Articles

Duosegno Visual Design shared with us a video they put together for the Social Housing project by ZigZag Architects.

DesCours is a free, public, ten-night architecture and art event now in its fifth year, held December 2-December 11 in New Orleans.

This event invites internationally renowned architects and artists to create architecture installations within ‘hidden’ locations in the heart of New Orleans, including private courtyards, rooftops, abandoned buildings and walkways, all locations normally unseen, inaccessible or unused by the public.

More information on the event after the break.

Architectural designer and historian, Rachel Preston Prinz, discusses ancient building methods and how they may be integrated into modern design in order to create sustainable architecture. Rachel Preston Prinz has studied cathedrals and villas in Europe, as well as alongside Americans specializing in religious architecture, historic preservation and ultra-high-end custom residential design.

Our friends from Studio Gang Architects recently sent us their new book Reverse Effect. ”The culmination of a yearlong collaboration between Studio Gang Architects and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), Reverse Effect is dedicated to exploring the importance of the Chicago River and the possibilities for its 21st-century transformation. Both an information-rich resource and a catalyst for action, this book’s diverse content, perspectives, and visions illuminate potential trajectories for the future of our city.”

Along with the Mumbai and Toronto offices, the Los Angeles based Yazdani Studio of Cannon Design announces their conceptual design for the new world-class Bollywood Museum located at Film City in Mumbai, India. The design is the physical manifestation of an emotional response to Hindi cinema.

Location: Film City, Mumbai, India Client: Maharashtra Film, Stage and cultural Development Corporation Ltd. Architect: Yazdani Studio of Cannon Design in collaboration with Cannon Design International

Continue reading for more images and the project description.

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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.

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Today, ideology appears to have become, and to have been reduced to, something merely aesthetic, something you can buy yourself into as Wouter Vanstiphout explains in an interview with us entitled “Acrobatic Narratives”. In that sense cities have become suspicious territories where hypocrisy and fakery prevail when it comes to urban ideologies and one wishes to have some kind of optical device that detects all the lies, similar to a kind of night vision infrared technology that Thomas Ruff used in his “Nacht Series” applying the same technology that was used during the Gulf War.

You can see more about the articles on their official website. Also, you can browse the entire issue YouTube (video and more images after the break).

In 1958, Harry Harlow famously demonstrated, in a still controversial and haunting study, that tactile stimulation can be more desirable than food. Harlow raised infant rhesus monkeys without mothers and gave them a choice between two artificial surrogate mothers. Both were constructed of wood and wire mesh.The difference was that one had a bottle of milk while the other one was covered with cloth. To most psychologists’ surprise, the monkeys bonded with the cloth mother that lacked a source of nutrition. Since then numerous studies from baby rodents to neonates have shown the importance of tactile stimulation. Yet, 50 years on, few architects have studied how a design’s tactile experience might affect its users. In all likelihood, the effects of a design’s tactile properties are probably minuscule when compared to the studies mentioned above; they are categorically different in terms of tactile engagement. Still, the effects could be meaningful and measurable when it comes to a person’s social behavior, self-perception, enjoyment of, and comfort in a building.

The Society of Architectural Historians/Southern California Chapter will be presenting architect Hicks Stone, son of Edward Durell Stone, and author of the new book Edward Durell Stone: A Son’s Untold Story of a Legendary Architect (Rizzoli, October 2011). The free lecture and slide presentation is hosted by SAH/SCC Life Member Edward Cella at Edward Cella Art + Architecture in Los Angeles on December 10th from 4-6pm. More information on the event after the break.

Duosegno Visual Design, a project of architecture photos and videos, shared with us one of their videos for the Niemeyer Center designed by Oscar Niemeyer. In collaboration with the cultural center, they are shooting the interiors for the second part of the project.

For the International Conceptual Design Competition of The Two Towers – CDB Tower & Minsheng Financial Tower, Saraiva + Associados focused on a unique and harmonious force, along with a modern and innovative approach to create a building of intense character. The essence found in this project was the result of an international competition in which Saraiva & Associados reached the six finalists: The Two Towers in Shenzhen. More images and architects’ description after the break.

Sam Dufaux presents WORKac’s vision for the transformation of Salem-Keizer, Oregon. The project integrates elements of the city and nature across an existing 200 acre big box retail site. WORKac 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.

Three projects from USA, one from Austria and one from Australia for our 8th selection of previously featured health architecture. Check them all after the break.

St. Anthony Hospital / ZGF Architects LLP Prior to the completion of the new St. Anthony Hospital, the South Sound Region represented one of the largest population centers in the State of Washington without a central community hospital. As a result more than 3,500 emergencies and 4,000 patients requiring overnight care had to travel well outside of the area for treatment annually (read more…)

Architecture firm Line and Space, has been selected as the 2011 Architectural Firm of the Year by the Arizona Chapter of the American Institute of Architects (AIA). The award recognizes a firm that has produced distinguished architecture for over ten years, has made significant contributions to the profession and the community, and has transcended local boundaries in making these contributions. Awarded by an out of state jury comprised of architects, the honor was given to Line and Space at the Institute’s Celebrate Architecture Awards Gala held in Phoenix on October 22.

The Museum of Modern Art and MoMA PS1 has announced the 2012 finalists competing in the 12th annual competition under the Young Architects Program. Each year a group of emerging architects compete for the opportunity to design and construct a summer installation within MoMA PS1’s courtyard.

Buildobfuscation

The Guangfa Securities Headquarter, designed by Jaeger and Partner Architects, is a 308-meter tall class-A high-rise office building that will serve as the new landmark for the eastern portion of Guangzhou’s new CBD. Its orientation is rotated slightly from the dominating orthogonal grid of the surrounding area to mark the site as a transformational pivot point of the urban fabric. More images and architects’ description after the break.

When we spotted the news on ArchRecord of a major delay for the Elbe Philharmonic, our hearts sank a little. We’ve been covering the building extensively during its construction period and have anxiously been awaiting its completion (a date that was pushed from 2010 to 2012, and, now, is uncertain). Yet, technical difficulties pertaining to the saddle roof structure are creating a tangle between the German contractor Hochtief and the Elbe Philharmonic, leading Hochtief to stop work on the glass facade, the steel roof support structure, the 82m-long escalator and the building services.

More about the halted construction after the break.