Write on glass

I see glass walls with writings, I see the movie "13 ghosts".
God, the horror of photographic memories...

Shanghai Museum of Glass

Logon Architecture

From Archdaily:


Located in Shanghai’s Baoshan District, this former glass manufacturing site covers a total area of 29,612sqm including thirty existing buildings varying in age and scale. logon developed the entire 20 year strategic development plan renaming the site to G+Glass Theme Park (Glass, Art, Research and Technology Park). Phase one includes the Shanghai Museum of Glass and a hot glass show covering a total site area of 5,785sqm


The Shanghai Museum of Glass multifunctional design combines exhibitions with hot glass shows, DIY workshops, lectures, libraries, restaurants, coffees, events, shops, public space and so on. Its’ sustainable adaptive reuse design and modern feel incorporate old and new ideas making it the first of its’ kind in China. The Entrance Plaza is the face of the museum enabling immediate recognition and recall for visitors where it guides people into the museum, hot glass show and surrounding areas.


The new entrance building stands on the Entrance Plaza acting as a welcoming platform for the museum. Contrasting the dark facade with the bright lobby interior creates a unique first impression for visitors to the museum. The facade is made from U shaped glass imported from Germany, sand blasted and enameled to reveal transparent glass-related words in various languages. Behind the glass facade is a LED backlight that allows light to glow through each word on its black background; the final effect is breathtaking by night. The Shanghai Museum of Glass will educate and entertain thousands of visitors whilst adding value to the local district government and people for years to come.

The making of a swing

Finished my mid-term exam!

To celebrate the end of the short hiatus, let's start with something light~

Noodle, people?

Beijing Noodle No. 9 | Las Vegas
design spirits co., ltd

PS:
  Dear Architortureland residents,
       my mid-term exam is due June 13
            so I'd probably be away
                 for a week or so
                     ...for the sake of my sanity.
                           Wish me luck! \(- -)/*******

A glowing pond!

Blue Frog Lounge | Mumbai

Serie Architects

Tori! Tori! Tori!

Tori Tori Restaurant | Mexico City

Rojkind Arquitectos and Hector Esrawe

Senor, Senora, Barcelona

Barceloneta Market | Barcelona

MiAS Arquitectes

Treehugger

The Treehugger | Germany

One Fine Day Architects

Somebody call 911!

Ever seen a burning building in which people keep walking?
No?


Thus, I declare the saying "no smoke without fire" is not always true.

Blur Building | Swiss

Diller Scofidio + Renfro

From the architect:

The Blur Building was built for the Swiss Expo 2002 on Lake Neuchatel. It is an architecture of atmosphere. The lightweight tensegrity structure measures 300 feet wide by 200 feet deep by 75 feet high. The primary building material is indigenous to the site, water. Water is pumped from the lake, filtered, and shot as a fine mist through 31,500 high-pressure mist nozzles. A smart weather system reads the shifting climactic conditions of temperature, humidity, wind speed and direction, and processes the data in a central computer that regulates water pressure.

Upon entering the fog mass, visual and acoustic references are erased, leaving only an optical "white-out" and the "white-noise" of pulsing nozzles. Blur is an anti-spectacle. Contrary to immersive environments that strive for high-definition visual fidelity with ever-greater technical virtuosity, Blur is decidedly low-definition: there is nothing to see but our dependence on vision itself.

The white tree of...

...GONDOR !!

As a huge fan of Tolkien's "The Lord of The Rings",

I'd be lying to say this didn't remind me of The White Tree of Gondor.

Bite me.

The Tote | Mumbai

Serie Architects

Desperate vs delusional

From Architizer.

"We identified a few of the most common visual gambits in the architectural photography game, from the desperate to the delusional."

On "how do they do it"

"We design by challenging - by asking the right questions."

- Foster and Partners 

When Kaohsiung glows

2nd place in Kaohsiung Marine Gate Project

Asymptote Architecture and Artech Architects 

From Archdaily:

Asymptote Architecture and Artech Architects were awarded a close second place finish for the Kaohsiung Marine Gateway project.

The project proposes a 200m long structure situated between two 14 story towers located at the cities newly developed harbor edge. The proposal calls for a new urban intervention at the cities waterfront combining both cultural and commercial aspects with the port terminal functions the building is designed to house. The buildings technological envelope and architecture and is designed to be a striking and elegant addition to the quickly changing city of Kaohsiung and to act as a catalyst for unique and sustained urban development over the coming years and decades.

