Some info and shots on another building I shot for Parklex.com

This building was part of a zero waste energy scheme in the Tianjin TEDA development zone. Which this part happened to be on an island, which happened to shut the bridges off the island at 6pm, which happened…….  Anyway managed to live to tell the tale. I was releaved to have found a black cab which I had to share with a young romantic couple. Tired and not looking forward to the journey through Tianjin to the high-speed Train Station, al of a sudden the cab’s radio started playing “take my breath away”; while I watched in the slow motion as the young couple made out. Well after that moment of power ballad serenity was over we had managed to make it off the island and we were duly ejected from the cab/boudoir of Top Gun squeezy emmotion.

Of coarse the monorail still hasn’t managed to open the stretch of track which connects the last station to the the train station which means for the second time in my life I’ve had to brave the back of a Tianjin motorcycle with tripod and camera gear rushing and weaving through the oncoming traffic; some stationary, some predatory.  To get to the station on time.

Tianjin has to have the most mismanaged and incompetent transport system in the world.  When I got back to Beijing on the rather pleasant 35min train I had to wait 2.5hrs for a cab which made me later for a birthday party dinner. At which party a friend of mine had just done the same journey to pretty much the same place, but instead took a cab there and back because he couldn’t risk the stress and possibility of being late.  Lesson learn’t

Anyway Some Data about the building and more pics at the bottom.

Architects: MoChen Architects & Engineers (www.mochen.com）

设计总监: 赖军 |DESIGN DIRECTOR Lài Jūn

建筑设计:姜源宣 林亚娜 王哲 杨明 |ARCHITECTURE DESIGN Jiāng Yuán Xuān, Lín Yà Nà, Wáng Zhé, Yáng Míng

工程设计| 李志军 景刚 聂亚飞 王伯荣 ENGINEERING DESIGN Li Zhì Jūn, Jǐng Gāng, Niè Yà Fēi, Wáng Bó Róng

室内设计:郝向孺 赵晖 宋伟 徐瑞 |INTERIOR DESIGN Hǎo Xiàng Rú, Zhào Huī, Sòng Wěi, Xú Ruì

合作伙伴|PARTNERS 中国建筑科学研究院（绿色技术顾问）

工程建设团队：

深圳珠海兴业建筑有限公司

北京天阔宏宇建筑装饰工程有限公司

Partners:

China Architectural Institute of Science and Technology (green technical advisor)
Project construction team:
Industrial Construction Co., Ltd., Shenzhen, Zhuhai
The Beijing Tiankuo Hongyu Building Decoration Engineering Co., Ltd.

Material Suppliers:

Parklex:  Cladding and internal wall timber structure

建设时间Construction Duration       2010.4-2011.5

占地面积(M2)Land Area     543.08

建筑规模(M2)Gloss Floor Area 1245

地上Upper Ground Floor Area        953.

地下Under Ground Floor Area 292

容积率Floor Area Ratio     0.34

绿化率Green Rate      38%

Project summary:

The building client Vantone is one the biggest developers in China. This project acts as the community center of a new residential development, Vantone Eco-city based in the Binhai district of Tianjin. A newly developed zone which is part of the massive TEDA development project in Tianjin (http://en.investteda.org)
The project aims to reach the zero-energy building standard by significantly reduce building energy consumption through the design, use of clean energy, wind energy, solar energy and geothermal energy as an alternative to conventional energy of burning fossil fuels to supply the building with the energy required. The ultimate goal of such design is to be completely be self sufficient without the need for municipal supply.

The low energy building design practice.
The goal was to design a zero energy consumption building from the ground up, and by doing so give full consideration to the needs of the various energy-saving technologies. The design  strives at a combination of modeling techniques and technology to provide this. For example: due to shortage of land, the project will provide the building electricity demands via photovoltaic panels set on the roof; combined with the simulated data of the building site wind environment, the layout of the building accommodates natural ventilation via air vents in the spring and autumn, this use of natural ventilation reduces air conditioning energy consumption.

