The objective of this project designed by Armin Senoner was to contextualize and gradually change both, the appearance as well as the physical experience of a Presidential Library.

The brake up from a seemingly purely contextualized agglomeration of solids into a new more articulated central library can be interpreted as the reflection of the last year’s turbulent, refreshing maybe also controversial presidency.

This project sees itself as a timeline, where the old and traditional negotiates creating new forms. Situated in Chicago, the presidential library takes place at West Garfield Park, at 5th Avenue and Kostner. A neighborhood predominated by high criminality, poverty, high percentage of low weight births and high rates of infant mortality.

The objective is to clear up the neighborhood by creating employment, adding service facilities and therefore hopefully lowering criminality. Many buildings are empty, lots can still be filled up. High potential for urban expansion guaranteed. In terms of program, the 105.000m² large area will be overbuild with the library and the archives in first place, followed up by a medical care center.

A boulevard is splitting the two main buildings and at the same time numerous shopping and retail facilities will revitalize the area and hopefully decrease negative characteristics of the surrounding area. Read the rest of this entry »

The prosposed design is not inteded to be seen just as a normal bridge or a path which is just the shortest link.The exisitng structure fullfills this requirement well enough. In this case it’s character and essence would be deepely rooted in making the city center of Atlanta more accessible and user friendly to the community and attractive to guests passing through. Because modern monuments don’t need to be just statues.They can be structures,areas , surfaces or places strengthening interaction, focused on performance in many ways, on what they can give in return to the eco-system, nature and society due to claiming of a piece of land. Hence the bridge design does not have to derive from aesthetics, beeing a sculptural form what would not bring any solutions for the issues of those who live within and visit Atlanta using the connections above the connector via car, bicycle, transit, and pedestrian movement systems.It can be a performative approach showcased in this parametric bridge design proposal which has the potential to be easily tailored to different needs and conditions including financial ones.

The outcome is a 35 meters wide and 144 meters long platform which would hover and stretch beyond the focus area to create a seamless connection with the land and improve pedestrian connections. The structure would form a roof allowing to shade specific areas positioned on an easy promenade featuring social active functions such as meeting points or market places. The extended pavement would still be giving necessary clearance for each type of traffic,where cars,bicycles would have it’s own lane, designed to changing vehicular needs. While the bridge would be a functional connector it’s character and essence would be defined by nature and the Atlanta City itself. Read the rest of this entry »

Electrical Energy is the key factor for mankind evolution and at the same time its Achilles heel, the demand of this precious resource keeps growing at exponential rates but our capacity to produce and transmit it is limited.

In the future, civilization will be forced to research and develop alternative energy sources. Our current rate of fossil fuel usage will lead to an energy crisis this century. In order to survive the energy crisis, our team is proposing new ways to extract energy from renewable and self-sustained sources.

The project develops as a way of finding a solution for this premise; inspired by tesla’s work and way of thinking we create a system based on four formulas that complement each other to achieve a renewable source of energy. This power grid is based on interrelated systems that support each other with different inputs and outputs as a balanced system.

The project is intended as a pilot based on its campus scale and location on Boston’s innovation district.

Formula 1 (Initial Push) – The purpose of this formula is to create enough energy for the initial push of our system. The two main aspects to consider is the height (min 40m) and the water mass that we need to power up the tesla turbine.

Formula 2 (Liquid Nitrogen Production) – The ideal way to distribute and store energy with a minimal loss is obtained by cryogenically cooled superconducting coil/cable.

Formula 3 (Electricity Generation) – Our infinite energy will be created through induction, where a magnet is constantly moving inside a coil. The energy is then stored in a Superconducting magnetic energy storage that requires liquid nitrogen.

Formula 4 (Hydrogen Production) – Since the amount of energy created is too much for our area, we will use the electricity to create Hydrogen by electrolysis.

Project by: Alejandro Carrillo, Borislav Schalev, Denis R. Li Read the rest of this entry »

The Wood Shed project designed by HAO / Holm Architecture Office is situated along the coast, a short drive from Taipei in Taiwan. The project is designed as an adaptive reuse project around an existing shed structure, re purposing all of the existing structure.

The building design takes it inspiration from the unique forest and nature located in Taiwan, creating a new building envelope that blends naturally into its surroundings.

A series of vertical wooden fins create natural shading for the shed interior and creates a consistent pattern that defines the entire shed volume as a built forest. Each fin has a series of small extrusions that, when stacked horizontally, creates the forest pattern that defines the shed exterior. The new facade pattern creates a seamless integration into the natural surroundings of the shed making the building one with its surroundings.

On the interior the roof and parts of the shed sides have clear polycarbonate facades to allow for control of changing weather conditions as well as integrated lighting.

“With the Wood Shed project we wanted to redefine the mainstream shed volume to directly reflect the beautiful surroundings of the Taiwan landscape. The project reuses the existing long span steel structure, keeping a completely flexible interior plan which allows the building to be used for a multitude of programs ranging from storage to exhibition space.” – Jens Holm (director, HAO) Read the rest of this entry »

The design project reinterprets the Kṣīra Sāgara, a story of religious Hindu Cosmology and abstracts its embedded ontological process as a strategy of both formal design and functional solution in rejuvenating the ecological condition of the holy pilgrimage lake of Pushkar, India.

Through the conceptual abstraction of the Hindu cosmological story, the Ksiri Sagara, the project embodies an ontological design methodology as a process to define, solve and synthesise both its formal and functional requirements. Set at the sacred Hindu lake of Pushkar, India, the lake is a place of yearly pilgrimage for Hindus, and home to one of the world largest yearly camel fairs. The design outcome is an open-loop rejuvenating system of the lake, which due to the heavy environmental bearing of local activity, is under constant degradation. The design solution helps to regulate the lakes condition through a seasonal cyclic process of water storage, de-siltation, carbon filtration, biomass & camel pellet feed production, providing a local source of economic stability, clean privately sheltered bathing pools, public toilets, a tourism viewing tower and raising a wider scale awareness of the lakes condition and possible alternatives to local chemical farming techniques.

