There is another great event coming in Canadian history, our 150th birthday in 2017. This is especially a chance to redefine what Canada is and where the country is heading. As architects and urbanists, it is a chance to define our vision for cities in our nordic climate and vast geography, and to consider the urban implications of our new demographic characterist from years of continual immigration. An inspiring and thought provoking call-to-action from Peter MacLeod (video) at MASS LBP at TEDx Toronto is worth watching.
I think that this is a great opportunity for Canadian designers to channel efforts into recreating and refreshing a vision to our society.
Architecture Open Form est à la recherche de collaborateurs étudiants afin de poursuivre une recherche sur la fabrication numérique. Nous recherchons, si possible, des personnes qui connaissent les logiciels Rhinoceros ou autre logiciels de programmations ou 3D. Nous devons faire des maquettes à partir de modèles numériques sur des appareils tels que découpe au laser ou CNC milling machines. Nous devons aussi terminer notre propre CNC et la tester afin de fabriquer des maquettes ou toutes sortes de formes complexes. Cette collaboration sera pour vous une chance de faire vos heures de stage ou bien de pratiquer ce genre de techniques avec les nouveaux outils – AOF est la seule firme ou presque à travailler de ce genre au Québec.
S’il vous plaît contactez Maurice Martel au bureau AOF.
2010.01 // Interns Needed
Open Form Architecture is seeking student intern collaborators to help with digital fabrication research. Our ideal candidate already has some knowledge of Rhinoceros 3D and other 3D softwares and an interest in parametric modeling and scripting. We need to build physical models from digital models using numerous processes included laser cutting and CNC milling. Also included is the building of our own in-house CNC machine to test different fabrication processes and complex shaping. This collaboration is a chance to count your professional internship hours and to practice these new form-making techniques with new tools and softwares –OFA is one of the few offices in Québec to use such tools.
Please contact Maurice Martel at the OFA office.
The CNC Machine prototoype at the SAIC, Chicago; Photo by DIYLILCNC
At Open Form we’re busy coordinating our construction of our first CNC machine, the DIYLILCNC. It’s an open source DIY project developed by Chris and Talyor — two staffers at the SAIC — School of the Art Institute of Chicago. The 3-axis machine has a cutting area of 12″ x 14″ x 2″ (x,y,z), but these limits can be played with creatively. We have all the parts on order, and will post more when we have photos of the project and our experiments. In the mean time, if you’re interested in building the machine, we have started a post on the website for Building a LILDIYCNC Machine in Canada.
The installation is simple, and fully explained on the Google Code page (link above). You simply import the .txt file and overwrite the defaults. A Microsoft Excel file shows the list of used commands (and unused commands for future development). Feel free to make suggestions on further commands!
Option Explicit
’Script written by Maxime Moreau
’Script copyrighted by Open Form Architecture
’This script locate a new point on a curve according to its distance from either the CurveDomain(0), the CurveSartPoint or the CurveDomain(1), the CurveEndPoint.
’Script version Tuesday, November 24, 2009 11:26:07 PM
” new point from the CurveDomain(0) or the CurveStartPoint
If crvNewLength > domain (1) Then
Rhino.MessageBox “Curve new length > CurveDomain: ” & CStr(domain(1))
Else
Rhino.AddPoint Rhino.EvaluateCurve (object, (domain(0) + crvNewLength))
End If
” new point from the CurveDomain(0) or CurveEndPoint
’ If crvNewLength > domain (1) Then
’ Rhino.MessageBox “Curve new length > CurveDomain: ” & CStr(domain(1))
’ Else
’ Rhino.AddPoint Rhino.EvaluateCurve (object, (domain(1) — crvNewLength))
’ End If
Video showcasing Holger Schubert’s Maserati Garage in Los Angeles, CA
Earlier this year, Maserati and Architectural Digest magazine together invited individuals who appreciate fine design in general and cars in particular to join in a competition titled “Design Driven.” Two categories — Existing and Concept — asked entrants to submit a garage design that included a noted architectural element, uniqueness and individuality, while providing a complementary environment for a Maserati car. Holger Shubert’s existing Los Angeles garage, as well as the design of Chris Altman, of Stubbs Muldrow Herin Architects of South Carolina, in the concept category demonstrate that the automobiles continue to create the organizational logic of Los Angeles. Cars remain ineradicably associated with Los Angeles. All entries can be viewed at DesignDriven.
