Situated along a wetland in Yellow River, the Yinchuan Art Center by We Architech Anonymous is derived from its modern geology, preserving its cultural identity and symbol as ‘the cradle of Chinese civilization.’ The center will be constructed in a new eco city in Yinchuan, Ningxia and be the central focus in a pedestrian friendly, parkland city center.

With an estimated population of 500,000 inhabitants, its proximity to a frequently flooding Yellow River is crucial to shaping the architecture of new settlements. In the past millenia, studies have shown the river’s violent character and ever changing location, depositing large sediment and debris over various locations around the city. A study on Yinchuan’s geomorphology led to understanding the relationship between water erosion and mountain formation in the area, known as pressure release. Large volumes of rock cause rocks beneath and below the surface to expand, fracture, and are carried along the surface, causing a natural phenomenon called “unloading.” Rocks above the surface often hold high pressure beneath them due to its heaviness, releasing pressure slowly, allowing for underlying rock to push towards the surface. Read the rest of this entry »

The Crystal is built as an extension of the existing Nykredit premises in Copenhagen, Denmark. Designed by Schmidt Hammer Lassen Architects, it is a transparent, crystalline structure that floats above the adjacent plaza. The multi-faceted glass façade is highly reflective and features a system that allows the building to adapt to changing light conditions. The building references much of the surrounding architecture. The passage under the building provides a clear view towards Nykredit’s head office building, called the Glass Cube, and the harbor.

The interior of the building is constrained by the demands of functionality, flexibility and efficiency. The typical floor plan is disposed in a Z-shape around two atria, which ensures that all workstations are well lit and enjoy a view. The disposition of the plan allows the accommodation of open plan, separate offices or meeting rooms. The building is primarily supported by a rhombic construction system placed immediately inside the façade. The system functions both as an architectural element while also allowing the building to dispense with pillars. Read the rest of this entry »

The new Surrey City Centre Library is part of a major civic investment aiming to transform the downtown Surrey into an attractive commercial area. Designed by Bing Thom Architects, the library is currently under construction with its opening scheduled for September 2012.  The project was funded as part of Canada’s Federal Infrastructure program, but the firm decided to use social media to circumvent the standard (and lengthy) community consultation process. The architects developed a social media strategy using blogs, Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr to speed things up. BTA worked with Surrey librarians to create a blog on the library website which, in turn, was linked to a Flickr site where BTA posted photos of libraries and other spaces the firm liked. Members of the community were encouraged to post comments and photos. Read the rest of this entry »

Phoenix, Arizona-based Blank Studio’s proposal, ‘House in Shadow,’ takes a contemporary approach to the single-family residence set in the countryside. This home, which is located amid pastoral scenes in the rugged mountains around Phoenix, is designed to optimize passive cooling and ventilation. Through the use of a modified brise-soleil and central walkway, the home is able to provide both solar shading and attractive breezeways. The home, whose contents are divided into two simple blocks, are connected by a large, expansive, and gestural roof. This room, whose profile resembles a wave, spans the entire footprint of the house, encompassing both volumes, as well as the central breezeway, in one fell swoop. The peaks in each of the three arched forms that make up the roof dissipate and soften sunlight as it travels through the space, creating both a natural place for hot air to rise to, as well as a soft glow that contrasts with the often harsh beams of light located just outside the exterior walls. These walls themselves are carved with curved formations that reveal the interior of the building to the outside, as well as let light into the structure. Read the rest of this entry »

Made from environmentally friendly post-formable plywood, for the 2011-12 Hong Kong & Shenzhen Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism/Architecture, the Dragon Skin Pavilion marries the most up-to-date fabrication technologies with local industries of Hong Kong. The first version of the structure was designed and built at the Tampere University of Technology by students in the autumn of 2011. The pavilion was built in 8 days. An international team of material and structural engineers have built the second version For the Hong Kong Biennale.

