You’ve heard the news. You’ve seen the renderings. Now, it’s time to formally meet Wendy.

This year’s winner of the MoMA PS1 Young Architects Program, Wendy is an innovative project that engages the current ecological problems at hand which face the field of architecture and beyond, while refusing to let these same pressures get her down. Designed by Architizer sister company Hollwich-Kushner (HWKN), Wendy is an unapologetically formal scheme that presents an optimistic solution out of the ennui in which architecture presently is entrenched.

The architects designed a seven-bay network of scaffolding that forms a giant porous box to encase Wendy, a bright blue cluster of spikes and folds made from fabric specially treated with smog-eating, air-cleansing titania nanoparticles. The exuberant “starburst” shape may seem arbitrary, but is actually based on radically simple, yet rational premise: increase the fabric surface area and increase the quality of air in the neighborhood–in this case, the equivalent of removing 260 cars off the highway. Wendy’s dramatically shifting, yet iconic profile is, thus, a result of the performance optimization of every one of the design’s elements. Where the multi-faceted spikes may cascade, fold, and zig-zag to maximize surface coverage, they also reveal spatial opportunities to create climatic (shade) and programmatic (seating, misting areas, a DJ booth) zones. Some of the spikes will even be armed with water cannons, that will splash and cool visitors all summer long.

MoMA’s chief curator of architecture and design Barry Bergdoll says Wendy will be ”aesthetically unforgettable”, adding that, once built, it will look “amazing from the No. 7 train.” Beyond the project’s shock value, Bergdoll has noted how Wendy was born out of “months of sustained research” that yielded a prescient scheme that points towards “new directions for architecture in terms of material research, ecological responses, and recyclability.”

There are ways that you, too, can be involved in the Wendy project. Friends and graphic designers 2×4, Bruce Mau, and Pentagram have designed tote bags and t-shirts to the cause, each of which is emblazoned with striking graphics of Wendy and coated with the same titania nanoparticles that will clean the P.S. 1 courtyard this summer. The products, which are non-toxic, are available here and will be coming soon to all MoMA design stores. Buy some for you and your friends to jumpstart the nanoparticle revolution!

You can also volunteer your time and manpower to help build Wendy. More details, including volunteer schedules, can be found here. Construction will conclude by mid-June, when Summer Warm Up begins. For more on Wendy, including updates and photos, follow her on Facebook and Twitter. Wendy will be at MoMA PS1 from June 28 to September 8, 2012. See you there!

Click through for a better look at the merchandise!

more

Last week, we featured artist Baptise Debombourg‘s arsenal of fictional architectural typologies, each of which was shaped by the unique form of a different firearm. Debombourg’s newest work, entitled “Aerial”, floods the crypt of a former Benedictine monastery with waves of compacted glass that engulf the space’s columns and floor in a vitreous “pool”. The piece, which is installed at Brauweiler Abbey in Germany and took some 420 hours to complete, was made by gluing 2 tons of shattered laminated glass and layered in successive sheets to form a mosaic that mimics the sea’s frothing waves.

The installation is divided in three segments or waves, each one corresponding to the windows on the western wall.  Light is funneled down the inverse of the chutes and is scattered along the sculpture’s deceptively flat, even folds. Since the surface of the avalanche is more fractal than flat, however, each of its nooks and cracked edges picks up and reflects the falling light in a different way.

[All photos courtesy of the artist]

more

Penthouse PPDG by Hernando Silva Architects

Stumble into the bathroom tucked away in architect Hernandez Silva‘s renovation of a 70s Mexican colonial-style penthouse, and you’ll come face to face with…THE VOID. Silva fashioned the small powder room/water closet from an unused space that had been originally excavated as a circulation shaft for the installation of a second private elevator. Whereas the architect’s tastes for colorful reflective surfaces, his preference for unmitigated, partionless spaces, and his widespread use of white task lighting impart a “refined atmosphere” to the apartment’s living and social quarters, the bathroom’s thick glass floor reveals a portal to another darker, grimier world that is at odds with the ordered composition and sleek image projected by the exterior of the residence.

