Visionary Schools

Cheap, dull, unattractive and unpleasant spaces – that’s the reputation of school ‘relocatables’. They’re the decades old, utilitarian solution to changing school demographics, remote community needs and disasters such as fires, floods and cyclones.

But a new plan by the Laboratory For Visionary Architecture [LAVA] turns these unpleasant spaces into smart buildings, the design an education in itself. In sustainability, social interaction, nature and adaptive technology. Chris Bosse, Asia Pacific director of LAVA says: ‘we wanted to turn this idea upside down and create spaces that are sustainable, practical, cost-effective whilst fun and exciting to be in’.

The sustainable design includes a modular façade system that is manually operable, flexible for light and shade, enclosed space or open space, bringing the outside in or the inside out. Using eco-materials it is low cost, low carbon, with off-site prefabrication allowing responsive assembly, with small lightweight, easily transportable modular elements. This cellular ‘space for learning’ strengthens the connection between mankind, nature and technology. ‘Three-axis’ geometry allows the interlocking of each module to form large groups with smaller learning clusters. This results in the building itself learning how to adapt to future methods of learning and future modes of operation.

The future classroom adapts to multiple sites, unusual configurations and different climates and topographies through a simple telescopic system of posts integrating the classroom into the landscape. The concept received a commendation in the Australian Future Proofing School competition to future proof relocatable learning spaces. The aim of the ideas competition was to produce effective spaces for 21st century learning that are sustainable, integrate with the landscape and connect with the school environment, suitable for prefabrication and mass customization.

to Feed the Planet

The topic of the upcoming EXPO 2015 in Milan is “Feeding the planet – Energy for life.” So how could a pavilion deal with that topic? It’s name is Biolosophy, a design by architecture student Patrick Vogel at Wismar University, Germany The basic idea was to design a building, that seems “alive” and maybe eatable. Food is getting scarce on the planet, and meanwhile the world population is increasing. One almost infinite resource that we have is algae. The building is created with special columns and beams, made of steel, concrete and acrylic glass with algae growing in it. So the visitor of the pavilion feels like they are moving in a huge cell structure and can watch the algae grow and also eat it.

The design deals with the global food crisis and shall show new possibilities that we should all observe. It should be seen as a food producing algae sculpture with a highly sustainable effect in terms of feeding the planet and dealing with upcoming global issues. We already have the technology for growing algae, decreasing CO2 through algae cultivation and producing healthy algae-food, so why not use it in a modern building?
 

to Water your Pray

Part of the Young Architects Program, an initiative for promoting emerging designers, the Latin America branch was established and launched in 2011 by CONSTRUCTO, in collaboration with MOMA and MOMA PS1. It’s an active platform for creating new opportunities for talented Latin American architects to explore and design within the scope of collective-use spaces and informal live events, with strong emphasis on sustainability issues. In 2011 it was particularly oriented towards young Chilean architects, few of whom are members of the GUN Arquitectos team, a collective whose Water Cathedral Project was chosen as this year’s winning proposal.

The Water Cathedral is an outdoor installation, created primarily for public use. Its large horizontal nave is made up of numerous vertical components which vary in height and density. It is also a facility that generates a water injection system, with rainwater flowing through the stalactites. When filled with small amounts of water, the components act as interfaces out of which water droplets gradually flow and cool visitors below. The dynamic canopy of different density achieves less contrast between sunny areas and darker ones. The stalagmites, rising from the ground, create a cave-like topography of urban furniture which welcomes visitors and provide them with shaded sitting areas.

 

an Algorithmic Soma

The swarm intelligence systems are used in designing this proposal for the Taiwan Tower in Taichung, creating a bottom up logics in high-rise geometry. SOMA’s approach was aimed at achieving a multilayered, evocative tower appearance. Through use of algorithmic basis the natural processes applied in the organization of the design determine the visual aspect of the project. The Taiwan Tower showcases future architecture that learns from nature and deploys its underlying principles.