The Dragon Skin Pavilion was carefully designed to maintain balance between the regular, repetitive framework of the rectangular panels and their gradually irregular interconnections as they configure the overall shape. It comprised 163 plywood components manufactured in Finland at TUT and shipped to Hong Kong. The components were the result of a complex process involving the latest techniques in digital fabrication. A CNC-router was used to make a wooden mould in which pre-heated flat rectangular pieces were bent into shape. A computer programmed 3D master model generated the cutting files for those pieces in a file-to-factory process: algorithmic procedures were scripted to give every rectangular component their precisely calculated slots for the sliding joints, all in gradually shifting positions and angles to give the final assembled pavilion its curved form. A meticulously pre-choreographed montage sequence required all components to be uniquely labelled and numbered for assembling or dismantling the structure. Read the rest of this entry »

Only hours to go before eVolo’s Kickstarter campaign for the book [ours] Hyper Localization of Sustainable Architecture comes to an end. Discover your inner parametric architect. At the $44 and $88 reward level we are offering the playful and mindful handcrafted zenblock, a building block that requires a special touch to be stacked or balanced. Custom made for this Kickstarter campaign the blocks are made with birch and non-VOC painted on a single facet with eVolo Magazine colors and finished with a non toxic oil finish. The wood is reclaimed from a window manufacturer and each unique piece is handcrafted.

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-> [ours] Hyper Localization of Sustainable Architecture on Kickstarter

The BMW Group Pavilion is inspired by Victorian bandstands, applied in relation to the building’s natural surroundings. Designed by Serie Architects, the building is a place of spectacle, presenting the BMW brand and services. Located on the Waterworks River in the Olympic Park, the pavilion achieved its distinctive appearance by re-imagining the classic podium. It is light and seems to be floating above the water. Its animated façade, with water streaming down around the ground floor, creates an exciting visual effect. The first floor that forms the plinth is covered with water; this water spills down on all four sides of the pavilion entirely covering the ground floor.

One of the pavilion’s functions is to display BMW’s new fleet of electric and hybrid vehicles. These vehicles use carbon fiber bodywork with fluid soft curves. The geometry of the pavilion roofs manifests a similar calm and rationale attitude to geometry through the use of off-phase sinusoidal curves set out in symmetrical arrangement. The building thus communicates as sense of fluid dynamism without imitating the product.

The pavilion is in fact a cluster of smaller pavilions. Huddled together, the group of spaces is planned to be dispersed to other locations after the Olympic Games and serving as constant reminders of the Games held in London.

Designed by students at the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia IAAC, the Endessa Pavilion is part of the Smart City Expo in Barcelona, Spain. The aim of the project is exploring the possiblities of distributed intelligence concept. The building is conceived as an adaptive system that responds to environmental influences. The skin is constructed as a network of intelligent nodes that position themselves according to solar radiation. Read the rest of this entry »

Panama City’s Museum of Biodiversity, also known as Biomuseo, is designed by American architect Frank Gehry. In attempt to recapture the energy and urban impact of his Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Gehry was commissioned to design an iconic urban structure for this burgeoning Central American capital city. The building in question, like Bilbao’s, is meant to act as a distinctive jewel in the city’s skyline, an emblematic structure that both houses and acts as art. As its name implies, the museum is meant to catalog the tropical region’s biodiversity, and contains within its walls, a series of rainforest-like gardens and climate controlled-biospheres that were designed by Bruce Mau Design, who helped to articulate the museum’s interior spaces, visitor experience, and the manner in which visitors learn while attending the museum. Read the rest of this entry »

London-based Illustrator and sculptor Arran Gregory’s latest line of creations take the notion of faceted surface and apply that concept to the form of wild animals. In this case, for his exhibition titled ‘Wolf,’ Gregory has sculpted a wolf out of acrylic resin and mineral stone and applied cut, faceted mirrors to every surface along its body. The resulting work is striking, yielding a dramatic form that reflects both light and image.The difficulty of translating the supple, organic lines of a living creature’s body into geometric lines and cut glass only furthers the impact of this aesthetic statement. Gregory often works in natural forms like these, typically employing all manner of fauna in his body of work. In the past, he has sculpted greyhounds, bears, deer, and a rhinoceros. His subjects portray a naturalism of form that is obscured and abstracted through material, sometimes via the faceted glass method, other times left unadorned, showing only the stark white of the cast resin and stone.

This work represents a formalized approach to naturalistic form that uses material and color to interpret and abstract that naturalistic form towards artistic ends. The artist utilizes line and plane to render complex form.