In this film, Chibi Moku explore the design of Kunst in Weidingen with Anja Axt of Axt Architekten. They explore it's rationalistic style, intended use ...
With a one-acre piazza at its heart, open to the sky and graced with trees, City Center brings to San Ramon a public place at once welcoming and entertaining
24 meters above sea level, with a view of Copenhagen’s harbour, sits a bright red playground atop a car park – a building that transforms our understanding of public space
Originally built to house over 7,000 people, the Aylesbury estate in South East London was one of largest housing projects in Europe when completed in the 1970s
Santiago Cirugeda is a subversive architect from Seville who has dedicated his career to reclaiming urban spaces for the public. In austerity-hit Spain where the state has retreated and around 500,000 new buildings lie empty, “people are doing things their own way,” says Cirugeda. “In times of crisis, people come together to find collective solutions.”So, …
Part of a Iconic Norway, the film is a time lapse journey thru Norway´s most beautiful contemporary architecture.
The project enhances the experience of the Trollstigen plateau’s location and nature. Thoughtfulness regarding elements and materials underscore the site’s nature and character, and well-adapted, functional facilities augment the visitor experience.
The architecture is characterized by clear and precise transitions between planned zones and the natural landscape. Through the notion of water as a dynamic element—from snow to running and then falling water—and rock as a static element, the project creates a series of prepositional relations that describe and magnify the unique spatiality of the site.
Taking bustling chaos of the Venice Biennial as its cue, the firm experimented with scale and proportion until — after much prototyping — they were left with a scaled down, minimal retreat embedded within Venice’s Time Space Existence exhibition.
The video offers a look at the final project as well as at earlier prototypes that had been considered for the space, giving a behind-the-scenes glimpse at how a design comes into fruition.
Time Space Existence is organized by the European Cultural Centre, with the support of the GAA Foundation.
Music: Robins Egg Blue by Podington Bear (CC BY-NC 3.0)
PLANE—SITE: plane-site.com
European Cultural Centre: europeanculturalcentre.eu
Lars Hesselgren is a leading researcher and academic in architecture and urbanism. His research in PLP Labs focuses on the technologies that underpin design in the built environment – ranging from novel mobility systems to new sustainable materials in construction. His research has led to the development of several pioneering new mobility systems including Skypod, Cartube and NuMo, in collaboration with RISE, the Swedish Research Institute.
Lars is a pioneer in novel design technologies from parametric design to computational techniques in the design process. As such he is a founder director of the Smartgeometry group (SG) and a co-chair at events of the Advances in Architectural Design (AAG). He has been a Visiting Professor at Chalmers University in Gothenburg, Sweden, where he is engaged with creating future novel collaborations with industry and advanced researchers.
Our cities are built around infrastructure. In the last century the car came to define our cities just as trains had in the preceding century.
So we ended up with two transport systems – one associated with public transport – the train; the other – the car – with personal mobility and flexibility.
We are in the midst of a revolution – the Autonomous Vehicles, Electric Vehicles and Shared Vehicles (AES).
Now is the time for a revolution in urban transport. Why do we have to group people into very large assemblies, then just to break them apart? The one distinct advantage of the car is that people are sorted – by destination and timing. But cars are inferior because they take up a lot of space – roads are inefficient, and the parking requirements have almost destroyed our cities.
It is time for a revolution in thinking – can we take the best from each system and devise something new and much better?
Any system has to consider two aspects – the vehicle and its track, and how people change from the system to pedestrian.
From trains and motorways we know that a high-speed system needs to be segregated – no pedestrians or bicyclists. The next question is how large does the vehicle need to be? There are surprisingly few people who want to go from A to B at time C – research in Stockholm suggests the vehicle need only be a four-seater, but there will be exceptions for popular destinations and times, so a system should take minibuses, say for eight people. This equates to Class 1 vehicles – cars and vans. Class 1 vehicles are defined by a parking garage height restriction of 2.5m, a maximum width of 2m and a maximum load of 2.7 tonnes, far removed from the conventional road which has to carry vehicles of up to 16 tonnes.
Once we have a segregated system, the controls which dictate vehicle separation is crucial. With autonomous vehicles the separation can be very tight; we can form virtual trains.
The most critical issue is the layout and shape of the network. Roads go everywhere but their capacity drops calamitously as soon as there is a junction. Motorways avoid this by special junctions and a new system needs something similar. The final mile delivery can most often be via the traditional road system which reaches all properties.
So the properties we are looking for is a segregated system which can be used only by Autonomous Electric Vehicles of Class 1. To ensure it is segregated there are multiple choices – above grade, at grade or below grade. Current segregated systems use a combination depending on the local setting; at grade in the countryside, above grade closer in, and finally below grade in central areas. We would expect a new system to follow similar paths.
