Today Piracy, Live at Sea- [Image: A screen-grab of the Live Piracy Map].With all the talk of piracy at sea, it was only a matter of time before the Live Piracy Map was developed. According to its creators, the map "shows all the piracy and armed robbery incidents reported to the IMB Piracy Reporting Centre during 2008." It's the geography of aquatic crime, mapping realtime adventures in buoyant larceny. [Image: From the Live Piracy Map].This incident report corresponds to the map, above. The report describes the attempte…(more)
- Feral Cities
- I've got two more events coming up in London, both on Wednesday, November 26. I'll post more info about the first event in a bit. The second one, in the evening, has been organized by the Complex Terrain Laboratory, and it will take place in the J.Z. Young Lecture Theatre at UCL, inside the Anatomy Building on Gower Street. Here is a map.I'll be teaming up with Antoine Bousquet, Lecturer in International Relations at Birkbeck College, and author of the forthcoming book The Scientific Way of Warf…(more)
- Code 46
- On Monday, November 24, I'll be hosting a live interview at the Barbican in London with director Michael Winterbottom, for a special screening of his film Code 46. You can read a bit more about the event – as well as buy tickets – here. This is part of an ongoing series called Architecture on Film, curated by the Architecture Foundation. [Image: From Michael Winterbottom's Code 46, courtesy of United Artists].The purpose of the event is to talk about film and architecture – or, in this ca…(more)
- Resampled Space
- [Image: Photo by Filip Dujardin, courtesy of the artist].Belgian photographer Filip Dujardin makes images of unexpected buildings – that is, he "combines photographs of parts of buildings into new, fictional, architectonic structures," Mark Magazine explains.The resulting projects look like old factory sites in the American rust belt – Mark describes them as "informal and often dilapidated structures with unspecified functions" – or, in some cases, new projects by LOT-EK, Simon Ungers, or …(more)
- Off to Chicago...
- [Image: Madinat al-Hareer, or the City of Silk, a new development in Kuwait].I'm off to Chicago to participate in Offshoring Audacity and Burnham 2.0 – but new posts will continue while I'm there... More soon.…(more)
- Spaceballs
- [Image: Courtesy of the Zero Gravity Corporation, via the New York Times].If Kevin Slavin and Sam Jacob had a baby – under the medical supervision of Alex Trevi – I think it would look like this, a new "space sport" being developed by the Zero Gravity Corporation: The game would be called Float Ball. It would combine elements of basketball, football and the Lionel Richie video for “Dancing on the Ceiling” into a sort of free-for-all, compelling weightless players to bounce off walls, obs…(more)
- Offshoring Audacity
- [Image: Dubai's "carbon-neutral" ziggurat, designed by Timelinks].I'll be in Chicago next week to host a panel on Saturday, November 8, as part of this year's Chicago Humanities Festival. The other participants are Joseph Grima, Jeffrey Inaba, and Sam Jacob.More info:Look abroad: Whole cities are planned, built, and inhabited in less than a generation. Artificial islands, indoor ski slopes, and the world’s tallest this-and-that are being constructed, not in the West, but in the Middle East, Ch…(more)
- Slow Decay
- [Image: By Yvette Molina, 2008; oil on 7" convex aluminum disc. Via Johansson Projects].Opening at Johansson Projects in Oakland this week is a show by artists Katy Stone and Yvette Molina "that considers the ephemeral thrills and underlying decrepitude of the natural world" – it is "a nature walk through a mysterious and delicate landscape, where organic beauty blossoms in the midst of slow decay." [Images: All works by Yvette Molina, 2008; all are oil on 7" convex aluminum discs. Via Johanss…(more)
- The Atlas of Hidden Water
- [Image: From the "atlas of hidden water." Check out the original PDF or simply view it larger].An "atlas of hidden water" has been created to reveal where the world's freshwater aquifers really lie. "The hope," New Scientist reports, "is that it will help pave the way to an international law to govern how water is shared around the world." This prospective hydro-geopolitical legislation currently includes a "draft Convention on transboundary aquifers."[Image: The "hidden water" of South America]…(more)
- The immersive sculpture of linked voids
