SOM and Field Operations’ Master Plan for the Yongsan Economic Zone proposes a centralized, cultural node that complements the draw and mass of SOM’s Yongsan Landmark Tower. By balancing the Landmark Tower on one side with cultural programs on the other, the matrix of office and residential buildings is energized between commercial and cultural poles. REX was tasked with designing all the cultural venues.

As individual elements—including an art center, an arts magnet school, a broadcasting studio, a congress center, a museum, and a performing arts theater—the cultural programs are too small to generate critical mass; a field of cultural “confetti” hardly constitutes a node. As individual elements—including an art center, an arts magnet school, a broadcasting studio, a congress center, a museum, and a performing arts theater—the cultural programs are too small to generate critical mass; a field of cultural “confetti” hardly constitutes a node.

It would be inappropriate for a single architect to design every cultural institution for an urban development of 2.2 million m² (23.6 million sf). Design beyond a certain scale thrives on—if not outright demands—multiple authorship and expertise. The single-authored alternative all too often yields oppressive homogeneity.

REX therefore determined the Tower of Culture’s concept, infrastructure, and overarching iconography, but in the interests of genuine multiple-authorship, required each cultural component to be designed by other architects. Read the rest of this entry »

Wirl was conceived by Zaha Hadid to reflect the intensity of a hyper-acceleratory force within an elastic tactile form. The sculpture is located in Hong Kong, China. Moments of graceful suspension are tensioned between muscular sweeps in multiple directions. As the curvature of the surface dynamically and seamlessly twists and turns, dynamic form and functional furnishings are seamlessly integrated. Swells provide areas for seating while stretches in the form furnish opportunities to recline. A generous upward sweep provides shade as well as integrating a series of evolving framed views of the surrounding environment and buildings. Differentially sized voids allow for a variety of experiential possibilities in regards to entering into and interacting with the sculpture for visitors of all sizes, all the while, surrounded by a cloud of swirling forces lifting off the ground. Rhythmic and asymmetrical, seamless and articulated – its curvaceous form is an intricately linked spatial and inhabitable improvisation suspended in time. Read the rest of this entry »

Award-winning architecture studio SOFTlab unveiled their new installation in Frankfurt, Germany as part of the ‘abstrakt Abstrakt – The Systemized World’ exhibition organized by the NODE festival. The piece is a three stories high funnel composed of hundreds of neuron-like pieces of reflecting plastic. SOFTlab was one of the 13 artists invited by Eno Henze and Marius Watz, curators of the exhibit, to analyze the nature and effect of abstraction systems.

“Abstraction systems reproduce the ‘world’ in a new medium (e.g. the financial system) and have great effect on our lives through complex regulatory circuits. The extensive and powerful autonomy of such systems becomes obvious in moments of their dysfunction, like during the interruption of air traffic due to a scientific simulation of a vulcano cloud, or by the drop of the stock market due to automated computer trade. Under a regime of rationality scientists and engineers become performing agents of this development, and bring ever new abstraction systems (and even abstractions of abstraction systems) into action, empowered by computerization and softwareization. The NODE festival emerged from the ‘scene’ of users and developers of the programming language vvvv, which is widely used for the realization of art and design projects. Coming of age, it is not solely committed to these roots, yet two dispositions still characterize its pursuit: on the one hand there is a great familiarity with the ‘workbench of abstraction’ (programming / conditioning of machines), and on the other hand we share an artistic perspective, which is interested in the social and philosophcal implications of this work.” Read the rest of this entry »

Move: Choreographing You is an exhibition of visual and performance art curated and hosted by the Hayward Gallery on London’s Southbank. The theme of the exhibition focuses on sculptures and installations which invite the visitor to become both participant and performer through interaction with performers, visitors, and the pieces themselves.

Amanda Levete Architects was commissioned by the Hayward Gallery to do the interior spatial design and planning of the exhibition, as well as develop a multi-media archive in collaboration with interactive designers Unit 9. The exhibition design was driven by the relationships between choreography and geometry, movement and form. Inspired by the photographic motion studies of the human body of Etienne-Jules Marey and Eadweard Muybridge, we have created a collection of spatial dividers which are defined by a serial transformation of a single material: a sequence of folded oscillations of Dupont Tyvek. The resulting translucent paper-like fabric ribbons, a counterpoint to the brutality of the building, rise and fall with undulating folds which simultaneously define themselves as way finding devices, partitions, suspended ceilings, and portals. These fluid spatial and formal transformations choreograph the movement of the visitor through areas of sculpture, film, archive and performance.

