Cai Guo Qiang: Hanging Out In The Museum

Currently on display at the Fine Arts Museum, Taipei is the retrospective exhibition of chinese born, new york based artist Cai Guo Qiang. The show features numerous works including day and night and toroko gorge, large drawings created from explosions
of gunpowder on sheets of paper covered with stencils. He initially began working with gunpowder to foster spontaneity and confront the suppression that he felt from the controlled artistic tradition and social climate in China at the time.

Also on display is his ‘Head On’ installation consisting of 99 life sized wolves running in a high arc against walls.

Be it creating elaborate installations, drawing his explosive art on paper, or illuminating the sky with colorful fountains, bridges or dragons, all of Cai Guo-Qiang’s works combine Chinese culture with western, post-conceptual thought.

‘People say you can hang out with a pretty girl or hang out at an internet café. in essence, the term ‘hang out’ means to enjoy something.’ – Cai Guo-Qiang explains the title of his new show.

Cai Guo Qiang ‘Hanging Out At The Museum’ will be on view until February 21, 2010

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via designboom

Concrete Cloth by Concrete Canvas

UK company Concrete Canvas have been awarded Material of the Year 2009 by materials consultancy Material ConneXion for their cement-impregnated fabric.

Called Concrete Cloth, the material consists of cement layered between fabric that can bond with water, backed with PVC. The product can be formed into the required shape then allowed to absorb water, causing it to set after two hours. The material can be used structurally and is fireproof and waterproof. The designers hope it will have applications in disaster relief, military and commercial environments.

Here’s some text from Material ConneXion:

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New York, NY, November 23, 2009 – Global materials consultancy Material ConneXion announced today the launch of its first annual MEDIUM Award for Material of the Year, naming UK-based company Concrete Canvas’s Concrete Cloth as the inaugural winner. The award recognizes materials juried into the company’s Materials Library within the past year that demonstrate outstanding technological innovation and the potential to make a significant contribution to the advancement of design, industry, society and economy. “The MEDIUM Award for Material of the Year is an opportunity to celebrate the extraordinary breadth and scope of materials innovation today,” says George M. Beylerian, Founder & CEO of Material ConneXion. “The winner is distinguished not only for its technical ability, but for its capacity to make a lasting impact on our lives.” Concrete Cloth’s groundbreaking cement impregnated flexible fabric technology, which allows it to be quickly and easily molded and set into shapes, is a natural choice for 2009’s winner. “With the simple addition of water, Concrete Cloth makes it possible to create safe, durable, non-combustible structures for a wide range of commercial, military and humanitarian uses,” says Dr. Andrew H. Dent, Vice President, Library & Materials Research at Material ConneXion. “This innovation is especially remarkable for enabling the construction of rapidly deployable shelter and food storage structures in disaster relief situations,” Dent adds.

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via dezeen

Re:Vision Dallas Competition Selects Atelier Data / Moov as Final Winner

Yesterday, Urban Re:Vision and the Central Dallas Community Development Corporation announced that “Forwarding Dallas” has been selected as the winning design from Re:Vision Dallas, an international design competition. The challenge, to transform a vacant inner-city block behind City Hall into a carbon-neutral community, drew hundreds of entries from top architecture firms and city planners in 14 countries worldwide.

Forwarding Dallas is the product of a collaboration between Portuguese-based architectural firms Atelier Data and Moov, and will run “off the grid,” acting as a working model of sustainability for cities around the globe. Ground breaking is scheduled for early 2011.

Forwarding Dallas is modeled after one of the most diverse systems in nature, the hillside.  The site is a series of valleys and hilltops, the valleys containing trees and more luxurious plants which transition into more resistant plants as the altitude increases.  Atop the hills, solar thermal, photovoltaic and wind energy is harvested.

Other design components include open ‘green’ spaces, housing options from studio apartments to three bedroom flats, a rooftop water catchment system designed to recycle water collected from rooftops and store underground for later use, a 100% prefabricated construction system and public green houses, including a sensorial greenhouse, swimming pool green house and meeting point green house.

A spiritual space, gymnasium, café and exhibition space are also planned to accommodate various lifestyles.  There is a temporary accommodation center as well as a daycare center designed for both children and the elderly.

