Complexing Winter

Super-Stadium is a proposal designed by Alan Lu for an Olympic complex for Harbin’s bid for the 2022 Winter Olympics that seeks to integrate the multitude of Olympic arenas and villages into one continuous entity, allowing for a seamless transition between programs and events.

With the economic burdens of hosting the Olympic games a key issue in the local and global economy, the proposal attempts to inject the current model of sporting arenas with a social and cultural initiative. Thus, the building itself becomes a series of typological layers, with the ground floor programmed as a cultural landscape with libraries, museums, convention halls, and screening rooms. The layer above exists as the main sports level with four large multiuse arenas, and the upper most layer becomes a public promenade that weaves through the landscape lines with retail stores and cafes. The layers are connected visually through shifts in section that allow users to watch the sporting events from other programs and vice versa. The end effect is one of specialized spaces that resist the urge for unprogrammed space to go unused, yet still inform each other spatially and visually. The Olympic village itself is transformed into a vertical tower, tailored for the athletes during the games, but easily converted to valuable real estate once the games are over.

advanced Architecture

X|Atelier is organizing an international intensive workshops of Advanced Architectural Design, part of an ongoing academic research, which introduces participants into contemporary discussions of formal exploration in Architecture and Art, through technical attainment of design and production. Omni(progra)chromatic by X|A is under the auspices of Benaki Museum, the Hellenic Institute of Architecture and the Athens School of Fine Arts. It is an opportunity for architects, students of Architecture and Art, professionals, designers and artists to challenge new territories.

The workshops led by Erick Carcamo and Nefeli Chatzimina -principals of X|A- will be held at the Benaki Museum in Athens 138 Pireos st, with daily meetings from 10am to 6pm. Our goal is to explore innovative, potential architectural expressions of the current discourse around form through computational tools (Autodesk MAYA). We will focus on technique elaboration, material intelligence, formal logic e ciencies and precision assemblies as an ultimate condition of design. The workshop will develop and investigate the notion of pro cient geometric variations at a level of complexity, so that questions towards geometrical e ectiveness, accuracy and performance can begin to be understood in a contemporary setting. The workshop is a discourse based in the use of multi-layered techniques and production processes that allow for control over intelligent geometries, calibration of parts, and behavioral taxonomies, normalizing an innovative held of predictability. We will focus simultaneously in the attempt to negotiate the question of topology vs. typology, odd genus (Greek. ) and species within the condition of space and how fragmented surface state emerges through, constituting a potential assembly of parts and quanti ed normalities. Within this context, our work will turn into design and production each student will operate within an expertise towards intuition by means of software and advancement of the discipline through a precise contemporary understanding of Architecture’s reliance on surface performance, unspeci ed systems, scale within the scale, mechanical parts and absurd precisions to expand its discourse.

to Heal a Building

http://valuesinarchitecture.blogspot.com/2011/07/healing-buildi

Grayson Highland State Park
What would it mean to create “healing buildings?”  I believe that well-designed buildings make people more productive, protect their health and can support a positive, hopeful attitude.  But I’ve always seen the role of the human-made physical environment in a passive, “first-do-no-harm” kind of way.  Having grown up in the beautiful Shenandoah Valley, I find what humans build to be a pale imitation of the mountains, fields, forests and streams crafted by God.  The story arc of God interacting with His creation begins in the Garden of Eden but ends in a new city – the New Jerusalem.  So maybe there is a role for building that goes beyond mere shelter and utility and includes healing the brokenness we all have in some form.The person who got me thinking about this, again, is Joel Salatin of Polyface Farms. Utilizing nature’s template for farming, their approach recognizes the inter-connectedness found in growing healthy, wholesome plants and animals.  Their website proclaims that they are in the business of, “healing the land, healing the food, healing the economy, and healing the culture.”

Green roof at Nationals Park, Washington, DC
There is an analogous way of thinking about how and what we build. Most of the green building movement is about limiting the damage done by modern building methods.  I believe we can move beyond a “limiting damage” mentality to one where what we choose to build and how we go about it can make us better people.  It begins with question, “Do we need to build?”  If the answer is yes, then come discussions about scale and context – what does the size and locations of our building(s) say about our values and priorities?  The techniques we employ should harness the natural forces of sun, wind and rain and utilizing these forces, not overcoming them with brute force -- making us constantly aware of the cycles of the natural environment – a connection with creation that can be healing.  Such questions are only the beginning; the conversation can and should go on.

By more carefully considering what and where and how we build we will inevitability question our values and purposes – discussion that can transform communities and culture.  The act of building can be either be an expression of our brokenness as human or demonstration of our faith and hope in a redemptive future.

to Ecology From a Nuclear World

The “ecological model project” designed by LAVA is a proposal for the ‘Green Climate Fund Headquarters’ in Bonn, Germany. The future structure will be situated along the rhine river within walking distance of several system departments, including the federal ministry for the environment, nature conservation and nuclear safety and economic cooperation and development. With a design inspired by the setting in the Rhine valley, and with curvilinear forms, nature light wells, roof top gardens and a large sunken terrace for the restaurant, the three-level structure will comply with the latest energy and building ecology standards, meeting the highest demands in terms of sustainability (German Gold Certificate), ecology and energy efficiency.

Besides functional offices with state-of-the-art office technology, planning includes an access and logistics area with security controls and a visitor reception zone, an auditorium, a conference room, a canteen/cafeteria and an underground car park. The Fund will provide input on the functional division of areas to create optimal working conditions.

The proposed building has excellent transport connections, is in walking distance from several Federal ministries, including the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety and the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development. Chris Bosse, Tobias Wallisser and Alexander Rieck set up LAVA as a network of creative minds with a research and design focus in 2007 with offices in Sydney, Shanghai, Stuttgart, Berlin and Riyadh.

Building Performance

The 2011 d3: Housing Tomorrow competition called for the design of “transformative solutions that advance sustainable thought, building performance, and social interaction”. David Zhai and Alexis Burson’s winning selection for the New York category was an innovative project that speculated on the future of the network society through the hybridization of data and living.

The design strategy called for a series of server farms established within a network of high and low-density housing. The servers interface with surrounding domestic spaces allowing informational feedback to occur between the inhabitants and a kinetic architectural system that responds to the various spatial needs of its community.

Revenue generated from the data servers help to subsidize the cost of living while the substantial heat created from the processing of data is used in a heat-exchange process to support domestic heating and hot water. Heat from the servers also support a network of vertical farming which provides sustenance for the community. An integrated biometric monitoring system allows residents to better improve on their health and lifestyle while increasing the effectiveness of health and emergency response services.

By re-conceptualizing new modes of informational collection and distribution on an urban scale, with consideration for health, privacy, economy, and the environment, this project tests but also begins to define the emergence of the post-computing society and the creation of a new urbanism and a new model of community.

a Membrane for Tennis

This is an innovative Tennis complex designed by Matija Djedovic M.Arch.  ”Tennis complex Varna” is situated in Bulgaria, on the  island in the central part of town Varna called “Ostrovo”. The project aims to be landmark for new impulses to urban development in Varna.

The idea is to create a visual link between the City of Varna and the observed locations. So the morphology of Varna transferred  in three steps  to the field configuration. When you’re approaching the Tennis complex, your attention is attracted by the amorphous shaped, modern Central stadium that is in harmony with environment, on one side, and on the other side Stadium 1 which is dig  in the hill so it wouldn`t change the shape of terrain.

The complex is divided into five zones: auxiliary fields, Central stadium, Stadium 1, the central public space between the two stadiums and parking located under ground (1 000 vehicles).  The capacity of the Tennis complex is about 14000 seats and area of the complex is 117429 m2.

Membrane of the Central stadium is seen as a new architectural element, which contributes to the creation of the aesthetic richness of the project. The final treatment of membrane is perforated sheet.  In the structure of the building where exist indoor and outdoor spaces, heated and unheated spaces…. holes cane be treated in three ways (1.unheated spaces – no filling; 2.heated air spaces – ETFE foil; 3.heated dark spaces that do not require light – PVC membrane). The use of this materials unfluence on the depth on texture of the facade, shaped facade and effect on her aesthetic qualities. This element increases the interest and enjoyment in the building, improving its usability and positive impact on visitors.

On the Copmlex can be applied different types of renewable energy. Because of  the excessive frequency of people this project will focus on the piezoelectric plates.  The intention is to build the most efficient Tennis complex, which will base its maintenance without the use of non-renewable energy. In this way the whole complex not only to produce electricity for their own maintenance, but in the future could be supplied and a residential block, part of town…,  with electrical energy. This kind of design will represent the small power plant based on „clean energy“ where the object lives 24.07.

For all its respectful understatement, the Tennis complex will become a distinctive feature of the City. It improves the inmediate environment of „Ostrovo Varna“ and acts as a stimulus for other positive developments in the adjacent urban structure, the surrounding district and the whole urban environment.
 

Deployment Strategy

The Transient Response System (TRS-1) is a deployable architectural base that quickly assembles a tower to provide immediate shelter for victims of natural disasters such as earthquakes and floods. This structure designed by architecture students Adrian Ariosa and Doy Laufer at SCI-Arc in Los Angeles is proposed for cities like Jakarta which could be underwater by 2025.

Once a flood subsides, the architectural base could serve as a rally point with a residential tower and a civic plinth for diverse programs including factories, refineries, and recycling plants. The residential tower is comprised of 3-story modules that adopt an open program to accommodate as many inhabitants as possible with adequate air, light, and space.

