VENETIAN PIGMENT CHROMATOGRAPHY LABORATORY

Constructing a celebratory space through exploration of Venetian colours and the connections and influences of Venice (the West) and Istanbul (the East) on architecture. This project articulates the colours of Venice through digital design methodology that is driven by the poetic history of Venice and constructing pigment scientific investigation laboratory and sculpting the process of making ink inside the existing Campanile of Venice. St Marks Square is full of exuberance, opulence, sculpture, and colour; the landmark of Venice also required these astonishing architectural elements. The architectural design is elaborated through exploration in Venetian patterns, ornamentations and the influences of domes that links both Venice and the East while also creating functional spaces that also provide a sublime spatiality in contemporary context.

(via fabriciomora)

ZAHA HADID

CONVERSION OF 59 EATON PLACE, SITE PLAN, 1981-82

(Source: betonbabe, via dotyj)

H.Th. Wijdeveld. 15 Miles into the Earth, 1944. 
NAI Collection, WIJD 470

It cannot be denied that Wijdeveld’s attitude was experimental. Especially in the latter years of his life he concentrated on large-scale, utopian projects in which he was seeking for a new relationship between mankind, nature and culture. He situated this 1944 design for an international geological research centre in a shaft in the earth at a depth of 15 miles.

Source: Collectie Nederlands Architectuurinstituut

(Source: ethel-baraona)

Pighouse- Housing for Pigs Compost for Life by Alexander Prusakov

(Source: catrinastewart)

Shitscape via Mammoth

“Shitscape” describes “the making of an entirely functioning landscape built from human excreta”. It proposes to accomplish this by recovering “the ‘soil’ from the settlements while extracting the beneficial flora from the forest and, in turn, utilize both as a generator for a new and evolving landscape”. The project aims to give “those living in peri-urban” Mumbai the capacity to relieve their own ”conditions of poverty” by providing a structure within which “they participate in the creation, processing and profits of this landscape”.

(Source: ryanpanos)

Regeneration of the Favela de Rocinha Slum / Jan Kudlicka via arch daily

Rocinha began to develop after the 1930′s when people began to migrate from the rural areas of Brazil  to areas just outside Rio de Janeiro with the prospect of benefiting from the development of the urban center.  The favelas developed on the hillside with any means available creating hazardous living conditions with crowding and inadequate ventilation, natural light and sewage treatment.  These types of conditions are true all over the world where the populations of urban environments have outnumbered rural areas since 2008.  With such a high proportion of the world living in urban centers, many people are faced with the overcrowding and unsanitary conditions associated with living on the outskirts of a big city.

The strategies that Jan Kudlicka developed prioritize the need to preserve the space already built up and protect it from the vehicular traffic.  The desire is to regenerate the existing conditions rather than demolishing homes to begin anew.  The environmental conditions of Rocinha made this especially difficult because the site is built up to its limit, crowded on all sides by mountains from one end and the urban center of Rio de Janeiro on the other.  The natural development of the favela has produced overpopulated and dangerous conditions that do not account for emergencies or the general safety of the inhabitants.  The organization of the dwellings create dead ends and very few passages in case of fire or medical emergencies.

(Source: ryanpanos)

PAISAJES EMERGENTES – HEATHROW AIRPORT FORT

Paisajes Emergentes’s proposition for an idea competition run by Greenpeace for the design of an architecture that would prevent the construction of a third runway.

Property owners may waive any putative notion of “air rights” near an airport, for convenience in future real estate transactions, and to avoid lawsuits from future owners who might attempt to claim distress from overflying aircraft. This is called a navigation easement. “At the same time, the law, and the Supreme Court, recognized that a landowner had property rights in the lower reaches of the airspace above their property. The law, in balancing the public interest in using the airspace for air navigation against the landowner’s rights, declared that a landowner owns only so much of the airspace above their property as they may reasonably use in connection with their enjoyment of the underlying land. In other words, a person’s real property ownership includes a reasonable amount of the airspace above the property. A landowner can’t arbitrarily try to prevent aircraft from overflying their land by erecting “spite poles”for example. But, a landowner may make any legitimate use of their property that they want, even if it interferes with aircraft overflying the land” 

Source: thefunambolist.net

(Source: thefunambulist.net, via catrinastewart)

Demotown by Jesse Honsa & Gregory Mahoney | The Funambulist

Utopian megaprojects of the 20th century, from Le Corbusier’s Ville Radieuse to Paulo Soleri’s Linear City, are too often negated by their megalomaniacal, individualistic plan for the future. With the tabula rasa as their method for organization, such projects lack the contradictory, contextual, democratic, “organic” process of city building. Contextual, yet admittedly still megalomaniacal, this project uses the city of Detroit as a found object (rather than a blank canvas), forming the basis for a retroactive arcology that redefines urban density and circulation.

