Bartlett Year 1 Architecture

2012-02-13T00:05:00.001Z

Fuehlometer - Lindau, Germany

2012-02-12T23:34:00.000Z

From here on DESIGNBOOM and here on FELD

The “Fühlometer” (Feelometer) or “Public Face” is a reactive art installation which measures the average mood of the people in a city or a specific place, publicly representing this mood in the form of a monumental smiley.

Measuring 8 meters (26.25 feet) tall, the face is composed of steel and neon tubes, installed atop a lighthouse in lindau, germany.
a digital camera along the lake captures the faces of passersby, which are then analyzed by a computer program
and classified as either happy, sad, or indifferent. the cumulative results determine the expression of the sculpture,
whose mouth and eyes shift accordingly via a system of automated motors.

The system was developed as a joint project by the artists Julius von Bismarck, Benjamin Maus from FELD and Richard Wilhelmer.

cafe and people sketches - from URBAN SKETCHERS

2012-02-12T11:29:00.000Z

from here thank you!

Collage of sketches done primarily in December 2011. Individual sketches can be seen on my flickr.

Lost knowledge: ropes and knots

2012-02-12T05:59:00.002Z

from here on LOWTECHMAGAZINE thank you!

Ropes and knots are among the most  ancient and useful technologies ever developed by man, predating the  wheel, the axe and probably also the use of fire. Today, they are fast  on their way to become an obsolete technology.

The  earliest fossilized  fragments of ropes and knots date back 15,000 to  17,000 years, which makes the direct evidence of this technology much  older  than that of the axe (6000 BC) or the wheel (5000 BC). However,  based on indirect evidence (perforated objects, wear marks on artefacts,  bone needles,  representations in art, etcetera), archaeologists  believe that the use of ropes and knots dates between 250,000 and  2,500,000 years old. Speculatively, this  might even predate the use of  fire (400,000 BC) and coincide with the  first crude stone tools. It is  interesting to note that modern apes have some very elementary skills at  knotting and ropework, which suggests that the beginning of knot tying  may well have preceded the evolution of the genus Homo. (source).

Few  realize the importance that knots and cords have played in human  history. It is remarkable that they are not even mentioned in otherwise  great books on the history of technology. Yet, it is hard to find any  important technology developed over the last 250,000 years that did not,  in some way, make use of ropes and knots. Starting in prehistoric  times, they were used for hunting, pulling, fastening, attaching,  carrying, lifting and climbing. 

Some  early examples of their applications are fishing nets, hunting traps,  tying stones to  sticks to make spears and harpoons, the construction of  bows, building shelters, making baskets, fastening clothes, tying  animals (and people),  harnessing horses and oxen to chariots, and  constructing rafts. Cordage of some kind, and the knots needed to make   it work, have played a crucial role in the earliest technological  development of man.

Hauling and lifting 

With the rise of civilization, the ingenuity in the application of ropes and  knots was expanded, used for the hauling  of canal boats,  the dragging of heavy stones along ramps, and the erection of large  obelisks (first done by the ancient Egyptians), the development of cranes,  lifting devices and catapults  (kicked off by the Greeks and the Romans), the construction of enormous  rope bridges and rope suspension bridges (which originated in China),  the appearance of sailing vessels,  and more. 

The  construction of the noose  to hang people was another application of  ropes that was invented by "civilized" people, as well as the ringing of  church and monastery  bells. Although other materials were involved,  notably stone and wood, none of  these technologies could have worked  without ropes and knots. Apart from all these  practical uses, ropes and  knots also became an important decorative element, especially but not  limited to Chinese and Celtic cultures. 

Talking knots

Ropes  and knots were also used as record keeping devices, best known  in the  form of the Peruvian "khipu" or "quipu". The Inca civilization  (1400 -  1530) made extensive use of them for accounting and census  purposes -  recording the contents of storehouses, the number of  inhabitants,  etcetera (picture credit and more info). 

A  khipu consists of a long cord from which hang thinner ropes,  sometimes  just a couple, sometimes many hundred. These pendant cords are  tied in  a series of small knots. Originally, they were dyed in rich  colors.  Because the Inca's, unlike other civilizations, appear to have  lacked a  written language, one hypothesis is that these bundles of  knotted  strings also contain narrative information and can thus be  regarded as a  form of writing (1 / 2 / 3).   The khipu was probably developed in pre-Inca times, because less   elaborate knotting recording devices already appeared in primitive   societies in China and elsewhere (1  / 2  / 3  / 4).

  The hardware: ropes

In  rope making, four basic steps are identified: preparing the fibre,  spinning the fibres together to form yarns, twisting the yarns in  bunches to form strands, and winding the strands in rope (see the  illustration on the right). 

At  each stage the twisting is performed in the opposite direction from the  previous stage, in order to overcome the natural tendency for each  yarn, strand or rope to unravel. Most ropes consist of three twisted  strands (called a Hawser laid rope). 

