Toyo Ito wins Royal Gold Medal

The Japanese architect Toyo Ito has won this year’s Royal Gold Medal.

digital wall, detail of the exhibition
‘toyo ito architetto’,
basilica palladiana, vicenza, italy

Ito is known for his aesthetic of lightweight, permeable membranes composed of fabrics, perforated aluminium panels and expanded metal sheets, resulting in projects such as Tower of Winds (1986), Restaurant Nomad (1986) and Yatsushiro Municipal Museum (1991).

RIBA News

Add comment September 29th, 2005

HMC MediaLab’s Hyperfabric

HMC MediaLab’s Adam Montandon came over to me at the end of the submerge exhibition in June and asked me about my flexible wall skin I used for my Project Reciprocal Space. A few months later to create this fantastic project he used the same material to make an interactive surface that you can actually penetrate beyond a flat surface into virtual space made tactile and interactive.

“You really feel like you are going “through” the screen. ”

“HMC MediaLab designed the hyperfabric after working with large scale touchscreens and touchtables. The team found that whilst they were very effective at controlling computers, they just didn’t “feel” touchable. HMC MediaLab wanted to create something that you could really engage with, so it’s perfect for adults and children of all ages and abilities. ”

Add comment September 27th, 2005

Bartlett Kicks Off

MArch AVATAR combined with the Interactive Architecture Workshop

Many of our critical understandings are derived from second order cybernetics, especially the work of Gordon Pask, Francisco Varela and Heinz von Foerster – who was also a magician. Interactive Architecture, like magic, is based in differentiating types of perception – there are three broad types.

Add comment September 26th, 2005

Second Skin – Lutyens & Winkler

A project that explores the structure of mind as mirrored by emergent architecture.

Second Skin is a project that involves architecture students and professionals from around the globe to form the basis for a new emergent approach to architecture.

Urbanization and architectural strategies usually follow a vector from macro to micro, from general to specific, from prescribed and mandatory to subjective and personal. Second Skin turns this trajectory around, seeking a process of emergent design. Second Skin starts by examining patterns, qualia and structures seated within the unconscious that relate to conception of shelter and dwelling.

These modules of mental processing are coaxed out through an application of a hypnotic induction technique and projected into the terrain of architecture. The Second Skin is an architectural space that corresponds to an enlarged self, that comprises aspects of memory, brain function and deeply rooted notions of protection and shelter. Essentially, Second Skin uses the processes of mind as a model for architectural approaches and at the same time uses architecture as a metaphor for housing the collective space of mind.

Each student listens to a trance-inducing audio track that is designed to evert architecturally based forms from the unconscious. The students draw their impressions on paper in a trance state, and record a detailed description of their impressions, such as specific qualities relating to size, form, structure, materials, viewpoint, kinaesthetic and proprioceptive experiences related to their own Second Skin.

The next stage of the project involves everting this information into a format that can be objectively assessed, mapped, processed and reconfigured. The aim is to build a model of an intratypical dwelling, or in short, a structure that emerges and evolves from a morphing and merging of a collective of intratypes.

Website

also visit ArtBrain for an article about the project written by Tania Lopez Winkler.

Add comment September 24th, 2005

Kinetic Lighting – Front & the Interactive Institute

Between 20-25% of the energy consumed in UK households is used by lighting. So a light that indicates how much energy is being consumed within the home at any moment seems a particularly appropriate innovation

Stockholm-based industrial designer Front has done just this. It has designed the Flower Lamp, a 1m-long prototype made of slices of reflective plastic which open and close like a flower, in response to energy use in the home. The lamp incorporates a mechanical motor connected to a digital meter, which monitors energy use. The motor then determines to what extent the plastic strips that make up the lamp’s “petals” are opened or closed. The lamp only opens when the occupier is restrained in their power consumption — if too much is used it closes again.

This is just one of the many imaginative prototypes that are being developed by the Swedish Interactive Institute’s research project called Static! in which designers, engineers and artists use design to solve energy issues.

The Bubble Lamp designed by Front is a paper lampshade that “bubbles” when the lamp is switched on visually demonstrating how energy is being released.

Add comment September 23rd, 2005

Maximilian’s Schell – Ball & Nogues

The new vortex-shaped, outdoor installation by architects Benjamin Ball and Gaston Nogues warps the flow of space with a featherweight rendition of a celestial black hole; “the deadliest force in the Universe.” Hovering over M&A’s courtyard “Maximilian’s Schell” is a spectacle the size of an apartment building that has been stopping traffic along Silver Lake Boulevard since its unveiling in June. Constructed with tinted Mylar resembling stained glass, the vortex functions as a shade structure, swirling above the outdoor gallery.

The interior of this immersive experimental installation creates an environment for enhanced social interaction and contemplation by changing the space, color, and sound of the M&A courtyard gallery. During the day as the sun passes overhead, the canopy casts colored fractal light patterns onto the ground while a tranquil subsonic drone from an integrated ambient sound installation by composer James Lumb (Electric Skychurch) entitled “Resonant Amplified Vortex Emitter,” lightly rumbles below the feet of visitors

1 comment September 13th, 2005