Urban Lab Global Cities (ULGC)

Retranscription of The City 2.0 Evolved (not made) by Ecological Humans, a live conversation directed by Rachel Armstrong

2012-02-09T10:04:00.000+09:00

I have already introduced Rachel Armstrong's research. This is consequently not necessary to go back over it. Today I followed a live conversation she led on TED.COM, titled The City 2.0 - Evolved (not made) by Ecological Humans. This conversation is based on her recent published book Living Architecture which attempts to rethink the city in the nearing future. For Rachel Armstrong, the combination of architecture, city planning and biology — synthetic biology — can reshape cities and our lives. The following excerpt of this live conversation provides a forestaste of her book Living Architecture.

Suggested book: Rachel Armstrong, Living Architecture, TEDBooks, 2012.
Note that the book is only available in the ebook format via iBook, Nook and Kindle.

Before retranscripting of her conversation — I will only retranscript her notes not those of the other participants. To read their questions and observation, go to the TED.COM page —, let me start with the presentation of this live conversation project.

The City 2.0 — Evolved (not made) by Ecological Humans
We are not machines but Ecological Humans. We depend on our networks for survival, like an oak tree in the forest, being made up of highly interacting and interdependent systems. For example, eating is not simply consuming 'fuel' to feed our body-machine but is a mutual relationship shared between our gut bacteria, our food and our bodies (which, in turn, are highly interconnected assemblages of specialised tissues). The way that we see ourselves influences the way that we operate through the world in all aspects of our lives — from health, to business and even space exploration!
Ecological Humans, imagine the City 2.0 as being grown from the bottom-up by its comunities. It is udnerpinned by highly interacting and interdependent networks, which use dynamic fabrics that behave in life-like ways. These buildings can be described as Living Architecture that are capable of responding to the changes in our dynamic cities as only real ecologies can?
Questions:
Will The City 2.0 be qualitatively different to modern cities? Or pragmatically, can the transition only be made as a series of incremental changes? What can we do to facilitate this transition?
What does being an Ecological Human mean to me? Can it help me find new or more effective ways of working?
Can we rely on biology to provide all the answers when it comes to sustainable building solutions? Is life a technology - and should we exploit it in the pursuit of more sustainable ways of building?

Now the retranscription that I extracted from her posts. Note that this retranscription appears to be disjointed. This reflects the flows of discussion and reaction to participants' questions and comments as well as the themes she proposed:

Is it possible — given that cities are complex, therefore unpredictable — to generate any kind of impact (whether initiated by a 'wish' or any other kind of action) — on what is a conundrum and constantly moving target? Moreover, cities possess durations longer than a life span and inevitably outlive the jurisdiction of politicians and company heads who may be in any kind of meaningful position to oversee sustainable change.

(…) I definitively believe humanity can coevolve into a beneficial structural and functional force in living systems and the Panarchy. With us evolving into an urban species, cities are the key!

This method of approaching uncertainty has become so successful that we have even embraced this concept into the soul of our existence. Machines are really great for being machines. They command control through the consumption of natural resources and are belligerent to a tickle natural world. They keep us sage and in command.

Since ancient times we have sought to gain control of the unknown, believing that the laws of the cosmos, nature and the human realm are knowable and ordered. The most powerful instrument we have used to unravel the complexity of existence and simplify it is the 'machine' - the idea of an object-based, hierarchical system that possess a mathematical order. The metaphor of the machine has been extremely successful, so much so that we imagine ourselves as machines. We think of our bodies of being made up of parts consisting of organs and tissues. At the very centre of these machine organs is a biological program, a complex chemical called DNA that literally runs the processes of our soft machine. When various parts of the body machine break down, we can replace them with other parts that do the same job and ultimately, since we are machines the logical conclusion is that we could indefinitely replace our body parts and achieve immortality. If we do not submit to complete mechanisation Ray Kurtzweil warns us that we will be replaced by superior life forms in an event horizon so profound that we cannot see the consequences for our species beyond it. He calls this The Singularity.

Can a city be solved? A distinguishing feature of the life of a city is that it is not made but evolved in collaboration with its inhabitants. In other words – cities are long-term projects that engage with both top down and bottom up ideas and processes.

When I was writing my TED book on Living Architecture - which I am eternally grateful to Tom Reilly for suggesting and Jim Daly for seeing the idea through to fruition – I began to realise that ‘living architecture’ was not a product but a process that could be used for problem solving.

As the implications for ecological thinking became apparent, I was keen to find a context in which it might be possible to test how ecological principles could be applied to a variety of different challenges.

The TED Prize City 2.0 challenge started me thinking about the seemingly insurmountable issues that our cities will pose over the coming decades. It invites us to collectively craft ‘one wish’, which will collectively ignite the actions of the TED community and set them on the path towards sustainable change in our cities worldwide.

This conversation is entirely separate to the TED Prize but has been inspired by it. The idea of a future city offers a framework in which I’d like to start to explore the possibilities that a new kind of thinking. I’d like to explore what this approach may have to offer us in dealing with the unknown and also with the more mundane aspects of our daily lives.

It occurred to me when I was writing of my TED Book that all the Grand Challenges that we currently face are not ones control and command issues related to simple situations but complex ones - that require participation, engagement, collaboration and interdependency.

Two decades after the internet breached the domestic and commercial realms we have become familiar with the idea of complexity - on a daily basis. Whereas once the world may have appeared to be ordered in a hierarchical manner – now it appears to be impossibly entwined and forged from networks and interactions that are ephemeral, transient and fundamentally uncontrollable.

Is it possible to reconcile this subversive view of existence with a working view of our presumed cosmic order?

We might imagine this new complex framework in which we are inextricably immersed as being an ‘ecological’ one.

This method of approaching uncertainty has become so successful that we have even embraced this concept into the soul of our existence. Machines are really great for being machines. They command control through the consumption of natural resources and are belligerent to a fickle natural world. They keep us safe and in command.

Since ancient times we have sought to gain control of the unknown, believing that the laws of the cosmos, nature and the human realm are knowable and ordered. The most powerful instrument we have used to unravel the complexity of existence and simplify it is the 'machine' - the idea of an object-based, hierarchical system that possess a mathematical order. The metaphor of the machine has been extremely successful, so much so that we imagine ourselves as machines. We think of our bodies of being made up of parts consisting of organs and tissues. At the very centre of these machine organs is a biological program, a complex chemical called DNA that literally runs the processes of our soft machine. When various parts of the body machine break down, we can replace them with other parts that do the same job and ultimately, since we are machines the logical conclusion is that we could indefinitely replace our body parts and achieve immortality. If we do not submit to complete mechanisation Ray Kurtzweil warns us that we will be replaced by superior life forms in an event horizon so profound that we cannot see the consequences for our species beyond it. He calls this The Singularity.

Is it possible that by thinking differently - using a new kind of ordering system - whether this might give us a set of tools that can help understand ourselves in a more connected, ecological context and may have an impact on for example : the way we live our lives, the way we make things and the way that we dream and build our cities?

In my book [Living Architecture] I have attempted to use an ecological framework to address a complex issue - such as the future city - as invited by the TED Prize City 2.0. Living Architecture, is the consequence of using a new set of tools and technologies in our acts of making. These are not machines, they do not work like machines at all but behave biologically. The portfolio of new tools, which are mostly based in synthetic biology and complexity chemistry, sets the scene for a new group of materials and architectural interventions that lie somewhere between the performance of machines and biology. These strange, new technologies blur the distinction between building and landscape and suggest that the 21st century marks the advent of synthetic urban ecologies. The book itself takes a multi-systems view of the potential applications of systems that are not truly 'alive' but possess living qualities. As 'living technologies' these properties can be exploited as new ways of 'making' things at many scales of operation ranging from the micro scale, to the city. The text explores the context and need for these kinds of new solutions that are compatible with a systems view of the world embodied in the ecologically engaged practices of Panarchy, Permaculture and Biomimicry. Living Architecture results from the strategic applications of living technologies and - importantly - is based on real world experiments.

1) A system that is ecological and emergent is dependent firstly on its context - or its environment. This establishes just how much growth and self-organization any particular generative system can achieve. Think of a small office making great business, enough to take on new staff - the size of the office space will limit the emergent interactions in that group of people.

2) A system that is ecological and emergent is dependent on its 'metabolism' - the energy that it possess to keep it away 'from equilibrium' - that's a term used by Shroedinger 1944 to describe a signature of life. In an everyday setting we can think of the 'metabolism' as motivation, stimulation, cultural motivation and belief systems (I am sure that you'll be able to think of many more ways of keeping energy flowing in a community or a workplace). Without an internal energy to stop everyone reaching a point of inertia - or unproductively - spontaneity and emergent behaviour will not occur.

3) A system (or group of people) that work according to ecological and emergent principles also need an 'architecture' - in other words a strategy through which the participants can use to connect with and interact with each other. Without social codes, ethics and etiquette then the bonding or 'architecture' of the system breaks down. These forms of architecture do not have to be permanently fixed but they need to be present as they are vital for the participants to help them understand their role and limits within a group.

This raises a very important challenge when dealing with ecological ways of working - that is the need for both top down and bottom up forms of coordination. The whole issue of emergence is one that is inherent to systems thinking and ecological thinking yet it provides a design and engineering challenge that has not been 'formalised'. How do we design with emergent systems? The short answer is that emergence alone is not enough to generate sustainable change other factors are extremely important.

Let's think about what this might mean in the work place. If we think of ourselves as machines, we have a single job to do, wall ourselves away and invest all our energy in getting that job done. We work to the same pattern, the same programme and the same habits. In a machine, variety is not a good thing as if dilutes our efficiency. In an ecology, networks are all important. The first thing we would do in an office would be to make sure that our networks are healthy. If we have a particular task to perform we find out who can help us and use the network to find out a way around any issues that may result from the unseen challenges that beset us daily. An ecological approach to the work place would also see continual changes in practice that respond and evolve according to ongoing daily challenges and may evolve new systems of ways of working that do not need a centralised command chain to operate them. Ecological ways of working evolve rather than follow a rigid program which is then very disruptive when this is altered at central HQ.

The political theorist Jane Bennett takes a very interesting view of the material world which gives it political agency. In other words, as we depend on more than ourselves for our well being then she believes that the world around us has meaning and therefore value. She describes the act of eating, for example as being a collaboration between the bacteria in our gut and our own bodies - neither one of these exclusively benefits or always 'wins' in this transactions - she imagines then that our bacteria, during the process of eating are part of us. So if we need to embrace and respect our body bacteria as a way of looking after ourselves this changes their meaning - for example, we may not take an antibiotic when we feel unwell as we would see it as being more harmful than good and would take a bionutrient instead to strike a better biological balance. This is a subtle but important change in the way we think about our environment. Machines seek to be sterile - and bacterial free. Ecologies are the consequences of healthy networks and balances.

I'll address some of the questions that resulted from writing the TED Book on Living Architecture. The first being what the idea of an Ecological Human actually mean? Could it help us find new or more effective ways of working?

Those contexts are just some very simple rules that it was possible to examine using the living technology that I have been working with since 2009. It has been an amazing experience being able to work with a technology that really does look as if it is alive but since it has no DNA, it is not called 'alive'. However, that this technology breaks a lot of rules that machines obey helped me look again afresh at the way that world appeared to be organised around me and how it might be possible to use the powerful visualisation that the technology offered as a way of re-imagining what may be possible. Take a look for yourself - this is a series of films that were taken of the technology - they are not animation but real footage of simple droplets behaving in a remarkably lifelike way. Video: Here [credit Michael Simon Toon].

