Loop_3 is a project conceived and realized by Loop_3 design team, a group of students form Architectural Design 3 course at the Faculty of Engineering, Università di Bologna, for an installation on invitation by the 1st Architectural Biennale of Thessaloniki – “Architecture and the City in South-Eastern Europe”.

Loop_3 is a self-standing installation that uses mathematical trigonometric functions (explored through parametric design software) as a mean of aesthetic device, exploring a use of rationality in complex shapes that merges user spatial interaction, curvature as a structural and expressive strategy (the voluptuous ripples also strengthen the overall shape) and form as a sorting device to deploy functions (carrying 3D models, showing pictures from various projects as well as a pad to interactively explore design strategies).

Architects use mathematics as a privileged tool for tracing systematic paths as well as enhancing their expressive language, as it provides an underlying layer for the description of reality’s inner complexity in terms of computation as well as the tools to enhance and intensify research and expression, elegantly and seamlessly linking science, art, economy, philosophy and other disciplines, merging them into force fields of a unified yet topographically differentiated territory. Architects use mathematics as a privileged tool for tracing systematic paths as well as enhancing their expressive language. Read the rest of this entry »

Jeffrey Lee, Rui Liu, and Tina Qiu are authors of Vertical Central Park. As they state, Manhattan is filled with skyscrapers and the only significant green area on the island is Central Park, situated in the heart of the city. Almost two million people live on the island with an area of 23 square miles–that is about 70,000 people per square mile. It’s no wonder then that new commercial and residential construction has looked skyward instead of building horizontally.

The example of Central Park is crucial for Manhattan planning, as an attempt to conserve outdoor greenery. The authors of Vertical Central Park elevated the existing one, altogether with its grid, road penetrations, programs and features, and rotated it 90 degrees so it became the section for the future intervention of the skyscraper. At the point where skyscrapers require an atrium void, they inserted a green one. Mimicking the insertion of Central Park within its rectangular city grid, the central atrium of the skyscraper becomes the park area, whilst its adjacent access routes become the slab set for the high-rise. Read the rest of this entry »

The Haikou Towers by Henn Architects are designed to become the heart of the new Central Business District of Haikou, the capital city of Hainan. The master plan comprises an ensemble of 10 towers ranging from 150 to 450m height with an overall building area of 1.5 million square meters. The proposal’s centerpiece is the 450metre high middle tower. Form and structure have been directly influenced by the program requirements and the drive for a highly efficient structural scheme. The occupant’s needs for large and flexible office spaces on the lower floors and an unobstructed view from the hotel rooms on the upper levels have led to a shift of the cross-bracing system at the boundary between the two functions.

The shift in systems occurs at the hotel lobby area in the form of a large outrigger truss. This truss is purposefully exposed and integrated into the architecture to articulate a multistory high atrium on the upper floors and to provide a clear distinction between functions and structural systems. Read the rest of this entry »

The Showroom for Nanotechnology is part of HENN’s Nanopolis Masterplan in Suzhou, China. Visitors and employees to the Technology Park can explore the different areas of application of nanotechnology over 1300 m² of exhibition space. Standing on a central square and characterized by its dynamic shape, the pavilion creates an intentional contrast to the otherwise strongly right-angled articulation and design of the surrounding architecture.

The layout of the curved building follows the classical inner courtyard typology and its form makes reference to the interplay of three ellipses. The largest ellipse defines the external size of the building, the smallest, the inner courtyard and the middle, the roof edge. At the lowest point, the pronounced slope of the annular allows a second access across the inner courtyard and opens the building to the forecourt opposite and the city. At the same time, the building rises from this point and terminates in the glass facade, which extends over the full height of the building and faces toward the water-scape. Read the rest of this entry »

Code [9] is situated within Patrik Schumacher’s agenda for a Semiological Campus. ­Due to that fact, the architecture is seen as a frame to order and adapt society, while pursuing architectural distinctions and differentiation to have cognitive intelligibility embedded within the proposal.

