Archive for May, 2009
Scheduled to open October 2009, Asymptote Architecture’s YAS hotel in Abu Dhabi is currently nearing completion. Based in NYC, Asymptote are known for their work at the crossroads of Art and Architecture.
Yes, that’s a formula 1 racetrack you can see in front of the hotel in the image below.
The grid-shell encompassing the hotel complex consists of 5,800 pivoting diamond shaped glass panels. With the help of lighting integrated behind each panel, designed in conjunction with Arup Lighting in NYC, the project is said to ‘respond visually and tectonically to it’s environment.
I am yet to figure out for sure whether the individual panels of this facade actually move, but I do remember hearing about a year ago that this was the intention. Regardless of whether this ambitious plan made it through to the final design – the result is definitely spectacular. This hotel is, after all, in the desert.
Asymptote’s founders and partners Hani Rashid and Lise Anne Couture quote their inspiration for the architectural landmark as ‘aesthetics and forms associated with speed, movement and spectacle to the artistry and geometries forming the basis of ancient Islamic art and craft traditions.’
In 2004 Hani Rashid and Lise Anne Couture were awarded the Frederick Kiesler Prize for Architecture and the Arts in recognition of contributions to the progress and merging of Arts and Architecture. For this project, I’ll be keen to see what they do with the facade (content?) once it’s up and running.
May 24th, 2009
Interactive Architecture is evolving after 4 years of me writing some 388 articles on my own. I’ve invited Lighting Designer Ben Kreukniet from United Visual Artists & Interaction Designer Paul Skinner from Digit to contribute to the blog as guest writers.
May 18th, 2009
Coop Himmelblau was founded in 1968 by architects Wolf D. Prix, Helmut Swiczinsky and Rainer Michael Holzer. In its early days, the firm was based in Vienna, but moved to Los Angeles in the 1980’s. Their early experimental works included a series of installations in which people played key roles. These experiments included inflatable spaces that could fit into a suitcase. These particular experiments were small enough that they were represented in full scale. However most of their earlier work was represented by large-scale models. Coop Himmelb(l)au paid attention to extreme detail, creating interior models, many times, at a scale of 1:10.
Their work was inherently performative, a couple of examples being “Soul Flipper”, a face helmet that is sensitized to react to movements of facial muscle and skin to transmit optical and acoustical signals and ‘Hard Space’, an event in which heart microphones were attached to the three group-members and electronicallv connected to three explosive charges two kilometers away. The transmission of the three heartbeats activated the explosions, and three “instant” (and very temporary) spaces were realized.
The name “Coop Himmelblau” is German for “Blue-Sky Cooperative” and reflects the firm’s design intent to make architecture that alludes to cloud-like and heavenly imagery through complex angular forms that create dynamic and airy spaces, as well as their extensive use of glass and steel in their projects.
Some of Coop Himmelblau’s recent projects which best exemplify this design intention are the BMW welt in Munich, the Cinema Center in Busan, South Korea, and particularly the Akron Art Museum in Akron, Ohio, completed in 2007.
May 13th, 2009
When the groundbreaking Prada store by Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas opened in New York’s SoHo neighborhood in 2001, the concept of retail design was forever changed. Now, less than a decade later, the Pritzker Prize-winning architect and the Italian fashion house have done it again with the Transformer, a shape-shifting event structure in Seoul, South Korea that will accommodate art, cinema, and style events for the brand.
The pavilion combines the four sides of a tetrahedron: hexagon, cross, rectangle, and circle into one structure. Covered with a smooth elastic membrane, the steel-framed building can be flipped and rotated using cranes, reconfiguring the structure into one of its four different façade and floor-plate configurations to complement the nature of a given event.
“The interesting thing about this building is the acknowledgement of the Transformer as a dynamic organism, opposed to simply a static object, which arbitrarily fits program,” says Koolhaas. “Prada Transformer helps add an extra dimension regarding the treatment of this typology by allowing it to be molded in real time, depending on the specific programs it intends to facilitate inside.
Located in Seoul’s 16th-century Kyeonghee Palace, the Transformer opened on April 25 with “Waist Down,” an inaugural exhibition featuring the skirt designs of the label’s doyenne, Miuccia Prada, that will run through May 24.
May 6th, 2009
