Αren't you ever scared of him?

Brenin never lay down in the back of the Jeep. He always liked to see what was coming. Once, many years ago, we had driven from Tuscaloosa, Alabama, all the way to Miami - around 800 miles - and back again. And he stood every inch of the way: his hulking presence blocking out much of the sun and all of the rear traffic. But this time, on this short drive into Béziers, near the village where we were living in the Languedoc, he wouldn't stand; couldn't stand. It was then I knew he was gone. I was taking him to the place where he would die. I had told myself that if he stood up, even for part of the journey, I would give it another day; another 24 hours for a miracle to occur. But now I knew it was over. My friend of the past 11 years would be gone. And I didn't know what sort of person he was going to leave behind.

The dark French midwinter could not have contrasted more starkly with that bright Alabama evening, in early May, when I first brought six-week-old Brenin into my house and into my world. Within two minutes of his arrival - and I am by no means exaggerating - he had pulled the curtains in the living-room (both sets) off their rails and on to the ground. Next, while I was trying to rehang the curtains, he found his way out into the garden and under the house. At the rear, the house was raised off the ground and you could access the area underneath by way of a door built into the brick wall - a door that I had obviously left ajar.


He made his way under the house and then proceeded - methodically, meticulously, but above all quickly - to rip down every single one of the soft, lagged pipes that directed the cold air from the air-conditioning unit up through various vents in the floor. That was Brenin's trademark attitude to the new and unfamiliar. He liked to see what was coming. He would explore it; embrace it. Then he would trash it.


I was a couple of years into my first job - assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Alabama, in Tuscaloosa. Tuscaloosa is best known for its university's (American) football team, the Crimson Tide, which the local community embraces with a fervour that surpasses the merely religious - although they're heavily into that, too. Life was good; but I had grown up with dogs - mostly big dogs like Great Danes - and I missed them. And so, one afternoon, I found myself looking through the want-ads section of the Tuscaloosa News.


For much of its relatively short life, the United States of America pursued a policy of systematic eradication of its wolves - through shooting, poisoning, trapping, whatever means necessary. The result is that there are virtually no free wild wolves in the contiguous 48 states. Now that the policy has been abandoned, they've started to make a comeback in parts of Wyoming, Montana and Minnesota, and on some of the islands in the Great Lakes. They have even recently been reintroduced, over the strident protestations of ranchers, into the most famous of US natural parks, Yellowstone.

This resurgence in the wolf population, however, has not yet reached Alabama or the South in general. There are lots of coyotes. And there are a few red wolves in the swamps of Louisiana and east Texas - though no one is really sure what they are, and they may well be the result of historical wolf-coyote hybridisation. But timber wolves, or grey wolves as they are sometimes known (inaccurately, since they can also be black, white and brown), are a distant memory in the southern states.

Therefore I was somewhat surprised when my eye was caught by an advertisement: WOLF CUBS FOR SALE, 96 PER CENT. After a quick phone call, I jumped in the car and headed off to Birmingham, about an hour to the north-east, not entirely sure what I was expecting to find. And so it was, a little later, that I came to be standing, eyeball to eyeball, with the biggest wolf I had ever heard of, let alone seen. The owner had shown me around to the back of the house, and the stable and pen that housed the animals. When the father wolf, Yukon, heard us coming he jumped up at the stable door, just as we arrived there, appearing as if from nowhere.

He was huge and imposing, standing slightly taller than me. I had to look up at his face and his strange yellow eyes. But it was his feet I will always remember. People don't realise just how big wolves' feet are, much bigger than those of dogs. It was his feet that announced Yukon's arrival, the first things I saw as he bounded up to lean over the stable door. They now hung over that door, much bigger than my fists, like furry baseball mitts.

