Tuesday, April 21, 2009

MiesArch European Prize 2009

"MiesArch European Prize is a joint initiative of the European Commission and the Fundació Mies van der Rohe. The principal objectives are to recognise and commend excellence in the field of architecture and to draw attention to the important contribution of European professionals in the development of new concepts and technologies. The Prize also sets out to promote the profession by encouraging architects working throughout the entire European Union and by supporting young architects as they set off on their careers." to find out more...

Image featuring Mountain Dwellings by BIG ARCHITECTS
downloaded from http://www.miesarch.com/press
by Jens Lindhe

Monday, April 20, 2009

DALLAS CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS DEE AND CHARLES WYLY THEATRE

"Dallas Theater Center (DTC) is recognized as one of the country’s few innovative theater companies located outside the triumvirate of New York, Chicago, and Seattle. Ironically, the company’s artistic success can be attributed largely to its provisional accommodations in a dilapidated, galvanized metal shed. Free of the need to respect its architectural surroundings, the group regularly challenged its art’s physical conventions. The company’s makeshift residence also allowed it to be multi-form: throughout its season, DTC routinely reconfigured its stage. Imagining a new home for DTC posed two distinct challenges. First, like a restaurant renovation which polishes out the character that made the original establishment successful, the creation of a pristine venue threatened to stultify the environment that had facilitated the company’s originality." to find out more...

Image & Passage from http://www.rex-ny.com/work/wyly-theatre/

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

11th International Bauhaus-Colloquium 2009 - Call for Papers

"An acephalous power has superseded imperialism, if we can believe Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri. This new world order that they call ‘Empire’ transgresses all the inherited divisions of political thought, such as state and society, war and peace, control and freedom, core and periphery. It is a diffuse Foucauldian network of economic, military, political, cultural and social power, “in a permanent state of emergency and exception justified by the appeal to essential values [...].” The decentered and deterritorializing Empire rules through biopolitics, a form of power that regulates social life from within, directly affecting the minds and bodies of the citizens via media, machines and social practices.

The 11th International Bauhaus Colloquium in April 2009 in Weimar asks how architecture responds to the Empire.

The Bauhaus Colloquia are the oldest and most esteemed conferences on architectural theory in the German speaking world. The last five meetings – Power (1993), Technofiction (1996), Global Village (1999), Medium Architecture (2003) and The Reality of the Imaginary (2007) – have focused on the effect of changing social and technological conditions on the practice of architecture. The next colloquium will take on the political challenges of our world." to find out more...

Passage from http://www.uni-weimar.de/cms/en/university/faculty-of-architecture/lecturers/
entwerfen-und-architekturtheorie/atheo/bauhaus-kolloquium/bhk2009/cfp2009.html

Monday, April 13, 2009

Teaching Architecture Learning Architecture

"Young people go to university with the aim of becoming architects, of finding out if they have got what it takes. What is the first thing we should teach them?
First of all, we must explain that the person standing in front of them is not someone who asks questions whose answers he already knows. Practicing architecture is asking oneself questions, finding one's own answers with the help of the teacher, whittling down, finding solutions. Over and over again.
The strength of a good design lies in ourselves and in our ability to perceive the world with both emotion and reason. A good architectural design is sensuous. A good architectural design is intelligent.
We all experience architecture before we have even heard the word. The roots of architectural understanding lie in our architectural experience: our room, our house, our street, our village, our town, our landscape - we experience them all early on, unconsciously, and we subsequently compare them with the countryside, towns and houses that we experience later on. The roots of our understanding of architecture lie in our childhood, in our youth; they lie in our biography. Students have to learn to work consciously with their personal biographical experiences of architecture. Their allotted tasks are devised to set this process in motion." to find out more...
Passage from http://www.archidose.org/Jun99/061499a.htm by Lars Muller

Commentary from Kevin Mark Low





Apart from the interesting work, what stands behind is more appealing.