It occurred to me when I was writing of my TED Book that all the Grand Challenges that we currently face are not ones control and command issues related to simple situations but complex ones - that require participation, engagement, collaboration and interdependency.

Two decades after the internet breached the domestic and commercial realms we have become familiar with the idea of complexity - on a daily basis. Whereas once the world may have appeared to be ordered in a hierarchical manner – now it appears to be impossibly entwined and forged from networks and interactions that are ephemeral, transient and fundamentally uncontrollable.

Is it possible to reconcile this subversive view of existence with a working view of our presumed cosmic order?

We might imagine this new complex framework in which we are inextricably immersed as being an ‘ecological’ one.

Future cities will need to have some qualitatively differences to modern cities but change does not mean tearing down what already exists. This is simply silly. In my book I refer to 'extreme recycling' of cities where structural elements such as concrete and steel that mature with age are kept in situ and new kinds of 'skins' that have more biological-like and dynamic materials in them can start to perform some of the kinds of functions that we'd normally attribute to plants. Most of us will not be able to live in Masdar and sustainable enclaves so one of the biggest challenges that I hope that living technologies can address is in our existing building stock. I think that we will firstly experience a series of incremental changes as some of these new technologies can increase the quality of the local environment in physical but also in terms of its psychological impact. We need to make room for nature in our cities. We can be inventive about what this actually means now that we are able to design and engineer with biological systems to the degree that we are currently able. But we also need to respect our environment and also the wishes of communities. Facilitating a transition towards a City 2.0 (as the TED Prize states) has really got to start with a change in mindset as to what is possible, education, addressing infrastructures, meeting the needs of populations and lastly changing the way that our architectures are made. In that order. Also this is just my opinion and I am very keen to hear your views as to how change may be possible - it is so vital for a humane future in cities - and so pressing upon us!

What is the role of biology in our twenty first century cities? Will we have space for native biology if we're not only going to see one third again more people in urban environments, living more densely and with more people moving from rural to city lifestyles. Can biology be viewed as a technology that can help us generate more sustainable solutions for city living spaces? These kind of questions may be addressed best by the practice of a new kind of science called synthetic biology. Most of us will equate synthetic biology with genetic modification - which is something that I do not do myself. But is it more broad than this - certainly the way that I personally view synthetic biology. I consider this science as being the way that we design and engineer with nature and living systems. In other words using a set of tools and materials that are Ecological in their very nature. Machine based tools need to be checked and adapted for their ecological compatibility because they constitute a barrier between human design and the natural world - but biological systems share a common language with nature through the laws of physics and chemistry. In my TED Book Living Architecture I describe the range of these kinds of interventions that range from agrarian techniques to biotechnology. They constitute a powerful portfolio of possible ways of shaping our living quarters. Because they are powerful they need to be considered carefully but they do offer us something new and different to machines. Modern architecture finds the biological system too slow for its liking. But if we really do find some of the properties such as, robustness flexibility, the ability to deal with the unexpected and the capacity for surprise valuable then there are a new range of opportunities (and challenges - which include ethical ones) available to us.

More: Here.

Call for Ideas: Autoprogettazione 2.0 by Domus Magazine

2012-02-08T09:29:00.001+09:00

Domus, in collaboration with FabLab Torino, invites designers, architects, students and professionals to participate in an open-source design challenge: conceive a line of furniture to be used in FabLabs all around the world that can be manufactured in the FabLabs themselves. A selection of the best designs, chosen by a panel of experts, will be realised and exhibited by Domus at the Milan Salone del Mobile in April 2012, published in Domus and made available for download on Domus.
FabLabs are global network of small-scale workshops offering cutting-edge digital fabrication technologies to communities all around the world. Autoprogettatione 2.0 intends to explore how these fabrication technologies, combined with the networked creative talent of the design comunity, can open up new horizons in furniture design and manufacturing.
The title is a homage to Autoprogettazione, which rougly translates as "self-design", a visionary concept proposed by Milanese designer Enzo Mari in 1974. Mari's now-legendary project consisted of a set of guidelines to create "cheap, high quality, long lasting and easy-to-assemble" furniture using only rough boards and nails. Mari's project was at the same time a serious design proposition and a provocative invitation to consider the production process with a critical eye.
Autoprogettatione 2.0 is an invitation to consider the potential of a diffused, localised manufacturing network combined with the self-build ethos proposed by Mari for the future of furniture design. It is an open-ended process that seeks to leverage the combined intelligence and talent of the design community and collaborative, open-source networks. Selected projects will be exhibited by Domus in an exhibition exploring the future of manufacturing hosted in palazzo Clerici, one of Milan's most prestigious palazzi.

The Submission deadline is 27 March 2012.

More: Here.

Call for Papers: MAS Context is calling for submissions on Communication

2012-02-08T07:32:00.000+09:00

MAS Context calls for submissions on the topic of Communication.

Content is only as good as the way we communicate it. Whether to a colleague, a client or the masses, the way we communicate our ideas will more than likely define their ultimate success or failure. Developing and applying the right tool to reach the full potential of our work is the critical step in a world that does not lack information. This issue looks into the way new and innovative ideas, proposals and projects are shared and discussed in successful ways.
For this issue, we are soliciting submissions of unpublished critical articles, design projects, photographic series or other type of contributions that examine the potential of communication in our built environment.

Submission are accepted until March 2, 2012. More: Here.

Who are they?
MAS Context is based in Chicago, but MAS Context's reach is global. The magazine is more like a platform for the sharing of relevant proposals, ideas and experiences that help advance the world of design.
The magazine's approach is simple and profound. Each issue asks people to think of new possibilities. Leading to collaborate in new ways. This unleacheas a great debate. And asks designers everywhere to act in new and unimagined ways. The core of the magazine can be summarized into 3 points:

Focus on a single topic and address it from a range of design fields: architects, photographers, writers, industrial designers, musicians, graphic artists, urban planners, etc.;
Combining the techniques delivers a comprehensive overview; and
Then share the insights and outlooks via different media types to reach a global audience.

News: AIDS Memorial Park Competition, New York, unveiling winning design

2012-02-08T06:33:00.002+09:00

The AIDS Memorial Park, located in New York, unveiled design selection, as The Architectural Record reports. The winner is a Brooklyn-based firm, Studio a+i with a design, titled Infinite Forest, consisting of a grove of twenty white birch trees that are reflected by 12-foot-long mirrors.

This competition was hosted by Architectural Record, Architizer, and The AIDS Memorial Park. Participants were invited to design a park on an unused triangular lot in Manhattan's West Village neighborhood.

Studio a+i was inspired by two important element, first the disease that should not be considered as "either a war or a disease conquered as", the agence goes on, "there are no definite dates or victims." Second: a fence.

AIDS Memorial Park design proposal, New York, © Studio a+i

The site, which was primarily used for a loading dock as well as for storage of liquid oxygen tanks, has 17,000 square feet on the street level and 10,000 square feet below-grade.

AIDS Memorial Park Design Proposal, © Studio a+i

According to the Architectural Record, Studio a+i's proposal consists of an above-ground park with a 12-foot walls on all three sides with entrances at each corner. A park, better: an infinite forest with three facing mirrored walls along each side of the triangular land.

AIDS Memorial Park Design Proposal, New York, © Studio a+i

This park will not have separate statues, sculptures or plaques, Studio a+i says. According to the agency, this park will be accessible to all: children, communter and visitors.

AIDS Memorial Park Design Proposal, New York, © Studio a+i

Three walls define entrances to the park, as the diagrams show. These walls will be reinforced with mirrored walls inside the park. Materials such as highly-polished stainless steel can be used to obtain these mirrored walls. The aim of the choice for mirrored walls is to generate an appearance of boundless space inside the park, Studio a+i adds.

AIDS Memorial Park Design Proposal, New York, © Studio a+i

These walls will function as generator of peaceful place for the users as they will isolate the park from the city. They will also act as light wells and access to the Learning Center. As the agency says, "by bringing sunlight into the basement via skylights, the raw utilitarian space can be transformed into a welcoming and open area for exhibition, learning and performance."

AIDS Memorial Park Design Proposal, New York, © Studio a+i

The walls taper in width to host stairs and ramps. Twenty white birch trees will be planted in the park. It will also include benches.
Exterior walls will be clad in chalkboard slates along sidewalks of Seventh Avenue, Greenwich Avenue, and West 12th Streets. These chalkboard slates were inspired by a fence as mentioned above, precisely a fence around a lot across the street, which was adorned with makeshift memorials after September 11, and which today has rows of similarly decorated tiles, Architectural Record reports. "People want a place to express their loss, their emotions, and feelings," the agency says.

AIDS Memorial Park Design Proposal, New York, Studio a+i

Studio a+i's proposal is modest, simple in a positive way. It is very difficult to design such a place which treats diseases such as AIDS without avoiding pathos. Exterior gathering spaces are important for any disease as a help for therapy or for living with the illness. This is the goal of Studio a+i with this Infinite Forest, that is, designing an environment calibrated to be a comfort to the patients as well as the visitors.

Building fact
Project: AIDS Memorial Park Competition
Architects: Studio a+i
Project team: Mateo Paiva, Lily Lm, John Thurtle, Insook Kim, Esteban Erlich
Location: Greenwich Village, New York City
Rendering: Guillaume paturel, by-encore
Date of Competition: January, 2012 (1st Prize)

Who are they?
Studio a+i was created by Lily Lim and Mateo Paiva in New York in 2004. Both are licensed Architects and have worked for Rafael Viñoly Architects in New York for number of years as Project Managers for large scale institutional and commercial projects all over the United States as well as in Asia and Europe.
Since its inception, Studio a+i has been involved in projects from residential buildings to commercial retail and office spaces in New York, Argentina, Uruguay and Singapore.
At Studio a+i, every project is a set of unique design challenges that are met with simple are elegant solutions.

Call for submissions: 306090 15 (Non-)Essential Knowledge for (New) Architecture

2012-02-04T09:29:00.000+09:00

306090 15 (Non-)Essential Knowledge for (New) Architecture calls for submissions.

What is essential knowledge for architecture? This frequently posed question targets fundamental principles of design, those basic criteria and priorities through which disciplinary stability is ensured. Yet, insofar as relevance is a core value of architecture, in both theory and practice, the contingent nature of the future guarantees that some forms of knowledge not presently considered essential will eventually become indispensable.
With that condition in mind, the editors of 306090 15, (Non-)Essential Knowledge for (New) Architecture, seek cntributions that envision possible futures for architecture trhough speculations about new disciplinary knowledge. What specific methods, materials, or understandins — tools, ratios, formulas, properties, principles, guidelines, definitions, rules, practices, techniques, reference points, histories, and more — not presently considered essential to architecture could, or should, define its future? Pertinent knowledge might be previously forgotten, currently undervalued, generally misunderstood, or not yet recognized. Architects misunderstood, or not yet recognized. Architects have long looked both to the outmoded traditions of their discipline and to other fields altogether when imagining possible directions for their work. In blurring this boundary between essential and non-essential knowledge, this inquiry seeks not to codify the contemporary state of the art for architecture, or to assert the value of multidisciplinarity, but to envision, and potentially catalyze, new disciplinary approaches.
(Non-)Essential Knowledge for (New) Architecture will serve as both a gauge of contemporary concerns and a manual for emergent theory and practice. Submissions are sought from practitioners, theorists, historians, critics, artists, activists, and anyone else with direct or indirect interest in the future of architecture.

Deadline for submissions: Friday, March 30, 2012

More: Here.

