The project of a Mediatheque – “Newer Orleans” in US, by UNStudio, helps better understanding the building as a tool in re-establishing a balanced ecology between culture and commerce. Here the participants can congregate without fear of reprisal – it could be called the safe haven and it acts as a setting that people transiently share.

This is what architects from UNStudio were imagining as the future of one of the world’s most vibrant, yet stricken places – a public construction, open, accessible, and forward-looking. However, as they stated, the task of rebuilding New Orleans undoubtedly leads to a paradox – on one hand the city needs new buildings symbolizing hope and courage towards the future while on the other people have to realize what happened and address recent history. The dramatic fact has to be noticed; therefore it should be avoided to tell complete new story after a disaster has occurred. Read the rest of this entry »

“Living Tomorrow” in Amsterdam, by UNStudio, is a temporary building that combines a laboratory, a gallery and an auditorium. The edifice functions as a basis for the different innovative technologies to be exhibited and it acted as a prototype, showing high-end technology environments for living and work. As the requirement for the structure was to be most innovative, it has an expiration date – five years after the opening it is planned to be demolished due to new technologies coming to the market. During this period the displayed concepts will be constantly evolving and adapted to the latest developments.

The ground floor houses the entrance, auditorium, event hall, exhibition room, administration and kitchen are located, while the four levels above contain more exhibition rooms, a small restaurant and other secondary facilities. Visitors can get acquainted with the products and services, which can enhance the quality of living or working in the near future. The building systems feature alternative heating and cooling methods, in addition to the latest technologies. Read the rest of this entry »

Synthesis Design + Architecture’s proposal for the recent Keelung Harbor Terminal Building in Taiwan was clearly inspired by the geometric patterns of Taiwanese Hen Cages as well as the structural shells of luxury racing yachts. Building’s shape appears as a reaction to the programmatic content and performative requirements, and is created in rather dynamic transition from exo-skin to exo-skeleton. However, the architects at SDA state that, although it appears to be formal expression, it is actually an “informed form”, responsive to the integration of sustainability, urban context, program, circulation patterns and weather. That kind of integrated design response further informs building’s orientation, spatial layout, façade design as well as the choice of material and structural system.

The program of this unique harbor building is divided into three experience groups and cyclical sequences. Three groups share programmatic overlaps and the exchange between the groups is therefore enabled. As the sustainable approach is integrated into the design from the very beginning, the building strives to generate an efficient operational strategy which uses passive techniques in order to manipulate the natural conditions, and for the benefit of internal environment. Building orientation is into the direction of the prevailing wind direction, which allows the air flow to be drawn into the flanks of the tower, providing natural ventilation for the main structure and the façade. Read the rest of this entry »

As stated at Telus, this dynamic tower, designed by Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) in collaboration with Dialog, is $400-million, 750,000 square foot LEED Platinum project which will significantly transform Calgary’s skyline as an architectural marvel, creating a dynamic community of blended urban living and working. This vibrant mixed use will offer 430,000 square foot of office space, mostly for Telus, and it is scheduled for completion in the fall of 2017.

Designed for downtown Calgary, a typical North American city center with a cluster of corporate towers surrounded by a periphery of low density suburban homes, Telus Sky Tower proposes different way of living in a lovely and more sustainable mixture of living and working at the very intersection of light rail and main roads in the heart of the center, which creates more varied and pedestrian-friendly center for this city. The idea behind the design is to smooth the transition from working to living, as the tower takes off from the ground to touch the sky. Read the rest of this entry »

Compresscity, designed by Master of Architecture graduate Garrett Ryan Miller from California College of the Arts, is a speculative architectural intervention  that allows for a more sophisticated cross-occupation of urban vacancies near commercial and industrial zones along the Alaskan Way Viaduct in Seattle, Washington.

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Port to Port, Advanced Data Visualization Project courtesy of SIDL (Spatial Information Design Lab, Columbia University)

THE POLITICS OF PARAMETRICISM is an international conference to be held at REDCAT, in Downtown Los Angeles, California, at 7-9pm on Friday 15th & 10am-6.30pm on Saturday 16th of November 2013.

A range of international guest speakers from the industries and academic spheres of architecture and urbanism, including Phil Bernstein, Benjamin Bratton, Christina Cogdell, Teddy Cruz, Peggy Deamer, Andrés Jaque, Laura Kurgan, Neil Leach, Reinhold Martin & Patrik Schumacher will explore urgent questions that concern the social and political ramifications of the spreading influence of parametric scripting software as the potential standard industry tool for architecture, urban planning and many other aspects of design.

