Designer : Pedro Gomes via [Plantronics and DesignBoom]

[Press Release]
MVRDV wins Gwanggyo City Centre Competition, near Seoul, South Korea

The Daewoo Consortium and the municipality of Gwanggyo announced the MVRDV concept design for a dense city centre winner of the developer’s competition for the future new town of Gwanggyo, located 35km south of the Korean capital Seoul. The plan consists of a series of overgrown hill shaped buildings with great programmatic diversity, aiming for high urban density and encouragement of further developments around this so-called ‘Power Centre’, one of the envisioned two centre’s of the future new town.

Since the beginning of the millennium local nodes with a high density concentration of mixed program are used in Korean town planning. These nodes consist of a mix of public, retail, culture, housing, offices and leisure generating life in new metropolitan areas and encouraging further developments around them: the Power Centre strategy. The Gwanggyo Power Centre will consist of 200,000m2 housing, 48,000m2 offices, 200,000m2 mix of culture, retail, leisure and education and 200,000m2 parking.

This diverse program has different needs for phasing, positioning and size. To facilitate this all elements are designed as rings. By pushing these rings outwards, every part of the program receives a terrace for outdoor life. Plantations around the terraces with a floor to floor circulation system store water and irrigate the plants. The roofs of these hills and the terraces are planted with box hedges creating a strong, recognizable, cohesive park. This vertical park will improve the climate and ventilation, reduce energy and water usage. As a result a series of overgrown green ‘hills’ appear in the landscape.

The site is surrounded by a beautiful lake and forested hills, the design aims to create a landscape on top of the new program that enlarges the green qualities and that links the surrounding parks by turning the site into a park.

The shifting of the floors causes as a counter effect hollow cores that form large atriums. They serve as lobbies for the housing and offices, plazas for the shopping center and halls for the museum and leisure functions. In each tower a number of voids connect to the atrium providing for light and ventilation and creating semi-public spaces. On the lower floors the atriums are connected through a series of public spaces on various levels linking the towers and serving the outdoor facilities of the culture, retail and leisure program. The Power Centre creates a dense urban program with a green regard.

The concept plan is currently at the Gyeonggi provincial authority’s Urban Innovation Corporation for further development and feasibility study, the entire new town will be a self sufficient city of 77,000 inhabitants. The estimated budget and timeframe are still in the process of being established, completion is envisioned for 2011. A consortium lead by Daewoo develops the project with local firm DA Group, which commissioned MVRDV to design the scheme. British firm Arup is involved as engineer.

Designer : MVRDV via IGreenSpot via WordArchitectureNews

Gold Award to New York City’s first carbon-neutral building

Silver Award for a self-contained day labor station in San Francisco

Freshwater lake restoration and research facility in Ontario wins Bronze Award

Source : Holcim Awards via Bustler

Designer words :

“Failing to manage laundry and piles of dirty clothes is one of the many daily chores that are left unattended by so many busy people, whose jobs doesn’t leave them with time to take care of them. Whether you have a washing machine in your home or go to the corner laundromat, doing wash is a royal pain. Especially for the i-generation, who had whole hours pass in the blink of an eye, sometimes whole days get eaten up in some black hole and so household chores pile up. With a view to offer a little help, I have designed iBasket – a revolutionary washing machine that could really make life easier.

The i-generation are too busy working for their dreams. What if the whole laundry thing could be forgotten and both time and attention are saved for dream work?

The idea is to use this as a hamper, throwing your dirty clothes in as they accumulate. The iBasket then senses when the load is full and initiates the wash and dry cycle. Since it is Wi-Fi-enabled, you can control and monitor (if you’d like to do so) the concept washing machine via your PC or mobile device. Once the the cycle is complete, iBasket will alert you and send a message to your PC or mobile”

Designer : Guopeng Liang

Text from the designer :
This concept presents a small 3-seater city car. It is powered by a sophisticated hybrid system, consisting of small 1,6 liter HDi engine and an electric motor. Unlike most small cars the engine is placed above the rear(driving) wheels, actually making it a mid-engine car. This improves weight distribution, gets rid of the complex, heavy mechanics for power transmission and makes the unique, aerodynamic body possible. The big windscreen, together with the center position of the driver contributes to perfect visibility and makes even short trips joyful experience.

Another innovation is the rims which consist of two parts- outer(10-spoke classic) part which is free to rotate and inner part with Peugeot neon logo, which is stationary and great to behold, especially at night. For safety considerations the tail-lights are designed in such a way that the harder you press the brakes the more LED light up to warn the driver behind. The car is inspired by Nature and designed to work in harmony with It. It proves that small and practical cars can be stylish as well.

Designer : Ognyan Bozhilov

From the website :

Passion
The Napkin PC aims to bring out the creative passion of the user both individually and in group sessions. It encourages spreading out and allows for multiple creative workflows that can interact or just as easily stay independent. It encourages group interaction and collaboration by allowing any number of interfaces that can be passed around or pinned up, but which all communicate with a central network.

