Grasshopper Plug-In - Ladybug

Ladybug is a free and open source environmental plugin for Grasshopper to help designers create an environmentally-conscious architectural design. Ladybug allows you to: import and analyze standard weather data in Grasshopper; draw diagrams like Sun-path, wind-rose, radiation-rose, etc; customize the diagrams in several ways; run radiation analysis, shadow studies, and view analysis for your design inside Grasshopper.

Experimental Japanese Winter Cabin Blends Traditional Methods with Modern Materials

The conventional modern way of building for northern climates often involves synthetic insulation and some kind of mechanical heating — an energy-intensive and inefficient way to live out the winter. For the Ainu, the indigenous people of Japan, the traditional way of winter-proofed building is called “chise,” referring to a home that is built with earth, clad with bamboo and sedge grasses, with radiantly heated floors and interiors kept warm by a central hearth that is never allowed to go out.

In an experimental project for the Meme Meadows environmental research facility on Japan’s Hokkaido island, Japanese architect Kengo Kuma has constructed a dwelling that uses these indigenous principles and combined them with modern materials to create a translucent house that operates in rhythm with natural patterns of light and heating.

Via Treehugger

ZERO/FOLD SCREEN

Although digital fabrication has allowed architects and designers to explore more complex geometries, one of the byproducts has been a lack of attention to material waste. Often digitally fabricated projects are generated from a top-down logic with the parameters of typical material sheet sizes being subordinated to the end of the design process. This project attempts to reverse that logic by starting from the basic material dimensions and then generating a series of components that will minimize material waste during CNC cutting while still producing an undulating, light-filtering screen in the gallery.

Via MATSYSTEM

Wanna Reinvent The Inner City? Reinvent Its Housing Stock

The Rock Street project came about after a local housing nonprofit tapped the university’s Community Design Center (a consortium of architects and students) to design housing for a plot of land stretched over nine vacant lots in Little Rock’s Pettaway neighborhood. Instead of building nine homes on nine lots, the team grouped the individual homes a la Chapin’s designs, creating shared outdoor spaces and pooling infrastructural resources. Homes are grouped in fours and sixteens, creating unique typologies that ring a common courtyard. “The project does a very interesting and successful job of co-mingling variations of public and private space,” commented the AIA jurors.

Stephen D. Luoni, the director of the Community Designer, acknowledges that Rock Street is a huge leap forward for most American homeowners. “Shared space is a difficult concept in contemporary America,” he tells Co.Design. “Even in urban neighborhoods, the prevalence of single-lot housing has inured residents to the homogenization in their neighborhoods and skewed conceptions of compatibility.” Community feedback from Pettaway residents was uncertain at first, because residents saw the design as a “separatist” development, which hugely surprised the design team. But after explaining the concept behind the proposal—that the entire neighborhood will benefit from the shared outdoor spaces—the community signed on.

Via FastCoDesign

Dordrecht Energy Carousel / Ecosistema Urbano

The Centre for Visual Arts and Amsterdam design bureau Carve recently invited ten European design firms to develop unconventional, inventive, and playful objects for a new public space in the western Netherlands city of Dordrecht. Responding to the challenge, Spanish architecture firm Ecosistema Urbano designed the Dordrecht Energy Carousel - an energy-generating chandelier of hanging ropes meant to engage kids of all ages in the densely populated suburbs surrounding Governeusplein Square…

As kids swing around on the carousel, kinetic energy is released and captured through the structure and stored in a battery underneath the play site. When the sun sets and darkness looms over the park, the carousel is illuminated using the energy that was stored during the day. The varying colors of light are determined by how much energy was stored up that day. Therefore, this park creates two different experiences: one during the day with natural sunlight and one at night with colorful LED lights.

via Archdaily

Do you have an idea on how transportation could change America’s urban landscape?

What impact does urban mass transit have on the mobility of our cities in which we live, work and play?

What does the future hold for transportation investments in urban mass transit?

What forms will these new investments take and what is the result to our built environment?

Transform Kansas City, a collaboration between the Kansas City Regional Transit Alliance and the Kansas City Chapter of the American Institute of Architects Young Architects Forum, would like to apply these questions and solutions to the Kansas City Metropolitan Area. Transform Kansas City has launched an International Call for Ideas and is asking for submissions that illustrate transportation related or affected ideas or solutions. Transform Kansas City invites you, no matter your background or experience, to submit your ideas on transportation, urban design and architecture.

Kansas City is a mid-sized Midwestern American city with a population of just over 2 million people concentrated in both Missouri and Kansas. Until the 1950’s, Kansas City was a vibrant urban center with bustling activity strengthened by streetcar and passenger rail synergies. The widespread introduction of the automobile decimated the public transportation system in Kansas City. Since the end of the streetcar era the urban core of Kansas City has slowly declined to an almost halt. Infrastructure deteriorated, populations fled for the suburbs and new investments were ineffective and stagnant….until now…

The future of Kansas City’s urban core and the metropolitan area in general is starting to brighten. Thanks to several large scale transit investment strategies, the region has the opportunity to see urban Kansas City return to its bustling days of transit glory. A robust return to the streetcar system, high technology light and regional rail systems, and a smart grid strengthened by Google Fiber all add to endless possibilities to the Kansas City environment.

Here is where you come in. We would like for you to identify and elaborate on the initiatives taking shape in Kansas City. Better yet, create your own. No idea is too large or novel. Introduce us to transformative transit projects in other parts of the world. Display original designs relevant to the Kansas City region. Inspire us!

Submissions are due June 30, 2013 and selected entries will be featured on the TransformKC.org website and included in an exhibition at Union Station. Please visit the website for submission criteria and medium. The TransformKC exhibition will be located in the East Hall of Union Station during the month of October 2013. The exhibit provides a great opportunity to bring your ideas, knowledge and expertise to a local, grassroots level and showcase you as a leader in the world’s built environment.

For more information please visit the TransformKC.org website. 

UNStudio UNTraditional

UNStudio, the Dutch firm led by Ben van Berkel and Caroline Bos, is on target to relaunch this June as an open-source web-based knowledge hub… that, by the way, will still pursue adventurous architecture. We could say they are “launching” this initiative, but it seems more accurate to say they themselves are “relaunching”.

Because of the difficult economic climate in Europe, van Berkel and Bos began to reimagine the practice along the lines of something more fluid, flexible, and agile, a knowledge-based approach to how they work within the office and how they engage the larger world. They are basing this around four topics or “knowledge platforms”: sustainability, materials, organization, and parametrics.

The model for this was internet start-up culture and online knowledge sharing platforms where the spirit of collaboration and co-creation are the drivers. The notion of the solitary genius designer with the notebook full of ideas is swapped out for a hive of thought and potential accidents that may come from bumping into strangers on the Web. Let me rephrase. Bumping into strangers with a purpose, that purpose being to improve how buildings are designed.