"All architects seek frame of reference in design.
Some seek it in style and others in theory, it comes down to personal choice and our instinctive need for reference and context. Mostly, we are moved by and drawn to originality, the expression of singular thought.
Originality is quite commonly found in published work. Due primarily to the speed and proliferation of published architectural material, architects have begun to gauge and be gauged themselves with reference to the publishing eye; we to ooften aspire to an international fraternity of the avant garde, to design staples of a western paradigm. Being drawn to what has been deemed good by virtue of inclusion, we often relive the strength of that originality in our work; we subtly duplicate the aesthetics of design already realized, believing it to be our own.
Unintentionality is no absolution.
Plagiarism is the act of engaging in the context of duplicating originality.
There is a deeper frame of reference for style and theory called place specificity: it is the context of our own originality. When one chooses to draw from place or site specificity, the search for meaning in what we do comes to resolution since nothing inspires greater meaning than the uniqueness of context.
In design one constantly finds oneself treading the fine line between repeating oneself (or another) and being spontaneous in creativity. The originality of an outcome depends almost entirely on its response to its specific context." to find out more...
Passage featuring plagiarism from http://www.small-projects.com/short/commentary.html
Image featuring steel on steal and board form house from http://www.small-projects.com/short/w08.html and http://www.small-projects.com/short/w24.html

Sunday, April 12, 2009

Estudio Carme Pinos

Interesting projects from Estudio Carme Pinos Architects you cannot miss! to find out more...
Images featuring Cube Tower in Guadalajara in Mexico from http://www.cpinos.com/english/home-eng.html#inferior

Vicente Guallart Architect

"With all the respect that assumes building in the frontline of the sea, this buildings, of squared plan, Project themselves according to new space organizations and functions with the objective of profiting the maximum the sea location of the site. One of the differential factors has been the relation between the rooms and the big terrace that surrounds them, conceived literally to enhance and enlarge each apartment. By folding doors and curtains we can have terraces follow essential elements for the circulation in the terraces. The kitchen and bathrooms look over exterior. The sea can be seen from the bathrooms. Another remarkable condition: the water elements are placed in the façade, reflect the surroundings and generate a relation between the interior skin and the exterior of colored glasses. " to find out more...
Image & Passage featuring 34 APARTMENTS CAMBRILS from http://www.guallart.com/01projects/Cambrils/default.htm

Kazunori Fujimoto

Clean, Simple, integrated space design with strong shape and space grammar from Architect Kazunori Fujimoto. to find out more...
Images featuring House in Miyanomachi and House in Higashi-Machi from http://www.jutok.jp/en/ by Kazunori Fujimoto

Pugh & Scarpa Architects


"Orange Grove is a five-unit for sale market rate loft project, featuring ceiling heights up to 30 feet. The building is sensitively designed and compatible with the neighborhood, but differs in material palette and scale from its neighbors. Referencing architectural conventions of modernism rather than the pitched roof forms of traditional domesticity, the project presents a characteristic that is consistent with the eclectic and often unconventional demographic of West Hollywood. Distinct from neighboring structures, the building creates a strong relationship to the street by virtue of its large amount of highly usable balcony area in the front façade.

While there are dramatic and larger scale elements that define the building, it is also broken down into comprehensible human scale parts, and is itself broken down into two different buildings. Orange Grove displays a similar kind of iconoclasm as the Schindler House, an icon of California modernism, located a short distance away. Like the Schindler House, the conventional architectural elements of windows and porches are reconceived as an abstract sculptural ensemble, in this case referencing a paradigm based on the space, light, and industrial materials of the loft." to find out more...
Image & Passage from http://www.pughscarpa.com/projects/orange.grove

Friday, April 10, 2009

Sauerbruch Hutton

"Sauerbruch Hutton is an international agency for architecture, urbanism and design, founded in 1989. Presently there are about 100 Architects, Designers, Engineers, Modelmakers and administrative staff of approx. twelve different nationalities working in our office in Berlin. The team is led by Matthias Sauerbruch, Louisa Hutton, Juan Lucas Young as well as Jürgen Bartenschlag and Andrew Kiel.

Sauerbruch Hutton realise individual and sustainable solutions to a wide range of programmes. The enjoyment of the sensuality of space and material, as well as the mastery of up-to-date technology is combined with the intelligent use of existing resources of every kind.

Built works range from the much-noted Brandhorst Museum in Munich to the Federal Environmental Agency in Dessau, which presents a benchmark building for the sustainable design of offices. A whole series of projects for private and public clients are currently under way in Paris, Geneva, Milan, Tilburg, Sheffield and several cities in Germany." to find out more...

Image and passage from http://www.sauerbruchhutton.de/

Saturday, April 04, 2009

Bonzai3d

A simplified formZ version called Bonzai3d beta version is out for free download and tryout!