The spatial configurations defined by our dividers are intended to embody two types of performative experience: public and private. In the public experience, the ribbons frame views, carve space, and lead visitors to a fluid and communal experience of the interactive objects and installations of Bruce Nauman, Robert Morris, Franz West, Franz E. Walther, William Forsythe, Christian Jankowski, and others. Read the rest of this entry »

The new 5.000 sq. meter Chess-club building in Khanty-Mansiysk already hosted the 2010 Chess Olympics in September. Now in December it will officially open for the inhabitants. Erick van Egeraat worked closely with the municipality of Khanty-Mansiysk and its main benefactor Gazprom in realizing this extraordinary building. He compared the Chess Club’s sleek, but slightly distorted appearance with the physics of a chess player. Motionless on the outside, but with great internal struggle to beat the opponent. This contrast is emphasized by the “cool” zinc-clad façade and the “warm” predominantly wooden interior. “This tiny building is a little Icon but could soon become the first step in the redevelopment of this unique city in the centre of Eurasia”, says Erick van Egeraat. Read the rest of this entry »

The London Borough of Newham and Stratford Renaissance Partnership appointed Studio Egret West as lead consultant to design and deliver £13.5 million of high quality public realm that offers a unique visitor experience at the heart of Stratford Town Centre in time for the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

Without any imminent change to the traffic system, we needed to accept the Town Centre as an island. However, an ‘island’ can be a very special place with many positive connotations – a destination, a getaway, a place apart… The key is to facilitate movement across the Town Centre, and create a sense of excitement and drama that invites people in.

The project proposes new public realm designs for a series of key spaces: Meridian Square as the gateway to Stratford for visitors arriving via public transport; Theatre Square at the heart of the Cultural Quarter; the Broadway with its historic character; and the Railway Tree crossing that connects with Stratford High Street. In addition, a vertical kinetic sculpture made of naturally coloured titanium – the Shoal – produces a linear edge that consolidates the fractured northern edge of the Stratford Island. The sculpture helps define the island and acts as decoy to the taller parking structures and buildings upon the island. Overall, the re-invigorated public realm together with the Shoal aim to change perceptions and establish Stratford Town Centre as a destination in its own right – a benchmark for the quality of future designs that will not be compromised by change ahead. Read the rest of this entry »

Rising high from the ocean below, the elevated “Emergency Land” proposed by South Korean architect Jinman Choi and graduate student Ji Yong Shim is a structure topped by skyscrapers that serves the vital cause of housing the 11,000 residents of the Tuvalu Islands – islands that may soon be swallowed by the sea.

The nine islands of Tuvalu, eight of which have human residents, are located in the Pacific Ocean near the equator. Two of the islands are already experiencing significant flooding, and with elevated sea levels submerging the islands’ lands another 0.5-0.6 cm a year, experts fear the islands could completely disappear within the coming decades.

Choi and Shim are especially concerned with the residents of the islands, as they seem to have few options for escape at this point. The two explain that, currently, nearby Australia has not opened their borders, and New Zealand only permits 75 immigrants from the islands per year, As such, new solutions must be crafted for Tuvalu residents, and quickly. Their solution is to build grand, elevated landmasses anchored by bases on the seafloor and topped by massive skyscrapers to house the 11,000 residents needing new homes. The “arch-designed core” will allow for the balance needed to support the expanded mass of “land” above. The funnel-shaped platforms can be recreated continually to expand the amount of land available. This socially responsible design brings innovation and attention to the needs of a people whose land may, sadly, soon be forever submerged. Read the rest of this entry »

Citing experts and news articles, architecture student Hugon Kowalski says that the unrest in the Darfur region of Sudan, where over 200,000 have been killed and 2 million have fled, has, in reality, been caused by the scarcity of water, and the subsequent struggles to claim some of this precious resource. Amazingly, researchers at Boston University discovered, in 2007, an underground lake in the region that, though now dry, could be refilled as an artificial lake. This reservoir could then be tapped to bring plentiful water, and quite possibly peace, to the war-torn area.

The skyscraper that Kowalski has designed taps into the underground lake and brings it to the surface for distribution. In addition to housing the water pumps and treatment facility, however, the building also has a hospital, school and a food storage center, centralizing many life-bringing and saving services into one vital tower.

The building is made of brick, which will be made on-site and baked, energy-free, by the hot desert sun. The building will also be environmentally responsible by utilizing water turbines and solar panels. Read the rest of this entry »

The “Gullwing Twin Wind Towers,” designed by architects Minervini Vittorio and Sanna Giacomo of Rome with designers Delzotti Carlo and Lombardi Fabio, Ph.D., is an idea for how to generate clean energy in an urban setting – in a manner aesthetically pleasing to the eye.

The structure is a pair of towers whose exteriors are covered in blade-like wings that project up to catch the wind; the wind then moves the wings, which are attached to rings that spin around the buildings’ exteriors. As the rings spin, the movement powers the wind turbines inside of the two towers. The movement of the rings with the two towers so closely entwined creates a “tornado-like effect” to maximize movement and energy generation.

To accentuate architecturally the permeability of the structure, the towers feature empty plastic cavities interspersed throughout their heights. The towers are covered in a black “skin,” with a glass encasement of the turbines on the interiors. Read the rest of this entry »

London based design group PostlerFerguson recently displayed the conceptual renderings of Microclimates a passive cooling unit that is as much art as it is functional. The project uses artificial sandstone to make a complex series of surfaces which when wet allow air to be cooled by evapo-transmission. The pieces stand in central areas where air currents are maximized to cool and moisten the immediate environment.

Using stereolithography a 3-D printing process by D-Shape the individual units are inspired by desert cooling techniques developed over the millennia. The stand alone units are composed of sand and an organic binder that is printed out in layers to achieve the complex internal area required for sufficient evaporative surface. The structure’s patterns are an interpretation on Islamic architecture styles. While intended to be art installations the design holds promise to be incorporated into desert buildings where peak energy loads can be reduced. Read the rest of this entry »