architectology sui generis

Inspiring young architects since 1932!

2012-01-30T12:29:00.000-08:00

Click on the image to the left for LEGO Home Site.
I wish I had all the LEGO's I had as a kid now.
What I do have however is
LEGO Digital Designer.
With this you can design, build in three dimensions on-line anything you can imagine restrained only by the the shape of the Lego pieces . They are not just rectangular or square blocks anymore. When you are done you can have your Lego model custom packaged and sent to you to build at home.

what makes a building unique?

2012-01-30T12:28:00.000-08:00

Moshe Safdie on TED.com

Looking back over a long career, architect Moshe Safdie digs deep into four extraordinary projects to talk about the unique choices he made on each building -- choosing where to build, pulling information from the client, and balancing the needs and the vision behind each project. Sketches, plans and models show how these grand public buildings, museums and memorials, slowly take form. (Recorded February 2002 in Monterey, California. Duration: 17:41.)

Moshe Safdie studied architecture at McGill University and apprenticed under Louis Kahn in Philadelphia. At age 24, his master's thesis was selected to be constructed as part of the Expo 67 celebration. The Habitat 67 project, a complex of cellular residences that could be lifted into place like LEGO blocks, propelled him onto the world stage. In 1967, he returned to Israel, where he was part of the team that refurnished Old Jerusalem. He lives in a renovated home in the old city and has Israeli, U.S., and Canadian citizenship. Moshe Safdie's works are known for their dramatic curves, arrays of simple geometric patterns, and usage of windows and open spaces.

Architecture as Salvation: A Conversation with Paolo Soleri

2012-01-30T12:18:00.000-08:00

"Paolo Soleri is a complex man, impossible to summarize. Clearly a man of deeply religious sensibilities, his unwillingness to associate himself with any religion is emphatic. Labeled as a visionary, he has struggled to escape being dismissed as a dreamer. He intends to be taken seriously."by Richard Whittaker, May 21, 2000Read more here...[link]

Photo by C. Otto 2011

Endangered American Places

2011-07-22T08:16:00.000-07:00

The Chicago building that formerly housed Prentice Women's Hospital is proudly unorthodox. Above a steel-and-glass base, in a sea of more-conventional rectilinear neighbors, the building's quatrefoil concrete tower rises banded with oval-shaped windows.

Designed by Bauhaus-trained Chicago architect Bertrand Goldberg — best known for the twin cylindrical towers of the nearby Marina City development (1964) he designed — the Prentice tower's cloverleaf design was far from being simply contrarian. Goldberg sought to create a modernist architecture more organic than the International style's straight lines and boxes, which he came to consider dehumanizing. In hospital design, he intended to improve patient experience, which at Prentice translated into a bed tower with seven small patient floors, each divided into four lobes.

Designed for maximum flexibility, the 1974 hospital building was also structurally innovative. The tower is cantilevered from a central core, allowing for column-free, open-plan floor plates. The load-bearing concrete shell transfers loads diagonally back to the core via four large arches.

Despite its significance, this building is at risk of demolition. To bring attention to its plight, the National Trust for Historic Preservation has named the former Prentice Women's Hospital building to the 2011 list of America's Most Endangered Historic Places.
read more [link] >>>by ArchitectureWeek

KEG Apartments Transform Liquid Container Trucks Into Mobile Houses

2010-03-30T15:53:00.000-07:00

Now that shipping container homes are super hip, designers are concocting new ways to upcycle existing materials into dwellings -- say for instance, liquid container semis! Aristide Antonas, a designer from Athens, has a great idea to recycle old trucks into apartments that can either remain stationary or stay attached to the truck and be mobile. His KEG Apartments take a cool new look at how we can reuse just about anything to create low impact domiciles for a more resourceful age.
Read More [link]

Frank Gehry Selected to Design Eisenhower National Memorial

2009-04-04T10:58:00.000-07:00

WASHINGTON, DC.- Gehry Partners, LLP, the Los Angeles-based architectural firm headed by Frank O. Gehry, has been selected as lead designer of the national memorial to Pres. Dwight D. Eisenhower. The Eisenhower Memorial will be the seventh national presidential memorial in the Nation’s Capital, and the first since the Franklin Delano Roosevelt memorial opened in 1997. ...more from artdaily.org

aspiring city planner?

