The transformation of a banal, ubiquitous object—the shipping pallet—into a space for opera. The pallet is envisioned as a total architectural artefact, serving as building material, structural system and stage set. Its use for this temporary, open-air performance space is a kind of journey: from factory to stage and back. The project designed by Jaques Plante and Pascale Pierre is located in Quebec City, in a courtyard of the Conservatoire. It will be built in July 2011 for the Quebec International Opera Festival.

The pallet is the most widely manufactured object of the post-war period, not only in North America, which is its birth place, but all over the world. It is also the most anonymous object. At first, it was designed with a side of 1.2 m so as to cover without loss the whole area of a train wagon, much as Japanese homes are designed according to the standardized dimensions of tatami mattresses. Later, cardboard boxes were introduced to cover each pallet according to different assemblies. Finally, the fork-lift truck appeared, making it possible to quickly move and stack pallets. Nowadays, steel containers have taken the place of train wagons. They are designed according to the dimensions of these same pallets. Pallets are now produced with different designs and degrees of sturdiness—not only in wood, but also in plastic, steel and recycled materials. Read the rest of this entry »

The project designed by Chevalier Morales Architectes from Canada  takes its first inspiration in the very particular artificial site in which it is set. Through the complex network of existing structures, the planetarium blends into the white universe of the Olympic installations. In contrast to the opaque and matt concrete used for the Olympic stadium and for the cycling installations, the planetarium is translucent and milky. With human activity, the interior will be invaded by colors and the many polished and reflective surfaces like opalescent glass, stainless steel, lacquered white aluminium, white perforated aluminium and frit glass will contribute to amplify this effect. Once inside, articulated volumes and spaces will reveal the object of the museum: the Star theatres, covered in perforated brass panels.

Inspired by today’s climate changes and melting arctic ice, the building resembles a tormented and cracked rectangular volume. Slowly sinking next to the Olympic stadium on one side, it seems to be in a precarious balance on the other.

The initial shape goes through many torments that generate key spaces like an important green terrace, drowned by the white universe, a glass roof creating a grid on the sky, an exterior auditorium and an irregular shaped pearled iceberg-lantern floating on a thin layer of water. In the daytime, the lantern allows natural light to invade underground spaces. From outside, the Star theatres are not completely revealed. Other than a few specifically targeted openings in the façade, the only indication of their presence comes from shadows projected onto the exterior building envelope from interior lights reflected onto the brass surface. Read the rest of this entry »

Chris Bosse has sliced up the Panton chair as part of the Re-loved: designer stories at the Powerhouse Museum from July 31  to October 10.

Bosse, director of innovative architectural firm LAVA, is one of several designers commissioned by the Powerhouse to use a pre-loved chair to tell a story about a piece of furniture they love. He chose a design classic that relates to current design and manufacturing techniques.

The gravity defying Panton chair c1967 by Danish designer Verner Panton was a radical departure from traditional design and manufacturing techniques. It anticipated the digital revolution by 30 years and is the first freeform, organic molded piece of furniture. “I’ve chosen to represent this shape as slices, similar to an MRI scan in order to make visible its complex 3dimensional geometry. The chair is metaphorically and physically carved out of a sliced box ” says Bosse.

“The project retro-digitises the chair design, although it was the chair that preceded the digital design revolution.”

“What made the Panton chair so spectacular when it came on the market and what makes it so interesting today in terms of design history is not only its shape, which is as extravagant as it is elegant, but also the fact that it was the first chair made out of one piece of plastic. Every chair at the time was about the assembly techniques of materials, compression, tension, and junction. Verner Panton exploited the possibilities offered by the new material in order to achieve a total departure from classical design thinking.” Read the rest of this entry »

JDS Architects completed the Holmenkollen Ski Jump in Oslo, Norway. The International Ski Federation has certified the structure and it is ready to host the Nordic World Ski Championship in March 2011. The Jump passed all the technical and safety standards and was inaugurated in an opening ceremony that included 20 ski jumpers. Rune Vetla had the longest jump at 141 meters. According to some contestants, this is the best ski jump they have ever competed on.

