recreating Manhattan

Welcome to Formiscucity, Manhattan’s premier recreational P.A.R.C. tower – where a new way of life is taking shape!

Formiscucity, located just west of Times Square in Manhattan’s new and most contested real estate, occupies a single city block as an uber-special island within the man-made islands of the city’s 200’ x 800’ block grid system. The 50-story tower reaches up 600 feet, with a footprint covering 25% of the site to achieve the super density characteristic of Manhattan. This extreme density promotes diverse interaction as a microcosm of the city itself.

The remainder of the site begins as a horizontal green space on 11th Avenue, continuing up vertically through the tower’s 50 stories. Four core biozones (jungle, arctic, mountain, and desert – each with their characteristic fauna/climate) are utilized as a vertical recreational park space, density generator, and internal climate moderator for energy conservation. For adventurous climbers, the mountain service and structural core additionally provide vertical climbing access to the top.
Surrounding the biozones are 600 privately occupied generic lofts. Lofts may be flexibly inhabited by market-rate and 30% below market-rate housing, commercial/retail, and/or office space as driven by economic demands, such that Formiscucity never ends up as a vacant office tower during an extreme economic downturn.

Whereas typical skyscrapers intensely consume, Formiscucity uses no more energy than the neighboring 6-story brownstones. This is achieved through a double-skin structural façade with solar and waste water collection, a grey water system, geothermal pumps, and organic light emitting diodes that actively re-dress the tower in response to Times Square and Manhattan’s ever-changing imagery.
Formiscucity spatially embodies and psychologically projects the extreme “uber-specialness” of Manhattan’s island density, diversity, and variability to residents, workers, recreation seekers, locals, and tourists. Additionally, effort to formally and programmatically re-conceive Manhattan’s skyscraper typology in response to current city conditions sponsors a tower ecology of community, ecosystems, populations, and behaviors.

Ultimately, Formiscucity aims to simultaneously address Manhattan’s extreme social and political climate of divergent community, developer, resident, and architectural desires through form, program provision, energy consumption, economic sustainability, and quality of life.
Formiscucity… Inhabit Variety!

ethnography in Bangladesh

Bangladesh National Museum, formally inaugurated on 17 November 1983, is one of the largest museums in South Asia. Dhaka Museum, formally inaugurated on 7 August 1913, was its forerunner. Bangladesh National Museum is devoted to archaeology, classical, decorative and contemporary art, history, natural history, ethnography and world civilization. Bangladesh National Museum has splendid collections which range in date from prehistory to the present time. Both in number and uniqueness, the Museum is extremely rich in stone, metal and wooden sculptures, in gold, silver and copper coins, in stone inscriptions and copperplates and in terracottas and other artifacts of archaeological interest. The Museum has one of the largest collections of arms and armour in the Indian subcontinent.

Quite fascinating are its collections of decorative art, especially of woodwork, metalwork and embroidered quilts. It has items of natural history and ethnographic interest. The Museum is noted for its collection of Shilpacharya Zainul Abedin and works of other contemporary artists. The Museum also illustrates the freedom struggle culminating in the liberation of Bangladesh.
 

the Heart of a City

The designer of the “Monument to Civilization” asks you to reconsider what constitutes ‘spectacular.’

Skyscrapers are meant to wow, to impress. But other things within cities are also impressive, the designer says: “New York, for instance: If we put its annual garbage on a area of a typical tower footprint, we’ll get a 1,300 meter high landfill tower, which is about as three times tall as the Empire State Building (450 meters). Isn’t that spectacular?”

As landfill possibilities surrounding growing metropolises disappear and cities fight waste management issues, the power of trash needs to be reconsidered. The accumulation of waste, for example, actually creates potential energy-recycle opportunities, such as when gas is emitted during decomposition. The Monument of Civilization proposal suggests locating trash vertically in a tower and using the energy generated from its decomposition to help power the surrounding city. By locating the tower in the heart of the city, energy is provided in immediate proximity, and money is also saved in transportation costs when garbage no longer needs to be shipped out of town.

It also able to serve there as a loud reminder of society’s wasteful ways: “The ever-growing Monument may evoke the citizens’ introspection and somewhat leads to the entire city’s waste-decreasing and better recycling,” the designer says. Seeing the tower as an “Earth-Friendliness Meter,” the designer says, means the shorter the tower, the friendlier the city, as that means less waste is made and more is recycled. “Perhaps all metropolitan cities would inverse the worldwide competition from being the tallest to the shortest.”

