As promised, a little look at my friend Noel's Masters Project. It is the re-imagining of what the old abandoned Chicago Post Office could become. Pretty wild, but we need these kind of provocative projects to get the collective blood running, especially for adapting or re-using infrastructure at this scale. The Share IIT website is on the fritz right now so I will include the link to his Masters Booklet in a bit.
 
Has anyone done this before? This seems like a genius idea for ship preservation. Its essentially "floating" on a bubble of glass. It just works so well for the experience and the program. Not to mention, it treats the namesake of my favorite cheap scotch like a princess! Huzzah Cutty Sark!

 
A couple more from Archdaily:

The Printable House is a nice example of using CNC/CAD-CAM technologies to fabricate new material relationships out of standard building components, in this case plywood. 4 week build time is not too shabby at all. I would like to see some performance info on the house, and some drawings would be nice so you could really understand the envelope. but overall I dig it

This beach house
is also pretty clever. Very efficient while having some expansive interior space. The fact that it's pulled around on a "raft" is fantastic. Lots of great stuff coming out of New Zealand.

 
Spring show went really well and was a pretty good turn out. We all went to Logan and Vija's building where their families threw an awesome party for the grad students (Thank you guys!). Awesome tacos (as usual), great views and great people. it was a fun night. Everyone is coming in this week and graduation on Saturday. I might have a more meaningful post about the end of school, but until then it feels good to be done!

 
Click the link here to see the entire article on archdaily

A really handsome project in the works by OMA in Moscow redeveloping an old Soviet building into a modern art space. It looks very sedate and clean. I think Rem's comments on the benefit of re-using an existing building are pretty eloquent.

Rem Koolhaas: “We were able, with our client and her team, to explore the qualities of generosity, dimension, openness, and transparency of the Soviet wreckage and find new uses and interpretations for them; it also enabled us to avoid the exaggeration of standards and scale that is becoming an aspect of contemporary art spaces.”

Re-using and re-purposing buildings are an important part of the architecture of the future. We have so much built space already, and yet much of it remains unoccupied or abandoned. I think this project will show how well Adaptation Architecture can be executed. I will have another post soon about my friend's Masters Project on revitalizing the abandoned Old Chicago Post Office.

 
Pics of the finished 3/4" section model. It was a blast to build, and i think it turned out pretty well. When I put the photo of the section next to the drawing I was surprised how close they looked, although I suppose that's the point. And, the interior pictures look better than my renders! hope to get everything up on the main site soon.