The Realization of the “Cosmic Quilt” / The Principals
Remember the “Cosmic Quilt” kickstarter campaign we published a few weeks ago? Well, it was a success! With the help 20 students from the Art Institute of New York, The Principals were able to construct a reactive architectural environment just in time for the New York Design Week that took place May 19-21.
Continue after the break for more.
Neri Oxman: On Designing Form
Neri Oxman is an architect and founder of MATERIALECOLOGY with the MIT Media Lab. Her work focuses on computational strategies for form finding; she chooses to define and design processes that generate form. She has published numerous papers and has contributed to various texts. Her work has also been featured at the MOMA for the exhibit “Design and the Elastic Mind“, which she designed four systems of processes. In this lecture posted by PopTech, Oxman discusses what the processes of nature can teach designers and how computational strategies defined by materials and the environment can expand the possibilities of the generation of form through algorithms and analysis.
Follow us after the break for more. (more…)
Architectural “iphoneography” / Lynette Jackson
According to Spillman Farmer Architects‘ blog “Speaking of Architecture“, Lynette Jackson aka Flickr user Page67_Lynette Jackson uses her iphone to document, design and publish images of the built environment around her through Instagram. Taking a series of images that zoom deeper and deeper into the nuances of architectural form and space, Jackson’s use of pop-art imagery and graphic tools bring out details that otherwise go unnoticed and creates a narrative about each individual work of architecture that she documents.
Follow us after the break for a selection of images from her work.
Ghost Town planned for New Mexico to test emerging technologies
Pegasus Global Holdings, LLC, a private international technology development firm, has announced plans to build a new billon-plus dollar city capable housing 35,000 people Lea County, New Mexico. However, no one will live there. The vacant city will be a full-scale, fully functional test city, dedicated to enabling and facilitating the commercialization of new and emerging technologies. Looking for a place to test out that self-driving truck? Look no further. The Center for Innovation, Testing and Evaluation (CITE) will provide 15-square-miles of resident-free cityscape in the middle of the New Mexico’s Chihuahuan Desert.
Continue after the break to learn more about CITE. (more…)
The Plant: An Old Chicago Factory is Converted into a No-Waste Food Factory
The old red-brick building sporting a “BEER” sign may not look impressive, but what is going on inside certainly is. “The Plant” is an indoor vertical farm that triples as a food-business incubator and research/education space located inside an 87-year old meat packing factory in the Union Stockyards of Chicago, Illinois. The project was partly funded by the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity with a $1.5 million grant. Browse through the Plant Chicago’s Flickr Photostream and you can watch the space steadily transform into an urban farm that will grow fresh produce, farm fresh fish, brew beer and produce kombucha all while recycling the waste of the facility to make it a Net-Zero Energy System.
How does it work? Follow us after the break to learn more. (more…)
Video: The Printable House / 1:1 Arkitektur
Danish architects from 1:1 Arkitektur, in collaboration with Facit Homes, are constructing an entire house in just four weeks with only their computer and a CNC machine. Constructed entirely out of wood, the printed house demonstrates a sustainable, quick and affordable alternative to conventional building that minimizes waste and simplifies the buildings process. Many argue that this way of building is the future of construction.
‘BubbleDeck’ Technology at Harvey Mudd College / MATT Construction
MATT Construction is utilizing an innovative new slab technology called BubbleDeck, which replaces a significant percentage of a slab’s concrete mass with hollow or foam-filled plastic balls, made from recycled plastic material. The Teaching and Learning Building at Harvey Mudd College (HMC), designed by Boora Architects with structural engineering provided by kpff, will be the first above-ground building in the United States to employ the technology. HMC has enthusiastically embraced this project on their campus. More images and project description after the break. (more…)
Kickstarter: Cosmic Quilt – Interactive Installation + Student Workshop / The Principals
The Principals, a Brooklyn-based practice that work on industrial design and interactive environments, are posing a question to the design community: What would it be like if the environment we inhabit responded to our present in an active way? What if we shift the scale of the way in which our devices operate to the way our buildings function? The questions posed by The Principals are the considerations of a project called Cosmic Quilt that is planned to be exhibited on Design Week 2012 on May 19-21. In order to create a mock-up of this type of space, the group is enlisting the help of 20 students from the Art Institute of New York and the help of financial backer’s through Kickstarter.
