Spongebob Squarepants, eat your heart out! The Conch Shell House is a beach lover’s fantasy abode. Shaped like a giant white conch shell, the rather unusual home on the island of Isla Mujeres is constructed of concrete and recycled and found materials from the area. It would be cool if an enormous hermit crab lived inside the home, but it’s actually occupied by famous artist Octavio Ocampo.

The bizarre home, which sits right on the beach, has 2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms and a swimming pool. Even the interior of the house follows the rounded shaped of the outside, and many of the curvaceous furnishings have been built right in. The upstairs bathroom sink is made out of the base of a conch shell and the faucets are made out of coral (which we don’t think is the most sustainable material unless it was coral found on the beach…). If staying a night in this lovely seaside home is your dream, you can make it a reality – the homeowner rents it out on occasion for overnight stays and events.

'the vanishing mosque' by rux design all images courtesy of rux design and via traffic

New york-based design studio rux has won the ‘design as reform’ competition hosted by traffic,
a dubai-based art and design collective. the architecture category of the multi-disciplinary
competition called for a reinterpretation of the traditional mosque with a variety of requirements
such as an ablution area, a women’s prayer room, and communal spaces. rux’s design proposal,
‘the vanishing mosque’, plays with the idea of liberating the mosque from a building form
and incorporating it directly into the fabric of the city, making it more visible, connected,
and integral to the spiritual and cultural workings of a community.

The design features a 5000 m2 urban plaza which skews the city grid to forge a forced perspective
view in the direction of mecca. the combined effect of the saw-tooth facades of the surrounding
buildings as well as the angle of the structure makes it seem as if the plaza is vanishing into
the horizon. the space created under the peeled up prayer plinth provides an ablution,
an area for ritual washing.

This cute little prefab is only 220 sq ft and was designed for these unsteady economic times. In other words, it’s cheap! Called the L41 Home and conceived by architect Michael Katz and artist Janet Corne, the prefab home is ultra-compact, built with green materials and energy efficient. Designed to be constructed on piers or a four-point foundation, the home could easily be located on any site with minimal impact. Eventually the designers hope that they can produce it for just $50,000 each.

The goal of the designers of the home is that it will eventually be able to be mass-produced much like a car and become very affordable with economies of scale. At 220 sq ft, the studio packs in built-in storage, living/bedroom space, a kitchen and a bathroom. Other models include a slightly larger 290 sq. ft. 1-bedroom unit and a 360 sq. ft. 2-bedroom unit. These homes could even be included in a much larger, prefabricated multi-unit development.

As for the green features, the L41 is constructed of cross-laminated timber, which is an engineered product made from beetle-killed pine trees in the north-west US. Beetle-killed lumber is structurally sound, but if left to the devices of nature, will rot in the woods. When used for engineered lumber, it is put to good use. Each home includes triple-glazed windows, energy efficient appliances, LED lighting, solar heating, heat recovery, and even a pretty little green roof.

While it looks a bit like something that Queen Amidala might wear on her head, this incredible tower is actually a concept for a multi-use skyscraper for the city of Yerevan in Armenia. Designed by Vahan Misakyan, the insect-like building consists of “structural geodesics” that link up via habitable bridges. Another interesting feature is that the tower will be clad in an “intelligent” skin equipped with rain water collection systems, photovoltaic cells, and wind turbines.

The tower is based on geodesics — soft transitions between the vertical and horizontal planes that peel off from the ground and transform into habitable areas. One of these peels will house a transportation hub and another a park. The towers will have areas for offices, residences, and a hotel, and the bridges between them will be accessible to the public as places to gather and play.

The building will also be equipped with an “intelligent” skin capable of controlling the amount of daylight and ventilation that permeates the structure. The skin will also feature rain water collection systems, photovoltaic cladding and wind turbines.

Capital Gate is a new building forming the entrance to Capital Centre, a major development project in Abu Dhabi and is designed by RMJM Architects.  It is an advanced parametrically designed tower sitting at 160 meters featuring a leaning façade of 18 degrees off horizontal. This technically has given it the title of the most substantial lean to a building in the world according to the Guinness Book of World Records.

The building contains a substantial concrete core slightly off center that carries the cantilevered floors. 490 pilings were cored to a depth of 30 meters to counteract the cantilever. A diagrid exterior structure made of triangular tubular steel units creates a ridged mesh to add support and act as a frame for the custom glazing units. The exterior was also developed to reduce the supports mass, thus weight. The triangular glass is a double glazing unit and is custom cut to fit the constantly changing form of the building’s skin. The individual units were installed in a prebuilt panel that was then secured to the diagrid structure. The building’s exhaust air cycled between the panes of glass to lower the radiant temperature.

The program consists of a hotel and office space. A large daylit atrium starts on the 19^th floor and is formed by a separate internal diagid. Each floor plate is a unique size and shape. The southern façade has an external screen cascading down the face and forming a canopy at ground level. The screen also covers a significant potion of the southern façade thus reducing direct solar gain by 30%. The Capital Gate Project is to be completed by late 2010.

