NOVAE Architecture has been recently selected as one of the 10 Young Italian Architects under 35 at the “Architects Meet at Fuori Biennale”, for the Venice Biennale. For the event, they presented their project “Teritorial Dissonances”. More images and architect’s description after the break.
LEDarchitecturestudio + HIDDENOFFICE’s Efficient Living Machine project transforms a building into an infrastructure able to improve and expand the lifestyle of the metropolis. The firms propose that the skyscraper become a system of overlapping grids upon the existing environment as a way to read the city differently. These grids contain different layers of programmed activities, ranging from recreational areas to farms, and from public parks to areas of commerce.
More details about the project, by architects Alessandro Liberati, Roberto Straccali in partnership with Roberto Salvatelli, Simone Pirro, Luca Tappatà, and Roberto Turtù, after the break:
Peaking above some contemporary New York favorites – such as Gehry’s IAC Building and Field Operations + DS+R’s High Line – Jean Nouvel’s 100 Eleventh Avenue adds yet another touch of character to Manhattan’s West Side. ArchRecord‘s great pieces on curtains walls gave us a better look at Nouvel’s textured glass curtain wall.
More about the curtain wall after the break.
Based on the idea of Mirage, described at the wikipedia as a naturally occurring optical phenomenon in which light rays are bent to produce a displaced image of distant objects or the sky, the team that designed the Croatian Pavilion for the Venice Biennale decided to create a floating pavilion to present arts and architecture of Croatia at the Venice Biennale.
Following the same principles of a Fata Morgana, which is an unusual and very complex form of Mirage that can be seen in a narrow band right above the horizon, the Floating Pavilion is constructed on an existing barge with dimensions of 10m x 20m x 3m. It is designed by a group of 14 leading Croatian architects, who have made the recent Croatian architecture visible on the global scene. Instead of working in the usual formats of their practices and presenting speculative projects, they decided to work together on a single proposal and to have it constructed and towed toward its final destination in Venice right away. The pavilion structure is the barge’ cargo, welded from 30 tons of Q385 wire mesh in more than 40 layers of varying contours. The cargo presented here maps the process of intense interaction between architects working on the common project, their collaboration with the Croatian maritime industry, and the extraordinary act of architecture it produced. Please follow the pavilion’s maiden voyage across the Adriatic over here
HOK has infused green strategies into Chicago’s Greenway Self-Park facility – a not so typical place to find sustainable ideas. While the 11 story energy efficient parking garage features a naturally ventilated exterior wall, a cistern rain water collection system, a green roof, and electric car plug-in stations, we can’t get over the dozen wind turbines made by Helix Wind that attach to the external structure.
More about the self-park and more images after the break.
Back in May, when American philanthropist, Eli Broad, announced his plans to build a new museum in downtown Los Angeles, six invited top architects competed for the commission ( Rem Koolhaas, Herzog and de Meuron, Christian de Portzamparc, Ryue Nishizawa and Kazuyo Sejima, Diller Scofidio + Renfro and Foreign Office Architects). Yesterday, Broad confirmed that Diller Scofidio + Renfro (one of just two invited firms who have not been awarded the Pritzker) will design the 120,000 sqf downtown museum.
The current need for housing in Chile after the earthquake is a unique opportunity to re-think architecture. It has generated an exceptional scenario that demands for new proposals and solutions.
Architecture usually responds to definite problems with specific, unique and unrepeatable responses. Projects are configured as rigid and closed systems that can hardly be replicated with success anywhere else. At the same time, these architectonic solutions are linked with an ‘elite’, they are luxurious commodities that are specific-individual-crafted, normally at a very high cost.
After the break you can see Emilio Marin’s proposal regarding this issue, including diagrams, renders and the complete text description.
Slovenia-based OFIS arhitekti (see their projects here) are looking for a local office around Minsk, Belarus and Sochi, Russia to work with two sports projects (a football stadium and a building for Winter Olympics).
Continuing our coverage of Herzog and de Meuron’s Elbe Philharmonic Hall, we just found some interesting news regarding the construction site. Currently around 80 meters high, the music hall still has a few years of construction left. As huge cranes rise high above the building, Michael Batz, a scenographer, has taken advantage of the cranes and turned an ordinary construction site into a tourist attraction. Usually, people come to see a finished building – yet Batz’s idea of covering the cranes with blue LEDs creates a new kind of attraction.
Check out more images of the blue cranes, and a close up shot of the skin after the break.
Following our recent updates about the Architecture Billings Index, the most recent news from the AIA shows a slight increase for the month of July. The American Institute of Architects reported the July ABI score was 47.9, up from a reading of 46.0 the previous month.
The next world congress of the International Union of Architects will be held in Tokyo, Japan, from 25 to 29 September 2011. The academic program covers research papers and design works, realized or planned, on the overall congress theme: DESIGN 2050. This theme is the opportunity for designers to express and present their visions of architecture and ideal cities and to imagine the tendencies of urban architecture prefiguring the world in 2050.
