Hasta La Ideas

Contract magazine has named Joey Shimoda (pictured) its 2013 Designer of the Year, praising the Los Angeles-based architect and designer for the “quality and breadth of his design work, his ability to transform the mundane, his consistently strong client relationships, and the respect he garners in the profession.” With the motto “extra superfino,” 13-year-old Shimoda Design Group has completed projects ranging from interior architecture to “building rejuvenation” for clients such as Steelcase, Rolex, and MTV Networks.

Also honored this morning at Contract‘s 34th annual interiors awards, held at New York’s Cipriani 42nd Street, was Michael Graves, who received the 2013 Legend award for lifetime achievement. (Graves is a past Contract Designer of the Year, having clinched that title back in 1981.) Among the projects that bested the competition in 13 categories are INNOCAD’s Vienna office for Microsoft, complete with gleaming silver slide; the Bentel & Bentel-led transformation of the public areas in the Grand Hyatt New York; Rockwell Group’s Untitled restaurant at the Whitney; and Wuhan Pixel Box Cinema, a pixel-themed, 95,000-square-foot movie theater in Wuhan, China, designed by One Plus Partnership.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

News: architect Rem Koolhaas, the director for the Venice Architecture Biennale 2014, has revealed that the title for next year’s show will be Fundamentals.

“Fundamentals will be a biennale about architecture, not architects,” said Koolhaas, principal of OMA, speaking this morning at a press conference held by biennale president Paolo Baratta at the event’s headquarters in San Marco, Venice.

Koolhaas explained that event will “focus on histories” and the “evolution of architecture” in the last 100 years. “Architectures that were once specific and local have become interchangeable and global. National identity has seemingly been sacrificed to modernity,” he said.

Starting a year earlier than previous directors, the architect hopes to coordinate the exhibitions in each national pavilion to follow a coherent theme. “The exhibitions in the national pavilions will generate a global overview of architecture’s evolution into a single, modern aesthetic, and at the same time uncover within globalization the survival of unique national features and mentalities that continue to exist and flourish even as international collaboration and exchange intensify,” he concluded.

Koolhaas was confirmed as director earlier this month, when he first announced: “We want to take a fresh look at the fundamental elements of architecture – used by any architect, anywhere, anytime – to see if we can discover something new about architecture.”

Koolhaas was awarded the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the 2010 biennale, while for 2012 OMA presented an exhibition of buildings designed by European local authority architects in the 1960s and 70s.

The Venice Architecture Biennale 2014 will run from 7 June to 23 November.

Last year’s event, directed by David Chipperfield, was entitled Common Ground.

We’ve filmed a few movies with Koolhaas, including his introduction to OMA’s Garage Center for Contemporary Culture in Moscow and a series filmed at the OMA/Progress exhibition at the Barbican in London – watch them all here.

See more stories about Rem Koolhaas and OMA »
See more stories about the 2012 Venice Architecture Biennale »

Here’s the full statement from Rem Koolhaas:

Fundamentals will be a biennale about architecture, not architects. After several Biennales dedicated to the celebration of the contemporary, Fundamentals will focus on histories – on the inevitable elements of all architecture used by any architect, anywhere, anytime (the door, the floor, the ceiling etc.) and on the evolution of national architectures in the last 100 years. In three complementary manifestations – taking place in the Central Pavilion, the Arsenale, and the National Pavilions – this retrospective will generate a fresh understanding of the richness of architecture’s fundamental repertoire, apparently so exhausted today.

In 1914, it made sense to talk about a “Chinese” architecture, a “Swiss” architecture, an “Indian” architecture. One hundred years later, under the influence of wars, diverse political regimes, different states of development, national and international architectural movements, individual talents, friendships, random personal trajectories and technological developments, architectures that were once specific and local have become interchangeable and global. National identity has seemingly been sacrificed to modernity.

Having the decisive advantage of starting work a year earlier than the Biennale’s typical schedule, we hope to use this extra time to introduce a degree of coordination and coherence among the National Pavilions. Ideally, we would want the represented countries to engage a single theme – Absorbing Modernity: 1914-2014 – and to show, each in their own way, the process of the erasure of national characteristics in favour of the almost universal adoption of a single modern language in a single repertoire of typologies.

The First World War – the beginning of modern globalization – serves a starting point for the range of narratives. The transition to what seems like a universal architectural language is a more complex process than we typically recognize, involving significant encounters between cultures, technical inventions and imperceptible ways of remaining “national”. In a time of ubiquitous google research and the flattening of cultural memory, it is crucial for the future of architecture to resurrect and expose these narratives.

