Being in confinement has produced unconventional means of exploring architectural spaces and installations. Instead of putting everything on hold until life goes back to normal, designers and curators found inspiration from practices like performance arts and theatre, breaking down the walls between the subject and viewers but from a distance.
Ashley Bigham and Erik Herrmann of Outpost Office reimagined the theme of "mobility" by creating 1:1 scale drawings on the Ragdale campus using GPS-controlled field marking robots. Their unique urban installation, which addressed modern-day concerns such as public spaces, how we are engaging with them, and physicality, won first place in the 2020 Ragdale Ring competition.
Edoardo Tresoldi has inaugurated a permanent installation on Reggio Calabria’s seafront, in Italy entitled Opera. Commissioned by the local Municipality and the Metropolitan City, the public art intervention “was created to celebrate the contemplative relationship between place and human beings through the language of classical architecture and the transparency of the Absent Matter”.
"Les Jumeaux" or The Twins is a new large-scale public urban intervention by French artist and designer Camille Walala in White City, West London. The project encompasses two pedestrian crossings and seven striking murals, created with geometric patterns and primary colors, Walala’s signature style. Moreover, Camille Walala also unveiled this month her East London intervention, a giant work of art aiming to breathe new life into the street and boost the local economy, entitled "Walala Parade".
The concept of Design for Disassembly (DfD for short) gained increasing traction in recent years, as it addresses the growing concern around the high consumption of resources and low recycling rate within the construction industry. The following article details on the method and features guidelines for a design process that facilitates the dismantlement of future buildings, with the scope of providing a better understanding of this principle within the broader framework of the current practice and circular economy.
Manufacturers: AutoDesk, Induzir, Nuno Cardoso Serralharia, Oficinas do Convento - Centro de Investigação Cerâmica + Telheiro da Encosta do Castelo, Oficinas do Convento - Laboratórios da Terra, +3Robert McNeel & Associates, Sobreira e Serras, Vitruvius FabLab ISCTE-IUL-3
The author gained a grasp for innovative architectural materials and their application while working for architects such as Rick Joy, whose Mountain House in Tucson, Arizona, employed rammed-earth walls. (Creative commons/Flickr user designmilk)
There is a slide I like to show at the beginning of the architecture courses I teach that provides an overview of the last hundred years or so in design and technology. In the left column, a car from the beginning of the 20th Century (a Ford Model T) is poised over a contemporary car (a Tesla). The middle column contains a similar juxtaposition, showing a WWI-era biplane and a modern-day stealth fighter (an F-117A). In the right column, Walter Gropius’s 1926 Bauhaus Dessau building is seen next to an up-to-date urban mixed-use building. The punch line, of course, is that the two buildings—separated by roughly 100 years—look basically the same, whereas the cars and planes separated by the same timespan seem worlds apart. What is the reason for this?
Plastic has a huge contribution in the making of the modern man. It has revolutionized human activity and living because of its versatility as a material. It made space travels possible. It has revolutionized medicine. Daily, it saves millions of people making food resources safe and accessible to the poorest populations of the planet. Modern life is addicted to and dependent on this versatile substance, which is found in everything from cars, planes, computers and equipment to clothes made of polyester and nylon, to the adhesive seal on most teabags.
Since 1950’s, plastic production has almost outpaced that of almost
Framlab, an innovation studio based in Bergen and New York City has created Glasir, a community-based system for urban farming. The proposed modular structure relies on aeroponic growth systems to provide local products.
Dedicated to love and diversity, the public art installation Heart Squared has just opened to the public. In its 12th edition, the Times Square Valentine Heart Design Competition curated by Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum had selected the winning proposal of MODU, an architecture and design firm based in Brooklyn, and Eric Forman Studio.
It is an inevitable truth that the world population is growing exponentially. Higher numbers can only lead to a higher demand for resources, food, and housing. By the year 2100, the 7.6 billion people currently living on earth will reach, according to the UN, a whopping 11.2 billion.
This increase can only mean that the need to accommodate these people will become an urgent priority, innovating and shifting from the household system that is present nowadays. Soon enough this will be a global pressing issue.
Created by Studio Studio Studio, the new interdisciplinary lab founded by Edoardo Tresoldi, Gharfa is a pavilion located in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The experimental installation is part of the temporary creative project Diriyah Oasis, designed and curated by Dubai-based studio Designlab Experience.
Commissioned by the Nobel Peace Center in Oslo, Norway, and designed by Snøhetta, the installation entitled The Best Weapon, was first unveiled to the public at the United Nations Headquarters’ Plaza in New York City. This urban peace bench aims to honor “the past Nobel Peace Prize laureates and their efforts to bring people together to find effective solutions for peace”.
CTF Museum under construction within the existing KPF development. Image Courtesy of SO-IL
As a firm which has already won major awards, worked on culturally significant projects on a large scale, and generally achieved substantial success and recognition in just over 10 years, SO-IL seem to straddle a line between being an “emerging” and an “established” practice. Florian Idenburg and Jing Liu founded SO-IL (Solid Objectives-Idenburg Liu) in 2008 and have since gained a reputation for modern, clean-lined designs, but often with a unique material twist.
Constructed as part of Agrikultura—a triennial of public artworks and urban interventions in Malmö, Sweden—this installation, described by the designers a "maquette of a monument to the honeybee", is in fact home to an entire colony. It references—by design—the mysterious elements of 'bee orientation': verticality (gravity), geometry (the cell structure of the beehive), and the position of the sun relative to the hive. The project is, on the one hand, "a potential memorial for the bees" while, on the other, "a celebration of the sun on which all life depends."
__by_Camille_Walala__in_White_City_Place__London_2020_Photography_Charles_Emerson_HighRes_004.jpg?1597595156 "Les Jumeaux. Image Courtesy of Camille Walala")
__by_Camille_Walala__in_White_City_Place__London_2020_Photography_Charles_Emerson_HighRes_002.jpg?1597595028 "Les Jumeaux. Image Courtesy of Camille Walala")
