Hasta La Ideas

Could we actually be seeing, dare we even let the thought cross our collective brains, a consistent upward trend? After years of being burnt in this exact situation, when the American Institute of Architects‘ monthly Architectural Billings Index would stay in the positive for a few months, only to plummet back and make everyone gloomy, we’re not entirely ready to dust off the helium tank and start filling up the balloons just yet, particularly because the ABI was actually down just a bit from last month. It’s currently at 50.4, a few notches lower than 51 in February, but as anything above 50 indicates an increase in billing, and provides a general sense of growth within the industry, we’ll take it. Here’s a bit from the AIA’s defender of the digits:

“We are starting to hear more about improving conditions in the marketplace, with a greater sense of optimism that there will be greater demand for design services,” said AIA Chief Economist, Kermit Baker, PhD, Hon. AIA. “But that is not across the board and there are still a number of architecture firms struggling so progress is likely to be measured in inches rather than miles for the next few months.”

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Wooden sticks shield the facades of this house in Belgium by Ghent studio Architecten De Vylder Vinck Taillieu, while a tree bursts through the roof.

Screening exterior walls at both the front and back, the crisscrossing wooden batons feature integrated doorways.

Grey tiles clad the remaining two walls, the roof and even the chimney.

Clusters of missing tiles create openings for windows, while missing tiles on the roof give way for branches of the tree that is enclosed between the rear screen and the wall behind.

There are three storeys inside the house, where a chunky concrete frame is left exposed.

See more projects in Belgium by following this link.

Photography is by Filip Dujardin.

Here’s some more information from Architecten De Vylder Vinck Taillieu:

House Bernheimbeuk at GB.

House.
A small site. A small house.
The small budget.

An even smaller house.
Square meters don’t matter.
Mechanics of living versus unexpected sense of space.

A small site. And huge trees.
Tree in house. Tree in room.
Room outside. The drawing.

Or, rather, the tree. Or, rather, the column.
That drawing.
Is the section of the column on which and around which the house rests.

A column that has become a tree. Among the other trees.
Structure. As starting point.
As finishing point. What is in between is a quest for making and imagining.

So how a column might be.
Might become.

Design architects: architecten de vylder vinck taillieu (Jan De Vylder, Inge Vinck, Jo Taillieu)

Design team: Jan De Vylder, Inge Vinck, Jo Taillieu, Lauren Dierickx, Gosia Olchowska

Structural Engineering: UTIL Structuurstudies cvba, Brussel

Shell of construction and finishing: Bouwonderneming Verfaillie bvba, Beernem, client themselves

Carpentry: Dirk Janssens bvba, Zaffelare:

Roofing: Ducla bvba, Beernem

m2: 99 m2

Budget: Private
Client: Private

Location: GB., Belgium

Design phase: 2009 – 2011 (delivered)

Slideshow: a wall of wooden scales folds through the glazed facade of this house and studio that Korean architects AND designed for an artist in South Korea.

As the panels emerge behind the glass they begin to separate from one another, creating a series of openings that permit views across from the double height studio to the living quarters behind.

The wall also curves upward to wrap and conceal a bedroom on the first floor.

The two-storey-high exterior walls are constructed from concrete and nestle against a hillside that climbs up behind the house.

See more stories about about studios for artists or designers here.

Photography is by Kim Yong Gwan.

Here’s some more text from AND:

Skinspace

Artist + Painting

An artist walks into the office, introducing himself with a pamphlet of his paintings. Vivid colors and forced brush strokes that densely filled the screens shows his sensibility and thoughts. His use of unfamiliar words to describe his works that he is “interested in ecological theology,” illustrates the naïve mind of the artist that he paints from himself, or he paints himself through the painting. Perhaps, that is why his recent works include a body of a person in a landscape. The body, rather than being separated as a distinctive object, is depicted as part of the aggregated elements of the surrounding landscape where the trees, bushes, and the sky respond to each other blurring the boundary. What he depicts here is not a moment’s phenomenal state; rather it is the deconstruction of the object as a monad, at the same time, it is about things become an integrated being united with the surroundings.

Studio + Nature

The artist has been working at home for more than ten years. The subjects of his paintings are nothing special but spaces of his daily life. He has been constantly projecting his gaze at the parks nearby, streets, a small village in a countryside where he often visits. As seen from his recent exhibition titles, ‘A Talk with a Tree,’ ‘Thinking Forest,’ there is no clear boundary between human and nature in his paintings. Furthermore, the distinction between a body and its surroundings, or interior and exterior is only allusive.

