Combining green consciousness with sleek and sustainable ultra-modern design, the Solarflora from Nectar is a fully functional solar generator that, in addition to providing green power at public spaces, pays elegant and stylized tribute to nature’s simple beauty. Suggestive of a giant flower, with lines that are simultaneously clean and slightly curvilinear rising to petal-like forms at its apex, the Solarflora is capable of holding one, two, three, or four solar panels and supplying up to 1.2 kilowatt-hours of electricity per day of depending on leaf configurations.

An artistic and enjoyable addition to parks, shopping malls, museums, fairgrounds, convention centers, bus stops, and wide variety of other locales, the Solarflora includes up to three modular leaves which feature a soft light for dramatic effect and are attached to a plant-like stalk. Each Solarflora is adjusted to the local geographic latitude so that it is angled towards the sun to capture the maximum available energy. The Solarflora has been tested to withstand hurricane force winds. Read the rest of this entry »

MY Lounge Chair – for Walter Knoll

Extending Ben van Berkel’s earlier MYchair into a family of related designs, My Lounge Chair will be presented for the first time at the Walter Knoll stand in Milan. My Lounge Chair continues and extends the formal qualities and spatial effects of the earlier MYchair, with the facet shapes of the chaise longue inspired seat echoed in the curves of the supporting frame.

“My Lounge Chair is literally an expansion of the MYchair, both physically and conceptually. An actual stretching of the original chair extends the ‘Coming Home’ concept of relaxation and reflection even further.” – Ben van Berkel Read the rest of this entry »

Creativity and innovation meet design, Disney meets DuPont-Corian at the next Milan week of design (11-17 April, 2011), the most important venue for design companies and professionals from around the world. DuPont – Corian and Disney will showcase at “Padiglione Visconti” (via Tortona 58, Milano) “TRON designs CORIAN”, a design exhibition inspired by the film “TRON: Legacy” from Walt Disney Studios.

For the participation of dynamic international kitchen manufacturer Ernestomeda at “TRON designs CORIAN”, Milan-based architectural and design studio AquiliAlberg have conceived a kitchen and dining area inspired by the movie. Read the rest of this entry »

Power Flower is an exploration by Amsterdam based NL Architects to create aesthetically pleasing and adaptable windmills for use in all environments, particularly in urban settings. To create a design that is one part power plant one part art, NL asked themselves the question: “Can we turn windmills into objects of desire?”

NL began by examining current windmill design: the typical three-rotor, and horizontal-axis wind turbine (HAWT) design. These windmills require a large amount of space around them to operate safely and efficiently. This of course leaves significant unworkable space between mills that could be used to capture more energy. Not to mention they must be placed at a safe distance from homes, where that energy is needed, a particular hindrance to use in urban settings. Read the rest of this entry »

Lea Ceramiche is taking part in Interni Mutant Architecture & Design with an installation designed by Zaha Hadid.

The installation features Lea Slimtech, the ultraslim slab (just 3mm) available in large sizes (up to 3m x 1m): the chosen site is an 18th century courtyard, one of the most attractive areas at Milan’s University, where the slabs will be used to bring a three dimensional structure to life. It will be a sort of vortex made entirely in porcelain stoneware; a dynamic space demonstrating a flexible and unconventional use of this innovative material.

The project started out as a contemporary take on courtyard architecture. It is a dynamic composition that starts out at the perimeter of the space and then follows the orthogonal shape of the columns and lines, meeting at the centre, creating complex and sinuous geometrical patterns: The 800 m2 area is covered with 7 different colours of Slimtech slabs (from milk white to black coffee) that are 1 metre wide and in various heights ranging to a maximum of 2 metres. The installation transforms the courtyard into a space with a constantly shifting shape and colour depending on the many possible viewing angles. Fluorescent light tubes by Artemide run along the structure, lighting up the building and creating a link between the formal layout of the setting and the flowing lines of the project. Read the rest of this entry »

eVolo Magazine is pleased to announce the winners of the 2011 Skyscraper Competition. Established in 2006, the annual Skyscraper Competition recognizes outstanding ideas that redefine skyscraper design through the use of new technologies, materials, programs, aesthetics, and spatial organizations, along with studies on globalization, flexibility, adaptability, and the digital revolution. This is also an investigation on the public and private space and the role of the individual and the collective in the creation of a dynamic and adaptive vertical community. The award seeks to discover young talent, whose ideas will change the way we understand architecture and its relationship with the natural and built environments.

The Jury of the 2011 edition was formed by leaders of the architecture and design fields including: Juan Azulay [principal Matter Management, professor at Southern California Institute of Architecture], CarloMaria Ciampoli [port director Live Architecture Network], Mario Cipresso [principal Studio Shift, professor at University of Southern California], Ted Givens [principal 10 Design], Eric Goldemberg [principal Monad Studio, professor at Florida International University], Jose Gonzalez [principal Softlab, professor at Pratt Institute], John Hill [editor Archidose], Mitchell Joachim [principal Terreform One, professor at New York University], Andrew Liang [principal Studio 0.10., professor at University of Southern California], Javier Quintana [principal Taller Basico de Arquitectura, Dean of IE School of Architecture], Rezza Rahdian [Architect, Second Place 2009 Skyscraper Competition], Michel Rojkind [principal Rojkind Arquitectos], and Michael Szivos [principal Softlab, professor at Pratt Institute]. The Jury selected 3 winners and 32 honorable mentions. eVolo Magazine received 715 projects from all five continents and 95 different countries.

