we The last of Blood

“We Draculs have a right to be proud…
I am the last of my kind”
– Dracula, from Bram Stoker’s Dracula

Some say that Transylvania sits on one of Earth's strongest magnetic fields and its people have extra-sensory perception. Vampires are believed to hang around crossroads on St. George's Day, April 23, and the eve of St. Andrew, November 29. The area is also home to Bram Stoker's Dracula, and it's easy to get caught up in the tale while driving along winding roads through dense, dark, ancient forests and over mountain passes.

The newly published Vampires, Werewolves, Zombies: Compendium Monstrum allows readers to get
acquainted with the attractions of the Romanian
region of Transylvania from a 19th-century perspective.

It includes information on sights associated with Vlad
the "must-sees", and even highlights the wildlife of
the region. An antique fold-out map of Transylvania is included.

Tales of the supernatural had been circulating in Romanian folklore for centuries when Irish writer Bram Stoker picked up the thread and spun it into a golden tale of ghoulishness that has never been out of print since its first publication in 1897. To research his immortal tale, Stoker immersed himself in the history, lore and legends of Transylvania, which he called a “whirlpool for the imagination.”

Bram Stoker’s Dracula novel was published in Romanian for the first time in 1990.Count Dracula, a fictional character in the Dracula novel, was inspired by one of the best-known figures of Romanian history, Vlad Dracula, nicknamed Vlad Tepes (Vlad the Impaler), who was the ruler of Walachia at various times from 1456-1462. Born in 1431 in Sighisoara, he resided all his adult life in Walachia, except for periods of imprisonment at Pest and Visegrad (in Hungary). For more information about Bram Stocker's Dracula Novel please visit
www.literature.org/authors/stoker-bram/dracula/

Tracking Dracula
Although he never traveled to Romania, Stoker crammed his book with descriptions of many real locations that can still be visited in present-day Romania. They include the most important historical places associated with Vlad Tepes, such as the 14th century town of Sighisoara where you can visit the house in which Vlad was born (now hosting a restaurant and a small museum of medieval weapons).

Other Dracula sites include: the Old Princely Court (Palatul Curtea Veche) in Bucharest, Snagov Monastery, where, according to legend, Vlad’s remains were buried; the ruins of the Poenari Fortress (considered to be the authentic Dracula's Castle); the village of Arefu where Dracula legends are still told, the city of Brasov where Vlad led raids against the Saxons merchants, and, of course, Bran Castle.

Some tours also cover the folkloric aspects of the fictional Dracula. For instance, visitors can eat the exact meal Jonathan Harker ate at The Golden Crown in Bistrita and sleep at Castle Dracula Hotel, built no so long ago on the Borgo Pass at the approximate site of the fictional Count’s castle.

a Natural Heritage

A Museum in Sabah has existed in some shape or form with some lapses in time since 1886. The first location was at Sandakan in a room in the Chartered Company's Secretariat where the present divisional administration is centered. By 1905 it had disappeared, part of the collection was returned to the donors while the rest was shipped to London.

In 1923 the museum was again revived in Sandakan but its again disappeared with the Japanese invasion; its collection was lost.

In 1947, George Cathcart Woolley, a Chartered Company Administrator bequeathed his collection of ethnographic and other material such as photographs, diaries and books and known and as the Woolley Collection. The Woolley Collection has formed the basic materials of the existing Museum. The new Museum was opened to the public on July 15, 1965. It was then housed on the second floor of a shophouse on Gaya Street and was run by a staff of eight.

From January 1, 1966 the Museum operated as a joint department with the Library until January 1, 1972 when both became separate department under the Ministry of Social Welfare.

Due to the rapid increase of the collection over the years the Museum moved to a much larger premises of 9500 square feet on the third floor in Nosmal Court situated opposite the General Post Office in Gaya Streeet. Ten years later (1979) the second floor of Nosmal Court was acquired by the Museum as storage area thus freeing space on the third floor for office and display and greatly increasing the storage area.

In 1971 a site along Penampang Road was selected as a permanent location for a new museum. The Complex will consist of a main block housing the central exhibition hall and six galleries, offices and meeting rooms; a Science and Development Centre Exhibition and Education with a specially designed theatre adjacent to house eventually an Omnimax Projection system and a Consevation Block containing the workshops and laboratories where the collection could be stored and conserved. The new Museum Complex was completed in 1984 and it was officially opened by His Excellency Sultan Ahmad Shah the King Malaysia on April 11, 1984.

