Jürgen Mayer H a Berlin-based architect extraordinaire and his team have researched the relationship between the human body, technology, material, and nature, reaching new heights of innovative spatial creation and architectural solutions. Recent projects include the spectacular redevelopment of the Plaza de la Encarnacion in Sevilla, as well as constructing a town hall in Germany. Juergen Mayer H.’s work is included in the collection of both New York and San Francisco’s Museum of Modern Art. He has won numerous awards and currently teaches at Columbia University in New York.
Robert Barnes
Shigeru Ban – 2014 Pritzker Prize winner
Shigeru graduated from Cooper Union’s Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture, worked at Arata Isozaki’s atelier, and in 1985 founded Shigeru Ban Architects. Shigeru Ban’s practical philosophy of architecture involves nothing less than redefining aesthetics, space, materials and structure.
[pull_quote_center]Architecture is my life. And also something I enjoy the most[/pull_quote_center]
His unusual modular shelter design using recycled paper and cardboard shipping tubes, for example, provided evacuees with sturdy havens after the Great East Japan Earthquake. His notable works include Curtain Wall House, the Japanese Pavilion at Expo 2000 in Hannover, Germany, and the Centre Pompidou-Metz museum of modern and contemporary arts in France. Shigeru has received a wealth of awards, including the Architectural Institute of Japan Prize, Auguste Perret Prize, and the Ministry of Education’s Award for Fine Arts. Currently on the faculty at the Kyoto University of Art and Design, he has also taught at Harvard, Cornell and Keio University
Shigeru Ban is 2014 Pritzker Prize winner.
Read and watch the entire interview here – www.archdaily.com
Shigeru Ban – Emergency shelters made from paper
Architect Shigeru Ban had begun his experiments with ecologically-sound building materials such as cardboard tubes and paper. His remarkable structures are often intended as temporary housing, designed to help the dispossessed in disaster-struck nations such as Haiti, Rwanda or Japan.
Shigeru ban started exploring the structural possibilities of the cardboard tube as a building component, testing its stability and durability in the development of temporary constructions. he discovered that no only was the material strong, but also easy to waterproof and fireproof, making it an affordable, cost-effective material option. having been involved in a number of monumental projects and integrating cardboard tubes into his architectural schemes, ban realized that his practice and selected medium could be pushed further.
Shigeru ban recently spoke at TEDx Tokyo about the responsibility of the architect in the wake of a natural disaster, and why he started to construct emergency shelters out of paper.
Amazing Underwater hotel room in Zanzibar
Amazing underwater hotel room suite in the Zanzibar archipelago.Spend nights sleeping beneath the surface of the ocean. After being escorted to the remote suite by boat, guests use a staircase to descend to their underwater bedroom, where windows on every wall allow 360 degree views of the underwater coral reef and sea life.
The structure was designed and built by Swedish company Genberg Underwater Hotels and takes its cues from Utter Inn, a floating structure on Lake Malaren in Sweden that was modelled on a traditional Scandinavian house.
Emporia shopping centre
Swedish architecture firm used brightly-coloured curved glass to draw customers inside its Emporia shopping centre. It features two gaping entrances made out of brightly-coloured curved glass, one amber and one blue.
Emporia, which won the Shopping Centres category at this year’s Inside Festival, is a shopping mall located to the south of the city of Malmö in Sweden. The building features residential and office units on the levels above the shopping centre, as well as a publicly accessible roof garden on the top.
Urban-Think Tank improving housing conditions across South Africa
Design strategy collective Urban-Think Tank has designed and built a prototypical house as part of an initiative to improve housing conditions for slum dwellers in some of the 2700 informal settlements across South Africa
Working under the title Empower Shack, the team organised a design-and-build workshop in Khayelitsha, a township in Cape Town that is one of the largest in South Africa, and developed a design for a low-cost two-storey shack for local resident Phumezo Tsibanto and his family.
They then worked together to replace Tsibanto’s existing single-storey dwelling with the new two-storey structure, giving the family a new home with a watertight exterior and its own electricity.