Silva’s intervention is pure affect, a Surrealist joke of sorts meant to humor party guests. The vertiginous anxiety induced by the shocking transparency of the floor is significantly lessened by the obvious (and necessary) structural system and the bright accent lights that expose the walls of the shaft, thus, spoiling what could have been an utterly disorienting and legitimately terrifying effect. Not to say that we’d want to spend any more time than necessary in here. We’ll hold it, thanks.

[via Let Me Be Inspired]

more

Cardboard has recently witnessed a surge in popularity as a building material, best exemplified by Shigeru Ban’s cardboard “Transitional Cathedral”–the latest of the architect’s similar experiments with the material. Ban elevates cardboard beyond its humble origins and pushes it to its structural limits, achieving an airy space that approaches the solidity and textured palette of the stone cathedral it will replace. For Ban, cardboard’s regular availability and material pliancy give it a versatility that enable it to be applied across nearly all architectural typologies and scales. Even better, any cardboard structure can be easily replaced or dismantled then recycled for other purposes for, say, a bespoke office space.

Designed for Nothing Avertising Agency by Joost van Bleiswijk and Alrik Koudenburg, the cardboard office consists of several modular units situated within a white box apartment in Amsterdam. The designers devised a “no glue, no screw” construction method–whereby spatial objects are collapsed onto two-dimensional components and lasercut with notches so they can be slotted together– to create a trellis, desks, bookshelves, stairs, and a conference room. The ubiquitous 15 mm honeycomb cardboard proves rather accommodating to foreign materials and electrical systems, with glass panes inserted into the wafer-thin walls and track lighting embedded on the underside of the beams and plants. Retro knickknacks such as an hourglass and Mac Plus and wistful touches like the pockets of cartoonish graffitti fill out the space and complement the faux-industrial details of the cardboard columns and beams. Each of the pieces can be easily and cheaply replaced when the inevitable coffee spillage occurs. Start saving up those UPS boxes!

Click through for more.

more

“One can kill a man as easily with a dwelling as with an axe!” Artist Baptiste Debombourg takes literal this famous damnation of Heinrich Zille, only updating the killing device  from a singular ax to an arsenal of automated guns. Entitled ‘Tradition of Excellence’, Debombourg’s hand-rendered drawings treat each of the guns as a solid mass, from which are carved a series of architectural rooms and spaces.

A series of dormitories are aligned along the interior shaft of a Famas-F1, while a narrow corridor follows the curve of its hand guard that lead to a large room of unspecified program.  Tiered seating fill up the auditorium that resides in the magazine of a Kalachnikov AK-47, a grand staircase hugs the walls of a Colt M1911, baths run down the central arm of an Uzi. The greatest spatial complexity can be found within the M134D Minigun, whose bilateral symmetry is realized in plan as a Baroque collage of mirrored rooms, sculptural staircases, and angled walls.

The drawings recall the plan drawings of medieval British castles–famously collected and studied by Louis Kahn–in which small spaces are excavated out of the thick fortress walls. Yet the “walls” of Debombourg’s gun typologies are much more thin, even nimble, with electic, non-platonic profiles that prove naturally conducive to the new spaces and programs. Click through for more of the drawings.

more

‘Explosion’ series; All works: Joschi Herczeg and Daniele Kaehr

In his wonderful book on climatology and architecture, Fire and Memory, Luis Fernández-Galiano writes that ”the primitive hut and the primitive fire are revealed to be inseparable”. In this way, architecture has its origins and even its most profound moments in fire. After the innovations introduced by modern architects and engineers that freed buildings from the fluctuance of climatological forces, the home has been irrevocably distantiated from its material origin–the hearth.

