THOUGHTS ON ARCHITECTURE AND URBANISM

Reflexiones sobre la fractalidad aplicada al estudio de la morfología urbana 2

2012-01-26T07:10:00.000-08:00

Fractal generado como simulación por el asentamient. Baila en Africa. Por Myriam B. Mahiques. Archivos personales

Imagen aérea de un mercado mexicano, archivo binario. Foto bajada de Google y pasado a binario por Myriam B. Mahiques. Ver referencia del autor en la foto

¨To the superﬁcial observer scientiﬁc truth is unassailable, the logic of science is infallible; and if scientiﬁc men sometimes make mistakes, it is because they have not understood the rules of the game. Mathematical truths are derived from a few self-evident propositions, by a chain of ﬂawless reasonings; they are imposed not only on us, but on Nature itself. By them the Creator is fettered, as it were, and His choice is limited to a relatively small number of solutions. A few experiments, therefore, will be sufficient to enable us to determine what choice He has made. From each experiment a number of consequences will follow by a series of mathematical deductions, and in this way each of them will reveal to us a corner of the universe. This, to the minds of most people, and to students who are getting their ﬁrst ideas of physics, is the origin of certainty in science. This is what they take to be the role of experiment and mathematics. And thus, too, it was understood a hundred years ago by many men of science who dreamed of constructing the world with the

aid of the smallest possible amount of material borrowed from experiment. But upon more mature reﬂection the position held by hypothesis was seen; it was recognised that it is as necessary to the experimenter as it is to the mathematician. And then the doubt arose if all these constructions are built on solid foundations. The conclusion was drawn that a breath would bring them to the ground. This sceptical attitude does not escape the charge of superﬁciality. To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; both dispense with the necessity of reﬂection.¨

From Science and Hyphotesis. By Henri Poincaré. Author´s preface to the edition of New York, 1905

Estas palabras de Poincaré me llevan a la reflexión. Dios está presente en la naturaleza, está ¨encadenado¨ a ella por las mismas leyes con las que la ha regido, leyes que se pueden descubrir mediante el análisis matemático, y según las soluciones descubrimos qué elecciones hizo Dios. Para ello, es necesario experimentar, y podemos dudar o creer, cualquiera de las dos determinaciones surgen de la reflexión.

La fractalidad, es la geometría de la naturaleza, y con respecto a la pregunta, toda morfología urbana es fractal? le transmití mis dudas al profesor Ron Eglash, por email, a principios del 2000. Y me contestó que para verificarlo, debía analizar el producto cultural de la gente que habitaba en esas formas urbanas. ¨Hablando¨ de su libro African Fractals, él había descubierto que las formas fractales africanas se daban en los peinados, en los juegos, en simbolismos, en asentamientos.... No lo dijo directamente pero dejó implícito lo que luego mi directora, dra. Vera de Spinadel me preguntó: Has probado la autosimilitud? La invariancia de los resultados a través de la escala?

Entonces, ya una vez establecida en Estados Unidos, me dispuse a verificar si las formas urbanas de los barrios mexicanos – chicanos respondían a la invariante escalar.

Y sí, las mediciones de la ropa típica, los grupos de viviendas con sus particiones (declaradas y no declaradas), las decoraciones, todo arrojaba un valor de D con tendencia o igual a 0.80, -el ansia por la ocupación total del espacio-.

2º POSTULADO: Para probar si una forma urbana es fractal, debemos verificar que su valor D (dimensión fractal) sea igual o de tendencia a un valor determinado a través de las distintas escalas.

Nota: hablo de tendencias porque por supuesto no son fractales deterministas.

Lea Reflexiones sobre la fractalidad aplicada al estudio de la morfología urbana 1:
http://myriammahiques.blogspot.com/2012/01/reflexiones-sobre-la-fractalidad.html

Concepts: analogy in fractal urban morphology

2012-01-24T07:24:00.000-08:00

Analogía fractal de un campo romano. Generado por Myriam B. Mahiques. Archivos personales. Fractal analogy of a Roman field. Generated by Myriam B. Mahiques. Personal archives.

Analogy in a fractal urban morphology. Generated by Myriam B. Mahiques. Personal archives

Mathematicians therefore proceed “by construction,” they “construct” more complicated combinations. When they analyse these combinations, these aggregates, so to speak, into their primitive elements, they see the relations of the elements and deduce the relations of the aggregates themselves. The process is purely analytical, but it is not a passing from the general to the particular, for the aggregates obviously cannot be regarded as more particular than their elements. Great importance has been rightly attached to this process of “construction,” and some claim to see in it the necessary and suﬃcient condition of the progress of the exact sciences. Necessary, no doubt, but not suﬃcient!