Photo Society - Architecture, photography, speculation and scandal from the Middle Kingdom

• Client is Qingdao Vanke Properties Co., Ltd.
• Ssales office of Qingdao Vanke Licang New Town first-stage Project.
• The architect is Gao Yingdong of Shanghai Yuangou Architects Office.
• Construction by Beijing Honghengji Curtain wall Decoration Engineering Co., Ltd. using exterior Parklex Panels.
• 2,450 square meters of Parklex panels used
• The total cost of building is RMB 20,000,000 yuan.
• It’s part of a 5,000 square meter site

Photo Society - Architecture, photography, speculation and scandal from the Middle Kingdom

As an architectural photographer based in Beijing sometimes it can be frustrating not having a huge array of architectural styles to visit and boost your portfolio with. But in this building I found an unusually pleasing use of hardlined structure and concrete finishing. In the process of architectural photography I want to test myself on buildings that have innate integrity and elegance without the embellishments or extraneous details that often become process in a rapidy growing country, where better to look for such a example  than a communist stadium.

So I arrived at the location and it’s desolate and empty, cold and windy, surrounded by a big fence and a little guard house.

Guard walkby – first take, not enough courage, story not fully formed, no bottle.  Seemless 180 degree turn and back to entrance. “Hi I’m here to take photograph for a big magazine”, the jovial teenage guard keeper smiled, let me in, probably the most engagement he’s had on the job thus far.  Well, at least until his boss finds me and gives him a bollocking. Knowing that my time was limited and that I had only managed to break through the first chink in the armor, I rapidly set up tripod and snap away at different locations.  It’s funny how the first shot you take is often the best of the day, the rest tend to gradually become fillers. After 20mins or so someone important does shoo me away, I pack up and leave, job done.

West elevation of Stadium

A rare clear blue sky in Beijing, perfect backdrop for the image below, sets of the sandy tone of the concrete perfectly. I was waiting for as long a possible for a little schoolkid to come running over the horizon waving the red flag of china, but alas it’s never quite as good as the adverts.

Architectural photography by Nathaniel McMahon- China National Tennis Stadium

Photo Society - Architecture, photography, speculation and scandal from the Middle Kingdom

Architectural Photography shoot for Parklex last week. Their wood facade system here employed behind a glazed curtain wall.

I started using Photomatrix HDR software for these images instead of the usual Photoshop HDR pro inbuilt feature.  Photomatrix is a software hailed by creators of the more extreme overindulgant togs looking for that surreal painterly effect.  But with a little restraint can actually be tamed to produce a more realistic view (i.e. what we actually see) and there fore more suitable for use in architectural photography. This is down to the dynamic range limitations of camera sensors.

• Compared to a camera sensor the human eye has a dynamic range that can encompass a lot more (example: a view where we can see details in the darkness and still see details in the brightness would require a camera to expose two shots at different exposures, one to capture the shadows and one to capture the highlights, as both do not fall within the range a camera can capture in one exposure).  Actually as I write this I just found a wiki article on the human eye stating that the human eye has a dynamic range of just 6 stops, below the 10 typical of modern professional DSLR’s. Which makes me think that our brain is perhaps processing a range of captures that result in what we see, which may be a part of the reason why in the morning when we first open our eyes our vision is severely hampered and things seem to bright and with too much contrast.  In effect what we see is a composite HDR image. This requires more thought… will write more later.Actually this article on dynamic range states that the eye has a range of about 17 stops which would make more sense, interesting technical reading at Eye to Eye Cameras and Vision, goes into how our vision is comprised from rods in our eyeballs to the methods the brain uses to interpret the information.

I wouldn’t say Photomatrix is purely a image processor as it seems to add it’s own effects that are add-ons rather than image tone generated purely from algorithms working on the images you feed it. i.e it seems to add some special effects of its own. But these can be tamed fairly easily with manipulations of its sliders, to get acceptable non-surreal images. And the rendering I get from it far surpass what Photoshop produces. For some reason colors tend to go awry a little with the photoshop produced HDR images and the details are less spectacular and at the same time less balanced. I think Adobe has spent little time developing this side of things and would not be surprised if future versions of their HDR Pro plugin are based on offerings by the likes of the people behind Photomatrix.

