The five teams, which include a mix of architects, urban designers, landscape and other designers, are headed by the firms AECOM, Aedas Architects, James Corner Field Operations, and the Xavier Vendrell Studio, the only team headed by a Chicagoan. The fifth team, known as !melk, includes the large firm HOK.
During the modernization of Beijing, except for some historical houses, independent housing typology was almost eliminated. Afterwards, the new model became huge, stacking commercial residential buildings.
Thus, with the support of the client, project Beijing House II is trying to seek new methods of bringing the independent housing typology back to Beijing’s contemporary city life. This design scheme adds a new house onto the exterior of an obsolete factory building. Inside the house there are bedrooms, a studio and a green room. By doing this, the design uses the empty city space in the air and rediscovers the typology of independent housing in Beijing city.
Meanwhile, this scheme also brings about new challenges because Beijing has frequent earthquakes and this design scheme suggests a big cantilever house, which is attached onto the exiting building. Therefore, to keep this in mind, a mechanical system is introduced to counteract a potential earthquake.
The design ...
The Holcim Awards Bronze was awarded to Julie Snow Architects of Minneapolis for a border control station on the US frontier to Canada at Van Buren, Maine. The approach meets a range of stringent regulations for safety, operation and durability and yet is a highly aesthetic structure marking the national frontier. A zero net energy goal and water saving targets, challenged by the remote location of the site and energy demand for 24-hour operation, are achieved through features such as a ground source heating and cooling, a solar wall to temper outside ventilation air, a ground-coupled heat pump, peaking bio-diesel boilers, LED lights, and lighting control systems to reduce fossil fuel consumption. The jury commended the design for successfully applying state-of-the-art features of sustainability in a government project with its regulatory implications.
The winners of the 3rd International Holcim Awards competition for sustainable construction projects and visions from North Amer...
Danish practice schmidt hammer lassen architects has won the international architectural competition to design a 188 meter office tower in the financial district of central Warsaw, Poland. The 60,000 m2 high-rise building is to replace the existing ‘Ilmet’ building.
Hi Archinect,
I wrote this post about two weeks ago but haven't had time to properly post with photos, so apologies apologies and … here we go!
We finished a semi-formal review of the last project Cumulative Coherence a few Weds ago (maybe just 2) in the downstairs gallery with outside jurors. Some photos posted below of the crit, which took place the same day as Open House so we had a few new faces.
Immediately after Cumulative Coherence, we moved on to a quick one week case study of
techniques for curved surface fabrication (archispeak-to-english: how to bend wood). We spent a quick week researching bent plywood designs by Ray & Charles Eames, Aalvar Aalto, Gerald Summers, Marc Newson, Carlo Mollino, Matthias Pliessnig... some seductive recreations below.
Reconstructed Eames DCW | Cristina Toth, Mehr Khanpour | AUD 411
The following week and the next three up until finals week, we are developing a project responding to the precedent studies.We focused on se...
Danish and French architects BIG & OFF, engineers Buro Happold, consultants Michel Forgue and environmental engineer Franck Boutte is the winning team to design the new 15,000 m2 research center for Sorbonne Université Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris. The winning team was honored as the best design among proposals from MVRDV, Lipsky Rollet, Mario Cucinella and Peripherique.
Video documenting the development and fabrication of the 2011 SCI-Arc Graduation Pavilion by Oyler Wu Collaborative along with students at SCI-Arc.
Every year in early September, as graduate students at the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc) in Los Angeles put the finishing touches on their thesis projects, a Sci-Arc faculty member and students prepare a temporary pavilion for the annual graduation ceremony. This year, faculty members Dwayne Oyler and Jenny Wu of Oyler Wu Collaborative, along with their students, designed a pavilion entitled Netscape for the event that stretches across the northern end of the SCI-Arc parking lot, providing seating for 900. Consisting of 45,000 linear feet of knitted rope, 6000 linear feet of tube steel, and 3000 square feet of fabric shade louvers, the pavilion creates a sail-like canopy of rope and fabric that floats above the audience. With its fabric louvers tilted toward the western sky, the canopy is designed to provide shade for the specific date and time.
Netscape utilizes a double layer of netting in varying configurations to create a three-dimensional field of ...
In a bid to bolster tourism in Moscow, plans are underway to build what could become the tallest observation wheel in the world. The graphic below breaks down the proposed wheel, possible locations and compares it to other giant observation wheels in the world.
The installation Bloom opened at Materials & Applications on Saturday, November 19. A collaboration between architect and Woodbury School of Architecture Graduate Chair Ingalill Wahlroos-Ritter, architect Doris Sung, and structural engineer Matthew Melnyk, the sculptural piece—a shiny metal “flower”— rises 20-feet into the air and towers above Silver Lake Boulevard. The petal-like skin, composed of thousands of pieces of laser cut custom fabricated sheet metal, opens and closes with the heat of the sun.
Sung is an assistant professor at University of Southern California and Melnyk teaches at SCI-Arc, so Bloom is not only a collaboration between the three practitioners, but also a chance for cross-pollination between the schools. Students from Woodbury School of Architecture and USC joined forces to fabricate and install the piece at M&A.
Bloom’s design, based on research by Sung and Wahlroos-Ritter, explores the possibilities of a thermally responsive metal surface, which reac...
USC Professors Behrokh Khoshnevis (Engineering), Anders Carlson (Architecture), Neil Leach (Architecture) and Madhu Thangavelu (Astronautics) have completed their first visualization for their NASA research grant into the potential use of Contour Crafting robotic fabrication technology to build structures on the Moon. [...] Contour Crafting was recently voted one of the top 15 innovations most likely to change the World. The question now being addressed is how it will change the Moon.
