“…We’re not tourists. We’re travelers. A tourist is someone who thinks about going home the moment they arrive…Whereas a traveler might not come back at all…”

Whether in search of escapist traveling experiences or simply looking for luxurious accommodation with a breathtaking view, the primal qualities of a stone carved retreat present the opportunity to explore both.

Carved into the sandstone cliffs of  southern Jordan, an hour and a half outside of Petra, The Wadi Resort is a design of powerful architectural gestures. The 80,000 square foot form is a winning competition entry by Oppenheim Architects. It is comprised of 47 desert lodges, accompanied by assorted pools and hammams littered around the site.

The walls are to be built from rammed earth and cement mixed with local red sand. Energy consumption is meant to be minimized by utilizing the natural cooling effect of the rocks. Various conservation measures establish a closed system of harvesting rain water. Using subterranean cisterns and re-harvesting gray water should contribute to low environmental impact. Read the rest of this entry »

The business residential building designed by two joint Slovenian offices- Arhimetrics and Enota is located in an important but degraded part of Celje, Slovenia. Even though the area is considered part of the city center, there are no historical or municipal building in its immediate vicinity.  The location is surrounded by modern city blocks, residential villas and freestanding multi-residential buildings. West of the site a large park connects it to the Savinja River.

The uniformity and repetitiveness of the building elements are intentional, derived from the need to reconnect exceptionally  heterogeneous surroundings into a logical whole. The starting volume of the new building is determined in three steps. The lower floors, set up along the edges of the lot, epitomize the height of the freestanding residential buildings in the south. Together with the public program of the existing city block buildings they embrace the central area and form a new city square. The tallest point of the new building in Herman’s square relates to the height of the existing residential high-rise, which is located along the road in the north-western edge of the lot. The number of floors of the building softly traverses between the heights adjusted according to surrounding buildings. Equal opening of the facades are enabled by positioning the building near an open public park. Read the rest of this entry »

Quito, Ecuador.January 14th, 2121 – More than a century after the initial dream of MIT architect Mitchell Joachim and his team at Media Lab’s Smart Cities group; the EIT (Ecuador Institute of Technology) discovered the secret for a perfect balance between nature and the built environment.

Three decades of experiments in the Ecuadorian Cloud Forest and 420 billion in governmental funds were spent to arrive to this sensational discovery.

Biodynamic structures can now be grafted onto genetically engineered trees to create the NBH (Nature-Building-Hybrid) Species. After the final breakthrough in the understanding of photosynthesis inner dynamics, buildings are now able to use the energy stored in trees and output refined waste products that are used by the tree to sustain its growth.

New composite materials developed by the Oxman Foundation perfectly integrate with the trees living cells and gradually fade into bio strengthened alloys to form the basic structural substrate for the grafted building units. Read the rest of this entry »

JDS Architects have unveiled the design of a sustainable zoo they’re proposing to be built on the South Korean island of Dochodo. The architecture would serve as a tourist region where nature and structures function in equilibrium. The landscape is ideal for such a development, as it features natural peaks and valleys that could house animals and be treated as nature reserves. The proposed development would have a low ecological impact. The development will be based on zero-emission transport systems and harvest renewable energy for other power needs. Rainwater will be collected and all waste would either be reused or composted for use as biofuel and fertilizer. Read the rest of this entry »

Located on the Venice Canals of Los Angeles, Hover House 3 represents the third iteration in architect Glen Irani’s Hover House series. Conceived as a reinterpretation of interior and exterior space, the series sets a standard in temperate regions for eliminating significant portions of the interior floor by ‘hovering’ the building envelope above the grade level. The design increases the overall square footage afforded by the lot, while also decreasing the more costly and resource-intensive interior floor. The exchange of built volumes for exterior living equivalents, a wind tower that extends nine feet above the roof (eliminates air conditioning), and other significant system integrations aid in greatly reducing the overall carbon footprint. Read the rest of this entry »

Inspiration came from approaching a “skyscraper” as the achievement of resource densification. Humans are a resource as much as water and energy are, so should the program of a building be designed in a way to densify the resources that are in the greatest demand for its environment.

Using Detroit, Michigan for context, Riparian Urbanism is part of the solution for breathing new life into the starving urban environment. It introduces new opportunity, concentrates and mobilizes existing industries, connects the community in new provocative ways and improves overall quality of life. It cultivates algae for bio-fuel and fertilizer, provides conditioned spaced for urban farming, incubates technology start-ups and is a home to cutting edge research and development. Algae cultivation and urban farming naturally treats and filters wastewater as well as sequesters carbon dioxide through photosynthesis. The program of the building provides innovative space and location attracting human capital to develop and mature ideas into market changing products, catalyzing new industries that will re-use the expanse of abandoned infrastructure. With new technology and design capacity this urban infrastructure emerges not only as a functional necessity but as a formal icon, creating a connection by engaging population through multiple sensory channels. Through that engagement, the structure communicates its purpose and becomes an influential piece of urban evolution – culturally, economically and socially. Similar to the local riparian ecosystems in Michigan national parks the building houses zones or microclimates regulated by their programmatic thermal requirements. Farmland, Biomass, Research Labs, and Office Space come together in a symbiotic building regulating its heat based on the needs of its specific program. The building swells and billows at times of climatic extremes, indicating that its ecosystem is in-fact alive. Read the rest of this entry »

