A lot more attention has been paid to natural disaster proof and survival architecture since the Japan quakes hit in March. One of the biggest problems facing survivors and responders after such a disaster is finding enough safe temporary shelter. Drawing inspiration from the Sao Paulo skyline, Designer Mike Reyes came up with the RISE modules to help solve this problem by taking advantage of the usable space surviving structures offer.

Sao Paolo is the largest city in the southern hemisphere and the 6^th largest in the world. It’s also the most populous in all of the Americas and when a disaster like the constant floods Sao Paolo receives hits, hundreds of thousands of families are left homeless in unsafe conditions.

Reyes asks “What would happen when a mega flood comes; leaving only the strong survivors stranded? Could this catastrophe be a road for a new, sustaining civilization?

To basically create space where there wasn’t before, the RISE system hangs securely off the exteriors of existing high-rises, and is designed flexibly enough to allow it adapt to different kinds of structures; even bridges and other infrastructure. Construction is simple: helicopters would fly in folded individual units and together with the help of survivors inside the building would basically hook the RISE unit to the interior lip like the threshold of a window. Then the survivors would unfold the walls and ceiling of the unit. The unit is held securely by the force it creates against the walls of the building. Read the rest of this entry »

As we mentioned in our post on BIG’s E2 winning project PUU-BO, the first place prize in the E2 competition was also shared with Team Arup, headed by Arup Gmbh for their design E2volution. The E2volution design was chosen by the competition jury for, in their words, its“structural clarity, based on the use of three basic elements… quick construction and cost-effective transportation”.

E2volution’s design and materials are taken from the trees of the Finnish forests. Sustainably grown timber is used to create the laminated veneer lumber that is manufactured within 100km of the pilot site, and the design emulates a tree, with a strong base and trunk leading to offshooting branches. The E2 and E2 plus design allow a choice for tenants between passive house levels and zero-plus energy standards respectively.

Because of the linear arrangement of vertical load bearing elements, E2volution modules can be arranged in a multitude of ways including townhouses, urban blocks, and up to 8-story high-rises. And because system comprises only three main elements: decks, walls, and external shear plates, which allows a high degree of flexibility in configuration. Read the rest of this entry »

The Design Incubator is an exploration programmatic extremism by Boston architect and designer Alan Lu. The Design Incubator is a performance theatre by definition, but an atypical one at that. Lu embraces the existing vertical structure the Design Incubator is built around and used it to create a theatre that shifts the focus of performance to it’s production. The result is  the Design Incubator, a theatre of production.

In many of Lu’s designs, the exterior form is characterized by fluid curves; and the Design Incubator is no different. This particular design however borrows more from the physical characteristics of textiles than of a liquid substance like the majority of Lu’s designs. The rubber exterior appears as if it was draped over the existing vertically arranged ice storage facility like a blanket or cloth would. The exterior drape is lifted and pinned to reveal the entrance to the theatre, thus revealing the structure’s program. Read the rest of this entry »

Architect, urban planner and researcher Adrian Lahoud has made the study of the existing environment and scale a main tenant of his career’s work. With his latest design, the Collective Tower, Lahoud has attempted to bring Tripoli, Lebanon out of the post-modern dark ages.

Tripoli is Lebanon’s second-largest city with a population of 500,000. Today it has a mass of faceless and formless concrete towers that house apartments and offices but say little architecturally, especially in relation to the small-scale and historic urban fabric that has filled the ancient city for centuries.

The Collective Tower is actually a bundling of three towers: the three separate structures join in the middle for support, but then splay from each other dramatically. The top portion of the building brings style and ample space, and allows the bottom portion to stay more plain, which has two benefits. The first is the obvious need for stability; the second is that the smaller base has a less impactful footprint on the city. Read the rest of this entry »

Nicknamed the “veil and the vault”, Diller Scofidio + Renfo’s Broad Museum is designed to serve two main functions: provide gallery exhibition space for Broad Art Foundation and hold archive/storage space. For The Broad, the architects threw out the traditional layout for gallery and archive space to create a unique space for visitors to explore.

In most galleries, the exhibition space being the primary function, the archive and storage space is located in the basement or hidden away someplace else. With the Broad however, Diller Scofidio + Renfro put the massive archive space, the “vault”, directly in the middle and draped it with the “veil”: an “airy, cellular exoskeleton structure… (to provide) filtered natural daylight”.

