We spoke with OMA Hong Kong managing partner - architect David Gianotten recently, and covered serious ground, including his favorite diagrams, what he’d do if he only had 24 hours in Hong Kong, the reign of blue foam, and the inevitable all-nighter with Rem Koolhaas.
Excellent insights in this interview, beyond architecture.
http://www.thepolisblog.org/2010/12/behind-scenes-at-national-geographic.html
Behind the Scenes at National Geographic: Depicting Gaudí’s Vision
Barcelona’s Sagrada Família’s Deputy art director Kaitlin Yarnall and senior graphics editor Fernando G. Baptista do a guest post at polis
CNN Report on Rem Koolhaas
This is a puff piece championing Koolhaas, but the last few minutes are very good, Koolhass wanders through West Kowloon and discusses his current philosophy of design.
(Source: CNN)
New Tower for London
Mayor Boris and Anish Kapoor’s preview new sculptural tower for 2012.
via: Bruce Sterling and Guardian.co.uk
Engineering without engines. We should use contemporary technology and computation capacity to make our buildings independent of machinery. Building services today are essentially mechanical compensations for the fact that buildings are bad for what they are designed for—human life. Therefore we pump air around, illuminate dark spaces with electric lights, and heat and cool the spaces in order to make them livable. The result is boring boxes with big energy bills. If we moved the qualities out of the machine room and back into architecture’s inherent attributes, we’d make more interesting buildings and more sustainable cities.
Via: WorldChanging
Delta Shelter
Olson Kundig Architects
Tom Kundig, Design Principal
Mazama, WA, 2005
Mount Fuji Architects Studio - Rainy/Sunny House, Tokyo 2008
Full story at Arch Daily
Found via: SUBTILITAS, the amazing architecture blog.
http://incredimazing.com/page/Bamboo_scaffolding_on_skyscrapers_Hong_Kong
Man-made jungle: bamboo scaffolding on Hong Kong skyscrapers
inky / via skyscraper
http://atelier-ad.blogspot.com/2009/02/ruta-peregrino.html
Ruta Peregrino is a path that goes from Ameca to Talpa de Allende, in the State of Jalisco near Guadalajara, Mexico. During holy week, about 2 million people walk along this pilgrimage path. The municipalities involved wanted to give the pilgrims some permanent service areas and have invited an international team of architects and designers to design the various parts of this project like Shelters and Lookout Points.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tsparks/3942732132/sizes/l/
Building facade Symi Greece
photo by tsparks
From Istanbul Memories and the City by Orhan Pamuk
In The Seven Lamps of Architecture, John Ruskin devotes much of the chapter entitled ‘Memory’ to the beauties of the picturesque, attributing the particular beauty of this sort of architecture, and (as opposed to that of carefully planned classical forms) to it’s accidental nature. So when he describes something as picturesque (‘like a picture’) he is describing an architectural landscape that has, over time, become beautiful in a way never foreseen by its creators. For Ruskin, picturesque beauty rises out of details that emerge only after the buildings have been standing for hundreds of years, from ivy, the herbs and grassy meadows that surround it, from the rocks in the distance, the clouds in the sky and the choppy sea. So there is nothing picturesque about a new building, which demands to be seen own it’s own terms; it only becomes picturesque after history has endowed it with accidental beauty and granted us a fortuitous new perspective.
http://web.mac.com/friendadrian/iWeb/www.friendandcompany.co.uk/BAT%20SPIRAL.html
The Bat Spiral
Twenty-four different types of timber roosts are positioned within the concrete spiral as if they were the spokes of a wheel. Each roost position is determined by the orientation of the sun, shade and prevailing winds. The roosts are painted black externally to maximize heat gain from the sun…Via: BLDGBLOG
Ancient underground water chambers have been transformed into gallery spaces beneath Plaza del Torico in the 12th-century town of Teruel, north-eastern Spain.
From ICONEYE:
“They just needed three things,” says Vázquez. “One was to tidy up the services, with lighting and a new pavement, and another was to make the chambers accessible. They also wanted a strong proposal to add contemporary layers, to produce signs of modernity.”Via: bldgblog
The LED lights buried into the square neatly address all three concerns, signalling the presence of the new network of corridors and tourist facilities below. The lights can be programmed to go from white to red on special occasions.
