[ours] Hyperlocalization of Architecture: Contemporary Sustainable Archetypes
ISBN 978-1938740084
Hardcover/ 264 full-color pages

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Hyperlocalization of Architecture

What lesson does the largest sustainable office building in the Southern Hemisphere, the smallest of houses in Tokyo, and an underground shopping mall in Mexico City share? They are in fact a perfect response to their conditions. They provide pronounced insights into the challenges and opportunities of contemporary environmental architecture throughout the world. An authentic architecture has emerged– from Melbourne’s kinetically charged buildings, Tokyo’s tiny homes, Cascadia’s large wood, Germany’s energy efficiency, Copenhagen’s bike culture, and Spain’s elegant day lit commercial buildings. These are new architecture archetypes which boldly anticipates the needs of the future by using place as the catalyst.

[ours] Hyperlocalization of Architecture 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.

Hyperlocalization is the synthesis of these conditions, challenging the conventions of what a building can be. Hyperlocal architecture captures concepts such as resilience, zero carbon, and regenerative, terms Michler calls aspirational architecture, and turns them into grounded and provocative fully realized forms.

[Japan Condenses] While micro home design is a fashionable subject and often given credit as a sustainable typology, the elements of building cost, services and transportation access, as well as temporal use and daylighting are just as critical for these homes to work as intended. In Japan the fusion of culture and inventiveness merge in manifestation of some of the most provocative small living spaces in the world, demonstrating how we can live better with less.

[Spain Wraps] Daylight is a core asset in larger scale Spanish architecture and has been mastered by the use of second skins, which both eliminate artificial light in the daytime but also allows the building to stay cool, dramatically reducing it need for energy. These buildings go well beyond beauty and function though by embedding a human value into what is often a difficult scale to design for.

[Australia Unfolds] Australia provides the most comprehensive group of environmental building designs. While striking in their distinctive and deep use of natural resources to provide quality living and working environments they also share a kinetic spirit. The design vocabulary is emulated in personal ways but these projects use the gesture of motion to engage with the place they are in.

Other chapters include [Germany Condenses] and the world’s first Passive House museum which is shortlisted final five for the Mies Van der Rohe award for 2015, [Cascadia Harvest] featuring the timber-framed Bullitt Center, considered the world’s most sustainable office building, [Mexico Embeds] where subsurface architecture is taking root, and [Denmark Plays] which embraces a culture of inventiveness epitomized by 8 Tallet in Copenhagen.

“The book ‘[ours] hyperlocalization of architecture’ can be seen as a contemporary experimental guide for the future designers and produces different approaches to ‘ordinary architecture’ with regional sources or materials. In this regard, defines a new way of producing through provocative rules and limitations, removing all ambiguity about sustainable architecture. ” – designboom

The book opens with conversations with visionaries including Edward Mazria’s analysis of the significant impact of buildings in climate change, Dr. Wolfgang Feist on the extraordinary low energy Passive house movement, and William McDonough on how to create a design ecosystem that not only solves many of the ills of building design but how we approach design as a healing agent. Featuring a forward by Lloyd Alter and a unique online index for each project directly accessible from the book via smartphone.

Projects by: studio505 | PHOOEY Architects | William Mcdonough + Partners | KUD Architects | Berta Barrio Arquitectos | Francis-Jones Morehen Thorp. | Unemori Architects | Andrew Maynard Architects | Edward Mazria | Peter Busby Perkins+Will | Sean Godsell | Canvas Arquitectos | DesignInc | Hassell Studios | Kavellaris Urban Design | Lederer + Ragnarsdottir + Oei | A.L.X. Architects | BIG | Yasuhiro Yamashita | Miller Hull | Schemata Architecture | KMD Architects | MPR Design Group | Schemata Architecture | Coll-Barreu Arquitectos | Voluar Arquitecture | Durbach Block Jagger | Ramón Fernández-Alonso Arquitect

“This is all based on human creativity, and the ability for us to advance and continuously improve with freedom from the remote tyranny of bad design. That’s why the cultural question becomes interesting because at that point the culture can express itself in a creative way. It still has integrity because you’re expressing yourself creatively within a context. Your solving for rich, local problems. All sustainability, like politics is local. It has to be.” – William McDonough in [ours]

About the Author

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 as a personal investigation in to the potential of hyperlocal design. His house is one of the most energy efficient buildings in the Americas.