In the sprawling grounds of the Sabah Museum is the Heritage Village with the concept of Man and His Environment comprising 12 life-sized traditional houses and The Islamic Civilization Museum located along Jalan Menteri.

Vision
The Sabah Museum's vision is to save Sabah cultural, historical and natural heritage.

Mission
The Sabah Museum's mission is to serve the public as an educator towards creating a well-informed, vibrant and culture-caring society.

Objective
The Sabah Museum's objective is to collect, preserve, conserve, document, exhibit and interpret material evidence and associated information on history, culture and natural history of Sabah.

Website: http://www.museum.sabah.gov.my/
 

the Power of Inspiration

This competition entry by artist Liu Chien-Sheng for the ” Changing the Face –Pushkinsky Cinema Hall Competition” is a tribute to Александр Сергеевич Пушкин / Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin – it is a poem conceived by architecture. The Pushkinsky Cinema Hall is located next to the Pushkin Square on the urban green line, and the statue of Pushkin stands in front of the cinema hall. The concept of this design is to write a poem as a tribute to Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin by architecture.

“The power of inspiration” – poem

1- Freedom: Against gravity by floating steam. Gravity is one of the great obstacles to artistic design of architectural structure, thus there has been deep desire to construct the architecture without giving sense of gravity. In order to present freedom of architecture, the mist floating in the air performs as a new type of materials for the façade.  The steam floats surround the cinema hall to represent a new type of façade and actually increase the temperature near the building. The rise of steam from horizon – a view of architectural façade extends to unban collage.

2- The warm sun on the snow: The architectural form is originated from an image of sun. Snow country has thirsts for basking in pleasant sunshine, just like the world of poetry need Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin to provide and expand its spirit. The façade starts a primitive geometry with a light materiality to reflect the surrounding. And then, the curves cut it and create the pattern of architectural form.
3- The inspiration of color – a symbol of warm temperature: The architectural façade changes the color with temperature. Generally, the façade color is red during the summer. When the temperature drops, the color turns to black. Moreover, spouting steam from the new façade to increase the temperature around the building and the color turn to scarlet. The color and steam give people warmth. The stainless with Performance Coating on the façade is able to echo the color when temperature becomes different.

a New Palazzo

OFL Architecture is an interdisciplinary practice established by Francesco Lipari in 2008, currently based in Rome. Aiming to combine Art, Sculpture, Biology and Cinema, they engage in various international competitions and tackle a wide range of architectural typologies. Receiving several prizes: the honorable mention at the Hong Kong Noise Barrier Competition with the Riccio project, as well as the first prize for the Silk Road Map International Competition, their work is considered provocative, as it ranges from referencing historical architecture to issues of future housing.

The competition proposal for the office building located in Bolzano is a result of collaboration between OFL Architecture and Rabatanalab. The concept is born from a sculpture idea generated by the desire to establish continuity with the past of the city of Bolzano. It is seen as a re-construction of memories, spirit of places and iconological transposition of the city’s historically relevant architectural symbols. From this ideological assumption, the innovative study carried out on the skin / facade of the new organism recalls one of the iconographic symbols of the city, the Duomo. In fact, the trend of the ribs of the great vault’s “a crociera”, projected on the three naves, have permitted the extrapolation of the particular generator module of the new skin. Optimized exploitation of natural light aims to achieve a visual comfort as well as a desirable level of energy conservation. The common areas will have devices to monitor and regulate energy consumption with time sensors and daylight sensors. On the roof there solar thermal and photovoltaic panels. These are connected to the technical facilities in the basement through a mechanism integrated within the modules of the skin.

ground Water

New York City’s Watershed is in crisis. Not only is there a larger demand for water due to the growth of the population, but due to further suburban development in upland areas, water catchment sites are not as hygienic as before. Within the Croton Watershed lies Carmel,  a suburban town in Putnam County with large basins for water catchment integrated into a developed suburban community. The distributed system currently in place for the dispersal of sewage, though, has a very high risk of contaminating the watershed.

Based on a topological study using sand and cavities to represent the density and area of groundwater contamination risk, a landscape was generated by Carla Lores and Michael Yarisnky. The areas that are highest upland have the highest ground water capacity and lowest contamination risk, and the areas downland have the lowest capacity and highest risk. This relationship is key to the remediation strategy, by creating a topography that channels effluent water to these specific sites. The exo-landscape is then populated with components that not only allow the material flow relationship but can also be modulated to allow for varying lighting conditions and the ability to contain soil and plants. This passive system is then activated by integrated pumps that draw sewage to biogas processing sites.

