Air studio progress journal

Architecture Design Studio 335868 Chiwen Zhuang

Air

Personal project

State of the art

Architecture Discourse Last semester, out project is getting insparation and learn from masters to design the boathouse in Kew. I was doing the Frank lloyd Wright.

What Frank suggestest is the Organic Architecture.

It’s about the communication between human and the surrounding nature of the builidng. He believes that the design of the architecture should through approaches so sympatheic and well integrated with its site. The building, furnishings, and surrouding become part of a unified, interredlated coposition.

My design was too emphasis on the outlook of the building which leads to the lack of pushing the design to more consideration about the meaning of the building.

Seed Cathedral

By Thomas Heatherwick Shanghai, China

http://amfalk.wordpress.com/2010/06/25/2010-world-expo-bringing-pavilions-together/

The theme of the 2010 World ExpoBetter City, Better Life is perfactly experessed by Seed Cathedral. Since I have been to the Expo, the building did not feel real. It was like you turned a page from some kind of arhictecture magazine and it was there. The cube shaped pin box is impressive from a distance. Inside ends of the pavilion, over 6,500 seeds are stored in the needle glass.

Without the parametric design, the advance technique from the computer software, such building is quite unachievable from tradtional hand drawing. The idea of patametric will not be achieved.

Metropol Parasol

By J端rgen Mayer-Hermann seville, Spain

Metropol Parasol is one of the

most creative and outstanding redevelopment of the city square – Plaza de la Encarnacion in Seville, Spain. In 2004 German Architect Jurgen Mayer H. won the competition of creating a new iconic place for Seville. 2011 Mayer presented the new world’s largest wooden structure in style of urbanism of the 21st century. The bizarre frame, shaped as a gigantic mushroom, consists of 8000 wooden items, covering 5000 sq m of the Plaza (the size is 150 by 70 meters, built on 4 levels with a maximum height of 26 meters).

It took a series of complicated computer calculations to design and build such a strong structure, considering each piece of the puzzle and its placement – any small change would impact the whole building.

Each wooden piece is unique in shape and doesn’t have a repetition. Parts of the new landmark are connected with steel bars and a special glue (developed specially for the structure) – a very risky step taking into account severe summer temperatures in Spain.

The construction of Metropol Parasol cost 90 million euros (around 130 million dollars). One of the main purposes of the giant mushroom is to protect the remains of the Roman architecture (archeology museum now) – partly determining the shape and dimension of the building – and at the same time the commercial side of attracting more tourists to Seville and Spain.