The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL teamed up with Roca London Gallery to create the MArch Architecture Unit 22 end of year show – ‘Bartlett Architecture Dares to Care’, which is on display until December 18. Executed through the creation of Zoetropes, their study was focused on social and environmental sustainability, and the role architecture plays in preserving and empowering vulnerable communities. Each Zoetrope depicts the daily actions of an individual belonging to a vulnerable community. By designing for the everyday tasks, consideration is given to the role the built environment plays in protecting or helping them, rather than focusing purely on aesthetics. For more information, please visit here.
Presented by The Architectural Review and sponsored by the Danish architectural hardware design company, d line, the winners of the 2012 ar+d Awards for Emerging Architecture for young professionals under the age of 45 included projects of exceptional merit. This year’s four winning projects include a glass house in Japan, a community centre in rural earthquake-prone Bangladesh built on low-lying land susceptible to chronic flooding, an innovative 10-family condominium in Winnipeg, and temporary facilities for a nomadic music festival that had been commissioned at the last minute due to emergency circumstances. Original and practical, thoughtful and inventive, these projects demonstrate fresh approaches to a variety of architectural challenges. More information after the break.
The Seville 24/7 center, proposed by Ayrat Khusnutdinov & Zhang Liheng, adopts the famous Spanish traditions of street life. Their project would create a retreat from the harsh sun of Andalucia, Spain and extend the street life to 24 hours of the day and 7 days of the week. Seville 24/7 is not only about holiday or cultural side of Seville, but more importantly, everyday human interaction. More images and architects’ description after the break.
The Sketch, Script, Score. Figures of Architectural Thinking event is a conversation between Wiel Arets, Peter Wilson and Cino Zucchi presenting the “Inspiration and Process in Architecture” Moleskine book series. The event takes place at ANCB The Metropolitan Laboratory in Berlin on December 14th at 6:00pm. Which role does drawing still have in the design process? Which are the most frequent sources of inspiration to influence the theoretical work that is behind the making of architecture? The debate means to investigate the role that tools like drawing, sketching, taking notes, still have in the design process of contemporary architects. The discussion will encourage debate on what could be the tools of architectural thinking and design, in relation to drawing which remains the most powerful means of conceptualizing and representing architecture.
The proposal by Joan Alomar, of Estudio Lunar, presents a building that completes the urban block and blends in to the neighborhood of Casablanca. This concept leads the architecture that mimics the events at it’s surroundings, the nature, vernacular architecture, etc. To blend is the rational sustainable concept to exist without causing a disturbance. Sustainability as a complete concept is not only about saving energy, the building first needs to be socially useful and improve the neighborhood, that’s the first target of this market; it’s not only a market hall. More images and architects’ description after the break.
The proposal for the ‘Yad Lebanim’ (Fallen Sons’ Commemoration) memorial homes are designed as programmatic hybrids, teaming a military memorial hall with a civic community center. Designed by architects Moshe Fluhr, Lee Davidson Lehrer, and Yinnon Lehrer, the project reflects a constant dualism in Israeli Society, struggling to exist between the extremes of past and present, war and peace, sacred and profane. The 2.5 hectare site, which is situated in the entrance to Ramat Yishay, gives the opportunity to answer the needs of the community, while creating a building that emblemizes local values. More images and architects’ description after the break.
In the virtualized information era, Plan 01 believes the design for the Helsinki Central Library should be more than ever a “physical space”. The project should be a place for sensory experience, a place where culture becomes an opportunity to meet and exchange ideas, a place where the civil forum is recovered from the virtual and returned to the urban world. Their concept becomes a symbol in stone and wood that opens its heart to the city and offers visitors a retreat for body and mind. More images and architects’ description after the break.
Swiss architecture practice, Boltshauser Architekten, recently won an international competition to design a new aquarium in the center of Basel, Switzerland. Their concept, titled ‘Seacliff’, was noted by jury members as being the best match for the public image cultivated by the Basel Zoo. The above-ground building space proposed by Boltshauser was smaller than any of the other competition entries, offering the best solution from an urban development perspective. Beating out such prominent firms as Zaha Hadid Architects, David Chipperfield Architects, and Caruso St John Architects, Boltshauser’s winning project is due for completion in 2019 with an estimated cost of £54 million. More images and information after the break.
With produce coming from the Imperial Valley, Central California Valley, neighboring states and other countries the 30,000 plus residents of San Diego’s central urban context consume 21,231,000 pounds of produce each year. Where will we get our food? Transparency in the food industry needs to occur and enlighten blinded consumers. Our city needs to handle this critical issue with an architecture that responds. A new type of residential tower needs to come forth. Utilizing vertical farming, Brandon Martella’s “Live Share Grow’ proposal is a new model of living can be tested and resolved in a dense vertical community. More images and architects’ description after the break.
