OYES Chair / Hofman Dujardin
The German magazine AIT invited 100 selected architecture and interior design offices across Europe to redesign the ‘ONO’ chair produced by the Dietiker company. The newly designed chairs will be exhibited in the context of a road show in the AIT-Architektur Salons Hamburg, Munich, North Rhine-Westphalia, and Stuttgart. The main auction of the chairs will talk place in spring 2010. The revenues generated through this auction will support the Langa Township in Cape Town, South Africa. Hofman Dujardin shared with us their entry into the competition, their OYES chair, as an urban charity for city. More images and architect’s description after the break.
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The Indicator: Post-Occupancy 01
This week, we present the first of a special series called “Post-Occupancy” in which we feature the experience of the owner-dweller in different types of architectural spaces. Our goal is to present architecture by letting the users narrate for themselves what it means to them, how they experience it, how it has transformed them. We pose the questions. What do owners want? What do they need? How do they experience their homes after they’ve lived in them for a while?
Often, architectural discourse begins and ends with the designer. Here, the owners come first. They provide the answers in their own words, without the dialect of the discipline mediating what they say.
In this first installment, the goal was to examine the experience of domestic space from the point of view of a globe-trotting intellectual couple. James Massengale and Tracey Sands are both scholars. And as is the way of many academics, they have more than one residence: one in the United States and one abroad, located in the region of their studies. In this case, that is Scandinavia. And this is what they had to say.
More after the break. (more…)
New Harmony Grotto: A reinterpretation of Frederick Kielser’s Grotto for Meditation / METALAB Architecture + Fabrication
New Harmony Grotto, by METALAB Architecture + Fabrication, is a reinterpretation of avant garde architect Frederick Kielser’s Grotto for Meditation.
With the growing genre of architecture generated by biomorphic design and biomimetic processes, a reevaluation of Kiesler’s work is ever more timely. During the mid-20th century he became increasingly occupied with the relationship of structure and natural form in architecture. The Cave of the New Being (also known as the Grotto for Meditation), proposed in the 1960s for New Harmony, Indiana, represented the designer’s pièce de résistance, embodying all of the intellectual currents of his era, from surrealism to biotechnics, yet it was never realized.
Architects: METALAB Architecture + Fabrication
Location: University of Houston Campus, Houston, Texas, USA
Partner/Principals: Andrew Vrana and Joe Meppelink
Original Client and Patron: Jane Blaffer Owen
Studio Critics: Andrew VranaVisiting Assistant Professor and Joe Meppelink, Adjunct Assistant Professor, University of Houston College of Architecture
Visiting Critic: Ben Nicholson, Associate Professor, School of Art Institute Chicago
Fifth year Design Studio Digital Fabrication Seminar
Student Team Leaders: Juan Deleon, Rosalia Covarrubias, Lee Kelly, Minh Nguyen, Justin Garret and Michael Gonzales
CNC Fabrication: Ambox, Ltd. (laser cut stainless steel)
Historic Documentation and Design: 2008
Fabrication and Installation: 2010
Structural FEA Analysis: Steve Boak, Buro Happold Engineers
Photographs: Andrew Vrana
Moving Homeostatic Facade Preventing Solar Heat Gain
This prototype system, Homeostatic Facade, is the latest in green building design. The line maze like facade consists of material that flexes and bends as an artificial muscle fighting solar heat gain by changing shape on its own. No computer programing or physical adjustments required. The system regulates a buildings climate by auto responding to environmental conditions and has an advantage over other systems because of its low power consumption and localized control.
Check out the video of the moving Homeostatic Facade following the break.
2010 Zombie Apocalypse Safe House Competition
Few design competitions ever focus on truly traumatic life experiences, the kind of situations that force men, women and children into their primal survival tendencies. Luckily, in 2010 this gaping hole in architectural design was finally addressed. The 2010 Zombie Apocalypse Safe House Competition posed the task to designers to find solutions to the the very real threat of having to defend yourself against hoards of brain hungry zombies as the end of mankind grows near. Follow after the jump to read about this lighthearted design competition, the entries and their presentation boards.
