Archinect - News

A pavilion of facemasks and soda cans opens in Philadelphia, designed by SLO Architecture

2021-05-11T11:29:00-04:00

An installation by SLO Architecture has been unveiled in Camden, New Jersey, which repurposes 3600 facemasks into a dynamic façade and pavilion. “Turntable” will sit as a 6-month-long installation in Coopers Poynt Waterfront Park, facing the Delaware River and downtown Philadelphia, infusing reflections on history, waste, and public space in a post-pandemic world.

Image: SLO Architecture

The installation occupies a site which, during the 18th century, served as a critical infrastructure node for land and water-based transport along the Delaware River and the now-buried Windmill Island. From the 1980s until 2010, the site also served as a prison, thus separating the public from the waterfront. The design team’s vision was for an installation which invited activity back to the site, while also reflecting on the thematic history of unearthing, rediscovering, and reconsidering.

Image: SLO Architecture

SLO Architecture’s design features a dome made from thousands of the familiar blue f...

The BEACH to be reincarnated in arts competition for D.C.'s Dupont Underground initiative

2015-09-01T12:55:00-04:00

The wildly successful BEACH installation is down to its final exhibition days at Washington D.C.'s National Building Museum. Since opening on July 4, over 120,000 visitors both young and old "splashed" around in its bubbly waters, lounged about on the "shore", and perhaps saw a live band rock out in the 10,000 square-foot monochromatic ball pit, designed by Brooklyn-based Snarkitecture. Although the Beach closes on September 7, that won't be the last of it.

Recycling the Beach was always part of the plan. Even before the installation opened, representatives of the D.C.-based initiative, the Dupont Underground, proposed to transport, store, and re-use its building materials.

The Dupont Underground has set its sights on revitalizing an abandoned trolley station beneath the Dupont Circle neighborhood into a public venue for arts and design-oriented events. As part of their inaugural programming, the group will take the Beach's more than 650,000 anti-microbial plastic balls and its 6,000 ...

Rotterdam considers paving its roads with recycled plastic

2015-07-10T18:39:00-04:00

The construction firm VolkerWessels unveiled plans on Friday for a surface made entirely from recycled plastic, which it said required less maintenance than asphalt and could withstand greater extremes of temperature– between -40C and 80C. Roads could be laid in a matter of weeks rather than months and last about three times as long, it claimed. The company said the environmental argument was also strong as asphalt is responsible for 1.6m tons of CO2 emissions a year globally

Sims Municipal Recycling Facility, Designed by Selldorf

2013-11-19T20:25:00-05:00

... instead of letting engineers design the plant, as often happens at an industrial site, Sims hired Selldorf Architects, a glamorous New York firm known for doing Chelsea art galleries and cultural institutions.

Duke researchers design toilet that turns waste into drinking water

2013-07-26T20:20:00-04:00

It works like this: people empty their latrines into a sewage receptacle (currently, latrines are often emptied into rivers), the waste gets funneled through a series of tubes and is pressurized at extreme temperatures, and the byproduct is clean, possibly drinkable water. Deshusses describes the process as “a pressure cooker on steroids.”