Asymptote’s design for the new Kaohsiung Marine Gateway Terminal proposes a visually powerful and highly efficient transport and public facility that connects the heart of Kaohsiung to the city’s impressive waterfront.
The Kaohsiung Marine Gateway Terminal as envisioned by Asymptote is designed to invigorate and activate Kaohsiung’s city edge at the waterfront though vibrant open public spaces and facilities that together bring a powerful and electric experience to the city 24 hours a day. The new Kaohsiung Marine Gateway Terminal would become the primary marine gateway to both the city of Kaohsiung as well as to all of Taiwan.

The new Kaohsiung Marine Gateway Terminal is designed as a new state of the art transport interchange, a destination with both public and private commercial facilities including exhibition and event spaces for the people of Kaohsiung as well as for national and international visitors.
The project transforms the site from its industrial roots into a dynamic urban hub, the new terminal is a celebration of international travel as well as local culture and recreation.

Say "aaaaaaaaaa~rch"

Tama Art University Library

Toyo Ito

...how many decades does MY university library require to transform into this kind of wonder?

If we have this amazing-looking place as a library, we'd be keener in our study!
...or at least we'll read more.

A split decision

Bella Sky Hotel | Copenhagen

3XN Architects

From Archdaily:


‘Although Bella Sky is the Nordic region’s largest hotel, we have done everything to ensure that the hotel doesn’t give the typical impersonal and formal feeling that so often defines large hotels,’ says 3XN Architects’ founder and partner, Kim Herforth Nielsen. ‘Therefore, we decided to interpret the overall theme as New Nordic Cool. We looked at how Scandinavians approach the design of their homes, how they live – and then chose the best of our design tradition for the Bella Sky Hotel. Key words for us were simplicity, functionality and high quality, both in design and materials.’


Therefore anything synthetic was banned in the selection of materials for the hotel’s 814 rooms. Carpets are in wool, bed sheets in high thread count cottons, and there is a prevailing use of natural materials such as smoked oak and leather found throughout the décor. The smokey colour palette gives the rooms warmth and at the same time creates references to the Nordic nature, which is evident from the hotel views over the nature park, ‘Amager Common.’


3XN has chosen the best from the Nordic tradition in terms of furniture designers, and has used a strategy comprising both new and classic design from a selection such as Hay, Arne Jacobsen and Finn Juhl. The common thread running through the chosen furniture, textiles and lamps, are round organic forms, which underline the informal and relaxed mood.

Plastik fantastik

AIA Pavilion

Gernot Riether

The pavilion not only demonstrates the work of the digital design build studio that Riether leads at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, but also uses glycol-modified polyethylene terephthalate (PETG). This material can either be produced from recycled plastic, or more pertinent to this location, from sugar cane: a plant that has been an integral part of the culture of Louisiana for over 200 years.

The pavilion is situated in the beautifully restored courtyard of a local gallery owned by Arthur Ross, close to North Rampart at 1025 Orleans Street, the 18 sqm pavilion comprises 320 different PETG cells. The cells were prefabricated and assembled into six larger components, designed to stack and fit into a small truck, and to be installed in less than two days by Riether and eight students. The pavilion cost $2,500 to build.

The pavilion’s geometry distorts in response to specific site conditions, solar orientation and programmatic requirements, such as lighting, seating, viewing, planting and water harvesting, with each of the cells shaped by scripted rules. Using CNC technology, each template was cut from PETG sheets, before being thermoformed into shape using a neatly designed adaptable mould.

Pinching and reconnecting the surface was used as a technique to increase the structural performance of the envelope. At strategic locations the skin morphs into bracing and column like systems. Structure and building envelop are combined into a single material system.

Using PETG as a material suggests a negative carbon footprint. According to one of it’s world’s largest manufacturer, “Dow Chemicals” every 0.5kg of PETG produced from sugar cane represents a total gain of almost 1kg of CO² removed from the atmosphere. Since the AIA pavilion used 123kg of material, the production of the pavilion would remove 246kg of CO² from the atmosphere. This demonstrates that producing PETG from sugar cane has tremendous environmental benefits that might make plastic the building material of the 21st century.