It  is likely that the earliest "ropes" in prehistoric times were naturally  occuring lengths of plant fiber, such as vines, followed by the first  attempts at twisting and braiding these strands together to form the  first proper rope in the modern sense of the word. This must have been a   time-consuming process, more related to weaving plant fibers into mats   and baskets than to later ropemaking methods (more info:  1,  2, 3  and 4). 

For  centuries afterwards, ropemaking  remained a manual process, without  the use of tools. It could be done  alone, or by two people working  together. In the latter case, one person  held the two strands, one of  them in his hand and the other tied to his  big toe, while his companion  standing some distance away twisted them  together (source).  

Another  simple method was used in China when making bamboo ropes. Two  workers  on a high wooden tower corded bamboo strips which had been cut  several  metres long and hung down from the working platform so as not to  become  entangled, see the picture above left (source).   The ancient Egyptians (from 4000 BC on) were the first to develop a   special tool to assist the making of rope, using a hand held spindle (source).  Much later, similar devices appeared in Europe and China (illustration  above, right). 

Ropewalks

International  trade by sailing vessels skyrocketed in late medieval Europe and  naturally, so did the demand for  ropes. Sailing ships  required rope  for anchors and rigging (supporting the masts and managing the sails),  and could easily carry with them 35 kilometres (around 20 miles) of  rope. The arrival of larger sailing  vessels (and the growing importance  of the mining industry) meant there  appeared a need for much longer,  stronger and thicker ropes. 

This  led to the construction of some of the most remarkable industrial  workshops and buildings in history: ropewalk factories. Because the  spinning of the fibres (illustration  above, England, 1770) and the  twisting of the yarns and strands (illustrations below) had to be done  in a straight line, the  length of the rope was set by the length of the  workshop. This resulted in strange looking  narrow buildings which were  typically  350 to 450 metres  (1150 to 1475 feet) long by the 18th and  19th centuries, a time  when navigation and mining kept pushing the  demand for ever longer ropes. One ropewalk factory in Australia at the  end of the 19th century was 760  metres long (2500 feet, source).   

Several  (human-powered) machines were added to make the process more efficient  (illustration below - note that the illustrator made the ropewalk look  much shorter  than it was). At the beginning of the Industrial  Revolution, these were  scaled up and  converted to steam power. In  Europe, the US and Australia, some ropewalks remained in operation until  the middle of the 20th century, after being converted to be powered by   electricity. In some "lesser developed" countries they are still being  used. 

The  ropewalk method - which was also in use in China - is very  simple.  Describing it is a little more difficult. I came across many  lengthy  and sometimes puzzling explanations, but the one I found in the book "Handbook  of Fibre Rope Technology" makes it quite clear (the accompanying illustration comes from the same source): 

  "At one end, there is the jack, which has three hooks that can be  rotated. At the other end, there is a carriage with a single, rotatable  hook. In stage one, three sets of yarns are pulled off bobbins and are  held along the length of the ropewalk."

"In stage 2, an assistant turns the crank handle of the jack so that the  yarns are twisted into strands by the rotation of the three hooks on  the jack. Twist causes the lengths to contract, so that the carriage has  to move along the ropewalk, under the control of the ropemaker."  

"In stage 3, the hook on the carriage rotates in order to twist the  strands into the rope. In the usual mode of operation, the initial  strand twist is made as high as possible without kinking. When the  single hook on the carriage is released, the high torque in the strands  causes the hook to rotate, and this, in turn, cause the three strands to  twist together and form the rope. The ropemaker controls the production  of the rope by continually pushing back its form of formation to give a  tight structure. Meanwhile, the assistant continues to rotate the crank  to make up for the loss of twist in the strands."

Remaining ropewalks

 Most  ropewalks were set up outdoors, sometimes underneath  a wooden shelter.  Some were housed in a brick or wooden building, which dates  back to  the beginnings of the 19th century. 

 The  majority of earlier  communities, irrespective of their size, had their  modest ropewalk.  Coastal towns, due to necessity, had several of them.  For example:  Boston (US) had 14 ropewalks in 1794, Plymouth (UK) had  14 of them in 1816 (source).

Ropewalks  were mostly located outside the city or town, because of  the fire risk  they posed. In wooden structures especially, the  combination of dried  hemp and the open flames of the tarring vats was very risky (tar, made  from pine  trees, was used to make hemp cords more water-resistant).

Nothing  remains of the smaller medieval ropewalks, nor of many later  ropewalks  in open air or in wooden buildings. However, some ropewalks housed in  brick buildings are still intact. The ropewalk  at Chatham Dockyard, UK, constructed in 1790 and the only one which is still producing rope commercially today (see these images)  has an internal length of 346 metres (1,135 ft.). In the US, a 250 foot section of an early 19th century rope walk (the Plymouth  Cordage Company Ropewalk) is preserved at the Mystic Seaport Museum in Connecticut.  