The non-hierarchical cluster of vertical geometries emerges from an open field base, letting the surrounding landscape to flow freely between the legs.  The biomimetic fibrous lamellas intertwine and connect to form a whole, while applying a set of digital models to organize the performative structure of the tower. The results are overlaid with functional requirements and further developed with the help of evolutionary structural software. At the eco-laboratories visitors can observe how piezoelectric halms produce energy by movement and transform them into light at night, resembling floating swarms of particles. The facades adapt to weather conditions by opening and closing and protect the visitors from sun and wind. The tower itself becomes a fully integrated part of the exhibition; it displays how the responsible use of natural resources can lead to architectural innovation and investigation that speaks to both imagination and emotions.

a Versatile Environment

The steel, cocoon-like structure represents a parametrically altered design of a typical fence.  What is supposed to function primarily as a demarcation tool is developed into an element that accentuates the 3-dimensionality of space. It is fragmentized, as if under the influence of powerful tectonic forces, pulling the initially linear structure in different directions. Not only does it frame the views of the surroundings, it creates an awareness of space that reveals its true potentials. The garden is transformed into a versatile environment, partly covered, withdrawn and protected, with a canopy sheltering a pool and a seating area. Seen from afar, it has a sculptural quality of a biomorphic structure that mimics the existing organic patterns of its surroundings.

With integrated panels following the concave form of the supporting structure, the surface segments of the fence develop in the central area in relation to the steel structure from the inside to the outside and dissolve more and more along the vertical. The frame construction has diagonally running circular tube profiles for out crossing and plate attachment. The frames consist of solid welded flat steel profiles. The not entirely closed shell is constructed with diamond shaped plates which are fixed by tabs on the diagonals and in case can be turned around their axis.

 

Mathematician Origami

The project is installed at “Pommery” champagne factory in France, part of the largest underground systems of corridors and caves in the area. It combines computational design techniques with ancient paper folding techniques, resulting in a 345 cubic-meter suspended structure which acoustically amplifies sound. The Sound Factory project was designed in cooperation between artists Ali Monemi and Robin Meier and architect Hyoung-Gul Kook.

The structure is made of 285 flat sheets of aluminium/polyethylene composite. The idea of modulation and systems for actual construction was developed into combinations of basic geometry, with a specific visual and acoustic impact on the immediate surroundings. The form itself was inspired by mathematician and origami expert Taketoshi Nojima, especially his work reproducing organic forms from folded paper. It acoustically amplifies the sound form a single speaker-driver in order to create an enclosed space that overflows the listener in its center. Using the actual sounds of effervescence picked up by a special microphone immersed in the champagne vessel, a real-time analysis/synthesis audio system creates a continually evolving sound environment, diffused downward from above.

“La Fabrique Sonore”, as this project was originally titled, uses contemporary computer-aided design techniques in a program-specific fashion, avoiding the common trap of reducing it to formalistic experimentation.

based on the old Zeppelins

Passing Cloud is a project by Tiago Barros for the international ideas competition: “Life at the Speed of Rail”, organized by the Van Alen Institute  in New York City. It reveals a strong conceptual approach on new ways of traveling based on the old Zeppelins.

Nowadays, traveling is achieved with this idea of having a fixed destination and an estimated time of arrival. Passing Cloud completely inverts this system. A floating device is introduced that travels around the entire USA territory according to current predominant winds. It has no fixed time of arrival or place for arrival. The journey becomes the essence.

This project envisions a distinct approach towards moving around the United States being also a revival of the act of traveling. Why traveling at high speed? Why having the final destiny always defined? And why always departing and arriving on a tight schedule? Nowadays, everything is set and everyone is always running around.

