During the past year over 1000 grievances, gripes, and annoyances were collected from people across the city. The Toronto Complaints Choir transform this complains into “disappointed people’s song”.

BMD studio decided to do something about it.  Studio designers Amanda Happé, Kar Yan Cheung, Chris Braden, Michal Dudek, and Paul Kawai team set up a pop-up studio, working in real-time in the Propeller Centre. They tried to design solutions in response to the complaints. A book of these ideas was also simultaneously designed, and sent throughout the city of Toronto and their citizens.

Durante esta semana (17-21 octubre) ecosistema urbano dirigirá el taller Appstorming en el Istituto Europeo di Design de Madrid con la participación de José Luis Vallejo (@jlvmateo) y Jaime Eizaguirre (@eiza)

Actualmente el “lugar” donde con más éxito se están experimentando modelos de creación colectiva y autoorganización es sin duda Internet. Appstorming se sitúa en la esfera 2.0 y pretende la generación de nuevas aplicaciones para descubrir cómo conectar horizontalmente a los usuarios, siendo capaces de analizar comportamientos sociales optimizando situaciones urbanas.

El taller trabajará con el entorno urbano de Hamar, Noruega, sobre el que se propondrán las “apps”, conectando así con la iniciativa de network design dreamhamar (actualmente en marcha y en la que ya participan otras escuelas y universidades europeas).

El taller formará además parte de la iniciativa MexicoDesignNet.

The Downsview Park Toronto competition was held in 1999 to select an urban park design for a former military base in Toronto. However, the competition exceeded its objectives as it introduced a turning point in the design of urban public parks. As Julia Czerniak points out in her book Case: Downsview Park Toronto, the five selected designs shared a common theme: the configuration of frameworks that structure the site but also allow the growth over time. Landscape becomes the main tool to model the city, and objects lose importance in favor of fields.

The design of frameworks consists in offering guidelines as an approach to designing the park during the fifteen-year implementation process. Thus, the designers recommend flexibility to accommodate the different programs and participatory processes included in the design process. The schemes were not only flexible in the programmatic sense, but they allowed different political and economic conditions, and even the paths to change depending on the vegetation growth, establishing diverse patterns over the surface. Complex processes such as erosion or plants succession were related to these frameworks too.

In all the proposals, the design of the park was based on the definition of the variables with the potential for something different to emerge. In other words, the designs established minimum control in order to allow new decisions and flexibility but, at the same time, maintaining their own identity and logic. For example, Tree City, the winning proposal for Downsview Park, is more a formula than a design: “grow the park + manufacture nature + curate culture + 1,000 pathways + destination and dispersal + sacrifice and safe = low-density metropolitan life”.

The competition jury viewed these frameworks as project strengths because their flexibility allows accommodations for budgetary constraints, remediating soils, or adapting the parks to current necessities. However, the competition also gives rise to debate regarding the role of design. As Czerniak asks, “how much design is enough?” (Czerniak 2001 15). To assure the longevity of the park, it was necessary to guarantee a certain degree of flexibility and openness. A strategy that lacks this characteristic will minimize a design’s adaptability to new circumstances. On the other hand, a too loose strategy would fail to provide identity, organization, and legibility.

Nowadays, ten years after Tree City won the competition, the plans for the park are still up in the air, and politicians and planners have been unable to sell and implement the project. In 2004, Mau’s team redeveloped the project, using the name Six Hundred Acres of Ecologic, Economic, and Social Sustainability, transforming the original plan into a comprehensive park plan. Some critics stated that the open-endedness of the initial proposal was one of the main reasons for the current state of the park.

On the other hand, the Downsview Park Toronto competition offered a good opportunity to study new ways of approaching urban parks design. In Downsview Park Toronto, landscape is transformed into a mechanism though which the city can be projected and envisioned, defining a new discipline entitled Landscape Urbanism.

Text by Patricia Martín del Guayo:
web: www.martindelguayo.com
twitter: @pmguayo
facebook: Martin del Guayo

WASTE TO RESOURCES- URBAN PROTOTYPE PLAZA ECOPOLIS led by ecosistema urbano is proud to announce our submission to the Buckminster Fuller Challenge. Named “Socially-Responsible Design’s Highest Award” by Metropolis Magazine, the Challenge is an annual international prize program that awards $100,000 to support the development and implementation of a solution that has significant potential to solve humanity’s most pressing problems.