The “heavy opaque mass” of the archive space is carved on the bottom to form the entrance level lobby and circulation routes and its flat top is the floor of the 3^rd floor gallery space. The “veil” lifts at each corner to invite patrons to the museum. An escalator leads guests from the lobby up to the 3^rd floor exhibition space, where 38,000 sq ft of open gallery space is located. Here, natural daylight is filtered into the 24 ft high room through the overhead “veil” to provide the ideal lighting for exhibitions. Read the rest of this entry »

This engaging design was created by Louisiana State’s Guy A. Avellone for a suckerPUNCH competition to design a new home for the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art (MoCCA) in New York City. Avellone’s design is heavily centered around creating a connection with Delancey Street below and doing so with an aggressive aesthetic quality aimed at increasing the numbers of visitors. The design won an honorable mention from suckerPUNCH.

Avellone drew heavily influence from action comics, most visibly in the exploding exterior façade inspired by a comic illustration technique for expressing motion. The horizontal textured lines of the exterior walls are meant to emphasize that burst of energy towards the street. The 21 degree angle of the lean was purposely chosen as well, drawn from the environment around the site: it is the street angle of the Lower East Side, the desirable stadium seating angle, and complements the angle of Tschumi’s Blue Condos across the street.

Like in any good comic book, the MoCCA is a clash of opposing forces. Where the MoCCA smashes towards the street, the yellow circulation core counters its energy, appearing to slice into the museum from the street. The clash further creates a sense of connection between the museum and the street below. From the architect: “This dynamic is a comic expression of the way almost every building is experienced: penetrating the building mass from the street via a circulation system”. Read the rest of this entry »

The Flower of Life is as core symbol for a proposed sanatorium in Mariahof, Austria by Atelier Thomas Pucher. A place of residence those in a vegetative state and for their families, the design is the metamorphosis of the symbol of life in many world cultures. Developed to provide spiritual uplift for what often is a fearful and difficult transition the sanatorium’s concentric circular form embeds a cultural narrative on the cycle of birth and death.

Found throughout nature in the form of seed pods and flowers the motif has been widely used throughout the world in design. Increasingly complex versions of the motif show up in architecture like Catholic Church rose windows and Islamic design motifs. The richly detailed roof is the result of overlapping concentric circles set to a grid with sections highlighted. The vesica piscis shape is considard a sacred geometry, especially in Christan traditions. Read the rest of this entry »

This OFIS design was submitted into a competition for a carbon neutral office by the Slovenian public power supply company Elektro-Slovenija(ELES). For a site in Ljubljana, Slovenia, the solar powered office was custom designed to take advantage of local renewable energy sources.

OFIS created a site-specific energy system by studying rainfall and sunlight patterns and the renewable resources available in the area. Ljubljana is sunny for almost a half of the days of the year and receives around 1402 mm of rainfall a year, a slightly higher average than for most of Europe. OFIS put in place the enormous solar panel membrane around the office to take advantage of the high amount of sunlight, in the process defining the office’s exterior character. The amount of panels in the membrane is actually enough to generate the energy needed to complete the second phase of construction. The rainfall is incorporated into the office’s sanitation and watering systems, wind provides natural ventilation and groundwater is used in the climate control system. Read the rest of this entry »

Finalist
2011 Skyscraper Competition

Nicolas Jomain, Boriana Tchonkova
France

The Porifera Skyscraper is a new project for the city of Paris that will produce bio-fuels through different types of algae synthesized with sunlight exposure. The tower is located at the base of the Seine River. It is divided in three main towers for hotel, housing, and offices – its geometry is based on marine sponges; the outside structure is based on Voronoi subdivisions that allows for large and diverse openings.

The building harvests solar, wind, and kinetic energy. Apart from the main habitation areas, sky gardens and hydroponic green houses are located at various levels which produce vegetables and fruits for the community. Read the rest of this entry »

Finalist
2011 Skyscraper Competition

Tomas Kozelsky, Patrick Bedarf, Dimitrie Andrei Stefanescu
The Netherlands

The deforestation rate of a country describes the annual destruction of its natural forests. Confronted with this acute challenge this high-rise is a prototype for the usage of wood in a sustainable and innovative manner through the combination of research and tourism. The project introduces the novel technology of laminated wood construction as load-bearing material and as a space partitioning thick lattice.

Located in Coari, Brazil, at the heart of the Amazon forest, this conceptual tower would be constructed in several phases. The idea of the skyscraper is to create a sustainable skyscraper that allows tourists to explore the Amazon forest while creating global awareness of its alarming destruction rate.

First, conventional shipping containers are prefabricated and equipped according to the specific requirements and technical systems. Second, punctual foundations with minimal footprint are built on site, providing the basis for elevators and staircases. Afterwards, a thick-latticed three-dimensional framework consisting of prefabricated laminated titan-wood elements is erected on site and floor plates are attached into the exoskeleton. Read the rest of this entry »