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A Room for London proposal / LMTS Design
Bangkok-based architect Nontawat Jittrong (LMTS Design), shared with us his proposal for the competition A Room for London, for the 2012 London Olympics. More images and architect’s description after the break. (more…)
Mies van der Rohe Society
The Mies van der Rohe Society recently released their newly designed website. Some of the features we like are the detailed building biographies, sketches, models, 3D renderings, and photographs that showcase the buildings Mies designed.
In addition, when you visit the site you can:
- Browse the titles on Mies’ bookshelf and read his speeches
- Track progress on building restoration efforts and support the organization by becoming members
- Sign up for architectural tours at IIT
- Shop
- Register for events, such as Mies’ 125th birthday party scheduled for March 28, 2011
- Learn about exhibits, lectures, and performances at S.R. Crown Hall
The Indicator: Defining China
Defining the City
The construction of a city involves how is it defined, understood and experienced. These processes and definitions diverge wildly depending upon one’s location: East or West. Heretofore, western architects have subjected analysis of “The City” in China, indeed all of Asia, to a set of western-privileging universals for both physical and epistemological constructions.
More after the break.
New Yorkers top Architectural Events of 2010
This years architectural events in New York are bound to have a meaningful effect on the years to come; the decision by NYU to add another tower complementing I.M Pei’s existing Silver Towers complex (rather than their initial plan to demolish them), the opening of the first section of Brooklyn Bridge Park coupled with the completion of the High Line has re-established New York City as a key model to reference when it comes to designing urban public space, and finally construction began on Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial, by Louis Kahn, to name a few.
From transportation, urban planning, exhibitions, residential and office buildings follow the break to see the New Yorkers list of some of the most influential decisions surrounding architecture over the past year in New York.
Architecture for Humanity: Year in Review
As 2010 comes to an end we wanted to share with you some of the highlights from Architecture for Humanity. AFH has been involved in fifty three projects this year, completing a project on each continent. Follow the break for AFH’s 2010 By The Numbers.
A Room for London Proposal / Design Initiatives
Design Initiatives, an innovative, award-winning architecture practice based in Los Angeles, California and Sofia, Bulgaria, shared with us their proposal for A Room for London, a competition for a temporary demountable hotel room for up to two guests on top of the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London during the Olympic year of 2012. Designed as a boundary structure floating in space between ground and sky, their proposal employs the dialectical contrast of active OR passive. More images and architect’s description after the break. (more…)
The Indicator: 2011 Resolutions
New Year’s Resolutions for principal of a firm (in this case, size does not matter).
1. Be honest with my employees.
2. Be respectful to my employees and open to their suggestions.
3. If absolutely necessary for economic reasons, I resolve not to lay off any employees but instead to furlough them—as well as to furlough or reduce my own salary. And I resolve not to exploit them by demanding that they work on their furlough days.
More after the break.
A Room for London Competition proposal / Robin Monotti Architects
London-based Robin Monotti Architects shared with us “White Cube for London”, their entry for the Living Architecture and Artangel “A Room for London” Competition, for a roof-top hospitality structure to be built in the year of the 2012 London Olympics. More images and architect’s description after the break. (more…)
Eathouse / de Stuurlui stedenbouw & Atelier GRAS!
Architects Marijke Bruinsma (de Stuurlui stedenbouw) with Marjan van Capelle and Arjen de Groot (Atelier GRAS!), shared with us Eathouse, a house and garden to eat. More images and architect’s description after the break. (more…)
European Architectural Travel Photographs
Kevin Hui of pushpullbar architecture + design forum and 4site architecture shared these travel photographs. He recently completed a 16 day / 66 building trip through Germany, Sweden, and Denmark, accompanied by Andrew Maynard of Andrew Maynard Architects. The photographs include: Mercedes Benz Museum by UN Studio, Museum of Modern Literature by David Chipperfield, Dupli.Casa by J Mayer H, Sammlung Goetz by Herzog & de Meuron, Treptow Crematorium by Axel Schultes Architekten & Charlotte Frank, Cottbus Techincal University Library by Herzog & de Meuron, Wolfsburg Cultural Centre by Alvar Aalto, and Phaeno Science Centre by Zaha Hadid. Follow the break to see all eight featured photographs.
