The Camp JRF Eco-Village is situated in the Pocono Mountains just up a hill from the existing Jewish Reconstructionist summer camp. The new village will be for older adolescent firl and boy campers and be composed of yurt cabins and sheltered by colorful canopies. The yurts will sit upon platforms, adjacent to a program building for gatherings, bathhouses, and an earthen berm for stargazing. Metcalfe Architecture & Design has been working closely with Camp JRF to provide a design that is focused on creating social spaces for campers and staff to meet and enjoy their lives together at summer camp. The Camp JRF Eco-Village anticipates to break ground this coming summer.
This All Nighter Original poster is for “students who know or wanna know about the architecture studio experience.” We want to know which one is your favorite?
Chef Fre Peneau’s new restaurant, Le Dauphin is an 80 sqm ‘obsession in white’. OMA‘s Rem Koolhaas and associate Clement Blanchet received the Fooding 2010 award for their interior design of the restaurant that opened December 2010. Predominant materials of marble, mirrors and wood enlarge the space through reflection, and blur the boundary between interior and exterior.
Brought to you from the minds behind the documentary films Helvetica and Objectified, filmaker Gary Hustwit and cinematographer Luke Geissbuhler have started filming Urbanized, a study on how design affects our daily lives. The third film in the design trilogy, Urbanized continues the discussion surrounding the development of cities, presenting the challenges for and response by designers and citizens. The film will also highlight implementation of proposed design solutions, as it is happening now and in the future.
This house on a Maine woodlot is designed as a weave of volumes and courtyards that strikes a precise balance between solid and void. Neither a carved solid, nor aggregate volumes within a continuous void, the interior rooms and exterior courtyards are both continuous, but meet only at their upper and lower corners. More renderings and drawings of the Woodlot House by FreelandBuck following the break.
The Bellevue Botanical Garden improvements, led by Olson Kundig Architects, include a new Visitor Center complex, renovations of a mid-century residence, and extensive site work. Targeting a minimum of LEED Silver certification, these improvements will enhance the existing educational program and provide facilities for greater numbers of visitors.
“The Bellevue Botanical Garden has the potential to become one of the finest botanical gardens in the world,” shared Jim Olson, founder of Olson Kundig Architects. “I grew up in the Northwest and have spent my life exploring ways to bring architecture and nature closer together, to blur the distinction of indoors and outdoors and to frame nature so that its beauty is celebrated. This project offers a chance to bring my lifelong exploration to a place where it would encourage others to love nature as much as I do.”
Further description and rendering following the break.
Commissioned by Unesco and the Palestinian Authority, Pritzker Prize winner Peter Zumthor’s House of the Mosaics is a design that provides shelter to the Middle East’s largest known mosaic. Hisham’s Palace, home of this colorfully detailed tile mosaic, was built in 700AD and is situated just on the northern outskirts of Jericho, one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities of the world. The mosaic along with numerous other ruins are currently susceptible to further damage by the elements in addition to possible new development.
More details about the House of the Mosaics following the break.
One topic with two points of view, THE BI BLOG recently proposed a discussion on the topic of control. Featuring two distinctly different buildings, Georgia Tech’s recently renovated Hinman Research Building by Office dA in association with Lord, Aeck & Sargent, and Berthold Lubetkin’s London Zoo Penguin Pool, the contributors share their points of view on an architect’s ability to control or not control their buildings, from conduit to how a penguin uses a space.
Change It! wall concept uses a prism system to provide flexibility allowing the user to transform the style of a space with the flick of a wrist. The interior wall has numerous combinations, adapting to provide either a subtle wall or an art piece. This design, by Amirkhan Abdurakhmanov, will be in production soon.
From Tulane School of Architecture, theCharrette, is a student run architecture journal publication. Today they will release their latest issue, continuing their monthly discussions surrounding architecture and their local New Orleans community.
“SFI 10 + 1″ will unite activists, designers, funders and policy makers as change agents to address the most pressing design challenges of the world today, challenging participants to integrate positive change design in their own practices. Going above and beyond the green design movement the “SFI 10 + 1″ will confront design processes to consider the broader social and economic well-being of communities and cities.
