Archinect - News

Indestructible Home in Berkeley, CA Inspired by Sea Creatures and Dinos

2013-06-17T15:00:00-04:00

Nicknamed “The Fish House” by locals, the Tsui House built by architect Eugene Tsui is touted by its creator as the one of the world’s safest dwellings. The design is based upon a small and segmented water creature known as a tardigrade, and also features a few architectural elements inspired by dinosaur physiology.

Gold Coast/Northern Rivers Regional Architecture Awards Winners

2013-05-13T17:06:00-04:00

A joint venture between PDT, STH and HASSELL, and a separate project by dm2architecture, have taken top honours in the 30th Australian Institute of Architects’ 2013 Gold Coast/Northern Rivers Regional Architecture Awards.

Architecture as Child's Play

2013-05-01T19:31:00-04:00

At university, students from other courses felt that we in architecture weren’t really studying at all; to them the studio seemed like some kind of uber-kindergarten, legitimated for academic credit.... The architecture profession seemed from the outside, and perhaps even to us on the inside, to promise an idyllic eternal childhood of balsa and glue and gee-whiz drawings on computers.

On Places, Naomi Stead discusses the popular conception of architecture as a kind of "child's play."

What do dollhouses and architectural models have in common? Why should we care about Lego Architecture and Architect Barbie and the romantic depiction of architects in Hollywood movies?

She concludes: "If the profession of architecture is constructed from the outside as an escapist daydream, available for the idle fantasizing and wish-fulfillment of all, then this leaves the whole profession operating inside a doll’s house: idyllic, hermetic and controlled, but largely powerless to act in the actual world."

Hitler's Words Into Stone. Can architecture itself be fascist?

2013-04-28T00:06:00-04:00

Rather elegant," intoned the white-haired figure at the podium. He was speaking of Adolf Hitler's Reich Chancellery, designed in 1938 by Albert Speer. Up next on the screen was the Nuremberg Party Rally Grounds where brown-shirted Nazis paraded en masse. "I think it is really great architecture," said the lecturer. "You take off the swastikas, and you can admire it without feeling guilty."

As you might expect, "Audience members shifted awkwardly in their seats, and a few walked out to protest the remarks by Léon Krier, opening a conference on Berlin at the Yale School of Architecture in February." Anyone manage to actually be there for this, or have any follow-up?

Shedding its Fusty Architectural Past, Philly Welcomes Nordic Starchitect Snøhetta

2013-03-28T19:40:00-04:00

The latest evidence of Philadelphia’s architectural comeback? The Norwegian architecture firm Snøhetta is coming to town for a project at Temple University. “We have a fantastic tradition of quality architeture and urbanism in Philadelphia, but we do go through low ebbs in that tradition,” says Harris Steinberg, the executive director of PennPraxis, the clinical arm of the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Design.

The Norwegian architecture firm Snøhetta has designed some of the most notable buildings and public spaces in the world over the last 15 years. The new Oslo Opera House. Egypt’s Bibliotheca Alexandrina. A reconfigured Times Square in New York, and a massive expansion of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Next up? Temple University’s library, on a still-gritty stretch of Broad Street between Montgomery and Norris in North Philadelphia. Snøhetta director and co-founder Craig Dykers is delivering a lecture on campus next week, sharing some of his firm’s work with Temple students and a general audience of designers, architects and urbanists.

Dykers might shed some light on Snøhetta’s early stage thinking for the library project, but design work has not yet begun, so don’t expect any renderings.

Even so, Dykers is likely to address a full house. The Oslo-based firm, which was featured in a glowing 5,400-word New Yorker profile in January, is very much in vogue. Plenty of its...

Navarra, Spain Welcomes Redesigned Parliament

2013-03-25T15:48:00-04:00

A previously historic government building has now become the centre of the Parliament of Navarra, Spain. Designed by Otxotorena Arquitectos, the redevelopment project was part of plans to restore the 19th century Audiencia Building of Pamplona. Covering 11,062 square metres, the €9 million redevelopment project has drawn attention for its architectural aesthetics which incorporate a new glass skin into the parliament building.