Passing Cloud is an innovative and environmentally friendly method of transportation that doesn’t require expensive steel tracks or concrete highways. It is made of a series of spherical balloons that form the shape of a cloud. Its inner stainless steel structure is covered with heavy weight tensile nylon fabric. During the journey, It moves according to prevailing winds speed and direction at the time of travel. Since it moves with the wind, no wind is ever felt during the trip, offering the passengers a full “floating sensation”.

a Visualization Design

Kinematic Bloom is an interactive project designed by Daekwon Park, founder of the web-based Meta-Territory_Studio. The project took shape within the framework of Augmented Architectures course at Harvard Graduate School of Design. The course focused on the idea that spatial experience can be conceived, understood and designed as a series of reactive computational events. The goal of the course was to explore the realms of theory, visualization, design, and production of augmented architecture. It engaged in a critical discussion on the impact that our daily digital experiences have on the perception and expectation of physical experiences.

From a simple source of light, Kinematic Bloom is transformed into an interactive and responsive set of luminaries. Equipped with several sensory mechanisms (sound detection, reaction to light and movement) the structures change shape and level of brightness, depending not only on human movement but also on the proximity of other light sources. The claim of augmentation, which Kinematic Bloom explores, is not to apply sensor technologies to an inert object as a simple overlay, but to shape the entire design process with the idea of integrated systems as a determining factor. The intelligence of design, material and sensor technologies and computation will therefore become combined.
 

to Re Engineering

The Acapulco Chair is one of the most celebrated chair designs of the 20th Century. It is an anonymous design that emerged in the 1950’s in Hollywood’s favorite beach destination: Acapulco, Mexico.

The chair was born next to the famous “La Quebrada” divers cliff, a place visited by Frank Sinatra, Elizabeth Taylor and where John and Jacqueline Kennedy headed for their honeymoon.

The design enjoyed continuous success for almost five decades – being a designer’s favorite for its clean lines and comfort. It was manufactured by several artisanal workshops in Mexico, slowly disappearing from the market at the turn of the 21st Century.

After several design improvements, the chair is once again available with Electrostatic powder-coated steel frame and recycled UV filtered PVC woven cord shell, which makes it ideal for indoor and outdoor use.

The chair is available at thecommonproject, a design initiative based in Los Angeles, Barcelona, and Mexico City. In addition to this classic design, thecommonproject offers a stunning rocking chair version, as well as a kid’s size in both designs. Subtle and vibrant cord colors are the perfect accessory for any location.tyo

to Lava Bionic

“Architecture has to perform as an ecosystem within the organic tissue of the city.”

The intention of the Bionic Tower is to explore the array of ways in which natural and architectural can merge, creating the ultimate inhabitable structure. It starts at the basic level. Using references to the biological organization of the ecosystem, the design works its way from the smallest unit to the intelligence of the overall system.  By use of parametric modeling of a behavioral logic the system gets constantly optimized. Designed by LAVA, this biomorphic project is inspired by nature, and attempts to conceive a structure of great lightness, efficiency and elegance, using advanced design techniques.
to
The architects seem to address issues of ventilation, solar access and water collection as an evolutionary instinct of self-preservation, found in nature and adopted by architecture. Envisioned as equivalents to mechanisms of organic regeneration, the proposed systems are connected to the facade design. They are embedded in the façade in the form of intelligent automation of the surfaces, addressing pragmatic issues such as ventilation, solar access and water collection. New materials and technologies enable adaptability, responsiveness, environmental awareness and strength. The building systems and skin are controlled and react to external influences like air pressure, temperature, humidity, air pollution and solar radiation.

to Erase the Barriers of Art

DCPParquitectos proposal for the New Taipei City Museum of Art is an open and welcoming design that erases the barrier of exclusivity normally surrounding the world of art, patrons, and experts.

As such, the architecture of the New Taipei City Museum of Art is one that embodies this idea of erasure through eliminating the traditional borders between exhibition space and circulation, as well as exterior and interior. Every part of the museum is represented by a space without limits that can hold any type of expression.

Put together, each space is part of a large connected organism that expands and extends itself through the site, acting as a filter and transitional space between public and art.
A forest of columns, extending from the topography of the exterior into the interior spaces, acts as the device that delineates space, each program has a specific uniform distance between each column. This creates a unique atmosphere throughout the museum in which spaces are only roughly defined.

