Electrical Energy is the key factor for mankind evolution and at the same time its Achilles heel, the demand of this precious resource keeps growing at exponential rates but our capacity to produce and transmit it is limited.

In the future, civilization will be forced to research and develop alternative energy sources. Our current rate of fossil fuel usage will lead to an energy crisis this century. In order to survive the energy crisis, our team is proposing new ways to extract energy from renewable and self-sustained sources.

The project develops as a way of finding a solution for this premise; inspired by tesla’s work and way of thinking we create a system based on four formulas that complement each other to achieve a renewable source of energy. This power grid is based on interrelated systems that support each other with different inputs and outputs as a balanced system.

The project is intended as a pilot based on its campus scale and location on Boston’s innovation district.

Formula 1 (Initial Push) – The purpose of this formula is to create enough energy for the initial push of our system. The two main aspects to consider is the height (min 40m) and the water mass that we need to power up the tesla turbine.

Formula 2 (Liquid Nitrogen Production) – The ideal way to distribute and store energy with a minimal loss is obtained by cryogenically cooled superconducting coil/cable.

Formula 3 (Electricity Generation) – Our infinite energy will be created through induction, where a magnet is constantly moving inside a coil. The energy is then stored in a Superconducting magnetic energy storage that requires liquid nitrogen.

Formula 4 (Hydrogen Production) – Since the amount of energy created is too much for our area, we will use the electricity to create Hydrogen by electrolysis.

Project by: Alejandro Carrillo, Borislav Schalev, Denis R. Li Read the rest of this entry »

The Wood Shed project designed by HAO / Holm Architecture Office is situated along the coast, a short drive from Taipei in Taiwan. The project is designed as an adaptive reuse project around an existing shed structure, re purposing all of the existing structure.

The building design takes it inspiration from the unique forest and nature located in Taiwan, creating a new building envelope that blends naturally into its surroundings.

A series of vertical wooden fins create natural shading for the shed interior and creates a consistent pattern that defines the entire shed volume as a built forest. Each fin has a series of small extrusions that, when stacked horizontally, creates the forest pattern that defines the shed exterior. The new facade pattern creates a seamless integration into the natural surroundings of the shed making the building one with its surroundings.

On the interior the roof and parts of the shed sides have clear polycarbonate facades to allow for control of changing weather conditions as well as integrated lighting.

“With the Wood Shed project we wanted to redefine the mainstream shed volume to directly reflect the beautiful surroundings of the Taiwan landscape. The project reuses the existing long span steel structure, keeping a completely flexible interior plan which allows the building to be used for a multitude of programs ranging from storage to exhibition space.” – Jens Holm (director, HAO) Read the rest of this entry »

The design project reinterprets the Kṣīra Sāgara, a story of religious Hindu Cosmology and abstracts its embedded ontological process as a strategy of both formal design and functional solution in rejuvenating the ecological condition of the holy pilgrimage lake of Pushkar, India.

Through the conceptual abstraction of the Hindu cosmological story, the Ksiri Sagara, the project embodies an ontological design methodology as a process to define, solve and synthesise both its formal and functional requirements. Set at the sacred Hindu lake of Pushkar, India, the lake is a place of yearly pilgrimage for Hindus, and home to one of the world largest yearly camel fairs. The design outcome is an open-loop rejuvenating system of the lake, which due to the heavy environmental bearing of local activity, is under constant degradation. The design solution helps to regulate the lakes condition through a seasonal cyclic process of water storage, de-siltation, carbon filtration, biomass & camel pellet feed production, providing a local source of economic stability, clean privately sheltered bathing pools, public toilets, a tourism viewing tower and raising a wider scale awareness of the lakes condition and possible alternatives to local chemical farming techniques.

Design: James London Mills
Tutors at the Bartlett: Marcos Cruz, Marjan Colletti  Read the rest of this entry »

MAD Architects reveals 8600 Wilshire, a residential project located in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles. 8600 Wilshire is MAD’s first US project and demonstrates founder Ma Yansong’s core design philosophy: to coalesce nature and community into a living environment among high-density cities.

