Oct 29, 2008

OMA, AMO, MOA


“The latest plan is to set up a third branch in addition to OMA and AMO. That third branch shall distribute plans without copyright or ego. Anonymous projects by the world-famous architect Rem Koolhaas, it seems like a contradiction in terminus”. The remark is put occasionally at the end of a lengthy article celebrating the career of Rem Koolhaas. The setting: the new glossy for boys called ‘JFK’. With a heavy spillage of words like ‘world-famous’ it is hard to take the statement seriously. Did the author made this up, or is it real? How should we call this third branch? After ‘OMA’ and ‘AMO’ there are only three other configurations of the letters ‘O’, ‘M’, ‘A’ left: OAM, MOA and MAO. I opt for MAO.
In various lectures Rem Koolhaas has stated his resentment of iconic architecture and his love for the ‘background’ architecture of cities like Tokyo. In that light it would be a bold statement to actually start building that architecture.

What would it look like, an ego-free and copyright-free architecture?
Would it generate a more humble architecture?
Would it appropriate the Minimalist style?
Would it therefore come in ‘every color you want, as long as it is white’?
Would it result in building masses constituted by pragmatic boxes?
Would that predictability be its virtue?

(to find out more..)

image and passage from:
http://www.eikongraphia.com/?p=2628


posted by midori mizu

Oct 26, 2008

DESIGNTIDE TOKYO 2008


This marks the 4th year that DESIGNTIDE TOKYO is being held.This year, Tokyo Midtown Hall will be used as the main venue for the event. DESIGNTIDE TOKYO is a trade show where designers across a variety of fields – from interior and product design, architecture, graphic design, textiles, fashion and art - can congregate and exhibit work from serious design practices that make up the unique mix in Tokyo.This edition of DESIGNTIDE TOKYO will be an opportunity to reconsider design as a concept and way of thinking that anyone can share and participate in. DESIGNTIDE TOKYO will be a design-oriented event that gathers creators and artists with a sincere passion for design, linking design-related creative talents, manufacturers, journalists and buyers from all over the world, connecting them to people and their everyday lives and spreading the word about their design activities.This is the kind of design hub that DESIGNTIDE TOKYO aims to become. (to find out more..)







passage from: http://www.designtide.jp/08/en/index.php
images from: http://www.designtide.jp/08/en/index.php & http://www.excite.co.jp/ism/concierge/rid_2302/pid_1.html

posted by afterrabbit

Maya Lin: Systematic Landscapes


Blue Lake Pass

Systematic Landscapes is Lin’s second nationally-traveling exhibition in ten years, with venues in Seattle, St. Louis, San Diego, and Washington, D.C. “This exhibition continues my interest in exploring notions of landscape and geologic phenomena,” says Lin. “The works created, both small- and large-scale installations, reveal new and at times unexpected views of the natural world: from the topology of the ocean floor to the stratified layers of a mountain to a form that sits between water and earth.”


2x4 Landscape

Lin’s extraordinary ability to convey complex and poetic ideas using simple forms and natural materials is fully evident in Systematic Landscapes. Working in a scale that relates to the land, and combining a deep interest in forces and forms of nature with a long-term investigation into the possibilities of sculptural form to embody meaning, this exhibition offers a rich, immersive experience for visitors that brings the sensory understanding of Lin’s outdoor works inside.


Water Line

Lin has created a trio of large-scale sculptural installations for the exhibition that present different ways to encounter and comprehend the landscape. 2x4 Landscape (2006), a vast hill built of 65,000 boards set on end, presents a land surface rising from the gallery floor. Water Line (2006), a wire-frame three-dimensional drawing in space based on an undersea formation, is installed overhead and dips into the visitor’s sightline. Blue Lake Pass (2006) is a topographic translation of a Colorado mountain range made of layers of stacked particleboard that have been segmented and pulled apart to create landscape strata through which the visitor can see. (to find out more..)
& via arcspace