By telling the history of the last 100 years cumulatively, the exhibitions in the National Pavilions will generate a global overview of architecture’s evolution into a single, modern aesthetic, and at the same time uncover within globalization the survival of unique national features and mentalities that continue to exist and flourish even as international collaboration and exchange intensify.

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Venice Architecture Biennale 2014 appeared first on Dezeen.

This ridged steel art gallery by South Korean studio Mass Studies has half of its floors buried underground while others balance on a pair of triangular piloti (+ slideshow).

The Songwon Art Space is located in Buk-Chon, a suburban district filled with traditional Korean Han-Ok houses, and the building is squeezed onto a steeply inclining site between two roads.

Mass Studies faced restrictions on the size of the new building and had no choice but to place some spaces below ground to maintain sight lines towards a neighbouring historic residence. “We neither wanted this project to become a compromise to the restrictions nor a mere negotiation between the contextual obligations,” explained the architects.

In response, they planned restaurant and event spaces on the two upper floors, while two exhibition floors occupy the basement and a car parking level is slotted in between.

“We had to come up with a structural scheme that simultaneously lets us fit everything within the relatively small site and also lifts the building up,” said the architects. “This composition allows the building to be seen as performing a ‘silent acrobatic act,’ slightly floating above ground while still staying close to it.”

When approaching the building, visitors are faced with two large windows. A length of curved glazing offers a view into the restaurant while a triangular aperture faces down towards the entrance of the exhibition spaces. The architects describe this as a “sudden unexpected moment of vertigo” where “the entire height of the building suddenly presents itself”.

A sloping roof angles up to follow the incline of the hill and features a large skylight to brings natural light into the upper floors. Louvres across the ceiling moderate this light, while voids in the floor plates help it to filter through the building.

Louvres also crop up on the exhibition levels, where they allow curators to adjust artificial lighting.

A surface of steel wraps the facade and is made of hundreds of vertical strips.

Seoul-based Mass Studies is headed up by architect Minsuk Cho. Past projects include the Xi Gallery in Pusan and the recently completed headquarters for internet company Daum.

See more architecture in South Korea »

Photography is by Kyungsub Shin.

Here’s some more information from Mass Studies:

Songwon Art Space

Buk-Chon, where Songwon Art Space is located, is one of the few areas that were less affected by the heavy wave of development that has been sweeping through Korea since the fifties. The townscape is based on an irregular network of streets that weave through the area, where Han-Ok is the dominating architectural typology.

During the past 10 years Buk-Chon has seen lots of buzz primarily caused by the newfound interest of the public on the traditional townscapes. Han-Oks (traditional Korean houses) have become a subject of admiration again, and many commercial/cultural businesses have been brought into the area to take advantage of this setup. In this social context, it is consensual that any new development in the area intrinsically faces the challenge to simultaneously conserve existing values, and contribute in a new way to what already is.

Not surprisingly, with our project we faced numerous restrictions and conditions that were inherent to the site. The design development process took an unusual amount of time – as we neither wanted this project to become a compromise to the restrictions nor a mere negotiation between the contextual obligations. The design is a result of optimizing the parameters, sensitively reacting to the surrounding and simultaneously developing a rigorous logic.

A Pre-determined Shape

The site is an irregularly shaped piece of land, roughly 297 sqm in size, sitting in an entrance location to the Buk-Chon area when approached from the city center. The two adjacent roads meet in a sharp angle, with the main street sloping up towards the site. These situations give this small plot an unusually strong recognizability.

The massing of the building is largely limited by two conditions – the shape of the plot determined the plan of the building, and the adjacently located House of Yoon-Bo-Sun, a cultural heritage site, determined the elevation of the building to be cut in an angle in relations to sightline conservation. The volume trapped in these restrictive borders could only contain roughly two thirds of the maximum buildable floor area above ground (90% out of max. allowed 150% FAR). Therefore, much of the exhibition program had to be located below ground-level.

The resulting building is three floors below ground level and two floors above. The bottom two floors are used as an exhibition space, the semi-underground B1 level as parking, and the top two floors house a commercial restaurant and other social functions.

Structure – Silent Acrobat

Another condition with the site was the parking requirement – 7 spots needed to be provided within the plot area. The only way to suffice this condition was to designate a semi-underground level that is made accessible from ground level through the use of a piloti scheme. We had to come up with a structural scheme that simultaneously lets us fit everything within the relatively small site and also lift the building up. By making the piloti structure out of two triangular walls, forming half a pyramid, we were able to also house the entrance and staircase leading into the main space below ground within the structural element.

