May 31, 2012

On the Boards : Buffalo School of Medicine


(c)HOK

International architecture firm HOK has been selected to design the new University at Buffalo (UB) School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences on its downtown campus. Located at the centre of the region’s emerging bio-sciences corridor, the new transit-oriented medical school development will anchor a lively, urban mixed-use district on campus and bring 1,200 students, faculty and staff downtown.

On the Boards ::: Al Ain stadium

© MZ Architects

Sunken into the cooler depth of the desert sand, the Al Ain stadium, designed by MZ Architects emerging from the ground like a hidden treasure. The mountain provides backdrop for the stadium and allows for the gathering of a large number of visitors in the heart of the vast landscape.

May 30, 2012

House of the Week 143: Mop House

images © nelson garrido

The Mop house is a 1300m2 single family residence in Al-Nuzha,Kuwait designed by AGi architects. At a cost of €1.2 million, the house is composed of two curved wall volumes that sweep and overlap mimicking the motions of a mop, twisting and revealing to form an open air courtyard. More via

May 28, 2012

blog wunderlust : 28th May 2012

I want to see the traces, stains and dirt of my work, the layering of erased lines, errors and failures, the repeated re-tracings on the drawings, and the collage of corrections, additions and eliminations on the page that i am writing….These traces help me feel the continuity and purposefulness of the work, to dwell in the work, and to grasp the multiplicity, the plasticity as it were, of the task.
Juhani Pallasmaa (The Thinking Hand)

That Awkward Moment When You’re Not Invited to the Opening of Your Own Building | Frank Lloyd Wright Sketch Misinterpreted? | Costa Rica Architectural Firm Building Energy Efficient Homes To Combat Rising Electricity Rates | RIBA Falls Short on BIM, Say U.K. Architects | Kanye West hired OMA to design a temporary polyhedral pavilion | interactive map showing the location of Banksy's artworks | mid century (garage) door |


last word: trust me I'm an (unlicensed) architect and other sh*t architects say (part 1)

May 25, 2012

Paris 2030


Winy Maas director of MVRDV talks about the design philosophy their vision of greater Paris 2030 that was presented to the Economic and Social Council of France. More

Studio Banana Tv:::Vittorio Magnago Lampugnani

Studio Banana TV interviews architect Vittorio Magnago Lampugnani professor of History of Urban Design at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. He also has his own architectural practices, one in Milan (Studio di Architettura) the other in Zurich (Baukontor Architekten).

May 24, 2012

On the Boards : Museum of Concrete Art & Design

(c)Stanton Williams

The winning competition entry by Stanton Williams Architects for the Museum of Concrete Art and Design to be located in Ingolstadt, Germany. The museum retrofits a disused brick foundry maintaining the primary volume as an exhibition space. The in situ concrete extension contains the ancillary spaces and specialized areas – small exhibition rooms, foyer, café and services.

May 23, 2012

House of the Week 142: Corallo House

(c)Paz Architects

The Corallo House in Santa Rosalia, Guatemala city, Guatemala designed by Paz Architects is a three level concrete residence completed in 2011. Located in a dense hillside forest the penetrates the home, merging nature into the daily activities of the users. The glass façades reinforce the connection to the landscape. The main structural element is fair-faced concrete that bears the texture of the formwork, creating a dialogue between the man-made and the natural.

May 21, 2012

Blog Wunderlust : 21st May 2012

The world is how you see it. Don't let anyone else's image of it determine yours.
Farshid Moussavi


From Bauhaus to Rundhaus | Silent World: What Makes A City A City | Marina Abramovic Institute in Hudson by OMA | Archifocus Awards | Work/life/work balance | 2nd Annual Small Project Award Winners | Calling All Women: Finding the Forgotten Architect | Now towering over London's Olympic Park: 'The Godzilla of public art'| Rehabilitating Vacant Lots Improves Urban Health and Safety | After the Meltdown: Where does Architecture go from here? | A Miniature City Built with Metal Typography |

last word: Bold, frank criticism can only nourish architecture

May 18, 2012

Sustainable Gothenburg

Swedish city Gothenburg faces a challenge comparable in size with the industrial revolution: to become a sustainable city. Kjellgren Kaminsky architecture, in collaboration with a team of local volunteers, have created a vision for a sustainable Gothenburg.

