Shell Shocks
A new shell structure will be tested on April 16 in Stuttgart. (Courtesy Universität Stuttgart ILSCD)
We have written about the Universität Stuttgart’s Institute for Lightweight Structures and Conceptual Design before, but they keep pushing the boundaries of exciting new building technology. On April 16 they will introduce the “world’s first adaptive shell structure spanning 10 meters by 10 meters (to a scale of 1:1.), ” and the shell will be “exposed to hydraulic drives that produce movements at the support points in order to specifically reduce loads and deformations caused by externally applied loads.” Check back in on April 17th to see the test results!
The lightweight structure has a 10 meter x 10 meter span. (Courtesy Universität Stuttgart ILSCD)
Mies’ Gas Station Gets Refueled
Courtesy Les Architectes FABG
Designed a year before his death in 1968, Mies van der Rohe’s Esso station on l’Île des Sœurs in Montreal has been vacant and shuttered since 2008. The station, intended to serve nearby apartment blocks also designed by Mies, was built during the early urbanization of the island and closed when another station opened closer to the island’s main thoroughfare. Having been declared a historic monument in 2009, the community eventually decided to restore the structure and convert it to an intergenerational community center.
Pictorial> eVolo 2012 Skyscraper Competition Winners Announced
Himalaya Water Tower: Zhi Zheng, Hongchuan Zhao, Dongbai Song
The winners of the eVolo 2012 Skyscraper Competition have been announced; get ready for an afternoon of browsing some pretty spectacular renderings. Entries offer innovative (and sometimes outlandish) solutions in an attempt to address the social, historical, urban, and environmental responsibilities of the 21st century mega-structure.
Unveiled> Jean Nouvel’s Police Panopticon/Dance Studio
(Courtesy Jean Nouvel)
It is unclear whether the newest Jean Nouvel project in Charleroi, Belgium is the first of the hybrid Police Headquarters/Dance Studio typology, but we would guess that it is. The collaboration between Paris-based Atelier Jean Nouvel and the Belgian firm MDW Architecture was selected in a competition and resulted in a scheme for a 246-foot tower and renovation of 19th century brick barracks.
Yesterday voters in Aberdeen, Scotland narrowly approved a plan to transform Union Terrace Gardens in the heart of the city into an ambitious hybrid park and cultural center designed by Diller, Scofidio + Renfro with OLIN, according to The Scotsman. The project is estimated to cost £140 million, though Sir Ian Wood, an oil services tycoon, has pledged £50 million toward the project. Aberdeen is known as the Granite City, and the design creates a new series of granite pathways criss-crossing over the sloping site, dividing it into different programmatic zones, including an amphitheater, exhibition hall, and a number of gardens.
Pictorial> Jim Kazanjian’s Victorian Apocalypse
Untitled (house), 2006. (Jim Kazanjian)
Jim Kazanjian doesn’t make photographs of buildings, he makes photographs into buildings. His assemblages of “found” structures create fantastic worlds that resemble the post-civilization wreckage of 19th century England. Through the collapse of time and expansion of space, each collage tells an eerie story about making the familiar unfamiliar.
Urban Movement Design to Transform Hadid’s MAXXI for Young Architects Program in Rome
Rendering of Urban Movement Design’s Unire/Unite, winning design of YAP MAXXI 2012. (Courtesy Urban Movement Design)
Earlier this month, we were first to bring you renderings of HWKN’s planned installation for MoMA’s P.S. 1 Young Architects Program (YAP), but now AN has learned that YAP’s counterpart in Rome has selected Urban Movement Design’s proposal for a series of sinuous benches and archways covered in grass and hanging plants as the winner to fill Zaha Hadid’s MAXXI museum piazza this June.
Breaking> Chinese Architect Wang Shu Awarded Pritzker Prize
Wang Shu in front of his New Academy of Art Hangzhou, China. (Iwan Baan)
Chinese architect Wang Shu has been named the 2012 Pritzker Architecture Prize laureate, marking the first time a Chinese architect has been honored prize which brings a bronze medal and $100,000 purse. Wang Shu is known for building with traditional Chinese forms and materials, often recycling bricks and tiles to form a patchwork mosaic in his buildings, which demonstrate a distinct modern sensibility. He is professor and head of architecture at the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou, China and founded Amateur Architecture Studio with Lu Wenyu in 1998 where he has taken an outspoken stance against architecture that he perceives as destroying vast urban and rural landscapes across China.
Pratt Student Awarded Gensler Brinkmann Scholarship
Tina Uznanski's concept for a flexible library. (Courtesy Gensler)
While most design students are starting the scramble for plum summer internships, Tina Uznanski can rest easy, knowing a desk with her name on it will be waiting at Gensler’s London office. Uzanski, an interior design student at the Pratt Institute, has received Gensler’s annual Brinkmann Scholarship, winning a paid summer internship at the Gensler office of her choice and a cash prize to be put toward her final year of study at Pratt. The award was established in 1999 as a memorial to interior designer and former Gensler partner Donald G. Brinkmann.
Uznanski won the competition with her clever concept for a renovation of her neighborhood library in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn, that creates a flexible room through “shifting stacks.” images after the jump
Hirst's "Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living" (Sotheby's/PA)
Artist Damien Hirst, known for, among many other things, suspending dead animals in formaldehyde, is also considered to be the world’s richest artist (he’s reportedly worth over $300 million). He’s investing some of that money in the development of 500 new “eco-houses” near North Devon, on the southwest tip of Great Britain. The residences, which will feature rooftop turbines, solar panels and sophisticated insulation, are slated to break ground early next year. One of the firms working on the drawings is London firm MRJ Rundell + Associates, whose founder Mike Rundell told a North Devon newspaper of Hirst “He has a horror of building anonymous, lifeless buildings. He wants these houses to be the kind of homes he would want to live in.”
After collaborating on dozens of products from tea kettles to toilet plungers, Minneapolis-based Target is ending its 13 year partnership with architect Michael Graves, according to the Star-Tribune. ”Michael Graves was Target’s first and longest-standing design partner to date,” Stacia Andersen, senior vice president of home merchandising, said in a statement. “Together, we created an iconic product collection that expertly blended design with function.” A final Graves collection will debut in March and will be available through 2012. Graves was the first well-known designer to work with the discount retailer, and his products proved so successful that the company has since worked with numerous other product and fashion designers.
The Guardian is reporting that one of Le Corbusier’s most famous works, the Unité d’Habitation in Marseille, France, has been damaged in a fire. Three apartments were gutted and many other units were damaged by the fire, which took 12 hours to contain. Five people were being treated for injuries. Originally built as low-income housing between 1947 and 1951, the Unité is now a protected landmark in France and home to approximately 1600 residents in 334 apartments.
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