David Tajchman received an honorable mention to design the Meribor Museum in Slovenia. The high-tech project consists of fragmented pixilated surface inspired in the traditional Slovenian lacework. The steep condition of the site was considered to elevate the museum galleries to the first level and create a public square at the ground plane where different ramps connect the exterior with the interior spaces creating a constant flux of people.

An interesting aspect of the proposal is the transformation of the walls into continuous programs. It is an innovative surface that folds and peels according to program and circulation. At one point it creates and enclosed auditorium and in another it organizes the public outdoor landscape. Read the rest of this entry »

Diller Scofidio + Renfro designed the new Museum of Image and Sound in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil to be completed in 2011. The architecture of the museum takes Copacabana Beach as its inspiration; its coastline, its mountains, and its distinctive beach promenade designed by Roberto Burle Marx. The building is conceived as an extension of the promenade, stretched vertically into the museum. This new “vertical boulevard” gently traverses indoor and outdoor spaces and branches to make galleries, education programs, and spaces for public leisure and entertainment.

The vertical circulation sequence connects the street with the building’s entertainment programs. The building is also conceived as an instrument to observe the city in a new way. The panoramic view before it, overexposed to tourists in the hotels and restaurants while restricted for many residents, is perhaps the central image at stake. Read the rest of this entry »

New York architecture firm Diller Scofidio + Renfro (DS+R) designed the museum expansion and sculpture garden to the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington DC.  According to DS+R “The Bubble is an inflatable event space planned for the cylindrical courtyard of the Hirshhorn Museum. In respectful dialogue with this Modernist icon originally designed by Gordon Bunshaft in 1974, the Bubble is an architecture of air; a pneumatic structure enclosed only by a thin translucent membrane that squeezes into the void of the building and oozes out the top beneath its mass.”

In contrast to the familiar strategy of roofing over courtyards of institutional buildings, the Bubble produces a soft building inside of a hard one in which existing and new spaces, both interior and exterior are playfully intertwined. The ephemeral structure will be erected twice-yearly, allowing the museum to program its courtyard. Read the rest of this entry »

Danish ADEPT, Japanese Sou Fujimoto Architects and an advisory team consisting of Topotek1, Rambøll A/S and Bosch & Fjord win the competition for a new library in Falun, Sweden, with the project “Dalarna Media Arena”. The project, which consists of a 3000m2 library and an adjoining plaza, is a part of Dalarna University campus. Dalarna Media Arena is a reinterpretation of the library – a multifunctional event- and knowledge center – targeting students and teachers as well as the local community.

The library is organized as a ”spiral of knowledge”. The sloping terrain continues in a ramp through the building. Wrapping itself the ramp creates a spiral-shaped space – the heart of the building for information seeking and easy orientation. This organization of program creates various learning environments where students can take part in the vibrant life of the library as well as retreat into various study niches. The different sound levels and activities create a diverse and eventful library.

The library has its own spatial character in which library and multimedia functions unite and create synergy with the existing university. Wooden facades integrate the building in the surroundings, reflecting the local tradition of using wood as construction material.

Dalarna Media Plaza is created in addition to the library – together they form a new landmark for Högskolan Dalarna. Through a simple reorganization the car park becomes a new surface with ‘islands’ of activities. The programming of the Plaza is flexible and will be developed in the user process. The Plaza, which is a mix of recreational functions and furniture, serves as arrival area and hang-out space for users of Högskolan, the library and visitors in the area.

This project will help to attract people in the neighborhood, thereby anchoring the library in the local community. In addition the ambition is to project strengthen the collaboration between regional and international educational and research institutions. With its public functions and activities Dalarna Media Library will become a dynamo in the area and an attraction for both local inhabitants and businesses. Activities in the café, exhibitions, lectures, continuing education, etc. will provide fertile ground for international exchange and interdisciplinary collaboration. Read the rest of this entry »

The aim of this proposal is to integrate urban life into an ecological self-sufficient skyscraper. Located in Madrid, on the bank of the Manzanares River, the design by Addler Elizalde Lozano is a faceted urban sculpture for multiple programs, including residences, hotel, and commercial, and recreational areas. The façade is designed through folding solid planes that protect the interior from the hot climate. Small opening in conjunction with an open central core provide natural light and ventilation to every space. At the ground plane, a urban plaza interacts with the building while creating a urban path across the entire skyscraper. Apart from the passive energy systems, the building is equipped with solar panels and wind turbines that will power up to 40% of the structure. Read the rest of this entry »

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Polish architects Jakub Fiszer, Piotr Pyrtek, and Tomasz Salamon unveiled a futuristic proposal to make our cities greener. It is estimated that in 2013 more than half of the world’s population will be living in urban settlements. The neck-break pace of urbanization has left our cities with a constant lack of infrastructure, high pollution levels, and poor urban and architectural design.

