Archinect's Building of the Day series is brought to you by our friends at OpenBuildings.com, the web's most comprehensive directory of buildings. Shouldn’t it be possible to conceal a house in an Alpine slope while still exploiting the wonderful views and allowing light to enter the... View full entry
Consolidation of the structure provided a challenge given the size of the cracks and a system of exposed stainless steel ties and bracing frames in original window and fireplaces openings was devised with project engineers David Narro Associates. — www.OpenBuildings.com
The RIBA has announced the 17 ‘best new houses’ vying for this year’s Manser Medal. The White House by WT Architecture won the Ambassador Award. This exceptional private home, situated on the Isle of Coll, Scotland, was built in the ruins of a house abandoned 150 years earlier... View full entry
Earlier this month, the Obama Administration under the USAID (United States Agency for International Development) launched the advisory committee on voluntary foriegn aid (ACVFA). On that list advisors was none other than Cameron Sinclair, a person who has revolutionized the way we think and speak about people and architectural spaces, and actually acts and implements these thoughts and words into reality. — triplepundit.com
The magic of cities comes from their people, but those people must be well served by the bricks and mortar that surround them. Cities need roads and buildings that enable people to live well and to connect easily with one another ... in the most desirable cities, whether they're on the Hudson River or the Arabian Sea, height is the best way to keep prices affordable and living standards high. — grist.org
Europe is undergoing a revolution in energy production that requires massive new infrastructure to support the shift to renewables. But do new power lines always have to result in blight? Some utility companies are hoping that designer power masts can help overcome local opposition. — spiegel.de
The past 12 months have seen a remarkable number of humanitarian crises with earthquakes in Japan and New Zealand and deadly tornadoes in the southern US being among the most recent.
Among new innovations which could help relief efforts is a fabric shelter that, when sprayed with water, turns to concrete within 24 hours.
— BBC News
Co-editor Mark Foster Gage will present Composites, Surfaces, and Software: High Performance Architecture. Composites, Surfaces, and Software: High Performance Architecture explores how computer technologies and digital fabrication techniques give architects unprecedented tools for crafting performance and aesthetics through cross-disciplinary collaboration. — AIA Website
An ambitious zero-energy retrofit proposal for a downtown Los Angeles federal building has just won the first prize of the 8th Annual Next Generation Design Competition, presented by Metropolis magazine in partnership with the General Services Administration. The brief of the competition's 2011 edition asked architects and planners to design a Zero Environmental Footprint for this 1,172,746 sqft, eight-story, 1960s energy-guzzling federal building, considering any scale of intervention. — bustler.net
The first phase of this zero-carbon Gulf city is up and running. But behind the futuristic facade of driverless pods, medieval streets twist and turn back the clock to traditional design — guardian.co.uk
Daniel Toole, an architect at Perkins + Will in Seattle and a 2008 University of Oregon architecture graduate, has won the 5th Annual Cavin Family Traveling Fellowship award for his design, “Whittier Organic Food Center Towers,” a system that “flips” greenhouses vertically to incorporate on-site energy generation from wind and solar exposure, gravity-fed hydroponics, housing for students and farm laborers, and space for farmers’ markets. — bustler.net
In a move that could be viewed by some as a regression to the late 1800s when convicts were shipped from England to Van Diemens Land (Australia), a local prison will next week begin a trial housing inmates within shipping containers converted into maximum security cells. Political proponents calim they are safe, secure and cheap; civil libetarians say they are inhumane and not secure. — Inhabitat
Inexpensive yes, but effective? View full entry
Google has hired Ingenhoven Architects, a German firm that specializes in sustainable architecture and has completed award-winning green designs from Sydney to Stuttgart, to develop plans for what could total nearly 600,000 square feet of space. Google currently owns or leases about 4.3 million square feet of space in Mountain View, according to its securities filings. — mercurynews.com
Could one of the world's most ubiquitous staples hold the key to saving tropical hardwood trees? — BBC News
Fiona Graham a technology of business reporter, explores a range of new "sustainable" and renewable building materials that are being developed. The first Resysta, may look like wood, and be used like wood, but the main ingredient is rice husks. There is also Kirei board, which is made from... View full entry
When we think of wood and paper, we usually see it in this manner; wood=source, paper=result. What if we flipped the model and saw paper as the source and wood as the end product? This was the concept behind Mieke Meijer's project at the Design Academy Eindhoven. — yatzer.com
Staxxon’s primary objective is to develop a vertical folding and nesting method for empty containers that removes the most expensive commodity container cargo – air – and replaces air with folded and nested empty containers that meet existing CSC structural and weathertight standards for dry containers when unfolded. — gcaptain.com
Will this lead to a new form of container architecture? View full entry
