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 »

Designed by Benjamin Ferns at the University of Nottingham, UK, St. Mary’s Church is an entropic product, dealing with a series of interrelating networks in a dynamic, fluctuating and self-augmenting system. Mechanisms maintain the coastal balance, whilst the architectures of Happisburgh are continually consumed through a cycle of 200 years. Elements from previous systems become reclaimed devices, suspended for eternity in the sunken courtyard of the time arena, a metamorphosis of energy. The architecture seeks to establish a new legacy of St. Mary, one of saviour and recollection, sacrificing the graves of HMS Invinsible to the storms, in exchange for the salt lines that inform the scavenging mechanisms of the impending loss.

A system of petrification and archive, these lands may be re-augmented but they will never be forgotten.

It’s another in a series of cutting-edge projects designed for the blooming Asian market. The competition for the Taipei City Museum of Art has drawn a large number proposals, including the one by Porto-based OODA Architecture, which received a merit award. The aim of the competition was to provide a new landmark for the urban center.

The proposed concept is based on two hypercubes; a 90 degree angled cube suspended within a larger contorted volumetric box. The main museum is located within the cube, and above the Children Museum of Art. The latter is positioned below the open public space and sheltered by the main building. The Museum of Art itself flows on a continuous ramp between the outer skin and the hyper core cube inside, all the way to the top. The galleries are located along the ramp, which spirals upwards, around the art resource center. The administrative units are situated at the top. Read the rest of this entry »

IDEA Studio is a research program for designers, pursiung innovative projects that push design technology to its limits. Its residents have access to latest technology and coaching from Autodesk’s experts who can help them apply the latest technology to accelerate their projects. Shajay Bhooshan, lead researcher at Zaha Hadid Architects, used Autodesk Maya and Autodesk Algor Simulation software to create operative pathways from physically-based simulation designs to structurally sound architectural models. Bhooshan created a plug-in for Maya to visualize stresses in real-time, enabling him to integrate structural feedback into the form-finding process with minimal disruption to the creative experience. To test out the workflow, Bhooshan and his colleague, John Klein, created a case study design of a train station. Using 3D printers in the Autodesk Gallery, Bhooshan and Klein printed the 18 components of the train station design, which fit together to create one fluid form. Read the rest of this entry »

Adults typically make sense of an object and all the sensations it gives them by reference to linguistic and conceptual categories. For new born kids non-linguistic practices come first. The space of the MAXI-ooh! is therefore designed in relationship to a new ergonomic unit: the Babult [1baby + 1adult = 1 BABULT = Unit of playful Learning] .It is a concept design for an innovative playground for kids from 0 to 5 years old. Each BABULT learns by wandering and exploring a continuous space defined by gradual morphologic variations, a smooth space as Deleuze/Guattari would call it. In the MAXI-ooh! space is defined by a field of cells of different dimensions and porosity rather than by walls.

Ground surface is differentiated and folded with the aim of creating an artificial landscape of dunes and niches while all the other structures are hanged up to the ceiling. A forest of water, sounds and smells where the Babults are immersed and can interact with. Babult is not interested in gadgets or inventions but in communication, he’s not interested in studying but in learning by doing. As a consequence all the interactive systems are integrated in the geometry and in the materials of the project augmenting the embedded intelligence of the environment and the potential of learning of the Babult in a dynamic, intuitive but not-prescriptive way. Read the rest of this entry »

The New Taipei City Museum of Art is located in the south of Taipei city, in between the mountains and Dahan River. The museum minimizes its footprint on the original site in being designed vertical, thus creating an urban totem.

The NTCArt is a vertical museum. The different floors offer views of the surroundings at different levels: (lobby of the children’s museum of art, hall of fame, outdoor/semi-outdoor exhibition space, exhibit resting areas and restaurants) all face the landscape and offers new perspectives frame (urban window) of the Island of Taipei. The entrance lobby of the NTCArt is taken after a landscape that invites the visitor to access the different parts of the museum. Each part of the museum has an independent access from the lobby. A restaurant, a gift shop, and a bookstore surround the lobby. Furthermore, this passage allows the garden to continue and connects the Ceramic Art Plaza and the Art Workshop. So, the passage is an urban gate between the Ceramic Art Plaza, the Art Workshop and the NTCArt. Read the rest of this entry »

Designed for the Busan Opera House Competition in 2011 by Paul Preissner Architects, the project relies on three main ideas: to provide a strong urban statement in newly forming cultural district; to develop a clear visual strategy for the identity of the Opera which is simultaneously familiar and never-before seen; to create a unique building for the center of the cultural district with a contemporary architectural approach shaped to optimize active and passive energy use.

This project develops its personality by a combination of unique formal expression through the shape of the building, rational programmatic organization, and a curated graphic pattern (stripes) in order to produce a project that looks like nothing before it. Read the rest of this entry »

How do we rethink an Opera? There is no lack in ambition.The constant all consuming urge for innovation can be destructive and self serving. But there is no mistaking the impact of creative processes fuelled by these seemingly undesirable traits . To dissect the traditional opera, gnawing away at the foundations of the sacred opera house till that threshold is reached when the hierarchies are disintegrated, when the instrument becomes the artist, and artist the facilitator.

The attempt was to transform the notion of a designed space into that of a designed intent. Performative spaces were achieved through articulations of the skin, the surface and the structure. Starting from a simple module, the articulations rise in complexity and hierarchy to sprout a new opera and concert hall in the middle of the Stadtpark in Vienna. The landscape is a manicured english garden which is transformed by the growth of the bionic music pavilion progressively mutating into an Opera. A relationship fluctuating between symbiotic and parasitic exists between the landscape and the opera in such a way that the boundaries are blurred. Read the rest of this entry »

Designing a gathering point for the city of Timisoara, the main focus for the pavilion conceived by Chris Precht was to stand out as an attractor and fit in the context at the same time. Located within the green lung of the city with direct connection to its surrounding districts and due to its vertical orientation, the highseat‘ has a great potential to serve as a cultural,social, and urban focal point to attract people back to the park.

The goal was not designing a brand new shiny project, but an self-evolving pavilion becoming one with its location in a way that the strongest and most capable plants will impose on the structure. Some time later, there should be a completely unpredictable, wild and unorganized garden taking over the pavilion.

Three centimeters thick and thirty centimeters wide romanian beech timber boards construct a truss system covering a spacial program based on relaxation during the day and activation in the evening. After entering the building the first spacial program is for people resting after physical activities. Read the rest of this entry »