The deployment strategy of the TRS-1 follows seven steps:

Deployment – The vehicle arrives and deploys the base. The carrier returns to the main factory.
Stabilization – The tower expands and plug into existing infrastructural systems.
Expansion – The tower is raised as the base continues to expand and merge with the existing urban fabric.
Occupancy – The structure is opened to the displaced residents.
Operation – The residents are trained and helped to rebuild their homes and neighborhood.
Progression – The city is completely recovered and the TRS-1 could become a permanent structure for necessary infrastructure or could be dismantled and transported to a new disaster zone.

Cobogó Brick to Create Clouds

Could emergent settlement tendencies as seen in slums of the third world become more than a problem; a new way of living and an example to learn from?

Favela Cloud is a conceptual proposal for a future development of favela Santa Marta, a vision for a new way of building inhabitable structures in the area. The design proposes an alternative way of developing the build environment, drawing on the social and organizational qualities of the favela itself. Based on the self-organization logic, the proposal exhibits an additive system that can grow and adapt to its site conditions, hovering above buildings and vegetation to utilize the existing paths and openings of the site.

Inspired by the cobogó brick, widely used in a Brazilian context, the cloud is designed to act as an urban cobogó shading the open spaces inside the cloud as well as the public plaza underneath.

The cloud deals with a hybrid program, combining new dwellings with a set of flexible platforms for cultural functions such as a library and media space, dance studio and learning centre. The intention is to merge a diverse program into a flexible architectural design that can evolve according to future needs of the favela, and the design is intended to be a new landmark functioning as a communicator to the formal city.

“Favela Cloud” is a master thesis project by Johan Kure, Kemo Usto and Thiru Manickam developed at the AD:MT at Aalborg University, Denmark.

A Geometry Living

Fashioned by a simple circle Andrew Maynard Architect’s Mt. Macedon House is currently under construction near the town that the home derives its name in Victoria, Australia. Incorporated into the wooded landscape the home’s geometry grows out of the hillside keeping it from being walled off from its environment. The landscape adds variety to the circular form as well which provides elevated views throughout the main living floor. The home’s open expanse to a central courtyard, divided by a lap pool in the center, articulates a recreational and social presence as each space can see and been seen from the rest of the home. The interior floor plan, with bedrooms to one side, kitchen and living in the middle and office and garage on the opposite end is egressed by an inner path lining the courtyard. The total effect is one of relaxation.

The landscape continues to a vegetated slope which then turns into a deck that is approached appropriately enough by a circular staircase. The integration of the hill into the house is key design element providing a path to the upper hillside, roof or across the home. The entrance’s centerpiece is a tree growing from the floor and through the circular opening in the roof. Wrapped externally by vertical louvers the entire house’s glazing is protected from unwanted solar heat. On the roof a solar electric system and solar thermal collection for the swimming pool provides renewable energy resources, furthering the intention of integration of the home into the land.
 

to Feel Brain

Housing, like the majority of architectural genres, has always been a permanent construction attached to the ground for long-term residence. This project explores the possibility of creating a nomadic type of dwelling that should be seen as an industrial product rather than architecture.

In the 1960’s, Archigram designed a ‘Walking City’ in which an entire community could move from one place to another. Although a very innovative concept, it has been proven to be economically and technologically unfeasible over the last 50 years. ‘Capitalist Symbiosis’ is a small scale version of Archigram’s utopian vision, a small inhabitable transportation unit for the global resident. It is consumer product, just like ipods, laptops, and mobile phones.

In 1984, William Gibson envisioned in his cyberpunk novel ‘Neuromancer’ a world in which the boundaries and interactions between men and machine will blur, thus making it impossible to tell them apart. He described a world not far from ours, in which humans would only need minimal dwelling space, and in which virtual reality would provide an unlimited amount of space; the only traditional aspect of this proposal would be to provide shelter from the natural elements.

The aim of this scheme is to design a mobile structure that could continuously modify the urban configuration of a specific site. It could be seen as a benign parasite that will transform and enrich the city through consumer demand.

The first of two different projects is a summer bungalow that plugs into the sides of a modified robotic pier. The main goal is the creation of new programmatic opportunities through the interaction of the bungalow and the pier itself. There is a reconfiguration of the tectonic qualities of the host by the insertion of the guest.

to Parametric Fjords

Designed to connect the two shores of the Limfjord seaway in Denmark, the project explores the structural, experiential and functional variability of bridges through use of parametric tools. It was part of a research project aimed at discovering possibilities in associative geometry and the building of structures, functions and materials into one model where it could analyzed and change according to selected criteria. It develops and tests methods of parametric design and digital/analogue form-finding.

The bridge will be used for light traffic and will connect the Nørresundby area to the future urban context at the east harbor and the House of Music site. Instead of simply facilitating communication between future architectural interventions, the bridge introduces a visual direction, imposing a spatial statement to be followed. The idea of flow is expanded by introducing several paths that create diverse pedestrian experiences. Users are offered the option to choose different paths and rooms-they are given the ability to design their own crossing scenario. Using the notions of floating material and open spatial qualities of the fjord, the project aims to distance itself from the city architecture.

Students: Mathias Kræmmergaard Kristensen, Christian Raun Jepsen
Supervisors: Jens Klitgaard, Poul Henning Kirkegaard
Aalborg University: Institute of Architecture and Design

the Position of Humans

........The book presents a wonderful insight into the lives of three poets in particular, William Carlos Williams, Wallace Stevens and Marianne Moore, and is enlightening as to the ways in which they responded and reacted to the increasingly science and technology oriented society they lived in. Since this trend towards a reliance on science and technology has only escalated since the 1920s and 30s it is interesting to compare their position to our own. Certainly, I have gained a new appreciation for the poetry, and a new understanding of the period. I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in the ways poetry is written to reflect our position as humans within a social context.............
 

to Desalinate the Water

The Bridge of Hope is a symbolic structure that seeks to link the shores of the Dead Sea to promote peace between Jordan and Israel. Construction of the bridge would commence from both sides of the sea, ultimately meeting in the middle; there, a settlement for Arabs and Jews to live harmoniously is established.

The water level of the Dead Sea is dropping by 1 meter per year, and plans are currently underway by the Jordanians to replenish the water levels by connecting it, via pipelines, with the Red Sea. In addition to the bridge’s construction, this project also proposes the creation of aqueducts from Israel’s side to help replenish the sea with water from the Mediterranean. These aqueducts would generate electricity as the water flow drops 400 meters; this electricity is used to desalinate the water, making it useable for irrigation purposes (residual water is discharged into the Dead Sea). Salt water pools  (with normal salt levels) are created within the Dead Sea for fish farming, and other pools are also created to cultivate mineral baths for a variety of uses (potash is used for fertilizer, Bromine for fire retardants, fresh water for hydroponic farming, Dunaliella bacteria for its high CO2 sequestration rate, etc.).

The houses within the bridge settlement are adaptations of traditional Middle Eastern “wind catcher chimney” house designs. These will differ, though, in that all sides of the structures will offer shaded areas and openings of varied sizes that lead to green terraces and water pool terraces. These openings allow for fresh airflow, which creates cool breezes to cool the homes in this warm environment.

As approximately 7 million tons of water evaporates each day, a water cycle within the buildings will be established to create fresh water from condensation; this will help irrigate the gardened terraces. The condensation is created when ocean water is brought from a depth of 15 meters to the surface; when the salt water meets the warm air, the temperature difference (which is 20 degrees Celsius or more) creates vapor, and the molecules regroup without the salt, creating fresh water.

to Galaxy a Park

The project attempts to integrate rural landscape and the city. Located in the fast growing city of Shenzhen, in China’s Guangdong Province, the Galaxy Yabao Hi-Tech Enterprises Headquarter Park covers an area of about 65 ha. It is a complex comprised of 18 high-rise towers, a 5 star hotel, 3 service apartment towers, 3 residential towers, a shopping mall and a 32 ha park. In order to introduce nature as a strong element in space, the architects at 10 design decided to pull off the tower facades to allow for vegetation to grow up the sides of the buildings.  Mounted on the western facades are the algae tubes. The strips of vegetation, climbing up the towers are transformed into rooftop gardens, reducing the heat-island effect.

The buildings of the Galaxy Yabao Hi-Tech Enterprises Headquarter Park are designed with façades that neutralize air pollution 24 hours a day, an algae system that produces oxygen, organic fertilizer, and cleans grey water, and a series of subterranean chambers that naturally cools outside air and pushes it into a series of outdoor courtyards. The buildings take full advantage of technologies that help shape the temperature and air quality of their micro-climate.

to Promote Science

The Centre for Promotion of Science in Belgrade, Serbia designed by Austrian architect Wolfgang Tschapeller will be an institution of service and a national bank of knowledge in the field of science. It will organise innovative and educative exhibitions, and bring science closer to the people. The main goal of the Centre for Promotion of Science will be to facilitate scientific education, a continuous training as well as social and economic growth, both with direct action, and in partnership with other actors – primarily the Ministry of Science and Technological Development and the Ministry of Education.

