a Parametric Fabergé

Fourfoursixsix (Daniel Welham & Mark Nicol) were invited to participate as one of the artists for the Fabergé Big Egg Hunt. The city will became home to 200 giant and uniquely crafted Easter eggs for an event that is a first of its kind, aiming to raise vital funds for charities Action for Children and Elephant Family, inviting tourists, locals, and visitors to join in a truly magical experience.

As an architecture practice, Fourfoursixsix  felt it would be both topical and interesting to apply a set of architectural principles to the overall geometric form of the egg. Through this process they played with structure, light, and shadow and began to develop a three dimensional architectural terrain.

Conceptually, the design works around a rational grid of components that have been configured to react to both light and scale over the surface of the egg. Each component was designed to incorporate an aperture which could adapt to these changing surface conditions, thus altering the patternation of the egg.

Working with EOS, the world leading manufacturer of laser-sintering systems and Ogle Models, exquisite cutting edge Model Makers, has enabled the construction of a piece that is at the forefront of three dimensional printing technology. The end result is a delicate, intricate and complex piece that intrinsically connects back to the original Fabergé brand concept. In some ways, their design brings this concept into the modern era on a larger physical scale; a piece of 21st Century digital opulence.
 

to Reflect Contingencies

This project designed by Arthur Azoulai and Melody Rees is a morphological study that assumes an extended field of movement and circulating forces. It is designed by simulating self-organizing biological systems where selective decision making is used to sculpt innate yet deliberate spatial relationships and formal qualities. At its pure essence, this project is an infrastructural system that acts as a receiver and link-up for formal architectural systems. The inherent continuity of the overall form as a topological surface allows for the emergence of roadways, interstitial interior space, and landscape.

With imbricating structural support systems, the collective tectonics provide a network of circulation paths for pedestrians, cars and trams in addition to an emphasis on temporary pavilion spaces such as transitory food markets, pop-up retail shops and time-share housing. With a temporal and ephemeral program the local culture of Santurce in San Juan becomes active. Correspondingly, the adaptive qualities of the infrastructural surface allow the building and site form an organic semiotic relationship where the building seamvlessly emerges from the land below. This is emphasized as the ecologically evasive character of Puerto Rico’s environment merges into the architecture. Thus this project articulates new formal relationships and interstitial space while also reflecting the contingencies of the current moment in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

via suckerPUNCH
 

a Master Vision Of Sea

Three Spirits” is the master’s thesis of Filip Kurzewski, from the Warsaw University of Technology. The project proposes a floating tourist base and hotel in the form of three ships. Each of the three ships functions as an independent unit. The initial vision of the project was propelled by the author’s numerous personal drawings and painting studies. A great inspiration for the direction of the form, colors, and spatial arrangement came from personal diving experiences. Hand drawing and personal reflections and experiences became a driving force for the author, and are visible throughout the project. They intentionally connect the design with the context of underwater world which hotel guests explore. The thesis topic was carefully selected to reflect the design process, leaving traces of hand sketches and gestures on the final unit. Hand drawings and sketching played an important role in keeping the conceptual idea through all the stages of the design process. The theme was very demanding when it came to the program, justifying the design. The project was also consulted with naval architects. The ships making up a complex ,to a certain degree, differ as for the applied program. If the appropriate localization is chosen, they may form the common assumption – an island “Lang”. Guests can then benefit from the broader scale of supplementary attractions. On the first ship they have a ballroom at their disposal, on the second one – a casino and on the third one – the hall of multifunctional purposes where, inter alia, film shows and theatrical performances are possible. When the ships “meet” they generate a common water area for guests to swim.

One of the main attractions of a particular ship is a diving capsule. Guests can not only practice scuba diving but also they can dive safely in significant depth to see ,for example coral reefs or wrecks. The set of boats is also delivered for guests, and it enables them to choose an appropriate place for recreation, among other things also for scuba diving during the stopover of the ship.

