Livestream + Live4Space are co-hosting a live interview with Daniel Libeskind today at 2:00PM ET (GMT -5). Thanks to the Livestream platfom, Libeskind will not only discuss his role on the WTC master plan, but will also answer questions by the audience. All you have to do is go to the streaming website here and send your questions during the interview.

Joshua Prince Ramus is one of the best architects I’ve meet, and also a very good speaker. I think most of you have already seen his presentation at TED back in 2006, where he presented the Seattle Central Library, a powerful talk on which he talked about the role of the architects in the process, as an editing/team approach rather than authorship. We interviewed Joshua back in 2008, where we first heard about his position regarding the separation of conception and execution on architecture, as architects became the “artists” leaving the execution to engineers, which can be seen on the first minutes of his talk at TEDx Dallas posted above, before explaining how the Wyly Theatre re interpreted the typical theatre programatic configuration.

As I told you on our previous post, the summer installation competition held by the MoMA and the P.S.1 is a platform for young architects, and that’s why we are presenting you all the entries for this year. You can read our whole P.S.1 competition coverage here.

We continue with William O’Brien Jr, who has been very related to the academy and is currently a professor at the MIT School of Architecture and Planning and he also runs his own practice in Cambridge, MA.

His proposal for the summer installation, Weathers Permitting, constructs an elevated boardwalk with a topology which collects water, which varies or evaporates depending on the current weather at the location. The action of the weather over the boardwalk reminds me of the weathering effect described by Mohsen Mostafavi on his book On Weathering: The Life of Buildings in Time.

Last friday we presented you the results of P.S.1 summer installation competition, held by the MoMA and the P.S.1. As the idea of the competition is to identify and showcase young practices, here at ArchDaily we’d like to introduce you not only the winner as we did last Friday with SO-IL’s Pole Dance, but also the other contestants, as their proposals are good examples of what young architects are thinking these days. So in the following articles we are going to feature the entries by Freecell, William O’Brien Jr, Easton + Combs and BIG.

We start with Freecell, a design and fabrication practice based in Brooklyn, NY, directed by partners Lauren Crahan and John Hartmann. The firm specializes on small scale commissions, as you can see on the many projects featured at their website.

Their proposal “Cumulus” explores pneumatic structures, which respond to the weather changing its configuration between sunny and cloudy days:

This video clearly explains the concept for SO-IL‘s winning proposal for the P.S.1 summer installation we presented you yesterday. Now it is easier to understand the concept proposed by Pole Dance, encouraging people to move the structure to create a dynamic space.

Since 2000, the MoMA and the P.S.1 have been running a competition under their Young Architects Program, inviting each year a group of emerging architects to experiment with new shapes and materials, resulting in a summer installation at the P.S.1.

Interesting projects have come out of this competition, such as the Public Farm (PF1) by Work AC in 2008, and Afterparty by MOS last year. And today, the winning proposal for 2010 has been announced: Pole Dance by Brooklyn based SO-IL (Solid Objectives Idenburg Liu) a practice ran by Florian Idenburg and Jing Liu.

Conceived as a participatory environment that reframes the conceptual relationship between humankind and structure, Pole Dance is an interconnected system of poles and bungees whose equilibrium is open to human action and environmental factors. Throughout the courtyard, groups of 25-foot-tall poles on 12 x 12-foot grids connected by bungee cords whose elasticity will cause the poles to gently sway, creating a steady ripple throughout the courtyard space.

To explain this to one of my friends, I used a fabric and a few sharp pencils (so they stick to the fabric, and the eraser in the back sticks to the table) and we started to move it around… I´m pretty sure that the built installation will be very fun to visit. As you can see on the renderings, the net waves around, and touches the soil at the pool in the center, with a few holes that let you pass by.

SO-IL worked with Buro Happold for this structure, and with Sciame for cost analysis, to keep the installation on a $85,000 budget.

After the break, more images and a video from SO-IL’s winning proposal.

After “The Function of Ornament“, Farshid Moussavi comes again with another useful book published by ACTAR and Harvard GSD.

The book is the result of a series of seminars Moussavi taught over 2 years at the GSD, and in over 500 pages it describes the most common material systems and its sub-systems: Grids and Frames, Vaults, Domes, Folded Plates, Shells, Tensile Membranes and Pneumatic Membranes.

Each of these systems are presented first on its most basic unit, which is then tessellated into three  directions (horizontal, vertical, curved) exploring the full potential of these combinations, either trough completed buildings, proposals or just proposed structures by the author and her team.