About…
306090, Inc. is an independent non-profit arts stewardship organization. Since its founding in 2001, 306090 has worked to support architect professionals and students by organizing publications and events geared towards forestering a community of ides and exchange within the field of design. Exploring contemporary issues in architecture "from every angle" 306090 is dedicated to opening up architectural discourse by publishing design projects, critical essays, and historic inquiries across a range of places, people and practices. Comprised of new work and untested ides from around the world, 306090's books are an arena of open criticism, addressing contemporary conditions in political, technological and artistic disciplines on the basis of how architecture can address them.
306090's most recent book, Sustain and Develop, includes a geographically and ideologically diverse range of over 50 individual contribuors. The series' fourteenth book, Making A Case, is currently in production and features radically new and varied ideas abouth the future of the American home.

Membrane: A waterproof membrane by Tingwei Xu and Xie Zhang

2012-02-04T08:12:00.002+09:00

As I can't wait for reading Rachel Armstrong's Living Architecture which will be in sale next week, on February 7th, (TEDBook 2012), I am looking at some innovative projects posted here and there or, published in magazines, and other books.

Suggested article and book:
More on Rachel Armstrong's Living Architecture, read Green Building Elements' review.
See also: Rachel Armstrong, "Self-Repairing Architecture", in Next Nature, Koert van Mensvoort and Hendrik-Jan Grievink, Actar Editorial, 2011, pp.166-169

Architectural Membrane for New York, © Tingwei Xu and Xie Zhang

eVolo posted early today a project designed by two students, Tingwei Xu and Xie Zhang, both from the University of Pennsylvania, a project that explores a built environment confronting with sea level rising in the event of global warming.

Architectural Membrane for New York, © Tingwei Xu and Xie Zhang

Their case study focuses on the sea level rising of New York. It however can be expanded into other very concerned areas such as Venice or Thailand.

Architectural Membrane for New York, © Tingwei Xu and Xie Zhang

This membrane, that wraps a stack of spaces along the bayside edge of New York functions as a system of protection, a waterproof modular structure, that will prevent the city from sea level rising.

Architectural Membrane for New York when Sea Level © Tingwei Xu and Xie Zhang

As such, this surface system, a sort of woven membrane, with perforation to reduce heat gain and allow for natural light, ventilation within the building, or the covered surface. Xu and Zheng said to have been inspired by the intelligent components to design this responsive and ingrated surface. The space between the old buildings' facade and this surface is dissolved creating a layered skin.

Architectural Membrane for New York © Tingwei Xu and Xie Zhang

Such as a growth assembly-type of system, this membrane can act as a waterproof in the events of flooding as it can be served as vegetal envelope to mitigate climate change, plants, mostly trees profitting from the openings to grow up.

Architectural Membrane for New York when Sea Level Rises © Tingwei Xu and Xie Zhang
> Transforming space
Some parts of the surface have double layers, it seamlessly dissolves the old and rigid layer system of the building. Thus, the space between the old building and the new surface become total fluid, Xu and Zhang say.

While it is difficult to say whether or not this skin is capable of self-repairing, it is nonetheless able to respond to environmental pressures, repeated flooding or, here, sea level rising. The surface can be accessible easily for the users transforming itself into a park, or, at least, a promenade. This modulated system contingently generates a self-contained environment and a protective skin.

Architectural Membrane for New York, © Tingwei Xu and Xie Zhang

In conclusion, it is tricky to classify this design proposal under the 'landscape urbanism' rubric. Thus 'landscape urbanism' is becoming more and more an overused term for any 'marketable' reason. In the same way it is tricky to say if this is a new generation of architectural skins.

Architectural Membrane for New York, © Tingwei Xu and Xie Zhang

In this context, more precision is required about the properties of this envelope. Yet this design proposal raises a series of significant issues that concern building design and materials, building construction as well as building as problem-addressing in environmental stresses.
Then, this design reminds me, to a certain extent, R&Sie(n)'s research, in particular, Dusty Relief (2002), specifically this electrostatic skin which aims at attracting dust and pollution of Singapore within the skin and filtering the air. Yet, in R&Sie(n)'s work, as Javier Arbona noted in Architectural Design (Territory, May/June 2010), technology is interlinked with nature "both visible and invisible." Moreover, R&Sie(n)'s research attempts to less avoid "treating technology as another entity with an ambiguous relationship to idealised nature, obfuscating the long lineare where we humans have ensnarled nature and technology with each other," to paraphrase Javier Arbona.

Architectural Membrane for New York, © Tingwei Xu and Xie Zhang

Rather, it couples built environment to technology and nature generating an adaptive and responsive ecologically and 'technologically' surface. In other words, it is both human and nature technology', meaning technology acting as a partner not only in" improving the human condition", rather than a rival, as well as in making nature and human feed back into one another. In "I'm Lost in Paris", R&Sie(n) created a nutritional system to feed ferns that grow up on the surface of the building. Will it be the same — or at least a similar strategy — for this architectural green membrane?

Suggested essays: Allison Guy and Koert van Mensvoort, "Humane Technology", in Next Nature, Koert van Mensvoort and Hendrik-Jan Grievink, Actar Editorial, p. 261.
Javier Arbona, "It's in Your Nature. I'm Lost in Paris", in Architectural Design, Territory, guest-edited by David Gissen, May/June 2010, pp. 46-53.
David Gissen, "Toxic Territories", in Architectural Design, Territory, guest-edited by David Gissen, May/June 2010, pp. 54-59.

Notwithstanding this surface might expand new functions for buildings' envelopes as well as building materials. This is probably what Tingwei Xu and Xie Zhang envision with this design proposal.

Source: eVolo.
All images originally appeared on eVolo.

News: Pierscape Competition, Chicago, revealing Team Finalists' booklets

2012-02-03T09:55:00.000+09:00

Pierscape Competition, Navy Pier, Chicago, unveiled list and booklets of Design Team finalists. After the guidelines of the Pierscape Competition, I will post an abstract of each entry. More can be read in Team Finalists' booklets.

Navy Pier has been a Chicago icon and populat destination throughout much of its history. It offers a diverse and eclectic experience and is positioned in one of the most unique settings i the world. As Navy Pier approaches its centennial in 2016, now is the time to revisit its legacy and reimagine its potential through a contemporary lens. Navy Pier has enjoyed both populat and commercial success. It already has much of what is necessary to become a world-class public, but for the Per to truly achive this status it must embrace and implement a new version. The search for a Pierscape design team is an important part of a larger Navy Pier initiative entitled The Centennial Vision whose goal is to make Navy Pier a truly iconic and world-class destination.

In July of 2011, Navy Pier, Inc., the newly formed not-for-profit entity entrusted with the operation and redevelopment of Navy Pier, put forth The Centennial Vision, a framework for reimagining Navy Pier. The vision's purpose is not only to expand the Pier's audience but to enrich the experience of its visitors. Like other Chicago endeavors — Millennium Park is a recent example — The Centennial Vision aims high and establishes a framework befitting a world-class city with a vibrant architectural, cultural, environmental, and recreational landscape.

The design of Pier's Pierscape, or outdoor public spaces, is an essential component of The Centennial Vision. In addition to the Pierscape, Navy Pier is moving forward with other components of the vision. The Pier is beginning to plan the renovation of the Family Pavilion, explore the addition of more restaurants and entertainment, and to work closely with its cultural partners, Chicago Children's Museum and Chicago Shakespeare Theater, on the feasibility of each expanding their presence at the Pier.

The five Pierscape design proposals on display mark an important milestone in the search for a design team, a process that began in September with an invitation to design firms worldwide to submit their qualifications. There are a great number of big ideas on display, and each design proposal gives a good sense of the team's approach to redesigning the Pier's public spaces. Navy Pier intends to select the team that best understands its objectives and would make a great partner in further exploring, developing, and refining design ideas and concepts to respond to the complex conditions at Navy Pier and to work with the Pier on implementing a vision for the Pier's Pierscape.

Navy Pier is the "People's Pier" and as Chicago's most popular public destination, feedback is an important part of the selection process. Navy Pier would like to hear from you about the finalists' design for a reimagined Pierscape.

More: Here.

So the list and booklets of the team finalists.
AECOM, an agency, from Chicago who collaborates with BIG, in this project. The Booklet can be downloaded: here. A video is available: Here.

Pierscape, Chicago © AECOM & BIG Team

The main aim of AECOM/BIG is to create a welcomng, well connected arrival experience through focused interventions and gift the city a truly world-class setting and the finest views in town, through integrated, holistic thinking.
Let's give a rapid overview of AECOM/BIG's design with five key concepts:

Shakespeare Extension (alternative):
Currently the Navy Pier is visually cluttered. Rather than constructing yet another disjointed building within the mix, we propose an alternate expansion of the Shakespeare theatre which is tucked beneath a grand staircase. This not only seamlessly transitions from Pier Park to the existing Shakespeare/Parking structure, it also adds a vast amount of potential uses and leasing opportunities for the future pier.

Pierscape, Chicago © AECOM & BIG Team

Children's Museum Expansion:
The Children's museum has nowhere to expand its current facility and has considered alternative locations within Chicago as a viable option for future gorwth. By allowing the museum to expand down to the first floor with its current footprint it can achieve the desired 100.000 + square feet that it needs for future programming. This move has the added benefit of giving it a much stronger presence in the arrival experience inside headhouse. The resulting displaced food court can be easily accommodated within the proposed grand staircase with access to ample outdoor seating for patrons.

Arcade expansion:
The existing corridor beneath pier park is squeezed by grade-level parking to the north and an oversized stair to the south. The result is a dead corridor resulting from a spatial proposition that is not adequate for most uses including retail. We propose extending the current arcade to the south creating up to 56,000 square feet of additional feasable area and alleviating the constraints on this constricted corridor.

Pierscape Competition, Chicago © AECOM & BIG

Level 2 Connections/Canopies:
The proposed undulating stairs on the south dock will provide access to the level 2 Festival Hall while providing shade below on hot summer days.

Phase 2 Rooftop Archipelago:
Over time the roof garden experience can expand to the entire roofscape creating a true one-of-a-kind experience of the Skyline and Waterline of Chicago.

Pierscape Competition, Chicago, © AECOM & BIG

More in the booklet.
The second team finalist is composed of Aedas Architects, Davis Brody Bond and Martha Schwartz Partners. The booklet can be found: here.

Pierscape Competition, Chicago © AEDAS Architects, Davis Brody Bond, Martha Schwartz Partners Team

The tremendous civic opportunity presented by Navy Pir's Centennial Vision has inspired our team to expand Pierscape to PierESCAPE: a 21st century watefront experience for Chicagoans and visitors from around the world. Navy Pier become both a historic and contemporary destination — a renewed jewel along the lakefront taking its rightful place among Chicago's collection of iconic and world class civic spaces. This proposal imagines Navy Pier as a specular urban landscape with five uniquely imaginative episodes:

Pierscape Competition, Chicago, AEDAS Architects, Davis Brody Bond, Martha Schwartz Team

Crossing the Water int Gateway Park

Taking it over the edge into South Dock Park

Getting up to get down at Pier Park

Going through the looking glass in Crystal Garden

Taking the plunge at East Edge Park

Pierscape Competition, Chicago, © AEDAS Architects, Davis Brody Bond, Martha Schwartz Team

Navy Pier will no longer be perceived as a place "only for tourists." The new character of this landscape will be defined by an expanded offer of experiences and activities designed to appeal to broader audiences. PierESCAPE will change from day to night and throughout the seasons, drawing visitors from both Chicago and beyond who return again and again. As Navy Pier Inc. has stated, "The Pier is not broken," so we have accepted the challenge to build on existing successes while also identifying missed opportunities and giving shape to new possibilities. This proposal transforms Navy Pier from a linear to a multidimensional journey that connects the city out to the shoreline, the shoreline down to the water, and the water up to the sky. Entertainment, recreation, culture and ecology are woven together to create places that are exciting, enriching, and sustainable. By extending, restoring, integrating and expanding existing spaces and landscapes, the PierESCAPE synthesizes the whole of Navy Pier into something greater than the parts. The shaping of Chicago's coastline has long been shaped by three ambitions: protecting the life-giving waters of Lake Michigan, promoting economic growth, and creating spectacular civic spaces for the pleasure and enrichment of citizens. People of the world come Navy Pier to enjoy marinas, parks, swimming, museums, theater, the Ferris wheel, fishing, concerts, art and countless other attractions. In the context and tradition of Chicago's majestic lakefront, the PierESCAPE will be a world class destination and spectacular gathering of the programs, cultures and ecologies that define 21st century Chicago.