The first three levels of the museum sit in between the forest of columns around the building. As the visitor moves upwards towards the upper two floors that house the main galleries, this forest starts to disappear. Upon arrival, the visitor can enjoy a space that floats above all else.

These main gallery spaces are defined above all else by flexibility. Here, the column grid is the most open, allowing museum curators ample room to design exhibitions and sequences that can suit any particular need.

It is this level of flexibility and openness that will make the New Taipei City Museum of Art a unique public forum for art, learning, and culture.
 

a Great Inspiration in Art

In approaching the design for the new Kimball Art Center, we found great inspiration in the urban development of Park City, the Kimball site, and the citys mining heritage. We feel the form of the new Kimball Art Center emerges where these rich stories overlap. We were particularly moved when a long-time resident of Park City spoke nostaligally about the former Coalition Building, which once stood just south of the Kimball site.

It stood 80 feet tall for 80 years as an iconic landmark for Park City and a monument to the mining heritage, until a fire tragically brought it down on 1982. We wanted to recreate some of its attributes in the new Kimball Art Center – not only the proportions and materiality but the history it represented. Historically, timber was the primary construction material of the first miner settlers in Park City. Inside the mines, heavy timbers were stacked into retaining walls. The same technology was applied outside the mines as primary structure for most residential construction. We conceived the new Kimball Art Center as an evolution of this construction technique basically a highly-evolved log cabin at an unprecedented scale.

We found the most interesting challenge to be where the Kimball is situated in the urban context. At the intersection of the most socially active street Main St. and a diagonal street that has become the gateway to the city Heber Ave, the new Kimball needed to address both orientations. We solved this by essentialy giving each street a gallery. The building footprint sits in relation to Main St and the city grid, then as it rises it turns it to greet visitors entering the city via Heber Ave, creating an iconic yet contextual building at the citys doorstep.

 

a Monthly Rose

The new Dalian library conceived by Architects Collective is designed to become the center and heart for the local community with a strong relationship to the ocean and the bay. The building is placed in a park setting and aims to be a landmark for locals and visitors and a symbol for the creative and environmentally friendly future of New Pulian. It is a place for the public to read, contemplative and come together. The basic architectural form for the new library is the rose petal since the Monthly Rose is the city flower of Dalian. The new Pulian branch is one of several library branches in the Dalian region with each branch symbolizing a petal and forming a rose flower.

The Morpholio Project

The proliferation of device culture, social networking, and cloud technology is changing the way we work and connect on a daily basis. For designers, this means that technology is not only transforming the process of production, but also the processes through which we share, critique, and organize ourselves around the work we do. It has been predicted that in 2020, there will be 50 billion mobile internet connections worldwide, the equivalent of seven devices per person. Morpholio is not simply about the existence of technology, but rather is a tool for and an experiment in how we might better harness its power.

What is the future of critique, the driver of design culture, in this increasingly connected world? Is the speed at which images circulate around the globe, advancing the level of conversation within and amongst design disciplines? When placed in opposition, the time honored design school tradition of convening public debate around a set of images and ideas, presents a stark contrast to the typical comment forum found in social media. Taken together, however, a new spectrum of valuable means of gathering feedback about one’s work becomes visible. Its continued evolution will be impacted by the tools we create for sustaining and magnifying meaningful conversation, critique, feedback, and debate with a global community.

The Morpholio Project begins by re-imaging the portfolio. “Although essential to design culture, the current methods of creating and sharing design portfolios and presentations still ultimately rely on fixed notions of time, media and outdated technologies of sharing,” says Anna Kenoff, Co-Creator. The design world lacks the tools needed to understand how our work is consumed and experienced by those we most want to reach. The project ultimately asked, what would happen if you could merge processes of presentation, critique and collaboration into a single elastic platform?
Morpholio Beta 1.0: Present + Collaborate + Critique
The iPhone and iPad app, along with the MyMorpholio website, provides a unique space in which to collect, share, and discuss your work.

