Archicad 25 allows you to continue selections by switching between 2D and 3D views without reselecting items thanks to new and improved commands. Furthermore, you can also speed up your workflow by using overlapping elements and hiding the selected elements in the active view.
BIG + Paris-based architects OFF, engineers Buro Happold, consultants Michel Forgue and environmental engineer Franck Boutte is the winning team to design the new 15.000 m2 research centre for Sorbonne’s Scientific university University Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris. More images and complete press release after the break.
The computerization and urbanization of the 21st century is creating new lifestyles and forms of public space. Architectural Environments for Tomorrow presents the spatial experiments of 23 architects and artists from around the world responding to the transformation of their surroundings. “The metaphors of the world-views suggested by the artists resonate with the practical proposals of the architects, presenting images of future humanity from a variety of different angles.” Architects featured include Toyo Ito, Frank O. Gehry, Sou Fujimoto and many more.
Continue reading for a complete list of the participants and more information on the exhibit.
Andrew Zago presents Zago Architecture’s transformation of Rialto, California “defaulted” subdivisions, suggesting a new species of urbanism that grows from the existing American suburb. Zago Architecture is one of five interdisciplinary teams participating in “MoMA’s Foreclosed: Rehousing the American Dream.” Each team is challenged to re-imagine struggling American cities and suburbs, seeing the current economic crisis as an opportunity to evolve.
The first prize winning proposal for the Nursing & Retiree Home, designed by Firma d.o.o., was directly influenced by the characteristics of the immediate surroundings of the plot. Through detailed site analysis, they concluded that the most important aspects of the context are the landscape and the extreme impact of the rural environment. Therefore, the proposed residence for the elderly, apart from fulfilling all functional prerequisites, must be consistent with those surrounding features. More images and architects’ description after the break.
The winning proposal for the new Panama City Hospital, designed by TASH, is based on the design of ecological protections and passive bioclimatic strategies. The project is configured as a city, it is in no way a single building but a complex, keeping the capacity of total intercommunication between different buildings in a way that benefits from the different synergies, general systems, logistics, production systems, waste disposal, etc, avoiding element duplicities and improving the general performance of the complex, thus giving sense to the concept of a hospital city that is at the core of the project. More images and architects’ description after the break.
Visual Workshop shared with us their proposal for the Hotel Liesma competition. The aim of their concept is to make a new landmark of the surrounding neighborhood as a contemporary, sustainable and functional hotel. More images and brief description after the break.
Australian studio INDEX Architecture has completed a proposal for a new hotel on the beach side of a resort in Jurmala, Latvia. The design is located a short walk from the beachfront and includes 130 rooms, a restaurant, conference and health club facilities. The brief called for a design based around the theme of music that reused an existing tower on the site. The ground floor is to be constructed from a curved timber LVL framed roof structure, which was drawn from the waveforms of Handel’s ‘Water Music.’ The tower reuses the existing concrete structure with a new curtain wall featuring a white ceramic interlayer pattern. More images and architects’ description after the break.
If you are in the Chicago area, Jeanne Gang, 2011 MacArthur Fellow and lead architect of Studio Gang Architect, will be joined by Henry Henderson, Midwest Program Director of The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), to discuss the new book, Reverse Effect: Renewing Chicago’s Waterways. The book explores the importance of the Chicago River and the possibilities for its 21st century transformation.
There wasn’t much time to reflect on the accident. The casualty was taken away in the hot daylight. There was an awkward group moment following. The instructor said a few words of encouragement and caution to the assembled and then chuckled a little to himself like he know what that was like, or like he had almost lost some fingers, too, at some moment in time. He then shook his head and said, Well…. But he said nothing further for a moment as he glanced around the little blood-spattered scene.
