Archive for the ‘Utopia’ Category
BIG – Shenzhen International Energy Mansion
September 9th, 2009 | 
Author: Partner in charge: Bjarke Ingels
Project Leader: Andreas Klok Pedersen
Team: Cat Huang, Alex Cozma, Fan Zhang, Kuba Snopek, Flavien Menu, Stanley Lung
Collaborators: ARUP, Transsolar
Invited Competition, 1st prize.
Size: 96,000sqm
Client: Shenzhen Energy Company
Exterior render
The skylines of the world´s most important cities (except for Dubai I guess) are shaped by the typical office tower. The reason is simple: it provides a flexible floor plan, with an economical structural system. “Bang for the buck” if you want to call it. To address lighting and cooling issues that these tower traditionally have, electric lighting and air conditioning were the solution.
But in times when energy is a big issue, we can no longer design buildings that depend on high consumption to provide a comfortable working environment, specially in tropical weathers. And this is what BIG had as a design principle for the Shenzhen International Energy Mansion competition they just won, proposing a tower based on an efficient and well-proven floor plan, enclosed in a skin specifically modified and optimized for the local climate.
Posted in Utopia | 
Tags: Architecture, BIG, efficient, energy, Shenzhen International Energy Mansion | 
No Comments »
Scale Outdoor People Photography – Living Large
Digital photo editing makes all kinds of images possible – but Julia Fullerton-Batten did not need edit her photos in creating these incredibly strange suburban and city scenes featuring models spectacularly out of scale with their surroundings, giants in the streets.
Inspired in part by the encounters of the photographer with miniature model built environments, these photographs capture everything from surreal moments to daily-life scenes. The subjects only seem out of place due to the sheer differences in size between the people and the tiny houses, roads and other ordinary natural and man-made objects around them.
While some of the subjects and scenes are intentionally extremely ordinary – such as a girl picking up a daily milk bottle or a woman fixing the heal of her shoe – others are extraordinary, depicting dangerous situations and disasters from bicycle and train accidents to trips and falls that, once again, seem strangely out of scale with their causes.
Structural Concept – TERMES Pavillion at London’s Pestival
Joseph BurnsThe much anticipated Termite Pavilion arrived at the International Arts Pestival in London earlier this week. The Pestival is “a festival celebrating insects in art, and the art of being an insect…it is a rare creature: an international, inter-disciplinary, community-led festival.” Inspired by the Namibian termite mounds, the six square meter walk-in solid timber structure ”allows Pestival goers a unique insight into these extraordinary organic forms.”
Joseph BurnsBased on the work of Dr. Rupert Soar and the TERMES project, the pavilion is a 3D central section of a termite mound that is scaled up to accommodate humans. The structure will arrive in kit form, to be put together on site. It is made of cross laminated timber, sourced from Austrian spruce, for reasons of sustainability, durability and cost.
Greenhouse Design: Solar Heat-Trapping Prefab Home
Greenhouse design principles are becoming increasingly integrated with home solar heating strategies, the heat of the sun drawn in through expansive windows and then trapped within super-insulated interiors. This particular greenhouse building also references the aesthetics of its inspiration, with glass on all sides selectively shielded by interior layers where privacy is desired.
Shaped and structured like an industrial greenhouse, this design by architects Verdickt & Verdickt features exposed steel supports, broadly spaced windows and a barn-shaped a-frame configuration all very evident from the exterior. Once inside, however, modern furniture, clean lines, and white walls and ceilings contrasted with black floors and granite countertops all give this a sleek minimalist look
In some ways, the interior design aesthetic is a natural extension of the bare-bones exterior but is nonetheless a radical departure from what one expects to find within a greenhouse. Because it is constructed using prefabricated metal parts and standard industrial-sized windows this home was also relatively inexpensive to construct (as well as being cheap to heat of course).
OMA – The Interlace
© OMAA year and a half ago, OMA unveiled the first images for a residential project in Singapore, on schematic design phase. Basically it was a set of stacked low-rise blocks.
Today OMA sent us an update on this project, The Interlace, and more details appear.
The project is located on a green belt outside the capital city, and consists on 31 stacked apartment blocks, each six-stories tall and identical in length, resulting in 170,000sqm of gross floor area for 1,040 apartments.
What is interesting about the project is how these stacked volumes achieve a high density, while still maintaining privacy and long-range views as you can see on the renderings.