Hyperlocalization of Architecture

Hyperlocalization of Architecture

Hyperlocalization of Architecture

Hyperlocalization of Architecture

Hyperlocalization of Architecture

Hyperlocalization of Architecture

Hyperlocalization of Architecture

MenoMenoPiu Architects proposal for the new House of Hungarian Music focuses on creating a landmark for the park whilst respecting its environment. In order to fulfill this, our proposition plans to conserve 95% of the existing trees selected by their health and age. The remaining 5%will be moved inside the non-constructible area near the Lakeside.

The structure will be formed by a series of parallel blades orientated perpendicularly to the new axis in order to allow permeability towards the lake. These structural elements will allow the trees to easily grow in between them.

The beams represented as blades will project themselves over the top of the smaller trees included in the site, whereas on the taller trees the blades will pass under them where the trunk will be the only part left apparent.

CREDITS: MenoMenoPiu Architects

PROJECT TEAM: Rocco Valantines, Mario Emanuele Salini, Alessandro Balducci, Giovanni Sandrini, Giampaolo Fondi, Pietro Bodria, Alexandra Baldwin, Paola Malinverni

RENDERINGS: +imgs Read the rest of this entry »

Architecture duo Micaela Colella and Maurizio Barberio designed Unboxed, a prefab wooden home that can be completely recycled. Unboxed is based on the typical Mediterranean house and represents a more sustainable alternative to masonry or frame structure buildings. The high standardization of the modules and their total prefabrication creates great flexibility. This goal is also achieved by splitting the building in several basic structural elements designed to be mounted with all the finishes and without thermal bridges. Thanks to an innovative foundation made of steel, which reduces or eliminates the need for excavation, the house is 100 percent recyclable and can be removed from the site. A low inclination roof allows for the installation of solar roof tiles capable of producing electricity and heat. The house also has a clear division between the living and the sleeping area with a glazed corridor/entrance in the middle that allows residents to re-establish contact with the surrounding environment (flow of time) during each passage. Read the rest of this entry »

Diatomic explores the agglomeration of cellular components within a self-supporting assembly. The project takes inspiration from the observation of single cell algae whose unique feature is that they are enclosed within a cell wall made of silica. These shells show a wide diversity in form, but are usually almost bilaterally symmetrical.

The wall is formed by two distinct components: the tetrahedral component which branches in three-directions and a larger cubical “cell” which branches in eight different directions. The single units were made by assembling flat sheet of plastic cut and bend into shape to form the component. This “cells” was then proliferated to form a hybrid internal partition which can be used as shelf unit as well as a space divider. The porous nature of its geometry provides a visual divide as well as offering opportunity to be used as small office storage.

The projects was developed together with a group of young Swedish designer and was exhibited at KTH School of Architecture.

Credits

Project Architect: Marco Vanucci
Project Team / Prototype: Jenny Ryderstedt, Lovisa Wallgren, Max Lindgren, Eira Jacobsson, Frida Körberg Thurhagen Read the rest of this entry »

The solid, rigid material has been the leading role in architecture industry for hundred years, but in this project this definition of architectural material has been changed. In this case, the soft, flexible rubber has been applied into the structure system, interior space and architectural organization. The rigid metal, concrete and glass play the roles as molds to shape the deformable rubber. This combination makes a brand-new relationship between these materials and come out becomes the new visuality of spaces and provides a new sensing experience for the users.

