Our friends at Various Architects, authors of the innovative Mobile Performance Venue,  just shared with us a new inflatable project, currently running up for the Yorkshire Renaissance Pavilion competition. From a total of 87 submissions, the jury selected 5 projects and then narrowed down to 3 finalists. Final results aren´t announced yet – we´ll keep you posted on that.

Their project, named “The Yorkshire Diamond“, has a very particular structure with inflatable tubes forming a diamond-lattice structure, forming a box with an excavated interior, which allows for different configurations.

The architect´s description:

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A heart-shaped sculpture by Gage Clemenceau Architects will land on Times Square today. It will stay on Duffy Square until March 1st. The sculpture is constructed with DuPont^TM Corian® strawberry ice and welded steel tubes. The heart is lit from within using color changing LED lighting.

For more information, go to Times Square website.

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The construction process of the The Cathedral of Christ the Light by SOM (featured earlier on AD), clearly shows the impressive structure that supports the building and its skin.

You can see more at this gallery, courtesy of SOM:

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Since year 2000, the  MoMA and the P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center present the Young Architects Program, an annual competition that invites emerging architects to design a temporary structure at the P.S.1 ’s facility in Long Island City, Queens. This has been a field for experimentation for digital manufacturing, new materials and new construction techniques -all under a tight budget-, as we saw in 2008 with the P.F.1 installation by WORKac.

A few days ago we featured this years winning proposal by MOS, a lightweight aluminum frame using recyclable parts, and saw how the economical crisis is present on the project´s conception.

But also, the other proposals by BSC Architecture, !ndie architecture, L.E.FT architects and PARA-project explore this and other social/cultural concepts on their proposals, so we decided to contact them and feature this projects so you can get the whole picture.

I´d like to thank Michel (MOS), Martin (BSC Architecture), Paul (!ndie architecture), Ziad (L.E.FT architects), Jon (PARA-project), April (P.S.1) and Meg (MoMA) for helping us out on this article.

And now, onto the proposals:

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Architects: astearchitecture
Location: Stubai Glacier in Tyrol, Austria
Project year: 2008
Design Team: Arch.DI Kathrin Aste, Arch.DI Frank Ludin, Thomas Feuerstein
Client: Wintersport Tirol AG & Co, Stubaier Bergbahnen KG
Construction Engineer: aste construction
Soil Mechanics Engineer: Ingenieurbüro Wietek
Photographs: astearchitecture

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Architects: Baulderstone Hornibrook Queensland & Cox Rayner Architects
Location: Brisbane, Australia
Design year: 2007
Construction year: 2008-2009
Structural Engineer: Baulderstone Hornibrook Queensland Pty Ltd and ARUP Engineers
Budget: $63,3 million
Images: Cox Rayner Architects

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We just got the news that MOS Architects won the competition to build a temporary installation at MoMA´s P.S.1 during this summer.

For this competition the P.S.1 invites each year a group of emerging architects to experiment with new shapes and materials, as Work AC did last year with their PF1 project.

MOS project is entitled Afterparty, a design that Micheal Meredith and Hilary Sample (MOS partners) say is meant  to honor and reflect current economic realities, by using basic materials. The main structure is a lightweight aluminum frame using recyclable parts which require minimal assembly, which will become a landmark for the neigborhood – all this on a USD$70,000 budget.

I spoke with Michael a few minutes ago and he refered to the name of the project: One thing about the “Afterparty,” as we’re calling it, is the need to look for new promiscuities after the party of a sort of high-formalism which has dominated academic discourse, and in our case it’s with the basic structural arch geometries, rough almost singular materiality and the production and interaction of “environment,” (literally cooling down the courtyard through stack effect) looking towards a more primitive state of architecture. – (See afterparty definition on Wikipedia).

The project is still under development, and we´ll keep you posted on further updates. We´ll try to do a good coverage on this as we did last year.

You can see other works from MOS previously featured on AD: Floating House and their ORDOS 100 villa.

