Hasta La Ideas

Next week London’s Kemistry Gallery will showcase a selection of the SHOP Magazine’s 2011 cover artwork commissioned from a host of illustrators including Adrian Johnson (a cover illustration by Johnson for a London issue shown above), Pietari Posti, The Heads Of State, Nathalie Lees, and Robert Hanson…

SHOP Magazine, art directed by Studio8, is the world’s leading shopping publication – publishing a whopping 3.8 million magazines in 78 editions across 28 countries.The week long exhibition in London will celebrate this year’s cover artwork across the title’s many editions. Here are a few of our favourite images:

by The Heads of State for Singapore

by Adrian Johnson for London

by Brett Ryder for Portugal

by Pietari Posti for Istanbul

by Nathalie Lees (for Copenhagen)

Limited edition prints of the illustrations are on sale at the show and via print-process.com (where you can see more of the work) and profits will go to Kids Company, a London-based charity which provides education and support for vulnerable inner-city children.

SHOP Magazine Cover Illustrations runs from 21-26 November at Kemistry Gallery, 43 Charlotte Road, London EC2A 3PD.

kemistrygallery.co.uk

CR in Print

Not getting Creative Review in print too? You’re missing out.

In print, Creative Review carries far richer, more in-depth articles than we run here on the blog. This month, for example, we have nine pages on Saul Bass, plus pieces on advertising art buyers, Haddon Sundblom, the illustrator who ensured that Coke will forever be linked with Santa Claus, Postmodernism, Brighton’s new football ground and much more. Plus, it’s our Photography Annual, which means an additional 85 pages of great images, making our November issue almost 200-pages long, the biggest issue of CR for 5 years.

If you would like to buy this issue and are based in the UK, you can search for your nearest stockist here. Based outside the UK? Simply call +44(0)207 292 3703 to find your nearest stockist. Better yet, subscribe to CR for a year here and save yourself almost 30% on the printed magazine.

In Part 1 we discussed the various organizations that take part in international disaster response, including the United Nations and the Red Cross. In this post, we’ll look at disaster response vs humanitarian aid, as well as the challenges that disaster response faces on the global stage.

Distinguishing Disaster Response From Humanitarian Aid

By their very nature, the timelines for providing disaster assistance versus delivering humanitarian aid are quite different. Disasters themselves are usually over within a matter of hours, while the bulk of the aftermath is over within a number of days. Humanitarian crises, however, are often the result of a prolonged series of events that cross some sort of threshold definition and are thus thrust onto the world stage. The difference, succinctly put, is short-term suffering as opposed to long-term suffering. However, as we have seen in Haiti, New Orleans and any number of locales, disasters are often degenerate into full-blown humanitarian crises.

The resources necessary to respond to one or the other are also quite different. For instance, the Urban Search and Rescue Task Force groups of the United States’s Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) are self-reliant for up to 72 hours, the normal lifespan of a disaster. During the lifespan of a humanitarian crisis, the Task Force would soon discover itself without enough resources for the length of the event. Thus, it is important to accurately define the nature of the crisis before sending resources for response and relief, lest the rescuers find themselves in need of rescuing.

Challenges for the Future of International Disaster Response

1. A Real Unified Response

When an international disaster occurs, the responders consist of urban search and rescue (USAR) teams, disaster medical assistance teams (DMATs), transportation crews, and logistics coordinators from all levels of local, government, international and non-governmental organizations. What is often overlooked, though, is that “the burden of dealing with a disaster is never felt more intensely than at the community level.” It is absolutely paramount that external responders can effectively interface with residents and government officials in the disaster area. This often means that local capacity must be developed and trained ahead of time in order to ease interaction in an emergency setting. In the United States, where protocols like the Incident Command System (ICS) and the National Incident Management System (NIMS) exist, cooperation is significantly smoother. On the international scale, however, language and political barriers make such cooperation and coordination more difficult.

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Danish architects ADEPT and Luplau & Poulsen have won a competition to design harbour-side housing blocks in their hometown of Aarhus.

The proposed development, collectively titled the City in the Building, will include an assortment of uncomplicated brick buildings that surround a shared courtyard.

Shorter buildings located beside the water will accommodate apartments for families and senior citizens, while taller buildings behind will house students.

All residences are planned to be dual-aspect and every block will contain some sea-facing homes.

Greenhouses will be located on the roofs, beside solar panel arrays and rainwater collection units.

The project is due to complete in December 2013.

Other competition wins from ADEPT include a skyscraper of stacked cubes – see all our stories about the architects here.

Here are some more words from ADEPT:

ADEPT and Luplau & Poulsen win 12,000 m2 residential project at Aarhus Harbour

Common greenhouses on the roof tops, adjacent terraces overlooking the bay of Aarhus, and a sheltered green courtyard – all in close proximity to downtown Aarhus. This is the essence of Brabrand Housing Association’s new residential complex that breaks with both the port’s massive scale, and present iconic building tendencies. The project is expected to be completed for inauguration in December 2013.

Wednesday November 2nd the Deputy Mayor Laura Hay revealed the winners of the competition at a reception at Aarhus City Hall. The winning team consists of the architects ADEPT and LUPLAU & POULSEN, turn-key contractor Dansk Boligbyg and NIRAS Consulting Engineers. The team has designed a project entitled The Port Dwellings – Housing for All at Harbour North, that consists of 238 public dwellings distributed between 83 apartments for families and +55 aged seniors, and 155 student-housing units.

