HITOSHI ABE - AOBA-TEI RESTAURANT (2004-05)

The restaurant, called Aoba-tei, which means “leafy place”, features perforated steel surfaces as a single continuous inner “skin”. This runs in an S-shape to contain both the reception area on the restaurant’s lower floor and the upper 30-seat dining area. “We made this steel plate as a seamless monocoque surface in order to create a seamless graphic surface for the images of zelkova trees, and to integrate the two floors smoothly,” he says.

The skin’s outer surface, made from 22mm-thick steel plate, performs 90û turns as the walls bend into the ceilings. The upper-floor ceiling height rises from just over 2m high at the front to 3.5m at the back. To achieve all the complex curves in the skin, a shipbuilding process was used in which key points are heated and chilled.

The spaces are lit with concealed downlights and by lighting behind the perforated skin. The overall effect is a golden gloom that evokes the ambience of a forest.

Abe also designed the chairs and tables – each is moulded from a single piece of birch plywood that references the curves of the inner loop – and the long walnut wood counter that runs down the back half of the upper floor of the restaurant.

Hitoshi Abe has his own practice, which he established in Sendai in 1992. Other projects of his include the 49,000-seater Miyagi Stadium, near Sendai, created for the 2002 World Cup, and the Miyagi Water Tower.

Aoba-tei is currently only open for special guests of the owner, who made his fortune in beef tongue, a local delicacy.

from Architecture and Interior blog and ICON magazine online

See the book The articulate surface ornament and technology in contemporary architecture by Ben Pell for more detailed description and drawings

Friday at Tate Britain: Performing Architecture

Alex Schweder and Ward Shelly, Stability, Seattle, 2009 Photos 
© Scott Lawrimore, edited by Ward Shelly & author.

What does performance have to do with architecture? 
How can a building perform, and how can we perform a building?

Come on a playful journey through the gallery in its current phase of spatial and structural transformation, taking a look at architectural and art practices that explore how our physical bodies interact with built form.

With talks, performance, a workshop, and sound and film from Alex Schwederand Lamis Bayar, Kreider + O’Leary, Effie Coe, Emptyset and The Architecture Foundation. 

*Late at Tate Britain: February 2013
Performing Architecture*
Friday 1 February, 18:00 - 22:00
Tate Britain

more details here.

How to Build Animated GIFs in Photoshop

Second Year Students working on your blog posts: Here is a simple tutorial on how to create animated GIFs in Photoshop,  with some example files you can download and try out: 

http://creativetechs.com/tipsblog/build-animated-gifs-in-photoshop/

Colònia Güell by Antoni Gaudí

Courtesy of Samuel Ludwig

Colònia Güell was a workers’ colony located in Santa Coloma de Cervelló, presently a town of around 7,000 inhabitants 20km outside Barcelona. The area was a manufacturing suburb that grew rapidly around the turn of the 20^th century. In 1898, Antoni Gaudi was commissioned by Count Eusebi de Güell, who wanted to provide a place of worship for the booming suburb, to build a Church.

Through the construction process of Colònia Güell, Gaudi is said to have experimented with an array of techniques and architectonic details, many of which would later be used in his famous tour-de-force, the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona.

Courtesy of Samuel Ludwig

Brick and mosaics dominate the structure, used in an extraordinary way. The form of the building is anything but traditional, perhaps a by-product of the breath taking spaces, both interior and exterior. The crypt is magnificently articulated, changes in materiality carefully calculated and light sensitively controlled. Different bricks and stones are used for the structure, meeting at carefully detailed joints, and perhaps filling in different structural roles.

from archdaily

KOWLOON WALLED CITY CROSS SECTION

At one time, one of the most densely populated areas on Earth, Kowloon, was a walled city within Hong Kong. It was unregulated by the then-ruling British authorities, who reluctantly allowed it as the only Chinese settlement. It was a no man’s land because of this; run by the Chinese mafia and filled with brothels, sweat shops, illegal hospitals, and trashy eateries.

Originally, Kowloon was built as a watchpost for guards who would protect the area from pirates. But as the population grew–from 10,000 in 1971 to a staggering 50,000 in 1990–attempts were made by the government to evict the squatters living in the city. In 1992, the governent succeded in evicting the population and, in 1993, the 15 story tall block of buildings was torn down. Today, a park with tennis courts covers the area.

Below you will find a highly detailed cross section of the city, drawn by a Japanese team, just before it was torn down. They were obviously having fun drawing and added many hidden gems of city life. See the image full size by clicking here.

 original POST BY PAUL CARIDAD FROM THE VISUAL NEWS

Mapping- 'The World Redrawn by the 5 Senses'

The Secrets of Grand Central

Sam Roberts goes behind the scenes at Manhattan's Grand Central Terminal. The impressive interior space holds many intriguing and fantastic design elements.

Still Lives

For the 1st and 2nd Year Students, a few references to get you started in thinking about the 'Still Life' that your group is constructing from your 123D scanned objects:

Ensemble by Jiri Kolar

Vanitas Still Life, by Pieter Claesz, 1630

“Madame, la table est dressée”, by Le Corbusier, 1961

 painting by Audrey Flack

'Violin and Jug', by Georges Braque,1910 

Still Life by Giorgio Morandi

Vyhnani z pekla by Jiri Kolar

The 3D Printing Revolution

"Though it’s been used by industrial designers to create prototypes for decades, the process of rapid prototyping has only recently begun to benefit the masses...These are just a few of the ways in which we’re seeing 3D printing entering into our daily lives and addressing our practical needs, while giving us a new creative outlet through which we can create any 3D shape imaginable."

from the creator's project blog.

New Issue of a + t: RECLAIM

It publishes a+t magazine - whose issues are edited in thematic series - and books on collective housing and public space.  With this start to the Reclaim series, a+t interprets the works analysed and organizes its discourse on the basis of Re- actions, using these actions to create a body of knowledge applicable to any project.

Reclaim has the environmental sense to reclaim the territory, the objects, the infrastructures and the materials yet it also is a call to reclaim dignity and citizen rights. It is a wake-up call to morally reclaim society using theRe- processes as atonement.

Remediate Reuse Recycle interprets and compares actions extracted from the projects and classifies them into three Re-processes:

Remediate: acting on the territory
Reuse: acting on the building
Recycle: acting on the material

more info at a+t