As architecture and design students prepare for their final shows, we’ve collected together our guide to the best graduation gifts, from a watch based on architectural drawings to a lightweight electric bicycle for the commute to their first job and a sofa for their first post-student flat (+ slideshow). (more…)
“El Litre Memorial” It’s a work that takes place in the certification process of the Architecture school of Talca’s University. Located north of Maule Region, in “Los Queñes” rural town, this work focuses in one of the principal relations that contributed with the identity of the place along its history: the bridge acts as a connecting thread and public infrastructure that allows access to the village, and at the same time the river, as unit of landscape that allows different activities, mainly as a river resort.
The work is emplaced in the remains of what it was the first entry bridge, which gave beginning to this relation between bridge and river, also being the place in which the first river resort would be established for visitors and inhabitants of the rural town. Due to this, the intervention is proposed as the rescue of these ruins that, besides evoking the mentioned past, alows to rebuild the collective memory, valuing the structural basis, bringing to light an abandoned vial piece.
In this exercise of cultural heritage recovery,the intention is to intervene this ruin of an already finished story, to give it a new life in its renewed functionality, returning it to its original source as public space.
Under the recovery of this piece, to inhabit operates as a repair process, emerging as the main project actions the extraction and cleaning of the elements, first to bring down and inhabit the heart of the ruin and then to reveal and bring up the occult, placing these ruins as a raw material in its present condition, and not as some marginal monument of the past.
In a bid to preserve and protect the place, the contrast appears as a central axis of this proposal to differentiate on matter, gesture and height of the original dwelling, respecting the glory and strength of the monument as stirrups of an extinct bridge in time. The workraises the conservation of this place by limits that do not affect the old, leaving the staircase as the main integrator element of both languages and as a trigger for new routes.
Finally, to emphasize the action of extract, the edge protection mechanism is created on the perimeter of the gesture. By installing 104 wooden pillars, a system that holds the soil groundstructure is established. Also, it protects and limits a space of silence around the monument. This new edge, guides and accompanies the road around the ruin and serves as a break before descending to the river.
An exhibition has opened at London’s V&A museum charting the career and legacy of Ove Arup, who “forged a new role for engineers” in the 20th century (+ slideshow). (more…)
White Arkitekter has won the Nordic Built Cities competition in the category of Vertical Challenge for the office’s proposal, “The Eyes of Runavik,” located in a village on the Faroe Islands. White Arkitekter has devised five 3-story ring-shaped “houses” that collectively provide 100 units of housing on a steep hillside with views of fjords and surrounding islands. Each building is surrounded by a meadow – ”hagi” – of local vegetation, and each inner courtyard is a cultivated microclimate, or “bøur,” meant to be a more comfortable outdoor space for residents.
“Minimal impact starts with understanding the conditions, accepting them and making the most out of them,” says Morten Vedelsbøl, Creative Director at White Arkitekter in Denmark. “We asked ourselves – how can we create an environment on such a steep slope and in such harsh weather conditions? We decided to transform those challenges into our tools and identity markers.”
With an excess of paths both connecting the buildings and providing access to the adjacent town, cars will fill a subordinate role in the development. And with the efficiency of passive house construction, along with the use of renewable energy – including geothermal heating – long-term occupants will live in net-zero conditions. Each building’s inner courtyard, providing protection from the elements, will allow residents to grow vegetables and other plants that would ordinarily not survive the harsh conditions of the hillside location.
The buildings will use a variety of local materials in their construction including cedar wood with different levels of charring for the exterior facades, non-charred cedar wood for the walls of the building’s interior courtyards, basalt rocks for stonescaping, pathways, as gravel for playgrounds, and sand for sandboxes, moss for green roofs, and sheep’s wool for insulation.
White Arkitekter’s proposal was praised by Nordic Innovation, the Nordic governments, and the Nordic Council of Ministers, for its “iconic character” and the mark it leaves on the community, “creating new thinking in relation to traditional construction in Runavik.” The project does not currently have a construction schedule or expected date for completion.
Following the success of the inaugural HOUSE VISION Tokyo in 2013, the exhibition is set to return again this summer under the theme of “Co-Dividual: Split and Connect / Separate and Come Together.” Once again curated by Kenya Hara, designer and creative director for minimalist housewares retailer Muji, the month-long event will tackle the objective of “thinking about how to create new connections between individuals,” as well as build upon the topics explored by its previous edition, namely the ways in which Japanese housing can adapt to recent demographic, technological and cultural shifts, and the vision of the house as the intersection between industries.
This year’s exhibition will feature house designs by top Japanese architects such as Sou Fujimoto, Kengo Kuma, Shigeru Ban and Atelier Bow-Wow, each paired with a leading company to envision and implement new strategies in housing design. The houses will be constructed at full-scale, allowing event-goers to fully experience and reflect upon each design.
“Although we named the project HOUSE VISION, It refers to display not only the housing industry, but also the future of all industries to the public,” says Hara. “The Japanese have a strong desire for a rich and varied life. We should turn the potential desire into a concrete one.”
