“The body of the Leviathan, especially his eyes, possesses great illuminating power.”

It is light that this creature thrives upon. It’s energy-regulated outer skin has the ability to to control the level of sunlight, depending on the needs of users, as well as the motion-based reaction to weather conditions. Flexible material of the skin can be rigidified, giving it a different appearance.

Kinetura is a design team led by Barbara van Biervliet and Xaveer Claerhout, established in 2006. They run an architecture office Claerhout-Van Biervliet since 1995 and are mostly engaged in more “down-to-earth” design.

The architects don’t seem to have concrete specifications about the system itself, as they are still in the process of developing the technology for Kinetower. Nevertheless, they emphasize that the project was an architectural exercise in conveying their design philosophy. Metamorphosis of space,  adjusting to functional and environmental demands can lead to, what can be called- “controlled spontaneity” of buildings. Read the rest of this entry »

Italian designers Francesco Colarossi, Luisa Saracino and Giovanna Saracino created a Solar Wind bridge project for a Solar Park Works – a competition in Italy. The aim of the competition was to get designers to imagine new ways to reuse an elevated highway between Bagnera and Scilla in Italy, incorporating new energy efficient solutions. The designers won second place for this project.

The proposed design has 26 wind turbines incorporated in structure of the bridge. They are integrated into the spaces between the bridge’s pillars. The traditional asphalt would be replaced with 20 km (12.4 miles) of solar roadways, consisting of a dense grid of solar cells embedded in the road surface, providing 11.2 million kWh per year. The designers claim this system, combined with the 26 wind turbines underneath the road would provide enough electricity to power approximately 15,000 homes.

In addition to the “solar roadways,” the top surface of the bridge would also include a “green promenade” along its length comprising solar greenhouses for growing local produce. Drivers would be able to stop along the bridge to buy some fresh fruit and vegetables while enjoying panoramic bridge views. Read the rest of this entry »

Invited by Excellence group from Shen Zhen in April 2010, EMBT designed an exhibition space celebrating one of China’s most prominent modern artists. Being the artist’s hometown, Neijiang is trying to promote itself through his art. The museum is to be built on peak of Dong Tong Lu, Yuan mountain, a site conveniently resembling  Zhang Da Qian’s main thematic inclinations in painting.

Conceived as a cluster of exhibition rooms, the design emulates the physiology of mountain tops, as if following Zhang Da Qian’s short brush strokes and swirling patterns. Laminated bamboo structure generates organic forms both shielding and directing the light inwards. The construction elements are used in a custom way and play a crucial part in the overall architectural imagery.

Far beyond simple mimicry, the design evokes Chinese traditional pagoda by successfully avoiding quotations. It establishes a dialogue between cultural essences of east and west, which, yet again, refers to the master’s artistic attitude. EMBT’s signature roof is also discreetly  inserted into the design. It makes  it distinctive, yet prevents the impression of repetitiveness. Read the rest of this entry »

The project is located in one of the largest wholesale trade of Santo Domingo where both merchants and consumers go there in large numbers of people. This is the architect thesis project of Abel Castillo at the UNPHU University (Universidad Nacional Pedro Henríquez Ureña ) and was advised by Architect Juan Mubarak.

The semiotics of Villacon market environment are a mixture of colors, patches, and “spontaneous and chaotic” organizations, for this reason we try to apply all these physical and cultural patterns so the user would be able to adapt more easily to this solution, using color mixtures and natural distributions applying chaotic and random space distributions.

In this project we have made a solution that tries to maintain the natural and economic resources, where also the building will make earnings for the improvement of the surrounding communities. Born with the need to reinstate a market which construction stopped in 2002, the project try to enhance the great commercial cluster where is located that lacks the economic resources for its proper maintenance. Read the rest of this entry »

Engineering students Lorenzo Carrino, Andrea Bonamore, Riccardo Franchellucci and Lorenzo Bramonti from Rome, Italy have created, from their historic city, a skyscraper plan that will allow people to move with ease from one world capital to another.

The Mo.Ho., or Mobile Housing design incorporates moveable apartment units, “modules,” that are housed within Mo.Ho. towers or skyscrapers. The towers range between 50 and 80 meters tall, and are built on top of existing structures in an effort to increase density without increasing the city’s covered surface area. The skyscrapers are between 350 and 450 meters tall and can revitalized even the most “degraded” of urban areas, the students say. Their main draw is ample green space realized through green squares, public gardens and sports areas, which are connected via pedestrian green belts.

