With produce coming from the Imperial Valley, Central California Valley, neighboring states and other countries the 30,000 plus residents of San Diego’s central urban context consume 21,231,000 pounds of produce each year. Where will we get our food? Transparency in the food industry needs to occur and enlighten blinded consumers. Our city needs to handle this critical issue with an architecture that responds. A new type of residential tower needs to come forth. Utilizing vertical farming, Brandon Martella’s “Live Share Grow’ proposal is a new model of living can be tested and resolved in a dense vertical community. More images and architects’ description after the break.
Miami, Florida is booming with new architectural projects by big names: everything from new condominums by BIG,to the new Miami Beach Convention Center. So why are so many big projects migrating to Miami Beach? The city is turning itself into an American cultural and civic center.
The Helsinki Central Library, designed by FIRM a.d. and OKB Architecture, is a hub of knowledge, where different people, communities and constituencies can come together. With their concept of ‘Geologies of Information’, their design expresses how if libraries were like sedimentary rocks, where layers of knowledge accumulated over time, libraries of the 21st century are like igneous rock in which different mediums of knowledge and learning are fused into a granular heterogeneous whole. More images and architects’ description after the break.
Taking place this Friday from 3:00pm to 5:30pm EST, the Algorithmic Design in Grasshopper webinar by modeLab will focus on creating algorithms using lists and transformations in Grasshopper, iteratively developing geometries inspired by nature. Through a series of short presentations and “live” case studies, learn strategies to discover forms that are defined by simple rules and incremental creation. With two instructors offering guided curriculum and continuous support, their goals is to provide you with an in-depth and personal learning experience. A video of the webinar as well as instructor files will be uploaded after the broadcast – all participants will have unlimited access to the webinar content and this video online. To register and for more information, please visit here.
Sure, you could just go for the old, reliable "black turtleneck" again this year, but where's the fun in that? This year, why not get the Architects in your life a gift we know they'll love? We've culled the "For Architects" page of our Pinterest to bring you the 10 most pinned products - chosen by architects, for architects - that are guaranteed to please.
In recent years Downtown Brooklyn has become somewhat of a hub of cultural activity. Just past the triangular intersection of Flatbush Ave and Fulton Street, a high density of cultural buildings, expansive retail, and entertainment exists. Mayor Michael Bloomberg of NYC announced in late November that the city and private companies will be partnering to produce three new projects in this area that will bring affordable housing and additional cultural and community spaces to Downtown Brooklyn. This last city-owned parcel will be developed into mixed use facilities: a 515,000 square foot building at Fulton St, Rockwell Place and Ashland Place; a 32-story mixed use building on Flatbush and Lafayette to be designed by Enrique Norten of TEN Arquitectos and a third building currently in the RFP stage of development at Ashland Place and Lafayette.
Designed by Onat Öktem and Ziya Imren, the proposal for the Çanakkale Municipality “Green” Cultural Center & Municipality Building, which won an honorable mention, aims to create a new focal point located at the intersection of two busy pedestrian and vehicle axes, that strengthens the urban identity. The project intends to achieve a sharing/networking space that supports the everyday life of urban dwellers with social and cultural activities/facilities/uses, and a human-centered urban space that is also respectful to environmental values. More images and architects’ description after the break.
The power and destruction of Hurricane Sandy made New Yorkers acknowledge just how vulnerable the city is to natural disaster. The storm pummeled Queens’ and Brooklyn’s shores, destroyed and flooded homes while Manhattan’s lower half was submerged and plunged into darkness for a week. But arguably, Staten Island, New York City’s Forgotten Borough, received the brunt of the storm and the slowest level of recovery. In the midst of the controversial clean-up, the New York City Economic Development Corporation decided to plow through the tragedy with pursuant talks of the planned developments on the St. George waterfront in Staten Island. While some residents may be offended that the subject of the talks was not of the EDC’s recovery programs, the real controversy is the way in which the EDC is planning to go forward with its proposal. It is planning to build the world’s largest ferris wheel along a vulnerable coast line that just saw damage from one of the worst storms to hit NYC in recent history.
The Dortoir Familial, designed by NADAAA, focuses on merging with the landscape as the slipped court provides simultaneous interiority and exteriority—protected and private as well as extroverted and engaged. The most significant result of this integration of landscape and house is the production of a monumental vaulted threshold to a central courtyard. More images and architects’ description after the break.
The proposal for the Casablanca Sustainable Market Square competition by Nikolova/Aarsø (N/A) brings together the economic, ecological, cultural, and social aspects of sustainability together. The architects do so with the interplay of medieval Islamic design tradition and contemporary advanced building technology. The architectural concept is developed through the use of the girih tiles as a constantly present design method that elevates its purpose from pure ornamentation to a method of developing architectural composition, spatial organization, structural elements, integration of environmental sustainable technology and strategies, to the planning of flow of people. More images and architects’ description after the break.
Located on the edge of Cerklje, an alpine town in Slovenia, the Hayrack Apartments have beautiful views due to the courtyard opening onto a view of the surrounding mountains. Designed by OFIS Arhitekti, their video highlights the character of the social apartments as they were sold to the Slovenian Housing Fund for young families at a price of 900 EUR/m2 which is extremely cheap. he concept of the façade is taken from the hayrack system – wooden beams following traditional details and patterns. Traditionally farmers use the beams to store grass and corn, on the housing one can store flowers or other balcony decoration. Apartments are of different sizes – from 30m2 studio flats up to four room apartments of 80m2.