For example, the Diagrid (interconnected support beams that form a diagonal grid) one of the systems included in the book, starts with the basic unit (as seen on a photo below) with a description of the forces and how flexible the system is in terms of scale, angles, depth, profile, etc. Then, it is described in its horizontal tessellations exemplified through the Smithsonian Reynolds Center for American Art by Foster + Partners, the Milan Fair Center by Fuksas, or the Great Court at the British Museum by F+P. On the vertical, we have 30st Mary  Axe by F+P, the Hearst Tower by F+P, the Lotte Super Tower Hotel by SOM, Elisabeth House by FOA and even the Glass Pavilion by Bruno Taut, among others.  Every example has very good drawings and explanations (see photos below).

Also, the matrix incorporates affect, defined by Deleuze “as the pre-personal intensities transmitted by forms”, ranging from freedom to centrality, and other several terms that further extend our conception of these systems.

This exercise, starting from the basic unit and then expanded according to its possibilities, repeated in a rigorous matrix for all the systems, makes this book a valuable resource for almost everyone: from students, to architects who need to deal with a structure in early stages of design, up to someone dealing with parametric tools for complex structures, because at the end the systems are the same: from Bruno Taut to SOM, to FOA.

I have been following CEBRA for a while, and when I noticed that Mikkel Frost (one of the partners) was going to lecture at CIP Talks, I finally saw an opportunity to interview him to understand more about the “CEBRA style”. His presentation was a blast. Mikkel was so passionate about their work, always looking for new formulas on each project but still maintaining a unique touch…. as a cebra: always the same, but always different.

Our friends from CEBRA, with the The Danish Foundation For Culture And Sports Facilities, are developing a series of “igloos” for sports and culture in Denmark.

The concept is to create a multi an unheated use dome, for sports and cultural acts as you can see on the sketches below. The dome covers a 1,650sqm area on one single space subdivided by smaller pieces. The main structure that allows this single space consists on large laminated wood beams as you can see on the images. Over this structure, a series of sheets cover the space leaving space for ventilation.

This dome is being built in Hundige (Greve municipality), and it will be replicated in other danish cities.

Stay tuned for a CEBRA surprise later this afternoon.

More images after the break:

2009 has been a great year for ArchDaily, and all thanks to you: We have tripled our visits, great debates have been conducted on the articles, our Facebook page has grown to almost 40k fans, our Twitter community is very active and growing fast… and what a better way to celebrate this with an award chosen by you.

For this, we have partnered with Floornature to bring you the Building of the Year 2009 award, an award given by our readers to the best buildings featured during the last year at ArchDaily. Your nominations will result in a short list of 5 buildings per category, after which you will vote to select the best buildings.

We have chosen Facebook and Twitter as the authentication platforms for the award, so we can assure that the nominating and voting processes are conducted by the community. You can nominate once per day, so you can propose your favorite projects from Jan 18th to Feb 7th, after which 5 buildings per category will continue to the voting round, between Feb 8th and until Feb 28th, after which the winners will be announced.

Once again I’d like to thank all our readers for your support in 2009, and rest assure that we are working on new ways to improve ArchDaily in 2010.

You can start nominating at the awards page.

Rules:

As announced last week, we have the winners of the Hybrids Series contest, thanks to our friends from a+t.

The Metropol Parasol in Sevilla, Spain, is the result of a competition in 2004, awarded to Jürgen Mayer Architects.

The sinuous structure is proposed to be a landmark in the middle of the old city fabric, while serving as an observation deck to discover the upper level of the compact urban context, a new view of the city. The project has been criticized by the citizens because of the contrast with the existing constructions, as you can see on the renderings.

Architecture photographer Pedro Pegenaute shared with us some photos of the current status of this impressive structure, from which we can see a preview of what the observation deck will be:

OMA in association with Leigh & Orange Architects have won the international competition for a 28,000m2 campus for the Chu Hai College of Higher Education in Hong Kong.

The project consists on two 8-stories tall parallel volumes with a rich public space in between, housing three faculties (arts, science and engineering, business), with 10 departments and 2 research centers.

What I like about this project is how OMA incorporated the multidisciplinary focus of this college, trough a rich public space between these two volumes, a topography with library, cafeteria, gym and lecture theaters, which given its ramps, steps and shaded platforms, generate several different spaces for socializing, meeting, studying, etc. So, students from this 3 faculties will flow into this central public space, mixing together.

