Courtesy Input Creative Studio

Designed for DIFFA DBD 2012, this table is a tribute to today’s digital society where everyone is always on the move with a wealth of information at their fingertips.

Input Creative Studio wanted to play on the idea of a QR code-abbreviated from Quick Response-it is one of the most popular types of two-dimensional barcodes and was designed to allow its contents to be decoded at a high speed.

The illuminated tabletop has been cut to emulate a QR Code and references the immediate and convenient rate that society expects knowledge. The chairs are constructed out of cardboard and once again evoke the feeling of a temporary and constantly changing space. The same feeling extends to the tableware that consists of recyclable takeaway containers in place of traditional serving pieces.

Paris-based architectural firm Emmanuel COMBAREL Dominique MARREC Architects (ECDM) has recently designed the Quai de Queyries – Bordeaux.

Courtesy ECDM

Courtesy ECDM

Courtesy ECDM

Typical floor plan, courtesy ECDM

Section, courtesy ECDM

+ Project facts

Program: Housing and shops
Owner: Bordeaux Metropole Development
Project manager / Architect: architects ECDM
Location: Quai of Queyries, Bordeaux (33)
Land area: 23,000 m2
Built area: 45 000 m2 floor area

+ All images and drawings courtesy ECDM

The BOMBAY SAPPHIRE Sky Pavilion Imagination Project opens in Melbourne, Australia today and its free to the public. It is an interactive 4D installation which facilitates manipulation of virtual clouds and star constellations inside a pop-up space, using your body.

The installation is part of an International campaign which communicates what is possible with the power of imagination.

With motion-sensing and projection technology that changes from day to night, people can use their imagination to create individual clouds and constellations and enjoy those created by others.

RE-IMAGINE THE WORLD AROUND YOU WITH
THE BOMBAY SKY PAVILION

Logic will get you from A to B but imagination will take you everywhere.
Albert Einstein

BOMBAY SAPPHIRE® gin invites you to re-imagine the world around you at The Bombay Sky Pavilion. This interactive 4D installation facilitates manipulation of virtual clouds and star constellations inside the pop-up space, using your body. The Pavilion will be visiting Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane between late March and April 2012.

This free interactive experience, which is open to the public, invites you to touch the sky. With motion-sensing and projection technology that changes from day to night, people can use their imagination to create individual clouds and constellations and enjoy those created by others.

BOMBAY SAPPHIRE, Senior Brand Manager, Naomi Roth explains, "Bombay Sapphire is a gin for people who ask 'why not?' to the imaginative possibilities others may not even entertain. Continuing a tradition in imagination that started as early as its unconventional iconic blue bottle, the Bombay Sky Pavilion brings to life imagination in a way that everyone can experience."

The Bombay Sky Pavilion offers an escape from the stresses of everyday city life and infuses its visitors with imagination and wonder. From cloud gazing to star gazing, the pavilion is inspired by the sky's influence upon our imagination – during your lunch break, after work, or just for fun, take five minutes out to be inspired. Infuse everyday with imagination at the following locations:

Sydney

When: Wednesday 21st March to Sunday 25th March
Opening hours: 12pm to 8pm
Location: Customs House Forecourt, 31 Alfred Street, Circular Quay
Cost: free
Age: Over 18

Melbourne

When: Thursday 29th March to Sunday 1st April
Opening hours: 12pm to 8pm
Location: City Square, corner of Collins and Swanston Street
Cost: free
Age: Over 18

Brisbane

When: Thursday 12th to Sunday 15th April
Opening hours: 12pm to 8pm
Location: Cultural Forecourt, South Bank
Cost: free
Age: Over 18

+ About BOMBAY Sky Pavilion: An Imagination project by BOMBAY SAPPHIRE:

The Bombay Sky Pavilion has been created for BOMBAY SAPPHIRE by Melbourne-based ideas agency Right Angle Studio with interactive visual artists ENESS. Providing for a true sensory experience, the environment will also engage visitor with DJ and purposely customised fragrance. The temperature of the room will also be controlled to feel like a perfect spring day. On entering the Pavilion visitors will be struck by a holistic sensorial experience.

