Is the proliferation of sophisticated tools for modeling, parametric design, and digital fabrication making the practice of sketching by hand obsolete?
Image courtesy Michael Maltzan Architecture Michael Maltzan Architecture's third project for the Skid Row Housing Trust will connect to its urban context in a variety of ways. For example, the now-under-construction 95,000-square-foot building will incorporate an existing one-story structure slated to house shops and support services for both residents and the larger community. Above this podium, prefabricated apartments will be stacked to define recreational spaces and courtyards, making it the first modularly constructed, multiunit residential building in Los Angeles. ARCHITECT: Michael Maltzan Architecture BUDGET: $19.3 million CONTEXT: When completed in 2013, Star will add 102 apartments to the approximately 1,300
The design-build studio's latest intervention at Lions Park in Greensboro, Alabama, replaces a much-vandalized playground and is the fifth element designed and constructed at Lions Park by Rural Studio students.
After a deadly tornado tore through Joplin, Missouri last year on May 22, leveling the town’s high school, district officials pledged to be ready for the regularly scheduled start of the academic year—less than three months away.
Image courtesy BNIM The twister that pummeled Tuscaloosa on April 27, 2011, killed more than 50 people and left a trail of destruction a mile wide and more than five miles long. The city's plan for rebuilding calls for neighborhoodscaled commercial centers, improvements to several city parks, and the construction of new municipal facilities like police and fire stations. The scheme also includes a recreation trail that doubles as storm-water-management infrastructure. This greenway dubbed the 'Citywalk,' follows the scar left by the tornado, preserving it as a 'path of remembrance and recovery,' explains Stephen Hardy, BNIM associate principal. ARCHITECT: BNIM
At Princeton University's new Frick Chemistry Laboratory, dedicated in April, a highly efficient lighting scheme is one of several tightly integrated strategies that contribute to the building's ambitious energy-saving goals: Frick is designed to use 24 percent less site energy than allowed by the 2007 version of ASHRAE 90.1 standard. This building's configuration is a product of both environmental and programmatic goals, according to its architects, London-based Hopkins and Payette Associates of Boston. The 265,000-square-foot structure has two four-story, largely glass-enclosed wings'one on the east for research and another on the west for offices. The pieces are joined by a
Low energy use was a particular priority for the Triskelion, a 1,300-square-foot moveable pavilion commissioned by the nonprofit arts organization FOR-SITE. Designed by Ogrydziak/Prillinger Architects, San Francisco, the building consists of three shipping containers arranged at 120-degree angles to define a central skylit atrium. Since May 2010 it has been installed at the Presidio, where it was part of the yearlong Presidio Habitats'an exhibition of artist-created animal habitats distributed around one corner of the national park. The pavilion served as a space for the display of sketches and models. Because Presidio officials required that the building be easily demountable and
Last June, Yotel'a U.K.-based hotel chain inspired by Japanese capsule hotels and luxury airline cabins'opened a location on the far west side of Manhattan. It is just one component within a vast, $800 million, mixed-use complex designed by Arquitectonica. But the hotel, with a facade, public spaces, and 669 rooms by Rockwell Group and lighting firm Focus, possesses its own distinct character. It has a '2001: A Space Odyssey feel,' says Michael Cummings, Focus design director. The hotel's public spaces are illuminated almost exclusively with LEDs. The brightness of the source worked well with the sleek, predominately white and gray
