# RIBA's President's Medals / Street Life

I am sorry for those who are fed up with student's projects but the end of the year is always prolific in informations about interesting works...

Here is another RIBA's President's Medals' winner, Mark Rist with his project in University of Wesminster, Street life / Commune for urbanities.

Set within the tough reality of repetitive modular design - and located between Old Compton Street and Oxford Street in central London - this design project proposes a new urban streetscape which can embrace the simple and seemingly banal acts of commercial and domestic everyday life within Soho’s particular vibrant and (it should be said) voyeuristic context.

While acknowledging that there is an apparent inability to conceive a genuinely globalised context even in a city like London, for to do so would result in an undeniable flattening of individuality, it is still clearly the case that we live similarly modulated lives as modern urban dwellers. How can we mix the feeling that we are special and unique with the knowledge also that we are not? Hence it is within the subtle idiosyncratic acts of personal desire and commodification, as well as our often near-invisible mannerisms and behavioural patterns, that the shared space of the contemporary street truly comes alive. We perform, we consume, we blend in, and we feel energised by our daily links to others whom we do not even know.

Thus this project seeks to provide the sense of a physical 'commune' that can address the sense of temporality experienced by urbanites in a place like Soho. It does this though by proposing a new hybrid between a domestic and a commercial street, set within a design strategy which equally embraces but also indefinitely shatters the typical cliches of modular dwelling systems. The project's aim is to deliver a generic, self-made and fluctuating urban environment which will help towards the creation of an even more eclectic and vibrant condition of street life.

# SMALL /// Technocraft's Low tech balloon system

Here is one emergency architecture designed by Technocraft you can find in the book Design like you give a damn (see also a previous post about Concrete massonry units by Sistema Arde).

The idea is to take used hemp sacks, in this case animal feedbags, and sew them together to form a dome-shaped structure. The construction is separated into prefabricated elements that can be assembled off-site or a local cottage industry "build-up process" at the site. Separating the production process allows for faster production and eliminates the need for electricity.
At the site the sewn hemp "skin" are connected by plastic ties and attached to "Life Elements" (doors, windows and faciilities for cooking, sanitation and storage) with a maximum of eight per structure. Workers stuff the hemp strucutre with inflated airbags or balloons, tighten the plastic ties to increase the air pressure, and dampen the entire structure. They then spray or apply mortar over the dome to create a thin concrete shell, much like a papier-maché model. Inner pressure from the airbags supports the structure during the mortar application, making additional construction devices such as an air-compressor or wooden supports unnecessary.
Once the mortar has dried, teams cut out excess hemp from the openings of the doors, windows, and other elements and deflate the airbags, which can be reused. Then workers mortar and plaster the interior walls, creating a waterproof, thermal-insulated shell. Individual units can be easily combined to create larger living spaces.

# Jürgen Mayer's Metropol Parasol is still growing

Archidose informs us that there are some new pictures of the Metropol Parasol's construction site on Jürgen Mayer's website. Although construction is still going on very slow, it does progress and as far as I'm concerned, I'm looking forward its end !

# RIBA's President's Medals / The Brewer's anatomy by Fredrik Haukeland

Another winner of the President's medals is our good friend, Fredrik Haukeland from the Oslo school of architecture. His project, The Brewer's anatomy got attention even in UK !! One more time, congratulation to him.

“The Brewer’s Anatomy” is situated next to a Ship Yard, by River Clyde. It’s a brewery containing all the elements of beer making; a garden for growing hops and barley, an oat and malting house, a brewery, administrative and technical spaces and, of course, a bar for consumption of beer.
The project has developed around the person of the brewer. The spaces adapt to his body shape at the same time as the brewer adapts to the brewery. The vessels, pipes and tubes are organized in a functional way as well as revealing their potential as space creators.

# SMALL /// RepRap project

The REPRAP project started two years ago, the project is based on the idea to create a machine that can reproduce itself.

The Reprap machine is in fact an open sourced D.I.Y. 3D printer that can produce solid plastic connection that are necessary to build the machine.

Anyway this machine is an affordable possibility to create your own rapid prototyping machine, it's dedicated for all the lazy students that doesn't want to build there models (but whom are ready to build this machine!!).

The official site: here

The official blog: here

Thank s Matt for the links !

