Danish--riding to green

The Shanghai 2010 Expo comes to an close today!!! Let's say bye-bye to the Expo by watching this interesting video about biking through the Danish Pavilion.
The pavilion offers to the visitors this bike track as an symbol for the danish way of life--go green, ride your bike!

Here in the United States, riding is mostly just an exercise and sport. Not many people actually ride their bikes to school or work. Things are different in Denmark. My friend who studied abroad in Denmark last year told me that many people in Denmark ride their bikes as transportation.

Here is a video:
http://www.archdaily.com/69212/learning-from-copenhagen/

This is a perfect example of bike riding changing the city. In Copenhagen, people ride their bikes everywhere and even uses cargo bikes to take children to places.
Ride your bike--this is something everybody can do to help reduce pollution and CO2 emission.Why not exercise while you go to work and help the city go green at the same time?!

So why doesn't people here in the States do this?
The most important reason is that there is not a good enough system for bikes--roads, and instructions. Only when there is separate bike lines for bikes only,and everybody learns about rules of riding a bike on street, people will then feel comfortable and safe to ride their bikes to places.
If we have the bike line, if we show people this can really be done, if we teach kids to bike since kindergarten, this simple step can really change life.

What can architects do? They can play a huge role in this change. Architect can help design better roads and help figure out how to use structures on street to help riders feel safe. Architects can also build nice bike parks and rest stations for riders to help complete this riding system.

rural studio

http://www.cadc.auburn.edu/rural-studio/
The Rural Studio is an undergraduate program of the School of Architecture at Auburn University. I recently watched a documentary about this program and was deeply moved by the design & build aspect of architecture.


At the rural studio, students spend a year in rural Alabama and build real houses for people who need housing in the community. The video we watched showed how students built a small home for a local "music man" so he could move into a real house and have clean running water for the first time in his life.  


I was deeply moved by the connection between the builder student team and the music man. His smile and happy life attitude inspired many students. The students live together, design together and then build together. Throughout the time they spend on the project, they are learning real architecture instead of paper architecture.


It is impossible to be a good architect without building something just like we would never want a doctor to operate on us if he has only practiced on models before. So it is important for architecture students to actually know about building houses. During this past summer I was interning at T.I.A. Architects in Amherst, MA. During the time I was there, my boss--the architect was building a ramp for the studio because the old one started to break down. Ramp is something really simply compare to a house, but when I was helping him, I realized that I know nothing about real architecture if I just draft on tables and the computers. I learned from the name of each nail to how to cut wood, and it gave me a whole new prospective of architecture.


Later in the summer, I volunteered for "Habitat for Humanity" in Easthampton, where we worked on a real housing project for a family there. During the day I was there, we did painting, measuring, air conditioner installing, and drywall. I did not know how to do any of those before. When I drill over different layers of walls for the hole for air conditioner, I saw exactly what the walls were composed of. I also started to realize that a community project like this is not all about beauty, but more importantly, about how to use the least amount of money to build more efficient and comfortable housing. The design that's nice and cheap to build is the best design. No fancy form is needed here, but a nice place for a family with kids.


After watching the video of rural architecture, I really hope to one day have the chance to be a part of a design&build team during my learning process towards being a real architect. 

parking tower

This is a picture of a parking tower in German. 

http://kirubashankar.sulekha.com/blog/post/2006/08/parking-tower-you-gotto-give-it-to-the-germans-w.htm

Parking towers like this are seen more and more around the world nowadays because of the increasing number of cars and limited space available for parking.

I still remember I was totally amazed and shocked when I saw a parking tower the first time. Today, when I was looking at this picture, I suddenly wonder, can we build a housing tower like this?

As a college student, I hate moving. Every year, I have to move all my stuff out of the dorm and move into a new dorm room. I always wish I could just take my room and bring with me to the next destination of mine. There are probably many people like me, especially young people, who have to rent cheap, small spaces when going to school or first start working and don't like moving. If we can build a housing tower, we can all keep our room and take this room with us to wherever we go. The room could just be like a shipping container with our bed, desk, dresser and everything we need in it. Whenever we need to go to a new place, we can use our car to drag it from one housing tower to another one at a different place. In fact, it will just work like hotels except I get to be in my OWN room all the time! How exciting is that!

Here is a sketch of my "housing towers":

This house has a cuboid shape with a courtyard in the middle. There is an elevator for moving the house at one of the corners. Different floors are for rooms that stays for different length of time, which helps to decide where exactly to place each room. The architecture itself is basically a skeleton. When we want to move a room in, we start from the first floor, move it up using the elevator and then move the room horizontally to the slot it needs to be in.