Continuous city for 1.000.000 human beings | Alan Boutwell / Mike Mitchell 1969

Domus 470, Milan

Alan Boutwell became acquainted with the ideas of the megastructuralists during his studies and was particularly impressed by the thoughts and designs of Archigram. In 1965, his first designs of modular building systems were released, in which he experimented with new technologies and materials. The project of a gigantic linear city that he created together with Michael Mitchell caused a sensation. It spanned on hundred meter high pillars straight across the American continent. Its interior combined all classical functions of urban life and was connected by a complex traffic system that was differentiated by speed, transportation and distances.

Alan Boutwell and Michael Mitchell described their project with the self-confidence and urgency that is characteristic of that time: This is our city. We have not sensationalized. All that we have described is feasible today […] If we do not act now, in spite of all the seemingly insuperable difficulties, we shall sonn reach a state where action is no longer possible.

(Source: megastructure-reloaded.org, via beansreels)

Feix & Merlin’s proposal for the Gasholder No. 8 in Kings Cross

(Source: feixandmerlin.com, via co-zine)

H.Wijdeveld
15 Miles into the earth, 1944

(via ethel-baraona)

The World is a Library and It’s Inescapable, by Michael Hara : socks-studio

This project explores hypertextuality, fiction, and narrative, utilizing architecture as a language to investigate these philosophies and phenomena. The proposal is a home for three fictional characters: a Victorian watchmaker, a Renaissance engraver, and a post-modern librarian. The three characters convene to re-create Giulio Camillo’s memory theater, a mechanism designed to convey infinite knowledge and wisdom upon anyone who entered its construct. The project is written in both images and words; plans and poetry. It is a fiction and should be read as such.

This project utilizes narrative and fiction as generators for an architectural proposition – one that is theoretical, philosophical, and physical; that is, it is an actual built proposition, not merely an idea. Within this framework the project specifically addresses issues of hypertextuality, memory, and identity in architecture. Hypertextuality is a post-modern belief in interconnectedness between literary works and, on a broader scale, the interconnectedness of all phenomena (be they physical or ethereal), whereby the universe exists not as a distinct and isolated set of phenomena but rather is a network of interconnections and associations. It also refers to the value of juxtaposition and aggregation – that new forms of knowledge might be born through their associations with dissimilar items.

(via ryanpanos)

atelierarchitects: the ruralscraper

hungarian practice atelierarchitects proposed ‘the ruralscraper’, a conceptual highrise structure for the eVolo 2011 skyscraper competition. a response to a projection stating 70% of the global population will live in urban areas, this vertical farm would act as a substitute for the rapidly shrinking amount of arable land throughout the world. energy and land will be saved by moving food resources into city centers placing consumers close to the production source of their daily provisions.

plastic bag cultivation, glasshouse culture, home gardening, tray method and late field growing occur within the tower’s diverse levels. farmers live within integrated houses. vertical circulation accommodates the various machines and equipment necessary for production and harvesting. prompting social interaction in a communal market setting, awareness is raised about growing methods with the ability to converse with the farmer. tanks for water collection can be redirected for irrigation and turbines generate electricity. glasshouses enable year round production while open air spaces may be used as ice skating rinks for the community.

(via ryanpanos)

Fredrik Hellberg, “Manhattan Oneirocritica,” 2007-8 (via dpr-barcelona + thefunambulist)

“This project visualizes the unbuilt twentieth-century visionary projects for Manhattan. It was generated through a quest to explore spatial languages that goes beyond the material and into the deep oceans of the mind, imagination, thought, meditation, fantasy, spirituality, psychedelic journeys and the dream. The language of the project is that of dreams: a state where the mind itself creates the space while perceiving it. To explore the world of dreams is to debate the logic of your own mind and universe.”

(via ethel-baraona)

Coastscraper for Evolo Competition | The Funambulist

Coastscraper by Gary Kellett (UK) introduces a gigantic and fantastic machine that scrapes the English cliffs, using the chalk to fight against the acidification of the oceans.