Design: James London Mills
Tutors at the Bartlett: Marcos Cruz, Marjan Colletti  Read the rest of this entry »

2018 Skyscraper Competition is open for registration.

MAD Architects reveals 8600 Wilshire, a residential project located in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles. 8600 Wilshire is MAD’s first US project and demonstrates founder Ma Yansong’s core design philosophy: to coalesce nature and community into a living environment among high-density cities.

Bringing the nature found on the adjacent foothills of Los Angeles into the city of Beverly Hills, 8600 Wilshire mimics a small sinuous white hill boasting an 18-unit residential village atop commercial space. Clustered white glass villas and trees ascend upward to contour the Beverly Hills skyline and provide a distinctive streetscape on Wilshire Boulevard.

The “hillside village” offers a variety of housing types for city residents, including three townhouses, five villas, two studios and eight condominiums. The massing of the village cultivates community with the added benefit of individual balcony-patios to maintain independence and privacy. Villa residents experience a balance between public and private as the incandescent villas appear opaque from the street, yet reveal a transparent façade facing the private garden, townhouse and condominium units.

The village is wrapped in a water-efficient “living wall” of native, drought-tolerant succulents and vines. Undulating around perforated windows on the façade, this vertical garden extends interior space to the exterior balconies and provides a natural green-screen for condominium residents. Along Wilshire Boulevard, the living wall lifts off the ground to reveal glass storefronts at ground level. The resulting effect is a floating plinth that resembles local privacy hedges and conceals an elevated courtyard. Hidden away from the street is an elevated courtyard accented by a canopy of trees and native plantings. At the center of this secret garden is a water feature flowing gently to a secondary reflecting pool in the lobby below. As residents leave the everyday bustle of the city, they find solitude at 8600 Wilshire in a garden valley – at home in nature.

In high-density cities, Modernist and Post-Modernist housing typically prioritized functions and formats over human relationships to the environment. For 8600 Wilshire, MAD considers the possibility of a new model for West Coast vernacular amid the sprawling density of Los Angeles. MAD purposes a harmonious architectural space of human experience by placing residents in the spiritual landscape of nature.

8600 Wilshire is expected to break ground this October. The project is newly honored in the “design concept” category at the 45th Annual Los Angeles Architectural Awards, hosted by the Los Angeles Business Council. Read the rest of this entry »

The Quartz designed by Michael Khoo at the RMIT University Melbourne, Australia is a master plan proposal situated in the bay of docklands which took the opportunity to investigate the role of architecture in overcoming the food crisis due to the predicted population spike by 2060. Existing farms can only produce that much, the expansion rate is slow because there will not be enough land to cater for more. The upright solution will be replacing the existing farming methods with the highly efficient vertical farms.

Motivation/Inspiration: Re-thinking agriculture
The proposal sets forth to approach the vertical farming typology in a whole new perspective. I wanted to do something different compared to most other vertical farm precedents and proposals. I believe that vertical farming can be something more than just a stacked up farming typology.

The Key Proposal
The Quartz attempts to create a totally transparent vertical farming process and exposing it to the public, turning the unnecessary private realm into a new form of public attraction, which indirectly educates the general public about the next generation of food production. On the other hand,I foresee that open green space in the future will be close to non-existent as most of them will be shrunk to make space for development.This master-plan hybridizes the farm and park typologies to form a new kind of educative,mutually beneficial public avenue.

Design and Form Generation
I wanted the ground area to be as inviting as possible and openness is the concept behind it. Circulation and spatial connectivity were adjusted in a way to provide the general public with a better user experience. The massing blocks were then being adjusted and positioned to prioritize street level comfort at the same time capturing surrounding views. The towers were sculpted under constraints such as day lighting, wind energy, shadow casting and also to programme needs. Using conventional form finding techniques, such as extrusion, twisting , and tapering, the result is a series of highly efficient diamond-like towers which breaks free from its surrounding high-rise neighbors to create its own identity yet still respecting the rectilinearity of Melbourne skyline.

Conclusion
The scheme aims to become a dense node of activity by creating a whole new unique relationship between public and private spaces, hybridizing agriculture, education, and commercial typologies together. The exposure of the overall process becomes an informative feature that educates the onsite audience to better understand that vertical farming is indeed the eventual replacement to conventional farming. Read the rest of this entry »

This USC Undergraduate Thesis by Zack Matthews focuses on the contemporary condition of digital addiction and how the broad embrace of digital space has been at the expense of culturally significant physical social exchanges.

Virtual space has become so addictive because of its capacity to overstimulate user perceptions. We can be playing a favorite song on our phone, while browsing the latest news on a computer, while playing an interactive game on a tablet,

Upon entering back into physical space, banalities of reality are magnified and relapse back to the digital realm is that much more inevitable.

How do we make the physical environment as potent as the space accessible through technological devices – How can cultural addiction to personal technology be delayed?

#HOUSEFORTHEDIGITALFIEND addresses this question by re-examining the wall as a performative surface that intensifies perceptual engagements; specifically sight, sound and touch. These perceptions are of interest because they are the few of which are natively over-stimulated through technology.

By amplifying a non-virtual experience through; channeling and isolating sound, contorting and clarifying vision, and repelling then invoking occupation, the wall becomes an interactive element that makes physical space as enticing and engaging as the digital realm. Once physical engagement rebuttals the strength of digital engagement, the intent is that this will delay our cultural spiral further towards digital addiction. Read the rest of this entry »