Conceived as a kind of southern hemisphere Serpentine Pavilion, the MPavilion has just opened its first work, a 12×12 meter kinetic box by the local architect Sean Godsell. Using the typically restrained massing of his homes as a template Godsell has then animated the space with a fully louvered skin. The pavilion is placed in the 18th century Queen Victoria Garden with Melbourne’s high rises serving as a backdrop. To be utilized for weddings and other occasions the pavilion can match the formalness of the event and weather with a simple adjustment.

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Since the first Chairman Mao Statue was built in 1967, there are hundred copies situated in China. The Mao Statue is located in Tianfu Square, Chengdu, Sichuan, China. The monument stands 30 m (98.4 ft) tall and depicts Mao Zedong with an outstretched arm. Before 1967, the site was occupied by an ancient palace from the Shu Kingdom of ancient Sichuan. The palace was destroyed by Red Guards and the moat around it filled in to make an air raid shelter in 1967. Half a century has passed, and the statues have become RED memories for the older generation but nothing for the younger generation. The youth doesn’t know why he stands here like a Buddha and no one has an answer to the question.

As a young Chinese architect, it is responsible to respond to the phenomenon and try to change the way how we look at Chairman Mao. He will be not a simple sculpture anymore but a landmark which represent modern China. It is like a Utopia, people in the space enjoy a full view of the city at present as well as its history. I unveiled this individual project to the government recently.

Wu Kai Xun, architect from China Read the rest of this entry »

Barker Freeman Design Office proposal to redesign the Warsaw Rotunda enwreathes the existing structure in a pleated Dupont Corian Terra canopy that provides a space for events, exhibitions, and performances. The Rotunda facade and roof is reclad in Dupont SentryGlas to house a rain garden of native Polish vegetation that can absorb stormwater from the surrounding hardscape. The space can be reserved for special celebrations like weddings and parties and to house exhibitions and installations. Rainwater filters through the center of the new powdercoated steel center column into a reservoir for plant irrigation. The underside of the canopy becomes a reflective canvas that can be uplit to create a dramatic light show. An elevated outdoor amphitheater provides a space for public gatherings and performances as well as a connection to an indoor mezzanine. The Polish climate is highly favorable for solar energy harvesting, and the country is a leader in the production of solar collectors. The faceted panels on the expansive canopy roof are laminated with thin film photovoltaic cells using Dupont encapsulants and resins to power events within the space. Read the rest of this entry »

Memory and Commemoration in Beirut is a very delicate subject. Beirut witnessed ups and downs, from a devastating civil war to an exponential urban development. Architecture plays a fundamental role in shaping a city. It acts as a living organism with muscles and tissues inextricably interwoven, building a complex world.

With its 30 stories, the Holiday Inn is a massive example of one of these damaged buildings. Facing Beirut’s famous St Georges bay, the hotel was mostly known for the rotating restaurant on its top, offering a 360-degree view on Lebanon’s scenes. It dominates its surroundings by its mass, its brutal imperialistic architectural style, and mostly by the shared individual and collective memories. Due to its height and strategic position, numerous militias occupied it during the war. It is currently still in ruins, unlike most other hotels which were damaged by the war but later renovated.

The project is conceived to be a public hub, the existing shell opening up to welcome individuals between the circulation core and the ruined iconic facade. The renovated hotel is inserted on the existing facade, merging the new structure with the existing one. Different room typologies are conceived responding parametrically to sun exposure. The agglomeration of components gives a new look to the hotel in Beirut’s urban fabric. The project proposes a single three dimensional network as one architectural space, creating a homogenous, loosely differentiated ‘field-space’. Alternation in scale and thickness of the network’s members leads to finely differentiated program typologies, allowing for gradual transitions between polar opposites: structure/volume, open/closed, public/private.

Design: Elias El Soueidi Read the rest of this entry »

The West Coast Premier Design Event Set to Attract Influential Design Community and Enthusiasts with Curated Selection of Leading Brands, Series of Special Events, Special Sales, Panels and Workshops

On an island in Lake Superior craftsman Robert Teisberg’s Ancientwood Ltd. studio has created an exceptionally rare and unique $100,000 table made from 50,000-year old Ancient Kauri wood, the oldest workable wood in the world. The 42-by-94 inch Kahiko (Ancient One) table is one of the most unique and expensive tables ever created.

The unique grain of this particular piece of wood creates waves that make the surface of the table appear three-dimensional even though it’s flat. The wave effect is exceptionally rare in Ancient Kauri and is not found in any other species of wood.

“This table is created from one of the rarest pieces of wood I’ve ever seen,” said Teisberg, who has been creating Ancient Kauri pieces for more than a decade as the sole U.S. distributor of the ancient wood. “The price of the table reflects the unparalleled collector quality of the piece,” added Teisberg.

The base of the table is as unique as the wood itself. The compositely engineered wood and carbon fiber base is a sculpted design that “offers” the two book-matched pieces of polished Ancient Kauri to the viewer.

