“The Ark,” by Alexander Remizov
Russian architect Alexander Remizov thinks so — and his prototype design, called “The Ark.” Remizov believes his Ark, designed to be constructed from timber, steel and high-strength ETFE plastic, could be adapted for all kinds of environments and put to a number of different uses, including emergency housing – its prefabricated structure should allow it to be constructed quickly- and hotels. He’s even suggested a variation with a honeycomb-style hull that can float.
A wind power generator that runs through the center of the building would provide power while the outer surface would be covered with transparent solar panels. If the Ark was built on water, as Remizov suggests, he says it could also utilize thermal water energy.
Read More…
Tianjin Eco-City by Surbana Urban Planning Group
Designed by Surbana Urban Planning Group, Tianjin Eco-City is 30 square kilometer development designed to showcase the hottest new green technologies and to serve as a model for future developing Chinese cities.
A conscious effort was made not to create a generic city devoid of humanizing features or cognitive characteristics, one that is replicated ad infinitum in cities of rapidly developing economies. Read More…
Self Washing Sink Built in a Dishwasher by AHHA Project
Wouldn’t it be great if our sink got intelligent enough and cleaned up the mess automatically?
Here is the Pure Washer Eco Automatic Sink that does just this.
The name Ahha Project is apropos given that one’s initial reaction to Eco Sink is likely to include a self-administered slap to the forehead and no small amount of pseudo-affirmative muttering. Its a sink that is divided into two rotatable parts, where in one part you put in the dishes, and it rotates away under the counter to wash them. The other part is a mirror image to the first and is ready to take in your next cycle.
Besides being a space-saving idea, the washing technique is Eco-sensitive as well; it functions using only the minimal resources required, based on the space occupied by the dishes in the chamber. There is a cycle for washing fruits and vegetables included as well. What a perfect sink!
AHHA Project
350 Earth, Global Climate Art Project by 350.org
As part of the launch for 350 EARTH, the first global art show for the climate is signed by 350.org, founder Bill McKibben; multimedia hip-hop innovator DJ Spooky; renowned urban artist Jorge Rodriguez-Gerada; and director of the Santa Fe Art Institute, Diane Karp.
350 EARTH has issued a call to artists to submit climate change design sketches that will be used to create images viewable from space. The designs will be replicated by human beings, assembled like pixels on a computer screen, to create images so large that they will be seen and photographed by an orbiting satellite. The installations take place in over a dozen cities, including in Europe, South America, and seven locations in North America. Each project is large enough to be visible by space, and will be photographed via satellite. The public can sign up to participate in their city, or make their own art.
Most of the art is developed along the line of “gather-enough-people to-form-a-shape (or message)”: for example, a giant “350″ (representing the optimum levels of parts-per-million of CO2 in the atmosphere); a green footprint; or a polar bear created out of hundreds of red tents. 350.org says aerial images will be made available and displayed at the latest climate talks in Cancun starting on Nov. 29.
Read More…
Brus Residence by Studio Kois Associated Architects
Studio Kois Associated Architects have just sent us the photos of their last projects called BRUS, a private residence situated in Athenian suburbia designed by Studio Kois Associated Architects (KAA)
The project is sited in a seaside suburban area in East Attica. The concept was to create an uninterrupted route behaving as a connection of the interior and the exterior, manipulated and worked in a dynamic but conscious and recognizable way that moves far from mechanistic logic and closer to stochastic processes.
The route starts with the stepped entrance and folds around the central vertical axis of the building as it ascents to the top, terminating at the plateau on top of the periscopic structure, which encloses the living space. Casa Malaparte designed by Adalberto Libera the great Italian Modernist with its reverse pyramidal stairs leading to the roof patio was an inspiration during the design process. The villa behaves like a moving organism which enabled by light, alters from hour to hour and from season to season. The dark soft and humid turns to luminous, dry, crystalline cold in an unbroken loop.
Underground City in Diamond Mine, Eco-City Project 2020 by AB Elis Ltd
Eco-city 2020 is a proposal for the rehabilitation of the Mirniy industrial zone in Eastern Siberia, Russia designed by the innovative architectural studio AB Elis Ltd.
Eco-city would be constructed of multiple levels, with a huge central core. The main floor would hold parks and recreation areas, with residential areas terracing up around the walls of the mine. Underneath would be space for vertical farms and forests, subsiding on light piped down the central core. An estimated 100,000 people would be able to live in Eco-city, and architects are hoping that it would help to attract tourists to Eastern Siberia. Read More…
X-RAY Mobile Phone by Tokujin Yoshioka for KDDI
Tokujin Yoshioka has proposed a mobile phone with a transparent form and body. Called “x-ray” it is
is the result of a conceptualizing process that explored the notion of a design without a shape. The design was created for telecommunications company KDDI and will be on show KDDI Designing Studio in Tokyo from 19 October.
Read More…
Solar Umbrella Project by Constantin Boincean, Ralph Bertram, Aleksandra Danielak
The Southern California Institute of Architecture, announced the winners of the Los Angeles Cleantech Corridor and Green District Competition. An open ideas competition sponsored by SCI‐Arc and The Architect’s Newspaper, entrants were challenged to use the competition as a forum for provocative, even revolutionary, reconceptualizations of L.A.’s urban fabric.
