Conceived as an extension of the Austrian National Library, the Chris Prechteck’s design proposal contains a number of cultural and educational facilities. Situated in the baroque settings of Vienna, in the vicinity of the Hofburg Palace, the building attempts to blend into the surroundings by creating a single spiraling gesture. Straddling the border of a nearby park, it contributes to the continuity of open public spaces by housing much of its content underground. Public circulation is uninterrupted by the extension, as a curvilinear roof garden in created at the top. The main entrance is accessible by vehicles through a drop-off and fire emergency line placed under the arch. Gradually descending towards the entrance, visitors are intuitively directed to the foyer, and into the programs. The project offers 1,200 square meters of exhibition space as well as 600 square meters of multifunctional facilities, creative studios, restaurants and shops.

Its faceted façade is reminiscent of the decorative ornamentation of baroque architecture. The mosaic form of crystal-like openings allows natural lighting to filter through the interior, creating strong light-and-shade contrasts. The seamless structure of the extension generates a discreet curvature in the urban landscape, offering a different spatial experience from each perspective, whether from the interior or from the street level. Read the rest of this entry »

Rock and Roll culture has always had an uncanny relationship with death. The death of a rock star creates a cult(ure), marking an unyielding mnemonic point where personality, musical genre and event combine to produce myth. (Think of Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Sid Vicious and Kurt Cobain to name a few; their individuality, unique musical contributions and the particular way in which each died are forever fused together in our collective memory). If Rock and Roll culture is exclusively within the domain of youth, a premature death is the event that insures it will always remain so. (Pete Townsend never got his wish)

The death of a rock star is culturally transformative, creating the moment for a larger, shared and collective experience. It is almost as if the death-story competes with the life-story, eventually to become one story. This phenomenon is unique to Western Culture; like a war hero, the way one died is forever bound to the one who died. From purple hearts to purple haze, the iconic rock star lives like a character within a Greek myth. Taken down by the iconoclastic forces of Rock and Roll, our hero re-emerges larger than life within the pantheon of dead rock stars, forever eternal.

Death by Rock and Roll is an opportunity to reconceive the crematory urn on terms gleaned from the cultural practice of Rock and Roll. In this case, the urn takes on the role of noting the particular rituals of these heroes, (always stranger than fiction) and leverages them as drivers for a new expression altogether different from the conventional urn typology and practice.

This urn for Kurt Cobain is not a singular vessel, nor will it simply hold his ashes in the conventional sense. Instead, a retroactive urn for Kurt Cobain will be made in multiple pieces, as a family of parts, and will be synthesized from his ashes. Composed as a series of geometric figures and made from his ashes suspended in a substrate, we imagine they will inspire new forms of sharing and distribution rituals enabled by their multiplicity. Read the rest of this entry »

The Plein & Pavilion project was conceived by the Battery Conservancy to create an extraordinary ‘outdoor living room’ for spontaneous and scheduled activities, public markets, seating and shade, and a gleaming white, state-of-the-art pavilion for visitor information and delicious locally grown gourmet food. Designed by UNStudio in collaboration with Handel Architects LLP, New York serving as associate architect. The project’s landscape was conceived by Parks Dept. Landscape Designer Gail Wittwer-Laird.

UNStudio’s design for New Amsterdam Plein & Pavilion creates a 5,000 square-foot, carefully programmed space located within Peter Minuit Plaza, housing regional organic food by Merchants Market, as well as the Alliance for Downtown New York’s Visitor Information Booth. This highly sculptural pavilion stands as a gateway to the Battery’s park and waterfront, with an expressive, undulating roofline and curving walls; a compact little building with the authority of a major landmark, evoking a flower opening to its surroundings. Read the rest of this entry »

Located next to basilica St Castor, in the vicinity of Deutsches Eck in Koblenz, Germany, the temporary pavilion will facilitate diverse events during summer of 2011. Occupying a plot that was previously used as a parking space, the treelike structure holds a pivotal position between The Gardening Show and the surrounding urban fabric. The aim of the project is to create a versatile space suitable for exhibitions, lectures, workshops and spontaneous gatherings of students. The members of Düsseldorf based office One Fine Day commented that one of the important aspects of the design was to educate both students and craftsmen of recent computational design and computer aided manufacturing technology.

The polygonal geometry and manifold symmetries of nearby St. Castor’s stellar vault have been a major inspiration for the project. Together with a rotationally symmetrical order a system of interdependent geometrical relations was defined that was resilient, yet rigorous enough to adapt to specific structural and functional needs. Furthermore the “branching” and inherent “porosity” of the trees’ leafy canopy above has been abstracted into the similarly “porous” pentagonal and rhombic tessellation of the surfaces. Read the rest of this entry »

In 2008 a prestigious competition to design Dublin’s new National Concert Hall had two finalists narrowed down from a shortlist of prominent architectural firms. 3XN and Henning Larsen Architects, both Danish Studios, presented powerful design ideas. However, due to client’s difficult financial situation caused by the global economic crisis, appointing of a final winner has been cancelled.