Pierscape Competition, Chicago, © AEDAS Architects, Davis Brody Bond, Martha Schwartz Team

James Corner Field Operations' booklet. The video is available here.

Pierscape Competition, Chicago, © James Corner Field Operations

Culture Mile + The City Lake MileAt an urban scale, the main organizing principle is to treat the South Dock edge as a longer social promenade that connects west back into the city all the way to the "Culture Mile" along Michigan Avenue. This promenade would be actualized through generous sidewalk treatment, tree-planting, street lighting, social furnishing, art and signage.
Importandly, we propose an artist media and light-installation underneath the elevated portion of Lkae Shore Drive to help ensure a welcoming, safe and attractive passage between city and lake.

Pierscape Competition, Chicago, © James Corner Field Operations

A New Hub for ChicagoImproved connectivity to the various lakefront parks as well as to Grant Park and Millennium Park, should also help to relate the Pier to a larger network of social spaces and major attractions in the city.
"Plugging in" to the City
The long urban promenade functions as an organizing armature along which a variety of "social rooms" and event spaces may be clearly sequenced. A lighting work by Leo Villareal is proposed for the underside of Lake Shore Drive as a welcoming beacon and gateway to the lakefront. Pedestrian and bicycle access are prioritized over vehicles, with distinctively marked pathways and crossings, signalized intersections and signage.

Pierscape Competition, Chicago, © James Corner Field Operations

The PierscapeAt the scale of the actual site, this sequencing of rooms and event spaces along the promenade bar are tied to the existing building functions, essentially extending internal activities outward.

Gateway Park — Water and Festivals

Children's Museum — Family and Food

Crystal Garden — Play and Magic

Pier Park — Fun and Games

Shakespeare Theater — Performance and Art

Festival Hall — Events, Entertainment, Festivals, Hotel, Beer Garden and Pool

East End Park — "Lake Room"

North Dock — "Hidden Nature"

Pierscape Competition, Chicago, © James Corner Field Operations

The Pierscape at the same time can be experienced sequentially from City to Lake — grading in its elements and actvities from sheltered and vertical to open and sublime — seeing the long horizon of the great Lake Michigan.

Pierscape Competition, Chicago, © James Corner Field Operations

!Melk Team's booklet. Their video can be watched here.

Pierscape Competition, Chicago, © !Melk Team

Reimagining Navy Pier is an unequaled opportunity to participate in the next heroic transformation of a landmark that represents Chicago's great tradition of reserving the lakefront for public space. Our team proposes to harness the rich, singular history of Navy Pier and transform it into a global year-round destination truly commensurate with Chicago's world-class collection of landscape architecture, architecture and art. We tap into the rich legacy of Daniel Burnham and Frederick Law Olmsted who reconnected people with nature in the city, and the legacy of Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright who designed structures that express nature — the prairies, waters and wetlands unique to Chicago. Our approach is to create dynamic venues for individual and family recreation and public leisure activities. We create connections to nature and a sense of place for Navy Pier visitors to better understand and truly appreciate the singular organic conditions that gave rise to Chicago itself.

Pierscape Competition, Chicago © !Melk Team

Inspired by Chicago's historic public waterfront, we are optimists who design from a deep understanding of site and place. We become energized by careful listening and by harnessing the magnetic forces intrinsic to a lace, thus giving in return memorable experiences that promote cultural vitality. Daniel Burnham believed in the virtues of engaging public space for social engagement, mixing together Chicago's great variety of citizens. Over the past one hundred years, the success of Burnham's vision elevated Chicago's status as a global city, and in turn a world class tourist destination. Throughout its history, Navy Pier has been a virtal engine of Chcago's regional, national and global outreach and economic success. Our approach will assure that Navy Pier remains the city's preeminent exclamation point extending from the Great Lakes to the world in the Chicago tradition of ambitious public works. A renewed Pierscape that capitalizes upon quintessential Chicago elements will intensify the importance of Navy Pier as a worldwide attractor, as well as attract and captivate Chicagoland patrons again and again. Transforming the Pierscape into a vital and genuine slice of Chicago, especially for the people of Chicago, will assure it remains the single most popular attraction in the city and region.

Pierscape Competition, Chicago, © !Melk Team

Last team is Xavier Vendrell Studio and Grimshaw Architects, also named Team X's booklet. The video can be watched here.

Pierscape Competition, Chicago, © Team X

Built as a working pier to accommodate seafaring trade, Navy Pier was, from its inception, anointed the People's Pier, moniker that holds true to this day. Navy Pier: dynamic dock and lively promenade: genuine historic and still working People's Pier: landmark piece of mixed-use public infrastructure that reflects Chicago's rich and varied past and embodies its composite brawn and grace: as ever, history is the present. There is no other city in the world like Chicago. City of poets and pragmatists, realists and dreamers. Ethnic kaleidoscope of new and generational immigrants, citizens all. Slick urbane metropolis and 'raw slangy town.' Sentimental and cynical in equal measure. Where untempered optimism, moxie and sheer force of will makes the impossible possible. 'For always our villains have hearts of gold and all our heroes are slightly tainted." Among Chicago's many assets — 'its people; its basic economy; its political character; its local, regional, and national influence; and its role in the global world — economically, politically, socially, culturally" — is the city's physical landscape: Shoulder-to-shoulder with the great Lake Machigan; Chicago's enviable elemental eastern border: demarcated by water: demarcated by horizon: demarcated by big open Midwestern sky. Extending out into the lake by approximately 6 city blocks, Navy Pier punctuates the lake like a giant exclamation mark.
(…)
The project proposed by Team X celebrates the physicality and elemental nature of avy Pier as a Pier: of the water not of the soil: built on pilings not landfill: lively energetic place pulsating over Lake Michigan: muscular Pierscape punctuated by an array of engaging hospitable places-com-neighborhoods: 'a public statement of who we are, who we want to be, and how we want others to define us': our very own People's Pier.
(…)
To reinvigorate Navy Pier and its inimitable Pierscape: designing a project true to the history and cultural heritage of Navy Pier and its relationship to the city: responsive to the needs and particlars of Navy Pier's clients and publics: enhancing and distinguishing the Navy Pier experience: supporting existing programming and creating possibilities for new and seasonal programming. In advance of developing any design concepts, our team initiates a common understanding of the space and place.

Pierscape Competition, Chicago, © Team X

Team Finalists:
AECOM and BIG
AECOM is based in Chicago and its lead team partner, BIG is located in New York and Coppenhagen.
The team is composed of: AECOM, BIG, Lead Pencil Studio, Project Projects, Speirs + Major, WET Design, Davis Langdon, Christy Webber, Tivoli International, Eden Project.

Aedas, Davis Brody Bond, Martha Stewart Partners
Aedas is the lead firm. The agency is located in New York with offices in the Americas, Europe, Asia and the Middle East. Davis Brody Bond is imlanted in New York with offices in Washington DC, Seattle and Brazil; Martha Schwartz Partners has offices in the UK, New York and Cambridge, MA.
The team is composed of: Aedas Architects, Martha Schwarz Partners, Halcrow Yolles, Solomon Cordwell Buenz, Marshall Brown Projects, Pentagram, Fisher Marantz Stone, Suzanne Randolph Fine Arts, Davis Brody Bond, Atelier Dreiseitl GMBH, Dan Euser, Ned Kahn Studios, Hoerr Schaudt, Action Sport Development, Marks Barfield Architects, Lou Raizin, Gregory Hummel.

James Corner Field Operations
James Corner Field Operations works in New York.
The team is composed of: James Corner Field Operations, Terry Guen Design Associates, nArchitects, Bruce Mau Design, Leo Villareal, L'Observatoire International, Ed Marszewski, Fluidity Design Consultants, Patrick Blanc, John Greenlee & Associates, Chris Wangro, Billings Jackson, Buro Happold, Primera, HR&A Advisors, ETM Associates.

!MELK
!Melk is the lead firm. The agency is based in New York City. HOK is located in Chicago with offices throughout the world; Urban Lab is based in Chicago.
!Melk, HOK, UrbanLab, Terry Guen Design Associates, Thirst, Zoe Ryan, Conservation Design Forum, HR&A Advisors, Magnasson Klemencic Associates, Sam Schwartz Engineering, Leni Schwendinger Light Projects, CMS Fountain Consultant, Karin Bacon Entreprises.

Xavier Vendrell Studio and Grimshaw Architects.
Xavier Vendrell Studio is from both Chicago and Barcelona. The Office is implanted in Chicago. Grimshaw Architects is located in New York with three additional offices in the UK and Australia.
The team is composed of: Xavier Vendrell Studio, Grimshaw Architects, Harley Ellis Devereaux, Arup, Studio Lab, Schuler Shook, Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle, Lisa D. Freiman, Creative Time, Nelson Nygaard, Fluidity, Faithful + Gould.

Call for Submissions: PLAT 3.0 Magazine

2012-02-03T02:26:00.000+09:00

PLAT Magazine is calling for submissions for the new issue.
PLAT's purpose is to shift architectural discourse by stimulating new relationships between design, production, and theory. It operates by interweaving student, faculty, and professional work into an open and evolving dialogue which progresses from issue to issue. Curating worldwide submissions in two annual issues, PLAT serves as a projective serves as a projective catalyst for architectural discourse.
PLAT is an independent Architectural Journal published by students at Rice School of Architecture.

From unforeseen endings come dramatic beginnings. PLAT 3.0 invites projects; images, essays, and manifestos, including scholarly papers, photographs, drawings prints, media projects, and philosophical, explorations of the discursive opportunities which emerge in the wake of collective disruption. In a time characterized by rapidly shifting conditions and perpetual crises, contingencies and opportunities to innovate emerge. Such moments lay the ground for radical change. free from the constraints of the established doctrine, architectural and urban practice find new frontiers where experimentation is not only allowed, but demanded -- where breakdown, crisis or destruction produces new, lasting thresholds for architecture. In these moments:
What are the limits of urgency and agency?
Where is the relationship between speed and production?
How do rapid changes in topography, geography, and movement produce new territories for architecture?
When can architecture extend the potentials of the boiling point to make lasting change?
What was yesterday unimaginable is now perfectly plausible, in the call for action embedded in disruption.

Note that the deadline is February 14, 2012. More: Here.

