Recipient of 2013 James Templeton Kelley Prize for Best M.Arch I Thesis

Air Ops is a project about re-envisioning zoning and energy-use in a post-Hurricane Sandy Manhattan.  The core of the project hinges on the notion that zoning has always been one of the most potent elements in shaping the city, and in order for architecture to tackle the problem of energy at the urban scale, especially as a response to the increasing volatility of the climate, it must bring topics of sourcing and using energy into active dialogue with zoning, real estate, and the public realm.

Just a few months ago, Hurricane Sandy tore a path of destruction through the North East.  In some ways, it was an event that revealed the fragile nature of the city’s electrical infrastructures.  It raises the question: How can we create a certain level of individual energy autonomy, while simultaneously increasing the robustness of our existing energy infrastructure?  One possibility is to look at the potential of ...

For the 145th consecutive year, the American Institute of Architects is holding its annual convention this week, June 20-23. It is the biggest gathering of Architects and designers each year, and it is always held different host cities. This year, Denver is the location.

Traveling to the convention has generally been a challenge for many architects who are not within driving distance, but with increasingly more robust internet capabilities, it is now possible for architects, non-architects, AIA Members and non-members to take in the convention experience from their home, office, library, coffee shop or any other location with hi-speed internet access.

The 2013 AIA National Convention will provide the most real-time access to online participants ever as the AIA will host the 2013 AIA Virtual Convention over the same days as the event in Denver. Eager participants can join the experience with live streaming of content from the convention via computer (Windows and Mac OS platform...

The planning and design of a new elementary/intermediate school for 420 children in 12 classes, ages 6-12.
 

A crocodile which has crawled up from the canal to settle in the park. An L-shaped building with two floors overlooking the canal in the west and neighbouring park in the north. Special rooms for needlework, woodwork, visual arts and dining.
 

The building of white concrete with regular traces in the facade to relate to the vicinity of the stream, swaying reeds! In general robust materials and sedum rooftops.

The shortlisted teams are:

• Diller Scofidio + Renfro
• Mack Scogin Merrill Elam/AECOM
• Morphosis Architects
• Rafael Viñoly Architects
• Steven Holl Architects
• Yazdani Studio

For the latest edition of the Student Works: series Archinect featured the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) library pavilion, located on a sloping lawn on the temporary Dover Campus. The gridshell structure designed by City Form Lab had to accommodate three mature trees and forms a noise barrier toward the Ayer Raja Expressway in the north. Especially noteworthy we read "The pavilion is designed to be dismantled and recycled after two years". For his part TED liked what he saw writing "Nice stuff - well done"...

News
American Public Media’s Marketplace examined the resurgence of Midtown, a small pocket of Detroit that is thriving.

observant believed "There is such a dichotomy between Bloomfield Hills et. al. and the decaying part of the core...The city is probably more in need of urban designers, planners, sociologists, and economists at this point than it is starchitects producing concepts for individual buildings".

The NYT reported that the Pritzker Pr...

John Laurenson talks with supporters and critics sparring over plans to build 12 new skyscrapers in Paris. The issue has generated enough controversy that Laurenson believes  it will likely play a role in deciding the next municipal elections.

Previously: Helsinki Central Library Competition Announces Stage 2 Finalists

Log is pleased to announce the lineup for In Pursuit of Architecture, a conference in celebration of the magazine’s tenth anniversary, to be held at The Museum of Modern Art in New York on September 21, 2013.

The ten architects participating in the conference were selected from an open call for submissions of work built between 2003 and 2013:
51N4E (Brussels)
Barkow Leibinger (Berlin)
C+S architects (Treviso)
LAN (Paris)
MOS (New York City)
Neil M. Denari Architects (Los Angeles)
OFFICE Kersten Geers David Van Severen (Brussels)
Preston Scott Cohen (Cambridge)
Reiser + Umemoto (New York City)
UNStudio (Amsterdam)

These architects will be joined by four architecture critics – Sam Jacob (London), Sylvia Lavin (Los Angeles), Emmanuel Petit (New Haven), and Sarah Whiting (Houston) – in a series of roundtable discussions about the physical and conceptual challenges of making architecture. In the face of ever-changing sociopolitical, economic, and environmental demands, th...

Kjellander + Sjöberg creates yet an example of contemporary architecture that fits modern needs and without nostalgia corresponds with its site. Bönan and Kisen is a city block on Södermalm that with an urban intensity adds new qualities and preserves the local scale and character.

The project aims to add new buildings rooted in the local vernacular, an addition that emphasizes and enriches the urban fabric, providing space for businesses that in turn allow Högbergsgatans urban content to prosper and expand. The design contains two volumes, Bönan and Kisen, (50’s local slang terms for girl and boy, respectively) with distinctly separate identities that are not obviously one development, rather an easy addition opening up towards the park in south.
 
The starting point is the mixed urban context near the lively Medborgarplatsen and Götgatsbacken, which in combination with the view over and access to the park Fatbursparken, is a definite potential for the project’s success. Böna...

