The glass tower by Eric Owen Moss Architects is encouraging the re-development of South Central Los Angeles with this project. The building has been in planning since the nineties but was stalled for some years until it was re-designed in 2006 as a single tower.
A rail line installed nearby spurred the redesign. The structure is part of the redevelopment of South Central LA, an area plagued with poverty and violence for many years. The project was originally conceived of with a structural strategy, consisting of curvilinear ribbons wrapping two main volumes.
The new design remains very similar with the same ribbon theme, but as a single volume. as the area’s only high-rise, office tenants will enjoy wide, open views of the city. a train stop sits directly outside the building, but car parking was also a main concern for the architects. The aforementioned ribbon scheme provides the building’s structure, making each floor completely open. The ribbons are made from steel tubes filled with concrete. Each floor was the same flexible plan but comes in three distinct heights of 13, 16 and 24 feet, to offer further flexibility.
The Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning at the University of Melbourne, in association with the University’s Property and Campus Services department, is seeking to appoint an architect or architectural team to design a new building for the Faculty, to be located on the Melbourne University Parkville Campus. The process of appointment will be via a limited competition to be held in 2009. Architects and architectural teams who wish to be considered for selection into the competition are invited to submit an expression of interest.
Choosing the main material for your house may be quite a problem. Wood? Steel? Or stone? So to finish this week’s Round Up, we bring you previoulsy featured stone houses on ArchDaily.
The Mohawk Group, along with Interior Design Magazine and IIDA, is hosting a number of FREE workshops designed to help displaced designers and architects get back to the drawing board and back to work.
Did you know that there are 48 million children under 13 in the US? Well, the new National Children´s Museum is for all of them, inspiring them to care about and improve the world. The design, by renowed architects Pelli Clarke was unveiled a couple of days ago, and includes over 150,000 sqf to house permanent exhibitions by three prominent design firms – Amaze Design, Roto Studios, and Aldrich Pears.
After the break, more images and the green features of this LEED-certified project.
The Rice Design Alliance Prize, presented annually, has been created by Rice Design Alliance (RDA) to recognize exceptionally gifted architects in the early phase of their professional career. The jury saw avant-garde architecture and a personal language in the work of Antón García-Abril that is at the forefront of the contemporary architectural scene.
RDA – a committee of architects and academics – will meet annually to review the work of national and international architects, young talents that exemplify excellence in design and are within their first 15 years of professional practice.
The inaugural “Rice Design Alliance Prize” was formally delivered to Antón García-Abril, founder of Ensamble Studio (Madrid), on April 15 in Houston. In addition García-Abril gave a lecture to present his latest work.
Here’s a little game developed by AutoDesk. You get to see 10 images. Some of them are photographs of real objects or scenes, others are created by computer graphics (CG) artists.
Our friends from visiondivision sent us this interesting project. A Swedish family wanted a dream house in the south of Spain that at the same time could be turned into an invisible fort when the client is not there. Passing the house on the nearby road one will only see a garage. If you would accidentally walk pass the hidden garden you will see a façade with a flower patterned mesh.
The client will experience a totally different house. Inside the garage there is a spiral staircase inside a steel cylinder leading down to a big living room, and as the mesh is flipped into sun protecting panes, the panoramic view towards the surrounding mountains will appear from all the social rooms and the bedrooms. The bathrooms are located towards the hill and will have a cave-like appearance.
Mixed Use buildings can provide different types of activities and programs in just one place. So to start this week of roundups, we bring you our first selection of previously featured Mixed Use projects on ArchDaily.
Singapore-based WOW Architects designed this hotel in Tanzania. It has two buildings, and the overall design was inspired by geological processes that shape rock formations in nature.
Flowing gardens spill out of the building’s windows and the orientation was planned so that the sunlight enters the interior courtyard in the center, providing the hotel guests a warm and inviting space to mingle.
For more information, click here. More images after the break.
The American Institute of Architects have just granted ten houses a Housing Awards. The recognition is handed out every year to outstanding residential designs. For this year, many houses incorporate eco-fiendly ideas, like solar panels, radiant heating and “daylighting”. Seen at The Wall Street Journal. All the winners, after the break.
“The Architect develops…” is an exhibition of plans for the experimental housing plots in the Homerus Quarter in Almere-Poort. The Homerus Quarter is a new residential area, designed by the Office for Metropolitan Architecture, which is completely realized by private sponsorship.
Green construction is a huge deal nowadays. With more and more architects designing sustainable buildings, anything you can do to make your house more eco-friendly is more than welcome. One of those things, is prefabrication. So to end this week’s Round Up, we bring you previoulsy featured prefabricated projects.
If you have fantasies of living like the Swiss Family Robinson or even the characters in Lost, this rainforest resort near Quepos, Costa Rica may be just the ticket. Situated on the edge of the Manuel Antonio National Park, the Costa Verde Resort features an incredible hotel suite set inside a 1965 Boeing 727 airplane. In its former life the airplane transported globetrotters on South Africa Air and Avianca Airlines, and it now serves as a two bedroom suite perched on the edge of the rainforest overlooking the beach and ocean.
The airplane was transported piece by piece from the San Jose airport to its current resting place on a pedestal 50 feet above the beach. It looks a bit like a model airplane on a stand, and we can only imagine the spectacular views from the balcony and the airplane windows. Five big trucks were needed to get the plane out to the resort, and while the transportation certainly had a negative ecological impact, the finished project is a stunning example of adaptive reuse.