South Brisbane Welcomes Twin Tower Development

2013-02-19T20:52:00-05:00

South Brisbane’s renewal is well underway and the suburb could soon become home to a landmark $50 million twin tower development known as Arena. The contemporary 12-floor twin tower apartment buildings is slated for 9 Edmonstone Street and has been designed to allow pedestrian access to Browning Street via a dedicated cross block link.

Sydney’s New Icon | Barangaroo?

2013-02-15T15:06:00-05:00

Billionaire businessman, James Packer has shortlisted four of the world’s best architects (Adrian Smith + Gill Architecture, Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates, Renzo Piano and Wilkinson Eyre Architects) to bid to design and build the urban masterpiece that will be Crown Sydney. The proposed $1 billion six-star Crown Sydney resort will be a dramatic addition to Sydney’s skyline and be built across a giant 6,000 square metre site in Barangaroo.

ZIP: Studio400 book show installation, by Cal Poly students

2013-02-11T11:39:00-05:00

A quarter of a million zip ties altered a gallery into a bristled vortex of swirling, cavernous zip tie fabric magnified through reflective cellophane and augmented by subtle changing color. ZIP expresses the story of collaborative effort through research, acquisition, design, and construction of an environment designed as haptic reading room. Designed as an experience to exhibit thesis books, Professor Karen Lange’s fifth year studio (Studio400) at California Polytechnic State University (Cal Poly), San Luis Obispo, was assigned a collaborative installation project to showcase their previous personal research and transition into the design phase of their individual thesis projects.

Nineteen students worked tirelessly through the zipping, snipping, and stitching of the zip ties together composing an intricate three-dimensional fabric that could be swirled onto itself to create multiple experiences within a small storefront space. Entry portal, tubular book receptacles, undula...

Design for an Aging Population

2013-02-06T23:23:00-05:00

A new multidisciplinary field has emerged in several universities in which sociologists, psychologists and urban planners work to tailor architectural designs to seniors as that demographic continues to grow. In America, 54 million people are over the age of 55 and that number is predicted to increase over the next 30 years by nearly 50 per cent. Despite most people’s desire to age in their own homes, most will be required to seek alternative arrangements.

Architects, Engineers Selected For John Tyler Community College Phase III

2013-01-24T16:30:00-05:00

Clark Nexsen and Pearce Brinkley Cease + Lee will design the Academic Building and Parking Deck

January 24, 2013 (Raleigh, NC) -- The team of Clark Nexsen and Pearce Brinkley Cease + Lee (PBC+L) has been selected to design the Phase III Academic Building and Parking Deck on John Tyler Community College’s (JTCC) Midlothian, Virginia, campus. Both firms bring extensive experience in higher education facilities design and sustainable architecture to the team.

This will be the fifth building on the JTCC Midlothian Campus, and college administrators say it will be critical to the growth and emerging identity of the campus.

Jeffrey Lee, FAIA, Design Principal for the project, anticipates that the 70,000-square-foot building will include academic classrooms, faculty offices, auditorium space/performance arts space, a student services center, food service, and a 350-space parking garage.

The project will be on a fast track for completion in January 2015, Lee said.

Founded in 196...

Outside The Box Idea To Tackle China’s Population Problem

2013-01-17T14:02:00-05:00

In an innovative response to the current property squeeze in China, a Beijing architectural and a design firm have combined creative forces to develop a portable house and garden on the back of a tricycle. The Tricycle House and Garden is a sustainable mobile home with its design and construction inspired by the shape and movement of an accordion. The playful designed is also being described as the “adult cardboard box fort box.”

The People’s Architecture Office (PAO) and People’s Industrial Design Office (PIDO) in Beijing developed the clever modular home as a single-person dwelling for those who wish to live in the city but simply cannot afford it due to increasing property prices.

Toronto Leading Western World in Tall Building Construction

2013-01-07T23:48:00-05:00

Canada’s biggest city is getting even bigger, with a pace-setting number of skyscrapers set to join the city skyline. According to a Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH) report dubbed “Canada Rising,” Toronto is leading the western world in terms of new buildings 150 metres or taller currently under construction.

