Hyperlocalization of Architecture

The Fort Collins Museum of Art is proud to host the official book release of [ours] Hyperlocalization of Architecture: Contemporary Sustainable Archetypes, written by local author Andrew Michler. The book release event will be held at the Fort Collins Museum of Art on Friday, September 25,^, 2015 from 6:00-9:00pm. The evening will include a short film, slideshows, book signing, and Michler will be reading from select chapters. Libations for the evening will be provided courtesy Odell Brewery. Michler is requesting RSVPs through the event’s Eventbright page.  [ours] Hyperlocalization of Architecture: Contemporary Sustainable Archetypes will also be available for purchase in the Fort Collins Museum of Art gift shop.

[ours] Hyperlocalization of Architecture: Contemporary Sustainable Archetypes by Andrew Michler journeys to seven regions around the world for a firsthand account of powerful movements in contemporary sustainable architecture. The book explores the possibilities and promise of deep sustainable building design through the lens of some of the most provocative projects and esteemed architects of our time. Michler explores and documents the work first hand, and with extensive commentaries from the architects readers gain a unique insight into how these buildings function in the context of their culture, environment, and utility. The book is published by eVolo Press, research is supported by the Institute for the Built Environment at CSU.

Andrew Michler has lived off-grid for two decades in the Colorado Rocky Mountains and is a LEED AP BD+C and Passive House Consultant. He has written extensively on sustainable architecture in print and for leading design blogs. With an extensive background in sustainable design and construction, he pioneered a net zero energy and foam free Passive House informed by the local foothills and as a personal investigation into the potential of hyperlocal design. His house is one of the most energy efficient buildings in the Americas.

The mission of the Fort Collins Museum of Art is to engage our community in cultural experiences that promote an awareness and appreciation of the visual arts. To offer our audiences the highest-quality art experiences, the Fort Collins Museum of Art presents a diverse series of exhibitions, community events, publications, and educational programs for children and adults. The Fort Collins Museum of Art seeks to enrich the cultural life of the region and advance community understanding of the power of the visual arts to foster life-long learning, social interaction, and personal inquiry.

The museum is located 201 South College Ave., in the middle of Old Town Fort Collins.

WVA alias WEAVA was awarded the Third Prize on the Zhuhai Doumen Observation Tower competition in July 2014.

Located at the confluence of two rivers of Zhuhai, China, WVA’s scheme for the Observation tower takes the advantage of being a point of junction, of connection between different neighborhoods of the area, but at the same time, being a destination point, where people, locals as well as tourists will participate in the dynamic of the urban environment.

A peak of gathering sceneries as a concept for the Observation tower, is thought as a three-dimensional flow where the metaphor of the three roads, three bodies of the river will be shaped into a mountain that refers to the Jianfeng Mount across the river, on the other side of the waterfront. Three bodies will converge into a central vertical element to form the tower, and among these two will be bridges that connect a smaller island designated as part of the park and the other one linking the other side the near neighborhood.

A system of vertical potted landscape creates a unique experience of Chinese traditional pagoda behind a parametrically patterned façade of an abstract Mountain and Water themed perforated metal screen.

At the top of the Observation Tower, WVA’s scheme proposes a platform that offers a 180° panoramic view of the surrounding and at the back of the platform a facetted mirror which can reflects the environment but also the sunlight like a diamond in a fragmented way. Read the rest of this entry »

Coral Regeneration Platform Section

Coral Frontiers is a proposal designed by Rosa Rogina at the Royal College of Art in London for a new infrastructure for coral regeneration on the Island of Diego Garcia. It is also a geo-political intervention into a unique entanglement of military, human rights, and environmental stakes. The project explores how could an architectural proposal result in a shift in the balance of power that has crystallised in this remote island, and support the resettlement of the exiled community of its native inhabitants, the Chagossians. Diego Garcia is a coral atoll and British territory in the Indian Ocean that from 1966 operates as the biggest US military base outside the States. For this spatial anomaly to happen, one whole nation had to be brutally ‘swept and sanitised’ and lost one of their fundamental human rights – the right of abode in their homeland. Still today, 40 years after their forced displacement, the majority of the 5000 Chagossians in exile are actively campaigning for their right to return.

Today is a crucial time to examine the island. By the end of 2016, the 50 year-long UK lease of Diego Garcia will expire. This project explores a speculative scenario in which, due to pressure by the international community and human rights institutions, the Chagossian return to their homeland is one of the conditions for the US lease of the island to be extended. In order to avoid reproducing, through architecture, the colonial schema that first led to their forced displacement, the project doesn’t impose a design solution for the resettled community. Instead, this project is a proposal for their first means of survival – the infrastructure that may sustain their resettlement. Just like it uses the fragility of the coral as both a weaponry and a line of defense, this project attempts to turn vulnerability into a force, and to challenge the defeatist assumptions that a small exiled community would always has to bend to the will of powerful governments. Read the rest of this entry »