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WORKING LIGHT
Imagine rushing through an underground subway station and suddenly looking up into the sky to realize that the earth has turned a few degrees and the weather has changed. This is the reaction that architect and artist James Carpenter wants to create with his daylight-bending projects. — Published 2007.0418
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MODULAR MODES
Modular houses are composed of one or more sections that are factory built, transported by truck, and set on a foundation. Modular houses may be made of two modules, as is the Sunset Breezehouse shown here, or they can be assembled from a kit of prefabricated parts. — Published 2007.0411
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BELFAST DRAWING VISITORS
Mention Northern Ireland, and two images likely come to mind: rolling green hills and violent clashes dressed up as religious unrest. While the first are very much still in evidence, the latter are much less so. In fact, the region has transformed in the last ten years, with the capital city of Belfast bustling as a center of redevelopment. — Published 2007.0314
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LEAVES OF GLASS
Glass, as a building material, offers a special interlayer between our outer and inner space and has opened up and contained, as well as sheltered and revealed, the architecture of its time. Architects' pursuit of the minimal environmental envelope has created an evolutionary and reductionist approach, whereby glass has become a predominant and essential cladding material of contemporary architecture. — Published 2007.0228
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STRUTTING SPACE
Students at Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation have been building complex structures — and in the process learning about parametric modeling, digital fabrication, and computer-assisted assembly.
They have been using the Trusset System, developed by Columbia researchers in the Avery Digital Fabrication Laboratory. The system provides an inexpensive and simple method for manufacturing and building a custom-designed, three-dimensional space-truss structure and enclosure. — Published 2007.0214
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SEALING OUT WATER
Sealants are an important part of the building envelope system. I think of them as the third line of defense against water and vapor intrusion. The first line of defense is made up of the building skin, with its coatings, veneers, and sheathings. Membranes and flashings are secondary. — Published 2007.0131
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EMBEDDED LAB
The new Center for Embedded Network Sensing (CENS) building designed by Culver City-based Studio Pali Fekete Architects (SPF:a), is unlike the red brick edifices that grace most of the University of California, Los Angeles campus. Surrounded on all sides by 1960s buildings and occupying a formerly neglected courtyard, the glass and steel structure is like a diamond in the rough. — Published 2007.0117
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CONTAINER HOUSE
Modular intermodal cargo Containers used to serve primarily for transporting massive amounts of manufactured goods across oceans. But an ongoing imbalance in trade volume between Asia and North America contributes to a surplus of these huge corrugated metal boxes around ports in the United States. And as shipping containers become ubiquitous, architects are increasingly incorporating them into creative buildings. — Published 2007.0103
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ENDANGERED STAR FERRY
Since its origins in 1888, the Star Ferry has been an icon of Hong Kong. With tens of thousands of people crossing Victoria Harbour every day, the ferry and its piers play a special role, with both tourists and locals, in the city's history and folklore. Now the icon is threatened by recent controversial developments. — Published 2006.1206
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REJUVENATING BOOMERS
An article in the New York Times late in 2005 reported on the escalating demise of brutalist buildings designed and constructed during the post-war years — the hard-edged, unforgiving, sterile, and often-humorless creations of modernism's aging gurus and, especially, their uninspired copyists. — Published 2006.1108
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