Chilean Skyscraper Overshadows The City

2013-01-07T00:30:00-05:00

The skyline of Chile’s capital city, Santiago, has a new addition with the Gran Torre skyscraper casting a two-kilometre shadow across the historic city. The 70-storey residential building stands more than 300 metres tall, making it the tallest building in South America. The five-ton steel structure cost an estimated one billion dollars to build and tenants are expected to move into the building next March.

Exploitation of Interns Coming to an End?

2012-12-27T13:17:00-05:00

Unpaid interns are common in architecture firms, but recent lawsuits brought by interns across other industries may have the architecture industry forking out some cash. In many industries, the term ‘intern’ is often used to describe someone who works for no pay, but the NCARB’s IDP has been trying to detach interns from the assumption by architecture firms that they are willing to work for free. The council defines architectural internships as post-graduate, pre-registration professional work.

The UK’s Most ‘Outstanding’ Green Building

2012-12-20T20:23:00-05:00

The building, known as 1 Angel Square, has been designed to deliver a 50 per cent reduction in energy consumption compared to The Co-operative’s current Manchester complex and an 80 per cent reduction in carbon. This will lead to operating costs being lowered by up to 30 per cent.

Architecture in Children's Books and Fairy Tales

2012-12-19T17:36:00-05:00

Even the smallest architectural design proposes to make an intervention in the known world, it dares to change things as they are, and to venture how they might be. It envisions a possible future, sometimes a fantastic one, and then sets out to make it manifest. If that’s not a rich subject for children’s books, I don’t know what is. But such books should also make us question what we want architecture and architects to be. Not just in fairy tales, but in real life.

For generations children's books have told fanciful stories about the creation of houses and the comforts of domesticity. "When you go looking," writes Naomi Stead on Places, "you realize that there is a huge, even dominant genre in children’s literature: stories about houses, about the choice of a house, the quality of homeliness, and the very concept of home." Stead surveys the scene, from Iggy Peck to Roberto, from The Little House to House by Mouse, and wonders what these books tell us "about the architecture profession and how it is conceived and represented in culture more broadly."

In related features, Places continues an ongoing series on fairy tale architecture, with new designs by Abruzzo Bodziak ("Snowflake"), Bernheimer Architecture ("The Little Match Girl"), and Solid Objectives – Idenburg Liu (SO – IL) ("Monkey King").

Call for contributions zawia#01:Utopia

2012-12-17T13:20:00-05:00

"... If history has taught us that the realization of a utopia is necessarily its destruction, Can we regard this process as a continuously failing attempt of architectural hallucinations? Or is it a way to promote escapism from an inevitable dystopic reality? ..."

The call for contributions for the upcoming volume zawia#01:Utopia is out now. We are expecting abstracts until the 28th of January. Please download the document by visiting our website www.zawia.co or by simply clicking here http://www.zawia.co/issuedownload/zawia_01_Utopia_Call_for_Contributions.pdf

[Zawia is an English & Arabic publication & collaborative events on architecture, design & Urbanism]

Isolated Tombstone Stands Among Chinese Skyscrapers

2012-12-12T14:01:00-05:00

In a bizarre dispute, a skyscraper has been built around a tombstone in the city of Taiyuan, the capital of Shanxi province in China. Building developers bought a cemetery with an eye to building a series of skyscrapers on the land. Prior to construction, locals were paid to relocate the graves, yet one family refused the proposed terms, forcing developers to build around the landmass.

EMPOWERHOUSE: Solar Decathlon Team, Habitat for Humanity and D.C. Goverment Celebrate Completion of Innovative Model for Affordable, Green Housing

2012-12-04T07:06:00-05:00

After several years of planning, design and construction, a team of students from The New School and Stevens Institute of Technology who participated in the 2011 U.S. Department of Energy Solar Decathlon celebrated the completion of Empowerhouse, an innovative model for affordable, energy efficient green housing located in the Deanwood neighborhood of Washington.

