Finalist
2011 Skyscraper Competition

Michael Leef, Tahel Shaar
Israel

This project proposes an innovative spatial integration between nature, agriculture, and urbanization – an analysis of Jerusalem’s future development. In Jerusalem, land is a valuable and scarce resource, it is a city that has nowhere to expand; geo-political reasons prevent the city from expanding to the north, east, and south, while ecological reasons prevent the city from expanding to the west, therefore, Jerusalem can only expand internally.

The Agro-Housing Towers are part of our urban masterplan – a multi-use complex with commercial, public, and cultural spaces on the street level and agricultural housing and agro-public spaces above. It is a new way of perceiving the urban fabric by creating a structural network of built space with productive and natural open spaces. The towers have a continuous system of agricultural fields on the southern façade – designed according to the annual sun movement to allow agriculture to exist vertically in the maximum number of levels. Read the rest of this entry »

“The Galleria Cheonan responds to the current retail climate in Asia, where department stores also operate as social and semi-cultural meeting places. Because of this, the quality of the public spaces within the building was treated as an integral aspect of the design.” – Ben van Berkel

UNStudio’s Galleria Centercity Department Store in the Korean city of Cheonan reclaims the social and cultural space within the private, commercial large scale department store.

Rather than being the outcome of a prescriptive, standard-critical approach, the design of the Galleria Centercity is based on observations of current behavioural tendencies in large commercial spaces. Particularly in South East Asia, department stores serve a highly social function; people meet, gather, eat, drink and both shop and window shop in these venues. The department store is no longer solely a commercial space, it now offers the architect the opportunity to build upon and expand the social and cultural experience of the visitor. If today we are seeing the museum as a supermarket, then we are also now seeing the department store as a museum. Read the rest of this entry »

In an effort to design sustainable new housing prototypes for Haiti, architect Laurent Saint-Val unveiled a designed inspired by the traditional art of basketry by weaving natural plant fibres, including bamboo,  from the local habitat into a cocoon-shape structure.

Saint-Val compares the residential structure to the carving of a totem pole, noting the sacred correlation and explaining: “It’s an architecture that segments space and which translates well the transient character of these habitats.”

Wolf D. Prix / COOP HIMMELB(L)AU presents the new ‘Open Parliament of Albania’ in Tirana which incorporates fundamental democratic values such as openness, transparency and public co-determination. The building, located on a site area with approximately 28,000 m², is going to be the first project in Albania for the Viennese headquartered studio.

“Our design for the new Parliament in Tirana, Albania, stands for the transparency of democracy”, according to Wolf D. Prix, Design Principal and CEO of COOP HIMMELB(L)AU.

Architectural Concept

As the future political center of the Albanian Republic, the Open Parliament of Albania creates an outstanding architectural landmark in one of the main parts of Tirana’s urban fabric. Situated along the compositional axis of the city, it is located in vicinity to the major governmental institutions. The design for the Open Parliament of Albania relies on three main ideas:

• To provide a strong urban statement in this exposed part of Tirana’s urban fabric;

• To assemble the different functions in one building ensemble that is compact enough to create a public forum and a park on the southern part of the site;

• To create a unique building for the most important public institution of the Albanian Republic with a contemporary architectural approach shaped to optimize active and passive energy use.

The design incorporates fundamental democratic values such as openness, transparency and public co-determination. The simultaneity of competing political concepts within a democratic society is translated into the design concept: Different building elements are not opposed, but coexist in one building ensemble with a contemporary aesthetic that allows visualizing new functions and meanings. Read the rest of this entry »

Creativity and innovation meet design, Disney meets DuPont-Corian at the next Milan week of design (11-17 April, 2011), the most important venue for design companies and professionals from around the world. DuPont – Corian and Disney will showcase at “Padiglione Visconti” (via Tortona 58, Milano) “TRON designs CORIAN”, a design exhibition inspired by the film “TRON: Legacy” from Walt Disney Studios.

For the participation of dynamic international kitchen manufacturer Ernestomeda at “TRON designs CORIAN”, Milan-based architectural and design studio AquiliAlberg have conceived a kitchen and dining area inspired by the movie. Read the rest of this entry »

The Ecological Wall is a project designed by Polish architecture student Stanislaw Mlynski for an international competition organized by National Taipei University of Technology (NTUT) School of Architecture.