The architects have taken the best aspects of the city’s existing block structure and reinterpreted it, providing a modern and sustainable expression on the waterfront in Aarhus Nordhavn. The simple building arrangement is complemented by shared greenhouses on the roof, varied building heights and sustainable initiatives that make the new dwellings robust and future-proof. The housing structure adapts to its context that, on the one hand, consists of large, industrial scale and on the other, a smaller and intimate scale with a lively maritime atmosphere.

“Placing the building volumes along the edge of the site proved to be highly appropriate for the location. It gathers the dwellings around a large green courtyard sheltered from the wind and creates the best sun and daylighting conditions for the apartments,” says Martin Laursen, partner of ADEPT. The development is being realized predominantly in brick, dropping in building height towards the water and the marina. As a consequence, the apartments furthest from the water, the youth homes share the extensive views. In addition, the building structure is subdivided into smaller buildings, marked by varying heights and subtle changes in façade expression. “The building’s division into smaller buildings relates to the human scale and creates affinities between the residents and the individual ‘town house’,” says Simon Lyager Poulsen, ADEPT’s project architect on the Port Dwellings.

The project differs from the bulk of existing and proposed port projects in that it does not attempt to be a major iconic building – an aspect of the scheme remarked upon positively by the developer and competition jury. Brabrand Housing Association has deliberately chosen to focus on a building that inserts itself in the port in a humble manner, challenging the large scale of the context by addressing the scale of inhabitants’ daily lives.

The family apartments are located in the lowest buildings, in close proximity to the water and the intimate scale of the marina. In this way children and parents have convenient access to activities at the waters edge, the forest and the inner courtyard. In addition, all roof surfaces are designed for shared-use amongst residents. The sunny roof surfaces are activated with greenhouses, common areas and living terraces with excellent views of the city, forest and bay. The remaining roofs are established as green surfaces both for collecting rain water and supporting solar panel arrays.

The settlement is a ‘zero-energy building,’ which, with it’s solar panels and greenhouses, takes more advanced steps toward meeting future energy requirements than those currently formulated by the municipality and the state government. Brabrand Housing Association expects the future settlement to meet the energy requirements of 2025 – an energy class yet to be formulated. At the same time the dwellings can be built within the allocated budget, which allows rents to be competitive.

Each apartment is lit from two sides and has private outdoor spaces overlooking the water and the common courtyard. The units range in size between 78m2 and 115 m2 and consist of 2, 3, 4 and 5 room apartments. Robust and flexible plan layouts ensure live-ability over the years, across generations and changing architectural trends. In these terms, the winning project offers both a robust, simple and coherent project as well as a varied and lively architecture.

Throughout the competition process, ADEPT and LUPLAU & POULSEN have enjoyed a close collaboration. LUPLAU & POULSEN has in recent years been responsible for several new Brabrand Housing Association projects. “We are delighted to continue the strong cooperation with Brabrand Housing Association,” says Jørn Lyager Poulsen, partner responsible for the housing project at LUPLAU & POULSEN. The three partners in ADEPT, who all come from Aarhus are, like LUPLAU & POULSEN, excited about the opportunity to build in their hometown and to contribute to the development of the waterfront in Aarhus.

Senior Industrial Designer
(11)
Boston, Massachusetts

Now that they’ve had a week to recover from their extra-special 11/11/11 party, it’s back to business at (ELEVEN). They’re searching for an unparalleled industrial design professional to join us in our pursuit of excellence. This senior team member will be expected to lead projects, inspire the design staff and drive design excellence. The ideal candidate has a breadth of skill and a reputation for vision and innovation in the design world—he or she goes well beyond the obvious solutions. The designer also happens to have a proactive, positive attitude that influences every design touch-point that he or she creates.

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The best design jobs and portfolios hang out at Coroflot.

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If you happened to have been reading this blog two years ago, or really most any design-interested blog, you might recall that a healthy chunk of 2009 was spent talking about Brooklyn’s Atlantic Yards, the massive project in that borough by developer Forest City Ratner, which included a new basketball stadium, housing, shops, etc. And what was not gold to report? To name just a few red letter stories, there was Frank Gehry‘s firing, the NY vs. Kansas City battle, and the constant stream of lawsuits, protests, books and even songs. It was all golden. But since last year, once the project started that slow process of actually being built, the national headlines went a bit quiet. However, as of yesterday, it came back to life, with the unveiling of the plans for the residential portion of the development. Designed by ShoP (which joined then-known-as Ellerbe Beckett in replacing Gehry), and in collaboration with Arup and XSite Modular, the series of towers are set to be built using prefabricated modular construction. The largest tower, coming in at 32 stories, will be the world’s tallest modular structure to date. Not only will that help speed up construction, which is thought to begin early next year, assuming the developers can get through another set of lawsuits, but building modular is believed to help save a considerable amount of money. In certain angles, we think the towers look somewhat attractive, but not everyone shares that opinion. Whatever the case, assuming Forest City manages to get them up, the buildings will at the very least have an interesting story behind their construction.

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