Bringing the nature found on the adjacent foothills of Los Angeles into the city of Beverly Hills, 8600 Wilshire mimics a small sinuous white hill boasting an 18-unit residential village atop commercial space. Clustered white glass villas and trees ascend upward to contour the Beverly Hills skyline and provide a distinctive streetscape on Wilshire Boulevard.

The “hillside village” offers a variety of housing types for city residents, including three townhouses, five villas, two studios and eight condominiums. The massing of the village cultivates community with the added benefit of individual balcony-patios to maintain independence and privacy. Villa residents experience a balance between public and private as the incandescent villas appear opaque from the street, yet reveal a transparent façade facing the private garden, townhouse and condominium units.

The village is wrapped in a water-efficient “living wall” of native, drought-tolerant succulents and vines. Undulating around perforated windows on the façade, this vertical garden extends interior space to the exterior balconies and provides a natural green-screen for condominium residents. Along Wilshire Boulevard, the living wall lifts off the ground to reveal glass storefronts at ground level. The resulting effect is a floating plinth that resembles local privacy hedges and conceals an elevated courtyard. Hidden away from the street is an elevated courtyard accented by a canopy of trees and native plantings. At the center of this secret garden is a water feature flowing gently to a secondary reflecting pool in the lobby below. As residents leave the everyday bustle of the city, they find solitude at 8600 Wilshire in a garden valley – at home in nature.

In high-density cities, Modernist and Post-Modernist housing typically prioritized functions and formats over human relationships to the environment. For 8600 Wilshire, MAD considers the possibility of a new model for West Coast vernacular amid the sprawling density of Los Angeles. MAD purposes a harmonious architectural space of human experience by placing residents in the spiritual landscape of nature.

8600 Wilshire is expected to break ground this October. The project is newly honored in the “design concept” category at the 45th Annual Los Angeles Architectural Awards, hosted by the Los Angeles Business Council. Read the rest of this entry »

The Quartz designed by Michael Khoo at the RMIT University Melbourne, Australia is a master plan proposal situated in the bay of docklands which took the opportunity to investigate the role of architecture in overcoming the food crisis due to the predicted population spike by 2060. Existing farms can only produce that much, the expansion rate is slow because there will not be enough land to cater for more. The upright solution will be replacing the existing farming methods with the highly efficient vertical farms.

Motivation/Inspiration: Re-thinking agriculture
The proposal sets forth to approach the vertical farming typology in a whole new perspective. I wanted to do something different compared to most other vertical farm precedents and proposals. I believe that vertical farming can be something more than just a stacked up farming typology.

The Key Proposal
The Quartz attempts to create a totally transparent vertical farming process and exposing it to the public, turning the unnecessary private realm into a new form of public attraction, which indirectly educates the general public about the next generation of food production. On the other hand,I foresee that open green space in the future will be close to non-existent as most of them will be shrunk to make space for development.This master-plan hybridizes the farm and park typologies to form a new kind of educative,mutually beneficial public avenue.

Design and Form Generation
I wanted the ground area to be as inviting as possible and openness is the concept behind it. Circulation and spatial connectivity were adjusted in a way to provide the general public with a better user experience. The massing blocks were then being adjusted and positioned to prioritize street level comfort at the same time capturing surrounding views. The towers were sculpted under constraints such as day lighting, wind energy, shadow casting and also to programme needs. Using conventional form finding techniques, such as extrusion, twisting , and tapering, the result is a series of highly efficient diamond-like towers which breaks free from its surrounding high-rise neighbors to create its own identity yet still respecting the rectilinearity of Melbourne skyline.

Conclusion
The scheme aims to become a dense node of activity by creating a whole new unique relationship between public and private spaces, hybridizing agriculture, education, and commercial typologies together. The exposure of the overall process becomes an informative feature that educates the onsite audience to better understand that vertical farming is indeed the eventual replacement to conventional farming. Read the rest of this entry »

This USC Undergraduate Thesis by Zack Matthews focuses on the contemporary condition of digital addiction and how the broad embrace of digital space has been at the expense of culturally significant physical social exchanges.

