Architect: Meyers + Associates Architecture Location: Westerville, Ohio, United States Project Year: 2011 Photographs: Matthew Carbone

Landscape architect: Østengen & Bergo AS landscape architects MNLA Location: Lørenskog, Norway Architect: L2 architects AS Design: Collaboration between architect and landscape architect Budget: 1,630,000 Euro Project Area: 1,8 daa Project Year: 2011 Photographs: Østengen & Bergo landscape architects AS

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Nendo in Japanese means free forming clay almost like Play-Doh, founder Oki Sato goes on to further describe the meaning to represent in the end ‘flexibility’. The company, which he established in Tokyo in 2002 after graduating with an architecture degree from Waseda University, has steadily gained momentum (they now have a second office in Milan) and recognition. Focusing on small ideas that provide a strong impact, Sato shares, “we don’t specialize in anything it is the story that is important.” Nendo‘s designs, are able to simultaneously remain clean and minimal while remaining friendly or as Sato describes it, “he doesn’t want to make them cold, it needs a pinch of humor.”

The World Monuments Fund (WMF) is calling for international attention to the 1969 Preston Bus Station. Once the world’s largest bus station, the brutalist monument is scheduled for demolition as part of the city center’s redevelopment plan. The building is one of thirty UK “at risk” sites featured by WMF.

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Published by Analist Group and organized and curated by the Italian Association of Architecture and Criticism_presS/Tfactory, the OUTSIDE THE BOX competition is focused on identifying design ideas for resolving various problems in emergency situations. During recent years, numerous natural phenomena have upset the lives of many communities scattered across the globe. Examples include Fukushima in Japan, Haiti, L’Aquila and New Orleans. The Box is a small temporary structure capable of offering various services: a space that is simultaneously a workstation and information center open to public to allow people remain in touch with the rest of the world. A fundamental role in the elaboration of the design proposal must be entrusted to technology, whether low- or high-tech. The challenge launched by the competition is to combine sustainability and parametric design. The submission deadline is 15 January, 2012. More information on the competition after the break.

Pedro Kok

ContemporARchitectURban Designers Group, which was created by Ali Andaji Garmaroodi, Amin Monsefi and Reza Roudneshin, shared with us their winning proposal for the Mehrshahr Residential Complex Design Competition located in Karaj which is the fifth largest city of Iran, and located near Tehran. The main purpose of the client and the organizer of this competition was to find new ways to develop and build houses for middle layer people of the society in order to have an complex suits to Iranian needs and culture, which has had missed in the recent years. More images and project description after the break.

Auburn University’s chapter of American Institute of Architecture StudentsA invites you to join them for their annual Internship Fair on March 5th – 6th, 2012. The event allows professional firms the opportunity to meet and interview students of Auburn University and the students are eager to initiate and continue the relationship between participating firms and the students.

holdUP shared with us their latest installation, ‘FROM OFF TO ON’, exhibited at the international KOBE ART BIENNALE (Japan) during the ART IN A CONTAINER exhibition. Selected among 289 proposals, ‘FROM OFF TO ON’ received the honorable mention by the jury. In this interactive artwork, visitors are assimilated to explorers observing their environment, chasing marvels of unknown lands: nothing is taken for granted, everything is extra-ordinary. More images and project description after the break.

Livability.com recently released a compilation of the 10 best downtowns in the USA. Based on a rubric analyzing entertainment, planning, architecture, and green spaces they have come up with a list atypical of the cities typically found at the top of similar lists. Each of the cities on the list has a distinct and unique aura. Starting with Franklin, Tennessee, and topping out with Indianapolis, Indiana at number one, the descriptions of each city are sure to provide ample insight into the inimitable characteristics that warranted their listing within the top 10 downtowns. Be sure to check out projects from the cities on the list here:

Five great industrial projects we published back in January this year for our 8th selection. Check them all after the break.

Biotechnology Industry / Marlene Imirzian & Associates Phoenix, Arizona has a burgeoning Biotechnology industry and in order to help fill the demand for skilled employees the Paradise Valley Community College plans to double its Biotechnology Program. The new Life Science Building provides new instructional space, housing the college’s Anatomy, Physiology, General Biology, Biotechnology, Microbiology, Marine Biology and Environmental Biology Programs (read more…)

Recent recipient of the 2011 Holcim Gold Award for the North American region, Lateral Office’s Arctic Food Network is a series of strategically distributed shelters addressing food security, biological and wildlife species management, and provides a safe navigation system across Baffin Island in Nunavut, Canada.

Architect: Lateral Office Location: Baffin Island, Nunavut, Canada Collaborators: InfraNet Lab, Dr. Claudio Aporta Advisor: Nunavut Department of Culture, Language, Elders, and Youth Project Team: Mason White, Lola Sheppard, Nikole Bouchard, Fionn Byrne Start of Construction: May 2012 Images: Lateral Office

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Vitra presents an office of possibilities called Citizen Office – one in which employees control the way they interact with their work environment. Through the creative implementation of products and arrangements that stimulate the flexible use of space for each individual, employees can choose how their work will be most productive. This promotes physical and mental well-being and reflects positively on employee performance. According to Katharina Weisflog, Marketing & Public Relations Manager for Vitra, “feeling at ease makes people more motivated and productive” which is why at Citizen Office “the workers decide autonomously which rhythm and which form is right for their respective activity at which location”.

Click through for images of the working environment created within Citizen Office.

