Carolina Tamayo | Looking Out Week 12

This is the Chokkura Plaza by Kengo Kuma and Associates. It was design for an exhibition in Tochigi, Japan. It celebrates and plays with material and its assembly. In this case, the material is the Ooya stone characterized by its softness and porosity. The building functions as a community hall that has assembly spaces and galleries.

Link: http://www.architecture-page.com/go/projects/chokkura-plaza__all

Alyssa Hamilton: Looking Out Week 12

Hans Scharoun's Berlin Philharmonie is one of the most renowned acoustical spaces. The roof deserve allows for sound to reach the farthest corners without causing an echo. All the service spaces are below the main orchestra space. The tiered seating is all about gathering around the single point of sound within one community-based space. This concept was my inspiration for my Boston Cinema.

Chang Liu: Looking Out Week 12

Evolver is a wooden construction build by 2nd year students from the ALICE Studio at Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland. When you walk through it, you’ll make a 720° turn and have an amazing panorama on the surroundings of Zermatt.

Bollens | Looking Out Week 12

The Wild Reindeer Foundation pavilion by Snohetta uses CNC fabrication to the max to create an interesting curvilinear space within a very orthogonal box-like enclosure. A large window opposing the the fabricated wood seating allows one to take in the natural landscape. It is interesting also that the wood inside is only a cladding over a more conventional structure as seen in section.

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.

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