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SOM Foundation UK Award

from bundling to beehive

Part 1 Project 2006
Max Wilhelm Kahlen
Architectural Association London | UK
The project is proposing a design-strategy for super-high-rise. The principle is based on a system of bundling. A diversity of spatial conditions, structure, and circulation are brought together into a coherent system that does not rely on floors in terms of its stability.
The high-rise is developed as an organic “material”, grown from a set of initiating parameters that result into a building with the ability to adapt to it’s changing environment.
The arrangement of smaller spaces around larger atria have a structural function as well as that they form microclimates of varying light- and ventilation- intensities.

Max Wilhelm Kahlen


Max’s project bravely experiments with complexity as a contemporary topic that might harbour new potential for better and more organically integrated design. His parallel use of both computer- as physical modelling gives him the tools to generate, control, and evaluate his project simultaneously. The interest and emphasis of his work lies within the process: His almost biological approach of continuous production of varying “offspring”, and subsequent selection of the fittest opens new horizons of potential.
His process-based design shows the possibility for real structural-architectural-environmental coherence to emerge that particularly as a high-rise could very well make sense.

2006
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