December 27, 2008

Lifecycle Challenge 3


Lifecycle building is the design of building materials, components, information systems and construction management practices to create buildings that facilitate and anticipate future changes to and eventual adaptation or dismantling for recovery of all systems, components, and materials.

view project pdf

December 26, 2008

blog wunderlust: 26 December 2008 (boxing day)


FLW movie in the works | Brad builds 6 in New Orleans | Zaha designed Chanel tour cancelled | New Hatch Series Archinect T-Shirts | It was fun (until the money ran out) | Sorry we missed the party - we were working | Sou Fujimoto interview | Pope Benedict goes green

December 24, 2008

what hasn't Foster designed?


Recently Dezeen previewed a collaboration between Lord Foster and Aston Martin, for a competition to design a new double decker bus. This adds to the impressive line of previously designed items like a lightweight chair, a desk and a table, some door hardware, and yes a yacht.

house of the week: 003 | Terrace House

"the house that is not really there"
Senan Abdelqaber has designed, with this house, an approach that is nothing more than a platform bracing the horizon to a vast landscape. The entry below leads to an intimate yet modern domicile that gently unfolds space by the interplay of natural and man-made materials, soft against hard, transparent versus opaque, light and shadow.

December 23, 2008

Private Library


Private Library from A Space In Time on Vimeo.

A short film about the design of a writing studio in the woods of Long Island by architect Andrew Berman. The film, while informative conveys the tranquility of the building by simply inviting you to enter and experience the pace of the writer's world inside.

Directed & Produced by David Vegezzi
Cinematography by Ben Wolf
Edited by Carsten Becker
Music by Circle of Sound

Museum of Islamic Arts



I.M.Pei has recently completed the Museum of Islamic Arts in Doha, Qatar. The museum aims to showcase the complexity and diversity of the arts of Islamic culture and be an international centre for learning and creativity.

The building is defined by the main volume - an abstracted pyramid, common in Pei's work, made up of large cubic forms. The 35,000 sq.m mass, rendered with quarry stone exterior, appears to majestically rise out of the sea. The interiors however lack the simple elegance of the elevations, appearing overworked and dated.

more images here
via

December 22, 2008

GREAT PLACES AWARDS 2009- Call for Entries



Celebrating excellent places and how people inhabit them

Unique in the ever-expanding universe of award programs, our concern is for good places and how people inhabit them. We seek entries of exemplary work, inviting participation from a range of design and research disciplines, recognizing projects whose significance extends beyond any one profession or field. Projects should emphasize a link between research and practice, demonstrating how an understanding of human interaction with place can inspire design.

Awards recognize
Design: Excellence in human environments, completed projects.
Planning: Proposals for future design, use, or management of a place.
Research: Projects investigating relationships between design, human behavior, culture, and experience.
Book: Recently published books advancing the critical understanding of place and design of exceptional environments.

December 20, 2008

tower-bridge proposal - 3XN

As part of the master plan for Copenhagen, 3XN created this hybrid proposal a multi-story facility and a bridge spanning the harbour (between Marmormolen with Langeliniekaj). The towers and the bridge constitute one single dynamic movement, swooping across the harbour defining the entry into a new revitalised waterfront.
The tower-bridge competition was won by Steven Holl (seen here) with a far more austere structure.

Mr. Glasses



comedic criticism of mid century modernists, with a lead character that resembles Philip Johnson

episodes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

December 19, 2008

blog wunderlust: 19 December 2008

no prefab buyers | Abandoned boxes | air-conditioned beaches | why architects wear black | REX doll house | some stunning photographs of Piano's Academy of Sciences | Top 10 books for Xmas

also for more architecture news try Alltop (although they don't have us listed, it is still worth a mention)

December 18, 2008

a+t


The Public Chance – New Urban Landscapes

This compendium of contemporary urban landscapes is a monograph and a commentary of modern regenerative sites. The selection of works, mostly European, exhibit a generation of architects concerned with the spaces of public gathering and activity as well as using these spaces as critical constructs responding to our changing climate. The standardized visual analysis becomes an integral tool for understanding that allows a comparative reading, despite the difference in scale, of the programs that make up the varied urban spaces. The beauty of Chance is the richness of the projects spoken through descriptive illustrations of detailed drawings and vibrant photographs.


the Public Chance is a visual analysis of 30 Urban Landscapes of opportunity. The projects selected are grouped according to scene of origin; industrial areas, peripherial voids, infrastructures and waterfronts. Each intervention undergoes a layer analysis of water, vegetation, buildings, routes, rooms and activities.