Underneath the structure lie recycling and wastewater processing facilities, gas and power stations, a temporary dump and wasted water tank. The tower consists of a garbage brick wall, gas transmission pipelines, and a solid-waste tank in the center.

to Restore a Mountain

Industrialization and mining are destroying China’s natural settings, especially mountains, which are excavated to the point of destruction in man’s search for minerals. These processes don’t just devistate regions’ ecologies; they also displace whole populations of people, separating them from their homes and also their means of living, as many in these rural areas work as farmers. The “Mountain Band-Aid” project seeks to simultaneously restore the displaced Hmong mountain people to their homes and work as it restores the mountain ecology of the Yunnan mountain range.

This is achieved with a two-layer construction project. The outer layer is a skyscraper that is built into and stretched across the mountain. By building the structure into, and as part of, the mountain, the skyscraper helps the Hmong people recover their original lifestyle. It is organized internally by the villagers to replicate the traditional village design they utilized before they were displaced. The building’s placement on the mountain means that its height is mainly determined by the height of the mountain. The design as a whole is one of “dual recovery:” the Hmong people living on the damaged mountain can keep the unique organization of space in their village, recreating it within the skyscraper, but they won’t be contributing to the mountain’s degradation. Instead, they help the mountain’s environmental restoration by recycling domestic water for mountain irrigation. It is this irrigation system that comprises the project’s inner layer: an irrigation system is constructed to stabilize the mountain’s soil and grow plants.

The skyscraper is constructed in the traditional Chinese Southern building style known as Chuan Dou. Small residential blocks are used as the framework: The blocks are freely organized as they were in the original village, but the framework controls this organization of blocks into different floors, acting as the contour line in traditional Hmong village.

where Tigers live...

When Eléazard Von Wogau dusts off the stuffed bird spider that he keeps on his desk he accidentally damages it, unleashing dozens of baby spiders from its womb, which will wreak havoc on his house in the months to come and this on the day when his housekeeper is leaving him for good. It is a negligible incident, but it is an example of the unintended consequences that abound in Where Tigers Are At Home (Là où les tigres sont chez eux), the kaleidoscopic novel by the French author Jean-Marie Blas de Roblès.

Where Tigers Are At Home tells the story of Eléazard von Wogau, a foreign correspondent in the northern regions of Brazil, who is working on an annotated translation of a 17th century biography of the maverick German Jesuit scholar Athanasius Kircher (1602-1680); his ex-wife Elaine, who is on a jungle expedition in Mato Grosso in search of some rare fossils; his drug-addict daughter Moéma; Moreira the corrupt governor of Maranhao and his alcoholic wife; Loredana, an Italian journalist who ends up befriending Eléazard; Roetgen, a student who falls in love with Moéma; and Nelson, a legless boy from the favelas on a mission to avenge his father’s death.

In alternating chapters and paragraphs we learn of the fortunes and misfortunes of each of the novel's main characters. Much of the novel consists in a retelling of the biography of Athanasius Kircher that Eléazard von Wogau is translating. During his life Kircher was a celebrated scholar who devoted his considerable intellectual energy to everything that aroused his interest, from hieroglyphs to geology, biology and medicine. He was also an inventor of numerous machines and automatons. His attempt to construct a flying machine is one of the motifs that will return in a rather surprising fashion towards the end of the novel.

While Von Wogau is working on his book we learn that the ship on which Elaine and her companions are traveling is attacked by cocaine smugglers. One of the expedition members is killed during the attack and another is mortally wounded. The ship is heavily damaged and the members of the expedition are forced to continue on foot through the jungle looking for help. They are taken hostage by an Indian tribe who recognize the messiah in one of the scientists.

Moéma, in the meantime, descends into an orgy of sex and drugs. Blas de Roblès accurately captures the delusions of an addict who constantly promises herself to get her life back on track but betrays everyone around her to get another dose of cocaine. As a consequence I felt at once empathy and anger with her.

I admit that some of the passages about Athanasius Kircher are a bit hardgoing, also because the storylines about Moéma and the expedition in Mato Grosso are so compelling. Of course, if you want to, you can just skip the parts about Kircher, but then you would miss the parallels that Blas de Roblès has woven into the novel.