Since each ship is a separate unit there is a possibility of temporary separation of the “vessels” (“vehicles”) in order to carry out different cruises and afterwards a possibility of ships meeting again.

to Be Builded of War

Ružica Church (Rose church) is located in the Kalemegdan Fortress, in Belgrade, Serbia. A church of the same name existed on the site in the time of Stefan Lazarević. It was demolished in 1521 by the invading Ottoman Turks. Today's church was a gunpowder magazine in the 18th century, and was converted into a military church between 1867 and 1869. Heavily damaged during the First World War, the church was renovated in 1925. The iconostasis was carved by Kosta Todorović, and the icons painted by Rafailo Momčilović. The walls were covered in paintings by Andrej Bicenko, a Russian artist.

be Re Loved

Chris Bosse has sliced up the Panton chair as part of the Re-loved: designer stories at the Powerhouse Museum from July 31  to October 10.

Bosse, director of innovative architectural firm LAVA, is one of several designers commissioned by the Powerhouse to use a pre-loved chair to tell a story about a piece of furniture they love. He chose a design classic that relates to current design and manufacturing techniques.

The gravity defying Panton chair c1967 by Danish designer Verner Panton was a radical departure from traditional design and manufacturing techniques. It anticipated the digital revolution by 30 years and is the first freeform, organic molded piece of furniture. “I’ve chosen to represent this shape as slices, similar to an MRI scan in order to make visible its complex 3dimensional geometry. The chair is metaphorically and physically carved out of a sliced box ” says Bosse.

“The project retro-digitises the chair design, although it was the chair that preceded the digital design revolution.”

“What made the Panton chair so spectacular when it came on the market and what makes it so interesting today in terms of design history is not only its shape, which is as extravagant as it is elegant, but also the fact that it was the first chair made out of one piece of plastic. Every chair at the time was about the assembly techniques of materials, compression, tension, and junction. Verner Panton exploited the possibilities offered by the new material in order to achieve a total departure from classical design thinking.”

the Taichung City

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.

to Redefine a Waterfront

Acknowledging that the city is nothing but the product of a myriad network of interactions and emergent flows, re-organized and regulated by a highly evolved system of pattern recognition, the project designed by Gijo Paul George from Studio Toggle aims to find urban solutions for the city of Cagliari in Sardinia, Italy.

Taking fields, nodes and agents as the building blocks of urbanity, the relations and perturbations are mapped, giving rise to generative patterns. Based on this logic, the project strives to find a balance between adaptive non-programmed spaces and typological specificity. The site, SantÉlia has the notoriety for being the badlands of Cagliari. Often this image is exaggerated, contributing to the resident’s hostility to the city and vice versa. This spectacular stretch of waterfront land towards the southern tip of Cagliari happens to be disconnected from the rest of Cagliari due to massive infrastructural figures, which creates canyons in the urban fabric, also due to the negative ramifications arising from a dysfunctional social housing project, from 1970’s.

The project had specific goals including, reconnecting SantÉlia to the rest of Cagliari by colliding the island grids, bringing the city closer to the sea and thus developing the waterfront, revitalizing the social housing and improve conditions and to develop strategic nodes into multimodal urban ecologies. The focus was on de-canyonizing the fabric and overlaying the terrain with a new urban organism, which irrigates the territory and bridges the programmatic archipelago.

Rediscovering the spatial matrix of field conditions as described by Stan Allen, and further elaborated by Keiichi Matsuda in his ‘Cities for Cyborgs’, an emergent matrix of potential (pheromonal) fields acts as the substrate on which an agent-based system is populated. The constant material and information feedback between the to systems gives rise to generative patterns and densities which in turn mutate into inhabitable spaces and nested typologies, there by creating the fabric.

The project in itself becomes a discourse in how the intuitive and emergent processes can work together to produce an urban fabric, and occupy it at the same time, not losing the balance between adaptable emergent spaces, and the specific typologies which seed the territory.

African Words

African literature

African literature refers to literature of and from Africa. As George Joseph notes on the first page of his chapter on African literature in Understanding Contemporary Africa, while the European perception of literature generally refers to written letters, the African concept includes oral literature.

As George Joseph continues, while European views of literature often stressed a separation of art and content, African awareness is inclusive:

"Literature" can also imply an artistic use of words for the sake of art alone. ... traditionally, Africans do not radically separate art from teaching. Rather than write or sing for beauty in itself, African writers, taking their cue from oral literature, use beauty to help communicate important truths and information to society. Indeed, an object is considered beautiful because of the truths it reveals and the communities it helps to build.

