Acknowledging that the city is nothing but the product of a myriad network of interactions and emergent flows, re-organized and regulated by a highly evolved system of pattern recognition, the project designed by Gijo Paul George from Studio Toggle aims to find urban solutions for the city of Cagliari in Sardinia, Italy.

Taking fields, nodes and agents as the building blocks of urbanity, the relations and perturbations are mapped, giving rise to generative patterns. Based on this logic, the project strives to find a balance between adaptive non-programmed spaces and typological specificity. The site, SantÉlia has the notoriety for being the badlands of Cagliari. Often this image is exaggerated, contributing to the resident’s hostility to the city and vice versa. This spectacular stretch of waterfront land towards the southern tip of Cagliari happens to be disconnected from the rest of Cagliari due to massive infrastructural figures, which creates canyons in the urban fabric, also due to the negative ramifications arising from a dysfunctional social housing project, from 1970’s.

The project had specific goals including, reconnecting SantÉlia to the rest of Cagliari by colliding the island grids, bringing the city closer to the sea and thus developing the waterfront, revitalizing the social housing and improve conditions and to develop strategic nodes into multimodal urban ecologies. The focus was on de-canyonizing the fabric and overlaying the terrain with a new urban organism, which irrigates the territory and bridges the programmatic archipelago. Read the rest of this entry »

The Concert hall designed by Isaïe Bloch / Eragatory balances on a fine line between sculptural architectural objects and functional monuments, between meaning and use and between the beautiful and the horrific. While the architectonic aesthetic may seem to revolve around a straightforward gimmick, the work is much richer than that. The more you look, the more you realize how many levels it operates on, from its allusions of architectural ruïnification/collapse as in the romantic era to its connections to our current culture of remixes and mash-ups.

Each successive component of the design layers the pragmatic with an evocative spatial experience obtained by degeneration of architectural primitives in stead of the aggregation of complex freeform geometries, which would lead to very linear repetitive spatial experiences. It reorients the visitor toward a new architectural perspective and circulational/functional logics. Read the rest of this entry »

As a shining pearl in the Pearl River Delta, Hong Kong connects four places between two sides in China. Its characteristics of identity, interchanging and flexibility are more and more emphasized not only in the future metropolitan context, but also in the role in the historical and political sense that it plays.

We propose to rethink HKBCF as the architecture of air, a geyser of fire, flaming on the moving surfaces of the sea by holistic way.

Initially, as a transportation junction adjacent to HK International Airport, its identities are affected mainly by both the general view approaching the boundary and the vision relationship between the plane and boundary. In terms of this we create voids with landscape inside to emphasize the contrast between the building forms and the figure-ground petal patterns. Second, we explore the formal principles of Chinese traditional decorative knots and paste its inner sense into the architecture. The boundary is not only a space for connecting but a place for emotional intersection but also as a container of flexible functions and complicated circulations. Lastly, flowing transportation route is another key point we seek for. Linear circulation substituted by centrality form smartly separated the two fields of vehicle and pedestrian. Within the nodes, Hong Kong incessantly connects to its motherland and the world. Read the rest of this entry »

This project by Joseph A. Sarafian from the University of Southern California imagines a future in which billions of genetic algorithms act not only as the mediator between man and reality, but shape his existence through their very interactions. It explores a functionality beyond the carrying out of human desires, but of the prediction of human behavior. These ideas manifest in the design of the Bach Multidisciplinary Research Institute. Derived from notions of how Johann Sebastian Bach wove together voices in his fugues, this design is a synthesis of various flows of information, creating an effect larger than the sum of its parts. To achieve this goal, the building acts as an organism, reacting to its environment in such a way that it automatically controls its porosity through a network of advanced algorithms. Thus the facade is a continually fluctuating network of openings.

Instead of merely controlling the light conditions of the interiors, the aperture system is designed to close off and filter pollution from the adjacent freeway as part of the research of the facility. Thus by engaging with its environment the building acts as a testing instrument as much as an enclosure. Acoustical considerations are addressed on a local level as spaces that require varying levels of insulation are opened or closed automatically and in relation to human occupancy.

The research institute is designed to engage various fields of study, from music and the visual arts to biology and mathematics. This diversity promotes a common wealth of knowledge and facilitates interdisciplinary learning. Advancements in one field will have ripple effects in others and this synergy will promote a culture of recombinatory knowledge. Read the rest of this entry »

During the modernization of Beijing, except for some historical houses, independent housing typology was almost eliminated. Afterwards, the new model became huge, stacking commercial residential buildings.

Thus, with the support of the client, project Beijing House II is trying to seek new methods of bringing the independent housing typology back to Beijing’s contemporary city life. This design scheme adds a new house onto the exterior of an obsolete factory building. Inside the house there are bedrooms, a studio and a green room. By doing this, the design uses the empty city space in the air and rediscovers the typology of independent housing in Beijing city.

