mini: The Latest Architecture and News

Studio Mode / modeLab is pleased to announce the modeLab 2012 Spring Workshop Series. The series starts off with the Agent Forms, a two-day intensive design and programming workshop to be held in Brooklyn during the weekend of February 04-05.

The origin of Songlines can be traced to Australian indigenous systems for navigation and caretaking of land achieved by mapping space through the creation of music based on the topography of land. For 007_Urban_Songline, the artist, Allard van Hoorn, creates a series of Dreaming Tracks utilizing the changing morphology of Storefront’s façade and the sounds that emerge from the urban sonic context of the gallery. The exhibition is the artist’s first solo exhibition in New York taking place at Storefront for Art and Architecture from January 18-February 18. More information on the exhibition after the break.

The vision of Pitupong Chaowakul, Wattikon Kosolkit and Yupadee Sutvisith for the future Thai house is an architecture that is composed of different levels of resilient segments. This includes 100% resistance with facility space that allows water to flood on the entire area without causing damages. More images and architects’ description after the break.

In the design proposal for the Asian Culture Complex, UnSangDong Architects + Kim Woo II constitutes a stage that acts as a new container for the culture and everyday events. If the new stage for the city is creating an empty open space out of penetrations pathways and plazas, making the new ‘city stage’ is the same as to conduct an enormous mapping operation with penetrating programs and landscape. They propose the Asian Culture Complex as the earth in between creation and disappearance. The earth that is transformed into fragmented pieces and become urban landscape filled with memories of the site and historical evolution of various spectrums of relationships. More images and architects’ description after the break.

Now’s your chance to learn all about the wonderful world of Charles and Ray Eames at A+D Museum‘s ARkidECTURE + design workshop at The Eames Office Saturday, January 14th from 10AM – 1PM.

The Chamber of Architecture and spatial planning of Slovenia (ZAPS) is currently putting on a competition for public, project, open, anonymous, single-stage, architectural design for the selection of the most appropriate expert solution for the structure and external arrangement of the National and University Library NUK II.

The construction of NUK II on the location of the new building must implement the common objective of urban planning, cultural heritage protection and archaeology, and therefore provide a contemporary urban space of high quality, reflecting recognisable local and historical characteristics. The NUK II project is located in the southern part of Ljubljana city centre, between Slovenska, Zoisova and Emonska ulica and Rimska cesta. More information after the break.

Informality, which was first categorized and described in the 1970s, is now pervasive — across cities, in the places we live, work, and move through the everyday. For many, the informal is no longer a discrete sector appended to the workings of the “formal” city, but an integral effect of the structuring of cities and landscapes by contemporary economic, political, and technological change. Self-built architectures and urban agglomerations, ambivalent landscapes, nomadic and temporal spatial manifestations of informalized are situationally specific, but globally ubiquitous. Design Tactics and the Informalized City symposium, being put on by Cornell University on April 13-14, brings a discussion of this reality to disciplines that work on the city in material and spatial terms: architecture, urban design, landscape architecture, engineering, media and product design. More information on the event after the break.

The proposal for the Wimmer Medien Business Center and Urban Development in Linz, Austria by Atelier Thomas Pucher recently won the third prize in the international invited competition. Their main concept is the creation of a 33,600 m2 gross floor area central public space that recovers the mystical feeling of the Italian piazzas, offering flexibility to host the most variety of events and activities, like ice-skating, Christmas market or outdoors cinema. This piazza is also a central point for the social life of the building, providing outdoors spaces for the offices, significant synergies for the commercial area and a feeling of the life of the city to the apartments. More images and architects’ description after the break.

Portland State University’s Department of Architecture recently announced that architect and professor Gilles Saucier will deliver the third presentation in their inaugural lecture series, titled “Firsts,” given by the department. Saucier is currently a design partner of Saucier + Perrotte Architects in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, and an invited professor and critic at a number of Canadian and American universities, most recently at MIT in 2011.Saucier will speak on Thursday, February 23, at 7pm, at Shattuck Hall Annex on the Portland State University campus. These lecture series, which are free to the public, explore the concepts of origins and beginnings, long a subject of interest among architects. More information on the event after the break.

The ‘Multitalented City’ by PUPA (Public Urbanism Personal Architecture) is a winning proposal for the Europan 11 which creates a new identity for an old university campus at the periphery of Reims, France. The campus is transformed into a flexible and self sustaining district which is able to adapt to changes – environmental, societal, and economic. More images and architects’ description after the break.