Oral literature

Oral literature (or orature) may be in prose or verse. The prose is often mythological or historical and can include tales of the trickster character. Storytellers in Africa sometimes use call-and-response techniques to tell their stories. Poetry, often sung, includes: narrative epic, occupational verse, ritual verse, praise poems to rulers and other prominent people. Praise singers, bards sometimes known as "griots", tell their stories with music. Also recited, often sung, are: love songs, work songs, children's songs, along with epigrams, proverbs and riddles.

Precolonial literature

Examples of pre-colonial African literature are numerous. Oral literature of west Africa includes the Epic of Sundiata composed in medieval Mali, The older Epic of Dinga from the old Ghana Empire. In Ethiopia, originally written in Ge'ez script is the Kebra Negast or book of kings. One popular form of traditional African folktale is the "trickster" story, where a small animal uses its wits to survive encounters with larger creatures. Examples of animal tricksters include Anansi, a spider in the folklore of the Ashanti people of Ghana; Ijàpá, a tortoise in Yoruba folklore of Nigeria; and Sungura, a hare found in central and East African folklore.

In Islamic times, North Africans such as ibn Khaldun attained great distinction within Arabic literature. Medieval north Africa boasted Universities such as those of Fez and Cairo, with copious amounts of literature to supplement them.

Colonial African literature

The African works best known in the West from the period of colonization and the slave trade are primarily slave narratives, such as Olaudah Equiano's The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano (1789).

In the colonial period, Africans exposed to Western languages began to write in those tongues.

African literature in the late colonial period (between the end of World War I and independence) increasingly showed themes of liberation, independence, and (among Africans in French-controlled territories) négritude.

Postcolonial African literature

With liberation and increased literacy since most African nations gained their independence in the 1950s and 1960s, African literature has grown dramatically in quantity and in recognition, with numerous African works appearing in Western academic curricula and on "best of" lists compiled at the end of the 20th century. African writers in this period wrote both in Western languages (notably English, French, and Portuguese) and in traditional African languages.

Ali A. Mazrui and others mention seven conflicts as themes: the clash between Africa's past and present, between tradition and modernity, between indigenous and foreign, between individualism and community, between socialism and capitalism, between development and self-reliance and between Africanity and humanity. Other themes in this period include social problems such as corruption, the economic disparities in newly independent countries, and the rights and roles of women. Female writers are today far better represented in published African literature than they were prior to independence.
 

in Gabon, in Libreville

Museums in Gabon
The Museum of Arts and Traditions at Libreville is a general interest museum. The National Museum of Gabon is also in Libreville.
Encyclopedia of the Nations

National Museum of Gabon (Gabon)

Telephone: +241 (0)17 614 56

The Museum of Arts and Traditions (Gabon)
Telephone: (+241) 76 14 56     
Email: museegabon@numibia.net

to Laminate Wood

The deforestation rate of a country describes the annual destruction of its natural forests. Confronted with this acute challenge this high-rise is a prototype for the usage of wood in a sustainable and innovative manner through the combination of research and tourism. The project introduces the novel technology of laminated wood construction as load-bearing material and as a space partitioning thick lattice.

Located in Coari, Brazil, at the heart of the Amazon forest, this conceptual tower would be constructed in several phases. The idea of the skyscraper is to create a sustainable skyscraper that allows tourists to explore the Amazon forest while creating global awareness of its alarming destruction rate.

First, conventional shipping containers are prefabricated and equipped according to the specific requirements and technical systems. Second, punctual foundations with minimal footprint are built on site, providing the basis for elevators and staircases. Afterwards, a thick-latticed three-dimensional framework consisting of prefabricated laminated titan-wood elements is erected on site and floor plates are attached into the exoskeleton.
 

to Reconnect Nature and Architecture

Here is another Kengo Kuma’s project that speaks of the continuous interest in reconnecting architecture with nature or, to quote the architect, the need “to recover the place”. Using architecture as a frame of nature, the project seems to echo a need for experiencing built space through its interaction with the elements and transformations affected by the passage of time. The faceted wall is populated with plants, creating an impression of two tectonic forces, the natural and the artificial, fighting for supremacy.

