“Emergent City” is Joseph A. Sarafian’s 5th year Thesis project at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.

“By the turn of the Twenty-Second century, a new epoch in global survival had emerged. The human race was no longer concerned with sustainability as a trend, because it could no longer deny the fact that the world was in fact dying. The environmental catastrophes that surfaced in the Twenty-First century became increasingly frequent. Barraged with hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, and tsunamis, mankind was at the brink of extinction. Read the rest of this entry »

Proposal by Sanzpont Arquitectura for the Changing The Face Competition. This project goes beyond the reconstruction of the facade of the building, and aims to promote Russian cultural life from the inside out. While the interior is used as a cinema, the exterior becomes the cultural landmark of the city being used as an Urban Stage for everyone. The outdoor stage is designed to host performances and public events, including theater, film and fashion shows, sculpture, sound and light art, dance, video and music. Lateral facades are designed unfolding the roof of the building from top to bottom, creating urban stairs to reach the top, plus 2 exterior elevators that allow people to access the roof using it as an urban balcony and a figure skating rink. The LED media wall is an element that makes the building come alive and is used as the Cultural Media Wall of the city. Powered with green energy, generates a visual urban display contributing to the Moscow’s cultural life. Read the rest of this entry »

X|A is organizing an international workshop of Advanced Architectural Design, part of an ongoing academic research, which introduces participants into contemporary discussions of formal exploration in Architectureand Art, through technical attainment of design and production. The Omni(progra)chromatic by X|A is under the auspices of Benaki Museum, the Hellenic Institute of Architecture and the Athens School of fine Arts. It is an opportunity for architects, students of Architecture and Art, professionals designers and artists. Read the rest of this entry »

This project by computational architect Michael Hansmeyer involves the conception and design of a new column order based on subdivision processes. It explores how subdivision can define and embellish this column order with an elaborate system of ornament. An abstracted doric column is used as an input form to the subdivision processes. Unlike the minimal input of the Platonic Solids project, the abstracted column conveys a significant topographical and topological information about the form to be generated. The input form contains data about the proportions of the the column’s shaft, capital, and supplemental base. It also contains information about its fluting and entasis.

The input form is tagged to allow the subdivision process to distinguish between individual components. This allows a heterogeneous application of the process, with distinct local parameters settings. In addition to distinguishing among tagged components, the process parameters can be set to vary according to the input form’s topography as well as its topology. Finally, an environmental specification of parameters is possible to allow regional phenomena to occur. Read the rest of this entry »

Ghostly Illumination designed by Sofia Borges and Danika Voorhees enhances the sensory potentials of the Orthodox church through the strategic alignment of spatial boundaries. Through a series of pulls and pinches, spaces that once maintained rigid edge conditions begin to erode. This spatial erosion provides for a more dynamic and engaged experience for the user as sight lines collapse and extend and programmatic hierarchy dissolves, allowing for wider range of opportunities to intermingle between the priests and their patrons. Read the rest of this entry »

This iconic 950 foot tall residential tower is proposed for a micro-urban site in New York City. Designed by solus4, an architecture and planning firm, the tower is a vertical neighborhood creating an efficient and valuable use for a small and otherwise underutilized water’s edge site. Uniquely, the tower is designed by solus4 using their SNCI principals (Sustainable Neighborhood Collaborative Initiative). Applying these principles to a vertical neighborhood requires the full engagement of the design team, the building team, the financing team and the owners.

With a cross-section of G plus 55, there are 50 full-floor four bedroom plus apartments planned at approximately 3,000 square feet each served by high speed destination selective elevators. The distinctive shape of this tower comes from its innovative structure and energy generating systems. The entire structural system, designed by LeMessurier Consultants, is in-situ concrete with flat slabs supported by columns and shear walls embedded in the extruded core shaft leaving large portions of the perimeter free for the 14 foot floor to ceiling glass. The exterior glazing makes up one of the tallest proposed hybrid double glazed skins. While the initial intent of the double skin is to enhance the thermal barrier thereby controlling heat gain in the summer and heat loss in the winter, an interesting added benefit will be the chimney effect at the external surface. Strategically placed mini-turbines take advantage of the vertical air movement to generate supplementary power. Balconies at each floor provide exterior space for the resident while adding a variable shading screen to further control glare and heat gain. Temperature controlled window shading with personal preference overrides will provide for individual comfort requirements in any season. Read the rest of this entry »

DuPont together with Union of Architects of Russia, YEM, RIBA and Architizer announced the winners of “Changing the Face – Moscow 2011,” a competition for ideas to redesign the façade of the famous Pushkinsky Cinema, located in Pushkin Square, Moscow. The architects who participated were asked to imagine a new facade for the Pushkinsky cinema, incorporating modern architectural solutions into the original location. The only condition set by the organizers was the use of at least one DuPont material.

The first prize went to the proposal designed by Juan Andres Diaz Parra from Columbia. “Frozen in Time” takes its inspiration from the poem “Winter Morning” by Alexander Pushkin which celebrates the way the bracing Russian winter can transfigure the landscape and create possibilities. The façade elements disperse water which in the summer becomes a cooling mist and in winter freezes to a new façade of ice surrounding the building. In this way the deep cold, which so often isolates people, actually creates a space for social interaction and a new landmark. Read the rest of this entry »

The London-based art and design practice United Visual Artist presented a series of light installation titled “Speed of light”. The project was commissioned by Virgin Media to commemorate the tenth anniversary of broadband in the UK. It is not a matter of chance that the UVA team was chosen, as their trajectory is more than impressive since they have made tour visuals for Massive Attack, U2, UNKLE and The Chemical Brothers, installations for the Victoria & Albert Museum and fashion show light visuals for Y-3 and Vivienne Westwood. Read the rest of this entry »

Zagreb Architects Society (DAZ) is launching a series of annual cycles of conceptual architectural competitions, defined by programming tasks proposed by the elected jurors, renowned Croatian and international practicing architects. The annual cycle consists of four conceptual architectural competitions. The annual theme serves as an input parameter for all four conceptual competitions, which address four different program tasks aligned with the main theme. The theme is determined by the guest curator. In the year 2010/2011, The Think Space Competition theme deals with the notion of borders (geopolitical, ecological, urban and moral scenarios). Read the rest of this entry »

The project attempts to reinvigorate the old grain silo in Center City Philadelphia. Designed by Interface Studio Architects, the proposal explores the opportunities for re-using defunct industrial buildings by inserting new activities into old structures.  Capitalizing on the strength of historic building’s structure, the project proposes to overbuild an early 20th century grain storage facility with a 12-story 100 apartment tower with new commercial uses inserted at ground level to activate the street. Read the rest of this entry »