Steven Holl shared with us his winning entry for the Hangzhou Normal University Performing Arts Center, Art Museum and Art Quadrangle in Hangzhou, China. The pair of buildings, situated on either side of the canal, are the heart of the new campus. Holl’s concept early on was two balanced forms, one additive as seen in the design of the Performing Arts Center, and one subtractive displayed in the design of the Art Museum. This dialogue between these two buildings, the utilization of local materials, and the carbon neutral section of the new university provides for a special moment within the campus.
Follow the break for sketches and renderings of this project.
Architects: Steven Holl Architects Location: Hanzghou, China Design Architect: Steven Holl, Li Hu, Chris McVoy Project Architect: Garrick Ambrose, Yichen Lu, Roberto Bannura Project Team: Human Wu, Guanlan Cao, Francesco Bartolozzi, Michael Rusch, Johanna Muszbek, Maxim Kolbowski Frampton, Nathalie Frankowski, Scott Fredricks, Garrett Ricciardi, Jose Carlos Quelhas, Wenny Hsu Structural Engineer: China Academy of Building Research (CABR) Acoustics Consultant: Kirkegaard Associates Sustainability Consultant: Mathias Schuler (Transsolar)
Perspective Lyric interactive installation utilized a microphone and an audio analysis algorithm, where the building deformations and figures were controlled by the audience. Utilizing the facade of ‘Celestins’, former Lyrical theater, the video-mapping production was held during the Festival of Lights in December 2010.
The ARCHI ZINES project, conceived by Elias Redstone, aims to ‘promote publishing as an arena for architectural commentary, criticism and research, and as a creative platform for new photography, illustration and design’. This online archive of international publications is in its first stages with ambitions of expanding the collection – providing an important cohesive resource for the design world.
LightHearted is the winning design for this years Times Square Valentine, an annual competition to deign and build a heart for Times Square. Designed by Freecell, a 2010 P.S.1 contestant, in collaboration with Peter Dorsey, the ten-foot diameter heart is a light weight construction, with five pairs of aluminum elliptical loops radially arranged with rotating connections. The structure is covered with an open weave red fabric that both captures and reflects light while letting wind pass through.
LightHearted is an interactive installation, six people will hold the heart up for fifteen minute intervals. The ten-day event, February 10 to February 20, will need over 2,600 volunteers to share in this collective experience.
Head to the LightHearted website and sign up for your fifteen minutes on their volunteer calendar!
Richard Meier, the architect who landed ‘the commission of the century’ and one of the New York Five, has a portfolio of pristine structures that range in scale from the Douglas House on Lake Michigan to the sprawling Getty Center in Los Angeles.
The Architecture City Guide series heads to the West Coast this week. Los Angeles area is huge and it was nearly impossible to narrow down 12 buildings for this weeks list. Here’s what we suggest visiting if you are in LA, but we want to know what additional buildings you think we should add to our list! Visit the comment section and provide your can’t miss buildings in LA.
Earlier today it was announced that OMA teamed with AMO have been commissioned to develop a new vision, Railway Vision 2020, for Hong Kong’s MTR, urban transit authority. Together they will produce new branding and identity, site analysis, sustainability research, and usage patterns studies. OMA will also be designing two prototype stations that will eventually span the entire transit network in Hong Kong. The prototype stations are expected to open before 2014.
The 20 collegiate teams chosen for the 2011 Solar Decathlon headed to Orlando, Florida last week for the International Builders’ Show where they met with media, exhibited scaled models of their current designs, and had their Design Drawings reviewed – the last stages of preparation, feedback, and red-flags prior to the September assembly at the National Mall in Washington DC.
In a strange turn of events, the National Park Service and Department of Energy decided to simultaneously announce last week that the Solar Decathlon would not be hosted at the National Mall. Contestants were blindsided by the announcement to relocate this years U.S. Department of Energy Solar Decathlon 2011 competition. The launching pad for the largest solar competition in the world, where contestants are educating the general public about sustainable living and further are held fiscally responsible under competition rules for maintaining and restoring their respective sites to their natural state following the exhibition, is apparently not good for sustainability.
The AIA Honor Award recipients for 2011 were announced this week and will be honored at the AIA 2011 National Convention in New Orleans. Recognizing excellence in architecture, interior architecture, and regional and urban design, 27 recipients were chosen from over 700 submissions.
Awarded buildings, including links to features on ArchDaily, can be found after the break.