Designed by George Kontalonis, Jared Ramsdell, Nassim Eshaghi and Rana Zureikat, Code [9] is therefore challenging the traditional campus typology that exists today, by taking a good look into education, society, environment and networks. Designed for New York, the project deals with a proto-campus that is not site specific but context specific and it is dealing with urban sites that have embedded culture and activities, relationship on the micro and macro level, social behavior and architectural typology. The design proposes a deploy-able system that can reconfigure into any environment and function as a flexible and interconnected campus. The synthesis is a new definition of a campus, one that is set within today’s environment and society. Read the rest of this entry »

Commercial Office Towers for Zhengzhou, China, is one of the most recent projects by Asymptote Architecture. These two towers aim to have a powerful presence and stature in the overall master plan as envisioned by Arata Isosaki and his planning team. The design for two new commercial office towers, for a new central business district Longhu in China, draw inspiration from a variety of historic Chinese architectural references and the rich tradition of ceramic art in the region.  The main design features for both these towers consist of cylindrical towers placed within circular plinths that in turn provide each tower with large interior atriums and foyers. These large volumes spaces are highly accessible to the public and serve both as entryways as well as multi-use commercial space.

From these central spaces the main core elements in each tower extend upwards into a cruciform cantilevered office component. These suspended office spaces house new trading floors and other high volume programs high above and open void below while located at the base of the cylindrical towers above. Read the rest of this entry »

GRAFT, German office for architecture is eager to explore territories of design offered by a new awareness of and open-mindednes to sustainable design, converting energy-saving requirements into poetic design solutions which are not only environmentally friendly and efficient, but provide a new interpretation of the spaces we live in.

This structure in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia – a Birds Island – along these lines, presents a cost-saving response to warm climate habitation. Its living quarters provide an expansive shaded and ventilated outdoor living deck, while living space is primarily concentrated in a cooler interior core. A surrounding silicon glass skin structure provides a multi-functional translucent shell which casts subtle shadows and allows changing view patterns, hence freeing the space from the bonds of traditional walls. Curtains serve to enclose living spaces, therefore creating privacy.

This strategy is geared to cut waste and eliminate redundant energy systems. The optimized building skin doubles as a frame while implementing rainwater and solar heat collection systems, acting as wind flow conductor and distributing rainwater. Read the rest of this entry »

Budapest’s got an icon – architectural statement in Vaci Street, in the very center of the city. Asymptote’s design for the new HQ for the Budapest Bank consists of two interconnected towers along the Danube River. These subtly twisting and tapering towers rise out of the site to further revealing a shifting juxtaposition of solid and void that varies depending on one’s angle of view. As the geometry shifts and turns the buildings effectively address both the Danube River and the historic center of Budapest simultaneously.

The form is vivid and the whole movement is wrapped in glass – the building’s transparency is achieved through the use of curtain wall glazing – often used in contemporary architecture for the achievement of balance between natural light, visible connections, metaphoric transparency and more trust-based connections with society. The overall massing of the Budapest Bank is the result of an innovative structural strategy and creative optimization of zoning requirements for light and air. At the entrance level, the base of the towers artfully negotiates and accommodates the asymmetrical site enclosing a new public space within a spectacular atrium. Read the rest of this entry »

Hybios: Hybrid BIOStructures is thesis project by Rizad Joucka and Jack Chandy Francis, and it explores the fluidity of concrete as a material, coupled with the flexible workability of its forming process, as it has lead to innovation in the architectural discourse throughout history. The model typology for this research was a cultural center and the aim of this thesis is to go beyond current practices of using concrete in the built environment, in order to enable the construction of complex geometries analogues to the coherence of structures found in the nature. State of the art materials related to concrete construction, and cutting edge computer simulations are used in the research, which created a constant feedback loop between qualitative analogue prototypes and information-rich computer models.

The program of a Cultural Center was envisioned within the computational algorithm, which simulates the building form based on material qualities, forces and environmental conditions. Program and circulation are seen as main input parameters for the generation process. Design decisions that are based on pragmatic logic have been the result of the building process, working in a bottom-up form generation process. Read the rest of this entry »

Dublin-based practice Heneghan Peng Architects has recently won an international competition to design a new National Center for Contemporary Arts (NCCA) in Moscow, Russia. Their proposal was chosen from the three finalists and it offers vertically stacked exhibition spaces resembling flexible trays varying in size and height, in order to maximize accessibility while visually connecting the activities to the surrounding landscape.

The building is designed to host large-scale permanent and temporary exhibitions, lectures, professional conferences, concerts and performances, studios, art education facilities and many more. Multitude of possible routes is designed to facilitate a multitude of visitors, from browsers to specialists. A multi-level foyer allows the design to negotiate the various site and service challenges while responding to the possibilities offered by the park.

The verticality of the concept is dominant – the building is rising above Aviapark in Khodynskoe Pole. It concentrates the activities on the ground in order to further create intensity at a single point in the vast space. Given the scale and relative sparseness of activities in the area, the aim is to concentrate the flow of people to generate an excitement and energy which can then expand into other areas as the park develops. Read the rest of this entry »