More on the planned project after the break. (more…)
Hanging Hotel: A Suspended Campsite for Climbers / Dr. Margot Krasojevic
Dr. Margot Krasojevic is known for using digital parameters to explore the psychological effects of architecture – materials and spatiality – on its inhabitants. The Hanging Hotel / Suspended Campsite is one such project that was completed in October 2011 for Holden Manz Wine Estate Cape Town in Massif de L’ Esterel, (Gorges Du Vedron) South of France. The project is an investigation in the choreography of perceptions of the environment around us. In this particular project, catering to rock climbers, Dr. Krasojevic uses compound glass and a prism louver system to alter how the climbers see their environment and stimulates different psychological experiences based on these subtle shifts in vision.
More on this project after the break.
Global Holcim Award 2012 Winners Announced
A secondary school project in Gando, Burkina Faso, a community center project in São Paulo, Brazil, and an urban renewal plan in Berlin, Germany are the winners of the Global Holcim Awards for 2012. These leading sustainable construction projects were selected from 15 finalist submissions by a jury of independent experts led by Enrique Norten. The finalists were the regional Holcim Awards 2011 winning projects that had been selected from more than 6,000 entries in 146 countries.
All 53 prize-winning projects at the regional level also competed for further prizes based on their contributions to sustainable construction through innovative building materials and construction technologies. The Global Holcim Innovation prizes conferred by a jury of materials and industry experts led by Harry Gugger went to projects in Switzerland, Germany and the United Kingdom.
Continue after the break to view the winning proposals!
Origin / United Visual Artists
Designer: United Visual Artists
Score: Scanner
Client: The Creators Project
Location: New York City (2011) and San Francisco (2012)
Additional Audio Programming: Henrik Ekeus and Dave Meckin
Producer: Keri Elmsly
Photographer: James Medcraft
Journey to the Center of New York: Can Design “Cure” Our Cities?
Walk into the cafeteria at the Googleplex and you are nudged into the “right” choice. Sweets? Color-coded red and placed on the bottom shelf to make them just a bit harder to reach. “Instead of that chocolate bar, sir, wouldn’t you much rather consume this oh-so-conveniently-located apple? It’s good for you! Look, we labelled it green!” [1]
Like the Google cafeteria guides you to take responsibility of your health, Google wants to transform the construction industry to take responsibility of the “health” of its buildings. They have been leveraging for transparency in the content of building materials, so that, like consumers who read what’s in a Snickers bar before eating it, they’ll know the “ingredients” of materials to choose the greenest, what they call “healthiest,” options.[2]
These examples illustrate the trend of “medicalization” in our increasingly health-obsessed society: when ordinary problems (such as construction, productivity, etc.) are defined and understood in medical terms. In their book Imperfect Health, Borasi and Zardini argue that through this process, architecture and design has been mistakenly burdened with the normalizing, moralistic function of “curing” the human body. [3]
While I find the idea that design should “force” healthiness somewhat paternalistic and ultimately limited, I don’t think this “medicalized” language is all bad – especially if we can use it in new and revitalizing ways. Allow me to prescribe two examples: the most popular and the (potentially) most ambitious urban renewal projects in New York City today, the High Line and the Delancey Underground (or the Low Line).
More on “curative” spaces after the break. (Trust me, it’s good for you.)
The Motherships Are Landing: What Google’s New Headquarters Reveal About Apple 2
When Apple revealed the plans for their new campus in Cupertino, the responses to the “spaceship” were….varied, to say the least:
“Spectacular would be an understatement” ; “So disappointing…” ; a “…panopti-lawn…” ; and – my personal favorite – “Sphincter?” [1]
The announcement instigated a flurry of analyses and criticisms over the meaning of the design for the world – the Zen-like significance of the circle, the role of architecture in this technologically-driven age, the legacy and hubris of Jobs – but produced very little discussion over its meaning for the company itself.
Meanwhile, months before news of the “spaceship” landed, another internet giant was searching the California landscape for its own space to call home. Still very much under-wraps, the new Googleplex will be the first time Google builds a workplace completely from scratch. [2]
These projects will be the Magnum Opuses, the ultimate physical representations, of the two most influential Tech companies in the world, and the two share striking similarities. So let’s clash the plans of these two titans and take another look at Apple 2 – but this time in the light of Google – and see what they can tell us about these companies’ futures.
Interview: Robert Miles Kemp
Digital technology touches nearly everyone’s life. Be it delivered through cell phones, home entertainment devices, ATMs, storefronts or countless other means, digital design is big business and Robert Miles Kemp is at the forefront of that exploding movement.
The son of a carpenter and general contractor, Kemp visited job sites from the time he was small. At nine years old, his father gave him the challenge of designing a structure for a neighbor, which was subsequently built. Kemp loved both the process and the end product. Thus began a career in architecture. More after the break.