One thing people often ask me about owning a wolf: aren't you ever scared of him? The answer is no. Not because I'm brave, but I think it's because I am very relaxed around dogs. And this is largely the result of my upbringing. Looking back, I realise that, when it comes to dogs, my family are just not normal. We would often take in Great Danes from rescue centres. Sometimes these were lovely animals. Sometimes they were positively psychotic. Blue, a Great Dane unimaginatively named - not by us - after his colour, provides a good case in point. Blue was about three years old when my parents rescued him. And it was easy to understand why he found himself in a rescue centre. Blue had a hobby: the random and indiscriminate biting of people and other animals. Actually, that's not fair: it wasn't random or indiscriminate at all. He just had various, let us call them, idiosyncrasies. One of them was not permitting people to leave the room when he was in it. You could never afford to find yourself in a room with Blue on your own. You always needed someone to distract him while you exited. Of course, they would then need someone else to distract Blue should they wish to leave the room. And so the great wheel of Blue's life turned. Failure to adequately distract him before exiting the room would often result in one's hindquarters being scarred for life. Just ask my brother, Jon.

to Robotize Architecture

Nanjing Lab is a vegetation laboratory located in the historical district of Nanjing. Different from the traditional vegetation lab, which focuses on the attributes of the plants themselves, the purpose of the Nanjing lab is to test the plants’ behavior inside Nanjing city, for instance, the plants’ reaction to the the city’s polluted air and dust.

Therefore, the design focuses on being able to control the plant’s interaction with the outside. In order to do this, different plant species are put into separate containers which protrude from the main volume of the building to the outside environment. The containers provide the ability to let sun light come through and control the amount of air that passes through. At the same time, the form of the landscape around the building creates different levels humidity and solar conditions around the building, allowing the containers to interact with a diverse environment.

In the center of the lab, there is a central robot arm that is able to take out the core of the container and place them into storage for further research. The control room of the robot’s arm is located on the south side of the building.  The windows of the control room allow free view of the central robot room and the exterior.

The two big C channel steel beams are the main structure of the Nanjing lab. They lift the main body of the lab off of the ground to provide space for the underside plant containers. In between the C channel steel beams and the body of lab space is the hydraulic mechanical system that absorbs the impact of the structure from movement of the central robot arm.

Architect: Yaohua Wang Architecture
Location: Nanjing, China
Structural Engineer: Organization Group
Client: Nanjing Xiaguan district goverment
Program: Vegetation lab
Size: 200 m²
 

an Abstract Of Birds

After five months of intensive design work and two weeks of building-up, on 29th of March the exhibition of THE SWARM – a Parametric Pavilion – took place in the outdoor area of the Bavarian Chamber of Architects in Munich. The main exhibit is a sculpture out of Alucobond which is 4 meters high and 15 meters long. Its shape describes an abstract swarm of birds.

The idea of THE SWARM was born on the new chair of Emerging Technologies at the faculty of architecture of the Technical University of Munich. The first concept made by Magnus Möschel was selected within an intern competition in the summer semester 2011 while the time of visiting professor Charles Walker. In the following semester, the students Sabrina Appel, Max Langwieder and Sascha Posanski developed the project and transformed it into a real building. They were supervised by the assistents Nadine Zinser – Junghanns, Moritz Mungenast and Wieland Schmidt.

The sculpture can be seen another two months; the exhibition can be visited until the 4th May in the Bavarian Chamber of Architects.

The project was supported by the companies 3A Composites GmbH, Aluform GmbH, Metallbau Böhm, Würth, Erco, Terrafix and Boels and by the structural engineers Leonhardt, Andrä and Partner.

an Unmask Mechanism

The project deals with the occularcentric nature of contemporary culture, by manipulating and unmasking its deceptive mechanisms. The design process starts with the fact that our ability to perceive the details is limited to the narrow fovea (the only part of the retina that permits 100% visual acuity) in the eye’s retina. Vision is then a matter of unconscious inferences: making assumptions and conclusions from incomplete data, based on previous experiences.

This inference and the inability to perceive the details trigger an attractive process, but the complexity of the component detail can be appreciated only at a scale where the perception of the whole is lost; rolling backwards, it becomes clear that the effect of the whole is more than just the sum of the constituent parts. It is an experiment (or proof of concept) on how morphology, organization, material systems and patterns have the ability to trigger dynamic behavioral effects and interaction in space and time.