Using pastoral ideas native to the development of suburban landscaping, such as the sweeping vista, winding pathway, scenic overlook and grotto, we develop the landscape to be a desirable recreation site. Overlaid, layers of sewage, air, and water flow create a new material ecology within Carmel. Since the sites of highest contamination risk are protected, New York City’s Watershed is more protected than previously. Because the system is automated to deposit and process waste into the sites of highest capacity, the system as a whole has a larger capacity for sewage.

This project hopes to blur the boundary between what is considered clean and contaminated, synthetic and natural, and in doing so foster a modified suburban desire. This, through the intensification of existing conditions of a synthetic pastoral and the gizmo begins to challenge the boundaries that enabled the development of suburbia in the first place.

morFologies in Bucharest

Nympha Cultural Center in Bucharest is a concept proposal designed by Brasov-based upgrade.studio, an architectural practice oriented towards computational design and cutting-edge concepts. Their Urban BY-PASS project received a Special Mention at eVolo’s Scyscraper Competition in 2008.

The proposal is conceived as a programmatic addition to the studio’s Digital University project. It comprises Art galleries, Cultural Center, Performing Arts Center and the University library.The two morphologies seem to be deliberately conflicted, expressing opposite approaches.

The veins system is collecting rainwater and storing it into the ground. Using the heat pump principle for cooling and warming the water the building requires no air-conditioning. A wide spread network of thin tubes covers the outer shell and ensures an efficient heat exchange with the environment. 

a Complex Oscillation

This proposal by Emergent is based on creating a complex visual oscillation between two and three dimensional realms. Somewhere between the disciplines of sculpture and painting, the piece registers as a mass but also as a graphic. Loopy, spotted patterns flow over manifold surfaces, simultaneously dissolving the mass and re-establishing it. Transparent zones allow people to view deep inside the object, their gaze pulled into involutions in interior surfaces. They can see the inside of the mass-painting.

The human brain, recent neuroscience suggests, is not engaged in “seeing” space, but in actively “modeling” space1. Residing on multiple ontological levels, this project is an attempt to force the brain to hedge and guess in its “modeling” of physical reality.

The colorful pattern language, while fanciful at first glance, is not simply a visual phenomenon. It is the result of intersecting a map of structural stresses with a painterly sensibility. The loopy mass is analyzed as a composite shell structure, revealing areas of low and high stress. The resultant color-gradient map is manipulated to produce certain visual effects but also broken down into layers of variable thickness and material strength. Color and pattern therefore only partially index material forces; the piece exceeds simple material expression towards something which correlates nature and culture.

Finally, layers of super-thin technology are embedded into the structurally sedimented fiber composite shell. Thin film solar tape is tucked beneath the outermost layer of the shell, while organic LED  lighting film is embedded on the inside of the shell, in accent layers. The solar tape creates micro-patterning which breaks down large surfaces and generates energy to power the lighting system. At night, mysterious graphic and silhouette effects are produced, heightening the dimensional play of the piece.

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Η Σοφία του Ρ. Μ. Ρίλκε

Σε έντεκα χιλιάδες γράμματα εκτιμάται το σύνολο της αλληλογραφίας του γερμανόφωνου ποιητή Ράινερ Μαρία Ρίλκε (1875-1926), προϊόν της επικοινωνίας του με φιλικά και συγγενικά πρόσωπα, καλλιτέχνες και νέους ποιητές που του ζητούσαν συμβουλές, πρώην και νυν ερωμένες. Η διεκπεραίωση αυτής της αλληλογραφίας ήταν καθημερινή ασχολία του ποιητή για αρκετές ώρες και δεν αποτελούσε γι' αυτόν κοινωνική υποχρέωση αλλά έργο πνευματικό, σχεδόν εξίσου σημαντικό με το ποιητικό του, αφού οι επιστολές του είναι συμπυκνωμένα φιλοσοφικά δοκίμια που καλύπτουν ένα ευρύτατο θεματικό φάσμα - από την καθημερινή συνύπαρξη με τους άλλους μέχρι τον ίλιγγο του έρωτα και από την απώλεια και τις δοκιμασίες της ζωής έως την καλλιτεχνική έμπνευση.

