The Wall Street Journal asked architects to draw up plans for the most energy-efficient houses they could imagine.
It could have gardens on its walls or a pond stocked with fish for dinner. It might mimic a tree, turning sunlight into energy and carbon dioxide into oxygen. Or perhaps it will be more like a lizard, changing its color to suit the weather and healing itself when it gets damaged.
Those are just a handful of the possibilities that emerged from an exercise in futurism. The Wall Street Journal asked four architects to design an energy-efficient, environmentally sustainable house without regard to cost, technology, aesthetics or the way we are used to living.
The idea was not to dream up anything impossible or unlikely — in other words, no antigravity living rooms. Instead, we asked the architects to think of what technology might make possible in the next few decades. They in turn asked us to rethink the way we live.
Find different ideas of what the energy-efficient house of the future will like look like on Wall Street Journal. Architects like William McDonough + Partners, Cook + Fox and more share their interesting ideas.
Read more here.
No Comments »
The editors from Triple Canopy invited us to visit the new issue of Triple Canopy, an online art and culture magazine. There is a new issue "Urbanism: Model Cities". It is the first of two issues devoted to examining various forms of and approaches to urbanism, considered in relation to the current economic crisis, from the perspectives of a number of writers, researchers, artist, and architects.
Some selected projects:
- In “The City that Built Itself,” Joshua Bauchner writes about and photographs a Caracas slum where residents have turned utopian modernism on its head, transforming a fifty-year-old superblock housing project into the locus of sprawling improvised developments.
- Joseph Clarke’s “Infrastructure for Souls” traces the parallel histories of the American megachurch and the corporate-organizational complex over the last century, from the Crystal Palace to the General Motors Technical Center to Googleplex, from Charles Spurgeon to Richard Neutra to Rick Warren. Illustrated with a striking series of images juxtaposing ecclesiastical and office buildings.
The second "Urbanism" issue will be published in June and will feature more interesting projects.
Read the first issue here.
No Comments »
Web tv channel SMAC (ScribeMedia Arts and Culture) just released a new video about the show Into the Open: Positioning Practice. This exhibition, which opened at the Parsons School of Design in NYC, features the work of architects exhibited at the American Pavilion of this past year’s Architecture Biennial in Venice. The video includes interviews with the curators, William Menking, Aaron Levy, and Andrew Sturm, along with several participating architects including Larua Kurgen and Teddy Cruz. (more…)
No Comments »
.jpg)
In October 2008, Treehugger had an article on the ancient “hula hoop buildings” of China. These buildings are more accurately known as Fujian Tulou, and were built starting in the 12th century as the ultimate gated community. The buildings followed the Chinese dwelling tradition of closed outside, open inside concept: an enclosure wall with living quarters around the peripheral and a common courtyard at the center.
Now Treehugger and designboom are reporting that Urbanus Architects bring them back in modern form.
While the traditional Tulou was a complete circle around an open court the Architects have filled most of the center with public spaces, retail, a gym and library. (more…)
3 Comments »
Lorcan O’Herlihy Architects (LOHA) have designed an eleven unit housing project in West Hollywood. With a new approach to private space, the project emphasizes the need for a central, communal space for both the residents as well as the community at large. Instead of creating an internal courtyard that only residents could enjoy, the building is surrounded by a park that is operated by the city and will be open to the public.
The architects explain the idea of the project, “As a result of shifting the common open space to the exterior and pushing the building to one side, units are organized linearly allowing for “park frontage” and cross-ventilation for every unit. External circulation is used as a buffer between public and private realms and articulated through layers of perforated metal and small opening.” (more…)
1 Comment »
Carrot City – Urban Agriculture is an exhibition which shows a variety of possibilities in urban farming and takes place at Toronto’s Design Exchange until April 30th 2009. The aim of the exhibition is to display how the design of cities and building is enabling the production of food in the city.
The background of the background of the exhibition is described as the following:
The role of architecture in food production, distribution and related issues is a new area of study, despite the historical importance of food in cities. The emerging alternative food movement has only just begun to engage with the possible (more…)
1 Comment »
Danish BIG Architects, Bjarke Ingels Group, a Copenhagen based group of 85 architects, designers, builders and thinkers operating within the fields of architecture, urbanism, research and development, have won the first prize in the Danish pavilion completion for the world exhibition in Shanghai in 2010.
Looking like a snail-shell the architects explain their design in the following way: (more…)
1 Comment »
The harbour of the Danish capital Copenhagen is in the midst of a transformation from an industrial port and traffic junction to being the cultural and social centre of the city. The Harbour Bath, a project by Danish architects BIG and JDS, has been instrumental in this evolution. The Harbour Bath offers an urban harbour landscape with dry-docks, piers, boat ramps, cliffs, playgrounds and pontoons. As a terraced landscape, the Harbour Bath completes the transition from land to water, making it possible for the citizens of Copenhagen to go for a swim in the middle of the city.
Find a lot more about that project on archdaily or JDS (it is quite complicated to find that project but its code is BAD). (more…)
No Comments »
Because of thousands of unwanted shipping containers around Greater New York, the AIA Newark and Suburban has invited international designers to re-invent the box with their most inspired and creative utilizations of shipping containers as the primary construct of an urban multi-family mixed use project: Live the Box.
Mr. Stone, one of the organizing architects, said, “So often, those with limited means feel they are being sequestered and forced into something substandard. “Why would they want to live in shipping containers if no one else does?” And then it occurred to the architects: “We should figure out how to create housing so cool that everybody would want to live in it.” (more…)
No Comments »
Subscribe (RSS)