Bodies of Water : Red Sea

passage from: http://www.huliq.com/13/67120/maya-lin-systematic-landscapes
images from: http://www.arcspace.com/architects/lin/sys_landscapes/sys_landscapes.html

posted by afterrabbit

Oct 25, 2008

Estonian National Museum (ENM) by Vincent Callebaut


At the crossing of the Estonian and Finno-Ugric History and cultures, the Estonian national Museum (ENM) presents an architecture that inserts itself as a built geography. Towards a new understanding of the place, it imposes itself like an open field of multilayer strength that compresses the nature of the city and of the dynamic processes which govern it. It is an animated matrix with compressive folds topologically open which forms a common meeting frame between the city and the rural municipality, between the site and the visitor. The museum is at the intersection of new devices able, simultaneously, to generate reactive mechanisms (operating paradoxes) and evolutional spaces (landscapes). It is an interactive field of strengths among other fields, a geography of transition.

INFILTRATION FROM THE VACUUM
The notion of vacuum is considered in the project as first-rate « architectural material » on top of the predominance of the form. The building is a « space in negative » formed more by « absences » than by « presences ». It is an architecture of the vacuum that is planned in resonance with the qualities of a « free landscape-space ». At the intersection of the leak lines and the crossing dynamics of the park, an inhabited frame of 250 meters by side is at the meeting of the sky and the earth. In levitation above the lake, it constitutes a true double “building-bridge” articulating the course and framing with its tremendous fertile vacuum the luxuriant plants. It is a laminated area of “nurbs-surfaces” of “floors on other floors” that mixes furtively the Estonian horizons. It is a “presence-absence” which affirms itself from the paradoxical combination between densification and disappearing. It is a space dedicated to be infiltrated, crossed, contaminated. (to find out more...)

text and image from : http://vincent.callebaut.org/page1-img-estonie.html

posted by s-uper-chii

Arne Quinze



REBIRTH BY ARNE QUINZE is a unique futuristic and provoking wooden sculpture by Arne Quinze for the well-knownand distinguished five-star Paris hotel Le Royal Monceau on Avenue Hoche. The Art Deco temple will close its doors for an entire year while it undergoes a complete revamp by Philippe Starck. But the hotel doesn’t plan to go quietly, and gives an exclusive party. In full contrast with the abundantly decorated interior, Arne Quinze will turn heads with a gigantic new futuristic art installation, and an exclusive selection of VIP guests are invited to take out theirunresolved issues by partaking in a subsequent ‘Demolition Party’, where they are invited to smash, wreck and generally annihilate anything left standing.

The dazzling sculpture — which lasts for only one exclusive night — embraces the entire hotel building as a conquering and boldness alien stream, breaking through walls, corridors, stairways, lobbies and rooms... (to find out more...)





text and images from: http://www.arnequinze.tv/

posted by s-uper-chii

Oct 17, 2008

Tokyo Jewel Box : Ando + Olafur


Obayashi had in mind a house that would be a collaborative effort between artists and architect, and he commissioned works by several talents, including Danish-born light artist Olafur Eliasson, Japanese designer Tokujin Yoshioka and Japanese lighting architect Shozo Toyohisa, who has designed lighting for exhibitions at MoMA in New York. “When Eliasson came up with the idea of working with the courtyard using ceramic tiles, I really liked it,” says Obayashi, who was hesitant to propose the idea to Ando. “Many architects want minimal change within their design. They want to speak with their own language. In Mr. Ando’s case, his language is glass, steel frames and concrete.”
With over 6,800 platinum-glazed ceramic tiles attached to the concrete walls of the courtyard, Eliasson created an astonishing spectacle. “Small changes in light make the tiles appear different, and it changes the light in the interior as well,” says Eliasson. “You really get the feeling of a temporal or ephemeral component to the house and the constitution of its space.”
“Olaf’s work has a very strong impact,” says Ando. “You don’t ever see anything like this in my work. In the beginning I thought the tiles were too drastic technically and aesthetically. They arrived late. We didn’t know if they could be affixed properly. It’s difficult to adhere things to the surface,” he admits. “Of course, I work with a lot of artists. In Los Angeles, I’m making a guesthouse and exhibition space sort of like Yu-un, and we’re doing things with Damien Hirst and other people with installations on the surfaces. So it may become common with this kind of project where one installs treatments on certain surfaces.”
(to find out more..)

