Hasta La Ideas

News: California studio Smith|Allen has completed the world’s first architectural structure using standard 3D printers (+ movie + interview).

Called Echoviren, the 10 x 10 x 8 foot pavilion was completed last weekend. It consists of 585 individually printed components produced on seven Series 1 desktop printers made by Type A Machines.

It took the printers two months and 10,800 hours to print the components, but just four days to assemble them on site.

The components, each measuring up to 10 x 10 inches, were snapped together to create a perforated structure resembling an igloo with an opening at the top.

Each component is made of a plant-based PLA bio-plastic, meaning the structure will decompose over time, disappearing within 30-50 years. “As it weathers it will become a micro-habitat for insects, moss, and birds,” the architects write.

Artist Stephanie Smith and architect Bryan Allen of Smith|Allen built the structure in a redwood forest at Project 387, an arts residency programme in Mendocino County north of San Francisco.

“The texture [of the structure] is based on a study of the cellular forms of sequoia cells,” Allen told Dezeen (see full interview below). “Their structure allows the trees to maintain huge amounts of strength with a minimum volume.”

Allen added: “The overall form is driven by the structural requirements of building in PLA. The section is pyramidal so each of the walls is self supporting. As the structure is completed it becomes a compression structure with the top most layer forming a compression ring.”

Architects have this year been racing to complete the first 3D-printed house, as we reported earlier this year. Projects in the pipeline include a looping two-storey dwelling by Dutch architects Universe Architecture and a fibrous single-story dwelling by UK studio Softkill. Meanwhile Amsterdam studio DUS Architects plan to create a canal-side house room by room.

However Italian engineer Enrico Dini is credited with creating the first 3D-printed inhabitable structure using a D-Shape printer – a huge machine he invented himself that prints using a type of synthetic stone.

In 2009 Dini teamed up with designer Andrea Morgante to print a 3 metre-high prototype structure and the following year he worked with architect Marco Ferreri to print a single-room house modelled on a mountain dwelling. See our feature about 3D-printed architecture for more details.

We conducted an email interview with Bryan Allen of Smith|Allen about the project:

Marcus Fairs: Tell us about the type of printers you used.

Bryan Allen: We used 7 of the Type A Machines Series 1 printers. We’ve been working with some other types for a few years. I worked with Ron Rael at Emerging Objects and at Berkeley where we used ZCorp printers to develop new materials. The idea to make something huge has been around for a while but despite our efforts to use the ZCorp, the BFBs, or the Makerbots, it just wasn’t possible or it was prohibitively expensive. The Series 1 made it possible to build large prints reliably and with the price drop in PLA, building something big became a reality.

Marcus Fairs: What does Echoviren mean?

Bryan Allen: The name Echoviren comes from a reference to the coastal redwood, it’s Latin name is sequoia sempervirens. Translated roughly that’s ‘always alive’ or ‘always growing’. The Echoviren is a technological echo, a reflection, and specter of life and of the forest. It evokes the essence of its site in the forest and mirrors it in a deliberately artificial method. Although we consider this forest primeval and natural, in reality its a highly controlled and modified environment, the forest has been logged and even before recorded history it was cultivated. Echoviren highlights that palimpsest, a forest landscape that has been written over many times, continually changed and grafted onto.

Marcus Fairs: What are the form and texture of the structure based on?

Bryan Allen: The texture is based on a study of the cellular forms of sequoia cells. Their structure allows the trees to maintain huge amounts of strength with a minimum volume.  This form also naturally works well on FDM-style printers. Their ability to print cellular infill structures on the interior of parts fits in with a macro scale cellular tessellation scheme. The perforations form a gradient of size drawing the viewers vision up and through the occulus.

The overall form is driven by the structural requirements of building in PLA. The section is pyramidal so each of the walls is self supporting. As the structure is completed it becomes a compression structure with the top most layer forming a compression ring. The PLA components are strong in compression and the pyramidal section coupled with a compression ring makes the structure tend towards stability. In the XY the components are connected via a dovetail joint, in the Z the layers fit together with a pin and socket.

Marcus Fairs: How did you get started with 3D printing?