The largest rope walk still standing dates from 1666 and was in  operation until 1867: "La  Corderie Royale"  in Rochefort, France. With an internal length of 374 metres (390 metres  external length), it was the longest brick building of the 17th century  (aerial view of it above, source)   and could produce ropes with a length of up to 246 metres. (Twisting  the strands into rope shortened the length of it, naturally. The final  rope was about two thirds of the length of the yarns used.) 

  The software: knots

 

  By themselves, ropes are essentially useless. They have to be tied to   something (be it an object, another rope or to themselves) and therefore  they need knots  to function. A simple comparison would be that  if ropes are considered the hardware,  knots would be the software.  While knotting technology must have been  very simple in prehistoric  times, it became a highly specialized art over time. 

The sheer number and diversity of knots that was once in use would be  bewildering to the modern city-dweller. About 4,000 different knots exist, ranging  from the very simple to the extremely complex.  Not so long ago, each  profession or trade had adopted the knots best  suited to its requirements, and knotting was part of their daily lives.  Today, only campers, boy-scouts, climbers  and sailors acquire some  knowledge of this once imperative technology.  

There   are two reasons for the demise of knotting. Firstly, many technologies   that were once dependent on ropes and knots have disappeared. These  are  most notably sailing ships, but we have also stopped hauling canal  boats and using pack trains or catapults (we have bombers and diesel  engines now), as well as hundreds of more mundane tools and devices that  once made use of ropes.  

   The demise of  natural fibres  

Secondly,  the hardware has changed. From prehistoric times to midway  the 20th  century, ropes were made from vegetable fibres (and to a much lesser  extent from animal fibres such as sinews and hairs). Egyptian rope was  generally made of papyrus plants or date palm fibre. In Eastern  Asia,  bamboo, grasses, and coconuts were used. 

Hemp,  which use originated in China in the third millennium BC,  became for  many centuries the material of choice for rope manufacturing  in Europe  and, from the 17th century onwards, North America. 

In 19th century Europe and North-America, hemp (and flax) were  largely superseded by imported  tropical fibres:  mainly manila (made from the leaves of the abaca plant), but also coir  (made from the shell of  coconuts), sisal and henequen. Cotton and jute  were also used to make  (weaker and less durable) ropes.

  Beginning in the second half of the nineteenthy century, many ropes   made of natural fibres were superseded by "ropes" made of steel.   Elevators, cranes and suspension bridges, for instance, are now fully  dependent on steel "wire  ropes",  while modern sailing yachts make use of steel wires.  Gradually, wire  ropes also supplanted natural fibre ropes for mining and  mooring  purposes. 

Where  "real" ropes are still used, for example in the fishing  industry, for  water sports equipment, parachutes, hot air balloons (illustration   below) or for mountaineering (including industrial rope access),  they are now almost always made out of synthetic materials, based on  refined oil - a trend  that kicked off in the 1950s. Today, the market  for natural fibre rope has  all but disappeared.

Polymer-based ropes are stronger and lighter than ropes made from natural fibres,  naturally replacing them in no time. Nylon  came out of the laboratory at the end of the 1930s, and today it is the  most frequently utilized material for the production of ropes. Polyester  and Polypropylene   arrived on the market in the 1940s and the 1950s respectively - these   materials are not as strong as nylon but much cheaper than natural  fibre  ropes. 

Today we have - among many others  - Kevlar, Technora,  Twaron,  Vectran,  ZylonUltra  High Molecular Weight Polyethylene  ropes (the latter are 10 to 100 times stronger than steel). Amazon  books  arrive in boxes tied together with adhesive tape, gadgets come in  boxes  held together by plastic strapping. The only natural fibre rope  that I could find in my apartment was the cat-scratching post.   and 

Of  course, contrary to natural fibre ropes, the manufacturing of   synthetic cordage requires expensive, high-tech (and at present   digitalized) machinery. 

Knot-holding  ability 

None  of these new materials is compatible with knots. This speaks for itself  in the case of steel wires, adhesive tape and plastic strappings, but  the same goes for synthetic ropes: most have very poor "knot-holding  ability" - this is why shoelaces are mostly still made of natural  fibres. Knots have thus been replaced by an array  of other fastening  technologies, made out of plastic, steel or aluminium  (illustration  below).  

Moreover,  most natural fibre ropes sold today when compared to those sold one  hundred years ago are of inferior quality, and are more  likely to be  made water-resistant by the use of biocides and chemical preservatives   instead of using tar (source,  pdf).

Interestingly,  natural fibres keep losing terrain to their synthetic alternatives.   Manufacturing a wire rope is somewhat similar to making one from natural  fibre: the individual steel wires are twisted into a strand, and these  strands are again twisted around a core. Until recently, this core was  made out of hemp, or another natural fibre, but these days this is  becoming increasingly rare. Instead, steel or plastic (Polypropylene or  PVC) cores are now commonly used. And if a hemp rope is still used as  the core of a wire rope, it is impregnated with PVC (source).