Where Tigers Are At Home has won several literary awards in France, including the Prix Medicis. I enjoyed reading it and if you like the work of Umberto Eco and David Mitchell you'll love Where Tigers Are At Home.

We, the People Of...

As a part of the 2012 New Museum Triennial The Ungovernables currently on exhibit is artist Danh Võ’s deconstruction of the Statue of Liberty. WE THE PEOPLE is a gesture of installation using architecture and sculpture as an underpinning for a more unsettled experience. Copper sheets were assembled in an exact replica of the originals weight and scale, placed in sections on the floor in an undetermined state. The panels are hammered using the same technique as the original statue to the same tolerances. Taken from a larger collection of more recognizable pieces the series of parametric copper plates read as though they are part of a contemporary façade or pavilion. The pieces allude formally to modernist sculpture such as the work of Richard Serra, where form and materiality is the subject .

The initial abstraction of the installation gives way to interpretation on the context and value of the gesture. The deconstruction touches upon aspects of formal design, history, and national identity without expressing alliance to any of these qualities. Perhaps the ambiguity is born from Võ’s complex personal past, a child of South Vietnam but raised in Denmark and settled in Germany. The panels could be presented as before final assembly of a reconstructed and renewed Statue. Or Võ’s message can be one of protest to a loss of freedom, an impending disassembly of an ideal. The symbolic gesture, without a guide, adds tension to the presentation, leaving the viewer to assemble the statue and its meaning with their own expectations.

Photos: ©Benoit Pailley
 

into the past of Iranian architectural Models

The project seeks to provide the Benetton Group with a site specific building prototype able to give material consistence to such a renewed model. It is designed by ecoLogicStudio, a firm mostly oriented towards combining new computational technologies with natural principles and ecosystem processes. The initial idea for the project was found in the “recycling” of past Iranian architectural models and prototypes that are still deeply rooted into the culture of the place and are, at the same time, providing solutions that perfectly fit local microclimatic conditions. However the contemporary business models demand an architectural and material reinvention of those traditional models to accommodate the new spatial and per-formative requirements as well as communication/ branding potentials.

The main local models recycled in the project are: the geometric Islamic patterns and ornaments, employed as organizational principles for the plan, facade and structural systems; passive cooling techniques, turned into an innovative system of solar control and screening as well as passive ventilationand ground cooling; thermoregulatory systems using the thermal mass of the building envelope and the ground, reinvented in a new “deep facade” system using water as thermal storage and heat regulator.

The hybridization of this new model into a new proto-system has been achieved by introducing a set of new components/technologies: fully developed parametric and associative modeling of the entire building, allowing a direct real time manipulation of form and internal organization in relationship to microclimatic, structural and programmatic requirements; an innovative approach to materials and systems engineering, where thermal mass, radiation control, cooling and on site carbon sequestration and renewable energy generation has been embedded in the architectural fabric of the building; this has been achieved by introducing the technology of algae farming directly in the facade and partitioning system of the building. This technique allows for real time adaptation of the skin properties; the facade will be an ever changing living system negotiating seasonal weather patterns and interacting with programmatic and socio-economic developments.

between Aggression and Elegance

Life Will Kill You is an installation designed by Molly Hunker and Greg Corso for the Revolve Clothing showroom in West Hollywood. To stand in contrast to the high-fashion clothing of the boutique, an everyday industrial material – the zip tie – is aggregated to create a floating volume that nestles below an existing soffit. The design is intended to explore the edge between aggression and elegance through material sensibility, overall form, and visual effect.

The cloud-like volume is created by a double-sided surface composed of over 100,000 zip ties. The exterior surface of the volume is an aggregation of longer, wider white zip ties while the interior is comprised of shorter and finer colored zip ties. The resulting bulging form offers ever-changing glimpses of blurred yet vivid color combinations as the zip ties layer on top of one another in the predominantly black and white store interior.

our Lady of Angels

The concept of this design by Xiaofeng Mei and Xiaotian Gao is based on the deconstruction and restructuring of Bionics as well as the supernatural spirit of re-designing a church.

