Archive for February, 2010
STUTTGART CITY – PARAMETRIC SKIN
studio tobias wallisser
STUTTGART CITY – PARAMETRIC SKIN
tobias wallisser _ professor of architectural design
stuttgart city parametric skin
designed by oliver dibrova

Parametric skin is an experimental setup to design parametric driven facades on an existing building situated in the city of stuttgart. It´s a mixed used building with shops offices and apartments surrounded by schloßpark, a five star hotel,fashion shops, the main central station and one of the most important main street which connects the inner city to the suburb.As reaction to the local conditions, internal and external criteria the facade materializes as a skin for the building.Each element was first drafted in the parametric modeler Generative Components and tested for it´s performance. After the first component was set up, a parametric program was written in python to interact with the modeler maya. This program gives you the possibility to populate components designed in maya on any given surface and use external data, parameters for parametric transformations. The final form of the elements is controlled by several external parameters like sun-position and shadows derived from Autodesk Ecotect and internal parameters like program and transparency. These parameters are transformed into excel sheets or bitmaps, which later are used to inform these elements. Later on, the influence of each parameter was adapted to the special needs of parts of the facade e.g. store window: less shading device, more transparency. This gives you the possibility to react even more sensitive to the given parameters, which otherwise would be too rigid or even fixed.

Architonic Lounge
LAVA Laboratory for Visionary Architecture
Architonic Lounge
imm cologne 08
- part of design team; conceptional approach oliver oibrova
Client: Architonic AG, Zürich, SUI
Location: imm cologne 08, GER
Status: Completed 2008
Area: 96 sqm
Project Partners:
Bertrandt AG, Ehningen, GER
Global Membrane Designs, Stretton, AUS
sixinch, Antwerpen, BE
Carola X. Knoll, Architect

Representing nature in form and ambience is a constantly reoccuring challenge. Architonic Lounge concentrates on the idea of an arctic glacier, developing a methodology to virtually design furniture pieces and directly print them in real dimensions. Modular furniture inspired in its basic form by well-known Escher patterns, drift like ice flows – individually or in casual groups – under a canopy of light membranes and atmospheric projections. Using precise digital tools, the seating- (more…)
HYBRID HOTEL – DUBAI
studio hani rashid
HYBRID HOTEL – DUBAI
hani rashid _ visiting professor of architectural design
teaching assistants: suzanne song, alex hurst, philippe luc barman
hybrid hotel dubai
- designed by barbara leonardi – oliver dibrova

Dubai, the Arabian Peninsula’s most vibrant city, boasts over 30% of the world’s cranes at work and is the planet’s fastest growing urban settlement. It is a place of extremes, from its climate and physical context, to its economic and geopolitical strategies to its urban infrastructure and architecture. Here, limits are constantly being tested and surpassed, producing a city that today is subject to a Darwinian trajectory. Dubai is either quickly becoming one of the most extraordinary and evolved cities, or a travesty of extravagance and excess, the potential result of both misguided vision and ambitious, yet flawed enterprise. Recent developments provided the context for the studio to design a resort hotel complex in Dubai. The studio explored the extreme condition as it is manifest in Dubai today and in its future trajectory.We were interested in the phenomenon of singing dunes in which sounds are produced when grains drum against one another, exciting elastic waves on the dune surface, with the vibration of the sand bed tending to synchronize the collisions. Inspired by that we created a system by these principles to create surfaces influenced by soundfiles which represented different kinds of program conditions. The result of this experiment were diverse surfaces, which can be used to generate a hybrid space. At the highest peaks the surface starts to split and rises in the height . We chose this area for our hybrid hotel a spiraled structure that continues the public space and contains four plugged in hotel-units, which can act independent from each other and are specialised on diverse topics (business hotel, recreation hotel, sports hotel and city hotel)

MERGE CITY – ZÜRICH WEST
studio hani rashid
MERGE CITY – ZÜRICH WEST
hani rashid _ visiting professor of architectural design
teaching assistants: suzanne song, alex hurst, philippe luc barman
zürich west media interface
- designed by barbara leonardi – oliver dibrova
Zürich-West is today in a state of complete transformation and flux as extensive conversions of its industrial zones, old buildings and spaces are perpetuating entirely new neighborhoods, office space, housing, restaurants, clubs and public infrastructure. The development of Zürich – West, which is becoming a city onto itself, parallels the growing municipalities surrounding it. As these areas expand and merge into and with one another, there are numerous potentials for the development and configurations of new urban density and architecture. Merge- City_ZurichWest is an investigation of potential architectures that act as catalysts and protagonists for these new territories and city space, confronting traditional downtown/ old-town city models with new notions of urbanism that address contemporary conditions of economically driven cultural growth.

Boutique Hotel
LAVA Laboratory for Visionary Architecture
Boutique Hotel
Resort Hotel Concept U.A.E
- part of design team : oliver dibrova
Client: undisclosed
Location: U.A.E.
Status: concept design-feasibility study
Area: 24.000 sqm
The hotel project will be part of a large sport driven resort. It´s design revolves around the idea of creating a communal space within the volume of the building defining the identity of the hotel. A large atrium space rising over four floors is articulated in a canyon-like fashion and becomes the backdrop for all public activities.
A large spa and wellness area is organised as a continuation of the canyon zone. Restaurant and bar areas are located on a balcony level, while all hotel rooms are positioned to face outside. A zigzagging arrangement of individual rooms generates balconies of varying depth around the atrium.
The design of the hotel rooms follows a rational layout of the necessary functions whereby differing elements combine into two walls along either side: a quiet wall for everything related to resting and an infrastructural wall for the utilisation of media.
Sustainability plays an important an role in the design and can be experienced by visitors. The whole building is wrapped by a facade made of perforated metal sheets functioning as a light diffuser and exterior sun-shading device. Rainwater is collected on the roof while a large waterfall inside the atrium is part of the air-conditioning concept.
RTV – Headquarter
RTV – Headquarter
- designed by Oliver Dibrova, Studio Mamem Domingo ETH-Zurich
This project focuses on the research of using minimal surfaces as spatial elements for programmatic interweaving.
RTV – Headquarter is a building for TV and communications studios in the city of Zurich.The site is located at Zuriberg neighborhood, on high level. The program is divided into different parts: administrative area, TV studios, radio studios, an open public zone, working spaces and offices for internal use.

Inspired by the behavior of liquid crystals, their ability to change their conditions from solid to fluid depending on temperature, to form “soap”-films between their borders and to change their directions, I started to experiment and simulate the various conditions of liquid soap-films and minimal surfaces. Porosity is one of the qualities that characterize minimal surfaces. As an architectural design tool emerging qualities like visual and path porosity results in a highly differentiated space.

THE OBLIQUE HOLE – DYNAMIC EDGES
studio gramazio & kohler
THE OBLIQUE HOLE – DYNAMIC EDGES
gramazio & kohler – professors of architecture and digital fabrication
designed by
barbara leonardi – oliver dibrova – stefan förg – valeria tarkhova


