AllModern | Architechnophilia Competition

AllModern has partnered with architechnophilia for a fantastic offer, a chance to win an Alessi Mediterrano multipurpose container.


To enter this competition simply add a comment with your name, email address, occupation, and location. The winner will be selected at random and notified by email, and your name published in a future edition.

Information received will not be stored or passed on to anyone else; rather we just want to know a little more about our viewers. Competition closes 20 July 2009.

Prefab 20*20

Introducing PREFAB 20*20: Visions For 400 Square Foot Homes, an International Open Ideas Competition. Open to all designers, architects, engineers, artists and students around the world, PREFAB 20*20 challenges you to propose a free-standing, prefab dwelling unit for a footprint no more than 400sf (37.5sm) in an urban setting anywhere in the world. Fit for two adults, its basic program shall include sleeping, bathing, cooking, living, working/studying, and storage areas.

And who said Prefab is dead? I guess they didn't get the memo

on the boards: Crystal Clear

Danish architects C.F.Møller and Norwegian practice Kristin Jarmund Arkitekter have won a competition to design a series of office towers in Oslo dubbed the Crystal Clear due to resemblance to stacked glazed boxes.

on the boards: Make it Right

Frank Gehry has proposed a multi-family residence for the Make it Right foundation, a charity founded by actor Brad Pitt to develop new housing typologies for the hurricane-devastated Lower 9th Ward district of New Orleans.

on the boards: London School of Economics

Irish architecture firm O’Donnell & Tuomey has won the RIBA-organized design contest for a new $35.6 million student center at the London School of Economics.

House of the Week 030: Brosmith House

The 4,500 sq ft Brosmith residence located in Beverly Hills, California was designed by SPF:a [Studio Pali Fekete: architects] as separate living pods along a central spine to capture uninterrupted views of the San Fernando Valley below.

Della Valle Bernheimer

From the creative foment of Brooklyn comes Della Valle Bernheimer, a young design firm committed to new forms of collaborating.

blog wunderlust: 3 July 2009

Mousavi the architect | US Housing Awards | Johnston Marklee interview | the architecture of video games | the bathroom reinvented | tipsy in Shanghai | 22% of Game Show Audience Members Think Gehry Can Fly | Fighting back | a model for our times | toothpick city | green roof law grows |

British Pavilion - Shanghai Expo

Thomas Heatherwick has recently released images for the British pavilion for the 2010 Shanghai Exposition. The six-storey pavilion under the theme "Better City, Better Life" is pierced by 60,000 transparent rods that will illuminate the interior of the pavilion with natural light during the day, whilst at night, transporting artificial light from the inside to the exterior, allowing the structure to glow.

on the boards: Coomba Park House

Proposal for a weekend house built on the edge of a lake in Australia by Neeson Murcutt Architects

Up to 35: a competition

OLIAROS, a young property development company, is calling architects up to 35 years old to submit proposals for the construction of a student housing unit in Kerameikos and Metaxourgeio (KM), an area in the historic centre of Athens, Greece.The aim of the competition is to encourage creativity among the next generation of designers while supporting architectural research and the implementation of contemporary architecture projects in Greece. The competition seeks to elicit designs which explore new ideas on urbanism and rethink existing housing models for communities.

for more

House of the Week 029: Lake House

This copper clad weekend home on Mercer Island, Washington by architects Hutchison + Maul makes use of the stunning view with the sight lines it creates perched high above the water's edge like a telescope balancing on staggered pilotis.

Beyond Media 2009 ::: Urban Visions

The final contents of the URBAN VISIONS exhibition can be seen online. The exhibition aims at testifying the ability some cities had in seeing their transformations in perspective, in looking "beyond". The observed cities are Helsinki, Milan, Medellín, Zaragoza, Belgrade, Turin, New Orleans, Paris, Bologna and Mumbai, as part of a wider survey which considered, for example, the problematic case of Beijing. The exhibition will be open to the public for the whole duration of the BEYOND MEDIA festival at July 9-17 at 5 pm with an introduction by the curator, Michele Bonino.

Grand Expansion

Proposals for King Abdallah's grand expansion of the Haram Mosque in the Holy city of Makkah

green convention

Follow the architects LMN, as they tour the 1,200,000 sq.ft Vancouver Convention Centre, in British Columbia, Canada

Koolhaas Video

on the boards: Wolfsburg plaza

anOtherArchitect, in collaboration with landscape architects TopoTek1 and structural engineers Bollinger+Grohmann have recently released designs for a proposed roofed pedestrian walkway in Wolfsburg next to Zaha Hadid´s Phaeno building

on the boards: Tallinn City Hall

The Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) has been awarded first place in the design competition for a new City Hall in Tallinn, Estonia. Like most projects by BIG the architecture is derived by rationalised organisational principle, this time to maximize natural lighting by breaking up the building function into small blocks - this allows for courtyards to be created at various levels as well open up the ground floor as an extension of the city

on the boards: House of Art & Culture

The competition entry for a House of Arts and Culture to be built in Beirut, Lebanon by Latvian studio NRJA (No Rules, Just Architecture). The design aims at being a tapestry of the city, giving a modern view of the different national, cultural and religious traditions.

previously

House of the Week 028: Desert Nomad House

Built along the base of a mountain range in Tucson, Arizona the Desert Nomad House by architect Rick Joy is composed of a cluster of three vividly rusted metal boxes arranged around particular views. The interior of the boxes in contrast to the harshness of the desert climate, are finished with soft maple floors and wall panelling exuding a human comfort.

housing solutions??

The closing of Kaufmann Design, for many has signalled the end of pre-fabs primordial return. Prefab had returned to the pages of flashy architectural journals as the fix to both the global demand for housing - affordable or otherwise, as well a means to green the way we construct our houses by reducing waste, and a host of extras that could be added - solar panels, grey water systems, etc. But perhaps others took it a bit too far - a recent entry of a pre-fab house by Daniel Libeskind puts into disrepute the eco-credibility of many prefabricated houses whilst mocking his endeared portfolio.
Many argue that a business model geared towards those financially equipped to afford a free standing single family residence on a self-owned property, like the David Adjaye designed Ed's Shed, was at the core of the demise. Added that single family houses generally run counter to the eco-practice in favour of density. The pre-fabricated house ran the course of most toys of the affluent, now being put down to rest.

In Jamaica prefabricated or prefab is often interchangeable with the term pre-cast since much of the work is typically made from pre-cast concrete. Added it is also synonymous with large housing estates built for low-income families. The use of pre-fab, has unfortunately been associated with poor quality, a stigma due mostly to its cost-effectiveness than it's performance.

Manley Meadows, Jamaica

However in these two opposing markets, of differing construction the solution may conceivably lie. The parting prize for Kaufmann and her cohorts may be the lessens shared with her neighbours from the Caribbean - providing a prefabricated housing solution that is economically built and simultaneously attractive to an upwardly mobile market. A task unachieved by precast. Furthermore the variety of options that make them uniquely customizable, caters nicely to the desire of the individual.

previously

Architect David Ling at home in his New York City loft in Manhattan.

MVRDV

A cinematic portrait of the Dutch architecture firm MVRDV including interviews with directors Winy Maas, Jacob van Rijs, and the owners of the Didden Village house, and mentions of the works Westerdokeiland, Rotterdam Market Hall, Parkrand and others.