We are thrilled to be a part of the Buckminster Fuller Challenge review process, which brings together influential design science leaders such as Josè Zaglul, Vandana Shiva, Danny Hillis, William McDonough, John Thackara and Hunter Lovins.

We entered this competition because of its reputation as the most prestigious Prize concerning social issues.

The project aims to provide a sustainable solution for water treatment in urban contexts, transforming the waste waters of buildings into purified water that then can be reused for different purposes. The water purification system works by natural means (macrophites). The main idea is to fit this solution into the residual or spare city spaces (roundabouts) where the water treatment system can be placed.

We know 40% of the water consumed in the world is used in building facilities. We believe it is important to develop technologies and products as small scale solutions applicable locally for both: improving the management of this scarce resource and second but also relevant, raising awareness of the problem.

According to the UN, 12% of Europe is at risk of turning into desert and between 30-60% of Spain is at immediate risk from desertification. Regardless of the present situation, there are few projects to implement new water management models or promote the creation of a new culture of the water. This project aims to promote a more respectful attitude towards environment and especially towards water.

Architecture is related to every human and conditions people’s quality of life. From that point of view we consider relevant to develop innovations which directly affect the quality of life and promote environmental consciousness.

For more info on the project, you can visit us here

Our project, along with 118 other entries are published in the Idea Index on the Buckminster Fuller Challenge website. We encourage Rivas, Madrid and other European  cities to participate in our project by joining BFI’s online community and submitting your comments on our page.

We expect to be a serious contender for the award, and winning the Challenge  would be a tremendous honor, but we are also very excited about the opportunity to become part of a network that is advancing and accelerating the practice of comprehensive, whole systems thinking and design to develop the kind of high impact global solutions we so desperately need. We look forward to an engaging review process, and should our project win, we plan to leverage the $100k to promote the implementation of similar schemes in other cities and communities all over Europe.

This money would allow to further develop technical solutions as well as creating  a webpage and designing a whole media campaign so that anyone could find very clear information on how to implement this solution through a Do-it–yourself brochure.

Ecosistema urbano can offer their technical support and expertise for:

- Designing specific solutions for particular sites

- Advising administrations and companies who want to incorporate this solution into their own water management systems.

- Creating a creative commons platform to launch the project allowing any community from anywhere in the world to implement it by themselves.

This money would be a great push forward for the project to spread worldwide. We are proud to be affiliated with this important Challenge.

Stay tuned!!

En Ecosistema Urbano desde hace unos meses estamos trabajando a la puesta en marcha de un nuevo ilusionante proyecto. Se trata de la asociación Urban Social Design cuyo objetivo es la investigación y promoción de un nuevo ámbito profesional, situádo en un punto intermedio entre arquitectura, ingeniería, urbanismo, geografía, política, sociología, informática, economía.

La asociación Urban Social Design promueve un nuevo marco de referencia basado en los entornos de trabajo en red, la cultura libre, el uso de las nuevas tecnologías, el procomún, las licencias creative commons, la creación colectiva, la inteligencia colectiva y la innovación social.

En 2011 la asociación pondrá en marcha lo que provisionalmente hemos llamado “Urban Social Design Institute”: una serie de cursos (on-line, de momento) que pretenden presentar enfoques y lineas de trabajo innovadoras en el campo de la Arquitectura y la Gestión Urbana.

En estos próximos dos meses Ethel Baraona y Paco González impartirán el módulo “Arquitectura en beta” para testar, aprender, compartir y facilitar el desarrollo de los futuros cursos de Urban Social Design Institute. Tenemos que agradecer públicamente a las personas que se han prestado desinteresadamente a participar en esta primera fase con el compromiso de que sus proyectos se vean mejorados en el transcurso de estos dos próximos meses.

El temario se construirá en torno a las siguientes entradas:

Cultura de red
Web y herramientas sociales
Ciudad colectiva y espacio público urbano
Urbanismo emergente
La calle como plataforma
Mapeado y geolocalización
Ubicuidad y móviles
Datos y política abierta

Las clases del curso son semanales, se realizarán on-line, via streaming y estarán abiertas a todo el público a través de nuestra web tv:  www.ecosistemaurbano.tv.

Los profesores y la metodología del curso se presentarán hoy a las 19:00h UTC+1 (Madrid, España).