Bryan Allen: When my partner and I graduated from School we lost our access to the tools that had allowed us to make,design, and to create things. We were faced with a choice: go into an office and slave over CAD drawings for a couple years working on someone else’s projects until I could get licensed, or to go it on our own. Getting the printers made it possible for us to actually make a go of doing what we really wanted to do: creating large scale installations, sculpture, and architecture.

We first attempted to make a small scale aggregation called Xylem at the end of 2012. That piece was 4x4x3′ and after we completed it we thought well, what if we go bigger? We bought more printers, put them in our studio and got to work. We applied to Project 387 for funding and for the site, after we were accepted we began construction.

Marcus Fairs: What’s new about this project that hasn’t been done before?

Bryan Allen: I think the fundamental breakthrough in this project is that of aggregation as a construction system. So many of the 3D printed architecture projects that have been proposed are based on building large scale printers which is a huge barrier in and of itself. By utilizing Rhino and grasshopper with consumer-grade, easily available desktop 3D printers we were able to make this thing in (relatively) small, precise, individual components. After all architecture is about assemblage, it’s about how to organize connections, details, and joints. To design a 3D printed architecture requires a fundamental rethinking of how we design: there are new details, systems, and processes that open the door to the huge potential of 3D printed architectures.

Marcus Fairs: What will you work on next?

Bryan Allen: So next we are going to be working on a retail interior in Oakland California. We are hoping to build a large scale urban intervention in San Francisco at the beginning of next year. We are also closely involved with Type A Machines and hope to be designing pavilions and other structures for their office and events in the future. We want to continue to grow the scale and scope of our projects. We want to find the limit of what is possible within the disruption 3D printers have created. We want to incorporate more intensive systems into 3D printed constructions like HVAC, lighting, etc, as well as make spaces for more permanent dwelling.

Marcus Fairs: What’s next for 3D printing?

Bryan Allen: There are some new printers and materials coming out that allow designers who don’t have the resources of a huge institution to begin to realize their creations and push the envelope of architecture in general. To us the 3D printer is right on the cusp of transitioning from a toy to a tool, it can make real things, real design, and real architecture.

Marcus Fairs: What is Project 387?

Bryan Allen: Project 387 (www.project387.com) is a multidisciplinary residency program in its inaugural season. Located in rural Mendocino Country, California Project 387 has offered six artists an opportunity to develop their proposed projects in the quiet of giant redwoods. This year’s selected residents are: Smith|Allen Studio [Bryan Allen and Stephanie Smith] (Oakland CA), Rich Benjamin (Brooklyn NY), Claudia Bicen (San Francisco CA), Sean McFarland (San Francisco CA), and Robert Wechsler (Glendale CA).

Project 387 provides community-based living and working experience to artists in all career stages. The residency is a unique opportunity to dive into the creative process in a focused, exploratory and rigorous manner while removed from the clamor of urban distractions.

Here’s some more info about the project from Smith|Allen:

Echoviren, the worlds first piece of full scale 3D printed inhabitable architecture

Smith|Allen participated in the Project 387 Residency, located in Mendocino County from August 4-18, 2013. In the heart of a 150-acre redwood forest, Smith|Allen has created a site responsive, 3D printed architectural installation (the largest of its kind): Echoviren. The project merges architecture, art and technology to explore the dialectic between man, machine and nature. The Project 387 open house and reception was Saturday, August 17.

Spanning 10 x 10 x 8 feet, Echoviren is a translucent white enclosure, stark and artificial against the natural palette of reds and greens of the forest. Walking around and within the structure, the viewer is immediately consumed by the juxtaposition, as well as uncanny similarity, of natural and unnatural: the large oculus, open floor, and porous surface framing the surrounding coastal landscape.

This artificial frame draws the viewer up from the plane of the forest, through a forced perspective into the canopy.

Echoviren was fabricated, printed, and assembled on site by the designers. Through the use of parametric architectural technologies and a battery of consumer grade Type A Machines desktop 3D printers, Smith|Allen has constructed the world’s first 3D printed, full-scale architectural installation.  Made of over 500 unique individually printed parts, 7 3D Printers ran constantly for 2 months for a total of 10800 hours of machine time.

The structure was assembled though a paneled snap-fit connection, merging individual components into a monolithic aggregation. From breaking ground to finish the prefab 3D printed construction technique required for only 4 days of on site building time.

