Two residential towers in Seoul, Korea, designed by MVRDV, are connected in the centre by a pixilated cloud of additional program offering amenities and outside spaces with wide views. Positioned at the entrance of Libeskind’s Yongsan Dreamhub master plan project, the adjoined structures represent pixilated volumes with their rigid compactness disrupted at the connecting point. With a total surface of 128,000m2, the towers are expected to be completed in 2015.

Two structures are linked at the 27th floor with a volume spanning ten floors, evoking the image of a geometric cloud. The cloud comprises residential and commercial functions, along with the sky lounge, a wellness center, conference hall, fitness studio, pools, restaurants and cafes.  The square floor plans contain four corner apartments per floor. All spaces are rich with daylight and are well ventilated. Except for the grand lobby, used for accessing both towers, the rest of the ground level floor is divided into town houses. Read the rest of this entry »

This piece of public art was chosen as the winning proposal among three finalists for the new transit center being built in North Redondo this year. Located at the entry plaza location at Kingsdale Avenue, designed by Marc Fornes/THEVERYMANY in cooperation with Volkan Alkanoglu, the project is a piece of urban furniture, announcing the city of Redondo Beach to arriving visitors.

“Gate Wave” is designed to serve as a communication device, allowing the public to interact and engage with the variety of moiré effects within the colorful pattern and ephemeral qualities of light and shadows.  The design is 13.5 feet at its highest and almost 50 feet wide at its base. It will be constructed using concrete footings, a timber frame structure, and anodized aluminum in four total layers, with cyan and lime colorations on the interior aluminum and white on the outside. Read the rest of this entry »

As one of three shortlisted proposals for the St. Petersburg Pier International Design Competition, the Wave tries to connect the water and the city of Petersburg by emphasizing the possibility of achieving unity through physical contact. Its undulating form creates a narrative that merges the pier structure with the entire bay area. BIG’s project is divided into three parts: Tributary Park, Wave Walk and the Wave. The first phase of construction will include The Wave and Wave Walk. Tributary Park will be realized in the second phase. Read the rest of this entry »

Architects at Manuel Ocaña Architecture and Thought Production Office were asked to design a rather unusual spatial concept, one that would ensure the survival of 20 families and thousands of books for three years after the 2012 Apocalypse. The design was commissioned and promoted by a Belgian foundation and would be located at a mountain slope in Sierra Nevada, Spain. It is conceived as a “culture ark”, after a suddenly precipitated climate change with tsunamis, earthquakes, and a global chain of disasters, nuclear or otherwise.

The initial idea for the project was to use a more organic approach of atomization and circulation strategies. Several dome-shaped areas are interconnected and manifest the underground configuration of the system upon the landscape. In the light of ever-rising number of religious beliefs and, as the architects put it, “the “scientificisim” religious looking for immortality”, the project can also function as an Apocalyptic Resort. Read the rest of this entry »

Winning the Hong Kong Alternative Car Park Tower Competition, the proposal attempts to integrate the Hong Kong City hall, the second-floor pedestrian system and the streets on the second floor. It provides a network of public spaces with atriums and multifunctional areas placed at the top floor, along with great views of the Victoria Harbor and Kowloon. Designed by Mozhao Studio, the Car Park Tower is a public building, transforming the typical parking facility into an urban landmark. Read the rest of this entry »

The building is located in a densely populated residential part of Mumbai, with hight desity ranging from 7 to 15 stories. This height regulation governs the development of the entire neighborhood, including the school site. In order to create privacy in the school spaces and make the building more efficient, designers at Sanjay Puri Architects introduced a second skin of hexagonal modules encompassing the entire building. The modules have small openings on the southern side to reduce heat gain into the building while providing cross ventilation since the sun during most of the year is on the southern side in this location while southwest breeze blows throughout the year. Towards the northern side, with indirect sunlight, the hexagons are like truncated pipes moving in and out and creating additional usable spaces for sitting, playing or reading as extensions to the open spaces on each floor. Read the rest of this entry »

Conceived as a forerunner of Ukraine’s development of sustainable means of communication, the project uses principles of biomechanics in linking form with function. Designed by KO+KO Architects, the Center for Development of Innovative Transportation Technologies comprises an entire network of factories, technologies and spaces. It uses principles of biomimicry in a strategic way, as well as aesthetically. The building is a living organism, with its mechanics, structural configuration and visual appearance. A particularly important issue for the architects was establishing a state between chaos and order, whole and fragments, organic and industrial imagery. Read the rest of this entry »

Supported by the Curacao authorities nad their entrepreneurs, the project for a major touristic attractor was designed by Rotterdam-based ONL Studio. It is supposed to host the future operator for Galactic Travels and offer a venue for international scientific space ressearch. The landmark building will be built as a spaceship, applying maritime and aviation techniques on the building body.

The shape and material of the building evoke the power of rocket engines, along with lightness of the Spaceship glider swirling down to Earth. The visitor experience is articulated so it resembles the one of astronauts, making the 100 km trip into outer space. The public trajectory leads downwards, swirling down like the Spaceship glider does. The levels grow bigger each step, relating the Experience of space travels to always larger environmental and universal subjects: from the International Space Station to Spaceship II, from the Earth’s atmosphere and global climate change to the expanding Universe, and finally down to themes related to the deep sea space. Read the rest of this entry »

An ornate structural system suspending a patch of greenery high above the ground can serve as a concise explanation of the winning concept for the Taiwan Tower Competition for Taichung City. The structure will frame the semi-outdoor interior space and create an elevated urban retreat by providing a green rooftop island for the city inhabitants. Designed by Sou Fujimoto Architects, the tower is a symbolic landmark with strong sculptural rhetorics. Visible from many points throughout the city, the building reintroduces the beauty of nature into the urban fabric. Read the rest of this entry »

VoltaDom is an installation created for MIT’s 150^th Anniversary Celebration and FAST Arts Festival. It populates the passageway between Buildings 56 and 66 on MIT’s campus. Designed by a multidisciplinary research based practice SJET, founded by Skylar Tibbits in 2007, the project is one of the firm’s recent experiments in computational design. The project revisits a historically paramount structural element-the vault, attempting to find its contemporary equivalent through various assembly and fabrication techniques. This reference allows one to appreciate the installation both as a sculpture and a research in materiality and digital fabrication. Read the rest of this entry »