whispers Ice

The first artwork I “met” by Charles Stankievech, a Montreal/Dawson City multimedia artist, was his delicate, subtle work Whispers (for WB) at the Parisian Laundry (Montreal) in 2005. For this piece, Stankievech set a series of speakers attached to long, rambling wires along the floor of a skinny concrete hallway. The speakers exuded a wash of overlapping whispers in multiple languages, mixed from 12 channels.

The audio effect was either spooky or soothing, depending on your mood. Visually, it was spare yet also inviting, since you could pick up the speakers if you wanted to listen more closely.
Since then Stankievech has continued to work with overlaps between architecture, acoustics (connecting more broadly to communications technologies), and visual art (most frequently sculpture and video). He’s on year three in Dawson as an instructor at the School of Visual Arts (SOVA).

And ice has begun to appear in – or literally around – Stankievech’s geographically northern art on a regular basis. Pale landscapes add to his minimalist aesthetic, and the North is definitely a place where sound travels farther and feels thinner. But even more importantly, Stankievech is currently contemplating boundary issues in remote places – places where international defence systems install themselves. The North provides the specific history of the DEW Line plus the current US HAARP project.

to Intel Alexandrina

Intel Bibliotheca Alexandrina Science and Engineering Fair 2012

The BA Planetarium Science Center (PSC), in collaboration with Intel Co., is organizing Intel Bibliotheca Alexandrina Science and Engineering Fair (Intel BASEF) from 10 to 12 March 2012.This competition prepares students from all over Egypt for participating, competing, and winning in the national competition. Intel BASEF top three winning projects will represent Egypt in the International Science and Engineering Fair (Intel ISEF) competition that will take place in USA.Intel BASEF brings together students, 14-18 years of age, from all over Egypt to train, research, innovate and compete in preparation for the Intel ISEF, the world’s largest international pre-college science competition.

a Helicoidal to Save a City

The ‘City Respiration Skyscraper’ designed by Czech architects Pavlína Doležalová and Jan Smékal is a helicoidal  240 meter-high structure designed to clean the air of the most polluted cities worldwide. Its primary structure is a concrete ribbon covered by air-cleaning algae. The outer cellular structure is a three-dimensional cluster of individual concrete three-spike units inspired by sea sponges. 

This helicoidal structure acts as a chimney where warm and polluted air is captured at the bottom and  filtered and oxygenated by the algae and a specialized water-sprayed system. A network of these skyscrapers strategically placed in the most polluted areas could clean a city in a couple of weeks.
 

a Romantic among

In  the beginning,” the elderly Edgar Degas recalled, “Fantin, Whistler and I, we were all on the same road from Holland.”

What he meant was that in the early 1860s, just as the moribund polarities in French painting between the neo-classical and Romantic schools were giving way to the full-blooded realism of Gustav Courbet, he was among a band of young artists who aspired to bring up-to-date the Dutch 17th-century landscape, portrait, still life and genre traditions.

One of the artists Degas mentions was Henri Fantin-Latour, painter of that great aubade to the Romantic movement, Homage à Delacroix, the 1864 group portrait in which (among others) Baudelaire, Manet, Whistler and Fantin-Latour himself boldly stake their claim to the leadership of the cultural avant-garde.

Whistler and Manet in their different ways went on to become two of the most progressive artists working in European painting during the second half of the century. Fantin-Latour did not. Neither reactionary nor innovator, his absolute dislike of plein-air painting and preference for a nearly monochromatic palette set him apart from the generation of young artists who allied themselves with the Impressionists.

Yet there is something schizophrenic about Fantin-Latour’s talent. On the one hand he was a portraitist of extraordinary ambition and psychological acuity whose works in the genre always impress but never enthral. His chilly, grey-black palette, the emotional distance he keeps from his sitters, and the stiff poses contrived in the interest of compositional balance rather than for natural effect cast a funereal pall over all his group portraits.

to Ethnograf Installations

Museums in Botswana

In Gaborone, there is a collection of ethnographic and historical treasures, as well as Sub-Saharan art, in the National Museum and Art Gallery. Kanye and Mochudi also maintain ethnographic museums, named Phuthadikobo Museum and Kgosi Bathoen Ii (Segopotso) Museum. There is also a postal museum in Gaborone. In 1986, the Supa-Ngwao Museum Centre in Francistown opened to host ethnographic and historical installations.

Encyclopedia of the Nations

Phuthadikobo Museum (Botswana)
Telephone: +267 577 72 38
Fax: +267 574 89 20
Supa-Ngwao Museum Centre (Botswana)
Telephone: +267 240 30 88
Kgosi Bathoen Ii Museum (Botswana)
Telephone: +267 544 11 35
Telephone: +267 544 25 52
The National Museum & Art Gallery (Botswana)
Telephone: +267 374 616
Fax: +267 302 797
E-mail: national.museum@gob.bw

evolution OF discipline

The architecture for performance and exhibition, being museums, galleries, music halls, pavilions, etc., has been in the leading edge of architectural innovation throughout the history and evolution of the discipline. Architects and designers experiment on new aesthetics, concepts, and ideas with projects that tend to have a flexible program and a large budget. In many cases, the main requirement of such structures is not only to accommodate a specific program but also to inspire the imagination of its users and challenge the current state of architectural design. Some examples, such as the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao by Frank Gehry or the Sydney Opera House by Jørn Utzon are considered design masterpieces of the 20th Century. Gehry’s Museum transformed the city of Bilbao from a small industrial Spanish city into a world destination, while Utzon’s Opera House become the symbol of Sydney and Australia.

