The surfaces of sinks, bath and countertops are made of solid-surfacing material, aiming to provide stunning beauty and durability. Wall panels and cabinetry are made of pre-finished wood, which never requires additional painting. The wall and ceiling panels contain fully-dimmable LED lightings with longevity of around 100,000 hours.

Designer : Scott Specht

Designer : Victor Vetterlein

From the website:
JS BACH / ZAHA HADID ARCHITECTS CHAMBER MUSIC HALL AT MANCHESTER ART GALLERY FOR MANCHESTER INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL.Zaha Hadid Architects have created a unique chamber music hall specially designed to house solo performances of the exquisite music of Johann Sebastian Bach.

A voluminous ribbon swirls within the room, carving out a spatial and visual response to the intricate relationships of Bach’s harmonies. As the ribbon careens above the performer, cascades into the ground and wraps around the audience, the original room as a box is sculpted into fluid spaces swelling, merging, and slipping through one another.

“The design enhances the multiplicity of Bach’s work through a coherent integration of formal and structural logic. A single continuous ribbon of fabric swirls around itself, creating layered spaces to cocoon the performers and audience with in an intimate fluid space.” said Hadid.The process of realizing the design involved architectural considerations of scale, structure and acoustics to develop a dynamic formal dialogue inseparable from its intended purpose as an intimate chamber music hall.

A layering of spaces and functions is achieved through the ribbon wrapping around itself, alternately compressing to the size of a handrail then stretching to enclose the full height of the room. Circulatory and visual connections are continually discovered as one passes through the multiple layers of space delineated by the ribbon.

The ribbon itself consists of a translucent fabric membrane articulated by an internal steel structure suspended from the ceiling. The surface of the fabric shell undulates in a constant but changing rhythm as it is stretched over the internal structure.It varies between the highly tensioned skin on the exterior of the ribbon and the soft billowing effect of the same fabric on the interior of the ribbon. Clear acrylic acoustic panels are suspended above the stage to reflect and disperse the sound, while remaining visually imperceptible within the fabric membrane.

Programmed lighting and a series of dispersed musical recordings activate the spaces between the ribbon outside of performance times. The installation is designed to be transportable and re-installed in other similar venues.

Pivotal to its function is the performance of the ribbon. It has been designed to simultaneously enhance the acoustic experience of the concert while spatially defining a stage, an intimate enclosure, and passageways. It exists at a scale in which it is perceived as both an object floating in a room as well as a temporal architecture that invites one to enter, inhabit and explore.

Designer : Zaha Hadid Architects via Dezeen

This concept has been driven from the need for zero-pollution, efficient and affordable cars for the future community and enjoying the freedom of a ride. The ATNMBL is designed as a self-driving car with artificial intelligence which arrive to you with just a phone call. The standing-height entrance has an electric sliding glass door and upon entering, you will be asked for your desired destination. The comprehensive and innovative voice recognition system of this vehicle along with a touch screen remote and slide up display, it can offer a wide range of tour planning, detailed performance setting and enjoyable ride sharing.

The overall arrangement of the interior of ATNMBL is very much familiar with conventional living room sitting including side chair, a couch and a low table. Up to seven passengers can sit towards each other and can see outside through large floor-to-ceiling windows on both sides. From outside, this vehicle looks like micro-architecture with a large window, pitched room and asymmetrical shape from every view without any reference to past automobile designs.

A considerable amount of typical car space is blocked with the engine and drive train, while, the mechanical components of ATNMBL are simplified and densely packed, providing more interior space. Each wheel contains electric motors which provide all-wheel drive. The power storing mechanism is located beneath the floor; moreover, alternative solar energy can be obtained from the roof-top solar panels. The front and rear end contains an array of tail lights, headlights and sensors.

Designer : Mike and Maaike via Core77

The new deck position allows direct access to the kitchen and dining room and offers additional activities combining with the salon/ living room. The pool deck can be traversed in three ways. First one is a direct outside walkway or bridge which divides the pool with an underwater opening that allows the swimmers to plummet from one side to another. Second method is a flyover which connects to the central stairs and elevator. A lower level lounge is the third option which includes glass portals into the pool. There is a helipad on the bow deck and the yacht can house 12 guests and crew.

