With a challenge of creating regeneration and community development in Trent Basin, Nottingham, UK, which meets passive house requirements, the first stage winning proposal for Isover Multi-Comfort House competition focuses on the minimization of the A/V ratio of the building. Designed by Evgeni Leonov Architects, the egg shape is used as inspiration to this project since the egg is known as one of the most energy-efficient forms of nature. More images and architects’ description after the break.
Best of Housing by DETAIL Magazine: Housing is something individual: we each have our own ideas and aspirations for it, and we express a lifestyle by the way in which we house ourselves — the way in which we dwell. To dwell means to be “at home”, where one ideally has a sense of well-being.
When it comes to housing, there have been numerous studies of standards, developments and trends, which have analysed and compared people’s needs. But as needs change over time, so do trends. And also the global and demographic changes affecting society alter the way we dwell and flexibility becomes a decisive criterion.
The subject of housing also includes the integration of individual buildings in an urban context. Especially in cities, people often live in compact spaces in which there are fewer personal spaces and more communal areas. Yet each of us longs for a space of our own. Therefore it becomes important that designers develop ideas that meet our shared need for a balance between personal and communal space.
The annual Seattle Design Festival, created by Design in Public, is an event that encourages all to ‘engage our world’ by offering the public an opportunity to better understand design and how it adds value to our lives, our city, and our region. This fun-filled weekend, which takes place September 20-23, is a collaboration among ten nonprofit partners that created an ambitious set of offerings: more than 35 events, including tours, films, speakers, exhibits, installations, and family programs—all aimed at a public audience. For more detailed information, including a complete list of events going on that weekend, please visit here.
Uruguay has been invited to be one of the Latin American countries participating in the 2012 Venice Biennale. Located in a former warehouse of the Biennale, which has belonged to the Uruguayan State since 1960, the Uruguayan pavilion will present their curatorial proposal, Panavision – an exhibition that will feature six diverse and emergent Uruguayan practices that will not exhibit their work, but rather their practices as a way to spark a discussion on contemporary Uruguayan architectural agenda.
The practices representing the young generation of architects for the 2012 Uruguayan pavilion are the following:
Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) Provost Alan Cramb announced today the appointment of Wiel Arets as the new dean of the IIT College of Architecture. Born in the Netherlands, Arets, an internationally acclaimed architect, educator, industrial designer, theorist, and urbanist, is known for his academic progressive research and hybrid design solutions. He is currently the professor of building planning and design at the Berlin University of the Arts. His architecture and design practice, Wiel Arets Architects, has multiple studios throughout Europe and its work has been nominated for the European Union’s celebrated ‘Mies van der Rohe Award’ on numerous occasions.
Arets, who was dean of the Berlage Institute in Rotterdam from 1995-2002, will join IIT this fall and will lead an academic program originally shaped by the vision and work of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Considered by many to be one of the founders of modern architecture and design, Mies chaired the IIT architecture program from 1938-1958 and designed the IIT Main Campus, home to many of his iconic structures including S.R. Crown Hall.
“Rem Koolhaas: A Kind of Architect” (2008) filmed by Markus Heidingsfelder and Min Tesch, and produced by Arthouse Films, Rem Koolhaas: A Kind of Architect offers a “thought-provoking portrait of the architect”.
The AZA 2012 Biennial Festival in Cape Town, South Africa will feature six international architects to join South African architects in a conversation about architectural practice and its role in the context of the city. The participating speakers include David Adjaye, founder of Adjaye Associates, Yoshiharu Tsukamoto and Momoyo Kajima of Atelier Bow-Wow, Tatiana Bilbao, Teddy Cruz of Estudio Teddy Cruz, Rahul Mehrotra, founder ofRMA Architectsand Kibwe Tavares co-founder of Factory Fifteen, in addition to others. This is the second Architecture ZA event, a premier urban culture festival that brings together cutting-edge thinkers and multi-disciplinary practitioners from around the world. It will be held on September 13-16, 2012 and will include various events, talks, film screenings, conferences and tours.
Read on for more about the speakers invited to AZA 2012.
GREENHOUSE TALK, a comparison of design cultures in the great countries of Eastern Asia and Europe, will be taking place August 28 from 9-11am as part of the 13th International Architecture Exhibition at la Biennale di Venezia. Promoted by the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Rome and supported by Image, the main protagonists of this meeting are Pritzker Prize Laureate Wang Shu of Amateur Architecture (China), Rahul Mehrotra of RMA architects (India) and Francine Houben of Mecanoo (the Netherlands). The meeting, introduced by Pippo Ciorra and commented by Ole Bouman, will be an informal discussion in the Serra dei Giardini in Venice. For more information, please visit here.