Robin Pogrebin of The New York Times recently reported that Raj Ahuja, an Indian-born architect who joined Philip Johnson’s firm back in 1971 and became a partner in 1984, will be selling the architect’s archive of sketches. And, this isn’t any ordinary sketchbook. Johnson’s collection includes over 25,000 design sketches, working drawings, renderings and photographs that cover more than 120 projects from 1968 to 1992. After a bankruptcy claim left the work in Ahuja’s possession, he has been waiting to “transfer it to respectful hands” with the hope that a single institution will acquire the entire collection so as not to break up the archive.
More about the collection after the break.
As the long days of summer are sadly coming to an end, architecture students across the world will be heading back to their universities and preparing for their next studio projects. While the upcoming semester will allow students to master the latest digital modeling programs and perfect their physical modeling skills, the value of reading architectural books (whether they be reference, theory, etc.) should not be overlooked. We found a few lists of books that are categorized as “the essentials” for any architecture student. For instance, Amazon.com’s list includes: Le Corbusier’s Towards a New Architecture, Steen Eiler Rasmussen’s Experiencing Architecture, 2nd Edition, Norman Potter’s What is a Designer: Things, Places, Messages and Marc-Antoine Laugier’s Essay on Architecture.ArchiNinja’s list includes Matthew Frederick’s 101 Things I Learned in Architecture School, 10×10 by Editors of Phaidon Press and A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction (Center for Environmental Structure Series) by the Center for Environmental Structure Series. And, About.com Architecture’s reference list includes Sir Banister Fletcher’s A History of Architecture, Willem Van Vliet’s The Encyclopedia of Housing and James P. Cramer’s Almanac of Architecture & Design 2005, Sixth Edition (Almanac of Architecture and Design).
Danish architects ADEPT Architects, together with an impressive group of collaborators, have been awarded with the 1st prize on the competition for the Dalarna Library in Sweden. The team includes Sou Fujimoto (Japan, see all his projects previously featured on AD), Topotek1 (Germany), Rambøll A/S (Denmark) and Bosch & Fjord (Denmark).
The new library, placed centrally at the Dalarna university campus, is organized as a ”spiral of knowledge” (see diagram below). The sloping terrain continues in a ramp through the building. Wrapping itself the ramp creates a spiral-shaped space – the heart of the building for information seeking and easy orientation. This organization of program creates a various learning environment where students can take part in the vibrant life of the library as well as retreat into various study niches. The different sound levels and activities create a diverse and eventful library.
A recent graduate from London’s Bartlett School of Architecture, Richard Hardy has produced a fascinating animation for Nic Clear’s Unit 15 that pushes futuristic architecture to a new level. Using David Foster Wallace’s ‘Infinite Jest’, a novel that questions certain aspects of Americans’ obsessive behavior – in terms of the intense fascination with entertainment, materialism, technology etc – the studio challenged students to analyze the implications of society’s “obsessive/addictive behavior…to develop tactics to cope with the difficulties of creating an architecture in uncertain times.”
More about the project after the break.
Although we’ve featured dozens of projects that incorporate vertical or roof gardens, we just couldn’t stop looking at this beautiful six story tall green wall by architect Jose Maria Chofre that we spotted at Urbanarbolismo. The articulated design, teamed with the variety of foliage, adds a great texture and personality to the building, a new children’s library in eastern Spain.
More images and more about the green wall after the break.
Earlier last week, the City Council of New York City decided to move forward with Rafael Viñoly Architects’ master plan for the New Domino in Brooklyn. While the historic sugar refinery complex, with its familiar yellow signage, has achieved landmark status and will be preserved, the 11.2 acre-site will be outfitted with 2,200 new apartments – 660 of which are affordable housing – and four acres of public park space including a riverfront esplanade along the East River in Brooklyn.
More about the master plan after the break.
Throughout this decade, we’ve experienced and endured quite a few severe natural disasters. Whether it be earthquakes in Chile or Haiti, a hurricane in New Orleans, or a tsunami in Ao Nang, Thailand, these powerful natural forces illustrate the amazing, yet catastrophic, side of nature. Currently, Pakistan is suffering greatly from floods and mudslides that have resulted from monsoons. As CNN reports, an estimated 1,100 people have already been killed and thousands more are stranded on rooftops trying to escape the rising waters. The monsoons have destroyed twenty five bridges, washed away 58 kilometers of road, and damaged thousands of acres of crops. Plus, weather officials predict more monsoon rains today.
When Chile battled the 8.5 quake, the country greatly benefited from strict building codes. Yet, we know that many countries do not implement the same kinds of construction guidelines nor adequate flood control systems, plus the poverty levels in countries leave the less fortunate even more vulnerable. Jackie Craven’s architecture blog for About.com shows different strategies designed by architects and civil engineers to control flood water in their low-lying countries.
Take a look at some of the solutions. Would any of these solutions work in Pakistan?
