Emergent architecture2

It provides models and processes for the creation of artifical systems that are
designed to produce forms and complex behaviour, and perhaps even real intelligence.

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Waagner Biro

The Waagner Biro Stahl-Glas-Technik Group is the international partner for modern architectural steel
construction. The company is specialised in planning and development of customised, innovative solutions
for highly complex requirements.
Waagner-Biro Stahl-Glas-Technik creates unique structures of steel and glass, which combine unusual
architecture with the lightness of a steel-glass construction. The company works in these areas with
leading, international architects such as SOM, Norman Foster, Coop Himmelb(l)au, Hans Hollein, The Jerde
Partnership, Epstein and Sons and many other giants in the architectural scene. The Reichstag dome in
Berlin, the Red Bull Hangar 7 in Salzburg, the Sage Music Center or the British Museum are just a few
examples of how the most demanding designs are turned into reality.

• The new dome over the Reichstag in Berlin

The conference chamber of the Reichstag building was enveloped with a 24 ribbed dome, 40 m in diameter
and approx. 25 m high. The outer skin is clad with large glass elements. Two internal winding stairs lead to
a 200 m² viewing platform. The "light cone" is covered in 360 mirrors and reflects daylight into the inside of
the conference chamber. To avoid direct sunlight, an electronically controlled sunshade element continuously
covers the mirrors directly facing the sun.

• British Museum

he British Museum was built in the 18th century. It encloses, in the form of a square, the Great Court which has
as its center the historical Reading Room. The Great Court, created for the British Library, was converted by Lord
Norman Foster into a spectacular public space which is covered by an elegant steel-glass structure the size of a
football field. This newly created area covers galleries, shops and a restaurant. It has now become the real focus
of the museum. Currently the Great Court is the biggest covered public area in Europe.

http://www.waagner-biro.at

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Achim Menges

• Postagriculture project

The ambitions of the ‘Postagriculture’ project, by architect Achim Menges, stem from the recognition of the critical
importance of environmentally and socially sustainable food production. The aim is to develop an inclusive and
responsive strategy that will enable a mode of agriculture that is highly integrated, mutable and a vital urban programme.

• Landscape Playhouse Copenhagen

The design proceeds from the recognition of the many different activities that are part of going to the theatre. In
response to the limited capacity of conventional theatre plans to accommodate diverse activities, the aim of this
proposal is to create an environment that provides for a multitude of different cultural and social activities, and that
responds to its users and provides an intense urban space. A continuous surface was developed, the folds of which
provide a variety of different conditions of enclosure, climate, sound and light. This field of conditions was used to
evolve the sectional articulation of the building envelope, which constructs an urban landscape permeable to the
public on every level. Alongside the theatre spaces, this acts as a filter and connects to the major tourist attractions
of the waterfront.The space is divided into areas of "hard" programmes that cater for specific requirements and "soft"
zones that allow for a wide range of different activities and events to happen. Programmes are distributed in the
landscape formed by the surface folds according to the condition profiles of activities in relation to spatial performances.
The material articulation of the landscape was derived from a series of soap-bubble experiments.

http://www.evolutionary-strategies.org/

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Peter Cook (Archigram) and Colin Fournier

"While the building's interior is meant to inspire its curators as a "black box of hidden tricks", its outer skin is a media
facade which can be changed electronically."
Colin Fournier
Like a bubble of air, the bluish, shimmering skin of the Kunsthaus floats above its glass-walled ground floor. Spanning
up to 60 metres in width, the biomorphic construction envelops two large exhibition rooms without additional supports.
From the surface of the acrylic glass outer "skin", strikingly shaped "nozzles" project outwards to admit daylight: they are
inclined to the north and thus provide optimum natural lighting.

http://www.arge-kunsthaus.at/

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-- JaynePotter^? - 21 Jun 2005
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