Corzuelas House / Manuel Gonzalez Veglia + Dolores Menso
Translucent Wood? Meet the New Material Developed by KTH
A group of researchers from KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm has developed Optically Transparent Wood (TW), a new material that could greatly impact the way we develop our architectural projects. Published in the American Chemical Society's journal Biomacromolecules, the transparent timber is created through a process that removes the chemical lignin from a wood veneer, causing it to become very white. This white porous veneer is then impregnated with a transparent polymer, matching the optical properties of the individual cells and making the whole material translucent.
Palau Sant Jordi Vip Lounge Club / MIAS Architects
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Architects: MIAS Architects
- Area: 395 m²
- Year: 2015
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Manufacturers: Acor
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Professionals: Cardoner
OMA Reveals Design for Mixed-Use Tower in Tokyo
OMA has revealed the design for its first skyscraper in Tokyo. A tower with a torqued front-facade, the building incorporates an elevated park and access to a new Hibiya Line subway station in a project that mixes hotel, office, and retail components.
Wolfson Tree Management Centre Mess Building / Invisible Studio
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Architects: Invisible Studio
- Year: 2015
Sou Fujimoto Installs a "Forest of Light" for COS at 2016 Salone del Mobile
Photographer Laurian Ghinitoiu has captured the collaboration of the Swedish fashion retailer COS and Japanese architect Sou Fujimoto for this year's Salone del Mobile in Milan.
"In this installation for COS, I envisage to make a forest of light," said Fujimoto. "A forest which consists of countless light cones made from spotlights above. These lights pulsate and constantly undergo transience of state and flow. People meander through this forest, as if lured by the charm of the light. Light and people interact with one another, its existence defining the transition of the other."
Here's How Dubai Plans to Become the Design Capital of the Middle East
In recent years, it's been no secret that Dubai has been attempting to diversify its industries, as the city moves on from being an oil-based economy. In this article, originally published by Metropolis Magazine as "Dubai: Making a Creative Capital from Scratch," Ali Morris investigates how the city is building its own design district to rival London or New York - and doing so despite starting from almost nothing.
In cities where a faded industrial area exists, a creative community often follows. It’s a well-established cycle of urban regeneration that has played out in Berlin, London, and New York. Attracted by cheap rent and large, empty spaces, the creatives come, building up areas with independent cafés and stores before inevitably being priced out of the market by the very gentrification they helped to bring about.
So what happens in a city so young that it doesn’t have a dilapidated area for the creatives to occupy? When the city in question is Dubai, which was still just a desert fishing settlement until around the 1960s, you build it from scratch, of course. With the second part of a three-phase build unveiled last year, Dubai Design District (known as d3) is a sprawling 15.5-million-square-foot (1.4 million square meter) development located in a desert plot on the eastern edge of the city. Circled by multilane highways and located between downtown Dubai and a wildlife reserve, d3 has been masterminded as a framework from which to grow and sustain a new design ecosystem.
Casa No Muro / Saperlipopette les Architectes + Martial Marquet
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Architects: Martial Marquet, Saperlipopette les Architectes
- Area: 14 m²
- Year: 2015
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Professionals: Arborescence
Reflections on Zaha Hadid: A Compilation of Introductory Remarks
Zaha Hadid’s prolific, admired, and influential body of work led to hundreds of invitations to lecture around the world. Through her contemporaries’ heartfelt introductions, we can appreciate her groundbreaking architectural approach in a world which often appeared to be one step behind her ideas and enthusiasm.
Details Revealed About the Content of the Spanish Pavilion at the 2016 Venice Biennale
The curators of the Spanish Pavilion have revealed the selected material which will be exhibited at the 2016 Venice Biennale. The content is a response to Alejandro Aravena's thematic directive for the Biennale, entitled "Reporting from the Front," in which he invites each country to share experiences and moments of crisis that architecture has experienced in recent years.
Under the title "Unfinished," the projects selected by Iñaqui Carnicero and Carlos Quintans reveal the architects’ response to the economic and construction crisis in Spain over recent years, through virtues that can either become strategies or creative speculations, capable of "subverting the past condition into a positive contemporary action."
Cultural Catalyst / ARROKABE Arquitectos
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Architects: ARROKABE Arquitectos
- Year: 2015
Geographies of Uncertainty: Space and Territory in the Operational Logic of UPS
The following article was first published by Volume Magazine in their 47th issue, The System*. You can read the Editorial of this issue, How Much Does Your System Weigh?, here.
For the United Parcel Service (UPS), space is valued insofar as it grounds the socio-technical assemblages that secure the company’s economy of speed. Holding one of the largest airline fleets in the United States, UPS’s services range from delivering cargo for the US Air Force and e-commerce packages to relocating endangered animal species and partaking in disaster relief. It operationalizes logistics in the space between military and civilian domains and from the scale of cargo for large corporations to small packages for individuals. UPS runs a global logistics network that crosses more than 200 countries and territories and delivers about 17 million packages every day through its planetary ring of Shanghai-Shenzhen-Anchorage-Louisville-Cologne-Dubai.[1] It participates in the making of trans-border infrastructural systems and influences national politics towards the lifting of legal barriers to transnational trade. Yet what makes UPS significant is not its volume of shipment, infrastructural capacity, or magnitude of operational precision, but rather its resiliency and acute performance within the tides of uncertainty.
House in Alcobaça / Aires Mateus
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Architects: Aires Mateus
- Area: 475 m²
- Year: 2011
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Manufacturers: panoramah!®, Jofebar
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Professionals: Ecoserviços, Betar
Skewed Stolp in the Beemster / SeARCH
In the Loop / Takuma Sugi + Nanako Hirai + Ben Nitta
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Architects: Ben Nitta, Nanako Hirai, Takuma Sugi
- Area: 30 m²
- Year: 2015
Call for Submissions: CTBUH 2016 International Student Tall Building Design Competition
The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH) is pleased to announce its 5th International Student Tall Building Design Competition. The goal of the competition is to shed new light on the meaning and value of tall buildings in modern society.
As worldwide populations continue to urbanize and grow, creating megacities, the role of the tall building in the twenty-first century has moved beyond simply addressing spatial and economic efficiencies. The permanence of these structures necessitates careful forethought into how they will interface with the surrounding urban context, the natural environment, their inhabitants, and the world as a whole. Although they are statically embedded in our cities, skyscrapers must employ a dynamic spatial and functional dialogue, allowing them to remain active and relevant for not just decades, but centuries.
IRO / Reiichi Ikeda Design
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Interior Designers: Reiichi Ikeda Design
- Area: 59 m²
- Year: 2012