This issue of eVolo studies the most innovative examples of performance and exhibition architecture today. These are projects that revolutionize architecture on many levels, including sustainability, aesthetics, technology, and urban design. It is interesting to point out that these works are not concentrated in one specific region, but are located in every corner of the globe; from MVRDV’s Comic and Animation Museum in China, to the new Broad Museum in Los Angeles by Diller Scofidio + Renfro, or Kengo Kuma’s Victoria and Albert Museum in Dundee, Scotland.
The variety of programs is as diverse as their location. Steven Holl’s Museum of Ocean and Surf in Biarritz, France creates awareness of the oceans’ fragile state and emulates the kinetic sensibility of water through sweeping walls and carefully articulated volumes. Holm Architecture’s circular Samaranch Olympic Museum in Tianjin, China is a study on framing and juxtaposing artificial and natural landscapes to generate a continuous exhibition loop. X-TU Architects’ Prehistory Museum in Jeongok, South Korea was parametrically designed as a futuristic vessel erected as a bridge atop hills along the Hantan River preserving the untouched historic landscape. Among other projects, Diller Scofidio + Renfro’s Museum of Image and Sound in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, is an interface between exhibition spaces and the city. Other smaller scale projects are WORD’s Holocaust Memorial for Atlantic City’s Boardwalk, which acts as an inscriptive apparatus, which etches the history of the Holocaust in our memory, and the America’s Cup Pavilion by Daniel Carper, which functions as an epicenter for various activities. The design is based on the tectonic and function qualities of high-end sailing vessels.

For this issue we had the opportunity to interview one of the most promising architects of Mexico: Fernando Romero, who recently completed the Soumaya Museum in Mexico City. The museum has been praised by the critics as one of the most outstanding works of architecture in the country this decade. Fernando also shares with us the his experience in practicing architecture in Mexico, the United States, Europe, and China – an interesting insight on the major differences, challenges, and advantages of working in different cultures and economies.

The Opinion section includes essays on morphogenetic computational design and zero-energy buildings. Emmanuel Ruffo from the Graz University of Technology explains structural patterns formation and the digital tools utilized to explore these geometries and their potential use in architecture. On the other hand, Dr. Eugene Tssui, from the University of Science and Technology in Guangzhou, China, proposes the first true zero-energy building based on studies of the Termite’s nest of central Africa. Dr. Tssui´s “Evolutionary Architecture” is an in-depth study of living organisms and their natural processes. Finally, Beatriz Ramo, from Tilburg’s Architecture Academy exposes the abuse by architects, designers, writers, politicians, etc., of the so-called “green” sustainable architecture, which in many cases is just an advertising gimmick and not true environmentally responsible designs.

In the News section Kurt C. Hunker from the New School of Architecture in San Diego examines the consequences and changes in high-rise architecture since 9/11. In this section we also present the winners of the 2011 eVolo Skyscraper Competition. The contest recognizes outstanding ideas that redefine skyscraper design through the implementation of new technologies, materials, programs, aesthetics, and spatial organizations. Studies on globalization, flexibility, adaptability, and the digital revolution are some of the multi-layered elements of the competition. It is an investigation on the public and private space and the role of the individual and the collective in the creation of dynamic and adaptive vertical communities.

 

a Love, a Paper, a Ballerina

"The Steadfast Tin Soldier" (Danish: Den standhaftige tinsoldat) is a literary fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen about a tin soldier's love for a paper ballerina. After several adventures, the tin soldier perishes in a fire with the ballerina. The tale was first published in Copenhagen by C.A. Reitzel on 2 October 1838 in the first booklet of Fairy Tales Told for Children. New Collection. The booklet consists of Andersen's "The Daisy" and "The Wild Swans". The tale was Andersen’s first not based upon a folk tale or a literary model. "The Steadfast Tin Soldier" has been adapted to various media including ballet and animated film.

On his birthday, a boy receives a set of 25 toy soldiers and arrays them on a table top. One soldier stands on a single leg, having been the last one cast from an old tin spoon. Nearby, he spies a paper ballerina with a spangle on her sash. She too is standing on one leg and the soldier falls in love. That night, a goblin among the toys angrily warns the soldier to take his eyes off the ballerina, but the soldier ignores him. The next day, the soldier falls from a windowsill (presumably the work of the goblin) and lands in the street. Two boys find the soldier, place him in a paper boat, and set him sailing in the gutter. The boat and its passenger wash into a storm drain, where a rat demands the soldier pay a toll. Sailing on, the boat is washed into a canal, where the tin soldier is swallowed by a fish. When the fish is caught and cut open, the tin soldier finds himself once again on the table top before the ballerina. Inexplicably, a boy throws the tin soldier into the fire. A wind blows the ballerina into the fire with him; she is consumed at once but her spangle remains. The tin soldier melts into the shape of a heart.