The few shots below I think vary on the scales of realism but while some would be better suited to an advertising backdrop image than for architectural representation purposes.   The clients favorite was the interior image with the sunlight wrapping round the curved wood facade towards the camera.

As with all things your sense of taste can easily become lost after working hours on a couple of HDR images, and you can wake up in the morning and find that great work you worked into the night for looks like cheap kitsch Google+ fanboy imagery. I’d be interested in your comments…

HDR version

With HDR

Non-HDR version

Photo Society - Architecture, photography, speculation and scandal from the Middle Kingdom

Considering the number of SOHO’s that have been built in the 6 years that I’ve been living in Beijing, SOHO Galaxy would seem a fitting name for the whole group of them. But no this is just one of the twoshopping centers currently under construction in Beijing designed by Zaha ( + one more in Shanghai). There more Beijing SOHO’s than you can count with your fingers (SOHO New Town, Jianwai SOHO, SOHO Shangdu, Chaowai SOHO, Guanghualu SOHO, Guanghualu SOHO II, Beijing SOHO Residences, ZhongGuanCun SOHO, Sanlitun SOHO, Qianmen Avenue, Chaoyangmen SOHO I, Chaoyangmen SOHO II, and Galaxy SOHO)

Headed by the billionaire outfit developing couple described by The Times of London as ‘China’s most visible and flamboyant property tycoons’, ‘SOHO China Limited’ have claimed the old London district’s name as their brand. A name not derived from King Henry 8th’s hunting cry on London’s celluloid and sex driven quarter, disappointingly, but instead the conveniently rounded and plump acronym Small Office/Home Office. Or as what’s defined in London planning regulations as Work/live space.

A quick waltz around Beijing on a freezing winter day last week took me to 5 SOHO’s nearby my home. The older SOHO’s (and by old I mean 3 or more years old) were desperately populated, high tech looking buildings filled with the type of shops, had they been located elsewhere other than SOHO shopping mall, that have the more traditional Chinese work/live arrangement that involves a bed behind the counter. Generally the hot lower level locations were run as cheap lunchtime staple-food joints, presumably for those working in the CBD but trying to save for that overinflated dowry apartment (on how china property soaring prices, price bachelors out of the marriage market) in the upper levels of SOHO, or not being able to afford the type of lunch their CBD job suggests.

The newly completed ones (Sanlitun SOHO being a prime, well known example) were empty colossuses with a few brand shops in the road side entrances and a scattering islanded coffee shops. An entire atrium devoid of slogans, logo’s or any of the trimmings of the commercial shopping experience clanged and bounced along instead to the sounds of the only commercial enterprise there, an ammusment arcade on the ground floor. The grandness of the struture laying in emptyness and begining a life of disused decay led me draw comparisions to the english seaside Pier. An ambitious and once grand gesture now stuck in Limbo between enevitable decay and ruin and the unimaginably high costs of demolition vs rehabilitation. Dufully I headed into the arcade and exchaged my pictures of mao for local coin. Me and my companion were the only ones in there as we started on a game as a gun slinging cop duo accending a high rise shopping/office development in a lift which would occasionally open for us to be swamped with mutants, zombies and other creatures you would typically expect to find in a vibrant high rise shopping development. But the arcade machine had taken it to the next stage. It’s gimic, an actual pair of elevator doors between us and the screen.  The games generic architecture and rendering mirrored the lifelessness of the mall which housed it.  By adding the real elevator doors the developers of the game had bought the player a step closer to reality, a step to address reality that the SOHO developers have overlooked.

SOHO Galaxy

SOHO Galaxy CGI flythrough

Here are some more picures I’ve taken of the SOHO galaxy development

soho galaxy building site

INterior view of office and halway, SOHO Galaxy by Zaha Hadid.

