Kubota & Bachmann Architects won a honorable mention for the Maritime Culture & Pop Music Center in Kaohsiung,Taiwan.

Color is joy, color is love and color is Pop! Joy is the pleasure of living in front of the sea, strolling along the beach, walking on the port and visiting the Port Market, the ships that come and go, looking into the distance. Love is the meeting of two programs on a single site. It is the encounter of Kaohsiung Maritime Cultural and Popular Music Center. Pop is the new symbol of Kaohsiung’s port. A place accessible to all audiences. A place where people sing and dance. A new meeting place in the city of Kaohsiung. The Kaohsiung Maritime Cultural & Popular Music center is a composition of different programs and components. The arrangement forms a harmony of colors. Read the rest of this entry »

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. Read the rest of this entry »

The Energy Report: a comprehensive study developed by the WWF, AMO and Ecofys claiming that the world can be 100% reliant on renewable energy by 2050, launches globally today.

The report proposes to address the urgent problems caused by looming climate change and dwindling fossil fuel supply through its assertion that by 2050, the world’s energy needs could be met entirely by renewable sources. It outlines an ambitious energy saving scenario as the first step toward an energy system in which fossil fuels are gradually replaced by wind, solar, geothermal, hydropower and sustainable forms of bio-energy.

The aim of the report is to inspire governments and businesses to understand the challenges associated with this shift and, at the same time, to encourage them to move boldly to bring the renewable economy into reality. By demonstrating the advantages of global cooperation and the deeper integration of global energy infrastructure, The Energy Report shows that the benefits of a transition to renewable energy far outweigh the challenges.

AMO’s contribution to the report, led by Partner Reinier de Graaf and Associate Laura Baird, both conceptualizes and visualizes the geographic, political, and cultural implications of a 100 percent renewable energy world. AMO draws a vision of a world without borders in which all continents have equal access to sustainable energy. Read the rest of this entry »

The Dancing Water Pavilion is a design by SUS&HI office – Calcagno Littardi A.A.+ Y.Park + A. Tomaiuolo that won the bronze prize at the Seoul Design Olympiad for its innovative geometry and interaction with Seoul and the Han-river.

The cityscape of Seoul is mainly made of nature with surrounding mountains and  the beautiful waterway. The Han-river is one of main nature elements in Seoul. In the past the Han-river gave life to Seoul, nowadays many cultures within the city are together around the river. Routine urban life is refreshed by Han-river’s energy. Han-river is the cradle of Seoul with unlimited energy that can be transform in many different ways. Rippling of water tells it to us. It is continuously rippling by wind or kind of vibrations, it is showing the energy flowing that is not visible. They are interacting between each other and make irregular forms.

The form of the proposal is created by the transformation of water dynamic energy. The rippling of water is a dance with wind and generates forms. Hence, the form is generated by the flow of energy. It is ready to be transformed into others interacting with people. The geometry is composed with organic forms. The concept is ‘fossilization of nature’. The geometry fossilizes the form that water ripple makes. It is makes natural textures one the form and becomes the structure at the same time. Read the rest of this entry »

The recently completed Cubus building designed by Woods Bagot boasts exclusive open decks of differing sizes throughout various locations in the building, creating a strong identity that differentiates itself from surrounding structures.

“The development of ‘Podium Tower’ buildings continue to prevail in Hong Kong due to local site coverage regulation, however, the design team transformed this potential constraint into an opportunity by creating exclusive open decks through the reduction of the lower-level floor, floorplate sizes,” said Stephen Jones, Principal, Woods Bagot.

Visitors experiencing exciting retail and restaurants on offer, or travelling inside the glass elevators will be able to enjoy striking views towards the city. The design of this vertical retail building with original façade features, and lighting effects is inspired by ice cubes.

“The value proposition for this project was to create a landmark building exhibiting a strong identity that differentiates itself in the market. The project team has fulfilled the client’s vision, with the building set to become a landmark in this busy area of Hong Kong Island,” continued Stephen Jones, Principal, Woods Bagot. Read the rest of this entry »

The urban night club designed by Tiffany Dahlen and Virginia Melnyk responds to the vibrant and eclectic youth culture of Harajuku and balances the high end fashion of Omontesando. The urban club consists of a large meet and greet entry area, sushi restaurant, sake bar, music lounge and two VIP lounges; Pockets of unique intensities are held within a white framework, creating zones of spatiality, surficiality, and crenalation. Five distinct qualities corresponding to the specific programs and aesthetic desires, transform between the different spaces through the medium of the framework and are embedded within it. They differ from a sweet salivating sushi restaurant to a soft pillowy lounge space. Read the rest of this entry »

The project is a proposal by Italian architect Tommaso Casucci for the new library of the school of architecture, located at the limit of the old town of Florence. It is part of a renovation plan of a large area used until recent times as convent and later penitentiary. Pre-existing spaces are converted in archive, the new addition provide study areas, meeting spaces, auditorium, exhibition spaces in a continuous varying experience.

The project explore the emergent qualities derived from surfaces modulation in an intensive fields, aiming to equilibrium states of program, structure and function trough morphodynamical processes. Form, structure, function and decoration are emergent qualities of the same coherent system strictly related to his environment.

At a global scale the system explore how the modulation of isosurfaces, based on intensive field from site analysis data, can achieve highly differentiated spaces and performative structures. The research uses a generative methodology to test multiple solutions based on the same process from which was selected the one that represent the best compromise between structural performance, program and connections. Read the rest of this entry »

Isaie Bloch experimented with form production at the Excessive studio II, Urban strategies, Die Angewandte Wien in Austria to produce a music pavilion that embraces monstrosity as a design tool.

How boring has perfection become?

Evidence of this lies in the fact that our contemporary design obsessions are based on an appreciation for the perversity of mutant form, a taste learned from the movies and set to work on architecture.

By subverting the logic of perfection and beauty, non-perfect images coming from controlled methodologies are generated. What used to be about mastering the result of a non-perfect process is now about the production of monstrosity and the grotesque throughout accurate mechanisms.

Key elements coming from Romanticism such as: ruinification, untamed wilderness, the unfinished and the validation of obscure perceptions are used as modus operandi. Intruding botanical gardens functioning as structure, dens calcified structures organizing circulation, decaying metal formations forming apertures and growing organic tissue transforming the internal morpholgy are all contributing to the architectural qualities of the design. Read the rest of this entry »

The House of the Future designed by  Kuangyi Tao from Texas A&M University,  College of Architecture is a project reacting to the problems emerging during modern times: overpopulation, resource shortage and virtual world development.

Inspired by images of “body cells” depicted in the Matrix, the house is based on a similar system of energy and information exchange. The major difference is that people will be in control.  Memory alloy tubes of infrastructure system can be stretched apart to create the basic skeleton of the house. The overlaying skin acts like a heart. The material, which is electro-responsive, is able to expand or contract under different electrical stimulation, just like cardiac muscles. It is responsive to changes in program and daylight. For example, higher occupancy in a room will result in higher voltage, causing the skin to expand and allow more space. STEM algae, embedded in the skin, react to different amounts of sunlight, allowing the skin to become either more opaque or translucent. In addition, they also generate oxygen to purify the atmosphere. Overgrown algae can be composted as bio-fuel, and extra fuel is feed back to the city. Other tubes buried in the skin distribute water and energy throughout the house. Space pattern of the house is much like a klein bottle, twisting the traditional space sequence. Read the rest of this entry »

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. Read the rest of this entry »