Korean Corporate Pavilion

Happy Friday!

Designed for the ShangHai Industrial Pavilion, UnSangDong Architects imagined the Korean Corporate Pavilion coinciding along the subjects of green city and green life. It is named Communi-Imagination and it holds the introspection of environment together with innovation of technology. Korea got over the unfortunate situation of the Korean War which didn’t seem to be possible and has achieved unimaginable development and innovation. This space represents technology and spirit of Korean enterprises which is the main agent of these accomplishments. More images and architects’ description after the break.

The spirit and the technology of 12 Korean enterprises which are developing towards higher-tech such as information technology, distribution, aviation, electronic, vehicle, chemistry and shipbuilding are represented in the architecture by diverse exhibitions and videos. This recordable scale of expo is held in China which is the biggest market in the world. We hope to promote advanced Korean technology and brand, and re-establish a new relationship for economy and cultural exchange between Korea and China. We hope to promote new competiveness of Korean enterprises with new awareness of nature and Korean high-technology. In conclusion, Environmental Communi-Imagination connects Asia to the world and suggests a new vision.

Courtesy of UnSangDong Architects

Green Imagination 01: Combination of Green and Imagination

We suggest Korean Corporate Pavilion containing exhibition and experience of natural nature and artificial nature. The shape of the pavilion is taken from nature. It brings parts of it to the architecture as an artificial container. Green-Imagination means the combination of Green and Imagination which re-produces an unlimited potentiality of nature and the power of making imagination true in order to express the spirit and the technology of Korean enterprise.

As society is getting civilized, the condition of nature goes to ruin. Global warming and depletion of natural sources which the consumption-driven society in capitalism causes are important issues now, and we can’t avoid the environmental subjects. Especially the unlimited expansion of population, architecture and infrastructure in big cities predict overall natural exhaustion threatening the ecosystem. Korean enterprises also need to suggest new values for the future through introspection of nature. Therefore, a new system gained from the combination and symbiosis of nature and human is suggested such as landscape architecture and ecological architecture. This system is the active integration of architecture and nature from deep introspection of sustainability.

Courtesy of UnSangDong Architects

Green Imagination 02: Compound of nature component_ a container holding nature

Korean Corporate Pavilion is a pot-like architecture. The pot is an artificial container in which nature is put in. The pot is a technological container maintaining and creating diverse figures of nature. In this technologic container, 12 Korean enterprises are combined. The exhibit hall provides potentiality of futuristic high-technology through cooperation and communication among each other. This pot-like architecture is composed with a 3-dimensional digital space at ground level, exhibition space on the 2nd floor and space for enterprise prospecting on the 3rd floor. Eventually it is a huge pot of a pine grove penetrating the whole system.

The artificial pot putting nature in embodies and combines nature by diverse methods. This diverse composition is generated by a 3-dimensional combination of natural topography. Various Korean topographies are abstracted and its components such as mountain, field, valley and river are combined with architecture.

The artificial pot putting in nature contains eternity and change of Korean landscape; mountain and water. In the oriental view of nature, scenery is interpreted as a temporal medium which contains traces and the involving the past and the future. Korean Corporate Pavilion as artificial nature is an organic body breathing with mysterious nature which keeps changing unlimitedly. Korean Corporate Pavilion is a symbiotic structure at the contact point of lively dynamics and contemporary esthetics. To sculpt Korean scenery, the Korean corporate pavilion intents a Korean environmental-friendly spirit. The Korean nature like landscape painting is engraved. --Alison Furuto

To view the rest of the article and more eye candy, please visit here: http://www.archdaily.com/175844/korean-corporate-pavilion-unsangdong-architects/

Thank you Dan Clifford for today's YEOW.

Arizona Centennial

Happy Friday!

Michael Hadley has sent you a link to a blog:
“Look at what's going on in Arizona!!!"
[If anyone else has any YEOW’s they’d like to share, please feel free to let me know! Thx]

Do Enjoy! Y.our E.nvironment O.f the W.eek

Counting down to Arizona's Centennial..... 

The city of Phoenix, in partnership with the Arizona Centennial Commission, is in the process of designing improvements to Centennial Way, currently Washington Street, from Central to 19^th avenues, in preparation for Arizona’s Centennial Celebration!  The Achen-Gardner/Entellus Design-Build Team was selected as the project team to design and construct these improvements.  Provided below is an aerial view of the project area.




