IDEA Studio is a research program for designers, pursiung innovative projects that push design technology to its limits. Its residents have access to latest technology and coaching from Autodesk’s experts who can help them apply the latest technology to accelerate their projects. Shajay Bhooshan, lead researcher at Zaha Hadid Architects, used Autodesk Maya and Autodesk Algor Simulation software to create operative pathways from physically-based simulation designs to structurally sound architectural models. Bhooshan created a plug-in for Maya to visualize stresses in real-time, enabling him to integrate structural feedback into the form-finding process with minimal disruption to the creative experience. To test out the workflow, Bhooshan and his colleague, John Klein, created a case study design of a train station. Using 3D printers in the Autodesk Gallery, Bhooshan and Klein printed the 18 components of the train station design, which fit together to create one fluid form. Read the rest of this entry »
Bangalore Railway combines architectural form-finding with structural analysis
Maxi-Ooh! is a sensory playground for newborns / ecoLogicStudio
Adults typically make sense of an object and all the sensations it gives them by reference to linguistic and conceptual categories. For new born kids non-linguistic practices come first. The space of the MAXI-ooh! is therefore designed in relationship to a new ergonomic unit: the Babult [1baby + 1adult = 1 BABULT = Unit of playful Learning] .It is a concept design for an innovative playground for kids from 0 to 5 years old. Each BABULT learns by wandering and exploring a continuous space defined by gradual morphologic variations, a smooth space as Deleuze/Guattari would call it. In the MAXI-ooh! space is defined by a field of cells of different dimensions and porosity rather than by walls.
Ground surface is differentiated and folded with the aim of creating an artificial landscape of dunes and niches while all the other structures are hanged up to the ceiling. A forest of water, sounds and smells where the Babults are immersed and can interact with. Babult is not interested in gadgets or inventions but in communication, he’s not interested in studying but in learning by doing. As a consequence all the interactive systems are integrated in the geometry and in the materials of the project augmenting the embedded intelligence of the environment and the potential of learning of the Babult in a dynamic, intuitive but not-prescriptive way. Read the rest of this entry »
Taipei City Museum of Art / Kubota and Bachmann Architects
The New Taipei City Museum of Art is located in the south of Taipei city, in between the mountains and Dahan River. The museum minimizes its footprint on the original site in being designed vertical, thus creating an urban totem.
The NTCArt is a vertical museum. The different floors offer views of the surroundings at different levels: (lobby of the children’s museum of art, hall of fame, outdoor/semi-outdoor exhibition space, exhibit resting areas and restaurants) all face the landscape and offers new perspectives frame (urban window) of the Island of Taipei. The entrance lobby of the NTCArt is taken after a landscape that invites the visitor to access the different parts of the museum. Each part of the museum has an independent access from the lobby. A restaurant, a gift shop, and a bookstore surround the lobby. Furthermore, this passage allows the garden to continue and connects the Ceramic Art Plaza and the Art Workshop. So, the passage is an urban gate between the Ceramic Art Plaza, the Art Workshop and the NTCArt. Read the rest of this entry »
Busan Opera House Proposal / Paul Preissner Architects
Designed for the Busan Opera House Competition in 2011 by Paul Preissner Architects, the project relies on three main ideas: to provide a strong urban statement in newly forming cultural district; to develop a clear visual strategy for the identity of the Opera which is simultaneously familiar and never-before seen; to create a unique building for the center of the cultural district with a contemporary architectural approach shaped to optimize active and passive energy use.
This project develops its personality by a combination of unique formal expression through the shape of the building, rational programmatic organization, and a curated graphic pattern (stripes) in order to produce a project that looks like nothing before it. Read the rest of this entry »
Symbiotic Opera House in Vienna
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. Read the rest of this entry »
Timisoara Cultural Pavilion is a Green Oasis
Designing a gathering point for the city of Timisoara, the main focus for the pavilion conceived by Chris Precht was to stand out as an attractor and fit in the context at the same time. Located within the green lung of the city with direct connection to its surrounding districts and due to its vertical orientation, the highseat‘ has a great potential to serve as a cultural,social, and urban focal point to attract people back to the park.
