FUNgiCULTURE

Bika Rebek

Year: 2009

Studio: Studio Lynn: Mass Effect

School: University of Applied Arts Vienna

FUNgiCULTURE is a mushroom growing facility located in the east of France. The architectural ambition is to redefine the relationship between mass and void by means of a contemporary surface language.

The site is located on the countryside, close to the "Les Salines Royales", a salt processing plant. Visitors and workers get to this area mostly by car; they can drive directly onto the site and park underneath the building. For pedestrians a ramp is leading from the street to the outdoor space. The architecture is perceived as an object in the landscape. There is a clear distinction between outside and inside, but the outdoor room creates a different kind of transitional space from the exterior of the object to the interior. In summer it becomes a market place and a meeting spot for the local community. From there visitors already catch glimpses of the central production area before they enter the artificial architectural space.

There are two distinct spatial qualities on the inside; on the one hand the open, colorful space for visitors and workers and on the other hand the cavernous rooms where the fungi are grown.The growing rooms rest on the ground emphasizing their weight, while the inhabited areas are elevated allowing for views and creating the sheltered outdoor space underneath. The exterior is connected to the central inhabitable space through deep cuts that reveal the depth of the massive architecture.

The visitor zone is colored bright red, creating a vivid atmosphere for a cafe and a small shop. The yellow area in the middle is for production and packaging of the harvested mushrooms. Deep openings formed by cuts radically frame the surrounding landscape. In the back the hues turn blue to create a calm environment for research and administration offices. The colors blend into each other, emphasizing the blurred programmatic transitions. The poche spaces contain one main growing room and two smaller ones for testing and experimentation, smaller cavities are used as restrooms and staff changing rooms.

By reexamining the classic architectural themes of mass to void and interior to exterior relationships, FUNgiCULTURE creates a new kind of atmospheric industrial architecture.





via : http://www.studioplex.org/node/196

Hexigloo found on contemporist

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Project description from the designers:

Hexigloo is a fully parametrically designed pavillion resulting out of a 7 day workshop in Bucharest Romania organized by Tudor Cosmatu, Irina Bogdan, Andrei Raducanu, and guest tutuors Andrei Gheorge (Angewandte, Vienna) Alexander Kalachev (DIA, Dessau) and Bence Pap (Zaha Hadid Architects London) . 55 students participated in a week long workshop learning the basic principles of parametric design, and software, with the task to build in the second half of the week a human scale spatial installation. Out of 10 projects 3 got finally built using a laser cutter and longnight workshifts for the assembly of the parts.

HEXigloo represents a pavilion that’s based on a cellular honeycomb structure, applied on an igloo surface typology. From concept to the finite product, the process went through the following steps: mapping a hexagonal grid on a pre-modeled surface (14 rows + 14 columns – having 196 elements as a result), extruding the mapped hexagons on the Z axis in order to create a binding surface between the components. All the binding surfaces together add rigidity to the overall structure.

The main interest was focused on the interior space; therefore, the interior cells were offsetted and moved on the Z axis, perpendicular to the normal of the surface in the center of each mapped hexagon. The value of the offset is directly proportional with the distance between the centers of the hexagons and a predefined curvilinear attractor, while the perpendicular one is using the opposed value.

In order to produce the elements, unrolling each one of them was necessary. In order to unroll them we used a VB.NET script. Since the algorithm uses a general set of rules, the result needed a second check in order to optimize and find the best nesting place on the cardboard sheet. Approximately 2200 linear meters were cut at the laser cutter for this installation and it was made out of 6mm cardboard.

Two teams of participants were created in order to assemble the laser cut components: one that assembled the pieces in their three dimensional shape and one that stitched the components together in order to create the final overall structure. We subdivided the whole volume into subassemblies in order to make the job easier. The whole process lasted approximately 80 hours.


via : http://www.3d-dreaming.com/2011/06/hexigloo-found-on-contemporistcom.html

Clean CANAL Water Margot Krasojevic

Courtesy Margot Krasojevic

Clean CANAL Water is the proposal entry by Margot Krasojevic for the Competition Amsterdam footbridge 2012.

Water management is still the most important function of Amsterdam canals. Without them, the city would drown. Circulating the water is also vital for sanitary reasons. In the days when windmills had to do the job, the stench of the water could become unbearable in periods with little wind or rain.

Courtesy Margot Krasojevic

Three times a week, 14 of the 16 existing waterlocks around the city close up, so clean water can be pumped in from the big lake IJsselmeer. The current that is created pushes the dirty canal water out through the open locks on the other side of the city. Specialized cleaning boats with big scoops and nets patrol frequently clean surface debris. Since 2005, all the houseboats in the city are connected to the sewer system.

The cleaner water has attracted 20 different species of fish and crab that live a healthy life below the surface. Water birds like herons, ducks, coots, gulls and cormorants also feed and live on the canals.

Courtesy Margot Krasojevic

The bridge proposal uses this as a design criteria, the form of the proposed bridge follows a water vortex, which pumps dirty canal water through and round the steel tubes which filter it and create a current which helps with the sanitation of the canals especially when they are flushed 3 times a week. The bridge acts as a pump pushing dirty water out through the open locks on to the other side of the city, where the cleaning boats patrol and clean the debris. The bridge acts as a reservation for birds which in recent years have been attracted to the cleaner water in the canals.

Courtesy Margot Krasojevic

The coffee shop and the steel ribbed frames that wrap around the bridge reflect the constant movement in the city, bicycles are hoisted up into the frames waiting to be repaired. The coffee shop is an orange water tunnel which has inner reinforced etched glass panels that mimic that give the feel of being underwater. The entire scheme is a piece of reclaimed land, a polder which also allows for people to sunbathe and relax, like an reclaimed urban beach.





via : http://plusmood.com/2012/03/clean-canal-water-margot-krasojevic/