Ideal forms or adaptive geometries? Presented with the problem of resolving a complex program, such as housing, within a difficult site, architects usually pursue one of these two strategies.  They can either resolve the abstract issue of program, or address the concrete problem of context. The former becomes predicated on a pure internal logic, while the latter becomes an issue of adapting to external contingencies. A schism is created between idealized solutions to the problems of Housing, for example, and attempts to most fully ingratiate architecture with its surrounding context.

Those projects that set out to generate a ‘perfect’ programmatic or conceptual solution usually achieve this by disengaging themselves from their surroundings, resolving their formal aspects in isolation. Often the way this is achieved is by literally lifting the projects out of their sites, as was proposed by Le Corbusier when he shifted his buildings onto pilotis in the pursuit of a true ‘machine for living.’ Steven Holl’s nearly completed Vanke Center, in Shenzen, China is also lifted up off of its site, but unlike its modern progenitors this lift allows the project to marry the two halves of what had previously been a dichotomy of purpose. The lift constructs a more active relationship to site, while reinvigorating the bar building as an archetypal residential typology. The project points to a future paradigm where internally derived, conceptually pure prototypes are subtly co-opted to create new forms of contextuality. Read the rest of this entry »

Critical Practice is a public arts group based at the University of the Arts, London. They operate under the proposition that developing aesthetic and programmatic space is a radial rather than lineal process and created the installation Parade to explore the effectiveness of their process in the public square. Made from 4300 black milk crates tied together with zip ties the structure’s components were minimized in order to focus on special relationships during the design and assembly process. It was constructed on the Rootstein Hopkins Parade Ground at Chelsea Collage of Arts and Design during the third week of May, 2010. Read the rest of this entry »

The main idea behind this proposal is to build a skyscraper in space. It will sit on the plane of an orbit where gravity is zero. The concept is to keep the median point of the structure on the orbital plane and build it until it almost reaches the Earth’s surface. This experiment is one of the many investigations to free the skyscraper from gravity and create the tallest structure which could completely solve our housing problems. The building is 1000 kilometers tall and its orbital plane would be at 500 kilometers. Read the rest of this entry »

Architects Joseph Moore and David Tai Wai Pak believe that the future of urban design will be found in the interdependence of expansion and mass transit systems. In California the directionless sprawl of its largest cities has created a culture of cars, pollution and commuting. Continual independent growth was solution that provided great comfort and freedom while land and resources were available. However, California’s population has grown exceedingly in the past fifty years and it cannot sustain its current growth within this old system. Los Angeles’s population in particular has increased from 4.7 million in 1950 to a staggering 16 million in 2008 and it is projected by the U.S. Census Bureau to continue to grow to a total population of 24.6 million by 2050. To deal with this future population increase, Intension proposes to relocate any further expansion of California’s major cities towards a linear urban plan. The catalyst for this proposal was California Department of Transportation’s development of a high speed rail that will link major cities from Sacramento to San Diego. Read the rest of this entry »

Kibera in Nairobi, Kenya is Africa’s second largest slum and one of the densest human settlements on the planet; over a million people in a congested mess of cardboard and corrugated tin shanties in a bare two-and-half square kilometers area.

The settlement’s illegality is at the heart of its perverse attraction; chaotic, anarchic – unbound by tenancy laws or building restrictions or any of the strident, stringent limitations of a modern city. The land is cheap, and the slum, with both its proximity to Nairobi and its own, semi-autonomous economy, exercises a magnetic attraction on the millions of Kenyans fleeing rural poverty. Yet the area is dominated by a handful of landlords, who have no incentive to invest in Kibera’s infrastructure. Illegal in the eyes of their government, and ignored by their erstwhile landlords, the residents of the slum make do as best they can; struggling with the – literally – shifting territory, with internecine and inter-ethnic strife, with fire and floods. Read the rest of this entry »

As time transcends the virtual and physical limits of tall buildings, their ability to mingle into the existing urban fabric and transform a city’s dynamic core becomes a fine line between the density and physical mass already embedded in the metropolis and the ingenious ability to create grandeur. We therefore only see fragments of the past and brave gestures of the future in the densification of urban cores. Each gesticulation becomes an expression – a murmur on the reality of what could be achieved.

To allow for true freedom of expression that allows complete indulgence concerning the interplay of form and structure we have to consider the rationale of building placement. Allowing buildings to set their footprint in avenues of un-built mass provides for urban renewal in areas of cities previously left as urban wasteland from decaying manufacturing. Read the rest of this entry »

Trabeculae is the result of re-imagining the central atrium office tower. Replacing the traditional operation of repetitive extrusion, a heliotrope branching system actively seeks out those areas within the zoning envelope with greatest access to daylight. Forking and swelling in response to varying light conditions the atrium is thus conceived as a site-specific network that traverses intelligently and freely from one façade to another. The atrium becomes the defining element of differentiation within otherwise normative floor plates while maintaining efficient floor space ratios.

Within the atrium a second order proliferation of the same system at a finer scale develops a structural meshwork. The swellings and coagulations of this topologically free structural network-within-a-network accommodate meeting rooms and bridges.

The ambition of achieving inorganic speciation is part of Supermanoeuvre’s broader research into the capacity of generative architectural methodologies to negotiate novel spatial, formal and material organizations. Whereby, the performance and character of architecture is elaborated through both the internal systemic logics of the algorithm and its motivated response to external stimuli and latent conditions. Read the rest of this entry »

Helices Tower conceived by Julia Koerner is a building prototype that aims to transform the modern high-rise typology for equatorial climates through the incorporation of sustainable, bioclimatic building-systems. The design demonstrates that passive ventilation strategies can be exploited for both energy efficiency and formal beauty.

The design features innovative building systems that transition from highly articulated, two-dimensional façade patterns to three-dimensional bioclimatic interior spaces.

Helices Tower consists of two primary elements: opaque monolithic cores, incorporating the ventilation system and primary structural system, and the twisting helices that span in-between to form floor slabs and interior spaces. The cores are located on the east and west sides to shade the building from low solar angles while the helical slabs create a fluid gradient pattern on the façade and provide additional shading for the interior. Read the rest of this entry »

Benidorm is a Spanish town that enjoys a pleasant semi-arid Mediterranean weather. It attracts thousands of tourists to its pristine waters and beaches. In the last few years it has been affected by unregulated construction that destroyed most of its vegetation with catastrophic consequences. There has been an increase in temperature, reduction of humidity, and long summer droughts. Read the rest of this entry »

Urban Stakes is a new type of skyscraper designed by French architects Laurent Bariat and Yann Magnet for the city of Lyon in France. The first urban planning for this city dates back to the Roman Empire. The second one took place during the Middle Ages and the third one during the industrial revolution. During the last four decades its population has dramatically increased and the urban fabric is rapidly growing with careful consideration of the environment. Read the rest of this entry »