The Helsinki Central Library, designed by FIRM a.d. and OKB Architecture, is a hub of knowledge, where different people, communities and constituencies can come together. With their concept of ‘Geologies of Information’, their design expresses how if libraries were like sedimentary rocks, where layers of knowledge accumulated over time, libraries of the 21st century are like igneous rock in which different mediums of knowledge and learning are fused into a granular heterogeneous whole. More images and architects’ description after the break.
Taking place this Friday from 3:00pm to 5:30pm EST, the Algorithmic Design in Grasshopper webinar by modeLab will focus on creating algorithms using lists and transformations in Grasshopper, iteratively developing geometries inspired by nature. Through a series of short presentations and “live” case studies, learn strategies to discover forms that are defined by simple rules and incremental creation. With two instructors offering guided curriculum and continuous support, their goals is to provide you with an in-depth and personal learning experience. A video of the webinar as well as instructor files will be uploaded after the broadcast – all participants will have unlimited access to the webinar content and this video online. To register and for more information, please visit here.
Designed by Onat Öktem and Ziya Imren, the proposal for the Çanakkale Municipality “Green” Cultural Center & Municipality Building, which won an honorable mention, aims to create a new focal point located at the intersection of two busy pedestrian and vehicle axes, that strengthens the urban identity. The project intends to achieve a sharing/networking space that supports the everyday life of urban dwellers with social and cultural activities/facilities/uses, and a human-centered urban space that is also respectful to environmental values. More images and architects’ description after the break.
The Dortoir Familial, designed by NADAAA, focuses on merging with the landscape as the slipped court provides simultaneous interiority and exteriority—protected and private as well as extroverted and engaged. The most significant result of this integration of landscape and house is the production of a monumental vaulted threshold to a central courtyard. More images and architects’ description after the break.
The proposal for the Casablanca Sustainable Market Square competition by Nikolova/Aarsø (N/A) brings together the economic, ecological, cultural, and social aspects of sustainability together. The architects do so with the interplay of medieval Islamic design tradition and contemporary advanced building technology. The architectural concept is developed through the use of the girih tiles as a constantly present design method that elevates its purpose from pure ornamentation to a method of developing architectural composition, spatial organization, structural elements, integration of environmental sustainable technology and strategies, to the planning of flow of people. More images and architects’ description after the break.
Located on the edge of Cerklje, an alpine town in Slovenia, the Hayrack Apartments have beautiful views due to the courtyard opening onto a view of the surrounding mountains. Designed by OFIS Arhitekti, their video highlights the character of the social apartments as they were sold to the Slovenian Housing Fund for young families at a price of 900 EUR/m2 which is extremely cheap. he concept of the façade is taken from the hayrack system – wooden beams following traditional details and patterns. Traditionally farmers use the beams to store grass and corn, on the housing one can store flowers or other balcony decoration. Apartments are of different sizes – from 30m2 studio flats up to four room apartments of 80m2.
The main aim of AZPA in their design for the New Library of St. Martin in Passiria was to create an envelope that is not only functional but also representative of the local and global contents of a cultural institution found in a library. This design would have the architectural potential to transcend the specificities of the place to reach a global character. More images and architects’ description after the break.
Inspired by the Harvard Graduate School of Design‘s book, Ecological Urbanism, published in 2010, the school commissioned Portland-based interactive studio Second Story to transform the book into an iPad app. This app aims to be a resource that draws from the original text, focusing on sustainable city-building, but can also be updated with new projects and papers as needed, which is something a physical book would not be able to do. Available now for free here, the app shows how dynamic areas of study can benefit greatly from equally dynamic texts. With the world moving so fast, books can’t keep up – thus technology allows books to remain updated and relevant to our lives.
As one of the winners for the international competition, “Performance architecture”, the agriCultural Mountain project by Group IUT (Nuno Miguel Lima Cruz, Bruno Martins Afonso Gomes, António da Silva Lopes) explores the paradox of an ephemeral monument creation. It´s an artificial mountain placed at the city outskirts, outside the dense urban core, at an agricultural area called “Veiga de Creixomil”. Cultural activities are mainly urban happenings. Rural people and rural areas are usually outside the mainstream circuit of the cultural industry. This proposal aims to bring the cultural phenomenon to the agricultural realm. More images and architects’ description after the break.