[Press Release]

Infinitas is the second design launch of Schöpfer Yachts. Our new 300 foot (91.5 meter) yacht was designed by E. Kevin
Schopfer with Sparkman Stephens, Naval Architects. The design’s main inspiration comes from the symbol for infinity which has been abstractly expressed within the yacht’s elevation. The two major features of the yacht asserted by this closed loop infinity symbol are achieved by carving out stern and mid section elliptical deck constructs.

A central structural “spine” holds the loop together allowing the yacht’s superstructure to seamlessly flow within itself. The added benefit of “infinity” is the realignment of traditional functional areas. Within this realignment, the main deck living room, and dining room are detached. The dining room moves forward and is separated from the living room by a massive pool deck. This new deck location allows for the first time, direct access to dining room and kitchen for expanded activities, in combination with the living room/salon.

There are three methods to traverse the pool deck. First is a direct outside bridge / walkway which bisects the pool itself. This walkway has underwater openings in its support system, allowing swimmers to dive from one side to another. The pool has the option of being covered for larger venue needs.

The second method of crossing the pool deck is an overhead sky bridge which connects to the main stairs and elevator. The “sky” bridge is clear glass floor and ceiling allowing natural light to penetrate the pool below.

The third method is through a lower level lounge which features glass portals into the pool.

The main level contains the two aforementioned decks, living room, dining room, kitchen, storage, and bow deck (with helicopter pad). The interior design of the space, and others, reflects an intense minimalist palette with a dash of attitude. The main salon also features generous 12 foot ceiling height and fully glazed walls creating an island within the yacht.

The second level up is reserved for a series of guest suites and secondary bow deck. The owner’s suite occupies the third level with “sky bridge,” pilot house, and upper deck. All decks below are currently designated crew quarters, storage and
mechanical, engine room activities. Infinitas is designed to accommodate 12 guests and crew.

Thank you to Tangram 3DS for all rendering images.

Designer : Schopferyachts

Designer : Richard Hunt via [DesignBoom]

[Press Release]

DRAGONFLY, A METABOLIC FARM FOR URBAN AGRICULTURE

2009 : 800 MILLION OF URBAN FARMERS FOR RESPONSIBLE ECO-CITIES

The world of fast-food and frozen food is over! The urban keen interest of the beginning of our Century turns toward the garden flat bringing back the countryside in our overcrowded cities fighting from now on for a community urban agriculture able to contribute to the durability of the city and to rethink the food production.

On the roofs, terraces, balconies, in the hollow of the non-built public spaces, in the interior yards and the suspended greenhouses, the eco-warrior aspires to escape from its competitive and consumeristic universe imposed by the laws of the market. He desires to cultivate its immediate landscape so as to better take root in the ground by creating his own ecologic and alimentary biodiversity. The consumer becomes from then on producer and the garden inhabitant !

From the Parisian « worker gardens » to the « community gardens » of New York going though Muscovite « vegetable squares », eight hundred million of urban farmers, i.e. more than one human being out of ten, consume nowadays chlorophyllous products from these cosmopolitan kitchen gardens. These new gardens, aware of the emergency to reduce our fuel consumption and the necessity to modify our behaviour facing the climatic changes, decrease thus their environmental impact and build eco-responsible cities on a community way.

2025 : 5.5 BILLION OF CITY SLICKERS FACING THE FOOD CHALLENGE OF THE 21ST CENTURY

According to the PNUD (Programme of the United Nations for the Development), the worldwide urban population will go from 3.1 billion of inhabitants in 2009 up to 5.5 billion of inhabitants within 2025. Looking for a positive energetic assessment, the contemporary city aims within fifteen years at producing cleanly and intensively more energy than it consumes so as to pack this urban exodus! It develops therefore the urban agriculture to become food self-sufficient by recycling at the same time its liquid waste by phyto-purification, its solid waste in fertilizers by composting and by producing energy by biomass, photovoltaic cells and other renewable energies (thermic solar, photovoltaic solar, wind, tide-turbine energies…).

