/  by Thomas DeVoss

treeroots: The man who isn’t there You might say that Liu Bolin likes to blend in. But the Chinese artist does more than just wear camouflage pants and stand next to a bush. With the help of some assistants, Bolin paints himself, head to toe and un…

treeroots:

The man who isn’t there

You might say that Liu Bolin likes to blend in.

But the Chinese artist does more than just wear camouflage pants and stand next to a bush. With the help of some assistants, Bolin paints himself, head to toe and unassumingly just stands there—in grocery stores, next to piles of coal, on staircases, you name it. And, unless you look really closely, you’ll miss him entirely—which is pretty much the point.

Liu Bolin/Eli Klein Fine Art

/  by Thomas DeVoss

see more images, drawings, info…

http://www.archdaily.com/87063/cor-oppenheim-architecture-design/

“The ambitious project to design the first sustainable mixed-use condominium in Miami has been getting a lot of buzz and rightfully so.  At 400′ tall it represents a dynamic synergy between architecture, structural engineering, and ecology.  Extracting power from its environment utilizing the latest advancements in wind turbines, photovoltaics, and solar hot water generation COR upon completion will be seeking a LEED Platinum certification.  The polka dotted hyper-efficient exoskeleton shell simultaneously provides building structure, thermal mass for insulation, shading for natural cooling, enclosure for terraces, armatures for turbines, and loggias for congregating on the ground.  Comprising commercial, office, fitness, live/work, and pure residential spaces (113 residences from studios to penthouses)—COR provides a uniquely flexible platform for­ lifestyle enhancement.

Last week on ArchDaily we featured our interview with Chad Oppenheim founding partner ofOppenheim Architecture + Design.  Below is a portion of the interview regarding the design of COR, and the full interview can be found here.

Architects: Oppenheim Architecture + Design
Location: Miami, Florida, United States
Project Team: Chad Oppenheim, Carlos Ramos, Juan López, Carolina Jaimes, Juan Calvo, Hugo Mijares, Jessica Santaniello Barrera, Rodrigo Londoño and Camilo Orozco
Client: Nexus Development Group
Project Area: 480,000 sqf
Project Year: Estimated 2011
Renderings: Dbox

Environmental design techniques incorporated into the design:

  • On-site renewable energy (e.g., photovoltaic panels, wind turbine): Wind turbines, solar hot water
  • Gray water system
  • Green roof of penthouse units and with low-water landscaping, pool area with Renewable materials (e.g., bamboo flooring)
  • Bamboo Floors
  • Recycled glass tiles
  • Offering option of Concrete or “Paper Stone” counter tops options for residential units
  • High efficiency plumbing fixtures
  • Waterless urinals
  • Dual flush toilets
  • White single-ply thermoplastic membrane roofing on mechanical area
  • Green Roof: Penthouse unit terraces and gardens
  • Highly insulated walls and roofs
  • Low-e glass
  • Operable windows for office and residential
  • High fly ash content in all concrete
  • Low VOC paints and adhesives
  • Local stones and materials rather than imports with embodied energy
  • Bicycle infrastructure: Encourage residents and office employees to bike; bike racks located in parking levels
  • Access to public transit: Walkable distance to bus stops
  • The skin is a concrete structural sheer wall; providing thermal mass and solar shading for natural cooling, and reduction of solar gains. Reflective nature o white façade further resists solar gains
  • In working with the structural engineer and green consultant, a thermal mass analysis will define the thickness of this wall to efficiently cool the interior spaces
  • The south façade will be set back 6′-0″ from this wall to further reduce solar gains to interiors, while providing double height terraces, with opportunities for natural ventilation of duplex units

    • /  by Thomas DeVoss

    landscapearchitecture: HOW GREEN IS YOUR CITY? (Not as green as Kharkov) In the new urbanism drive for green, well vegetated cities - Planners, Architects and Landscape Architects seek exemplars to pad their reports.  However, I have yet to see a K…

    landscapearchitecture:

    HOW GREEN IS YOUR CITY? (Not as green as Kharkov)

    In the new urbanism drive for green, well vegetated cities - Planners, Architects and Landscape Architects seek exemplars to pad their reports.  However, I have yet to see a KHARKOV (Kharkiv) in many reports.

    This is a city that is so well vegetated its Google earth is almost green at every scale.  And we are not talking a small town. Kharkov, at 1.5 million people is Ukraine’s second biggest city.

    There is little in the way of images or descriptions that celebrate the treed streets.  Is it that this is not on designers’ radars- stranded in the former Soviet block between the design capitals of Western Europe and East Asia; or is it the streets do not gain additional urban function from the green.  The city has its share of Soviet style architecture, but even a lot of this is set amidst the green (for an outsider, talk about cognitive dissidence). 

     Best places of world: KHARKOV

    /  by Thomas DeVoss

    http://dprbcn.wordpress.com/2010/01/16/takis-zenetos-electronic-urbanism/

    “…

    Takis Zenetos was born in Athens, Greece, and would design some of the most beautiful buildings in Greece during the 60′s and early 70′s. He studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, graduating in 1954. Living in Paris in the lively atmosphere of pioneering artistic and cultural life of the postwar period. His few remaining modernist buildings are out of favor and some are targets for demolition. Sadly, Zenetos committed suicide in 1977.

    Zenetos worked in some interesting avant-garde speculative projects, one of them known as Electronic Urbanism. The basic idea of Electronic Urbanism [which Zenetos designed, developed and investigated from 1952 to 1974] is the creation of a system with diverse levels and locations for different urban functions, primarily residential, suspended from natural environments [as cantilevers or mountains] and integrated with all communications technologies, that allow wide-ranging connections among people and social groups. The extensive use of tele-work, tele-management, tele-medicine and tele-education redefines the human environment geared to free communication and creative occupation.

    As Jane Jacobs says in her great book The Death and Life of Great American Cities:

    Cities are an inmense laboratory of trial and error, failure and success, in city building and city design. This is the laboratory in which city planning should have been learning and forming and testing its theories.

    Even if Zenetos didn’t have the opportunity to know if the ideas behind Electronic Urbanism would have worked or not, his approach to technologies focused on telecommunications, was really innovative for the time.

    …

    ”