Lecture: Project Japan: Metabolism Talks Rem Koolhaas, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Brett Steele, Shumon Basar, at AA School of Architecture

2012-02-03T02:01:00.000+09:00

Project Japan is a new book by Rem Koolhaas and Hans Ulrich Obrist, edited by Kayoko Ota with James Westcott and designed by Irma Boom. It tells the story of the first non-western avant)garde movement in architecture, and the last movement anywhere to play a crucial role in the economic, intellectual, and architectural (re)building of a nation: Metabolism.
Between 2005 and 2011, architect Rem Koolhaas and curator Hans Ulrich Obrist interviewed the surviving members of Metabolism, together with dozens of their collaborators, mentors, rivals, critics, protégés and familes. The result is a vivid documentary both of an architectural movement and an activist state that mobilised the most creative forces of its population for a task that, in 1945, seemed impossible.

Project Japan: Metabolism Talks
Date: 07.02.2012
Time: 18:00:00
Venue: Lecture Hall, AA School of Architecture

For details on registration: Here.

Call for Submission: The Journal Spéciale'Z

2012-02-03T01:37:00.003+09:00

The Journal Spéciale'Z is a publication of the Ecole Spéciale d'Architecture in Paris, explores architecture's complex contemporary context. Each issue is structured around four thematic questions critical to current debate on the built environment, bringing together contributions by researchers and practitioners — artists, architects and urbanists. The Journal mediates the wider cultural experiences that feed into the knowledge-culture of spatiality with open calls for submissions ensuring a dialogue between emerging and established voices. Articles appear in either English or French, with selected French texts also translated.
The Journal Spéciale'Z is distributed by Bruil & van de Staaij, one of the world's leadings distributors of architecture, art and design magazines.
Contributors are: Odile Decq, Etienne Chobaux, Justin Fowler, Office for Subversive Architecture, Beate Niemann, Claude Parent, among many others.

Co-opting Art
In architectural publications such as this one, art is fair game — 'architecture and art' uttered in nearly the same breath. The latter is understood to share many concerns with the former, warranting frequent critical forays by architects into the realm of art. Indeed, in practice itself, the phenomenon of architects shifting away from the profession's traditional remit to make art in one of multiple declinations — sculpture, installation, photography, drawing, is today prevalent. Historically and across cultures, art and architecture formed a continuum with engineering, offering a coherent and complete mode of interrogating the world. In the 20th century, le Corbusier's paintings were one example of a deviation into what could be considered an art practice; yet these works raised spatial questions that fed back into his architecture, becoming instruments of an architectural project.
From le Corbusier forward, it is possible to cite numerous architects who have embedded artistic modes of operation in their practice or who have abandoned, either abruptly or in steps, architecture for art entirely. Yet, it would seem more difficult to name artists who have made the opposite journey toward built works of architecture; Vito Acconci comes to mind but few others. Indeed, architecture may have become such as highly professionalized discipline that the notion of an artist making architecture is simply untenable considering the technical skills that one assumedly needs to build. The highly regulated distinction between architecture and design (whether of interiors, industrial, or otherwise) is one that some architects insist upon, arguing that architecture is a specific discipline with its own set of technical and conceptual needs. Do architects then harbour an entrenched skepticism towards the kind of crossing-over that they themselves sometimes engage in?
For some in the art world, architects simply are oblivious to the bad art they produce. The co-opting of art practice by architects — and these include the now also highly professionalized institutional structures that support artists: galleries, museums, grant-making foundations — is an unjustified incursion into terrain for which architects are ill-prepared. The debate raises larger questions about the differences between architecture and art; when, if at all, does one become the other? Do architects have a legitimate claim to art-making? Are architecs ever free from an understanding of production that is bound to a notion of a process leading toward an ultimate end which is building?

Contributions
Contributions can be sent to specialez until May 15, 2012. Click Here for details.

Exhibition: Lyon Confluence, Cité de l'Architecture et du Patrimoine, Paris

2012-02-02T11:00:00.000+09:00

The Cité de l'Architecture et du Patrimoine, a museum located in Paris, recently showed Lyon Confluence and its regeneration across models, maps, texts, slideshows, photographs, stage design, panoramas conceived by Thierry Bazin, a video installation by Marin Kasimir and an art project by Felice Varini. This exhibition shows a Grand Lyon which envisages an attractive place to live, work, shop and enjoy.

Lyon Confluence Exhibition, Cité de l'Architecture et du Patrimoine, Paris — Model. Credit Photo: Grégoire L.
for Urban Lab Global Cities

As cities are growing in areas and population at unprecedented rates, whether they be developing cities or developed cities, as cities are involved in a unprecedented competition, with a trend in a de-industrualization in a number of cities and a rapid economic growth of emerging cities.

Lyon Confluence Exhibition, Cité de l'Architecture et du Patrimoine, Paris. Photo credit: Gregoire L. for
Urban Lab Global Cities

Cities upgrade their urban environment so that not only will they provide a better quality of life for their dwellers and companies but also they will be able to withstand deep change. This is the case of Lyon, a city located in the east-central France, between Paris and Marseilles.

Lyon Confluence Exhibition, Cité de l'Architecture et du Patrimoine, Paris. Photo credit: Gregoire L. for
Urban Lab Global Cities

Little Lyon's estimates a population of 480,660 inhabitants on a land area of 47.95 square kilometers. The population density is about 10,077 per square kilometers, roughly comparable to Milan. Its urban area is 954.19 square kilometers with approximately 1,422,331 people and its metropolitan area 3,306 square kilometers and a population of 2,118,132.

Lyon Confluence — Aerial view © Herzog & de Meuron - Michel Desvigne Paysagiste/SPLA Lyon Confluence. Originally appeared on Lyon Confluence

And Lyon is renewing with a probable ambition of strengthening its role as an ecocomical key to Paris. It is certain that when analyzing global cities, cities such as Osaka/Tokyo, Chicago/New York/Washington-DC-Baltimore/Dallas/Atlanta/Los Angeles/Philadelphia, Rome/Milan, Berlin/Frankfurt/Dusseldorf are regularly quoted, to name a few. Yet when quoting French cities, it is often limited to Paris. Accordingly, it will be unsurpringly that Lyon's regeneration aims at playing a more important role, becoming internationally more attractive and competitive. Lyon is a middle-scale city yet very ambitious if we look at this program of urban renewal.

Lyon Confluence — Aerial View © Desvigne Conseil/SPLA Lyon Confluence. Originally
appeared on Lyon Confluence

Lyon is driven by topographical constraints, specifically derelict lands. It used to be an industrial city. In a post-industrial era and post-recession economy, Lyon, like The Grand Lille (Greater Lille) and the Grand Paris (Greater Paris), accordingly raises this question: how change and rejuvenation can enhance territory, economy as well as quality of life of developed cities?

Lyon Confluence — Le marche de gros vu depuis le sud-est © Jacques Leone (Grand Lyon). Originally appeared on
Lyon Confluence

Moreover, Lyon does not have the ambition of a scrap and build like some Asian cities. As a result, the city must address various important factors from enduring legacy, architectural historic character and identity, geography to economy, cultural and social accountability.

Lyon Confluence Exhibition, Cité de l'Architecture et du Patrimoine, Paris. Photo credit: Gregoire L. for
Urban Lab Global Cities

Since a decade, the Lyon Confluence, a territory of 150 hectares, has been regenerating this territory with a wide range of programme of urban redevelopments, and the participation of architects from Coop Himmelb[l]au, MVRDV, Massimiliano Fuksas, Kengo Kuma to Odile Decq and Tania Concko. Let us quote some of these projects:

Lyon Confluence Exhibition, Cité de l'Architecture et du Patrimoine, Paris. Photo credit: Gregoire L for
Urban Lab Global Cities

The blocks consisting of varied types of buildings and functions from housing and offices to retails, from low-rise structures to higher structures; In such a country as France who suffers from a lack of housing, Lyon attempts to provide new stocks of housings to its inhabitants and to attract new inhabitants. Housing aside, offices and retails are also targeted. The aim is to allow for sustainable mixed-used areas flexible enough and easily accessible to all the inhabitants;
Garden courtyards, or open spaces with green features, paths, fountains providing walkable spaces for pedestrians. Apparently, the aim is to provide a walkable place and combining walkability and mixe-use;
Water supply: the creation of a system of knots that combines historical and current conditions of the confluences to manage rainwater. Here, unfortunately, in a world threatened by global warming, as Lyon's population undoubtly increases and requests for more resources, it is certain that Lyon will be confronted with water issues. Consequently, more precision will be welcomed for long-term water sustainability;
Vegetation: A composition of, among others, waterbank trees, dry or wet grassland, young shrub willows. In few words: how to infuse a landscape change to reinvent Lyon Confluence urban territory;
Built fabric: The Field will consist of a complex of buildings: from low-rise to higher building (from three to eight stories) to house housing and business activities. More specifically, a mix of offices, housing, shops and services;
Infrastructure and pathways: Development of travel-infrastructure elements: shared roadways, walkways;
Links: existing travel infrastructure, new bridges, new streets and new pedestrian routes aiming at making access to The Confluence easier and connecting the scheme to the rest of the city.

Lyon Confluence Exhibition, Cité de l'Architecture et du Patrimoine, Paris. Photo credit: Gregoire L. for
Urban Lab Global Cities

This urban project is led by Herzog & de Meuron and Michel Desvigne Paysagiste. The first phased is completed. The second phase is under construction although some projects are already completed such as the Monolithe designed by MVRDV Team. Lyon Confluence is scheduled to be completed by 2015.

Monolithe, Lyon © MVRDV Team, SPLA Lyon Confluence. Originally appeared on
Lyon Confluence

The aim is clear: the city seeks to attract new dwellers and companies of the tertiary sectors and cultural events.

Lyon Confluence Exhibition, Cité de l'Architecture et du Patrimoine, Paris. Photo credit: Gregoire L. for
Urban Lab Global Cities

As mentioned above, Lyon will play a considerable role not only in terms of economics, social as well as cultural, not only at a local level but also at a global level. Smart growth seems to drive this Lyon Confluence urban regeneration.

Lyon Confluence Exhibition, Cité de l'Architecture et du Patrimoine, Paris. Photo credit: Gregoire L. for
Urban Lab Global Cities

Some points nevertheless remain unclear. Let us quote one. In a city like Lyon which is mainly car-dependent (47%) but envisages a reduction of CO2 emissions by improving mobility (Public transport: 15%, Bicycle: 2%, TER (trains): 1%) including the recent Car2go aiming to target car-dependent use, and with the gasoline prices that will continue to go up due to oil scarcity, it will be interested to see if Lyon Confluence will inaugurate a low-car lifestyle. In this case, Grand Lyon aims at linking quality of life to quality of place.

Lyon Confluence Exhibition, Cité de l'Architecture et du Patrimoine, Paris. Photo credit: Gregoire L. for
Urban Lab Global Cities

Lyon Confluence's goal might be to plan and design, better, to reinvent its territory, say, to respond to this question: how can derelict lands be transformed into community assets?

Lyon Confluence Exhibition, Cité de l'Architecture et du Patrimoine, Paris. Photo credit: Gregoire L. for
Urban Lab Global Cities

A question that must be posed is as follows: if Lyon Confluence proposes 'consilient' urban territory, a sustainably urban area that taps social, economics, cultural and environmental dynamics playing off one another, it will be a first step toward a higher quality of life for Lyon's inhabitants. As urban health and well-being are now integrated to urban policies, it will be interesting to measure Lyon Confluence, in particular, its quality of life, health, well being of the population and its quality of the territory, when completed.

Lyon Confluence Exhibition, Cité de l'Architecture et du Patrimoine, Paris. Photo credit: Gregoire L. for
Urban Lab Global Cities

Lyon Confluence Exhibition, at Cité de l'Architecture et du Patrimoine, until January 29th 2012.