This year’s theme for the London Festival of Architecture, “The Welcoming City”, inspired Superblue Design to create an installation where all could sit together to enjoy the space, but also take an active role in making that place.  Entitled Giant Knitting Nancy, the project is a metaphor for the “interwoven cultures, spaces and places that help make the London a distinctive place.”  By collaborating with sculptor Dan Preston and jewelry designer Holly Packer, the team created a large-scale knitted structure which doubles as an “interactive architectural seating unit.”

Inspired by the knitting toy, Knitting Nancy, Superblue created a scaled up version, allowing visitors to actually participate in making the growing installation.  Throughout the course of the exhibit, over one hundred people added dozens of meters to the structure simply by sitting and knitting together.

The inflatable balls contained within the knitted structure made “an interconnected seating structure connecting people together. This created a space for sitting, reclining, relaxing and playing,” explained the designers.

The piece was a great success and attracted people of all ages to its welcoming and comfortable environment.  Plus, the people were able to leave their mark at the festival as the structure clearly became a celebration of their experiences.

Green Skyscrapers
In the next few days we will showcase 25 innovative proposals for green skyscrapers. These projects were submitted for the Annual Skyscraper Competition from 2006 to 2009.

We designed a building that provides infrastructure, urban facilities, green zone, office and living space. In our view, the real challenge of Mediterranean self-sufficient skyscraper lies not in their design but in integrating these within congested urban areas. What can be designed without damaging historical centres?

Within a well-known base and in the heart of Barcelona, a four million people city-area, the Eixample Quarter, we propose a series of Regenerating Hubs, a 335ft (102m) skyscraper, in essence a mechanism for living, breathing, producing energy, and recycling the huge quantity of waste we produce, for managing scarce resources such as water.

The regenerating hubs, located within the Eixample Quarter blocks.
Provide additional housing for increasingly atomized family structures, to account for the rise in the number of people living alone, reduction in the number of children per family unit, adapting living areas to their specific needs. Hubs would provide accessible housing to both the young and old bracket of the population, with the idea of counteracting rising house prices pushing them out of living in city centres.

Economic hub
Specialized clusters providing workspaces with shared technology. Working close to where you live is made easier, hence reducing traffic and the pollution it creates. Optimizing space on the basis of work schedules.

Social and cultural hubs
Spaces with facilities based on social need, be these of a pedagogic, healthcare, social or leisure nature.

Ecological hubs
Use of clean, non-polluting energies, gathering of organic and inorganic waste, storage and management; centralization of antennae for technology, television, telephony, Internet and radio; collection of resources such as water; attraction and absorption of pollution, creation of large green spaces.  The building is structured along a great vertebral column, centre of communication and access areas. A large perimetal structure is created to support the building height. Housing, workspace and facilities are connected and supported by the same structure. In addition, every house is designed with five ecological and self-sufficient considerations, planned to take care of the management of energy and material resources.

Solar structure
collecting rays through photovoltaic panels, oriented according to the seasons; accumulation of energy, supplying the block as a support to already existing sources of energy; heating and air conditioning.

Recycling structure
conditioning of all housing, workspace and facilities with specialized recycling ducts. Ducts for glass, aluminium, plastic, paper and organic waste, functioning through gravity and suction. Placing of containers below the structure. Conditioning the whole block in order to centralize waste disposal and management.

Pollution and telecommunication
support structure: captivation of dust, heavy particles in suspension, through an electrically charged structure in the housing exteriors. This would result in a large concentration being formed around the building exterior and acting both as a thermal insulator and acoustic buffer.

Green structure
Each living space has a landscaped roof for cultivation of vegetables, plants and small trees and an annexed lateral green house. The green structure articulates the whole building, from the access areas to the heart of each block (as was contemplated by Cerdà) and each of the building decks, thus converting the whole area into a vertical and horizontal green space. The inhabitants will be in charge of a green space equal to the space rented or bought.

Water structure
Channelling of water coming off the decks, filtering and storage. Reutilization for irrigation, WC, washing machines, etc. Water collection from the constructed area’s whole surface and surrounding green zones.

As we move toward the year 2040, the demands for energy, mobility and space in Los Angeles continue to grow in a region already overwhelmed with urban sprawl, traffic congestion, scarce open space, and inferior public transportation.  Excessive autonomy of living situations and transportation are at the root of these problems.  The 25-Hour City looks to oppose the Los Angeles urban model of autonomy by creating an urban environment with hyper-density and vibrancy by incorporating everything, everywhere, all the time.  The hyper-mixing of program allows for the freedom of continuous work or leisure at anytime of the day or night.  This urban configuration is coupled with the programmatic dispersal of commercial, residential, retail, public, and recreational space to fulfill the 25-Hour City concept.

This vertical proposal accomplishes the ultimate level of sustainable responsibility vis-à-vis hyper levels of land-use efficiency. By condensing 75,000 people in one tower, transportation needs are reduced substantially while open space on the ground level is maintained.  When dealing with the hyper-dense situation of 80,000 people / km², parameters of natural light and ventilation become the most prominent influences on zoning and massing throughout the city. Using these parameters of light and air to understand limits in density that can happen at the ground level, the only logical way for a city to grow is vertically. Through the use of this logic, swells in the urban fabric are created that evolve into vertical cities where the limits of density cease to exist.