  Roped, wired,  wireless

Synthetic  fibres and steel might be stronger than hemp rope, but this progress  comes with a price. Synthetic ropes release toxic fumes when they   alight, they are not bio-degradable (which is why they don't rot) and  they cannot be recycled (some of them can in theory, but not nylon,  which is the most used). 

Natural  fibre ropes, on the other hand, were extensively recycled throughout  history, either for making new (lesser quality) ropes or to produce  "oakum", which was driven into the seams of wooden ships to render them  water-tight. 

Both  steel and plastic ropes and wires are much more energy-intensive to   produce than natural fibre ropes, and they are fully dependent on fossil   fuels for their existence (steel could be produced by renewable   energies, but in reality this does not happen). It also means that their  cost is dependent on the price of oil, which is not the case for  locally grown natural fibres. In short, fastening technologies are now  dependent on non-renewable sources, while natural  fibre ropes and knots  are not. This sounds familiar, because it is true  for most of our  modern technologies. Of course, because all our machines are adapted  to  stronger steel and plastic ropes we can't go back to natural fibre   ropes unless we adapt the machinery itself. 

While  ropes have disappeared, our society has become ever more "wired" - the  arrival of electricity and modern communications technologies around the  turn of the twentieth century have brought with them an explosion of  wires or, more correctly termed, cables (because they always consist of  bundles of wires). 

While  I was wandering around my apartment in search of ropes, I had no  trouble finding cables. In just one hundred years, we evolved from a  "roped" society to a "wired" society. And more recently we seem to have  entered the "wireless" age, with mobile phones, internet over the  airwaves and - if we let the engineers have their way - wireless  electricity. Since all these new applications keep pushing fossil fuel  consumption up, it is a safe bet that before the 21st century is over,  society will return to ropes, ropewalks and knots.

© Kris De Decker (edited by Shameez Joubert)

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 Additional sources :

Online knotting reference books
History and Science of Knots, JC Turner & P van de Griend (1996), free access in some libraries
Rope, Invention & Technology Magazine (1991)
Cordage and cordage hemp and fibres, Thomas Woodhouse (1919)
Handbook of Fibre Rope Technology, H.A. McKenna (2004)
The history of rope, Bill Fronzaglia (pdf)
Ropes and cordages (website)
Noeuds et brêlages (La Nature, 1889)
Corderie, Encyclopédie Diderot (1751-1772)
Corderie (Planches), Encyclopedie Diderot (1751-1772), better quality scans here.
How to build a ropewalk for ship models (diy)
More primitive technology
More articles on obsolete technologies.

URBAN SKETCHERS - Panorama of Naples

2012-02-11T11:23:00.001Z

Play the panorama in Naples

LINK TO URBAN SKETCHERS

Villa Hermína by HSH Architekti

2012-02-11T06:13:00.002Z

from here on SPACE72 thank you!

" The building is situated on a sloping terrain on the outskirts of Černín, taking the same slope into its internals for floors. The interior layout is based on alternating straight and sloping floor surfaces that create the overall spiralling character of the interior and define the building’s external appearance. However, the use of the sloping floor on the ground floor is not purposeless – it is there on investor´s reguest to accomodate movie projections as a small movie theatre. Windows and other openings are placed with respect of the external façade – each of the walls only has one opening."

HSH

SMOUT ALLEN at UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

2012-02-10T12:21:00.001Z

BARTLETT LECTURE 10.02 BOW WOW

2012-02-10T06:31:00.000Z

Friday 10 February 2012, 5 pm
Darwin Lecture Theatre, Darwin Building, Gower Street, London, WC1
Bartlett School of Architecture International Lecture Series

Niall McLaughlin introduces:

Atelier Bow-Wow
Atelier Bow-Wow is a Tokyo based architectural practice founded in 1992 by Yoshiharu Tsukamoto and Momoyo Kajima. Their interests in ‘micro-architecture’ and daily life are embedded in their domestic buildings along with their urban research. Authors of publications such as ‘Behaviourology’, ‘Pet Architecture’ and ‘Made in Tokyo’, their interests lie in questioning the role of the body and individual in a social, cultural and habitual context. Their latest project is Miyashita Park in Shibuya, Tokyo, opened in April where they have created a new park for the community with skate ramps, climbing walls and park tables from the old concrete walls of the park.
http://www.bow-wow.jp/profile/index_e.html

The Bartlett School of Architecture International Lecture Series is a free event and everyone (including non-students) is welcome. Tickets are not required and seats cannot be reserved. For up-to-date information please visit the website http://www.bartlett.ucl.ac.uk/architecture/latest/events/lectures

Supported by Fletcher Priest Trust.
Entrance to the Darwin Building is now via Malet Place. Please allow yourself extra time to access the building.

Making Planning Popular - from BLDGBLOG

2012-02-10T06:30:00.003Z

a really interesting way to look at planning in a positive way. you can learn a great deal from looking at the drawings and the captions. invaluable for your mapping project starting today.

more here on BLDGBLOG thank you!