The cantilevered design includes a restaurant/bar at 418 meters where visitors will enjoy views to Oslo and to the fjords. A special feature is the stainless steel mesh that protects the jumpers from extreme wind and fog. Read the rest of this entry »

Vertical farms seem to be one of the best solutions for encouraging agriculture in the cities. They are a smart solution where transportation costs and pollutants are reduced. This proposal conceived by Michaela Dejdarova and Michal Votruba is located in the outskirts of Prague, Czech Republic and it is intended to be a communal farm for the city. The structure consists of clusters of tetrahedrons grouped to create an exoskeleton that peels from the ground and supports hundreds of green terraces for agriculture. The novelty of the idea is that it could be developed in stages because of the modularity of all the components. It could grow and spread according to demands and could also be easily dismantled and transported to other locations. As with other vertical farms this project uses rainwater collection systems and solar panels as its main source of water and energy. Read the rest of this entry »

This project designed by Alessandro Tonni and Manuela Spera was created as a meeting point between architecture and literature encompassing and reinterpreting one of the most suggestive surreal images of the 1900’s Italo Calvino’s invisible city, Zenobia. This reference is carried out through the general idea of the articulation of single elements, their placing amongst each other, the choice of the communal areas and the materials used. Every floor has housing, outdoor public spaces, and indoor public spaces which are repeated with identical components, thus favouring the economic and construction aspects. Read the rest of this entry »

The rapid increase in population in the United States along with the shortage of farmers has prompted some architects to design new architectural typologies like a quarantine structure for imported livestock conceived by California-based architect Drew Pusey. Pusey states that “given the current consumption rates of beef products in the US and the available land/resources we have for livestock production, it’s only a matter of time before these beef products (in the form of live cattle) will come largely from foreign sources.  Unlike other imports, livestock presents a particular problem to domestic food safety in that diseased animals might not immediately show signs of contamination.  The Ruminant Quarantine (based on the 4-chambered stomach of a cow) sits on the Port of Los Angeles and operates as both the storage and processing facility for the animals during the 60 day period of sterile isolation from when they are first taken off the ship to when they are distributed via rail to consumers.  In contextual terms, the structure strives to mediate between its own monstrous scale and its status a a player in the surrounding urban condition. All said, the Ruminant Quarantine is largely an investigation of mass infrastructure as an expression of state-sponsored paranoia.” Read the rest of this entry »

During the last decade the construction of hundreds of super-tall skyscrapers around the world has been a fierce race among nations to show economic prosperity and geopolitical power. Unfortunately these buildings do not respond to the environmental crisis that our generation is responsible for.

The BioUrban Generator is a proposal by CJ Chen Architects to create net-positive vertical cities that consist of mega skyscrapers equipped with solar, wind, and water collection systems. In addition they propose a series of agricultural terraces attached to the main structure where vertical harvesting, farming, and recreational areas will be located. The building houses a variety of commercial and residential programs that will enrich and transform the host cities. Read the rest of this entry »

Russian Architect Kitaev Artem Leonidovich shared with us his vision for a 21st century skyscraper that responds to a specific industrial area in Moscow. His thesis is to erase the preconceived idea of a high-rise building as an extruded crystal prism of repeated floor plates.

Having seen new skyscrapers in China not very different from the ones in Dubai or New York, Kitaev proposes a building that blends into a historic 19th century neighborhood with hundreds of clothing factories. His goal is to solve the housing and commercial requirements while preserving and enriching the existing urban context. Read the rest of this entry »

Table Cloth, designed by Ball Nogues Studio, is collaboration between the UCLA Department of Architecture and Urban Design, The Herb Alpert School of Music, and UCLA Design Media Arts. It is made possible by generous support from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts and the UCLA Arts Initiative.

The installation in the courtyard at Schoenberg Hall serves as an integrated set piece and backdrop for performance and everyday social interaction. We understand the work as a tablecloth to adorn and activate the architecture of the campus. Tables are places where people interact socially. Dining tables, specifically, facilitate organization and communication within the typical American home.

We see this project like the cloth adorning a dining table; however, at Schoenberg it will embellish a courtyard, an important social hub, and will facilitate community at the scale of the University. It can be used for a variety of activities, from musical practice to performance, dance to lectures, and from casual conversations to academic discussions. It will embellish the courtyard through the summer of 2010. The processes to manufacture, assemble, and dismantle the performance space are examples of an unique approach to the challenges of sustainability. This approach to design, manufacturing and re-purposing of building materials is a process we term “Cross Manufacturing.” Read the rest of this entry »