Failed Architecture — Researching urban failure

Illuminating Engineering Society The Advanced Energy Design Guide series provides a sensible approach to easily achieve advanced levels of energy savings without having to resort to detailed calculations or analysis. The four-color guides offer contractors and designers the tools, including recommendations for practical products and off-the-shelf technology, needed for achieving a 30% energy savings compared to buildings that meet the minimum requirements of ANSI/ASHRAE/IESNA Standard 90.1-1999. The energy savings target of 30% is the first step in the process toward achieving a net-zero energy building, which is defined as a building that, on an annual basis, draws from outside resources equal or less energy than it provides using on-site renewable energy sources.

DIY Used Cargo Homes & Shipping Container House Plans Designs & Ideas on Dornob.url Once upon a time, you had to buy passage on a freight ship headed out to sea in order to see a stack of containers piled high to the sky all around you. Nowadays more and more architects and builders are finding used free or for sale cargo containers at discount prices to construct all kinds of houses, homes and office structures. However, lest you think you need to go the route of hiring a professional, you should know that some do-it-yourself designers like Keith Dewey are making do with their own shipping container home plans.

Interview with Peter Eisenman: "I Am Not Convinced That I Have a Style" As one of the most revered and often reviled architects of the latter part of the 20th century, Peter Eisenman has courted controversy throughout his 50-year career, often attempting to distance himself from the work of his contemporaries and standing in firm opposition to popular trends. In this interview, Eisenman elaborates on his beliefs about architecture and the new direction he has taken in recent years – while simultaneously pulling no punches when discussing the work of others, including Rem Koolhaas, Richard Meier, and even his younger self. The interview is a shortened version of the latest of three interviews with Peter Eisenman (from October 2003, June 2009, and February 2016) that comprise the upcoming book by Vladimir Belogolovsky “Conversations with Peter Eisenman.” The book, published by Berlin-based DOM Publishers will be presented during the opening days at the 15th Venice Architecture Biennale in late May this year. Peter Eisenman: Yes.

Touchscreen Landscapes [Image: Screen grab via military.com]. This new, partly digital sand table interface developed for military planning would seem to have some pretty awesome uses in an architecture or landscape design studio. Using 3D terrain data—in the military's case, gathered in real-time from its planetary network of satellites—and a repurposed Kinect sensor, the system can adapt to hand-sculpted transformations in the sand by projecting new landforms and elevations down onto those newly molded forms. You can thus carve a river in real-time through the center of the sandbox, and watch as projected water flows in— [Image: Screen grabs via military.com]. —or you can simply squeeze sand together into new hills, and even make a volcanic crater.

Urbanized Landscape Series by Li Han / Atelier 11 Inspired by the unprecedentedly rapid urbanization process undergoing in China, Beijing-based Chinese architect and artist Li Han of Atelier 11 | China has developed a series of drawings on the subject of urban landscapes. The purpose of the series is to record the phenomena Li found interesting and representative in this urbanization process. With techniques and visual languages borrowed from architectural drawings, Li tries to present the spontaneous interaction between the urban environment and human activities. The drawings are not only objective documentations, but also reflections and scenarios on the future development based on the current facts. More images and architects’ description after the break. Xi Zhi Men

Last Futures Is a Crash Course in the SciFi-Tinged, Utopian Architecture of Yesterday A new book treats the architectural failures of a radical past as a learning opportunity for an apathetic present. Anna Khachiyan Buckminster Fuller’s giant dome for Expo 67 in Montreal presents a harmonious vision of high technology nestled in nature. All images courtesy Verso “Nothing dates faster than people’s fantasies about the future,” scoffed art critic Robert Hughes in 1980, referencing Oscar Niemeyer and Lúcio Costa’s pop-up capital Brasília. The quote originally appeared in The Shock of the New, the last hurrah in a string of politically aware television documentaries on art history and visual culture that also included Kenneth Clark’s Civilization (1968) and John Berger’s Ways of Seeing (1972).

Port-a-Bach: A Container Getaway Port-a-Bach is a holiday home made from a shipping container. It’s portable, secure, stylish, and can comfortably accommodate two adults and two children. How wonderful it is to just lay there, on the top bunk bed, read a book and enjoy the perfect indoor/outdoor flow. This prefab getaway allows you to use your land without investing in a permanent housing solution; it can be connected to available services or used off the grid; and it has a minimal impact on site and can be easily transported and installed. This portable vacation home is based on a fully enclosed steel shell, positioned on six stable concrete footings. Unfold the container to create an indoor/outdoor living space, and fold it back up for storage or when not in use. Spiraling Out of Control: The Greatest Spiral Stairs in the World Recently the Loretto Chapel was entered into the Atlas. The Santa Fe chapel is known for a very cool looking set of spiral stairs built in 1877 by a mysterious stranger. With no central support the stairs are said by the sisters of Loretto Chapel to be miraculous in construction. While there are those who beg to differ about the miraculousness of the stairs, no can deny that the stairs look, well, really cool! The miraculous staircase at Loretto Chapel (photograph by Michael Martin) In the past I have admitted a somewhat obsessive love of libraries, and looking at the Loretto stairs, made me realize I have a bit of a thing for spiral staircases as well.

Before the Eameses, There Were the Aaltos Nina Stritzler-Levine, curator of "Artek and the Aaltos: Creating a Modern World," talks about Alvar Aalto and Aino Marsio-Aalto's productive partnership. Paul Makovsky The Aaltos photographed in the Artek-Pascoe showroom by the graphic designer Herbert Matter in 1940. The couple are the focus of a new exhibition at the Bard Graduate Center Gallery in New York. Courtesy Aalto Family Collection Alvar Aalto and Aino Marsio-Aalto built one of the enduring design brands of our time, Artek, and turned it into an essential force in the Modernist movement.