Submission: LOG Journal Issue 25: Reclaim Resi[lience]stance, Guest-Editor François Roche

2012-02-01T06:02:00.001+09:00

Just to remind that Log is calling for papers for their next issue 25 Spring/Summer 2012, which theme is Reclaim Resi[lience]stance. It will be edited by French architect François Roche/R&Sie(n).

Call it madness, if you want… but the new world knows only resistance… when I bend in order to avoid accepting the rules and their authority, I am destroying the foundations, I am insulting their legitimacy… There is rage in the face of my madness, a ferocious rage as if they found themselves faced with an act of revolt… Cretin, don't you understand that it's exactly that?

Antonio Negri, The Bent Man: Didactics of the Rebel, (2005)

Two worlds face each other today: Davos and Porto Alegre. One represents business and the operative economy, both financial and managerial; the other, the multitudes and their potential for organization from the bottom up -- for a productive and operative resistance against the first.
How can the architect, artist, scientist, writer, and citizen absorb, swallow, and digest this Janus-like condition without favoring one over the other? How can they walk on the razor's edge, following a schizoid strategy of weaving together contradictory forces, of knitting together two genetically opposed wires? On the one hand, technology as a vector of invention in the pursuit of the "businessdom," the mix of free-enterprise and the ideology of progress that was a basis of the democracy empire, and on the other, the growing of the bottom-up, of the delegation of power's simulacrum as a highly imperfect and corruptible system that needs to be renovated by, and through, the multitudes and their creative energy and potential.
Log 25 will explore ways to navigate this antagonism, which could be negotiated in an (un)certain and ambiguous manner… nonhierarchical, nondeterministic, defining a path in which Urbanism and Architecture could fuse bottom-up and top-down, contingently, simultaneously, as if the ingredients were making recipes, and recipes were modifying the substance of the ingredients… apparatuses of exchange, [1] which transform the game of power and the knowledge diffused through that game.
The stuttering between Resilience (recognition of vitalism as a force of life and innovation) and Resistance ("Creating is resisting" [2]) will be the goal… 1+1=?
Architecture today is shifting, or drifting, in the pure logic and strategy of shaping, where fabrication, expertise, efficiency, and computation have become substitutes for the logic of the raison d'être. Like the car company producing cars, where a specific social organization has been created to manage production without diagnosing the structural and human alienation produced by that system, the discipline of architecture is going back to its own ghetto, constructing simultaneously an efficiency and legitimacy of knowledge from evaluation and expertise, which gather and target a high degree of professionalism… while raising the fences, the fortress wall of its "territory," with loneliness and detachment and a kind of absurd arrogance[3].
Paradoxically the world is being pulled and pushed in so many directions, producing contradictory tensions, new conflicts, new nationalism, new local ideologies, even new El Dorados with flickering financial firewors - mirages in the desert. In this context, it is not innocently that a group of philosophers requestions the foundation of democracy, the validity of its structure and the procedures of deliegation of power; requestions the notion of government, of governance. Yet architecture, wallowing in its comfortable post-digital affect, or afraid to lose the privileges acquired in a period when the reason of a few presided over the destiny of many, stands straight in the phantasm of control, with tooling at its origin (master planning) and substituting the green-washing expertise of "ecology," or the social meanings of "social networking," for the need to refound its own practice, and the reason for this practice, in a polis-political approach.

More: Here. And the deadline is February 15, 2012.

Log is the premier print journal of architectural writing and criticism today. Recent topics include: the necessity of the metacritique in architecture; burgeoning urbanism in Dubai; Venice and its defiance of the modern; lying with images; unanswerable questions posed by signature buildings; the vainglories of "research architecture"; cultural patrimony in Paris; the political and material expediency of the building envelope; molecular gastronomy as an analogue of the excesses of parametric architectures; the troubled, but fascinating reception of Gilles Deleuze in New York, in the 1970s, and the subsequent development of the publications Semiotext(e) and Zone; and Peter Greenaway's multi-media intervention, Wedding at Cana, at the 2009 Venice Biennale.
A carefully crafted compendium of essays, conversations (interviews), and short observations on contemporary buildings and trends, Log published thre times a year.

Infographic of the day: Threats and Opportunities to the UK

2012-01-31T05:45:00.000+09:00

The Guardian posted Thursday 26 January an infographic revealing threats and opportunities to the UK, identified by the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs that could arise as a result of climate change.

Below the graphic.

A Summary of potential opportunities and threats for the UK. Originally appeared on The Guardian

As seen in this graphic, overheating building, residential properties at significant risk of flooding, change s in soil organic carbon, changes in species migration patterns, summer mortality due to higher temperatures, number of unsustainable water abstractions, flood risk to high quality of agricultural land, risks to species and habitants due to drier soils, potential decline in summer water quality (point source pollution), and so on and so on, are the forecasted negative outcomes of climate change. As for the opportunities, this can be enumerated as follows: decline in winter mortality due to higher temperatures, reduction in energy demand for heating, changes in grassland productivity.

Source: The Guardian. The graphic can be downloaded: Here.

Planning: News: JDS Team selected for Vejle Urban Development, Denmark

2012-01-28T02:33:00.004+09:00

JDS Team, composed of JDS, Klar, François Leclercq Architectes, Kuben Management, Arup, and Jens Kvorning, will be in charge of Velje Urban Development in Denmark, JDS just revealed.

Velje Urban Development, Denmark © JDS Team

More soon…

Conference: Social Cities of Tomorrow

2012-01-24T07:52:00.000+09:00

Our everyday lives are increasingly shaped by digital media technologies, from smart cards and intelligent GPS systems to social media and smartphones. How can we use digital media technologies to make our cities more social, rather than just more hi-tech?
Social Cities of Tomorrow is organised by The Mobile City, an international research group on mobile media and urban design, Virtueel Platform, the Dutch e-culture knowledge institute, and ARCAM, the Amsterdam Centre for Architecture.
Its main focus is how to use digital media technologies to make our cities more social, rather than just more hi-tech, and it will be investigated during a workshop (pre-conference) from 14 to 16 February and a conference on 17 February.
The International conference brings together key thinkers and doers working in the fields of new media and urbanism. Keynote speakers such as Usman Haque, Natalie Jeremijenko and Dan Hill will speak about the promises and challenges in this newly emerging and highly interdisciplinary field of urban design. The keynotes will be accompanied by presentations of 'showcases' from various disciplines, such as architecture, art, design, and policy.
The prefonference workshop will be held at ARCAM, Amsterdam for a select, interdisciplinary group of designers, programmers and digital creatives. The aim of this experimental workshop is to bring together local stakeholder organisations, and participants from various professional and national backgrounds to collaborate in real-world social design challenges. Unfortunately application for the workshop was closed on December 30th. The results will be presented at a public event on Thursday February 16 at 20:00 hours at Mediamatic Bank, Vijzelstraat 68, Amsterdam.

Ticket, information: here.

In Progress: Jubilee Gardens by West 8

2012-01-23T10:06:00.000+09:00

West 8's Jubilee Gardens progresses surely. The Jubilee Gardens is another project as part of London Olympic 2012. It is located on the iconic Southbank and forms part of Lambeth, one of the funded boroughs.

Jubilee Gardens in progress © West 8

The agency just announced that important milestones have been completed and the gardens continues its progress. This includes the installation of new drainage, the formation of tree pits and the production of granite seating edge units and paving setts.

Jubilee Gardens in progress © West 8

The next step will be the edge installation, the assembling of the irrigation system and the placement of the sub- and topsoil. Will be included: English Oaks, Common Beech, Sweetgum, Small leaved Lime Trees, Pin Oak and Bald Cypress.

Jubilee Gardens in progress © West 8

The Jubilee Gardens is announced to be completed by May 2012 in accordance with Queen's Diamond Jubilee celebration, the agency said.

Jubilee Gardens in progress © West 8

The Jubilee Gardens will feature a lush, new green landscape to Royal Parks standard, red Geranium and Lilium 'Orange Pixie'.

Jubilee Gardens in progress © West 8

Below some renders of Jubilee Gardens design

Jubilee Gardens, London © West 8

Jubilee Gardens © West 8

Jubilee Gardens, London © West 8

Project fact
Project: Jubilee Gardens
Landscape architects: West 8
Team: Adriaan Geuze, Edzo Bindels, Jerry van Eyck, Alyssa Schwann, Freek Boerwinkel, Joris Welijts, Karsten Buchholz, Maarten van der Voorde, Matthew Skjonsberg, Perry Maas
Location: London, UK
Client: South Bank Employers Group
Partners: AKT Engineers, BDSP Partnership, Soil and Land Consultants, Buro Happold
Year of Completion: May 2012

News: Erect Architecture Team winning Queen Elizabeth North Park, London

2012-01-23T09:24:00.000+09:00

While James Corner Field Operations Team won the Queen Elizabeth Olympic South Park design, London-based Erect Architecture Team has been chosen for the Queen Elizabeth Olympic North Park design.

Queen Elizabeth Olympic North Park, London © Erect Architecture Team

The goal is to design a community hub and destination playground that will as part of the parkland and river valley of the north park area.

Queen Elizabeth Olympic North Park, London © Erect Architecture Team

This project will feature a playground themed on its surroundings with the chance to climb trees. It will be enterily linked with nature.
The team is composed of landscape architects Jennette Emery-Wallis and Claire Greener from Land Use Consultants, quantity surveyor Ian Jupp from Huntley Cartwright, Structural engineer Toby Maclean from Tall Engineers, Services engineer Neil Daffin from Max Fordham and artist enabler Ashley McCormick.

ConceptUsing native ecology as our key tenet, we have created a series of landscape characer areas which tell life cycle stories — from the pioneer birch and hazel woodlands through to climax pine forest and the developmental stages in between. Interweaved with this is the play layer which uses these stories to inspire bespoke play and potential event opportunities within each space.
Hazel CopseWe are proposing a pioneer copse of hazel woodland to enclose the event lawn to the east. The copse will be augmented by rich woodland under-storey planting, with informal weaving paths of bark mulch to create a magical play setting to explore and discover. To manage the hazel wood effectively it would be coppiced in rotation every 7 years. The harvested wood could then be actively used by children to create dens, undertake arts and crafts activities and encourage children and adults to learn about the wood and its folklore through environmental workshops and seasonal play activities.

Queen Elizabeth Olympic North Park, London © Erect Architecture Team

Den Making and Bug HotelsMoving out of the woodlands groups of hazel and rowan trees are set within grassy glades providing space for den making activities. Enabling children to manipulate their environment is a key requirement in rich play making. Long serpentine walls of log piles are proposed to provide playful hide and seek elements, whilst also performing a valuable role for insects and invertebrates by creating bug hotels and places to find and observe mini beasts.
Seed Heads' PlayBeyond here, close to the Hub, are a series of large scale artist-craftsman made timber/stone seed heads that have been 'dispersed' by wind from other trees and plants across the Olympic Park site. These are tactile play elements, which children can interact with, take 'bark rubbings', use as informal seats, as well as learn about key botanical and life cycle messages.
Sand + Water PlayThe design of the sand and water play is inspired by the industrial heritage of the River Lea as a key navigation route. The braided landform inlaid with layers of fine gravels mimics the river's overall morphology in miniature with water criss — crossing the area in a series of rivering tributaries, while children are encouraged to dam, flood and manage the flow of water through a set of weirs, locks and sluice gates — becoming their own water engineers. The water is then filtered for sand and re-directed to irrigate plant beds with any excess directed into the existing western swale to be filtered by the marshland habitats.
The Life Cycle Story of PlantsAlongside the sand and water play is a long bank of richly banded planting which will continue the storey of life cycle and succession, whilst also providing a colourful and sensory plant-based play element. Visually this will be a very attractive element of the play environment giving children a sense of time, seasonality and successional change, which again could be actively interpreted through environmental education workshops.

