Holon into an epicenter of culture and education. To that end they brought in a famous architect and renowned group of international guest curators to make the museum famous. The Design Museum Holon was designed by Ron Arad Architects, led by Tel Aviv born industrial designer and architect, Ron Arad. After four years of construction the museum was inaugurated on January 31st, 2010 and its first exhibition just opened.

The structure itself is not merely a box to house works of art and design, rather it is meant to be the first exhibit visitors see when coming to the museum. Arad’s creation is most notably characterized by the metal ribbons wrapping around the building. Five sinuous bands of varying shades of Corten weathered steel form the exterior facade casting curvaceous shadows down onto an outdoor courtyard, by which the visitors enter. Inside are various exhibition halls, gallery spaces, a design lab and an archival collection for the many shows the museum soon hopes to hold within its confines.

an Urchin Shape

The new convention center in Yingkou, China, was designed by 2DEFINE Architecture, supported by their local partner Dalian Urban Planning & Design Institute. Located in the northwest province of Liaoning, the sea urchin-shaped building is designed to reflect its natural environment. As a satellite business district of the future harbor, the building, surrounded with outdoor promenades and gardens, aims to be a prominent port location. The oblong building will have no front or back, so it will face all directions to allow 360-degree views.

According to the architects, the aim was to design a building that could be used throughout the year, thus becoming the heart of the city. The 45 meter high center will feature several exhibition spaces, meeting rooms, a 200-sseat auditorium, a 900-seat banquet hall and a large atrium. The super structure will feature a unique rain screen system on the roof that will reflect natural light during the day, and create a soft glowing form at night with minimal use of artificial light. The half-acre roof-top terrace will overlook the Bohai Sea, and offer an outdoor space adjacent to the ballroom. An elevated four-lane road with pedestrian walkway will connect the island with the mainland.

Construction of the island will begin in 2012 and the building is slated for completion in 2014.

fluid Horizons

The research proposal by Shellar Garcia from the California College of Arts focuses on the horizon line, which is created by the convergence of the Earth’s surface and the sky. In architecture, the site or ground acts as part of the horizon, where buildings impose their presence, therefore fragmenting the horizon. This creates what is called a visible horizon, consisting of the current existent horizon containing transformation. The question then is: Can architectural structures be seamlessly spliced into the horizon line to form new fluid horizons? Fluid horizons refer to characteristics such as continuity and seamlessness, where panoramic views are achieved and not obstructed by existent architecture.

The proposal is located at Russian Hill, which is extremely varied in its topography, specifically at the currently abandoned, Francisco Reservoir. Its drastic slope provides views to strategic places such as Alcatraz, Golden Gate Bridge, Ghirardelli, and Sausalito.

A 60-degree angle cone of vision was used as a strategy for the design. This generated a surface, which redefines the horizon and guides towards specific views. It also provides the opportunity for program such as sightseeing, play, art, and planting; as well as incorporating other program lacking in Russian Hill such as commercial and office space. This program acts as plug-ins occurring underground to the surface, which also blends and takes advantage of the surface by extending outwards and merging with exterior surface program and views. Since the site is currently an abandoned Reservoir, the surface reincorporates that aspect, where rain water travels throughout and ends on several actual empty lots on the site acting as reservoirs.

Using the horizon line and the views focused within each line, a new form of architecture design emerges, where the design doesn’t start from a plan or elevation, but instead on the perception and perspective performances it will carry. Architecture will not be molded to the ground’s surface, but rather the ground will be treated as part of the architectural construction.

ecology Redux

The skyscraper has paradoxically enjoyed a renaissance since the terrorist attacks of 9/11, which brought world attention to the tragedy while raising multiple questions about its future. The boom in the Middle East has focused purely on new aesthetics and a lavish display of economic wealth. In contrast, Vertical Ecology Redux is a project that brings a new level of per formative organization into the design equation; it is fully integrated into the urban fabric and existing infrastructure.

Vertical Ecology Redux is located on the waterfront of Hong Kong. The ground level is a continuous path that fuses the tower to the port and offers a series of cultural amenities. The tower emerges as three distinct geometries that merge into a structure with housing and commercial space. The façade is a hybrid structural system of pleats, seams, subdivisions, lacing, and cells.
 

Landscape Elements

Comfort Confrontation is a project designed by Johan Tali, Marte Ringseth-Helgeland and Daniel Prost at the Studio Wolf D. Prix of the Die Angewandte in Vienna. It researches the possibilities of living in a desert environment, further more creating an off-grid self-sustainable university campus for 2500 students.

