The site is located at the western part of midtown Manhattan NYC at the present Hudson Yards MTA rail tracks. The site is the focal point of the regeneration of the High Line Elevated Park and finishes the long history of misuse of one of the masterpieces of 20th century heritage. The position of the site on the NYC map lends itself to becoming a stitch between different neighborhoods and the Hudson River, and being transformed into an invigorated cosmopolitan center with a direct view of NYC’s landmark Empire State Building and the midtown business district.

The project designed by Ayrat Khusnutdinov is in an intermediate position between urban design and architecture. The number one issue the project deals with is creation of proper relationships and preservation of the High Line Elevated Park. This is the core factor around which the project develops. Another point is connection of dispersed neighborhoods via new pedestrian pathways and nodes – decolonization from the motorized transport in this part of the city and transformation into a place accessible for pedestrians. The last point is to connect aforementioned urban agenda to the rich public functions of the new theatre complex which provides the opportunity for independent theatre teams to perform.

The Piezoelectric playground is a temporary structure designed by Margot Krasojevic for the Pioneers park in Belgrade, Serbia. It will be used as a bandstand and playground.

The canopy is a hyperbolic structure which folds in on itself draining rain water into the pool directly underneath it which diffracts light (acting as a prism) further magnifying the activities within the canopy structure. Movement agitates the semicondcuting piezoelectric crystal disks which as a result generate an electric current within the structure itself, this voltage controls the holographic glass clad canopy and optic fibre light projections choreographing a series of patterns which illuminate the immediate context according to the music or events occurring within the canopy. ; with the possible use of vibrating piezoelectric crystals releasing hydrogen and oxygen from the water molecules, piezoelectrochemical effect, supporting the hope that energy can be used to generate power from any structure which vibrates and produces noise, from passing traffic, children playing etc.

The canopy’s geometry blurs the relationship between interior and exterior spaces; as it is a surface with one boundary, mathematically the form is non-orientable which focuses on the event as a way of defining it’s physical presence on site.

The wooden frame’s looping structure is clad in reinforced optical glass tubes which house optic fibre cables that direct the light through the canopy, the light patterns and strength is influenced by the circuit of piezoelectric crystals and diodes to change charge direction therefore continually altering the direction of light and intensity of projections depend on movement throughout the canopy or sound reverberations from music.

The canopy never lights up in the same way twice and our perception of the canopy glowing and projecting light describes a very different environment every time it is used as either a playground shelter or outdoor concert canopy.

This project was inspired by Thomas Wilfred’s Clavilux projects from 1930.

The project attempts to integrate rural landscape and the city. Located in the fast growing city of Shenzhen, in China’s Guangdong Province, the Galaxy Yabao Hi-Tech Enterprises Headquarter Park covers an area of about 65 ha. It is a complex comprised of 18 high-rise towers, a 5 star hotel, 3 service apartment towers, 3 residential towers, a shopping mall and a 32 ha park. In order to introduce nature as a strong element in space, the architects at 10 design decided to pull off the tower facades to allow for vegetation to grow up the sides of the buildings.  Mounted on the western facades are the algae tubes. The strips of vegetation, climbing up the towers are transformed into rooftop gardens, reducing the heat-island effect.

The buildings of the Galaxy Yabao Hi-Tech Enterprises Headquarter Park are designed with façades that neutralize air pollution 24 hours a day, an algae system that produces oxygen, organic fertilizer, and cleans grey water, and a series of subterranean chambers that naturally cools outside air and pushes it into a series of outdoor courtyards. The buildings take full advantage of technologies that help shape the temperature and air quality of their micro-climate.

After five months of intensive design work and two weeks of building-up, on 29th of March the exhibition of THE SWARM – a Parametric Pavilion – took place in the outdoor area of the Bavarian Chamber of Architects in Munich. The main exhibit is a sculpture out of Alucobond which is 4 meters high and 15 meters long. Its shape describes an abstract swarm of birds.

