memorabilia Generation

Designed by Fletcher Priest Architects, the tower is intended to celebrate the cosmopolitan, urban and global character of New York City. It is a high-rise monument located at the tip of Manhattan on a pier projecting from Battery Park. While revitalizing the immediate surrounding and integrating it with the existing urban tissue, the Tower Museum also functions as an architectural landmark, terminating the north-south axis that extends to uptown Manhattan. The building would facilitate various exhibitions, with the emphasis on the 1970’s memorabilia: personal effects, souvenirs and photos of a new generation of immigrants who arrived after 1960.

“The Tower rises at an incline towards the Statue of Liberty, the symbolic gateway to New York, gesturing as an outstretched arm and welcoming hand about one hundred meter high. The external structure reads as a complex layering of muscle with a layered sinuous form. Internally, a central spine rises as a vast spiral stair through a void and is approached through a fluid entry sequence to a glazed wall facing the water. Lifts and stairs climb through this vertical void to the museum, library and rooftop restaurant that has a panoramic view over the city and the outlying boroughs.”

emergent Porosity

This project by Joseph A. Sarafian from the University of Southern California imagines a future in which billions of genetic algorithms act not only as the mediator between man and reality, but shape his existence through their very interactions. It explores a functionality beyond the carrying out of human desires, but of the prediction of human behavior. These ideas manifest in the design of the Bach Multidisciplinary Research Institute. Derived from notions of how Johann Sebastian Bach wove together voices in his fugues, this design is a synthesis of various flows of information, creating an effect larger than the sum of its parts. To achieve this goal, the building acts as an organism, reacting to its environment in such a way that it automatically controls its porosity through a network of advanced algorithms. Thus the facade is a continually fluctuating network of openings.

Instead of merely controlling the light conditions of the interiors, the aperture system is designed to close off and filter pollution from the adjacent freeway as part of the research of the facility. Thus by engaging with its environment the building acts as a testing instrument as much as an enclosure. Acoustical considerations are addressed on a local level as spaces that require varying levels of insulation are opened or closed automatically and in relation to human occupancy.

The research institute is designed to engage various fields of study, from music and the visual arts to biology and mathematics. This diversity promotes a common wealth of knowledge and facilitates interdisciplinary learning. Advancements in one field will have ripple effects in others and this synergy will promote a culture of recombinatory knowledge.
Flanked by Grand Avenue and an off-ramp of the 101 Freeway in Downtown Los Angeles, this site poses a unique set of challenges. Noise and car pollution are controlled through the pyramidal apertures that can close off sound, light, air, or all three depending on which layer of the double skin system is closed. This building envelope is comprised of carbon-fiber panels that enclose a shell of glass apertures. The glass is actually an assembly of two thin glass sheets with a membrane of translucent Aerogel insulation that adds to its acoustical and thermal insulation abilities. This enclosure system functions as the mediator between interior and exterior, and is controlled by an individual, agent based system. Each occupant has his own algorithm of light preferences and thus controls the system locally, contributing to the movement of the array as a whole when the needs of many are seen acting as an amalgamation.

The building form and structure is generated by an agent-based flocking algorithm in which agents from various locations on the site create paths following those of structural loads, determining the location of primary and secondary structural members. Special thanks to my instructor, Roland Wahlroos-Ritter and friends Erick Prins and Michael Sun for their help.

a Complex Landscape

The project is located in Xiaguan District, Nanjing, China. The site is on the south side of Jianning Road, in this urban area which is traditional and historical. The architects are required to design a big complexity including entertaining, sport, commercial and administration offices. Hence the major concern of the design is how to merge this “huge complex” into the existing beautiful nature landscape scenery and get a brilliantly transitional connection with the landscape there.

The distribution of architectural volumes in this design follows the idea of traditional Chinese Gardens, which transforming the elements of water, stones, hills, bridges and flowers into significant urban shapes animating and vitalizing the daily life of the entire district. As the site is in the traditional area, which is very sensitive to avant-garde architecture, this drives us to control the upground mass of the highrise. The proposal therefore lifts up the ground surface and transforms it into a flexible and lively vertical highrise with landscape integrating all the service and leisure facilities to provide an attractive and continuously active support for this traditional and cultural site.

To the open space, the idea is through “bottom elevated” to broaden the horizons, enhance ventilation, expand public space, and promote community interaction. Meanwhile by setting up “roof garden” to increase the accessibility and integration between the inner and outer space. Thus, an outstanding public space which allows citizens to have an unique and great spatial experience can be realized.

Besides, considering the different climate in Nanjing, this requires to pay a special attention on the facade during design period. In the podium part, the façade is in form of compound “green skin“. The continuity of the urban environment is a necessary urban ecological factor.

Team Members: Xinyu Wan, Dingliang Yang, Keming Wang, Jialong Lai, Jie Li

minority Women

Over the past two years, Lili Almog has photographed minority women in the countryside, small cities, and villages of China. In her second powerHouse monograph, The Other Half of the Sky, Almog examines these women at a time when the demands of rapid growth and a sweeping desire for modernity is encroaching upon the traditions and values that have sustained their cultures as intact microcosms in the larger picture of China for centuries. Almog focuses on minority women, with an emphasis on the extraordinary situation of Muslim women in China, as well as the Mosuo women, a unique ethnic minority living within the boundaries of western China and one of the last matriarchal societies existing in the world.