The goal was not designing a brand new shiny project, but an self-evolving pavilion becoming one with its location in a way that the strongest and most capable plants will impose on the structure. Some time later, there should be a completely unpredictable, wild and unorganized garden taking over the pavilion.
Three centimeters thick and thirty centimeters wide romanian beech timber boards construct a truss system covering a spacial program based on relaxation during the day and activation in the evening. After entering the building the first spacial program is for people resting after physical activities. Read the rest of this entry »
Reconfiguration of Shipping Containers as Public Space in Long Beach
(RE)Configured-Assemblage is a developmental landmark proposal by WE-DESIGNS.ORG in collaboration with XP& architecture composed of reconfigured traces of shipping containers, through diligently reconnecting, revitalising, and humanizing the accessibility of the City of Long Beach, Long Beach Blvd and Broadway Area. Through proposing three types of innovatively reconstructed modular shipping containers, the overall construct leads to open courtyards, interlocking units, and playfully generated programs that introduce a new innovative topological design that regenerates and reconnects the community.
Bringing together a fusion of technological, economical and cultural entities, and combining a public free space into an interlocked modular construct, which includes an internal courtyard as public landscape, the newly developed (RE)Configured-Assemblage becomes an open playground of hidden gems, which offers the community countless integrated opportunities to develop and harmonise the City of Long Beach, Long Beach Blvd Area. The shifting of the vertical containers on the Intelligent Daylight Façade represents the constant movement of containers in the nation’s busiest container port. Read the rest of this entry »
Peeled Metro Entrances for the City of San Sebastian, Spain
‘Eleva’, the proposal for the entrances to the new underground of San Sebastian, is based on the idea of the manipulation of the terrain. As the tubes of the metro network are generated by excavating and perforating the ground, the access is created by cutting the pavement in correspondence to the superfitial world.
The concept is to recognize the place to penetrate and – as the Pink Panther would do – cut the surface and elevate it to obtain an access to the subterranean world. Finally the area of intervention is delimited and pointed out by a change of material. As a result the object in sinuos curves emphasizes its strong sculptural character demanding its protagonism in the urban scale. The entrances are conceived as landmarks of the city of San Sebastian, leading the users to recognize them as an inseparable part of the metro and the urban surroundings. Read the rest of this entry »
2011 Moscow Design Week
Moscow Design week – the most important annual design event in Russia, organized by ART TRADING Group, will be starting on October 11, 2011. Intense program of MDW 2011 is dedicated to Design in an extended sense: starting from product-, fashion- and graphic- design to the latest developments in architecture. The project, featuring both Russian and international participants, will occupy the main lecture halls and exhibition spaces of Russian capital. The aim of MDW 2011 is to create a platform for design in Russia and to set international business standards within the industry along with supporting business and friendship worldwide.
«This annual event is overwhelming the entire city. It engages the broadest audience: intellectual elite, art-community, show-business celebrities as well as everybody who is already absorbed by the topic or wants to discover it. Mostly non-profit exhibitions showcase the latest catch-ups in the world of design: visiting them one will explore the unknown sphere, looking, touching and finding things he likes or meeting amazing people» – commented Alexandr Fedotov, the President of organising committee of MDW 2011 and ART TRADING Group.
For the week Moscow will turn into design cluster, bringing up such professionals in contemporary design domain as Maarten Baas, Giulio Cappellini, Luigi Colani, Paola Navone, Li Edelkoort and other stars. Read the rest of this entry »
Modular and Deployable Parametric Bridge
The design for a modular, deployable, and adaptable bridge using parametric strategies and digital fabrication methods was developed by studio BÄNG. The design was conceived using the following rules: Four data points were established at the beginning, middle, and the end of the bridge. These 12 parametrized points give the opportunity to steer the crosssection of the bridge at three important areas. Based on these points the defi nition creates three frames one for each end of the bridge and one in the middle.
All frames get connected and the resulting four-point polylines triangulated to get the base of the load bearing framework for each side of the bridge. The triangles get offsetted according to the sun and then moved in direction of their normals. By lofting the two resulting curves a rigid and complex looking shape occurs.
The most important benefit of parametric design and digital fabrication is the optimization of the whole design process. Modularity, the optimization of the construction time as well as saving material were the main goals. Read the rest of this entry »