The Centre  will be floating high above the ground. It will operate in 3 main levels. On the level of the City it will be an optimistic sign positioned on one of the main routes of the capital. For the Blok 39 it will be a sign, a canopy and a portico. The  building being programmed to promote sciences, it plays on visions of technology and construction. The architectural language of the centre will  be one of state-of-the-art technology and the display of structural principles. A special role is given to the underside of the centre; it will have mirroring qualities, able to reflect all the movement on the ground as well as the visitors that by entering the centre are penetrating the reflections of the earth’s surface.
 

human Amenities

This proposal examines the benefits of a field of small footprint skyscrapers. The main concept is to create visually and spatially linked pockets of recreational areas at the ground level.

It is common to see deserted streets at night and weekends in downtown areas where traditional skyscrapers do not offer public amenities and visual connection between different spaces is nonexistent.

to Form Identity

BIG, Martha Schwartz Landscape, Buro Happold , Speirs & Major, Lutzenberger & Lutzenberger, and Global Cultural Asset Management are today announced as the winning team of the international design competition for a new 27.000 m2 cultural complex in Albania, consisting of a Mosque, an Islamic Centre, and a Museum of Religious Harmony.

The capital Tirana is undergoing an urban transformation which includes the restoration and refurbishment of existing buildings, the construction of a series of new public and private urban structures, and the complete reconceptualization of Scanderbeg Square. This important square is the site of the new cultural complex that will consist of a Mosque, an Islamic Centre, and a Museum of Religious Harmony.

Albania is the crossroads of three major religions: Orthodox Christianity; Catholicism; and Islam. With the recent completion of two new churches, all three religions will now have new places of worship in the heart of Tirana. The complex will not only serve the Muslim community of the city and surrounding areas, but will educate the public about Islamic values and serve as a beacon for religious tolerance.

BIG’s winning entry was selected out of five finalists, including Spanish Architect Andreas Perea Ortega, Architecture Studio from France, Dutch SeARCH and London-based Zaha Hadid.

“The winning proposal was chosen for its ability to create an inviting public space flexible enough to accommodate daily users and large religious events, while harmonically connecting with the Scanderbeg square, the city of Tirana and its citizens across different religions. Additionally the project shines through its beautiful garden surrounding the new Mosque and Center of Islamic Culture which symbolically features the rich vegetation described in Islamic literature. Finally the team’s awareness of the economic aspects of this important development will contribute to a successful realization of this project.” Mayor of Tirana, Edi Rama.

The buildings’ forms emerge from two intersecting axes and formal requirements: the city grid of Tirana which calls for the proper framing of the square and a coherent urban identity, and orientation of the Mosque’s main wall towards Mecca. BIG’s proposal incorporates Tirana’s grid by maintaining the street wall and eaves line, yet rotates the ground floor so both the Mosque and the plaza face the holy city of Islam. This transformation also opens up a series of plazas—two minor ones on the sides of the Mosque and a major plaza with a minaret in front—which are semi-covered and serve as an urban extension of the place of worship. By turning the mosque inside out and bringing the program and qualities of the Mosque to a public arena, the religion becomes inclusive and inviting, and the cool shaded urban space can be shared by all.

“This project is very significant for us for two reasons: Firstly it is a privilege to contribute to the ambitious rejuvenation of Tirana City – especially since it is happening not by the random accumulation of singular monuments – but rather in accordance with a careful and considerate holistic master plan. Secondly and perhaps most importantly –religious tolerance is one of our greatest challenges today– politically, culturally and even urbanistically. With the construction of the New Mosque of Tirana, The Islamic Center and The Museum of Religious Harmony – Tirana will reestablish the equilibrium by adding a mosque to the newly completed Orthodox and Catholic Cathedrals – making Tirana an example for the rest of the world as a global capital of religious harmony”, Bjarke Ingels, Founding Partner of BIG.

to Appareil Agriculture

The population of the world is expected to double by 2050. This fact does not only raise interrogations for the future of food production and the increasing necessity of land cultivation, it also creates concerns towards endangering the future of natural resources and biodiversity.

Today, food is longer being produced where it is being consumed. Vegetables sometimes travel to other continents to be processed or even simply packed before returning for consumption. The transport infrastructure for refrigerated food products, besides being costly, is strongly energy un-efficient and is an important contribution to global warming.

Can agriculture make its way into the city? Can it integrate our urban fabric despite its apparent necessity to occupy large horizontal surfaces little available in the economically-driven metropolitan densities?

Agriculture 2.0 designed by Appareil attempts to propose an answer to these questions. It consists of a generative system for the design of the infrastructure for urban vertical farming, which can be used in any city of the world.

It is defined as a parametric model which necessitates three pieces of information as inputs to produce the local design for the vertical infrastructure:
•The climatic conditions of the city in which it is to be inserted.
•The area of the city, in m², to be covered in vegetable production.
•The specific site on which the tower is to be constructed.

The building itself is composed of a support structure for plant incubators which travel down the full height of the tower. Their journey last the necessary time of the plants’ growth from crop to maturity. 45 days in the case of the lettuce. The incubator is an expandable 4-8 m² closed pool which contains a controlled environment collecting rain water, regulating sunlight, temperature, air quality and CO2 concentration. Although limited in terms of species, the agricultural production include most lightweight crops such as lettuce, tomato, peppers, eggplant, marrow…  In its largest and most dense version, a single tower can reach a production rhythm of 42 kilograms of vegetables per day, which can cover a city area of approximately 1.5 km².

illusory Cuts

Rather than taking the “true” or literal approach to materials, this project designed by Dave Bantz and Michael Gross attempts to adopt techniques mastered by artists and apply them at an architectural scale. Material in art is used as a representational device for effects and a gateway to sensation. The”Artificial Matters” studio, run by SCI-arc professor Elena Manferdini, aims to provoke new sensations through texture, geometry, coloration, and finish. The studio began by 3D scanning literal materials (in this case a sliced peach) and modifying the raw data to produce a synthetic material with the potential to create new sensations.

The project footnotes artists such as Murakami for his use of distortion through an object in the landscape, while the attempt here is to implement distortion and blurring of context and figuration. The conceptual pavilion proposal for the Milan 2015 Expo takes massing, which has traditionally been absolute and legible, and makes it simultaneously illusory and viscerally evocative. This is where fact and fiction coexist. The exterior causes a distortion and blurring of reality through refraction and density, blurring the figure. While the indexical cut reveals the interior materiality of the pavilion and is concerned with more visceral and immediate sublime sensations.

via suckerPUNCH

make A city to be Free

Free City is a conceptual prototype for the XXI century city, conceived by FREE Fernando Romero EnterprisE in response to global issues brought forth by population growth and urban transition in the developing world. It proposes the design of a new urban infrastructure that integrates a sustainable and systematic framework into the grain of the urban fabric, stimulating innovation, production, services and growth.

a Geodesic Yerevan

This intriguing skyscraper proposal by Vahan Misakyan designed for the city of Yerevan in Armenia consists of an assemblage of structural geodesics that form three piercing towers linked by habitable bridges at the top and bottom. Different programs, including offices, residences, and hotel are located in each tower – the geodesics change in size and configuration depending on the program. The bridges are used as commercial and recreational areas for the general public.

One of the main concepts of the proposal is to create a soft transition between the vertical and horizontal planes by creating surfaces that peel off from the ground and transform into habitable areas. A transportation hub for the entire region emerges from one of these structures while a second one creates a bridge and a recreational park.

The building is designed with the latest green technologies. An “intelligent” skin controls, through mechanical openings, the amount of light incidence and could also be used to reduce heat and provide natural ventilation. This skin is also equipped with rain water collection systems, photovoltaic cells, and wind turbines.

enormous Arenas

City Futura” is a visionary urban design proposal by Los Angeles-based firm B+U for an expansion of the City of Milan set in the year 2210. The project is part of a development plan for fifteen different sites located on the outer ring connected by the Milan Metro line.

City Futura is superimposed over the existing city leaving most of its buildings untouched and tapping into existing infrastructure and expand it.

Urban design concept: Tissue and Void.  The 600m tall structure hovers over the city covering about one million square meter area and is divided into nine districts that are organized around three programmatic topics including: I- Civic; II- Entertainment and Recreation; and III-Art, Fashion and Manufacturing. Initially the nine districts were represented as spherical void spaces and randomly placed across the site, floating above the ground and varying in size and height they became placeholders for enormous civic arenas which expand up to 250 meters in diameter.

These public supercenters act as a scaffold for developing a new kind of urban tissue that is not defined by conventional massing and zoning rules within a two dimensional city grid but are based on emergent growth models and developed by linking together families of massing elements that form larger subsystems in-between and around these public hubs, which then in turn are linked again to give rise to a grander systems vastly expanding across the city. Elevating this system off the ground exposes the underside of the city, a quasi sixth façade. It allowed us to rethink the city quite literally from the ground up envisioning how one might move through it and how infrastructure might develop, how our spatial perception and experience might change, how our organizational models can be expanded and new interrelations can be made.
 

to Membrane all Deformations

Membrane structures are used quite often in modern architecture, such as stadiums or big canopies, but how can they be used in a tower? In this proposal Tingwei Xu from the University of Pennsylvania designed a membrane structural component for a skyscraper. Each component contains a continuous surface which has structural properties and it is made of plastic that can resist deformation in different configurations and directions.  The structural units grow from the surface and melt into each other like biological cellular membranes – each unit squeezes into each other with great strength. The secondary component contains a inhabitable space unit and antenna.

to Visual the Art

Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) unveiled the design for a new Institute for Contemporary Art (ICA) designed by Steven Holl and Chris McVoy. Part exhibition and performance space, part lab and incubator, the 38,000-square-foot building will feature a series of flexible programming spaces for the presentation of visual art, theater, music, dance and film by nationally and internationally recognized artists. The facility also encompasses a 240-plus seat performance space, outdoor plazas, a sculpture garden, classrooms, a café and administrative offices. Scheduled to open in 2015, this non-collecting institution is designed to facilitate the way artists are working today by accommodating the increasing lack of barriers among different media and practices, mirroring the cross-disciplinary approach at VCU’s School of the Arts (VCUarts). VCUarts has long been the top public university graduate arts and design program in the country, according to U.S. News & World Report. The ICA will complement and enhance the offerings of VCU while also serving as a new destination for contemporary arts and culture in the region.

