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 »

Chris Bosse of Laboratory for Visionary Architecture [LAVA] has created a window installation for the famous Italian department store la Rinascente for its Contemporary Christmas Art windows. LAVA’s window installation is an origami coral reef using 1500 recycled and recyclable cardboard molecules that explores the intelligence of natural and architectural systems.

The sculpture plays with space by climbing up walls and arching over to create coral caves. Based on the geometrical structures of sea foam and corals, the colourful reef comes to life through dynamic lighting and sound. Bosse, director of multinational LAVA, is one of seven designers from around the world to be commissioned to create a window – others are Kirsten Hassenfeld, Gyngy Laky, Andrea Mastrovito, Satsuki Oishi, Richard Sweeney, Margherita Marchioni and Tjep.

The store windows are at la Rinascente’s Piazza Duomo store, in the centre of Milan, design capital of the world. This is the first time la Rinascente have commissioned artists to do Christmas windows. The installation shows how a particular module, copied from nature, can generate architectural space, and how the intelligence of the smallest unit dictates the intelligence of the overall system.

Ecosystems such as coral reefs act as a metaphor for an architecture where the individual components interact in symbiosis to create an environment. Bosse says: “In urban terms, the smallest homes, the spaces they create, the energy they use, the heat and moisture they absorb, multiply into a bigger organisational system, whose sustainabilty depends on their intelligence”. Current trends in parametric modeling, digital fabrication and material-science were applied to the space-filling installation.

[Artspace] at Untitled, a contemporary arts center located at 1 NE 3rd Street in downtown Oklahoma City is organizing the 2010 Creativity World Biennale to be presented November 17, 2010 – January 8, 2011 in Untitled’s galleries and extending into venues throughout the historic Automobile Alley district along Broadway. The international invitational exhibit is being planned to coincide with Creative Oklahoma’s hosting of the 2010 Creativity World Forum November 15 – 17, 2010 in Oklahoma City.

Modeled after the long-running Venice Biennale, held every two years in Italy, the exhibition will focus on the visual arts and has as its theme, New Processes, New Approaches, New Art. It will include the work of artists selected to represent each of seven different Districts of Creativity worldwide: Catalonia (Spain), Denmark, Germany, Flanders (Belgium), Oklahoma (US), Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) and Scotland (UK). The artists representing each District are pioneers in new media. In defining the theme for the Biennale, Jon Burris, director of [Artspace] at Untitled and the Biennale stated, “The theme is based on the idea that as new technologies are developing around the world, so too are new processes of creating art involving new media and new materials. Artists world-wide are embracing new methods of producing art as a result of these new technologies and it is the goal of this Biennale to introduce new aesthetic approaches that have developed as a result.” Read the rest of this entry »

Autodesk has released today the much anticipated full version of AutoCAD for Mac. Apple users will finally be able to take advantage of the software without running Windows in Parallels. AutoCAD for Mac takes full “advantage of the Mac OS® X platform, with an intuitive, graphical user interface that makes it easy to bring your ideas to life. And because it’s AutoCAD, you’re working natively in DWG™ format, so you can easily share files with clients, suppliers, and partners around the world, regardless of platform.”

AutoCAD®for Mac® is now available at the Autodesk Store. Order now and get your license for the newest software in design!

Sit down, sit up, lounge, hang, repose, move, work, read, consult or relax, alone or together.

People communicate in a variety of ways. The design for the SitTable caters to the needs of these divergent varieties. It allows for the table to become a thinking place as well as a social meeting ground, whilst offering a diversity of options for functionality.

It may become a quiet reading table found in a library, or a work and relaxation place located in an airport lounge. It could simply be used in a waiting room, in a front office or in a school. It may also act as a meeting space for exhibitions or in shops. Whichever role it fills, everyone is given the opportunity to discover their own practical use for the SitTable. It is designed to serve one’s own intended purpose for functionality and arrangement.

The hybrid form of the SitTable combines two pieces of multi-functional furniture, offering a variety of space-creating authority to the user. Numerous tasks can be carried out simultaneously at the SitTable – both solitary and social, or a combination of the two. Read the rest of this entry »

The Casalgrande Ceramic Cloud, the first work of architecture in Italy by Kengo Kuma, the Japanese master, and a new symbolic gate of the ceramics district of Emilia Romagna, is located in the municipality of Casalgrande, in the province of Reggio Emilia. The work is located near the production works of Casalgrande Padana, the leading company in the production of unglazed stoneware and the buyer of the work itself.