Developed in partnership with Habitat for Humanity of Washington, D.C. (DC Habitat), and the D.C. Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD), the project marks the first time in the Solar Decathlon's history that a team partnered from the outset with civic and government agencies to create a house specifically for a local D.C. community. It is the first Passive House—the leading international energy standard—in the District of Columbia, and already a recipient of a Mayor’s Sustainability Award.

"This project fulfills a longstanding vision of our team to create a house that would endure in a meaningful way after the Solar Decathlon was over,” said Joel Towers, executive dean of Parsons The New School for Design. “Empowerhouse illustrates The New School's commitment to design-led civic engagement, and is a true model of affordable sustainable housing that has the potential for national as well as international replication. Due to the success of this project, Parsons is...

Could Australia’s Tallest Skyscraper Be the Fastest to Build?

2012-11-30T14:58:00-05:00

While becoming the tallest in architectural terms will always garner attention, taller building often harbour some of the lengthiest development periods. With a rise in the prominence of prefabrication, however, large is no longer necessarily equated with lengthy.

Uncovering Berlin’s Hidden Architectural History

2012-11-30T02:23:00-05:00

A recent structural discovery that was recently found buried beneath 30 tonnes of rubble has the global industry abuzz. The architectural secret, which was dubbed ‘Berlin’s best kept architectural secret,’ is a three-storey German Music Hall Theatre, designed by famous architect and business owner Oscar Garbe and built in 1905.

Will This Be The World’s Greenest Skyscraper?

2012-11-30T01:03:00-05:00

Holistic sustainability is a notion too often forgotten in a global industry heavily focused delivering on green ideals. While the notion of green building is an umbrella under which all things related to environmentally responsible construction and design efforts are categorized, the green sector actually falls under the broad-reaching holistic sustainability model.

Fairy Tale Re-Imagined by Bernheimer Architecture

2012-11-02T15:28:00-04:00

In the terms of the story, we wanted to distill experience to a shape, a volume, instead of a literal space-type (“castle” or “gingerbread house,” etc.) We chose this path in part because the structure of the story wasn’t accessible, the events were scattered, random and untethered to a place. So we had to find the rope, make the place, invent a story-space outside the tale itself.

In the Halloween installment of Places' ongoing series of architectural fairy tales, fabulist Kate Bernheimer and her architect brother, Andrew, investigate the shape of fear itself. Re-imagining a Brothers Grimm fairy tale at the site of a World War II bombing, Andrew Bernheimer and Vera Leung design and fabricate a model for the unsettling tale “The Boy Who Set Forth to Learn What Fear Was.”

Previous on Archinect: The House on Chicken Feet

PLANT ARCHITECT’S EXHIBIT OPENS AT HARBOURFRONT CENTRE

2012-10-04T11:00:00-04:00

On 29 September 2012, the Architecture Exhibition Fall 2012 opened at Harboufront Centre in Toronto. Curated by Patrick Macaulay, BREATHTAKING: Constructed Landscapes features PLANT Architect Inc.’s installation Lenticular Curtain alongside the works of architects Baird Sampson Neuert, Idea Tank Design Collective, and visual artist Vid Ingelevics.

BREATHTAKING: Constructed Landscapes explores the use of architecture in defining and directing how people view and understand nature and landscape. In response to the curatorial question “How can architecture create an awe-inspiring experience through the placement of built form within the landscape?”, PLANT Architect Inc. designed an immersive architecture meant to overwhelm, infuse, inhabit, and amplify the landscape. Lenticular Curtain is a larger-than-life, interactive lantern—a sculptural intervention that, when entered, disturbs and distorts multiple landscapes in order to form new ones. The central role of the visitor, whether ...

The Ideology of Publication / Conversation with Bernd Upmeyer

2012-08-14T13:09:00-04:00

Urbanism is one of those malleable concepts that defy definition. A flexible subject where, by trying to lock it within a specific scope, its validity sometimes gets undermined and its potential spoiled.

But when a magazine develops and maintains its own way to portray the multiple faces, forms, shapes, relationships, arguments, contradictions, images, consequences, and messages of the discipline that is supposed to carry the unbearable load of thinking the city, then the exercise of defining urbanism becomes an enriching intellectual journey.

