evolo 2011 Skyscraper competition

Some very interesting ideas were explored in the 2011 evolo skyscraper competition - worth taking a look (recycling plants, air cleaning etc). Also some very useful example of presentation methods and how to communicate detailed ideas.
evolo competition web site here - continue scrolling down the page to see all the entries.

Ken Yeang

Ken Yeang has developed his ideas for bioclimatic design through a sequence of projects with his practice TR Hamzah & Yeang and as a director of Llewelyn Davies Yeang.

Two examples of projects are shown below.
Editt Tower
The images above are of the Editt Tower project, Singapore.
'Ecological design starts with looking at the site’s ecosystem and its properties. Any design that do not take these aspects of the site into consideration is essentially not an ecological approach. '
TR Hamzah Yeang web site here.
Further info here.

Elephant and Castle Eco Towers


Details on TR Hamzah Yeang web site here.
Full details, including plans etc are in Tall buildings By Guy Nordenson, Terence Riley which you can look at on google books here.

Barragan

Recommend spending a bit of time immersing yourself in Barragan's plans, walking through the designs in your mind aided by the photographs tagged on the plans on the Barragan Foundattions web site. Look at the way he allows freedom of movement, the interplay of internal and external architectural space, and how the simplicity of spaces can reveal the complexity of the movement of time. Barragan Foundation web site here.

Thomas Thwaites: How I built a toaster -- from scratch

Fed recommended this talk by an RCA student who set about making his own a toaster from scratch....
'It takes an entire civilization to build a toaster. Designer Thomas Thwaites found out the hard way, by attempting to build one from scratch: mining ore for steel, deriving plastic from oil ... it's frankly amazing he got as far as he got. A parable of our interconnected society, for designers and consumers alike.' TED site
TED web site.

Living Systems

Liat Margolis and Alexander Robinson's Living Systems blog named after their book has a few intersting projects on it, including that shown above - : 'The concept of Launch is a combination of living and nonliving systems: a progression of vegetal growth and its correspondent structural scaffolding that is required to guide the plant’s form and trajectory until it reaches stability. The scaffold may be a transitional structure, i.e. biodegradable; permanent; or designed to evolve symbiotically. The material systems include aboveground structures, such as a tensile cable, a mesh, and beam frameworks that allow for plant attachment, as well as subsoil materials, such as geotextiles.'
Living Systems
Launch.

Inspiration?

The AA have a few years worth of videos of lectures available to view on-line. Lecturers include a whole array of influencial and interesting architects and theorists.
AA Lecture Videos

Biomimicry Institute

This site has a wealth of information and is well worth a look. 'Biomimicry is the science and art of emulating Nature's best biological ideas to solve human problems. Carbon-sequestering cement inspired by corals and energy efficient wind turbines inspired by schooling fish are examples of biomimicry happening today.' Janine Benyus (http://www.biomimicry.net/) has probably done more than anyone to reveal the way that natural organisms have adapted to resource-constrained environments. Amongst the most inspiring of these are the Namibian fog-basking beetle that creates its own distilled water in a desert; the bark beetle that can detect a forest fire at a distance of 80km; the abalone whose shell is a masterpiece of design and is twice as strong as the toughest man-made ceramic; and coccolithophores that build exquisite structures from calcium carbonate.' Michael Pawlyn Biomimicry Institute and also see Ask Nature.

Michael Pawlyn

Michael Pawlyn previously worked with Grimshaw's and set up Exploration architects in 2007. The practice focuses learning from nature, as he says nature has had a few million years of Research and Development. There are some very interesting projects dealing with water, energy and biodiversity on the site. Also see his talk on TED.

Two examples:



'The Las Palmas Water Theatre by Grimshaw ... the Namibian fog-basking beetle has evolved a way to create its own fresh water in a desert. This scheme employed similar ingenuity to take advantage of the sunny conditions, steady wind direction and cold seawater to create large amounts of desalinated water...'


'The World Water Headquarters project proposal ... a completely self-contained building that generates its own energy, is self-cooling and is a nett producer of distilled water in a desert location.'

Exploration Architecture