This project is led by Rem Koolhaas, General Manager of OMA Asia (Hong Kong) David Gianotten and associate Chris van Duijn.

More images after the break:

Morphosis Architects is currently completing a massive project in Shanghai: The Headquarters and offices for Giant Group, including residence for the chairman & all Giant Group employees, hotel, training center and clubhouse, with a total of 258,300 sqf (23,996 sqm).

Thom Mayne’s architecture has pushed building techniques in order to take his organics form to reality, and I think that the best way to understand his projects is not through renders or even drawings, but by watching the structure and the construction progress.

After the break drawings and several photos during the construction phase of this almost completed project in China:

As you may have noticed we have been featuring many books for the last 2 weeks, and now I´m proud to announce the launch of the Books & Magazines section at ArchDaily: weekly doses of the best architectural publications from around the world. We will give you our opinion and the hard facts, always with photos of the inside so you can have a better idea before adding a new book to your bookshelf.

In order to make this a better launch, we have partnered with a+t to give you the chance to win one of the 3 packs of the full Hybrids series (that’s 3 books each), an excellent learning resource on mixed-use projects as you can read on my previous review of Hybrids III.

How to win? You have 2 ways to enter:

Every time my architect friends drop by my office, I have to hide the a+t books and magazines because they always want to borrow them… And I don´t blame them, as the publications by this spanish editorial are useful tools for the architects.

The D Book, Density, HoCo and the Hybrids Series dissect some of the most iconic built/ongoing projects in the world, presented in full detail.

Hybrids III is the last one in the Hybrids series, covering residential mixed-use buildings. The book starts with a brief comparison between hybrid buildings and social condenser built during 1945-1975 to introduce the subject, like the John Hancock Center in Chicago by SOM or the Unite d’Habitation in France by Le Corbusier.

After this historic context, there is a good selection 0f 20 contemporary residential mixed-use buildings, such as the Sky Village by ADEPT + MVRDV, the St Jakob Turm by Herzog & de Meuron, the Market Hall by MVRDV (under construction), the Porta Fira Towers by Toyo Ito + b720, the Beekman tower by Frank Ghery, De Rotterdam by OMA (under construction), the Aqua Tower by Studio Gang and more.

The editorial seems to work very close to the offices, as the detail of the projects are amazing: detailed drawings, large photos, good diagrams, size comparisons, and all the facts you need to completely understand these projects as you can see on the photos after the break:

In my opinion, Portugal has been producing a constant amount of high quality architecture, very well executed. Unlike countries in which there are a few “gems” and the rest doesn´t matter, the average level is very good as you can see on our Portugal section at ArchDaily, ranging from small houses to public projects.

And thanks to photographer Fernando Guerra, and his brother Sergio (FG+SG), we’ve had the chance to see it on ArchDaily with very good photos.

His website Ultimas Reportagens has become the most extensive archive on Portuguese contemporary architecture (385 projects, 20,000 images), and has been recently redesigned in order to improve the browsing experience. Also, as you can see on the interview, Fernando has worked very close with Alvaro Siza, documenting 51 of his projects so far. Most of this work can be see at the recent book “Álvaro Siza: The Function of Beauty“.

Fernando and Sergio are also into the publishing business, you can buy their books directly from their store.

Now, to the interview:

1. When and how did you start photographing architecture?

“Architecture continually informs and is informed by its modes of representation and construction, perhaps never more so than now, when digital media and emerging technologies are rapidly expanding what we conceive to be formally, spatially, and materially possible”

- Lisa Iwamoto

During 2009 I had the chance to visit Iwamoto Scott in San Francisco, a practice lead by Lisa Iwamoto and Craig Scott. At their office I could see first hand the study models for some of the projects the firm has been involved, such as a mockup for their P.S.1 proposal, Coral Reef, or the lightweight wooden pieces that structure the massive Voussoir Cloud installation at SCI Arc. These small pieces had a lot to tell, not only about the specific project they were part of, but also their iterations.

The firm has a recognized expertise in digital fabrication, presented by Lisa Iwamoto at the AIA Convention 2009 during the Emerging Voices forum, and also on her book “Digital Fabrication” edited by Princeton Architectural Press under their Architecture Brief series.

The book presents in a clear way (with very good examples) the methods behind digital fabrication: sectioning, tessellating, folding, contouring, and forming. For most of us these words are pretty much obvious and we often use them as design principles of our projects. But to get the full scope of what they really mean, or for those that want to start understanding -and using- them, this is a recommended reading.