The idea of THE SWARM was born on the new chair of Emerging Technologies at the faculty of architecture of the Technical University of Munich. The first concept made by Magnus Möschel was selected within an intern competition in the summer semester 2011 while the time of visiting professor Charles Walker. In the following semester, the students Sabrina Appel, Max Langwieder and Sascha Posanski developed the project and transformed it into a real building. They were supervised by the assistents Nadine Zinser – Junghanns, Moritz Mungenast and Wieland Schmidt.

The sculpture can be seen another two months; the exhibition can be visited until the 4th May in the Bavarian Chamber of Architects.

The project was supported by the companies 3A Composites GmbH, Aluform GmbH, Metallbau Böhm, Würth, Erco, Terrafix and Boels and by the structural engineers Leonhardt, Andrä and Partner.

Free City is a conceptual prototype for the XXI century city, conceived by FREE Fernando Romero EnterprisE in response to global issues brought forth by population growth and urban transition in the developing world. It proposes the design of a new urban infrastructure that integrates a sustainable and systematic framework into the grain of the urban fabric, stimulating innovation, production, services and growth.

The design house prechteck was invited to design a corporate headquater for s.deer, a chinese retail-clothing company based in Nanjing.

The main idea behind the design for the building was to create world of fashion underlining the lifestyle s.deer stands for. As fashion is not just about clothing, the new s.deer headquater should not just be about administration. At fashion shows, photo shootings or previous store designs, cubes in different size and configurations are omnipresent and have been a key object and an unofficial logo for representing s.deer. Inspired by s.deer’s appearance design, rotated cubes were also the formal element for prechteck’s proposal.

The scheme divides the building into 2 structurally independant components interacting with each other on a certain height. 2 entities supporting each other and generating an working and lifestyle hybrid for s.deer. The larger cube contains a 25.000sqm administrative area with offices, conference and meeting rooms, workshops and creative areas for staff, including underground parking for 300 cars. Angled sky-gardens cut into the building getting natural lighting to the lower floors of the building. On the upper floors creative areas for rebooting and relaxing circumscribe the peremiter of those gardens. A 3.000sqm lifestyle area for fashion shows, parties and a small museum showing the history of the company should visitors strongly connect to the brand.

Prechteck’s scheme aimes to produce a natural and organic expression having a refined structure embraced by a textile facade pattern. Some sustainable aspects of the design include grey water treatment, photovoltaic panels on the outside of a double layerd facade, pipes for algae bio cltivation in between the two layers and a use of local materials during the construction of the project.

Team: Chris Precht, Fei Tang, Daniel Mayer

The population of the world is expected to double by 2050. This fact does not only raise interrogations for the future of food production and the increasing necessity of land cultivation, it also creates concerns towards endangering the future of natural resources and biodiversity.

Today, food is longer being produced where it is being consumed. Vegetables sometimes travel to other continents to be processed or even simply packed before returning for consumption. The transport infrastructure for refrigerated food products, besides being costly, is strongly energy un-efficient and is an important contribution to global warming.

Can agriculture make its way into the city? Can it integrate our urban fabric despite its apparent necessity to occupy large horizontal surfaces little available in the economically-driven metropolitan densities?

Agriculture 2.0 designed by Appareil attempts to propose an answer to these questions. It consists of a generative system for the design of the infrastructure for urban vertical farming, which can be used in any city of the world.

It is defined as a parametric model which necessitates three pieces of information as inputs to produce the local design for the vertical infrastructure:

• The climatic conditions of the city in which it is to be inserted.
• The area of the city, in m², to be covered in vegetable production.
• The specific site on which the tower is to be constructed.

The building itself is composed of a support structure for plant incubators which travel down the full height of the tower. Their journey last the necessary time of the plants’ growth from crop to maturity. 45 days in the case of the lettuce. The incubator is an expandable 4-8 m² closed pool which contains a controlled environment collecting rain water, regulating sunlight, temperature, air quality and CO2 concentration. Although limited in terms of species, the agricultural production include most lightweight crops such as lettuce, tomato, peppers, eggplant, marrow…  In its largest and most dense version, a single tower can reach a production rhythm of 42 kilograms of vegetables per day, which can cover a city area of approximately 1.5 km².