The first place was awarded to Atelier CMJN (Julien Combes, Gaël Brulé) from France for their ‘LO2P Recycling Skyscraper’ in New Delhi, India. The project is designed as a large-scale wind turbine that filters polluted air with a series of particle collector membranes, elevated greenhouses, and mineralization baths.

The second place was awarded to Yoann Mescam, Paul-Eric Schirr-Bonnans, and Xavier Schirr-Bonnans from France for a dome-like horizontal skyscraper that harvests solar energy, collects rainwater, and preserves the existing urban fabric at ground level thanks to its large skylights and small footprint.

The recipient of the third place is Yheu-Shen Chua from the United Kingdom for a project that re-imagines the Hoover Dam in the U.S. as an inhabitable skyscraper that unifies the power plant with a gallery, aquarium, and viewing platform that engages the falling water directly.

Among the honorable mentions there are “waterscrapers” that clean oil spills and desalinate sea water, inverted skyscrapers for a floating Olympic villa, recycling towers, research skyscrapers that harvest lightning power, vertical cemeteries and amusement parks, sports skyscrapers, fish farms, and “living mountains” for desert climates. Other proposals use the latest building technologies and parametric design to configure environmentally conscious self-sufficient buildings.

eVolo Magazine would like to acknowledge all the competitors for their effort, vision, and passion for architectural innovation and the members of the Jury for their knowledge, time, and enthusiasm during the long review process.

eVolo Magazine is also pleased to announce the publication of a Limited Edition  book (only 500 copies) that celebrates the sixth anniversary of the prestigious international Skyscraper Competition. With more than 3,000 projects received, we are showcasing the best 300 proposals from the past six years, including 2011, in a large-format hardcover book. Our goal is to edit a true gem of contemporary architecture printed in over one-thousand full-color pages.

ORDER LIMITED EDITION BOOK

Boston’s TREEPODS INIATIVE proposes to embody, and artificially enhance, the most important biological characteristic of natural trees: the capacity to clean the air, taking the CO² and releasing O².

Boston’s TREEPODS INIATIVE is a sustainable project leaded by Influx_Studio and ShiftBoston. The aim ff this collaboration is to allow the achievement of Boston’s global goals in terms of carbon reduction programs in the short time, giving us enough time to make the change from the present fossil fuel economy into a new Zero carbon energy economy.

The proposal could be define as a CO2-scrubbing living machine. Treepods may well redesign in an urban radical new way our polluted urban environment, interacting with natural trees, and enhancing its carbon absorption capacity. In that way, those artificial trees don’t replace the natural ones, but they act like small urban “air cleaning infrastructures”. Advanced technologies are actually already developed that allow the capture of the atmospheric carbon dioxide from ambient air in an efficient, economic and sustainable way. Developed by Dr Klaus Lackner, Director of the Lenfest Center for Sustainable Energy at Columbia University, this revolutionary process is based on the discovery of the ‘humidity swing,’ a technology that enables the energy-efficient capture of CO2 from air, allowing to close the carbon cycle and creating a valuable product for beneficial use. Read the rest of this entry »

This project by Neri Oxman from the MIT Media Lab explores the notion of material organization as it is informed by structural and environmental performance. A continuous tiling system is differentiated across its entire surface area to accommodate a range of physical conditions of light transmission, heat flux, stored energy modulation and structural support. The surface is thickened locally where it is structurally required to support itself, and modulates its transparency according to the light conditions of its hosting environment. 20 tiles are assembled as a continuum comprised of multiple resin types – rigid and/or flexible. Each tile is designed as a structural composite representing the local performance criteria as manifested in the mixtures of liquid resin. A single 3-D milled semi adjustable mold made of machinable wax is used to generate multiple tiles. Each tile is cast with high temperature curing plastic deforming the original mold with each casting procedure by controlling the temperature gradient across the surface area of the mold. These processes speculate about light and/or heat sensitive environmental-specific construction techniques. Read the rest of this entry »

AetherSCS.02 - Alan Tansey

Studio Mode/modeLab is pleased to announce the fourth installment of the coLab workshop series: Interactive Parametrics – a two-day processing workshop (with an optional third day) focusing on dynamic sketches and prototyping. The workshop will be held in New York City during the weekend of February 19, 2011.

The paradigm of scripting within ubiquitous modeling platforms such as Rhino or Maya allows users to generate complex form by accessing an underlying geometry engine and performing iterative functions. This paradigm is typically based on run-once execution, making it unsuitable for designing interactive or time-based behaviors. By implementing workflows that utilize Processing to create real-time software sketches, we can design dynamic systems that can act as standalone tools for parametric design, input mechanisms to feed other platforms, or processors of existing or sensor-based data sets. Read the rest of this entry »

The double video installation Topologies by artist Quayola is an experimental abstract of the Baroque period art works Las Meninas by Velazquez and L’ Immacolata Concezione by Tiepolo. The figurative paintings are systematically reduced to color planes and set in motion as a fluid kinetic skin. The fluttering undulations become almost entirely independent of their origins, responding to an underlying, ever changing formulation of three dimensional space. The abstractions have architectural geometric underpinnings of fixed points connected by simple geometric plains which create the three dimensional space. The organic movement of the topography is underscored by accompanying sounds corresponding to the intensity and scale of the movement. Read the rest of this entry »