More images of Afterparty after the break.

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For our readers in Europe, there´s a very interesting workshop taking place at the University of Technology in Eindhoven, Netherlands on March 9-13th, 2009. The workshop will focus on how to build complex structures, at a time when “can a design be built?” is not the question any more, but rather which technique is best suited to realise the concept.

The workshop will be based around lectures, tutorials and other activities on topics such as tensile, textile and membrane structures, including software, scripting and CNC techniques.

For the full list of participants, program and registration is available at their official website.

Architects: terrain: loenhart&mayr
Location: Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany
Architects in Charge: Prof. Klaus Loenhart and Christoph Mayr
Project year: 2008
Complete Complex Lenght: 395 meters
Structural design and structural planning: Mayr | Ludescher | Partner, advisory engineers, Munich
Design and planning of jurybuilding, technical equipment: Architects Sieber+Renn, Sonthofen, Germany
Photographs: terrain

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Concept Design: Choi Ropiha
Design Development & Executive Architects: Perkins Eastman
Location: New York, USA
Project Year: 2008
Principal material: Glass
Footprint Area: 79 sqm
Stairs Area: 200 sqm
Photographs: Copyright Paúl Rivera/ArchPhoto

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Our friends at Inhabitat tipped us on this amazing project, the Folded Bamboo Houses + Paper House by Ming Tang. This structures were conceived as a response to the 7.9 earthquake that strucked China last May.

In order to relocate the people that lost their houses, the Chinese goverment decided to build 1.5 million temporary homes. For this, Ming Tang proposed a shelter that was easily produced, cheap and environmentally friendly, using bamboo. The concept utilizes a system of bamboo poles that are pre-assembled into rigid geometric shapes. The geometry of these forms provides each structure’s integrity, allowing a range of lightweight modular structures to be quickly assembled in factories and transported to their destination. Once constructed, the shelters are then covered by using post and pre-consumer recycled paper.

For this modular system, Tang also proposed a  paper fibers, water, and cement envelope that allows for larger configurations.

This project was presented on the RE:Construct competition, a call for a ideas on temporary housing. This project was selected as a notable entry, but i think it should have been awarded since it address a on going problem with a local solution in an innovative way.

This are the kind of projects that I wish were being built right now! What do you think? Do you have more examples on innovative temporary housing?

More pictures after the break.

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In 2006, Foundation Greenland Street invited Office for Subversive Architecture to develop the first of their annual architecture commissions which will inhabit the roof of The Blade Factory.

More pictures by Johannes Marburg and text form the architects after the break.

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In  my opinion Bjarke Ingels, founder of BIG, is one of the best architects when it comes to give shape to the interests of an “unspoken” client on public buildings,either representing the values of a country or a culture. All with exceptional syntax and presentation skills.

And BIG‘s latest project (in collaboration with Arup and 2+1), the Danish Pavilion for the Shanghai 2010 Expo, does it again, by taking the best of living in Copenhagen and placing it on China for visitors to experience.

Basically, the pavilion is a big loop on which visitors ride around on one of the 1,500 bikes available at the entrance, a chance to experience the Danish urban way. At the center of the pavilion there’s a big pool with fresh water from Copenhagen’s harbor, on which visitors can even swim.

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Architects: Malone Chang Architects
Project Team: Malone Chang (architect), Yi-Heng Hsu (project architect), Tz-Tzen Huang (design team)
Location: Kaohsiung, Taiwan
Structural Engineer: Tien-Hun Engineering Consultant Inc.
Constructed Area: Approximately 60,000 sqm
Project year: 02/2006 – 11/2007
Photographs: Guei-Shiang Ke, Habou Chen