The idea is based on two starting levels and extraction elements. One is the derivative and evolution of fish’s bone and texture. Specifically, from fish bones, fish gills, fish suko, and other various important parts, I can extract the geometric elements and then sort out the logic of formation of biological body, which would become the primitive of main structure and mode. Second is the religious beliefs of church and spiritual of space. The exploration of the spirit of building is the basic method and necessary mean to study how to combine the modern architecture and ultra-modern architecture together.

External prosperity of Architectural appearance, but in fact, requires careful logical constitute of inherent physical units to support. In this project, I mainly studied the formation and variation of single cells as well as a series of gradually combined into a system derived from logic. At all stages, a power expansion of the complexity has been formed from the body itself, the logic of variation and composition. Meanwhile, I also sought to control the hierarchy of overall complexity and coherence in order to achieve complicated and orderly aesthetic coexistence of interaction scenarios. This is the original intention of bionics or architectural aesthetics that are tending to nature because nature is the most complex biological interpretation of synthetic organisms.

At any one area, theory would be far beyond the practice, which is the prerequisite for everything to constantly update and evolve, also in the architecture field. The imagination of future architecture and utopian city continued to the present from the last century. Here, the architecture abandoned the totalitarian and inherit the anti-totalitarian utopian tendencies, focusing on the nature and the spirit of liberalism.
 

iconic Kaohsiung City

With a short list of ambitious designs by Akihisa Hirata, Studio Gang Architects, Yves Bachmann and this featured design by Mack Scogin Merill Elam Architects (MSMEA), its fair to say the Kaohsiung City Public Works Bureau did not have an easy choice to make when they decided on a final design for the Kaohsiung Maritime Culture and Popular Music Center. Although MADE IN’s design was ultimately chosen for the Center, many of these other entries are still worth their mention.
With possibly the most “out there” design for the Center, MSMEA sought to create a 24 hour, iconic attraction for Kaohsiung. The eclectic design for the larger component, the Pop Music Center, and the concept for the Center as a whole for that matter is “founded in the vibrancy of Kaohsiung City and its maritime culture, and in the energy and phenomenon of popular music”.

The two main components, the Pop Music center and the Marine Culture Exhibit Center are placed on either side of the Love River and joined by a bridge spanning the mouth of the river.

Of the positioning they said “The Kaohsiung Maritime Cultural and Popular Music Center is not shy. Like a giant vessel moored at the quay, the Center announces and guards the mouth of the Love River and is a gateway to Kaohsiung City and the nation”.

But the placement of the Center is not only to create a cultural landmark for the city, the placement also allows for the remaining 87% of the site to be reserved as open public park space. This would connect to existing surrounding parks and provide a pleasant waterfront for residents and visitors alike.

MSMEA also wanted to create a flexible space to accommodate the various types of performances and events that would be held at the Center. By separating various components, MSMEA created the possibility for audience capacities ranging from as little as 3,500 to as many as 17,000. Floating stages and barges allow for marine performances.

cities Of Pain

For the purpose of consciously evoking society’s reaction, an architectural object is inserted into the main recreational zone of New York – Central Park Jovile Porvaneckaite. Moreover, social and cultural phenomena inspired by the innovative form are discussed. The aim of the project is to analyse the process of form modelling and, consequently, perform a research of the form as power, based on an experimental project carried out by the author. The article aims at establishing the influence of the volume deficiency formed or shaped in the city’s planning system on the suggestibility of the building’s form.

In the project concerned, the term volume deficiency is used to describe the stress environment in the city structure, formed on the artistic, planning, volume, stylistic, value or historical base, and programming continuity of the above processes after integration of the newly proposed object into the environment mentioned.

The artistic value of the volume influenced by the stress environment and adapted into it provides the suggestibility characteristic of the object of mass attraction to the form. The form designed in such a space obtains all the features characteristic of an architectural sign, the city’s dominant. The form of the City of pain project is created as a connective bridge between a narrow city system and a large area of artificial recreational space. The building as a sign is formed as a corridor for social provocation and a laboratory for the modern society’s behaviour
 

into Latvian Museum of Art

Collection of artworks by Alexandra Belcova consists of more than 2500 items, including paintings, painted porcelain objects (dishes from Baltars workshop), ink drawings, pastels, watercolor paintings, sketches for book illustrations and dishes. Collection provides quite complete overview on art of Alexandra Belcova, her accomplishments in each of her domains and illustrates every period of her creative work. The largest group of her artworks is original graphic art - drawings and pastels.
The collection of the entire museum is based on approx. 4500 artworks by Roman Suta and Alexandra Belcova, as well as several thousands of memorial items and archive materials which belonged to artists' daughter Tatjana Suta and which were given to the Latvian National Museum of Art in 2006 according to her will.It is possible to get acquainted with the memorial collection of Roman Suta and Alexandra Belcova in the National Joint Catalog of Museums www.nmkk.lv
 

Vocabulary Vienna

Historically Vienna is known for its operas and concerts for music lovers. Designing a concert hall in this place is challenging and inspiring.