Meanwhile, this scheme also brings about new challenges because Beijing has frequent earthquakes and this design scheme suggests a big cantilever house, which is attached onto the exiting building. Therefore, to keep this in mind, a mechanical system is introduced to counteract a potential earthquake. Read the rest of this entry »

BIG + Paris-based architects OFF, engineers Buro Happold, consultants Michel Forgue and environmental engineer Franck Boutte is the winning team to design the new 15.000 m2 research centre for Sorbonne’s Scientific university Université Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris.

The new multidisciplinary research centre, Paris PARC, located between Jean Nouvel’s Institut du Monde Arabe and the open green park of the Jussieu Campus will become a significant addition to the campus, strengthening the international appeal and openness of the leading French University for Science and Medicine. The facility will bring together academic scholars and the business community, while re-connecting the university physically and visually with the city of Paris. The winning team was honored as the best design among proposals from MVRDV, Lipsky Rollet, Mario Cucinella and Peripherique.

Paris PARC is located in the visual axis of the Notre Dame Cathedral in a dense context of university buildings from different historical periods. BIG proposes a building geometry that adapts to the specific conditions of all adjoining sides, optimized for daylight, views and accessibility. The three-dimensional envelope retracts from the neighboring facades, opens up towards the square of Institut du Monde Arabe and the park, and folds into a publicly accessible rooftop landscape, resulting in an adapted sculptural building volume situated between the emblematic architectural monuments of the university. Read the rest of this entry »

This project was designed for Cheraga, Algeria by Barcelona-based DNA Architects. Le Far du Grand Vent adapts itself to the surroundings. It follows the forms of the urban surface given by the road passing by and the built areas around. The building itself reminds of a ship due to the angular basis which is considerably bigger than the upper part of the construction. It could also remind of melting ice, backed by the presence of the sea nearby. The floors are separated on the exterior, with angular edges, giving the impression of fragility and that the huge integrating parts could fall apart.

Due to the used materials, such as the glass, Le far has a sophisticated and light air, contrasting the huge dimensions making it eye-catching, becoming a landmark at the city-skyline even more at night. Read the rest of this entry »

The project is located in Xiaguan District, Nanjing, China. The site is on the south side of Jianning Road, in this urban area which is traditional and historical. The architects are required to design a big complexity including entertaining, sport, commercial and administration offices. Hence the major concern of the design is how to merge this “huge complex” into the existing beautiful nature landscape scenery and get a brilliantly transitional connection with the landscape there.

The distribution of architectural volumes in this design follows the idea of traditional Chinese Gardens, which transforming the elements of water, stones, hills, bridges and flowers into significant urban shapes animating and vitalizing the daily life of the entire district. As the site is in the traditional area, which is very sensitive to avant-garde architecture, this drives us to control the upground mass of the highrise. The proposal therefore lifts up the ground surface and transforms it into a flexible and lively vertical highrise with landscape integrating all the service and leisure facilities to provide an attractive and continuously active support for this traditional and cultural site. Read the rest of this entry »

Pupa is a habitat by Liam Hopkins of Lazerian within Bloomberg’s London headquarters made from reclaimed cardboard and pallets.

The form and aesthetics are inspired by natural habitats – cocoons, bee hives, spiders nests and weaver birds nests. The ceiling assumes the appearance of a shelter; snug and cave like, but also references the vaulted ceilings of church naves.

The numbers which can be extrapolated from Pupa reflect the almost Sisyphean task faced, whether by human, bird or insect, to create these sort of  structures:

• 3,972 triangular cardboard borders make up frame
• 3,972 triangle inners fill the exoskeleton providing the cover
• 180 wooden pallets taken apart for chair frame and legs
• 11,000 nails removed from wooden pallets
• 252 leather offcuts from make up the chair seats
  

Constructed in triangular sections Pupa utilises the structural and acoustic properties of cardboard. Computer design techniques were used to generate the form and the individual components were then extracted from the virtual model to create flat layouts that are glued together by hand.The original Bloomberg cardboard arrived in damp bales so was pulped and re-constituted at a John Hargreaves factory in Stalybridge using machinery originally installed in 1910.

“Commissioned for Bloomberg Philanthropy by art and design agency Arts Co, ‘Waste Not, Want It’ is a series of specially commissioned art and design projects made almost entirely out of Bloomberg’s waste.”

Studio Mode / modeLab is pleased to announce the first installment of the modeFab workshop series: Strip Morphologies II .

As a continuation of the Strip Morphologies workshop held in June 2010, Strip Morphologies II is a two-day intensive design, prototyping, and fabrication workshop to be held in New York City during the weekend of November 12-13, 2011. In a fast-paced and hands-on learning environment, this workshop will investigate the morphology of the ’strip’ by cross-linking developable surfaces and joining strategies. We will identify and exploit the constraints inherent in sheet material and CNC laser-cutting technology to explore and construct highly articulated material assemblies. Furthermore, the workshop will provide participants with instruction in digital fabrication techniques and direct access to CNC equipment. Read the rest of this entry »