The actual building mass is hovering above the desert surface and is used as an apparatus to organize the public space that is the desert itself. The endless sand horizon is considered as an open field, where shade, brightness, and moisture are the variables to create a diverse public space. As the desert surface expands into the public buildings it becomes more shaded, creating a landscape of oasis like condition and manifests a forum contition for the academic buildings. The massing is developed simulating a field of connected focal points. The fieldlines are manifested as the main arteries and are represented as surfaces that organize the shading shells for housing and as the surfaces meet at a focal point, the bundling surfaces turn into a study of surface contitions like surface-to-volume (and the relation of different volumes to each other) and transparency in relation to sun conditions.

The climate concept consists of self shading shells for residential units, the residential units themselves as shading apparatus for inter-connected campus walkways and using groundwater for cooling via circulating in the hovering masses. A network of suspended roofing systems in the open courtyards is derived from the surface curvature of the self-shading shells of residential units. The landscaping language of the desert ground is shaped according to wind studies and direct access routes with the main purpose of creating wind blocking landscape elements.

new Wave Architecture

The project is located in the Iranian city of Semnan, and acts as an extension of the existing university campus. Taking a pivotal role in the complex and acting as a vibrant social hub, the added structures are two separate buildings – an auditorium and a library. The buildings pertain to the same architectural articulation, while creating different spacial characteristics. The dynamic and welcoming spaces of the auditorium are juxtaposed with the calm environment of the library. The achitectural dialogue creates a academic context that encourages interaction and learning.

The project attempts to approach a monumental and memorable picture of academic library and auditorium. The woven and crossing hasps on the façade link volumes visually while triangular dark glass openings illuminate spaces and illustrate authentic play of light and shadow. These elements provide a quiet atmosphere while diminishing the sunlight radiation, particularly in the hot summer. The Auditorium complex includes a 1000 seats auditorium, and 100. 200 seats convention halls, ,a multi-functional hall and a foyer. The library includes reading cluster, informal sitting newspaper, multi-lingual storages, computer station, reference collection hall, offices, exquisite book area and etc.

Design Methodology

Progression Through Un“Progression Through Unlearning” is part of an ongoing research by Bao An Nguyen Phuoc, Arie-willem De Jongh, and Mingy Seol from TU Delft into an architecture which explores the generation of programmatic, structural and spatial order through a multi-agent based design methodology which operates in a high pressure environment. The intention was to achieve highly varied heterogeneous spatial formations, catering to a wide variety of human activities and programmatic demands. The strategy of the project was to explore the possibilities of connecting exclusive programmatic and hard threshold zones through a continuous and gradient experience of the multifunctional voids and gree“Progression Through Unlearning” is part of an ongoing research by Bao An Nguyen Phuoc, Arie-willem De Jongh, and Mingy Seol from TU Delft into an architecture which explores the generation of programmatic, structural and spatial order through a multi-agent based design methodology which operates in a high pressure environment. The intention was to achieve highly varied heterogeneous spatial formations, catering to a wide variety of human activities and programmatic demands. The strategy of the project was to explore the possibilities of connecting exclusive programmatic and hard threshold zones through a continuous and gradient experience of the multifunctional voids and green areas.n areas.learning” is part of an ongoing research by Bao An Nguyen Phuoc, Arie-willem De Jongh, and Mingy Seol from TU Delft into an architecture which explores the generation of programmatic, structural and spatial order through a multi-agent based design methodology which operates in a high pressure environment. The intention was to achieve highly varied heterogeneous spatial formations, catering to a wide variety of human activities and programmatic demands. The strategy of the project was to explore the possibilities of connecting exclusive programmatic and hard threshold zones through a continuous and gradient experience of the multifunctional voids and green areas.

YIBD to Lead the World

International architecture firm Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates (KPF) is pleased to present its design for Block H of the Yongsan International Business District (YIBD) in Seoul. The goal of YIBD is to create a new symbol for the 21st Century city; a new urban center in Seoul for international business, living, entertainment, and shopping. YIBD will lead the world in innovative design, maximizing the site potential and taking advantage of connections made to its urban and natural assets. The master plan, created by Studio Daniel Libeskind, is a dynamic urban environment containing contributions from 19 different architects practicing in diverse locations around the globe.

Scheduled for completion in 2016, Block H consists of a luxury 5-Star hotel and high-end serviced residential building containing 167,225 square meters of space. The 385-meter-tall tower sits on a 14,600-square-meter parcel of land on the northeastern border of the YIBD, achieving an FAR of 11.4%. KPF’s building is situated in a way that seeks to mediate the extreme height (665m) of the landmark office tower to the northwest, and transition this height to the lower scale of the residential blocks beyond. KPF sought to intensify the social aspect of the street through a distinct urban landscape and diverse program at the lower levels of the building.