Lidköping Police Building is LETH & GORI’s proposal in the open competition for a new police headquarter and public parking facilities in Lidköping, Sweden. The project site is an open square on the border of Lidköping’s historical urban plan from 1672. The site is an important entrance point to the historic city and one of the design objectives of the competition was how to emphasize this. More images and architects’ description after the break.

The proposal by ferrarifrongia for the Deventer dock is to create a community pervaded by artistic spirit, a desire to build, house atmosphere, and play. The first intent of the project is to release the dock surface to become a beating heart of the new activity of the district. To follow this aim, a new building is conceived, suspended from the ground at a height of 6 meters. With its stereometric silhouette, the new building is a connection between the historic heritage (black silo, high silo, elevator), without brutalizing their facades, letting them breathe and respecting their historical value. The whole complex is pervaded by an artistic atmosphere with colored goedetic structures, which com-penetrate together with existing and new building, working as showcases in spreading color in the dock. More images and architects’ description after the break.

The second year of the AIM Competition invited participants to implement Green Transformation to the Shougang Group, the yin of dialectics of Beijing’s urban development. The design was to play an equally as significant role as the CBD (Central Business District) in making Beijing a healthy, balanced, and attractive city. It shall become a “Central Recreation District”, differentiated from the Central Business District. Due to the vast area of the Shougang Group site, this year’s focus was on the redevelopment of Er-Tong. Because green transformation spans the multidisciplinary layers of architecture, landscape and urban design, this year’s AIM competition recognized five different awards for outstanding performance. More images and information on the awarded projects after the break.

EASTERN design office + KAWAGUCHI & ENGINEERS shared with us their project, Light Thread, China Agricultural University’s Gymnasium / Wrestling Arena for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. During the Olympic Games, the wrestling arena has a 10,000-person capacity. After the Olympic Games, 4,000 temporary seats can be taken out and the interior can be refitted with three arenas, a pool, and 6000 seats to transform the space into a gymnasium complex. Since this building will come into the possession of the Chinese Agriculture University, they sought to create a condition that allows the special requirements of the Olympic Wrestling Arena and the functional features of a building for the Chinese Agriculture University to both be fulfilled in a single construction. More images and architects’ description after the break.

MY- AMI, A virtual and digital exhibit of architectural photography by Paul Clemence, has been extended to be on view until January 17th as part of the Design into Miami event, which started in November. A look at Miami’s unique urban landscape can be seen through Clemence’s refined eyes.

From the mundane to the exquisite, from “starchitects” to ” anonymous”, from glamourous Lapidus to cutting edge Herzog & de Meuron and contemporary Arquitectonica and Chad Oppenheim. From dyzzing glass atriums to swimming pools ( a most Miamian architectural “equipment” ), Clemence gives us his take on how he perceives the city. The photos selected for the show speaks of details, of moods and brings us a feel of what is to be in that constant evolving, cosmopolitan, creative and liberating city, its colors, its shapes and even a little splash.

The exhibit will be partially in display at the RS showroom and continuing online at here. More images after the break.

With the theme of ‘No Precedent’ this year, the annual Architectural League Prize competition invited young architects and designers to submit their work. Projects of all types, either theoretical or real, and executed in any medium, are welcome. Driven by the desire to create, to be heard, to keep busy or to fulfill untapped and forbidden niches, young architects are a self-defining generation. They are unwilling to wait their turn or to follow in footsteps. It has become normative for young architects to cast aside unfit precedents, codes, rules, and primitives, restlessly defining their projects, their problems, their methodologies, their users, and their spaces of intervention. Their work becomes uncategorizable, suggestive, and speculative; it’s on the brink. It’s neither here nor there, but fodder for the future. The competition deadline is February 15th. For more information, please visit their website here.

The project, Diamond for Dementia by Haugen/ Zohar Arkitekter, is a winning entry in a competition for upgrading an outdoor electrical supplier in a healthcare center for people suffering from dementia. The project intention was to transform the supplier’s old concrete walls into a jewel, a diamond, giving a focal point to the space, which the user could relate to as a steady though ever-changing reference. Since dementia is a condition that impacts one’s memory and other sensory related functions that many of us may take for granted, this project can provide a healthy experience for patients suffering from the condition and a rewarding experience for visitors and other users at the center. More images and architects’ description after the break.

Maide Inc. recently released an app that controls 3D programs over the wifi network from the iPad. The app now works with Maya, 3DS Max, Sketchup, Rhino and Solidworks (Beta). The company is just one step closer to controlling all CAD software through multi-touch applications. Check out the video above for a demo on the app.