The multi-purpose building is located near the railway station in Odawara, Japan.The façade, achieved by using decayed styrene foam, encompasses the building, leaving the ground floor transparent and accessible. The first floor facilitates a clinic and pharmacy while the upper floors are used for offices. The planters are comprised of aluminium die-cast panels, made in monoblock casting. Each panel is slanted, and its surface appears to be organic, of which cast comes from decayed styrene foam. Equipment such as watering hose, air reservoir for ventilation and downpipes are installed behind the panels so that the façade can accommodate a comprehensive system for the building. The piping delivers rain water to the aluminum die-cast planters, keeping the whole structure organic and alive.

the Flowers of Hiroshima

Edita Morris started her literary career with short stories published in the Atlantic Monthly, Harper's Bazaar and other publications. In 1943 she published her first novel, My darling from the Lions. During the 1930s and until his death in 1943 in New York she shared much of her life with the Swedish painter Nils von Dardel. She figures on many of his paintings from 1930 onwards.

She is mostly known for her novel The Flowers of Hiroshima (1959). The novel was partly influenced by the experiences of her son, Ivan Morris, later a distinguished japanologist, as an intelligence officer in the U.S. Navy visiting Hiroshima immediately after the dropping of the atomic bomb on the city. The book has been translated into 39 languages. In 1978 she published Straitjacket: autobiography which was followed in 1983 by a second volume, Seventy Years' War, published in Swedish only under the title Sjuttioåriga kriget.

With her husband, who came from a wealthy family background, she founded a rest house in Hiroshima for victims of the bomb.After her death, the Edita and Ira Morris Hiroshima Foundation for Peace and Culture, usually known as the Hiroshima Foundation, was established.The purpose of the Foundation is to promote peace by supporting efforts in the cultural sphere to favor peace and reconciliation. The Foundation presents awards to women and men who contribute, in a cultural field, to fostering dialogue, understanding and peace in conflict areas. Edita died in Paris in 1988. She is buried, with her husband and her son, in the village of Nesles.
 

to Open Research

BIG + Paris-based architects OFF, engineers Buro Happold, consultants Michel Forgue and environmental engineer Franck Boutte is the winning team to design the new 15.000 m2 research centre for Sorbonne’s Scientific university Université Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris.
The new multidisciplinary research centre, Paris PARC, located between Jean Nouvel’s Institut du Monde Arabe and the open green park of the Jussieu Campus will become a significant addition to the campus, strengthening the international appeal and openness of the leading French University for Science and Medicine. The facility will bring together academic scholars and the business community, while re-connecting the university physically and visually with the city of Paris. The winning team was honored as the best design among proposals from MVRDV, Lipsky Rollet, Mario Cucinella and Peripherique.
Paris PARC is located in the visual axis of the Notre Dame Cathedral in a dense context of university buildings from different historical periods. BIG proposes a building geometry that adapts to the specific conditions of all adjoining sides, optimized for daylight, views and accessibility. The three-dimensional envelope retracts from the neighboring facades, opens up towards the square of Institut du Monde Arabe and the park, and folds into a publicly accessible rooftop landscape, resulting in an adapted sculptural building volume situated between the emblematic architectural monuments of the university.
“As a form of urban experiment the Paris PARC is the imprint of the pressures of its urban context. Wedged into a super dense context – in terms of space, public flows and architectural history – the PARC is conceived as a chain of reactions to the various external and internal forces acting upon it. Inflated to allow daylight and air to enter into the heart of the facility, compressed to ensure daylight and views for the neighboring classrooms and dormitories, lifted and decompressed to allow the public to enter from both plaza and park and finally tilted to reflect the spectacular view of the Paris skyline and the Notre Dame to the Parisians.” Bjarke Ingels, Founder, BIG.
A central canyon provides daylight and a visual connection between laboratories and offices. In the atrium a cascade of informal meeting spaces lead to the public rooftop terrace and faculty club. A public stair to the rooftop offers glimpses into the activities of the laboratories which are divided by transparent walls throughout the building to ensure visual connections between the working spaces. The upper levels have panoramic views towards the Notre Dame and the skyline of Paris.
“We propose a building that creates the optimum conditions for encounters and exchange among the academics and visitors of Paris PARC. Like a scientific incubator the new building will provide the physical environment for nurturing growth of cultures and sharing of ideas – through the internal mix of laboratories, research facilities and informal meeting spaces, and through a reunification with the public life of the city.” Andreas Klok Pedersen, Partner-in-Charge, BIG.
The Paris PARC becomes the interface between campus life and city life by reuniting the Jussieu Campus with the city of Paris. The iconic view of the Notre Dame Cathedral is brought into the daily life of the building through the large panoramic windows while the façade towards the entrance square is slightly tilted, hence, a mirrored image of the Cathedral becomes visible at eyelevel on the square, connecting the building to its iconic location.

