The project was designed by a team organized by Prof. Dr. Markus Holzbach at the Offenbach Academy of Art and Design. The parametric engineer for the project was Xing Wang. The  design was exhibited in Frankfurt in January 2011 and it explores the structure andcombinations of cellular geometries, completely relying on computational design.

The project’s aim was to build a pavilion inside Diamantenbörse in Frankfurt. It was based on mobius geometry with 3d voronoi pattern structure. It tried to integrate special light effects for the media show during the exhibition. The 3d vronoi pattern structure is manufactured as straight wood panels by 5 axis milling machine and assembled on site. In order to save time and material, most parts of the wood panels were cut under 3 axis cutting method, only the both ends parts of the panels with slope are cut through 5 axis setting. Read the rest of this entry »

The interest of creating this project was to provoke opposing forces of beauty and darkness – the idea of immersing survivors into their environment of global flooding through an elegant and energetic fusion of floating architecture.

The project has the appearance of a glamorous water cube emerging from billowing cloudscapes to flood location by a hot air dirigible. The Water Capsule is a simple form constructed of highly engineered, gleaming white fiberglass-reinforced panels. The structure folds into a sequence of spaces illuminated by two skylights and a window to the sea below. The project’s overall organization follows the drift of its curving form floating experientially through air and water giving freedom to “one’s” imagination from their loss. Read the rest of this entry »

Architects at EMBT did an unpopular thing for their Comic and Animation Museum Design: they addressed the issue of context. The idea was to engage the surroundings in a visual and associative narrative, delivering a design that joins the Confucian geometry to a mystical appreciation of nature. The intense relationship between object and landscape and subtle referencing to tradition aimed to transform the site into, what the architects called-“a kind of magic land that will enhance the impossible and dare the mind to reach unexpected levels of imagination”. The punch-line iconicity and visual overstimulation were replaced with multilayered experiences of the specific and the imaginative.

The basket-like forms of the museum resonate with images of the Chinese vernacular. Their alignment suggests a processional navigation through the exhibition space, a principle immanent to the Taoist idea of “path”, ultimately embodied in the Chinese traditional garden design. The distinguishable imagery of narrow paths and networks of bridges amid lush green ambiance is reinterpreted, while still essentially rooted in the idea of the Chinese garden as “a cosmic diagram, revealing a profound and ancient view of the world and of man’s place in it”. Read the rest of this entry »

Held in Changsha, China, and supported by Hunan University’s School of Architecture, the ‘Digital Architecture Laboratory’ (DAL) is designed as an intensive workshop, led by invited design and architecture professionals to expose students to the integration of computationally-driven fabrication techniques. The program was organized around the concept of ‘aggregated porosity’, an exploration of dynamically changing density and the lines of intersection between skeletons and solids.

The invited tutors for ‘Aggregated porosity’ are Suryansh Chandra of Zaha Hadid Architects and Shuojiong Zhang of UN Studio, who were asked to propose a design scheme aligned with the workshop’s theme and that could provide shade and fit in a volume of 3 x 3 x 6 meters. Students in the program shared the same brief, and created their own design prototypes at 1:1 scale in addition to assisting in constructing ‘DAL canopy’.

The canopy’s foundation is a 40x40mm L-section steel frame anchored to a wall, to which a grid of laser-cut plywood pieces are secured. steel cable mesh is attached to this grid, and custom joints are used to affix the individual wooden hexagonal panels (also laser-cut) to the mesh, where they can be adjusted by hand and gravity into their desired position. Read the rest of this entry »

Moscow Design week – the most important annual design event in Russia, organized by ART TRADING Group, will be starting on October 11, 2011. Intense program of MDW 2011 is dedicated to Design in an extended sense: starting from product-, fashion- and graphic- design to the latest developments in architecture. The project, featuring both Russian and international participants, will occupy the main lecture halls and exhibition spaces of Russian capital. The aim of MDW 2011 is to create a platform for design in Russia and to set international business standards within the industry along with supporting business and friendship worldwide.

«This annual event is overwhelming the entire city. It engages the broadest audience: intellectual elite, art-community, show-business celebrities as well as everybody who is already absorbed by the topic or wants to discover it. Mostly non-profit exhibitions showcase the latest catch-ups in the world of design: visiting them one will explore the unknown sphere, looking, touching and finding things he likes or meeting amazing people» – commented Alexandr Fedotov, the President of organising committee of MDW 2011 and ART TRADING Group.