This is the first book by a+t architecture publishers in the In common series, which came about in the 2005 in the pages of a+t magazine to express our concern for the good use and design of common spaces and was developed over two years, in four issues.

The Public Chance offers a renewed vision of some of these projects, now finished, and incorporates new interventions, all of them under thematic analysis, characteristic of a+t publications.


more images


A bus boater's stop - not your conventional architectural typology, a proposal for a covered rest stop in Finland by Rintala Eggertsson Architects

via

December 17, 2008

house of the week: 002 | casa Bellicini



A modern house in Bienno, Italy by Architect Massimo Nodari. The building is arranged on three levels with two distinct volumes designed to break up the large foot print of the building seen against the domestic scale the context, and angled to direct the views towards the landscape.


more

December 16, 2008



Interview with Office dA

December 15, 2008

Triangle Project


Architectural powerhouse Herzog de Meuron, still riding the wave of popularity from the Bird's Nest - the Olympic Stadium in Beijing have recently attempted to remake the pyramids.....only thinner! So thin to prevent shadows being cast on nearby buildings, additionally to aid this eco-structure's ability to generate solar. Le Projet Triangle, as it is referred is a meant to be a vertical city combining a variety of programmes including retail, residential and offices.

more

December 11, 2008




Video-interview with Spanish architects Emilio Tuñón and Luis Moreno Mansilla (Mansilla & Tunon) by Internet-based TV station Studio Banana.tv

December 10, 2008

Glenn wins AIA Gold


Australian Architect Glenn Murcutt has been awarded the coveted Gold Medal by the American Institute of Architecture for 2009 for
"the depth of his work and the breadth of his influence, which echoes well beyond Australia, his place of practice"

December 9, 2008

New Feature: House of the Week

I have always argued that a house is the most difficult of typologies. The types and styles of houses are as varied as the colours in the sky. And nothing prepares you for the changing whims of a client wanting more for much less, being influenced by something they saw, experienced, or simply felt. As one architect puts it,

"essentially the architect/designer simply becomes the noble scribe of space and ornamentaion of the patron...we don't actually create"


Introducing the house of the week featuring modern residences around the world that attempt to critique the way we inhabit domestic space

house of the week 001: TDA House



The TDA house by Cadaval & Sola-Morales is a three story villa facing the Mexican Pacific . The building's unusual section, with its pronounced cantilevers, seeks to maximize how it occupies the narrow lot and the views of the pacific. The walls of the villa completely open, revealing its spartan interior - a flexible space to casually accommodate any number of guests. The furniture, carefree and colourful and as much a part of the architecture plays against the robust concrete walls.

December 4, 2008


Metropolis interviews James Corner of Field Operations about the changing role of Landscape Architecture and the much touted High Line.

My Playground

The following is a trailer for My Playground, a new "film about movement in the urban space." The film will be featuring architects, philosophers, urban planners, politicians and a parkour group called Team Jiyo. The setting for the trailer is the Mountain Dwelling apartment in Copenhagen by BIG.

December 3, 2008

December 1, 2008

Housing Competition

The Housing Agency of Jamaica Limited (HAJ) invites qualified professionals to participate in an exciting regional design competition to guide the development of a large residential community in St. Elizabeth, Jamaica.

Entries will be judged by a panel of national and regional professionals and attractive prizes will be offered.

The competition will open on 1st December 2008 and participation will be subject to the payment of a non-refundable registration fee of US$200.00. The competition will culminate in a public exhibition scheduled for 27th April 2009 to 1st May 2009.

Persons and firms interested in participating in the competition are invited to peruse the Project Brief & Competition Rules that are displayed here or on the website of the Association of Commonwealth Societies of Architects in the Caribbean (www.acsac.net.) Hard copies will also be available at HAJ’s Head Office, at 13 Caledonia Avenue, St. Andrew, Kingston 5, Jamaica.

For more information

blog wunderlust: 1st December 2008


minimal mac...and not the kind you are thinking | Modernism's Monster | me want honeycomb | the Alpine capsule | Green housing: Harvard; San Diego; | Not so tolerant of Gehry's Museum of Tolerance | RIP Joern Utzon |