FIRÀSSAFIEDDINE Portfolio
fs .bio Firas Safieddine t. +34 657431457 e. firas.safieddine@iaac.net e. safieddinefiras@gmail.com www.fuckingarchitecture.com ig. firasdottxt
Firas is a Barcelona-based designer, architect, artist, researcher, and neurotech enthusiast who currently operates on several fronts; editorial board member at UrbanNext [ an online platform that disseminates content, with the ethos of expanding architecture to rethink cities and territories ], creative and tech director/Senior designer at Guallart Architects designing international urban scale projects, and chapter lead at NeurotechBCN, the Barcelona chapter of NeurotechX, an international community that fuels up the development of neurotechnology. He coined “Electrical Ecologies” and carries on personal research on the topic. His current occupations circulate the same ecosystem, with a higher gravitational sensibility to redefining design’s new normal, with a neurotech bias, and aims at designing the first architectural brain implant. Given the unprecedented conditions we currently deal with, his research is committed to conceptualizing a viable planetary-scale comprehensive model that he can navigate as a designer. Firas has participated through realized projects in VividLights Festival in Sydney [ Nacre ], LlumBCN in Barcelona [ Brillen en la Foscor ], Tallinn Architecture Biennale in Tallin [ LiveCycles ], Fab Festival in Chile and Shenzhen [ Brain Space Apparatus, Skin2 ], Global AI summit in Riyadh [ Emergent Topographies], and more. Throughout his professional journey, he has taken part in jury panels, taught at Master programs, and lectured on several occasions. In addition to his professional design work, he has been awarded several times for his artistic work. In 2014, he represented Lebanon in Capetown at the RedBull Doodle Art global competition as a National winner and been selected winner at the 2020 AI Artathon, the first international art and artificial intelligence hackathon at its scale. He holds a bachelor’s in Architecture from the University of Balamand through the Académie Libanaise des Beaux-Arts and a post-professional master’s degree from Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya through the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia.
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Firas Safieddine t. +34 657431457 e. firas.safieddine@iaac.net e. safieddinefiras@gmail.com www.fuckingarchitecture.com ig. firasdottxt
Current Affiliations
Awards and Hon-
Publications
UrbanNext, 2019 .Editorial Board Member.
.Building of the Year Nomination, 2021 ArchDaily , Casa Rec.
UrbanNext ISSN: 2575-5374
Participations 2018 -
NeuroTechDesign 2020 Initiator & Host CAADRIA 2020/1 .Emergent Topographies .First Prize, 2020 Xiong’an NeuroTechX, 2018 Saudi Data 2030 2021 .Electrical Ecologies II: Towards a Lecture on the history of ArtifiArchitectural Design Competition .Chapter Lead Planetary-scale Nervous System cial Intelligence and Art. Residential and Community, The .Writer and Designer at NeuroTechX Content Lab. MIT Lebanon Challenge Self Sufficient City, Post Pandemic .Electrical Ecologies: The Far Too Obvious – Far Too Neglected – .Creator and Host of NeuroTech2020 Part of the marketing deUrbanism. Natural Design sign team and the participants’ .Neural Interiority – The Function team .Third Prize, 2020 Ai Artathon, of Interiority: f(interiority) Guallart Architects, 2017 - 2021 The world’s largest hackathon of Global AI Summit 2020 .Brains and Spaces: A Pres.Creative and Tech Director, Video Installation entitled: its kind,exhibited at the Global ent-Future .Architect and Urban Designer. Emergent Topographies. Ai Summit. .Architecture and NeurotechAi Artathon 2020 nology Center for Conscious DesignWinner. Project title: Emergent .Third Prize, 2020 Xiong’an the ccd, 2020Topographies.Riyadh, KSA. Architectural Design Competition .Neurotechnology and Archi.Fellow IaaC GSS Dubai 2020 Urban Public Management & tecture: how bidirectional .Barcelona Chapter co-lead Lecture on Architecture and Service Facility. knowledge exchange can Neurotechnology Vivid Sydney 2018 .Second Prize, 2020 Global Plan create persistent impact Education 2021 Artist of interactive light and for Conceptual Urban Design Published on Medium by the sound installation, Nacre of Jincheng Park Area in Pidu Universitat Politècnica de NeuroTechX Content Lab. The Absurd’ language of maDistrict, Chengdu. Catalunya [ UPC ] Institute chine 2018 for Advanced Architecture of Lecture. .Neuroscience and Architec.Finalist, 2019 Wuhan ChangCatalonia [ IaaC ], 2015-2017 jiang New Town Innovation ture 2017 NeuroTechBCN Hackathon Development Center Architectural ISBN-13 978-84-09-02652-4 2018, Organized, hosted, and Post-professional Master in Design. International Conference Arquiparticipant Advanced Architecture. Barcelotectonics: Mind, Land & Society. Tallinn Architecture Biennale na, Spain. .Second Prize, 2019 Internation- [ TAB17 ] 2017 MAA02 Thesis Project, title: Brain al Consulting on the Urban Design .Responsive Architecture Designer. LiveCycles. Space.