[Image: Making Planning Popular on display at the RCA in London].

For those of you near London, you have one more day to see David Knight's Making Planning Popular on display in a group show called GRIST at the Royal College of Art.  I'm a huge fan of Knight's work—an ongoing research project on the  strange terrains both encouraged and required by local planning  ordinances—and he's thus become a regular referent here on the blog.

   [Image: The manifesto from Making Planning Popular].

Specifically, Making Planning Popular  "aims to encourage greater popular knowledge of how the built  environment is, or could be, produced." Accordingly, "David is showing a  manifesto, recent articles and essays, and a series of case studies  chosen from his growing database of arcane, marginalized, or forgotten  planning practices. This work will in time form a popular history of  planning"—publishers, take note!—"one in which such practises are  brought back to life to explore their relevance to today’s environment,  in the belief that putting planning knowledge back into popular culture  will lead to a more democratic built environment."

  [Images: Excerpts from David Knight's "growing database of arcane, marginalized, or forgotten planning practices," part of Making Planning Popular].

Above are some examples of these case studies; but stop by the RCA  before the end of the day on Monday, February 6, to see more. Here's a map.

Don't Hug Me I'm Scared

2012-02-09T23:21:00.003Z

From here on BOOOOOOOM, by This Is It. Nice and reassuring.

Don't Hug Me I'm Scared from This Is It on Vimeo.

BARTLETT LECTURE 09.02. SOU FUJIMOTO, CHRISTIAN KEREZ

2012-02-09T06:27:00.000Z

Thursday 09 February 2012, 1-3pm
G01 (+ G02, G03) Wates House, 22 Gordon Street, London WC1H 0QB
Bartlett School of Architecture International Lecture Series

Double Lecture - Niall Mclaughlin introduces:

Sou Fujimoto
Sou Fujimoto established his architectural practice in Tokyo in 2000. He describes his style as ‘primitive future’, a primitive situation that relates to the human ‘cave’ habitation along with something new for the future. He likes to create ‘unintentional space’ that lies between nature and artefact. His recent projects such as House N in Oita City, House O in Minami Boso and Tokyo Apartments have been widely publicized. Fujimoto will be involved with Toyo Ito in visiting earthquake and tsunami hit areas and questioning what a primal, original house should be like. This journey of inquiry will be displayed in an exhibition in the Japanese Pavilion in the Venice Biannele 2012.
http://www.sou-fujimoto.net/

Christian Kerez
Christian Kerez began his career as an architectural photographer and established his practice in Zurich in 1993. His interests lie in the fundamental rules and elements that govern architecture. Often working with models on a vast scale, his research-based practice investigates the basic constituents of structure and materials. His aim is not to change or beautify the world with architecture but to facilitate change by the construction of something new. His school Leutschenbach in Switzerland completed in 2008 is a manifestation of his contextual explorations and demonstrates his structural expression.
http://www.kerez.ch/

The Bartlett School of Architecture International Lecture Series is a free event and everyone (including non-students) is welcome. Tickets are not required and seats cannot be reserved. For up-to-date information please visit the website http://www.bartlett.ucl.ac.uk/architecture/latest/events/lectures

Supported by Fletcher Priest Trust.

Seljord Lookout Points in Norway

2012-02-08T22:25:00.001Z

The local people of Telemark will tell many myths that are surrounded around their nearby lake of Seljord. One mystical story is a tall tale of a sea serpent, which has harbored in the lake for centuries. The local council decided to use this mythical feature as a point of departure for a new developement program in the area. Principals Sami Rintala and Dagur Eggertsson, of Rintalan Eggertsson Architects, were brought on by the Municipality of Seljord to spearhead a tall and slim lookout point over the lake - it’s purpose? To serpent watch!

The lookout point sits on the southwest end of the lake, close to the small town of Seljord. The tall building reaches above the two old pine trees it is nestled between, and it is constructed most entirely out of wood. The architecture firm explaines, ” The viewpoint becomes thus not the final destination, just a resting point between the landscapes of the known and the unknown.”

BOOK: Herzog & deMEURON, Natural History

2012-02-08T12:58:00.001Z

Natural History is great example of books exploring the natural history of buildings: How they are conceived, developed and build. They are not shy to show the 'ugly' models that were made in the beginning, how these are then taken further and further until they are finally developed into the final design.

It is certainly one of the books you should have on your shelf.