From a technical standpoint, the structure was generated by triangulating the mesh and choosing triangles in an alternate pattern: this strategy maintains structural integrity (all remaining triangles are connected) while using half of the surface area. In order to increase complexity and enrich the range of effects, components have a gradient variation in height according to their horizontal condition: the more they approach the horizontal condition, the higher and more developed they become. Each component, realized through laser cut from polypropylene flat sheets, has 3 radial “petals” with variable number of cuts and curve tangency according to the individual morphology and the height gradient, embedding the necessary cuts for assembly. All components are assembled using plastic ties.

to Green the Steel

The incredibly destructive effects that coal plants cause to our natural environment are well documented and known, but 50,000 plants still operate the world over every day to power the planet, as green technology has not evolved to a point where they generate enough energy to replace fossil fuel processes. The “Coal Power Plant Mutation” project is a proposal for coal factory addendum, a skyscraper built over an existing factory that can reduce the amounts of harmful waste that spew from their chimney stacks while we wait for green technologies to take over.

The skyscraper coal cleansers are comprised of three long, tubular legs that join are built around the existing factory’s chimneys and meet high in the air to share a bio-filtering area that also has balloons to capture and hold waste particles. The structure is made out from multiple carbon-fiber steel props that are held together by a carbon-fiber steel mesh; the props are anchored in the existing foundation of the power plant. The chimneys rise 1,000 meters in the air; as the smokestack pollution rises through the tall skyscraper chimneys, tubes with various types of air filters with various densities are placed at different heights. The lower filters for carbon dioxide exhaustion use synthetic carbon fixation techniques, while filters located higher in the chimneys are bio-filters. , At the very top, the chimneys are equipped carbon and vapor capturing and filtering devices that keep the gasses from reaching the atmosphere. They are made of horizontal air pipes connected only to the exterior. The vapors condensate on them, and the resulting water is gathered and distributed back at the base.

The mesh that holds the skyscraper together is covered by a lightweight skin, a waterproof elastomer that isolates the gasses and vapors that are produced in the factory. (The skin keeps them separate, as the vapors and gasses mixing could lead to acid rain.) The skin has an area of 300,000 square meters and is covered with photovoltaic cells and air quality monitoring sensors.

The skin is also covered in LED lights as an instructive tool that promotes awareness. Most power plants are located close to cities; the LED lights shine vertical patterns to make people aware of their power demands and what these imply. The patterns change according to the inner and outer air quality, monitored by sensors.

to Mimic Waves and Sounds in a Remembrance

Designed in cooperation between Giuseppe Farris and Stefan Schöning, the proposed structure aims to capture several aspects of Arab culture: its tribal society and the transregional entrepreneurship. The building’s appearance refers to the date palm which, along with fruits and fronds continue to be an important product in Dubai’s everyday life, both as a commodity and as a material used in local palm frond houses, fishing boats and the local palm-weaving craft. The twining maze of the building’s exterior simultaneously represents the network of trade and commerce routes that have, through history, arrived and departed from Dubai. The exterior also commemorates the tribal legacy and reminds of the dynamic maze of tribal affiliations that has given Dubai’s society its basic cohesion.

Functionally, the building’s interior continues this celebration of the tribal cornerstone of Dubai identity, and it is designed to promote its rich values and its relevance for the 21st century. More in particular, visitors can enter via different routes, each time discovering different aspects of Dubai’s tribal culture and history. At ground level, it is an open structure, hence symbolizing the hospitality of the Dubai people and inviting all to enter. Visitors may find at different levels outside and inside the structure different kinds of majlis.
 

a Criminal Building

How can architecture represent the essence of law today, in a world focusing on decentralization and proximity? OMA’s project for the new Parisian Courthouse is a unitary building where the program is organized into three clearly identified parts: Civil, Criminal and Offices.