Based on the applications of materials and behaviors of structures, this project can be separated into two different systems: hanging and stacking. The hanging system is the application of elasticity of the rubber. In this case all the spaces were hung by the rubber cable and there is no major structure touches ground. In the stacking system, the rubber plays as the medium between different materials, be shaped by metal and glass, and formed the new hierarchy for the interiority and the exteriority.

Follow these two architectural systems, there are three portions serve as the based constructions: the entrance building, the west tower and the east building. The design of entrance building and west tower are based on the hanging system: all the chambers and exhibition platforms are hold by the rubber cable and be connected to the cantilever structure. On the systematic aspect, the interior decorations and the architectural constructions become one through this design action. The east building is part of the stacking system. The rubber is the connection between metal components and glass shells. This mixture of material makes distorted visuality and a soft sense of touching for the users: it’s a brand new property for the interior space.

In the end this project becomes the mixture of hyper-properties in different meanings. On the structure aspect, it shows the new relationship between materials. On the user experience aspect, it provides the new senses of touching for the visitors. Most importantly on the architectural aspect, it makes a new architectural language and compositional methods for architectural design.

Project Location: Sir. John Soane Museum, London, England.
Designer: Che-Kuang Chuang
Adviser: Hernan Diaz Alonso, Jose Carlos Lopez Cervantes
School: University of Applied Arts Vienna, Studio Excessive Read the rest of this entry »

X|Atelier is organizing four international intensive workshops of Advanced Architectural Design. The X|A Summer Workshops 2015 are led by X|A principals Erick Carcamo (SCI-ARC) and Nefeli Chatzimina (USC, NTUA), both Allumni Graduates of Columbia University in New York City.

X|A LA Workshop I is organized in Downtown Los Angeles. Selected Participants will attend the compu-tation design workshops, academic lectures, final reviews and exhibition of the final work. Daily meetings will take place from 10am to 6pm.

X|A Athens Workshops II&III are organized under the auspices of the Hellenic Institute of Architecture and the Athens School of Fine Arts. Selected Participants will attend the computation design work-shops, academic lectures, final reviews and exhibition at Benaki Museum of Athens from 30th of June -11th of July 2014 or from the 14th -25th of July 2014. Daily meetings will take place from 10am to 6pm at the Benaki Museum of Pireos 138 in Athens.

X|A Innsbruck Workshop IV  is organized in Austria.  Selected Participants will attend the computation design workshops, academic lectures, final reviews and exhibition of the final work. Daily meetings will take place from 10am to 6pm.

As part of an ongoing academic research, Our goal is to explore innovative, potential architectural expressions of the current discourse around Form through computational tools (Autodesk MAYA). We will focus on technique elaboration, material intelligence, formal logic efficiencies and precision assemblies as an ultimate condition of design. The workshop will develop and investigate the notion of proficient geometric variations at a level of complexity, so that questions towards geometrical effectiveness, accuracy and performance can begin to be understood in a contemporary setting. The workshop is a discourse based in the use of multi-layered techniques and production processes that allow for control over intelligent geometries, calibration of parts, and behavioral taxonomies, normalizing an innovative held of predictability.

X|Atelier was founded in 2007 by Erick Cárcamo and Nefeli Chatzimina ::X|A:: is an architectural practice based in the use of multi-layered experimental techniques and production processes networked in Europe, US and Latin America. Both hold a Master’s of Science in Advanced Architectural Design from Columbia University and have graduated from SCI_Arc and N.T.U.Athens respectively. Their teaching expertise extends to Sci-Arc, University of Southern California, Columbia University, Yale SOA, UPenn, Pratt Institute, University of Kentucky, Die Angewandte, N.T.U.Athens and LTH in Sweden.

APPLY HERE

The New Gastronomical Innovation Center, designed by Oscar Abrahamsson and Jacob Waas at SCI Arc, is a speculative proposal for the El Bulli Research Campus in Cala Montjoi, Catalonia that explores complex systems and baroque geometry as tools in creating an artificial rival to nature.