[ 2016- 2017] of Unit 8 & 10 of Qianhai. ISSN 2339 - 8647. Fab13 2017 MAA01 Final project research: IaaC Bits - 2017 Institute for Ad- BrainSpace Apparatus Megacities and programmed .First Prize, 2019 Shenzhen Bay vanced Architecture of Catalonia Living in Future Cities 2017 collapse. [ 2015- 2016] Super Headquarters Base. BrainSpace Project .Bee++ 2016 Traces: Machinic Protocols University of Balamand [ UoB .First Prize, 2018 Shenzhen ISSN 0719-8914. Plataforma 2017, Artist, Casa Elizalde, Bar] Académie Libanaise des celona Spain Xiangmihu Area Urban Design Arquitectura Beaux-Arts [ alba ] 2010-2015 Competition. 2017 Eco-máquinas: cuatro experimen- HOST Milano Bachelor of Science (B.S.) in Meteorite Collaboration with Extos arquitectónicos para conArchitecture. ternal Reference Architects Mila.National Winner, 2014 Redbull tribuir a la morfogénesis urbana no, Italy Doodle Art National Winner, RepLLumBCN 2017 Research Interests resented Lebanon as a candidate for the Redbull Doodle Art global Interaction designer and artist, competition held in Capetown. Brillem en la foscor ` Architecture, Neurotechnology, Al-Tiba9 Barcelona 2017 Design, Urbanism, Responsive Performer, at the International Environments, Interaction Design, Exhibition of Contemporary Art, Ecology, Artificial Intelligence, 5th Edition with Aquaaerobika Brain-Computer Interface, by Sasha Frolova at Upf, BarceAutomation, Space Syntax, lona, Spain AudioVisual Art, ‘Electrical VR Jam 2016 Ecologies’ 3d artist, 3d scanning art, Fabbula Barcelona Fab12 2016 In Defence of Capitalism, prototype of the humans’ future skin, as it grows the ability to display graphics, Shenzhen, China
Bio And Beyond 2016 Bee++ Edinburgh International Science Festival, Edinburgh UK On Sustainability Conference 2015, Participant. Copenhagen, Denmark
In my everyday main workflow, I model with Rhinoceros and grasshopper, produce with Adobe Suite software [Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Premiere Pro, After Effects, Lightroom ], and render with Lumion and Vray for Rhino. For logistics, communication, team and project management, my workflow is mainly in, Slack, Trello, Miro, and Google Calendar, Drive, and Docs. For physical computing and interaction design, I work mainly with Processing and Arduino, in addition to Raspberry Pi alongside sensors, and other software such as Sonic Pi. Alternatively, I use SketchUp, unity, and ZBrush for modeling, Keyshot, and Enscape for visualization in addition to other software. I have worked with and familiar with the interface of a number of other software, tools, languages and platforms, such as blender, AutoCAD, Revit, Google Colab, Tensorflow, and Tensorboard, Wekinator, Cl3ver, Python, c# in gh and others.
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Selected Projects
+ Casa Rec
Rennovated historic building in heritage center
+ Tower of Life
Ecology as Economy / Future Icon of Ecological Design
+ Tour B
Office Building in a strategic spot in Abidjan
+ Christmas Soul
Stitching beirut’s scarred urban fabric
Forest within a forest - Designing Subecologies
+ Brillen en la Foscor
+ House 30
+ Nacre
+ Wuhan
+ LiveCycles
+ The Forest City Project
+ BraneSpace
+ Self sufficient block
+ BraneSpace Apparatus
+ VidAledo
Interactive installation at LLUM BCN Festival 2017 Insteractive Installation at Vivid Lights Festival 2018 Installation at the 4th Tallinn Biennale
Rethinking Architecture
Personal Research tool
Block-scale mixed use hub in Wuhan A viable model for the urban to come Post-Pandemic Urban Block a 100 Km from Beijing Ecological Urbanism and community building in Aledo Valley
+ Responsive Architecture Timefield
+ MUV
+ Mapping E-waste
+ Sci-loop
+ The Case of Newark
+ Cultural Superblock
+ Urban Metousiosis
+ Cheng Du
Tracing responsive architecture
Visualizing the E-waste footprint Megacities and Programmed Collapse The Future of the City
+ Emergent Topographies
[ Biodata and Geodata ] GAN Created Topographies.