Edward Burtynsky is a Canadian photographer whose work is focused on industrial (and post- industrial) landscapes. His pictures were so inspiring that moved Jennifer Baichwal in 2004 to record a documentary based on them. The result is an impressive film full of really powerful images that questions the limits between natural and artificial.
It seems to be a premonitory view of the current development issues, where the scale of industrialisation processes is such large that is capable to generate a whole new environment. A totally new landscape.
Let us know about your ideas of these “manufactured landscapes” and what can we do with these spaces afterwards?
In our final segment of Thinking Past Day 17 – our series examining the larger implications of hosting the Olympic Games – we conclude with ideas for the future host cities that involve dividing the Games across 7 permanent sites, complete with reusable architecture and a focus on sustainability at the urban level.
The effects of urban displacement coupled with post-Games housing concerns for the Athletes’ Village in Olympic Park – which we addressed in Part II - will definitely test the future viability of the Olympic Committee’s planning strategies. It is interesting to note that in relation to the entirety of the Olympic map, the area designated for the Village represents only a minuscule portion of the land that must be reintegrated post-Olympics. So, if we zoom out from the Athletes’ Village, what will become of the vast expanses of land currently supporting the major sporting facilities?
With a seating capacity of 46,000, the Pernambuco Arena will host the games in the group stage and quarter-finals of the World Cup 2014. Designed by Fernandes Arquitetos Associados, the main peculiarity of the project, and what makes it stand out from other projects of cities hosting the FIFA World Cup 2014, is that it is not being built in a consolidated urban area. The design challenge of this project is the creation of a building that is fully integrated into the natural environment and that in a second moment can establish a relationship of unity with the future urban development planned for the region. More images and architects’ description after the break.
Google recently released a new, intriguing type of software, which allows programmers to make a room come alive with interactive spaces. The new software framework, which is called ‘Interactive Spaces’, works by providing a high-level architecture for building activities that respond to events in a room through ‘blob tracking’. As seen in the image above, an Interactive Spaces installation was used where ceiling-mounted cameras tracked the position of individuals in a room so that the software could display colored lights on the floor where they are standing. The source code, which will open the door for creative and design oriented minds everywhere, is distributed under the permissive Apache license and is available for download from a Mercurial repository hosted on Google Code here.
Tony Hall, Chief Executive of the Royal Opera House said: “We are hugely excited about the ideas and inspiration the competition will generate. The Royal Opera House is looking for the team who, if we can raise the funds needed to fulfill our shared ambitions, will create the next evolution of our building. We are keen to investigate the possibilities of opening up the building even more to ensure that we have the very best facilities to welcome our loyal and existing audiences and to reach out to new ones.”
The seven practices shortlisted for the ROH competition are:
UNStudio has unveiled their design for the redevelopment of Singapore’s UIC Building (1973), located in the heart of the city’s Central Business District. The concept integrates lush sky gardens throughout a 53-story residential tower and a 23-story office tower, while distinguishing itself with a unique facade made up of five different textures that represent various programs. The climatically responsive structure is scheduled for completion in 2016.
Continue after the break for the architects’ description.
As innovation and new developments in technology now follow each other faster and faster, making yesterday’s architectural fantasies today’s construction realities, there’s already a movement to return to the essential things in life: be it a quest for sustainability, which implies basic principles such as incorporating a region’s typologies and materials, or for reasons of expense, which often prompt a search for efficient designs or manufacturing technology, or even aesthetic requirements that allow people to step out of our increasingly noisy and heterogeneous environment.
The disruptive minds series is in partnership with smartwater. smartwater, simplicity is delicious. Click here to learn more.
Usually when one studies architecture, one does architecture. But that’s just not enough for some people. James Ramsey, most famous for the sci-fi-like renderings of the Low Line, an underground park which has captured the imagination of thousands, is one of those people. An architecture grad from Yale University, Ramsey went on to be a satellite engineer for NASA, before coming back to architecture and starting up his own design studio, Raad Studio. Oh yeah, and along the way he came up with a fiberoptic technology that would allow you to bring natural light (and thus grow plants) underground.