View Slideshow via Architectural Digest.




passage and images from: http://www.architecturaldigest.com/architects/features/2008/01/ando_article_012008?currentPage=1

posted by afterrabbit

Oct 16, 2008

Werner Sobek


Architecture which claims to formulate an attitude appropriate to our time and the future, must be a form of architecture that finds its forms and materials not by reference to traditional forms and materials. We should not ask "how did we use to work and live" but "how shall we work and live in the future". The answer to this question requires an unconditional anticipation of what the future holds in store - a method which occasionally may lead us in the wrong direction but which is the only way in terms of being intellectually justifiable. Or, in the words of Hegel "...that the fear of being wrong constitutes an error in itself".
The architecture of our own time and the future must exhibit a radically different, viz. positive, attitude to the natural environment and its users and to its inherent technology.





passage & images from: http://www.wernersobek.com/

posted by afterrabbit

Oct 14, 2008

Underwater Museum@Egypt


Architect Jacques Rougerie -an expert when it comes to space and underwater structures- has designed the soon-to-be first underwater museum. It will be located off the coast of Egypt, near the new Library of Alexandria, where Cleopatra once had a palace on an island in one of the largest human-made bays in the world back in the day, submerged by earthquakes in the 4th century. The ruins were discovered years ago, and include several sphinxes, statues, roman and greek shipwrecks and pieces believed to be from the Pharos of Alexandria lighthouse (one of the seven ancient wonders of the world).
(to find out more..)



image & passage from:
http://www.archdaily.com/7427/underwater-museum-for-egypt-jacques-rougerie/

posted by midori mizu

Estonian Academy of Arts



posted by midori mizu

Oct 13, 2008

Libeskind's Westside shopping center opens in Switzerland


The Westside shopping center in Brünnen, a part of the city of Berne (the capital of Switzerland) , opened it's gates this weekend. The project was started 2000, when Daniel Libeskind won an international competition to design the shoppingcenter. Construction did not start until 2006. The complex not only features a shopping mall, but also a conference-hotel, a cineplex, elderly people housing and a spa. The whole development at the western most part of the city of Berne will complete a dense housing development started in the seventies and when completed will offer housing to additional 3000 people. The shoppingcenter is said to cater an area with around 1.2 Million people sourrounding the city of Berne.
(to find out more..)

image & passage from:
http://cisar.blogspot.com/2008/10/libeskind-westside-shoppingcenter-opens.html


posted by midori mizu

Oct 10, 2008

Modernist Master’s Deceptively Simple World



IT’S unlikely that the Portuguese architect Álvaro Siza will ever enjoy the fame of, say, a Rem Koolhaas or a Frank Gehry, architects who have vaulted to international attention by demolishing accepted orthodoxies.
For one thing Mr. Siza rarely builds outside Europe, while his celebrity counterparts shuttle around the globe.
He has spent his career quietly working on the fringes of the international architecture scene. He dislikes long plane flights, mostly because of a decades-long smoking habit and recent back problems. And he still seems most at ease in Porto, Portugal, his native city, where he can often be found sketching in a local cafe with a pack of cigarettes within easy reach.
Yet over the last five decades Mr. Siza, now 74, has steadily assembled a body of work that ranks him among the greatest architects of his generation, and his creative voice has never seemed more relevant than now.
His reputation is likely to receive a boost from his museum here for the Iberê Camargo Foundation, his most sculptural work to date. Its curvaceous bleached white exterior, nestled against a lush Brazilian hillside, has a vibrant sensuality that contrasts with the corporate sterility of so many museums today.
(to find out more..)

passage from: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/05/arts/design/05ouro.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2
images from: http://particool.wordpress.com/2007/12/23/ibere-camargo-foundation/ & http://flickr.com/photos/visualcuriosity/144785931/
image edited by DeArasis

posted by afterrabbit

Oct 9, 2008

New wave hero Portuguese architect wins UK's most prestigious prize


Álvaro Siza, the Portuguese architect and hero of a new wave of British design talent, was yesterday awarded the Royal Gold Medal, British architecture's most prestigious prize. The 78-year-old is regarded by some as the greatest architect Portugal has ever produced, although his only British building to date has been a temporary pavilion for the Serpentine Gallery in London in 2006.(to find out more..)

image & passage from:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2008/oct/08/architecture.portugal


posted by midori mizu

Oct 3, 2008

Parliament House, Malaysia

Although not as famous as its predecessor, The Petronas Twin Towers, the Parliament building is a case worth studying as a building that is modernist in outlook yet respecting the local context.