+ In Defense of Capitalism
The Future of Human Skin
+ Super HQ
Ecological Urban biotopes
Gym in Beirut The Future of the City [ Biodata and Geodata ] GAN Created Topographies. Urban Linearity and Ecological Branching Green belts to ChengDu’s Radial morphology
+ Sublimation
Micro-spa in Japan’s Snowcovered Landscapes
+ Artworks
Selected collages, hand drawings and murals
Project Index Type Master Plan
At Guallart Architects Collaboration with BAD. Built By Associative Data International Competition I Physically Realized Individual Project
+ The Forest City Project
I + Cheng Du + VidAledo
I + Sci-loop
Urban
+ The Case of Newark + Urban Metousiosis I + Self sufficient block
I + Super HQ
Block
I + Wuhan IDC
I + Cultural Superblock
+ Tour B + Casa Rec
Building
+ Tower of Life
+ House 30 + MUV + Sublimation + Brillen en la Foscor + Nacre
Installation
Scale
+ BraneSpace Apparatus + In Defense of Capitalism Microcontroller
+ BraneSpace + Christmas Soul
+ LiveCycles
+ Responsiveness Timefield
+ Mapping E-waste
+ Emergent Topographies Territory
In Defense of Capitalism A future of the human skin Video
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From the age of politics to our days of bioeconomics, The world is being mediated. More and more, ideology is a constant; We are adapting We hold brands all over us We are cyborgs Our skin will develop, from a passive cover to a more advanced tissue it will grow the ability to show graphics; A display We will be mobile billboards. Yes, it is profitable! We will start advertising for brand names, latest offers, delivery hotline, and our own products; used organs, body parts, and “humanity”, maybe.
Model Robert Chacon
BraneSpace “Designing for the user” “Designing the user”
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Faculty Luis Fraguada Personal Thesis Project
Touching areas around participatory design, responsive architecture, and neuroscience, BraneSpace is a speculative critique, towards realizing responsive spatial behavior triggered by the human unconscious. Technology becomes the interface, rather than the body, between the user and architecture, where after this negotiation becomes absent for architecture becomes the new body. BraneSpace has been made possible by linking physiological processes and mechanized operations directly, developing particular design tools, analyzing data, concluding upon findings, and finally utilizing the findings in a demonstrator that works as a lab for spatial experiments. As architecture is looked at from the lens of neuroscience, BraneSpace is an attempt to quantify experience, locate brain activity and conclude with the corresponding relation of spatial parameters celebrating a meta-data set of 32 dimensions overlapping user and spatial data. Moving towards a scientific understanding of an ever-changing experience based on a looping scheme of the experience and how it, and the brain mutate simultaneously.
Correlation analysis of meta-datasets collected by BraneSpace apparatus crossing brainwaves and the built environment data.
Enclosed in the space-user dialectic BraneSpace acknowledges the presence and immense effect of a context, yet to be put under the lens.
Cover Collage
Brain-maps
BraneSpace Apparatus Personal Research Tool
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BraneSpace apparatus emerged as a research tool, primarily as proof of how the built environment affects us. With the first design, several experiments were conducted in various sites in Barcelona on different people, whereafter the apparatus was upgraded and refined to cover a much wider range of spatial and human parameters. By overlapping spatial and physiological datasets, it becomes possible to understand better how spaces affect us, but not only that, as that can be a method for buildings to understand how we experience them too and interact accordingly. For that, the later stage BraneSpace Lab, an enclosed cube, with light and sound, used to monitor brain activity across various values of audiovisuals; later turned into a space that produces light and sound patterns, based on the users’ brain data.
