New Ars Electronica Center

Recently launched, the new Ars Electronica Center was designed by Treusch Architecture, an austrian-based studio. It features 38500 LEDs divided through 1100 glass panels. The RGB lights can be fully programmed using a different array of tools (eg. Max/MSP, Processing, VVVV), and the building also has built-in SMS capabilities. For the opening of the festival, artists Zachary Lieberman and Daito Manabe were invited to present a 10-minute show, and students and developers can also pre-test their work using an environment developed by the Ars Electronica Futurelab. The video shown above is a visualization made by Ingrid Stürmer based on bacteria patterns.

Treusch Architecture

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sexy destruction

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Out There: where Architecture meets Semiotics

What are the first things you think when I say “architecture”?
Heavy long-lasting buildings? Pyramids? Sparky skyscrapers? A thirty floor residence? The tour Eiffel?
If this is what we usually mean by “architecture”, maybe we need to change our beliefs.

As Semiotics tought me, the meaning of things is not simply an “object” (a “chair” is not only "the object that has the shape of a chair”, because a stone on the grass is actually a chair, if you sit on it!) but the consequences related to them (actions but also feelings).
In other terms, the meaning is what things REPRESENT.
Thats why the 11th International Architecture Exhibition in Venice is called “Out there: Architecture Beyond Building”.
Architecture is not just about “buildings” and “constructions” (=objects): we need to look beyond them.

Today the world is extremely dynamic, buildings cannot be something eternal anymore. What we create must be easy to develop, light, avaiable to be changed in order to our temporary needs.
Architecture is the way to create a world that

we feel like home
(Aaron Betsky)

Visual arts and performances, cinema, collage, illustrations, practices, immaginations, deconstructions, experiences, undefined shapes. Sperimentation, and not just an exposition of what already exists.

This is what I saw “Out there”.

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jorn utzon

On a day drenched with rain, the Jorn Utzon exhibit at this year's Venice Biennale provided shelter and stimulation. The exhibition has a number of models and plans of the buildings he built, most notably the Sydney Opera House. There was an interesting video segment explaining how how all the wedges that sit atop the Opera House are all pieces cut from a sphere. He rearranged these shapes until they attained a compositional and spatial rhythm that he found pleasing. Because they are all from the same shell of a sphere, they have a natural harmony that we can unconsciously perceive. Deriving it from a geometrical body helped him find that natural harmony - it's really quite profound and beautiful once the underlying logical form is made apparent.

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Lisbon Tiles

Lisbon has probably the most beautiful and imaginative tiles. They became an art form and today they still remain a very important part of the country's architecture.

Here you can find 64 different -and really nice- patterns to download and save as wallpapers.

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Porta San Tomaso

And for all those generations that came to Fabrica and spent their nights with a good spritz in the traditional San Tomaso -but never got to actually see it- we are happy to say that finally, after all the years of never ending renovation, Porta San Tomaso, in Treviso, is finally visible (and free of that terrible advertising).
Cheers!

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Student Housing

If you are looking for student housing in Amsterdam nothing can be more interesting than this. These Blue, Red and White apartments are a part of a complex of 380 Shipping Containers turned into living cabins. Each box has its own services like a kitchen, bathroom, toilet, tv-connection and internet...about 350 euro to rent, all inclusive.

Click here to find more

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brooklyn's floating pool

So the Neptune Foundation is apparently this group of people who really liked the floating baths that traveled around NYC in the late 19th century and wanted to recreate some today. Well after years of planning and construction, they have done it. The first floating pool has opened this summer, stationed at Brooklyn Bridge Park with of course an amazing view of lower Manhatty. The pool is open to everyone free of charge. They host like 1000 people a day. That's a lot of pee!

Neptune Foundation

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5 star jail

See here for more shots of this very fancy jail in Austria. It's kind of got a Tadao Ando type feel, don't you think?

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That Mega Bridge

Back in March, I blogged about the construction of the Bangkok Mega Bridge which uses the largest movable scaffolding system in the world. This bridge was constructed to help ease the traffic congestion around the BKK port. I'm telling you, the traffic congestion is a mega problem there, such that it requires a mega bridge...

construction pic:

Reader/visitor Suresh has informed me that bridge is now opened:

In his words: "Well the Mega Bridge is finished and the opening held yesterday (9/9/2549 - Thai calendar year. The bridge, despite its size is spectacular and highlighted by low energy digital lighting."

If that's El or LED lights, those are the biggest one I had ever done seen!

More about BKK Mega Bridge from 2Bangkok.

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Tate Modern 2 - designs revealed

Text and image from World Architecture News

Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron have today revealed plans for their £215 million iconic extension to the former power station on the south bank of the River Thames. The new 7,000 m² extension will be built on land to the south of the Tate Modern reclaimed from EDF energy networks. A new entrance and piazza to the 4 million visitor/year venue will allow north-south pedestrian passage through the complex. Ten new galleries will be provided in the 10 stories above ground and a performing space will be created within the former oil tanks, once used to feed the power station located below ground. The Mayor of London today pledged £7 million pounds towards the project through the London Development Agency. Completion is scheduled for 2012.