Ketham Santosh Kumar challenge was to deign a concert hall not only as a single architectural building but also as experiencing spaces through urban transition, At same time the design is unique from other music halls, in terms of architectural esthetics, vocabulary and tectonics. The site is located at center of Vienna adjacent to MAK museum in stadtpark. Music house composed of main concert hall is in centre of park and archive bridge connects to MAK museum and other two small theatres are: one in lower level of stadtpark and another on university. And in addition to, it also accommodates a music archive along the bridge and other ancillary facilities. The double core sphere shell, melting species acts as structural system and thermal insulation to music house.

It evolves as if painting and sculptures are melting and flowing out of existing MAK museum, Crafting and blending in surrounding landscape of stadtpark, and creating a new music house.
 

a Fame, a Fame of Sofia, to BE

Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria, grew rapidly after the fall of the communist regime. It is the most enticing for business and living city in the country. Unemployment rate is less than 3%, comparing with 12% for the state. About 20 years ago, together with the building of the subway line, the boulevard T.Aleksandrov was laid out. The idea is to connect the center with less developed west areas. Boulevard in words, more correctly to say road, generally flanked by old, almost ruin-like housing fund. The building of new structures is impending, the dispute is how dense and high. Sofia used to have fame for green city. The parks and the gardens have been neglected. The asphalt has conquered the grass, almost no new trees have been planted.

The plot, 5800 m2, predetermined for hi-rise, is municipal property, situated close to the formal government square, between T.Aleksandrov and the pedestrian a hundred years old street Pirotska. Archeological remains, the ancient city wall, pass through. There is open public space, between the plot and the boulevard.

The main question is haw to insert the skyscraper into five story banal environment. One of the answers is to replace the building with “something else” without typical architectural tectonics and elements, something without scale. The similar things can bi compared, the disparate not.
The proposal is to cover the whole building with greenery, creeping on metal web. Ever changing natural double skin filters the air, produces oxygen, protects from heat, cold, noise. Deciduous plants will let the sun in, when is needed and stop it in summer time. In chilly weather, the creepers and the web could be sprayed with water and the frost would create air cushion, preventing from overcooling. A few “sky courtyards” are placed randomly. Every one planted with different trees – blooming and evergreen. Tropical conservatory will keep the green color all the seasons.

There are two ways to preserve the archeology. The first is to be museum exhibit, the second – to be part of the real life. The second is chosen. One can be in touch with the remains accidentally.
The third goal is to let the people to stroll freely in the spot. The open area (without passing through doors) is five sixths of the plot – sidewalk, sunken patios, roof garden smoothly connecting the vertical greenery with K.Boris street.

The scheme of the tall body is simple and straightforward. The central core, almost symmetrical, is very suitable for the earthquake conditions in Sofia. Around – office spaces for routine activities. The bottom floors are open for public, where the archeological remains are integrated. Below parking, accessible from the two existing ramps.

a Living Ocean, in Manifold Ways

Architectural studio SOMA has finished the design of the thematic pavilion for the 2012 Yeosu World Expo. The project was selected in late 2009 and is expected to begin construction during the next couple of months.

As a major and permanent facility the thematic pavilion embodies the expo’s theme ‘the living ocean and coast’ in manifold ways. The ocean is experienced in two ways, as an endless surface and in an immersed perspective as depth. The plain duality of the ocean motivates the building’s spatial and organisational concept. Continuous surfaces twist from vertical to horizontal orientation and define all significant interior spaces. The vertical cones induce the visitor to immerse into the thematic exhibition. They evolve into horizontal levels that cover the foyer and become a flexible stage for the best practice area. Continuous transitions between contrasting experiences also form the outer appearance of the pavilion. Towards the sea the conglomeration of solid vertical cones define a new meandering coast line, a soft edge that is in constant negotiation between water and land. Opposite side the pavilion develops out of the ground into an artificial roof landscape with gardens and scenic paths. The topographic lines of the roof turn into lamellas of the kinetic media facade that faces the expo’s entrance and the ‘digital gallery’.

