The SodaBIB Project

The SodaBIB Project is "a prototype project to reuse plastic water bottles to form a thatch roof -- to help people to create shelter from discarded materials." The design of SodaBIB (Soda-Bottle Interface Bracket), developed by professors and students at New York Institute of Technology (NYIT), consists of a custom shipping pallet that breaks down to serve as an armature for mounting empty water bottles. Therefore water bottles can be shipped to people and places in need, and then everything can be reused for shelter.



The NYIT folks have already created a 5-foot-square prototype, but now they're aiming to build a barrel-vaulted mock-up on the Old Westbury campus. As is becoming the norm, Kickstarter is being used to help fund the project. A short video on the project is below, but much more information on SodaBIB can be found on its Kickstarter page.

Today's archidose #628

Today I snapped some photos of the FDR Four Freedoms Park on Roosevelt Island during its Archtober Open House. The park, designed by Louis I. Kahn and completed four decades after his death by Mitchell/Giurgola Architects, opens to the public on October 24.

































To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just:

:: Join and add photos to the archidose pool, and/or
:: Tag your photos archidose

The Next 100

Part of today's afternoon session at the 2012 MAS Summit is the presentation of ideas for Grand Central Terminal's Next 100 Years. Some photos, in order of the presentations.

Claire Weisz and WXY Studio:




Roger Duffy and SOM:




Norman Foster and Foster + Partners:

425 Park Avenue

I'm at the MAS Summit today (visit my twitter feed for some occasional updates), where renderings and models for the 425 Park Avenue invited competition are on display. Norman Foster's winning design was unveiled a couple weeks ago, but I had yet to see the designs of the three other competitors—Zaha Hadid, OMA, Richard Rogers. So here they are.

Renderings:

Top to bottom, left to right: Zaha Hadid, OMA, Richard Rogers, Norman Foster

Models:

Left to right: Zaha Hadid, OMA, Richard Rogers, Norman Foster

Skylights: Dumbo

About a month ago the Dumbo Arts Festival took place in that part of Brooklyn that is Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass. Not surprisingly, there was plenty of art and installations, one of which was Skylights: Dumbo by Engin Ayaz, Adrià Navarro López, Rozit Ardit and Esther Sze-Wing Cheung. I didn't make it to the festival, but for me and everybody else who missed it, here's a video of the installation and its construction:



And some explanation from the design team:

Skylights: Dumbo is a site-specific sculptural pavilion that utilizes ambient lighting within Brooklyn Bridge Park to show star constellations on the ground via cast shadows. The pavilion is organically shaped by site and programmatic constraints such as orientation, views and shadow paths. With its specific shape, location and perforation, the canopy is illustrates the complete star map of New York for the evenings of September 28-30th, the dates of Dumbo Arts Festival 2012.

The motivation behind this project is to poetically address the politics of light, and specifically side effects of light pollution in urban settings. By using the streetlight as the source for the star map, the project challenges the visitor to reconnect with the larger planetary scale, the stars that enshroud us.

The project has been exhibited in Brooklyn Bridge Park for the Dumbo Arts Festival 2012, and is currently looking for a longer term exhibition location.

Today's archidose #627

All eyes are on Ohio with the recent opening of MOCA Cleveland. Here is a look at it and some other pieces of contemporary architecture in Ohio, photographed by Taiyo Watanabe.

MOCA Cleveland, Farshid Moussavi (2012):


Glass Pavilion at Toledo Museum of Art, SANAA (2006):


Contemporary Arts Center (Lois & Richard Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art) in Cincinnati, Zaha Hadid Architects (2003):


Akron Art Museum in Akron, Coop Himmelb(l)au (2007):


The Vontz Center for Molecular Studies at the University of Cincinnati, Frank Gehry (1999):


Zimmer Stair at University of Cincinnati, Wes Jones - J.P;A (1996):


Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland, I.M. Pei (1995):


Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Eisenman Architects (1989):


To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just:

:: Join and add photos to the archidose pool, and/or
:: Tag your photos archidose

ADFF NY 2012

Thursday is the opening night of the 2012 New York Architecture and Design Film Festival at Tribeca Cinemas Theater, with a special screening at Time Warner Center.



For a schedule of films being screened in the four-day festival, visit the ADFF website. Some of the highlights include 16 Acres (opening night at Time Warner), Coast Modern, Design Is One: Lella and Massimo Vignelli (opening night at Tribeca Cinemas), Diller Scofidio + Renfro: Reimagining Lincoln Center and the High Line, Mendelsohn’s Incessant Visions, and Modern Tide: Midcentury Architecture on Long Island.