Designer : Batyr Ospanov

Some explanation from Edwin :
The exterior desing of the car is inspired by the form of fabric blown in the wind. The form also carries traces of the historical Auto Union Type C Streamline race.

There are no conventional doors on the car, but instead, inspired by the jet fighters, there are three glass canopies. The main canopy opens forward together with the steering wheel and the dashboard; the two passengers’ canopies open backwards; and a side panel on the bodywork opens downwards to act as a step, making the event of getting in and out of the cockpit very special and easy.

The interior is simply one continuous sheet, starting from the dashboard, then being folded and bended to create floor carpet and seat.

The interior of the car is as simple and futuristic as the exterior. Single sheet transparent LCD dashboard displays all the essential data such as speed and mileage. The screen in the center of the steering wheel displays digital map. The information can also be projected on the canopy by a head up display. The
whole driving experience would be like flying a fighter jet. There is a small but handy luggage space behind the driver seat for handbags and suitcases. It is also an arm rest for the passengers.

Four wheels are housed inside the car’s four “legs”. Each wheel contains an Audi In-wheel Electric Drive Unit, making the car an evolution in Audi’s trademark “Quattro” all time four-wheel-drive system. The long range Supercharge-ion battery which powers the in-wheel motors are separated into two packs located in front of as well as behind the cockpit, creating a perfect 50:50 weight distribution of the car for excellent handling.

Specifications:
Length: 4480 mm
Width: 1900 mm
Height: 1060 mm
Wheel base; 3048 mm
Weight: 800 kg
En Engine: 4 Audi In-wheel Electric Drive Units
Power: 544 hp (4 X 100 kW)
Torque: 4500 Nm (3319.03 lb-ft)
0-100km: 2.9 s
Top Speed: 360 km/h

Designer : Edwin Conan

Designer : Tai Chiem

Martin interview with Electrolux :

What was the inspiration for your concept?
In my opinion, everything I have ever seen, read and heard is my inspiration. Every experience stays somewhere inside you, and if you are lucky, it will come out at the right moment. If I look back, this particular concept was definitely inspired by the book The Naked Sun from Isaac Asimov, the R2-D2 robot from Star Wars, an egg, insects, and whatever else I see every day.

How does your concept fit into this year’s competition theme “Designs for the next 90 years”?
Ninety years is very long time. Nearly four generations will pass through, every one of them with its own dreams, desires and possibilities. One long lasting dream is to reach the stars, but before that, we will have to reach Mars to see whether or not we can live without Earth. This is the time where my concept is relevant. At that time, we won’t think of machines as dumb boxes with buttons, but more as partners that obey our commands, but still have their own minds. They will be more autonomous and think and make decisions on their own. It may sound frightening, but it isn’t scarier than the first arrival of trains to the cities.

What are the main consumer benefits of your concept?
One thing you notice on Mars is the silence and serenity. That’s quite good for one week’s vacation in the countryside, but for modern people it’s very depressing to live in such a place for several months or years. Therefore, the main benefit of Le Petit Prince is that it’s not just a machine, but more like a pet or silent friend that you can speak to when you aren’t in the mood to talk to people. On top of that, it is a good gardener that grows any plant you want or need to bare life or just for its beauty.

Describe the consumer research behind your concept.
Well, I must admit it’s difficult to do any real research behind the concept since it’s designed for Mars. However, some of my friends said it’s cute (I always thought some of them have to be from Mars) and I consider their feedback sufficient.

What kind of materials would you use to build your concept?
Metallurgy, glass production and synthetic plastics have been used for a long time and will probably continue to be used in the next hundred years, so I didn’t feel an urge to use new yet unknown materials. Nanotechnology made giant leaps in the last few years and it will improve properties of material surfaces in the future, so they will be even harder and more resistant than anything we know today. More effective (even transparent) are solar panels, etc., but this evolution will not affect the fundamentals of my concept.

Designer : Martin Miklica

[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

Nicolas explanations:
Utilizing a new energy model, the vehicle uses the electricity to stimulate a central water tank, splitting the water into hydrogen and oxygen. The hydrogen gets stored in special reserve tanks, while the oxygen gets expelled into the air as exhaust. With this model, the vehicle functions like a plant, only needing the sun and water to create its own fuel. The sleek, mono-volume design allows for optimal interior space and utility. Special design features also include layered body panels, unique headlight/side mirror units, and offset seating to allow elbow room for all occupants.

Since the principle material used to construct the exterior functions by re-directing light to the edges, I wanted to accentuate this feature in the design. To do so, I designed the roof panel to act like a canopy, suspended over the roof pillars mimicking a shade or visor. The rear lights themselves are packed into the edge of the “glass sleeve” composing the exterior, to seem as if the brake lights are being emitted from the glass edges.

Using this technology, there were key issues that had to be solved in the revision stage. While the solar panels use highly saturated dyes, this color cannot be used on the entire exterior because it would disorient the driver. To solve this, I broke up the material into three different shades (clear/smoked/colored) and strategically placed them around the vehicle in order to maximize driver visibility

Technology aside, it was important that I attempt to break the stigma against small cars in North America. To do this, I used long lines that stretch across the form, visually elongating the vehicle and providing an athletic stance. In order to maximize the use of such a small package, I used a mono-volume approach to open-up the interior space as much as possible. Another important feature to small vehicles is character… so besides a traditional “happy face”, I designed the headlights and side mirrors to be integrated into one unit that extends out from the body like eyes.