By inserting the tower (offices) in between the Criminal and Civil public spaces (courtrooms), OMA first optimizes the flow between different parts of the program (the tower is linked to the courtrooms with a hypercore system) while also giving a reason for height in the Parisian skyline. The emerging building, visible in the metropolitan landscape, is balanced and stable. The tower is about impartiality, discretion and the sublime.

The Criminal and Civil public spaces develop their own spatial identity. The Criminal, more introverted, is organized around a three-dimensional void. The Civil, more extroverted, looks towards the city. Each of them has a specific distribution system based on the frequency of use. To avoid the exclusiveness of an elevated Paris sky experience, the Salle des Pas Perdus — the main public space of the future Courthouse — is suspended to the edge of the Parisian rooftops.

a Parametric Fabergé

Fourfoursixsix (Daniel Welham & Mark Nicol) were invited to participate as one of the artists for the Fabergé Big Egg Hunt. The city will became home to 200 giant and uniquely crafted Easter eggs for an event that is a first of its kind, aiming to raise vital funds for charities Action for Children and Elephant Family, inviting tourists, locals, and visitors to join in a truly magical experience.

As an architecture practice, Fourfoursixsix  felt it would be both topical and interesting to apply a set of architectural principles to the overall geometric form of the egg. Through this process they played with structure, light, and shadow and began to develop a three dimensional architectural terrain.

Conceptually, the design works around a rational grid of components that have been configured to react to both light and scale over the surface of the egg. Each component was designed to incorporate an aperture which could adapt to these changing surface conditions, thus altering the patternation of the egg.

Working with EOS, the world leading manufacturer of laser-sintering systems and Ogle Models, exquisite cutting edge Model Makers, has enabled the construction of a piece that is at the forefront of three dimensional printing technology. The end result is a delicate, intricate and complex piece that intrinsically connects back to the original Fabergé brand concept. In some ways, their design brings this concept into the modern era on a larger physical scale; a piece of 21st Century digital opulence.
 

to Reflect Contingencies

This project designed by Arthur Azoulai and Melody Rees is a morphological study that assumes an extended field of movement and circulating forces. It is designed by simulating self-organizing biological systems where selective decision making is used to sculpt innate yet deliberate spatial relationships and formal qualities. At its pure essence, this project is an infrastructural system that acts as a receiver and link-up for formal architectural systems. The inherent continuity of the overall form as a topological surface allows for the emergence of roadways, interstitial interior space, and landscape.

With imbricating structural support systems, the collective tectonics provide a network of circulation paths for pedestrians, cars and trams in addition to an emphasis on temporary pavilion spaces such as transitory food markets, pop-up retail shops and time-share housing. With a temporal and ephemeral program the local culture of Santurce in San Juan becomes active. Correspondingly, the adaptive qualities of the infrastructural surface allow the building and site form an organic semiotic relationship where the building seamvlessly emerges from the land below. This is emphasized as the ecologically evasive character of Puerto Rico’s environment merges into the architecture. Thus this project articulates new formal relationships and interstitial space while also reflecting the contingencies of the current moment in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

via suckerPUNCH
 

a Master Vision Of Sea

Three Spirits” is the master’s thesis of Filip Kurzewski, from the Warsaw University of Technology. The project proposes a floating tourist base and hotel in the form of three ships. Each of the three ships functions as an independent unit. The initial vision of the project was propelled by the author’s numerous personal drawings and painting studies. A great inspiration for the direction of the form, colors, and spatial arrangement came from personal diving experiences. Hand drawing and personal reflections and experiences became a driving force for the author, and are visible throughout the project. They intentionally connect the design with the context of underwater world which hotel guests explore. The thesis topic was carefully selected to reflect the design process, leaving traces of hand sketches and gestures on the final unit. Hand drawings and sketching played an important role in keeping the conceptual idea through all the stages of the design process. The theme was very demanding when it came to the program, justifying the design. The project was also consulted with naval architects. The ships making up a complex ,to a certain degree, differ as for the applied program. If the appropriate localization is chosen, they may form the common assumption – an island “Lang”. Guests can then benefit from the broader scale of supplementary attractions. On the first ship they have a ballroom at their disposal, on the second one – a casino and on the third one – the hall of multifunctional purposes where, inter alia, film shows and theatrical performances are possible. When the ships “meet” they generate a common water area for guests to swim.

