HEEA Development LLC announced the completion of Metal Shutter Houses, a luxury condominium building designed by architect Shigeru Ban and his New York-based partner Dean Maltz, located in Chelsea’s art district, just west of the High Line. The building is at 524 West 19th Street, between 10th and 11th Avenues on New York’s ‘Starchitect Row’ next to Frank Gehry’s IAC Headquarters and across the street from Jean Nouvel’s 100 11th building.

Metal Shutter Houses take its name from two distinct features, the shutters that cover the two major facades of the building and the creation of condos that feel like individual homes within one structure. The building’s façade, with its “retractable skin” of motorized perforated metal shutters, echoes the after-hours shutters of neighboring galleries thereby contextualizing the building within its environment. Its façade represents a uniform minimal cube when all of the shutters are closed and presents a number of dynamic patterns based the arrangement of open and closed shutters at each resident’s discretion. Each apartment has direct access from the lobby through a single elevator and is a floor-through duplex providing abundant light streaming in from both the north and south facades. The double height exterior walls on the north façade apartments can be opened  via sweeping floor-to-ceiling bi-fold doors thereby creating continuity between the interior space and outdoor terraces – blurring the boundary between inside and out. To achieve the complete opening of the apartment to the exterior Ban re-designed and newly adapted an industrial bi-fold door, commonly used in airplane hangars, and transformed it into an environmentally sound window wall. Read the rest of this entry »

Currently in the M.Arch program at MIT, the prospective architect and designer Alan Lu creates and explores architecture through experimenting with form, fabrication and design techniques. The bridge project continues the research in applying modular structures to various typologies and establishing a specificity of public spaces. The conceptual pedestrian pathway design combines the immediate influences of the site with repetitive structural elements, delivering a variation of the initial principle as the resulting object. The anamorphic bridge is derived from the convergence of vantage points at a given site. Through a process of intersection and trimming, a figure emerges that provides circulation and outlook spaces. Adaptive modules provide openings directed back to these vantage points in addition to acting as the primary structural elements. Read the rest of this entry »

BLUE ROOM is an installation proposal that translates and complement the brand’s juxtaposition of soft silhouette and architectural lines in their work into the scale of the retail environment. We began with an idea about the insertion of a translucent lining that would contrast with the rectilinear envelope of the existing space and act as an atmospheric veil to separate and define areas for the display of merchandise. To connect the two geometries together, we devised a series of structural frames for the new surface that would continue onto the perimeter walls, floor and ceiling and translate into different elements, including shelving standards, clothing stands, and lighting. These linear frames act as seams that literally connect edges and create continuities across disparate surfaces. The materiality of the liner was envisioned as a stretchy translucent textile that would create atmospheric layers that allow a sense of discovery in what is essentially a very small space. We chose the fabric colors, a mid-range blue layered with a lighter blue, to literally convey a sense of atmosphere and to also recall an exotic environment that could be understood as water or sky, which might be particularly appropriate for resort wear, which we understand will be part of the collection on display. The form of the liner was intended to evoke a sense of an ephemeral shape or space like a wave or a cloud, and the shape and translucency has the ability to hold light and give it a volumetric quality. This surface could also be a place for image projections to convey an animated sense of atmosphere. The clothing display will be comprised of brushed aluminum standards and reclaimed wood planking that will be routed to provide a means for both shelving and hanging pieces. The changing room and cashwrap are enveloped in a second bi-directional wave that also leads back to the VIP room. Read the rest of this entry »

The Five Senses Lounge Bar designed by Barcelona-based, award-winning architecture firm ON-A was created with a clear premise: a desire to be unique and exclusive treatment for its customers. It was designed and constructed as a single space that is capable of stimulating several senses at once: visual, chromatic, auditory, sensory, etc. Seen from outside during the night, the bar resembles a strange lamp of colours, varying each night, while during the day it is a blue volume of irregular facets.

The idea arose from the existing layout of the space, as well as from the analysis of the different types of customers who frequent the lounge bar. There are several interior spaces: a bar zone, VIP areas, an entrance area and quieter zones of variable configuration, characterised by the central position of the privets.

ON-A began working from an analysis of the clients of the bar, leading to design areas that were, architecturally, inspired by genetics and codification. ON-A sought to use a single material, a single skin that would be able to generate the separate aforementioned spaces without completely segregating them, allowing for a perception of the totality of the space from within each of the individual areas. Read the rest of this entry »

The terminal, designed by Stephan Sobl, uses the typology of the Hypostyle Hall. The only Hypostyle Hall with two rows of columns on center is one in which the spacing of each of the bays made by the columns are equal or when the spacing between rows of columns in the central space is less than the spacing between the row of columns and the outer walls. This is all to say that the epitome of any Hypostyle Hall is a field of columns and not a volume defined by columns.