Product Description from AMAZON:

'More than any of their contemporaries, Swiss architects Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron are challenging the boundaries between architecture and art. Natural History explores that challenge, examining how the work of this formidable pair has drawn upon the art of both past and present, and brought architecture into dialogue with the art of our time. Echoing an encyclopedia, this publication reflects the natural history museum structure of the exhibition which it accompanies, organized by the Canadian Centre for Architecture. Models and projects by Herzog & de Meuron, as well as by other artists, are structured around six thematic portfolios that suggest an evolutionary history of the architects' work: Appropriation & Reconstruction, Transformation & Alienation, Stacking & Compression, Imprints & Moulds, Interlocking Spaces, and Beauty & Atmosphere. Each section is introduced with a statement from Herzog, and more than 20 artists, scholars, and architects have contributed essays, including Carrie Asman, Georges Didi-Huberman, Kurt W. Forster, Boris Groys, Ulrike Meyer Stump, Peggy Phelan, Thomas Ruff, Rebecca Schneider, Adolf Max Vogt, and Jeff Wall. '

from here on AMAZON for £19.20

BOOK: Paul Virilio, Bunker Archeology

2012-02-08T06:21:00.000Z

link to ANARCHITECTURE, thank you

The Atlantic Wall - Linear Museum

Between  1942 and 1944 the German  military erected a gigantic defensive wall along the Atlantic coast, running from France to  Norway: more than 12.000 concrete  bunkers were built.

Surprisingly the bunker architecture  reveals an aesthetics hardly to deny.

Bunker Archaeology, by Paul Virilio

Paul Virilio examined  already  1975  the German bunkers from WW II that lie abandoned on the coast of  France.  (Bunker Archaeology, by Paul Virilio): black and white  photography  accompanied by philosophical essays.

The exhibition - The Atlantic Wall (at  the Az W in Vienna,   Austria, from 13.09 - 09.10.2006) - documents the various types of   building for the first time on the basis of old plans and photographs.   It was created by the DPA-Politecnico di Milano in collaboration with   institutions in France and Belgium.

The infrastructure, a unique example  of its kind, is of great  interest for many reasons, including the  architectural quality of its  vast building system, the ability of these  objects to define a new  aesthetic canon for modernity, and the  relationships they have  established with their natural and urban  contexts essential elements for  interpreting cultural landscapes  (source: The Atlantic Wall, Linear  Museum).

Link to AMAZON 

Replacement leads: 2mm, coloured £3.00

2012-02-07T13:03:00.000Z

£3.00

Go wild with this set of coloured leads, six wild hues for the benefit of your inner artist.

from here, IN LONDON

EMBT Miralles/Tagliabue: Santa Caterina Market Redevelopment Reforma Mercat de Santa Caterina

2012-02-07T06:19:00.000Z

Redevelopment / Reforma Mercat de Santa Caterina

Barri Gotic, Ciutat Vella, Barcelona
1997-2004
Enric Miralles / Benedetta Tagliabue EMBT

Photographer: Alex Gaultier

Architects: Enric Miralles Benedetta Tagliabue
Miralles Tagliabue – EMBT

Building Description by Adrian Welch:
Most photos of this building are taken looking down on its colourful roof, made up of tessellations with the colours of the fruit sold within the St Caterina Market. Seen from the street the dominant forms are the rippling vaults of the roof edges. The vaults vary in section along their length just as Enric Miralles designed at the Scottish Parliament. However, rather than heavy concrete, here EMBT's touch is light and energetic, a brilliant icon for selling the colourful life of Barcelona.

photo © adrian welch

Santa Caterina Market redevelopment is, like many Barcelona buildings featured, an organic piece of architecture. The interior is functional and not trying to be cool, allowing the market traders to sell their wares in time-honoured tradition. Seen from street level the Santa Caterina facades are moderately playful with changing rhythms, but overshadowed by the roof in more ways than one. The vaults are quite fluid compared to those in Enric Miralles' Scottish Parliament building.

photos © adrian welch

But the real drama of the building is its fruitbowl roof, fantastically colourful and playful: more buildings like this in the world and architects' work may start to gain respect lost with the sombre Modern movement.

Enric Miralles - Santa Caterina, Barcelona: photo from EMBT

2012-02-06T13:45:00.008Z

From here on BOOOOOOOM

"Needing/Getting" by OK Go. What you have here are more than 1000 instruments setup across two miles of desert, and car equipped with arms to play those instruments.

Bit of a shame that the audio is quite separate from what they're actually doing, but it's still pretty fun.

Koh-I-Noor 2mm Coloured Lead

2012-02-06T12:00:00.000Z

"We've been searching for 2mm coloured lead for quite a while and are really pleased to present this Koh-I-Noor lead. 120mm long with a good dense colour. Image above is a scan of actual lead shades (usual reproduction caveats apply). 12 leads in a pack. Available in six strong shades: Black Blue Red Green Yellow and Brown

We also have an assorted pack of 6 leads available below.

While these leads work fine in almost all 2mm clutch pencils, we don't recommend using them in 'click-advance' pencils. The waxy composition of the lead makes them somewhat sticky, and they can become jammed in the mechanism of this type of pencil. "

£5.21

from here:

LINK

HN HOUSE by Shunsuke Uemoto

2012-02-06T06:24:00.003Z

Photo © Toshihiro Sobajima 

from WHAT WE DO IS SECRET.com, thank you  

A reinforced concrete house covered with “shou-sugi-ban” (burnt cedar)   siding — the ultimate in luxury and durability. There are a few more   unique things about this house designed by Shunsuke Uemoto – a   ‘crevasse’ opens through the top to the bottom in the middle of the   house,  the master bedroom and bathroom are located in the basement   while the kitchen and dining room are on the third floor, and therefore   the house is equipped with an elevator.