- When you pull back the curtain of Manhattan, what do you find? [Image: Photo by Andrea Mohin for The New York Times].The so-called "birthmark of the World Trade Center" has been removed from the earth of New York City. These "colossal cast-iron rings," as The New York Times describes them, were "the last visible remnant of the Hudson & Manhattan Railroad" that once crossed through the World Trade Center site. In an excavatory act that would seem to combine the best conceptual aspects of Rachel W…(more)
- Scarecrow Hacking at the Border
- Activists in Tucson, Arizona have been placing life-sized cutouts of Maricopa County’s insidiously regressive anti-immigrant law enforcement officials around town on street corners and at intersections, including one of the chief of armed despicability himself, America’s self-described “toughest sheriff” Joe Arpaio, and another of a Border Patrol agent, presumed to depict Nicholas Corbett, who just recently faced a hung trial for the second time after being charged with the murder of Me…(more)
- Redefining Walls
- [Anywhere near El Paso? If so, coming up a little art exhibit at the UTEP Union Gallery called Redefining Walls, featuring a few local artists seeking to “interpret the U.S./Mexico relationship either by responding to the physical presence of walls or by portraying imagery that conveys human immigration and movement.” Might be worth checking out. Nov. 20 – Jan. 5, 2008/09. Related.]…(more)
- When Voting Blocs Collide…
- [Image: “American soldiers walked past a blast wall at Al Awad on the outskirts of Taji, Iraq, where the word VOTE has been spray painted, the day before the presidential election in the United States.” Photo: Joao Silva for The New York Times.]…(more)
- A Subtopian Rainbow Under Your Feet
- [Image: City draws the line against feds, The Brooklyn Paper, 2008.]A relatively innocuous borderline has been literally drawn smack dab in the middle of downtown Brooklyn, we are told, absurdly enough, a “de-militarized “zone” only about one foot wide” to be exact.Apparently there is a little turf war going on between the city’s construction workers and the federal employees at the site of the new federal courthouse, where both contingencies are vying for use (and perhaps control) of…(more)
- Great Walls of Fire
- [Image: Neighborhood Watch, Detroit. Photo by Camilo José Vergara, NYT.]Camilo José Vergara, author of American Ruins, spotted these signs and many others like them popping up all over Detroit’s derelict buildings just before this weekend, and posted them in The New York Times. “Starting in the early 1990s,” he writes, “thousands of these eyes were placed throughout the city in hopes of deterring the arsonists who came out on Devil’s Night, the night before Halloween.” A kind of…(more)
- The Millipedic Limbs of Military Spending
- On nights you’re up late in bed, sleepless with incurable headache, just beat down and wondering where the hell exactly all your hard earned income tax dollars have gone, interminably curious and confused about how they’re actually being spent; and, perhaps, more importantly, how they will go on being spent this next year, and the years to follow – well, you might be able to rest a little easier, now, I don’t know. Probably not, actually. In any case, you might at least get a more clea…(more)
- Peripheral Milit_Urb 26
- BACK TO AFGHANISTAN…Months ago, Archis released an issue with a fascinating insert on Kabul based on one of their recent RSVP events that took a few lucky people there to investigate the security and public space dimensions of the capital city’s urban fabric. Apologetically, I failed to mention this ages ago, but alas point you there now in case you haven’t seen it already. The section was beautifully designed, mimicking a kind of Afghan daily gazette with op-ed-like commentary and pseudo…(more)
- Of Declarations and the Immigrant Imaginary
- Real quick, here's some bits and pieces on a few exhibitions I have already missed, or that I might still miss, or that are just in places between missed and missing; and, that if I could I would catch up to, or go back and visit. And it goes without saying, that I am sure I even missed a few others, too. A Declaration of Immigration at the National Museum of Mexico Art in Chicago. Declaration of ImmigrationHuman progress having been comprised by the lack of humanity and respect towards immigr…(more)
- From a Semi to a Fully Automatic Border
