Thursday, February 28, 2008

OFT by Sand & Birch

Nothing is new under the sun. Images shows concept of modular spaces to be assembled to form spaces for families and possibilities of rearrangement.
"The name OFT comes from the word Loft, in which it has been taken out the "L", that has to be meant like the dimension "Large". The OFT is in fact of limited dimensions in its basic composition, but, as well as the loft, it is characterized by spaces adaptable to changeable necessities."

"The OFT, transformable in time and space, it's a highly changeable system, which can easily comply with individual necessities. We have imagined a home that would easily allowed to assemble different pieces and to change them during the time. Adding or subtracting elements, also temporarily."
"The OFT can be a temporary house waiting for other settlement, an holiday house, an home-office to be placed in your garden, a dépendance for your guests, a home for young people who can gradually increase their living space…" to find out more...

Passage & Images from

Wednesday, February 27, 2008

zeroHouse wins Texas Society of Architects award

I like prefab house alot. Normally, prefab house requires several aspects: -
1. It’s aesthetic requirement.
2. It needs to look nice, cute and preferably small and clients are normally young couples or younger generation that prefers high-tech stuff.
3. Its’ well-thought and neat consideration of the living conveniences that pre-fabricated into the house.
4. Its’ easy to construct and installation cuts down the construction time
5. It can be seen and modified easily at range provided by the designers, and made to save up time.
6. It can even grow and assembled with several prefab modular houses depending on site area.
In short, it has to be user friendly, good looking, cost effective and a huge time saver from all aspect from design decision to site construction. I would love to get myself one of these in the future. Maybe design one for myself and turn it into a product to share or sell. My comment on zeroHouse would be the roof~! It should allow sun to come through. Glass or trellis is better solution then metal deck.

"The zerohouse was the only winner of a 2007 TSA Studio Award. The Studio Award category encompasses all unbuilt and theoretical work. Images of the house will appear in the October 2007 issue of Texas Architect magazine, and the house will be presented at the TSA convention in Austin. http://texasarchitect.org/news_detail.php?news_id=116&sess_id=c717d8987367465ea523cad06eb1f537" [1]
Passage[1] from http://www.spechtharpman.com/Images from http://www.zerohouse.net/

Aqua Tower by Studio Gang

This building is not attractive to me yet the rationality behind is something for your inspiration. I would propose something modular towards the building skin, then the solution now embraced by Aqua tower.
We at the moment are doing sun shading studies from sketchup, just a simple morning to evening sun path study, having shading devices to be implemented on the right side of the building.
The challenge we are facing is to implement a skin system towards the entire building that consists of service apartment, office tower and podium with elevated car parking and retail lots.

TNA Ring House

Ring House from TNA. What is implemented on the external facade brings impact to the internal. to find out more...
Images from http://www.tna-arch.com/archi/archi_wa01.html

Guillermo Hevia

Interesting facade treatment by Guillermo Hevia at Santiago Chile, 2005.
to find out more...








Friday, February 22, 2008

The Architecture Profession: A Brief Introduction

For people who is studying in Malaysia or having intension to be an architect in Malaysia, this is useful reading material posted as a thread in lowyat forum.
"I'm writing this guide as universal as possible so that anybody who's interested in pursuing this field can get a definitive idea of what to do, where to go and how. I will update this as frequent as possible. There have been several inquiries on studying architecture, so I wish I could redirect them to this topic. Although I'm attached to UTM, my intention is purely altruistic and to provide information as neutral as possible." to find out more...
Passage from http://forum.lowyat.net/topic/623018

The Garden


HL Design Group had organized a visit to The Garden today. The top level seems to be the ground level, where you can see most tenants throughout the 3 levels. The design director's first reaction is :- we can't see any tenants above when we are at the ground level. My suggestion would be a mirror or signage installed at the ceiling along the walkway would resolve this issue.