MONU (Magazine on Urbanism) was born in 2004 in Rotterdam. What was originally an almost underground magazine made available through a pdf dossier and a stapled black and white print has evolved into one of the main independent publications, a reference for the collective intelligence of urbanism, and an icon of exquisite aesthetics.

Set to satisfy a growing urbanophilic hunger, MONU has thrown into the mix an intoxicating mixture o...

The Architecture of Photography - Conversation with Simona Rota

2012-07-30T15:04:00-04:00

From the eroded optimism of the heroic building-monuments in east-Europe, to the monochromatic banality of housing developments in the Canary Islands, the photographs of Simona Rota appear to be talking to us about the aspirations and shortcomings of architecture in both its megalomaniac and its quotidian streams.
Often lacking human presence, the photographs tell a tale of evaporated intentions, and failed dreams, making through the images a visual statement about the power of humanity to create, alter, and transform our environment.

Images of architecture about topics that transcend architecture, projects like Ostalgia, Instant Village, and Placelessness take us to a personal journey through some of the faces of modernity in Europe, while revealing simultaneously the seducing beauty of its ugliness, and the vulnerability of its invincible architectures.
We are drawn towards the fantastic journey of an upcoming visual story teller that equally dazzles us with an image of the ...

MASS Design Group wins Zumtobel Award for Butaro Hospital

2012-07-03T17:04:00-04:00

"The [Butaro] project has a high relevance, since it can be applied as a solution to similar regions with limited opportunities and high risks of infection. [...] Also remarkable is the excellent quality of the buildings that were built exclusively with local workers.”

The Butaro Hospital in Rwanda was praised as innovative and cost-efficient by the Zumtobel Award 2012 jury, ultimately winning in the category of "Built Environment." Over 230 projects were submitted in for the 2012 Zumtobel Group Award in this category. Entries were received from 22 nations while the projects themselves spanned some 30 countries.

The Butaro Hospital in Rwanda was praised as an “innovative [and] cost-efficient [in] technology and design strategy in the category "Built Environment." Over 230 projects were submitted in for the 2012 Zumtobel Group Award in this category. Entries were received from 22 nations while the projects themselves spanned some 30 countries.

The Butaro Hospital is built in the Burera District, which was one of the last two districts in Rwanda to receive a district hospital. The hospital now serves a population of over 400,000 people. Innovative design developed in collaboration with infectious disease specialists from Partners in Health and ...

…China changes you

2012-05-16T10:35:00-04:00

MovingCities interviews Dutch architect John van de Water – NEXT ARCHITECTS China – about his book “You can’t change China, China changes you” [010 publisher, 2012]. The book is a a formidable page-turner telling the story of a three-year long architectural discovery in and of China. In the interviews John van de Water talks about his motives to write the book, to come and a set-up office in China, the tension he feels between a Dutch/Western and a Chinese approach to architecture and talks about the discovery and rethinking of two basic design parameters that are related to the limits of architectural design in China.

Extract:

First of all it is a shortcoming of western architects to think that we are equipped to provide solutions to answers. Chinese architects provide possibilities and western architects provide solutions. The second shortcoming is that we always want to change. [...] We tend to think that we can make flexible buildings, but Chinese people are able to make m...

Orange Barrel Media Announces LEED Platinum Headquarters in Columbus

2012-04-21T11:46:00-04:00

The new Orange Barrel HQ will reuse existing concrete storage silos and a renovated 10,000-sqft warehouse with a new 10,000-sqft addition. OBM President Pete Scantland says they’re aiming for LEED Platinum certification with the project. Solar panels will be located on the back side of a 120-foot tall structure rising above the new offices, while the front side will provide a showpiece advertising space.

Orange Barrel Media is a nine-year-old outdoor wallscape mural design and advertising firm that serves markets in New York, Boston, Charlotte, Columbus, Denver, Cleveland and Cincinnati. Yesterday, they announced a new headquarters in Columbus that includes an innovative solar-panel advertising tower and 20,000 square feet of space on a former concrete mixing plant adjacent to Downtown.

The new development was designed by George Acock of Acock Associates with Landscape Architecture done by Keith Meyers and his team at MSI+KKG.