Project Umbrella, revolves around large mushroom-like structures called solar evaporators that would not only serve as memorable symbols for the area, but, via a system of black-water treatment and clean-water dispersal, would transform large parts of the city grid into greener and more attractive public spaces. The second prize went to Los Angeles-based office Labtop’s scheme called Greenoplasty, which removes cars from the area through a local rail line and creates a system of lightweight housing on top of the area’s existing warehouses. Third prize went to a team including Buro Happold and Mia Lehrer & Associates that conceived integrated systems for energy creation (including solar arrays and hydroelectric power), waste management, transportation, and water runoff.
Read More…
GEOtube by Faulders Studio
Geotube is a building proposal designed by the California based architecture Firm Faulders Studio for the unique environment of dubai. Born from unique environmental conditions, GEOtube is a new kind of urban sculptural tower. Gravity-sprayed with adjacent Persion Gulf waters, its building skin is entirely grown rather than constructed; is in continual formation rather than fully completed; and is created locally rather than imported.
Read More…
Ripple Effect Tea Table, Project by Jeonghwa Seo & Hanna Chung
As part of his graduation project for IM masters design Academy Eindhoven, “Ripple Effect Tea Table” by korean industrial designer Jeonghwa Seo & Hanna Chung is a reflection of eastern mentality towards social relationships. They tried to translate the eastern culture mentality into a unique tea table design which offers unique tea drinking experience. They created the water layer on the tabletop to make the ripples.
Proposal for a New Prison in the City Center of Gothenburg by Maria Poll and AnnaKarin Stråhle
Two young Swedish architects, Maria Poll and AnnaKarin Stråhle have made a proposal for a new prison in the city center of Gothenburg suggesting that architecture can be a helping tool in the rehabilitation of prisoners. And that a central location of the prison can help the prisoners get in contact with the society and vice versa, creating a mutual trust between the citizens and the prisoners.
Read More…
3D Express Coach Buses Will Be Able to Drive Over Other Cars
Despite the silly picture and the eccentric “3D Express Coach” branding, this cunning project by Shenzhen Huashi Future Car-Parking Equipment actually makes sense. The idea is to make use of the space between regular-size cars and bridges, thus saving construction costs as well as minimizing congestion impact by allowing cars to drive underneath these jumbo buses.
Read More…
Car Motel Project by John Farrace
Los Angeles is a huge city that, because of its size and transportation infrastructure, allows for an unprecedented amount of diversity contained in a single city. The people of Los Angeles are connected through massive freeway systems that become extremely clogged and, as a result, the act of driving takes longer than it should. Because of this, driving becomes an introverted experience. We lose interest in the environment (specifically the built environment) around us because none of it engages us and/or pertains to us; we get preoccupied with the radio, our cell phone, shaving, reading the newspaper or whatever.
Read More…
Alpha Project by Xavier Vilalta Studio
Architects Xavier Vilalta Studio have won the competition with the theme : tower for Doha, Qatar. Called Alpha Project, the design is based on tha patterns of ancient Arabic tiles.
It would be designed as an independent ecosystem to ensure stable living at places with harsher climes with the use of sustainable renewable energy measures.
Read More…
Bentley’s Aero-Ace Project
Designers at the Royal College of Art were challenged to create a digital design for a Bentley coupe that embraces aerodynamics and reduced energy consumption while maintaining a 21st aesthetic that suits the brand. Here are the finalists plus additional submissions and sketches.
The challenge:
“Explore a new Aerodynamic lead design direction for Bentley, develop a digital design for a Bentley coupe that speaks to lean mid 21st century tastes, and that truly embraces aerodynamics to both reduce energy consumption and form part of a future Bentley design aesthetic.”
Fibrous Tower, by Kokkugia
This fibrous concrete shell was erected as an exoskeleton construction with a load-bearing shell and thin floor plate and column free. The shell is based on structural and tectonic hierarchies and a contemporary design, its articulation as a single self-organized structure responds to common conflicting design criteria. Pretty funky I think.
Boston Arcology “BoA,” Project by E. Kevin Schopfer
Designed by E. Kevin Schopfer, AIA, RIBA , the Boston Arcology “BoA”is designed to provide safe and dry living space to over 15,000 people after rising oceans swallow the cities in which we live today. The floating city will provide housing distributed in hotels, offices, retail, museums, condominiums and a city hall. And while the design seems pretty incredible and maybe even impossible, it’s a spectacular mix of architecture and ecology.
To be located on a buoyant platform of concrete cells right in the Boston Harbour next to down town, BoA would sit perpendicular to the waterfront, thus minimizing the view sheds of existing buildings onshore.
Read More…
“Ekokook,” Sustainable Kitchen Project by Faltazi Lab
Called Ekokook, the project by Faltazi Lab aims to process waste as close as possible to the point where it’s produced.The design incorporates storage containers for packaging, a reservoir under the sink for collecting water to be reused and a container where earthworms break down organic waste. The Ekokook also has the three built-in micro-plants that helps complete the three recycling functions.