Sunday, February 17, 2008

IRender nXt

"IRender is a new, fully integrated, rendering solution for SketchUp.
Create Photorealistic renderings from SketchUp models.
Lights, reflections, materials, transparency.
Wizards to create lamps and light fixtures.
Wizard to create mirrors.
" to find out more...
Download trial version here.
Image & Passage from http://wiki.renderplus.com/index.php?title=Main_Page

Friday, February 15, 2008

CO ARCHITECTS

Image beside shows shading device/element towards a college library designed by CO Architects. This image evokes ideas. Shading element to be with depth and emphasizes the internal spaces' function.
Image from http://www.coarchitects.com/

Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Som Solani Dining by Lucio Santos

There are more images and similar concept incorporated into different usage. One element to include furniture, wall, opening, partition and roof cover. A great concept to be used at architecture or interior.
A design attempt to create new experience. It's fun and it's easy to sell. With some improvement, it can be mobile and stackable. to find out more...
Image from http://luciosantos.blogspot.com/%202007/12/som-solani-dining.html

Thursday, February 07, 2008

Make it Right 9

Today is the First Day of Chinese NewYear. As for your information, Chinese celebrates 15 days for every New Year. As we are celebrating with our family, consider the homeless in elsewhere.
Another great project is running with 14 World known Architects with 13 Designs shown in Make it right 9 to help out thousands of homeless victims of Hurricane Katrina in August, 2005, in New Orleans. Make your donation for the homeless if you are afford to do so. Brad Pitt is taking part in this too.
"In keeping with Make It Right (MIR)’s overarching priority to work in cooperation with former residents of the Lower 9th Ward, the approach to new home design began directly with the homeowners themselves. Because local cultural influences gave rise to the pre-Katrina architecture so emblematic of the area, preserving that identity remains vital in reclaiming the spirit of the neighborhood. MIR’s goal is to join the history of this tradition with creative new architectural solutions mindful of environmental and personal safety concerns in order to encourage both the evolution of aesthetic distinctiveness and the conscientious awareness of natural surroundings.
The architects were given a typology study that included traditional New Orleans housing types such as the Shotgun, the Camelback and the Creole Cottage along with current ideas and recommendations for the target area in the Lower 9th Ward. The MIR team produced a set of guidelines for the houses that set metrics for the final design to insure that the specific goals of the MIR organizations were met. The team is also using Cradle to Cradle thinking to guide and inspire design and materials selection for new homes in the Lower 9th Ward.
The four main guiding principles for the designs are:-
Safety, Affordability, Sustainability and High Design Quality
" to find out more...

Passage from http://makeitrightnola.org/mir_SUB.php?section=mir&page=designs&mySub=main
Images from http://makeitrightnola.org/mir_SUB.php?section=mir&page=designs&mySub=morphosis

Wednesday, February 06, 2008

Atelier Tekuto





















Project 1000 is an interesting exercise launched in the year 1997 triggered by the Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake Reconstruction purposes. 10 years later, Atelier Tekuto had produced lots of cost effective temporary housing in Japan. Witness how Atelier Tekuto tackle the housing projects under budget constrain.
To find out more...

Image from http://www.tekuto.com/works/project1000/index1.html&tbb=1 /
Saitama K House

Friday, February 01, 2008

BIM for Construction

"Vico’s Virtual Construction Software suite consists of six integrated solutions that are designed specifically to bring the benefits of BIM to construction companies. At the hub of the suite is Constructor, a dedicated construction modeling application that covers architectural, structural and MEP modeling, allowing contractors to create detailed Virtual Building models of their projects. The main difference between these models and the BIM models you can create with individual disciplinary tools such as Revit Architecture, Tekla Structures, ArchiCAD, and so on is that an object in Constructor includes a detailed “construction recipe” that specifies various quantities and scheduling related attributes relevant to construction. Also, in Constructor, you would typically build the model as it would actually be built in the real world, for which a knowledge of construction is absolutely essential. Once the model is created, quantity-takeoff is automatically available and is quick and accurate. The extracted quantity and location data serves as input to two of the other applications in the Virtual Construction suite, Vico Estimator for generating cost estimates, and Vico Control for create project schedules. What is also impressive is the enormous flexibility in which the project can be broken down for estimating and scheduling—by floor, by zone, by building, by discipline, by material, by element type, by location, and so on (see Figure 2). This allows for extensive “what-if” analysis, and allows the construction team to explore many budgeting, scheduling, and procurement options, including those related to lean construction and fast-track construction. They can also effectively leverage the use of the 5D Presenter tool for this purpose, which is another tool in the Virtual Construction suite. It combines the building model data along with schedules and cost information to provide a unified and interactive 5D simulation of the project’s progress. Rounding off the suite are two additional applications: Cost Manager, which allows visual monitoring of the differences between the project budget and actual cost; and Change Manager, which automates the process of checking for drawing revisions across construction drawing sets." to find out more...

Passage & Image from http://www.aecbytes.com/newsletter/2008/issue_33.html by Lachmi , founder and editor of AECbytes, Ph.D. in Architecture from UC Berkeley, specializing in intelligent building modeling, and consults and writes on AEC technology