NextRevolution
Apparatus 2.0
Apparatus 1.0
Apparatus 1.0
Video
Brillen en la Foscor
Nacre
Interactive installation at LlumBCN Festival 2017
Interactive Installation at Vivid Lights Festival 2018 Official Publication
Video
D Sponsors
Ajuntament de Barcelona Festes de Santa Eulalia
Brillen en la Foscor is an immersive and interactive musical experience, transforming public space through visitor interaction and sound, engaging community, implementing advanced technology, and enriching social activity in the area. By pulling the interactive strings of light distributed around the patio, the user activates different chords, producing a melodic background sound. Piezoelectric sensors, capture the vibration from the visitors’ interaction, sending it to a raspberry pi, activating the speakers embedded into the digitally fabricated wooden islands, located at the base of the strings of light. The collective behavior and rhythm at which each participant plays the strings, activating their surrounding space, allows generating an immersive audio-spatial experience through a common interactive game. Moreover, thanks to the integration of latest technology within the traditional urban fabric the installation allow moving from the static concept of public space to a more dynamic and responsive model of active public space in memory of Santa Eulalia.
Photography Pulpo Collective
E Sponsors
VividSydney Showtex HASSELL ProtoPixel Box and Dice
Nacre takes inspiration from the many shell middens found during excavations of Sydney’s Barangaroo precinct. The middens revealed that the site was once a rich source of cockles, mussels, and rare species of mollusks, which were gathered by skilled fisherwomen from local Aboriginal communities. For centuries before European contact, the Aboriginal fisherwomen from the clans of the Eora nation around Sydney Harbour practiced their skills in a way that did no harm to its delicate and diverse ecosystem. In creating Nacre the artists wished to honor Aboriginal people and highlight the role that sustainable principles, such as those practiced by traditional users of the natural world can play in protecting fragile marine environments. The title of the installation, Nacre, refers to the mother of pearl produced in the inner shell of mollusks. The design of this lustrous work incorporates the geometry of seashells, and it uses technology to translate environmental data to illuminate a hidden, underwater world.
Photography Pulpo Collective
LiveCycles Video
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Automating Marine Agents
LivingCycles projects how small robotic agents can become a new transitional system from built to unbuilt environments and, in symbiosis with the natural species of the Baltic sea, could act on-site, creating interaction between natural and artificial systems. The installation itself is the digestive system of the robot, blown in scale. The installation works with Baltic Sea water, firstly extracting the contained microplastics from the marine environment then, passing through the complex digestive system of the nanorobot, bio-aggregating its particles into a material which can be reused for the further proliferation of this same marine environment. The installation invites visitors to experience the digestive system of a nano marine robot, and learn how future mechanisms, could allow realizing such systems, wandering in the ocean, collecting microplastics, and transforming them into a 3d-printable paste.
The Drone [ Nano Marine Robot ]
The nanorobot was 3d printed on a real scale and put under the microscope to show visitors the scale play.
Drone Anatomy
Installation at TAB17
Sterilization Organ, Glass and joint detail
Emergent Topographies
Topo-Stack
[ Biodata and Geodata ] GAN Created Topographies. Video
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Through a very wide lens, this work deals with current clinical elements of the spatiotemporal ecosystem of data objects; Topographically demonstrated as geo-data and bio-data examined by artificial intelligence Emergent Topographies dwells in the friction space between culture and context, represented through Biodata [ EEG Data ] and Geodata [ Topography meshes ] and speculates possible future topographies, as layers of hybrid point clouds generated using a generative adversarial network. The artwork takes an extra step to visualize the stacked topographies using a classical agent system utilizing connectome mapping aesthetics. The project was awarded as thirdplace winner at the AI Global Summit 2020.
Reals
Fakes
Pipeline
Tools
Book
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Time field of Responsiveness in Cultural Production The topic of responsiveness in architecture, cannot be cut out of its technological context and cultural production. Due to the complex non-linear relationships between various stakeholders, a time field, rather than a timeline was used as a tool to map the complexity of that space. Based on a complex database of more than 500 moments in the last century, the time field maps these moments across time, by their cultural relevance. All connections are causal or correlational links made to better understand how responsiveness emerged during this time frame. ¨The Problematic of Responsiveness in Arhitecture¨ is a booklet that on the one hand, establishes a glossary of terms, necessary to understand responsiveness as redefined in the text, and on the other, analyzes a set of typological projects through visualizations, maps, and causal diagrams. Finally, the booklet demonstrates a list of the projects, with all quantitative and qualitative data dimensions tied to them. The booklet is under ISSN 2339 - 8647.