Blogging the Future


Architect Louis Kahn, was known best for his design of the National Assembly Building in Bangladesh.

sLAB Costa Rica: Recycling Centre in Nosara


NYIT architecture students want to help build a recycling center they designed in Costa Rica, and fund a documentary film about it. More regarding this initiative

May 17, 2012

Call for Submissions: SHIFT

Call for submissions: North Carolina State University's Student ASLA Chapter seeks submissions for it's 2nd annual professional-reviewed landscape architecture student journal, SHIFT: process. Recognizing that students represent the next generation of leaders and design innovators, SHIFT provides a scholarly and provocative forum for professional-reviewed student research into emerging issues at the forefront of landscape architecture theory and practice. SHIFT fosters creative interaction across disciplinary boundaries and raise awareness of emerging trends within academic and professional communities. SHIFT: process will build upon SHIFT: infrastructure, the winner of the 2011 Student ASLA Award of Excellence in Communications, by focusing on new ways of thinking about the design process.

How can we engage the designer, the community, and ecology in the process of design?
What does this process look like? Where does it happen?
How do these processes improve on current techniques?

For detailed submission requirements and for more information

On the Boards : Bauhaus Museum

images Courtesy of Pedro Monteiro, Rodrigo Cruz, and Sérgio Silva

The winning competition entry for the New Bauhaus Museum proposed for Weimar, Germany designed by Pedro Monteiro, Rodrigo Cruz, and Sérgio Silva. The enclosed mass of the exhibition areas of the museum are organized around and in contrast to the openness of the courtyard. The design proposes the use of the geothermal mass to reduce the need for insulation and mechanical control of the temperature.

May 15, 2012

New Work : Ten Bangkok

images via gotarch
Designed by CASE Studio (Community Architects for Shelter & Environment) the group takes a humanitarian and anthropological approach to creating appropriate housing in informal settlements. The projects undertaken by this collective often involve community members as participants in the process of improving their shelter and environment from community surveying to group meetings and workshops. This alternative housing option for the middle class, features 10 units for a variety of persons including some of the architects. The volumes are staggered, interspersed with gardens and courtyards creating common spaces for physical and visual respite and blurring public/private boundaries. The process, as well as the aesthetic has conjured a community identity and a relationship between dwelling and context - the result is an architecture that is the fruit of cooperative design where the architects are also the clients; the clients are also the architects

80*120 Workshop

Over the month of October 2010, 28 participants in the "80*120" workshop produced11 street furniture items were made from pallets. The self-build workshop organized by Izmo was targeted to students and professionals in the field of architecture and design. The project was to make outdoor furniture within the urban redevelopment of an abandoned green area, "di pallet In the pallet."

Guided by a design process and theory, the project has focused on the disclosure of reuse and method of self-build in order to make sustainable and environmentally friendly outdoor furniture for the public space. The design process was characterized by the following phases: theory, design, construction, installation in public space.

more

May 14, 2012

Call for Abstracts - Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative


The Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative (CUDC) at Kent State University invites writers, designers, artists and thinkers to submit abstracts for Volume 5 of their annual publication, Urban Infill. This journal examines themes in contemporary urban design, architecture, and planning and has in past volumes addressed shrinking cities, temporary urbanism, urban hydrology, and storytelling in an urban context.