For a construction to be useful and not mere waste of mental eﬀort, for it to serve as a stepping-stone to higher things, it must ﬁrst of all possess a kind of unity enabling us to see something more than the juxtaposition of its elements. Or more accurately, there must be some advantage in considering the construction rather than the elements themselves. What can this advantage be? Why reason on a polygon, for instance, which is always decomposable into triangles, and not on elementary triangles?

It is because there are properties of polygons of any number of sides, and they can be immediately applied to any particular kind of polygon. In most cases it is only after

long eﬀorts that those properties can be discovered, by directly studying the relations of elementary triangles. If the quadrilateral is anything more than the juxtaposition of two triangles, it is because it is of the polygon type.

A construction only becomes interesting when it can be placed side by side with other analogous constructions for forming species of the same genus. To do this we must necessarily go back from the particular to the general, ascending one or more steps. The analytical process “by construction” does not compel us to descend, but it leaves us at the same level. We can only ascend by mathematical induction, for from it alone can we learn something new. Without the aid of this induction, which in certain

respects diﬀers from, but is as fruitful as, physical induction, construction would be powerless to create science.

Let me observe, in conclusion, that this induction is only possible if the same operation can be repeated indefinitely. That is why the theory of chess can never become a science, for the diﬀerent moves of the same piece are limited and do not resemble each other.

From Science and Hyphotesis. By Henri Poincaré. Edition of New York, 1905 (Bolt letters in this blog)

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/37157/37157-pdf.pdf

Analogy of a fractal and an urban shape. Generated by Myriam B. Mahiques. Personal archives.

Poincaré became the first person to discover a chaotic deterministic system which laid the foundations of modern chaos theory. He is also considered to be one of the founders of the field of topology. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Poincar%C3%A9

Poincaré was an influential French philosopher of science and mathematics, as well as a distinguished scientist and mathematician. In the foundations of mathematics he argued for conventionalism, against formalism, against logicism, and against Cantor’s treating his new infinite sets as being independent of human thinking. Poincaré stressed the essential role of intuition in a proper constructive foundation for mathematics. He believed that logic was a system of analytic truths, whereas arithmetic was synthetic and a priori, in Kant‘s sense of these terms. Mathematicians can use the methods of logic to check a proof, but they must use intuition to create a proof, he believed.

He maintained that non-Euclidean geometries are just as legitimate as Euclidean geometry, because all geometries are conventions or “disguised” definitions. Although all geometries are about physical space, a choice of one geometry over others is a matter of economy and simplicity, not a matter of finding the true one among the false ones.

For Poincaré, the aim of science is prediction rather than, say, explanation. Although every scientific theory has its own language or syntax, which is chosen by convention, it is not a matter of convention whether scientific predictions agree with the facts. For example, it is a matter of convention whether to define gravitation as following Newton’s theory of gravitation, but it is not a matter of convention as to whether gravitation is a force that acts on celestial bodies, or is the only force that does so. So, Poincaré believed that scientific laws are conventions but not arbitrary conventions.

From Mauro Murzi´s article at Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

http://www.iep.utm.edu/poincare/

Año Nuevo Chino en Argentina

2012-01-23T07:38:00.000-08:00

Foto Rodrigo Néspolo para La Nación

Foto de http://www.argentina.ar/_es/turismo/C10892-ano-nuevo-chino-en-buenos-aires.php

Ya han pasado más de dos años de la inauguración del arco chino en el barrio de Belgrano, Buenos Aires, y las discusiones y enfados de los vecinos ante su construcción sin su consentimiento, parece haber quedado atrás, bajo el empuje diplomático y por supuesto, las agencias de turismo.

Estaba viendo que el barrio chino de Buenos Aires, tiene su página web, sus restaurantes, sus eventos, sólo recuerdo algunos negocios incipientes del año 2000, con carteles de letras incomprensibles, y ahora estoy pensando si no será más lindo Chinatown Buenos Aires que en Los Angeles. Doy por seguro, que dada la historia de la ciudad, Chinatown San Francisco no podrá ser superado.

Entiendo que nuestra cultura latina-europea está netamente aceptando a la asiática, y me sorprende gratamente que los shows hayan tenido shows de música oriental, folklore y tango!

De la nota de Julieta Molina y Julieta Paci:

Un dragón colorido correteaba por las calles y veredas del barrio de Belgrano, mientras cientos de personas trataban de alcanzarlo para darle palmaditas y asegurarse buenos augurios. Ayer, cerca de las 15, la música oriental entretenía en una agobiante tarde de calor, a la vez que el aroma a comida china invitaba a quedarse y disfrutar de los festejos.

Ceremonias budistas, desfiles, las tradicionales Danzas del Dragón y del León, exhibiciones de artes marciales, de ensamble de tambores Taiko, de la ceremonia del té y de caligrafía china fueron sólo algunas de las decenas de demostraciones del talento oriental que se desarrollaron durante toda la tarde para darle la bienvenida al año lunar 4710, año del dragón, que comienza el 23 de enero y se extiende hasta el 9 de febrero de 2013.