Entirely composed of 3D printed plant based PLA bio-plastic, the space will decompose naturally back into the forest in 30 to 50 years.   As it weathers it will become a micro-habitat for insects, moss, and birds.

A graft within the space of the forest, Echoviren is a space for contemplation of the landscape, of the natural, and our relationship with these constructs. It focuses on the essence of the forest not as a natural system, but as a palimpsest. The hybridized experience within the piece highlights the accumulated iterations of a site, hidden within contemporary landscapes.

Echoviren exposes an ecosystem of dynamic natural and unnatural interventions: the interplay of man and nature moderated by technology.

Location: Project 387 Gualala, California

Manufactured by: Smith|Allen

Involved companies: Type A Machines

Commissioned by: Project 387

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3D-printed architecture” appeared first on Dezeen.

News: a residential development designed by Richard Rogers to adjoin two streets in London’s Mayfair via a paved arcade has been granted approval.

The £300 million scheme designed by Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners will include 42 apartments, a restaurant and retail space. There will also be 1248 square metres of dedicated gallery space, split into five retail units for the selling of art and antiques – for which Cork Street and the surrounding area are well-known.

The conversion will transform a former office building into a nine-storey mixed-use property and will link Old Burlington Street and Cork Street via a double-height arcade, making it the first of its kind in Mayfair since the 1930s.

Alasdair Nicholls, chief executive of property developer Native Land said: “These proposals will greatly enhance Cork Street and the experience of visiting one of London’s most established art gallery districts, by both augmenting the gallery offering of the building and creating an arcade with a permanent dedicated space for young and emerging artists.”

The scheme has faced opposition from gallery owners, locals and retail experts who felt that the development and expected higher rental costs would negatively affect the area which is well known for its small galleries.

A campaign website called Save Cork Street was set up and a number of public events were held in an attempt to protect the heritage of the street. A petition against the plans was signed by 12,000 people, including retail guru Mary Portas.

Recently we published a number of films with eminent British architect Richard Rogers. In our most recent movie, Richard Rogers reflects on his 50-year career and told Dezeen that architects today must be careful to protect the public domain.

In another movie exclusive Rogers spoke to us about London’s new Leadenhall building, dubbed “the Cheesegrater”, which is currently under construction.

See all our coverage of Richard Rogers »
See more stories about Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners »

Images are from Rogers Stirk Habour + Partners.

Here’s more information from Native Land:

Westminster City Council approves Native Land’s plans for 30 Old Burlington Street

Consent granted for apartment and gallery space in Mayfair

Native Land has secured planning approval from Westminster City Council for the redevelopment of 30 Old Burlington Street, Mayfair. Westminster’s Planning & City Development Committee last night agreed to the plans for new residential and enhanced gallery provision at the W1 address.

Native Land applied to redevelop the Old Burlington Street office building, creating 42 apartments, a restaurant, retail space, and 1,248 sq m of gallery space in five units dedicated to the sale of art and antiques, as part of the restriction in the Section 106 agreement.

The proposed development, designed by Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners, will replace the existing 1980s office block and will link Old Burlington Street and Cork Street via a newly built double height arcade, which is the first in Mayfair since the 1930s.

The new development will consist of nine floors, with 42 one, two and three bedroom apartments spread over floors 1 – 8. The ground floor will accommodate the new arcade, which is expected to increase gallery visitors and footfall within the area.

Alasdair Nicholls, Chief Executive of Native Land, said:

“We welcome Westminster City Council decision to approve our plans for 30 Old Burlington Street. These proposals will greatly enhance Cork Street and the experience of visiting one of London’s most established art gallery districts, by both augmenting the gallery offering of the building and creating an arcade with a permanent dedicated space for young and emerging artists. The combination of art galleries, purpose built residential and a contemporary arcade is unique, with appeal both to domestic and international buyers alike looking to live in Mayfair.”

Native Land, the Mayfair-based development company, is managing the development, after acquiring the site freehold in August 2012 in a joint venture with Hotel Properties Limited (HPL), the Singaporean hotel, property and retail group, and Amcorp Properties Berhad (Amcorp), the Malaysian property, engineering and infrastructure group.

