Basque Health HQ by Coll-Barreu Architects

edgargonzalez.com has a photo filled post about the new headquarters of the Basque Health Department in Bilbao, Spain that was designed by Coll-Barreu Architects.

Bonneville Salt Flats Rest Stop Shelter

The first in an occasional series of unexpected monuments - Bonneville salt flats is famous for its salty flatness - hence the name - and its predictable weather....making it a prime choice for land speed record attempts and possibly chip consumption.... A striking mid-century modern form at the rest area next to the (also striking) salt flats west of the Great Salt Lake. This is one of those historically significant public designs, like those of the WPA, that remains uncredited, and often unappreciated, by today’s administrators.

source

Liz on TED

worth keeping an eye on ted.com...

Is Architecture one of the Creative Industries?

http://www.bdonline.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=3106849&origin=BDweeklydigest

An interesting debate, worth posting a comment on the site above, I did, would you agree/disagree?

"Its people like Mr. Kenealy that make this profession so dull and restrained, subsiding it to merely tactics and trouble shooting! If it wasn’t for the creative individuals in this field that strive to "reinvent the wheel" we would still be living in 'thatched cottages’... Architecture is an art, beauty and intellectual thinking. It is very much related to the creative industries where it is cross informed by all the other subjects like fashion, ceramics, fine art, interiors, digital design, product design, modelmaking.....It is a social profession that is at the heart of society that listens and responds and not one that governs and dictates!"

Ted

MAde - Digital Ekistics MA now recruiting

On Monday, the MA digital ekistics: new online virtual settlements was validated for the maximum 5 year term. The course, the first of its kind, will provide a route by which students can conduct advanced design-based research into how architecture and urbanism can respond to these novel and increasingly pervasive electronic spaces. Should be fun....kind of drl in space, really...
link

Iso Truss

The three-dimensional, yet relatively simple geometry of IsoTruss® grid structure provides substantial resistance to local and global column buckling, while lending itself to cost effective fabrication using batch or automated continuous manufacturing techniques. IsoTruss extrapolates the traditional 2-D triangle based truss to a 3-D truss made up of pyramids formed by isosceles triangles.

The IsoTruss® can support axial tension or compression, torsion, or flexure (bending) loads, or any combination thereof. Each individual member carries primarily axial loads, taking full advantage of the inherent strength and stiffness of continuous fiber-reinforced composites. IsoTruss structures are particularly effective when replacing structures that were stability-critical designs.

link

The Acorn Pig

Art and Agriculture
landscape vision and natural animal keeping

The engagement of art with ecological questions is more old than 40 years. Since 1990 Insa Winkler did approach segments of this voluminous theme, special the keeping, the destroying and the repairing of the landscape - Moor, Chernobyl Zone, Military Zone, Wadden Sea and then the mass production of agriculture in the focus of the Acorn Pig and their species appropriate in the landscape.

`The domestic animal of human being incur into the machinery of the European agar industry. As an object of this intensive factory farming it becomes the danger of the landscape.´

loink

another huge dutch housing block

From BD - The Parkrand building, designed by MVRDV and interior designer Richard Hutten, is one of the key projects in what is being branded a “metamorphosis”. Situated between a park and a residential neighbourhood set for demolition, the 135m-long, 12-storey building dominates its surroundings through its sheer size. With 223 dwellings, 193 of which are at the higher end of the rental market, the Parkrand building introduces a type of tenant to the north-western periphery of Amsterdam West who had been virtually absent in the social housing units it replaces.

linkoid

Skydiving in the lift shaft?

Japan opens 'tallest lift tower'

The tower will be used to test new lift technologies

Japan's Mitsubishi Electric Corporation has opened what it says is the world's tallest elevator testing tower.

The 173m-high (567ft) structure is called Solae and dominates the skyline of Inazawa City.