In order to avoid the asphixiation of the planet and the feeding of its 9 billion of inhabitants within 2050, it deals thus with reinventing the traditional energetic pattern between the city and the countryside between western countries, emerging countries and developing countries. This sums up as following: on the one hand import of natural and food resources, and on the other hand export of waste and pollution. The ecologic city aims at reintegrating the farming function on the urban scale by emphasizing the role of the urban agriculture in the use and the reuse of natural resources and biodegradable waste so as to close the loop of ecologic flows.

The urban agriculture can feed the city without any pesticide or chemical fungicide (whose toxicity is proved on the human being : cancer, sterility…), and make it less food dependant of its backcountry or other regions of the world. Organising the distribution of fresh products in short circuits, that means linked directly with the consumer, the urban agriculture complete thus the traditional agriculture. In addition to the nutritive quality of the produced and consumed food, the urban agriculture is also a growth lever of the urban unemployment market and the local economy. It is used directly as a social link in the conciliation of the primary needs of the newcomers with the challenge of their integration in the life of the city, fighting thus against poverty and exclusion. On the sanitary level, this farm approach presents also an interesting potential for the decontamination of polluted grounds and undergrounds as well as for he purification of the polluted atmosphere in CO2.

Due to the fuel crisis and climatical change, the rural agriculture of the western countries must answer to the worldwide food crisis of the developing countries and mainly Africa. Its role is from now on to produce (with an increase estimated of 60% within 2050) all the foodstuffs transportable by boat such as cereals or corn. This is based on the evolution of the science and the most advanced biotechnologies. In addition to this nutritious role, the rural agriculture is newly challenged to recycle its own culture rebus for the green chemistry in order to produce the bio fuel called “second generation fuel” using the energy of non-consumable materials from the plants, that means fibres such as celluloses.

DRAGONFLY, A NOURISHING VERTICALY CULTIVATED CENTRAL PARK

The architecture has to be in the service of this new agriculture and to design this new social desire in this context of ecologic mutation and food autonomy! The Dragonfly project suggests therefore building a prototype of urban farm offering around a mixed programme of housing, offices and laboratories in ecological engineering, farming spaces which are vertically laid out in several floors and partly cultivated by its own inhabitants. This vertical farm sets up all the sustainable applications in organic agriculture based on the intensive production varied according to the rhythm of the seasons. This nourishing agriculture is furthermore in favour of the reuse of biodegradable waste and the keeping of energy and renewable resources for a planning of ecosystemic densification.

Floor by floor, the tower superposes not only stock farming ensuring the production of meat, milk, poultry and eggs but also farming grounds, true biological reactors continuously regenerated with organic humus. It diversifies the cultivated varieties to avoid the washing of stratums of soft substratum. Thus, the cultures succeed one another vertically according to their agronomical ability to provide some elements of the ground between the essences that are sowed and harvested. The tower, true living organism, becomes thus metabolic and self-sufficient in water, energy, and bio-fertilizing. Nothing is lost; everything is recyclable to a continuous auto-feeding!

A BIONIC AND ENERGETICALLY SELF-SUFFICIENT ARCHITECTURE
The architecture of Dragonfly prototype suggests reinventing the vertical building (that outlined the urbanistic booming of New York City since the 19th Century) as structurally and functionally as ecologically and energetically.

To ensure the social diversity and a permanent life cycle (24h/24) in the tower, the mixed programmation is mainly laid out around two poles of housing and work places. Around housings, offices and research laboratories as well as the most private to the most public agricultural and leisure spaces are designed in gardens, kitchen gardens, orchards, meadows, rice fields, farms and suspended fields. The distribution of flows is made around a true safe spine spreading in loop the numerous elevators, the goods elevators and stair wells serving all the levels by separating simultaneously the inputs and the outputs recycled from plants, animals and human beings.