“Explosion” by artists Joschi Herczeg and Daniele Kaehr explores the home’s intimate relationship with fire. Using “highly complex pyrotechnics”, they developed a series of photographs that channel the anxiety of domestic life when faced with its past and future undoing. To create the images, Herczeg and Kaehr devised a specially-made detonator that, when connected to a camera, synchronized the photo capture with the exact moment of explosion. Micro-mushroom clouds and clusters of flame engulf the most inane of objects in a manner that is both whimsical and menacing. The artists describes them as combustible “chance sculptures”, in that the formal qualities of the fireballs are both unique and ephemeral. Similar to Berndnaut Smilde’s manmade clouds, the ‘explosions’ are compelling because their documentation gives form to transient matter. Click through for more images.

more

Photo: Rifat Chadirji, via Artinfo

“Baghdad is at end of the world,” wrote Le Corbusier, “My responsibility as an architect is to be careful and not to be embark the client on adventures or misadventures.” But that’s exactly the fate that met the architect’s design for the Baghdad Gymnasium. A series of (mostly) misadventures would delay the realization of Le Corbusier’s sports complex nearly 25 years, from 1957 when the first plans were submitted to the Iraqi authorities to 1982 after Saddam Hussein had assumed power and completed the concrete structure as a monument to his rule. In that time, the original project underwent several iterations precipitated by the 1958 revolution and Le Corbusier’s death in 1965, among a series of other factors. Now, the building will enter into a new phase of life, as Iraq seeks aid from France to restore the obscure modernist work. Continue.

more

Element by Big Ass Fans

Last week we explored the untold stories of the window air conditioning unit, the ubiquitous eyesore that has long stood as technology and design’s solution to beating the heat. Though its bland, bulky and unabatedly industrial appearance has remained more or less unquestioned, it doesn’t take the most discerning of tastes to disparage the AC unit’s unpleasant exterior. Moreover, the AC unit is a hermetic black box, so to speak, that disguises a host of disagreeable energy-sapping and chemical-spewing processes. As summer begins to rear its head once again, we take a look at an alternative cooling solution that has stood an even longer test of time: the fan. More specifically, the Big Ass Fan, the industrial chic, low-energy air movement solution that puts any humming beige box to shame. Needless to say, we are big ass fans—pun intended—and here’s why.

more

What remains of the Nazi Europe? Mostly reinforced concrete towers and bunkers, whose immense size and incredibly thick walls proved difficult, even impractical, of destroying. In the 70 years or so since their construction, the structures, usually scattered along the beach or stranded in fields, have cultivated an aesthetic aura that continues to intensify as the generational gap and cultural gulf between the war and contemporary life widens. In France, for example, families in coastal towns near the Atlantic Wall have integrated some of the local bunkers into opulent single family homes. Similarly, in Belgium, architects Bham Design Studio have rehabilitated another Nazi infrastructural relic for domestic life, in what we think is  a much more successful, if spurious, effort.

Built between 1938 and 1941 near the village of Steenokkerzeel , the 30-meter tall structure functioned as a water tower–briefly used by the Nazis–up until the 90s, when it was decommissioned and preserved as a war monument. The exterior was completely restored to its original condition, while the interior was completely guttered, save for the concrete ceilings, stairs, and other elements which were left intact, repainted, and repaired where needed. The windows on the top floor were widened to accommodate a “sculptural” kitchen, library, cat house, and general living space. A steel bridge connects this floor to a rooftop panoramic terrace that offers expansive views of the region. The house was designed for two permanent residents, while a guest room on the second level may be rented throughout the month. Click through for more images!

more

Hearst Building (left), Gareth Pugh Spring/Summer 2009 (right), image via T Magazine..

Architecture and fashion. It’s a convergence we’ve seen time and time again, whether in Adolf Loos’s polemical essays about proper dress or in the twisted rubber of a pair of Lacoste sneakers designed by Zaha Hadid. We recently got a chance to speak with Karen Moon, co-founder of the newly launched StyleMusée, about the overlap between these two areas of design. StyleMusée is described as “a customizable style inspiration board keeping you at the pulse of fashion. It lets users visually explore the fashion industry’s social media posts on Facebook to discover designers and muses they love… and never knew they loved.” Their hope is to eventually take the style inspiration that people find in social media and offer tailored shopping recommendations. Their first editorial, Architectural Interpretations, immediately caught our attention, and Moon gave us the lowdown on building, dwelling, thinking…and dressing. Check out the interview after the jump.

more