“I proposed to create structural wall using organic waste containers. I believe that arrangement of elements, as well as their shape have potential to create shelters for animals, gather water, reduce CO2 . The solar system has the aim to ensure energetic independence.

The subject of my interest was every -existing or built in the future- useless, dirty, not-adapted city wall. As in nature every organism consist of huge amount of repetitious cells, which ensure reliability, I decided also to make up a universal modular system, which will allow to transform industrial building, grey skyscrapers, office blocks or even typical fences in green ecosystems. Such system would also provide with possibility to create buildings. On every step of the project I was seeking inspirations in nature, because to my mind it is the master of OPTIMIZATION and usage of resources from surrounding (to which it is trying to adjust). Read the rest of this entry »

Designed by Meridian 105 Architecture, Lincoln Mixed Use is a proposal for an urban mixed-use complex in Denver, CO, consisting of a hotel, retail, parking structure, restaurant, and movie theater. The building is sited on a transition lot between high-rise residential and a primary commercial corridor running through the city. Overlapping, cross circulation is established onsite, easing visitors through the various program uses between these two zones.

The building enclosure employs an aggressive energy strategy, with the hotel facade designed to perform as a twin glazed assembly, but consisting of prefabricated window units in lieu of labor intensive curtainwall installation. The units have densely fritted top and side panels angled to resist solar gain into the cavity during the summer, while allowing it to heat the shell in the winter. The facade is naturally vented in the summertime by the heat stack effect, with air intake at the base and exhaust at the top. Read the rest of this entry »

Designed by CLS, headed by award winning Architect Darren Chan, the “Helios Rehab Sanctuary” innovates application of sustainable technologies.

Within an ethereal rehabilitating tower, shades of society gather forming communities of hope. Occupants are treated with supported clean peaceful living. The tower, vertically zoned, focuses on healing the BODY (lower), MIND (mid-section) and SPIRIT (high).

Truly sustainable cities should focus on the economy of resources but also the health of the people. Sufferers briefly “escape” pressured living to rehabilitate within the tower and ultimately release back into society.

The tensegrity-network-based outer-frame houses horizontal access to pods via green ramps. The “hexa-skin” and pod shells incorporate air pollution cleansing TX-Active integrated white panels which also reflect light onto the Solyndra Solar rod arrays encasing the kinetic pods. The Solyndra capture direct, diffused and reflected sunlight across 360-degree photovoltaic surfaces. Depending on climatic variation, it opens promoting cooling and the rod-system induces ventilation and views, it closes for protection, insulation and energy saving. Read the rest of this entry »

The Cloud Room designed by Shanghai-based One Design Inc. sits on the roof terrace of the National Art Museum of China, a historical landmark from the 1960’s in Beijing.

The outside white polycarbonate panels follow a computer generated cloud-like profile. Each piece revolves according to the wind, casting moving shadows and reflections onto a second layer of translucent polycarbonate. Standing inside, people can think of this cloud room as an apparatus of urban observation or meditation – the translucent interior screen gives a mix of vague pixel urban image intertwined with wind and sun.

This Beijing installation can be a starting point of a sequence of works. As the exhibition is travelling to Taiwan this summer, The Cloud Room is expected to transform and to dialogue with the mild and warm environment of Taichung. Read the rest of this entry »

Stefan Ritter designed a proposal for an extension to the Riga International Airport in Latvia. The project’s architectural effects are based on three distinct surface qualities (clad solids, screened semi solids, and exposed trusses) which are composed over a geometric system with a strong tectonic expression. The consequence is a tension of simultaneous perception of surface figures juxtaposed with geometric volumes. The architecture becomes an esthetical experience of oscillating volumetric readings throughout the spaces of the building.

The terminal is an extension of Riga international airport for airBaltic. The architecture is concentrated on the roof – creating an artificial sky that modulates the spaces of the main hall through its undulations. The geometry condenses at the slowest point of circulation (security check) and expands towards the two gate arms, thus amplifying the circulation flows and simultaneously orientating passengers in the building. The main hall is subdivided into zones of land-side and air-side circulation by the cladding patterns of the roof and broken into rooms by “fake columns” that replace walls – they come down from the ceiling but don’t or just barely touch the ground. The roof includes spaces for longer waiting periods for transfer passengers, with an atmosphere of a semi underwater camera – looking down into the terminal hall, through the structure, and up over the roof scape out to the airplanes taking off and landing.

via suckerPUNCH Read the rest of this entry »