- [Image: Security, surveillance and 'Super Sangars', MOD Defence News, 2008.]So, what do you get when the British Army messes around with a few ISO shipping containers? Well, stack three, outfit the top one with bulletproof windows, then, rig a couple of daylight and thermal imaging cameras and a remotely controlled weapon station (RWS) that allows for some heavy dude machine guns to be fired by joystick from the inside, fence it off, and you got yourself one of these – the ‘Super Sangar…(more)
- A Scarecrow Empire
- [Image: Via Brick House.]Central to the effectiveness of any form of security is its ability to project power and to exponentialize its apparent sphere of influence beyond the verifiable boundaries of its control; to dupe people, essentially. Territory – as a material of power – succeeds in part not only because it marks its authority with definite radius but also its ability to transcend that same demarcation through a more fluid and illusory expansion of the imagination that defies the s…(more)
- MEGAblog in ARCHITECT Magazine
- The January 2007 issue of Architect Magazine features MEGAblog."There’s nothing radical about students with blogs, and websites showcasing the projects of architecture studios are easy to find. But MEGAblog is something different: A site designed and run by students as a course requirement, it is a portal to the inner work- ings of one studio’s semester, from initial meeting to final review. It’s also, says Ronald Rael, whose students created MEGAblog, a step toward a new way of teaching a…(more)
- Seismic City
- EARTHQUAKE RISKEarthquakes are known to occur mostly along fault lines, which are the edges of the earth's tectonic plates. These sections, large and small, of the earth's crust shift at approximately the same rate that your fingernails grow in one year. Along the fault lines, earthquakes are bound to occur and very frequently because of their uncontrolable and constant motion. Earthquakes form our mountains and create valleys, even at the bottom of the ocean (of course this process has occur…(more)
- Solar Molecules
- PRELIMINARY ANALYSISIn 40 minutes of daylight the sun releases upon the earth the amount of energy that is consumed by the entire population of the planet in one year. Each day more solar energy falls to the Earth than the total amount of energy the planet's 6 billion inhabitants would consume in 27 years. Currently, we harness about 1% of this energy. Photovoltaic cells are currently being used in large groups known as arrays to gather this energy and convert it into usable electricity.A two-d…(more)
- proposal: Tsunami (resistant) Architecture
- It was late on the morning of April 1, 1946, and on the island of Hawaii, children from the school at Laupahoehoe Point were the first to see the Pacific Ocean disappear. They watched, awestruck, as 500 feet of sand and coral emerged glistening into the sunshine. A few of the braver ones ventured out onto the exposed reef. Suddenly the water came roaring back, sweeping away the children along with the buildings near the shore and the entire waterfront of nearby Hilo. For nine hours, a teacher, 2…(more)
- Mega Energy Archipelago
- The Mega Energy Archipelago is the fusion of two very different energy sources-- oil and wind. This concept springs from the unique conditions affecting offshore oil rigs in areas prone to frequent tropical cyclones. The archipelago strives to both resist and respond to hurricane forces. It resists the wind forces of the storm by using an aerodynamic shape to deflect direct winds, protecting the structure itself and the oil rig inside. It responds to storm conditions by utilizing the high force …(more)
- Segue City One
- Segue City One is a proposal for the first mega construction of a new global network of trade and transportation. The city discussed here is a result of research done earlier this semster in Mega Blog posts and the Mapimation project; links to these studies will follow. The Mapimation project was the precursor to Segue City One; Mapimation began as an exploration of global flight paths and then turned into a study of the largest transportation networks covering the globe. The final map ov…(more)
- MegaDams: Fighting Against Global Warming
- GLOBAL WARMINGOver the last 100 years, sea level has risen 10 to 25 cm and will continue to rise 1 meter each century. A serious problem facing global regions around the world, global warming is slowly deteriorating our planet, warming the seas, and causing dangerous increases in the overall sea level. Several regions are already experiencing the dangerous effects. Carbon dioxide pollution is one of the most significant causes leading to an increase in air temperature. A datascape was construc…(more)
- Proposal: the McCattle Island.