One of the main attractions of a particular ship is a diving capsule. Guests can not only practice scuba diving but also they can dive safely in significant depth to see ,for example coral reefs or wrecks. The set of boats is also delivered for guests, and it enables them to choose an appropriate place for recreation, among other things also for scuba diving during the stopover of the ship.

Since each ship is a separate unit there is a possibility of temporary separation of the “vessels” (“vehicles”) in order to carry out different cruises and afterwards a possibility of ships meeting again.

to Be Builded of War

Ružica Church (Rose church) is located in the Kalemegdan Fortress, in Belgrade, Serbia. A church of the same name existed on the site in the time of Stefan Lazarević. It was demolished in 1521 by the invading Ottoman Turks. Today's church was a gunpowder magazine in the 18th century, and was converted into a military church between 1867 and 1869. Heavily damaged during the First World War, the church was renovated in 1925. The iconostasis was carved by Kosta Todorović, and the icons painted by Rafailo Momčilović. The walls were covered in paintings by Andrej Bicenko, a Russian artist.

be Re Loved

Chris Bosse has sliced up the Panton chair as part of the Re-loved: designer stories at the Powerhouse Museum from July 31  to October 10.

Bosse, director of innovative architectural firm LAVA, is one of several designers commissioned by the Powerhouse to use a pre-loved chair to tell a story about a piece of furniture they love. He chose a design classic that relates to current design and manufacturing techniques.

The gravity defying Panton chair c1967 by Danish designer Verner Panton was a radical departure from traditional design and manufacturing techniques. It anticipated the digital revolution by 30 years and is the first freeform, organic molded piece of furniture. “I’ve chosen to represent this shape as slices, similar to an MRI scan in order to make visible its complex 3dimensional geometry. The chair is metaphorically and physically carved out of a sliced box ” says Bosse.

“The project retro-digitises the chair design, although it was the chair that preceded the digital design revolution.”

“What made the Panton chair so spectacular when it came on the market and what makes it so interesting today in terms of design history is not only its shape, which is as extravagant as it is elegant, but also the fact that it was the first chair made out of one piece of plastic. Every chair at the time was about the assembly techniques of materials, compression, tension, and junction. Verner Panton exploited the possibilities offered by the new material in order to achieve a total departure from classical design thinking.”

the Taichung City

The ambition to provoke urban change can be understood as a desire to create an icon such as the Taiwan tower designed by STL Architects that highlights the unique character of Taichung city. The architects envisioned this reality as coherent blend through an architectural landscape anchored by iconic venues that will satisfy the needs of locals, the industries and future trends. The idea is to generate a flow network that communicates the Taichung gateway city project with the most important landmarks of the city.

The skin itself is a system: it is pixilated with glazed openings in the programmed and occupiable zones while permeable with openings in the central area. The degradation of the openings, varying between 20% and 60%, is done in order to achieve greater lightness in the central part of the tower, therefore using less material and saving.

The density and arrangement of beams in the structure provides higher levels of stiffness at the base, and a horizontal arrangement that does not obscure views at the top. The beams are minimized wherever possible to reduce dead load and create an overall visual lightness for the structure. While the body of the tower resists twisting and bending, the overall structure is held upright by the foundations. The foundations is created by the bottom of the ring, which is embedded several stories into the earth to resist lateral movement and stop the tower from falling.

The programmed and occupiable parts of the tower are fitted with a double skin. By contrast, the central zone is permeable; the openings are not glazed and the composition consists of only vertical structure and outer skin. By using only the necessary materials to ensure skin continuity, combined with systems for renewable energy, achieves a building that is lighter and more permeable.