Last May, three winners and three honorable mentions were selected from hundreds of entries.  During the months since, Urban Re:vision and the Central Dallas CDC worked with a cadre of pro-bono executives provided by The Real Estate Council Foundation who have done extensive work on the proposed designs, including site analysis, creation of trial proformas, engineering and architectural reviews and estimates of construction costs for all three of the winning designs.  During the first two weeks of November, each of the three winners flew into Dallas for additional discussion.

“All three of the design teams impressed us, both with the quality of their designs and in the interviews,” said John Greenan, Executive Director for Central Dallas CDC.  “Dallas would be a richer city to have the work of any of these architects represented, but as we went further into our review, we began to see the deep logic of the MOOV-Atelier Data design, Forwarding Dallas. Forwarding Dallas seemed to us to do the best job of incorporating concepts of sustainability into the foundation of the design.”

Forwarding Dallas

“One of the things that is terrific is the location of the block being right across from city hall,” said Dallas Mayor Tom Leppert during his welcome at City Hall last December. ”I think it is something that is going to be special for Dallas and it fits in well with what we’re trying to do.”

Considerations for the selection included:

• Sustainability and reality of intent
• Affordability/Constructability: Could it be built in the next few years?
• Innovation and Originality
• Incorporation of Sustainable Materials and Practices

As the re-visioning of one Dallas city block gains momentum, Greenan is already looking toward future endeavors. “The greatest economic impact will come from rebuilding a long neglected part of downtown,” Greenan said. “There are probably an additional half dozen underutilized blocks in the area of the project, and once we prove up the viability of rebuilding the south central part of Downtown Dallas, I think all those blocks will also be revitalized.”

“What I would love to see is an entire section of downtown notable for innovative, sustainable design–an attraction in the southern part of downtown balancing the Arts District in the northern part of downtown. There are already some interesting, green projects in The Cedars immediately to the south of downtown. A sustainable district that extends from downtown all the way into The Cedars neighborhood is a very reasonable possibility.”

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via Bustler

Flat Project by Schemata Architecture Office

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Earlier, in june this year, Japanese architecture studio Schemata poured color epoxy on the top board of school desks which were used in elementary schools. The now ‘Flat’ desks were before uneven due to time deterioration or scribbling. Although the school desks all have the same shape, they gradually gain individual character through the personal items of the pupil, like a school bag or a hat. However, in this project, the individuality of the desks is regenerated through colors, thanks to the craftsmanship and expertise of Nakamura Shuhei. He reset the the unevenness to ‘flat’ with translucent color epoxy. Deep points are mirrored by dense colors and shallow points by more transparent shades. This project is part of the ‘Flat Project’ series.

Currently schemata is displaying their ‘Flat’ project series in an exhibition at happa gallery, Tokyo.
New additions include ‘flat’ tables.

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via designboom

KRob 09 Winners Announced

The 35th Annual Ken Roberts Memorial Delineation Competition, one of the world’s most prestigious architectural drawing competitions, just announced the winners in the professional and student categories.

This year’s jury comprised Jeanne Gang, FAIA, Principal, Studio Gang Architects; Aaron Plewke, Editor, Archinect.com; and Michael O’Keefe, Artist, Educator.

Included here are some of the winning entries for you to enjoy.

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via Bustler (link there for more info on the winners)

Daycare Centre Felsoord / Delft / The Netherlands by Möhn + Bouman Architects

Möhn + Bouman Architects have recently completed the Daycare Centre Felsoord.

The building, located in Delft, The Netherlands, is a rare example of a modern design that usesthatch, a material more commonly associated with 19th century cottages.

The project concerns the extension and renovation of an existing daycare centre for mentally disabled, situated in a natural wetland area near Delft, the Netherlands.

The limitations of the patients make the sensoric / tactile quality of the building a key issue. Their emotional condition as well as their abillity for orientation are greatly determined by the building. The extension is laid out towards the garden as a natural shape and is cladded with thatch. The facades of the existing part could not be cladded with thatch but are treated in two different ways. Facades facing the public space are clad with silk-screened glass, based on a manipulated image of a thatch roof. The adjacent facades can only be perceived in perspective and are covered with a grid of thermally treated pinewood. This grid reacts on the forms of the thatch facade and is continued over the glass parts the extension, uniting old and new. Finally, a new central entrance area is introduced. Here, the thatch-facade as well as the pine-wood facades are extended into the interior, ending in the form of a huge sky-light  hovering over the reception desk.