- The McDonald's franchise has infiltrated the world at a phenomenal rate, creating complex relationships as a multinational corporation. These complex relationships bring global consequences, understood best through cultural, social, economic, and political lenses. Mappings revealing the influence of McDonald's as a global force within ideas such as purchasing power and refugee origin can be found here.One of the major global consequences formed through the McDonald's franchise, and other multina…(more)
- TIME/TUBE WORLD
- TIME/TUBE WORLD is a hybrid of a physical proposal and a theoretical study. The project consists of a physical proposal and a mapping of this proposal in a virtual world.IMG. 1.1As seen on MEGABLOG, studies of a trans-global highway and pipelines began to lead the project towards a speculative global transportation network.IMG. 1.2In the mapping phase of this studio, the idea of world travel was developed through a series of travel time mappings. A new world was drawn with location based on tim…(more)
- the internet archipelago
- the internet is one of the most powerful global and globalizing forces whose existence has revolutionized the way in which many people live and many corporations do business. in fact, its existence has fostered the creation of vast stores of data, not unlike this blog, and has made possible the experiment that is arch451 beyond mega. despite all its acclaim, the internet is still largely confined to developed countries and will forever be bound by infrastructure and language. (see also a brie…(more)
- Architecture Research Office
- ARO was established in 1993 by Stephen Cassell and Adam Yarinsky. Their work has become a model for research-driven architectural practice, as each project evolves out of a deep engagement with specific physical, social, and economic conditions. ARO's work has been shown at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and was the subject of a critical monograph published by Princeton Architectural Press in 2003.…(more)
- Urban Scan
- Lot/Ek (pronounced "low tech") a New York City-based design collaboration headed by Ada Tolla and Giuseppe Lignano juxtaposes artifice, salvage, and habitable space into formal constructs. These constructs always include the appropriation of common ready-made objects that are reinvigorated with new life through spatial formulations and transformations of use. Projects vary in size and type, from the recombination of two TV sets into a freestanding lamp to the splitting and positioning of an oil …(more)
- Brigitte Shim
- Shim's innovative Toronto-based firm integrates furniture, architecture, and landscape design. The firm's focus on the intersections between buildings and sites results in a thoughtful questioning of the fundamental relationships between object and ground, building and landscape, people and nature. An AIA SF/SFMOMA Public lecture.…(more)
- Meeting Humanity's Greatest Challenge
- "How do we dramatically cut down on green-house gas emissions, lessen our dependence on fossil fuels and become more energy-efficient without arguably wrecking the U.S. economy?
So far, no one's come up with a viable answer, largely because we keep looking at global warming from the same angle. The result is tunnel vision - we keep missing the forest for the trees with remedies like cleaner cars, fewer smoke stacks, more renewable energy sources. Each is necessary, but solves only part
of the p…(more)
- Michael Rock
- Founded in 1994 by Michael Rock, Susan Sellers, and Georgianna Stout, the design studio 2x4 has developed a reputation for innovative work that focuses on culture and spans print, motion graphics, the Web, and environmental design. Join Rock for a discussion of 2x4's unique methodology and innovative approach to graphic design. An AIA SF/SFMOMA Public lecture.…(more)
- Inventioneering Architecture - Dirk Hebel and Jorg Stollmann
- The research of Dirk Hebel and Jorg Stollmann involves applying the details of small-scale objects to the design of larger structures.
Their lecture will showcase how they applied the structure of the sprinkler head to the design of the Diller & Scofidio Blur Building at the base of Lake Neuchatel in Yverdon-les-Bains, Switzerland, for which Hebel served as project architect. The building was described as "an inhabitable cloud whirling above a lake" by Architecture Magazine.
Dirk Hebel and Jor…(more)
- Inventioneering Architecture - Valerio Olgiati
- Valerio Olgiati is Professor of Architecture at the Academy of Architecture of the Universita della Svizzera Italiana (USI), Mendrisio. His research addresses new methods of designing large buildings in terms of structure and organization. His lecture will include studio work with students.…(more)
- Inventioneering Architecture - Ines Lamuniere and Patrick Devanthery
- Patrick Devanthery and Ines Lamuniere were born in Sion and Geneva in 1954. Partnership DEVANTHERY & LAMUNIERE, Architects in Geneva and Lausanne in 1983. Since 1989 they are part of the editorial committee of FACE architectural journal in Geneva, where they pursue their interest in history and criticism of modern and contemporary architecture. Both have taught at the Graduate School of Design of Harvard (1996, 1999) and at ETH Zurich (1991 to 1993, 1994). Since 1993 Ines Lamuniere is Professor …(more)
- Inventioneering Architecture - Andrea Deplazes
- Andrea Deplazes' research addresses a broad spectrum of architectural design activities, including public and institutional projects, urban design, housing, and industrial buildings, with special focus on wood construction.
His lecture, "Constructing Architecture. Materials, Processes and Structures," will showcase studio work with students, in particular sustainable structures in the Swiss Alps.