For more information on Contour Crafting, visit contourcrafting.org.
Some congregants at Crystal Cathedral said they felt blindsided by the church board after it threw its weight behind a bid from the Catholic Church –- an offer that effectively boots them from their landmark site in Garden Grove. The ruling by U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Robert Kwan to allow the sale of Crystal Cathedral to the Diocese of Orange was met with tears.
Philip Johnson's iconic church gets purchased by the Catholic church.
Hi,
The company I work for pays me late. My employer paid me half of my pay check this past friday Nov. 18.......which is late, i should have gotten paid my full amount on Nov. 11. On the 18th, my boss said he's going to pay us the other half (my other two co-workers) on Monday the 21st. Bullshit, he didnt pay. The company sometimes pays on time but not always.
Are any of you guys experiencing this at the firm you work for? I know times are tough but I have bills and mouths to feed.
I already spoke to my boss about it 3 months ago and he gave me a bullshit story.
I dont know what to do. I've already looked up the California labor laws and I know my rights. Really, I dont want to go to the labor department because I dont want to cause any friction. By the way, this is my first job after being laid off in 2008 and it took me a long long time to find employment. I'm currently looking for another place to work.
I have 14 years of experience in the Archit...
This survey is not based solely on quality of life, number of trees or the cost of a month’s rent. Instead, we examine some cities that aim to be both smart and well managed, yet have an undeniably hip vibe. Our pick of cities that are, in a phrase, both great and good...
The NYT selects Auckland, Berlin, Barcelona, Copenhagen, Curitiba, Santiago, Shanghai and Vilnius as the hippest cities for young professionals.
Occupy Wall Street Protests is testing Public Spaces not meant as campgrounds. But when the public chooses to use its public space in ways it wasn’t intended to be used, who’s right? The public or the public space?
Whatever the response [to Occupy Wall Street], the fact that these protests have persisted for weeks and months in parks has put a spotlight on public spaces in general. But that fact has also complicated the response. These spaces are part of our cities so they can be used by the public. They’re also explicitly not intended to play campground for extended amounts of time. But when the public chooses to use its public space in ways it wasn’t intended to be used, who’s right? The public or the public space?
Disconnects. There are disconnects. You become aware of them when you pass from one reality into another. From employed to unemployed is one such transition. It’s hard to understand unless you have gone through it. I would compare the experience to going to war…without all the weapons and death.
The Department of Architecture in the College of Architecture, Art, and Planning at Cornell University invites applications for a tenure-track faculty position in architectural design.
Candidate qualifications must include evidence of exceptional strength in architectural design studio teaching as well as in practice and/or research work related to design. Candidates having focused interests and demonstrable expertise that address contemporary urbanism and/or environmental and ecological issues are particularly sought, as is the ability to engage in the full breadth of the architecture curriculum. A professional degree in architecture is considered a necessity for this position.
Required Application Materials:
1. letter of application including a brief statement outlining teaching and practice/research objectives
2. a full curriculum vitae
3. one portfolio
4. a list of five references with telephone and fax numbers, mailing addresses, and email addresses
All applicants...
On October 9, 2011, photographer Richard Barnes was honored with the Julius Shulman Institute Exhibition and Award at the Woodbury School of Architecture Annual Fundraiser. An artist full of insight into his own process, he treated guests to a gallery talk. Barnes walked the camera through Unnatural Spaces. While discussing many of the photographs in the exhibition, he revealed what it means for a photograph to be architectural.
For more of Barnes, see the Domus interview here.
The US Land Port of Entry in Warroad, Minnesota has been awarded LEED® Gold Certification under the New Construction v2.2 rating system. Established by the U.S. Green Building Council and verified by the Green Building Certification Institute (GBCI), LEED is the nation’s preeminent program for the design, construction and operation of high performance green buildings.
Working with the US General Services Administration, under the Design Excellence Program, the project represents “the finest in contemporary American architectural thought” and Customs and Border Protection’s pragmatic aspirations to secure national borders. The Warroad design is attentive to the safety and comfort of CBP officers providing a canopy that continuously covers their work area, while providing a warm welcoming portal to the United States.
The Land Port in Warroad achieved LEED certification for energy use, lighting, water and
material use as well as incorporating a variety of other sustainable strat...
Just got a new computer - MacBookPro, OSX 10.7.2. On my old Mac I ran Parallels 3 with Autocad 2002 flawlessly. But I don't think Parallels 7 will support 2002, and have always wanted to work native.
So, I need software that lets me import .dwg files from consultants. For the most part, I do remodel work, so very small files and drawing sets, and I never do 3d (except in Sketchup, poorly).
I think I can get AutoCadLT for Mac with my educator discount for a few hundred bucks. But I've heard pretty negative comments about it.
Does anyone like TurboCad or Archicad?
Softshelf is inspired by the idea of creating a bookshelf that deforms the rational cellular grid in order to create a custom occupiable, differentiated, and soft space for the storage of books and other objects. It is fully customizable by manipulating five customer controls embedded in a parametric design system: overall size of the shelf, overall geometric effect of the shrinking and expanding of boxes, the strength of this geometric effect on the entire shelf system, the curvature shape of the shelf, and the stretched shape of the boxes. Softshelf takes advantage of the rigidity and fluidity of wood combined with the precision of CNC milling technology to create a monolithic and continuous form, sturdy yet geometrically complex, and ultimately innovative.
