opposite Geometries

The project was designed and produced by Matt Miller, Dale Fenton, Emau Vega, Aubrie Damron, and Adrian Cortez, all students at the Texas A&M University. Developing the idea of two opposite spatial and symbolic conditions, the team decided to emphasize the difference between them, instead of trying to blend them together. The resulting structure was marked by two polar personalities that defined exteriority and interiority. The Bi-Polar Project comprises three systems: the tessellated parametric logic performative exterior, the free-flowing sensual interior, and the in-between bladder system acting as a mediator between the two extremes.

“Bi-Polar is a project like many others emerging from the discussion of performance and sensation through an architectural skin. While there are projects addressing similar discussions, Bi-Polar embraces an emphasis on the distinction between two competing directions. Just like bipolar disorder this prototype is argued in two different moods, different personalities, you can psychotically switch from one to the other. One personality, the exterior side, is about performance whose surface logic is resolved parametrically, as a rain water collecting instrument that takes the water into bladders integrated between the two skins. These bladders also serve as heating and cooling devices producing light and temperature affects. The other personality, the interior surface, is emotionally designed and more interested in matters of sensation whose surface logic is created by a sensual pleated skin, silk and/or leather, producing nuances and affordances that become ornament, pattern and furniture.”

 

in MoMa's ART

In the late 1920s, three progressive and influential patrons of the arts, Miss Lillie P. Bliss, Mrs. Cornelius J. Sullivan, and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller, Jr., perceived a need to challenge the conservative policies of traditional museums and to establish an institution devoted exclusively to modern art. When The Museum of Modern Art was founded in 1929, its founding Director, Alfred H. Barr, Jr., intended the Museum to be dedicated to helping people understand and enjoy the visual arts of our time, and that it might provide New York with "the greatest museum of modern art in the world."

The public's response was overwhelmingly enthusiastic, and over the course of the next ten years, the Museum moved three times into progressively larger temporary quarters, and in 1939 finally opened the doors of the building it still occupies in midtown Manhattan. Upon his appointment as the first Director, Barr submitted a plan for the conception and organization of the Museum that would result in the Museum's multi-departmental structure with departments devoted for the first time to Architecture and Design, Film and Video, and Photography, in addition to Painting and Sculpture, Drawings, and Prints and Illustrated Books. Subsequent expansions took place during the 1950s and 1960s planned by the architect Philip Johnson, who also designed The Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Garden. In 1984, a major renovation designed by Cesar Pelli doubled the Museum's gallery space and enhanced visitor facilities.

The rich and varied collection of The Museum of Modern Art constitutes one of the most comprehensive and panoramic views into modern art. From an initial gift of eight prints and one drawing, The Museum of Modern Art's collection has grown to include over 150,000 paintings, sculptures, drawings, prints, photographs, architectural models and drawings, and design objects. MoMA also owns approximately 22,000 films and four million film stills, and MoMA's Library and Archives, the premier research facilities of their kind in the world, hold over 300,000 books, artist books, and periodicals, and extensive individual files on more than 70,000 artists. The Museum Archives contains primary source material related to the history of MoMA and modern and contemporary art.

The Museum maintains an active schedule of modern and contemporary art exhibitions addressing a wide range of subject matter, mediums, and time periods, highlighting significant recent developments in the visual arts and new interpretations of major artists and art historical movements. Works of art from its collection are displayed in rotating installations so that the public may regularly expect to find new works on display. Ongoing programs of classic and contemporary films range from retrospectives and historical surveys to introductions of the work of independent and experimental film- and videomakers. Visitors also enjoy access to a bookstore offering an assortment of publications and reproductions, and a design store offering objects related to modern and contemporary art and design.

The Museum is dedicated to its role as an educational institution and provides a complete program of activities intended to assist both the general public and special segments of the community in approaching and understanding the world of modern and contemporary art. In addition to gallery talks, lectures, and symposia, the Museum offers special activities for parents, teachers, families, students, preschoolers, bilingual visitors, and people with special needs. The Museum's Library and Archives contain the leading concentration of research material on modern art in the world, and each of the curatorial departments maintains a study center available to students, scholars and researchers. In addition, the Museum has one of the most active publishing programs of any art museum and has published more than 1,200 editions appearing in twenty languages.

In January 2000, the Museum and P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center exercised a Memorandum of Understanding formalizing their affiliation. The final arrangement results in an affiliation in which the Museum becomes the sole corporate member of P.S.1 and P.S.1 maintains its artistic and corporate independence. This innovative partnership expands outreach for both institutions, and offers a broad range of collaborative opportunities in collections, exhibitions, educational programs, and administration.