Steven Holl Architects’ design for the ICA will be presented in an exhibition opening April 26 at New York’s Meulensteen gallery. “Forking Time” includes more than 30 study models and concept drawings that depict the design’s evolution.

“The ICA will be a transformational resource for arts education, experimentation and for the enhancement of VCU and Richmond as a capital city committed to the arts,” said Virginia Commonwealth University President Michael Rao. “The ICA brings a vital new dimension to us as a national research university, providing highly motivated students with opportunities to engage the arts in their learning experiences and to work across a range of disciplines. Steven Holl Architects’ design captures our global vision and commitment to human excellence. We look forward to the dynamic collaborations that the ICA will spark at VCU, within the region and around the world.”

Sited at the corner of Belvidere and Broad Streets directly off of Interstate 95, and one of Richmond’s busiest intersections, the ICA will form a gateway to the University and the city. The ICA will feature dual entrances—one facing Richmond and the other fronting VCU’s campus. At the heart of the building will be an inviting, double-height “forum,” a flexible space for both spontaneous encounters and planned events that connects to the ground-floor performance space and also opens to the sculpture garden and cafe. The galleries radiate out from the forum in forked arms, shaping the space of the garden. Large pivot doors open to the garden in order to create a seamless interplay between interior and exterior spaces. The open circulation serves to remove the formal protocols associated with entering traditional arts facilities. The three levels of galleries are linked through the open forum, allowing artists to create works that extend across, and visitors to circulate through, the spaces via a variety of paths. The ICA’s exterior walls of pre-weathered satin-finish zinc will complement its urban setting. Additional clear and translucent glass walls will create transparency, bringing natural light into the building during the day and radiating light at night, signaling the activities taking place within.
 

Island of Amager

The Blue Planet will be Northern Europe’s largest and most modern aquarium. Architecturally, the aquarium is shaped like a whirlpool, giving associations to eddies of fish, birds and sea currents. The building site is in Copenhagen, at the island of Amager, right at the coast of Øresund, north of Kastrup Havn, close to the Copenhagen Airport, and viewed from a plane the whirlpool shape will be shown in full. Approaching on the ground, one will experience the building as floating in a circular reflection pool, and a walk through its interior is a travel through several organic worlds. The solution also takes into account that the aquarium can later be expanded. The building’s gross area is 9,000 m2 plus outdoor facilities of 2,000 m2 plus parking.
Construction started in October 2010 and when the tank is finished in spring 2013, it will be one of Denmark’s biggest tourist attractions with around 700,000 visitors on a yearly basis. Moreover, it will the only aquarium in Denmark, primarily focused on exotic animals and plants – and hence global biodiversity. The building is now so far that the shell is finished and the steel structure is erected. Currently the molding of the walls is taking place. In total there will be placed 27.000m2 metal furring, which after the casting will be removed. The installation of aquarium techniques has begun and is expected to be completed in October 2012.

to Car the Art

Abu Dhabi is a car culture. The vast distances between destinations, the extreme heat and sand storms, the quality of the existing public transportation systems, and the current low cost of petrol in the UAE make the automobile the default means of transportation.

Compressive looks at this existing condition and, more specifically, the car as a representation of human beings’ very worst and very best achievement. While the resources consumed to manufacture and operate the car are astounding, the personal freedom the car affords is something that every society should strive for (personal freedom, that is). The car is an integral component of our existing lifestyle, and Compressive reexamines the interaction between person and car at various scales, while also questioning the current understanding of the parking lot as a type of “service space.” By utilizing the car as another form of vertical transportation the building can begin to register occupation by reacting to the weight of cars parked on various floors. By sectionally arranging the main programs of the mixed-use tower, groups of up to 5 floors will actually begin to sag with the weight of cars based on program use at different times throughout the day. The dynamic façade system intensifies this condition by folding out and up when the floors compress, allowing for more ventilation throughout the parking area in order to counteract the greater number of cars. Whatever solar protection is lost by the folding façade is made up for by the new condition of shorter floor-to-floor height of the surrounding parking ramps.

The compression is brought back to the scale of the human where the yellow pedestrian paths make their way from the parking spaces across the car ramps to the interior. When a car approaches a pedestrian path the road reacts locally to the car’s weight, causing an inverted speed bump and ensuring pedestrian safety. This reaction to the weight of occupation allows the user an intuitive understanding of not only their own impact on the space, but the impact of the aggregated population surrounding them as well.

Compressive was designed as part of the advanced Exotic Variables and States of Change studio led by Thom Faulders at the California College of the Arts. The challenge presented to the students was to examine emerging pattern models that would allow for growth and adaptive response, enabling them to explore process-driven territories and architectures of exaggeration. This approach allowed for an extension to current practices of environmental engagement to include exotic possibilities and novel formations, gained through artful entanglement and irregular conditions – pushing beyond simplistic notions of functionalism and economy.

a Necropolis

The concept of a Vertical Necropolis designed by architect Annkit kummar in Delhi is presented as a way to satisfy social prospects while proficiently exploiting scarce city land.

A vertical necropolis will free up a substantial amount of ground space for the living and provide within it a place of respite for the deceased. It will also create a space where diverse groups can feel comfortable grieving together. This way we will be able to see all people as equals.

The principal issue is the adverse effects of, practice of traditional methods of dealing with dead, by various religions, on the ecology. Environmental issues have not featured prominently with regard to bereavement, possibly due to the sensitivity of the subject.  This view is shifting as environmental issues are become progressively important.

The secondary issue is of land. The memorial park end up turning into dead space as it becomes less likely for individuals to use them as civic parks. Probably it’s time to utilize the square footage in a new, more efficient manner (going vertical)?

So what happens to the already existing cemeteries? They can be turned into wildlife reserve areas.

a Parametric DepthMap

Can parametric architecture be considered Architecture? Two of the eVolos 2011 Competition finalists, Patrick Bedarfand and Dimitrie Stefanescu would say so. Their C:Strip can be described as a singular manifesto for  meaningful use of computational techniques.

With the assistance of software analysis and various datascapes capturing different environmental influences, the design evolves into a multi-layered architectural object of almost permeable urban quality.

Ecotect was used in processing wind speed and insulation grids, calculating the optimal position of apertures and photovoltaics. In order to avoid disrupting the existing pedestrian flows and visual parameters, circulation analysis programmed in Processing/Java used starting parameters gathered by local observations. Functional distribution was carried out with careful attention to visual trajectories, relying on DepthMap calculations. Centric distribution of functions was replaced with grouping of facilities along motion paths, allowing not only spread of data, but also creating new information through societal behaviour.

Thus, two systems evolved: folding umbrellas with the ability to harvest grey water and heat energy, and the other situated inside the body of the object. Distribution of both depends on levels of necessity for adaptation along the strip area.

C: Strip confirms that, when used as  tools for  innovative concepts, new design techniques can play a significant role in shaping future architecture.  However, lack of critical and reasoned introspection in implementing these design trends often results in superficial and utopian experiments in form. Consequently, it alienates young practitioners and experienced professionals, making it look less as architectural avantgarde and more as something Han Solo would  fly.

between Gardens

Built in 2011 in the Spanish town of Motril, between the gardens of the Explanadas and the Park Pueblos de las Américas, the structure bridges the difference in height between these two areas and frees the passage of the Avenue Virgen de la Cabeza. The structures used are organic hexagons which allow easy adaptation to the surrounding environment, from host in its structure existing trees and adapt on the slopes to facilitate pedestrian traffic, allowing the movement of persons with motor disabilities.

The support of these structures is based on the lower bound for the Avenue, to emerge as ways to strengthen the gateway tree and at its upper bound. The conditions that have been taken into account are derived from the road shot, whichever save a minimum height of 5m gauge across the width of the Avenue. The structure was built with steel of varying thickness, so that the cutting and folding of the thin surface to create a continuous structural element gap. The clearances of the structure have been closed on its upper face by opaque surfaces that allow pedestrian traffic. In its lower face seals are sandwiched glazed incorporating LEDs, which allow both an illumination of the structure and the Avenue. The manufacturing process of the structures, continues with advanced manufacturing systems in which the architect must produce all the cutting of their projects through the programs of parametric design and scripting.

a Gaudi paraBolic

The design follows methods used by Gaudi for his church projects. This specific approach involved hanging the chains upside-down, showing the most opportune rib disposition and letting the gravity determine the strongest shape for the future building. Used in the chair design, the chain-models are combined with a software script to generate the structure of the ribs, informing of the complexity of the forces in a chair’s backrest. The chair is created by Studio Bram Geenen,  for their online Open Design Platform. The project was developed as part of the Furnistructures initiative, which involves extensive researches into structural systems, as found in nature and architecture, and the possibilities of designing lightweight furniture using such systems.