2008-03-15T22:19:00.000-07:00

City Creator

suite sewer

2008-02-26T15:02:00.000-08:00

"Each suite of the Park Hotel offers at minimal capacity maximum possible comfort for recreation and relaxation."
These ingenious little rooms are available for rent, and at whatever you can afford. The use of these concrete tubes into temporary housing shelters is inspiring to me, simple and effective. I'd like one in my back yard to hide in once in a while (great place for reading OSHA safety manuals). Of course these are used by campers, hikers (and vagrants?) passing thru for an evening or two. I do enjoy the use of already manufactured and readily available forms as living spaces. Close in the ends, put a door on the thing and roll it into place!

park hotel link

zoomorphic architecture - 'Lucy' the elephant

2008-02-26T13:37:00.000-08:00

I went here as a kid, I'd live in it!. I have some plan drawings of the interior around here somewhere, interesting, I'll post them here when I find them.

Lucy the Elephant is a six-story elephant-shaped architectural folly constructed of wood and tin sheeting in 1882 by James V. Lafferty in Margate City, New Jersey, two miles (3.2 km) south of Atlantic City, in an effort to sell real estate and attract tourism.

The idea of an animal-shaped building was innovative, and in 1882 the U.S. Patent Office granted Lafferty a patent giving him the exclusive right to make, use or sell animal-shaped buildings for seventeen years. Lucy is the oldest example of zoomorphic architecture, and the largest elephant in the world. more...
...what would happen if we crossed 'Stoorn' the moose with 'Lucy' the elephant? (answer)

Mafoombey

2008-02-21T21:48:00.000-08:00

MAFOOMBEY A SPACE MADE OF CORRUGATED CARDBOARD

Mafoombey, designed by Martti Kalliala and Esa Ruskeepää, took first place in the Habitare Fair design competition held in Helsinki in September for the best space for listening to music. The two students of Helsinki Faculty of Architecture, with the assistance of Martin Lucasczyk, realized Mafoombey, the ergonomically and acoustically optimum, as well as beautiful space, made of corrugated cardboard by cutting and piling.

“The initial concept for the design evolved from an ambition to create a strong spatial intensity within the volume of the dimensions given for the competition (2,5 x 2,5 x 2,5 m)”, tell the designers. “It soon developed into an idea of an intuitive freeform space cut into a rectangular stack of material.”
Kalliala and Ruskeepää decided to use corrugated cardboard as their material because of its low cost and strong aesthetic appeal. The interior contours of the cube were carried out mainly by means of computer design. When a pleasing form was found, the 3D model was sliced into horizontal layers in order to produce the cutting files for the computer-controlled Kongsberg cardboard cutter.

Each of the 360 layers of Mafoombey consists of two pieces of cardboard resulting in almost a ton in weight when assembled. Cardboard columns run through each corner of the cardboard cube stiffening the structure. No glue is used. Speakers, stereos and lamps are all integrated within the stack, allowing music and light to seep in through the cardboard structure.

Photo Credit:Stora Enso / Timo Wright Article:FinnishDesignShop

now that's a big moose

2008-02-21T19:49:00.001-08:00

"Stoorn" the Big Moose
I'd rather not say much more, you just have to see it.

cardboard house of the future?

2008-02-18T21:02:00.000-08:00

Cardboard is not a traditional building material,
however the introduction of innovative bonding,
cutting and structural techniques has provided the
opportunity to consider this lightweight and
recyclable material in a more creative fashion.

All the material in the house is recycled,
and recyclable, making it an excellent
environmentally sustainable option for housing.
The Carboard House is made of recycled carboard
supplied by Visy Industries. This is completed with
a waterproof roof made from HDPE plastic,
which also forms the material of the flexible
under-floor water tanks and the novel kitchen
and bathroom 'pods'.

More Info

Download the cardboard house fact sheet.

contained living

2008-02-17T23:17:00.001-08:00

Artist and Architect Adam Kalkin works with shipping containers, building economical, strong, recycled, unique homes.

http://www.architectureandhygiene.com/main.html

Download the quik house fact sheet.

musical edifice

2008-02-17T22:17:00.000-08:00

This unique piano house was built in

An Hui Province, China.

Inside of the violin is the escalator to the building.