The Citadel: Europe's First Floating Apartment Complex

This falls under the category of designs in "harmony" with their surroundings. The architecture firm is called Waterstudio and this project is located in the Netherlands. There are a plethora of Polders in the Netherlands that are used as areas for flood waters to settle during heavy rain storms to protect neighboring homes from being damaged.

The project uses the water that fills up the Polder to cool the apartments. To help you better understand the design technique I will ask that you take a moment and try to find some repetition of the building forms on the picture to the right.

Can you see a pattern beginning to form? This is a type of design that uses a standard component, in this case the apartment unit, to help simplify the form. Then the Architect provides a couple parameters; Greenhouses, patios, building materials, quantity of units per acre, etc.; to begin establishing a method for organizing elements along the site. From here a variety of studies can be conducted to establish size of units, geometries between units, allow more sun, create privacy or just present "cool" and visually appealing architecture that the Architect can then evaluate and digest to re-present to a client.

As you can see there are a variety of ways that Architects can help form a thesis to develop the architecture that you see, and if you have read my other blogs you are starting to learn about a few of them.

Bridge Homeless Shelter cuts Neighborhood Crime by 18%

This is one of the reasons why I got into to design in the first place, because the way we design does have a direct impact on our surroundings.

The stunning feature of the design was the fact that set really high goals for the project and were able to meet them. The project was built on a remediated Brownfield site, a burnt out and "hazardous" site that was not suitable for human habitation that they cleaned up and made useable, and strove for LEED (Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design)ratings on a building typology that is typically undesired visually by any community. "The Bridge proves that shelters should not be isolated, but an integrated part of our community.”
The original post is located on Inhabitat.

Architecturally they found a way to integrate a variety of Natural design elements into the building; graywater system, daylighting to reduce energy consumption and green roofs to reduce the amount of heat that a building radiates back into the "Global Warming".

MTC/MRC, Theatre and Recital Center, Melbourne, Australia

A fun and very performative design for the new Theatre and Recital halls designed by architect Ashton Raggatt McDougall. This falls into the category of interpretive design.

The architect used two different design profiles to develop the thesis for his design. The Theatre space was designed with the idea of the foam packaging that safely carries our large items when we buy electronics, appliances or other items.
By using this very broad brushed terminology the architect was able to free himself up to develop a design that could fit the overall space requirements of the theatre and not be mired in strange hirearchies (which gives me an idea for a future blog on different types of architecture) or other design philosophies.

The second design tool he used for the recital hall was using some expressions and elements that he pulled from artist Al Held, an american modern artist. The artist used strong geometric figures and two-dimensional patterns that distort a viewers perception of three-dimensional space.

The real design by the architect comes down to how he chooses to organize the circulation in and around the building, as well as how he proportions each space to organize the "feeling" of and the interaction between all the parts; building and people.

My goal is to help you, the reader, to better understand how some of these ideas come about and the magic and dedication a designer must have to his design to either succeed or fail in the execution. At first glance the entire building seems a hapahazard mess, and certain elements are less controlled then others, but when you start to ask "what was he/she thinking and what does it mean" then you can begin to organize all the parts into a very systematic and organized matrix of which to start exploring this new world of architecture (not to sound too dogmatic).

If you wish to read more the original article is posted
here.

Wonderland Magazine Part 1

Issue # 1: Getting started

First I want to make sure that I thank AnArchitecture from Vienna Austria for having shared the original post. I found his post helpful as I delve deeper into my own pursuit of Individual practive, and you can view his comments under people I follow.

This article is most applicable for people who are professionals more than those that are interested in knowing a few things about architecture in general. So I am going to spin the discussion of this post in a constructive direction, and I will do this as often as possible.

As my "mission statement" states, I am trying to help those of us that are choosing not to explore Architecture as a profession and open up your eyes to the potential that Architecture brings to our daily lives; healthier living, simpler life-stylers, more complicated life-styles, etc. The first issue out of this magazine states that "little is learnt about the road to building" and "countless questions remain unanswered."

Many questions I get from my friends and family are "What do you do as an Architect" or "Why was this (place anything building or space related here) done this way?" That is never a simple question to answer, and typically a response that few want to sit down and have an in depth philisophical debate over. To put it plainly, Architects must understand ideas and create tangible solutions that anticipate long-term user decisions.

Ideas can be any number of things. Take for instance (for simplicity sake), you have an idea one day that you want to open up a new Chocolate shop. Where would you locate the shop; suburban, urban, new-urban (I will discuss this topic in another post), public/private transportation? What kind of image will you present to the public and what kinds of amenities will you offer; chocolate bar, candy shelves, size of storage, chocolate made in shop visible to customers? How big will your place need to be in order to effectively serve the people you are trying to attract; number of seats, tables, couches, etc.?

