anchored by Iconic Venues

The ambition to provoke urban change can be understood as a desire to create an icon such as the Taiwan tower designed by STL Architects that highlights the unique character of Taichung city. The architects envisioned this reality as coherent blend through an architectural landscape anchored by iconic venues that will satisfy the needs of locals, the industries and future trends. The idea is to generate a flow network that communicates the Taichung gateway city project with the most important landmarks of the city.

The skin itself is a system: it is pixilated with glazed openings in the programmed and occupiable zones while permeable with openings in the central area. The degradation of the openings, varying between 20% and 60%, is done in order to achieve greater lightness in the central part of the tower, therefore using less material and saving.

The density and arrangement of beams in the structure provides higher levels of stiffness at the base, and a horizontal arrangement that does not obscure views at the top. The beams are minimized wherever possible to reduce dead load and create an overall visual lightness for the structure. While the body of the tower resists twisting and bending, the overall structure is held upright by the foundations. The foundations is created by the bottom of the ring, which is embedded several stories into the earth to resist lateral movement and stop the tower from falling.

The programmed and occupiable parts of the tower are fitted with a double skin. By contrast, the central zone is permeable; the openings are not glazed and the composition consists of only vertical structure and outer skin. By using only the necessary materials to ensure skin continuity, combined with systems for renewable energy, achieves a building that is lighter and more permeable.

The tower is designed to resist the dynamic force of the wind. Modal frequencies are those vibration frequencies where cyclical motion naturally occurs as a result of resonance between wind movement and the mass and shape of a building. A preliminary analysis of the tower shows that the modal frequencies of the ring result in the tower moving forward and back, side to side, and twisting. To resist these forces, the tower is thickened at the bottom to create stiffness, and provided with dampers to resist twisting. The low center of gravity allows the top of the ring to lean, carrying the observation platform out over the park.

by Zifan Liu, a Project

This project for a new Public LIbrary for the city of West Hollywood was designed by Zifan Liu at the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc). Long concerned with the articulation of form by means of volume to mass, and way beyond a contemporary threshold of hyper articulation, the discipline seems to be at a critical juncture by having to choose between polar opposites: to continue the search for more complexity via the willful sculpting of soft surface, or to return to a fundamental purity by the articulation of simple platonic volumes.

Turning its attention towards both primitive and figure, this project’s intention is to generate new cumulative mass and interstitial networks based on a simple logic of aggregation and growth of self-similar primitives, their formal accretion will promote a diversely unified spatial atmosphere that defy the distinction between holistic and discrete, figure and figuration. With emerging and ever-shifting number of massing configurations, group outlines and individual silhouettes as possible outcome.

Consequently, the design aims to challenge classical conventions of typological composition not by completely disregarding type, but by evolving its DNA through mathematically based and intuition driven formal operations. This project is not interested in a dogmatic or pseudoscientific reliance on modular self-similar structures and their consequent formally stable mathematical expression, but in a rigorous and playful examination of these systems and their capacity to instigate the appearance of new, unseen or even rare forms of expressions that are themselves embedded with a deep underlying order.

The project is to instantiate and hybridizes these systems in the design of a new public library for the city of west Hollywood. Adjacent to the iconic Pacific Design Center designed by architect Cesar Pelli in 1975 at the peak of postmodernism, the project presents the opportunity to rethink the role of public architecture in Los Angeles and with its over implicit iconicity. The project includes a children’s library, teen center, career development center, special collections, community meeting room, multipurpose public meeting room, cafe, bookstore and TV station.

to be located in Iserlohn

Performance Center Alexanderhoehe is to be located in Iserlohn, in Germany. The authors, B+U architectural firm placed the building north of the existing Parktheater and oriented it towards the inner city in order to emphasize and redefine its relationship to Alexander Heights. By orienting the building in such manner, it became possible to create a single access point for visitors to both Parktheater and the new Multifunctional Hall. In order to achieve that and avoid blocking the views from the existing Theater, a “linkage space“ was created: a generous multilevel foyer space that that allows for the actual hall to float above the ground and opens up views from the old Parktheater to the city towards the Northeast.

This linkage space between the existing Parktheater and the new multifunctional hall continues underneath the new Hall onto the plaza level. This linkage space is a combined lobby and main entrance to both the old and the new theater. There is a centrally located drop off zone for all visitors of the new Theatercenter from which the guest can proceed directly into the main lobby where they can purchase their tickets. From this point they can proceed over the Grand staircase to the different performance areas. An elevator connects the lobby space with all levels for barrier free access.
 

