Massachusetts-based Peter Rose + Partners had a simple strategy for designing the Kripalu Annex, part of the largest and most established yoga retreat in North America. Rose wanted his architecture to speak to the spiritual and natural essence of yoga by creating elegant material relationships and crisp aesthetics.
More images and more about the yoga center after the break.
Using 4,000 paper cups and 15,000 staples, APHIoIDEA’s newest installation is gracefully suspended from the ceiling, creating a new spatial experience in previously un-utilized storefronts. The architectural installation is part of PHANTOM GALLERIES, an organization that places temporary installations in vacant storefront windows throughout LA to instantly form a new public art gallery.
A video, more images/diagrams and more about the installation after the break.
In the August-July 2010 edition of The Economist, Bjarke Ingels and Paul Nakazawa examined Brazil’s potential to undergo a “new urban revolution” with the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics Games. With these two major events being hosted by the same country, Brazil will need to implement long term strategies for properly equipping the areas. Yet, the real solution lies in the country’s “improvements for the large local population rather than merely servicing the temporary needs of the global tourists and the world press.”
More about the article after the break.
Set for completion this October, NORD Architecture’s Shingle House will be part of the Living Architecture vacation houses, a project aimed to enhance the public’s appreciation of architecture. For their project, the young practice responded to the site’s strong winds and incorporated a modern take on the typical shingle homes that are scattered across the area.
More images and more about the home after the break.
By studying the solstice solar angles, Benjamin Hall and Brent Vander Werf’s research project, Fishman Shade Canopy, creates a site specific geometric strategy where the canopy provides 100% shade while maintaining a visual opacity. This prototype builds upon experiments conducted throughout Hall’s Capstone project at the University of Arizona, a few years ago. After developing a warp and weft system of structural shade members, the next step of the project was to manifest those findings in a full-scale built project.
For their competition design for the Tsunami Memorial, VeeV Design has blended the built and natural environments to produce a reflective atmosphere. Contrasting the horrific magnitude of the tsunami, the memorial provides a calming essence for those who visit. “We intentionally propose a gentle recasting of memorial conventions: discrete sites of contemplation modestly submit to the power of the land itself,” explained the architects.
More about the proposal after the break.
A year ago, we featured a set of Tim Harris’ early construction photos of Jean Nouvel’s Doha Office tower previously on AD, and now photographer Nelson Garrido has shared some new shots of the 45 story cylindrical structure. The building’s dia-grid gives much character to the project, as it not only provides structural support but also gives the volume a textured appearance from far away that turns into a more delicate patterning in closer range. The facade is layered with metal brise-soleil based on a traditional Islamic pattern. The fairly standard geometry module becomes a complex visual as it is rotated and flipped to provide maximum shading for the interior of the building. In this way, the arrangement of the panels is both functional and supplies the aesthetic touch that will define the tower.
During the post-WWII era, the surge in the housing market often resulted in “faceless” suburban communities that sprang up to relieve the immediate need for housing. The cities maintained their cultural identity and rather than the suburbs infusing their new communities with commercial or cultural entities, the suburbs constantly relied on the city’s proximity for such things. As this old model is highly unsustainable and car dependent, Christoph Vogl from Cheungvogl has studied Long Island’s suburbs, in particular Hempstead, that did not grow as independent communities. He has outlined a master plan of what can be done to give Long Island the social, cultural and economic context it needs.
“Very much representing these observations, the so-thought town centres of Long Island’s communities, placed around the major traffic intersections are not occupied by cultural, commercial and social institutions, as expected from the ratio of communal identity and urban context, but by parking lots. Not some, but hectares of paring lots. Not complaining about the non-existence of urban context and real community, these vacant areas around Long Island’s “Cross roads” offer the unique chance for master planning based reconsideration of the meaning of community,” added Vogl.
Check out the steps of the master plan after the break.
Bridging the gap between the ancient city and its contemporary expansion plans, DELISABATINI Architetti’s winning proposal for the International Competition: EPK 2012 – Embankment of the River Drava redevelops the riverside of Maribor City by addressing the differneces in the contrasted site. Important interventions of the past century, such as the great bridge and the dam, have distorted the character of the medieval city, whose buildings have lost direct contact with water. As the years progressed, the city’s differing sections, such as the historic town of Lent and the edge of Tabor, have grown too separate. The proposal incorporates a uniform organizational element that responds to the different conditions but also joins the two parts to make a strong whole.
More images and more about the winning proposal after the break.
Residents are hopeful that Foreign Office Architects (FOA)’s first museum design (and the firm’s first major US building) will help Cleveland’s urban-revitalization project move forward. Farshid Moussavi of the FOA London has designed a geometric volume that dominates the Uptown area’s site, creating a bold icon for the new Museum of Contemporary Art. Prior to this, the MOCA rented a 23,000 square feet of space on the second floor of the Cleveland Play House complex, but with this 34,000 sqf new home, the museum will be able to showcase a bigger selection and accommodate more visitors.
