With a population density of 130,000 people per square kilometre, Mongkok, a neighbourhood in Hong Kong, is one of the most densely populated places on the planet. Aedas was appointed to design a serviced apartment building in this hyperdense district, whose construction work commenced recently.

Standing on a site of 614 square metres, which is challengingly small, the building will offer serviced apartment accommodation to occupants. In the early post-war years, it was common to create illegal iron balconies for residential units in Mongkok to acquire maximum view. Aedas reinterpreted these structures in a modern way, using irregular protrusions to create unobstructed views for each apartment.

Inspired by the home gardens which people create on the balconies, Aedas designed a green wall that seemingly protrudes from the solid façade of the podium to further connect the building with the historical cityscape. This green wall will also enhance the quality of life for the neighbourhood by increasing the provision of greenery at the pedestrian level.

The building is set back from the street to allow more opportunities for planting, which creates a breathing space in the middle of the dense neighborhood and provides rare greenery. It also transforms the outdoor landscape space into an urban backdrop for the building’s public areas such as an entrance lobby on the ground level and a transit lift lobby on the second floor.

The design sets an example of contemporary interpretation of traditional architecture. Read the rest of this entry »

A building in a modern area in the outskirts of Rome, in the “E.U.R.” (Esposizione Universale Roma, in 1942), known as the “Eurosky tower” by Franco Purini, in our point of view is not realized according to the principles of “integration” architecture/renewable energy. This creates a strange, no sense residential tower looking like a boring box with on top a photovoltaic panel not designed for the tower itself.. It looks like that in the main design was not foreseen a photovoltaic panel system and it is just placed after all. That creates a design we don’t believe in, a design where the shape does not come out from its function. All this generated in us a deep idiosyncrasy against this architecture. What we propose is to make it fall down and replace with a similar in the function but radically different in the shape tower. The “Twilt Tower” (since twisted and tilted) integrates the photovoltaic panels not just in the facade but even in the volume. The idea of tilting and rotating the panels towards the solar rays, to allow direct sun radiation during the whole day, deforms the building making the idea and the architecture a unique thing. The outcome is a fabulous cutting edge design that demonstrates how a building can express a concept in a contemporary rather futuristic way. Far from academic visions where the new is not accepted, far from wrong interpretation of the history of architecture that made became the city of Rome from the most vanguardist city in the world to the most obsolete, we propose a new revolutionary design to allow the city of Rome to find again its own old splendor, leading it to a new pioneering city as it was in the passed century. Rome was not built in a day, lets make it born again! Read the rest of this entry »

The project HygroSkin – Meteorosensitive Pavilion explores a novel mode of climate-responsive architecture. While most attempts towards environmental responsiveness heavily rely on elaborate technical equipment superimposed on otherwise inert material constructs, this project uses the responsive capacity of the material itself. The dimensional instability of wood in relation to moisture content is employed to construct a metereosensitive architectural skin that autonomously opens and closes in response to weather changes but neither requires the supply of operational energy nor any kind of mechanical or electronic control. Here, the material structure itself is the machine.

The travelling pavilion’s modular wooden skin is designed and produced utilizing the self-forming capacity of initially planar plywood sheets to form conical surfaces based on the material’s elastic behavior. Within the deep, concave surface of each robotically fabricated module a weather-responsive aperture is placed. Materially programming the humidity-responisve behaviour of these apertures opens up the possibility for a strikingly simple yet truly ecologically embedded architecture in constant feedback and interaction with its surrounding environment. The responsive wood-composite skin adjusts the porosity of the pavilion in direct response to changes in ambient relative humidity. These climatic changes – which form part of our everyday live but usually escape our conscious perception – trigger the silent, material-innate movement of the wooden skin. This subtle yet constant modulation of the relationship between the pavilion’s exterior and interior provides for a unique convergence of environmental and spatial experiences.

The project by Achim Menges at the Institute for Computational Design of the Stuttgart University was commissioned by the FRAC Centre Orleans for its renowned permanent collection.  Read the rest of this entry »

eVolo Magazine is pleased to invite designers around the world to participate in the 2015 VMODERN Furniture Design Competition. The award was born from the desire to create a forum for the discussion, debate and development of innovative design. Our goal is to discover and promote the most creative pieces of furniture that will transform the way we live and interact with our environment. What is the future of furniture design?

