Let's Rock over Barock

Since the 17th century, Austria has been a stronghold of the Baroque. Here Wolf D Prix of Coop Himmelb(l)au recognises the deep pull of this cultural tradition in contemporary Austrian architecture, as it continues to endow its designers with an aptitude for spatial sequence and a tendency to prefer to design complex spaces over simplified boxes. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

2008年奥运会柔道跆拳道馆(北京科技大学体育馆)设计

2008奥运会柔道跆拳道馆的建筑设计以"立足学校长远功能的使用,满足奥运比赛的要求"为设计理念,强调建筑设计首先符合学校的使用功能和空间的设置,以及赛后空间功能的便利转换,同时按照奥运大纲通过空间的合理布局满足奥运会的要求。设计强调场所精神,运用洗练的建筑语汇营造既彰显柔道、跆拳道运动精神又符合北京科技大学校园氛围的体育建筑空间。建筑运用成熟、可靠、易行的生态建筑技术,如光导管自然光采光系统、太阳能热水系统、复合金属墙面系统等,在较低的建筑造价控制下,最大限度创造合理、人性、舒适的比赛、观赛条件,充分体现为奥运的校园体育建筑的特色。     

映趣自然,诗化空间--武汉华工大学科技园与长城创新科技园规划设计

在两科技园的规划设计中,通过学习和总结国际上先进园区的建设经验,立足可持续发展的原则,探求了如何将自然、文化、人、科技等观念与建设21世纪新型科技园区相结合。     

悉尼大学土木工程专业研究生培养模式及特色探讨

文章介绍了悉尼大学土木工程专业研究生教育体系和培养模式。从培养目标、课程设置、教学方法和质量保障等方面,剖析了悉尼大学研究生培养机制,以期对提高中国土木工程研究生培养质量有所启迪。     

The Urban Complex: Scalar Probabilities and Urban Computation

Guest-editor Anthony Burke redefines complexity in relation to the city as ‘a dynamic and luminal organisational condition “growing at the edge of chaos”’ and in so doing shifts our understanding of urban trauma as an event intrinsic to the contribution of the metropolis rather than external to it. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Interiorities

Ali Rahim emphasises the importance for design of overlaying a mastery of digital techniques with a nuanced and developed aesthetic sensibility. Here he illustrates his fascination with the formal with his exploration of ‘interiorities’, or internal logics of tectonic structures, in his design research at the University of Pennsylvania. The strive to create variation and atmosphere in buildings effectively places a stress on different part-to-whole relationships, organisations, material qualities and colours and their various rates of transformation. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A Two-Speed Landscape: The Reforestation of the Thames Estuary

Tom Noonan describes how, for this award-winning project, he took up the pen and developed a hybrid drawing technique that exploited the benefits of both the analogue and the digital - characterised by the tactility of the hand and the precision of the computer. He explains that a preoccupation with representation was further ‘reflected and supported by the programme, narrative and language of the architecture’.     

The Instinctive Sense of Space and Boundary

Petra Blaisse of Inside Outside describes how the studio focuses on the boundary of interior and exterior space, adding and subtracting highly tactile and sensuous layers. She highlights the significance of the invisible to her work - whether light, scent or texture - and how the future of design will be opening the way to ‘the sheer biology of things’. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Denise Ho Architects

Amid the chaotic frenzy of Hong Kong emerges an architectural voice of calm Karen A Franck encounters the work of Denise Ho, an architect who distinguishes herself through her quest for harmony and her careful consideration of her clients' needs. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Return of the Future: A Second Go at Robotic Construction

The last few years have witnessed a robotic revival with a reinvigoration of interest in what the robot can offer the construction industry. Martin Bechthold looks back at the first robotic boom during the 1980s and 1990s when millions of Japanese yen were invested in developing robots that could address the shortage of construction labour. Bechthold further explores the similarities and dissimilarities of the current and previous periods of activity, as supported by his research at Harvard's Graduate School of Design (GSD). Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Material Capacity: Embedded Responsiveness

Most attempts towards climate-responsive architecture rely heavily on elaborate technical equipment superimposed on otherwise inert material constructs. In contrast, natural systems embed all the responsive capacity in the structure of the material itself. In this article, Achim Menges and Steffen Reichert present the development of biomimetic responsive material systems that require neither the supply of external energy nor any kind of mechanical or electronic control. They introduce their research on physically programming the humidity-reactive behaviour of these systems, and explain the possibilities this opens up for a strikingly simple yet truly ecologically embedded architecture in constant feedback and interaction with its surrounding environment. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Can Architectural Design Be Research?

So far the Unit Factor series has focused on design research within the context of the Architectural Association in London. Here the series editor, Michael Weinstock, discusses the possibilities of architects undertaking research in practice. He draws on the experience of Chris Bosse, who is responsible for the competition-winning design for the Watercube, Beijing's National Swimming Centre. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

体育场馆适应性研究——北京工业大学体育馆

通过对体育建筑适应性的分析,剖析和反思奥运羽毛球馆设计、建造过程中强化场馆适应性的内在规律,指出确保与加强体育建筑适应性的三个重要环节:体量组合、功能配置、结构选型。     

Trauma Within the Walls: Notes Towards a Philosophy of the City

Renowned philosopher and critical theorist Andrew Benjamin provides a framework for thinking about trauma and the city. He returns to Sigmund Freud's definition of trauma as repressed memory and to Aeschylus' formulation of the unmasterable as portrayed in mythical Athens in the Oresteia trilogy. This view of unaccustomed or unpredictable forces, such as civic strife, as ever present and integral to democracy, enables the maintenance of the urban project avoiding repression. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

China's Concealed Crisis

Architectural historian and author Edward Denison and architect and researcher Guang Yu Ren lift the lid on the complex and urgent matter of China's ageing population. The impending crisis is not only a matter of numbers – a third of China's population are projected to be over 60 by 2050 – but also one of shifting social responsibility. Whereas the care of ageing relatives has traditionally been the individual family's responsibility – filial obligation being written into the constitution – urban migration and economic development and the legacy of the One Child Policy are disrupting this, creating a greater need for state and private housing provision for the elderly.     

Articulating Environmental Grounds

A new generation of thinking is emerging in the manipulation of ground systems that, with the aid of parametrics, is enabling a new level of design precision and ecological calibration. Anne Save de Beaurecueil and Franklin Lee describe how with Diploma Unit 2 at the Architectural Association in London, they are working towards their goal of fusing architecture, landscape and contemporary art through an engagement with articulated ground organisations. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Proto-Design: Architecture's Primordial Soup and the Quest for Units of Synthetic Life

At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Neri Oxman is engaged on the Material-Based Computation project. It takes an approach that can be regarded as analogous to protocells. It places a similar emphasis on material properties as intermediary agents for the built environment, containing the information for behaviour and evolution. Here she outlines three methods that define her research. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Adaptive Building Initiative: The Functional Aesthetic of Adaptivity

Ziggy Drozdowski, Director of Technology at Hoberman Associates in New York, describes the Adaptive Building Initiative (ABI), a collaboration with engineers Buro Happold that is conceived to catalyse innovation in environmental building performance. The emphasis here is on developing technologies that both architects and engineers can engage with rather than products per se, ensuring that ‘the design and the technology layers employed are intertwined into one dynamic system’. This is exemplified by the initiative's development of the Tessellate™ adaptive facade system that both interacts with and helps control incident sunlight. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.