Instead of daylight The Bombay Sky Pavilion will be jet black. It will take a few seconds for people's eyes to adjust. Lying back, visitors will look up towards a virtual sky. A perfect white cloud will form above them; it will become their personal cloud. By moving their body and hands around they will be able to change the shape of their cloud, bending it to their imagination with their own movements.

Mid-way through the sky sequence the sun will set and a night-time sky full of stars will emerge. By moving their bodies visitors can grab hold of stars around them to create individual constellations and milky way.

Render courtesy Woods Bagot

Woods Bagot has won the international competition to design China Southern Airport City, a 988-acre (400-hectare), mixed-use development set on the Liuxi River in Guangzhou, China. The design, which totals 41 million square feet (3.8 million square meters), expands the traditional corporate headquarters to an urban scale, blending business and manufacturing uses with lifestyle and residential components. This new active district will support China Southern Airlines’ brand and continued leadership as Asia's largest airline.

The design establishes a sweeping physical form that unifies the Airport City site—comprising two wing-shaped parcels bisected by a major highway—and presents a legible identity that is visible from arriving and departing planes. Within this landscape, landmark buildings, parks, lakes and other features define a series of programmatic "neighborhoods" that provide a sense of order and wayfinding at the human scale.

Render courtesy Woods Bagot

The master plan organizes the neighborhoods into three precincts. Business, cultural, and entertainment uses as well as Southern Airlines University define the central precinct, creating a distinct heart that bridges the highway. Here, a bend in the Liuxi River naturally highlights the project's centerpiece: an executive complex including offices, a five-star hotel and VIP club overlooking an expansive lake. Manufacturing, operations and research facilities form a second precinct to the northwest while residential and lifestyle neighborhoods compose the third precinct along the riverfront.

Render courtesy Woods Bagot

The landscape architectural and ecological concept—designed in close collaboration with Hargreaves Associates and Sherwood Design Engineers—overlays bold sculptural landforms with a series of contemporary urban, academic and residential landscapes. Each landscape is rendered with a unique indigenous flowering tree to further distinguish the Airport City neighborhoods and celebrate the rich Chinese garden palette. The landforms buffer the freeway and enhance views to the riverfront, while restoration zones, including a new freshwater wetlands and necklace of lakes, serve to cleanse stormwater and repair the site ecology.

Render courtesy Woods Bagot

Richard Marshall, Joint CEO/Director of Urban Design at Woods Bagot:

This has been a tremendously rewarding process bringing together the best talent from our London, San Francisco, Hong Kong and Beijing studios and our partners at Hargreaves Associates and Sherwood Design Engineers. China Southern Airlines' vision for a new district that embodies its global leadership and supports ongoing innovation afforded an opportunity to really advance our thinking about the connections between economy, ecology and culture. We look forward to our continued collaboration.

+ About Woods Bagot

Woods Bagot is one of the world’s leading architectural practices, with a global team of more than 800 working across North America, Europe, Asia, Australia and the Middle East. Our “One Global Studio” philosophy drives unprecedented knowledge sharing and true collaboration across time zones, producing innovative, inspired and functional design solutions for our clients. Underpinning Woods Bagot‘s knowledge culture is PUBLIC, our propriety research brand, created in collaboration with leading thinkers and academics. With a 140-year legacy of design excellence, Woods Bagot possesses a diverse portfolio of significant projects including: Sunshine Insurance Headquarters in Beijing, the Shijiazhuang International Convention and Exhibition Centre, 10 Trinity Square and 100 Bishopsgate in London, Qatar’s Science and Technology Park, Melbourne’s Convention and Exhibition Center, and the Ivy Hotel in Sydney.