SPAN

This is a recent competition entry for a retail chain in Japan

The Blossom Store

The store concept Blossom explores the opportunities present in the morphologies of floral entities as point of departure for the design of architectural conditions. The sensorial and spatial experiences co-notated with the manifold qualities of blooming flowers, from their topological qualities and the distribution of sepals and petals to form the body of the flower, are scrutinized for their architectural qualities and incorporated in the design of Blossom. Even the olfactory qualities could be implied as substantial part of the design. To include the programmatic elements of a store the concept of delamination is applied. In delaminating layers from the surrounding envelope of the store, pockets of varying sizes are generated. These pockets include, according to their size elements like office, storage, changing booths and elements that could be used as presentation tablets.

 System:

Although the designs visual appearance is of heterogeneous nature, the underlying logic of the design is informed by a repetitive system related to the allover theme of floration. Nodes represent the core components of the system, connecting a specific variety of petals. This system of node and petal form the innermost layer of the delamination effect described above. The second layer provides the store with the necessary depth to include programmatic points, tagging along the node and petal system in its morphology. The third layer is comprised by a simple box, which represents in the renderings a possible space provided for the store in an existing building. This outermost layer bears a vivid coloration in order to bleed the color into the glossy white interior.

The described system is highly pliable, providing a wide range of opportunities for various setups. It can be applied to different envelopes, independent from their shape. Additionally the various layers can be used in multiple combinations to populate different environments. The store can occupy an empty space, it can be setup to perform as a pavilion by combining the two inner layers, or it can accommodate itself in a shop-in-shop scenario by using the innermost layer only. Appearance

Fabrication:

The fabrication process relies on computational fabrication methods extensively. The nodes, the most complex part of the project, are CNC milled elements. These nodes are connected by the petals, which comprise of water jet cutted flat panels. These panels are laminated to provide the necessary structural integrity.  In order to reduce the energy consumption in this project a twofold method is applied: On the one hand the strict application of computational workflow in the design and fabrication process, providing the chance to minimize material and energy consumption in the making. On the other hand the use of natural, biologically degradable materials to minimize pollution effects.  Some of the possible solutions include the use of pressed cocoa fibers panels, wood for the nodes, biopolymers for the glossy white coating, and OLEDS (Organic Light Emitting Diodes) for the illumination of the space.

On invitation by the ESARQ, Sandra and I joined into the SIMAE Conference in Barcelona. The intense, three day conference covered a wide range of issues involved in the field of contemporary architecture design. The speakers could be devided into three categories: Practitioners of the Architecture discipline, Theorists and figures involved in 

the information of the Architecture field. Whilst Ali Rahim, head of the New York based company CAP and Evan Douglis definitely belong into the first category, Neal Leach, Michael Winestock and Bernard Cache belong to the second. (Yes, I know, Bernard Cache is fabricating a lot around this days, but I still don´t consider him an entrepreneur.)

Well, its not hard to guess which is the best place in the US for an exhibition about Wineries. Right, you got it: Napa Valley....give the man, lady a penny! After a successful stint in fantastic Los Angeles the show The Austrian Winery Boom moved on to Napa, the US winemaking heartland. I joined for the exhibition opening and a little winery tour through Napa.

 The exhibition, curated by the Architekturzentrum Wien is on show in Copia, an institution dedicated to Wine, Food and the Arts. Frankly said I was surprised about the extent of the rather modestly sounding institution. It´s a full fledged Museum, about the size of the Kunsthal in Rotterdam, or the Wexner Center. I loved the wonderful, diagonal garden, featuring a full range of fruits and vegetables, used in the Museums fabulous Restaurant (It better be...remember: Wine, Food and the Arts!). The beautiful Cherry Blossom was almost unbearable. The Garden was filled with the scent of fresh spices and flowers. 

Last Friday, following an Invitation by Wolf D. Prix (Coop Himmelb(l)au) and Reiner Zettl, I joined into the Panel of Critics for the Diploma Presentation of the Density group. The Postgraduate Students of the Angewandte had to present their final Thesis to receive the Master of Science degree. The Panel included Wolf D. Prix, Jeffrey Kippnis, Rainer Pirker, Robert Neumeyer and Brennan Buck (Assistant, Greg Lynn Studio) . The postgraduate course is called Urban Srategies, and that is basically what the students presented.

