Category: competitions

  • Veg.itecture #27

    The next installment of the Vegetated Architecture series – with a grab bag of interesting examples. For starters, the announcement that Jean Nouvel’s winning entry for the landmark tower in Paris’s La Defense district (featured in Veg.itecture #18) bested entries by Liebskind, Foster, and others. Some additional images of the project, and a quote via…

  • Eikongraphia’s MoPo 2008

    In this day and age of exit polls and populartity projections – time for one related to the top architecture blogs out there. A L+U favorite is Eikongraphia, has a great, semi-scientific method for determining the popularity of focused blogs out therer. It’s not mistake that certain blogs have extremely high readership and popularity is…

  • Media Good & Bad = Rant

    Ok, perhaps the last post on Integrating Habitats. Oh, probably not. Anyway, the best part of competitions is the joy of having freedom to explore ideas outside of the confines of either client or constraint (wherever these may come from). The second best thing is working to create a winning entry, and then sitting back…

  • Void Metabolism

    Eikographia is an amazing site. If you haven’t yet, add it to your list of regular visits, as it comes with some stellar and comprehensive overviews of projects, and an added twist of in-depth analysis of the remnant (or overt) iconography present in the work. A recent multi-part example covering a 2007 competition The Great…

  • Veg.itecture #22

    I’m giving a presentation next week at work about Vegetated Architecture, and spent a good amount of time sifting through some interesting additions, as well as some old favorites from the archives. It is interesting when compiling this information to see how the evolution of the concept has occurred over the very brief amount of…

  • AIA 2008 COTE Top-10

    The recently announced winners of the 2008 AIA COTE Top Ten Winners unearthed some fantastic projects – and a whole lot of sustainable features and some Vegetated Architecture as well. In honor of Earth Day 2008, we thought it appropriate to showcase those verdant and green selections here. The Yale University Sculpture Building and Gallery…

  • Go: West 8 Young Man

    I try to hide my distaste or love for things landscape+urbanist in the quest for some sort of neutrality (um, ok, not really). Without critical evaluation and dialogue – we lack the capacity to expand our thinking and examine our interventions in ways that are beneficial to us individually and collectively. Or in short, we…

  • Metropolitan Fauna

    One major theme that our Integrating Habitats winning team entry was the ability to address the interwoven patterns of urban fauna and urban form. There are numerous reasons why keeping a vital mix of flora, and fauna, along with people, is essential to the proper functioning of cities and urban processes. This investigation of species…

  • Earth Day: BYOBlue

    One week from today – another yearly affirmation of the trend towards sustainability. So what color best signifies Earth Day? Well, as previously mentioned, there will be a severe shift in the environmental movement away from the color green – as it is has become a cliche. I still don’t buy it – but as…

  • Big + Cool: Balmori’s Mammoth Endeavor

    A recent bit of information from the NY AIA awards, announcing one of the winning entries for 2008. The ‘World Mammoth and Permafrost Museum’ in Yakutsk, Siberia, which was a first-prize winner in a 2007 competition, is a project that definitely posed some challenges in site and program. The result ended up with an interesting…