The tower is designed to resist the dynamic force of the wind. Modal frequencies are those vibration frequencies where cyclical motion naturally occurs as a result of resonance between wind movement and the mass and shape of a building. A preliminary analysis of the tower shows that the modal frequencies of the ring result in the tower moving forward and back, side to side, and twisting. To resist these forces, the tower is thickened at the bottom to create stiffness, and provided with dampers to resist twisting. The low center of gravity allows the top of the ring to lean, carrying the observation platform out over the park.

to Redefine a Waterfront

Acknowledging that the city is nothing but the product of a myriad network of interactions and emergent flows, re-organized and regulated by a highly evolved system of pattern recognition, the project designed by Gijo Paul George from Studio Toggle aims to find urban solutions for the city of Cagliari in Sardinia, Italy.

Taking fields, nodes and agents as the building blocks of urbanity, the relations and perturbations are mapped, giving rise to generative patterns. Based on this logic, the project strives to find a balance between adaptive non-programmed spaces and typological specificity. The site, SantÉlia has the notoriety for being the badlands of Cagliari. Often this image is exaggerated, contributing to the resident’s hostility to the city and vice versa. This spectacular stretch of waterfront land towards the southern tip of Cagliari happens to be disconnected from the rest of Cagliari due to massive infrastructural figures, which creates canyons in the urban fabric, also due to the negative ramifications arising from a dysfunctional social housing project, from 1970’s.

The project had specific goals including, reconnecting SantÉlia to the rest of Cagliari by colliding the island grids, bringing the city closer to the sea and thus developing the waterfront, revitalizing the social housing and improve conditions and to develop strategic nodes into multimodal urban ecologies. The focus was on de-canyonizing the fabric and overlaying the terrain with a new urban organism, which irrigates the territory and bridges the programmatic archipelago.

Rediscovering the spatial matrix of field conditions as described by Stan Allen, and further elaborated by Keiichi Matsuda in his ‘Cities for Cyborgs’, an emergent matrix of potential (pheromonal) fields acts as the substrate on which an agent-based system is populated. The constant material and information feedback between the to systems gives rise to generative patterns and densities which in turn mutate into inhabitable spaces and nested typologies, there by creating the fabric.

The project in itself becomes a discourse in how the intuitive and emergent processes can work together to produce an urban fabric, and occupy it at the same time, not losing the balance between adaptable emergent spaces, and the specific typologies which seed the territory.

African Words

African literature

African literature refers to literature of and from Africa. As George Joseph notes on the first page of his chapter on African literature in Understanding Contemporary Africa, while the European perception of literature generally refers to written letters, the African concept includes oral literature.

As George Joseph continues, while European views of literature often stressed a separation of art and content, African awareness is inclusive:

"Literature" can also imply an artistic use of words for the sake of art alone. ... traditionally, Africans do not radically separate art from teaching. Rather than write or sing for beauty in itself, African writers, taking their cue from oral literature, use beauty to help communicate important truths and information to society. Indeed, an object is considered beautiful because of the truths it reveals and the communities it helps to build.

Oral literature

Oral literature (or orature) may be in prose or verse. The prose is often mythological or historical and can include tales of the trickster character. Storytellers in Africa sometimes use call-and-response techniques to tell their stories. Poetry, often sung, includes: narrative epic, occupational verse, ritual verse, praise poems to rulers and other prominent people. Praise singers, bards sometimes known as "griots", tell their stories with music. Also recited, often sung, are: love songs, work songs, children's songs, along with epigrams, proverbs and riddles.

Precolonial literature

Examples of pre-colonial African literature are numerous. Oral literature of west Africa includes the Epic of Sundiata composed in medieval Mali, The older Epic of Dinga from the old Ghana Empire. In Ethiopia, originally written in Ge'ez script is the Kebra Negast or book of kings. One popular form of traditional African folktale is the "trickster" story, where a small animal uses its wits to survive encounters with larger creatures. Examples of animal tricksters include Anansi, a spider in the folklore of the Ashanti people of Ghana; Ijàpá, a tortoise in Yoruba folklore of Nigeria; and Sungura, a hare found in central and East African folklore.