Here is the latest prefab urban project, the Palm House, in Venice, California, by the architects Marmol Radziner and associates. The house will be open to visitors and Leo Marmol will speak on the prefab process and its role in today’s housing market. This is also a nice opportunity to see the Vienna Way residence which sits right beside. Please see their website for more information. The Palms House is located at 734 Palms Blvd. in Venice, CA.
Will’s Bar project, Drawing (what I remember of it)
British architect, Will Alsop, offered a vibrant lecture at the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montréal, presenting his design process and a variety of creative works (showing everyting from conceptual models to paintings, drawings, photographs and diverse animations). Here is one drawing for the Will’s Bar project that explores the idea of creating an unusual building to attract people; to make them curious about the space.
The exhibition Will Alsop: OCAD, An Urban Manifesto will be, features Will Alsop’s preparatory work for the Sharp Centre for Design at the Ontario College of Art & Design (OCAD) in Toronto and reveals specifically the role of painting in his design process.
Open Form Architecture launched a new version (2.1) of its web site. The process is still underway, and the new project images are being uploaded, but lots of new material is now already online. Enjoy!
Here are two videos in relationship with our research on the Image, Identity and Integration in the Los Angeles housing development. The Rainbow Apartments is a significant project, designed by Michael Maltzan Architecture, for the homeless community in Los Angeles. According to the Institute for the Study of Homelessness, an estimated 254,000 men, women and children experience homelessness in Los Angeles County.
This building goes well beyond the kind of project that would be developed for this kind of community — the homeless. With this project Michael Maltzan breaks the traditional paradigm of what affordable houses are and changes its dynamic. “The Rainbow apartments set up a new model not only for a building, but for an entire combination of social enterprises, and not only produces a new paradigms just for Los Angeles, but the possibility of creating a new national model,” says Maltzan. Besides, the project addresses how to counteract the insularity and hermetic nature of the inhabitants’ daily lives and concerns over safety and security, introducing openness, social spaces, and enabling a reintegration of their lives into public life as a whole. Arranged in a partially open U-shaped configuration, five floors of residential units cradle a central courtyard on top of a socle of parking and administrative functions on the ground floor. A chain of public spaces and exterior gathering areas are carved out or extruded from the mass to erode the building’s apparent solidity, creating varying depths of connection and views between the internal life of the courtyard and the world outside.
OFA’s collaborator, Christophe Plattner, wrote us, while visiting his home town in Basel, Switzerland, about this new project of Zaha Hadid Architects, the Stadtcasino, to inform us that the new city casino was rejected at the urn by a clear majority, not only because the citizens found it too large and expensive, but also because they felt not enough informed by the authorities. Here is an animation, by Neutral, which investigates the buildings integration into the architectural and cultural fabric of Basel — a new shortcut connecting two major squares determines an architectural landscape to access the old and new parts of a music venue — and demonstrates the increasing convergence between motion graphics and the built environment.
Here again, we easily distinguish REX’s operation to comb, consolidate, and identify a set of programmatic clusters designed with different purposes: a 5,000 m² contemporary art centre; 3,400 m² of studios, glass shop, and gallery for the University of Louisville’s Master of Fine Arts program; a 250-room Westin Hotel; 98 luxury condominiums; 117 lofts; 25,000 m² of office space on 13 floors; 1,860 m² of restaurants and shops; underground parking garage for 800 cars.