Cities as we know it achieve variety through zoning distributions along the horizontal plane; this 25-Hour Tower proposal investigates how this programmatic variety can be accomplished in a vertical format. In order to create a city that includes a multitude of program types and sizes in a vertical situation, the overall building area must increase substantially compared to a typical high-rise in order to provide an extensive amount of programmatic and spatial diversity within the structure. The varieties embedded within a city are developed through different program types and sizes and their mixture.  This vertical city proposal reaches a level of ultimate diversity by being composed in a fashion that creates micro-autonomous areas of one program typology, a multitude of mixed program areas, as well as areas of hyper-diversity.

The vertical city is composed of networked strands of program that expand and contract in their spacing between one another in order to create the desired level of variety.  This alteration in the spacing of the strands does not affect the amount of program embedded within the building; the degree of compaction determines the level of programmatic diversity that occurs.  A vertical city is also faced with technical issues such as vertical circulation, natural light, ventilation, and structure.  The control of these technical parameters are embedded within the massing strategy used for programmatic distribution.  The spacing of the strands develops voids for natural light and ventilation, and the continuity of the strand network maintains structural integrity for the massing.  A dynamic and robust vertical circulation system is produced by developing a hierarchical system of express and local elevators that create multiple ways to reach a single destination.

Architecture students Kim Lagercrantz and Chia-Ching Yang from SCI-Arc talk about their design for a fashion muesum in Los Angeles, California.

Exploring the 2D&3D qualities of flatness and contemporary pop-culture, we intend to develop systems of color, texture and plastics that will produce multiple affects and various degrees of sensation. Relating to the urban obsession for the Surface, the envelope becomes the prime target for an architectural escape that offers immediate satisfaction. Although our building may appear as a solid from the exterior, the interior reveals a new kind of figural condition developed from the initial two-dimensional digital drawing applied to the Surface.

Articulated as floating exhibition Chambers, the elongated rooms open up to the outside revealing views over the city. From the exterior, they appear as glowing stars on the façade. We seek qualities of the ephemeral and temporal, a sense of continuity, but also a clear spatial transition, which reinforces similarities as well as unexpected differences. We are interested in this relationship, the juxtaposition of different qualities, the figure, the effects it may produce. Reaching the opening, color becomes darker, texture deeper, while the epicenter is white revealing a blush inside which eventually fades into new color. Using color we maximize contrast between Surface and Chamber.

Throughout history, through his need for civilization, man has created buildings that consume resources. The skyscraper is the epitome of this voracious consumption, its highly dense grouping of activities ie work, play, rest etc has become an ominous harbingers of our ecologically bleak future. As a reaction to the modern skyscrapers and its dilemmas the world’s eminent minds have created many variations of the skyscraper in the form of the antithetical subscrapers, groundscrapers and even depth scraper. Yet still they still struggle to achieve zero input/zero output in terms of resource production. There are greenscrappers which , though themselves are ecologically sound, are tied to and urban fabric and interconnection of production networks which are still contributing negatively towards the environment.

The ^hO₂+ scraper proposes to break free of the urban fabric and functions as self-sufficient ambassadors in the sea. The ^hO₂+ scraper is an autonomous floating unit of livable, functional and self sustaining space which will function, in a collective manner, as a floating city.  It is self sufficient as it generates its own power through wave, wind, current, solar, bio etc. and it generates its own food through farming, aquaculture, hydroponics etc. It carries with its own small forest on top its back and supports places for users to live and works  in its depths. Its bioluminescent tentacles provide sea fauna a place to live and congregate while collecting energy through its kinetic movements. Such sustainability strategies aim to ultimately create and provide an oasis with ‘Zero’ negative impacts to the environment, not only that but also improves on it hence the ’Plus’. Aptly as poetic antithesis to a skyscraper which goes up into the heavens the ^hO₂+ scraper goes down to the depths of the sea.

The main components of the programme for the ^hO₂+ scraper consist of resource generation (i.e. power, food, air etc), living, work, play, waste treatment and maintenance. The programme is spread evenly in accordance to the proximity of any specific required external resource i.e. the wind generators are placed of the roof garden island, the livestock farming component is also placed there, the living areas are placed just below sea level where the natural light is the best etc.

The building itself is kept upright using a system of ballast and balancing tanks. The tentacles also serve as balancing elements as they, in generating their power, are constantly moving with the rhythm of the tide. The buoyancy and ballast controls are placed at the lowest portions to create the proper counterforce for keeping the building upright.

In the finality, we envision a future where land as a resource will be scarce; it is only natural progression that we create our own. Approximately 71% of the Earth’s surface is ocean, even more if climate change has its way, hence it is only natural progression that we will populate the seas someday. We picture a new metapolis, created from a collection of ^hO₂+ scrapers,   as a city that does not consume nature but creates and produces nature.  In the end becoming   ^hO₂+ Cities.