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Bangkok's Mega Bridge

When I was visiting my sister in Bangkok during the new year holiday, my taxi driver missed an exit on the freeway which resulted in us having to cross a bridge to make a u-turn. While crossing the Rama IV bridge and thinking to myself, 'man, this bridge is huuuge,' I noticed that there's construction going on for another bridge just up the river. And it looked waaaay bigger just as a construction. "HOLY S***, that other bridge is gunnabe HUMONGOUS!" The taxi driver told me what the construction was for, but he certainly didn't seem impressed by the size of the scaffoldings. He was more concerned about how you'd be able to bypass certain roads. And now I know:

In order to relieve the commercial traffic congestion around the industrial areas of Bangkok Port, Poochao Saming Phrai Road and Suksawat Road the King initiated the idea of a ring road system." Now in construction, the Industrial Ring Road Bridge (aka Mega-Bridge) stretches 13 km and required the demolition of 881 houses and factories and the commissioning of the world's largest moveable scaffolding system.

You can find more about the bridge construction from 2Bangkok.com and check out more photos at the construction press release.

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Fire stations

While queuing at the post office, i found pictures of this amazing Feuerwehrzentrale (fire station), designed by BFM achitecture studio in Cologne (Germany).

The circular building, surrounded by with a lattice of red concrete, houses the fire brigade and the elongated part accommodates the offices and the school.

Made me think of another very stylish Firestation , designed by Zaha Hadid's in Weil am Rhein (near Basel, Switzerland), on the site of the Vitra Museum .

The firehouse is part of Vitra's program of building structures by world renowned architects, including Tadao Ando's Conference Pavilion, Frank Gehry's Design Museum and Alvaro Siza's Production Hall. The building had been designed to serve the Vitra complex which at the time fell outside the range of neighboring fire districts.

The building functioned as a firehouse until the whole complex was finally covered by a nearby fire department. The building is now used by Vitra to showcase a part of its collection of classic chairs (see their mini-version).

Inside the building, optical tricks are being played on the viewer and i suspect the firemen have been quite relieved to leave the gorgeous but so impractical station. I stepped into the bathroom when i visited it and felt sea-sick because of these plays of perspectives and i didn't fancy the nearly transparent doors either. The kitchen was quite weird too. The sink was so low that it seemed to have been conceived for dwarves. Lady Hadid, however, makes gorgeous chandeliers.

Image Cologne,

ah, another impractical building by our favorite architect around here...

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Aegis Hyposurface

Aegis Hyposurface is an elastic architectural surface made up of small metal plates that are controlled pneumatically and react in real time to electronic stimuli from the environment (movement, sound, light, etc). Driven by 896 pneumatic pistons, the dynamic 'terrains' are generated as real-time calculations.

The Aegis Hyposurface effectively links information systems with physical form to produce dynamically variable, tactile 'informatic' surfaces. Aegis is perhaps the world's first such dynamic screen.

Any digital input (microphone, keyboard, movement sensor) can trigger any physical output (a wave or pattern or word.)

Movies.

Developed in 1999-2001 by Mark Goulthorpe at dECOi atelier.

one of the cooler 3d surface options out there... I would love to have seen been around to witness the chaos of constructuion

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Virtual club to rock game culture

Jon Jacobs, aka Neverdie, the gamer who bought a virtual space station for $100,000 says he wants to turn it into a nightclub to change the face of entertainment.

Currently being built within the online role-playing game Project Entropia, the space would be called Club Neverdie and would bridge reality and virtual reality.

"I'm already in talks with some of the worlds biggest DJs about spinning live sets inside the nightclub," said Neverdie. "Gamers want to be entertained while they play, hunt, socialise and craft, and because of the real cash economy aspects of Project Entropia, they can afford to pay for their entertainment."

The player believes that "Club Neverdie will enable the entertainment industry to reach inside virtual reality and target the gamer while he's in his element, while also harnessing the economic power of the gamers to raise the quality level of the content on offer."

Via BBC News.

\"And just when I was bopping to this awesome house track... A big Absolut bottle landed on my player... man it was like minus 20 hit points. Don\'t you hate product placement???\"

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Splitterwerk’s Treefrogs

Rather than simply designing houses, the Graz-based architects SPLITTERWERK are reinventing the way we inhabit domestic spaces.

Between 1994 and 1996, they built The Red Treefrog, a row of twelve stridently rust-coloured maisonettes on the edge of the wetlands, where in spring the frogs go about their noisy business.

In recent years, this building has seen the birth of two siblings: the "black" and the "green" treefrogs.

The Black Treefrog is an insignificant existing structure, together with a garage added later for the fire brigade, converted into a ten-unit apartment complex. The new outer skin of the structure, which consists of two buildings, is formed by black impregnated wood lamellae while the inner skins are coated in coloured wooden materials that surround the individual living units. The flats are accessed by a path which creates an accessible free space in front of each entrance. Liberated from the existing walls, new inner skins are created that correspond to the outer skin. The functional areas are integrated into the space between the inner and outer walls. This produces an empty centre where the living functions can be switched concurrently or successively. The staircase becomes a virtual exterior room, wallpapered with photorealistic vine-leaf patterns that leave the impression of an LSD-trip on the retina (check also the Blue Shell flat).

For the Green Treefrog, the architects allowed the slope to "flow through the building". Above a green area measuring approximately 10 by 25 metres, twelve columns support an airy structure, which, if interpreted as a pitched roof, would slope at an angle of 45 degrees. This two-layered structure consists of an upper and a lower skin of green translucent corrugated polyester. Between the skins there is a lighting system consisting of fluorescent tubes and the roof structure of wood and steel.

Recently the architects admitted that they would like to construct a building in the form of a frog, the "frogscraper".
In 2003 already, they had imagined another zoomorphic building: Duck House.

Via Domus.

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