Entering the house…

We are going to start the tour from the basement level of this house.

…the “crevasse”

…up to the second floor

…now on the third

Photos © Toshihiro Sobajima 

Click for larger view below. 

© UEMOT PLANNING & DESIGN OFFICE

^Who: Shunsuke Uemoto
^What: Single family residence
^Where: Setagaya-ku, Tokyo
^When: March 2010
^How: Three-story w/basement, reinforced concrete construction
^{Site Area:} 872 square feet (81m²)
^{Construction Area:} 603 square feet (56m²)
^{Total Floor Area:} 2,185 square feet (203m²)

Little Printer: BERG

2012-02-05T15:41:00.000Z

Aghh this is so lovely!

BERG are a British design company that tend to create 'small' products. They recently redesigned receipts, hoping that people will be less likely to through them away (putting phrases, jokes on them and stuff) and now they have created 'Little Printer" which works through printing things off from your iphone or anything, or it can print off to-do lists, word searches, anything...

Reeves A1 Artists Portfolio Case - Black from ARGOS, £19.99

2012-02-05T12:57:00.002Z

This great value A1 portfolio has a professional black leather-look and is ideal for transporting and protecting your artwork.
Ideal for transporting and protecting your art work.
Made from sturdy weather resistant vinyl.
Size H4, W92, D62cm.

£19.99

LINK

ARGOS in on NEW OXFORD STREET or in CAMDEN or everywhere....

Rem Koolhaas: Delirious New York: A Retrospective Manifesto for Manhattan (1978)

2012-02-05T06:35:00.010Z

from here, thank you!

this one is on our reading list!

A précis by Emma Watson

Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan is an engaging review of modern architecture and urbanism, setting a celebratory account of the surreal ‘culture of congestion’ found in Manhattan. Written while Rem Koolhaas was a visiting professor at the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies in New York, and first published in 1978 - written during a period of financial crisis, with the city government narrowly avoiding bankruptcy through a substantial federal loan. At a time when confidence in the city is at an all time low, Koolhaas promotes Manhattan as a prototype of the modern metropolis, a collaboration of visionaries that strive to make life in the city a ‘deeply irrational experience’.

Declaring himself as the city’s ghost-writer, Koolhaas tells the story of Manhattan, a ‘mythical island’ and setting of an urban experiment in which the city becomes a factory for man made experiences, a laboratory to test the potential of modern life. He claims that ‘Manhattanism’ is the one urbanistic concept that revels in ‘hyper density’ and is fuelled by the splendours and miseries than come with the urban condition of man made living. ‘With Manhattan as an example, this book is a blueprint for a culture of congestion.’

The first chapter gives an overview of the history of the island, discovered in 1609, and depicted by a French artist as existing European components reassembled into a single location, ‘A Utopian Europe’. A utopia that is indifferent to topography, imposing the mental over the real. The grid system in Manhattan predicted the future condition of the city; its two dimensional restrictions gave way to three dimensional freedom, and the millions of people that it now houses was envisaged far before a tiny proportion were even present. Much like the grid, central park was created long before the programmes which fill it had been realised, quoted as ‘a colossal leap of faith, the contrast it describes – between the built and the unbuilt – hardly exists at the time of its creation.’

The book is a representation of the grid: ‘a collection of blocks whose proximity and juxtaposition reinforce their separate meanings.’ Each block correlates to a chapter; Coney Island, the Skyscraper, Rockefeller Centre and Europeans.

When Manhattan transforms from a city into a metropolis, Coney Island offers a resort, the ‘safety value of the worlds most highly charged metropolis’. As demand for escape increases; ‘the island is forced to mutate; it must turn itself into the very opposite of nature’, and instead of providing a release from the urban pressure, Coney provides intensification. The island’s artificiality becomes an attraction, counteracting the theatricality of the new metropolis with its unique ‘super-natural’. Coney’s amusement parks Steeplechase, Luna and Dreamland emerge, each more ostentatious than its predecessor, providing an infrastructure that made the island the ‘most modern fragment of the world’. Within Coney these three parks act as the testing grounds for a ‘new technology of the fantastic’, from which stem the strategies and mechanisms that came to shape Manhattan.

A ‘glorious whole’ – the skyscraper represents a coming together of a number of urbanistic breakthroughs. The tower was first tested on Coney with the ‘snow white pinnacles’ of Luna’s skyline. Now, in Manhattan, building became tower through the union of the elevator and steel frame, giving way to a construction which was ‘able to support newly discovered territories’, the further you ascend, the more you leave behind the undesirable circumstances below. Any site could now be multiplied ad infinitum to produce a proliferation of floor space. The skyscraper was a utopian formula which could be used an instrument for ‘a new form of unknowable urbanism’.

