Event: Pratt Explores the Importance of Cold War Era Pre-Fabricated Building Systems
Pratt Institute’s School of Architecture will present “COLD war COOL digital,” an exhibition of 20 scaled prototypes of modernist, pre-fabricated, and globally-distributed Cold War era housing systems that were created using contemporary 3D printing technologies (opening reception 2/18 at 6:15, details below). The exhibition will investigate architectural modernism and its global influence and will connect with contemporary prototype pre-fabrication methods and digital research in housing and skyscraper design. A symposium that explores the technical, aesthetic, and political aspects of prototyping and pre-construction in architecture will be held tonight in conjunction with the exhibition.
Continue reading for more details…
Pharrell to Collaborate with Zaha Hadid
Hip-Hop artist Pharrell is used to collaborating with big names – Jay-Z, Snoop Dogg, and now? Zaha Hadid.
According to an interview with Hypebeast, the artist has decided to continue his dabble into the design world (he’s written a book and designed chairs in the past) by working on a pre-fab home with the Pritzker Prize-winning architect:
Pharrell: “There’s a collaboration I’m working with Zaha Hadid, we’re touring around with the idea of a prefab for a house.
Hypebeast: Is that still at the planning stages or are you guys looking to erect something soon?
Pharell, enigmatically: “Well, we’re going to see something through.”
Via GreatSpaces and Hypebeast
VIDEO: Dwell Presents Jens Risom’s Island Home
If you’re at all immersed in the design world, you already know the name of Danish-American furniture designer Jens Risom. And, if you know Jens Risom, you most certainly know the mid-century, pre-fab house he designed and built on an isolated island 13 miles off the coast of New England.
If you don’t know it – now’s the time to get acquainted. The gorgeous summer home – which famously graced the pages of LIFE Magazine in 1968, has recently been featured by Dwell in a video.
The house, which has stood on Block Island for 45 years with relatively little renovation, despite the island’s notoriously powerful gales of wind, defies the stereotype that pre-fabricated buildings can’t be built to last (or beautifully designed). Indeed, Risom only attempted the venture because of the “personal freedom” that pre-fabrication afforded him. As he explains: “Architecture, to me, is the most beautiful of the arts. But I watched my father [an architect] struggle with the challenges, what was to me an enormous drawback: The architect did not fully drive the end product. I always knew that I wanted to design, but only [if I could] create products over which I had total control.”
More on this extraordinary home and its designer, after the break…
World’s Tallest Skyscraper Back On Track To Be Built in 90 Days
Despite reports that construction firm Broad Sustainable Building (BSB), a subsidiary of Broad Group, could not complete its 220-story Sky City tower in 90 days, the company’s senior VP Juliet Jiang has announced that the skyscraper “will go on as planned with the completion of five storeys a day.”
Thus, rather than in seven months, the world’s tallest tower (838 m; 2,750 ft) will be finished in three – topping out at the end of March 2013.
As we’ve discussed before here on ArchDaily, the tower could truly be revolutionary in China; Broad Group’s 95% prefabricated modular technology, which is responsible for the incredible rate of construction, is also radically environmentally-friendly, earthquake-safe, and cost-effective. In fact, Sky City, designed by engineers who worked on the Burj Khalifa, will cost a tenth of that famous skyscraper (only $1,500 per square meter) – and take a twentieth of the time to build.
More info on the world’s tallest tower, after the break…
AD Classics: Steel Pre-Fab Houses / Donald Wexler
For Donald Wexler modern architecture is simply the right way to design. One of the true fundamental Modernist, Donald Wexler began his career working in the office of Richard Neutra. It was here that he became a true pragmatist, balking at any ideological rational for modernism and instead argue that his pursuit of modern design derives from its responsiveness to dynamic environmental, technological, and material conditions. Adaptability and flexibility, prominent aspects of Wexler’s personality, are values inherent in his conception of architectural space, systems, and materials.
