An ornate structural system suspending a patch of greenery high above the ground can serve as a concise explanation of the winning concept for the Taiwan Tower Competition for Taichung City. The structure will frame the semi-outdoor interior space and create an elevated urban retreat by providing a green rooftop island for the city inhabitants. Designed by Sou Fujimoto Architects, the tower is a symbolic landmark with strong sculptural rhetorics. Visible from many points throughout the city, the building reintroduces the beauty of nature into the urban fabric. Read the rest of this entry »

VoltaDom is an installation created for MIT’s 150^th Anniversary Celebration and FAST Arts Festival. It populates the passageway between Buildings 56 and 66 on MIT’s campus. Designed by a multidisciplinary research based practice SJET, founded by Skylar Tibbits in 2007, the project is one of the firm’s recent experiments in computational design. The project revisits a historically paramount structural element-the vault, attempting to find its contemporary equivalent through various assembly and fabrication techniques. This reference allows one to appreciate the installation both as a sculpture and a research in materiality and digital fabrication. Read the rest of this entry »

The intelligent dynamic wall is an installation designed by E/B Office for Leonardo Museum of Art, Science and Technology in Salt Lake City, Utah. It aims to communicate the global environmental information through an interactive interface embedded in the material of the wall. It tries to convey the idea of applying green techniques to built space as a live, conscious system, fully integrated with the environment.

Environmental sensors capture data from sources throughout the planet and feed the data to solar-powered LED’s embedded in the sine-wave form made of recycled plastic. As the sensors register changes in temperature, wind, seismicity, and other factors, the LEDs reflect these fluctuations with continuous spectral waves that represent minute shifts in the data feed from moment to moment.  At 92 feet long and over 14 feet high, the structure covers 1300 sqft of vertical exhibition space traversing the museum’s ground floor lobby and acting as a programmatic threshold between exhibit spaces. It’s composed of 176 unique recycled HDPE fins embedded with 1,888 full-color RGB LED’s and held together by approximately 8000 individual set screws.  The estimated amount of plastic this project diverted from a landfill is around three tons. Read the rest of this entry »

Intended to contribute to Seoul’s initiative of becoming one of world’s top five cities in innovative urban design, this project for a stadium would be located near No-Eul Park is Seoul, serving the local colleges, high schools and adjacent communities. It’s dynamic form and tectonic qualities communicate both to the natural surroundings and the need for attractive and versatile public spaces.

The entrance is situated at the center of the structure, bringing visitors to the tessellated secondary structure. Shell-like structures help distributing the tension through the varied curved type and contain a gradient cavity that screens sunlight for the stadium audience. Triangulated panelization follows the building’s curvature, structuring its body and enhancing the dynamic effects of the structural shells. Stressing the conceptual importance of “poly-valiant qualities of the building”, the architect Michael Arellanes states: Read the rest of this entry »

This project by Joseph A. Sarafian from the University of Southern California imagines a future in which billions of genetic algorithms act not only as the mediator between man and reality, but shape his existence through their very interactions. It explores a functionality beyond the carrying out of human desires, but of the prediction of human behavior. These ideas manifest in the design of the Bach Multidisciplinary Research Institute. Derived from notions of how Johann Sebastian Bach wove together voices in his fugues, this design is a synthesis of various flows of information, creating an effect larger than the sum of its parts. To achieve this goal, the building acts as an organism, reacting to its environment in such a way that it automatically controls its porosity through a network of advanced algorithms. Thus the facade is a continually fluctuating network of openings.

Instead of merely controlling the light conditions of the interiors, the aperture system is designed to close off and filter pollution from the adjacent freeway as part of the research of the facility. Thus by engaging with its environment the building acts as a testing instrument as much as an enclosure. Acoustical considerations are addressed on a local level as spaces that require varying levels of insulation are opened or closed automatically and in relation to human occupancy.

The research institute is designed to engage various fields of study, from music and the visual arts to biology and mathematics. This diversity promotes a common wealth of knowledge and facilitates interdisciplinary learning. Advancements in one field will have ripple effects in others and this synergy will promote a culture of recombinatory knowledge. Read the rest of this entry »

During the modernization of Beijing, except for some historical houses, independent housing typology was almost eliminated. Afterwards, the new model became huge, stacking commercial residential buildings.