Deplazes is Professor of Architecture, Construction, and Design at the Swiss Federal Institute of …(more)
- So What Would Nature Do?
- Non-human living systems provide the only technology other than our own to which we have access. While close copying of nature has a poor history and only limited prospects, much can be learned from this alternative reality. In particular, looking at natural design can free us from the strait-jacket of our own tradition. Here we will consider several situations in which evolution's designs might provide useful guidance for our own technology, situations ranging from fairly specific devices to qu…(more)
- Yesterday Today's archidose #268
- Richard Desmond Children's Eye Centre , originally uploaded by photourbanism. Richard Desmond Children's Eye Centre at Moorfields Eye Hospital in Islington, London, England by Penoyre & Prasad LLP, 2007.To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just::: Join and add photos to the archidose pool, and/or:: Tag your photos archidose…(more)
- 3 days Literary Dose #36
- [Geodesic dome over Midtown Manhattan | image source]"I find Bucky [Fuller] more and more inspirational, especially for the freedom of his research. Two projects done with Shoji Sadao in 1960 make the point. The first of these is the much-ridiculed dome over Midtown Manhattan, criticized either as “impractical” (how to buff the glass, how to get the traffic through) or as simply a megalomaniacal expression of an environment overly controlled [as I did]. Such criticisms miss the project’s s…(more)
- Monday, Monday
- My weekly page update:China Academy of Art Xiangshan Campus in Hangzhou, China by Amateur Architecture Studio.This week's book review is Positions: Portrait of a New Generation of Chinese Architects, edited by Frédéric Edelmann & Françoise Ged, and Olympic Architecture: Beijing 2008, by the Beijing Institute of Architectural Design.Some unrelated links for your enjoyment: neuehausNews for designers with both e-mail and rss subscriptions. (added to sidebar under blogs::aggregate)on site"archi…(more)
- AE#10: Porous Masonry Walls
- While masonry is often perceived as impenetrable, a suitable material for keeping out wind and rain, it is actually by nature porous, to a greater or lesser degree depending on the specific material and its treatment. Cavity walls, for example, are designed to shed any water that may weep its way through the outer brick and mortar facade. Brick is seen as a veneer that keeps out most air and water, but it is not the sole means of doing such.Some architects exploit this inherent porosity of mason…(more)
- Today's archidose #268
- The Sequence by Arne Quinze, originally uploaded by michaeluyttersp. The Sequence in Brussels, Belgium by Arne Quinze, 2008. Check out michaeluyttersp's set for a few more images of the installation.To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just::: Join and add photos to the archidose pool, and/or:: Tag your photos archidose…(more)
- Today's archidose #267
- ORDOS 13:100, originally uploaded by archidose. The interior spread from an exhibition pamphlet for the Architectural League's 13:100 | Thirteen New York Architects Design for Ordos (Mongolia) exhibition now on display. Check the original size to read the key to the 13 projects by New York-based architects. See my previous post on ORDOS 100 for more information on the project.To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just::: Join and add photos to the archidose pool, and/or:: Tag …(more)
- Firm Faces #9
- Portugese firm Kaputt!'s web page is basically a splash page, but it's quite an interesting one. A slideshow of hands on a scanbed next to model photos gives us the firm's contact information and "cast of characters." The images associate the hand of the architect with the architectural creation, an immediate relationship that seems often splintered these days. The names take this relationship one step further, by marking the skin with that which can only be handwritten, not typed and printed on…(more)
- Today's archidose #266
- Saxion 7, originally uploaded by Marc ZZZ. Saxion Hogeschool Enschede in Enschede, The Netherlands by IAA Architecten, 2001.To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just::: Join and add photos to the archidose pool, and/or:: Tag your photos archidose…(more)
- Monday, Monday
- My weekly page update:Alila Cha-Am in Petchaburi, Thailand by Duangrit Bunnang Architect Limited.This week's book review is Spaced Out: Crash Pads, Hippie Communes, Infinity Machines, and Other Radical Environments of the Psychedelic Sixties, by Alastair Gordon.Some unrelated links for your enjoyment: Checking the Pulse of the Architecture IndustryA survey at Archinect that asks, "What will the future hold for an industry that relies on a relatively stable economy, and how will our industry supp…(more)
- AE#9: Undulating Brick Walls
- A brick is a modular masonry unit, something that wouldn't appear to "want to be" composed into undulating surfaces. Of course this doesn't stop architects from trying, from using limitations as inspiration and opportunities for doing something new. The idea of creating curves from orthogonal materials is not new. Modern examples of undulating brick walls include such mid-century designs as Eero Saarinen's 1955 MIT Chapel, where fairly regular ins-and-outs create an embracing space for worship.[…(more)
- Super Colossal is Alive.
