Chandler Archbell: Looking Out Week 3

This is ARC, a project by Bernaskoni Architects in Russia.  This large structure made entirely out of 6-meter long boards of wood, allowing the architects to accomplish a waste-free building.  It serves not only as a shelter, bar, and artists space, but also as a portal from forest to field.

This project shows that interesting forms and effects should not be compromised by material limitations.  Although the architects were limited to only one material, they used it to their advantage and created a cost-effective, green structure with a powerful effect.

Yasmeen Almuhanna: Looking Out, Week 13

Temporary Performance Space for the Sydney Festival 2012 / Iain Blampied + Oliver Hessian

Iain Blampied and Oliver Hessian approached the project brief with the understanding that ideally this venue should be an expressive piece of architecture that attracts visitors in its own right while also leaving the inhabiting director as much freedom for creativity and as little distraction as possible.

The transition is intended to link into the wider journey, slowly remove the audience from their setting in order to raise expectations and prepare them for the next performance. The elevations would be integrated with the internal movement of the audience and looked into ways in which the variables might be manipulated in response to this movement-the variables possibly being: radius, length and density.  There are two layers of the skin which explore the use of color, creating a dynamic effect when moving passed the elevation as one layer’s density read against the other, and as the transparency shifts with the perspective.

The elevations are split into panels with each panel having its own assembly information in order for the cylinders to be cut to the correct lengths and fixed together in the warehouse before being shipped to site. The average weight of a single 4x3m panel is estimated at 450kg. The entire cladding structure is made up of 140 panels making a total weight estimate of 70 tons.

Ana Mernik Looking Out Week 13

The Wild Beast is a project by Hodgetts + Fung Design and Architecture. The building is a recital space and outdoor stage for California Institute. It was conceived as a large instrument itself, for tuning musical performances: the "monocoque" roof curves and cantilevers to form a configured acoustic volume that looks like a violin or guitar, while a thin folding plane serves as structural support. The pavilion-like building is adaptable to multiple uses with its large sliding doors that give space for an outdoor performance place, and rotating wall surfaces and pivoting windows can be adjusted to project or refract sound.

Liz Dolinar: Looking Out Week 12

This is a furniture project by dbd Studio in Washington, DC. The storage unit is a wall installation and its organic form continues onto the ceiling. The form was created in Rhino and the physical pieces were CNCed birch plywood sheets. The bookshelf unit was made from a waffle system of notching. The bookshelf is not only functional storage, but an art piece that engages the hallway in a unique way.

Daniel Ha: Looking Out Week 10

Floating School on a Nigerian Lagoon
Architects: NLE (Kunlé Adeyemi)

     The school that Adeyemi designed was designed with the thought that much of the architecture in Nigeria is not permanent due to unpredictable rises of water level due to flooding. This half boat, half house prototype will help educate the people in the surrounding area. But the uses can extend farther than just a school, it could be a market, event space, or clinic that can hold 100 adults with no problem. The structure makes use of local materials, namely wooden off-cuts from a local sawmill and locally grown bamboo.

Liz Dolinar: Looking Out Week 11

This is the Letterbox House by McBride Charles Ryan Architecture in Victoria, Australia. This project is a residential home with an engaging shape and timber exterior. The planks add a great texture to the exterior walls, adding visual interest and emphasizing the angles. The wood of this project "wraps" from the front deck to the vertical walls to the "ceiling" of the deck. This continuity provides us with an understanding of the separate elements (broadly, "plinth," "wall," and "canopy"), while allowing the exterior to still appear as one unit of the facade as it ribbons across the side of the house.

Carter Nelson: Looking Out Week 12

The Riggio-Lynch Chapel in Clinton, Tenn. by Maya Lin flaunts a simple, yet unique design that is both sleek and modern as well as salutes the vernacular architectural forms associated with a boat or basin. The elegance of this project as well as its nautical form fit the program perfectly and represent the function of the space while still being a significant modern form. The pattern of using wood in a chapel setting may be attributed to the vernacular and primitive architecture that chapels began to be realized in but also provides a sense of warmth, connection to nature, and material honesty that is pleasing to experience.







Images found HERE.

Scott Holmes | Looking Out Wood Tectonics

The joinery of wood has been explored for thousands of years. There are multiple ways of making every type of connection with wood. The material's intensive use in architecture over an extended period of time has allowed for new construction technologies to be discovered through wood. Both in joinery with itself and with other materials have been mastered and there will always be an endless amount of precedents for new ways of wood connection and tectonics. Almost any form can be found through wood. This is a product of not only the joinery but the versatile nature of the material. Its ability to bend, connect, glue, form fit, and strengthen allows for an array of uses.

Fah Kanjanavanit: Looking Out Week 12

This simple wood structure is an installation at Central Park by Toshihiro Oki Architect. The project is called "tree wood" and is about exploration and dialogue between the field of architecture and sculpture. The wood is utilized to create a geometrical space within the tree canopy. The skeletal frame is made up of studs and nails.

Danielle Lehmann: Looking Out Week 12

The Bechtel Conference Center is in San Francisco, California and was designed by Marcy Wong Donn Logan Architects. The team wanted to design a conference room which didn't allow people to "take sides" by literally making the room circular. This created a problem though because completely circular rooms apparently have very poor acoustic properties or natural "undesirable acoustic distortion".

In order to correct this the firm worked with several people in order to manufacture rippling, wooden panels. The panels were made by a CNC machine and were "lined with acoustic substrate" The rippling of the wood and the substrate helps to randomly disperse and redirect sound from the center of the room while also being aesthetically pleasing.

Looking into the Conference Center

Walls of Conference Center with two podiums

Plan of entire building - conference center in middle

Looking Out Week 8 | Noopur Suckhlecha

The Casa das Artes (House of the Arts) by FAT (Future Architecture Thinking) in Miranda do Corvo. Its describes the meeting of rural and urban themes into one landscape and does a good job of that by using red on the exterior walls.

The building looks like a massing volumetric mass with sloping roofs.The red color  emphasizes its design and highlights the building through the surrounding landscaped area vegetation.

The project serves spaces that are designed to bring the community and cultures together which is the role of a theatre as well. It also has a design of an amphitheater which is different from traditional theatres seen today.