architecture’s limits as an agent for social healing

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/25/weekinreview/25ouroussoff.html?ref=design

Check out this NY Times article regarding the role of museums and cultural centers in reviving or destroying the American City.

“For years critics have railed against these cultural complexes as pointlessly grandiose expressions of vanity — a poisonous brew of architectural egotism and excessive wealth that was destroying America’s urban centers. Why all the fancy forms, they argued? Wouldn’t the money be better spent on something more valuable, like schoolbooks?”

“The problem with freedom, after all, is that it allows for horrifying imaginative failures as well as works of stunning genius. When artists fail, you can ignore their work. When architects fail, you walk by their buildings every morning on your way for coffee shaking your fist.”

Do you agree?

Voronoi and Kinetic Touch

http://www.dezeen.com/2009/09/26/bombay-sapphire-at-the-london-design-festival-seeper-at-tent-digital/

Check out the video on dezeen. Interactive digital light art.

Norman Foster Gallery

The NYTimes had an article on a small new gallery being built in NYC by Norman Foster, with nice pics of a gallery on a very tight site (next to a big ugly brick building) that reminded me of the CMoA North site.  Note how the few images presented in the article give a fairly complete expression about the main ideas and spaces: a tight site, strong street presence, separate (tall) entry space, main gallery with multi-story space at center for large art works, upper floor galleries, storage space, small outdoor display area…

Clear, concise, thoughtful, yet satisfying all the program elements.

From Google Earth to VRay

Hey guys,

just thought I’d share this with everyone.  Turns out that .skp files (SketchUp) are directly importable to Rhino.  Not only that, but they retain their material properties in VRay.  Some of the textures are actually ridiculously detailed; this is not visible in Google Earth due to its need for speedy rotations and zooming.

Here is the unmodified SketchUp file of Brunelleschi’s Duomo in Florence, Italy rendered in VRay:

Florence Duomo, rendered by VRay

It isn’t perfect, but for quick site renderings this could really speed things along.

Sidenote-
Just about every building in Oakland has been modeled in Google Earth thanks to our local CMU Google offices,  meaning that for the Museum East and West sites, many sketchup files are available in excellent detail.

This  includes the Carnegie Museum of Art:
http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/details?mid=d718b9f1c4bd0ece45f5590ac69325a5&prevstart=0

-Dan

Lucept–luminous concepts from arround the world

So, this isn’t specifically related to our current attempts to understand museums, museum annexes, and relationships with site, but seeing as Kai has declared this semester’s theme to be light I thought I’d share this.

http://lucept.com/

The whole blog is (surprise) dedicated to light. What I light most about it though, is that it doesn’t limit itself to dealing with light in only one way, but looks at it architecturally, sculpturally, and even highlights technological aspects of working with light, such as the most recent post about OLEDs.

Google Architects

Want to be an architect, have stuff “built” in minutes? Now you can “build” buildings for Google Earth, and be a Google architect.  I guess it’s less about being an architect, more about doing free work for Google.  But if you have a favorite building or a house that is not yet in 3D, here’s your chance to get it online in 3D, to be “published” or at least “made public.” But only if its in a list of pre-designated cities and sites for which Google has images.

Would it not be great if we could pick our own sites.  For example, the Mattress Factory, and surrounding buildings for our site are not yet in 3D on Google Earth.  Perhaps our class could help create an accurate model of the area!?

Link to Google Building maker; or see the article at Webpronews.

MF Sounds

I just uploaded an audio sketch of the Mattress Factory on the old Tumblr account (because WordPress won’t let me post the audio file).

Check it out HERE.

Patches of audio taken from Liza’s movies.

Small is Beautiful: Stephanie Smith Lecture REVIEWED

Stephanie Smith began her lecture the slide: Small is Beautiful

Her work was devoted to an exploration of architecture and economics on a grassroots level. Smith described how her desire was to change the system within the system. She found that the tendencies of  grassroots communes that had radical ideas about architecture and economics that resisted or disregarded the system, were temporary either purposely or inevitable failure. Smith referenced EF Schumacher of Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Matter, summarizing that everything we are doing economically is wrong.

INFRASTRUCTURE + ECONOMIC SYSTEM = ALTERNATIVE FORMS OF COMMUNITY

The Walled City of Kowloon, Hong Kong

Stephanie Smith went to Harvard, and had Rem Koolhaus as a thesis advisor. She, Koolhaus, and her class went to China to for “Harvard Project on the City”

The Harvard Project on the City, an undertaking which researches the effects of modernization on the contemporary city, was founded upon the realization of a double crisis. The first is the academic and professional bewilderment with urban conditions that seem to defy traditional description: specifically, new forms of accelerated urbanization in developing regions of the world and the maelstrom of redevelopment in existing urban areas. The second crisis is the failure of the design professions to adequately cope with these changes. As cities

modernize beyond professional control, no longer is the architect/urbanist/landscape architect able to sufficiently describe, let alone influence, large areas of the urban realm as even in the recent past. This double crisis of runaway development and disciplinary

paralysis warrants the urgent need to study the evolving agents, relationships and consequences of contemporary urbanization.

Deng Xiaoping, who ruled China between 1981-1989, said “To get rich is glorious”. As a result, an architectural entrepreneurship  and experimental boom had fostered a “Wild West Capitalism” culture. During her time in Dongguan, she observed how the impoverished villages of China were more or less gentrifying cities that were a victim to the 1996 economic crash.  Smith’s Thesis: The local culture moving to South China was more powerful than globalization. Above is the Walled City of Kowloon, which I was referring to in our gigantic discussion group on Wednesday. BLDGBLOG talks about the Walled City of Kowloon and its relationship to the architecture in the video game Guild Wars.