Manhattan’s architecture under went a lobotomy, ‘less and less surface represented more and more internal activity’. By separating the internal and external, the monolith of the skyscraper spared the outside world of everyday life, a shell housing layers of reality. Entering a building in Manhattan, even changing floors, could become an act of moving between worlds. The deliberate disconnection of storeys – ‘the vertical schism’ – accepted the skyscrapers instability in a definitive composition, succumbing to cultural potential. Each new building spanning a block, like a collection of urban islands, each striving to be a ‘city within a city’, all potentially at war with each other.

Media technologies were structurally integrated into the modern metropolis, as can be seen in the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, Daily News Building, and most importantly the Rockefeller Center. Like the speculative Manhattan grid, the Rockefeller Centre was ‘an artificial domain planned for non existent clients’, it finds a perfect occupant in the Radio Corporation of America and its subsidiary NBC and their state of the art production facilities. The theatricality that was once experienced on Coney Island, and then of the interior activities of the skyscraper, could now be fabricated within the Centre and transmitted across the world, ‘the nerve center of an electronic community that would congregate at Rockefeller Center without actually being there. Rockefeller Center is the first architecture that can be broadcast’.

Manhattanism is ‘congestion for congestion’s sake’, and the reason why any of Le Corbusier’s schemes failed to be realised in Manhattan. Radiant City, which Koolhaas describes as ‘a majestic flow of humanist non sequiturs’, is a proposal to erase all the utopian urbanistic ideals upon which Manhattan was built and replace them with a uniform set of towers – Cartesian skyscrapers - evenly planted in green spaces. His desire was to purify the city, and give its residents access to light and air. His urban form removed the congestion, offering only the efficiency of banality in exchange. This congestion, in a realm divorced from reality, forces the metropolis ever upward into the speculative. There was no place for Manhattan’s technology of the fantastic within the Cartesian skyscraper, for Corbusier; ‘use of technology as instrument and extension of the imagination equals abuse…for him technology itself is fantastic’. The Cartesian skyscraper had been stripped of the stone cladding that enclosed the Manhattan skyscraper and allowed the ‘ideological hysteria’ of the internal architecture to thrive. Koolhaas concludes that the glass walls of Corbusier’s skyscraper enclosed ‘a complete cultural void’.

During these playful journeys through Manhattans history, Koolhaas advocates his duty to modernity, if not to architectural modernism as a movement. He focuses on Manhattan’s ability to invent the ‘modern’, creating a parallel to the sober and abstract ideals of Le Corbusier’s European Modernism. The city’s buildings are not advocated as architectural masterpieces, but the tools for reinventing city life.

A5 Sketchbook for £2

2012-02-04T19:54:00.000Z

Notebook with elastic band, great for your Architecture Diary!
Black A5 notebook with 76 pages. Great for small notes.

LINK TO TIGER SHOP

TIGER SHOP EALING, close to Pitzhanger Manor in Ealing

Brodsky & Utkin's Copper Plate Etchings

2012-02-04T18:02:00.003Z

From here - A Journey Through Slavic Culture

“In 1957 Kruschev declared socialist realist architecture the “over-decorated” style and abolished the Academy of Architecture. the notion of a critically assimilated cultural heritage (i.e. the reuse of classical forms to serve modern ideological ends) was replaced by a doctrine of unadorned utilitarianism. modern technology, especially prefabrication, was exploited to produce the urgently needed mass housing and aesthetic discourse of any kind was considered unnecessary and immoral. faceless functionalism continued to dominate throughout the Brezhnev years as economic constraints, a hopelessly tangled bureaucratic procedure, a dearth of building materials, and a shrinking body of skilled laborers exacerbated unimaginative planning. this scenario confronted Brodsky and Utkin and their classm

ates at the moscow institute of architecture in the mid-seventies.

Many of the more creative young Soviet designers abandoned the exasperating professional situation they found themselves in while others like Brodsky and Utkin began using international competitions as a creative outlet.
As Brodsky and Utkin and a dozen or so other friends began to produce such projects in evenings and weekends over the next few years, the group assumed the title of “paper architects” – a derogatory epithet applied to avant-garde architects still producing radical work after the socialist realist clampdown of the thirties.

Brodsky, Utkin, and the others began producing visionary schemes in response to a bleak professional scene in which only artless and ill-conceived buildings, diluted through numerous bureaucratic strata and constructed out of poor materials by unskilled laborers, were being erected – if anything. as such their work constitutes a graphic form of architectural criticism, an escape into the realm of imagination that ended as a visual commentary on what was wrong with social and physical reality and how its ills might be remedied.”

Quote of the day: Peter Salter

2012-02-04T15:38:00.000Z

'Mistakes were another way of developing and testing ideas.' Peter Salter