Studio’s SHIFT proposal for the World Sustainability Center in Afsluitdijk, Netherlands sets out to connect the local and global community in a progressive arena of emerging technologies and investigations in a park-like setting near the Wadden Sea. Located along a 20-mile long dike, the center serves as a hot spot for educational, corporate and institutional topics on emergent sustainable practices and technologies. Temporary exhibitions on sustainable topics are stationed on floating piers and are also integrated into the natural landscape. In order to compensate for its remote physical location, the state of the art research facility projects an iconic form in order to inspire and capture the attention of visitors. Read the rest of this entry »
World Sustainability Center Integrates Global Community / Studio SHIFT
Funneled Glass Void Creates Vertical City in Myzeil Shopping Mall / Fuksas Studio
Located in the heart of the Frankfurt city center, the MyZeil Shopping Mall’s by Fuksas Studio has been the newest hub for restaurants, fitness gyms, and retail shopping since its opening in 2009 next to the famous Zeil shopping street and the PalaisQuartier. A funneled roof landscape takes urban shoppers into a vertical realm through six floors beneath 3,200 triangular glass pieces and one of the longest escalators in Germany (46 m). A void strategically travels through the building at multiple elevations and roots itself at the ground floor, much like a river, providing an openly lit tunnel from above and an atrium structure. Read the rest of this entry »
Student Dormitory Creates Human Interaction Through a Figural Void
This building is a proposal by award-winning firm from Los Angeles, P-A-T-T-E-R-N-S, for a 120-bed student dormitory for the Pontificia Catholic University of Puerto Rico in Ponce, the second largest city of the island and the old capital before San Juan. As part of a larger master plan aiming to attract students from the whole Caribbean region and fulfill the current demand of 500 apartments, the proposal aims to create a new presence within the campus. Articulating a vertical mass with a figural void that encapsulates the main social areas of the program, our proposal aims to induce human interaction among students and visitors in a vertical environment while enhancing unprecedented urban vistas from and to the historic center of the city just beyond the university campus. Read the rest of this entry »
Architectural Chimera
In Greek mythology the Chimera was a monstrous fire-breathing creature. She had the body of a lioness, a tail ending in a snake’s head, and a goat’s head arising on her back at the centre of her spine. There are of course many other examples in different cultures that could also be referred to as Chimeras. In genetics, biology and botany a Chimera represents an animal or plant with genetically distinct cells from two different zygotes or genetically different types of tissue; the resulting organism is a mixture of tissues, and of different sets of chromosomes. In paleontology, it is a fossil reconstructed with parts from different animals.
aRC(2)himera is an architectural chimera. From its distinct sets of digital chromosomes and analogue chromosomes evolves a monstrous mix-up of various approaches that go from developing skin morphologies, structure anatomies, ornamental textures, responsive environments, biological growth, robotic behaviour, miniature devices, machined fabrication, interactive media design, sensorial feedback etc. To some this may look and sound outrageous and horrific—as it is neither elegant nor pure, nor truthful or correct (process-wise).
Why this Frankensteinian, modern Promethean approach? The grotesqueness of aRC(2)himera is only relative. aRC(2)himera must be seen in a postvirtual and postdigital context of New Materialism, which marks the ambition to escape from the old unsustainable (socially and environmentally) virtual and cyber architectural visions, and from the old off-the-shelf and unsustainable (environmentally and financially) architectural production methods towards innovative applicable theories, techniques and technologies. Read the rest of this entry »
Re-designing the Balkan Square
The proposal by SAKELLARIDOU/PAPANIKOLAOU ARCHITECTS which received the first place in the international competition attempts the reconstruction and upgrading of the ‘Balkan Square’, in the former military camp ‘Strebenioti’, in Neapoli – Sykies, Thessaloniki. It aims at the reorganization of uses and accesses to the square, the redesign of existing facilities and the incorporation of new ones. The concept deals with the notion of hybrid space, time and place, as these coexist and express themselves in the Balkan Peninsula as a mixture of people, languages, religions, myths and traditions; as a mixture of colours and nature. It chooses nature as the active base that unifies the whole, that is continuously renewed, as a canvas, just like the balkan earth which blends people, toponyms, tales and history and binds them together in one mixture. It proposes the natural landscape as a hybrid container of multiple activities: both park and landscape and football field and theatre, as well as an event place and a space for the enjoyment of nature.