The principles of the Hypostyle Hall in the project are addressed using a field of massive and fragile columns that define a variation of spatial and volumetric interiors of the terminal. Denser areas of the field create intimate spaces and become areas to rest whereas less dense areas are circulation routes and contain architectural programs. Read the rest of this entry »

Second Skin is an installation proposal designed to complement the aesthetic and image of the clothing line of the Lake and Stars. Our initial concept was to develop a space that recalled the way in which the designers see lingerie as something that can be playfully exposed and integrated into everyday wear. We developed surfaces of abstracted “skins” that alternately reveal and conceal spaces with varying levels of privacy. Fittingly, our inspiration for the structure comes from the pissoirs that line the banks of canals in Amsterdam. These structures allow very private acts to take place in public through the design of the structure, which is configured as a spiral made of perforated metal mounted on standards above a drain. The spiral shape and relative opacity of the material allows for private acts to take place without doors, though the body is not completely enclosed. Our other inspiration was the spatial sensibility of moving through one of Richard Serra’s torque ellipses, whose canted, curved surfaces propel the visitor into forward movement and sensorial engagement and create an environment of anticipation and delayed revelation. In our proposal, the “skins” curve and curl to create a ruled surface that forms dressing areas and backdrops for hanging and shelving display as well as the checkout counter. The existing perimeter walls are secondary sites for display and storage. Read the rest of this entry »

The project is part of an architectural research carried out at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. It engages in a creative dialogue with notions of mass, developable surfaces, patterns and transparency. Designed by Bika Rebek, under the guidance of Gregg Lynn, this Final Thesis project explores the threshold between industrial structures and nature.

While waiting for their cruise ship to pass the lock, the visitors of the Panama Canal are kept exposed to the exuberant diversities of the area through biomimicry of the metal-sheet envelope and heavy masses of concrete. The narrative of the organic flow is free from interruption. Instead of juxtaposing the visual abundance of the natural surroundings with restrained imagery of the waiting room, the design introduces visitors to a range of ambiences. Moving through spaces with different identities and climate zones, they encounter planthouses, aquariums and exhibitions, conceived with the purpose of elaborating on the richness of the area surrounding the Panama Canal. One side allows for spectacular views onto the water lock, while on the other side visitors take a walk into the jungle canopy. The fragility of the façade mimics the dense jungle treetops, allowing natural lighting to filter through the interior and blur the line between spaces. The new building for visitors seems to emerge from the jungle and encompass the locks, reclaiming its territory.

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The proposal by  Moatasem Esmat of the Mataria Engineering School for a new Fine Arts Center in Helwan, Egypt represents a mix of architectural principles that stand for a new age of architectural design and sustainability. The project is designed as series of surfaces that emerge from the ground to create inhabitable spaces. The geometry has been carefully designed according to solar exposure, wind currents, and maximum rainwater collection. The roof is a continuos green park perforated at different areas to create courtyards that provide natural light and ventilation to all interior spaces. Among the different areas there is an exhibition hall, convention center, and academic buildings.  Read the rest of this entry »

The aim of the project is to develop a theater / performance / stage project for the Sydney Festival 2012, a one-month festival with hundreds of events occurring in the city. The project was designed along a number of briefs and locations that varied in program, size, character, and location.

Iain Blampied and Oliver Hessian approached the project brief with the understanding that ideally this venue should be an expressive piece of architecture that attracts visitors in its own right while also leaving the inhabiting director as much freedom for creativity and as little distraction as possible. The approach taken involves the investigation of architecture as a temporal, dynamic system, a performative envelope and a machine that mirrors a multiplicity of worlds. Read the rest of this entry »

This thesis by Brandon Clifford posits that our conventional understanding of domesticity is in direct relation to a cultural assumption about property ownership – permanence, prosperity, growth – and, in turn, claims that this relationship is currently in a state of crisis (we move now more than ever and foreclosure rates are through the roof).  This assumption of permanence has served as the foundation for a variety of disciplines – architecture, urban planning, real-estate, the building industry – but our increasing condition of impermanence forces us to reexamine how these disciplines respond.  This project proposes a method of making that operates in direct correspondence with the ebb and flow of property fluctuations, and is demonstrated through multiple scales of architectural design. Read the rest of this entry »