The images in The Other Half of the Sky reflect how the communist revolution, with its vision of the nobility of physical labor and emphasis on gender equality, left its mark on women's and personal identity in a changing China. The book tells the story of the women of today’s China, of their individualism in their domestic and work environments, and of minority women that have only recently been exposed to modernity. Given the nature of today's Chinese society and the conflict between the private self and society, The Other Half of the Sky presents a portrait of the public female representation as a challenge to express the dignity and heroism of the private, intimate female self.

at Bosphorus Valley

An interesting Studio Project program was introduced for the spring semester 2011 at University of Applied Arts Vienna, titled-Vertical Mass, Neither One nor Many. The idea was to propose large scale urban developments as an alternative to a collection of towers resting on a retail and public plinth.  The designs would have to reinterpret notions of skyline voids and spaces within masses, putting the emphasis on the urban void instead of a tower of any kind.

Designed by Joseph Hofmarcher, Rangel Karaivanov, Jürgen Strohmayer and Siim Tuksam, the Levent Vertical Mass sits at a high point of the Bosphorus Valley, integrating the high velocity axes of the highways and contextualizing views of the old city towards the southwest. The building is a commercial high-rise facilitating hotels, offices, condominiums and public plazas and gardens. The vertical garden occupies one of the landed masses and spills into the plaza meeting semi-programmed surfaces (open air theatres, parks) triggered by the civic program in the two other masses that touch the ground. The structure is made of a torus-shaped voids and supple forms, with the adjacent program and circulation pulled around the torus into the central mixed space. Multiplicity is created by organizing program and surfaces into irreducible forms negotiating organic internal logics with the urban concept of the project.

Natural Habitats

Pupa is a habitat by Liam Hopkins of Lazerian within Bloomberg’s London headquarters made from reclaimed cardboard and pallets.

The form and aesthetics are inspired by natural habitats – cocoons, bee hives, spiders nests and weaver birds nests. The ceiling assumes the appearance of a shelter; snug and cave like, but also references the vaulted ceilings of church naves.

The numbers which can be extrapolated from Pupa reflect the almost Sisyphean task faced, whether by human, bird or insect, to create these sort of  structures:


•3,972 triangular cardboard borders make up frame
•3,972 triangle inners fill the exoskeleton providing the cover
•180 wooden pallets taken apart for chair frame and legs
•11,000 nails removed from wooden pallets
•252 leather offcuts from make up the chair seats

Constructed in triangular sections Pupa utilises the structural and acoustic properties of cardboard. Computer design techniques were used to generate the form and the individual components were then extracted from the virtual model to create flat layouts that are glued together by hand.The original Bloomberg cardboard arrived in damp bales so was pulped and re-constituted at a John Hargreaves factory in Stalybridge using machinery originally installed in 1910.

“Commissioned for Bloomberg Philanthropy by art and design agency Arts Co, ‘Waste Not, Want It’ is a series of specially commissioned art and design projects made almost entirely out of Bloomberg’s waste.”

a HogManay

Scotland - Christmas traditions & customs

The Scottish people have their big celebrations on New Year's Day, called Hogmanay. A long time ago There is a superstition that it is bad luck for the fire to go out on Christmas Eve, since it is at this time that the elves are abroad and only a raging fire will keep them from coming down the chimney.

On Christmas day, people sometimes make big bonfires and dance around them to the playing of bagpipes. Bannock cakes made of oatmeal are traditionally eaten at Christmas.

In Scotland, Christmas had traditionally been celebrated very quietly, because the Church of Scotland - the Presbyterian Church - has never placed any great emphasis on the Christmas festival, However, the Scots are members of the Church of England or other churches generally celebrate Christmas in the same way as the English people disapproved of Christmas for they believed that there was too much riotous festivity that went on. Nowadays these things are held at Hogmanay, but they do celebrate Christmas with some very interesting customs.

in Sardinia's Sea and Art

The ecclesiastical architecture
In the main towns and in the greatest centres of Sardinia it is possible to visit ancient churches and
basilicas, prevalent in Romanesque style. The ecclesiastical architecture expresses also in little country Churches and sanctuaries whose artistic value is emphasized by their isolated position and their surroundings.

Civil and military architecture
Among the most significant traces of medieval fortifications we mention the ruins of the Castle of Goceano (1129), the Castle of Serravalle, erected in 3 112 by the Malaspina near Bosa, and the Castle of Acquafredda near Siliqua (13th century). Important, are also the town-walls of Iglesias Sassari, Oristano and above all of Cagliari. In the chief town there are moreover the Castle of San Michele and the Pisan towers of the Elephant (1307) and of San Pancrazio (1305).
The most significant examples of the Catalan -, Aragon's architecture is no doubt the town of Alghero, with many monuments which are very interesting from a civil and military point of view. Among the buildings with a defence and military character we suggest the Castle of Laconi, the Casa-forte in Villasor, the Tower of Ghilarza and the 16th century bastions of Cagliari. Further examples of the civil architecture of this period are the House of Eleonora in Oristano and the Bishop's Palace of Iglesias.