Architectural design: Rena Sakellaridou, Morpho Papanikolaou (sparch / Sakellaridou Papanikolaou Architects) Anastasia Papadopoulou, Vanessa Tsakalidou (40.22.Architects | Papadopoulou + Tsakalidou) Collaborators: Κ. Olympios, Ε. Papaevangellou, C. Karakana, Κ. Toubektsi. Students of architecture AUTh: S. Georgiou, Ε. Koumbli, Α. Niaka
Urban planning: Geochoros Meletitiki EPE, dr. A. Giannakou, dr. A. Tasopoulou, D. Zeka
Collaborator: S. Tsovras
Traffic design: K. Derpani
Collaborators: D. Samaras, G. Papandritsas
Atreo Skyscraper: Reinterpretation of the Ancient Greek Myth of Atreus
Atreus is a concept building designed by Crilo Architecture, with sharp shapes, it is lacerated in the armor of black metal and dark glass with cracks that reveal its interior. The prosthesis,projecting at different heights, are heliports. Below the complex, an underground space, infrastructural node and the heart of the ascent to the tower. The spatial nature is similar to the Etruscan funerary chambers and recalls the tomb of Atreus, whose treasure is part of the myth. Read the rest of this entry »
Big Sky Ski Lodge
The Big Sky Ski Lodge designed by Nikita Troufanov at the Illinois Institute of Technology takes cue from the muscle system. Actions of tension, overlap, pushing / pulling are explored both formally and programatically. Working from coarse to fine grain, linear program ‘muscle’ chunks fuse and overlap and then tesselate into cellular aggregations. Spaces and structure are placed in a feedback loop where each informs another, evolving until a desired amount of coherence and unity is achieved.
Hospitality and patrol programs are overlapped and placed in spatial tension against each other through connecting views and geometry. Hospitality space is distributed on 3 half-stories that step up to gain views out into the valley, creating a spatial sequence with plateaus of specific activity and experience. Read the rest of this entry »
Water City of the Future / Shma
The goal of modern development has created a clear separation between agricultural and industrial activities, between human and nature, between fluid and solid territories, which become a threat to human living. As we move forwards and slowly detach from nature, we neglect the power of it and forget how we once live with it. Ayutthaya is the city which illustrates such on-going situation clearly, from the day when water was city’s breath to the day when water become city’s catastrophe to local economy, society and environment. In planning for the prospect Ayutthaya we shall try to understand the formation of crisis, in order to determine the new balance between water, Ayutthaya living and Chao Phraya river basin.
We have witnessed 36,000 million cu.m. of water surge into the lower Chao Phraya Flood Plain and damage Ayutthaya tremendously beyond the historical records, especially for the unplanned settlement in urban area and industrial estates that were built in water way. The damage cost 1.2 billion baht with more than 200,000 lives unemployed. Ironically, agricultural land or natural water detention area could not take in water as they were still harvesting. This year flood surely triggered Thai society to revise our urban planning, economic production activities and our way of living to suitably fit with the nature.
Agriculture + Water Infrastructure: Water detention reservoirs, the agricultural and management of His Majesty the King with the ratio of 30:30:30:10 (Rice field:Plant:Water Infrastructure:Settlement) will serve as effective tools to store large amount of water in flood season for consumption in the dry season. Agricultural area can be turned into large Water detention areas by simply increasing the height of the existing polder. When raised, these ridges can help the flood plain to hold more of water in 200 years amount. Each pixel of land has drain channel which bio-filtrates this water before it is released to the river. Read the rest of this entry »
LAMBAME Analog-Digital Design
LAMBAME is a design experiment by Melike Altinisik using a ‘Handmade-Scripting’ process instead of using the digital manufacturing process but achieving the result of a digital process by handmade production. During the design process different ink sketches have been drawn on the several layers of 3mm MDF, mirror and perspex materials. After cutting the designed patterns from different materials, several versions of the lightbox has been composed with LED Lighting between each layer. It has a modular shape 60cm x 60cm x 5cm. Read the rest of this entry »
Bamboo Beds Activate Wuhan’s Public Spaces
Wuhan is at the center of China. Being regarded as one of the three “fire stoves”, it is the hottest city in China. Wuhan has already established 2000-2020 urban planning still based on the principles of severance and zoning system, due to the lag of new urbanism theory in practice. It costs too much resource if we rigidly erase the made-up principles and rapidly turn into new theories.
The designers inspiration comes from one of the Wuhan folk-customs, which is called “bamboo bed array”. Due to the hotness in Wuhan, all citizens carry bamboo beds to the outside to enjoy the cool. People with their bamboo-beds gather in arrays all around the city, from the roadsides to the roofs. These bamboo beds take on all kinds of functions, such as sleeping, playing, eating, reading, chatting and so on. Using this folk-custom for reference, our concept comes into being. The philosophy is conquering the unyielding with the yielding. Eluding the rigid transformation of the urban planning, we create new “bamboo bed” functional boxes——BAMMIXes designed by Zhaochen Wang and Ran She diffuse them to different zonings which needs complementary functions all around the city. These boxes inject functions into parts to fit the mixed demands of the city. In this way, each zoning can get functions they lacked, frequently enhance the quality of life, and reach the purpose of max-mix. Read the rest of this entry »