Ancient Kauri is a conifer endemic to the North Island of New Zealand. Preserved in bogs for thousands of years, its size is comparable to Coastal Redwoods and Giant Sequoias. While Kauri species still grow today, only fallen Ancient Kauri trees are removed from prehistoric bogs and used by Ancientwood to create its one-of-a-kind pieces.

Ancientwood’s studio is located in La Pointe, WI on Madeline Island, the only inhabited island in the Apostle Island National Lakeshore.

We are interested in exploring the relationship between an autonomous and a networked society. In the Mid review, we were challenged with the question, “How do you address the loss of freedom that comes with autonomous cars?” While it is true one might sacrifice freedom to go speeding on the freeway, we believe that autonomous vehicles represent a new kind of freedom. A freedom that lets you take a nap or check email on your way to work (something we are starting to do already).

Our site is the Venice Beach/ Marina Del Rey Area, where the Median income is $84,000 and the median age is 35. With Silicon Beach emerging as a target for young tech start-ups, the field is ripe for a generation of young, affluent early adapters to embrace a technology and an infrastructure that will shatter our preconceptions of private transportation. We are proposing a vehicle that dispatches from proposed metro stations that pick up the user when called, then return to the station. Instead of charging on a grid, they charge independently by the sun. They continuously traverse the roof of each station, which is optimized for solar radiation exposure and return to the ground plane when called. These hubs are designed to interface between human and vehicle movement, creating a fabric that can be pushed and pulled according to circulation and sunlight needs.

Design: Joseph Sarafian, Xueqi Bai, Xianshuang Zeng, Sruthi Kumar

Exhibit opening in Perloff Hall, UCLA Oct. 2 2014

Video: https://vimeo.com/josephsarafian/autonomous
Blog: http://biokinematic.tumblr.com
Website: www.josephsarafian.com

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Anagenesis examines the notion of a post-industrial building envelope that engages natural phenomena as a productive force. The investigation, carried out by Hseng Tai Lintner at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden, explores the interrelationship between the natural and the manufactured and focuses on the use of bioluminescence, a naturally occurring form of chemiluminescence that makes organisms like fireflies and jellyfish glow, to produce ambient lighting for the interior.

A series of laboratory experiments involving the harvesting of various bioluminescent bacteria strains and designing facade and food distribution systems that could support the growth of their colonies were conducted in collaboration with the Department of Clinical Bacteriology at Gothenburg University. The species that is most suited to the site and the nature of the project was Aliivibrio fischeri. This strain is endemic to the region, easy to cultivate, requires dark growing conditions with wide ranging optimal growing temperatures ranging from 4-25 degrees Celsius and subsists best on a simple medium consisting of sea water, peptone, yeast extract and glycerol.

The design of this has been supported by a dialogue between digital and analogue mediums that have throughout the process informed spatial relationships as well as performative systems. Investigations involved emulating the experience of geological formations through architectural language which was rationalized using a series of physical sketch models, computationally simulated fluid dynamics and equilateral mesh crumpling. The resulting smoke-like quality is an architectural anecdote to the building’s former use as a gasometer.

As a way of bringing the project full circle, and creating a narrative contrast between program and building envelope, the proposed program is a new museum of industrial history housed in a post-industrial installation in a derelict gasometer at Gullbergsvass in Gothenburg. The gasometer is a powerful symbol of Gothenburg’s industrial past and has been an important landmark for 80 years. The proposal is at once a homage to the city’s industrial legacy and an exploration of what things may come.

Eight stories high the building designed by Blauraum becomes a significant living landmark and stands out within the urban block. The crystal like and fully glazed street façade is divided into segments to reflect the shape of each unit. These individual glass segments are inclined in various directions and covered with a window film that vary in brightness. The result is a colorful and constantly changing rhythm of light and reflections.

The new building composed of rental units and retail space is located on Hoheluftchaussee, one of Hamburg’s main arteries leading to the city center. The primary concept is to fill a vacant lot and create high quality living space while taking into account the high traffic volume.

To counteract traffic noise an inhabitable double-skin façade similar to a loggia is created. It becomes a buffer between the lively street and the adjacent bedrooms. The layout of each apartment offers a southward facing open concept with a view onto the interior courtyard thus avoiding the busy street on the opposite side. During the planning process, the challenge was to create generous and open floor plans while working within the narrow margins of urban planning regulations. Each apartment has a balcony facing south as well as a loggia facing north – the Laubenzimmer. Read the rest of this entry »

Spanning over 20 acres in Wuhan, China, 5+design‘s Park Place is a large mix use development which just broke ground. It merges high end retail, residential and commercial spaces with an agrarian program. The 164k sq. meter retail space is tiered from the street front and allows pedestrians full access through the vegetated rooftops. The shopping center is anchored with a large atrium and sky bridge. The open terraced floor plan, greenscape, and farming component counters the cosmopolitan venue thus creating a diverse and dense set of experiences. Read the rest of this entry »