Visit the website of Möhn + Bouman Architects – here.

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via CONTEMPORIST

ProFORMA: Probabilistic Feature-based On-line Rapid Model Acquisition by Qi Pan

Qi Pan, a PhD student at the University of Cambridge, has developed an interesting technique to model objects using a webcam.

The results are very accurate, and this technique could lead to cheaper software for model scanning, extending the possibilities of how physical study models can be used in early stages of the project.

from the paper website:

ProFORMA: Probabilistic Feature-based On-line Rapid Model Acquisition
Qi Pan, Gerhard Reitmayr and Tom Drummond
Proc. BMVC’09, September 2009, London, UK

The generation of 3D models is very useful for many computer vision applications. This paper introduces ProFORMA, a system designed to enable on-line reconstruction of textured 3D objects rotated by a user’s hand. Partial models are created very rapidly and displayed to the user to aid view planning, as well as used by the system to robustly track the object pose. The system works by calculating the Delaunay tetrahedralisation of a point cloud obtained from on-line structure from motion estimation which is then carved using a recursive and probabilistic algorithm to rapidly obtain the surface mesh. [More]Winner of ISMAR 2009 Best Demo Prize

[2009 BMVC Paper (6.3MB)] [BibTeX]
Real-time system video (Xvid) [High Quality (42MB)]
Article about ProFORMA in Futura-Sciences
Printed article about ProFORMA in November 2009 issue of Sciences et Avenir, page 30

In Latin, “pro forma” means “for shape”, which is the inspiration behind the system name.

Interactive Model Reconstruction with User Guidance
Qi Pan, Gerhard Reitmayr and Tom Drummond
Proc. ISMAR’09, October 2009, Orlando, Florida, USA

The ability to generate models rapidly allows user interactivity during on-line 3D reconstruction. This paper looks at how the user can be guided to provide the required views to generate a complete textured model of an object. [More]

[2009 ISMAR (2.4MB)] [Longer Version (5.6MB)] [Poster (1.9MB)]
Real-time system video (Xvid) [High Quality (36MB)] [Low Quality (18MB)]

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via archdaily and Cambridge University (Qi Pan)

 

SPRINGTIME CHAIR by FRANK WINNUBST

Springtime is an amazing new chair by designer Frank Winnubst which takes one of the key elements of most furniture, breaks it down to its minimal necessity, and then systematically deploys it to make a beautiful (and hopefully) comfortable object.

from the designer:

Springtime

Chairs that are comfortable to sit in usually have an upholstered construction involving springs. A research about the various kinds of springs created an optimum seating comfort, through this way the function determined the form. To ensure that the springs would not feel cold and hard, a knitted cover is added on the top layer.

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via frank winnubst

Hier Und Anderswo (Here And Elsewhere) by Tim Rehm and Tim Sürken / HORT

The quotes on these billboards are from the emails Tim Rehm and Tim Sürken wrote to and received from clients during their freelance work at HORT. They then made these billboards for an exhibition called “hier und anderswo” at the MARTa Herford museum last summer.

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via today and tomorrow

PERFORMA BIENNIAL HUB @ COOPER UNION by nOFFICE

from the designers:

For the Ground Floor space of the new Cooper Union’s building on Cooper Square, nOffice have been commissioned to design and construct a symbiosis of Performa’s central hub – the Biennial’s central meeting and screening place, lecture hall, bookshop and lounge – and a pavilion in which nOffice will broadcast an architectural statement.

 

The pavilion is the direct physical and architectural manifestation of the statement. Acknowledging that they are not performance artists, nOffice explore the thin line between being understood as architects rather than service providers. The practice interprets architecture as providing and enhancing the performance of matter, but still maintain autonomy of production.

 

The space at the Cooper Union will be designed as a coherent environment yet will embody a multiplicity of diverse voices, a democratic archipelago in which hidden structures expose subliminal yet intended narratives. A long and tall wall, which follows the section of a lowered ceiling and produces two kinds of spatial conditions: an open field in which directly visible programmes will take place, as well as a series of pockets, dug into the wall.

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via nOFFICE