E-Waste Tracking Quantifying the e-waste footprint at a planetary
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This project questions the real footprint of the whole electronic industry on multi-levels-through studying the life of a device and the flow of e-waste; as well as what formal and informal treatment of e-waste reflects. As a framework, we started with the very basic production unit, the mining sites, which are basically located on the west coast of the American continent, afterward, displaying through a video the reality of what goes on in the factories – china as an example- which produces the devices, sells them, gets them back as e-waste and then reprocessing them. Data Mapped: •Location of the ten major mines in the world, and understanding of the basic component •Location – by volume of the main data centers worldwide, which are the backstage •location – by volume- of the major producers of e-waste, starting with the greater territory •location – by volume- of the major e-waste dumping sites •the flow of e-waste •close-up view on the busiest regions of e-waste receivers – China, India, and Singapore •case study on Singapore recycling places – to understand the flow on a micro-scale (formal treatment) – More specific site •case study on Ghana’s largest e-waste dump – and how it affects the urban fabric around it (informal treatment) - More specific site
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The Case of Newark
Urban Metousiosis
Mobility in Newark
Megacities and programmed collapse
Newark, a detected anomaly in the landscape of cities with an exaggerated infrastructure for what the city actually is. This project looks at Newark as a potential place for future intervention and stretches the projection to what might becoming. The scenario of Newark 2050, within this research phase, assumes huge demand and a nonchanging manner of doing things and thus the inevitable collapse scenario that is to be programmed. Programmed collapse as a design tool is what this project capitalizes on. To better understand Newark’s hidden layers, mobility, and all other aspects that affect or are affected by it, traffic, urban functions, capacities, were mapped and projected to a not very far future of what is to happen. With automation in the mobility space, autonomous vehicles will invade the landscape of privately owned vehicles and thus allow for a more efficient manner of transport, that will in itself decrease due to the change in the nature of how we do work.
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Metousiosis, from Greek, is a change of essence or inner reality. Under the megacities and programmed collapse agenda of the studio, in Newark, an average city with immense infrastructure, this projects looks at abandoned and vacant spaces in the city, and by inventing a system of transformation allowing first, and out of density, the emergence of urban interiors and consequently rethinking the city mobility grid in a more complex three-dimensional network rather than a flat street-level medium. This project is a speculation on the future of cities, tectonic automation to reconfigure spatial pattern, through urban mobility as a catalyst, taking Newark’s case as a sample. Emerging from an abandoned block, the block is transformed into “A building”, expanding out through circulation spaces in an attempt to reach neighboring buildings, and finally turn the city into a single object/ ecology. This is the story of a block that was a collection of introverted vacant buildings, tweaked to become a super-block, an organism that becomes a center of the city; attempting to become the city itself.
This project concludes with an urban environment that is capable and ready to benefit and house that shift.
Resultant Block
Added Circulation
Delete()
Unfolded Routes
Add()
Urban Data Mapping
Urbanscale Tectonic Automation // Transformation System
Mapping the urban setting using the following parameters [ occupancy permits across their values, green public spaces, vacant and abandoned properties as well as property value/owners and the traffic daily data of the vehicle type, street name, speed ] Data sets mapped and overlapped, with the emergence of space sharing platforms and community force in Newark, it was possible to render a project of urban mobility and transforming vacant/abandoned spaces in a key location in the city to become an urban hub.
This data-informed system is capable of transforming different patterns in urban data into formal/elemental/spatial interventions; in an attempt to transform the block into a super-block with smaller-scale changes, connections...
Vacant and abandoned prop-
Occupancy permits across
Urban Integration - Expantion
Green Public Space
Sublimation Micro-spa in Japan’s Snowcovered Landscapes
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Sublimation proposes an architectural voyage through changing states of water. The project finds its driving force in its metabolic water cycle, from hot to cold, and from solid to liquid, to vapour. This change in state is also translated through the architectural elements, both in their materiality, as well as in the openness or intimacy of each space: shared spaces are in open air scenarios, or the light protection of a translucent textile, and intimate alcoves are located within the solid wooden volumes. To feed the metabolic water cycle, both rainwater and snow, according to the seasons, are harvested by means of the vertical elements of the structure, as well as along the skin of the building. This water is collected below the building in a ground source hot water tank, from which the heated water is then recirculated throughout the building to feed the radiant floor system. The Radiant floor system allows to ensure an average temperature of between 24 to 26 degrees celsius within the building envelop. The bath water is provided through the grid, also passing through a ground source heat tank located below the building, allowing to ensure clean water for bathing. This water is channeled into to the main ground floor bathing area from one side so as to allow different gradients of temperature within the water body, enhancing the bathers experience. The naturally grounded cocoon invites the visitor into a delicate journey of pleasure and sensation through water’s diverse states, from tickling light droplets, to caressing warm vapour, or enveloping bodies of water, the user relaxes in Sublimation.