The CCCloud transversally divides the space of a roundabout like a thin diaphragm curtain dynamically attracting the viewers’ sight. The layout plan of the work is oblong and streamlined at the ends and the central section reaches a maximum width of 1.7 metres. It is almost 12 metre tall.

For the first time, ceramic material is tested for structural purposes. Its 3D structure is composed of nine layers of large technical porcelain stoneware slabs – standard production items by Casalgrande Padana – placed one onto the others and interconnected by means of thin hidden threaded bars. Read the rest of this entry »

Twenty-seven Billion tons of CO₂ are released into the atmosphere every year. This has resulted in a one-degree-centigrade rise in global temperature since the Industrial Revolution.  Carbon emissions are causing Climate Change across the globe, resulting in hurricanes, rising sea levels, spreading deserts, and the loss of arable land.

SKYGLOW is a 200 meter-long helium filled airship that is solar powered and enveloped in a flexible OLED lighting membrane. SKYGLOW will be flown into major population centers on any continent and docked at these locations. Multiple smaller replicas of SKYGLOW, fitted with touch screen questionnaires, will form an interactive night park at its base. The public will be invited to answer these questionnaires on carbon related issues in our homes, transport choices, and recycling levels. In turn this information will feed into the lighting of the small SKYGLOWS. The colors range from red, where the results are poor, to blue, which shows a change for the better. Targets can be advised and the public can revisit the Night Park to recalculate their carbon footprint. All this information will then be fed into the main SKYGLOW, along with national grid energy consumption levels and air quality information.

The intention is that within a short period of time the impact of positive choices will make a visible difference to the OLED output of the SKYGLOW.

The project was designed  by Ross Orr, Gary Dubary, Andy Kiely and Adam Lauri who took part in a back to work scheme called Greenshoots. Greenshoots gave unemployed professionals in the construction industry the opportunity to work on a eVolo Competition in a live work environment which was kindly provided by FHP Architects.

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OR² by Orproject is the further development of OR, a single surface roof structure which reacts to sunlight. The polygonal segments of the surface react to ultra-violet light, mapping the position and intensity of solar rays. When in the shade, the segments of OR² are translucent white. However when hit by sunlight they become coloured, flooding the space below with different hues of light. During the day OR² becomes a shading device passively controlling the space below it. At night OR² transforms into an enormous chandelier, disseminating light which has been collected by integrated photovoltaic cells during the day into the surrounding areas.

Special software components have been developed in order to create the shapes and to generate the cutting schedules. The individual elements were then automatically numbered and water jet cut. OR structures are the first ones to employ photo-reactive technology at an architectural scale, exploring its applicability to the fields of construction and design. The beauty of OR² is its constant interaction with the elements, at each moment of the day OR’s appearance is unique. Read the rest of this entry »

Hani Rashid co-founder of the award-winning, New York-based practice Asymptote Architecture recently unveiled the UBU-FUGU-ROI.MGX vases. With their metalized nickel coated surfaces, these three vases appear as tornadoes and whirlpools in constant motion. Produced using stereolithography and selective laser sintering, they possess the ability to create and reflect the atmospherics of a place, both absorbing and transmitting light. Read the rest of this entry »

Morphosis Architects unveiled their design for the new Perot Museum in Dallas, Texas. The $185 million structure consists of a landscape plinth with a forest of native canopy trees and desert flora terrace. The xeriscaped terrace gently slopes up to connect with the museum’s iconic stone roof. The overall building mass is conceived as a large cube floating over the site’s landscaped plinth. An acre of undulating roofscape comprised of rock and native drought-resistant grasses reflects Dallas’s indigenous geology and demonstrates a living system that will evolve naturally over time.

The intersection of these two ecologies defines the main entry plaza, a gathering and event area for visitors and an outdoor public space for the city of Dallas. From the plaza, the landscaped roof lifts up to draw visitors through a compressed space into the more expansive entry lobby. The topography of the lobby’s undulating ceiling reflects the dynamism of the exterior landscape surface, blurring the distinction between inside and outside, and connecting the natural with the manmade. Read the rest of this entry »