What is clearly revealed is the flow of continuous matter waves and powerful forces that fill the space. A quotation found from his note explains everything, “Molecules think, too.” As an alternative to the Modernist’s ontology that separates man and nature, body and reason, and that postulates a certain dominant structure, his studio explores the world of wholeness. His studio shall reflect his world view. Then the real question is how one constructs an ambiguous field that interior is blurred with exterior, nature permeates into the space, and the artist’s gaze spills out to the nature.

Skin + Space

To the north of the site is a 4 meter high sloped hill, and the site is open towards all three sides. First, a long façade stands on the south of the site and overlooks a stream. The skin of the façade is gently rolled inward as it breaks up the boundary between the interior and the exterior. The rolled in surfaces lift up as they enter the interior and they traverse the interior toward the opposite side of the wall. During the crossing, the panels of the skin are split and distorted, creating loose crevices.

The landscape permeates through the crevice, and so does light. The light colors the space with every moment in time. As a body moves, the space of the crevice changes sensitively. Skin becomes space, and space becomes skin. The boundary is blurred, and the flow that passes through the interior and the exterior becomes denser.

Site: Seohoori, Seojongmyun, Yangpyeonggun, Gyeonggido, Korea
Construction Area: 112.62m2
Gross Area: 130.60m2

Floors: 2
Structure: RC

Project Year: 2010
Designed and Constructed by AND

100 projects combatting environmental issues with innovative design

The intersection of sustainability and design is one that brings to bear problems and solutions wherein the problems can be life-threatening and the solutions critical. “Vitamin Green” is a massive, comprehensive snapshot of the design world’s response to urban agriculture, ecological sustainability and energy efficiency. The collection of 100 green projects records an up-to-the-minute anthology of innovative responses to nature’s most pressing issues.

As Amara Holstein writes in the introduction, “From the macro to the micro, projects are fomenting and coming together as designers begin seriously to reinvent and reimagine sustainability in the built environment. With need as the impetus, and nature as our inspiration, we might actually stand a chance of learning to live in harmony with our planet. We’re at a tipping point of design. It’s time to decide which way the professionalism will go.” The sense of urgency is not mired in government regulations and perceived difficulty—rather, it is demonstrated by a series of successful creations that forge a path to better living. While “Vitamin Green” encompasses a broad swath of environmental design, we were especially taken by the examples of urban agricultural efforts. The selections go beyond the theorizing of solo designers to show communities of people working towards a greener future.

One such project, Edible Estates condemns the lawn and sets out to replace America’s largest crop—and its most wasteful—with functional vegetable gardens. The company has been creating prototypes around the world since 2005, adorning completed gardens with a plaque that reads: “The empty front lawn requiring mowing, watering and weeding previously on this location has been removed.” While the project has been met with hostility from community regulations that seek to keep pristine and uniform lawns, the opposition hasn’t deterred Edible Estates ringleader Fritz Haeg from seeing out his mission.

Started in the Summer of 2011, the Lapin Kulta Solar Restaurant serves up food cooked in open-air aluminum solar dishes. Using no energy outside of the sun’s glorious rays, the restaurant has solved their most obvious dilemma by serving up sashimi and salads on cloudy days. The space is described as an “eatery and artistic installation,” and is headed by Martí Guixé. Their solar dishes—which take a mere five hours to create—heat everything from uniquely textured barbecue to pots of percolated coffee.

The “Living Wall” at the Musée du Quai Branly is a massive vertical garden in Paris that coats the museum wall. Botanist Patrick Blanc developed a custom system for the wall after concluding that plants have a tendency to grow in nearly any moist environment. Two layers of polyamide felt are stapled to PVC and act as the growing surface, with a drip irrigation system delivering diluted fertilizer to fuel plant growth.

In response to rapid urbanization and a growing disparity between city and rural income demographics, the Quinmo Village Project was established to educate the inhabitants of China’s Quinmo Village in self-sufficiency. Part school, part eco-household architecture program, the project has succeeded in creating a complete ecological cycle on-site: food waste serves as livestock feed, and manure is turned into fertilizer to restart the process.

Following the near destruction of the Vietnamese neighborhood in New Orleans East during Hurricane Katrina, the Mare Queen of Viet Nam Community Development Corporation (MQVN CDC) was established. Their effort, the Viet Village Urban Farm aims to replace the pre-existing network of gardens that had been operated by Vietnamese immigrants for decades. The proposed 28-acre site will be hedged in bamboo walls to separate it from residential areas, and plans have been made for the design, systems, funding and labor. To prevent future flooding and ensure responsible water use, the farm is connected to two off-site retention ponds as well as an artificial wetland to clean spent water.