The building will be erected in a former industrial harbour along a new promenade. Bridges will connect the pavilion to the expo site. after the expo and the aspired improvement of water quality the promenade will be transformed into an ‘urban beach’ offering leisure activities to the public. The main entrance is situated on ocean plaza, which is partly covered by the pavilion to achieve a shaded outdoor waiting area. The space boundaries of the open foyer are defined by the twisting surfaces of the cones.Tthe interstitial spaces between them frame the view onto the ocean and create niches for the visitors to take a pause from the exhibition.

an Occupy movement

Moved by the economic disparity in the United States brought to light by the 2011 Occupy Wall Street movement, the designers of the Occupy Skyscraper propose creating a building that can further empower protesters and accelerate the Occupy movement. The temporary Occupy skyscraper can be erected on any protest site to provide shelter and meeting spaces for dissenters. By providing a means for protesters to take their movement from a horizontal plane to a 3-D vertical reality, the Occupy skyscraper strengthens and bolsters the event as a whole, but amazingly, it does so only using hemp rope and canvas.

The skyscraper’s construction begins as soon as a protest takes place: Ropes are woven into a vertical web by attaching to and climbing nearby buildings. The webs are woven thicker and thicker until they form nets that can support weight. At this stage, the “building” can be used for climbing, hanging flags and supporting sleeping bags in the vertical spaces, and can be used for gatherings on the horizontal plane. Canvas is then attached to create solid paneling to segregate space uses within the building. The designers envision several designated areas: orientation spaces, and other spots for recreation, sleeping, workshops, conferences, rallies and large meetings.

As the movement gains in strength and more people join, the masses will continue to build out the skyscraper, adding space as needed. The height of the skyscraper reaches its peak, however, when the heights of the surrounding buildings that are supporting the ropes are met. As the protest dies down the building is deconstructed, and after its over, its remains can be removed completely, restoring the urban fabric to what it was before the event.

to Protect the Romans

The building designed by Atxu Amann, Andrés Cánovas, Nicolás Maruri is essentially a cover protecting the remains of a Roman assembly (thermal baths, forum and domus) in the archaeological site of Molinete Park in Cartagena, Spain.

This cover is certainly another piece in the urban area of Cartagena whose main architectural challenge is to reconcile very different architectures, from the roman times, passing through baroque to contemporary architectures, making them vibrate together in the neighborhood. It is a transition element, between very different city conditions, in size and structure, from the dense city centre to the slope park.

The primary goal of the project is to respect the existing remains, using a long-span structure, which requires the least amount of support for lifting the cover. The intervention unifies all the remains in a single space, allowing a continuous perception of the whole site. The cover also generates a new urban facade in the partition wall.
The project also pursues a sense of lightness and is conceived as an element that allows light. The inner layer is built with a modular system of corrugated multiwall translucent polycarbonate sheets. The outer layer, constructed with perforated steel plates, qualifies the incidence of light and gives a uniform exterior appearance.

Besides to the steel structure, the project proposes an elevated walkway parallel to the street. It is a very light structure hanging from the steel beams. Conceived as a glass box, with a faceted, partially visible geometry, it builds the street façade and allows a view of the ruins from three meters height. It is also accessible for disabled visitors. This high path permits an overall vision of the roman remains.

an Avatar Pallet

Avatar Architettura is a multi-disciplinary Italian office for architecture and industrial design founded in 2001 by Nicola Santini and Pier Paolo Taddei. The office research is oriented towards the identification of design strategies which privilege ecology, flexible systems, biodiversity and recycled materials in urban context. Their Recycled Pallet Pavilion is a temporary structure acting as a versatile art space. It can host different kinds of events and offers space for a wide diversity of production forms.

The pavilion is located in the garden of Villa Romana, the German Institute of Culture in Florence, Italy. The demountable structure of 100 square meters is made of precast diamond shaped wooden pallets and custom made joints. The assembly process takes four days. The wooden structure is wrapped by a continuous PVC membrane, opaque for the roof and transparent for the walls.

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.