Max Wallack, a 12 year old from Natick, has just won WGBH’s Design Squad “Trash to Treasure” design contest with his “Home Dome” invention, which is a shelter for the homeless, built with just plastic, wire and packing peanuts. The structure is in the form of a Mongolian yurt and includes a built-in bed.
For his winning design, Max won $10,000, a Dell laptop and a trip to Boston to see how his design becomes real. The “Home Dome” was selected as the winning innovation out of more than 1,000 contest submissions.
Seen at The Design Blog. Watch a video about the winner, after the break.
This was sent to us by Klaus Olsen via our Facebook Group. The Danish architects JAJA have just revealed their new proposal for an office and shop complex in Sandnes – Norway. They have worked with Rambøll Aros on this 13,000m2 project.
The building is named after an ancient Viking Ship, which was called worm Lange. The ship was Norwegian, and it feels appealing to draw historical references to a piece of contemporary architecture.
And we just saw the news that the project got “cut”, but in a literal way. It wasn´t because of the economical crisis, but actually due to construction flaws: 15 floors of wrongly installed rebar. This forced the developer to cut down the height -removing the condos portion of the building- resulting on a 28 stories tall building, instead of 49 as planned.
We just saw this link on VariousArchitect´s Twitter, and thought it might interest you. Small architectural practices are bearing the brunt of the recession with 47% saying they do not have enough work, new research reveals.
After a high-level meeting on February 13, CCTV issued a report that shows that only the surface of the building was damaged. The amazing fire we saw on the images and videos was actually the zinc alloy burning very fast (melts at 400ºC, versus 1000ºC fireworks can get). Anyway, a Chinese architecture expert puts this in doubt, saying that interior equipment had to be damaged. Now it´s up to the engineers to decide the future of the building.
Our green friends from Inhabitat sent us this interesting project. A new prefab recently built by the students at the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture. Their goal was to build a prototype prefab conducive to elegant and sustainable living within the heart of the desert landscape.
The results of the 2009 Skyscraper Competition have just been announced by eVolo. The winners are, in first place, Kyu Ho Chun, Kenta Fukunishi, and Jae Young Lee. In second place, Nicola Marchi and Adelaide Marchi. And in third place, Eric Vergne. They were also 15 special mentions. 40 projects will be published in eVolo Magazine.
The European Commission and the Mies van der Rohe Foundation has just announced the final five projects that will compete for the European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture, the Mies van der Rohe Award 2009. The winning building will be announced in May.
An amazing picture of the CCTV Building devastated by yesterdays fire was published in Gizmodo. Secrecy has sorrounded the whole event, but for now, the official story is that the Mandarin Oriental, located at the top of the building, caught fire from several fireworks set off to celebrate the Lantern Festival.
The Mandarin Hotel, adjacent to the CCTV building and part of the project, just got on fire today. The project, designed by OMA with facade studies by FRONT, looks to be completly affected as you can see on the above video. This supossedly started after fireworks during the last day of Chinese new year.
The hotel was used during the Olympics, but wasn´t officially opened yet, but was supossed to during 2009. This will definetely push dates back, as it seems like a complete loss to me.
Photos of the fire by Reuters here (very impressive, but can´t put them here because of copyright). More videos after the break.
UPDATE 5: Added 4 more videos
UPDATE 4: Statement from the Mandarin Hotel Group after the break
UPDATE 3: I replaced the first video with actual footage of the hotel starting to burn after the fireworks
UPDATE 2: Wonitata and other chinese blogs have impressive photos of the fire. See some more after the break.
UPDATE 1:Beijing police says the building could collapse
UPDATE: We just got the following statement from OMA:
An exhibition on the works of German architect Juergen Mayer H., entitled “Patterns of Speculation”, just opened at the SF MoMA. Mayer joins two modes of exhibiting architecture in a gallery – installation and documentation – to present a unique, hybrid environment.
Our dear friends over at CASE have been featured on Archinect´s Working out of the Box, a a series of features presenting architects who have applied their architecture backgrounds to alternative career paths. Personally, I don´t agree with this as I don´t feel that what they do is an “alternative” path, but something that should be into the core of any practice.
The Berlage Institute is offering, in conjunction with the Faculty of Architecture at the Delft University of Technology, a new three-year PhD Program in Architecture devoted to the study of how the form of the city can be theorized, represented, and projected. The program encourages speculations that take positions towards the city-at-large by questioning and using architectural knowledge itself. This knowledge of architectural forms and representations will be used to speculate about the city and its political, social, and cultural organization.
Schmidt hammer lassen architects (SHLA) has just received the MIPIM AR Future Project Award for their winning proposal for the Holbæk city harbour masterplan. The project includes a sports complex developed by the Danish Gymnastics and Sports Associations. The MIPIM AR prize is awarded once a year in various categories by the British magazine Architectural Review at the international property fair MIPIM in Cannes. The Holbæk project was nominated in the Mixed-use category. SHLA, were also awarded this prestigious prize in 2007 and 2008.
Our green friends at Inhabitat just featured a stunning new development set to break ground this month that will convert a desolate disused sand mine into a thriving environmental preserve and eco-resort. Replete with living walls and a five acre green roof, the development boasts an impressive list of green design elements and is working towards LEED Platinum certification. Now, saying that you’re the “Greenest Eco Resort” is quite a claim, but if the Resort builds out all that they have promised, it really will be the most environmentally friendly resort in the US, and possibly in the world.
The Open Architecture Challenge is an open, international design competition and is hosted every two years on the Open Architecture Network. This year, the challenge invites architects, designers, students, teachers and parents to propose the classroom of the future. Anyone can participate and the winner will receive $50,000 for their school.
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