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The design for the Kaohsiung Cruise Terminal by Emergent is interior driven, biasing building section, and interior spatial effects. The goal is to create a cavernous space which will appear simultaneously massive and lightweight. The project oscillates between volume and surface, avoiding the limitations of exclusively surface-based and volume-based architectures. The Port Services Center, made up of string of hard elliptical volumes, is pushed down into the soft bubble of the Ferry Terminal, so that exterior skin becomes interiorized. This nesting action allows for functional division between the programmatic elements while creating complex interior formations. While the Ferry Terminal is oriented towards the inside, the Port Services Center- consisting primarily of offices- is oriented towards the outside, with views out to the city and the ocean. It is a building within a building. The skin of the Ferry terminal is constructed out of transparent ETFE membrane and hard fiber-composite Armor Plates. These Armor Plates operate as both structure and ornament. They create stiff zones in the skin where the membrane can be affixed. Ultimately, the construction system is a hybrid of shell and membrane construction types- what we now call Shell-branes. A pattern of color flows over the armor, both responding to underlying formal features, and at times becoming graphic. Similar to a butterfly wing, coloration follows competing criteria, such as structural and optical pattern logics. Gradient effects begin to blur boundaries between opacities and transparencies, creating unifying visual crossovers between the two systems of the Shell-brane. The open space to east and west of the buildable area is designed as new kind of park, which does infrastructural work as well as supporting the picturesque. It is an organic machine, where energy is cultivated and grown inside algae photo-bioreactor pods. Using sunlight as well as artificial light at night, these pods gener

ProFolio is a professional ready to go portfolio that is perfectly suitable for both a personal portfolio or a more professionally oriented portfolio. Essentially anyone that wants an easy yet customizable way to display their graphical presentations such as photographs, digital art, web designs, etc would most likely be content with this software. Currently ProFolio is free, but the developers behind the software have been saying for as long as I've been aware of ProFolio that at some point in the somewhat near future they will be charging for further downloads. So, I wouldn't drag my feet too long before I gave this one a try.

In troubled economic times, there is only one high rise office tower being built in Brisbane. So enamoured was the client, GPT, with the design by Cox Rayner Architects that he decided to proceed on the basis that the building's aesthetic, environmental and workplace benefits would lure prospective tenants. The tower's structure is organic in that the columns twist and turn up its 45 storey height, emerging through the roof to form a tree-like canopy. The resulting filigree of structure reflects the city's two iconic Fig Trees in the building's forecourt, but the rationale for the concept was initially pragmatic. This was because the tower is being built over a wide existing loading dock such that there were few points on the ground where columns could land. Cox Rayner Architects with their engineers ARUP devised a structural system where loads could be gradually transferred diagonally down to the land predominantly on one side of the site, avoiding the dock. The concept evolved with several attributes. The columns in the 'web' are abnormally thin at 600 - 400 wide, maximising views to the river. Less concrete is required than in conventional typologies entailing reduced embodied energy in construction. Overall the tower is currently measured to be above 6 star rating under the Green Building Council of Australia's Green Star Design Rating System. The tower has a corner services core that also maximises the availability of views to the office areas, with the structural frame wrapping around the remaining volume inside a glass skin with operable blinds responding to solar orientations. The ground plane is designed as a public thoroughfare space linking the city to its main ferry terminal, such that the foyers are at the first level above. This design enriches the sense of lightness and space for which the building will become renowned