The first casualty was the large boy man with the soft hands. He had taken control of the tablesaw and was ripping ply for the little Asian girls with rectilinear eyewear and anyone else willing to let him. The bearded shop staff for some reason believed him when he said he knew what he was doing, &c, &c. That was soon revealed to be a mistake in judgment on their part when, after a number of successful, cocky rips, he tried a new technique and showed how close he could get his hand to the blade. The Asian girl who spoke in Ebonics shouted to be careful and he shouted back under his safety glasses that it was OK because the blade was outfitted with a laser thingamajig that would make it stop if his hand got within a mm of it or some small such dimension.

It was almost certainly her fault because the young man was at that moment trying to impress and seemingly in his element in the shop he slid his hand through the blade in one quick motion and the fingers popped off in quick succession, flying this way and that. The blood was immediately apparent and continued to flow freely out of the alien paddle that remained. His scream was more of a muffled grunting and crying as he concealed the paddle in his doubled over form amidst the sawdust. The Asian Ebonics girl immediately vomited while turning away and falling against a bandsaw. Others moved away. A few just stared transfixed. Some were dialing 911. The bearded shop staff ran in swearing and yelling what happened what happened and swearing some more and saying I thought you said you knew what you were doing and other accusations at the wounded boy as they obviously shifted blame onto him as the chief protagonist in his grave injury.

Chinese calligraphy is mainly based in three characteristics: status of mind, line and color. These tree concepts triggered ///byn original ideas for the Ordos Museum. A primary impression of non-organization is quickly overcome by a self-organized logic. Here, the museum volumes have found their own space in the park. The logics of placement come from many different aspects: orientation, functionality, targeted visuals, public space, creating a unique orchestrated sequence of spaces. More images and project description after the break.

Preston Scott Cohen’s office sent us drawings of his Tel Aviv Museum of Art to add to the images of the recently opened museum we shared earlier in the week. Preston Scott Cohen explained, “Conceptually, the Amir Building is related to the Museum’s Brutalist main building (completed 1971; Dan Eytan, architect). At the same time, it also relates to the larger tradition of Modern architecture in Tel Aviv, as seen in the multiple vocabularies of Mendelsohn, the Bauhaus and the White City.The gleaming white parabolas of the façade are composed of 465 differently shaped flat panels made of pre-cast reinforced concrete. Achieving a combination of form and material that is unprecedented in the city, the façade translates Tel Aviv’s existing Modernism into a contemporary and progressive architectural language.”

Check out the drawings after the break.

Located next to their apartment-factory project in Suizhong, China, the design for the mixed-used development of residential units and sales center for the apartment-factory by YKH_LAB (to be converted later as a retail center for the residential development) is a part of the Korea Town development. Relevant to the core idea of its sister project Suizhong Apt-factory, the conceptual qualities of this project are in response to this relationship with 8 distinctive courtyards and roof gardens. Their mission was also to reflect the needs of the owner: to maximum density and marketable residential prototypes. More images and architects’ description after the break.

The Institute of Multidisciplinarity for Art, Architecture and Design (IM) and Artgate Galleryare pleased to present an exhibition, Crisis & Design ver.1.0: Living in the Crisis Era, between Anxiety and Desire. The exhibition is on view at Artgate Gallery from November 17, 2011 through December 3, 2011. The exhibition and publication is made possible by the funding program for Next Generation Design Leaders supported by Ministry of Knowledge Economy of Korea and Korea Institute of Design Promotion.

Commissioned and curated by Changhak Choi, architect and founding director of IM, Crisis & Design ver.1.0: Living in the Crisis Era enlists twelve New York‐based architects and designers to envision solutions to issues of global crisis and examine its influence on daily routine. More information on the exhibition after the break.

JDS Architects have just shared with us their first French project in the city of Lille. The Euralille Youth Centre is a 6,000 sqm project that includes a youth hostel, offices and a kindergarten. More images and information after the break.

AD Review: From the Archives presents a wide array of architecture to feature today. While looking back over this particular week from years past we found museum and residential projects to highlight along with religious, institutional and educational architectural works.  From Poland to Israel, Chile and France, these projects are well worth a second look.

The rise in human population continues to exert enormous strain on earth’s ecosystems and finite resources. Scientific American recently devoted an issue to one solution among many needed to solve this worrisome situation. The cover reads, “We have seen a brighter future, and it is urban.” People living in dense urban environments “typically have smaller energy footprints, require less infrastructure and consume less of the world’s resources per capita.” But, what is the cost? There are always tradeoffs. Alla Katsnelson, from Scientific American, notes that city dwellers suffer “higher rates of mental illnesses, including anxiety disorders and schizophrenia” than their rural counterparts. All the factors underlying this difference are not known or well understood, but some of the possible causes appear to stem from the fact that urban environments are nothing like the ancestral environments from which our sensory systems evolved. As our hunter-gather ancestors learned during the Agriculture Revolution, our biology does not take kindly to rapid upheavals in cultural evolution. In a way, their experience somewhat parallels the one we face today. Put simply, the Industrial Revolution and the subsequent urbanization has been to our sensory systems what the agriculture revolution was to our digestive system.

On October 19th Charlie Rose interviewed OMA founding partner Rem Koolhaas (his fifth appearance on the show). The discussion ranges from Koolhaas’ current interest in the countryside, rather than the city, his firm’s newly completed Milestein Hall project at Cornell University, and the launch of the book Project Japan: Metabolism Talks written with Hans Ulrich Obrist and edited by Kayoko Ota. Watch the interview here.

Open Source Ecology

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