Thus, with the support of the client, project Beijing House II is trying to seek new methods of bringing the independent housing typology back to Beijing’s contemporary city life. This design scheme adds a new house onto the exterior of an obsolete factory building. Inside the house there are bedrooms, a studio and a green room. By doing this, the design uses the empty city space in the air and rediscovers the typology of independent housing in Beijing city.

Meanwhile, this scheme also brings about new challenges because Beijing has frequent earthquakes and this design scheme suggests a big cantilever house, which is attached onto the exiting building. Therefore, to keep this in mind, a mechanical system is introduced to counteract a potential earthquake. Read the rest of this entry »

Designed by Fletcher Priest Architects, the tower is intended to celebrate the cosmopolitan, urban and global character of New York City. It is a high-rise monument located at the tip of Manhattan on a pier projecting from Battery Park. While revitalizing the immediate surrounding and integrating it with the existing urban tissue, the Tower Museum also functions as an architectural landmark, terminating the north-south axis that extends to uptown Manhattan. The building would facilitate various exhibitions, with the emphasis on the 1970’s memorabilia: personal effects, souvenirs and photos of a new generation of immigrants who arrived after 1960. Read the rest of this entry »

BIG + Paris-based architects OFF, engineers Buro Happold, consultants Michel Forgue and environmental engineer Franck Boutte is the winning team to design the new 15.000 m2 research centre for Sorbonne’s Scientific university Université Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris.

The new multidisciplinary research centre, Paris PARC, located between Jean Nouvel’s Institut du Monde Arabe and the open green park of the Jussieu Campus will become a significant addition to the campus, strengthening the international appeal and openness of the leading French University for Science and Medicine. The facility will bring together academic scholars and the business community, while re-connecting the university physically and visually with the city of Paris. The winning team was honored as the best design among proposals from MVRDV, Lipsky Rollet, Mario Cucinella and Peripherique.

Paris PARC is located in the visual axis of the Notre Dame Cathedral in a dense context of university buildings from different historical periods. BIG proposes a building geometry that adapts to the specific conditions of all adjoining sides, optimized for daylight, views and accessibility. The three-dimensional envelope retracts from the neighboring facades, opens up towards the square of Institut du Monde Arabe and the park, and folds into a publicly accessible rooftop landscape, resulting in an adapted sculptural building volume situated between the emblematic architectural monuments of the university. Read the rest of this entry »

This project was designed for Cheraga, Algeria by Barcelona-based DNA Architects. Le Far du Grand Vent adapts itself to the surroundings. It follows the forms of the urban surface given by the road passing by and the built areas around. The building itself reminds of a ship due to the angular basis which is considerably bigger than the upper part of the construction. It could also remind of melting ice, backed by the presence of the sea nearby. The floors are separated on the exterior, with angular edges, giving the impression of fragility and that the huge integrating parts could fall apart.

Due to the used materials, such as the glass, Le far has a sophisticated and light air, contrasting the huge dimensions making it eye-catching, becoming a landmark at the city-skyline even more at night. Read the rest of this entry »

The project is located in Xiaguan District, Nanjing, China. The site is on the south side of Jianning Road, in this urban area which is traditional and historical. The architects are required to design a big complexity including entertaining, sport, commercial and administration offices. Hence the major concern of the design is how to merge this “huge complex” into the existing beautiful nature landscape scenery and get a brilliantly transitional connection with the landscape there.

The distribution of architectural volumes in this design follows the idea of traditional Chinese Gardens, which transforming the elements of water, stones, hills, bridges and flowers into significant urban shapes animating and vitalizing the daily life of the entire district. As the site is in the traditional area, which is very sensitive to avant-garde architecture, this drives us to control the upground mass of the highrise. The proposal therefore lifts up the ground surface and transforms it into a flexible and lively vertical highrise with landscape integrating all the service and leisure facilities to provide an attractive and continuously active support for this traditional and cultural site. Read the rest of this entry »