The Third & The Seventh from Alex Roman on Vimeo.

Let this be the best 12 minutes of your day. Watch it full-screen and in HD. And when you are done watching, read the description for a surprise.

A nice gallery of Jean Nouvel’s fantastic architectural works. Jean Nouvel was awarded the Pritzker Prize, the most prestigious award in architecture. In fact, he also designs home objects like bathroom faucets and showers that incorporate touch sensor technology that look to be inspired by Playstation.

The Rogers Stirk Harbour proposed design concept for the Transbay Terminal was unveiled earlier this week. The proposed towers will be the tallest structures on the West Coast.

Jim Leftwich [via Boing Boing] has a different view of the design. He proposes couple of additions to the design and envisions a Middle Earth-esque vision for San Francisco. See his modified design below:

 Well, why not? After all, we have had a Lord of the Rings subdivision in the works as well.

[source]

Architecture continues to push boundaries and of course, Daniel Libeskind is doing his share of pushing as designs for Gazprom City in St.Petersburg [HQ for the Russian gas giant] stream in. The building is expected to rise at least 300m into the air and symbolize the growing power of the firm. Check out the other designs in the image gallery – each is more ambitious than the other.

After 9/11, people were ready to write off towering skyscrapers as they tend to be sitting ducks for potential terrorism. But they are larger than ever and fears of terrorism are history. Right from the age of the Pyramids, bigger has always been considered better but is it really? Such a tall building in the heart of historic St.Petersburg is a virtual slap in the face of the city’s urbanscape. I have always believed in contextual design and this is so not it. But then again, change is revolutionary and departs from the status quo.

Technorati Tags: Daniel Libeskind, St. Petersburg, Gazprom, Russia, design, architecture, skyscraper

I had participated in a design competition that asked for a reconceptualization of the unbuilt Governor’s Palace. We had integrated the adjoining plaza as a gathering place to represent the exuberance of Punjab and its jolly people. We wanted the re-use of the feudal structure to be as democratic as possible. But I bet this was looked down upon purely from the perspective of security. The city could not trust its own citizens.

Bruce Schneier writes on a similar theme about architecture and security. His examples are a stark reminder of the cautious nature of man protecting the people against a threat that might not even exist:

When Syracuse University built a new campus in the mid-1970s, the student protests of the late 1960s were fresh on everybody’s mind. So the architects designed a college without the open greens of traditional college campuses. It’s now 30 years later, but Syracuse University is stuck defending itself against an obsolete threat.Concrete building barriers are an exception: They’re removable. They started appearing in Washington, D.C., in 1983, after the truck bombing of the Marines barracks in Beirut. After 9/11, they were a sort of bizarre status symbol: They proved your building was important enough to deserve protection.

It is indeed sad to see security triumph architectural aesthetics or even functionality. Vulnerable countries like India and Israel have often lived with a constant threat and such security-first architecture is almost expected and taken for granted.

openhousenewyork (OHNY) will present the 4th Annual OHNY Weekend, America’s largest architecture and design event, October 7 & 8, 2006. Presented by Target, OHNY Weekend provides the public with free access to more than 180 sites of architecture and design significance throughout all five boroughs, including many that are normally closed to the public, as well as 120 tours, talks, performances and family activities and workshops that explore New York City by foot, bus, bicycle and even canoe.

[Source]

One of the big challenges was to establish a natural gathering place for architecture students that would also unite the disparate elements around it, from the 19th-century rustic style of Sibley Hall to the early-20th-century industrial style of Rand Hall. Rather than create a showy building thrusting upward or sprawling outward, Mr. Koolhaas said, he transformed a parking lot into what is essentially a flat plate, with one level above and one below.

Rem Koolhaas returns to his alma mater Cornell University to unveil his new design for the school of architecture. Planned since 1990, the design plans of two earlier architects were scrapped. Koolhaas was hired in January and his design almost immediately found acceptance.

One such quirky home is Lisa Petrucci’s home. Looks like an ordinary home from the outside, complete with a pink flamingo in the yard, it is a virtual delight from the inside. It certainly seems like a house that has been lived in and not like those fancy homes that are meant only for the architectural magazines photo-ops. Lisa has an amazing collection of dolls, photo frames, and exotic artefacts. I liked this “reading center” section of her home. It looks like a children’s dream home.

Technorati Tags: dream homes, Seattle, art, interiors, houses, residential, real estate

Pretty cool animation walkthrough of the famous Kaufmann house or as popularly known, Falling Water by architect Frank Lloyd Wright. Although this animation doesn’t compare to the real thing which I did couple of years back, it can be the next best thing. However, don’t expect someone to jump out and start shooting. If you do, probably you should be playing fewer video games and watching more walkthroughs

There is surely something about bagging a public transit terminal design contract that makes architects go whoopie! They tend to stretch their imaginations, work in collaboration with artists and structural engineers, and turn out really interesting pieces of work. You can even imagine these structures to be completely functional first and yet amazingly captivating. This design by Santiago Calatrava for the Port Authority Trans-Hudson (PATH) terminal at the World Trade Center (WTC) site in Lower Manhattan is already creating a buzz:

Although airports can be pretty dramatic, for now we turn our attention to subways. See more pictures here. Enjoy!

Technorati Tags: subways, metro, architecture, beautiful structures, art, World Trade Center, Santiago Calatrava

Wouldn’t you kill for a view like that? Well, except you don’t have to.

A company of architecture of Barcelona and a group of aircraft
engineers of Florida (EUA) are developing a prototype of room of space
hotel, baptized like Galactic Suite, so that the tourists and astronauts who are decided to travel to the space have a site where to lodge.

Read more.

Technorati Tags: space, hotel, technology, Galatic Suite, architecture

An awesome panoramic picture [via] (click to view larger version) of one of my favorite buildings, The Guggenheim Museum at New York.

Technorati Tags: Guggenheim, panorama, photo, New York, Frank Lloyd Wright, photography

David Hertz’s 747 House built from discarded airplane parts. More images here.

“The images from the Spam Architecture series are generated by a computer program that accepts as input, junk email. Various patterns, keywords and rhythms found in the text are translated into three-dimensional modeling gestures.”

So spam does have a use after all. Would you be living in a building built by spam? It sure would be interesting.

However, after spending time with Page and Brin and the Google engineers that would occupy the building, Wilkinson realized that he was dealing with a distinctly different species of personnel. “We’ve always worked with people who were a mix of left and right brain,” Wilkinson says, “but engineers are very left brain. They might work in teams, but they require a high level of concentration; they sit in front of the computer and crunch formulas in the most extraordinary way.”

Read more.

Light-emitting diodes, or LEDs, are reinventing the look and feel of skylines, bridges, facades and other architectural surfaces around the globe. The light bulb is being unscrewed by energy-efficient LEDs that are both environmentally friendly and cost-effective. The $10.2 billion industry is growing to provide new design options for architects and planners. [source]

Light plays an important role not just in photography or historic preservation but also in regular design. Of course, playing with sunlight is a better course of action but when the sun goes down, technology takes over. And to an admirable effect too.