The traditional theater stagehouse, with its flies, catwalks, upstage, backdrops, battens, wings and traps certainly poses an aesthetic and formal issue for architects, often characterized typologically by a tall, dark, and oftentimes awkward volume shoved out of the top of the building.
Grafton Architects tackle the problem of tradtional theater design here…
This living laboratory is just that. Its concrete shell is covered in high-density insulation wrapped in geo-fabric, and a secondary support structure envelops the building mass. The secondary structure supports 1200 hydroponically grown ferns “coming from the Devonian period, technologically domesticated to come back in the actual regressive French period,” in order to achieve a subtropical retreat in the middle of Paris.
Drastically simplified forms accentuate the rich spatial complexity of this house and studio in Stuttgart Germany by C18 Architects.
Construction photographs from Diller Scofidio + Renfro’s High Line project, an adaptive reuse of a 1.5 mile abandoned elevated railway on the west side of Manhattan.
Images courtesty of Diller Scofidio + Renfro
This six-apartment building is placed in Tokyo. The design is the result of a competition.
The building is strongly additive: It begins from the inside with a strict, minimalist formal response to the site, executed in a rich material palette. (Each apartment has a distinct personality, informing the materiality for its very different spaces.) The structure then expands outward as needed to accommodate spatial requirements and to ‘grow’ around the existing trees on the site. Considering environmental sensitivity as a design parameter, this response is a sort of contemporary form-follows-function.
Image © Peter Zumthor, Kunsthaus Bregenz; Photo: Markus Tretter.
These photographs are from an exhibition of Peter Zumthor’s work at the Kunsthaus Bregenz (Modern Arts Center) in Austria. By Zumthor’s directive, the exhibition is focused on video installations on the upper level of the museum. This reflects the idea that his work is based on the human experience of space.
The iT HOUSE was constructed in a matter of weeks from prefabricated components that were delivered to the site by each manufacturer, and then assembled. The building uses both active and passive techniques and smart appliances to maintain its independence from the energy grid.
Snohetta’s September 11 Museum will be perhaps one of the most prominently sited buildings of our time, placed decidedly amongst the two pools of the World Trade Center Memorial.
This prefabricated structure is sited in an isolated mountainous of Australia. Sheathed in copper, the 10×10 foot building closes down to protect it from brush fire, as well as precipitation. The project also manipulates the elements by employing passive heating and cooling techniques and a water collection cistern (which provides running water).
Rubber music studio/practice space for the University of Sheffield in the UK.
This project makes a strong postmodern statement in its interpretation of building type through materiality. The “stringent acoustic requirements” of this music center are expressed in literal terms with the use of a thick rubber skin.