Present
This software begins by transforming the users portfolio into a constantly versioning and customizable collection of images that is more reflective of the way we work today. Capable of communicating with multiple devices, it organizes image collections in a comprehensible and accessible format that makes sharing and presenting work seamless and infinitely flexible.

Collaborate
Morpholio “Pinup,” allows collections to be posted for invited viewing and response. In “Pinup” you make your work public and searchable by all Morpholio users. You also have the option to send immediate invites to a targeted audience, and continuously update the images they see as you get feedback, and develop ideas. The “Co-creators” feature allows you to share and exchange image collections with anyone you choose, as well as give them access to selected images. Share image collections with your project team, consultants, or collaborators.

Critique
Morpholio “Crit” allows collections to be posted for private viewing and response. In “Crit” you can post work and invite other users to critique your work. Invited viewers can easily comment on any image by overlaying text, and will soon be able to use other feedback methods that are currently in development. Set up a critique for your studio, consultants, office, friends or project team.

to Bike Life

JDS’s proposal for the Bicycle Park in Chongming, China, consists of three landmark buildings, each portraying different aspects of the culture of cycling. With their spiraling shapes and sloping sides, the structures are accessible by bike, and offer a varied experience to visitors. The Park aims to inform and stimulate biking as an expression of social awareness, while illustrating the relationship between sport and technology through its distinctive architecture.

The Visitor Center acts as an entry landmark, serving as main access point and providing information about the park. The Bike Museum is a double helix, with its exterior portion used for the ride downwards. Swirling ramps provide excellent views of the surroundings, while the interior leads the visitors on a tour through the historical development of the bicycle. The multipurpose building is shaped as an island that can be used by people for various purposes. It can be used for holding conferences, competitions and even concerts. The slopes are at the disposal for biking enthusiasts to navigate.
The proposal seems to accentuate the accessibility of space by offering a bicycle-friendly environment and architecture that can be versatile in its use while still maintaining its educational and museological purpose.

 

non Parametric Flowers

Black Narcissus highlights the importance of encompassing all methods of fabrication; digital and analog in terms of technology, management efficiency and time towards the production the project. The piece is constituted of 1,000 pieces including the 644 pieces of CNC routed syntra, 50 large flowers with jewel like crowns and 100 small flowers. The idea was to produce a structure that combines a parametrically designed large form ornamented and gardened with nonparametric flowers.

Through this gardening process of aggregation, the flowers produce a sensation of excess in a garden of delight.
The precedent came from looking at contemporary fashion sensibilities and techniques thinking of it as an “haute couture” surface. We also took a look at the 1947 Michael Powell film Black Narcissus, where a group of nuns travel to a remote location in the Himalayas to set up a school and hospital and “domesticate” the local people and environment, by conversion and gardening, only to find themselves increasingly seduced by the sensuality of their surroundings. The location, the culture and the mountain air all begin to have a strange affect on the nuns. What was important about the film is understanding the power “sensual”, the way the recognition of your desires to the point of self-contemplation; an aesthetic displacement, you see your sensual self in the work as an act of narcissism. You become as beautiful as what surrounds you. Narcissism as a natural condition of self-admiration and a distorted self from reality, which it is more about the absurdity of the “cultural” concept in a pursuit for an argument of beauty.

Black Narcissus is a garden of contemplation where the surface of reflection is the piece itself. The piece is joyous and ominous, it attracts and repels because it sense of superficial ornamentation. It climbs up the wall caressing it. This piece does not operate within the notion of effect (literal reflection) but through affect, a true moment of qualia.

Design: Gabriel Esquivel & David Hernandez
Team: Erin Templeton, Dylan Weiser, Arnold Ghil, Miaomiao Xiao, Catlan Fearon, Hugo Ochoa, Megan Arrington, Le Phuc

Merry Merry Christmas

Wishes and Love to be!

into Ottoman's Empire

The main purpose is to design a multifunctional complex for people with an interest in knowing about Islam during the time of the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman Empire was the last big Islamic Empire and one of the most powerful during the Islamic era up until recent times. The building will serve as a hub for social activities and will portray the Ottoman Empire, especially, in an artistic sense.

