The Icon Square houses a Peace Center, Community Center, and Eco Hotel designed by Kyle Duvernay and Mike Knowlton in located in Bunker Hill, Los Angeles. A 150,000 sq/ft lot invites the public in by creating a corridor across the site, and by uplifting the ground floors for minimal building footprint. A systematic power generator consisting of over 200 vertical wind turbines was created for the public to view and interact with. The expression of the Eco Hotel is complimented by the purity of the Peace Center by allowing them to share a common goal of sustainability in the community. Read the rest of this entry »
Icon Square Houses: Peace Center, Community Center, and Eco Hotel
Sensory City: Buildings Dynamic Morphologies
Xiaofeng Mei, project is located on a coastal area of Japan which is a site susceptible to environmental influences. The project is about the Dynamic Morphologies of a building’s envelope, and how architecture can move away from being fix to one that is in contrast shape. That shape is a response to the immediate environment. By applying flexible material and intelligent surfaces to new volumes affecting form and color of buildings, to activate the building’s envelope. Read the rest of this entry »
Responsive Infrastructure for a Sinking Manhattan
Responsive Infrastructure by Natalie Chelliah combats the paradoxical problem of lower Manhattan’s future; a city with a footprint slowly sinking into the ocean while its population consistently expands. Less Space : more people. An new city infrastructure is created that not only elevates the previously 2D sidewalks into a 3D matrix of interconnected bridges, but also provides endless possibilities of inhabitation and use. Read the rest of this entry »
Trace: The App Architects and Designers Have Been Waiting For
The Morpholio Project announces the launch of its second app, simply called Trace. The app explores the role of technology in the conceptual phase of the design workflow through a digital version of trace paper, and fosters communication amongst a global design culture. Trace, essential to any design or creative process, allows users to instantly draw on top of imported images or background templates, layering comments or ideas to generate immediate, intelligent sketches that are easy to circulate.
The uniqueness of Trace is most visible in two primary modes. One is communication, in which the user can simply trace over something in order to give feedback or convey information quickly, and graphically. The second is idea exploration. “You are plugging yourself into a recursive feedback loop, as you iteratively build up an idea, taking several passes at it,” says co-creator Mark Collins. Both allow creative cultures to maintain conceptual thinking as well as critical feedback throughout the design process.
Created by architects, Trace addresses a number of questions about how the proliferation of device culture, social networking, and cloud technology are changing the way designers work and connect on a daily basis. It has been predicted that in 2020, there will be 50 billion mobile internet connections worldwide, the equivalent of seven devices per person. It is crucial that experimentation and research that harnesses the power of these devices, and makes tools specifically for the design and creative fields, occur in tandem with this rapid evolution of culture and process. Read the rest of this entry »
New LACMA Campus Explores Designing a Surfaceless Structure
Surface has a long standing relationship with architecture and has been the primary component through which we communicate architectural composition. However the less obvious contributor that has had its hand in the making of architecture is the line. The line has typically been the ghostwriter for compositions that have been manifested through surface. However surface has the potential to become a canvas for other rhetoric outside those of the lines’ and can dilute the lines’ original aesthetic intention. The ambition of this project is to remove the surface avatar and reveal the line as the protagonist of this project.
A figural arrangement or movement is often illustrated with a line. Contextual forces are used to agitate the surfaces of the building where intense moments unrest yield an unraveling of the lines within. The relationship of line to line and surface to line presents opportunities for different types of spacial configurations for the program. The lines bundle and splay for varying degrees of saturation to fulfill a variety of spacial and programatic requirements. Read the rest of this entry »
Stitch Architecture: The In-Between Space
The project’s goal by Johannes Beck and Stefano Passeri was to combine techniques developed in an initial exploration on digital drawing, with a building-scale proposal sited in West Hollywood (Sunset Blvd, Holloway Drive intersection). The approach to the architecture starts from the main programmatic elements: office space, three auditoria, and a large public garden. We decided to give each of these ‘blocks’ an independent generic volume. The resulting intersecting boxes are connected via a language of ‘joints’ – a direct consequence of our intention to avoid booleaning the middle. A spacious, central, mostly interior void becomes the indirect by-product of this move. Read the rest of this entry »
Designing an Urban Village / Brenac+Gonzalez
The building is composed of several layers assembled on the vertical axis, over a base that provides properly anchored natural and use-related services. It is designed according to the needs of each housing site, thereby defining the overlay districts. As a village, the high-rise is organized and structured around common areas such as meeting places and places of exchange. It includes characteristics of individual housing, offering to its inhabitants large living areas with more than 3 meters high ceilings and customizable spaces through use of mobile partitions. Read the rest of this entry »
Astana Railway Station Proposal / LAVA
An undulating canopy was designed by LAVA Architects, for the invited Astana Railway Station Competition. Located at the crossroads of the city’s main routes, at the point where the railway, the highway and the metro intersect, the station has the potential to develop into a huge transport hub. The project acts as a gateway to the Kazakhstan capital.
Description from the architects:
Astana sits astride one of the ancient silk roads and is both a critical junction and stop within the European-Asian landmass and its vast rail networks. Astana’s International Railway Station is thus a place for special meeting and greeting.
As we enter the low-carbon age, central stations will be the green cathedrals of the future, cathedrals of movement, light and space. They are the critical point of arrival to a city, and represent a place of welcome, greeting and even celebration of society, of space. They reflect technological advancement, and transport/movement at all scales, from international to local. Read the rest of this entry »
CO2ngress Towers Reduce Air Pollution in Chicago
In attempt to cut down on Chicago’s CO2 emissions produced from cars in the Eisenhower Expressway, Danny Mui & Benjamin Sahagun propose the splitting of the Congress Gateway Towers, using a system of carbon scrubbers and filtration devices that clean carbon dioxide and other air pollutants. Aimed to increase public awareness and improve of Chicago’s public health, the CO2ngress Gateway Towers absorb the CO2 emissions from passing cars and is then fed to algae grown in the building. The algae then helps with the processing of biofuels which will supply the building residents’ eco-friendly cars. Read the rest of this entry »
Shadow Chair Collection / Duffy London
Exhibited at the Milan Salone Satellite in April 2009, the Shadow Chair plays with the viewer’s perception. The chair design tricks the eye by appearing to stand on just two front legs. Seemingly, the chair defies gravity. On closer inspection, the Shadow Chair features a flat piece of plate steel that, colored black, appears to be a shadow beneath the actual seating structure. These permanent, unwavering shadows act not only as a visual peculiarity, but an integral part of the cantilevered support structure. Read the rest of this entry »