Houston is our focus this week for our Architecture City Guide series. We know Houston is packed with lots of great architecture so we are expecting to hear about your can’t miss buildings in the comment section below. Remember this list is intended to be added to by you, our readers. We will be updating our Architecture City Guides in the future to reflect your suggested buildings to visit.
Follow the break for our Houston list and corresponding map!
In recognition of his contributions to architecture in both theory and practice Fumihiko Maki was recently named the 2011 AIA Gold Medal Winner. Maki, arguably one of Japan’s most distinguished living architects, will be honored with the award in New Orleans at the AIA National Convention.
The Longview Gallery in Washington DC invited David Jameson Architect to design an installation that investigates the relationship of art and architecture. The gallery space is housed next to the DC Convention Center in the shell of a 1930’s auto repair garage. Conceived as a spatial armature, Stalling Detritus, as the installation is called, creates a gallery within the gallery by weaving steel beam scraps through space that react to the topography of the concrete structure.
Architects:David Jameson Architect, Inc. Location: 1234 9th St NW Washington, DC, USA Principal: David Jameson Project Architect: Ron Southwick Contractor: Rockville Iron Works Inc Project Year: 2010 Photographs: Alan Karchmer Photography
New Harmony Grotto, by METALAB Architecture + Fabrication, is a reinterpretation of avant garde architect Frederick Kielser’s Grotto for Meditation. With the growing genre of architecture generated by biomorphic design and biomimetic processes, a reevaluation of Kiesler’s work is ever more timely. During the mid-20th century he became increasingly occupied with the relationship of structure and natural form in architecture. The Cave of the New Being (also known as the Grotto for Meditation), proposed in the 1960s for New Harmony, Indiana, represented the designer’s pièce de résistance, embodying all of the intellectual currents of his era, from surrealism to biotechnics, yet it was never realized.
Architects:METALAB Architecture + Fabrication Location: University of Houston Campus, Houston, Texas, USA Partner/Principals: Andrew Vrana and Joe Meppelink Original Client and Patron: Jane Blaffer Owen Studio Critics: Andrew VranaVisiting Assistant Professor and Joe Meppelink, Adjunct Assistant Professor, University of Houston College of Architecture Visiting Critic: Ben Nicholson, Associate Professor, School of Art Institute Chicago Fifth year Design Studio Digital Fabrication Seminar Student Team Leaders: Juan Deleon, Rosalia Covarrubias, Lee Kelly, Minh Nguyen, Justin Garret and Michael Gonzales CNC Fabrication: Ambox, Ltd. (laser cut stainless steel) Historic Documentation and Design: 2008 Fabrication and Installation: 2010 Structural FEA Analysis: Steve Boak, Buro Happold Engineers Photographs: Andrew Vrana
Today, the design for the Broad Museum has been released. Situated adjacent to Frank Gehry’s Walt Disney Concert Hall and Arata Isozaki’s Museum of Contemporary Art, the museum has become a key part of the Grand Avenue redevelopment project that has been losing steam.
Envisioned as a new urban model for sculpture parks, this project is located on Seattle’s last undeveloped waterfront property – an industrial brownfield site sliced by train tracks and an arterial road. The design connects three separate sites with an uninterrupted Z-shaped “green” platform, descending forty feet from the city to the water, capitalizing on views of the skyline and Elliott Bay, and rising over existing infrastructure to reconnect the urban core to the revitalized waterfront.
This prototype system, Homeostatic Facade, is the latest in green building design. The line maze like facade consists of material that flexes and bends as an artificial muscle fighting solar heat gain by changing shape on its own. No computer programing or physical adjustments required. The system regulates a buildings climate by auto responding to environmental conditions and has an advantage over other systems because of its low power consumption and localized control.
Check out the video of the moving Homeostatic Facade following the break.
This week the Architecture City Guide series heads south to warm up a bit, featuring Atlanta. We’re looking forward to hearing from you, what are your can’t miss Atlanta buildings? Add them to the comment section below.
Follow the break for our Atlanta list and a corresponding map!
Taking inspiration from the behavior and volume of an idealized cloud, Dan Goods, Nik Hafermaas, and Aaron Koblin created eCloud an interactive sculpture for the San Jose International Airport. The dynamic liquid crystal scultpure hangs from the ceiling displaying weather data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. eCloud is constructed from polycarbonate tiles appearing as transparent and opaque depending on the pattern which is in constant motion transforming every 20 seconds.