Wading through the in-depth analysis of significant efforts, we came across a slew of projects that we have covered over the years. Sustainable objects like the Andrea Air Purifier, the Biolite Stove, the DBA 98 biodegradable pen, Freitag bags, the Plastiki sailboat made from recycled materials, Plumen‘s 001 light bulb and the Sayl Chair by Yves Behar remind us that eco-conscious designers are not alone. Architectural and community projects such as the Halley VI Scientific Research Station, Design Indaba‘s 10×10 Housing Project and NYC’s High Line brought us back as well. But in the end, even we had much to discover and even more to learn, the staggeringly ambitious projects in “Vitamin Green” inciting something beyond surface-level inspiration.

Vitamin Green ships 12 May 2012 and is available for pre-order from Phaidon and on Amazon. Find more images of the book in our slideshow.

Slideshow: our second project this week by Madrid studio Exit Architects is a civic and cultural centre inside a former prison in Palencia, Spain.

Constructed from load-bearing brickwork, the nineteenth century building comprises four wings that have been completely refurbished to accommodate an auditorium, a library, multi-function rooms and classrooms for art and music.

A translucent glass pavilion provides an entrance to the building, while new walls and roof structures have been created over and around the existing blocks using zinc and more semiopaque glass.

At the centre of the four wings is a new hall, inside which large round skylights extend down to create cylindrical light wells and miniature courtyards.

The library is contained within the wing that previously housed prisoner cell blocks and features a central reading area beneath an octagonal skylight.

Our other project this week by Exit Architects is a concrete sculpture museum, which you can see here.

Photography is by Fernando Guerra.

Here’s some more text from Exit Architects:

Rehabilitation of Former Prison of Palencia as Cultural Civic Center

The former Palencia Provincial Prison complex was created at the end of the XIX century, built with brick bearing walls following the “neomudéjar” style, and composed mainly of four two-storey wings and some other with one storey.

On this building was planned a comprehensive refurbishment to transform the former use and convert it into a center that promotes the social and cultural activity in this part of the town.

Our proposal intends to convert the former prison into a meeting place, recovering some of the old spaces, and creating at the same time new structures that make possible the new planned activities.

It is a project that respects the existing building, which is given a contemporary, lighter appearance, and where the natural light will play a key role.

With this aim the main two-storey wings have been refurbished, emptying their interior and placing a new independent structure to bear the new floors and roofs. Besides, between the main wings have been built new connecting pavilions, which form the new complex perimeter and give it a modern and friendly aspect.

To introduce the light in the building we had to remove the old covered with tiles which were in very poor condition, and have been replaced by others of zinc that open large skylights which introduce light into the open halls of the Center.

The entire building is organized around a great hall that connects the 4 pavilions of the former prison. It is a diaphanous space based only on a few mild cylindrical courtyards of glass that illuminate and provide the backbone of the stay.

Due to its central location in relation to the pavilions, this space acts as a nerve center and distributor of users, across the Pavilion access and reception, directed towards the rest of the areas of the Centre.

The hall gives way to the lateral pavilions where the auditorium and various music and art classrooms are. On the upper floor, under a large glass skylights, are two multi-purpose areas dedicated to more numerous groups.

In the area where is the cells of prisoners were, we placed the library. The reading rooms are articulated around a central space of high-rise under a lantern of octagonal shape that acts as a distributor for the different areas and that arrives vertical communication and control areas and offices.

Finally, access to the Centre are carried out through a very light and bright glazed perimeter that pretends to be a filter between the city and the activity of the interior.

A structural steel beam travels abroad tying areas glazed with the former factory walls getting an alleged industrial air.

The use of metallic materials in all intervention, as the zinc in facades and roofs, glass and uglass in the lower bodies and skylights and the aluminium lattices as light filters also contributes to this.

architects: EXIT ARCHITECTS – ÁNGEL SEVILLANO / JOSÉ Mª TABUYO
location: AVDA. VALLADOLID Nº 26, 34034 PALENCIA
clients: MINISTERIO DE FOMENTO, AYUNTAMIENTO DE PALENCIA

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area: 5.077 m2
budget: 9.675.038 EUROS
project date: 2007
completion date: 2011
quantity surveyor: IMPULSO INDUSTRIAL ALTERNATIVO. ÁLVARO FERNÁNDEZ

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structural engineers: NB35. JOSÉ LUIS LUCERO
mechanical engineers: GRUPO JG. JUAN ANTONIO POSADAS
light consultant: MANUEL DÍAZ CARRETERO
collaborators: MARIO SANJUÁN, IBÁN CARPINTERO, MIGUEL GARCÍA-REDONDO, SILVIA N. GÓMEZ

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