Volume 5 is focused on diagrams. We invite examples and perspectives on diagramming and its place in urban design practice and processes. We are particularly interested in the intents and agendas behind various forms of diagramming within the following framework. Submissions may correspond to any of these six (6) themes:

  • Defining the Diagram
  • Meaning | Function
  • Translation | Interpretation
  • Vagueness | Suggestion
  • Composition | Narrative
  • Exchange | Engagement


Abstracts due no later that 8th June 2012, for submission requirements and dates, refer to the Infill website

blog wunderlust : 14th May 2012

Living a life is like constructing a building: if you start wrong, you'll end wrong.
Maya Angelou

Boring still life objects turned into intriguing erotic images | Love it or hate it: Toronto’s OCAD building | Walk [your city] | Prefab houses... for birds | Where the Heart Is — This Sri Lankan architect knows | Amid the Art Fair Rush: “Expanding Museums” at Frieze Talks | Google SketchUp sold to Trimble Navigation | Inside the Kowloon Walled City | Tadao Ando Book Clock | The Promise Of The $300 House And Other Reverse Innovations | Want Maximum Value? Hire An Architect |

last word: Beware Of 'Fake' Architects!

May 11, 2012

DATE WITH AN ARCHITECT, a short film


This is a collaboration between University of Houston College of Architecture and School of Communication for class project. Story by Bundharic Taout, Screenplay by Wells Barber & Bundharic Taout.

Discotecture: nightclub of the future



VICE has recently premiered its first-ever nightlife and design-centric series, Discotecture, featuring David Byrne, Andre Balazs, Peter Gatien, Kenny Scharf, Eric Goode, Michael Musto, Amy Sacco, Steve Lewis, and other icons of New York nightlife. The series follows five young designers from different disciplines as they come together to create their vision of the "nightclub of the future" and get the best advice from the best in the industry. The designers' nightclub were brought to life, opening its doors to the public last month at the Milan International Design Fair.

May 9, 2012

[In]Closure: Seattle Urban Intervention Competition

French practice ABF Final proposal for the Seattle Urban Intervention Competition. The design envisions an interactive wall around a forested landscape that is both flexible and dynamic, embracing social life in the city at multiple scales.

House of the Week 141: Lakeshore View House

(c)Amir Sultan
The Lakeshore View House is one of a number of residences built along the Sentosa Cove in Singapore, facing the sea with the mountains in the background. The 720m2 house by Aamer Architects is designed in a simple yet contemporary language that bonds and coexist with the natural surrounding context - a truly modern tropical aesthetic. The open spaces which encourage natural ventilation alleviating the humid climate whilst offering residents vistas across the water.

May 8, 2012

Interiors : The Brick Loft

This project entailed the conversion of a former industrial office located in Joo Chiat in Singapore, into an airy & chic apartment. Designed by architects & cross disciplinary practice, FARM the spaces of the loft are bathed in light against the stark white wall surfaces and steel floated concrete floors. Conceptually the apartment borrows a localized aesthetic seen in textured ventilation blocks, painted brick and exposed, unrendered structure.

New Work ::: The Jesolo Lido Village

 photographs (c) Roland Halbe
The Jesolo Lido is a residential project on the Adriatic coast coast of Italy designed by architects Richard Meier & Partners. Completed in the 2007 the scheme is comprised of a number of facilities including a number of 3 story townhouses, a hotel and condominiums facing the sea. The architectural language marries the unpigment Meier-esque palette with a decidedly Hellenistic aesthetic.

May 7, 2012

blog wunderlust : 7th May 2012

[Architecture should answer] the needs of the people, not the needs of luxury.
Hannes Meyer

Bauhaus-inspired building blocks | The House That Doe Built | Aga Khan Award ups prize fund to $1m | Meier Tapped for Office Project in Trendy Rio Neighborhood | Jimenez Lai: Not just the comic book architect | Trailing a Master Photographer in Los Angeles | In Praise of Impermanence | One chair a week | Lego Architecture with Rem Koolhaas | The Next Generation of BIM | Installations: Cornelia Konrads | architectural souvenirs | Zaha's Maxxi museum faces closure |

last word: 5 Questions for Bjarke Ingels

The blog wunderlust is a weekly round up summarizing the architectural highlights, news and web links, that don't otherwise fit the format of this blog. If you have any to share feel free to drop me an email