According to KPF Design Principal, Trent Tesch, “Our goal for this project is to establish and make connections to street life, the new city of Yongsan, and to the larger context of Seoul. We do this through a thoughtful approach to the building’s program, position, and character.”

Fundamental to the logic of the unique shape of the design is the idea that the building is comprised of apartments and hotel rooms that demand ample natural light, dramatic views, and maximum privacy. These three internal parameters have shaped the DNA of the Architecture. Like an organic system that seeks equilibrium with nature, the design grows outward from the center, towards views and light, into three distinct “wings.” The three wings guarantee that the residential apartments will have a major corner view from the living space, while maximizing its privacy from the adjacent unit. Unlike most “Y” type high-rise towers, the design “steps” each wing asymmetrically so there is a low-wing, a mid-wing and a high-wing. The building is carefully oriented to increase views to the Han River to the south (low-wing), the Yongsan Park to the east (mid-wing), and the Nam-San historic district and adjacent landmark tower to the north (high-wing).

KPF Managing Principal, Richard Nemeth adds, “As demonstrated by this futuristic new city center, Seoul is one of the leading innovative Architectural Arenas in Asia, and we are proud to design the hospitality component of it. We hope that it will successfully bridge the high speed rail network with the commercial components to invigorate the master plan.”

KPF’s tower contains casino, retail, and spa functions in the basement, and the firm proposed a podium building to accommodate a large banquet hall and other amenities for the hotel. The desire, however, is not to create a composition of tower and podium, but rather to create a tower that emerges or grows out of the podium like the organic growth of a crystal. The tower and podium are treated as one singular form, with a language of terraces and set-back forms that grow upwards and outwards towards light and views.

The hotel and serviced residences will be expressed with different but interrelated material palettes. The solid elements on the façade will be expressed as a dynamic pattern of non-repetitious surfaces that create a field on the side walls of the tower and expose the end walls where maximum views are desired. These surfaces transition from stone slab at the base of the building to textured metal surfaces at the top of the building (where the program shifts from hotel to residential), subtly exposing the program of the building. Natural materials such as stone, metal, and wood, are used in ways that heighten their character. Large slabs of stone, planks of wood, and real alloys comprise both interior and exterior surfaces.

a Movement of a Plant...

The project explores principles of responsive structures, installations that interact with users through a combination of motion sensors and various other electronic components. The Succulent Hispid marries biological and technological mechanisms, evolving into a hybrid lighting system mimicing the movements of petals. It is inspired by succulent plants and their ability to retain water, thus adapting to arid climates or soil conditions. Designed by UCLA students Harlen Miller, Francesco Valente-Gorjup and Jordon Gearhart, the installation is an emotionally charged, interactive, electro-material object.

The petals are made of plastic, with acrylic substructure and silicone membrane lining. The surfaces are covered with metal pin hairs. Combined with silicone inflatable bladders, they hide the LED lights that emanate a central glow. When approached, the Succulent Hispid senses one’s proximity and closes up, exposing its outer skin in defence.

Among other studio projects, the Succulent Hispid explores different manufacturing techniques such as 3D printing, lasercutting, milling, vacuum forming, casting and various molding methods. It also researches computer controlled robotic movement, LED lighting and sensor technologies in order to introduce interactivity and kinetics to the structure. Instead of focusing on a single material or manufacturing technology the students worked on the problems involved in combining a multiplicity of technologies and materials into sensible electro-material wholes.

biomimicry Structure

This project is a design proposal conceived by Philip H. Wilck during his studies at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna under the guidance of Hernan Diaz Alonso. The project for a Concert Hall at the Stadtpark in Vienna rethinks the concept of a concert hall through the architectural emsemble of different geometrical and material configurations that offer the opportunity for a multilayered and complex music experience. The system includes central positioned classical, symmetric concert hall geometry, and two areas created as sound shells related to biological shell geometries (biomimicry) such as an ear or a muscle structure. Other elements provide spaces and areas for a fully energy self-sufficient building through host interaction and active materials.

Wilck rethinks the concert hall by intruding botanical gardens functioning as structure and evolving absolutistic symmetric building configurations that morph into free floating geometries. The project analyzes system hierarchies with an adequate circulation organization.