Located in central China, Zhengzhou is experiencing rapid re-development. Part of a broad scale master plan labeled “The Rise of Central China”; Zhengzhou is implementing a two part initiative: ecological and infrastructural development. Ecological development prioritizes the surrounding natural resources; forest park, scenic areas, wetlands/reserves, rivers/lakes & urban green space. Infrastructural development addresses an emerging market identified as “Logistics Industry”. Zhengzhou is to serve as an integrated hub for the import/export of goods and mass transportation which connects the east and the west. The project site is located in the historic city center which is the primary shopping district just north of the main train station and just south of the People’s Park (a large public park). The Erqi Monument resides to the south west corner of the site and is the primary tourist attraction in Zhengzhou. The monument is a 27 floor double pagoda dedicated to a worker strike that occurred February 7, 1923.

Challenging the conventions of this typology, the proposed design blends the hotel and live/work top with the retail base. In order to maximize and prioritize the corners of the site, the hotel and live/work program are rotated over the corners to frame the exterior/interior of the site. The green boulevards flow into and up the edges of the site to create a green urban space at the mezzanine level. Envisioned as an entertainment level, patrons can enjoy amenities and an elevated view of the city. The retail base steps down in plan and section for greater connectivity to the adjacent urban edges. The gradated triangulated façade reinforces the corners and programmatic relationships from floor to floor.

Principal Architect: Trey Trahan, FAIA
Senior Designer: Mark Hash
Project Team: Art Terry, Michael McCune and Kim Nguyen

The Thematic Pavilion for the EXPO 2012 planned by the Austrian architecture office SOMA will be opened in Yeosu on 11th of May. Soma’s design proposal One Ocean was selected as the first prize winner in an open international competition in 2009.

The main design intent was to embody the Expo’s theme The Living Ocean and Coast and transform it into a multi-layered architectural experience. Therefore the Expo’s agenda, namely the responsible use of natural resources was not visually represented, but actually embedded into the building, e.g. through the sustainable climate design or the biomimetic approach of the kinetic façade. The cutting-edge façade system was developed together with Knippers Helbig Advanced Engineering and supports the aim of the world exhibition to introduce forward-looking innovations to the public.

The pavilion inhabits the thematic exhibition that gives visitors an introduction to the EXPO’s agenda. The Best Practice Area on the upper level functions as a flexible stage for organizations and institutions. The permanent building is constructed in a former industrial harbor along a new promenade. After the EXPO the pavilion will stay an attraction for tourists and local residents.

The project deals with the occularcentric nature of contemporary culture, by manipulating and unmasking its deceptive mechanisms. The design process starts with the fact that our ability to perceive the details is limited to the narrow fovea (the only part of the retina that permits 100% visual acuity) in the eye’s retina. Vision is then a matter of unconscious inferences: making assumptions and conclusions from incomplete data, based on previous experiences.

This inference and the inability to perceive the details trigger an attractive process, but the complexity of the component detail can be appreciated only at a scale where the perception of the whole is lost; rolling backwards, it becomes clear that the effect of the whole is more than just the sum of the constituent parts. It is an experiment (or proof of concept) on how morphology, organization, material systems and patterns have the ability to trigger dynamic behavioral effects and interaction in space and time.

From a technical standpoint, the structure was generated by triangulating the mesh and choosing triangles in an alternate pattern: this strategy maintains structural integrity (all remaining triangles are connected) while using half of the surface area. In order to increase complexity and enrich the range of effects, components have a gradient variation in height according to their horizontal condition: the more they approach the horizontal condition, the higher and more developed they become. Each component, realized through laser cut from polypropylene flat sheets, has 3 radial “petals” with variable number of cuts and curve tangency according to the individual morphology and the height gradient, embedding the necessary cuts for assembly. All components are assembled using plastic ties.