a Parametric Analysis

The Devoid Tower, design by Daniel Caven at the Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, explores the passive systems that can be incorporated into high-rise design. The design is influenced by a set of design rules, and tested using parametric and environmental analysis.

The tower is composed of a central volume that is pierced by a void. The void’s placement and movement is designed around Chicago’s environmental conditions, i.e. wind speeds and sunlight. Energy and wind testing had shown that the void slows down wind speeds, giving the tower the option for natural ventilation through each of the floor-plates. Through the use of the void, the tower also allows for maximum sunlight onto floor plates as well as allowing for even more scenic views to the exterior.

Located in the River North area of Chicago, the tower is graced with a large of amount views (Loop, Lake Michigan, Chicago River), and pedestrian activity. The void extends to the entry way presenting a experiential view up through the tower and framing a view to the sky. On the interior users are greeted with an openness to the space and an open floor plate due to the dia-grid structure suspending the floor-plates. The tower’s form is derived and translated by the movement and form of the void.

The tower’s program includes: Retail space on the bottom three stories looking off towards the river/lake, as well as restaurant space incorporated into the walkway along the river. The larger portion of the tower is programmed for office space. The office floor-plates are arranged for an open plan and operable spaces. The top portion is a five star hotel with a sky lobby disconnecting the office space and hotel, as well as an observation deck near the top of the tower.
 

a Field of a Library

The project is a proposal by Italian architect Tommaso Casucci for the new library of the school of architecture, located at the limit of the old town of Florence. It is part of a renovation plan of a large area used until recent times as convent and later penitentiary. Pre-existing spaces are converted in archive, the new addition provide study areas, meeting spaces, auditorium, exhibition spaces in a continuous varying experience.

The project explore the emergent qualities derived from surfaces modulation in an intensive fields, aiming to equilibrium states of program, structure and function trough morphodynamical processes. Form, structure, function and decoration are emergent qualities of the same coherent system strictly related to his environment.

At a global scale the system explore how the modulation of isosurfaces, based on intensive field from site analysis data, can achieve highly differentiated spaces and performative structures. The research uses a generative methodology to test multiple solutions based on the same process from which was selected the one that represent the best compromise between structural performance, program and connections.

At finer scale, surfaces porosity is based on triply periodic minimal surfaces structures to define a performative interface of bioclimatic regulation where irradiation values on the surface are used to module light perception in the interior spaces of the library.

a Backdrop Of Learning

The School of the Arts in Singapore marries two distinct design tendencies: the existence of a safe and tranquil learning environment and the idea of stimulating communication with the public and wider arts community within the city. Two visually connected spaces encompass a public communication area, achieving a functional porosity that encourages interaction between different types of users. The two parts are called “the Backdrop” and “the Blank Canvas”.

The backdrop is the podium that contains a concert hall, drama theatre, black box theatre and several small informal performing spaces. It is envisioned as a heavy pedestal, a gargantuan mass of stone which has been carved out and chiseled to reveal volumes in various proportions. This exciting multi level space will be open to public as a tropical urban plaza, covered yet breezy.  Stairs and platforms create a diverse set of spaces where spontaneous and planned performances can occur.