The script used to determine the structure of the ribs is based on three steps: the distribution of forces across the surface of the chair, the direction of the forces defines the direction of the ribs, and finally, the amount of force specifies the height of the rib. A thin shell made of carbon fiber deals with compression forces. The white beam-grid substructure resists bending of the shell. The substructure was made using rapid-prototyping techniques to achieve the required complexity. Carbon fiber was chosen for its lightness and strength.

a Scenario rooF

This project conceived by Design With Company contends with the competing and overlaid desires for the site of the McCormick Place Convention Center in Chicago by creating a new tourist destination and scenario-planning infrastructure from the existing architecture. On the roof, a 1:25 miniature replica of Chicago is constructed. A clear mound protects the model, provides space for artificial weather equipment and creates unexpected visual connections between both Chicagos. Within the mound, the model acts as a simulator for various future scenarios. Consequences of global warming, new construction, earthquakes, fires, asteroid impacts, tornados, blizzards etc. are tested repeatedly while appropriate action plans are calculated. On the exterior, the mound presents a new urban landmark along Lake Shore Drive, provides space for new lake shore activities, and redirects views through and around the existing building.
The desire and plan to secure the waterfront for public access and parkland is directly attributable to Daniel Burnham and the 1909 Chicago Plan. At the time, nature and the city were conceived as separate, complementary entities. The opportunity to get away from the city and into nature was believed to cleanse the spirit and the attempts to “aerate” the urban fabric were to let it “breath.” Nature injections within the vast artificial construction were thought to cure urban ills. This proposal updates this urban operation manual with a new unnatural natural landmark. A 1/25th scale snowglobe enhancement surgery for the city.
The story of the project is primarily told through the visitor information documents. These include maps, promotional material and merchandise catalogs. It is a National Geographic exploration of an urban nature, archeology and anthropology.
Team: Stewart Hicks, Allison Nemwmeyer w/ Min Chen

a Metaplasis Form in Greece

Christos Koukis designed this project at the University of Patras, Department of Architecture under the advice of professor Vasilis Stroumpakos. Metaplasia comes from the greek word ‘μετάπλασις’ (mĕ-tap′lă-sis) which means change in form. As a scientific terminology is being used in cases where a cell type is not robust enough to withstand a new environment and so it mutates in another type more adapted to it.

The definition matches the aim of this project; the conversion of an existing situation (site & concept ‘stadium’) to another one, more adapted to the reality of the area and the era. Located in Nea Philadelpheia, a suburb of Athens, where immense urban density and natural beauty (grove of N.Philadelpheia) coexist, and designed in the same place with a demolished stadium, metaplasia becomes a new system, building, entity that through simulation techniques, time-based mutation, gradual metamorphosis and adaptive logic becomes a new species.

to Act like an Airport

Designed by Andrew Bromberg of Aedas, the Terminus is a 430.000 square meter structure, equipped with 15 high speed rail tracks that connect Hong Kong to Beijing. The project won the Best Futura Mega Project in MIPIM Awards 2012. Construction will be completed in 2015.It will be the largest bellow ground terminus station in the world. Situated in Hong Kong, the building acts more like an international airport, as it includes custom and immigration controls for departing and arriving passengers.

“Being a gateway to Hong Kong, the Terminus was designed to be an architecture that connects with the surrounding urban context as much as it makes visitors aware of the city’s character whether arriving or departing. To achieve this, the design efficiently compacted all of the supporting space to allow for a large void down into the departure hall below, with added apertures going down to the track platforms. The outside ground plane bends down to the hall and the roof structure above gestures toward the harbor. The result is a 45 meter high volume which focuses all attention to the south façade with views of the Hong Kong Central skyline, Victoria Peak and beyond.”
 

a Mesh of Steel Beams

The Containers Skyscraper is an idea to provide nomad housing to this specific type of urban dweller. It consists of an exoskeleton where regular shipping containers transformed into apartment units plug-in. The main structure provides basic infrastructure as well as recreational areas while the habitable units can be transported by ship, truck, and train to almost every large city worldwide providing a sense of “home” to these modern urban nomads.

The structures will consist of a dense mesh of steel beams. Every 100 feet there will be platforms that, in addition of providing rigidity to the structure, they will create a micro-city inside the skyscraper -an indoor /outdoor space used for recreational and social activities.
 

to Capture plastics

In the middle of the Pacific Ocean sits a mass of garbage that is 8.1% the size of the entire sea. It is known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (GPGP), and is estimated to contain over 100 million tons of waste. The debris gathers in that particular location as ocean currents convene in the Subtropical Convergence Region, and is causing grave harm to the immediate ecosystem and those within a broad surrounding swath.

The Plastic Fish Tower, a circular structure floating on the ocean surface within the GPGP, will collect and reprocess plastic, which estimates say comprises 90% of the GPGP and is often ingested by birds and fish, causing their demise. A large fence will circle the structure underwater in a 1 km diameter to capture all the plastic that floats its way. The plastic will be recycled within the structure and processed into plastic patches that can be assembled into fish farms to restore the ecosystem. In addition to helping mitigate the pollution, the fish farm will also have two added benefits: the buoyancy of the plastic fish farm elements will be enough to keep the entire structure afloat since plastic is in fact so buoyant, and it will position the structure as a tourist attraction. Bringing tourists to the GPGP would greatly help in disseminating widely the reality of this manmade ecological catastrophe. The tourists will be transported to and from the site by ships that are fueled by chemicals that will be collected from the processed plastics within the skyscraper in an as-of-yet-undiscovered method of chemical extraction.

The structure itself is a ring that rises above the water and also goes below, but is largely hollow. The outer ring holds residential and leisure spaces, and is connected at intervals by bridges that are enclosed underwater (and one that is open on the water’s surface). Fishing banks made from the recycled plastic funnel up through the middle of the ring, helping to keep the structure buoyant.

the Poetry in a Chair

The internationally acclaimed Studio Aisslinger, with offices in Berlin and Singapore, uses new materials in a way that emphasizes utilitarian and organic aspects of design, and manages to reconcile high aesthetics criteria with contemporary nomadic lifestyles. Their monobloc chair was created for the “Poetry Happens” exhibition in Ventura Lambrate. What is innovative about the design is the fact that it is made of natural fibers, using production methods widespread in the automobile industry to achieve lightness and strength.

The sustainable sheet material of the Hemp Chair allows the use of more than 70% natural fibers in combination with BASF’s water-based acrylic resin Acrodur. Unlike with classic reactive resins, this method releases no organic substances such as phenol or formaldehyde during the cross-linking process. The only by-product of the curing procedure is water. Furthermore, the industrial process of compression molding accounts for low-cost mass production of three-dimensional objects with high mechanical resistance and very low specific weight.

The Hemp Chair is eco-friendly, lightweight and stackable. It is made from a thin layer of material, shaping a soft curved structure reminiscent of automobile aesthetics. It’s a product that aspires to answer some of the current design demands: sustainability, sophisticated appearance and possibility of mass production.

an Energy to Draw

The Tena Tower is a massive 640,000 square meter development project for the town of Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso, West Africa. Designed by Paris based architect Manuelle Gauntrand, the Tena Tower project is meant to be an entirely energy self-sufficient oasis to draw in foreign and internal investments to Burkina Faso.

Gauntrand began her design by establishing a 180,000 square meter man-made lake to design the complex about. Although visually dominated by the 96 ft. tower on the northwest side of the development, the Tena Tower masterplan includes 80 villas, a park system, and a number of mixed used facilities to be built around the new lake.

Surrounding the lake in an emulating pattern are 14 massive groves of photovoltaic cells to power the villas and facilities. The pattern of the lake and groves were inspired by the feathers of a peacock. Parks, recreation areas, and promenades surround the lake and weave in and throughout the villa complexes.

The tower itself will house a hotel, 50 apartments, offices, and restaurants. A lace of metallic panels is extended beyond the facade, twisted to efficiently filter light but maintain views to the surrounding landscapes. Between the lace and façade will be periodic terraces to further emphasize viewing. Like a woman’s dress at the ankles, the lace lays outward at the base of the tower to cover the lobby and lower facilities.

The Tena Tower complex is the winner of a 2010 design competition for the site by real estate investment company REAL TACAMA FZE. The shear scale of the project should create hundred of construction and service jobs in the area, but the lasting effect of high end hotels and residences in developing countries is still quiet unclear. It is currently in the study phase and site work is expected to begin in 2013.

to Trike True

Today, more cities and urban centers are building dedicated bicycle lanes on city streets. Cycling is becoming an increasingly viable way to commute to work and make short, local trips around town.  However, cycling is also a fair- weather transportation option and often carrying groceries or other items is relegated to a small wicker basket perched precariously on the handle bars. The reality is that most climates and most cities need a viable alternative to make short distance commuting a reality for self propulsion. The TrikE is designed to be a true alternative to the car for local transportation.

to Cross over Fire

Prechteck’s design for the extension of the National Library of Austria located at the Hofburg in Vienna contains a number of cultural facilities including a 1200sqm underground core exhibition hall, a smaller 600sqm multifunctional hall, creative studios, a restaurant, and shops.

The design is to be seen as an extension of the bordering park and takes off at its north-west end to cross over the fire / drop-off lane with a twist that after crossing arches back to the ground level to melt into the landscape. All the  facilities are housed in one seamless structure, creating at each point a different spatial experience towards the Hofburg and directing its visitors intuitively to the foyer and to the different programs.
 

a Plywood to Mensa

Part of a distinctive plywood collection of furniture designed by Lazerian, the Mensa Collection includes models that use various connecting methods of bolting and self-interlock. With the use of CNC router, these models are further advanced to find structural forms capable of supporting weight. This specific collection uses both raw and laminated birch plywood. The Mensa table is constructed and held together with stainless steel fixings. The modular pieces are bolted onto a stainless steel base and a 6 mm piece of toughened glass.

