The skin of the Abra is an adaptive response solution for an outdoor music pavilion allowing for optimal sun penetration, natural ventilation, and acoustics. The pavilion serves as a temporary summer installation for music festivals in the city of Chicago.

Depending on the pavilion’s location in relation to the sun, certain panels will decrease their opening to allow ambient filtered light, while others maintain a full flexed position for natural ventilation. Thin film photovoltaics are added to the skin to absorb ambient sunlight allowing for omni directional solar gain as they wrap around the shell of the pavilion. The angular projections from the openings reflect the music from the ceiling and walls allowing for the sound waves to reach the ear and become embellished. Due to the lightweight construction, the pavilion is easily movable from location to location which is why it’s adaptation to different orientations is so necessary.

Design: Tashio Martinez Read the rest of this entry »

This bespoke living space is designed in a private residence located in Delhi-NCR, India. The brief was to transform the existing space into an interactive dynamic space that would be used as a family lounge as well as for guests.

The design proposal looks at analyzing the movement patterns and thereby designing two islands in the space. Geometrically they are carved out of each other, maintaining the design coherence. One island focuses on seating and the other one focuses on creating a wall paneling system that extends and integrates into the sitting as well.

Feature wall inculcates the design language of the room. Free flowing curves have been used which transform from shelving systems to seating to a wall pattern and also encases LED lights to give a soft mood lighting to the space.

The sofas, tables, wall systems were designed as bespoke elements specifically for this space and to create a unique compact design not governed by existing modular sizes available. The carpet was also custom made.

Complete Sustainability was achieved due to the chosen design principles of low-impact materials, energy efficiency and renewability of the materials. Materials were used that were locally available The production and choice of materials was governed by this principal and it was ensured that material available within 5 km distance were used to cut down the transportation distance. Also the production process took place on site itself using energy efficient processes.

Use of locally available materials and techniques ensured in keeping the cost of project economical. The local craftsmen and the basic tools that were used was kept in consideration during the construction drawing phase. Wooden ribs were designed for the sofas to create the framework for them which was filled in with foam and finished by hand stitched upholstery.

The color scheme of the room has been kept as white and gold. A play of textures is evident in the space in these two colors itself.

Architects: Studio Symbiosis
Principal Architect’s: Amit Gupta and Britta Knobel Gupta
Project Team: M. Shaique Uddin, Rishi Sapra, Mayank Ojha Read the rest of this entry »

The proposed house designed by Constantinos Kalisperas Architectural Studio is situated in the outer suburbs of Nicosia surrounded by the endless tranquility of the majestic agricultural terrains.

Inspired by the existing topography of the area, form and landscape interweave into one hybrid structure, allowing for multi-layered program, views and landscape to co-exist harmoniously.

The proposal was perceived, taking into consideration the traditional local architecture of having an internal courtyard (iliakos) as the main core of the building, so as to allow the surrounding program to interact fluently within its boundaries.

Using openings (iliakous) as a tool for unifying spatial and programmatic qualities within the building’s essence, the proposal allows natural sunlight to gently penetrate and gradually evolve as a controlled environment, a “secret garden”, within and below the dynamically suspended envelope, floating above ground level.

The dynamic form of the house projecting from the ground towards the sky achieves additional spatial and programmatic organization, revealing its programmatic qualities into the surrounding topography and beyond. The tectonic plate of the volume above provides “shelter” to the courtyard below.

The courtyard becomes a transitional zone between living and resting areas. The living areas allow the external garden to interact, “dissolving” the internal and external, public and private boundaries. The bedroom area suspended from above allowing constant natural air flow and multiple views towards the pool area and beyond.

Small openings, like progressive “urban noise” throughout the external envelope of the proposal, become “devices” for filtering light within the sheltered spaces at different timeframes. Carefully placed, each opening allows both users and externals to frame views of the scenery, and vice-versa, like a “collective camera”.

Throughout its dynamic presence the formal and programmatic morphology of the proposal inspires a subtle “contrast” to the poetic wilderness of the endless urban terrain and its golden fields. Read the rest of this entry »

The existing circular silo structure emerging form a pond triggers the idea of a water garden inhabited by aquatic plants. Circular as lotus leaves, four volumes are stacked up within the silo; circular isles and green areas define the external spaces.

As in a natural pond where reeds emerge form the shallow water, the emerging volumes are shaded with an uneven screen of bamboo trunks. The iconic existing silo structure is respected and left stand alone, its main inner space acting as a common public square.

The new volumes and the two existing brick buildings accommodate the spaces for an ideas factory, an unconventional place where people can work and create, share their ideas and meditate. Inspired by nature and led by design, the new si.lotus garden factory poetically inhabits the place.

Design: Pelizzi Architettura Read the rest of this entry »

Inspired by lace, Dense Atmosphere, explores the possibility of creating complex atmosphere using a basic construction material – lumber. The structure utilizes lace like densities to both block and reveal activities in the building promoting religious understanding.

Designed in response to the scale of the construction material, the structure is based of a grid defined by the structural capabilities of the material. Using a 2×4 as a proposed material, the grid becomes constrained to a maximum of 6’ by 6’ based on the member’s span distance as a beam. This results in a dense flat grid that is extruded to the maximum possible height of the member acting as a column: 16’. The column elements are slanted to affect visitors at the scale of an individual. Movement becomes more restrained thus the visitor of the building is slowed down and encouraged to experience wandering rather than rushing. In order to connect the visitor with the building, the grid houses stacks of books. These are observed by the visitor as he experiences the building. As the individual continues to explore the building, he begins to discover larger spaces. These are freed from the density of the angled columns. Even though these spaces are more open than the rest of the building, they still feel enclosed as result of the aggregations formed around them. These voids provide a sense of serenity that is used for meditation.

Design: Mircea Eni at the Illinois Institute of Technology Read the rest of this entry »

Designed by UK’s Metropolitan Office of Innovation (MOI), Shanghai Office, YOHO City is a new architectural landmark for the Jiangsu’s ‘forgotten’ city of Sui Ning, China. The development is a playful and efficient sustainable mixed-use that is designed to balance modern needs together with traditional Chinese historical culture and spatial identity.

Sui Ning will become a new major gateway that connects other cities around the area to Anhui and Xuzhou and further onto Suzhou, Nanjing and Shanghai. Taking inspiration from the Province’s historically famous silk weaving, the building layout and master plan creates streets, boulevards, plazas and squares by ‘stitching up’ the broken city fabric that currently separates the site’s surrounding and rest of the city, creating a new vibrant commercial hub that regenerates the area.

The single tower, acts as a beacon, fans out and is wider on the west and east side to capture the river view and natural wind breeze to the south creating a more comfortable environment for the hotel guests and serviced apartment residents on the upper levels. The SoHo offices on the lower floors have outdoor terrace access with views to the courtyard and commercial plazas with direct access to the riverfront via a pedestrian bridge linked at the 4th floor helping to activate and create a new water promenade for the city.

This unique 140,000 sqm development (excluding underground and parking), is designed to kick-start this forgotten region of the Jiangsu Provence and incorporates traditional Chinese cultural element such a courtyards and shaded walkways in providing a sustainable and inspiring place for people for all seasons of the Jiangsu weather whilst garden terraces at all levels and bridging to the river’s edge create a harmonious connection between the built and natural environment. Read the rest of this entry »

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