The blank canvas, the secure upper stratum is where Making, Interpreting and Communicating happens between individuals and groups within the school. This level is controlled through a single point of access, yet is visually connected to the public areas below. The academic blocks are three long rectangular blocks with class rooms and studios. The rooms are designed in a module with adjustable end walls for flexibility. Other facilities such as gymnasium and resource library are suspended between these blocks. The pockets gardens are provided to link the blocks together and encourage interaction between students.

symbolically Towns

As the first joint project of Rapperswil and Jona in Switzerland, symbolically announcing the merging of the two towns, Janus Project transforms the existing museum premises into a publicly significant stopping point. The project was designed by :mlzd Architects. It won the competition for the renewal and restructuring of the Rapperswil-Jona Municipal Museum, held in 2007.

The project to put up the new building has been sensitively integrated in the historic town. The view from the north, which is important for the overall visual impression of the town, is to remain unchanged. The building fits discreetly into the background of the historic picture presented by the narrow town-centre streets. With the new terrain situation and the tasteful bronze facade, the building imposes a new emphasis on its immediate surroundings and can easily be read as the main entrance to a modern museum complex.

The shape of the new building has been developed out of the lateral façades of the old buildings. Its façade and roof have been designed in such a way that the existing windows and doors of the old buildings are not intersected anywhere.

The newly created rooms are extending the museum’s spectrum in terms of space, operations and the possibilities available to the curator. Many different rooms are also available in addition to the main one and are appropriate for a variety of exhibition purposes. The way that different types of natural light are brought into play adds another interesting dimension to the building in the course of the day and the succession of the seasons. Illumination of the building through its roof and the transmission of light from floor to floor deliberately create a stark internal contrast with the legacy buildings. Firstly, that makes it easier for people to find their way around the whole complex and, secondly, the new is clearly offset against the old, heightening awareness for the threshold to the latter. Stepping into the legacy buildings thus becomes an eventful journey in time, back into the past.

an Emerald Flower

With Love to S.M

Matsuo Basho (c. 1680)
Spring:

A hill without a name
Veiled in morning mist.

The beginning of autumn:
Sea and emerald paddy
Both the same green.

The winds of autumn
Blow: yet still green
The chestnut husks.

A flash of lightning:
Into the gloom
Goes the heron’s cry.

a Lava for Coral Caves

Chris Bosse of Laboratory for Visionary Architecture [LAVA] has created a window installation for the famous Italian department store la Rinascente for its Contemporary Christmas Art windows. LAVA’s window installation is an origami coral reef using 1500 recycled and recyclable cardboard molecules that explores the intelligence of natural and architectural systems.

The sculpture plays with space by climbing up walls and arching over to create coral caves. Based on the geometrical structures of sea foam and corals, the colourful reef comes to life through dynamic lighting and sound. Bosse, director of multinational LAVA, is one of seven designers from around the world to be commissioned to create a window – others are Kirsten Hassenfeld, Gyngy Laky, Andrea Mastrovito, Satsuki Oishi, Richard Sweeney, Margherita Marchioni and Tjep.

The store windows are at la Rinascente’s Piazza Duomo store, in the centre of Milan, design capital of the world. This is the first time la Rinascente have commissioned artists to do Christmas windows. The installation shows how a particular module, copied from nature, can generate architectural space, and how the intelligence of the smallest unit dictates the intelligence of the overall system.

Ecosystems such as coral reefs act as a metaphor for an architecture where the individual components interact in symbiosis to create an environment. Bosse says: “In urban terms, the smallest homes, the spaces they create, the energy they use, the heat and moisture they absorb, multiply into a bigger organisational system, whose sustainabilty depends on their intelligence”. Current trends in parametric modeling, digital fabrication and material-science were applied to the space-filling installation.

to Build a Skin, to Harvest Salt

Born from unique environmental conditions, GEOtube is a new kind of urban sculptural tower designed by California-based Faulders Studio. Gravity-sprayed with adjacent Persion Gulf waters, its building skin is entirely grown rather than constructed; is in continual formation rather than fully completed; and is created locally rather than imported. The world’s highest salinity for oceanic water is found in the Persian Gulf (and the Red Sea) – local salt water is supplied to GEOtube via a new 4.62 km buried pipeline and misted onto the tower’s exposed mesh. As the water evaporates and salt deposits aggregate over time, the tower’s appearance transforms from a transparent skin to a highly visible white solid plane. The result is a specialized habitat for wildlife that thrives is this environment, and an accessible surface for the harvesting of crystal salt.