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Exclusive Interview: Tomas Koolhaas & His Documentary REM; A Film About His Father and Internati

Exclusive Interview: Tomas Koolhaas & His Documentary REM; A Film About His Father and Internati

In this exclusive DesignBloc interview, we are excited to team up with filmmaker, Tomas Koolhaas (name sound familiar?), to discuss his passions, personal interests, and his current project, 'REM', a documentary about his father, Dutch Architect of OMA, Rem Koolhaas. [Get excited!] Recently, we reached out to our readers & followers across the globe, to be a part of this interview by submitting their personalized questions to Tomas. It was truly difficult to narrow the questi

The DesignBloc Feature // PLAY: The Documentary

The DesignBloc Feature // PLAY: The Documentary

PLAY: The Documentary play (plā/) verb : engage in activity for enjoyment and recreation rather than a serious or practical purpose. All work and no play, is just no fun! People from all over the world are working themselves too hard, and leaving no time to enjoy the little moments in life. However, our friends at The Urban Conga are making a difference to change that. The Urban Conga, is a non-profit community that activates social interaction through the act of "PLAY." Thei

Unleash the Designs!

Unleash the Designs!

That's right kids... The designs for the Guggenheim Helsinki project have been revealed! Stage One involved submissions from 77 countries. Each submission is presented on the Guggenheim Helsinki Design Competition online gallery and allowed just two images and a brief concept summary provided by each competitor. However, don't expect to vote just for your favorite design big wigs. Each design is only listed by its registration number. Bit brief, yes, but the competitors were

The Situation Room

The Situation Room

What happens when you combine the minds of Marc Fornes and Jana Winderen? You get The Situation Room. But do not fear, this has nothing to do with Jersey Shore. A commission by the Storefront for Art and Architecture in New York City, a self-supporting, bright pink structure is born. The form was designed by Fornes and Winderen engineered the sounds making one question their surroundings and built environment. The design is testing what it is one knows about sound and the bui

New Home for FC BATE Borisov

New Home for FC BATE Borisov

The Reigning Belarusian Premier League Champions have a new home. OFIS Arhitekti has just completed a stadium for FC BATE Borisov. Basically, it is a domed shaped structure clad with aluminum panels and then punctured with an assortment of ovoid windows. The rounded shape was engineered to improve the acoustics on the pitch (that's soccer field for Americans) and an orientation north to south to ensure that sunlight is evenly distributed for both teams. No more running into t

Not your Grandfather’s Great Outdoors Experience

Not your Grandfather’s Great Outdoors Experience

Import.Export Architecture is updating our ideas of what we consider “roughing it” in the great outdoors. They want to look up, way up. Their creation is a 5-story platform that completely changes the camping experience. Each platform can be reached with an attached ladder and the alternating design of the levels allows people to be able to interact with those on other levels. The idea was to create a design that would allow the benefit of a cheap camping option while still b

Coit’s Restoration

Coit’s Restoration

San Francisco’s Coit Tower recently finished the $1.7 million restoration and has re-opened its doors after 6 months. The main focus of the restoration was the repair of the tower’s 25 water-damaged fresco murals. If you aren’t familiar with this icon in San Francisco atop of Telegraph Hill, it was designed by architects Arthur Brown Jr. and Henry Howard. It was named for San Francisco socialite Lillie Hitchcock Coit who wanted to the tower to be a memorial to the city’s fire

All Rise, Court is Now in Session

All Rise, Court is Now in Session

Zaha Hadid is suing the New York Review of Books over an article that was published claiming that Hadid was “showing no concern” for the deaths of migrant construction workers currently working on her design for a football stadium (that’s soccer) for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. That’s right, we have a good, old fashioned defamation suit on our hands. Now I will present the arguments and allow you to come to your own conclusions. The complaint centers on an article by Fil

The NOMA Convention is Near! Lecture Highlight: "Design & Technology - MoBE" - October 4th

The NOMA Convention is Near! Lecture Highlight: "Design & Technology - MoBE" - October 4th