This is an ideas competition and designers may submit pieces in production, prototypes, and/or concepts. Projects will be evaluated based on creativity, originality, feasibility, function, and aesthetics.

Participants may submit designs in any of the following three categories:

• Seating: armchairs, benches, chairs, lounge chairs, recliners, stools, etc.
• Planes: beds, coffee tables, desks, shelving units, tables, etc.
• Lighting: ceiling, floor, table, wall, etc.

SCHEDULE

August 10, 2015 – Competition announcement, registration begins
October 6, 2015 – Early registration deadline
November 10, 2015 – Late registration deadline
November 24, 2015 – Submission deadline (23:59 hours US Eastern Time)
December 15, 2015 – Winner’s announcement

JURY

Ammar Eloueini [principal Ammar Eloueini Digit-all Studio
Joel Escalona [principal Joel Escalona Studio, NONO]
Mitchell Joachim [principal Terraform ONE]
Po Shun Leong [principal Po Shun Leong Design]
Alexander Lervik [principal Lervik Design AB]
Zhang Zhoujie [principal Zhang Zhoujie Digital Lab]

AWARDS

1st Place: US $2000
2nd Place: US $1000
3rd Place: US: $500

For more information and to register for the competition please visit:
VMODERN.COM

Hangzhou New South North Mixed-use Project, designed by Aedas, is set to be a brand new riverfront landmark with iconic twin towers and dynamic retail podiums. The two 33-storey office buildings are hexagonal in shape and are placed diagonally to create a vivid building massing, show individuality from different angles and maximize opportunities for river view. Frontage retail continues the urban interface and the open courtyard acts as a city living room with a sunken plaza as well as multi-level roof gardens. Read the rest of this entry »

This design by Margot Krasojevic is for a private airfield in Doha, Qatar. A short stay pop-up hotel hangar that can be wheeled to different docking locations, primarily used for waiting for connecting flights, refuelling and airplane maintenance.

The hotel lounge is an extension of the private jet which enables the clients to rest/ stay for a period of 24 hours before departure. The scheme is composed of three telescopic fibreglass polymer clad shells, the exterior contains perspex encased tritium sections that glow, this contained radioactive elements are harmless and have a ten year life span without the need for external power supply. The scheme can be dismantled for easier transportation.

The expandable interior sections are lined with a combination of laminated glass , photovoltaic cells and low-resolution LED Lighting which can be programmed to create any fully immersive environment which either connects you with the existing horizon line and context or completely dislocates you from it.

The second stage implements a hot air updraft tower to contribute to sustainable energy and environmental design considerations. Read the rest of this entry »

Trillium Resort & Spa is a project proposal by Coorlas Architecture. The tower’s flowing geometry was developed utilizing 2 Dimensional projective carving. This method of form modeling results in optimized geometry for non-orthogonal forms, reducing inefficient model elements and maintaining sculptural shape. The craft in this calculated geometry economizes the built-form by reducing the amount, and complexity, of assembled parts. The geometric-efficiency or Geo-Efficiency translates into cost-savings for owners, developers, contractors, and architects through simplified assembly and construction, time-saving, and more easily manageable datums for the architect to maintain & manipulate per design & form finding exercises. With the evolution & integration of digital machinery in the design and construction process, the gap between concept and built-form continues to shrink. Design Approach, Construction-Type, and Modeling Strategy must be considered a synthesized procedure. These have never been independent modes of operation; and now more than ever, these aspects of the design/build process are becoming unified and more interdependent.

The tower’s waterfront site is located in Guaruja, Brasil. The formal expression is inspired by the Trillium plant; a three petalled flower which exhibits its efficiency in maximizing solar exposure with minimal flowering obstruction, and minimal structure. This concept translates into an efficient tower design by maximizing resident occupancy with minimal system infrastructure. Read the rest of this entry »

In central Warsaw, the PKO Rotunda bravery symbolised many layers of memory on the North-East corner above Dmowskiego roundabout. The new PKO Rotunda embraces the most tragedy of its history. By captivating the area, the sun light angle on Feb 15, 12:37 p.m. An exactly time of the tragedy occurred in 1979. A stratum of light cave down the corner. It leans down responsively to the sun angle. Every year, the sunken plaza is waiting for a moment of the sun ray to bright up the whole place and create a warmest light courtyard to withstand a harsh cold winter memory.