The name for the collection is derived from two Latin words: mēns, which means ‘mind’, and mēnsa, which means ‘table’ symbolizing the original conception of the society, ‘a round table where no one has precedence’. These light and sophisticated plywood-objects, which get their stability by the artfully patterned and flexible structure, are engaging examples of computer aided design.


 

a Kuma Kengo

Placed second at the Taipei City Museum of Art Competition, the proposal designed by Kengo Kuma+Associates derives its iconicity from emphasizing two distinct design tendencies. The first relates to the idea of connectivity: the museum is a cultural and communication hub, providing a space for gatherings, exhibitions and workshops. An urbanistic attitude is noticeable in the configuration of the structure. The skin acts as a canopy- accessible and welcoming, it shelters a public space below. The pavilion-like programmatic distribution contributes to the overall impression of the museum being part of the cityscape. The main hall is connected to a nearby train station, cable car, riverbank trail, demystifying the museum culture, interpreting it as an integral part of the urban experience.

The Museum’s other striking feature is the double skin system. It has an important role in the sustainability of the building. It is designed as a steel mesh of the structural framework, capped with diverse elements including EFTE cushions, LEDs, ventilation louvers, solar panels and green roof. This highly breathable envelope extends all the way to the ground in places to create shaded spaces. And at night, the building is illuminated by energy-efficient LEDs, creating an impressive lighting effect.

to Art an Egg

Kokuy Housing

This project is a redevelopment idea for the waste grounds in the suburbs of the Russian city of Kokuy. The majority of the existing houses will be restored and three new egg-shaped buildings will provide the new necessary housing. These structures will be covered with solar panels that will move according to the sunlight. Movable screens cover the entire outer skin and are used to regulate the temperature and the illumination. The main structure is formed by four columns that support a secondary structure around the ‘eggs’.

The project will be constructed in four stages and will accommodate recreational areas for the community. A new transportation system will communicate the new development with the city in less than ten minutes. Artists will be invited to decorate the facades and contribute to exhibitions in the new galleries.
 

to Green the Clouds

Imagine a skyscraper which is not an apartment block or an office building. Instead it is a vertical park that rises into the sky having its head in the clouds.

It’s a place for dreaming, playing and breathing. A peaceful place where in the middle of the hectic city on the 22nd floor there is room for birds chirping, rustling of leaves, lying on the grass and hearing your heart beat.

The vertical park is not a solitary skyscraper. It is a new urban typology which would emerge in several places from the midst of monotonous blocks of the city. Any city of the world lacking green space, but with an abundance of asphalt streets and concrete blocks would be an ideal location for vertical parks. Where there is no place at all at ground level they would anchor on top of buildings and simply rise into the sky.

The height of a vertical park would depend on the density of population in a particular neighbourhood and a number of people missing a green place to dream and play in. Everyone would have a chance to find their own little world.

The vertical park does not intend to compete with the surroundings. It enriches the modern city environment by bringing back nature into the artificial urban world. It’s an ecosystem in symbiosis with the city infrastructure.

As a piece of nature it completes the city and its inhabitants, thereby spiritualizing and elevating both.

to Sunlight a Room

This remodeling project was executed within a Hong Kong’s public rental building, in the attempt to merge two typical existenzminimum units and enhance their spatial qualities, regarding natural lighting, ventilation and privacy.

The project was designed by Kwok Tung Chun. He elaborates on the process:

“On the original plan, it is not possible to create two rooms which have widows toward outdoor, so I curved the new created wall for setting a window and door on a 45 degree in order to introduce sunlight and air flow into one of the rooms. In the other room, I patterned the wall with specified openings which insulating the sight but light and air-flow still be able to get into the room. Therefore the nature lighting and ventilation are able to happen in these two rooms.

The entire creation is consisted of customized furniture, reflective wall penals and a hollow partition wall. All of them were fabricated in factory and then assembled in site, especially the partition wall which was assembled from wooden boards and manufactured by CNC machine as a outcome of contouring process. All the pieces of boards would be assembled into several large components, and finished with polishing and painting before shipment to the site. Hence, this is a low budget and experimental project which testing the capacity of pre-fabrication in a interior design by utilizing CAD and CAM tools.”

to Live above Seven Rivers...

Housed within 55,000 glaciers in the Himalaya Mountains sits 40 percent of the world’s fresh water. The massive ice sheets are melting at a faster-than-ever pace due to climate change, posing possible dire consequences for the continent of Asia and the entire world stand, and especially for the villages and cities that sit on the seven rivers that come are fed from the Himalayas’ runoff as they respond with erratic flooding or drought.

The “Himalaya Water Tower” is a skyscraper located high in the mountain range that serves to store water and helps regulate its dispersal to the land below as the mountains’ natural supplies dry up. The skyscraper, which can be replicated en masse, will collect water in the rainy season, purify it, freeze it into ice and store it for future use. The water distribution schedule will evolve with the needs of residents below; while it can be used to help in times of current drought, it’s also meant to store plentiful water for future generations.

The lower part of the Himalaya Water tower is comprised of six stem-like pipes that curve and wind together and collect and store water. Like the stem of a plant, these pipes grow strong as they absorb their maximum water capacity. In each of the six stems, a core tube is flanked by levels and levels of cells, which hold the water. The upper part of the building – the part that is visible above the snow line – is used for frozen storage. Four massive cores support steel cylindrical frames that, like the stems below, hold levels that radiate out, creating four steel tubes filled with ice. In between the two sections are mechanical systems that help freeze the water when the climatic conditions aren’t able to do so, purify the water and regulate the distribution of water and ice throughout the structure.

At the bottom of the structure, surrounding the six intertwined water tubes is a transport system that regulates fresh water distribution to the towns and cities below. The curving channels connect the mountains to the villages, and are also hold within them a railway for the transport of people and goods.

water Sky earth

This project is a winning entry conceived by architects Chi Wai Chan, Xinyu Wan, and Geng Ke for a competition to design an arts and cultural square at Lake Sanyon in Daqing, China. The project examines the relationships between the elements of water, sky, and earth. A waterfront promenade that ensues the formal attributes and fluidity of the water, a 1,394 m long canopy with LED display that transpires the form of the clouds, and a ground condition of self-similar marine lifeform that establishes view corridors to the lake. These three design elements serve as the organizing  apparatus for the design of the square.

The architecture of the individual buildings experiments with a contemporary aesthetics attainable  through digital design.  Tools such as Maya, Rhino and Grasshopper were utilized during the  design process. But considerations were also given to achieving a balance between buildability and creativity. The architecture and the aesthetic affects were shaped by the materials and construction methods available, and by considerations of the process and fabrication technologies available in translating a digital model into reality.
 

the Landscape of an Opera

How do we rethink an Opera? There is no lack in ambition.The constant all consuming urge for innovation can be destructive and self serving. But there is no mistaking the impact of creative processes fuelled by these seemingly undesirable traits . To dissect the traditional opera, gnawing away at the foundations of the sacred opera house till that threshold is reached when the hierarchies are disintegrated, when the instrument becomes the artist, and artist the facilitator.

The attempt was to transform the notion of a designed space into that of a designed intent. Performative spaces were achieved through articulations of the skin, the surface and the structure. Starting from a simple module, the articulations rise in complexity and hierarchy to sprout a new opera and concert hall in the middle of the Stadtpark in Vienna. The landscape is a manicured english garden which is transformed by the growth of the bionic music pavilion progressively mutating into an Opera. A relationship fluctuating between symbiotic and parasitic exists between the landscape and the opera in such a way that the boundaries are blurred.

The interstitial spaces are colonized by a matrix of semi flexible biotic cell which undergoes mutation according to its specific situation. These cells exist in a state of flux between calcified structural cells, transparent circulation clusters, and lush botanical cells.

The opera as a music instrument that has a kaleidoscopic effect on the performances. The sound is selectively propagated into 4 quadrants based on the urban conditions. The opera is also an urban condenser, facilitating the streamlining of the multi modal flows surrounding stadtpark. Creates new vistas and flow patterns and thus sculpts the urbanscape.

The project was designed by Hend Almatrouk as part of the Urbanstrategies Excessive studio at the Universität Für Angewandte Kunst, Wien.

the Future of Housing

Architecture Redefined

All throughout history people have attempted to redefine the basic meaning of life.  How do you design for the future?  What is the future of housing?  When looking back on history, pre-fabrication became a popular process of mass production of similar units that could be easily assembled.  This process was invented during the industrial revolution when it became crucial for guns to have inter-changeable parts. Now, in an era of mass customization what does being pre-fabricated really mean?

In the past, machine like processing has always had a direct correlation to human musculature, and making things easier and quicker to build.  Could a machine be based on conscience instead of muscle… like a computer science program?

Changing the role of the architect is a possibility as well; instead of an architect designing a specific building, the architect develops the interface for people to interact with.  This design machine creates a constraint and a new born freedom.  The design machine becomes the interface system with which home owners can customize a home without an architect by their side.   