In Islamic times, North Africans such as ibn Khaldun attained great distinction within Arabic literature. Medieval north Africa boasted Universities such as those of Fez and Cairo, with copious amounts of literature to supplement them.

Colonial African literature

The African works best known in the West from the period of colonization and the slave trade are primarily slave narratives, such as Olaudah Equiano's The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano (1789).

In the colonial period, Africans exposed to Western languages began to write in those tongues.

African literature in the late colonial period (between the end of World War I and independence) increasingly showed themes of liberation, independence, and (among Africans in French-controlled territories) négritude.

Postcolonial African literature

With liberation and increased literacy since most African nations gained their independence in the 1950s and 1960s, African literature has grown dramatically in quantity and in recognition, with numerous African works appearing in Western academic curricula and on "best of" lists compiled at the end of the 20th century. African writers in this period wrote both in Western languages (notably English, French, and Portuguese) and in traditional African languages.

Ali A. Mazrui and others mention seven conflicts as themes: the clash between Africa's past and present, between tradition and modernity, between indigenous and foreign, between individualism and community, between socialism and capitalism, between development and self-reliance and between Africanity and humanity. Other themes in this period include social problems such as corruption, the economic disparities in newly independent countries, and the rights and roles of women. Female writers are today far better represented in published African literature than they were prior to independence.
 

in Gabon, in Libreville

Museums in Gabon
The Museum of Arts and Traditions at Libreville is a general interest museum. The National Museum of Gabon is also in Libreville.
Encyclopedia of the Nations

National Museum of Gabon (Gabon)

Telephone: +241 (0)17 614 56

The Museum of Arts and Traditions (Gabon)
Telephone: (+241) 76 14 56     
Email: museegabon@numibia.net

to Laminate Wood

The deforestation rate of a country describes the annual destruction of its natural forests. Confronted with this acute challenge this high-rise is a prototype for the usage of wood in a sustainable and innovative manner through the combination of research and tourism. The project introduces the novel technology of laminated wood construction as load-bearing material and as a space partitioning thick lattice.

Located in Coari, Brazil, at the heart of the Amazon forest, this conceptual tower would be constructed in several phases. The idea of the skyscraper is to create a sustainable skyscraper that allows tourists to explore the Amazon forest while creating global awareness of its alarming destruction rate.

First, conventional shipping containers are prefabricated and equipped according to the specific requirements and technical systems. Second, punctual foundations with minimal footprint are built on site, providing the basis for elevators and staircases. Afterwards, a thick-latticed three-dimensional framework consisting of prefabricated laminated titan-wood elements is erected on site and floor plates are attached into the exoskeleton.
 

to Reconnect Nature and Architecture

Here is another Kengo Kuma’s project that speaks of the continuous interest in reconnecting architecture with nature or, to quote the architect, the need “to recover the place”. Using architecture as a frame of nature, the project seems to echo a need for experiencing built space through its interaction with the elements and transformations affected by the passage of time. The faceted wall is populated with plants, creating an impression of two tectonic forces, the natural and the artificial, fighting for supremacy.

The multi-purpose building is located near the railway station in Odawara, Japan.The façade, achieved by using decayed styrene foam, encompasses the building, leaving the ground floor transparent and accessible. The first floor facilitates a clinic and pharmacy while the upper floors are used for offices. The planters are comprised of aluminium die-cast panels, made in monoblock casting. Each panel is slanted, and its surface appears to be organic, of which cast comes from decayed styrene foam. Equipment such as watering hose, air reservoir for ventilation and downpipes are installed behind the panels so that the façade can accommodate a comprehensive system for the building. The piping delivers rain water to the aluminum die-cast planters, keeping the whole structure organic and alive.

the Flowers of Hiroshima

Edita Morris started her literary career with short stories published in the Atlantic Monthly, Harper's Bazaar and other publications. In 1943 she published her first novel, My darling from the Lions. During the 1930s and until his death in 1943 in New York she shared much of her life with the Swedish painter Nils von Dardel. She figures on many of his paintings from 1930 onwards.