The building conceived by Yusuf Onder will have a library, museum, lecture rooms, workshop level and a rooftop garden/cafe. Another goal is to offer people a place to learn and understand about this unique, hybrid of, culture and religion and it’s place in the Ottoman Empire in a hope to diffuse the sense of xenophobia towards the religion and culture. This thesis expounds on the, long old, idea of constant integration of religion and culture from history.

Users of the facility will comprise, the numerous tourists in the Bay Area San Francisco, especially those with a curiousity about the diversity of San Francisco and then the Islamic World. Another category of Users are tourists visiting San Francisco and the Site with the Contemporary Jewish Museum or the St. Patricks Church. This new architectural edifice complete the triangle of the major religions and becomes a beacon for unity.

San Francisco is deal for this kind of Center, because San Francisco as a multicultureal metrepolitan city is iconic for it’s integration of many sorts of people and socio-cultural ideas. Already exists in the city is a strong presence of other major religions eg. Christianity and Judaism amongst others: this last piece of the pseudo-puzzle would complete the already begging polity for a complete and balance hybrid society. It would be examplary for San Francisco to have or to show the World how open minded they are and with a Topic as sensitive as an Islamic Culture Center it would win the Hearts Muslims around the World.

a Linen Collar of the 1600's

The award winning lighting design is based on the effects of the Dutch ruff, a decorative linen collar considered fashionable in the 1600′s. The collars required several yards worth of linen, and had to be starched and ironed into pleats, or even supported on wires, in order to achieve their voluminous appearance. Inspired by the way Flemish baroque painter Cornelis de Vos illuminated these items, Andrew Saunders created the similarly shaped Luminescent Limacon. The design integrates historical referencing to the contemporary fabrication techniques, transforming the traditional piece of garment into a vehicle for manipulating light.

This occurs at two levels, both as an ephemeral reflective source and as a figural volume with a material presence. This dense accumulation of light is achieved through a combination of the chiaroscuro painting technique, which uses dramatic contrast of light to build volume, and by trapping light through a process of periodic folding that creates a deep translucent ruffle. The geometry of the structure is determined through use of the polar equation-based Limacon curve. Rolling of the curve at different speeds generates self-similar profiles. Two levels of geometry appear simultaneously: the primary one is combined vertically, while the secondary, following similar geometric progression, creates folds that are nested diagonally and can be interconnected when they meet flush. For fabrication and assembly, these surfaces are embedded with a number of parameters including placement of apertures for connection points, material thickness, tabbing and indexing. Each individual unrolled developable surface contains a unique and specific location and assembly instruction.

geometric Ornaments

The basic idea of the project is rooted in the notion of flows. It strongly references historical, environmental and even biological diversification and friction that shaped the contemporary city of Istanbul. The geometric form dominating the building is combined with typical Turkish patterns and ornaments, displaying both European and Asian cultural influences.

Located at the boundary between continents, the city of Istanbul is experiencing geophysical friction generated by the shifts of continental plates. The friction between two forces generates dramatic reaction of the elements; it can be transferred to all four basic elements in nature, with an impact determined by the level of energy. The same rule is applied to the urban environment. The layout of the structure reveals an atrium building, organized around the central square. The central area symbolizes aether, the 5th element in nature. Aether is also called, from Latin, ‘quinta essentia’ which stands for the element that unites the other four.

The entire building is divided into three sections: conference, educational and infrastructure. A shelter with a capacity of 150 people, divided into 2 parts, contains places to sleep, to sit, toilets and a place to prepare meals. It’s the last room to be visited during the trip around the Centre. The long corridor that leads to it demonstrates and recalls anxiety or even fear connected with situations in which it needs to be used.