The Brooklyn Yard-Scraper designed by Rogers Marvel Architects is an innovative proposal for redevelopment of the Brooklyn House of Detention. It demonstrates how prime City-owned land can be re-imagined for broad public purpose through a design that carries the texture of Brooklyn into vertical urban form drawing directly from the character of its low-rise surroundings.

Located at Atlantic Avenue, the site is at the collision of the established brownstone neighborhoods extending to the south and the recently rezoned and rapidly changing high-rise construction of Downtown Brooklyn.

The lower portion of the Yard-Scraper is a diverse combination of social, commercial, and educational uses. Each key program element is linked to a yard, in either enclosed or open-air horizontal orientation.

The yard and program of the brownstone establishes the upper area of the building. The homes are stacked atop one another, each orienting itself for suitable light and air to support the residences and their adjacent program. No longer tied to the planar grid of streets and property boundaries, the new brownstones rise into the sky and create a vertical composition, each scraping its portion of the sun’s rays.

Among the many programs, the Yard-Scarper counts with a Green House Center, flats, brownstones, public school, institutes, library, justice center, and green public areas. Read the rest of this entry »

Polish architects Lukasz Wecawski, Jakub Kupikowski and Anna Wójtowicz unveiled an urban proposal to reconfigure the center of Warsaw which after World War II was completely destroyed and reconstructed according to the original plans during the following decades. Although most of the city recovered its previous charm, a large void was occupied by a massive and completely isolated building (Palace of Culture) donated by the Soviet regime.  The main idea of this proposal is to reconfigure that urban area.

The proposal departs from creating a massive volume that will occupy more than 10 city blocks in each direction. The resulting mass will later be carved to create a new urban typology according to diverse programs.  The sunlight voids resulted in the analysis of sunlight required for dwellings taking in consideration the angle of sunlight in the equinoxes.  The transportation voids consists of a spiral grid of ramps connecting all levels of the building – these will become streets with designated areas for pedestrians and bikers. The sun-fiber voids will provide sunlight from top to bottom through an ingenious group of light wells equipped with reflective materials while the green voids will be scattered throughout the entire project. Read the rest of this entry »

Sociocultural evolution is an umbrella term of theories of cultural evolution and social evolution, describing how cultures and societies have developed over time. Although such theories typically provide models for understanding the relationship between technologies, social structure, the values of society, they vary as to the extent to which they describe specific mechanisms of variation and social change.

Conceived as an iconoclastic intervention which implodes the conception of skyscraper at the global and local scale, Adamastor’s Throne exists to reveal and respond to the social fabric and cultural framework of an entire country, South Africa, but specifically Cape Town and its complex and contradictory history. The tower is an ontological experiment to provide spatial models toward recalibrating the relationship between technologies, social structure, and values of South African culture. Read the rest of this entry »

What does a geothermal plant and casino have in common? Well, a group of Korean architects are studying the possibility of creating a mixed-use skyscraper in Las Vegas that will harvest geothermic energy and pockets at the same time. According to various studies, the United States has the largest territories where geothermic energy can be extracted and it is expected that by 2015 it will produce at least 15,000 MW.

This proposal might sound a bit radical, but its main concept is to investigate in safer geothermic plants that could be mixed with other programs in the middle of a city; a right where a large amount of electricity is required. Read the rest of this entry »

The HydraScraper is a sustainable high-rise proposal by Chinese architects Bao Kai and Zhou Yixing from the Tongji University in Shanghai. The skyscraper was inspired on the Hydra organisms which characterize for its multiple tentacles and its ability to synchronize work by creating clusters of thousands of them. The main structure of the HydraSraper is a steel mesh that opens and closes according to wind loads and solar exposure. 

The building was designed as a multi-use structure for residential, commercial, and recreational areas. One of its most innovative aspects is its green park that occupies the middle section (30 floors) of the project. Tentacles or bridges emerge from this section and connect to other HydraScrapers creating a network of more than ten skyscrapers in Shanghai’s financial district. The main concept is to create a continuous elevated greenscape that will function as an air purifier lung and as the main park for the entire city. The location of these parks originated from the analysis of solar incidence and wind currents. Read the rest of this entry »

Neil Denari explains his urban project for Weifang, China

“Weifang is a special city in China. Not only is it well known for the history of its handicrafts such as paper–cutting and New Year’s paintings, it is the world’s most important city for kite flying and the history of kites. For more than 2,000 years, the people of Weifang have enjoyed the exhilaration of seeing these colorful objects flying in the brisk winds of the Shandong region in Northern China. For this project, located on the Bailang River in the heart of Weifang, we have been inspired by a poem by Zheng Banqiao in which he described kites as “Paper flowers that fly over the sky like snow.” Indeed, the color and lightness of the kite, it buoyant qualities, and its formal qualities have further inspired our work. The Bailang river has become over the last few years a vital place for the interaction of people and a true public space enhancement for Wiefang. We see our project along the river as furthering this public cause through an open, networked organization that allows both pedestrian and vehicular flows across the site. Beyond, the river and mountains are reflected in the light blues and greens of the buildings, lending a fresh air to the site, a place that is welcoming and open. The arrangement of the buildings is based on the traditional north-south orientation of units (as required per the brief). Each residential building has floor through apartments with only four units per floor. With strategic planning, we have deployed a large amount of mass on the site in a way that respects light, views, and social space. It is our hope that this site will foster new forms of urban experience for Weifang.” Read the rest of this entry »