*Update: The date of thie event has changed to October 4th (October 3rd was reported in the post last week) The NOMA {National Organization of Minority Architects} annual convention is in Philadelphia this year, and there will be lots to do and see. One event we would like to highlight is a presentation by Architect, Pascale Sablan, AIA, NOMA, LEED of FXFOWLE in New York. The lecture hosted Sablan titled, Design & Technology, will focus on the design process and technologies

Entrium Cloud Canopy

Entrium Cloud Canopy

Faulders studio has designed the ‘Entrium Light Cloud’ for a permanent installation at Portland State University. The composition of contours blends a gridded arrangement of aluminum fins with circular focal point geometries to create a pattern evocative of, ‘vectorial weather flows, topographical contours, wave oscillations, and amorphous cellular clusters,’ as described by California-based architect Thom Faulders. The sculpture seeks to engage the perception of students, fa

Stay Cool this Summer, With "Coolhaus"

Stay Cool this Summer, With "Coolhaus"

Summer is here and what is a better way to cool off than with ice cream! We've all tried ice cream sundaes, waffle bowls, and globs of ice cream on cones, the but after a while that gets boring. That's when Coolhaus comes in and saves that day. Coolhaus (a wordplay on Rem Koolhaus's name), is an icecream company that takes your design senses on a ride, and will be sure to fix your ice cream cravings this summer. The co-founder of Coolhaus, Natasha Case, was not trained as a c

Beethoven Music Hall: Zaha Hadid

Beethoven Music Hall: Zaha Hadid

Music and architecture are pretty amazing alone, but when you combine the two art forms, it's just magical. Zaha Hadid Architects created magic when they designed today's featured building, the Beethoven Concert Hall. The Beethoven Concert Hall is a renovation of the once limiting 1950's building located in Bonn, Germany. It not only gave the existing building a facelift, but it incorporated a "multifaceted crystalline mass, growing out of the earth, floating on water," state

Patron Saint...of Architecture!?

Patron Saint...of Architecture!?

Oh, What a Saint! That’s right fellow architects, we may finally have a Saint to pray to when deadlines loom, clients become unbearable, or we need an extra hour of sleep? Finally Now, who may this be you may be asking yourself? After sifting through all of the famous names you can recall from hours in architecture school… it’s Antoni Gaudi. An Architect a Saint? ...Who knew! Antoni Gaudi, Looking All Saintly! WWGD: What Would Gaudi Do? Within the next year, Pope Francis is r

The World's Tallest Timber Building: "Treet"

"Treet", is a 14‐story wood apartment building in Bergen, Norway, and once complete, it will be the tallest wood building in the world. The owner for Treet recommended using wood in the building as wood is a sustainable construction material. Check out this video presenting the world's tallest wood building, scheduled to be built between 2014-2015. This video will review the building system which consists of pre-fabricated building modules. Glulam is the main load bearing sys

Pinch us, NCARB Just Did What!?

Pinch us, NCARB Just Did What!?

Pinch us, we must be dreaming. NCARB has officially announced that the wait period to retake an architectural licensing exam has been reduced from 6 months to 60 days! This is unbelievable news considering that this rule has been in place since 1998, when they started the computer based format. For those that are unfamiliar with the process, ARE stands for Architectural Registration Exam, and is comprised of 7 exams. In order to become a licensed Architect, one must complete

Shigeru Ban is da Man! Congrats on Winning this year's Pritzker

Shigeru Ban is da Man! Congrats on Winning this year's Pritzker

I fell in love with Shigeru Ban when I was in architecture school, and one of my friends showed me a picture of the recycled cardboard rolls house...yes, that is what I call it [don't hate]. Since then, I have been a fan, and that next year, I traveled to Japan with my sister to see some of his work personally. It was such a moving experience, and it greatly incluenced my design style from then on. Shigeru is well deserving of this award, and I have to say, is it's about time

Happy 125th Birthday Eiffel Tower! You don't look a day over 21.

Today marks the 125th birthday of the Eiffel Tower, and as one of my favorite architectural/engineering endevors, I must pay my respects. So in honor of this magnifacant icon, I will like to highlight this great article, also seen here! It bascially lists 40 interesting facts about the Eiffel Tower, and I thought it would be nice to share my top 10 from the list. Here goes... 1. Completed on March 31, 1889, the tower was the world’s tallest man-made structure for 41 years unt

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