High Houses

I noticed these images by Lebbeus Woods of his proposed High Houses popping up in a couple places on the interwebs yesterday and figured ‘why not on AMNP, too’. I realize many of you are probably familiar with the project – but I thought some eye candy would hold the site down for the day until I could get some new posts up. Enjoy.

The High Houses are proposed as part of the reconstruction of Sarajevo after the siege of the city that lasted from 1992 though late 1995. Their site is the badly damaged “old tobacco factory” in the Marijn dvor section near the city center.

The concept of the project is simple. The houses rise up high into the airspace once occupied by falling mortar and artillery shells fired by the city’s besiegers in the surrounding mountains. By occupying the airspace, the High Houses reclaim it for the people of the city. Balancing on scavenged steel beams welded end-to-end, they are spaces of a new beginning for Sarajevo, one that challenges—in physical terms—the city’s past and present, aiming at a future uniquely Sarajevan. Stabilized by steel cables anchored to the site, the houses, poised like catapults, fulfill the paradoxical desire to fly and at the same time be rooted in their place of origin.

These houses are not for everyone. Indeed, probably only a few could master their challenges. Yet each mastery would manifest a spirit of courage and inventive skill in the name of all who must reinvent a city transformed by destruction.

.:via->Lebbeus Woods

Posted: March 9th, 2010
at 5:23am

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Categories: architecture, housing, illustration, towering pagodas

Comments: 2 comments


eVolo 2010 Winners

The winners have been announced for the 2010 eVolo Skyscraper Competition.

The winning entry – a ‘Vertical Prison‘ that isn’t actually vertical – looks like an oil rig suspended over a city and repurposed to house inmates. It’s not that the project isn’t interesting or lacks merit – but winner of the competition? My ninjas, please.

Seriously – I suppose I’m just confused as to what the competition is about, if ‘Vertical Prison’ takes first place. It seems to me that the value of this project lies in the sociopolitical implications of integrating our prison systems and our society in the proposed way, rather than in skyscraper design. Under different circumstances I’d actually feel entirely different about this project – but as the eVolo winner? It almost seems unfair to the other entrants that a competition that has been [let's face it] largely about form-making is going to change gears.

Any thoughts on this year’s winners?

Posted: March 9th, 2010
at 12:07am

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Categories: architecture, competitions, towering pagodas

Comments: 4 comments


Ninjas on the ‘Net

[map of 8 major fast food hamburger chains in the US - via]

Well, my ninjas, the sun is shining and the weather is sweet, as the man said. My triumphant return to the land of the living [so, the workplace] has been met with sunny skies and mild temperatures here in the Bean, which I’ll go ahead and take as a good sign. And that’s about all I’ve got to say this week – except for a quick ‘f$*k you’ to Tom DeLay for accusing those of us who were [or are still, in many cases] unemployed of not actually searching for work – of “being unemployed because they want to be“. What a dick. Didn’t he step down because of money laundering? And aren’t prominent politricks from the Bush years [both parties] largely responsible for the unemployment numbers? And now he wants to talk shit? I hope DeLay can hide out for a while, because some unemployed factory worker with kids to feed and a little ninja in her/him is going to mush him in the mouth for that mess. Well, I hope so at least.

On a happier note, if you come across something on the interwebs that you think should appear on AMNP – as a post, as part of Ninjas on the ‘Net, or as a quick sidebar link – drop me an email at architecture@myninjaplease.com – or hit me up on Twitter(twitter.com/ArchitectureMNP).

- a graffiti battle  in the making? [WSJ]

- Kotkin & the virtues of suburbia? [Next American City]

- interview with Kermit Baker, chief economist for the AIA [BSA Chapter Letter]

- Shauna Gillies-Smith & Mark Pasnik talk livable streets [BSA Chapter Letter]

- personal infrastructures competition [Bustler]

- more Steven Holl in China [Bustler]

- will LA cap its freeways with parks, a-la Big Dig? [Architect's Newspaper]

- RIP Raimund Abraham, 1933-2010 [Architect's Newspaper]

- ‘bottom-up planning‘ [City of Sound]