Computation based design and morphological processes allow for many different kinds of variations and mutations which can easily adapt to different constraints set forth.  What will tie these iterations together?  The answer is topology.  Houses written of the same base original equation will always have the same topological relationships, even when it is mutated, as long as the equation is always additive, without subtraction of original elements.  The Classic Klein Bottle seems like an ideal topology as it already begins to create openings and spatial continuity.  The way in which it is one continuous surface suggests certain structural performances.

What kinds of spaces will be in this mutated Klein bottle?  The machine will not design bedrooms, family rooms or any specific programmatic room. Instead, a home will consist of soft spaces, hard spaces, transparent spaces and wet spaces.  Depending whether a surface is sin-clastic or anti-clastic will determine what kind of structural system will be implemented. 

Another question that one must consider when designing for the future is where people will be living in the future.  How can one develop a new lifestyle of the future?  With global warming increasing and dense populations continuing to rise, where will people live?  With fewer desirable climatic regions and with an increase in population, the areas of inhabitable land diminish.  The new suburbia will not be on land but on water.  Mobile house ships may become the lifestyle of the future.

rainbow Panorama

ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum in Denmark’s second largest city’s is newly crowned with a glass rainbow ring that transforms the cities vista into ever changing hues. Olafur Eliasson’s “Your rainbow panorama” is the final level of the museums symbolic ascension through Dante’s 9 circles of hell in the Divine Comedy. The circle, set above the rooftop, is the crescendo of that journey into light. Measuring 52 meter in diameter and 150 meters long the skywalk is entered from a roof deck. The full spectrum of colors is achieved by sandwiching up to 6 colored sheets in-between two plates of glass. The effect of the circular walk and slowly transitioning changing in color acts as a visual meter of the city view.

Eliasson’s intention is to blur the distinction between contemporary art and architecture, using the entire city as an active part of the experience. His goal of mixing the inside with the outside is further emphasized by using natural light to power the retinal experience, where intensity is sensed by hue and sunlight levels. At night the ring is internally lit from the floor, becoming a beacon in the city.

“Think of ‘Your rainbow panorama’ as an expectation machine. Even before entering ARoS and ascending to the work, you may look upon the city as if through coloured glass. Your expected gaze. What you know from the street then emerges from above as strangely real, in a continuous interplay of colour saturation and desaturation. Suspended between the city and the sky, this viewing platform insists on your sensory engagement. You feel the view. Perhaps your memory of the art collections below, through which you just made your way, infiltrate your experience.”- Olafur Eliasson.

to Sound San Lorenza

The Soundscape Towers, the creation of Roman architects Alessandro Di Clemente, Martina Mattia and Carmen Pia Scarilli, are proposed for a very specific and historic location. Nestled into the dense urban fabric of the San Lorenza neighborhood of Rome will be three modern skyscrapers, and their design will not be entirely unwelcome, say the artchitects: though the neighborhood is part of the once walled-in old city, the building stock today is a mixture of history and modernity as much of the town was bombed in WWII (and subsequently rebuilt).

San Lorenza is located near the busiest train station in southern Italy and is home to the largest university campus in Europe, giving the towers a diverse array of community needs to meet. The architects studied the estimated growth rate of the region to calculate the use of the towers. Each tower has a different blend of units within: the buildings house a mixture of offices, student and family housing, commercial spaces for shops, restaurants and pubs, post offices, pharmacies, museums, theaters, a library, and relaxation areas, such as parks and sport fields. The towers are all accessible from the ground, but are also connected to one another with “sinusoidal bands.”

The towers also serve another purpose: they both absorb and dampen urban noise, and transmit is as well, as if giant speakers. The concept, say the authors, is to filter the urban noise pollution into serene sounds city dwellers wish to hear, to rework startling sirens and alarms into harmonic sound waves.

Using the ideas of energy transmission, sound wave traveling and complex geometry, Di Clemente, Mattia and Scarilli have created towers that help make urban life more peaceful for residents of the San Lorenza neighborhood both inside the buildings and out.
 

de Facto eCology

The student housing on rue Amelot designed by Stephane Malka is a project that inserts itself into an urban interstice: the thickness of a blind wall. It’s within the thickness of these walls that this thin building is constructed. The urban form is a strict extension of the blind walls, which houses using the existing. No building is destroyed, and no pollution generated. The skin consists of an existing module: the wooden pallet.

Held using horizontal hinges, the pallets contract towards the top, allowing privacy or large openings. The modularity of the various palettes creates varied geometries, which are based on use and constantly regenerated. The reappropriation of materials recycles the existing without additional processing, which would cost energy in terms of production and create byproduct pollution.

The real environmental approach consists not in destruction, but in superimposing interventions upon our built heritage. It consists of a new land strategy, unreferenced on a parcel, constructed in a de facto “ecology” of means.

folded CITY

How to live vertically? Building higher and higher does not seem to change the way we live. Most people wish to live in single-family residences, but the problem is the lack of diversity and density. How to have the benefits of suburbia combined with the intensity of living in the city?

The history of the skyscrapers goes back to Elisha Otis, who invented the elevator in the 19th century. This invention promoted the conquest of the sky with projects competing for prowess and size.  What would happened if within a house the elevator is used as a remote control to move from one floor to another, from one program to another?

This new “object” would challenge the function of living. The house becomes smart and incorporates multiple applications – one application per floor. The elevator is for the house what that Internet is for a smart-phone. A necessary parameter! Now you can “zap” your life spatially. Imagine yourself in your room, put on your slippers, go in your elevator, and zap! You will be in your living room, your garage, your favorite bar or business place; the park where you go jogging!

The new tower is born, or rather, the first cell. We must now find the idea of “Tower”. This cell is only anecdotal, but multiplied and intensified, it marks its existence. It is now clearly identifiable as an “object”.  The idea of “Tower” is inseparable from the idea of city, so we have now an object in the city, which looks like a city.  Perceptions are distorted. The object in the city became literally the “city-object”.

toxic Garden in Continuum

Toxicity/contamination/mutation/distortion is a hybride which synthesizes a library and garden into a one spacial continuum. The project designed by Kadri Kerge at the University of Applied Arts Vienna is located in the Burggarten, Vienna – which served as a private royal garden for the Habsburg family. It is situated between the Austrian National Library and a large greenhouse called Palmenhaus that sits at a right angle to it. The roots of the plants from the greenhouse grow out of the container, break the sealed ground and as a mutants combine nature and building. They overlap with the context in housing part of the program of institutions nearby like The Austrian Film Museum, the National Library, and the Albertina Museum.

Toxic Garden is a self-sustainable building generating heat and power through the plants which are growing in the building. The energy design concept provides a range of microclimatic conditions as interfaces between user, information and nature. The building of the Austrian National library is an opulent baroque structure that has housed the Imperial book collection between 1721 and 1918, that was then nationalized.

Since 2011 the National Library archive has been fully digitized, and therefore the physical space of books has been abstracted. The extension of the library is a new type of social environement. It creates different types of atmospheres forreading, working, discovery and community.

The Toxic Garden is an integration of nature and the artificial, of garden and information that has no body. The vegetation of the Burggarten becomes part of the library space and according to the four seasons it transforms atmospheres and functions. In the could season when the Burggarten is naked, the library becomes a green house. In summer the building is naked and opens the program to park activities .
 

a Plant to Read

LAVA has unveiled their EVOLUTION lamp in collaboration with Philips, the global leader in lighting. The lamp is on display at Handmade during the fair.

Chris Bosse, Asia Pacific Director of LAVA says: ‘the challenge was to re-imagine an object that everybody knows, to break up preconceived ideas. The playful reinterpretation of a sculptural table lamp resembles a plant rather than a desk light’.

Rogier van der Heide, Chief Design Officer at Philips Lighting, says: “With the EVOLUTION desk light, Chris Bosse of LAVA has created a new design language in luminaire design. The desk light is also a great representation of Philips’ people-focused approach to lighting: a friendly product, based on a humanistic design concept while delivering state of the art LED technology, all of this in a very attractive way. The design posed many technical challenges such as thermal management and a complex double curved shape – however, close collaboration between LAVA and Philips has ensured that the EVOLUTION lamp exceeded our expectations in terms of design and engineering.”

EVOLUTION is inspired by the growth in plants. LAVA’s design and architectural concepts emulate the structural principles of nature such as cells and leaves in order to be more efficient – lighter, stronger, and ultimately more beautiful.
LAVA imagines the design at many scales, from a living room lamp of human height to a desk light.

LAVA has designed a number of furniture and lighting objects on various scales. ‘But design in that sense is scale-less, the scale can be transferred up and down. The organisational pattern of a leaf can be the same as that underlying a plan for an entire city,’ adds Bosse.

The Handmade show at the Brioni Palazzo celebrates collaboration with leading international designers, manufacturers and craftsmen creating a unique collection – cape suits, jet seats, bottled books, a very modern makeup kit, a pop-up barbers shop and a lunch box.

the Ocean as a Living organism

The Oceanic Pavilion designed by Emergent Architecture and Kokkugia for the Yeosu 2012 Expo in Korea is a structure “which celebrates the ocean as a living organism and the co-existence of human culture and ocean ecosystems. The building is based on an aggregation of soft membrane bubbles merged together with a hard monocoque shell. The two systems are characterized by patterns of surface articulation which are specific to their materiality”. Deep pleats and mega-armatures that create structural stiffness are generally associated with the fiber-composite shell, while fine, double-pleated ‘Air-beams‘spread over and stabilize the vaulted ETFE membranes. Micro-armatures transgress thresholds between shell and membrane, creating structural and ornamental continuity between systems.

to Produce oXygen

Natural disasters, the threat of technological meltdown and even the possibility of visitors from space all present a need for cities and even countries to reorganize to implement infrastructure that can protect people from possible catastrophes.