The final result is a 214-meter-tall, 62-story skyscraper, displaying another distinctive and iconic figure which participates in what Koolhaas describes as: “an archipelago of cities in the city”. One might see a collection of traditional skyscrapers placed on top of each other above a traditional urban pattern, but in reality, even if the Museum Plaza doesn’t revise the superposition of floors in the typical American high-rise –in the same way as the Seattle Library– this project is a beautiful and inventive variation on the classic skyscraper; a new vision of skyscraper. The Museum Plaza will doubtless redefine the Louisiana skyline and certainly change the way architects, urbanists, and engineers shall think about tomorrow’s new high-rises and the process of urbanization.
In December 2006, Brad Pitt convened a group of experts in New Orleans tobrainstorm about building green affordable housing on a large scale to helpvictims of Hurricane Katrina. Having spent time with community leaders anddisplaced residents determined to return home, Pitt realized that anopportunity existed to build houses that were not only stronger and healthier, but that had less impact on the environment. After discussing the hurdles associated with rebuilding in a devastatedarea, the group determined that a large-scale redevelopment project focused on green affordable housing and incorporating innovative design was indeed possible. Continue reading ‘Brad Pitt annouces vision for Lower Ninth Ward’
After the big success of the Desert House, a prefab home designed by Marmol Radziner Prefab, here is their new arrival: the Nevada House 1. This project not only combine the benefits of a custom residential design with the efficiency of factory-built houses, but also clearly express this change in the way houses are now thought and bought. Before Thanksgiving, Marmol Radziner Prefab installed the thirty five modules of Nevada House 1 in just three days without a glitch. Check out their new video for a glimpse of the exciting delivery and installation.
Nearly-completed modules arrived at the Las Vegas site with pre-installed casework, windows, doors, fixtures, and wood siding. A crane set the modules on the foundation to create 8,100 square feet of interior living space and 3,400 square feet of covered deck for indoor-outdoor living.
Nevada House 1 is Marmol Radziner Prebab first two-story prefab home. At the same time as their factory was fabricating the modules, the site foundation was being prepared. The foundation includes a sunken auto court and subterranean basketball court, wine storage, and media room to create more usable spaces below grade.
After several years of development, the architect, Marmol Radziner Prefab, demonstrates that it is possible to make stylish and sustainable prefab housing reality while succeeding to understand the culture of building in Southern California/Nevada — to take advantage of indoor/outdoor living.
Few months ago, I got the chance to interview the architect Lawrence Scarpa, principal of Pugh+Scarpa, on the impact of sustainable design on the figure and integration of his own house, the Solar Umbrella, in Venice. Inspired by Paul Rudolph’s Umbrella House of 1953, the Solar Umbrella provides a contemporary reinvention of the solar canopy—a strategy that provides thermal protection in climates with intense exposures—using photovoltaic panels to provide 100% of the home’s energy needs. Continue reading ‘Cherokee Lofts Breaks Ground?, Pugh+Scarpa Architects’
Located in Santa Monica, the Stockman Residence sits on a tight corner lot, at a very busy street intersection. The house is surrounded by tall apartment buildings on the south side and a modest park with dense treed areas on the east side. “Within this context, the traditional house typology with front yard, front porch and back yard is ill-suited and demands to be re-imagined so to better respond to its surrounding,” says the designer, Roger Kurath. Continue reading ‘Stockman Residence, Los Angeles’
Between 12pm on September 22nd and 12pm on September 23rd, Open Form Architecture will participate to a 24-hour, non-stop, Surf-a-Thon organized by Make a wave project to help support Oceana and their effort to clean and protect our world’s oceans. I will be surfing the event Saturday, September 22nd from 3pm-6pm and Sunday, September 23rd from 9am-12pm with Team Sandshark. You can expect two days of music and fun in the sun and sea.
Our friends from Debonnaire were recently hired by a yoga company to reconstruct their image. Debonnaire’s branding reflects simplicity and quality. The way the letters are grouped and intertwined together, combined with the way the information is centralized create a clean and simple pattern — a light design that reminds us that yoga is a discipline that promotes the control of the mind (the letter M of daliMama) and the body (the A of yogA) through a series of postures. The MA symbol clearly expresses this idea.