The last two weeks Sandra and myself have been conducting a workshop at the Genetic Architecture Master course of the ESARQ in Barcelona. The main Issue of the workshop was the exploration of the opportunities present in the manyfold conditions of floral entities. The explored issue included venetion, plication, inflorescence, topology and ornament.

After a short research stint the students had to apply their specific findings to the design of a Flowerstore. The store was supposed to be a free standing structure about 180m2 size. For the first, hands on, exploration, we made a short excursion to the Park Güell, in order to scrutinize flowers, and to examine Gaudis work in terms of relations to floral ornamentation. The harder work was to avoid simple mimicking the observed floral conditions, but to apply it in accordance to the discussed issues.  After 9 days of hard work the students presented their work to a Jury we put together including Marco Verde and Max Zinnecker from Barcelona based architecture firm Cloud 9. I have to say that both Sandra and myself were astounded by the enormous progress the students made in nine days.

Here are some images of the exhibition setup for the show FLOAT in the Gallery Zeitkunst in Kitzbühel Tirol. The show comprises of works by Fritz Biedermann, Franz Schubert & SPAN. The main issue we wanted to show was our works dedicated to explorations into the field of botany to understand underlying rules. 

This rules can be explored for example with tools like Xfrog, a software applying rule based systems and algorithms to create organic entities. We used the tools to explore issues such as tropism, branching, creeping and more as main design components in architecture design. Other issues included in the exhibition are explorations on floral morphologies and cellular aggregations.

Today we received a couple of 3D printed models for the show Float. The exhibition will open upcoming Friday in the Gallery Zeitkunst, in Kitzbühel. In case you don´t know Kitzbühel, it is one of the favorite ski resorts for the wealthy of this planet, on the same level as St Moritz or Cortina. It is also the home of the winter seasons sport highlight, the famed Hahnenkamm downhill race. The exhibition in Kitzbühel will feature works by Franz Schubert, Fritz Biedermann and SPAN. We will show a series of huge high resolution Lambda prints, depicting digitally generated blossoms, in high glossy black, Animations of Blossoms and components as well as some 3D prints of the digital model. You can see a couple of images of the models below. 

Friday night I attended the opening Venue of the exhibition The Austrian Winery Boom which Sandra and myself designed last year. The show was commissioned by the Architekturzentrum Wien, and previously on show at the Austrian Cultural Forum in NYC, before moving on to the MODAA Gallery in Culver City, Los Angeles. The shows opening was pretty crowded by a bunch of architecture afficionados. At the midday opening session I was introduced to Wolfgang Puck, Austria´s representative of Haute Cuisine in Los Angeles and favorite cook to numerous Hollywood celebrities. (No way to escape Hollywood in LA, it seems.) The shows opening was also attended by Dietmar Steiner, the director of the Architekturzentrum Wien (Az W), who repeated his introductory words for the show several times this day. Peter Noever, the director of the MAK in Vienna, also happened to be in LA and dropped by to check out the show. The show was well received and I had to answer many, many times answers on the shows concept and design.

Now this was the end of a 9 days module that Sandra and I held at the Urban Strategies studio of the Angewandte. Urban Strategies is the postgraduate program of the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. This module was for the freshmen of the course, in order to familiarize them with a couple of concepts of advanced architecture design. Issues such as emergence, self-organization, gradients, topologies and more are explored within this course, and casted into embryonic ideas of possible urban textures. We will continue the course next semester and develop the ideas that emerged throughout the course in more detail. Hernan Diaz Alonso, Head of LA based architecture firm Xefirotarch was so kind to join into the panel of critics, the panel also included Brennan Buck, Oliver Bertram, Reiner Zettl and my partner Sandra Manninger.

Here are a couple of images of the test assembly we put together yesterday. We tested if everything works as we planed, and how long it needs to setup a portion of the exhibition "Housing in Vienna". The record for building up one pod was set by Phillip, one of the AzW´s hands, with 3min and 42 sec. The Podium of the Architekturzentrum Wien (AzW) doubled as impromptu exhibition space, providing enough space for one colony which at the end had a size of 20ft by 9ft. This colony consisted of eight individuals. Now the entire population consists of forty pods, you get an image of the final appereance.