The main idea behind Bio-City is to use nanotechnology and biogenetics to transform a normal vine into a “city-vine”. This new type of plant will be able to grow faster, attach to a variety of surfaces and expel more oxygen through an accelerated metabolism. The intent is to cover with city-vines certain areas of the most polluted cities around the globe. City-vines will provide shelter from the elements through green canopies, will decrease de amount of CO2 and will also be a source of bio-fuels that eventually will replace the consumption of fossil energy. Read the rest of this entry »

The transformation of a banal, ubiquitous object—the shipping pallet—into a space for opera. The pallet is envisioned as a total architectural artefact, serving as building material, structural system and stage set. Its use for this temporary, open-air performance space is a kind of journey: from factory to stage and back. The project designed by Jaques Plante and Pascale Pierre is located in Quebec City, in a courtyard of the Conservatoire. It will be built in July 2011 for the Quebec International Opera Festival.

The pallet is the most widely manufactured object of the post-war period, not only in North America, which is its birth place, but all over the world. It is also the most anonymous object. At first, it was designed with a side of 1.2 m so as to cover without loss the whole area of a train wagon, much as Japanese homes are designed according to the standardized dimensions of tatami mattresses. Later, cardboard boxes were introduced to cover each pallet according to different assemblies. Finally, the fork-lift truck appeared, making it possible to quickly move and stack pallets. Nowadays, steel containers have taken the place of train wagons. They are designed according to the dimensions of these same pallets. Pallets are now produced with different designs and degrees of sturdiness—not only in wood, but also in plastic, steel and recycled materials. Read the rest of this entry »

The project designed by Chevalier Morales Architectes from Canada  takes its first inspiration in the very particular artificial site in which it is set. Through the complex network of existing structures, the planetarium blends into the white universe of the Olympic installations. In contrast to the opaque and matt concrete used for the Olympic stadium and for the cycling installations, the planetarium is translucent and milky. With human activity, the interior will be invaded by colors and the many polished and reflective surfaces like opalescent glass, stainless steel, lacquered white aluminium, white perforated aluminium and frit glass will contribute to amplify this effect. Once inside, articulated volumes and spaces will reveal the object of the museum: the Star theatres, covered in perforated brass panels.

Inspired by today’s climate changes and melting arctic ice, the building resembles a tormented and cracked rectangular volume. Slowly sinking next to the Olympic stadium on one side, it seems to be in a precarious balance on the other.

The initial shape goes through many torments that generate key spaces like an important green terrace, drowned by the white universe, a glass roof creating a grid on the sky, an exterior auditorium and an irregular shaped pearled iceberg-lantern floating on a thin layer of water. In the daytime, the lantern allows natural light to invade underground spaces. From outside, the Star theatres are not completely revealed. Other than a few specifically targeted openings in the façade, the only indication of their presence comes from shadows projected onto the exterior building envelope from interior lights reflected onto the brass surface. Read the rest of this entry »

Chris Bosse has sliced up the Panton chair as part of the Re-loved: designer stories at the Powerhouse Museum from July 31  to October 10.

Bosse, director of innovative architectural firm LAVA, is one of several designers commissioned by the Powerhouse to use a pre-loved chair to tell a story about a piece of furniture they love. He chose a design classic that relates to current design and manufacturing techniques.

The gravity defying Panton chair c1967 by Danish designer Verner Panton was a radical departure from traditional design and manufacturing techniques. It anticipated the digital revolution by 30 years and is the first freeform, organic molded piece of furniture. “I’ve chosen to represent this shape as slices, similar to an MRI scan in order to make visible its complex 3dimensional geometry. The chair is metaphorically and physically carved out of a sliced box ” says Bosse.

“The project retro-digitises the chair design, although it was the chair that preceded the digital design revolution.”

“What made the Panton chair so spectacular when it came on the market and what makes it so interesting today in terms of design history is not only its shape, which is as extravagant as it is elegant, but also the fact that it was the first chair made out of one piece of plastic. Every chair at the time was about the assembly techniques of materials, compression, tension, and junction. Verner Panton exploited the possibilities offered by the new material in order to achieve a total departure from classical design thinking.” Read the rest of this entry »