She is mostly known for her novel The Flowers of Hiroshima (1959). The novel was partly influenced by the experiences of her son, Ivan Morris, later a distinguished japanologist, as an intelligence officer in the U.S. Navy visiting Hiroshima immediately after the dropping of the atomic bomb on the city. The book has been translated into 39 languages. In 1978 she published Straitjacket: autobiography which was followed in 1983 by a second volume, Seventy Years' War, published in Swedish only under the title Sjuttioåriga kriget.

With her husband, who came from a wealthy family background, she founded a rest house in Hiroshima for victims of the bomb.After her death, the Edita and Ira Morris Hiroshima Foundation for Peace and Culture, usually known as the Hiroshima Foundation, was established.The purpose of the Foundation is to promote peace by supporting efforts in the cultural sphere to favor peace and reconciliation. The Foundation presents awards to women and men who contribute, in a cultural field, to fostering dialogue, understanding and peace in conflict areas. Edita died in Paris in 1988. She is buried, with her husband and her son, in the village of Nesles.
 

to Open Research

BIG + Paris-based architects OFF, engineers Buro Happold, consultants Michel Forgue and environmental engineer Franck Boutte is the winning team to design the new 15.000 m2 research centre for Sorbonne’s Scientific university Université Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris.
The new multidisciplinary research centre, Paris PARC, located between Jean Nouvel’s Institut du Monde Arabe and the open green park of the Jussieu Campus will become a significant addition to the campus, strengthening the international appeal and openness of the leading French University for Science and Medicine. The facility will bring together academic scholars and the business community, while re-connecting the university physically and visually with the city of Paris. The winning team was honored as the best design among proposals from MVRDV, Lipsky Rollet, Mario Cucinella and Peripherique.
Paris PARC is located in the visual axis of the Notre Dame Cathedral in a dense context of university buildings from different historical periods. BIG proposes a building geometry that adapts to the specific conditions of all adjoining sides, optimized for daylight, views and accessibility. The three-dimensional envelope retracts from the neighboring facades, opens up towards the square of Institut du Monde Arabe and the park, and folds into a publicly accessible rooftop landscape, resulting in an adapted sculptural building volume situated between the emblematic architectural monuments of the university.
“As a form of urban experiment the Paris PARC is the imprint of the pressures of its urban context. Wedged into a super dense context – in terms of space, public flows and architectural history – the PARC is conceived as a chain of reactions to the various external and internal forces acting upon it. Inflated to allow daylight and air to enter into the heart of the facility, compressed to ensure daylight and views for the neighboring classrooms and dormitories, lifted and decompressed to allow the public to enter from both plaza and park and finally tilted to reflect the spectacular view of the Paris skyline and the Notre Dame to the Parisians.” Bjarke Ingels, Founder, BIG.
A central canyon provides daylight and a visual connection between laboratories and offices. In the atrium a cascade of informal meeting spaces lead to the public rooftop terrace and faculty club. A public stair to the rooftop offers glimpses into the activities of the laboratories which are divided by transparent walls throughout the building to ensure visual connections between the working spaces. The upper levels have panoramic views towards the Notre Dame and the skyline of Paris.
“We propose a building that creates the optimum conditions for encounters and exchange among the academics and visitors of Paris PARC. Like a scientific incubator the new building will provide the physical environment for nurturing growth of cultures and sharing of ideas – through the internal mix of laboratories, research facilities and informal meeting spaces, and through a reunification with the public life of the city.” Andreas Klok Pedersen, Partner-in-Charge, BIG.
The Paris PARC becomes the interface between campus life and city life by reuniting the Jussieu Campus with the city of Paris. The iconic view of the Notre Dame Cathedral is brought into the daily life of the building through the large panoramic windows while the façade towards the entrance square is slightly tilted, hence, a mirrored image of the Cathedral becomes visible at eyelevel on the square, connecting the building to its iconic location.