Driven by extreme density and a harsh economic climate, Tokyo has developed a unique housing culture that encourages architectural risk-taking. HOUSE VISION revels in that tradition by continuing to break down the boundaries between architecture and technology.
“The future of industry is not quite clear. It is the duty of designers to visualize this unclear future.” explains Hara. “I believe the important duty of designers is to let people understand that vision.”
The full list of pavilions is as follows:
1. The House with Refrigerator Access from Outside
Yamato Holdings × Fumie Shibata
2. Yoshino-sugi Cedar House
Airbnb × Tsuyoshi Hasegawa
3. Hiragana-no Spiral House
Panasonic × Yuko Nagayama
4. Tanada Terrace Office
Muji × Atelier Bow-Wow
5. Nomad House
Mitsukoshi Isetan × Tanijiri Makoto Ai Yoshida
6. Rental Space Tower
Daito Trust Construction Co., Ltd. × Sou Fujimoto
7. Life Core
LIXIL × Shigeru Ban
8. Checkered Waterside
Sumitomo Forestry × Nishihata Seijun × Kuma Kengo (venue configuration)
9. Woodgrain House
Toppan Printing × Hara Design Institute
10. Between Inside and Outside / Between Furniture and a Room
TOTO · YKK AP × Atsushi Igarashi Taiji Fujimori
11. Grand Third Living Room
TOYOTA × Kuma Kengo
12. Wireless Roof House
Culture Convenience Club × Hara Design Institute (exhibition design) × Shinya Nakajima (video production)
+ Iced Coffee Shop
AGF × Tsuyoshi Hasegawa
The event will be held at Aomi Station in Odaiba, Tokyo from July 30th to August 28th. For more information about HOUSE VISION, visit their website here.
The commision to design a house in a typical São Paulo neighbourhood context, out of gated communities, demanded that we test the limits of our design philosophy – permeability, openness to surrounding urban space. The result of the reading of these conditions a wide and light space that also shelters the need of enclosure that daily life demands.
Built for a young couple, the house is placed above street level, organized under a single roof that defines the wide space where the collective activities take place, crossed by the private use masonry block – on top of which is the mezanin, connected by a concrete staircase. The construction is gently closed by a large metal and glass wall, that allows space to be extended to the limits of the plot and also bring natural light, air and the surrounding urbanscape to the inside.
The mezanin is explicits the “open-to-close” operation that guided the design process: it is simultaneously integrated and detached, creating a spatial modulation that allows socialization or privacy without walls or partitions.
Regarding materials, the Butantã House results from a intervention in a existing construction, whose fragile structure had to be demolished, leaving only the concrete slab that covers the garage. The new construction is built with masonry, concrete, steel and glass.
In the latest scenographic set for Prada’s fashion collections, AMO have created a set “conceived as a stratification of architectures” – Total Space. Remnants from previous shows sit around the periphery of the room creating a foundation and aesthetic background for the house’s 2017 Spring/Summer collection. A linear structure, which sits centrally and divides the room, is designed to “amplify its perceived proportions.”
According to the designers, “a straight ramp, between the inserted ceiling and floor, serves as catwalk, while tribunes are arranged along the perimeter to accommodate the guests.” A continuous metallic surface folds around all the elements of the set in order to generate an abstract layer, composed of meshes with different patterns and dimensions that overlap to recreate a total space.
“The transparency of the cladding material unveils the underlying framework with Cartesian precision. The psychedelic glow that spreads throughout the space dematerializes all the surfaces, coloring the room, now reminiscent of a post-human scenario. The models walk in the center at a controlled distance from the audience, virtually levitating in the space. They ascend onto the elongated slope of the ramp incessantly, disappearing towards the vanishing point.”
London creative agency Studio Mills has completed a Manhattan store for online watch brand Larsson & Jennings, featuring a cantilevered display counter and a bar serving typical Swedish refreshments (+ slideshow). (more…)
Meet the mind behind this summer’s ICEBERGS installation. Landscape architecture and urban design firm James Corner Field Operations believes that a vibrant and dynamic public realm is informed by the interactive ecology between people and nature. Founder and director James Corner presents the firm’s recent work, and recounts how they conceived of an enormous glacial seascape in the Great Hall.
From the architect. 68 Claremont is a 6000 sqft warehouse conversion in downtown Toronto. The former sewing floor is now home to Free Space, a multi-use platform for video and photo production, events, co-working and gallery space.
The conversion had to make use of the existing floor plan while creating new partitions for the gallery, offices, photo studio and editing suites. The program uses a drapery track system to maintain a flexible floor plan that responds to different scenarios. An open floor plan is intended to leave the natural light unobstructed in order to shoot around the entire studio.
Materials included are raw pine, douglas fir plywood and galvanized steel. The material choices follow a temporal approach to the conversion, using affordable ready-made materials to craft custom furniture and millwork solutions.
The floor is divided between an exposed subfloor and plywood covering to denote drop-in and fixed workspace. The space is also host to the Canon Creator Lab, an event space for Canon Cameras.