The “Citadel Skyscraper” project is imagined for Japan because of the numerous natural and manmade disasters that have struck the region in recent years. The project proposes a three-part implementation of new structures with an end result of protecting the island with a fortress-like defense shield. The first part involves a restructuring of the land use of all of the country’s major cities as residents are moved out of the city proper. Businesses and commercial endeavors will stay located within the cities, but residents will move out to sea and live in self-supporting residential skyscrapers, or citadels. The second part specifies the location of these citadels: They will be lined up as a single “sheet”, creating a barrier 2-3 km from the shoreline that can protect the mainland from tsunamis. The skyscrapers themselves are connected by a system of breakwaters and drainage channels, and are able to withstand waves up to 50 meters tall. These are further bolstered by a connected series of fiber sails, buried as deep as 1,200 meters, that surround the island. When the waves hit the sails and meet the oscillations of its stretched fibers, such a dissonance is created that the wave is reduced to nothing.

The third part of this plan involves a skyscraper design that can protect its inhabitants. The prototypical skyscraper for this project has a metal frame; its foundation is poured at a depth of 1,200 meters and it reaches 500 meters into the sky. By burying the structure so far into the earth, it is protected from seismic activity (earthquakes up to a magnitude 11), waves (up to 40 feet tall) and man-made disasters (such as the explosion of atomic weapons). A system of bars forming a single, one-piece shield around the building serves as its protection system. They are energetically self-sustaining, using wave power for energy generation, and they have live fish tanks to provide food for residents.

The citadels mainly function as residential structures, but every 50 meters there are recreation areas and mini parks. The buildings also feature restaurants, cafes, shops, cinemas and laundromats. If the citadel’s outer shield is closed completely in anticipation of disaster outside, the building is ventilated by blowers located every 100 meters that are connected to a system of niches filled with hydroponic algae that produce oxygen by absorbing carbon dioxide. The citadels are connected with the city and the coastal zone by above ground, high-speed trains that run through 4 systems of tunnels.

platonic Space

Russian architects Gagarinskaya Anastasiya and Gaydukova Varvara from the Moscow Institute of Architecture propose a three-hundred meter tall space station on the western side of Moscow. The strong architectural forms are inspired by the Russian Constructivists of the early 20th Century with the use of platonic forms and clean lines. It consists of a main multifunctional round platform with additional horizontal landing strips. The station is linked to the city on the other side of the Moscow River by a pedestrian bridge where a hotel and other amenities would be located.

between Public and Private

The project attempts to integrate the homogenous structure of public housing with the urban fabric by blurring out the boundary between public and private. It uses the example of Seoul as the architectural paradigm for a contemporary Asian city. The program of the project relates to a unique building typology in Korea called “Keunseng” (community building), which consists of retail spaces, after school classes, and various “Bangs” (rooms). Both are unique to Korean culture. Since there is limited space for leisure activities inside the apartment, different kinds of Bangs emerge to provide space for leisure and entertainment.

The design involves three ways in which Bangs are assembled. Each of them directly engages with a particular condition and at the same time, draws people into the in-between plaza where the most intensive interaction take place. Each building transforms its internal programs into a public plaza, activating interaction within the community. The diversity of Keunseng is therefore disassembled and reorganized into a larger context. It is deployed as an instrument for connecting the residential unit to the street, landscape and adjacent buildings.

By triggering the latent network between homogeneous apartment buildings the project rethinks the concept of urban habitation and reestablishes the sense of community. The bathing Bang penetrates through the apartment tower, creating a unique space where residents and bathing customer and interact. The street interface transform the typical Karaoke room into different typologies from typical room into loft space, to auditorium and final an outdoor performance space.
 

Περαιτέρω Πτώση στα Ακίνητα

Περαιτέρω πτώση σημείωσαν το 2011, σε σχέση με το προηγούμενο έτος, οι τιμές των ακινήτων σύμφωνα με τα στοιχεία του δικτύου της RE/MAX. Συνοπτικά, οι μέσες τιμές των μεταχειρισμένων / παλαιών ακινήτων ήταν κατά 18% χαμηλότερες σε σχέση με το 2010, ενώ των νέων / νεόδμητων κατά 10%. Το 2011 αποτέλεσε μία από τις πιο δύσκολες, αν όχι τη δυσκολότερη χρονιά για την ελληνική οικονομία. Αναπόφευκτα επηρεάστηκε σημαντικά και ο κλάδος της διαμεσολάβησης ακινήτων.

Σημαντικοί παράγοντες που επηρέασαν αρνητικά την κτηματαγορά ήταν το πάγωμα των στεγαστικών δανείων από πλευράς τραπεζών, καθώς και η πορεία της οικονομίας με την οποία σχετίζεται τόσο η ψυχολογία των αγοραστών όσο και η αγοραστική τους δύναμη. Η επιβολή έκτακτων φόρων και το κλίμα ανασφάλειας για την περαιτέρω πορεία της οικονομίας ενίσχυσαν την αναβλητικότητα εκ μέρους των αγοραστών και δημιούργησαν υπερπροσφορά ακινήτων.

Στην Αττική οι μέσες τιμές των παλαιών ακινήτων έπεσαν κατά 21%, ενώ των νέων σε ποσοστό 7%. Στη Θεσσαλονίκη η πτώση στα παλαιά ήταν 20% ενώ στα νεόδμητα 10%. Στην υπόλοιπη Ελλάδα η μείωση τιμών για τα παλαιά κυμάνθηκε γύρω στο 13%, ενώ για τα νεόδμητα στο 17%. Όπως έχει αναφερθεί και σε αντίστοιχες έρευνες προηγούμενων ετών τα επίπεδα τιμών διαμορφώνονται από πολλούς παράγοντες.

Ιδιαίτερα τη συγκεκριμένη περίοδο οι τιμές επηρεάζονται από τις διαπραγματεύσεις και από τις ιδιαίτερες συνθήκες που δημιουργούνται εξαιτίας της οικονομικής κατάστασης, όπως επίσης και από τα χαρακτηριστικά της κάθε περιοχής, τη ζήτηση αλλά και τα ποιοτικά χαρακτηριστικά των ακινήτων.

Προοπτικές αγοράς

Για τους επόμενο χρονικό διάστημα, η πορεία της κτηματαγοράς θα εξαρτηθεί σημαντικά από την πορεία της ελληνικής οικονομίας. Η σταθεροποίηση της οικονομίας και η αποφυγή εντονότερων πιέσεων προς τους καταναλωτές θα δημιουργήσει κλίμα ασφάλειας και θετική ψυχολογία, παράγοντες που θα δώσουν ώθηση στην αγορά ακινήτων. Επιπλέον παρουσιάζονται ιδιαίτερα ελκυστικές ευκαιρίες σε πολλές περιοχές, τόσο στα αστικά κέντρα όσο και την περιφέρεια και σε συγκεκριμένες κατηγορίες ακινήτων που θα τονώσει ακόμη εντονότερα το αγοραστικό ενδιαφέρον.

Το 2011, το ενδιαφέρον των αγοραστών επικεντρώθηκε όπως και τα δύο προηγούμενα έτη σε παλαιές κατοικίες / διαμερίσματα τα οποία πωλούνται σε πιο χαμηλές τιμές σε σχέση πάντα με τα αντίστοιχα νεόδμητα και σε ακίνητα μικρότερου εμβαδού. Από την άλλη πλευρά, σε χαμηλά επίπεδα κινήθηκαν τόσο τα επαγγελματικά ακίνητα (γραφεία, καταστήματα κτλ.) όσο και τα οικόπεδα / αγροτεμάχια.

Την ίδια χρονιά, τα ακίνητα που πωλήθηκαν πανελλαδικά μέσω του δικτύου της RE/MAX ήταν σε ποσοστό 80% κατοικίες (διαμερίσματα και μονοκατοικίες/μεζονέτες), ενώ τα οικόπεδα/αγροτεμάχια έφθασαν το 12%. Τα επαγγελματικά περιορίστηκαν σε ποσοστό 8%.

Στην Αττική η συντριπτική πλειοψηφία των πωληθέντων ακινήτων (88%) αφορούσε σε κατοικίες. Το 9% επί του συνόλου ήταν επαγγελματικά ενώ το ποσοστό των οικόπεδων / αγροτεμάχιων στο 3%. Στη Θεσσαλονίκη οι αγοραπωλησίες επικεντρώθηκαν σχεδόν αποκλειστικά (97%) στις κατοικίες και το υπόλοιπο ήταν επαγγελματικά ακίνητα.

robotic Arms Behind

We have seen the financial outcome of the Real Estate crash in 2008. What sometimes we overlook are the urban voids left by unfinished buildings. That is the case of the Filene’s development in downtown Boston which construction was halted in November 2008.  Höweler + Yoon Architecture and Squared Design Lab think this as an opportunity to explore new ways of producing architecture. They have designed a prefabricated ‘Eco-Pod’ that proposes to stimulate the economy and the ecology of downtown Boston. “The pods serve as bio-fuel sources and as micro-incubators for research”. The idea is that these pods will generate enough energy to control a series of robotic arms that will continue the construction of the building – once it is completed, the pods could be transported to other sites to build more structures.