“Arquitectura en Beta” es un módulo de USDI propuesto por:

Ethel Baraona. Arquitecta que desarrolla su trabajo profesional en Barcelona, vinculada a varias publicaciones técnicas de arquitectura desde el año 2002. Ese interés por compartir contenidos la ha llevado a ser editora invitada en diversos blogs de arquitectura, lo que le ha llevado a ser invitada al evento Postópolis! DF. También es colaboradora en eventos y festivales de arquitectura y junto a César Reyes, es socia fundadora de dpr-barcelona, una compañía editorial independiente con sede en Barcelona, especializada en libros de arquitectura, arte y ciencia, entre los que se encuentran WATERCUBE The Book y el libro ¿Alguien Dijo Participar?. Su trabajo muestra una clara voluntad innovadora en la forma de acercar los contenidos al público, su libro experimental piel.skin traspasa los límites espacio-temporales propios de una publicación convencional, acercándonos a los que posiblemente sean los títulos de arquitectura en un futuro.

Paco González. 1977. Arquitecto, trabaja e investiga en radarq.net . Título por la Universidad de Sevilla (2005) y Máster de Gestión de la Ciudad (2008) por la Universitat Oberta de Catalunya. Fundador de radarq.net estudio de arquitectura seleccionado por el programa de innovación Proyecto Lunar de la Junta de Andalucía. Profesor consultor y Tutor Coordinador en el Master de Gestión de la Ciudad de la Universitat Oberta de Catalunya. Colaborador de ZEMOS98 Gestión Creativo Cultural, dpr-barcelona, Juan Freire, José Luis de Vicente, Ecosistema Urbano y Transit Projectes. radarq.net es un estudio abierto que trabaja e investiga sobre arquitectura, red y ciudad.  Su organización en forma de red distribuida permite, gracias a las TICs, formar estructuras profesionales de “geometría variable”, permitiendo una respuesta empresarial más innovadora, rápida, flexible en la Sociedad Red.

Urban Social Design Studio – GSD Harvard

UPDATE:

+ public interaction

this studio starts with one question:

How can we – by design and communication technologies – improve and promote interaction, creativity and self organization dynamics between people?

We will work on the design of new tools and strategies to make this possible, creating the conditions for citizens to play an active role in the transformation of cities and decision making processes.

+ concepts

+ urban planning:

Over decades cities have been conceived, designed and built from a physical point of view considering mainly their infrastructures, buildings, technologies, materials, geometry…and completely forgetting about the citizens.

This dominant perception has led us to end up believing that reality and processes are final and closed situations, rather than processes, relationships, patterns, and significant networks.

+ urban social design:

By urban social design we understand the design of environments, spaces and dynamics in order to improve social relationships, generating the conditions for interaction and self-organization between people and their environment.

+ participation+technology+environment

Technology is the interface between people and their environment. Technology beyond efficiency,  towards the implementation of an augmented reality.

This studio will incorporate technology exploring new possibilities of space transformation and networking

+ real space  ←public space →virtual space

Public space

Traditionally the public space has been the part of the city where most links and intersections take place, being responsible for the majority of interactions and random phenomena.

Today a 21st century new layer of a virtual public space interacts with the real space.

- Internet is the “space” where the most successful models of collective creation and self-organization are taking place.  Internet is the most democratic space, the platform where every citizen can express him/herself freely and horizontally, the space where ideas flow in every direction.

- By contrast, the physical space is increasingly more controlled and restrictive by excessive rules, becoming less spontaneous and creative.

Internet allows and promotes the interaction, while the design of many physical spaces cancels it.

+ question

considering the virtues and qualities of the internet as a public space:

Can a physical space emulate the conditions that foster the exchange and interaction that occur among users of the web?

2. target

+ gif mapa

We could have chosen any city in the world, and we have chosen Boston.  There is an exciting city out there to be discovered. And additionally we can act physically and get a feedback from it.

+ Boston aerial zoom

We take the advantage of the cultural diversity of students at GSD to bring in the studio their knowledge and personal experiences related to the public space.

We are going to take a close look at Boston. From these principles we will explore the opportunities, demands and conflicts that are just there. We’ll find out more about its physical configuration but paying special attention to people, associations, networks and dynamics that are already running.

+Outcome

The outcome of the studio will differ depending on the nature of each project.

We believe the tools of our discipline should go beyond what can be achieved and expressed by just drawings, models or inert materials.