- The site for Super Colossal is now live. There are a few dead links in there, but it is mostly complete. So head on over and have a look around! Gravestmor will stay up for about a month and then I will likely redirect traffic over to SC.
If you are a subscriber, the new RSS feed may be found here.
…(more)
- Urban Islands 2007
- The Urban Islands studio is happening again SOON. Last year in the studio, run through Sydney University, students worked on projects that explored the industrial ruins of the site, the topography of the already tunnelled, chiselled and warped landscape, and constructed a stunning installation in the turbine hall.
Guest tutors this year are:
Morphogenesis, Supasudaca, and Sumo. (All of whom will be speaking at the next Pecha Kucha as well….)
Kickstarting the event will be a syposium at …(more)
- Super Colossal
- After five years of working at BVN, I am moving into private practice and starting up a new office - Super Colossal. A studio that will be centred on architecture, landscape, infrastructure and most importantly, a reckless urban optimism.
Gravestmor has been a lot of fun and for the time being it will stay up and running. Slowly, over the next few months however, it will meld into the Super Colossal site which will become a kind of Practice-Portfolio-Blog-Machine-Thing.
…(more)
- Pecha Kucha Sydney Volume 04
- It is that time again. Again.
Pecha Kucha Volume 04 will be held next Thursday the 31st of May at the Commercial Travellers Association. Get there early to get a good spot last time the place filled up rather quickly….
New to Pecha Kucha? Look here and here.
See you there!
…(more)
- UME
- UME - one of the few Australian architecture journals of any real merit - has made its entire catalogue available for download as pdfs.
“UME is not a journal of record and is not engaged in marketing the latest architectural trends. (…) UME is about the drawings architects make to build their designs. Generally the emphasis is on showing the working drawings. Photographs of the buildings are intentionally reproduced not in colour but in black and white (often as duotones) in order…(more)
- Video of the Museum Plaza project in Louisville by OMA REX.
- Video of the Museum Plaza project in Louisville by OMA REX.
Reader, Dave Brown says it best:
“I saw this a few weeks ago and thought it was one of the coolest all time animation presentations ever…
I mean, you’re taken on an emotional roller coaster…at first your like…jeez, who do these guys think they are, showing off their office like that…so pompous…and then you’re like…wtf…where did those bars come from…and then all o…(more)
- The Nagakin Capsule Building in Tokyo looks set to be demolished.
- The Nagakin Capsule Building in Tokyo looks set to be demolished. Apparently Kurokawa submitted a proposal which was dismissed whereby the existing capsules would be removed and updated capsules - presumably sans reel-to-reel tape decks - reattached to the core. The proposal was dismissed in favour of knocking the whole thing down and starting again in order to add 60% more floor space. Previous Capsule madness on g-mor.
…(more)
- Former Prime Minister Paul Keating
- Former Prime Minister Paul Keating is speaking about the development at East Darling Harbour on 23 May 2007 at the next Design Quarter event at the Powerhouse Museum.
“The Honourable Paul Keating was on the jury that selected the winning design for the redevelopment of East Darling Harbour. This lecture will give his unique perspective on the selection process, the outcome, and the impact that the redevelopment of this historic foreshore precinct will have on our cityscape.”
…(more)
- Goal Sculptures at Strange Harvest
- Goal Sculptures at Strange Harvest. Goal posts in deserted parks caught unawares while they play art.
This one is rather nice. As is this. [Link]
…(more)
- The roundest sphere ever made
- The roundest sphere ever made. A ball of fused graphite forming a part of NASA’s Gravity Probe B, so smooth “that were it blown up to the size of Earth, the tallest mountain would be only eight feet high.”
[Link]
…(more)
- Lecture Zaera Polo
-
Alejandro Zaera Polo presents the theory he unfolds in this Volume issue at the Berlage Institute in Rotterdam on November 25.