MoMA has just completed the largest and most ambitious building project in its history. This project nearly doubled the space for MoMA's exhibitions and programs. Designed by Yoshio Taniguchi, the new MoMA features 630,000 square feet of new and redesigned space. The Peggy and David Rockefeller Building on the western portion of the site houses the main exhibition galleries, and The Lewis B. and Dorothy Cullman Education and Research Building—the Museum's first building devoted solely to these activities—on the eastern portion of the site provides over five times more space for classrooms, auditoriums, teacher training workshops, and the Museum's expanded Library and Archives. These two buildings frame the enlarged Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden. The new Museum opened to the public on November 20, 2004, and the Cullman Building opened in November 2006.

To make way for its renovation and rebuilding, MoMA closed on Fifty-third Street in Manhattan on May 21, 2002, and opened MoMA QNS in Long Island City, Queens, on June 29, 2002. MoMA QNS served as the base of the Museum's exhibition program and operations through September 27, 2004, when the facility was closed in preparation for The Museum of Modern Art's reopening in Manhattan. This building now provides state-of-the-art storage spaces for the Museum.

Today, the Museum and P.S.1 welcome thousands of visitors every year. A still larger public is served by the Museum's national and international programs of circulating exhibitions, loan programs, circulating film and video library, publications, Library and Archives holdings, Web site, educational activities, special events, and retail sales.

on La Dame...

La traviata is an opera in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi set to an Italian libretto by Francesco Maria Piave. It is based on La dame aux Camélias (1852), a play adapted from the novel by Alexandre Dumas, fils. The title La traviata means literally The Fallen Woman, or perhaps more figuratively, The Woman Who Goes Astray. It was originally entitled Violetta, after the main character.

Piave and Verdi wanted to follow Dumas in giving the opera a contemporary setting, but the authorities at La Fenice insisted that it be set in the past, "c. 1700". It was not until the 1880s that the composer and librettist's original wishes were carried out and "realistic" productions were staged

The first performance of the opera was on 6 March 1853 at the La Fenice opera house in Venice. The performance was jeered at times by the audience, who directed some of their scorn at the casting of soprano Fanny Salvini-Donatelli in the lead role of Violetta. Salvini-Donatelli, though an acclaimed singer, was considered too old (at 38) and overweight by the audience to credibly play a young woman dying of consumption. (Verdi had previously attempted to convince the manager of La Fenice to re-cast the role with a younger woman, but with no success.) Nevertheless, the first act was met with applause and cheering at the end; but in the second act, the audience began to turn against the performance, especially after the singing of the baritone (Felice Varesi) and the tenor (Lodovico Graziani). The day after, Verdi wrote to his friend Muzio in what has now become perhaps his most famous letter: "La Traviata last night a failure. My fault or the singers'? Time will tell."

After some revisions between 1853 and May 1854, mostly affecting acts 2 and 3, the opera was presented again in Venice, this time at the Teatro San Benedetto. This performance was a critical success, largely due to Maria Spezia-Aldighieri's portrayal of Violetta.

On 24 May 1856 the revised version was presented at Her Majesty's Theatre in London followed on 3 December of that year by its premiere in New York.

Today, the opera has become immensely popular and it is a staple of the standard operatic repertoire. It is second on the Operabase list of the most-performed operas worldwide, behind only The Magic Flute.
 

strip Morphologies

As a continuation of the Strip Morphologies workshop held in June 2010, Strip Morphologies II is a two-day intensive design, prototyping, and fabrication workshop to be held in New York City during the weekend of November 12-13, 2011. In a fast-paced and hands-on learning environment, this workshop will investigate the morphology of the ’strip’ by cross-linking developable surfaces and joining strategies. We will identify and exploit the constraints inherent in sheet material and CNC laser-cutting technology to explore and construct highly articulated material assemblies. Furthermore, the workshop will provide participants with instruction in digital fabrication techniques and direct access to CNC equipment.
This workshop will consist of a series of instructional lectures, open work sessions, and guided exercises, beginning with an introduction to Computational Geometry and Grid-Based Modeling. The workshop is structured to allow each participant time to iteratively develop design prototypes, moving quickly from digital design environments to material artifacts and back again throughout the weekend.