Ideally we should have a whole myriad of different materialisations. The final outcome will be a real  implementation in the city of Boston or a prototype experience ready to further developed into implementation.   (beyond the limits of our academic education)

3. logistics + schedule

Schedule:

We will be physically meeting every second week. We will also have virtual meetings on the weeks in between.

Lecture series: we are organizing a lecture series and a workshop to bring Boston breeze into the studio. The personalities from Boston will be selected by students according to the requirements of the researches carried out by them (politicians, neighbours, sociologists, urban activists, …)

+ Animation

Communication:

At Ecosistema urbano we have developed different digital platforms in the last few years and have created social networks  that give us a total of 40.000 hits per month.

At the studio we will also develop tools and a social network to share information and be real time connected between all of us.

+ Mayor

Publication: the work of the studio will be published. We aim to give the book to the Mayor by the end of 2010. We hope your ideas become inspiring and creative and are able to transform Boston.

We are really looking forward to starting the classes

Thank you for your attention and Welcome to Boston

On August 29th, Van Alen Institute and Environmental Defense Fund will host a roundtable discussion at the Venice Biennale US Pavilion to explore the environmental challenges faced by coastal cities throughout the world.

Titled Project Eco-Delta, the initiative is part of VAI and EDF’s ongoing collaboration in developing design strategies for the landscape surrounding New Orleans—the Mississippi River’s coastal delta. The forum will feature leading experts from the fields of design, engineering, public policy and environmental science, who will discuss innovative ways with which we can address the needs of fragile deltas and the communities living in them.

Five years—to the day—of Hurricane Katrina, the roundtable discussion will be an opportunity to reconsider some of the fundamental problems of coastal cities. How can we design economic infrastructure that works with the forces of nature to revitalize coastal environments? Can environmental challenges be resolved within contexts of conflicting economic, social, political, and cultural interests? Can coastal cities be re-thought, and re-engineered, as sustainable environmental systems?

Confirmed Speakers (Bios below):
Stephane Asselin (AECOM), Maria Teresa Brotto (Consorzio Venezia Nuova), Stephen Cassell (ARO), Piet Dircke (ARCADIS), Paul Harrison (Environmental Defense Fund), Padraic Kelly (Buro Happold), Olympia Kazi (Van Alen Institute), Dirk Sijmons (H+N+S Landscape Architects), Bregje van Wesenbeeck (Deltares), David Waggonner (Waggonner & Ball Architects), David Wilkes (Ove Arup).

About Van Alen Institute: Projects in Public Architecture
Van Alen Institute promotes innovative thinking about the role of architecture and design in civic life. Among VAI’s activities are design competitions, lectures and symposia, exhibitions, publications, research and advocacy. VAI’s programs engage a broad constituency of people in New York City, the nation, and around the world who participate in shaping the designed environment, from architecture students to emerging and established professionals to the interested public.www.vanalen.org.

About Environmental Defense Fund
Environmental Defense Fund is a leading U.S. nonprofit organization representing more than 700,000 members. Since 1967, EDF has linked science, economics and law to create innovative, equitable and cost-effective solutions to society’s most urgent environmental problems. Guided by science, EDF evaluates environmental problems and works to create and advocate solutions that win lasting political, economic and social support because they are nonpartisan, cost-efficient and fair.www.edf.org.

About the US Pavilion
Workshopping: An American Model of Architectural Practice is the official US representation at the 12th Venice Architecture Biennale. The exhibition has been organized by the High Museum of Art and 306090, and is presented by the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the US Department of State. Curated by Michael Rooks and Jonathan D. Solomon. www.workshopping.us.
Confirmed Speakers Bios

Stephane Asselin is a Senior Vice President, Environment at AECOM Asia and Global Director of AECOM’s Environmental and Ecological Planning practice worldwide. His technical expertise lies in water resources and coastal engineering. Notable projects led by his team include Shenzhen’s Coastal Park Landscape Masterplan, the Shanghai Chemical Industrial Park Wetland Treatment System, and the Beijing Water Authority Stormwater Management System.

Maria Teresa Brotto is a hydraulic engineer and Head of the Department of Design for Consorzio Venezia Nuova, the Ministry of Infrastructure’s concessionary for the physical and environmental safeguarding of the Venice lagoon. Brotto also coordinated the environmental impact studies for this project which involves the construction of a series of tidal flow regulation barriers at the lagoon inlets.