The aim of  the TRESTLES FOOTBRIDGE – International Design Competition was to deliver a safe and compliant route between the existing parking lot and the surf beach, while preserving and enhancing the co-existence of coastal ecology and recreational activities. Organized by Architecture for Humanity, the competition would provide a design to be implemented in repairing the San Onofre wetlands, damaged by excessive foot traffic.  The proposal by Dan Brill Architects was not selected as one of the 5 finalist. However, the design was ranked 5^th on Dezeen’s  “most-viewed” page of 2010. The competition entry received great number of public votes, earning the People’s Choice Award and an honorable mention.

Exceeding the actual distance between two points by 300 feet, the 1,100 feet long bridge incorporates elements of necessary infrastructure: toilets, outside showers, drinking fountains, a lifeguard tower etc. Its 11 feet width is sporadically increased to accommodate informal seating areas, positioned to enjoy dramatic vistas along the coastline. Educational content is distributed along the structure, informing visitors of local history and habitats of endangered species. Read the rest of this entry »

Created by Iraqi born British architect Zaha Hadid for CHANEL in 2007 and commissioned by Karl Lagerfeld, the Mobile Art Pavilion’s opening exhibition showcases a selection of work by the 2004 Pritzker Prize laureate Zaha Hadid, designer of some of the world’s most highly acclaimed projects.

A genuine immersion into the architect’s formal and conceptual repertoire, this exhibition of Hadid’s work is presented within its own architecture. Translating the intellectual and physical into the sensual and using a wide range of media, the Mobile Art Pavilion unfolds through spatial sequences which engage the visitor in unique and unexpected environments.

The Mobile Art Pavilion, donated by CHANEL to the Institut du monde arabe, will allow the institute to further develop its cultural programmes in the field of contemporary creation.

Mobile Art Pavillon: Historic “Zaha Hadid” will be the first exhibition held inside the Mobile Art Pavilion since the installation of the pavilion in front of the Institut du monde arabe. CHANEL donated the pavilion to the Institut du monde arabe at the beginning of 2011. It had previously travelled to Hong Kong, Tokyo and New York since 2007. It will now have a permanent location at the IMA, where it will be used to host exhibitions in line with the centre’s policy of showcasing talent from Arab countries.

“I think through our architecture, we can give people a glimpse of another world, and enthuse them, make them excited about ideas. Our architecture is intuitive, radical, international and dynamic. We are concerned with constructing buildings that evoke original experiences, a kind of strangeness and newness that is comparable to the experience of going to a new country. The Mobile Art Pavilion follows these principles of inspiration.” states Zaha Hadid. Read the rest of this entry »

Afsarmanesh Architects won first place at the Long Island Cinema Center Competition organized by suckerPUNCH. Their three turn concept is an architecturally eloquent investigation into what constitutes a cinematic experience. The essence of the design can be elaborated by three terms, equally immanent to both architecture and cinema – image, motion and space. Three frames facing the river provide different treatment of those motifs.

Within the first frame a large screen equipped with hologram technology  projects the faces of people entering the Center. The faces are overlapped with the image of Manhattan, creating a film-like experience. Set in a scenography of an actual city, simultaneously shot, edited and presented, the story follows its hero-the common man. To paraphrase Bachelard, the design creates a lived existential metaphor that structures the being , leading to the Cinema Center becoming integrated with our self-discovery.

The second frame is a screen for the open auditorium located on the roof of the lower indoor space. It gives the building a quality of an urban attractor, constantly generating movement.

By treating the third frame as a void, the proposal uses notions of emptiness and negative space to create a window with a view of the city. Rather than to fill it with mass, the building encompasses space, blurring the line between object and urban fabric. Read the rest of this entry »

The Plein & Pavilion project was conceived by the Battery Conservancy to create an extraordinary ‘outdoor living room’ for spontaneous and scheduled activities, public markets, seating and shade, and a gleaming white, state-of-the-art pavilion for visitor information and delicious locally grown gourmet food. Designed by UNStudio in collaboration with Handel Architects LLP, New York serving as associate architect. The project’s landscape was conceived by Parks Dept. Landscape Designer Gail Wittwer-Laird.

UNStudio’s design for New Amsterdam Plein & Pavilion creates a 5,000 square-foot, carefully programmed space located within Peter Minuit Plaza, housing regional organic food by Merchants Market, as well as the Alliance for Downtown New York’s Visitor Information Booth. This highly sculptural pavilion stands as a gateway to the Battery’s park and waterfront, with an expressive, undulating roofline and curving walls; a compact little building with the authority of a major landmark, evoking a flower opening to its surroundings. Read the rest of this entry »