For an instant, Dean made the sickening association with the Reservoir Dogs warehouse. He couldn’t help looking at the machine with the slippery fluid on it’s clean steel. They didn’t belong together. That was one of the secrets to Reservoir Dogs and the whole Tarantino oeuvre, he thought. It wasn’t a new thing, but it was something familiar taken for a spin in a twisted way. Something irreconcilable. A little manipulative, he thought. But, he couldn’t stop the gaze. The scene in the car. Black suit, white seat, red blood. It had the effect of making the person disappear, turn into a stand-in. The kid with the paddle for a hand would now march through life with a deformity. His fingers would be found in the sawdust but it would be too late for them. The girl who found the one finger was endlessly rubbing her hands with anti-bacterial hand-gel. Everybody was fucked mentally. Just like Paul Auster had surmised the Greatest Generation was actually insane because of all the killing and destruction and broken homes from WW II. Their kids were the ones who launched the sixties. Most of Dean’s peers were born out of the sixties to seventies, which meant that all their parents were fucked up by their parents who were fucked up by the war in one way or another. Seems like there is always a war to fuck up a whole generation or a good group of them, anyway. Dean was pissed that he had to witness that and keep that awful paddle image in his mind. He wasn’t pissed at Tarantino, but he was pissed at the stupid kid for making him more fucked up than he already was.
Krueck + Sexton Architects have been selected by the GSA Design Excellence Program for the firm’s design of the Federal Office Building in Miramar, Florida just outside of Miami. The 375,000 square foot building is designed with three goals in mind: reduce energy, resources and consumption, incorporate high performance buildings materials and systems and harvest renewable energy sources available on the site. Currently out to bid, the project is scheduled for completion in mid-2014.
Read on for more after the break.
Architects: Buol & Zünd Architekten
Location: Basel, Switzerland
Project Team: Matthias Aebersold, Martin Schröder, Silvio Schubiger
Site Area: 3250 sqm
Photographs: Michael Fritschi
The Economist featured an interview with Michael Pawlyn discussing sustainable architecture inspired by nature. Michael Pawlyn is known for his passionate investigations of the unique, efficient structures of natural organisms and how they may translate through design. Biomimicry has been an important topic amongst the innovators and educators who are learning from the 3.8 billion years invested into the design of our natural world.
The shell of an abalone is “twice as strong as the toughest man-made ceramic.”
Continue reading for the complete interview.
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GROUND UP is a new journal print and web publication intended to stimulate thought, discussion, visual exploration and substantive speculation about emerging landscape issues affecting contemporary praxis. Edited and produced by the students of the Department of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning at University of California Berkeley, along with an advisory board of noted landscape architects and urban theorists and critics, each edition will examine a critical theme arising from the tension between contemporary landscape architecture, ecology and pressing cultural issues. They are announcing an open call for submissions for their inaugural issue, ‘Landscapes of Uncertainty’, which examines the impact of recent radical economic, political and ecological shifts on the landscape. All submittals are to be sent in no later than January 13th. More information on the competition after the break.
The design of the Two Towers, by MA2 in collaboration with CZ Visual Architecture, is a series of manipulated manifolds that construct a dual vertical lattice with angled surfaces. The towers radiate vertically deriving from a multi-sided body, diamond shaped, molded, intended for diversity, complexity, and robustness in form. Elongated diamond bodies functions as a poly-operational structure that addresses flows of energy, circulation, dynamic composites, both aesthetically and material make up. More images and architects’ description after the break.
Organized by The Cultural Landscape Foundation and co-sponsored by the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, all are invited at attend the Second Wave of Modernism conference on Friday, November 18th at the Museum of Modern Art. The conference will examine modernism at the residential, urban and metropolitan scales, ranging from Richard Neutra’s Kun 2 in LA to the High Line. Participants include James Corner, Charles Renfro, Kathryn Gustafson, Michael Van Valkenburgh and many others. More information about the event and how to register, please visit here.
Earlier this month, a Washington D.C District chapter opened their doors to the streets near Chinatown and the Penn Quarter. The office joined other East Coast chapters in the movement promoting visibility, transparency and sustainability in architecture.
Five great mixed use projects from earlier this year for our 8th selection. Check them all after the break.