PARAMETRICISM has recently been heralded as the new avant-garde in the industries of architecture, urban design, industrial design, and digital information modeling: the natural heir to the passing out of favor of Postmodernist and Deconstructionist models. An increasing number of architecture projects and industrially manufactured products are now designed and realized using digital software based on parametric or algorithmic scripting platforms. These platforms have the capability to process large quantities of data for the development of complex topological structures and environments, as well as new understandings of space, both real and virtual. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Van Berkel of UNStudio stated that the philosophy behind the Raffles City, located near the Qiantang River in Hangzhou 180 kilometres southwest of Shanghai, is to integrate mixed-use in an urban context, but in a such way as to give this concept a twist by focusing on where the urban context meets the landscape of the city. The project incorporates retail, offices, housing and hotel facilities and marks the site of a cultural landscape within the Quianjiang New Town Area. Raffles City Hangzhou is designed to reach a height of 60 stories, presenting views both to and from the Qiantang River and West Lake areas, with a total floor area of almost 400,000 square meters.

In author’s own words, in the design of the towers the urban element of the project twists towards the landscape, whilst the landscape aspect, in turn, twists towards the urban context, thereby effecting the incorporation and consolidation of these separate elements in one formal gesture. Read the rest of this entry »

The Almere Pampus Transferium by Mariusz Polski is a reflection on an open-ended and meta-stable architecture. Meta-stability is used to describe the extended duration of equilibrium acquired by a complex system when leaving its most stable state after an external action. The parameters of such system usually reach and hold stationary values but after a long time, spontaneously or under a slight external action, they start to change again. The project is an experimental design with the aim to research the hybrid system which would try to offer the solution to the fact that even the most sophisticated buildings cannot be permanently suitable.

Even with the contemporary technological level and multiple scientific insights into natural systems reflecting similar tendencies, the open-ended architecture didn’t receive enough interest. The flexibility of an architectural piece is an issue that has to be revisited due to its great importance. The suitability of any building eventually comes to its end – the building constantly creates an impact on its environment, for which it was initially designed, and an unpredictable, dynamic field of external stimuli triggers changes in the environment. The project, however, doesn’t focus on human factor and the inevitable change of users’ needs over time.

Creating fixed built environment solutions that don’t react to the environmental feedback over the lifespan can be compared with building the house with fixed glazing, with no airflow through. Therefore informational system developed for Almere Pampus Transferium assumes the absence of permanent stasis. Additional computational mechanisms are incorporated, inspired by natural form emergence and evolution, not only in the design process, but also during the life of the building. These systems provide effective and adjustable embodiment, directly linked with the environment, initiating a continuous self-regulating feedback loop. Read the rest of this entry »

The Canadian Museum for Human Rights in Winnipeg, Canada, designed by Antoine Predock Architects, is carved into the earth while dissolving into the sky on the Winnipeg horizon. The design concept is rooted in humanity, and is a metaphor of the fundamental commonality of humankind – a symbolic apparition of ice, clouds and stone, set on the ground.

The museum journey is actually the epic journey through life. Visitors enter the building between the Roots – protective stone arms, suggesting an ancient geological event. As they are containing the important public interface functions of the museum, the Roots create a framework for outdoor ceremonies with roof terraces and amphitheater seating.

The Great Hall is the heart of the building and its a archaeologically rich void evokes the memory of ancient gatherings. The Garden of Contemplation is Winnipeg’s Winter Garden. Medicinal plants and water give the character to the place, suggesting the content. The space of the garden acts as a purifying “lung”, reinforcing the fundamental environmental ethic, which grounds the building of Canadian Museum. Read the rest of this entry »

Singular Branching by RES studies the concept and manufacture of architectural parts through continuous material organization at multiple scales. RES is collaboration between Felipe Escudero, Giovanni Parodi, Dimitrije Miletic, and Dimitar Pouchnikov and investigates innovative manufacturing processes using fiber reinforced composites. The group specializes in simulating material behavior at a high level of resolution by means of generative processes and computer algorithms. Methods employed include machine-controlled fiber placement using agent-based drawings of strand organization and cast in suspension techniques that avoid traditional molding.

In their understanding, the building cycle is situated within the design of a process, generative at both the conceptual and manufacturing level. Building conceived like this is responsive to complex site conditions, while simulating its manufacture and assembly – no matter how messy the production is, the final architectural product happens to be delivered as one entity.

At RES, they use a fiber-reinforced composite as a material that can be manufactured so that the fiber patterning is intrinsically related to the building form. Additionally, structural analysis of the building as a whole is proposed, and would determine the vector flows. Fibers are then placed onto the parts by machines following agent-based drawings of strand organization. Finally, parts are cast in suspension and assembled on site. Read the rest of this entry »