Queen Elizabeth Olympic North Park, London © Erect Architecture Team

The Pine ForestThe final 'climax' planting of our narrative is told through a group of Scots Pine set along the central raised landform. Using a play surface of natural pine cones, the play opportunities here are based on high level climbing and platform walkways using timber structures that mimic the form and habit of the pine to create billowy cloud-like enclosures high up amongst the real tree top canopies. This will be a physical and challenging play element attracting the 8-12 age group. Clear views of the wider North Parklands would be obtained, giving good observational and orienteering opportunities.
Large Scale Swings
Along the edge of the raised landform and pine forest are a series of large scale and robust swings, which groups of children and teenagers can use. These together with the pine forest play installations and the adjacent skate park and rockspace mark an increase in speed, intensity and physicality in the play offer to provide meaningful play challenges for older children, teenagers and young adults.
Rock LandscapeThe final element in our narrative is the creation of a bare rock landscape where our cyclical life cycle starts once more. Bands of graded shales and gravels set within a textured concrete surface traverse across the area, bordered by broad bands of meadow and grass planting, low scrub and birch trees, and large swathes of grass. Within these bands remnant industrial artefacts and rusting steel can be discovered, linking the site back to its former industrial heritage. Set amongst these artefacts are a group of large scale monolithic boulders which can be used for climbing and parcour activities. The focus of the area will be a large, bespoke, competition grade skate park set in the landscape like a piece of archaeology buried below the surface. This physical and challenging element will appeal to older children, teenagers and young adults and could become a destination skate park across the London region for competitions and connect well with other activities linked to the Velodrome.

Integrated landscape and Hub Design

Much as the Suth Park's '2012 Gardens' celebrate the Britsh love of Plants from around the world, inspired by Victorian pleasure gardens, our landscape palete intends to explore and celebrate our rich ecological heritage. We have taken the theme of life cycle and ecology to inspire our design approach to the Hub and playground.

In response to the powerful and sculptural topography of the wider North parkland, three tensioned and dynamic landforms have been set up to respond to this context and take the form of an 'unfurling leaf', with the Hub forming the hinge point and focus.

Using the design language of the staged timber seating used throughout the wider parkland, which accentuate and transform the fluid landforms and add layers of human inhabitation, the Hub repeats and builds upon these forms to develop the building volumes. Set back from the street, views of the Hub will be seen across an expansive species rich meadow whose landform guideds the visitor to the entrance following a low mound, which forms a threshold between and east west connection and park. The mound is overlaid with stepped timber ribbons, which increase in height to form the volume containing the building's ancillary spaces. The south facing external seating forms spill out space for the café, animating the south facade.

From this location the Hub will benefit from views not only at city level to the Olympic venues, but also past the large scale mound of planted birch woodland and beyond the River Lea and the riverine landscape. A large solitary tree marks the building entrance and the beginning of the existing line of trees, accentuating pathway and swale beyond. The building is designed as an extension of the landscape, internal and external spaces read together. Local meadow species blown in on the wind will naturally colonise the brown roof above the services spine to become a rich ecological habitat in its own right. The smooth but robust weathered hardwood lining forming the external seating and service spine cladding extends into the interior of the building.

The building has been designed to limit the need for mechanical services by getting the physical form of the building to provide most of the environmental control and in this way that building is doing more and architecture is working with nature. The café and multipurpose room volumes are arranged either side of the ancillary spine. Their gently sloping timber roof planes relate to the dynamic and directionality of the landforms and frame views into the landscape. Generous roof overhangs and the coninuity of the paved floor finish blur the transition between inside and outside. The caracter of vertical structural elements and detailing of the timber cladding are developed in dialogue with the surrounding tree planting.

The interior of the hub is characterised by the warmth and texture of timber. All rooms are naturally lit, key rooms like the foyer, café and multipurpose room are lit from two sides. The vertical façade cladding acts as shading device and creates an animated play of shadow and light. Reception desk and some simple built in seating and platforms in the cafés and multi-purpose room storage and designed as an extension of the external seating features intensifying the connections with the landscape and signalling inhabitation and usability.

The external spaces are an extension of the building and have been designed to allow as much flexible use as possible. Similar to the southern side the northern elevation of the building forms a generous external café seating area, which also includes space for future building expansion, if the café proved to be a success. The café spill out space is defined by the mound with stepped seating on the eastern and the line of trees, swale and pathway on the western side. It allows for natural surveillance of the under 5's sand and water play area, which runs along the existing swale site boundary. The eastern volume contains the multi-purpose community room, which opens onto a large but intimate grass lawn, enclosed by hazel woodland. The large grass area will become a natural gathering space for families to picnic and enjoy the hub and play space, it is also large enough to receive small scale community gatherings, house stalls or a marquee and spill out space for weddings and community events.

A very interesting project that must be followed to see more.

Who are they?
Erect Architecture is an award-winning team of architects led by Barbara Kaucky and Susanne Tutsch. Erect Architecture's projects range from architecture to public space design to different kinds of interiors. Erect Architecture provides full architectural services, interior design, undertake community participation projects and offer fundraising advice. Erect Architecture's solutions are creative and hard working, tailored to the varied requirements of our clients.
Erect Architecture is a RIBA Chartered Practice.
Erect Architecture also has a blog.

More: Erect Architecture and Legacy Company.

News: James Corner Field Operations Team winning Olympic Park South Competition

2012-01-23T07:54:00.003+09:00

James Corner Field Operations (JCFO) in collaboration with Make Architects, Arup, Piet Oudolf, L'obversatoire International, Tomato, Groundbreaking, Playlink and Deloitte, announced to have been selected for the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park South Park Project.

Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. The South Park, London, © James Corner Field Operations, Make Architects,
Arup, Piet Oudolf, L'Observatoire International, Tomato, Groundbreaking, Playlink and Deloitte.

The aim of the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park Competition was to design a visitor centre and playground in the green river valley of the north park, and a 50 acre urban landscape in the south plaza sitting between the Stadium, Aquatics Center and the ArcelorMittal Orbit.
The team's proposal consists of a tree-lined promenade connecting flexible spaces for events, cultural programmes, food stalls and other attractions. It is announced that the area will have a London South Bank feel and will welcome the majority of visitors to the Park.
The problematics raised in regards ecological and social complexities in high-dense cities, here in a European city with its history, is how to incorporate green features including park, path, garden, promenade, ground cover, among others, within such an urban fabric as London. Throughout this project, it will be interesting to see how James Corner and its team address the complex ecological and social forces that constitute London's urban landscape.

Below is the presentation of the winning team:

The South Park Pleasure GardensHow might South Park become a much-loved leisure destination for London, a spectacular attraction for both residents and visitors frim around the world?
Furthermore, how might the design of the park provide spaces that flexibility accomodate a wide variety of future programming events while at the same time appealing to a broad spectrum of the public on ordinary unprogrammed days?
For the main southpark and hub area we propose four physical landscape frameworks that can be easily implemented and shape a highly social and eventful series of "pleasure gardens":

1. Arc promenade

2. Planting ribbon & hedgerow

3. Event rooms

4. Lawns & Garden

Takes together, the Arc Promenade, the Planting Ribbon, the Event Rooms and the Lawns and Gardens create a powerful landscape framework for both everyday use and enjoyment as well as for supporting a wide range of event programming, from food festivals and markets to rides and small circuses, to concerts and performances, to arts, culture and education. The design is clearly legible, iconic, playful and varied, while at the same time capable of supporting a diverse range of uses. This theatrical event site, set within a larger network of ecological green systems, waterways and world-class attractions, creates a destination legacy park for London —scenic and social on a daily basis, and eventful and active when programmed.

The South Park Hub © James Corner Field Operations, Make Architects, Arup, Piet Oudolf, L'Observatoire International, Tomato, Groundbreaking, Playlink and Deloitte.

The South Park HubThe hub building is a simple yet elegant rectilinear form located at the southern end of the promenade, in close proximity to the orbit. It will become a key destination for visitors to the south park, with its prime setting offering strong visual connections with the river and the surrounding park.
Due to the scale and complexity of the park's prominent stadia, we propose a simple, low-lying pavilion which is substly stitched in to the flowing lines of the landscape, complementing the nearby large-scale structures rather than competing with them. The Hub takes the form of a series of horizontal and vertical planes which enclose both the internal and external spaces. The spine walls separate the public and private areas and provide connection points for the organic lines of the planted landscape ribbon as they extend out from the building.
A large, open café space is located at the heart of the pavilion, with an impressive transparent glazed frontage revealing the animation. Flexible event spaces are available if required, as well as covered external seating and a roof terrace above the café area which reveals stunning panoramix views of the south park. The vrtical spine walls which project out from the building provide the ideal location for art and media projections, which will generate interest and encourage public engagement.
Our strong yet simple concept provides a flexible design framework on to which future additions can be easily incorporated. This rational and practical design approach results in an elegant and well-proportioned pavilion which is highly efficient and buildable, facilitating the quick delivery of a high quality building within a challenging budget.

South Park Event & Activity Hub © James Corner Field Operations, Make Architects, Arup, Pied Oudolf,
L'Observatoire International, Tomato, Groundbreaking, Playlink and Deloitte.

South Park Event & Activity HubWith its strategic proximity and important support functions for the orbit — undoubtedly the greatest attraction of Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park — the South Park Hub will become the focal point of day-to-day activity the park.
To emphasize and support its role as the "Event Hub" within the Park, we have located the larger event rooms and spaces around this new feature. The Hub Building provides a generous and welcoming gateway to the Hub plaza area, spilling café uses and moveable furniture onto the plaza. This is a flexible event area, open, porous and social. The hard plaza meets a softer lawn area to the north, where one can sit, picnic and sun, or begin to stroll into the gardens and event rooms along the Arc.

The South Park Pleasure Gardens © James Corner Field Operations, Make Architects, Arup, Piet Oudolf, L'observatoire
International, Tomato, Groundbreaking, Playlink and Deloitte.

Source: Olympic Park Legacy Company

The proposal of the day: Aberdeen City Garden, Scotland by Diller, Scofidio and Renfro

2012-01-21T08:55:00.000+09:00

The proposal of the end of the week will be this networked park and cultural center for Aberdeen, Scotland. This Aberdeen City Garden, also known as Granite City, is designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro (DSR).

This Granite City is driven by ecology, and environmental and cultural dynamics combining garden and culture.

The regeneration of the city is in heart of this project. Apparently, Diller, Scofidio and Renfro (DSR) seem to address crucial questions of what it means to be urban, actively engaged with ecological context.

DSR collaborated with landscape architect James Corner Field Operations in the New York City High Line. Principles of resilience, adaptability and flexibility appear to drive this Granite City as these phenomena can be applied not only to environmental systems but also to city-systems, and buildings.
Below is DSR's presentation:

The Aberdeen City Garden will fuse Nature and Culture into a vital social network at the heart of the city. Rejecting the classical model of the cultural building isolated on the green, the Garden extends the surrounding urban fabric as an elastic web of 3-dimensional interconnections across its site. The warp and weft of urban lines support both park and cultural activities within a resilient fabric of layered programs, conjoining history with the contemporary and the urbane with the pastoral. Stretching across the historic river site, this parkland web is permeable, revealing a multi-tiered archeology while connecting to the city's emergent future as a technological hub for art, performance, leisure and commerce.

The Aberdeen City Garden is scheduled for completion by 2016.