# RIBA's President's Medals winners 2008 / Invisible University Library by Wynne Leung

The 2008 Royal Institute of British Architects' awards has been announced and here is one of them: the Invisible University Library by Wynne Leung from the University of Greenwich (London)

Our 'mutoscopes' are spaces which make invisible processes visible. We've established a logistical communication network between the city and countryside by displacing urban voids such as traffic islands, street furniture and hedgerows into the grounds of Hay Castle and Hay town. Streetlamps are enlarged to accomodate writers, whose invisible activities become visible signals in the nocturnal ambience.

Literary London decamps to Hay on Wye for the festival: flaneurs, voyeurs and agitators of the production process of writing. Ruins are the setting for recital, storytelling, lecturing, preaching, listening, whispering and eavesdropping; while pigeonfanciers dispense messages about future events. It is a soundscape where nature and artifice are intertwined. Once the books are converted to audio format, they are shredded, pulped and recycled to provide new paper for emerging writers. Writers, readers and audience occupy an illuminating space in the ruins of history; confounded by the ever expanding accumulation of technologies.

# SMALL /// Atelier Bow Wow's Pet architecture guide book

Bow Wow's Pet architecture guide book repertoriates small buildings in Tokyo which succeed to insert itself into what Exyzt calls RAB (read yesterday's post), a small parcel of waste urban land.

# SMALL /// Tom DIXON Pylon serie

Here's some pictures of the work of the designer Tom DIXON.
This serie of furnitures has been inspired by electric pylons, the lightness of the structure, is unusual at this scale and create an interesting contrast with daily life objects.

# SMALL /// Exyzt's Rab

Exyzt is a parisian architecture office applying some of Patrick Bouchain's theories (and also developping their own) about a certain way of designing architecture. Here is their first work in 2003:

MEANS and MEANING

The RAB is the first of Exyzt's architectural experimentation on urban reality. Going against all ideas of designed and controlled public space, the newly-born collective wanted to proove that everbody can bring informal urban spaces back into the city. These spaces, forgotten by urban planning, are the base of a democraty, that allows freedom of expression and exchange.
Where can you find a space in the city that could shelter such a project? Exyzt selected a certain type of urban space, which they defined as a RAB. The RAB is a leftover space, urban planning, and which is unusable for real estate transaction.

Here follows the manual of such a creation step by step.

1.Choose a RAB
Exyzt temporarily occupied a RAB forgotten by the construction of the Parc de la Villette. Situated on the verge of a modest neighborhood, it was, though its poor state, well situated. The criterias of selection included good sun exposure and visibility. Optionally, you can include the presence of a ad structure, vegetation and water.

2. Occupy the RAB
Occupying induces opening the enclosure, as to reintroduce the RAB in the public space, cleaning up, and reintroduce it to an human occupation. Such a physical occupation done, human contact with the autochtons should be established as to make the neighboorhood familiar with the RAB.

3. Play games
The five to be architects settled in the site with a Mecanoo like kit, contenaining a certain amount of scaffolding, textiles and lights. Thus equiped, they constructed a structure that could unfold, extend, and generally suffer changes as to answer to either planned or spontaneous events.

4. Public aknowledgement
Such an adventure should ask for an official recognition, as to establish the RAB as part of urban activities. In this case, Exyzt presented their experimentation as their final school project in front of all of those who took part of this adventure.

5. Transmission of the RAB
We hope our experience will make people want to occupy their own RAB. We left ours, but transmitted it to the Parenthèse association, created for the occasion by people of the neighborhood. Keep it an informal. Keep it joyful.

# SMALL /// Graffiti Research Lab's tricycle

Graffiti Research Lab is an international collective interested into the link between graffiti, technology and interactivity. Their tricycle allows them to pick a place (a wall) in the city and to create some ephemerous digital graffitis thanks to a laser.

# SMALL /// Introduction

Coloco's auto-consuming cart (see also NL Architects' moving forest)

We open a new thematic today called SMALL. SMALL is a scale accessible to anyone who decides to act on his environment. This act can be assimilated as an expression of ideas and identities of his authors within public space.
We don't really know yet where we are going with this, but we'll discover that all along this month !

# Arne Quinze's Sequence

Here is last Arne Quinze's installation close to the Flemish Parliament in Brussels for the first Festival of politics which ran on november 14th, 15th and 16th.
More pictures and informations on the official site.