Virtual space has become so addictive because of its capacity to overstimulate user perceptions. We can be playing a favorite song on our phone, while browsing the latest news on a computer, while playing an interactive game on a tablet,

Upon entering back into physical space, banalities of reality are magnified and relapse back to the digital realm is that much more inevitable.

How do we make the physical environment as potent as the space accessible through technological devices – How can cultural addiction to personal technology be delayed?

#HOUSEFORTHEDIGITALFIEND addresses this question by re-examining the wall as a performative surface that intensifies perceptual engagements; specifically sight, sound and touch. These perceptions are of interest because they are the few of which are natively over-stimulated through technology.

By amplifying a non-virtual experience through; channeling and isolating sound, contorting and clarifying vision, and repelling then invoking occupation, the wall becomes an interactive element that makes physical space as enticing and engaging as the digital realm. Once physical engagement rebuttals the strength of digital engagement, the intent is that this will delay our cultural spiral further towards digital addiction. Read the rest of this entry »

MenoMenoPiu Architects proposal for the new House of Hungarian Music focuses on creating a landmark for the park whilst respecting its environment. In order to fulfill this, our proposition plans to conserve 95% of the existing trees selected by their health and age. The remaining 5%will be moved inside the non-constructible area near the Lakeside.

The structure will be formed by a series of parallel blades orientated perpendicularly to the new axis in order to allow permeability towards the lake. These structural elements will allow the trees to easily grow in between them.

The beams represented as blades will project themselves over the top of the smaller trees included in the site, whereas on the taller trees the blades will pass under them where the trunk will be the only part left apparent.

CREDITS: MenoMenoPiu Architects

PROJECT TEAM: Rocco Valantines, Mario Emanuele Salini, Alessandro Balducci, Giovanni Sandrini, Giampaolo Fondi, Pietro Bodria, Alexandra Baldwin, Paola Malinverni

RENDERINGS: +imgs Read the rest of this entry »

Architecture duo Micaela Colella and Maurizio Barberio designed Unboxed, a prefab wooden home that can be completely recycled. Unboxed is based on the typical Mediterranean house and represents a more sustainable alternative to masonry or frame structure buildings. The high standardization of the modules and their total prefabrication creates great flexibility. This goal is also achieved by splitting the building in several basic structural elements designed to be mounted with all the finishes and without thermal bridges. Thanks to an innovative foundation made of steel, which reduces or eliminates the need for excavation, the house is 100 percent recyclable and can be removed from the site. A low inclination roof allows for the installation of solar roof tiles capable of producing electricity and heat. The house also has a clear division between the living and the sleeping area with a glazed corridor/entrance in the middle that allows residents to re-establish contact with the surrounding environment (flow of time) during each passage. Read the rest of this entry »

Diatomic explores the agglomeration of cellular components within a self-supporting assembly. The project takes inspiration from the observation of single cell algae whose unique feature is that they are enclosed within a cell wall made of silica. These shells show a wide diversity in form, but are usually almost bilaterally symmetrical.

The wall is formed by two distinct components: the tetrahedral component which branches in three-directions and a larger cubical “cell” which branches in eight different directions. The single units were made by assembling flat sheet of plastic cut and bend into shape to form the component. This “cells” was then proliferated to form a hybrid internal partition which can be used as shelf unit as well as a space divider. The porous nature of its geometry provides a visual divide as well as offering opportunity to be used as small office storage.

The projects was developed together with a group of young Swedish designer and was exhibited at KTH School of Architecture.

Credits

Project Architect: Marco Vanucci
Project Team / Prototype: Jenny Ryderstedt, Lovisa Wallgren, Max Lindgren, Eira Jacobsson, Frida Körberg Thurhagen Read the rest of this entry »