Opening the conference on March 25th will be keynote speaker Patrick Tighe of Tighe Architects. The conferences keynotes, panels, and workshops will also include the participation of Tom Fischer Dean of the College of Design at the University of Minnesota, Andrew Freear Director of Rural Studio, and Sergio Palleroni of BaSiC Initiative, Trung Le of CANNON Design, Christine Gaspar of Center for Urban Pedagogy, Quilian Riano of DSGN AGNC, and Michael Zaretsky Co-author of New Directions in Sustainable Design.
The SEED Design Awards, an international competition highlighting Public Interest Design, will be integrated in the “SFI 10 + 1″ as the winning recipients, featured after the break, will partake as key proponents in the conference experience.
More information about the “SFI 10 + 1″ conference can be found at their official website.
The recently unveiled renderings for the Mashouf Performing Arts Center at San Francisco State University (SFSU), feature not just one new building but five performance spaces linked through a series of transparent hallways and classrooms. Michael Maltzan Architecture, the designers behind the new Arts Center garnered the commission ahead of six shortlisted firms including Diller Scofidio + Renfro.
“The building is almost like a city. It is meant to act like a small campus with those spaces and connective elements,” said Maltzan. “There’s one continuous horizontal layer, which connects across the entire project and many different disciplines. With informal as well as formal spots, in the choreography of that mix, you create the culture of the college.”
The architects were inspired by the triangular site and its slanted lines, which they chose to repeat throughout the overall design and details of the buildings. This repetition can be seen in a series of sloping balconies within the primary performance space and the triangular shaped courtyards that are exterior connections between the buildings.
More details about this newly unveiled design and renderings following the break.
Situated near the entrance to the Gowanus Canal, formerly the site of a police impound lot, the 11-acre pier will house a new 125,500 sqf facility for recycling and education. Designed by Selldorf Architects, the Sunset Park Materials Recycling Facility was not just conceived as a facility for recycling, but also as an active classroom. The approximate 2.5 acres of green space, complete with grazing goats, 50,000 sqf of photovoltaic cells and hopeful wind turbine, will offer an observation corridor and educational classrooms for students. The site is currently being raised four feet by construction crews and a completion date of December 2011 is anticipated.
Architects: Selldorf Architects Location: Brooklyn, New York, USA Client: Sims Municipal Recycling Project Area: 125,000 sqf Renderings: Courtesy of Selldorf Architects
Construction for the City Green Court, Richard Meier & Partners third building within the Prague 4-Pankrác Master Plan, is underway. Receiving a pre-certification of LEED Platinum, the building’s design is inspired by the language of Czech Cubism simultaneously responding to issues of conservation and sustainability. A completion date of early 2012 is anticipated. The video,
“We are working together to make City Green Court a benchmark for green building design in the Czech Republic,” shared Richard Meier. “This assignment has been particularly challenging as it also meant addressing the historic beauty of Prague and at the same time creating a modern image of the City for its future.”
More renderings and drawings of City Green Court following the break.
Bjarke Ingels recently appeared on CNN’s series Big Idea, very fitting for his architecture firm Bjarke Ingels Group or BIG. Utilizing the firm’s website, Ingels turns it into a presentation tool, and with ease discusses the design process, sharing diagrams and photographs for four of their projects: Mountain Dwellings, their submission to the Shanghai Expo complete with video of Ingels himself riding through the Danish Pavilion, the recently unveiled designs for West 57th in New York City, and the winning design for a new Waste-to-Energy plan in Denmark. The quick, straightforward, and stylish presentation beckons the question, is there still a place for powerpoint?
The U.S. Department of Energy just announced that the West Potomac Park, adjacent to the National Mall between the Lincoln and Jefferson Memorials will be hosting the 2011 Solar Decathlon. The event’s permit for the National Mall, the launching pad for the largest solar competition in the world, had been revoked in mid January creating a lot of disruption for the 20 collegiate Solar Decathlon teams who had put over 18 months of work in preparation for the event.
Here is our previous coverage of the Solar Decathlon.
The American Institute of Architects (AIA) recently announced the recipients of the 2011 Honorary Fellowship (Hon. FAIA). This is given to architects with distinguished achievements, who display exceptional character and are held in high esteem by colleagues. Hon. FAIA members are neither U.S. citizens nor U.S. residents, and do not primarily practice architecture within the domain of the AIA.
For this week the Architecture City Guide series headed to the city of Boston including neighboring Cambridge just across the Charles River Basin. This area has an overwhelmingly large amount of modern architecture in a small radius, and our list reflects just that. What buildings do you want to see added to our Boston list, share them with us in the comment section below.