City street where construction will begin.

 

The project consists of new widened decorative sidewalks, better defined decorative crosswalks, ADA curb ramps, bike lanes, enhanced pedestrian lighting, landscaping, and other streetscape elements.  Finally, the project will resurface and re-stripe the roadway alignments within the project area. 

This project is partially funded with State/Federal funds through the Transportation Enhancement process.

Please see link provided for more information:

http://centennialwayaz.com/

For questions, comments or concerns related to the project, please contact our project hotline at 602-532-6100 or e-mail us at mailto:teresa@makprosvc.com?subject=Centennial Way AZ Inquiry

Tar Creek SUPERGRID

HAPPY FRIDAY EVERYONE!

For this Friday's YEOW, I'd like to share with you the TAR CREEK SUPERGRID.

Clint Langevin, in collaboration with Amy Norris, proposed "repurposing abandoned mines as renewable energy infrastructure in the U.S." for his thesis project at the University of Toronto.

[Image: Inside the Picher, Oklahoma, supergrid, by Clint Langevin and Amy Norris].

The specific site for their project is the Tar Creek Lead and Zinc Mine in Picher, Oklahoma, which long-term BLDGBLOG readers might remember as the town at risk from cave-ins. As the Washington Post reported in 2007, "Trucks traveling along the highway are diverted around Picher for fear that the hollowed-out mines under the town would cause the streets to collapse under the weight of big rigs." The unlucky town was then gutted by a tornado in 2008.

Langevin's and Norris's work highlights the area's surreal, almost Cappadocian landscape: "Dozens of waste rock piles, some up to 13-storeys high," they write, "and contaminated ground and surface water are the legacy of mining operations in the area, which produced a significant portion of the lead used in the World Wars."

[Images: Photos of waste rock piles in Picher; (top) Jason Stair, Photos via the architects].

The architects specifically propose "a structure that raises the solar energy infrastructure off the ground [and] creates the opportunity to host other activities on the site, as well as to remediate the polluted ground and waterways. The concrete structure, pre-fabricated using waste rock material from the site, is assembled in a modular fashion from a kit of parts that accommodates a variety of programs."
"Importantly," the architects add, "the hollow structure also acts as a conduit to carry water, energy, waste—all the infrastructure for human habitation—to all inhabited areas of the site."

The result is a three-tiered plan: the topmost layer is devoted to solar energy development and production: testing the latest solar technology and producing a surplus of energy for the site and its surroundings. This layer is also the starting point for water management on the site. Rainwater is collected as needed and transported through the structure to one of several treatment plants around the radial plan. The middle layer is the place of dwelling and exploration of the site. As the need for space grows, beams are added to create this inhabited layer: the beams act as a pedestrian and cycling circulation system, but also the infrastructure for dwelling and automated transit. Finally, the ground layer becomes a laboratory for bioremediation of the ground and water systems. Passive treatment of both the waste water from the site and of the acid mine drainage is coupled with a connected system of boardwalks to allow inhabitants and visitors to experience both the industrial inheritance of the site and the renewed hope for its future.

It's a bit of a Swiss Army knife—in the sense that it tries to solve everything and have a solution for every possible challenge—with the effect that the architects seem to under-emphasize the titanic supergrid that clearly defines the overall proposal. It's as if the proposal is so large—more landform building than architectural undertaking—that even the architects lose sight of it, focusing instead on individual systems in their description.

[Images: A wanderer above the sea of white cubes gazes at the Picher supergrid].

But inside this continuous and monumental space frame, whole communities could live—the "infrastructure for dwelling" and "pedestrian and cycling circulation system"—surrounded by a toxic geography for which the grid itself serves as both sublime filter and possible remedy.

[Images: inside the supergrid (view larger)].

The model for the project is pretty great, and I would love to see it in person: a cavernous grid envelopes the site's artificial topography, wrapping tailings piles and hills of waste rock, whilst treading lightly on ground too thin to hold the weight of architecture.

[Images: The model, by Clint Langevin and Amy Norris].

You can see more—including aerial maps and structural details, such as the placement of solar panels—at Langevin's and Norris's site. 

--BLDG BLOG
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Source taken from:
http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2011/09/tar-creek-supergrid.html