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Architects: Ecosistema Urbano – blog – Belinda Tato, Jose Luis Vallejo, Diego García-Setién
Location: Pau de Vallecas, Vial C-91, Madrid, Spain
Collaborators: Ignacio Prieto, Maria Eugenia Lacarra, David Delgado, David Benito, Jaime Eizaguirre, Patricia Lucas, Ana López, Asier Barredo, Laura Casas, Fabricio Pepe, Michael Moradiellos
Client: Land and Housing Municipal Company, Madrid Council, Directorate of Residential Projects Innovation
Year: Phase I 2004-2005, Phase II 2006-2007
Structure: Tectum Ingeniería, S.L. (Constantino Hurtado)
Services: IP Ingeniería
Botany: Ignacio López
Construction Inspector: Belinda Tato, Jose Luiz Vallejo, Diego García-Setién
Contractor: Grupo Entorno, S.A.
Photographs: Emilio P. Doiztua y Roland Halbe

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Of the things i really love about maintaining this blog is that it gathers architects from all around the world. In this case, the people from ZLG Design in Malaysia sent us their project for the BOH Visitor Center through our contact form – same as many other offices we will publish in the next days. Everyone is invited!

This great building -my personal favorite in the last month- is located in Malaysia, overlooking an amazing landscape. I think that its tectonic work really frames the natural surrounding.

Architect: ZLG Design
Team: Huat Lim, Susanne Zeidler, Jimmy Wong, Mary Verhaeghe, Hong Chieh
Location: Sungai Palas, Cameron Highland, Boh Visitor Centre, Malaysia
Locale description: Tea plantations and factory
Site area: 12,168.32 sqm
Built area: 1,233.8 sqm
Building start: November 2005
BUilding completion: July 2006
Budget: USD$498,652.29

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¿Remember GreenPix, the 2,200 sqm LED media wall powered by solar panels we featured some months ago? Alexandra Lerman published a  documentary about the GreenPix on which Simon Giostra, founder of Simone Giostra & Partners. Giostra explains the challenge to design and build this gigantic media wall, with the help of engineering experts ARUP.

Actually Giostra  is trying to convince the chinese goverment to display user generated content on the media wall, which is currently under the curatory of the authorities. This will make if fully interactive.

You can also download a software -available for Mac and PC- to simulate the media wall on your computer using Quicktime videos.

Reminds me of the display on the stage where Beck played at the Oulands Festival in San Francisco last week.

Some love this building, and some hate it. I´m impressed.

The Burj Dubai (set to be the tallest tower in the world, while the tallest structure as of now), is almost finished. Located in Dubai, it´s the centerpise of a mixed-use development that will include 30,000 homes, 9 hotels, 3 ha of parks, 19 residential towers, a man and a 12ha artificial lake.

I decided to Google about the Burj Dubai a little, and i found an interesting interview at Wired with SOM´s structural engineer Bill Baker, telling the story behind the design, the structure and construction. The foundations were overengineered just in case the client wanted to rise the height of the building during construction… which he did!. Now the final height won´t be disclosed until the construction is finished.

For now, enjoy this pictures the air on an helicopter by David Hobcote, seen at Gizmodo:

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Architects: 70ºN Arkitektur
Location: No defined location
Client: 70ºN Arkitektur
Constructed Area: 36 sqm
Type: Experimental Prefab
Builder: Senja Elementer AS
Project year: 2004
Photographs: BR – Bent Raanes and Sarah Cameron Sørensen, RSB – Rune Stoltz Bertinussen, 70N – 70°N arkitektur

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Architect: nArchitects
Location: Lacoste, France
Project Completion Year: July 2006
Design Team: Eric Bunge, Mimi Hoang (Partners); Daniela Zimmer (Project Architect), Kazuya Katagiri, Takuya Shinoda, Shuji Suzumori / Fabrication by nARCHITECTS and SCAD (Jim Bischoff, Michael Gunter, Cindy Hartness, Michael Porten, Ryan Townsend, Troy Wandzel, with Natalie Bray and Sarah Walko)
Client: Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD)
Program: Ephemeral pavilions
Photographs: Daniela Zimmer & nArchitects

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