New writing January/February 2010
R&Sie´s Parisian courtyard renovation is both a family home and a "hydroponic green cloak", Mark, Feb 2010
Bizarre and otherworldly, French architecture firm R&Sie(n) has designed and realized an experimental new home in a courtyard in central Paris. Known as ‘I’m Lost in Paris’, it suggests new ways of thinking about ecology, cybernetics and wilderness. R&Sie(n) cofounder François Roche may not want to talk about this project as ‘sustainable’ – "I hate that word and how it is has become the new high priest of moralism" – but his project can be seen as an alternative reading of urban sustainability, in which a personal relationship with nature and site allows for multiple readings, a notion that is radical beyond aesthetics. Disinterested in carbon counting and in energy-saving appliances; his work is subversive, both repulsing and intriguing with its glass and green façade – its ‘lost’ appearance…Read more in Mark Magazine 24, Feburary 2010 and see PDF below.
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Horten Office´s innovative facade by Danish architects 3XN with GXN, Mark, February 2010
A new office building in Copenhagen by 3XN and their internal research team GXN utilizes an innovative shading strategy. The G in GXN stands for both green and geometry, and GXN leader Kasper Guldager Jorgensen sees this headquarters for local law office Horten as an encouraging test case – the result of two years of research and development in façade design and sustainability rationalizing complex geometry… Each fibreglass and travertine sandwich panel on the Horten Building in Copenhagen’s Tuborg South area looks unique, but the geometry has been rationalized using parametric modelling tools and optimized to maximize solar shading while allowing natural light into the building. The distinctive projecting windows also give the offices a view to the canal. The structural panels are self- supporting and therefore do not rely on the building's primary vertical structure. Walking around the site, the observer sees a building that seems to open and close to the sun, revealing linear floor-to-ceiling windows that catch indirect light and are shaded by the relief of the three-dimensional façade. To the north and south the panels are flat, but on the east and west façades the geometries vary, with two panel types on each side…. Read more in Mark Magazine 24, or see PDF below.
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Mellem 'arkitekturen' og Kroppen, Arkitekten, December 2009
Published in Danish, translated by Cornelius Holck Coding. Exerpt from original English text: “It is a radical but a very simple architecture” says architect Philippe Rahm of his “The New Olduvai Gorges”, currently presented at Climate and Architecture at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture. Rahm´s installation is an interactive, multi-dimensional experience with offerings of mint or chilli water, techno music, swinging gymnastic apparatus, ultraviolet lights, simmering meat and a long white table with salmon sushi. His idea of allowing visitors to make connections between their inner “climate” (through feeling hot or cold), and a series of varied external stimulations (such as drinking chilli water or standing under lights that encourage the release of melatonin), is a simple yet startling way of thinking. Without pie charts or global warming diagrams, carbon warnings or Inconvenient Truths, Rahm presents visitors with what they already intuitively know, but in a poetic and sensual way: our exterior climate has impact on our physiology. When we get hot, we need to cool down, when the balance of daylight is not right, we need to adjust our habits and compensate. We need new ways of thinking about climate change and our relationships to our environment. Read more (in Danish) in Arkitekten Magazine, December 2009.
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Beyond Floor Wall and Roof - Is Biology a New Ecological Model for Architecture? - Jenny E Sabin profiled in Mark 23, December 2009
Recently it has become almost fashionable for architects to find influences in natural processes, living systems and other biological phenomena, but without proper collaboration, the results are merely aesthetic. Architect Jenny E Sabin’s work and ethics as cofounder of experimental research and design group Sabin+Jones LabStudio at the University of Pennsylvania have led her in the direction of cultivating vast scientific knowledge and working partnerships in lieu of the superficiality of form. ‘Scientists can produce so much data, to the point where designing different filters becomes necessary in order to visualize the data with the utmost clarity.’ She goes on to say that ‘using these filters allows us to analyse complex relationships in the body, mathematics and biology that have implications for multiple fields, including architecture’. ‘As a designer, I’m working on really important issues like breast cancer, but at the end of the day my heart is in making and materials. The architectural avant-garde has given us a slew of architectural examples, of new formal possibilities and material directions for architecture, but as architects and designers we have a responsibility to move beyond shapemaking.’ Considering form in its context, Sabin and Jones are using biology as an ecological model for architecture. ‘We need to understand how context or environment specifies form, function and structure,’ she says. ‘We are experimenting – looking at new models that relate to energy conservation, adaptability and performance in architecture.’ Read more in Mark 23 or see the PDF below.
| jenny_sabin_mark_magazine.pdf |
"A Cool New Leaf - Sustainable design from Copenhagen and Berlin", Clear, December 2009
In the creative industries, from architecture to product design to fashion design to art, sustainability is going beyond a PR selling point or a novelty and actually pushing the boundaries of material, form and style, challenging designers and consumers to demand more, not less, from their designs. An experimental event showcasing young fashion designers from Berlin and Copenhagen at September´s Copenhagen Design Week proved sustainability and bold design should no longer be considered mutually exclusive. Earlier this year, six young designers from Copenhagen traveled to Berlin to take part in the ‘Bright Green Fashion´ challenge which allowed them to learn alongside their German counterparts relating theoretical and practical skills to make their designs sustainable. Then at Design Week, the ten designers debuted capsule collections of sustainable design alongside their new collections. To a full house at the Copenhagen City Hall venue, the audience could see a vast range of design approaches, challenging the idea of a “sustainable” aesthetic. Read more at www.clearmag.com or see PDF below.
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