En esta ocasión y debido a la gran expansión de su cultura en nuestro país, la celebración se llevó a cabo en las calles del Barrio Chino y se extendió a las Barrancas de Belgrano. Los organizadores calculan que unas 65.000 personas participaron (muchas más que el año pasado) y esperan que en los festejos de hoy, que serán desde las 15 hasta las 22, se multiplique esa cantidad de gente.

La inauguración oficial del "despertar del dragón" estuvo a cargo del embajador de China en la Argentina, Ying Heng Ming, en el escenario de Barrancas de Belgrano, que destacó la integración entre ambos pueblos y agradeció "a los amigos argentinos por acompañar la alegría y el ambiente" de la fiesta. Varias fueron las demostraciones de integración cultural entre ambos países, como las exhibiciones de tango y los shows de folklore y malambo que se intercalaron con las actividades orientales.

Siga leyendo:

http://www.lanacion.com.ar/1442447-belgrano-vibro-con-el-ano-nuevo-chino

Concept of a landscape structure

2012-01-22T08:01:00.000-08:00

This is a concept of a landscape structure or a digital painting that I see as landscape. The terraces of greens, a structure of rows of blue flowers and on top of this hill, the landscape is covered by yellow flowers, as those who I can see on the 5 freeway, to San Francisco, in summer. And lakes as oasis among the yellow flowers.

Acerca de la preservación del patrimonio arquitectónico argentino

2012-01-20T19:57:00.000-08:00

Detalle del frontispicio confitería El Molino. Buenos Aires. Foto La Nación

Hace varios años ya que no vivo en Argentina, y sigo los avatares de sus reciclajes y demoliciones edilicias gracias a las noticias del diario y lo que me cuentan mis amigos arquitectos, con versiones más objetivas de los hechos. Por ejemplo, me decían ¨si volvés a Urquiza, no la conocés más. Te acordás esas casas antiguas, en medio de incipientes edificios? Pues ya no están.¨.

Esto para empezar. No estoy segura de la impresión que tendría de la Buenos Aires de hoy, refiriéndome a los edificios, ni hablar de los manteros y casas tomadas, aberrante desde mi punto de vista.

He leído el artículo del arquitecto Fabio Grementieri para La Nación, del cual reproduzco una parte, y coincido con él que en la materia historia de la FADU, la menos estudiada es la arquitectura primitiva o de las primeras épocas históricas, seguida por la arquitectura argentina. La prioridad absoluta es Europa.

Y no es que no apreciemos nuestra arquitectura (Fabio, disiento contigo, creo que los argentinos estamos orgullosos de nuestro entorno físico), sino que algunos grupos no la respetan. Y los demás, sienten la impotencia. Así como yo me siento impotente ante la foto de la estatua del pensador con graffiti.

También es cierto que no todo debe ser preservado, y le corresponde a los arquitectos especialistas MÁS las comisiones barriales decidir qué edificios deben quedar, cuáles no. Porque al arquitecto no ha mencionado la fuerza preservacionista de los grupos barriales, al menos los del Norte.

Del artículo de Grementieri:

Contaminación visual del colegio de San José. Foto La Nación

Fachada del edificio Operai Italiani, en Sarmiento al 1300. Foto de Andrea Knight. (¿No es vergonzoso?)

¨Parece que los argentinos, y en especial los porteños, tuvieran un crónico y estructural desdén por su pasado, su herencia y su memoria. Y se muestran especialmente indolentes y resignados cuando se trata de la arquitectura, que es justamente "historia congelada en el espacio". Las razones de este fenómeno son diversas y complejas.

Muchas veces se ensayaron explicaciones pero casi nunca se encontraron soluciones para revertir la disfunción cultural que nos aqueja. Por muchos motivos, las diversas acciones que conducen a la preservación del patrimonio construido quedan en manos de arquitectos. Y es un hecho que en la formación de estos profesionales argentinos la apreciación de la arquitectura nacional es aún materia pendiente, particularmente en lo que se refiere al acervo de la B elle époque, acechado por prejuicios estéticos y éticos. O se los considera frívolas copias de estilos europeos o productos desarraigados de la verdadera identidad nacional.

Los edificios de fines del siglo XIX y comienzos del siglo XX han sido los más vapuleados y destruidos en el país entero: de Córdoba a Tucumán, de Paraná a Mendoza y de La Plata a Bariloche. Y en Buenos Aires la destrucción ya se acerca al genocidio. Caen como fichas de dominó las decisivas piezas menores que arman el carácter de los barrios: casas chorizo, petits hôtels, chalets.