Bayer’s ‘Media Facade’ redefines building-vertising

http://www.engadget.com/2009/10/09/bayers-media-facade-redefines-building-vertising/#continued

From Engadget:

“You may think that once you’ve seen one building turned into a massive billboard you’ve seem them all, but that would mean you probably haven’t seen the so-called “Media Facade” now adorning Bayer’s former HQ in Leverkusen, Germany. Built by ag4 media facade GmbH and GKD AG, the massive display apparently consists of 5.6 milion LEDs that cover the entire 17,500 square meters of the building, and which can be lit up at will to pump out gigantic advertisements worthy of any science fiction movie. You’ll note this is the former Bayer headquarters — it seems that the promise of ’round the clock ads visible for miles around saved the building from the wrecking ball.”

The Invisible Man

i stumbled upon this artist this afternoon and thought that it was really interested and figured id share it. Take a gander.

Here’s a link to the site http://www.stumbleupon.com/s/#1ltPoj/v1kram.posterous.com/liu-bolinthe-invisible-man/ 

- Joe Colarusso

photosynthing

Blaise Aguera y Arcas is an architect at Microsoft that creates a program to hyperlink every associative image on the web to merge into amazing 3D visual space of the particular subject of the images.

http://www.ted.com/talks/blaise_aguera_y_arcas_demos_photosynth.html

Jensen

Stephanie Smith and the soART Lecture Series

TOMORROW! OCTOBER 8, at 3 PM Stephanie Smith will have a workshop at the Miller Gallery.

Smith, OCTOBER 8, 5PM, KRESGE THEATRE, “29 Chains to the Moon” exhibition at the Miller Gallery. Lecture preceded by a workshop at 3pm in the gallery.

STEPHANIE SMITH
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 8
5PM, KRESGE THEATRE
In conjunction with the “29 Chains to the Moon” exhibition at the Miller Gallery. Lecture preceded by a workshop at 3pm in the gallery.

STEPHANIE SMITH is a designer and entrepreneur whose projects span the worlds of architecture, art, technology, and culture. Her research into the social practices of fringe and nomadic societies tielded a movement she calls “Wanna Start a Commune?”, and include diagrams for creating modern Cul-de-Sac Communes, portable kiosks for non-monetary exchange and meet-ups, and most recently an online platform for creating as many communes as your life demands, WeCommune. Smith is also the founder of Ecoshack, a design experiment that began in Joshua Tree, CA, and is now an LA-based design studio inspired by the ad hoc, indigenous and archetypal typoligies typically found at the fringes of society and culture. In 2008 the Whitney Museum identified Smith as the designer/entrepreneur most actively taking the ideas of Buckminster Fuller into the 21st century. This fall she’ll be in the Fuller-themed exhibition “29 Chains to the Moon: Artists’ Schemes for a Fantastic Future” at the Miller Gallery, Carnegie Mellon University through December 6, 2009.

More on the SOART LECTURE SERIES.

29 Chains To the Moon, Aug. 28 – Dec. 6, 2009, Miller Gallery

Smith, OCTOBER 8, 5PM, KRESGE THEATRE, “29 Chains to the Moon” exhibition at the Miller Gallery. Lecture preceded by a workshop at 3pm in the gallery.

Oleszko, October 20, 5PM McConomy

Paolo, November 3, 5PM McConomy

Bing, Novemeber 10, 5PM, McConomy

Bishop, November 17, 5PM McConomy

(and congratulations on our 300th post!)

Latitude Specific house

I’ve had this project on my mind throughout the semester.   After considering the  description of Project 2:  use 40 degrees latitude as the main site constraint, this house is worth a look.

The project is sited to take advantage of the sun’s angle, and specifically how this angle changes throughout the year.  The southern wall is composed of a plate glass sandwich with green parafin (wax) cubes inside.  On the exterior, a layer of prismatic glass is added.  This glass was custom made with 2 angles that correspond to the summer sun angle range of 40 degrees or greater, and the winter sun angle range of 35 degrees and lower. 

 

The hot summer sun is bounced away from the building, and therefore the parafin remains in a solid state and retains its dark color.  This keeps the interior cool and shaded.  Conversely, the winter sun at a lower angle is allowed to enter, melting the parafin into a transparent liquid.  This lets much-needed light and heat into the house during cold Swiss winters.

The concept would work in other latitudes, however the prismatic glass would have to be recalibrated to site-specific sun angles.

The house in Ebnat-Kappel, Switzerland is by architect Dietrich Schwarz.

For more info, check out:  Detail vol.6 (2002) pp 736-737.

and: Facade Construction Manual, p. 297

The Tower of Henry Glennon

Dezeen had a post about a paper tube tower. Anyone from Red Studio 2nd semester remembers Henry’s plea to donate thick cardboard tubes so that he could use it as a calling device in divine cacophony. Back to the installation,  the tower is 22 meters or approximately 70 feet high, and was installed for the London Design Festival. Check out the article “Paper Tower by Shigeru Ban”

London Design Festival 09: a temporary tower made of paper tubes designed by Japanese architect Shigeru Ban has been erected on the South Bank in London.

Tree Frog

Wow, look at these tree frogs.