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. Enjoy!

British architect, Will Alsop, offered a vibrant lecture last night 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.

We will present our latest work at the Special Edition of Pecha Kucha Montréal, as part of the Portes Ouvertes Design Montréal. The event will take place at the SAT - Society for Arts and Technology on the 3rd May 2008. The doors open at 20:00 and OFA will be the first presenters, starting promptly at 20:20.

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 is a great performance piece - 207 IE Agents freeze in time on cue in New York’s Grand Central Station.

A little bit more informations for our research on the Image, Identity and Integration in the Los Angeles housing development… I found these two videos about the Rainbow Apartments; 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.

As you will see here, 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.

A few months ago, one of OFA’s collaborators, Christophe Plattner, wrote me, while visiting his home town in Basel (CH), about this new project of Zaha Hadid Architects, the Stadtcasino, to inform me 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. Tonight, as I was surfing on the Internet
(Detail Topics - Digital Architecture), I discovered this video/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.

The group settled on the goal of constructing 150 homes (one of the larger rebuilding projects in the city), with an emphasis on developing an affordable system that could be replicated.

To demonstrate replicability, Pitt determined to locate the project in the Lower 9th Ward, one of the most devastated areas of New Orleans, proving that safe homes could and should be rebuilt. Pitt hopes that this project would be a catalyst for recovery and redevelopment throughout the Lower 9th Ward and across the city of New Orleans.

Architects

Make It Right’s goal is to join the history of the Lower 9th Ward withcreative new architectural solutions mindful of environmental and personalsafety concerns in order to encourage both the evolution of aestheticdistinctiveness and the conscientious awareness of natural surroundings.

To that end, MIR assembled a team of fourteen local, national and international world-renowned architecture firms specializing in innovative,ecologically responsible design.

The Pugh + Scarpa Design

Pugh + Scarpa’s Make it Right (MIR) home seeks to redefine the concept of ahome into a flexible, multifunctional and adaptable space addressing the needs of today’s modern family, on a limited budget. Offering shelter and comfort, the MIR home breaks the prescriptive mold of the traditional home by creating public and private “zones” in which private space is deemphasized, in favor of large public living areas. The organization of the space is intended to transform the way people live-away from a reclusive, isolating layout towards a family-oriented, interactive space.

The inspiration for the home came from American patchwork quilting traditions, exemplified by the Gee’s Bend abstract geometric style-which is itself influenced by newspaper- and magazine-collages used for insulation on the inside walls of homes in the early rural American South. Recycled wooden pallets are repositioned here as a patchworked shade screen wrapping thebuilding, an innovative alternative to expensive facade materials that lend sits own unique character and texture. The visually expressive pallets impart an imperfect, rough-hewn individuality that we find particularly appealing.We are working with local manufacturers to ensure the viability of this cost-effective and sustainable off-the-shelf product, easily obtainable and readily replaceable. The pallet wrapping is joined by decoratively perforated cement board on the east and west facades, providing both shade and privacy while allowing views out and dappled, indirect daylight and breezes to enter. All the exterior elements will combine and interweave,emerging as a distinctive pattern-making aesthetic.

[Images and drawings by Pugh+Scarpa Architects]

For more information visit the Make it Right website located at www.makeitrightnola.org

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.

Process