Designer : Nicolas Stone

[Press Release]
The future headquarters of Antwerp Port Authority will be designed by the London firm of Zaha Hadid Architects. The choice of architect was made at the Port Authority board meeting on 13 January. The new Port House will occupy the site of the technical services building on quay 63.

The Port Authority aims to make its operations more efficient by centralising the administrative and technical services which are now divided between the Port House and quay 63. The new headquarters will also solve the pressing shortage of workspace in the present Port House on the Entrepot quay. Some 500 people will be able to move into the new building when it is completed in 2013.

In addition to offering better accommodation, the future Port House will contribute to further development and upgrading of the part of the city known as Het Eilandje. The brief for the new building specified that it had to symbolise the Port of Antwerp as a world port and economic driver of Flanders and the Antwerp area. It also had to be built according to the principles of sustainability.

In selecting the architect it was decided to use the Open Call for Tender procedure of the Flemish Government Architect’s team. The procedure was launched in December 2007, and nearly 100 architectural firms responded. A shortlist of five firms was chosen:

• Consortium of TV A2O Architecten / Atelier Kempe Thill / Marcq & Roba / BEG from Hassel, Belgium
• Vier Arquitectos from La Coruña, Spain
• Xaveer De Geyter Architects from Brussels
• Zaha Hadid Architects from London
• Rapp + Rapp from Rotterdam

The jury/board of directors finally opted for the proposal by Zaha Hadid Architects, because:

• The design preserves as much as possible of the dignity of the present building as a monument, adding a new object to the site;
• The board and its advisors had confidence in a team such as Zaha Hadid Architects being able to further develop the project so as to achieve a high quality end result that can act as a “shop window” for the Port Authority.

The estimated construction cost is 31.5 million euros excluding VAT and architect’s fees. This includes all the work for an office building with around 12,000 m² of floorspace for around 500 people, together with underground parking for 300 or so cars.

The new building fits in with the Port Authority’s future-oriented investment policy. At the same board meeting it was also decided to purchase four tugs as part of a renewal series of nine. And of course there will be further investments in infrastructure for expansion and renovation of the port. The various Flemish port authorities are currently holding discussions with the Flemish Government about financing for basic port infrastructure.
The new Port House forms part of a programme of improvements to the Port Authority’s own buildings. In addition to various renovation and new construction work that has already been carried out, a public call for tender has been issued for the new VTS (Vehicle Traffic Service) building beside the Zandvliet lock.

Design proposal

The design team from Zaha Hadid Architects proposed a very dynamic architecture that strikes up a dialogue with the Oosterweel road link, with the Lange Wapper bridge forming a backdrop to the New Port House. With its unique design, its facade architecture and its height of 46 metres, the new Port Authority will be an iconic building, visible from many different directions.

The concept is a free interpretation of a beam-shaped volume raised above the existing fire brigade building and supported on three sculptured concrete pillars housing the stairs and lifts. Two of the pillars are situated on the covered inner courtyard of the firehouse, while the third is located beside an external support point and consists of a panoramic lift shaft.
The new volume is oriented North-South parallel to the Kattendijk dock. The head of the building on the South side is a frame that looks towards the city and clearly marks the start of the port area.
The outside walls are made up of glass triangles, some transparent and some reflecting. These do not all lie in the same plane but are rotated slightly with respect to one another, creating an attractive reflecting play of incoming light in a reference to Antwerp’s diamond industry.

The present firehouse will be kept free of building all around, so that the four outside walls will be fully respected. As for the arrangement of the inside spaces, consultations will be held with Flanders Real Estate Heritage and the Monuments department of the City of Antwerp to determine whether open-plan offices (as laid down in the schedule of requirements) are possible, either partly of throughout.

The inner courtyard will be roofed over at the height of the second story so as to create an air-conditioned inside space. This central entrance hall will be considered as a semi-public space, with various enquiry desks (Personnel department, Harbourmaster’s Office, Planning Permission & Environment Permit office and Port Dues payment desk) integrated in the inside wall portals.

A sculptural, sloping roof unites an underground lobby with the covered inner court. Access to the underground car park is an important aspect of the overall concept, with the loading & unloading bays and the refuse handling facilities also located here. The car park has space for 300 or so cars and consists of a single underground level. The design of the square can be arranged so that daylight is allowed to enter. The above-ground layout forms part of a design project that is being carried out in consultation with the city departments responsible, with the main imperative being to “preserve the visual quality of the outside spaces in the Het Eilandje area.”

The open plan offices are indeed very open, so that office staff will have a great impression of space with a view along the various outside walls. The concept for the open plan office also allows for small areas in which to hold meetings, along with separate study offices.

Designer : Zaha Hadid Architects via Bustler

Alexey words about his design:
A conceptual project for a wristwatch, Endlesstime has been designed in the form of the Möbius band to symbolise the infinite (or endless) quality of time.

Endlesstime is a continuous band without knobs and buttons. It does not require the tuning of time or the changing of batteries. A receiving device in the clock face receives a satellite signal and automatically tunes the watch to match the time in the current time zone. The battery is automatically charged using the kinetic energy made by movement.

Designer : Alexey Bykov

Text from Lee :
“B-iron 725 is transparent iron. It relieves you from uneasy feeling about how well the ironing is going, and provides visual pleasure since you can see how your clothes are smoothed out.”

Designer : Dongseok,Lee and Jihyung,Jung

Designer : Gunther Horntrich via HomeDesignFind