Reusing what we already have is very attractive. Between cities we have motorways and setting aside a lane for these AEVs seems eminently possible – a trial is already being implemented in China as well as numerous proposals in US.
Raised systems abound from the DLR in London to numerous tram systems and even segregated bus lanes.
Our large cities have public transport based on tunnels – the subway in New York, Underground in London, Metro in Paris and huge numbers of new systems worldwide.
An interesting notion is floating tunnels where we exploit putting tunnels under existing waterways – we already have studies showing this in Stockholm and NY. The important aspect is not the tunnels – much cheaper than underground tunnels – but the type of technology that goes into the tunnels.
The NuMo proposal connects all these ideas into a holistic network – one based on a NuMo track only accessible to AEVs. But, how will these vehicles be owned and operated? Only local conditions will dictate that. In some jurisdictions the NuMo vehicle will be municipally owned and even operated; in others Uber will operate the system, yet in others any eligible vehicle can book into the system.
The first casualty will probably be the traditional bus system and the NuMo could take over the lanes, but of course still constricted to the same limitations on speed and layout of stops.
Once dedicated NuMo lanes begin to appear, their success will drive an increasing questioning of the public transport proposition that to be efficient, many people need to be grouped in the same vehicle with all the associated downsides.
Then we will have a true transport revolution!
Our next article will explore the urban opportunities opened up by such a new fusion of Public and Private Transport.
June 2, 2022 saw the On Demand and North American Digital premiere of The Price Of Desire, written and directed by Mary McGuckian. The film is presented by Giant Pictures and is available on Prime Video, Apple TV, and other digital platforms. The Price Of Desire is a film that revolves around a triangular tale …
In his lecture at the Boston Architectural College, David Walker, FASLA, discusses the work of PWP Landscape Architecture, a firm of about 45 landscape architects in Berkeley, California. The firm’s extensive portfolio demonstrates its ability to work on large complex sites, collaborating with world-renowned architects and corporate and governmental clients and developing clear design strategies that can succeed over an extended planning and construction process.
The firm’s primary goal lies in the success of the built work. Their projects, specifically the World Trade Center Memorial, the Novartis Campus, and Barangaroo, demonstrate PWP’s process of reconstructing large and complex urban sites with major infrastructure and the importance of conveying a consistent and legible design message all the way through construction.
The American Institute of Architects presents a short documentary about Chris Downey, an inspiring architect in San Francisco who is pioneering design for the blind.
Architect Helmut Jahn explains how his aesthetic choices for the Joe and Rika Mansueto Library reflect the University of Chicago‘s guiding ideals of inquiry and knowledge.
Video by Tom Rossiter; interview by Carment Marti; editing by Mark Lofgren; original music by Jim Tullio; sound recording by Mick Clemente; video assistance by Andrew Bruah; styling and makeup by Cindy Surman
“The music of Màquina Total reminded us of the dark romanticism in early videos by Depeche Mode, Estefanía de Monaco, and Franco Battiato. To reflect this, we visited some melancholic and brutalist buildings such as Ricardo Bofill’s Les Espaces d’Abraxas, Emile Aillaud’s Les Tours Aillaud, and Martin Van Trek’s Les Orgues de Flandre.
The song explores the idea that to forget someone, all memories that attach you to them must be destroyed, including places of shared experiences.”
Originally built to house over 7,000 people, the Aylesbury estate in South East London was one of largest housing projects in Europe when completed in the 1970s. Today it has fallen into rapid decline and perfectly encapsulates the growing housing crisis and problems caused by gentrification.
Architect and founder of Mitte’s Museum for Architectural Drawing Sergei Tchoban sat down with Berlin Art Link to talk about some of his iconic completed works in Berlin and abroad, and the importance of detail and process exploration to his architectural oeuvre.
The Tchoban Foundation Museum for Architectural Drawing was opened in 2013 in the Pfefferberg complex, where it stands in dialogue with the former industrial buildings now housing Olafur Eliasson’s studio and the Architekturforum Aedes. Crucial to Sergei Tchoban’s practice is the integration of new architectural elements amidst historical buildings. Over the years, he has become adept at tailoring his new facades to communicate with their older neighbours.
The museum – made to reflect its contents, with architectural sketches etched into the facade – houses Tchoban’s impressive collection of drawings and also plays host to collections from other major institutions worldwide. Down to the doorknobs, the Tchoban Foundation is a feat of detailed consideration. We spoke with him about the significance of draftsmanship in architectural practice today.