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Greg Lynn

Conceptual work teaming together filmmakers, architects and designers. Greg’s commentary is rather fascinating, averting the concepts away from preconceived notions of “the world = a globe”. Ross Lovegrove first mentioned Greg’s name during his TED conference.

Greg Lynn: New City – Seed Magazine Feature
Is a sphere the optimal shape for our world? If physical laws were no longer a concern, how would we mold the Earth to better suit our global economy? The 21st century city planner tackles these questions and more as he redesigns our planet for the web.

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Tadao Ando

Many of the works of Tadao Ando base their richness in the relationship of the building with light and nature. In that sense, the Church on the Water, designed in 1985 and built in 1988, is one of its most celebrated achievements, in which nature has been involved in the design of the building.

Ando manages to create a microcosm that combines simply but brilliantly concepts on the profane and the sacred, the artificial and the natural, the enclosed and the exposed, the emptiness and the infinity.

Hokkaido near Tomamu, Japan
HT @archdaily

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Hong Kong Happy Valley

Hnng Kong skyline with race horse

World-famous multi storey Hong Kong racecourse. There has been horse racing here since 1846. Views looking south from wan chai skyscraper (happy valley race course down on the right). An amazing night out, will upload footage of a short film we shot on Wednesday night race.

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Water Channel

Foster+ Partners designed those new office buildings near London’s Tower Bridge. One unexpected feature is the shallow (but fast-moving) stream running down the middle of the pavement heading towards Tooley Street away from the Thames. Playful pavement experience or a hazard in waiting. You decide. I’m a big fan.

Props @cybertech

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Channel 4

This images reminds me of the seminal branding campaign that was commissioned for UK television station Channel 4 who sought to be

different, unexpected and immensely smart with it.

Click the image and you’ll understand what I’m talking about. It’s a very clever series.

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Herzon Meuron

Herzog & de Meuron – 56 Leonard Street, NY

In the design by Herzog & de Meuron for 560 Leonard Street the load-bearing structure is strategically absent in the façade. The round columns are placed where Le Corbusier put them: just off the wall. The effect is not so much that of weightlessness – the building still has a distinct, ‘heavy’ mass that firmly stands on the ground. No, combined with the hip displacement of the upper floors, the effect is that of the stack. A stack of 56 stories, to be precise.

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Autopia Europia

Featuring a roof-mounted racetrack outside and 56 separate bars inside, the 708,661 square-foot Autopia Europia in Istanbul, Turkey will be the largest car dealership in the world. Rather than racing, the rooftop track is expected to be used for new car test drives, free from the traffic the 6 million annual visitors are expected to create on the surrounding roads.

Hat tip to @jalopnix

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Vectorial Elevation

Vectorial Elevation is an interactive artwork that allows participants to transform the sky over Vancouver, Canada. Using a three-dimensional interface, this web site lets you design huge light sculptures by directing 20 robotic searchlights located around English Bay. A web page is made for each participant with photos of their design from four cameras located around the city.

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200 Park Avenue

Don’t know how exactly to describe this building, except that I love it, clean, not bottom heavy, perched above the city, complex. It’s the keystone of Park Avenue, as others have said before, but its also the Anchor of the East Side of Manhattan. A shame that the heliport was closed.

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Ladakh Sustainable Buildings

Ladakh is a spiritual country which I hold dear to my heart.

Situated between Tibet and India, this high altitude desert neighbors Kashmir/Pakistan. One of the most breathtaking landscape. In 1998 I climbed in that region, falling in love with the barren moonscape. This e2 program focuses on the social values of sustainability and learning on what cultures can do to adapt to change. Beautiful and provoking 25 minute documentary.

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Lapse in Time

Short quote from the show “In an increasingly global production scenario, speed and acceleration are synonymous with “added value”. Eager to maximize cost-effectiveness, mainstream production is reduced to churning out irrelevant variations on existing models, old ideas with a revamped look.”

YDN Design Guide travels to Lisbon, Portugal for the Experimenta Design Festival 2009. Our first visit there is the Lapse in Time Show curated by Hans Maier-Aichen. Lapse in time highlights several young designers who have chosen to explore something new, on the crossroads of design, thought, science, environmental concerns and cultural exchange.

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Viaduc Millau

Stand back for a particularly well designed modernist bridge spanning the world of Foster. It’s futuristic smart elegant lines hide the inner mechanics and out of sight engineering sophistication, hidden like a sleek machine.

The viewer enjoys this breathtaking sensibility by driving through the clouds like a bird. It’s a rare experience to be driving over elevated clouds. What a magnificent way to drive to your destination.

The Millau Viaduct (French: le Viaduc de Millau) is a large cable-stayed road-bridge that spans the valley of the river Tarn near Millau in southern France. Designed by the structural engineer Michel Virlogeux and British architect Norman Foster, it is the tallest vehicular bridge in the world, with one mast’s summit at 343 metres (1,125 ft) — slightly taller than the Eiffel Tower and only 38 m (125 ft) shorter than the Empire State Building. The viaduct is part of the A75-A71 autoroute axis from Paris to Béziers. It was formally dedicated on 14 December 2004, inaugurated the day after and opened to traffic two days later. The bridge won the 2006 IABSE Outstanding Structure Award.

Viaduc Millau in landscape format
Viaduc Millau in landscape format

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Louis Kahn

‘My architect’ is a movie that I so vividly remember. Loui Kahn, an enigma that touches and transcends any preconceptions about the role and life of an architect. I share this TED out of great respect for his work/life.

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Roof Top Apartment

Roof Top

A former synagogue on East Seventh Street in the East Village, built in 1908, was converted by a developer in the 1980s into five private residences. When the top floor of the converted synagogue came on the market in 2006, Dominique Camacho and Gary Hirschkron jumped at the chance. Though they missed out at that time, they bought the unit when it came up for sale again in 2007. The eco-friendly triplex has an exhibitionist streak.

Inside View Looking Out

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Richard Meier models


First covered by NYTimes in 2008 but again reposting given the timeless nature of the subject matter. Jullian, fancy heading down one Friday?

Rather than offloading architectural models or letting them swamp the office shelves, Richard Meier stashes hundreds of them in a Long Island City warehouse. “I don’t throw a lot away,” he told The New York Times in an interview last spring, when he’d just started allowing the public in to poke around. “To have all this and have no one see it is kind of crazy.” On May 2, he’ll reopen the 3,600-sq. ft. space for the season. Visitors can stroll around miniatures of his built work spanning from the ’60s (boxy houses in Connecticut and on Long Island) to the ’90s (a Dutch paper mill, his masterpiece Getty Center). Also on display are furniture and product prototypes plus sculptures collaged from chunks of steel and wax.

45-minute self-guided tours available on Fridays only, call 212-967-6060 to reserve a spot