The workshop will progress through the following subtopics:
Computational Geometry :: Introduction to Curves, Surfaces, Meshes in Rhinoceros
Grid-Based Modeling + Implicit History :: Introduction to Paneling Tools
Articulation + Influencers :: Proximity, Image Mapping, Curvature Strategies
Detailing + Fabrication :: Prototyping Workflows with an 80W CNC Laser

As part of a larger online infrastructure, modeLab, this workshop provides participants with continued support and knowledge to draw upon for future learning. Attendance will be limited to provide each participant maximum dedicated time with instructors.
 

nach Berlin

The Bjarke Ingels Group has had an extraordinary year in which they claimed multiple competitions with what seemed progressively more radical design schemes. Their losing proposal for the German Freedom and Unity Memorial though is decidedly utilitarian and minimalist in scope with a symbolic gesture that is purposely understated.

The memorial site at the Schloßplatz on the Museum Island in Berlin Germany is to commemorate the falling of the Berlin wall in 1989 and the reuniting of East and West Germany. The peaceful transition of Germany after the cold war was most powerfully felt in the city of Berlin where neighborhoods and families were literally separated for a generation. BIG’s proposal using a circle to act a bridge and sculpture is a deliberate attempt to commemorate the event as not just the reunion of a nation by crossing the water channel but as a personal experience of individuals. The act of a bridge is a gesture of the reuniting the cleaved nation. The symbol of a circle is the gentle outcome of the event, a traditional sign of wholeness and strength.

While the symbolic value of the design is clear the effect is also personal as the plaza becomes a united pedestrian mall in the process, further enhanced by the amphitheater on one end. By allowing the public to utilize the space more freely rather than ogle at an object or pile into a pavilion the gesture of the design becomes one of a normalized existence.
 

a Reconfigurable Museum

Filippo Innocenti, co-founder of the UK-based architecture firm Spin+ and an associate architect at Zaha Hadid Architects, was selected by Adobe for the design of an entirely digital museum. Adobe wanted more than a website designer; they were looking for a way to make the space feel “physical’. While Innocenti designed the Museum as a real architectural project, the website design was left to the London-based digital production company Unit9.

The Adobe Museum of Digital Media was designed without concerns such as technical constrains, budget, or natural forces. Innocenti collaborated closely with award-winning designer Piero Frescobaldi, who served as the “building contractor” for construction of the virtual space. Initial design ideas, revolving around spaces devoid of gravity, were too far from the real feel of a building. However, the final design is far from conventional. In real life, the Museum would span over 620, 000 square feet. The visitor first encounters a podium structure resembling a nest of swirled ribbons, which holds the main exhibition spaces and an auditorium for web meetings. The open atrium is home to the exhibitions, which will include works that examine broadcast communications and product development in addition to art. A fluidly shaped set of towers house the archives rise from the base. The entire museum is reconfigurable, so galleries can be adapted to each artist’s vision, and the archives can grow.

In Opera's Music

Saint-Saëns' concertos and many of his chamber music works are both technically difficult and transparent, requiring the skills of a virtuoso. The later chamber music pieces, such as the second violin sonata, the second cello sonata, and the second piano trio, are less accessible to a listener than earlier pieces in the same form. They were composed and performed when Saint-Saëns was already slipping out of popularity and, as a result, they are little known. They show a willingness to experiment with more progressive musical language and to abandon lyricism and charm for more profound expression.

The piano music, while not as deep or as challenging as that of some of his contemporaries, occupies the stylistic ground between Liszt and Ravel. At times brilliant, transparent and idiomatic, the music for two pianos includes the Variations on a Theme by Beethoven, the Scherzo, a palindromic piece that uses a blend of modern tonalities and conventional gestures, and the Caprice arabe, a rhythmically inventive fantasy that pays homage to the music of northern Africa. Although Saint-Saëns was considered old-fashioned in later life, he explored many new forms and reinvigorated some older ones. His compositional approach was inspired by French classicism, which makes him an important forerunner of the neoclassicism of Ravel and others.

In performance, Saint-Saëns is said to have been "unequalled on the organ", and rivaled by only a few on the piano. However, Saint-Saëns's concert style was restrained, subtle, and cool; he sat unmoving at the piano. His playing was marked by extraordinarily even scales and passagework, great speed, and aristocratic refinement. The recordings he left at the end of his life give glimpses of these traits. He was often charged with being unemotional and business-like, less memorable than other more charismatic performers. He was probably the first pianist to publicly perform a cycle of all the Mozart piano concertos. In some cases these influenced his own piano concertos; for example, the first movement of his 4th Piano Concerto in C minor strongly resembles the last movement of Mozart's 24th Concerto, which is in the same key. In turn, his own concertos appear to have influenced those of Sergei Rachmaninoff and other later Romantic composers. Throughout his life, Saint-Saëns continued to play with the technique taught to him by Stamaty, using the strength of the hand rather than the arm. Claudio Arrau never forgot the ease with which Saint-Saëns played (he cites Chopin's fourth scherzo as an example).