Christmas Soul Fishermen’s net, construction meshes, stitch beiruts scarred fabric
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The first christmas following the disasterous explosion at the Beirut port, amidst a tough economic crisis, the project is situated in the center of the mar mekhayel-gemmayze neighborhood stitching an urban fabric thta has been brought apart, with a light gesture in a hope to bring back life to this area. The ‘tree’ is made of fishing net, stretches out by cables to neighboring buildings, with the apex smilarly hanged to create the cone shape. We, Are; It, is; Us. Chritmas, Soul, Elevated; Light, Cloud, Floating, Connecting, Stitching; Scars. Uniting, Occupying; Urban Fabric Reconstruction, rennovation, Scaffold net Life, Fishermen’s net; Port Immaterial, Overwhelming; Soul A Tree, Roots; Growth
MUV Gym in Beirut Instagram page
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MUV is a gym in Beirut, Lebanon as a collaboration project between an Architecture and Design practice and a graphic design and branding practice. spread over two floors, the design builds on an existing structure. The main space occurs similarly on both levels where a central area is open for periodic activities, body-weight exercise and other area requiring endeavors. It extends to an external space, completely open-air with a view to the see, just a street away. The view is maintained from the indoor gym space too. In collaboration with a graphic design and branding practice [ Lo Siento ] the project encapsulates a collaborative, interdisciplinary approach realized in a unified manner.
Casa Rec Subtraction as spatial addition in a heritage context ArchDaily Publication
O Nominee
“The project focuses on the reform of two buildings that hosted a small textile industry and a house at the end of the 19th century, in the Rec neighborhood in Igualada, near Barcelona,. The neighborhood is currently in the process of transformation from its industrial tradition focused on leather tanning to become a creative neighborhood that also hosts artists, cultural events, and gastronomy. The project has been an exercise based on emptying the buildings of slabs, patios, walls, and pillars to find the space of the house and the office inside. Therefore, based on a work of demolishing, reinforcing, recycling, and valuing building made with local materials. A double-height space has been created on the ground floor of the house, with a book mezzanine and a large open fireplace. On the first floor, intended for the children’s rooms, a large intermediate space has been created built around the remains of the old ventilation patio. On the upper floor, a spacious room has been created with a pavement created with the recycling of the beams of the demolished floors. The exercise has been repeated in the small business building, creating a workspace on both the ground floor and the top floor, with great material austerity.”
House 30 Forest within a forest - Designing Subecologies
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The house celebrates its context by emphasizing its major accents. Organic, limitless, distributed and natural, the spatial organization delivers an immersive experience in an intensified specimen of the forest, within the forest. Within such an ecosystem, the tree structure emerging from the ground, holds densities on its vertical branching, while maintaining its unity. Similarly, the spaces of the house are indicated by vertical elements, habitable horizontal platforms, discrete yet continuous in an enclosure that surpasses the formal to an organic, fluid, green and experiential realm. A tea corner here, a meditation platform there, and a diverse pool of functional and experiential planification, puts forward this house as a mise en scène that interprets this natural habitat. Not limited to interior space, the landscaping is an extension of the house. Hence being in the house ascends to a limitless and boundless setting within its context. The floating horizontal platforms, including the ground platforms, spread out along the sloping ground, creating a staged link between the road and the lake. Supporting the horizontal platforms, the mise en espace is fulfilled by vertical elements, such as pillars, cables, and plants to emphasize the verticality. On the other hand, the circulation system, an interconnected set of stairs and platforms, hung by cables wrap around the concrete walls. The net, brings together the whole space, by it fluidity, folding periferal spaces into a central vortex, accessible from various side, for the enhabitants to enjoy. As a functional layout, the main functions [ entrance, living spaces, cloakroom library, kitchen, dining room and bathroom ] occupy the ground floor. The two upper floors house four bedrooms, each with a bathroom, shower, and a dressing closet.
