Monthly Archive for July, 2011

Koolhaas, Delirious in Beijing

Published on July 29, 2011 in News and Newsletter. 0 Comments

From Nicolai Ouroussoff at The New York Times…

Aside from the new World Trade Center, it’s hard to think of a more contentious architectural project in the last few years than the CCTV building, the headquarters of China Central Television here.

After Rem Koolhaas, the project’s architect — along with his former Beijing partner, Ole Scheeren — unveiled the design in 2003 he was pilloried by Western journalists for glorifying a propaganda organ of the Chinese government. Several years later a fire at the site nearly burned down a neighboring building, also designed by Mr. Koolhaas, landing the director of the project and 19 others in prison for negligence and significantly delaying construction.

And then there’s something about the building’s appearance that seems to unsettle people. Just when things got back on track after the fire, a Chinese critic published an article saying that the building’s contorted form, which frames an enormous void at its center, was modeled on a pornographic image of a naked woman on her hands and knees. The piece ignited a storm of negative press, forcing Mr. Koolhaas to issue a denial. More…

Tour Végétale de Nantes by Edouard François

Published on July 28, 2011 in News and Newsletter. 0 Comments

From Dezeen…

This operation situated in the future eco-neighborhoods, Prairie-au-Duc, in Nantes, is unique in particular because of its height. Its main challenge is to (re) create the desire to live in tall buildings, in a remarkable setting in the heart of the town.

This mixed project consists of a base of shops and parking, on which is placed in a black rubber cube of offices and a housing tower of 17 storey (60m).

The tower consists of a main body ringed by elliptic balconies. The balconies vary from floor to floor to form a giant organic silhouette.

The tower is the support for a collection of chasmophites plants coming from the collections of the botanical gardens of Nantes. These plants have been collected by scientists from the whole world and frozen. The building will show the plant collection of the city. More…

Open Source Urbanism

Published on July 27, 2011 in News and Newsletter. 0 Comments

An op-ed from Saskia Sassen at Domus, image taken from The Pop-Up City…

The author proposes that urbanizing technology can can allow people to better “talk back” to cities and implement user-driven change

Where change is perceptible, rapid change makes change itself even more visible. Velocity becomes a concrete condition, not just a measure of speed. Rapid change in cities has highly legible moments—the material reality of buildings, transport systems, re-placements of modest shops with luxury shops and of modes middle-classes with the rich professional class, a bike-path where there was none—and they can be both good and not so good. Further, when rapid transformation happens simultaneously in several cities with at least some comparable conditions, it also makes visible how diverse the spatial outcomes can be even when the underlying dynamics might be quite similar.

All of this brings to the fore the differing degrees of openness of cities. I prefer thinking of this as the incompleteness of cities, which means that they can constantly be remade, for better or for worse. It is this incompleteness that has allowed some of the world’s great old cities to outlast kingdoms, empires, nation-states and powerful firms. More…

Stirling Prize shortlist 2011

Published on July 25, 2011 in News and Newsletter. 0 Comments

From Dezeen…

The beautifully simple Velodrome in London’s Olympic Park, the carefully crafted remodelling of the Royal Shakespeare and Swan Theatres in Stratford upon Avon, a highly imaginative London school on a tight urban site, an innovative and vibrant cultural centre in Derry, the transformation of an unremarkable 1980s office building in London into an elegant new office and retail space, and the breathtaking extension of a significant museum in Germany, form the shortlist for the prestigious £20,000 RIBA Stirling Prize.

Now in its sixteenth year, the RIBA Stirling Prize in association with The Architects’ Journal and Benchmark is awarded to the architects of the best new European building ‘built or designed in Britain’.

The winner will be announced on Saturday 1 October at Magna Science Adventure Centre in Rotherham and will be broadcast on a special edition of BBC TWO’s The Culture Show on Sunday 2 October, presented by Kevin McCloud. More…

The Constructed Environment Journal, Volume 1, Number 2 published

Published on July 18, 2011 in Journal and Newsletter. 0 Comments

constructed_front The second issue of The International Journal of the Constructed Environment has now been published.

Volume 1, Number 2 contains:

Understanding the Built Environment: Experience and Interpretation as Weaving between the Object and the Work by Levent Kara.
Timber: Materialization and Abstraction by Sandra Costa Santos.
Between Puffed Wheat and a Tornado: Rescuing Memory, Place and Meaning by Dan Wollmering.
Urban Design Principles for Low Cost Housing on a Micro-level of Planning: The Case of Turflaagte by Maléne Campbell and Zouna Meades.
Urban Design Trajectories: Roles and Skills of Design in the Communication of the City as Cultural Asset by Rossana Gaddi.
Looking Obliquely: De-encoding Gallery Architecture by Ellen Hartwell Alderman.
New Dimensions and Spatial Transformations in Concrete and Fabric Form: Concrete Casting in Fabric Form by Regin Schwaen.

Continue reading ‘The Constructed Environment Journal, Volume 1, Number 2 published’

Modernist Icon Joins UNESCO Heritage List

Published on July 5, 2011 in News and Newsletter. 0 Comments

From Spiegel Online

Gropius went on to found Germany’s internationally renowned Bauhaus design school in 1919. His design for the Fagus Factory was created in collaboration with Adolf Meyer, an architect who subsequently taught at the Bauhaus.

The functionalist design of the Fagus Factory, which is located in the town of Alfeld in the northwestern German state of Lower Saxony, helped propel the career of the legendary architect Walter Gropius. He designed the building when he was just 27 years old, and it was his first building to be built, with construction starting in 1911.

Describing it as “a landmark in the development of modern architecture in Europe and North America,” UNESCO incorporated the factory, which manufactures shoe lasts, into the elite international heritage list.

Its sleek design and airy glass façade made Walter Gropius’ Fagus Factory influential, both in its day — and also now, a century later. On Saturday, the United Nations’ cultural organisation UNESCO announced it would add the factory to its prestigious list of World Heritage Sites.

To Read More…