Key elements coming from Romanticism are also important for the proposal such as: untamed wilderness, the unfinished, and the validation of obscure perceptions. Committed to the futility to comprehend the world with the aid of rational systems, as well as from the inferiority of every perfect thought compared to the inherent laws of nature. A New Romanticism approaches new areas in design and architecture processes – emerging aestetic paradigms and systematic specifications.

a Generic Volume

The project’s goal by Johannes Beck and Stefano Passeri was to combine techniques developed in an initial exploration on digital drawing, with a building-scale proposal sited in West Hollywood (Sunset Blvd, Holloway Drive intersection). The approach to the architecture starts from the main programmatic elements: office space, three auditoria, and a large public garden. We decided to give each of these ‘blocks’ an independent generic volume. The resulting intersecting boxes are connected via a language of ‘joints’ – a direct consequence of our intention to avoid booleaning the middle. A spacious, central, mostly interior void becomes the indirect by-product of this move.

The gaps between the joints and the resulting edge were our real design focus – and the natural condition for the application of the techniques learned in the first exercise. The idea of edge works well as a defining moment for the dialectic of interior and exterior in built form. If you presuppose a black interior and a white exterior, as we did, the edge is the space for the opposites to meet and generate unexpected interactions. The black and the white never turn gray but clash and collide, producing large areas of interpenetration as well as small trickles and graphic traces on the volumes. In places, to really emphasise the importance of the edge condition and of the blackness ‘bleeding out’ from the interiority, almost eroding the outer white, the reaction ‘indexes’ parts of the boundary area with a slight relief. And lastly, a function of the extended eroded joint edge is to produce apertures whereby the black interior can be glimpsed from outside.

Morphotectonic Aesthetics

Limited Edition book EVOLO SKYSCRAPERS. The publication has been praised by the critics, including the Wall Street Journal for its importance in showcasing the future of architecture.

Title: EVOLO SKYSCRAPERS
Cover: Hardcover
Size: 9″ x 11.5″ x 2.5″
Pages: 1224
ISBN: 978-0-9816658-4-9
Limited edition: 500 copies (sold out!)
Second printing: Printed on demand. To be delivered in July 2012
Price: $120 – Includes shipping to any part in the world.

INTRODUCTION

Established in 2006, the eVolo Skyscraper Competition has become the world’s most prestigious award for high-rise architecture. The contest recognizes outstanding ideas that redefine skyscraper design through the implementation of new technologies, materials, programs, aesthetics, and spatial organizations. Studies on globalization, flexibility, adaptability, and the digital revolution are some of the multi-layered elements of the competition. It is an investigation on the public and private space and the role of the individual and the collective in the creation of dynamic and adaptive vertical communities.

Over the last six years, an international panel of renowned architects, engineers, and city planners have reviewed more than 4,000 projects submitted from 168 countries around the world. Participants include professional architects and designers, as well as students and artists. This book is the compilation of 300 outstanding projects selected for their innovative concepts that challenge the way we understand architecture and their relationship with the natural and built environments.

The projects have been organized in six chapters that describe the current position and the future of vertical architecture and urbanism. The first chapter, Technological Advances, is an investigation on the use of digital tools and computing fabrication. Ecological Urbanism explores sustainable systems, including new materials and clean energy generation processes to achieve zero-net-energy buildings. Projects that analyze the reconfiguration of existing cities and the colonization of new environments, such as underwater cities and floating habitats, are part of New Frontiers. The improvement of our way of living is the topic of the fourth chapter, Social Solutions, which is a collection of ideas that respond to social, cultural, and economic problems. A more experimental approach to architectural design is exposed in Morphotectonic Aesthetics, with proposals that use fields of data and self-regulating systems to respond to internal and external stimuli -the results are fascinating explorations of function and form. Finally, Urban Theories and Strategies is a group of projects that establish new methods to alleviate the major problems of the contemporary city, including the scarcity of natural resources and infrastructure, and the exponential increase of inhabitants.

Human Rights to be Concreted

Illegal acquisition of land by local Chinese government entities has caused thousands of residents incredible grief and even death recently, plus social instability, say the designers of the Structure of Human Rights in Beijing. Though private property doesn’t really exist in China (and buying a property only ensures its use for 70 years), the designers of this structure feel that land use needs to be reexamined in China, as a private home is a basic human right. Their proposal to bring every person a place to live takes into account the country’s exploding population and need for dense development, and thus is oriented vertically.

Inspired by the Chinese character 田 the traditional siheyuan residence and ancient Chinese urban planning, these designers have dreamed up a giant reinforced concrete structure that serves more as infrastructure than a building. It is “land” for housing, instead of the housing itself – a 3-D checkerboard that houses units within each cell. The structure is the same length as the Forbidden City, and is located directly to the east of it. (“Ironically,” the designers say, “it confronts the Forbidden City, the symbol of the superpower of despotism, emphasizing the priority of human rights in a dramatic and symbolic way.”) Living spaces within the structure measure 25 by 30 by 25 meters. This proposal was not made by politicians, they stress, or economists. “We are people. We just want a house, and land.”