Architects: MUDAARQUITECTURA Location: Malpartida de Plasencia, Cáceres, Spain Design Team: Pablo Rey Medrano, Federico Rodriguez Cerro, Mª José Selgas Cáceres, Jorge E. Ramos Jular Technical Architect: Miguel Ángel Tierno de Dios Client: Dirección General de la Policía y la Guardia Civil Area: 2,946.65 sqm Project Year: 2011 Photography: Juan Carlos Quindós
The main aim of AZPA in their design for the New Library of St. Martin in Passiria was to create an envelope that is not only functional but also representative of the local and global contents of a cultural institution found in a library. This design would have the architectural potential to transcend the specificities of the place to reach a global character. More images and architects’ description after the break.
Inspired by the Harvard Graduate School of Design‘s book, Ecological Urbanism, published in 2010, the school commissioned Portland-based interactive studio Second Story to transform the book into an iPad app. This app aims to be a resource that draws from the original text, focusing on sustainable city-building, but can also be updated with new projects and papers as needed, which is something a physical book would not be able to do. Available now for free here, the app shows how dynamic areas of study can benefit greatly from equally dynamic texts. With the world moving so fast, books can’t keep up – thus technology allows books to remain updated and relevant to our lives.
As one of the winners for the international competition, “Performance architecture”, the agriCultural Mountain project by Group IUT (Nuno Miguel Lima Cruz, Bruno Martins Afonso Gomes, António da Silva Lopes) explores the paradox of an ephemeral monument creation. It´s an artificial mountain placed at the city outskirts, outside the dense urban core, at an agricultural area called “Veiga de Creixomil”. Cultural activities are mainly urban happenings. Rural people and rural areas are usually outside the mainstream circuit of the cultural industry. This proposal aims to bring the cultural phenomenon to the agricultural realm. More images and architects’ description after the break.
The American Institute of Architects New York Chapter and the Hong Kong Economic & Trade Office are opening the “Hong Kong at 15: Redefining the Public Realm” exhibition this Monday, December 10th at 7:00pm and will be on exhibit until January 23rd. Taking place at the Center for Architecture in New York, the exhibit features architectural projects built in Hong Kong designed by New York architects, and highlights the 15 year milestone of Hong Kong’s transfer of sovereignty and highlights the contribution of New York architects to the design of Hong Kong. Fueled by a famously free economy, and reputation as a gateway to China, Hong Kong has continued to grow over the past 15 years with the city’s architects and engineers producing highly sophisticated solutions to the challenged faced in the city. For more information about the event, please visit here.
Organized as part of the launch of IE University’s Master in Work Space Design, which will receive its first intake next February, the school organized a workshop focused on What’s Next in Workspaces? Designing with Change. Distinguished panelists shared their vision on changing forces and trends in work space design, and how it is creating new and exciting working environments. The new program combines modules in Madrid and London with online periods, and is run in collaboration with strategic partner the Helen Hamlyn Centre at the Royal College of Art. Experts agreed that the work place has made a shift in the last years, due to flexibility, mobility and generation gap within the work forces. The role of office designers will become in the future more about facilitation and that simplicity will prevail in office space of the future. For more information on their new, upcoming program, please visit here.
Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates recently announced the launch of their KPF DesignCloud, the first global design charrette involving all 6 of the firm’s offices in New York, London, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Seoul, and Abu Dhabi. The web-based vehicle for interaction amongst designers is intended for the exchange of ideas, observations, and questions. This is done quarterly to frame a specific problem to be solved. Their first charratte focuses on “Rest, Relieve, Relax, Repose” where KPF staff members were given one week to come up with a design concept, after which the jurors and designers were able to review and comment through the KPF DesignCloud website. For more information, please visit here. A video of their last charrette can be viewed after the break.
Aiming to provide a meeting place for information, knowledge, skills, and stories, the proposal by Marc Anton Dahmen | Studio DMTW for the Helsinki Central Library competition reflects the creativity, innovation and interaction for the people of Helsinki. Resulting in the sculptural massing of the building, their design derives from the creation of an vertical circulation element, connecting the building by transiting from one function to another throughout the entire collection area. More images and architects’ description after the break.
Designed by AAIMM, the project of the Solar Towers is based on the analysis of the urban fabric of the city Sabadell, Barcelona. A medium-scale, self-sufficient and productive infrastructure promoting energy production from renewable and clean sources, the project also intends to promote the enhancement of healthy mobility through electric bicycles and electric cars, and to generate productive urban farming spaces and social community spaces for elderly, temporarily unemployed, or displaced inhabitans; all in one single infrastructure. More images and architects’ description after the break.
Bjarke Ingels, who heads up the Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG), was in Sydney recently and did a talk at the Australian Institute of Architects, which was sponsored and organized by HASSELL. With the common design values and easy fit between BIG and HASSELL, they make a powerful team. So BIG, whose projects we have published here, visited Sydney to explore the potential for future project collaborations. More information and a video after the break.