Towards a General Theory of the Building Envelope – 19:00 – 25/11/2008
More information and reservations can be made at the Berlage Institute.
…(more)
- Volume #17
-
At the close of this era of expansion and surplus Volume speculates on one of the period’s emblematic inventions: Content Management, or the collecting, organizing and sharing of digital information. Our retrospective appraisal of recent developments in the managing of information offers inside into the ability of Content Management to serve the current realities of digital abundance and material shortage, and to protect both vast and extremely limited quantities.
…(more)
- Prishtina is Everywhere
-
(view full-size slide show)
After NATO-led KFOR troops ended civil war in Kosovo (1999), an instant building boom changed the capital Prishtina dramatically. Within a few years its population doubled, partly as a consequence of an influx of returning refugees. Local investors profited, creating quick returns on ‘hit and run’ projects. On the fringes of the city ‘maverick urbanism’ had a different face: family clans invested family capital in large houses, built on farmla…(more)
- FROM THE ARCHIVE: Disrupted Harmony
- By Ole Bouman
This month Archis trains its spotlights on ecology. Whatever that might mean. Ecology in some or other guise is of course a thematic presence in practically all the articles. They forward various ideas about the link between architecture and environmental consciousness. The potentials for a more nature-aware architecture are explored from a variety of different angles. And all the authors are interested in the balance between the reserves of worldly riches and their social consumpt…(more)
- Sustainability Reloaded
-
Together Volume and Abitare launched a blog: Sustainability Reloaded. This blog functions as a platform for thinking out loud on the evasive concept of ’sustainability’. The exchange of information on the blog functions as runway kickstarted by Volume and Abitare at the Venice Biennale 2008. Each magazine draws from its own experience and visions in an attempt to reassess what is at stake.
…(more)
- Archiphoenix
- [One of the rendering of the Architecture Faculty of Delft by Van den Broek & Bakema before it got constructed in the early 70s]
Archis collaborates with NAI at the Biennale di Venezia in generating concepts and staging a debate around the question of how the next generation of architects should engage architecture. In other words drafting a curriculum of the architecture school of the future!
ARCHIPHOENIX - Faculties for Architecture turns the Dutch Pavilion, at this year Architecture Bienn…(more)
- Packaging Utopian Sustainability
- author: Lewis, Matt
Are carbon neutral cities, Eco-cities and sus tain able cities discursive cover ups for synthetic design in the desert of Abu Dhabi or something stemming from an honest utopian desire? Questioning Foster’s scheme for Masdar, Matt Lewis reaches revealing conclusions on the marketing of design in the Gulf.
In a world in which human egos dominate, where more is better, bigger and taller are the only aspirations. Places like Dubai are an architect’s playground. Here w…(more)
- Seeing Like a Society Interview with James C. Scott
- Scott is one of the most profound critics of high-modernist human development planning. He believes that the process of state-building, leading to what he calls the legibility and standardization of society, fosters control and domination rather than enlightenment and freedom. Scott started his academic career studying small village communities in the forests of Malaysia. When he left the rain forest he took with him a number of vital observations on how nation states organize their society. His…(more)
- Slabs and Slums
- IMAGE REPORT by Steven Wassenaar
Recent bidonvilles (slums) and decaying dalles (large urban centers built on slabs), two extreme urban forms in Greater Paris – harsh reality and a bygone utopia – are both regularly the theatre of police violence. It is a situation full of contradictions: the dalle as an architectural expression of the ultimate capacity to design a lifestyle, the total city for model families; the slum as a fortuitous miscellany with which the poor demand a place, make thei…(more)
- Planning Paradise
- ’A precondition for starting a significant architectural intervention is to define a project in consultation with those parties involved in its implementation (the government, the local municipality, private investors, developers, construction companies, planners, designers and architects).’ This preamble to a recent international conference on ‘architectural interventions and transformations’ is typical for an ‘all-inclusive’ way of thinking about processes…(more)
- Nobel Textiles
-
Five Nobel-winning scientists have been paired with five textile designers as part of a two-year project between Central Saint Martins College and the Medical Research Council, and the result is Nobel Textiles: a brilliant week of exhibitions and events at the ICA and in St James’s Park, London. Theres an introduction film to the project here
Five greenhouses in St James’s Park will contain self-folding fabrics, urban food production, garden furniture and more, with further work in …(more)
- “Untitled (UFO)” - Peter Coffin + Cinimod Studio
-
“Untitled (UFO)” is an art project conceived by established New York artist Peter Coffin and created in collaboration with London-based Cinimod Studio. Coffin had for a while been wanting to create a public UFO flight performance, but it was not until he met Cinimod that he had the confidence to proceed with making his vision a reality. After an intense period of structural and electrical design, and fabrication, the UFO made its inaugural public appearance on 4th July 2008 as a part of th…(more)
- Back To Version 1
- Sometimes things are best left as they are so I’ve gone back to the original look for the site. Seems like everyone is pimping up their blogs and I’m not much of a web designer so I’m making as bad a job of it as most of the others are. Long Live IA.O v1…(more)
- Energy Generating Dance Floor
-
Britain’s first eco-nightclub is to open this summer qith plans to install an energy-generating dancefloor, which would harness power from the pounding of clubbers’ feet and convert it into electricity.