The Architect:



William Ivor Shipley graduated from the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London and then did national service as a British Army garrison engineer from 1950 to 1952 in Singapore, where he met his wife, Stella. Returning to Britain, he applied in 1953 to the Crown Agents to work in Singapore. However, he was informed that his posting would instead be as Settlement Architect when his ship arrived in Penang. He worked on the island until his transfer to Kuala Lumpur (KL) in 1956.

The Building:


Parliament House in the making. — Picture courtesy of William Ivor Shipley



The realization of Parliament’s House’s architecture was a process that mapped Shipley’s design development professionally. While in Penang, he met Konrad Wachsmarm who, with Bauhausfounder Walter Gropius, had developed a modular grid. He experimented with his own three-dimensional grid layouts and design ideas on an eight-bay linear standard office block that expedited construction and planning: over 200 were eventually constructed nationwide (an example is the PWD Head-quarters in Jalan Sultan Salahuddin).

As one of PWD’s most talented architects, his selection to design the Parliament House came as no surprise. From its inception and expanding on his grid measurements, Shipley honed spaces around the bicameral arrangements and to accommodate the Senate and the Dewan Rakyat in a podium block.

Separating processes of Parliament from governmental establishment, offices were then contained in an 18-storey tower block whose reticulated façade of pre-cast terrazzo cladding panels became its signature.

The roof of the Dewan Rakyat was formed as a pleated shell with a five-sided section but later refined into a more triangular one, leading to interpretations of a “Malay House Roof’ — which the architect had not originally intended.

Its generous internal space-provision for future expansion saw its accommodation of Malaysia when 11 states became 14 (and then 13) and up to the present day.
Despite not including the additional mural art and sculpture that Shipley had hoped for, the complex remains one of KL’s most prominent and significant buildings.

The construction of a national culture was important for post-colonial states like Malaysia. National buildings then were, as now, major visual signs towards which a national gaze or imagination gravitated.

Shipley’s contributions to the development of Malaysia’s built environment are crucial. He understood modernist architecture and transformed it for the region.

The result was a set of important national works that are not only functional and expressive, but which exude actuality of purpose and confidence commensurate with the times. (For the full article..)

The above post are excerpts from a New Sunday Times newspaper article (July 27, 2008) entitled “Shipley, an Architect Extraordinaire” by Lai Chee Kien, Assistant Professor with the Department of Architecture at the National University of Singapore, who also curated “Building Merdeka: Independence Architecture in Kuala Lumpur, 1957-1966” in Kuala Lumpur in 2007.

posted by ling

Oct 2, 2008

Koivusaari International Ideas Competition 12 Aug - 10 Nov 2008


The City of Helsinki organises, in co-operation with the Finnish Association of Architects (SAFA), an open international ideas competition on the planning of Koivusaari Island.
The competition is open to all. The competition languages are Finnish and English. The entrants are encouraged to form multidisciplinary planning groups with a wide range of expertise on land use, landscape planning, traffic technology, municipal engineering, and construction and energy engineering.
The competition is organised in order to prepare the component master plan for Koivusaari Island. The objective of the competition is to produce innovative plan alternatives which can serve as a basis for further planning and drafting of the component master plan and to identify the essential features of this new district which will have a maritime atmosphere and an underground railway connection.
(to find out more..)

passage & image from: http://www.hel.fi/wps/portal/Kaupunkisuunnitteluvirasto_en/Artikkeli_en?WCM_GLOBAL_CONTEXT=/Ksv/en/Town+Planning/City+planning+projects/Koivusaari+Ideas+Competition

posted by afterrabbit
 

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