From that tiny example we, you and I, can evaluate a variety of questions and task from a micro to macro scale. The Architect is responsible for asking the right questions and listening to the way you respond to these questions. Some Architects may argue my next point, but... we are Agents working passionately on creating the reality of what you see in your head combined with the experience we have gathered over the years. You can call some of us "visionary" or "entrepeneurs" of a craft that we love and want to share with the world, but most importantly the only limit of what an Architect can provide is the limit that one places on themselves.

I will not ramble on much longer, but I am trying to help us both process the enigma behind what an Architect is. Architects label themselves, as most of us do to create a very efficient and marketable niche that calls people to us, in a variety of manners; Green Architect, Healthcare Architect, Residential Architect, etc. However, these do not help our clients to understand what we can and do provide, nor do these terms apply appropriately to what each individual has learned and experienced until asked. At the end of the day we, architects and people, are each individuals who are passionate about our own individual set of goals, and must learn to be more inquisitive of eachother and who we are. We might start to find a new style of design through communication that we only dreamed were possible.

I will have another blog in a week to discuss the Part 2 of Wonderland Magazine under the title "Finding your profile". Feel free to ask any questions or leave any comments, or post interesting ideas. I want this to be an open forum for Architectural debate and questions about what Architecture is.

Architecture for Humanity - 2009 Open Architecture Challenge

collaborating in inner city schools in New York City

This is what design is really about; collaboration, innovation and the social condition. Architecture for Humanity is an exciting architectural activitst organization that truly engages the world wide community to help change the way we think about our built environments and the way that our spaces help (or hinder) growth. Their focus is on the long term sustainability of built space, and the competition attached was designed to allow an open forum of design discussion for not just the Architecture community, but anyone in the world to participate and share their ideas. The exciting part, for me, is that this is what Architecture truly is... a tool we can use to help communicate how we choose to live and treat our world, and without communication and exploration we cannot sustain the world we live in nor expect growth. Check out the video attached above and enjoy. I hope that we can all learn to communicate for a more sustainable future, and it starts with how we teach eachother that makes the difference.

Wonderland Magazine

http://www.wonderland.cx/magazine_01.html

Europe's vision of how to start and manage a new Architecture Firm. I still have to read, and will follow-up with my impression.

David Woodhouse Architects wins Burnham Memorial Design Competition

$5 Mill Memorial project to the famous Daniel Burnham. The master and commander of the Chicago's World's Fair Design & Development with his partner John Root. A great book for those that love history is "A Devil in a White City". The story is a true life biography of all the events (tragedy, murder and mayhem) the ensue around trying to get the World's Fair up and running. There wouldn't be enough room to write about how powerful this moment in time really was and all the pain and suffering that all these men (yes, at that time men were the focus) had to go through to create such a Gorgeous Exposition.
This was what technological revolution really symbolized with the new World and development. A definite must read on all the major players that helped to shape the America that we now live in.

Daniel Libeskind's 'Sustainable' Prefab House

http://www.blogger.com/%3Ca%20href="

An article posted on Inhabitat, a repository for all things green in this world. The attached article and picture is a showcase of Star Architect Daniel Libeskind. I came across a lot of his work during my 5-years at college. He uses his language (archi-speak) to sell the type of design that he has developed. I never entirely figured out what his design really is other than a form of "pre-manufactured" metal paneling without true regard to shape or dimension. His designs are great at creating space, not neccessarily efficient, and playing with light. Most of the time I struggle with whether or not he truly labors over each and every detail (ie, where light comes into a space) or if his design is purely coincidental and only made valid by his ability to theorize and philosophize. I would have to question the later part of the last sentence and ask "how does one legitimize design if the designer doesn't think about the impact that the entire space will have on the people using it?"

Getting back to the article and some of the comments that were made (myself included), the building is suppose to epitomize Sustainable design. For those of you not totally familiar with Sustainability wikipedia has a great little background to help educate you further. The design looks stunning, not my style, but seems to lack the follow through. For instance, the large angled roof's aren't useful spaces, and do not seem to perform any real functional purpose. I would argue that the roof could be angled for the optimal angle to use Solar Collectors and then each prefab house could be subtly controlled for various regions of the world. Nothing was brought up in all of his marketing information other than a couple buzz words.

For now that is all I am going to say, because I am trying to figure out how I want to tailor these blogs to be more open for whomever ends up reading these. Thank you for any feedback!