View from nearby rooftop Hutong Pidgeon Coup, Pidgeon owner "The building will be opening in september this year, It's most beautiful"

View from ground level Hutong, which strangely enough is not part of the cgi flythrough.

My days tour finished at SOHO Galaxy, the latest installment led by Zaha Hadid’s architecture office.  This building being more iconic that the previous SOHO developments and obviously aimed at the very highest tier of small office/home office purchasers. Where most other SOHO’s have failed,  for there guestures of modernity and high tech becoming to readily rendered cheap with a crass flambouyance and lack of inteligent design, this one atempts to ammend.  Zaha Hadid who’s name and design has been cashed in on by more than a few provincial party leaders should attract the hip and rich which seems to be the market which most appeals to the SOHO couple Zhang and Pan.  The SOHO developments I more readily view as an entrance of the billionaire couple onto a scene of their own fantasy.  This one may work out and like the similar Sanlitun village development be a hub of shopping in Beijing.

For more on Zhang Xin one half of the SOHO couple see Beijing Billionaire Who Grew Up With Mao Sees No Housing Bubble

And the other half PanShiYi on his Weibo account here

Photo Society - Architecture, photography, speculation and scandal from the Middle Kingdom

A gallery: Architecture

Photo Society - Architecture, photography, speculation and scandal from the Middle Kingdom

One thing seems to lead the issues at the heart of a modern proffessional photographer. That the potential to get a decent photostory into the press and subsequent funding for said story is becoming increasingly unrealistic.  While at the same time photographers are replacing stills work with video,a possibly earned by recent developments in technology.
It’s oft argued that the greed for more for less media has got photogs doing film and stills at once. That new tech and distribution had opened up the potential mediums of syndication. But part of this I shift is I believe, down to the current failures of the photograph/image to fail to live up to the targets modern journalistic photography expects of it. There is a misunderstanding I believe at the heart of photojournalism. That the great photostory is a work of great narrative. Even the hybrid term photostory is a misdemeanor, a casually constructed lost leader. The true power of the image is held in it’s isolation from narrative, in it’s harrowing ambiguity. A void at the heart, negociated, not filled with narrative or explaination. A scientific example would be Capa and Dunkirk. Little can be learnt from the images yet they haunt our imagination.

To be continued…

Photo Society - Architecture, photography, speculation and scandal from the Middle Kingdom

This is an extremely low res version of what can be achieved, but gives some food for thought. Going to have to do some more high-res shots maybe 4×5 composites, enough to get a good look into the houses. This one is a composite of 3 6×7 frames but due to high wind and long exposures and a shaky wooden platform the shots are a little blurred to high res scans.

Photo Society - Architecture, photography, speculation and scandal from the Middle Kingdom

Met up with some old Korean friends on a recent trip to Seoul, we went a mountain climbing.

I had been told that the reason Koreans climbed mountains was in part due to a belief that drinking at altitude is superior to the low altitude boozing most of us are accustomed to.  I needed little excuse.  Stocked up on a bottle of Soju for the peak.  Beautiful day, I’d not in nature for quite some time.  Pretty relaxing and slow ascent for most of the mountain until point where local we telling us not to go further. We’d were warned and advised that the last 30m assent was extremely dangerous without the proper shoe blades, but no way we were about to turn back having spent 3 hours climbing, waiting for that all important bottle of heavenly Soju, righteously earned upon our arrival at the peak. Yea it was dangerous, sheer rock covered in ice with lengths of rope and ice covered railings to pull oneself up with. Koreans seem to have an aptitude for anything, young attractive women clambering up the slope giggling and shrieking upon every near death crack on the ice or slip on the rope.

I’d bough my 4×5 Sinar along for the ride.  Stupidly spent most of the film on the way up.  Loading film on the peak of a mountain is not the best way to spend the time.

Was also the coldest place I’ve ever seen a cat.

Photo Society - Architecture, photography, speculation and scandal from the Middle Kingdom