The company says it will use the tower to conduct research into high-speed elevators to serve the next generation of super-tall buildings.

linka

MURVEGETAL

I know some of you are aware of this guy- but maybe not everyone is - so here you go!
Using a system that allows plants to grow without any soil, The Vertical Garden by Patrick Blanc allows for natural living beauty in the otherwise most uninhabitable of places: the very walls of buildings, indoors or out. Watering and fertilization are automatic, so it's almost completely hassle free. Patrick Blanc has created customized living walls all over the world.
linkeroo

Bdonline's alternative architecture awards for 2007

In case you missed them - check out this lot of shrinking violets - I'm sure you are aching to join them - I particularly admire the island in the shape of Russia - mad as a brush and rightly receiving the 'god complex' award

linkoid

Edifici Fòrum Barcelona

James Turrell meets Anish Kapoor pimped by Yves Klein - as seen by swiss architects -
all of which are not necessarily bad things...

Herzog + De Meuron Winery

nice gabion walls...

smoke signals

This is a nice project from an old colleague of mine - Theo Spyroupolous.

“Participants engage in a collective act of writing space through the use of light as a virtual writing machine onto ephemeral plumes of smoke,” explain Minimaforms. In other words, onlookers can text messages which are then displayed using light projected into plumes of smoke. Their texts “are fed through dynamic coding that recognizes, archives and plays back a real time visualization. This visualization is then grafted onto trajectories of smoke that form a dynamic ephemeral field that is affected by all external forces in the space of performance. Through turbulence the smoke writes or erases the grafting of the inputted text.”

link

Asymptote building stuff - surely not?

image: Asymptote

Asymptote has unveiled another major Asian project, extending the complexity and scope of their kinetic work with a 10.8-million-square-foot mixed-use, zero-carbon complex in Penang, Malaysia. In a statement, Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi called the project, known as the Penang Global City, “a high-caliber development” that will serve as “a catalyst for the NCER and an important factor in the Malaysian economy as a whole.” The NCER is the Northern Corridor Economic Region, a recently created development zone along Malaysia’s northern border.

“It’s certainly a place that’s off the map, but it’s trying to get on there,” Asymptote principal Hani Rashid told AN. He said that in ambition, the city’s goals are analogous to those of Bilbao, Abu Dhabi, and Kuala Lumpur, all of which have used architecture to raise their global profile in one way or another. “When people think of Malaysia, they uually think of the Petronas Towers,” Rashid said. “Now the government wants to bring that attention to the northern corridor.”

I wonder who is drawing the construction set??

from here

Cross River Park

Mat & Kevin, I said that I would send you this link at the end of last year (there is a huge amount of info, embedded in here)

Cross River Park, Thames Gateway. This is the product of a Diploma Unit running at London Metropolitan (run by CHORA)
http://crp.urban-gallery.net/
http://www.chora.org/2005/?page_id=9

The Architecture of Parking

Neil the book I was talking about was 'The Architecure of Parking' (they have 3 copies in Waterstones Canterbury; to flick through). The last chapter with the contemporary stuff is very interesting.
http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/WEBSITE/WWW/WEBPAGES/showbook.php?id=0500342377

They have a fair amount of info on the BD site
http://www.bdonline.co.uk/feature.asp?featurecode=12025

The two projects that jumped out were:

OMA, Souterrain Tram Tunnel, The Hauge (the linking of 2 transport hubs, underground, plus parking)
http://www.oma.eu/index.php?option=com_projects&view=portal&Itemid=10&id=183

Aranda/Lasch, 10 Mile Spiral, Las Vegas (the beauty of parking at 55 miles per hour)
http://www.terraswarm.com/vegas/
http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2006/08/10-mile-spiral.html

Building Design Class 0f 2007

Just in case anybody missed it BD has an overview of some of last years student shows and student diploma work.
http://www.bdonline.co.uk/section.asp?navcode=2058

Plus you can download Paul Maich's full project from dezeen (bottom of the page 2 pdf files)
http://www.dezeen.com/2007/09/28/architect-murdered-in-his-own-building-cognitive-dwelling-by-paul-maich/#more-5482

gentlemen, start your bookmarks...

This is a Dutch Tax office - it would be better/more fun if it was in the UK when it would certainly leak - however its kinda cute, no?
more details and many more-or less- groovy projects at thecoolhunter

If you don't know this site - you do now.

Robodock 07

The 10th Robodock Arts & Technology Festival that took place in Amsterdam last weekend. Interesting as event architecture... have a look

link

There is an mp4 slideshow here

photo by PharPhoto / Aaron Butler