More images, a cool video, and more about the project after the break.
When we spotted William Leddy’s (the founding principal of Leddy Maytum Stacy Architects in San Francisco) thoughts on Getting Past Green for the Architect’s Newspaper, we completely connected with his words. A few months ago, when we shared Frank Gehry’s comments about LEED, we received an overwhelming number of responses about your opinions of the rating system. Leddy exclaimed, “Let’s get past our paler notions of “green design” and stop fussing over arcane LEED points to get to the real business of fully integrating radical resource- efficiency within our concepts of design excellence. Only then can we whole-heartedly focus the transformative power of design on the greatest challenge of our generation: helping to lead our society to a prosperous, carbon-neutral future. We can afford to do nothing less.”
More about the article after the break.
It is easy to take for granted the things you grow accustomed to, but ever since the initial idea of revitalizing the High Line began sprouting up, New Yorkers have been taking full advantage of the project and loving every second spent strolling, relaxing and gazing at the West Side’s newest addition. The project has truly piqued locals and tourists’ interests as the elevated promenade is enjoyed as much today as it was on opening day over a year ago.
With such success, it is no surprise, as Kate Taylor reported for the New York Times, that the small office of the Friends of the High Line has received countless calls asking how their cities can also enjoy the High Line effect.
Chaired by Paolo Baratta, the Board of the Biennale di Venezia has awarded the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement to Rem Koolhaas. The much deserving architect has produced dozens of thought-provoking and inspirational works that constantly push the limits of the current state of architecture. His strength lies in his buildings’ strong conceptual nature that is carried through to ideas about circulation, structure and programmatic organization. ”Rem Koolhaas has expanded the possibilities of architecture. He has focused on the exchanges between people in space. He creates buildings that bring people together and in this way forms ambitious goals for architecture. His influence on the world has come well beyond architecture. People from very diverse fields feel a great freedom from his work,” explained the board.
More about the award after the break.
We all know how harmful vehicle emissions are to the environment and in the past, we’ve featured different ideas for eliminating our dependence on the car (such as Martin Angelov’s Kolelinia), but sometimes, their ideas are just that… ideas. It becomes hard to see how ideas about a city using bicycles as a main form of circulation could actually become a reality. Then, along comes Copenhagen. Check out this video we found on StreetFilms about the city’s crazy biking system and it is perfect proof that we can change our ways and be on the road to becoming a little greener in no time. While the kind of city life portrayed in the video may seem foreign to us, it is not far-fetched. If we use Copenhagen as a model, new urban design efforts can focus on incorporating more bike friendly systems that can completely change our perception of “the street.” If our visions illustrate the importance of a well-designed and developed cycling component, city planners will quickly follow suit and more cities all over the world will opt for greener transportation methods.
We shared the news of Jean Nouvel’s Serpentine Gallery with you as soon as it was completed at the beginning of July. Today, we’re featuring Jonathan Glancey’s talk with Nouvel about his red ‘sun machine’, the 10th design to grace the Serpentine’s grounds. Nouvel describes the pavilion as a “simple place” that can accommodate the needs of its users, from providing a place to sit down to the amenities for a friendly game of ping-pong.
More about the pavilion after the break.
Awarded ‘Best Future Building’ at the 2010 Scottish Design Awards, 7N Architects + RankinFraser Landscape Architecture’s Garscube Landscape Link re-joins the city’s severed connection with a pedestrian friendly solution. The project is the first step in the area’s larger revitalization plan to link the canal network and Glasgow’s City Center.
More about the projects and more images after the break.
For the Young Architects Forum Atlanta’s 10UP! National Architectue Competition, participants were challenged to create a temporary installation for Atlanta. The winning 45 ft tower, Periscope, designed by Brandon Clifford and Wes Mcgee of Matter Design Studio, is an “inhabitable installation with iconic implications to advocate bold architecture for the Atlanta community and young designers across the globe.” The designers felt the tower would create a strong marker for the city, “Through vertical expansion via the omission of a vertical restriction, this tower will engage a broader audience, inviting them to the event similar to search lights in the night sky.”
More about the tower, including lots of images and a video, after the break.
If you quickly glance at this first image of Point Supreme Architects’ newest installation, you may being wondering what that blue volume is or even wondering what could happen in that small space. But, if you’re wondering what it is made of, well, that question yields the most interesting answer. The architects teamed with two visual artists, a musician and a performance artist/choreographer to design this installation and performance piece made 100% from blue foam insulation panels!
More information about this installation and more images of the amazing foam work after the break.