Sassari (1577).
In the 18th century were built various military works especially in Alghero and Cagliari. Among the
examples of the civil building the Palace of the University, the Theatre and the Seminary Tridentino in Cagliari are to be mentioned, as well as the Palace of the Duke of the Asinara in Sassari.

The Palaeo-Christian art

The architectural history in Sardinia goes back to the Palaeo-Christian age. The most important churches are those of San Saturnine in Cagliari (5th century, one of the most interesting early Christian monuments in Italy) and of San Giovanni of Sinis, near Cabras, which goes back to the 6th century.


The Romanesque

From an architectural point of view the Romanesque age is the most significant, various and richest. To the first Romanesque period (11 th century) belong the church of Santa Sabina in Silanus and the middle part of San Pietro in Bosa. To a next Romanesque current date back, on the contrary, the parish church of Sant'Antioco (1102) and the characteristic little churches of Santa Maria of Sibiola, near Serdiana and of San Platano in Villaspeciosa.
Of Tuscan derivation is the third Romanesque current, which the first construction of the church of San Gavino in Porto Torres, very impressive, Basilica Della SS. Trinità di Saccargia (SS) belongs to. The architects of the church of San Leonardo in Santulussurgiu and of the cathedral of Santa Giusta near Oristano follow that model. Of the same current we find different examples in the province of Oristano, with the cathedral of Terralba. The first construction of Santa Maria of Bonarcado (1147). San Paolo in Milis and San Palmerio in Ghilarza (12th century). The most representative building of the local architectonical style is the cathedral of Ottana, made of black and violet trachyte. To a later Romanesque period (12th - 13th century), in which are mixed Tuscan and Lombard influences belong some of the most important medieval monuments of the island and of Italy. We mention among them:

- The basilica of SS. Trinità in Saccargia, in the countryside surrounding Codrongianus;
- The Romanesque - Pisan church of Nostra Signora of Tergu, which rises solitary on a plateau near the village;
- The basilica of Sant'Antioco of Bisarcio, one of the most important monuments in Sardinia, erected on a hill near Ozieri, not so far from the road Sassari - Olbia from where you can see it;
- The imposing basilica of San Pietro of Sorres, one of the most important Italian Romanesque buildings, finished at the end of the 12th century.
The cathedral of San Pantaleo in Dolianova (1261) the church of San Gemiliano in Sestu and that of Santa Maria of Betlehem in Sassari testify the vitality of the late Romanesque in Sardinia. Of Gothic style is the church of San Pietro in Zuri planned by Anselmo of Como, the only church in Sardinia whose architect is known.

in Ethnic Romania

Into Music...

BanatIn Banat, the violin is the most common folk instrument, now played alongside imported woodwind instruments; other instruments include the taragot (today often the saxophone plays the taragot role in bands), which was imported in the 1920s from Hungary. Efta Botoca is among the most renowned violinists from Banat.

BucovinaBucovina is a remote province, and its traditions include some of the most ancient Romanian instruments, including the ţilincă and the cobza. Pipes (fluieraş or fluier mare) are also played, usually with accompaniment by a cobza (more recently, the accordion). Violins and brass instruments have been imported in modern times.

CrişanaCrişana has an ancient tradition of using violins, often in duos. This format is also found in Transylvania but is an older tradition. Petrică Paşca has recently helped popularize the taragot in the region.

DobrogeaDobrogea's population is especially diverse, and there exist elements of traditional Tartar, Ukrainian, Turkish and Bulgarian music among those populations. The most popular dance from Dobrogea is the geamparale, which is very different from the other traditional dances of Romania. In fact, Dobrujan music is characterized by Balkan and Turkish rhythms.

Maramureş and OaşThe typical folk ensemble from Maramureş is zongora and violin, often with drums. Taragot, saxophone and accordion have more recently been introduced.

In Oaş, a violin adapted to be shriller is used, accompanied by the zongora. The singing in this region is also unique, shrill with archaic melodic elements.
 

music Theme Liesma

The project is designed by Boston based PRAUD Studio as a competition proposal for the music-themed hotel in Jurmala, Latvia. The main idea was to take a more aggressive stand and focus on creating a unique experience of a “music park”. Creating an urban landscape, equivalent to the hotel’s natural surroundings resulted in an architecturally strong statement. An elevated structure  facilitating the new hotel was introduced to the site, achieving widely open public space on the ground level, and a better view of the Baltic Sea from the hotel rooms. Every room in the new mass has direct view towards the sea and has access to the balcony on the roof.

The structure is supported by multiple cones that contain public programs such as music café, restaurants, etc. By freeing up the ground level, and having hotel rooms separated from the public programs, the architects transformed the patio into a versatile, polyvalent public space, with a strong social connection to the city. The music park thus becomes a new venue for concerts, festivals, public performances in general. Because of its somewhat segregated treatment of different content, the hotel can run on different operational levels, depending on the season and activating specific parts of the new structure