If every city has one of this "parking tower" for rooms, many people can take their own room with them when they do short road trips or visit a friend.

see you

ivanka: 'seeyou' concrete gravestone design at milan design week 09


    I found this design a perfect demonstration of combining human and nature. Designers today are interested in a wide range of projects, but not many of them are interested in gravestone design. This project by architect Maurer Klimes Ákos and Ivanka Concrete Design Company was the star of Milan design week 2009 for a reason. 
    I really like this design because it shortens the distance between visitors and the gravestone by offering reflection of nature. The visitors are encouraged to walk close to the gravestone, touch it and feel it. The cross carved on the surface of the gravestone represents the beauty and meaning of life. If there is water held in the cross, it will reflect visitors themselves . They can see their face and the nature around them reflect from the water on the gravestone, which adds a dramatic effect to this design, and the emotions of the visitors.

    It's also interesting to see the contract between the sharp edge of the overall shape of the stone grave and the soft edge shape of the cross. This contract suggested the strength and silence of death, while mixing soft emotions, the sadness and the hope in the site.

For many reasons, people do not really pay attention to grave stone design anymore. However, this interesting project suggested how strong and emotional a project can be when adding spiritual elements into it. Here, nature, love, and cycle of life is what I can read our of the design.

source : http://forgemind.net/xoops/modules/news/article.php?storyid=1128

A Tiny Apartment Transforms into 24 Rooms

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lg9qnWg9kak


I really enjoyed watching the video this project! Growing up in China, I see and experience how small people's living space is due to the large population. So it becomes important to use the space wisely.
This design is a perfect example of function controlling forms. By dividing the space into different rooms with the moving wall in the middle,one space transverses into a lot of different rooms for different usage according to designer's need.
This small apartment can save both space and energy, but keep all the functions needed by the clients.

Garden City-new version of skyscrapers

    Recently, a Garden City design by OFIS architekti caught my attention with its unique approach to the future of skyscrapers.

This is a design project of Slovenian architects Enota for a competition. The purpose of the complex buildings are: 1. lower part as public programs and offices; 2. top part as apartments.

The most interesting about this design is that the form of the building complex looks like turning skyscrapers into three dimensional. Today, most office buildings are high towers into the sky, which waste a lot of space up in the air. This design allow office buildings to grow vertically and horizontally at the same time. There are external plazas connecting different parts of the building all together. From the picture, we can tell that people working there could walk outside or on top of their offices and enjoy the beautiful view outside. 

This design also allows maximum natural light into the offices and maximum cross natural ventilation.

This design is also highly flexibly. From the picture, we can tell that most of the space follow a pattern. This modular grid program distribution is flexible because it's easy to change programs and usage.  

The shape of the building (all programs ) are carefully considered and planned during the design process to benefit everybody using the space.

Big glass windows, green roofs, sunshine on the ceiling, natural lighting and views, unique community interaction...All those elements made this a great design that encourages to think about the future of skyscrapers.

source:
http://www.archdaily.com/80131/garden-city-k66-ofis-arhitekti/

What can architecture learn from nature?

http://www.agrocourier.com/bcsweb/cscms_de.nsf/id/Arc_Agro/$file/nt_architektur.jpg

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgG_wLyETg9dQfb3hudzmjDFpW6cVbO2Fw1YyN5jNxQGvu3yhONiKRaciGQ9WeO3tZj3QHLbo4Kv7I8m9HwRA4Xp-BtiiN92kCxt3XJ_arebYDna83TcpN6Vtubd3QzF73K8nk5awsBQ8BY/s400/Nature_and_Architecture_24.jpg

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvadhIhea_mq5sQiVpBNOrkOTmJxToJF20tY2HRa8LrE6MVddNQYYlTRCzVRLa2FgnqtO31YLORvgR2uX8_OuATraewxtqQQbUMUGap3ThpjlrsLQHobUP-_RPmpnO_IUnFGGRQezoyLYX/s400/IMG_0367.jpg

http://www.designboom.com/contemporary/naturalarchitecture/03.jpg

http://www.persvenssonsoundart.com/bilder/1%20ARCHITECTURE%20GREEN%20RED.jpg-for-web-LARGE.jpg

http://mocoloco.com/art/upload/2007/10/books_natural_architecture.jpg

http://inlinethumb59.webshots.com/42298/2561778790105101600S600x600Q85.jpg

http://www.biomimicryguild.com/images/sea_urchin_1.jpg

http://www.pestproducts.com/images/orb-spider-web.JPG

picture sources: google image search