Ο Urlich Baer, καθηγητής Γερμανικών και Συγκριτικής Λογοτεχνίας, ανθολόγησε μέσα από χιλιάδες σελίδες αμετάφραστων επιστολών τα καλύτερα αποσπάσματά τους και τα συγκέντρωσε σε ένα βιβλίο-κιβωτό, που προσφέρει στον αναγνώστη όχι μόνο την απόλαυση ανάγνωσης ενός καλογραμμένου κειμένου αλλά και μια πηγή σοφίας στην οποία μπορεί ν' ανατρέχει κάθε στιγμή της ζωής του. Γιατί ο Ρίλκε δεν υπήρξε μόνο ένας από τους σημαντικότερους ποιητές του εικοστού αιώνα, ήταν πρώτα και πάνω απ' όλα βαθιά ανθρώπινος - μ' εκείνο το είδος της ανθρώπινης κατανόησης και ζεστασιάς που συχνά λείπει από τους διανοούμενους. Με γλώσσα ρέουσα και ποιητική και ύφος οικείο και τρυφερό σαν χάδι, ο Ρίλκε στοχάζεται και καταθέτει τις σκέψεις του στο χαρτί καταρχάς και στις καρδιές όσων τις διαβάζουν, στη συνέχεια.

Τα κείμενα που αναφέρονται σε βιβλία όπως ''Η σοφία του Ρίλκε'', δεν χρειάζονται πολλά λόγια και βαθυστόχαστες αναλύσεις, τα τριαντάφυλλα δεν έχουν ανάγκη ούτε από κομπλιμέντα ούτε από διαφήμιση - υπάρχουν κι αυτό είναι αρκετό. Ένα μικρό απόσπασμα από το βιβλίο: ''το εξοχότερο επίτευγμα της δύναμης της ζωής είναι ότι ερμηνεύει το κακό ως καλό και ουσιαστικά το αντιστρέφει... τίποτα δεν διατηρείται δυσκολότερα από το κακό, γι' αυτό κανείς άνθρωπος δεν θα έπρεπε να σκέφτεται πως είναι κακός. Φτάνει να σαλέψει λιγάκι κι αμέσως παύει να είναι.''
 

a Frozen Music

Anisotropia, the design for the new Busan Opera House by Orproject is based on Klavierstück I, a composition for piano by Orproject director Christoph Klemmt. It is based on a twelve tone row which is repeated and altered by the different voices, in order to create complex rhythmic patterns.

Anisotropia becomes the physical manifestation of Klavierstück I, a frozen piece of music. The design for the Busan Opera House is based on a simple strip morphology instead of a twelve tone row, which creates the facade, structure and rhythm within itself, its repetition happening in space instead of time. Layers of the strips form the façade structure, and the shifting and alteration of these patterns results in the formation of complex architectural rhythms which are used to control the light, view and shading properties of the façade.

Klavierstück I uses a twelve tone row which starts with the lowest key of the piano. After its first cycle the row gets repeated, though shifted up by a halftone. However rather than translating up every tone by a halftone, only the lowest tone of the row is translated up by one octave. Like this the row remains the same, but its range has been shifted.

In the next repetition this shift continues, but the range now also gets reduced in its size: The lowest tone gets translated up by one octave again, and the second lowest tone gets dropped out, so that only the remaining eleven tones of the row are played. Instead of the twelve tones the range now only covers eleven tones, and also its length is reduced accordingly.

The range of the twelve tone row continues to be reduced and shifted upwards until only one tone is left in each repetition of the original row. Then the range grows again, and still moving upwards goes through further modulations: The different voices of the piece are starting to separate, the size of the different parallel ranges starts to diverge, they move around each other, until finally they grow together again, still moving up and their range fading out with the highest key of the piano.

Cellular Geometries

The project was designed by Xing Wang in cooperation with Offenbach Academy of Art and Design. The design team was organized by Prof. Dr. Markus Holzbach and was exhibited in Frankfurt in January 2011. It explores the structure and combinatorics of cellular geometries, completely relying on computational design.

The project’s aim was to build a pavilion inside Diamantenbörse in Frankfurt. It was based on mobius geometry with 3d voronoi pattern structure. It tried to integrate special light effects for the media show during the exhibition. The 3d vronoi pattern structure is manufactured as straight wood panels by 5 axis milling machine and assembled on site. In order to save time and material, most parts of the wood panels were cut under 3 axis cutting method, only the both ends parts of the panels with slope are cut through 5 axis setting.

The task was to generate the complex 3d structure in a parametric way, and also prepare the fully detailed CNC manufacture files for the CNC lab. The parametric solution for this system gave the possibility to adjust the structure many times on different design stages.