Stephen Cassell is principal and co-founder, with Adam Yarinsky, of Architecture Research Office (ARO), a New York-based firm practicing modern architecture and visionary urbanism. ARO was a member of the 2007-2009 AIA Latrobe Prize project team that reconceived the New York-New Jersey harbor in response to rising sea levels. A design for Lower Manhattan by ARO is part of the exhibition of Rising Currents: Projects for New York’s Waterfront, now on display at The Museum of Modern Art.

Piet Dircke is the Director of the Global Knowledge Network and Water Management at ARCADIS and a professor in Urban Water Management at Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences. He is responsible for the transfer of Dutch flood protection expertise to New Orleans and to the US Army Corps of Engineers. In Rotterdam he is one of the leading forces behind the city’s ambitious climate change adaptation program, and is President of the Dutch Flood Control 2015 Program, a Dutch public-private initiative to develop smart flood control systems.

Paul Harrison is the Senior Director for the Mississippi River at Environmental Defense Fund. Paul Harrison leads Environmental Defense Fund’s campaign to secure restoration of the natural functioning of the Mississippi River Delta and wetlands complex, where 2,000 of 7,000 square miles of land have been lost in less than a century as flood control, navigation, and energy extraction activities turned off the natural land-building mechanisms of the river.

Olympia Kazi, a critic and curator of architecture, and is the Executive Director of the Van Alen Institute in New York. A graduate of the Architecture Department at the University of Florence, Kazi has served as Junior Curator at the Milan Triennale from 2002-2004, Fellow of Architecture and Urban Studies at the Whitney Museum of American Art from 2006-2007, and director of the Institute for Urban Design, New York from 2007-2009.

Padraic Kelly is the Managing Director of Happold Consulting limited in London. Kelly is a Chartered Engineer of more than 30 years experience covering Europe, US, Middle East and Asia. He has worked on projects ranging in scale from city block to a regional scale, combining both technical expertise as well as providing social, economic and financial perspectives. He has worked extensively over the last 20 years on coastal cities both of natural and man-made constructions. One of his current projects is the Detroit Strategic Framework Plan.

Dirk Sijmons is a founding partner of H+N+S Landscape Architects, professor of Environmental Design at the Technical University of Delft, and senior consultant and former State Advisor on Landscape in the Netherlands. Dirk Sijmons is widely recognized for his contribution to landscape theory and Dutch culture, as well as his role in the national landscape debate. Sijmons initiated and is the Chair of the Quality team for the Room-for-the-River project, a national initiative of 30 separate projects protecting the Netherlands Delta.

David Waggonner is the president of Waggonner & Ball Architects, as well as the initiator of Dutch Dialogues. Through this intercultural, interdisciplinary and intergenerational exchange focused on water-based urban design, a new vision of New Orleans as a delta city living with rather than against water has been declared as a way to address long-term issues of urban character and form.

Bregje van Wesenbeeck is a researcher and consultant in the Unit for Coastal and Marine Systems at Deltares in the Netherlands. Dr. Wesenbeeck is an expert on the implementation of ecological solutions for water management issues. These projects use ecosystem services in a way that is complementary to traditional engineering designs, with the aim to develop adaptive, climate proof, and multifunctional designs for coastal defense.

David J Wilkes is an Associate Director at Arup and Vice-President of the Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management. David Wilkes managed the Thames Barrier and flood defense efforts for London from 1994 to 2000, and is currently the director for a range of projects across the Humber Estuary, where the tidal defenses protect 400,000 people, the largest port complex in the UK, and endangered agricultural land.

‘Reclaiming the Street’ is an open-submission competition aimed at established and emerging artists, architects and skateboarders who have or wish to establish a relationship with skateboard culture. We are looking for unpublished and unrealised concepts for the (re)organisation of urban public spaces in order to create a place for multiple user groups including skateboarders. Whereas in the past skateboarders were driven away from public spaces and then ‘caged up’ in purpose-built skateparks, we envisage a new phase in which youth culture and skateboard culture will be integrated within the public realm. In addition to our wish to provide a valid place for skateboard culture, we see skateboard culture as an instrument for improving the quality of certain public spaces.
‘Reclaiming the Street’ takes the idea of skateboard culture as ‘homo ludens’ as its starting point for building bridges between the all those who make use of the public realm.