- young designers, recycled [Architecture Boston]

- 15 mind-blowing moon base designs [DVICE]

- Syria’s Stonehenge? [The Independent]

- Smout Allen’s proposal for the Grand Egyptian Museum [mammoth]

complexity and contradiction in infrastructure [varnelis]

Posted: March 8th, 2010
at 5:00am


Categories: Ninjas on the 'net

Comments: 1 comment


Shigeru Ban at L Studio

Posted: March 7th, 2010
at 5:00am

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Categories: architecture, videos

Comments: 1 comment


Customizing the Eames Chair

I have to say, I think this beats the Eames molded plastic rocker that I have in bright red. Drawn by hand, the custom designs for the chairs are done by NY illustrator Mike Perry – and are pretty feckin’ dope.

.:first seen over at Design Milk->

Posted: March 4th, 2010
at 11:20pm

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Categories: design, furniture, illustration

Comments: 2 comments


Ninja Arithmetic LXVII

[Equation: Projector X steel plate = Henning Larsens Tegnestue's Danish Opera House]

Thanks to our ninja Tony for submitting this edition of Ninja Arithmetic.

If you’re inspired with an idea for a Ninja Arithmetic post by a project that you come across, don’t hesitate to contact AMNP! You don’t have to make the graphic yourself – simply explain the equation to me in an email, and I’ll handle the rest. Simply end your suggestion to architecture@myninjaplease.com, with “Ninja Arithmetic” in the subject line.

Posted: March 3rd, 2010
at 3:54pm

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Categories: architecture, my ninja, please, ninja arithmetic

Comments: 2 comments


Guru’s Heart

YouTube Preview Image

AMNP’s thoughts are with our ninja Guru, who has undergone successful heart surgery after suffering a heart attack.

And no – he ain’t dead, you fools.

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.:full story->ALLHIPHOP

Posted: March 2nd, 2010
at 8:13pm


Categories: MNP

Comments: No comments


Zaha Hadid: King Abdullah II House of Culture & Art

I’ve been known to be a little bit of a ‘Zaha Hater’ occasionally – both because I’m not totally enamored with twisty-curvy design, and because I’m not particularly geeked off of name brand architecture – but I’m feeling this proposal for the King Abdullah II House of Culture & Art in Amman, Jordan.

Inspired by the eroded forms of Petra, the House of Culture & Art is a simple volume stretching along the highway – from which the internal spaces are ‘eroded’, creating a curvilinear interior to a mostly-rectilinear structure. The project includes a 1600-seat concert hall, 400-seat theatre, educational centre, rehearsal rooms, and galleries. The large, eroded void in the mass of the building marks the public spaces – which connect to a series of exterior plazas [that will even extend beneath the highway - see the video below]. This public space then also serves to distinguish between the two main program elements – the large concert hall at the end of the volume [all the way to the left of the image above], and the smaller theatre which seems to hang above the main entry space [the right end of the volume in the image above].

There’s also some kind of transparency / translucency being achieved in some of the more solid-appearing parts of the volume, although I’m not really sure as of yet what’s going on there.

The architectural expression for the new performing arts centre has been inspired by the magnificent ancient city of Petra explains Zaha Hadid. “Petra is an astonishing example of the wonderful interplay between architecture and nature, as well as the intricate complexity and elegance of natural forms – the rose-colored mountain walls have been eroded, carved and polished to reveal the astonishing strata of sedimentation. We have applied these principles to articulate the public spaces within the centre, with eroded interior surfaces that extend into the public plaza in front of the building.”

~ Zaha Hadid Architects

One thing that concerns me is that while this long, almost over-sized, volume seems appropriate for facing a highway, it seems as if the building might be ‘turning its back’ on the neighborhood on its other side [watch the YouTube video below to see what I'm talking about]. However, I have no idea what the neighborhood is, or if it should be addressed in another way – it’s just my initial reaction to seeing the animation below.

YouTube Preview Image

Unfortunately I can’t find any plans / sections yet – but I’m sure they’ll start popping up on these here interwebs soon enough [not that anyone seems to care about that sort of thing anymore, unfortunately]. Construction is scheduled to begin sometime in 2012.