3XN’s proposal for the Concert Hall is a sculptural composition of volumes reflecting the interior layout of the building. Three Halls, each different in size, function and acoustic objectives, are connected by a foyer promoting flow and social interaction. The foyer expands and contracts, adapting to the new structure.

From the garden side, a transparent façade cascades down from the three Concert Hall volumes, drawing the gardens forth into the foyer and extending into a new public plaza towards Hatch Street.

The design concept from Henning Larsen Architects follows an entirely different logic. The Symphonic Hall is located at the heart of the site, becoming a pivotal point and affecting the entire organization. The Hall’s unique acoustics and lightness affect the performing act by discreetly creating unity between art and audience. Read the rest of this entry »

Hope Tree installation was envisioned by award-winning architecture firm, 24^o Studio, led by Fumio Hirakawa and Marina Topunova (both graduates of SCI-Arc) as a spatial condition that attended to question our surrounding as we know it and hoping to generate a discussion and understanding amongst the visitors about the place of our everyday life, our environment. Lately, we are bombarded with products that try to deal with the consequences of environmental damages throughout the world, but occasionally we overlook the roots of these occurring problems by not fully understanding our environment. Read the rest of this entry »

“The body of the Leviathan, especially his eyes, possesses great illuminating power.”

It is light that this creature thrives upon. It’s energy-regulated outer skin has the ability to to control the level of sunlight, depending on the needs of users, as well as the motion-based reaction to weather conditions. Flexible material of the skin can be rigidified, giving it a different appearance.

Kinetura is a design team led by Barbara van Biervliet and Xaveer Claerhout, established in 2006. They run an architecture office Claerhout-Van Biervliet since 1995 and are mostly engaged in more “down-to-earth” design.

The architects don’t seem to have concrete specifications about the system itself, as they are still in the process of developing the technology for Kinetower. Nevertheless, they emphasize that the project was an architectural exercise in conveying their design philosophy. Metamorphosis of space,  adjusting to functional and environmental demands can lead to, what can be called- “controlled spontaneity” of buildings. Read the rest of this entry »

Oyler Wu Collaborative and Michael Kalish have recently completed a traveling installation dedicated to Muhammad Ali.

From the Designers: “Designed as collaboration between Oyler Wu Collaborative and Michael Kalish, this traveling installation is built as a tribute to the life and cultural significance of Muhammad Ali.  The project is aimed at exposing a new generation to this larger than life character by building an appreciation for the nuanced emotional, aesthetic, and technical principles that collectively form experience – a concept that holds true as much for human persona as it does for architecture.

Conceived of as an experiential 2-D image, the core of the project is a seemingly random field of 1300 boxing speed bags that, when viewed from a single vantage point, form a pixilated image of the face of Muhammad Ali.  The structure is designed with the intention of simultaneously supporting the clarity and focus from that vantage point, while enriching the experience of the piece from all others, through a combination of dense structural bundles, material effects, and geometrical repetition.

The need for viewing the image from a single vantage point set in motion a series of essential design decisions.  First, the overall form of the piece is defined by the cone of vision between the viewer and the image, growing from front to back both in plan and in section.  In order to minimize the impact of the structure from that vantage point, its form from that location can be seen only as a simple frame that surrounds the image- one that is careful not to detract from that likeness.  Once the viewer moves away from that location, even the slightest, the bags explode into an unrecognizable array, with the surrounding structure serving as a complimentary and integral part of the system.

As a way of further highlighting the 3-dimensionality of the field of bags, the structure is split down the middle, with half of the bags pulled forward and the other half pushed backward, effectively elongating the field of bags.  Similarly, the structure is divided in such a way as to cantilever both forward and back, creating the rotational effect of the overall form.  In addition to supporting the bags, this strategy allows for portions of the bags to be viewed separately from the structure in elevation. Read the rest of this entry »

Moritz Mombour has designed a music pavilion for the Karmelitermarkt in Vienna. The concept for the project revolves around the notion that qualities typically deemed as un-architectural can be purposefully employed in order to abandon the typical ambition of creating and preserving a perfect aesthetic moment. Attributes such as decay, tenuousness and collapse are harnessed to produce an atmosphere that can embrace emotions ranging from the uncertain to the romantic. The cellular logic of the project allows for continuous expansion and, in turn, a continuous evolution of these qualities and emotions. Read the rest of this entry »

The latest and greatest in recent skyscraper design tends to be vertically homogenous and self-referential, only mixing program at the base, and responding to the immediate context ornamentally. The Shenzhen Interchange competition entry by WORKac defies this mode of apparatus by embracing a new kind of density-one that is more mixed and vertical. Shenzhen, one of the fastest growing cities in China is the ideal location for this digression, as its exponential growth necessitates a new agenda for skyscraper design. Read the rest of this entry »