Two Bridges Neighborhood

Xtra Moenia is a site specific installation designed and produced by SOFTlab for the San Gennaro North Gate. The piece was commissioned by  Council and produced by The They Co. The piece serves as the North Gate to the annual San Gennaro Festival. SOFTlab developed a form that created out of two distinct oculi as a reference to one of the simplest and most effective classical architecture devices. One oculus points up while the other hangs down defining a zone on the street for pedestrians. The two forms are created using a minimal surface blending the two oculi together in a way that blurs the distinction between the two. The final geometry was developed closely with the structural engineering firm Arup.

The piece is completely held in tension from cables attached to the surrounding buildings. The shape is completely site specific and can only find its true form when attached at these specific points and tensioned with the proper lengths. Each piece is unique requiring custom software tools to be developed to fabricate the installation.

The installation is made of 4224 laser cut panels. Each panel is a unique shape and printed with a custom color. The panels are connected using over 6,000 aluminum grommets. The shape is held in complete tension using a complex system of cables and tubes attached to the surrounding buildings.

Bandjoun: Dynamic Tradition, Creation, Life

The museum has more than one hundred major and significant objects of the cultural and artistic heritage of Bandjoun, one of the main centres of artistic creation and tradition in the Cameroonian Grassland. There are rare pieces, including some masterpieces of Africa art. They celebrate the pomp of the court of the kings of Bandjoun, the grandeur and the power of these monarchs and their retainers and the solidity of the institutions. They also materialise universal themes such as death, life, defeat, love, victory, power, prestige, occult forces etc. The superb royal thrones, the magnificent masks and beaded objects, the richly decorated architectonic elements, the fabrics with enigmatic patterns and various cultural objects which are at times the expression of the cycle of life, are often of great aesthetic and/or social and historical value.

The permanent exhibition is entitled «Bandjoun: dynamic tradition, creation and life» and is organised around six themes:

The land and the men   
Myths, legends and history
Kingdom and society
Secret societies and religions

Creation:
      containers
      architecture
      statues and furniture
      musical instruments

Bandjoun yesterday, today and tomorrow
Itinéraires de la memoire colective

ecological Thinking

The project of an environmental enhancer designed by Mirco Bianchini for the Nogara  highway in Veneto, Italy provides the unique chance to bring together ecological thinking, host interaction, and active materials. Its location (an open country planar area among cultivated fields) enucleates as critical variables the impact of pollutants and the phenomenon of dazzling. With respect to such criticalities, the project uses digital generative and parametric strategies to generate a performative structure in which densification and rarefaction of elements is a local morphological response to dazzle.

The structure itself acts as a scaffold for a photo catalytic PET based material that, mimicking the behavior of coccoluti (marine microorganisms) is able to reduce CO2 (and potentially other pollutants) to salts and nitrates that are then naturally deployed to the neighboring cultivated fields as fertilizers. The material has been tested for photo catalytic integration and is currently under development.
 

an Ocean Movement

A Spain and China-based architectural firm AQSO Arquitectos, in collaboration with Ydesign, has designed the proposal for the thematic pavilion of the 2012 Yeosu International Exposition. The project aims to capture the dynamic and translucent qualities of fluids, by translating them into the architectural details of the pavilion.

The pavilion will have different levels for each sections of the building: exhibition areas are 12m high, whereas adjoining spaces are 8m high. Ring corridors accessible from ramps and stairs are located at a mid-height of the main exhibition areas, located 6m above the floor, offering a 360 degree-view of the ocean on one side and a view of the main exhibition on the other.

With its layout of interconnected circles, the building represents molecular structure of water. Each component responds to a specific programmatic requirement with three main lines connecting the pavilion with the rest of the facilities on the mainland. The volumes are wrapped with a versatile skin system that reacts to tidal and wave motions of the ocean. It can move upwards as well as downwards, depending on the water level, creating a dynamic atmosphere of periodical movement.  The inner louvers of the façade are fixed onto the glass, whereas the outer louvers float on water, becoming a unique element which moves and changes with no energy consumption. The layering of the two osmotic systems gives an image of a breathing building.

a new School

The project proposal for the Campus International School for Downtown Cleveland illustrates the transformation of Cleveland State University’s master plan for converting the area into a dense mixed-use development and with recreation fields.The quotation ‘’an opportunity to re-evaluate the broader terrain in which children learn and give as great an emphasis on learning environments as others have given the educational philosophies’’ formed the basis for our proposal.