We want you to send a design sketch for an urban intervention, environment, object or piece of street furniture that can be used by skaters and which will also stimulate use by other members of the community, thus improving the quality of a particular public space. A jury will nominate five of the submitted ideas for further development, from which a winner will be selected. All the submissions will be included in a short-term exhibition and accompanying publication.
MAMA will do its best to implement the winning idea but can give no guarantee that it will be realised.

MAMA is a platform for visual art and youth culture, based in Rotterdam. Alongside exhibitions in its own gallery space, MAMA organises projects on location in Rotterdam and further afield. MAMA offers an extensive programme of educational and supplementary projects. MAMA also undertakes research and develops new methods for reaching a broad public via art and culture.

PLEASE NOTE: applications coming from outside the Netherlands need to provide only an English text, no Dutch text is needed.

web: www.showroommama.nl

Timetable
- call for entries launched in April 2010.
- deadline for submissions: 31 May 2010 (date of postmark or date of delivery will be judged to be the date of receipt). Submissions received after this date will be returned unopened to the sender.
- presentation of the designs and jury’s decision: June-July 2010
- final presentation of nominated designs to the professional panel: early August 2010
- presentation of the publication: September 2010

These dates are subject to change.

If you have any further questions about the competition, you can send them by email (subject: Reclaiming the Street) before 1 May 2010 to: kim@showroommama.nl.
Reclaiming the Street is supported by: Stimuleringsfonds voor Architectuur, Stichting Mondriaan, Gemeente Rotterdam Dienst Kunst en Cultuur

Procedures and the rules for the competition

Reclaiming the Street design competition

As you probably already know, [Ecosistema Urbano] has been inspired by the Twitter #followfriday to create a new section known as #followarch focused on recommending interesting and innovative architecture offices.

Today we are glad to present the work of the French firm based in Paris HDA | Hugh Dutton Associés that we have been recently following trough their blog and through their twitter @HDA_Paris.

We especially appreciate their approach that focus on an intelligent and poetic combination of architecture and engineering.

In the last months, due to a big “network effect”, some of their projects have been widely published, as well as their recently inaugurated footbridge design in La Roche-sur-Yon, France in collaboration with Bernard Tschumi.

photo by © Christian Richters/VIEW

By the way, we would like to thank HDA for their funny fold-able Happy New Year card we’ve received in January and which is inspired by the footbridge design.

For more info on the footbridge you can read the article on dezeen or take a tour through HDA’s flickr page.

photo by © Christian Richters/VIEW

HDA has also won, in December 2009, the “Pylons of the future” Terna Competition for the design of new pylons with a minimal impact on the environment of the highest technical and aesthetic quality.

This is how the architect Hugh Dutton explains his design intention: “Our design response is based on changing the current “industrial soldier” image of today’s pylons. Primarily by an elegant shape whose form is inspired by nature instead of galvanized trellises. And secondly by what I have called – Dancing with nature – where the pylons lean and swerve in response to the topography. They find a structural equilibrium by leaning into the curve of the electric cables as they follow the constraints of the landscape.”

“The design is developed with an innovative working method inspired by today’s tools found in the computer and industrial technologies. The potential of these technologies permit us to optimally individualize each one and thereby avoiding the banality of standardization whilst limiting material wastage. In a similar process to nature’s own selectivity and optimization.”
We understand in this statements a clear belief in parametric architecture as a new design approach.”
As they say in their office intents description, “HDA believe in technology as a powerful medium to overtake standardization of modernism and develop a more human, nature-oriented, parametric architecture.“

Construction technologies used for the pylons (flat steel plates cut with numerically controlled machines) are the same that HDA has already successfully used for the arch of the famous Turin Olympic Footbridge, realized in 2006 (you can visit this collaborative Flickr Group about the footbridge)

For more info about the design - Dancing with Nature - , visit complexitys or the flickr set, where images and technical drawings are shared under a creative commons license.

Texts below have been extracted from HDA references portfolio, that you can download in PDF on their webpage.

HDA | Hugh Dutton Associates is a specialist design company formed in 1995, based in Paris, France.

HDA comprises a team of architects and engineers providing specialist design services. Our work strives to provide design that is a synthesis of poetic intent and physical reality. Each project, big or small, varying from long span structures down to small fixing details, begins with a clear architectural idea with its own specific story to tell. The successful realization of the idea is dependent on a thorough understanding of technical constraints. The studio is an experienced team of designers from diverse backgrounds who specialize in works of complex geometry, innovative structures, 3DCAD, graphic design, 3Dimaging, engineering and detail design.

