Our friends at Various Architects, authors of the innovative Mobile Performance Venue, just shared with us a new inflatable project, currently running up for the Yorkshire Renaissance Pavilion competition. From a total of 87 submissions, the jury selected 5 projects and then narrowed down to 3 finalists. Final results aren´t announced yet – we´ll keep you posted on that.
Their project, named “The Yorkshire Diamond“, has a very particular structure with inflatable tubes forming a diamond-lattice structure, forming a box with an excavated interior, which allows for different configurations.
A heart-shaped sculpture by Gage Clemenceau Architects will land on Times Square today. It will stay on Duffy Square until March 1st. The sculpture is constructed with DuPontTM Corian® strawberry ice and welded steel tubes. The heart is lit from within using color-changing LED lighting.
We just got the news that MOS Architects won the competition to build a temporary installation at MoMA´s P.S.1 during this summer.
For this competition the P.S.1 invites each year a group of emerging architects to experiment with new shapes and materials, as Work AC did last year with their PF1 project.
MOS project is entitled Afterparty, a design that Micheal Meredith and Hilary Sample (MOS partners) say is meant to honor and reflect current economic realities, by using basic materials. The main structure is a lightweight aluminum frame using recyclable parts which require minimal assembly, which will become a landmark for the neigborhood – all this on a USD$70,000 budget.
I spoke with Michael a few minutes ago and he refered to the name of the project: One thing about the “Afterparty,” as we’re calling it, is the need to look for new promiscuities after the party of a sort of high-formalism which has dominated academic discourse, and in our case it’s with the basic structural arch geometries, rough almost singular materiality and the production and interaction of “environment,” (literally cooling down the courtyard through stack effect) looking towards a more primitive state of architecture. – (See afterparty definition on Wikipedia).
The project is still under development, and we´ll keep you posted on further updates. We´ll try to do a good coverage on this as we did last year.
In order to relocate the people that lost their houses, the Chinese goverment decided to build 1.5 million temporary homes. For this, Ming Tang proposed a shelter that was easily produced, cheap and environmentally friendly, using bamboo. The concept utilizes a system of bamboo poles that are pre-assembled into rigid geometric shapes. The geometry of these forms provides each structure’s integrity, allowing a range of lightweight modular structures to be quickly assembled in factories and transported to their destination. Once constructed, the shelters are then covered by using post and pre-consumer recycled paper.
For this modular system, Tang also proposed a paper fibers, water, and cement envelope that allows for larger configurations.
This project was presented on the RE:Construct competition, a call for a ideas on temporary housing. This project was selected as a notable entry, but i think it should have been awarded since it address a on going problem with a local solution in an innovative way.
This are the kind of projects that I wish were being built right now! What do you think? Do you have more examples on innovative temporary housing?
In my opinion Bjarke Ingels, founder of BIG, is one of the best architects when it comes to give shape to the interests of an “unspoken” client on public buildings,either representing the values of a country or a culture. All with exceptional syntax and presentation skills.
And BIG‘s latest project (in collaboration with Arup and 2+1), the Danish Pavilion for the Shanghai 2010 Expo, does it again, by taking the best of living in Copenhagen and placing it on China for visitors to experience.
Basically, the pavilion is a big loop on which visitors ride around on one of the 1,500 bikes available at the entrance, a chance to experience the Danish urban way. At the center of the pavilion there’s a big pool with fresh water from Copenhagen’s harbor, on which visitors can even swim.
Of the things i really love about maintaining this blog is that it gathers architects from all around the world. In this case, the people from ZLG Design in Malaysia sent us their project for the BOH Visitor Center through our contact form – same as many other offices we will publish in the next days. Everyone is invited!
This great building -my personal favorite in the last month- is located in Malaysia, overlooking an amazing landscape. I think that its tectonic work really frames the natural surrounding.
Architect: ZLG Design Team: Huat Lim, Susanne Zeidler, Jimmy Wong, Mary Verhaeghe, Hong Chieh Location: Sungai Palas, Cameron Highland, Boh Visitor Centre, Malaysia Locale description: Tea plantations and factory Site area: 12,168.32 sqm Built area: 1,233.8 sqm Building start: November 2005 BUilding completion: July 2006 Budget: USD$498,652.29
¿Remember GreenPix, the 2,200 sqm LED media wall powered by solar panels we featured some months ago? Alexandra Lerman published a documentary about the GreenPix on which Simon Giostra, founder of Simone Giostra & Partners. Giostra explains the challenge to design and build this gigantic media wall, with the help of engineering experts ARUP.
Some love this building, and some hate it. I´m impressed.
The Burj Dubai (set to be the tallest tower in the world, while the tallest structure as of now), is almost finished. Located in Dubai, it´s the centerpise of a mixed-use development that will include 30,000 homes, 9 hotels, 3 ha of parks, 19 residential towers, a man and a 12ha artificial lake.
I decided to Google about the Burj Dubai a little, and i found an interesting interview at Wired with SOM´s structural engineer Bill Baker, telling the story behind the design, the structure and construction. The foundations were overengineered just in case the client wanted to rise the height of the building during construction… which he did!. Now the final height won´t be disclosed until the construction is finished.
Various Architects is a collaborative design office based in Norway, and they shared with us a very innovative project: a Mobile Performance Venue. Designed to host the performance “ID – Identity of the soul” (touring worldwide in 2009), the client requested a unique and iconic structure. Also, this venue needs to be mobile, so volume/weight were key on this design developed as a flexible ellipse structured with aluminium frames and an inflatable hexagonal skin.
Once built, it will be the world´s largest mobile performance venue, fitting on 30 standard containers for shipping.
Can´t wait till 2009 to see it? Be sure to check the test inflation of a full scale mock-up, a preview of how it will look like when finished. Below, project description, plans and renderings. Thanks to Jim Dodson from VA for sending this in.
