The “Vertical Village: A Sustainable Way of Village-style Living” by Yushang Zhang, Rajiv Sewtahal, Riemer Postma, and Qianqian Cai (with studio tutor Alexander Sverdlov, at The Why Factory of professor Winy Maas (MVRDV) at the TU Delft) was recently awarded the first prize in the d3 Housing Tomorrow 2011 Competition.

The proposal investigates medium density housing as a new way to enjoy village living without occupying conventional land area. The Vertical Village tries to achieve this goal. For the team’s studio work in The Why Factory  they analyzed the pros and cons of typical spatial organization of both traditional village and urban high‐rise residences and determined this concept of “3D plot division” inside a vertical volume to realize the idea of a vertical village. Read the rest of this entry »

Field of Notation was designed by Tyrone Marshall as a language of form in adaptation and performance in rhythm to express a mathematical sequence that acts through a continuous movement of light, shade, and shape to inscribe a spatial condition. In a motive design action of object mechanical motion, a digitally based form self-assembles into a cohesive moment from a sequence of animation and computation. The result is a structural signature of continuous movement whereby the sequence is captured in a moment of computational design expression.

An expression that seeks to find economy in its suggestion of unitary construction formula which is an assembly of simple constituent parts that gather to form a larger contextual structure. The contextual form is a study in self-organization through the vehicle of computation and component geometry propagation through a three dimensional spatial construct of pure shape. In this construct of spatial signatures there is musical notation and progression of repetition, redundancy, hierarchy and modulation. There is an act of performance. The object is presented in its performance of a virtual simulation of a field. Born from shape, the structural form of simple geometry builds through a sequential path in digital self-assembly to inscribe a special place and suggestion of spatial inhabitation. Read the rest of this entry »

“A museum for Viking age heritage, the ultimate danger of falling somewhere to close to the literal architectural interpretation of Viking age building, or doing a late 20th century modernist museum with all its niceness and whiteness, in complete ignorant incoherence with a rather rough Viking age feeling.”

The project investigates the collision of scale and space. Obstructing elements. An absurd and unpolished atmosphere with roots in the exploration of a dark, yet intriguing space. The design takes its offset in a design competition arranged by the Historical Museum of North Jutland, Denmark, aimed at developing design proposals that will form the conceptual basis for a new Viking Museum. Read the rest of this entry »

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“City Futura” is a visionary urban design proposal by Los Angeles-based firm B+U for an expansion of the City of Milan set in the year 2210. The project is part of a development plan for fifteen different sites located on the outer ring connected by the Milan Metro line.

City Futura is superimposed over the existing city leaving most of its buildings untouched and tapping into existing infrastructure and expand it.

Urban design concept: Tissue and Void.  The 600m tall structure hovers over the city covering about one million square meter area and is divided into nine districts that are organized around three programmatic topics including: I- Civic; II- Entertainment and Recreation; and III-Art, Fashion and Manufacturing. Initially the nine districts were represented as spherical void spaces and randomly placed across the site, floating above the ground and varying in size and height they became placeholders for enormous civic arenas which expand up to 250 meters in diameter. Read the rest of this entry »

The Aortic Arc designed by Visible Research Office creates a canopy over a student lounge in an existing two-story atrium at the heart of CCA’s San Francisco campus. The canopy is equal parts light scope, spatial definer and viewing portal. The canopy arc’s over an existing concrete beam and is topped by three portals. Two of the portals are located to pull in light from above while a third allows for discrete views into the lounge below. The panels of the canopy are shaped to direct natural light down into the space during the day and become a colorful surface when artificially lit at night. The canopy gives the lower level student lounge a sense of definition for large group activities and protection and intimacy for individual relaxation. The canopy acts as a screen to both direct and shield views from above. Read the rest of this entry »

This thesis by Alexa Getting proposes a disparate trajectory of architecture: a dissension from current design practice, a design practice that is no longer confined to or constrained by a building code and standardization which inevitably lends itself to apathetic and conditioned users. Rather, this thesis probes a trajectory of architecture that capitalizes on an urban and architectural reconsideration of conditioning, via a design intervention of perpetually transforming space. This spatial strategy affords the user a higher level of self-awareness through re-conditioning, or what this proposal terms “hyper-conditioning.”

Traditionally, conditioning exposes our detachment from the built environment. Highly-conditioned occupants are characterized by having a predictable or consistent pattern of behavior as a result of having been subjected to certain circumstances over time, which in turn prevents the user from experiencing architecture in a visually and a physically stimulating manner; autopilot engages. Users robotically pass through architecture, as if it is simply a way to get from point A to point B, forgetting that the majority of one’s life is spent confined within these conditioned walls. Read the rest of this entry »

Shanghai is a fragmented collage of different scales and styles. The identity of the city lies in the diversity of traditional, colonial, communist, and “post-modern” architecture united only through the city’s history. The Global Financial Centre on the Bund – yet another mixed-use project among all these opposing elements – has the natural task of addressing and emphasizing all the contradicting qualities of Shanghai without compromising their benefits.

The schizophrenic character of Shanghai calls for a cohesive agent: our project is a cluster of similar tilting towers but with different heights and footprints of different scales. The varying scales of each footprint allow different programs to inhabit the same complex and follow the logic of the site, with a smaller scale facing the old town, mitigating the difference between the various typologies surrounding the site. Global Financial Center on the Bund incorporates the richness of the small and the big, the local and the international, “hard” structures and “soft” elements, natural forms and man-made constructions. It can become a new landmark for Shanghai that is immediate, unique and identifiable while simultaneously remaining a fully-integrated and representative piece of the city’s rich culture. Read the rest of this entry »

The project designed by Vienna-based architecture firm Coop Himmelb(l)au has both to reflect the promising modern future of Dalian and its tradition as an important port, trade, industry and tourism city.

The formal language of our project is not pictographic, but associative; it will combine and merge the rational structure and organization of its modern conference center typology with the floating spaces of traditional Asian architecture as well as with a design reminescent of the soft surfaces generated by the forces of the sea.

A public zone at ground level allows for differentiating accessibility for the different groups of users, with the shopping and exhibition facilities directly connected to the conference center providing dramatic sight axis within the building. The actual performance and conference spaces are situated at +15 m above the entrance hall. The grand theater, with a capacity of 1,600 seats and a stage tower, directly opposite of a flexible conference hall for 2,500 seats, is positioned at the core in the center of the building. Read the rest of this entry »

FOPods (Future Office Pods) revamp the office building typology. The project was designed by Alexa Getting. As we continually advance technologically, the office needs transform from physical space to virtual (paperless) space. The office becomes hand-held, thus decreasing the office footprint. FOPods capitalize on this concept to create a unique, open air, minimal footprint, public, and hourly rentable office spaces. The jury noted that this “aspirational” plan is reminiscent of a 1960’s hyper-future in its forward thinking approach. Read the rest of this entry »