A unique biotechnology start-up company have developed a method of growing bricks from nothing more than bacteria and naturally abundant materials. Having recently won first place in the Cradle to Cradle Product Innovation Challenge, bioMason has developed a method of growing materials by employing microorganisms. Arguing that the four traditional building materials - concrete, glass, steel and wood - both contain a significant level of embodied energy and heavily rely on limited natural resources, their answer is in high strength natural biological cements (such as coral) that can be used "without negative impacts to the surrounding environment."
View. Image Courtesy of Marc Koehler / ONZ Architects
Marc Koehler Architects, in collaboration with ONZ Architects, have recently won an invited competition for their design of the Kastamonu Campus in Turkey. Their winning proposal, described as "an asymmetrical star", embodies excellence and is an endeavor to create the largest high school campus ever designed. Featuring laboratories, libraries, performance spaces, sports centers, a health centre, places of worship, dormitories and 29,000 square meters of educational spaces, the campus is expected to welcome 10,000 students.
First Place / Caterina Spadoni, Valentina Brunetti. Image Courtesy of YAC
The results for the latest Young Architects Competition (YAC), Post-Quake Visions, have been announced. The competition aimed to discover innovative ways to overcome the effects of a seismic catastrophe over a medieval Mediterranean town. Participants were encouraged to rethink and redesign the quake-inflicted gaps left inside ancient urban tissues. With 356 enrolled teams comprising of 808 designers, see the winning results and Gold Mentions after the break.
Original design by Crawford Architects on the Zahner Headquarters in North America / Mike Sinclair. Image Courtesy of Zahner
Zahner, one of the world's foremost fabricators of façades, have launched new software to assist in design, fabrication, costing and delivery. CloudWall, part of Zahner's ShopFloor platform, is a web based programme which provides an interface for users to design and fabricate curving facades in metal. It is a tool that uses Zahner's "factory floor like a massive rapid prototype machine".
In an hour long documentary for PBS, Geoffrey Baer tours the USA in search of the ten buildings that "changed America." From a state capitol designed by Thomas Jefferson to resemble a Roman temple to Henry Ford's factory that first saw the Model T enter production, the film explores the "shocking, funny, and even sad stories of how these buildings were created." Investigating places of worship, shopping malls, concert halls and skyscrapers this film is tipped as "a journey inside the imaginations of the daring architects who set out to change the way we live, work, and play."
Videos
Gehry's Vertigo. Image Courtesy of Living Architectures
This time last year we published our 30 Architecture Docs to Watch in 2013featuring a fantastic range of films telling the tales of some of the world's greatest unsung architectural heroes. We now bring you eleven more for 2014, looking past the panoply of stars to bring you more of the best architectural documentaries which will provoke, intrigue and beguile.
La Maison au Bord de L'Eau, an unrealized beach house in Miami designed by architect, designer, planner and photographer Charlotte Perriand, has been built by Louis Vuitton for a Design Miami 2013satellite exhibition. Designed in 1934, the house was first conceived for a design contest held by L’architecture d’aujourd’hui magazine with the aim of creating a simple, economical form of holiday lodging for the mass market. After winning second prize it was never built but, eight decades later, "Perriand’s studies prove quite contemporary in light of the advancements in wooden architecture."
Following a year of high-profile debates surrounding women in architecture, the results from the Architects' Journal (AJ) third annual survey entitled Women in Architecture has been revealed. According to the AJ, "two thirds of women in architecture have suffered sexual discrimination at work, an eight point increase since the survey began in 2011", and "88% of women respondents believe that having children puts women at a disadvantage in architecture." Even though women in architecture believe that they are paid equally to men, they can in fact "earn as much as £10,000 ($16,500) less than their male counterparts." More, after the break.
In OASE's91st edition, Building Atmospheres, the elusive craft of creating, capturing and understanding 'atmosphere' in architecture is explored in a carefully chosen collection of themed essays by Peter Zumthor, Juhani Pallasmaa and philosopher Gernot Böhme. Zumthor, famous for his 1996 text Atmospheres, identifies and discusses "a series of themes that play a role in his work in achieving architectonic atmosphere". Alongside this, the OASE team have visited his studio and interviewed him about the current relevance of his writing and how he captures 'atmosphere' in his design process.
You can now use ArchDaily's content on Field Trip, an app which notifies you when you get close to something architecturally interesting. With ArchDaily's daily feed now embedded within the app, when you approach a building we've covered your phone will alert you and provide you with photos, facts and information. More info, after the break...
A recent, well-written article for The Guardian chronicles the story of Sydney's East Darling Harbour (also known as 'Barangaroo'), from the city's optimism in 2003 to the relative disappointment of today. David Shoebridge, a New South Wales Greens MP and the party's planning spokesperson, recounts the series of compromises and sellouts that have turned what was meant to be a "prime public space" into - to add insult to injury - the site for a casino.You can read this cautionary tale in full here.
The results from the first brief of Think Space's MONEY themed cycle of competitions, Territories, have been announced. David Garcia (MAP Architects), juror of the Territories competition, invited participants to send in proposals "that tackle the present economic and territorial challenges in the present and future of the Arctic lands." See them all, after the break...
Francesco Veenstra, one of six partners at the Dutch practice Mecanoo and Lead Architect on a number of major projects in the United Kingdom, recently spoke to Mies. UK about the practice's approach to design and their unique take on sustainability. Having recently completed a major public building in Birmingham (which was put to the vote and won the AJ's 2013 Building of the Year), and with more in the pipeline, the practice's international outlook is growing. How has the practice's design methodology and core ideas influenced this success? Read more after the break.
ArchDaily recently spoke to Ben van Berkel, co-founder and principal architect at UNStudio, an international network of specialists in architecture, urban development and infrastructure based in the Netherlands. The office, which was founded in 1988, has completed projects around the world ranging from Rotterdam’s Erasmus Bridge to the Mercedes-Benz Museum in Stuttgart. With over 81 built projects, and 54 currently in progress (including Raffles City in Hangzhou and Scotts Tower in Singapore), London’s Canaletto Tower (which is due to be completed in 2015) marks the practice’s first major project in the UK.
Mies. UK recently spoke to Roger Stephenson OBE, Managing Partner at Manchester based stephenson:ISA Studio, about his award winning practice's approach to "using craft in a contemporary way". The office most recently completed an addition to Chetham's School of Music, winning the 2013 RIBA Regional Building of the Year Award, RIBA National Award, and the RIBA Regional Award. This project is the latest in a long list of innovative buildings that are part of a "rigorously coherent, contextually progressive architecture" that has made the practice one of best known regionalist design offices in the UK.
Read the interview in full, and watch a three minute tour of Chetham's School of Music, after the break.
The London Cinema Challenge, organized by Combo Competitions, challenged participants to design a new cinema located on Newman Street in central London which should "reflect the participants’ ideas of the cinematic experience in the near future." The scope of the proposal, along with the extravagance of the idea, was decided by the individual competitors with the only criterion being that the design provided a space to watch movies. In addition to the cinema, each proposal had to include a "unique feature helping to serve the main purpose" of the building. Whether "an intimate screening room for indie films, or a commercial multi-storey cinema complex showing blockbusters," the winning proposals demonstrate an array of unique ideas.
Slash withPhillips/Pilkington Architectshave been announced as the winners of the Royal Adelaide Hospital Site International Design Competition, which was open to registered architects and landscape architects from around the world. The competition centred around redesigning the current hospital site, which will be vacated in 2016, in order to create an iconic place within the Greater Riverbank Precinct of Adelaide. See the winning and shortlisted proposals after the break.