For the week Moscow will turn into design cluster, bringing up such professionals in contemporary design domain as Maarten Baas, Giulio Cappellini, Luigi Colani, Paola Navone, Li Edelkoort and other stars. Read the rest of this entry »

Hong Kong’s urban furniture contains multiple functional objects. Each of them belongs to a different set of formal expression or is part of a different style.

While variation is obvious in the style mix of Hong Kong’s public furniture, there is a lack of uniformity in the formal expression that could foster a unique Hong Kong identity. This design proposal by Rocker-Lange Architects for a contemporary city bench seeks to understand the concept of street furniture as a holistic design problem. Instead of offering only one single static design, this scheme suggests multiple varying solutions that meet specific fitness criteria.

The project “Urban Adapter” is based on a digital parametric model. At its core the model utilizes explicit site information and programmatic data to react and interact with its environment. That way the model’s DNA structure is capable of producing a variety of unique furniture results. Read the rest of this entry »

“Waste Landscape” by French art studio Le Centquatre is a 600 square meters artificial undulating landscape covered by an armor of 60,000 unsold or collected CDs, which have been sorted and hand-sewn.

It is well known that CDs are condemned to gradually disappear from our daily life, and to later participate in the construction of immense open-air, floating or buried toxic waste reception centers. Made of petroleum, this reflecting slick of CDs forms a still sea of metallic dunes: the monumental scale of the art work reveals the precious aspect of a small daily object. The project joins a global, innovative and committed approach, from its means of production until the end of its “life”. “WasteLandscape” will be displayed in locations coherent with the stakes of the project: the role of art in society, the sensitization to environmental problems through culture, the alternative mode of production and the valuation of district associative work and professional rehabilitation. Read the rest of this entry »

[Ay]Architecture is an international design studio committed to cutting edge research and experimentation, across scales. It engages with multidisciplinary fields from fashion design, architecture to landscape urbanism, in both theoretical and professional praxis.

The Capital HIM project is inspired by Nicola Formichetti’s stylistic work through Lady Gaga’s and Rick Genest’s fashion personas. The emerging esthetics in fashion is translated into a spatial condition, retaining the main qualities; it is alienated, urban, volumetric and at times vulgarly carnal (no pun intended). The network of theoretical connections meshed with the space of the given site (Walker Street, NY) generating the three-dimensional spatial condition per se. This allowed a series of control points and lines that would parameter the starting point to the physical substance. An actual morphology is created by narrowing down the possibilities of physical connections. The organic appearance of the project and its arbitrariness reflect the whimsical nature of the fashion at hand, robust and sensual at the same time. Read the rest of this entry »

Developed by students from “An Inconvenient Studio” at the Institute for Digital Fabrication of Ball State University, MorphoLuminescence utilizes an understanding of fashion photography to find its form and provide optimized lighting, enhancing the experience of trying on clothing. A three-point lighting set up is commonly used by fashion photographers, arranging a bright key light above eye level, in combination with softer fill and back lighting to create subtle shadows and a three dimensional effect.

Comprised of custom laser-cut “petals”, “stems”, and hinges, Morpholuminescence was pre-assembled for testing prior to shipping in pieces to the SPOT ON SCHOOLS exhibition in Florence, Italy. MorphoLuminescence provides variably tuned hue and light intensity levels in order to affect the fitting room experience and adapts its form to accommodate changes in the space. In its idle state the dimly lit surface of petals hangs free, signaling to consumers that it is ready for use. Through simple infrared sensors, human presence and variations in the space are analyzed, initiating its state of change. Read the rest of this entry »

The design is a result of collaboration between an international practice Asensio_Mah and students from Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. It welcomes the visitors of Reford Garden Metis International Garden Festival, framing the view of the Festival’s entry sequence. It revisits the garden wall, giving it a modern expression.

It assumes the form of angled panel structure, designed more as a dynamic sculpture than as a conventional wall, intended to separate two distinct spaces. With that in mind, the authors decided to change the wall’s basic function and give it a new purpose. The wall is gradually transformed from a seating structure to ground plane, acting as an interactive site. Its framework holds together a volume of moss as it meanders at the entry of the gardens. The honeycomb structure is embedded with experimental moss surfaces, creating a vertically positioned vegetation strip, with different orientation and establishing various microclimates. Read the rest of this entry »