Glass Lofts / Front Studio Architects Commissioned by the Friendship Development Associates (FDA) as a central player in its community revitalization program, the Glass Lofts are a new mixed-use construction consisting of 39,000 sqf artist’s work spaces, 18 loft condominiums, retail and restaurant space, FDA offices and a flexible-use community space. Located at the center of the Penn Avenue Arts District, the Glass Lofts is the result of a community-driven planning process actively involving neighborhood residents, artists and business owners in the development of the project (read more…)
Have you ever rushed across your house to get something from another room, but by the time you got there you completely forgot why you were there? This might seem like a trivial question for architects, but it might have more to do with architecture than you might think. Your memory appears to be affected by how many doorways and rooms you go through. This sounds absurd, but a recent study published in The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology has been able to measure this effect at several different levels of environmental immersion. The study comes out of Norte Dame Psychology Professor Gabriel Radvansky’s lab. Much of Professor Radvansky’s work explores how spatial organization can influence the mental narratives we construct to learn, retain and apply information. Radvansky believes, “many architects already intuitively grasp many of the concepts work examines, but research could further improve their understanding of how spatial design affects a building’s users.”
Unsangdong Architects have nearly finished the steel structure of the “Culture Forest”, revealing the distinctive figure of the Culture & Art Center in SeongDong-gu, Republic of Korea. Read the architect’s description and view schematic renderings on our previous post.
More photos after the break.
Architects: Unsangdong Architects – YoonGyoo Jang, ChangHoon Shin, SungMin Kim Location: 656-323, SeongSu-dong, SeongDong-gu, Seoul, South Korea Client: Municipality of SeongDong-gu Structure: Steel framed reinforcement concrete Use: welfare, education and research, culture, nursery school Site Area: 1694m2 Bldg Area: 1001.77m2 Gross Floor Area: 9597.37m
Ron Arad and Asa Bruno welcome BD to their studio for an exclusive view into the inner workings of their practice. In 1981, Ron Arad established his first design studio ‘one off ltd”. Over the years, the practice has evolved into Ron Arad Architects and has become known for their unique ethos that challenges the relationship between form and function.
Anchoring at the end of the proposed Hongqiao primary retail axis in Shanghai, and with a canal meandering through the northern edge of the site, the Linkong Block 10-1 Development is the destination for the public within the Linkong Business Park. The program for the development, ‘The Urban Crossing’, calls for a boutique urban mixed-use project with office, retail, gallery, conference center, and water promenade plaza. This concept by Aedas is to create a brand new landmark, which further establishes a strong civic presence through its iconic form and vibrant program mix. Portrayed as the Gateway of Hongqiao Airport Transportation Hub, the project is deemed to generate synergy from public and commercial activities. More images and architects’ description after the break.
Museum of Architecture and Design has published the first film from the series of six Small and Smart – Expressions of Contemporary Slovenian Architecture in Film: Biotechnical Faculty, ARK arhitektura Krušec (Ljubljana, 2009-2010). Small and Smart consists of six short films, one of each of six built architectural projects. Each employs a simple story – a development, an exchange – to move through and relate the experience of the architecture. As the films move through and document the spaces and exchanges, certain key features of the architectures are revealed and emphasized. All architectures here are recent builds (2006 and later) and are of varied types, programs and scales: private house, row house, industrial facility, sacred, educational/institutional, public/sports. Together they reflect representative currents, developments and practices in the best of Slovenian architecture today.
The winners of the 2011 International “Barbara Cappochin” Prize for Architecture are two young emerging talents in the field of contemporary architecture, the Italian architect Fabrizio Barozzi and the Spanish architect Alberto Veiga: it is their project, a Promotional Centre for the D.O.C. wine: “Ribera del Duero” in Roa, Spain, which was unanimously chosen by the judges “because it merges the qualities of aesthetics, functionality and sustainability for which the Prize is awarded”. More information on the award after the break.
But you can browse the last one: 417
