Veg.itecture: Flat + Graceful

Picking up the previous thread (and continuing to clean out some languishing archives of projects), a few additional projects that offer some formalistic solutions, via building form, size, and representation.

A project shown in Jetson Green offers a view of the potential sustainability, building greening, and most importantly - spectacularly poetic form. As covered previously in L+U, Masdar is a model eco-city with an aim of being zero-carbon and zero-waste. This project is developed by Chicago architecture firm Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill, and will be the world's first positive energy, mixed-use building. Taking the idea past net-zero - the building aims to create more energy that it consumes. Anoter interesting note, the building will generate the energy required for it's construction via a solar tower to be built prior. Graceful in form, elegant in implementation. That might just be bordering on true sustainability.






:: images via Jetson Green

Similar size-wise, and will lofty sustainability goals, a significant regional project I've been following for a while is the Vancouver Convention & Exhibition Center. This expansion aims to be one of the largest green roof projects in the world when completed. Inhabitat recently profiled this project, showing the expansive rooftop greening, as well as some exterior spaces which are actually pretty disappointing in these renderings.






:: images via Inhabitat

From Inhabitat, a melding of green features: "The entire 6-acre addition will be covered in a ‘living roof’ that will support 400,000 plants of indigenous varieties. A rain catchment system will irrigate the vegetation during much of the year, while grey and black water recycling systems will generate much of the centers’ own water supply. Underwater, the concrete foundation has been stepped to encourage fish habitat to return to the area, and an updated seawater heating and cooling system, similar to the original building’s mechanical systems, will pump seawater over a heat exchanger to control indoor temperatures."

Six acres of green roof is about what exists currently in total in Portland, where small blocks and small developments tend to give us more smaller projects. There are however, some significant buildings that would benefit from this expansive greening (Lloyd Center, peripheral big-box stores, and the Expo Center). It's disappointing that our own Convention Center's recent expansion eschewed green roof due to costs... while the Rain Garden is a fantastic asset - the lack of rooftop greening in a project that easily could have been a significant Portland model - is a huge missed opportunity.


:: image via Prism Magazine

Veg.itecture: Curly + Folded

Ok, I promise I am running out of formalistic themes for Vegetated Architecture, really soon. For now, a couple of posts with an exposition on shape and form around some recent projects.

Steven Holl's design for a get's a nod for interesting vegetated plane on structure, as well as the most hyperbolic name 'Sliced Porosity Block' in Chengdu, China. While not as striking in B/W imagery, the plaza and rooftop spaces are integrated into the bioclimatic strategies (quote via Treehugger): "As in Beijing, the complex is heated and cooled geothermally, and contains large ponds in its plaza that harvest recycled rainwater. Grasses and lily pads create a natural cooling effect."




:: images via Steven Holl Architects

A folded plane, similar to some recent projects, is artfully abstracted by artist Ben Peterson, in this visionary 'California Ten', which to me evokes the Gibsonian aftermath of the big quake. (A descriptive quote via architecture.MNP): "He makes exquisitely detailed and pristine renderings of impossible architectural spaces. He calls his imagined constructions follies, and they are indeed in that tradition of fanciful and unattainable spaces that are meant to set the mind to wander."


:: California Ten by Ben Peterson - image via architecture.MNP

In a more tangible form, Eikongraphia profiles a project by Oppenheim described as 'Curly Slabs'. The iconic forms create a soaring interior void between two distinctive architectural forms that engage the periphery, as well as creating cathedral-like quasi-interior courtyard space. It's no surprise that this project is one of the boom in UAE/Dubai, where the anything-goes attitude has produced some amazing potential projects. This is no exception.




:: images via Eikongraphia

The irony of scale is evident in the interior folds of the Gazprom tower in St. Petersburg, dubbed the 'tallest tower in Europe'. Contrasting the lush interiors of the Oppenheim project above, or the interiorscapes of Nouvel - the sparseness of the terrace spaces make a somewhat comical picture when contrasted with the overall building mass:

:: images via Inhabitat

Materiality: Textural Classes

Like color, the use of texture is an adaptable design strategy to transform a material and expand its range of visual and functional characteristics. There are a number of ways to take existing material and provide an added dimension through manipulation of texture through patterning, perforating, and articulating.

Digging back through the archives, I discovered a theme of material texture in a number of projects. These span large-scale high-rise facades, to simple boxes, to landscape elements. A December post on Atelier A+D aptly sums up the theme, in 'Not Your Grandmother's Lace'. A number of projects experimented with variety of openings, as well as taking this as an opportunity to experiment with lighting.

O-14 Commercial Tower in Dubai by Reiser + Umemoto is a taller project with a more coarse-grain perforation, that sets it off from the orthagonal surrounding buildings and offer variable-sized penetrations for windows.


:: image via Atelier A+D

The Airspace Tokyo by Beige Architecture and Proces2 veers into striated organic forms. Coolboom refers to this as "...a layer of artificial vegetation."


:: image via Atelier A+D

Projects take different forms, and can be abstract, or take patterns that reference place or culture. The United Arab Emirates Shanghai Expo Pavilion by Foster and Partners evokes patterns of Islamic art and culture.


:: image via Atelier A+D

Another widely publicized project that uses cultural textures (which from reactions tended to split into poles of loveit or hate it) was the Polish Pavilion for the 2010 World Expo in Shanghai. 'Incision Skin' features a folded origami of planes representative of folk-art paper cutouts. The interactivity and lighting provide some very compelling imagery.


:: image via BLDGBLOG


:: Polish Pavilion Lighting - image via The Design Blog

The very literal and definitive patterning is interesting, but does veer into potential for over-simplified and stereotypical iterations. As Michelle Linden in Atelier A+D points out, regarding the use of arabesques: "...its now starting to worry me, that perhaps these lacy skins are a bit of a cop out... While I recognize the excitement in using new technology and old imagery to create a new building form, I'm concerned that its becoming the easy solution, particularly in the case of western architects designing in the middle east."

The texture does not need to be cultural, but can be more artistic, or abstracted. Another more small-scale version entitled 'Perforate the Box' comes via Architecnophilia. The result is an elegant project called 'Sakura' by Mount Fuji Architects plays with small holes in metal panels with amazing results:

:: images via Architechnophilia

Site scale applications can augment building forms, such as Herzog & de Meuron's 40 Bond project, with patterns derived from graffiti tag forms. The layering of texture of the foreground screen and the more subtle building texture is a pretty stunning juxtaposition.


:: image via Archidose

This use of interesting materials is slowly creeping into landscape architecture, and the use of more manipulated textures is creating some good results. A good starting point for option are the companions of Transmaterial and Transmaterial 2 series by Princeton Architectural Press, which offers some great examples of materials that 'Redefine our Physical Environment'.

These architectural solutions provide some good fodder for landscape architectural design. There seems to be a conservatism that falls back on the widely adaptable but somewhat limiting use plant materials - as well as wood, stone, and concrete which become the major ingredients in exterior designs. Adding metals and synthetics, and juxtaposing these in new interesting ways with the typical landscape designers palette, including more architectural plantings - offers myriad opportunities to expand and contemporize urban landscapes - making them more fitting and adaptable with the urban context.