Tour B Office Building in a strategic spot in Abidjan
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The most populous city in French speaking West Africa and the largest in Côte d’Ivoire. Considered as the West African cultural crossroads, Abidjan is experiencing strong growth characterized by strong industrialization and rampant urbanization. Despite the loss of its official status as the capital of Côte d’Ivoire, it remains de facto the seat of most of the country’s administrative and national political institutions, and continues to play the leading role in Ivorian political life.
Tower of Life The Future Icon of Ecological Design
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The future icon of the African continent, a building as an organism, enmeshed with its ecosystem, operating on variable ecological layers. The design is made to allow movement of air, water, energy, technology and biology [ humans, flora and fauna ]. The tower will host multi-tennent and multiscalar companies in a mixed environment where small companies are hosted to become unicorns. The tower’s core is a seedbank for the flora of africa. In addition, the core includes most circulation systems. Wrapped around the main core, an air sustem that includes vents and can be populated by drones. The air channels move air that is cooled and purified underground as it circulates above the water tank that in turn hosts collected water and purifies it. Just below the entrance level, The Museum of the Future economy of Africa emphaizing the ethos “ Ecology as Economy “. The sensing layer of the building is both static with installed sensors and mobile with a swarm of drones that scan the territory, help spread seeds from the seedbank, monitor crop health, perform light shows, and deliver crisis management supplies such as vaccines. The building’s floors include indoor flora within the top floors as trees and shrubs, and in the lobby as algea bioreactors. The tower’s skin is a carbon capturing membrane with appretures following a growth simulation.
Ecology as Economy
Self-Suficient Blocks Post-Pandemic Urban Block a 100 Km from Beijing
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The project defines an urban model, that merges the traditional European urban blocks, the Chinese modern towers, and the productive farming landscape. This new urban environment where people can live, work and rest, will allow the residents to produce resources locally while they are connected globally, providing a full life even in moments of confinement. Located a 100 km from Beijing, the blocks have been designed given the context of the virus crisis, and therefore inverts the crisis setting into an upportunity to design post-pandemic urban built environment. The proposed blocks are protypes for the next generation housing blocks in china, equiped with necessary facilities to produce food, energy and things. The blocks are populated with a complex and diverse array of flora.
Self Suffiecient Block New Urban Typology
The European Block
The Chinese Modern Block
Productive Solar Greenhouses The New Self-sufficient Urban Block
Resilient NeighborhoodNew Urban Typology
Form
Producing Things
Social InteractionNew Urban Typology
Producing Food
Wuhan New Town IDC Block-scale mixed use hub in Wuhan
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Absorbing the business direction of the Jingchu bushes originated from “Jingchu Culture”, using a “cloud platform” with a high degree of integration of information, commerce and leisure as the backbone of interaction, each building function is distributed on the branches. Like a cluster of shrubs, it is closely connected with the core backbone “cloud platform”, symbolizing the design concept of the plot centered on communication and interaction, and various functions complement each other.
Shenzhen Super HQ Ecological Urban Biotopes
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The HQ area urban design is based on an ecological design process that reconstructs natural biotopes and maintains an biological green corridor as the main axis. The central part includes the main functions such as a science center, research, transportation and commercial hubs in addition to the mangrove tower inspired by the fauna of the territory. The biotopes designed are biotopes of life including cultural life and commercial life. The mangrove tower bas 3 converging footings that hold to the ground as a tripod. It is inspired by the Mangrove trees, characteristic in the area, being unique plants that stem from wet ecosystems into and converge to rise up.
Huanggang Port Sci-Loop The Science park of the future at the Hong Kong-Shenzhen limit
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“This project establishes creating a science park on both sides of the Shenzhen river, one promoted by Hong Kong, and another promoted by Shenzhen. The site next to the Huanggang Port must be potentially connected to the city, but at the same time it must be limited by an access system for authorized people. For this reason, we propose creating a water channel that defines a circle, a loop around the river, and that embraces both parks in Hong Kong and Shenzhen in a single geometry. This artificial channel located on a higher level than the river, will allow nature and biodiversity to develop along its route, and will also create an invisible barrier between the city and the science park. Therefore, the Loop is an element that unites and separates at the same time.”