Horticulture Expo in Qingdao / HKS
This unique landscape and future landmark for the city of Qingdao, China is a first place project, submitted by the Los Angeles office of HKS Architects, for the design of the Conservatory by the Office of 2014 Qingdao World Horticultural Expo Executive Committee. The winning proposal was selected from an international selection of projects and was shared with us by HKS. Read on for more after the break.
Video: Swarming Nano Quadrotors Fly in Formation
You may remember our coverage on the Flight Assembled Architecture exhibit by Gramazio & Kohler and Raffaello D’Andrea, in collaboration with ETH Zurich, that featured a team of flying drones constructing an architectural structure at the scale of a 600m high “vertical village” out of foam blocks. Well, check this out! Roboticists at the University of Pennsylvania’s GRASP Lab, along with developer Kmel Robotics, have created these autonomous Nano Quadrotors capable of flying in formation and flawlessly performing complex maneuvers. Imagine the possibilities!
Reference: Wired, GRASP Lab at the University of Pennsylvania
TEDx Danubia: Children of the Industrial Revolution / Rachel Armstrong
In this TEDx sponsored talk, Rachel Armstrong - co-director of AVATAR (Advanced Virtual and Technological Architectural Research) in Architecture and Synthetic Biology at the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London (UCL) – speaks about the dangerous relationship that we have developed with machines since the industrial revolution and ways we can break that habit. Along with her research on “living materials” and “synthetic biology”, Armstrong is looking for ways to rebuild the relationship between our reliance on machines and the systems of nature and our ecologies that are often neglected.
More on this talk after the break. (more…)
Contour Crafting / Dr. Behrokh Khoshnevis
At first glance, Dr. Behrokh Khoshnevis’ Contour Crafting (CC) seems both fascinating and unreal – a fabrication machine that has the potential to construct entire structures in a single run. Supported by the National Science Foundation and the Office of Naval Research, CC’s combination of conventional robotics and “age-old tools” creates a layered fabrication process where large-scale parts can be fabricated at remarkable speeds. On his blog, Khoshnevis, a professor in the USC Viterbi School of Engineering, explains that the system is a scale-up of the rapid prototyping machines now widely used in industry to “print out” three-dimensional objects designed with CAD/CAM software, usually by building up successive layers of plastic. ”Instead of plastic, Contour Crafting will use concrete,” explained Khoshnevis.
More about Contour Crafting after the break. (more…)
Cornell’s NYC Tech Campus Wins Competition
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg is set to announce Cornell University and its partner, the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, winner of the intense, yearlong competition to build a New York City Tech Campus on Roosevelt Island. The announcement follows Stanford University’s unexpected withdraw from the competition after tense negotiations with the Bloomberg administration. Meanwhile, last Friday Cornell received a $350 million donation in support of their proposal, being the largest gift the University has ever received. (more…)
The Architecture and Transformation of elBulli / From World’s Best Restaurant To Culinary Research Foundation
Food is as much about architecture as it is the concept of taste. With food comes the sum of its parts to create the whole, the great attention to detail and the emotion of first bite like that of entering a memorable space for the first time.
Jorge Louis Borges says, “The taste of the apple lies in the contact of the fruit with the palate, in the fruit itself, in a similar way poetry lies in the meaning of the poem and the reader, not in the lines of symbols printed on the pages of a book. What is essential is the aesthetic act, the thrill, the almost physical emotion that comes with each reading.”
Ferran Adria, the master chef of elBulli, which has religiously been called the Best Restaurant in the World, has a heideggerian approach to food, cooking, and the physical act of eating. Similar to that as architects with the same heideggerian approach and the concepts of material, making, and the experiencing of space. Like Jorge Louis Borges and heideggerian architects, Ferran Adria crosses the realm of cooking and enters the presence of wholeness of experience. Transforming the traditional means of eating and elevating them to a memorable moment where memory, experience and taste meet.
Continue reading for more in-depth information.
Manifestations : The Immediate Future of 3D Printing Buildings and Materials Science
The future potential to build and realize the concepts of the human mind lie just there, within the potential of the human mind. For years the architectural world has been struggling to keep up with the ability of pen-to-paper and the recent advents in NURB surface computer modeling, algorithmic and parametric architecture. This in-return has led to the building and technology industry playing catch-up with the recent advances in 3D architectural visualizations. In fact, as computer-aided design invaded these practices in the 1980s, radically transforming their generative foundations and productive capacities, architecture found itself most out-of-step and least alert, immersed in ideological and tautological debates and adrift in a realm of referents severed from material production.