Saint-Saëns wrote five symphonies, although only three of these are numbered. He withdrew the first, written for a Mozartian-scale orchestra, and the third, a competition piece. His symphonies are a significant contribution to the genre during a period when the French symphonic tradition was otherwise in decline. Saint-Saëns also contributed voluminously to the French concertante literature; he wrote five piano concertos, three violin concertos, two cello concertos, and about twenty smaller concertante works for soloist and orchestra, including a colorfully orchestrated piano fantasy, Africa; the Havanaise and the Introduction and Rondo capriccioso for violin and orchestra; and the Morceau de concert for harp and orchestra. Of the concertos, the Second Piano concerto is one of the most popular of virtuoso piano concertos, and the Third Violin Concerto and First Cello Concerto also remain popular.

by Kengo Kuma

Placed second at the Taipei City Museum of Art Competition, the proposal designed by Kengo Kuma+Associates derives its iconicity from emphasizing two distinct design tendencies. The first relates to the idea of connectivity: the museum is a cultural and communication hub, providing a space for gatherings, exhibitions and workshops. An urbanistic attitude is noticeable in the configuration of the structure. The skin acts as a canopy- accessible and welcoming, it shelters a public space below. The pavilion-like programmatic distribution contributes to the overall impression of the museum being part of the cityscape. The main hall is connected to a nearby train station, cable car, riverbank trail, demystifying the museum culture, interpreting it as an integral part of the urban experience.

The Museum’s other striking feature is the double skin system. It has an important role in the sustainability of the building. It is designed as a steel mesh of the structural framework, capped with diverse elements including EFTE cushions, LEDs, ventilation louvers, solar panels and green roof. This highly breathable envelope extends all the way to the ground in places to create shaded spaces. And at night, the building is illuminated by energy-efficient LEDs, creating an impressive lighting effect.

 

Negative Pockets

In this project by Cheng Gong for a public library the  main idea is to emphasize the order and relationship between solids and voids. The final geometry derives from petals of flowers and small branches from trunks, the building  walls are two sides within the site and grow like a generation of branches in their early development phases.

Floors are inserted into the volume to divide spaces vertically while creating a domino structural system. Branches are detached out of a bounding solid which is restricted by the site so that the rest of the space in the solid box plays the role of an envelop. As a result, voids are large spaces with abundant light. In contrast, in spite of providing light to the other interior spaces, visitors are able to “touch” and “feel” the negative spaces in between the masses.

The corner strategy comes to a public space created by a smooth transition as a lobby function. The gaps in between the solids follow a strong alignment order to reinforce the envelop form. Transportation is organized in-between the slope volume as wells as voids. Interior spatial order follows with the growing of the “branches”. Ornamental details such as creases are applied to the surfaces’ edges to emphasize its geometry.

 

the New MomA

Located in Warsaw city centre, the new MoMa Museum would be a landmark cultural institution for the new millennium. Designed by Finish ALA Architecture, the building is a strong statement, capable of challenging the iconic status of the neighboring Palace of Culture, built in the Soviet-era.

The project uses reflectiveness and transparency to create contrasting effects, responding to the definition of exhibition spaces, as well as to the surrounding  urban fabric:

“The project has only two surfaces. The glass wall represents and enables the digital world of direct, location-independent communication. It works locally as a gigantic shop window and display board, utilizing visual communication methods from transparency to manual manipulation and digital projection. It reveals, protects and enhances the physical, “real” art behind it.

The sculptural curving wall is a solid and permanent feature born out of the current conditions and inspirations. It is real and mesmerizing, and will remain as a document of our time while the glass wall keeps evolving and the contents changing. It is clad in a chromium-like finish, thus literally reflecting the local surroundings in a unique way. The museum interior is delineated by these two surfaces. It is a combination of their different qualities. It has generic and unique aspects, light and dark moments and permanent and temporary features. The art can be totally isolated inside, or it can be totally exposed to the outside. The art can be inspired by the space and take on its unique qualities, or it can ignore the space and turn it into a new condition just for itself. The amount and quality of light can be modified by manipulating the glass wall. The large gallery spaces can be divided into smaller units, or the whole museum can act as one continuous space.”