Our project addresses its relationship to the rural countryside left behind by urbanization and long excluded from the architectural discourse. Instead of trying to imitate or integrate the romantic notions of the “natural”, we are embracing the rapid and radical change of the European countryside – with the understanding that the countryside of today is without doubt man-made – not natural.

We are showcasing the artificiality by withdrawing from the surroundings and turning inward, to create a discrete an internalized world for El Bulli gastronomy. This internalized world is designed to enable El Bulli to not only to house its research and production but to also allow the research and production to affect the built environment.

Our system is derived from the Baroque geometry of Francesco Borromini that is employed at different intensities and scales throughout the building using different computational systems operating at mulitple scales. At the large scale, taking from the platonic geometry of San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane, a series of delaminated volumes are nested within an exterior envelope, sometimes tightly fit, and sometimes loosely fit; creating interstitial spaces that fit the programmatic function of this live-research-education facility. The interstitial space becomes a separation of the world and the interior. At certain points, the interior system breaks through and dissolves the envelope, exposing the intricate shapes of the internal volume. The separations of the different layers are never discrete, but they interweave with each other, always indexing each other in different ways.

The outcome is a building that is based on architectural relationships, but exhibits intricacies usually associated with systems found in nature, thus it creates a cross breed of (synthetically) organic complexity and architectural intention. This is an attempt of questioning the romantic notion of what is “natural” but also an attempt of incorporating the current technological tools that, at a root level, can manipulate geometries to achieve mulitiple intensities of detail.

The corruptive interior system, producing an eroding effect on the figure of architecture, creates cavities and niches that provide a surface for the cultivation required by the El Bulli research. By integrating and informing our systems with systems of organic matter, we want to obscure the relationship between a synthetic nature and the organic, between the living and the non-living.

Design: Oscar Abrahamsson, Jacob Waas.
Instructor: M. Casey Rehm. Read the rest of this entry »

The Clover House is a kindergarten that feels like home. Due to limited land area the owner of a local kindergarten decided to renovate his own family house transforming the original private nursery into a fully developed education institution. Clover House differentiates itself from traditional kindergartens by fully embracing its role as a shelter—a haven for education during the day and a home in the evening. The kindergarten’s homelike environment supports Clover House’s fully open teaching methodology, through which the children can build emotional bonds and trust among one another. During the day, children and teachers can eat, study, communicate, rest and play as if they were at a home. At night, the house reverts back to be the living space for the owner’s family and the school teachers.

The transformation started with an investigation of the existing 105 sqm two-story house. Like the surrounding houses, this wood structure building was first constructed as standard mass-production housing. After on-site surveys, MAD decided to reutilize the existing wood structure, incorporating it into the new building’s design. One of the signature repurposed elements is the pitched roof, which not only creates dynamic interior spaces, but also brings the owner’s memories of the building as his home into this residence and the starting point of the clover house.

The new house’s skin and structure wraps the old wood structure like a piece of cloth covering the building’s skeleton, creating a blurry space in between the new and the old. The original wood structure is present throughout the main learning area, integrating the history of the building with the educational lessons to tell the students Clover House’s traditions and stories. Its translucent and enclosed spaces easily adapt to different teaching activities. Sunlight sifts through the windows to create ever-changing shadows, chasing the students’ curiosity and innocent imaginations. Read the rest of this entry »

The challenge of this project designed by Zelig Fok at the Savannah College of Art and Design was to design a boutique and showroom for the Japanese fashion label Comme des Garçons in Tokyo’s Aoyama shopping district. Architecture and fashion share a dedication to experimental design as well as the ability to question customary enclosure/dress, prescribed aesthetics, and notion of beauty. Collections by the fashion designer were studied, particularly where padded figures were stuffed beneath or sewn into the lining of garments.