Amanda Gann, a graduate architecture student at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, will take center stage this month as cohost of “ARCHITECT Live!,” a live broadcast that showcases conversations with the leading thinkers and personalities in architecture.

The show will be part of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) National Convention in Denver from June 20-22.

Gann, of Pegram, Tenn., who won a video contest by popular vote, will host with Stephen Chung, an acclaimed architect and creator/host of “Cool Spaces: The Best of New Architecture,” a prime-time television series on U.S. and Canadian public television. Karen Tang of California Polytechnic University was also voted to emcee.

VView Gann's video entry at http://youtu.be/wvu-n2xH0bE. 

“It is such an incredible honor to be chosen,” Gann said. “It means the world to me to have this opportunity to represent the voice of students and emerging professionals from around the globe in a discourse about leadership i...

This blog is a view of an architecture student's work, influences and experiences in and outside of studio. I want to share with you some of the great experiences I’ve had so far while working in studio projects, being creative, attending conferences and working with several extracurricular activities.

If my friend Kurt Dillon has not sent me the link for this significant thesis by then Master of Science in Architecture candidate Sam Rodell in Washington State University in 2008, I would have my suspicions hanging in the air without proper documentation. It is a great reading for folks who are ready to trash Robert Venturi at all times and treating Kahn as Zeus from the top of the hill. I have learned from and a fan of both, btw.

"This study considers the question of how Louis Kahn’s development as an architect was shaped by the influences of Robert Venturi. The personal and professional interaction between these two historically significant architects began late in Kahn’s career and early in Venturi’s.

Starting with Venturi’s master’s thesis in 1950, the relationship continued past the seminal publication of Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture sixteen years later. Some historical accounts portray Kahn as mentor to Venturi over this period of time. It was in fact a ...

Previously: Winners of Redesigning Detroit: A New Vision for an Iconic Site

The C-building is one of three buildings in the DnB NOR complex situated in Bjørvika at the waterfront of Oslo. The C-building by Dark Arkitekter has within a surface of 12.000 m2 fifteen floors containing both offices and public services. The project will be completed in 2012. Thirteen generic office floors give the bank 500 workplaces. The two top floors contain a public restaurant and a bar with a 360 degree viewpoint area on the roof terrace. An inclined panorama elevator connects the viewpoint and the restaurant/bar on the top to the ground level restaurant at Dronning Eufemias gate, the new main boulevard of Oslo.

At street level the building has a mix of retail and commercial establishments, in addition to one of several dining lounges in the DnB NOR complex. A two story high public passage penetrates the building, as a part of a public short track through the Barcode site, leading to the Oslo central station.

The stair-shaped volume, with each step two stories tall, face...

DNB's 70.000 m2 headquarter consists of 3 buildings on which the architecture firms Dark Arkitekter, a-lab and MVRDV are collaborating on design and architecture. MVRDV is responsible for Building A (the central building), with Dark Arkitekter AS as local architects. Building A is 37.000 m2 and was completed autumn 2012.

The pixelated design is adapted to the urban context. It combines a big and flexibel spatial organization split into effective work zones and varied common areas, a shielded public passageway through the building at ground level, and sightlines from the city behind.

The general workspace areas are subdivided and partially withdrawn to create room for common areas both inside and outside the building, and outstanding daylight conditions.

The pixelated design enables a flexible adaption of the building volume to its surroundings and allows each story to be unique while being general as well.

In addition to more than 2000 workspaces, the building also contains a...

A tour of China’s last remaining enclave of old-school social governance and architecture: Nanjiecun Village, Henan

By: Paul Stephen

In China, the existential conflict between “old” and “new” in architecture, development, and general society is almost always seen as being a juxtaposition of modern ideas and designs with a vague, ancient Chinese identity—the neo-modernist office parks built atop the ruins of Beijing’s beloved hutong alleyway neighborhoods. Rows of brand-new, uniformly rectangular apartment blocks built atop old farms and villages across the countryside. A Starbucks in the Forbidden City. What is often left out of the conversation, intentionally or not, are the architectural and artistic relics of the Cold War/Mao Zedong Era. While the old socialist-realist architecture of the former Soviet Union has garnered something of a cult following, the Chinese equivalent has gone wholly unloved—and perhaps understandably so. In a country where entire new cities rise ...

Inspired by the structure of human DNA, each floor of the 272-million-U.S.-dollar (1 billion-Dirham) tower is rotated by one-point-two degrees to achieve the full 90-degree spiral, creating the shape of a helix.

Dignitaries from diplomatic corps and Corporate Dubai joined the celebrations which closed in a gigantic fireworks display across Dubai's new tower and the Marina night-skyline.

The emirate of Dubai also harbors the world's tallest hotel, the near one-thousand-two-hundred- foot (354.7-meter) tall J.W. Marriott Marquis.

There's also the world's tallest residential tower, the Princess Tower reaching over one-thousand-three-hundred-feet (414 meters), a five-minute walk away from the twisted tower.

Cayan Projects, estimated to be worth around 2.7 billion dollars (10-billion Saudi riyal) cover a wide spectrum of developments from exclusive residential to commercial projects.