With the exception of the sloping roof, the aboveground mass is generally represented in a set of strictly horizontal or vertical concrete planes, forming a hard shell-like unibody structure. The Mass is then balanced on the aforementioned ‘half pyramid’ on one side, and a leaning column on the other. This composition allows the building to be seen as performing a ‘silent acrobatic act,’ slightly floating above ground – while still staying close to it.

Vertigo Moment, Two Windows at the Corner

In section, the building can be seen as two programs separated by the parking area – the social function of the restaurant above, and exhibition spaces below. As the sharp corner of the site is approached by pedestrians, one encounters two acrylic windows each revealing one of these two spaces – a curved, seamless window to the top, revealing the 7-11m high space to the above, and a triangular window within the base of the pyramid reveals the 8m space below, resulting in a sudden unexpected moment of vertigo as the entire height of the building (some 19 meters) suddenly presents itself.

Two kinds of Light Conditions

The two main volumes differ in the way they deal with lighting conditions. The underground volume needs to provide varying lighting conditions depending on the requirements of the exhibitions it houses – thus flexibility is essential, and the system relies heavily on artificial lighting. The exception is made in the entrance to the exhibition space, where the previously mentioned triangular skylight dramatizes the entry sequence by providing natural light into the vertical space. One may think of a skylight as an object that is looked at from below, but in this case the triangular window greets the visitors as an opening in the ground and then later changes its identity into a skylight as we descend into the gallery. We think of this as an adequate, surprising way to begin the gallery experience.

The walls of the social/ restaurant space above ground are mostly solid – with the somewhat limited exceptions of a few slits and small windows that were devised to provide ventilation and some amount of view towards the outside. The main source of lighting here is the skylight that takes up a large portion of the sloped roof – a response to the cultural heritage regulation from an adjacent building. The ceiling is composed of 3 layers of steel components – skylight frame, structure and louvers – each of these layers are oriented differently for a diffused lighting effect. The skylight itself is made of triple glazed panes with an embedded layer of expanded steel mesh which aids the process of primary sunlight filtering.

The steel louver system is applied to the ceilings of both the restaurant and exhibition spaces, albeit for different purposes. If the roof louvers were installed to control the daylight, the basement ceiling louvers were to add flexibility to the artificial lighting system. This gesture of using the same louver system in different ways was also to have the two spaces create a visual coherency.

The exhibition space has a polished concrete floor and white walls, whereas the more social restaurant space keeps the naturally exposed white concrete as its finished surface. The two spaces share a somewhat understated material and color scheme, but vary subtly according to the functions of the spaces.

Silent, but Unfamiliar Pleated Wall

It was suggested by the client that we use a material manufactured by a specific steel manufacturer – who is also an important supporter of Songwon Culture Foundation. This particular steel company has the technology to roll paint various colors and patterns onto rolled galvanized steel sheets. These products are commonly used as a reasonably priced exterior finishes, normally in a panel format.

With the help of the metal company we were able to apply a customized finish that resembles concrete or perhaps weathered zinc, in somewhat of a distressed tone. This finish was applied through the roll printing process and then these coloured Galvanized sheets were folded and cut into V shaped channels of 5 different widths – ranging from 3 to 7cm in 1cm increments. These channels wrap the exterior of the building forming a row of full height vertical strips, in a randomized array of the five different widths. Absent of horizontal breaks, this exterior finish gives an illusion of being casted in a single piece, rather than being an assembly of several smaller pieces. The intention was to have the building perceived as an ambiguous monolithic mass.

The resulting pleated texture, combined with the varying boundary conditions of the building plan – having straight and rounded portions – reacts with the natural lighting conditions in an unpredictable way and obscures the materiality and construction of the exterior. Here the building becomes ‘silent but unfamiliar.’

Above: site plan – click above for larger image

Above: top floor plan – click above for larger image

Above: upper ground floor plan – click above for larger image

Above: lower ground floor plan – click above for larger image

Above: upper basement floor plan – click above for larger image

Above: lower basement floor plan – click above for larger image

Above: section one

Above: section two

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by Mass Studies appeared first on Dezeen.

Following our story about plans for a 3D-printed house, Universe Architecture’s Janjaap Ruijssenaars tells us about the race to be first to print an entire building (+ interview + slideshow).

Ben Hobson: Our post about your plans to 3D print an entire house is one of the most popular stories we’ve ever published. Tell us about the Landscape House.