In Rome, the students have placed a Mo.Ho. skyscraper in the San Lorenzo neighborhood near the Termini station. An overpass highway that runs directly through the neighborhood is overtaken for the building’s implementation, and it is this area that is redeveloped into the greenway. Read the rest of this entry »

Imagine a giant, amorphous algae vine swallowing a traditional skyscraper.

Now imagine living inside that growth.

This is precisely what Polish architecture students Karolina Czochańska, Emilia Dekarz, Paweł Dudko and Justyna Krupkowska have proposed with their ‘Saprophyte’ design. In the future, they say, corporations will retreat to the virtual world, and communications will reach a height to where people no longer need to commute from work. People will reclaim urban centers from the corporations that have abandoned them, and, working from home, will need to be served by a more adaptable, flexible and efficient living structure.

The students have combined biology and architecture – biomorphic architecture — to propose a living mass that overtakes typical skyscraper structures and transforms them into buildings that can shrink, grow, split, or change in any way needed by residents. And, the bio mass is self duplicating, meaning new buildings effortlessly appear – they sprout “like flora.”

The design is both economical and effective because, the students say, it is based on the principles of self-sufficiency and energy efficiency. The students reached their design ideas through a study of biomimicry and asking, what can we learn from nature? Read the rest of this entry »

Before modern structures as we know them were developed, man and animal lived together in nature. Gothenburg, Sweden-based architects Joakim Kaminsky, Fredrik Kjellgren, Maria Martinez Fabregas, Alexandra Agapie and Shadi Jalali Heravi with the firm SAR/MSA have proposed reinstating this original cohabitation, but in today’s modern, vertical context.

Their concept, called “Alive Architecture,” imagines a skyscraper in Shanghai that houses both human and animal inhabitants within a building that blends the typical domiciles of both: modern building materials in the building’s core protect the building’s mechanical systems, but more primitive materials on the exterior, including wicker, straw, clay, mud and stone mimic a bird’s nest and earlier human building methods as well.

This blending of nature and modernism is the arch that “green architecture” could taken to restore what has been lost in our typical urban centers. Building vertically, the architects argue, solved cities’ density problems, but simultaneously grievously harmed human interaction with other people and with nature. What if the new green architecture were developed as a functional habitat for wildlife, they ask? Read the rest of this entry »

Thomas Heatherwick’s Rolling Bridge, completed in 2004 at Grand Union Canal Paddington Basin, London, is one of the most unique bridges in the world. A small pedestrian crossing, it is designed to curl up to allow boats through the inlet and uncurl again over the water. Eight triangular sections host a hydraulic ram on either side. As the rams open out of their vertical posts they extended the hand rails upwards. The pivoted sections are drawn toward each other creating a slow curling motion. The bridge can stop at any interval.

Fully curled up the bridge forms a compact vertical standing octagon at the water’s edge. Winner of the 2005 British Structural Steel award the bridge is also a sort of kinetic sculpture performing at high noon every Friday. Read the rest of this entry »

How to integrate an opera theater into the historic urban fabric of Vienna? This project seeks to develop a middle ground between excessive un-architecture and conventional opera theater. One of the strategies is to create a new vertical transition part as the coherent between the opera theater and the concert hall. It was designed as a solution to the substantial decrease of earth specially which site is located in a high density residential district. This tower proposes an intensive, yet ivy romantic environment with an Opera Theater, a Concert Hall and a Panoramic Restaurant where you will be able to find little squares, picturesque sightseeing to this city, parks, hanging garden, and many cultural facilities.

Tang Fei experimented with form production at the Excessive Studio II, Urban Strategies, Die Angewandte Vienna in Austria to produce an Opera Theater or a Concert Hall in the Karmelitermarket. Read the rest of this entry »

Following the international competition held in 2006, Zaha Hadid Architects (ZHA) were chosen to create initial conceptual proposals for the Civic Centre of the City of Elk Grove, California, a fast-growing suburb of Sacramento.

The main objective of the Elk Grove Civic Centre Design Study was to explore a wealth of possible ideas for programmatic distribution; incorporating the city’s requirement for initial ‘visioning’ proposals that identify all the project components while keeping the opportunities for flexibility.

The city commissioned AECOM to provide ZHA a brief for the 76ha site consisting of 3 main aspects: Civic, Commercial and Recreational. The civic aspect includes a library, children’s discovery centre, community and performance centres. The commercial aspect included a hotel, retail and conference center, while the recreational aspect include gym, tournament fields, park and a wetland. Read the rest of this entry »