May 15, 2013
All images by Garrison Architects.
Among the many effects of Hurricane Sandy, the lack of suitable beach facilities was among the more symbolic. Destroyed bathrooms, changing rooms, and lifeguard stations would have a major dampening effect on the economic and cultural livelihood of New York City’s coastal recreation areas such as Rockaway Beach and Coney Island, as well as many Staten Island beaches.
Luckily, Garrison Architects and the New York City government are coming to the rescue with a series of modular beach facilities to be deployed around May 25. The pavilions, 35 in total, are being manufactured in Pennsylvania and will be delivered as single pieces to their respective sites. Conforming in size to interstate trucking limits, the pavilions will house comfort stations, lifeguard stations, and offices for Parks Enforcement Patrol and Maintainence and Operations Staff.
Built on pre-installed concrete piers, the pavilions will sit at or above FEMA’s revised Advisory Base Flood Elevations (ABFEs). This in addition to the selected material palette will ensure the pavilions’ resistence to future storms.
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February 5, 2013
All photos: British Antarctic Survey
Call it this generation’s “Walking City.” Halley VI, the latest iteration of Britain’s Halley Antarctic research stations, is now fully operational—and it walks, sort of. Halley VI opened today on the centennial commemoration of the first British Antarctic expeditions on the Brunt Ice Shelf, which launched an entirely new and incredibly fertile avenue of scientific research exploring the Earth’s near-space atmosphere. Designed by Hugh Broughton Architects, the new “re-locatable”—i.e. “movable”—facility is the first of its kind in the world. Continue.
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January 4, 2013
The answer to that headline: yes, only without the unnecessary death. Klaas Kuiken‘s charming little invention covers the roof of your house while also providing shelter for tiny winged creatures, tired from a long day of foraging, feeding, and whatever else it is birds do. The design consists of a small gabled “structure” fastened to the top surface of a clay tile, itself secured to adjacent tiles with special glue capable of withstanding extreme temperatures. Seen in section, the lilliputian unit is rather spacious, making this a dream abode for any bachelor bird. Continue.
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May 7, 2012
Dubai’s thirst for crass civic projects and buildings cannot, it seems, be quenched. In the last decade, the emirate has cultivated an utterly strange landscape of isolated icons, each one more “spectacular”,”daring”, and “different” than the last. From the vacuous iconicity of the Burj Khalifa to the ludicrous ambition of ”the World“, Dubai’s tolerance for an asinine and radically depoliticized architecture has yet to be exceeded. See the latest conceptual project, Deep Ocean Technology’s proposed Water Discus Underwater Hotel, another “diamond in the rough (waters)” scheme that envisions a partially submerged object of vage sci-fi origins. And, by vague, we mean Star Trek.
According to the sleek initial renderings, the hotel is to be stranded in a reef, with lodging above and below the waterline. The structure consists of a system of modular programmatic discs, anchored to the seafloor by steel legs capable of withstanding tsunami-scale conditions. The discs can be moved, replaced, and multiplied to alter the hotel’s composition and respond to the vagaries of sea life.
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