Project fact
Project: Public Park
Architects: Diller, Scofidio + Renfro
Principal-in-Charge: Charles Renfro
Project leader: Albert Cavallero
Type: Public park
Location: Aberdeen, Scotland
Date of Completion: By 2016

Housing in Carabanchel, Madrid by Amann-Canovas-Maruri

2012-01-21T08:22:00.000+09:00

Amann-Canovas-Maruri (ACM) completed the Housing in Carabanchel, Spain, consisting of a massive colorful metallic housing block and a central courtyard combo. While achieved in 2009, it is interesting to look back at this project as it continues its exploration of Le Corbusier's mass housing principles that appear to dominate Spain's housing development.

The Housing in Carabanchel is impressive with its façade punctuated by these colorful panels that screen the envelope. The enclosed courtyard plays is in the heart of this housing project, as the architects say.

This massive yet elegant as well as functional residential block, rectangular in form, encloses a private courtyard and express a colorful façade with these red, blue, brown, yellow, orange and red shutters.

Volume
The compact volume reminds MVRDV's Celosia, located in Madrid, as well as Le Corbusier's Immeuble-Villas, 1922. As known, Les Immeuble-Villas seem to have nurtured these recent housing development in Madrid, at least they served as model for mass production of block housing.

Accordingly, following Corbusier's concept of residential block, the Housing in Carabanchel is compact in form and provides efficient and flexible units for the occupants.

As the architects said, mechanical necessities generate this modular design offering flexible interior spaces with openings in the wall. This rectangular housing block has then been manipulated to generate a inner courtyard.

The surface of the envelope is perforated with colorful panels for air, daylight circulation and views.
It also brings to mind the Corbusian vision of housing that dominated the 20th century architecture. Les Immeubles-Villas are a direct inspiration for this Madrid-based agency.

These colorful metal shutters across the entire façade break the repetitive façade, common trait in Madrid's suburbs. These also create a colorful affect allowing ventilation and natural light into the inner spaces, while protecting from external views.

Private terraces allow for solar access and air circulation as well as view into the inner courtyard.

A strong focus on the differentiation…
…accentuated by the use of color patterning. Green, orange, red, yellow, blue, brown… a discontinuous set of colorful panels, in lieu of common panels, play an important role as it used to break down volume, and to generate a formal autonomy formel and a spiritual inclusion, as the architects said.

Color is particularly utilized to break down monotony and repetition that characterize Spanish typology of residential blocks. Such just as MVRDV's Celosia, FOA's Viviemos en Carabanchel, ACM attempts to create a disruption within the clautrophobic conditions of existing developments in Spain.

Each unit has its own private patio in accordance with the principles of Le Corbusier's Les Immeuble-Villas.

As the architects mentioned, Le Corbusier spent his life developing research upon how to interprete the benefits of a family in urban housing, including garden, views, orientation.

The creation of a central inner courtyard is another influence from Le Corbusier, a courtyard that is also reproduced in various project such as MVRDV's Celosia.

Units are interconnected by corridors and open terraces, open terraces that also act as tool since air circulates easily in the open terraces and ensures that fresh air gets into the building.

Building facts
Project: Housing in Carabanchel
Architects: Amann-Canovas-Maruri — Atxu Amann, Andres Canovas, Nicolas Maruri
Location: Avenida de la Peseta, Carabanchel, Madrid, Spain
Client: EMVS (Department of Housing, Madrid Council Government)
Site area: 4441.33 sqm
Built-up area: 13419.81 sqm (including parking areas)
Completed year: May 2009
Colaborators: Gonealo Pardo Diaz, Beatriz Amann Vargas, Ana Arriero Cano, Ignacio Diaz Gonzalez, Sara de la Fuente Sanz, Susana Velasco Sanchez, Christina, Parreno Alonso, Ana Lopez, Rafael Marcos, Carlos Rios, Rafael Palomares, Javier Gutierrez
Photographs: Miguel de Guzman, David Frutos

Images originally appeared on Archdaily except if not mentioned. See also: El Mundo (in Spanish): "Los arquitectos hemos sido la punta de lanza del liberalismo mas soez".

Today's infographic: China is now urbanized

2012-01-19T10:49:00.000+09:00

China is now urbanized and the chart below proves the increasing urbanized areas in China.

Originally appeared on wsj.

China's urban areas outnumber countryside with 51.27% of urban dwellers. And the percent will continue to increase as rural population migrates to cities for better living conditions and jobs. As mentioned by Tom Orlik and Liam Denning in wsj, urbanization supposes increasingly demand for housing, infrastructure. Neighbors such as Korea and Japan based their economic rapid growth partly upon urbanization in the 20th Century. In this instance, Post-War Japan used urbanism as tool to boost demands for roads, infrastructure, and as falling birth rate and population aging were integrated as important components, health care and well-being became axes in Japan's urbanism. In short, Japan's rapid economic growth profitted from urbanism and China is taking the same way along with a large number of programmes of urban development at a high level. Drawing a perspective on this shift into urbanized country, The Atlantic Cities noted that:

City dwellers represented just 10.6 percent of China's population in 1949, when the Communist Party took power, and just under 19 percent in 1979, when it launched the market reforms, according to official Chinese statistics. That means that in the economic boom of the past three decades, China has roughly matched what economic historians say took about 200 years in Britain, 100 years in the U.S. and 50 years in Japan.

Yet China will challenge a large range of issues to provide best quality of life for each resident, in particular, insofar as China will be engaging in a certain growth slow and population aging that will sap its economic dynamics. But for now China's cities must respond to external issues, in particular demand pressures in terms of living conditions that includes health care, childcare, well-being, housing, infrastructure, jobs to dwell their urban citizens.

News: SOM unveiling Cornell Campus Proposal

2012-01-19T03:13:00.000+09:00

SOM recently revealed its proposal for the Cornell's Campus, implanted in Roosevelt Island which will host 2,500 students.
The goal of this design is to propose a place of work and research based on collaboration, productivity and creativity needs of the students.
Three major axes motivate this proposal based on a flexible open plan: hubs, sustainability, green features.

Hubs
The Cornell Campus will be composed of hubs rather than a complex of closed-off silos: a healthy hub, gathering biomedical and engineering fields, and mobile social hub integrating mobile technology and social marketing studies. These hubs aside, the project will also include walkways, precisely lateral paths, between these hubs.
As views playing an important role in this proposal, interior and exterior paths are announced to be connected aiming at maximizing views for the occupants.

Cornell Campus © SOM.
—> The Cornell Campus will include a multi-story pedestrian network, indoor/outdoor connectivity between academic spaces, a half-million-square-feet of public
gardens and amphitheaters.

Sustainable approach
The second interesting part will be the sustainable approach allowing for energy efficiency, say, zero net energy. This system will be capable of producing as much as energy it consumes, Roger Duffy, a partner of Skidmore Owings & Merrill said. This will be possible with a research on the orientation of the building in relation to sun and to green features.
"You really have to design from the conceptual stage," confessed Colin Koop, an associate director at SOM. "When you have that kind of aggressive idea, you have to design your orientation of the campus around it."

Cornell Campus — Rendering: layout of the Campus, © SOM. Originally appeared on International Business Times.
—> "A 150,00-square-foot photovoltaic array that would be the largest in New York City, and an interactive
sustainability strategy that will boast one of the country's largest net-zero energy structures."

Apart from the zero net energy, the building will integrate not only photovoltaic panels whose function, obviously, will be to capture maximum of sunlight, but also underground geothermal that will help produce power. The layout below shows the articulation of the environmental strategy of SOM's proposal for the Cornell Campus. Radiant celing panels will be integrated to provide sensible cooling to users that will utilize the hydronic system.

A displacement ventilation will allow for dedicated outside air at the floor level. Operable windows will provide warm air to reduce cooling loads. A congeneration plant will also be incorporated. The building will thus use the tidal energy from the East River.

Landscape approach
The last part of this project concerns the courtyard and retail that will co-designed with Landscape architect James Corner Field Operations. This project will be composed of public space for pedestrian access. The accent will be put on the western side. A lush landscape made of trees, rain gardens will surround the building such as a park within the campus.

Cornell Campus © SOM.
—> The relation of the facilities and the landscape will particularly be well-represented by a large amount of
the site devoted to green features.

According to SOM:

This is a spectacularly rare opportunity to imagine a new campus from the ground up — and to do so in the heart of a great city. In terms of its urban design, architecture, landscape design and sustainable strategies, this campus will be an exemplar — a living, learning applied sciences community whose design supports and reflects the fundamental ideals of research and innovation.

Source: New York International Business Times.

Today's video: The Other Inconvenient Truth: Agriculture and Land Use

2012-01-16T11:12:00.000+09:00

As 70 percent of world's population will be living in cities by 2050, along with climate change, another issue: Agriculture. This video of Jonathan Foley's conference, TED's Talks highlights how Agriculture is changing the face of our planet:

We typically think of climate change as the biggest environmental issue we face today. But maybe it's not? In this presentation, Jonathan Foley shows how agriculture and land use are maybe a bigger culprit in the global environment, and could grow even larger as we look for to feed over 9 billion people in the future.

Video Credit: TED's Talks.

Conference, Landscape and Critical Agency, UCL, UK

2012-01-14T01:43:00.000+09:00

Critical Ground Architecture/Urbanism/Theory co-organise with Murray Fraser, Tim Waterman and Ed Wall a one-day symposium on 'Landscape and Critical Agency', at UCL, UK on 17th February.

What agency does landscape possess, as a means of territorial organisation and creative production, to engage criticality with the conditions that define the collective aspects of our environment?

For the participation of: Jill Desimini, GSD Harvard, Murray Fraser, UCL, Matthew Gandu, UCL, Jon Goodbun, University of Westminster and RCA, Jonahthan Hill, UCL, Jane Hutton, GSD Harvard, Douglas Spencer, Architectural Association, Lisa Tilder, Ohio State University, Ed Wall, Kingston University, Tim Waterman, Writtle School of Design, Jane Wolff, University of Toronto, Daniel Zarza, University of Alcala.

More about registration, location: Here and Here.

Arup Unveiling the Dwabor Kindergarten Project

2012-01-14T00:27:00.000+09:00

A nice project for Ghana's children, in particular for Children of Dwabor. Dwabor Kindergarten is a prototype for 30 schools in the district designed by Arup, Davis Langdon, A-Kon Consultants and Atelier for Sabre Charitable Trust.

This building simple in form but flexible, scalable and modular is made of local materials such as waste products like bamboo coconut husks, and stabilised soil blocks which can be transformed into durable and cost-effective building materials, as Arup states. The community was engineered in the construction of the building foundation, weeding, removing tree stumps and the choice of the materials.

For the walls, Arup, Davis Langdon, A-Kon Consultants and Atelier used the soil stabilised blocks as the video, above, shows. Concrete was also used, in particular pozzolana that has been made from fired palm kernels.

Due to environmental constraints, as Ghana has wet and dry seasons, accordingly during the rainy season, children could not go to school, a metal roof was required to withstand rainfalls, and better still, and collect water rain. fibres from coconut husks reinforce the roof helpingdeaden the noise from rain and protecting downpours from interrupting classes.

Colourful pivoting slatted bamboo windows act as screen for sun protection providing natural light without any glare. These also allow for masking interior spaces — children activities — from exterior views. These shutters of bamboo that screen the envelope create a differentiated affect to the school.
This results in a school with interior spaces large enough for children to study.

Building Fact
Project: Dwabor Kindergarten
Architects: Arup, Davis Langdon, A-Kon Consultants, Atelier
Client: Sabre Charitable Trust
Location: Dwabor, Ghana

Video credit: Sabre Charitable Trust