In December 2012 Native Land secured funding for the development via a £90 million debt facility from OCBC Bank of Singapore.

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+ Partners gallery arcade in Mayfair appeared first on Dezeen.

This house in Alabama folds open to provide seating for an open-air performance space (+ movie).

Sections of the house-shaped structure designed by artist Matthew Mazzotta are hinged and unfold to reveal rows of seating inside the walls and under the roof.

Community organisation Coleman Center for the Arts and local residents teamed up with Mazzotta to demolish a derelict house in the centre of York, Alabama, and repurpose its materials and site for new public space – an amenity lacking in the town.

“Public space is an important element for the social and political health of a community,” Mazzotta told Dezeen. “If there is nowhere for people to come together and talk, except for the grocery store, then the conversations about the town are much less dynamic and inclusive.”

The team took the abandoned dwelling apart by hand to salvage timber boards, window frames and anything else reusable. The fire department then levelled the remaining debris using a controlled blaze.

The new structure sits on the same plot as the original house and is built on top of reclaimed railway sleeper foundations. The project was completed seven months after the idea was initiated.

Opening along the top ridge in five sections on each side. Hinges are located along the ground and seams halfway down the sides of the roof.

The large sections are lowered down in two stages and each requires a few people to move them at a time.

Once fully unfolded, five rows of seating in three lines face an open area that can be used for film screenings, musical performances and town meetings.

“People that sit together can dream together and have a moment to collectively see their town from a new perspective, and have a moment to express that to one another,” Mazzotta said.

Present at the opening event, Mazzotta noticed that everyone made themselves at home in the outdoor theatre straight away:

“People took right to it and started dancing and having a good time,” he said. “When we showed the movie, all the kids sat and laid all over it like it was their living room.”

“Overall there is just a real positive attitude towards the project since it cleaned up such an eyesore and now provides such an enjoyable experience, both through the events and the design,” said Mazzotta.

We recently published a home in Paraguay with a roof that lifts up like the lid of a box, and other moving buildings we’ve featured include a house that would shape-shift in different weather and structures that would roll along railway tracks.

Other outdoor theatres on Dezeen include an outdoor stage in Estonia made entirely from timber batons and a temporary canal-side cinema under a London motorway flyover.

See more moving buildings »
See more architecture and design in the USA »

Read on for more information from the project organisers:

Open House by Matthew Mazzotta

202 Main Street, York, Alabama – between the town post office and the main grocery store.

What happens when an artist is invited to use the resources of a small town to help transform its identity? Artist Matthew Mazzotta, the Coleman Center for the Arts, and the people of York Alabama have teamed up to transform one of York’s most iconic blighted properties into a new public space. Open House is a house with a secret, it physically transforms from the shape of a house into an open air theater that seats one hundred people by having its walls and roof fold down.

On June 15 of this year, a ribbon cutting by the Mayor of York, Gena Robbins, inaugurated Open House. The symbolic gesture was followed with an invocation prayer to bless the project by Reverend Willie, performances by a gospel choir and the local R&B funk band Time Zone, as well as an outdoor film screening of Dr. Suess’s The Lorax. For the town of York, this is the beginning of a series of free public events programed by the Coleman Center for the Arts. A screening of the film Madagascar 3 was shown this past weekend – August 10th at 7:30pm. The theatre is free and open to the public.

How Open House came to be?

In January 2011, artist Matthew Mazzotta was invited by the Coleman Center For The Arts to organise an artwork with the people of York. During Matthew’s initial visit to York, the artist asked people from the community to bring something from their living room so that they could recreate a living room outdoors in the middle of the street as a way to provoke discussion about what were on peoples minds and to generate ideas about what direction they might go in. From this conversation, they developed a project that uses the materials of an abandoned house as well as the land it sits on to build the transforming structure on the footprint of the old house.

How it works?

The metamorphosis of Open House is designed to require cooperation. It takes four people one and a half hours to unfold the structure. The foundation is made of used railroad ties which anchor the custom fabricated industrial hinges to five rows of stadium seating. The rows of seats fold down with the aid of a hand winch and enough manpower to counter balance the hefty, but agile structure.