The new PKO Rotunda does not only preserves 45 columns in addition with 4 new columns but also gives back a historical meeting point to public realm by relocate the branch underneath the prominent plaza. All those columns are together to represent a group of 49 victims. Each column commemorates each bravery victim with engraved name onto the columns. The column does not only transform the plaza by illuminate the area with ambience bright warm white to guide pedestrians a way but also calmly generates clean energy with micro wind farm to feed the plaza and the building.

The plaza’s street furniture are carefully located to maximise a flow of traffic. They also function as a barrier and organize plaza to be an urban corridor and urban retreat. Multimedia Information Centre is distributed to North area and South area that serves for both tourist and citizen. Its showroom at North displays objects. Its printable multimedia boards at South display digital information.

An underground walkway is rerouted to a new cave alike tunnel which connect directly to the sunken courtyard. By relocating its access staircases, it amplifies a ground level surface usage and reinforce the new sunken courtyard to function as a new urban courtyard.

The stratum of light winds down and encloses outside courtyard into inside a main hall of the bank. Along the way, the stratum alternates its function and material but it retains a continuity of light and shadow choreography on its surface throughout.

Visitors walk through the courtyard which is enclosed by the bank’s double glaze facade. The stratum wall gestures them to different areas such as Self-service area, Video banking area, Counter-service area, Consultation area, etc. The choreography of light and shadow on the wall response to their access point. They are complimented with high volume of terrain which A main chamber is an informal lounge area which is connected support chamber through private consultation corridor. They all share the same courtyard which is brighten by the sun and is vitalized by the people.

Project Team: Pruthiphon Buakaew, Titiwat Uboltham, Kasama Yingyodyeam Read the rest of this entry »

The DHL Relay is an annual event in Denmark involving over 200,000 runners competing in teams of 5 over 5km in the 3 main cities; Copenhagen, Århus and Odense. The event requires each team to provide their own shelter leading to a proliferation of white marquees and gazebos. However, for this year’s event in Århus the team at Søren Jensen consulting engineers decided to create their own design.

With only 2 weeks to complete the design and build we adopted a ‘guerrilla engineering’ approach to the project using simple details and substituting lengthy computational analysis for physical modeling.

The final design was a cable net structure suspended within a rectilinear glulam timber frame with 1mm thick polyethylene cladding. The cable net was formed using 4mm diameter stainless steel wires with wire clamps at the nodes and fork-end connectors and steel eye bolts at the interface with the timber frame. A model of the geometry was created using Grasshopper, the form finding was done in Kangaroo and the sub-division mesh in Weaverbird. Grasshopper and Rhino Nest were used to create the cutting patterns and nest the polyethylene cladding panels. Read the rest of this entry »

Airy is a lamp that uses laminated Japanese rice paper as a main material. Lamination on the surface makes the paper prone against tearing, tarnishing and fire-retardant. A simple slot-in assembly is required to complete the kit consisting of five- and six-sided panels with finely cut perforation pattern. This allows Airy to be shipped flat-packed to save on packing materials. The finely cut perforation pattern in each panel allows the end users to extrude each panel into a desired form.

Available in four sizes (small, medium, large, and medium sphere) and two styles (pendant and floor lamp), Airy kit also includes a laminated Japanese rice paper ceiling cap, shade holder, and socket.

While maintaining the characteristics of the rice paper that provides soft diffused light effect, geometrical pattern brings unique experience to the space when Airy is lit.

Airy Lamp Series exhibited at Milan Design Week at Ventura Lambrate (April 8 – 13, 2014 Milan) and 2014 Tokyo Designers Week (October 25 – November 3, 2014 Tokyo). Airy was also one of the winners of SHADE – International Lighting Design Competition (Canada) and received a Special Jury Award.

The products will be available at the online webstore at store.24d-studio.com. Read the rest of this entry »