This project creates architectural enclosure that fluctuates between 2D flat and 3D massing effects. The interior objects are soft bubbles aggregated into a tense constellation. The outer object has harder edges and addresses the site boundaries. This formal morphology acts to deny the simultaneity between the container and the contained. Similarly, figural cuts, creases, and tattoos work against this surface geometry. Competing surface logics and hybrid articulation confound the boundaries between interior and exterior as the building enclosure modulates between thin surface and thick poché. This strategy challenges architecture’s traditional hierarchies of enclosure and internal subdivision of space. Read the rest of this entry »

Editor’s Choice
2015 Skyscraper Competition

Davide Coluzzi
Italy

Prologue

On Earth, aridity has always been a problem … Latest scientific research shows that our planet is constantly getting hotter which causes significant changes perceptible for everyone. The equatorial region’ s population is already living with scarce resources of water and due to global warming, aridity will even increase in the future

Controlling the Climate

United by the aim to preserve territories and resources, humanity should respond as community to the problem of rising aridity. Some companies have dedicated years of scientific research on working out how to govern the climate. In early 2000, finally, their work concluded with positive results in the matter of controlling the climate. In their experiments, scientist used various methods to control rainfall, one of the oldest basing on chemtrails spread by airplanes, before turning to a solution with “apparently” less impact on the global system: ionization.

Few companies are touting their ability to create rain from clouds that would normally produce none. To make this process, still barely understood by the scientific community, become proven science, ionization devices are being field-tested around the globe. Most people are unaware that weather modification by cloud seeding has gone on for years, and even less are aware of this new technology.

WeatherTec cloud ionizers were used in Abu Dhabi for precipitation enhancement, with Claimed results of making it rain over 50 times when forecasters expected no rain. Their system employs radio frequency antennas to emit negatively charged ions which statically charge clouds, increasing water drop size, causing precipitation. Another, easier way to put it is the antennas create statically charged dust particles in the cloud that attract water vapor, forming droplets that fall to the ground

Based on the ILAP Technology (Influence on the Local Atmospheric Processes), Clear Sky Manager TM has been developed by Advanced Synoptic Technologies Ltd (AST) for managing, at a local atmospheric level, humidity density in the sky in order to pursue a a wide range of possible objectives: create precipitation, avoid or create snow, disperse fog and smog or, generally speaking, conduct any type of atmospheric action that may improve living conditions at ground level.

Most of these studies are only at the theoretical level, the evidence of the operation are uncertain, the research continues.

Clearly there is a serious danger related to the possibility of making military use of climate control, which is why many researches are secret. I sincerely hope that the use of such powerful technologies will be to the benefit of all humanity and not turn against it.

The project

Breeding clouds is a vision of a possible future in which mankind has managed to use its wits to solve serious problems such as climate change and aridity.

To interpret vertical building in a world in danger means to create small vertical ecosystems. The Breeding Clouds towers are rain generators. The lower part of the tower consists of ionizers that collect and electrify dust particles from the ground. Negatively charged ions tend to rise to the warmer air. Each tower has the ability to capture within a giant glass case the ionized particles. Inside the condensation chamber they are kept in continuous circular motion in order to condense the charged particles with the right humidity: in this way a cloud is generated. The fully charged cloud will create rain, which is collected along the stem of the tower and will be used to irrigate the levels of the tower and the surrounding soil. Large amounts of rain concentrated in a small point may change the way to cultivate plants. The tower is a large vertical greenhouse to collect botanical species that usually could not exist in an arid climate. Developing these towers in desert areas means generating artificial oases. The power supply of this futuristic building is autonomous, using the kinetic energy of the water itself and solar energy captured on the outer shell of the cloud generating condensation-chamber.

The project is clearly utopian but it wants to point out that new technologies and climate research can used in an alternative way than to terrorize or defeat others: to finally comfort and give a better life to those in distress. Read the rest of this entry »