Posted: March 2nd, 2010
at 11:38am

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Categories: architecture, starchitects

Comments: 4 comments


Photo du Jour 02.03.2010

[photo by Christina Römer]

Designboom has a recent post featuring a number of photos named winners and honourable mentions of a competition launched by the German company Thonet. The competition? To photograph the iconic Thonet no. 214, as a way to celebrate its 150th anniversary.

214: It is often called the chair of all chairs – and rightfully so. traditionally-made chairs had handcrafted joints. Then, around 1850, michael thonet made production cheaper by bending the wooden components using steam and simply screwing them together. No other chair has ever been reproduced as many times.  To date, more than 50 million copies have been made. And thonet is still producing it following the original well-tried and proven principles. Chair no. 14, today 214, is considered the most successful industrial product in the world.

Basically, I just thought the photo was dope – check out the Designboom post for more.

.:via->designboom

Posted: March 2nd, 2010
at 10:04am

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Categories: architecture, design, furniture, photographie

Comments: 2 comments


Ninjas on the ‘Net

[United States of Facebook - via archiCULTURE]

Happy March! With any luck, Spring is rapidly approaching, and things will start turning green again (Boston has been a lovely shade of overcast grey for months – as has most of the North East, I imagine).

Interesting news (for me, at least) to kick off the month: I’ve been asked to return to the firm that had to lay me off last year. Just over a year after cutting me loose (I’m estimating 54 weeks), they’ve contacted me about returning to help on some current projects. Now I say this is interesting not because I’m about to be employed full-time again, but because this is (I think) a telling example of how things are moving in architecture. Some work is picking up for this firm – in early design phases – but they’re still cautious about their immediate future, as everyone is unsure how far the projects will progress. I, for instance, am being brought back for a period of 3 months – after which I may be out again.

After meeting with my old co-workers and seeing what I’d be working on, I was struck by the fact that only one project (for now) was in the US – not because this is surprising in our current economy, but because for some reason it suddenly occurred to me that we may have hit a kind of critical density here. I know expansion is as American as apple pie and xenophobia, but it seems as if we’ve reached a point where the only way to populate a new community is to syphon population away from another area – essentially moving people simply for the sake of ‘progress’ and profit. There was so much talk last year about the end of the so-called “architecture of excess” (as if Thom Mayne should never work again because Wall Street and the Banks screwed us all), but I wonder if that isn’t missing the point. We’ll always need a certain number of new buildings, obviously – but what if the economic collapse means the death of New Urbanism and expansion for expansions sake? There’s a positive here, which is that this would create increased interest in our current urban/suburban areas – but how does the profession of architecture adapt to a change from the abundant growth from post WWII to the turn of the century to a more refined, perhaps more surgical, approach to dealing with what is already built / existing?

Maybe we all simply work for the UAE and China and don’t bother losing sleep over it.

Moving along, it’s time for this week’s link round-up. If you come across something on the interwebs that you think should appear on AMNP – as a post, as part of Ninjas on the ‘Net, or as a quick sidebar link – drop me an email at architecture@myninjaplease.com – or hit me up on Twitter (twitter.com/ArchitectureMNP).

Have a good week.

- the timeless work of I.M. Pei [the Guardian]

- “I’m a Western Architect” – interview with I.M. Pei [Financial Times]

- Ole Scheeren leaving OMA? [Archinect]

- learning from “Learning From…” [Archinect]

- feds looking for suggestions for greener communities [Denver Post]

- container city approved for Haiti relief [Inhabitat]

- architecture billings index drops in January [Building Online]

- the Architectures of Atelier Bow-Wow: Behaviorology [Dexigner]

- photog takes (beautiful) subjective look at homes [LA Times]

- how’s the environment doing? Ask the buildings [CNN]

- educational agriculture [BLDGBLOG]

Vitus Bering Innovation Park | C. F. Møller Architects [+MOOD]

- interview with studiometrico [Archi-Ninja]

Posted: March 1st, 2010
at 12:00pm


Categories: Ninjas on the 'net

Comments: 3 comments