Critical Impact

Through the project, the artist hopes to directly address the lack of public space in York, AL by providing a physical location that becomes a common ground for community dialogue and activities. The new structure carries the weight of the past through the materials that were salvaged and repurposed from the old structure, most visibly the original pink siding. When Open House is fully unfolded, it provides an opportunity for people to come together and experience the community from a new perspective. When it folds back up, it resembles the original abandoned house, reminding people of the history of what was there before.

Support for Open House provided, in part, by the National Endowment for the Arts, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the Visual Artists Network, York Drug, the City of York, the City of York Fire Department and countless individual supporters of the Coleman Center for the Arts and Matthew Mazzotta. A special thanks to Jegan Vincent De Paul, Cory Vineyard, Curtis Oliveira, James Marshall, Elouise Finch, Brenda Carole and Lerene Johnson, Alpha Kappa Alpha of the University of West Alabama, John’s Welding of Meridian, MS, Beany Green, Pam Dorr and CCA employees and Board of Directors.

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Matthew Mazzotta appeared first on Dezeen.

Matt Givot et Dan Douglas ont réalisé cette vidéo tournée en « time-lapse » au parc Disneyland Anaheim, premier des parcs Disney situé en Californie. Utilisant près de 20 000 images, cette création mettant en avant l’univers pensé par Walt-Disney est à découvrir en vidéo dans la suite de l’article.

This apartment block in Osaka Prefecture by Japanese studio EASTERN Design Office features recessed corner balconies that become incrementally wider towards the roof.

Named Step Tower, the ten-storey building is located within a shopping district in Ibaraki. Buildings here are typically four to five storeys, so EASTERN Design Office added larger openings at the parts of the building with views across the surrounding rooftops.

“The open space of each floor gets wider as the floor level becomes higher, and you can get a wider sky view,” said architects Anna Nakamura and Taiyo Jinno.

The exterior walls are rendered white and feature smooth edges that give a gentle curve to the corners of the balconies, which the architects compare to the hull of a ship.

“It makes you imagine the wave splashes that occur when the bow heads-on through the sea,” they said.

A shop occupies the ground floor of the building, while tiled walls on the side reveal the entrance to apartments on the nine floors above.

The first three floors each contain four one-room apartments, suitable for single occupants, and the six upper floors contain two- and three-bedroom flats designed to accommodate families.

Other housing projects by EASTERN Design Office include a concrete house with slits for windows and a residence punctured by circular holes.

See more architecture by EASTERN Design Office »
See more architecture in Japan »

Photography is by Koichi Torimura.

Read on for a description from EASTERN Design Office:

Step Tower

A stark white ship that sails in the middle of the bustling sea of colours.

The ship floating on the ocean suddenly appears in a shopping centre. It evokes a feeling not of a resort area, but of an exotic corner of a town in some southern country. A feeling of a ship that comes across this area by chance.

It makes you imagine the wave splashes that occur when the bow heads-on through the sea. It is a pencil building of 9.7 metre width and 21.6 metre depth. Big holds are designed for the balconies at the southwest corner. These holes become bigger as the floors go upwards from the bottom. You can have the same image when you look up the bow from under it.

It is simple, neat and clean. You look up the smooth and pure white exterior wall. This reminds you of a cool lifestyle in some southern country, or of being on a trip, and spending days at a tropical land in a quest of change of air.

It is an apartment house for rent built at Ibaraki-city in Osaka, a town with a population of 270,000. This town is not only a residential one, but it is now calling for the development of industrial areas for research and development facilities of universities and industrial firms. Therefore, the population is also increasing as an industrial town. This architecture is built at the shopping district, the centre of this town, which is located in front of the JR station.

It is a building of 10 storeys of RC structure consisting of a tenant space at the first floor, one room apartment houses for singles at 2-4 floors, and 2LDK and 3LDk for families at 5-10 floors.

The surrounding buildings are 4-5 storeys height. So it is not proper to have a big slit (opening section) for this building. The open space of each floor gets wider as the floor level becomes higher, and you can get a wider sky view. This idea is reflected in the design of this building.

Location: Osaka, Japan
Site Area: 384.38 sqm
Total Floor Area: 1,548.85 sqm
Structural Engineering: IHARA STRUCTURAL ENGINEERS
Contractor: Matsumotogumi Co., Ltd

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EASTERN Design Office appeared first on Dezeen.