The Indicator: Book Review: Walter Benjamin and Architecture
Here is something to consider: September 25, 1940. Portbou, Spain. Walter Benjamin, aged 48, is found dead in his hotel room. He had been fleeing the Gestapo, intending to make his way to the United States. He carried with him a manuscript he deemed more important than his own life. To this day, it has never been recovered.
The end of Benjamin the man would ultimately be the beginning of “Benjamin” the international philosopher. Had he made it to the United States one suspects he would have attained the unique fame philosophers can enjoy—alive and relevant rather than dead and relevant. Due to the influence of colleagues, Benjamin’s position in the pantheon of the philosophy of modernity would be secured.
The discipline of architecture, seeking new ideas, would ultimately turn to his oeuvre through Manfredo Tafuri’s influential Teorie e storia dell’architettura, translated in 1968. This marks Benjamin’s official entrée into architectural discourse. The attention subsequently led to an explosion of Benjamin citations in the field.
More after the break. (more…)
The Indicator: Interview: Witold Rybczynski
Witold Rybczynski, author of fifteen books and over 300 articles, is one of the most prolific and engaging writers on architecture and the urban milieu. He is the Martin and Margy Meyerson Professor of Urbanism at the University of Pennsylvania and architecture critic for Slate.
His writing, propelled by the insights of a sensitive designer, imbues subjects such as the home, Central Park, and cities with feeling and wonder. Like a guide to the built environment, his sharp prose points to what needs to be looked at and seen and why architecture matters.
As part of my series of discussions with critics, I recently exchanged ideas with him about his interest in cities and architecture, his role as a critic, and his new book Makeshift Metropolis.
Interview after the break. (more…)
Hometta’s Gingerbread House
Four days until Christmas, so we’re just in time for Hometta’s Gingerbread House! For this year’s house they used Min | Day’s Wedge House. You can download free PDF plans for this project right here. And you can see last year’s gingerbread house here. More info at Hometta’s official website.
Dirichlet Modular Decomposition / Arthur Toth
In Arthur Toth‘s, A Room for London competition entry, the main impetus for the use of computational geometry is the ease it introduces into computer-aided design and most importantly into manufacturing. This computational geometric algorithm leads to a balanced subdivision of the outer shell of the room and also to a matching coherent organization of the space inside. Planimetric issues also subscribe to this inner logic, as well as structural and detailing processes. More images and architect’s description after the break. (more…)
The Indicator: The Student is the Client
This article is co-authored by Sherin Wing
It’s the season for end-of-year juries before everyone escapes to the sanity of real life. And true to expectations, horror stories abound about instructors and jurors.
Here is one story: a student at a well-known Southern California program said that after spending five straight days at studio without returning home once (he clearly didn’t read The 101 in re: change your underwear and it’s not medicine), his instructor approached him and said one thing: “You’re F%#@$!”
Hey, thanks for that helpful and really insightful advice!
And if that weren’t enough, this same instructor had embarked on a campaign of concerted humiliation of this student, teasing him not just to himself, but repeatedly in front of his entire studio class regarding another student he supposedly had a crush on. That is clear harassment and she should not only be fired, but she is opening up the entire school to a lawsuit.
More after the break.
The Indicator: My Head is in the Cloud Office
Recently, I have been thinking about what would happen if you just removed the physical presence of the office from the profession of architecture. A firm would simply be a network of people scattered all over the place who came together as needed. This is what I call the cloud office.
Given the technology and the economy, there are many start-ups who can’t afford the overhead of a real office. Many of the ones I have heard of operate out of apartments, coffee houses—wherever they can get free wifi. They may not realize it but their economic limitations have placed them on the cutting edge of business culture. In fact, larger, more established firms could learn a lot from recent grads with laptops and smart-phones.
More after the break. (more…)