In the Los Angeles metropolitan area, the image and identity of the architectural landscape is not only associated with the diversity of cultural influences, but also defined by the complex, extensive freeway networks that criss-cross the still fast-growing region.
Along with the beaches, palm trees, and movie studios, the freeways of Southern California –and automobiles– create the organizational logic of Los Angeles. Together; they represent one of the main trademarks of the metropolitan region. “Visitors to Los Angeles most often remember its freeways, either with admiration or disgust. The freeways (rather than individual buildings, or grand avenues or public spaces) remain ineradicably associated with Los Angeles. Because the freeways create the total context of Los Angeles and because they condition the perception of Los Angeles,” explains the historian Paul Zygas. Continue reading ‘Jamie Residence’
This is the result of a study with Mathematica on the way to “produce” an enormous possible range of shapes. This tool that we’ve made allows us to create any shape by setting regular or irregular boundaries. then the software computes and gives born to some alien babies. This is all parametrical and based on mathematical functions. Mathematica is a powerfull software that Open Form will use efficiently from now on.
These are the results of one of our project at the summer school of New Kind of Science.
What if a building could shape itself depending on the context where it is built!
This statement might be hard to understand in a physical world, but let’s assume, for instance, that it is a theoretical problem. In fact, a building always has to respond to certain constraints due to the context wherein it is inscribe. Indeed, streets, surrounding buildings, municipalities’ rules and codes, topography, the program of the building (its use), etc. are the tip of the iceberg of what an architect has to deal with when he is designing a building.
POPULATION GROWTH VS HOUSE TYPOLOGY
Los Angeles continues to increase in density and there is now an urgent need for more people to find a place to live inside the city. However, the desire of the inhabitants who already live within the urban areas is to continue keeping the current low density which resembles that of a suburb. Consequently the results of this tension disturb not only the form of the urban landscape of LA, but also begin to severely transform both the shape and identity of its domestic typologies. Roger Sherman of Roger Sherman Architecture + Urban Design states that today “Los Angeles needs to build more within its existing size, within its existing footprint.” Continue reading ‘3-in-1 House (Schab-Sherman Residence)’
During the 2005 AIA Venice Home Tour, I got the chance to visit the Solar Umbrella House. I was interested by the way the architect and owner, Lawrence Scarpa, integrated a new addition to an existing 1920’s one story bungalow. Soon after, I contacted him to discuss on the image, identity and integration of his house.
Fundamentally the house is our shelter, but it is also a place of appropriation, where we create our identities and our memories. An interface with the world, the home is a device in which we filter our environment and transfer information about ourselves to others. Our proposal for the plan-less house seeks to create a simple system of movable elements which together yield almost an infinite combination of spatial configurations. The idea of the home is no longer a plan diagram indicating a hierarchy of divisions, but a set of variables which creates a flexible system adapting to the user. Now a more interesting and complex exchange and interaction can occur, one in which the inhabiter(s) can constantly re-appropriate, re-territorialize space as needed. The house conceptually becomes a stage set, in which many activities and storylines take place simultaneously in the same “space” and can also be reconfigured for different “scenes.” A mutable code for living, the plan-less house fulfills the need for the spatial complexity which our lifestyles demand. Continue reading ‘Plan-Less House, OFA’
In 2004, “Open Form Architecture” was created by three intern architects – Maxime Moreau, Maurice Martel and Darrel Ronald.
We are an eclectic group of friends whose lives have crossed in many different places and spaces throughout the years. Including our core group, we have had many special, exciting collaborations with friends from around the world.
Even though we have lived in different countries and continents, we are excited to announce that we have registered our studio in the province of Quebec, Canada. Since registering in a French province, we are legally titled: Architecture Open Form. Both the English and French names will be in use!
Thank you for you support through all these years.