Rather than responding to the brief with a monumental artwork “representing the heritage of Perth”, Emergent’s design consists of an outcropping of human-scale Photobioreactors which relate to the city in a more nuanced way. These devices are intended to operate ontologically at both conceptual and visceral levels, in terms of space, color, luminosity, but also infrastructure and engineering. There are seven elements, tied together by a pleated, color-variegated groundscape which tracks a network of biofuel lines leading across the street to the Perth train station.

The outer shells of the Photobioreactors are fiber-composite monocoque construction, pleated for stiffness. These structures support large transparent polycarbonate apertures to allow in sunlight while also protecting internal moving parts. Inside are coils of transparent acrylic which contain green or red algae colonies. The photosynthetic process of the algae requires carbon dioxide on the front end, and produces bio-diesel or hydrogen at the back-end. These devices therefore simultaneously remediate the environment by removing carbon dioxide from the local atmosphere and generate fuel in a closed-loop, off-the-grid system. One of the implications here is that energy production may, in the future, be super-localized and embedded in daily behaviors, rather than magically available from distant sources. Read the rest of this entry »

German architects Johannes Michael Moegelin and Christian Alexander Seidel propose a new hotel at the end of the Oresund Bridge in Sweden. The site is fantastic place where water, country, and the horizon flow together. The main concept is to create a reflective structure that captures and fuses the colors of the immediate landscape. The building appears like a pixilated image where each pixel is a differentiated window according to the inside spaces – large windows for suites and common spaces, and smaller ones for standard rooms and private areas.  The Oresund Hotel will be a new icon for the region and a gateway to Sweden. Read the rest of this entry »

The city of Maribor has a rich history and quite possibly, an even richer future. As the 2012 European Capital of Culture, the future will arrive in a hurry for this intimate, vibrant city. There is therefore, an urgency about what this future will provide for the people of Maribor and to what extent the new UGM will accelerate the conditions of urban life. Museums, as we know, don’t simply reflect the identity of a city, they transform identities through the material life of architecture. In this, a building must have the nerve to respond to a particular cultural energy, to be assertive, but how? In what way? At what cost?

The UGM is a 15,000 square meter contemporary art museum in Slovenia’s second largest city. With temporary and permanent galleries as its core function, the building also operates as a community and cultural center that houses three restaurants, a library, and a children’s museum.

The most important condition of this project is the context. Even more than the program, the site demands manifold responses because of its ever changing views, peripheries, and topographic nuances. We have worked desperately to develop a project that “fits” the site in terms of massing and circulation, not only out of respect for the historical and geographic aspects of Maribor, but also of out of movement and acceleration. Indeed, while the site demands an understanding of place making in the traditional sense, the program demands that culture flows through the site. The project must address the static and the active at the same. Read the rest of this entry »

Henning Larsen Architects has won first prize in the invited competition for a new aquarium in the Georgian seaport of Batumi. The 2,000 m2 aquarium will replace the previous aquarium of the port and will be situated on the beach side of Rustaveli Str. adjacent to Batumi 6 May Park featuring a Dolphinarium and Zoo.

Inspired by the characteristic pebbles of the Batumi beach, continually shaped by the wash of the waves through millennia, the building stands out as an iconic rock formation visible from both land and sea. The formation constitutes four self-supporting exhibition areas where each of the four stones represents a unique marine biotype.

”The building will become a landmark and an organic reference to all elements of the sea”, explains Design Director and Partner at Henning Larsen Architects, Louis Becker. “It captures the special atmosphere by the sea and thus becomes a tribute to the power of the sea!”

Batumi Aquarium will become a modern, cultural aquarium offering visitors an educational, entertaining and visually stimulating journey through the different seas. The central, multipurpose space in connection with the aquarium features a café and retail functions and its flexible layout makes it well-suited for presentations and workshops.

Its significant expression inspired by nature will not only make Batumi Aquarium a spectacular new landmark in Georgia but also a state-of-the-art contribution to exploring life underneath the sea surface.

The project team from Henning Larsen Architects includes Louis Becker (design director, partner) Anders Park (project manager), Viggo Haremst (design responsible), Michael Sørensen and Jaewoo Chun. Read the rest of this entry »