HDA believe in technology as a powerful medium to overtake standardization of modernism and develop a more human, nature-oriented, parametric architecture.

HDA works as independent architects, design consultants, and in collaboration with other architects.

Hugh Dutton qualified as an architect at the Architectural Association in London, after preliminary training at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada. In search of complementary technical expertise he began his professional career with Peter Rice, a renowned inventive engineer responsible for the Sydney Opera house and Pompidou Center. Rice’s newly formed Paris Company RFR, including Martin Francis and Ian Ritchie, sought consciously to muddle the traditional boundaries between the architectural and engineering cultures of building professions toward an objective of an integral and holistic approach to design. His early years included experience at Norman Foster (Carré d’art in Nimes and Stansted Airport). Hugh Dutton collaborated closely with Peter Rice for 13 years at RFR, and related their experiences of the development of bolted structural glass and cable structures at the La Villette Science museum in a joint publication entitled Structural Glass. Wishing to take the design approach beyond modern steel and glass, Hugh Dutton, worked with Rice in his later years on developments in stone for its structural potential and translucent qualities. Notable examples are work on the Seville Expo 92 stone structure Universal Pavilion as well as the translucent west front of the Cathedral de Notre Dame de la Treille in Lille (photo below).

(credit flickr hokutosuisse)

At HDA, given his background of technical expertise, Hugh Dutton continues his exploration of design and built reality, having collaborated with many well known architects and designers (Andreu, Arquitectonica, Bellini, Heatherwick, Nouvel, Ricciotti, Saee, Tschumi, Wong & Ouyang & others) assisting them on the realization of their concepts with a notable attention to detail.

You can find here an interview (in French) of Hugh Dutton speaking against “branding” in architecture.

As we have already said, HDA also runs an open research platform named complexitys about architecture and complex geometry (image above). The blog aims to build a space for open debate on contemporary architecture and new technology issues. Complexitys is also the central node of an extended, internationally connected network of sharing and debate tools such as flickr, twitter, youtube and several external blogs.

HDA put forward the idea of sharing in Creative Commons as a way to get higher quality results. Photos, videos, texts, methods, research, calculation and drawing scripts which are traditionally used as the product, are shared for free and everyone is invited to use and improve them.http://complexitys.com/tag/script/- This is based on a future vision of practice based on design services and not on the product itself, as it is explained in the text “Guggenheim side effects and the Architects’ originality obsession”.

The very idea of sharing photos or videos related to “starchitects” productions under a CC license is often delicate but HDA believes in openness as a way to diversify architecture business and to overcome the flattening of culture which has become typical of the globalization process.

HDA | Hugh Dutton Associés is composed by Hugh Dutton, Phil Barrett, Pierluigi Bucci, Pierre Chassagne, Francesco Cingolani, Mariangela Corsi, Gaëtan Kohler, Hélène Pasqualetti, Cathy Shortle, Carla Zaccheddu.

Download reduced portfolio HDA | Hugh Dutton Associés (1109) (entire version downloadable at hdaparis.com)

Il Convegno è organizzato in due sessioni. In mattinata è previsto l’intervento di relatori di fama internazionale che illustreranno il loro approccio al progetto di design. Tra gli ospiti, insieme a Pascal Amphoux (Università di Nantes), Jurgen Bey (NL), Andrea Branzi, Stefano Mirti (Id-Lab) ci sará anche Jose Luis Vallejo (ore 12:00) in rappresentanza del nostro studio.

L’intervento di Jose Luis seguirá le seguenti linee:

The public space in its physical dimension encompasses the streets, pedestrian walkways, plazas, parks; in its social dimension cherishes the ability of groups to organize and implement actions for the common good and in its political dimension, it represents a meeting place of ideas and openness. Public space is a task for all citizens, its development and maintenance are part of the search for a more fair and pleasant social life.

We live in a democratic era, in which we would expect significant contributions to the public sphere, however today’s public space is planned with no identity, appearing as a sterile field of operation and without the minimum conditions for the development of the social life that creates a “city”.

A public space should be an open structure for citizens, a meeting place for everyone, in which the participation of each of the individuals who occupy it, defines and characterizes it.

Since we believe that many of the world’s most difficult environmental challenges can be addressed and solved by cities … the project what if…?cities is a collection of ideas from people with different backgrounds from all over the world presenting their own visions for an alternative future urbanity. Because cities are the answer.