Although entry to the club costs £10, those customers who can prove they travelled there by foot, bicycle or public transport will be allowed in free. Mr Charalambous, the head of a new climate change organisation called Club4Climate, said he hoped to use clubbing to inspire young …(more)
- DigiWall
-
DigiWall from the Interactive Institute looks like a traditional climbing-wall but it’s actually a computer game you climb upon. Every climbing-hold is equipped with a sensor that registers hands and feet. In that way DigiWall can keep track on where on the wall the climber or climbers are. This opens up for a large number of games, exercises and competitions of various kinds. DigiWall is also a musical instrument. The climbing-holds acts as keys on a keyboard and music is played according to…(more)
- VIDA
-
Here are a number videos of installations and sculptures on the theme of artificial life which won awards at VIDA last year. Via wmmna
Mission eternity sarcophagus
Etoy.corporation launched the Mission Eternity Project in 2005, foregrounding on the one hand respect for the human longing to survive in some way after death, and on the other a sense of irony about dated sci-fi fantasies we contrive to satisfy that desire. The Sarcophagus is one materialization of this project. It is a mobile sepu…(more)
- openFrameworks
-
I’ve been playing with openFrameworks (currently in prerelease) for the past couple of days for a project I currently doing. I have to say that it is extremely powerful and a great introduction to C++ programming. “OpenFrameWorks, is a new open source, cross platform, c++ library, which was designed by Zachary Lieberman (US) and Theo Watson (UK) to make programming in c++ for students accessible and easy. In it, the developers wrap several different libraries like opengl for graphics, …(more)
- Joseph Weizenbaum - AI & Humanity
-
Joseph Weizenbaum died at the ripe old age of 85 last month (NYTime Obituary). Weizenbaum was best known for ELIZA, a program designed in 1966 to establish natural language conversation with a computer by emulating a Rogerian therapist (Online Version of ELIZA). Weizenbaum was the first to note that the ELIZA conversations weren’t an example of computer “thinking,” but really consisted of some clever programming techniques. His argument that computers were merely tools to assi…(more)
- Jellytecture
-
Here’s another competition that has come out of the Interactive Architecture Workshop at the Bartlett by current student Harry Parr. You’ve got one month to get your jelly mould designs in for the Architectural Jelly Competition. Any submitted media may be auctioned for Architects for Aid. I’ve seen these moulds up close and they look fantastic so come on, have a go.
“Jelly had its heyday in the late 19 Century: exquisite copper moulds were made that transformed the jell…(more)
- INTERArChTIVE Commission Winner
-
Mette Ramsgard Thomsen previous installation ‘Vivisection’
I’m pleased to announce after a lot of very high quality proposals, the INTERArChTIVE commission has been given to Mette Ramsgard Thomsen and Karin Bech, to develop their interactive installation ‘Slow Furl’ for the Architecture 08 festival in June at Lighthouse in Brighton. The proposal is to make a room size textile installation that acts and reacts on its inhabitation. The installation exists as a soft a…(more)
This page has been viewed 3660 times
Page rendered in 0.7218 seconds
Total users: 0
The most visitors ever was 290 on 04/27/2007 01:56 am
Architecture