Users’ Culture & Lifestyle
The primary users are creative professionals including those in any field of design, but also expanding to include business and marketing professionals who use creative thinking to come up with business plans or marketing campaigns.

Their primary need is to have a simple system to help keep their creativity moving and maintain good collaborative communication. They want to drink a cup of coffee, pick up a pen and let their creativity flow, without having to sit down later to actually document and organize the information later.

The Napkin PC is a continuously additive system, where each new idea is already documented and organized with references and connections to related ideas. In addition each Napkin interface is an instant portal to the entire network giving quick and easy access and sharing of ideas and reference material.

Market Viability
The design appeals to business professionals. It is ideal for work groups of around 6 people (a typical brainstorming meeting) although the system is easily expandable for larger business.

The viable markets are any business that works with creative professionals. Any company that relies on brainstorming and group collaboration would benefit from using a Napkin PC.

A secondary market is creative professionals who work alone or in smaller groups, but who want the same ability to spread out and use multiple workflows.

Size
See page titled “Dimensions”

Napkin interface: 180mm x 180mm x 2mm
Pen stylus: 140mm x 9mm x 10mm
Base station: 160mm x 150mm x 150mm
Mobile station: 45mm x 36mm x 15 mm

Overview of Design
The Napkin PC is innovative because of its multi-flexibility. It can have multiple users, multiple interfaces, and multiple configurations. It breaks the PC down to only the interface— a pen and a space— and then gives you a multitude of both so you can let your creativity run wild.

User & Context
The users are creative professionals who work in collaborative groups. The PC is designed to be used for brainstorming, ideation, meetings, think tanks, etc. — anywhere where creativity is the driving force.

Scenarios of Use
There are two new usage scenarios delivered by the PC. First is the brainstorming workflow. Creativity that normally starts on paper and whiteboards goes instead directly into the PC without the user changing their behavior. This creativity is richer because of the innumerable software tools and resources available on every Napkin interface. It can also be shared, compiled, and compared instantly for a smooth, speedy workflow.

The second scenario is a replacement for printing. Instead of ever putting ink on paper, the interfaces themselves instantly become “prints” when power is removed. They would then be used just like a print, pinned up, handed around, reviewed, etc. When the print is no longer needed the interface is simply returned to the base station as a fresh Napkin.

User Interface
The interface consists of any number of Napkins and one of the Pens. When powered by the Pen, the Napkin is a multi-touch input display which responds to human touch as well as the Pen. The intuitive use of a pen and paper is exploited by the design, making it very easy to use. Also the ability to work on multiple interfaces in parallel, instead of shuffling through windows on a single interface, makes multitasking much easier.

Aesthetics
The Base station is designed to interact like a napkin holder. The user can grab an interface from the stack in the middle of the table. The computer itself is somewhat hidden in the Napkin holder, its only reminder being the OLED status display on the front. The user only really interacts with the Napkins and the Pens. This helps them maintain hands-on, creative freedom. The square Napkin form is used because it is modular, but also because it conveys the idea of being one of many. This helps the user stay relaxed and open minded because less importance is put on a single interface.

Technical Aspects
The key technologies are full color e-Paper, multi-touch input, Inductive power circuits, and high speed RF wireless connections. The e-Paper is key because of its low power consumption, thinness and flexibility, and ability to retain an image without power. Multi-touch is simply the future of intuitive input that makes the PC fun, fast, and easy to use. The inductive power circuits are crucial because they allow wireless power transfer and make the interface Napkin simple and inexpensive enough to be used in large numbers. High speed RF continues to keep everything wireless and intuitively seamless.

Ecology
The environmental sustainability of the PC is most innovative with the Napkin interface. It is the most numerous component and the one most likely to need replacing due to wear over a few years. Therefore it is beneficial to make it easy to recycle which is accomplished by powering it with an inductive circuit. This eliminates a hard-to-recycle internal battery.

The second, and likely more impactful, innovation is the use of the interface as an instant “print.” This eliminates the need for printers, paper, and ink, which are used in large amounts during the creative process.

Manufacturability
The focus of the design is really in the interface – the Napkin and the Pen. Both have very limited actual function because they only relay information between the user and the base station. The Napkins are manufactured by adhering the layers of touch input, display, and power/communication circuit, between a protective plastic cover. The pens have a similar induction circuit and communication antenna set up along with a rechargeable battery to send power to the interface. The Base Station holds the actual PC, which is compact but powerful enough to handle multiple users.

Source : Next-Gen PC Design

Bionic shapes and intelligent material user – the Silbervogel demonstrates very innovative engineering competence. The load bearing carbon structure is designed exactly for the physical forces during the race and therefore extremely light and rigid. This goes for the slim rims as well.

The spirit of competition is the father of this extreme racing vehicle. Each detail has been optimized for lowest resistance. This also applies to the main body shape. Polished aerodynamics is important, especially for gravitation racecars. That’s why the Silbervogel is fully encased.

Designer : Jakob Hirzel