 

The Nukus Museum

The Karakalpakstan State Museum of Art named after I.V. Savitsky - also known, simply, as the Nukus Museum - hosts the world's second largest collection of Russian avant garde art (after the Russian Museum in St. Petersburg). It is also home to one of the largest collections of archeological objects and folk, applied and contemporary art originating from Central Asia.

Igor Savitsky (1915-84), a Russian born in Kiev and the Museum's founder, first went to Karakalpakstan in 1950 as the artist in the Khorezm Archaeological and Ethnographic Expedition led by the world famous scientist, Sergei P. Tolstov. Fascinated by the culture and people of the steppe, he stayed on after the dig (1950-57), methodically collecting Karakalpak carpets, costumes, jewelry, and other works of art. At the same time, he began collecting the drawings and paintings of artists linked to Central Asia, including those of the Uzbek school, and, during the late-1950s/early-1960s, those of the Russian avant garde which the Soviet authorities were then banishing and destroying. Today, the Museum houses a collection totaling about 90,000 items, including graphics, paintings and sculptures, as well as thousands of artifacts, textiles and jewelry, ranging from the antiquities of Khorezm’s ancient civilization to the works of contemporary Uzbek and Karakalpak artists.

Perhaps the most remarkable, indeed unique features of the Savitsky Collection are the paradoxes surrounding its existence. For example, Karakalpakstan - the remote northwestern region of Uzbekistan where the Museum was founded - was, and remains one of the poorest of the entire former Soviet Union. On the other hand, despite its poor economic prospects, Karakalpakstan’s culture has been preserved and provided the intellectual raison d'être and nourishment for the Museum’s creation in 1966.

Second, the Museum may be one of the few places in the world where Russian avant garde art hangs alongside that of Socialist Realism - the former slandered by the Soviet State, the latter glorified by it.

Third, the Museum’s collection of Russian avant garde is the only one that was initially condemned officially by the Soviet Union and, at the same time, financed partly by it, albeit unwittingly. Evidently, Nukus’ status as a ‘closed’ city and, especially, Savitsky’s good relations with the Karakalpak regional authorities enabled this to happen.

Finally, Savitsky, the European, trained the Karakalpaks, his Asian counterparts, in the value of their own culture and the importance of preserving it. His approach and sensitivity instilled trust not only in the older generations of Karakalpaks who sold him their textiles and jewelry, but also in the local government which played a large role in the Museum’s foundation and continued existence. It was this mutual affection and trust that has ensured the renaissance of both a forgotten nation and a neglected generation of artists and their work.

This pearl in the desert - or, as the French magazine Télérama recently called it, 'Le Louvre des steppes' - is located in Nukus, the capital of the Autonomous Republic of Karakalpakstan in northwest Uzbekistan at the southern base of the now dying Aral Sea, which until the mid-1960s was world's fourth largest inland lake.  Although the ancient Silk Road cities of Samarkand, Bukhara and Khiva may be better known, the Nukus Museum is in fact the fourth splendor of Uzbekistan. Indeed, the Savitsky Collection has been called "one of the most outstanding museums of the world" by the UK's Guardian newspaper.

Alaska, is portrayed...

The Call of the Wild is a novella by American author Jack London published in 1903. The story takes place in the extreme conditions of the Yukon during the 19th-century Klondike Gold Rush where strong sled dogs were in high demand. After Buck, a domesticated dog, is snatched from a pastoral ranch in California, he is sold into a brutal life as a sled dog. The novella details Buck's struggle to adjust and survive the cruel treatment he receives from humans, other dogs, and nature. He eventually sheds the veneer of civilization altogether and instead relies on primordial instincts and the lessons he has learned to become a respected and feared leader in the wild.

The Call of the Wild is London's most popular work and is considered the masterpiece of his so-called "early period."The novella is often classified as children's literature because of its animal protagonist, but the maturity of its subject matter makes it valuable for older audiences as well. Major themes include survival of the fittest, civilization versus nature, and fate versus free will.

The Yeehat, a group of Alaska Natives portrayed in Call of the Wild, were a figment of London's imagination.
 

electro Magnetic FIELDS

Designed by Alisa Andrasek, the Seroussi Pavilion was “grown” out of self-modifying patterns of vectors based on electro-magnetic fields (EMF). Through logics of attraction/repulsion trajectories were computed in plan and than lifted via series of structural microarching sections through different frequencies of sine function. Additional feature built into script allows for local adaptation to the site in regards to the section (pavilion is implanted into a steep hill _ EMF trajectories needed to “find the ground”). Six different geometrical systems were used for design and are all steaming out of primary trajectories.

The plan of the pavilion differs greatly from a classical notion of architectural plan drawing _ it is a dynamic blueprint closer to musical notation _ deep ecology of imbedded algorithmic and parametric relationships are the seed for possible materialization procedures and adaptation to the site conditions. In a design of the roof tilling resolution was increased by the algorithmic differentiation of components features.