Carolina Tamayo | Looking Out Week 16

This is a wooden swing/ sculpture design was created by Veronica Martinez. It was crafted by Spanish sculptors and is made out of cerejeira wood and treated with Teka oil. The ergonomic curved shape makes this seat a comfortable and relaxing space to be in.  Additionally,  the leaf form was inspired by warm season of autumn.

Link: http://www.trendir.com/archives/006525.html

Alyssa Hamilton: Looking Out Week 15

Temppeliaukio Church ("The Rock Church") in Helsinki by brother Timo and Tuomo Suomalainen

The church looks like a spaceship landed from the outside but the inside is forgettable thank you're halfway underground and around ruins. Its about taking the old and capping it with the new (literally). Its use of wood, metal and stone give the very open space a lot of contrast and variety.

Alyssa Hamilton: Looking Out Week 14

The Chapel of Silence, Kamppi
This building is about looking inward and pondering. Its use of light and lack of windows emphasizes this. The use of wood is supposed to give a warm, comfortable, and peaceful setting for ceremonies.

Alyssa Hamilton: Looking Out Week 13

The Cathedral of Christ The Light by Craig W. Hartman

This building is all about the light (literally in the name too). It all about purity to the light, airiness, and height, while keeping the space warm and comforting, hence the use of wood. There is a double layered skin enclosure, one system of wooden slats and the second of mullion-less glass paneling.

Carolina Tamayo | Looking Out Week 6

Wood Home in Sao Paulo, Brazil designed by Marcio Koban. The wooden facade opens up into an exterior courtyard. 

Link: http://www.trendir.com/house-design/innovative-brazilian-architecture-concrete-house-with-folded-wood-walls.html

Chandler Archbell: Looking Out Week 5

Loblolly House: Kieran Timberlake Associates
Taylor's Island, MD

Situated on the edge of the beautiful Chesapeake Bay in Maryland, this house was inspired by nature itself.  The architects worked to design a modular, mostly prefab house that would also sit well with its context.  They utilized long wooden piles as supports, which were angled to mirror the large trunks of the loblolly pines on the site.  They also designed a beautiful cedar rainscreen, which was an abstraction of the forest view on the site.  The entire house is made up of modular cubes that were assembled together to create a series of rooms with open spaces between them.

Liz Dolinar: Looking Out Week 13

This is the Café del Arco by Clavel Arquitectos in Murcia, Spain (2009). The project was a redesign of the existing cafe, which linked two important districts in the city. The vertical wood facade wraps around the walls from the street face to the "interior," showing that the whole cafe is really an open eating space. The facade/interior screen is made from strips of iroko wood set on a steel frame, and designed to balance transparency and privacy. The wood serves as an extension from the street, emphasizing the open, outdoor nature of the cafe, while adding a sense of enclosure from the "screen" and a warm atmosphere.

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.

Chandler Archbell: Acoustics through the art of poetry

Sound.

A manifestation of itself,

it forms through waves

within the air.

Pressure changes

and deviates from the average

like hipsters in the streets.

They cause a motion,

they make a noise.

Chandler Archbell, 2014

As this prolific poem accurately explains, sound is the product of waves caused by rapid variations of pressure in the air.  These waves push and pull on air molecules, forming what are called compressions and rarefactions (similar to the peaks and troughs of normal waves).  Sound waves coming from a source either go directly into the listener's ear or reflect off surfaces and create reverberation.  Reverberation is a stream of continuing sound created when sound waves constantly reflect off surfaces after the original sound is produced.  The reverb time is the amount of time it takes for the frequency of reverberations to drop below perception level.  Because of their size, concert halls and theaters usually have a long reverb time.

Acoustic panels work best when they don't have any cover or finish that interferes with the acoustical infill or substrate.  They should be positioned to allow the sound to reflect evenly throughout the theater.  Here's a helpful image:

This sexy wood is brought to you by the National Theater of Bahrain.  The architects used wood due to its acoustically reflective surface, which allows sound to spread easily throughout the large space.  The shape of the interior shell also directs sound where it needs to go.  The theater space is also completely soundproof, and it exists as a separate entity from the rest of the building.

Dat separation.

Looking Out: Week 6 (NICOLAS GOMEZ)

This Wood Block House by Tadashi Yoshimura Architects showcases an interesting implementation of wood as an interior element. Behind the exterior facade made out of glass and stone, a basket-like wooden texture of timber envelops the interior spaces.

This structural shear, as the architects call it, is easily assembled and stacked. The fact that this does not require skilled workers makes it a very accessible design element for many architects.

Looking Out Week 7: Madhura Kharche

This is the Rakvere Summer theatre in Tallin, Estonia. This outdoor theatre is built for various performances. It is built in a way that allows the plants, trees and the pond to become as significant part of the stage. The use of wood allows light construction that creates various types of interesting spaces and dynamic stage lighting.

Looking Out Week 6 :Madhura Kharche

This is one of the Bogota Tourist Information Spots. The simple rectangular design allows easy circulation for tourists. The wood emphasizes the two axes of the rectangular plan and section.

The use of wood makes it easy to make a light structure that could be multiplied easily. The same units could be used to make different types of rectangles, with different arrangements for interiors.

Looking Out Week 5:Madhura Kharche

This is a design for a multifunctional center and development of the natural environment. It explores a system of three different structures of wood working together as main structure, cladding, and supports/ screens, to allow different types of spaces and experiences.

Using wood as a material for such a project definitely emphasizes the concept and the main goal of the design. It creates spaces that would be most natural for the plants and the occupants.