78 posts tagged “architecture”

So, here is the new studio task for next semester in the Dessau Institute of Architecture:

It´s about time to mention that the show Housing in Vienna is on show right now in the Ringturm in Vienna. The show was designed by SPAN last year and was first on show in Venice. The second stint of the exhibition was in the Polytecnico Milan, and I´m pretty sure it will be close to your home someday this year, as the tour continues. The design of this show was an important step for us as we could continue our explorations in surface tessellation systems and spatial continuity. Another important aspect for us was to gain further experience in the fabrication processes of complex curved geometries. This explorations are fully integrated in the design of the show.

After a seamless setup of the show Sandra and I attended the opening of the exhibition Housing in Vienna at the Palazzo Tron in Venice. The day was filled with activities as also the main venue, the Venice Biennale opened the same day. The show in the Palazzo Tron, dedicated to the history and presence of subsidized living in Vienna was opened with speeches by three persons: the Viennese Stadtrat Ludwig, the director of the Wohnbauforschungsinstitut Dr. Wolfgang Förster and the representative of the UIAV, the University of Architecture Venice, Liliana Padovani. The opening was a huge success. We were lucky with the weather as the reception took place in the wonderful garden of this Baroque palazzo. Just as the reception finished it started raining cats and dogs. 

This Semester I had three students to coach as second adviser for their Thesis work at the Bauhaus Dessau, DIA Dessau Institute of architecture. They all had the same typology, a highriser. All of them used computational design techniques to explore the morphology of the highriser, especially in the aspects of performativity. Sandra and I travelled to Dessau for the presentation of all the thesis works that spanned two days of presenations. One very special guest appeared on invitation by Prof. Alfred Jacoby director of the postgraduate master course of the DIA: Lars Lerup, Dean of Rice University in Texas. A University I consider highly interesting considering the amazing faculty that includes the likes of Sanford Kwinter, David Erdman, Clover Lee and Sean Lally.

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.

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. 

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.