Architecturally, the functional organisation is represented by two oblong towers symetrically arranged in pair around a huge climatic greenhouse that links them and deploys itself between two crystalline wings. These very light wings in glass and steel retake the loads of the building and are directly inspired from the structure of the dragonfly wings coming from the family of “Odonata Anisoptera” whose transparent membrane is very finely nervured. Two inhabited rings buttress around these wings. Their organically chiselled exo-structure accommodates the inter-climatic spaces that receive the agrarian cultures. They buttress.

The whole set forms «double layer» architecture in bee nest mesh that exploits the solar passive energy at its maximum level, by accumulating the warm air in the winter in the thickness of the exo-structure, and by cooling the atmosphere by natural ventilation and by evapo-perpiration of the plants in the summer. Protecting thus the cultures from climatic changes in New York (from -25.5°C in the winter to +41°C in the summer), these plug spaces are useful to reflect on the agriculture not anymore in terms of surface area but really in terms of volume. Actually, whereas grounds nourish orchards, each wall and each ceiling are metamorphosed into three-dimensional kitchen gardens. The interior frontages of the housing and offices throw towards the skyline of New York the cantilever of their hydrophonic balconies with hexagonal section thanks to what it multiplies the culture layers by floors. The vegetation abounds, the earth is swarming of insects and animals are freely brought up in holding tanks by urban consumers with low income. The architecture becomes eatable!

Designer : Vincent Callebaut Architect

How the concept works :

Phase 01
The air going into the greenhouse is first cooled and humidified by seawater, which is trickled over the first evaporator. This provides a fresh and humid climate for the crops that in these conditions need very little water as they are not stressed by excessive transpiration.

Phase 02
As the air leaves the growing area it passes through the second evaporator which has seawater flowing over it. During this phase the humid air mix with the warm dry air of the ceiling interspace. thus the air is made much hotter and more humid.

Phase 03
The warm air is forced to flow upward by the stack effect that is temperature induced. In the central chimney the warm and humid air will condense when in contact with plastic tubes where cool sea water is pumped. In the surface of the condenser many drops of fresh water will appear, ready to be recollected in a tank to water the crops and for other uses.

Designer : StudioMobile via TreeHugger

Text from the website:
The Freight*BUS is designed for several possible propulsion systems, including batteries that are automatically recharged when the bus stops and the potential for fuel cell operation in the future. Thanks to in-wheel electric motors, the bus can manoeuvre into tight bus stops in a ‘crab’ like movement.

Designer : Hugh Frost via Yahoo

Text from website:
Oculus is the first “design launch” of Schöpfer Yachts LLC. This 250-foot vessel was designed by E. Kevin Schöpfer, founder and owner of his namesake company.

Designed to accommodate 12 guests in extraordinary comfort and style, Oculus is a long distance cruising yacht capable of speeds upwards of 25 knots.

The exterior styling is representative of the jaw and eye socket bone structure of large oceanic fish and mammals. Featuring a dramatic reverse bow configuration, the yacht’s armature balances an elegant expression of symmetry and structure.

In addition to the bow, Oculus also features a “low rider profile”. This slightly lowered surface allows for new side recreational areas, alternate dockage access and light cruising openness. Lateral retractable side panels close this area when heavier wave action is indicated.

The interior features of Oculus focus on a 12 foot high ceiling in the main salon, a cylindrical double height dining room, central stair and elevator tube, and seemingly anatomical ceiling and floor lighting extensions giving definition to the seating areas.

The second level is the dedicated Owner’s suite. Living areas and bedchambers are divided by a series of four freestanding tubes, which house bath and storage necessities.

In addition to the main common stair, the second Owner’s stair connects to the third level aft private salon and deck / water feature.

The third level also contains the forward pilothouse and separate captain’s quarters. The generous open decks with separate water features are located forward and aft for convenient guest use. Specifications and plans are in the final stages of completion and will be posted at a later time.

Designer : Schopfer Yachts