A key aim of the design is to produce a safe learning environment for the students. The flexible classroom design and “street” layout of the school encourages different age groups of children to meet and learn together, while the main circulation space between the classrooms, student dining, media center and recreational spaces is an additional learning hub. The proposed plan layout avoids hidden corners and blind spots, and careful thought has been given to landscaping to provide different types of outdoor play space including areas for learning, planting, quiet zones and games. Each classroom has direct access to the outdoor playgrounds and views to the surrounding buildings.
The basis of the design is centered around four clusters of education: learning, growing, recreation, and social interaction. We believe these to be the foundations of the new school vision, allowing for a complex program where students can interactwith each other and the city of Cleveland. Instead of opting for a linear and continuous distribution of these four clusters, the project design proposes a combined, more playful combination of spaces through the use of curves and organic shapes.

The vision for the Campus International School is to establish an open learning environment as such that the site will be a landscape for future and extended learning. By creating an environment that will promote and sustain continuous learning, it will make learning a part of everyday life.

Organic Scapes and Architecture (OS+A) is an architectural practice interested in the study of natural organic landscapes and how these can be reinterpreted and applied to the modern day needs for living, working and play. We are a dedicated practice that resulted from a long collaboration in different offices world-wide. Our design philosophy aims at the constant study and reevaluation of methods and ideas, looking at architecture as the ground for new discoveries and uncharted horizons.

a Set of Organic Volumes

Yuliyan Mikov, the Bulgarian artist, designed this dramatic proposal for the Museum of Architecture. A set of organic volumes interlock to create a versatile structure that shelters the public space below. It is a lofty building, supported by a network of pillars and a core of vertical communication.

The design is accompanied by a piece of reflexive writing, elaborating on the project’s  inspirational origins:

“During walk along Lipscani, ( a fable about the old merchants of the past centuries) my eyes are taken by huge piles of garbage where as if on a throne, stood empty plastic bottles. And then I saw the ghosts of the past, creeping out of their deformed mouths, rising slowly just like the ghost of the magic lamp. But they were many, the same number as the empty bottles, wearing clouds with their semitransparent bodies, as if embracing each other and rising towards the heavens. When the night attracts affection with her darkness, the ghosts shaking in the cold atmosphere gather closer to each other, lying in cluster and folding themselves, beginning to exchange ideas, furtively communicating in order to escape the fear of the normality, the habits, and the fear of becoming animals, casted in form, driven by reflexes…
The next night I followed the pouchy ghosts and noticed on that special place of the world’s creation ” trees, growing from the ruins, between the metal and the piles of garbage, dancing with their leaves like sirous creeping between the ghosts, entering their small navels.

The ghost’s domain does never dry out. Depending on the spot you are looking you can see them, sweet and huge, playing hide and seek, squeezing between each other’s white and oily skins.”
 

Freedom of Humanity

Symbolizing the unity of German people, in reference to The peaceful revolution of 1989 which began in Leipzig, this competition proposal illustrates the idea of freedom as an open, retractable field. The monument will encourage visitors to identify and commemorate the events and will convey meanings and images associated with a variety of historical and experiential impressions. Designed in collaboration between RNA Architektur and Archiglobe, the building establishes itself as a continuously transforming open form. There is no inside nor outside, but a field without a specific shape.

The monument consists of three main elements: the foundation vaults, the historical platform and a flowing field of false, distorted and illuminated aluminum bodies-abstract forms that symbolize the momentum of a crowd. The existing vault is opened in the former national monument and can be accessed via a staircase. An information center is situated near the entrance, educating visitors of the 1989 events and reunification of Germany.

High-gloss aluminium bodies are suspended on steel supports, positioned on the four main foundations of the ancient monument. A volume of 41x26x9 meters is formed, corresponding to the bisected Schlüterhof. The suspended steel elements can be attached to their longitudinal axis to rotate around the center and configured to always create new spatial situations, suggesting constant change.

From a distance, the memorial appears as a swinging, three-dimensional object with its appearance constantly being changes by shifts in light and weather. Symbolically, it accentuates the individual role in each collective action, discreetly reminding visitors of recent historical events.