Janjaap Ruijssenaars: In 2009 we [Universe Architecture] entered a competition for a beautiful location in Belwell, on the western coast of Ireland. The location was so beautiful that we thought, if you brought traditional architecture here, then you’re going to make a cut in the landscape. So our question was: “can you make a building like landscape?”

Our answer to that question was to create a continuous structure that doesn’t have a beginning and doesn’t have an end. We got a strip of paper and tried to fold it and bend it and see if we could make a structure that is endless in itself. By turning and twisting we got on to the Möbius band principal.

We didn’t win the competition, but I thought the idea was so strong that I proceeded [to develop the design] and approached people that could help me.

Ben Hobson: And one of those people was Enrico Dini, who invented the D-Shape printer [the world’s largest 3D printer]?

Janjaap Ruijssenaars: Yes, that’s an important connection. We had been trying different materials to make a small model of the house – we tried to use lead as well as paper – but the only way to make it was with a 3D printer. Having this model in our hands we thought, “why not take it to the next level and see if this principal works on a larger scale?”

Ben Hobson: So you had the concept, and the only way you could realise that was to use 3D printing. Is that right?

Janjaap Ruijssenaars: Yes, that’s the chronology. We started off with the landscape and then the right technique seemed to be 3D printing.

Ben Hobson: Tell me a bit about the D-Shape printer.

Janjaap Ruijssenaars: Enrico has dedicated his life to make the biggest 3D printer he can, so he can print the biggest structures possible. So really it is his ambition that makes Landscape House possible. It uses ground-up rock or sand that is put into the printer and then hardened by adding a [binding agent].

Ben Hobson: So it’s a kind of artificial sandstone? Does it have a similar texture?

Janjaap Ruijssenaars: In 2D printing you have pixels, with 3D printing you have voxels. The voxels that Enrico’s machine produces are five millimetres high, wide and deep. You can think of them as small cubes. So this will influence the texture on the outside of the building.

Ben Hobson: So the 3D-printed parts will provide the finish for the walls of the building?

Janjaap Ruijssenaars: Everything that is printed will be seen in the end product. The curved walls at the ends, even the stairs inside; everything you see that is not transparent will be out of the printer.

Ben Hobson: And will you need to treat that material in any way?

Janjaap Ruijssenaars: Inside we will polish it, but outside we will probably keep it as it is. We’re really interested to show the material that is printed.

Ben Hobson: And is the material structurally sound?

Janjaap Ruijssenaars: What Dini proposed for this house was to not print the whole floor, or ceiling, for example, but to print the outside shape of the floor or ceiling. So what you get is a hollow structure in which we put reinforced concrete. You can have a beam as well as a column when you do this.

Before our Landscape House design, you could easily use the printer to print columns that go up vertically. But it was not possible to print something that has a horizontal connection, like a beam. By putting reinforced concrete within a hollow 3D-printed structure you can have a vertical load on top of a horizontal structure. And that opens the door for all types of designs. That was Enrico Dini’s idea.

Ben Hobson: Couldn’t you have used traditional construction methods to build this house? Why use 3D printing?

Janjaap Ruijssenaars: One important thing is the endlessness of it: you work from bottom to top and there’s no beginning and no end. But maybe even more important is the fact that the shape is already in the computer and you can print the complex forms, the twists and the turns of the stairs, for example, directly as you designed it.

In the traditional way of building [with concrete] you have to make timber moulds which you will later take away again. But it’s very complex with these curves to make moulds that you fill with concrete and then remove – that’s an enormous effort.

Ben Hobson: So explain the construction process. As I understand it, the house will be built in 3D-printed segments that slot together.

Janjaap Ruijssenaars: That’s where we stood last week. That’s a process the [D-Shape] printer in Italy can handle now. But within the media there have been some reactions to the fact it’s in pieces and it’s not one print.

So now we’re also exploring the possibility of the printer following the direction of the house. The printer would go around a few hundred times, and basically print it in one go. That’s my ambition because then it would be continuous, from bottom to top. And I think it’s possible.

To print it in a few large pieces and then put it together is a very important step because you can still print the curves and the stairs. You can print [those complex sections] in one go. But to make the whole building in one go would be even more true to the idea behind the design.

Ben Hobson: And what ramifications will the use of 3D-printed parts have on the rest of the construction process?

Janjaap Ruijssenaars: Traditional things like “how do you make a large span?” will remain the same; gravity will work in the same way. But it’s interesting to see how traditional [construction] techniques and these new [3D printing] techniques will work together. For example, the printed parts can incorporate space for the plumbing, or the electricity.

