Æsthe/tech:Tonik
Building | Beauty | Consuming | Image
Reburbia
Recently, Inhabitat & Dwell sponsored a competition to reinvent suburban life. The finalists can be seen here.
http://www.re-burbia.com/finalists/
MS
Matryoshka
Recently, Tent London & The Art Fund Prize sponored a competition to design a semi-permenant summer pavilion for the Lightbox Museum. Amongst all of the criteria, the gyst is that it needed to be a flex space to house a number of various art pieces (standing, hanging, etc.), allow for presentations, and be a place for informal gathering.
In addition, it was to be designed such that a local design and fabrication firm (FACIT), could use their system to produce the product within 72 hours (on-site build time).
The following is my entry, entitled Matryoshka. The project is based around a proposition that a system of volumes be nested within one another in an ultra-efficient cube, and their ultimate extension results in new program-specific space. I found the most liberating thing about the project was that it was an exercise in restraint – from the site, to the programmatic stipulations, cost and highly specific construction methodology, the design had to satisfy a number of constraints.
The winning entry was from Tina Manis, and was highly effective.
Enjoy
MS
Maha Nakhon
OMA/Ole Scheeren tower design in Bangkok (estimated completion 2012). It will be the tallest building in Thailand’s capital.
77 Stories, 1.6 million square feet.
MS
Noriko Ambe
I was looking at the work of Noriko Ambe the other day, and am completely fascinated with the meticulous nature of her endeavors. What’s interesting to me is the dichotomy between what is expected and what is revealed in this process. Superficially, I don’t know if I am to believe that these are excavations of sorts, where the beauty lies within the sequential discovery of the formal nuances amidst each layer of Yupo paper as it is carved away, or if in fact, she knows what is coming next, and the mastery of the technique has led to a carefully planned additive method, where we only see what she intends, knowing how each layer will unfold.
I would guess it’s probably a little of both, which makes it all the more compelling.
MS
Open KSA
One of my most memorable classes as a student was a theory seminar I took by Jeff Kipnis, which at the time was privy to only students in their final year of architecture study. Entertaining, to say the least. Since then, he has also taught lectures to students in their first year of school, and the lectures are available here. I think you’ll find them humorous, and enlightening.
Start with “Windows”
http://knowlton.osu.edu/open/media.asp
MS
Universcale
An amazing website devoted to the scalar relationships of our known world. Think Eames Powers of Ten with a flash interface. Perhaps the most amazing thing is how small we have been able to create man-made objects (namely single electron transistors). A sobering testament to both our insignificance, and simultaneously our amazing ability to catalogue our environment.
MS
Kalyx
Engaging the right side of the brain is a liberating exercise, except most times it isn’t something we consciously do. Right-brained thinking is interesting in the sense that it is so unlike its counterpart, aka left-brained thinking, in that there isn’t necessarily work involved in getting from point A to point B. There isn’t an “I get it” or “I don’t get it”, but simply a range/depth of appreciation.
I think we would all be surprised at just how attune to visual phenomena we really are, and how much we can process simply by looking at an object, a space, a face, or an image.
I say that relevant to this project, only because I started with trying to indulge a right-brained urge, and ended up getting there in a pretty linear fashion.
Working on a project in Dubai, our project team found out that a good portion of the masonry in the city is actually cut and hewn coral deposits. Its combination of mass and porosity, as well as availability, had obvious benefits given the climate and region. Though the project pursued another direction, I kept finding new things relative to color, growth patterns, etc.
A project emerged simply by trying to follow the underlying geometric logic of a species of coral whose septa (walls) fuse together from polyp to polyp. Simplicity follows two tracks; a simple thing + complex technique, or a simple technique to get a complex thing.
This employs the latter.
I’ll probably post a more detailed description on my website shortly.
MS
Wing Suits for All
This has nothing to do with architecture or design for that matter, unless you’re counting the suit fabrication, but I thought it was amazing nonetheless. Besides the sheer insanity of it all, some of the video tracking the jumps in first person is incredible.
Get the fullscreen vimeo video here.
MS
Architecture; Collective Mediocrity?
I came across this note in the NYT by chance in a google search. Thoughts anyone?
To the Editor:
Christopher Hawthorne asserts that individual geniuses like Frank Lloyd Wright are being replaced by ”collectives” — teams that advocate group design and compromise [''Goodbye 'Fountainhead,' Hello Kibbutz,'' April 27]. As Ayn Rand has demonstrated, however, a collective of mediocrities cannot match the achievements of a single genius. Could Fallingwater have been designed by a committee? The surge toward collectivism in architecture may explain why so many buildings today are trite, disintegrated and/or just plain ugly.
EDWIN A. LOCKE
Westlake Village, Calif.
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