River-front view
Research Facility Building and Cloud Elements
Territorial Context - Rhino File Screenshot [ Modeled for the project ] 3d Model Screenshot
Public Space
Internal Courtyard
The Forest City Project A viable model for the urban to come
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The Forest City project is a conscious decision to undertake the climate crisis following the UN Habitat objectives for Sustainable Development. Situated in Gabon, the project leverages the forest-rich ecosystem to develop bio-products, forest science, and a city that will grow following nature-derived principles; a branching system that maximizes exposure to nature and diversity. The project seed is a lab-factory with the vision of educating local youth on design and fabrication utilizing local wood promoting by that local industry and the creation of bio-startups. Hence creating a self sufficient city built of local resources with advanced water, food and energy management systems, in line with establishing an economic sector alloy to inspire the world.
Collaborators .European Forest Institute .BAD. Built by Associative Data
Governed by a branching growth logic, the forest city project is a productive mixed-use urban development concieved as redesignig ecology into a living economy with design at the core.
Sectors
Branching Logic 1st Sector
2nd Sector
3rd Sector
Wood Transformation Cycle
Neighborhood View
Twig Community
VidAledo
Territory Terrain
Ecological Urbanism and community building in Aledo Valley, Murcia
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Following the self-sufficient ecological urbanism principles, and happening right in the pandemic crisis, the master plan has a modular, scalar, and adaptable geometrical system as its formal basis. Each leaf is a small community, 3 leaves create a triangular block with nature in the center, and scaling up, the grid takes a hexagon aggregation scheme. The communities are armed with natural assets and designed spaces to produce food, things, and energy.
Leaf Grid Geometry
Terrain Analysis
Modular Grid
Terrain Conditions
Adapted Modular Grid Mesh
QianHai Cultural SuperBlock Slow mobility, urban ecology, and innovation-fostering programme for new Cultural superblock.
Y
“Qianhai Cultural Superblocks is a project to reinforce the Central Cultural District character of Units 8 and 10 in Qianhai Bay. The idea is to create an ecological and cultural corridor between the Mountain of the Reform and the National Museum of China • Shenzhen which will be located in front of the Bay, creating an urban system from Superblocks, so that the citizen and not the car, is the protagonist of the city. In this way, Culture in the city is not manifested in buildings, but in the urban plot itself that is capable of hosting multiple activities of large, medium and small size, along an ecological axis and public spaces of various formats . This urban format allow several levels of vegetation, so that the space for the city becomes 80% of the urban fabric of the city and with it the culture and urbanity are encouraged.”
Full Site Axonometry
Super Block Urban Mobility Crossing
Building Types
Office Block Courtyard
Cheng Du - Native Flow
Ecological Green Branching Belt
Urban Linearity and Ecological Branching Green belts to ChengDu’s Radial morphology
Z
The project’s design strategy trasforms the site from a boundary that separates to a connector that brings together both parts of the territory. This is done through creating a chronoligical mapping of water flows within the site, detecting ecological artifacts and catalyzing the water flow, and allowing nature to penetrate and expand from the edges of the corridor to the different areas through fingers. The fingers are designed following the trajectory of the rivers and water canals, hense creating an ecological belt that branches out to bond two broken pieces of the territory. The urban development within the scheme therefor follows a linear approach where urban density is paired with a maximum exposure to nature.
Ecological Layers
Territorial limits
Laughing Boy AI generated portrait exposing dataset biases and laughter complexity
0
“Laughing boy is a photograph by Hersley Casero in 2008 while testing out a new long lens - sponsored to him by the LA Times - of his younger cousins and nephews who were playing amongst the trees and bamboo houses in his hometown of Dumaguete, the Philippines.” Soon after the photograph was out, it spread where artists started creating their version of the image, by painting on top, collaging, and all ways of photomontage and editing. This artwork uses a generative adversarial network to generate an interpretation of the photograph “the laughing boy” based on classical paintings of boy portraits. The main ideas here are [1] to expose the cultural and racial biases within datasets and [2] the weirdness of recreating a free and innocent gesture such as a laugh using artificial intelligence for image-making.
Laughing boy photograph by Hersley Casero - 2008
Rooster; With a Human Eye
< Body
An almost-uncanny Valley
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Body without organs/ Organs without a body
2
Evolution
Owl
Pen on Canvas 100*67cm
3
Graffiti in Tres Xemeneyes / Barcelona
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The Natural Pen on Canvas 200*67cm
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