Ben Hobson: And where are you now with the project? When will construction start?

Janjaap Ruijssenaars: The ambition is to start at the beginning of next year [2014], but we don’t have a commission that’s fixed at this moment. There’s interest from Brazil to construct a residential centre for a large national park, a few hours away from San Paulo. We’re looking into how serious that is.

Above: basement floor plan – click for larger image

Ben Hobson: Assuming you find a client, how much will it cost?

Janjaap Ruijssenaars: My estimation is around five million Euros. But this depends on many things: what country, what site, things like that.

Ben Hobson: And how long would construction take?

Janjaap Ruijssenaars: The estimated time for the printed parts is over half a year. So construction will probably take between half a year and a year.

Above: ground floor plan – click for larger image

Ben Hobson: So the speed of the printer is the main thing that slows you down?

Janjaap Ruijssenaars: If we continue doing research then we’ll get the building time sharper than that. One option for this house [rather than using a 3D printer] would be to bend steel like you would with the bow of a ship. Then you could have everything pre-fabricated and maybe build it within six months. But I think eventually 3D printing will be competitive.

Ben Hobson: Are there any other architecture firms looking to use 3D printing to build a house?

Janjaap Ruijssenaars: We would be first. There is a Dutch company called DUS Architects and they have the ambition of printing a house. I don’t want to offend them, but in my opinion Enrico Dini is the only person who can print a true building at this stage, and he’s sure that this would be the first.

Above: first floor plan

Ben Hobson: And where can this technology go? In the future will buildings be constructed, or part-constructed, using 3D printing?

Janjaap Ruijssenaars: I think it has great potential, but it has to be the best way of constructing [for any given project]. The design has to really relate to the technique, or have specific features that can only be done by a 3D printer. For Landscape House, 3D printing is nice because it relates so much to the design.

Above: long section – click for larger image

See all our stories about 3D printing »

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a “whole building in one go” appeared first on Dezeen.

This lopsided house by Argentinean studio Adamo-Faiden has a pointed balcony poking out of one side and a caged terrace on the roof (+ slideshow + photos by Cristobal Palma).

Located in Villa Adelina, a suburb in the north of Buenos Aires, the two-storey Casa Martos butts up against a neighbouring commercial building of the same height and Adamo-Faiden has matched the proportions of the volumes to tie together the conflicting architectural styles.

The facade of the house faces south-west, which architect Marcelo Faiden explains was to bring in natural light and prevent any issues with overlooking windows from the other two properties. “This decision allowed us to cover the ten-metre-high party wall, maintaining the existing sunlight and generating long views to the new house,” he said.

The balcony shelf protrudes from this glazed elevation behind a layer of metal fencing, creating a ledge of plants beside the first floor window. Faiden added: “From the inside, the vegetation of the double enclosure seems to merge with the patio of the next plot.”

A small room and garage occupy the ground floor of the house, while the bedroom, bathroom and living room are positioned on the first floor.

The architects compare the project with Casas Lago, their first built project, which also features a rooftop terrace. “In both cases the new construction tries to create a relation with the urban fabric through an immaterial, open air room located on the terrace,” said Faiden.

Since completing Casas Lago, Adamo Faiden has worked on a number of residential projects, including designs for social housing on top of existing homes and a housing block that could also be used as offices. See more architecture by Adamo Faiden.

See more architecture in Argentina »

Photography is by Cristobal Palma. See all our stories featuring Cristobal Palma’s photos.

Here’s a short description from Adamo-Faiden:

Martos House

The house is located in Villa Adelina, a neighbourhood in the north area of Buenos Aires suburbs where great commercial activities, industries and housing coexist.

The construction is close to the street in a lot where a prefabricated house already occupies the central area of it.

The characteristics of the buildings nearby, determine the position of the new house. An industrial building generates towards one side a 10 meters height division wall that is used to structure lengthwise the house while orientating all the interior spaces towards the garden of the opposite field.

A metal tray runs all along the structure length, becoming a shell for a new vegetation that gazes from the inside and seems to merge with the neighbouring garden.

Above: site plan – click above for larger image

Above: ground floor plan – click above for larger image

Above: first floor plan – click above for larger image

Above: roof plan – click above for larger image

Above: section aa – click above for larger image

Above: section bb – click above for larger image

Above: section cc – click above for larger image

Above: front elevation – click above for larger image

Above: rear elevation – click above for larger image

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Adamo-Faiden appeared first on Dezeen.