In 2006, I participated at the NKS Summer School, which was a defining experience. The topic of my research was THE SPACE BETWEEN THE CELLULAR AUTOMATA: Reworking the Spatial Division in Architecture. During the last year, I continued to explore this idea and used it in various international architectural competitions entries, such as the Plan-Less House (Japan) and The Stockholm Library (Sweden).This summer, I will participate for a second time to the NKS Summer School at the University of Vermont, Burlington, Vt. During this year’s program I will advance my research by exploring Network Structures in architecture.
As Steven Wolfram argues, “Space is a giant network of nodes” we see that, as opposed to the metropolises of the twentieth century, contemporary society produces Networks of Cities. These cities work simultaneously on their internal renovation, increasing their efficiency from within, while they organize themselves territorially in the form of a NETWORK OF CITIES. Continue reading ‘Network Structures in Architecture’
The Box House replaces one of several California-modern homes built in a 1950’s planned development in Portola Valley, California. This neighborhood was laced with walking trails and mature landscape that helped separate the closely sited dwellings that were based on a style celebrating inside/outside qualities of living. Within this constructed environment, fabricated on conventional mid-twentieth century notion of “modern living,” the house found itself in direct dialogue with past and contemporary notions of landscape, dwelling, and the functions of the “modern” home.
The interaction of public and private space within the home — always a programmatic concern — was heightened in this case. Yet the clients also desired privacy from the surrounding neighborhood while opening the house to desirable landscape elements. The challenge was then to provide privacy within the house from the outside neighborhood while allowing for free flowing public spaces. Public spaces engage and create an active dialogue with both distance landscape views and the temperate Northern Californian climate.
Street facade, Photo by Tim Griffith
The solution that emerged was a 2900 square foot house focused on the architectural articulation of its public and private spaces as well as its materials. An elevated volume of bedrooms is contained within a wood clad box. The box is rotated on the site annexing the space of an adjacent easement. Held above the public spaces of the house, the bedrooms are located relative to the view in and out to the site. Hillside views are framed while the views to the neighborhood are blocked and filtered by the detailing of the wood screen.
The wood box is structured by a series of linear site walls that stretch the length of the site. These richly colored plaster piers create a distinct directional field across the site that becomes the walls of the living, dining and studio spaces on the lower level. An infill window and panel system completes the enclosure while allowing for large openings to the garden and terrace areas.
In the end, the Box House responds to its individual site and clients’ needs, as well as to the typical suburban conditions. Overall, the public and private spaces of the house come together.
Located on a corner site at 17th and Hope streets in downtown Los Angeles, the project proposes a 6-story apartment building that includes approximately 87 efficiency units of senior affordable housing, community recreation room, communal dining room, kitchen, laundry, and administrative spaces. The site is adjacent to a freeway on-ramp connecting to the 10/110 Freeway interchange and is within blocks of the Staples Convention Center to the west and the California Hospital Medical Center to the north. The transitional character of its location at the edge of downtown and adjacency to the freeway requires the project address environmental factors such as safety, noise, and privacy. Continue reading ‘New Carver Apartments’
THE EVOLUTION OF LOS ANGELES
The image and identity of Los Angeles architecture, especially its housing typology can best be understood through the evolution of the city as a cultural entity.
Los Angeles always has been a metropolis with great distinctions and as Michael Webb has stated: “Los Angeles has lured the struggling and the ambitious from all around the world.” For architects, the city is a unique territory to test news forms, programs and arrangements as well as to explore audacious and eccentric building design.
Impossible to express in plan due to the constrained size of the site, this 2400sf residence diverges from the pre-established response to front and back yards by balanced articulation of the skin on all faces in the vertical direction. Continue reading ‘Vertical House, Lorcan O’Herlihy Architects’
“When I first arrived in Los Angeles, I was surprised by the size and density within the residential lots,” says Swiss-born architect Roger Kurath, of Culver City’s Design 21.It is not unusual to see several single-family houses placed on one long, narrow site.This type of density is often the result of the increasing population Los Angeles is experiencing.
The CNC Machine prototoype at the SAIC, Chicago; Photo by DIYLILCNC