Desaparecen también casas de departamentos refinadas, garages de estilo, edificios industriales elegantes, todo ello para dar lugar a negocios inmobiliarios e inversiones desesperadas que prefieren los ladrillos huecos a los billetes frágiles. Pero también sucumben los edificios monumentales por abandono, degradación o depredación, como en los patéticos casos de la Confitería del Molino -excepcional palacio Art Nouveau-, de la sede de Unione Operai Italiani -magistral templo del Risorgimento Italiano en Sarmiento al 1300- o el sector del Colegio San José transformado en shopping en el barrio del Once.

Y ni que hablar de las estructuras que hacen al patrimonio intangible de la ciudad: lugares de escritores, músicos, artistas donde pareciera que se pretende exterminar a todos: ángeles, fantasmas y espectros. El panorama se completa con el maltrato al patrimonio paisajístico de parques y plazas, la amputación del arbolado urbano en vías de deforestación y la escultura pública graffiteada por pintura anarquista o por iluminación "led"? Pero también cuesta mucho acercarse con respeto y creatividad a la preservación del patrimonio edilicio desde el ámbito público o privado. Allí, en general, se aplican recetas que potencian reciclajes abusivos y casi nunca acciones de conservación efectiva y duradera y prima el mal manejo, cuando no el despilfarro de los recursos.

Parece no comprenderse o no interesar que ese patrimonio arquitectónico es imponente reflejo de la inmigración, hace a la esencia física de la capital del país y se ha convertido en verdaderamente universal. Esa arquitectura completa, de alguna manera, la trilogía cultural excepcional que la ciudad y el país dieron al mundo con la literatura encabezada por Borges y la música encarnada en el tango, dos de los aspectos de la civilización nacional que se consagraron internacionalmente en las últimas dos décadas.

Ante este panorama de orfandad en materia de valoración y tutela del patrimonio arquitectónico, los diversos actores sociales encuentran las claves para revertir la situación y salvarlo. En este tema los políticos parecen sordos y casi siempre ciegos; los artistas y los intelectuales, indiferentes o no, parecen movilizados por un legado único; los burócratas y los técnicos oscilan entre el cinismo operativo o la resignación culposa. Y la ciudadanía involucrada, que incluye a voraces desarrolladores, románticos preservacionistas y curiosa opinión pública, se mueve entre confusiones y malentendidos.

No todo es patrimonio, no todo es preservable. Pero tampoco todo es demolible o reciclable. Una de las claves de la solución de estos dilemas está en una adecuada valoración comparativa de todo el conjunto edilicio de una ciudad. La confección de un catálogo, de una suerte de "Inventario General Constituyente" con la jerarquización de cada inmueble, inclusive de cada sector del mismo, es una herramienta fundamental para el desenvolvimiento de proyectos e inversiones con eficiencia y provecho. Asimismo se necesita establecer claros y eficientes mecanismos de gestión que tutelen planes sobre propiedades privadas pero también públicas. El estado no puede imponer las necesarias restricciones al dominio que implica la preservación del patrimonio a los particulares sin controlar al mismo tiempo las acciones de sus propios organismos sobre los edificios oficiales.¨

Picking up murals in Los Angeles

2012-01-19T17:26:00.000-08:00

Los Angeles is also famous for its murals. Here, I took pictures from an interesting corner at Melrose ave.

All pictures by Myriam B. Mahiques

Reflexiones sobre la fractalidad aplicada al estudio de la morfología urbana 1

2012-01-17T19:00:00.000-08:00

Un círculo que es parte de un fractal.

El círculo como parte del fractal en un zoom

Nos alejamos y el círculo (Euclidiano??? a verificar) se integra en un borde rugoso, tal vez una costa.

Este artículo informal que publicaré en partes, lo hago recordando el comentario de un colega amigo, allá por el 2002, cuando le mostraba los avances incipientes de mi investigación: ¨¿Myriam, vos ves fractales en todas partes?¨ Por supuesto la respuesta fue NO pero esta cuestión requiere una larga explicación.

La primera y más importante: en ese momento, no disponía de softwares de medición fractal. El programa Mandelbrot, costaba mínimo 300 U$S, dinero que no podía invertir en softwares, más con mi próxima emigración a EEUU. De ahí, los precios saltaban a $500 U$S y así elevándose. Busqué apoyo en la FADU, hice un curso de GIS (Geographical Information System) y me enteré que las computadoras no debían ser usadas fuera del horario del curso. Me dispuse a buscar on line, y encontré algunos programas a prueba, un mes, tal vez más, y, en algún momento dí con Arthur y Olga Sirotinsky que son los profesores rusos creadores de Fractal Explorer. Les escribí, contándoles mis inquietudes, y les comenté dónde su programa fallaba (en los filtros) para mis estudios de formas urbanas. Por supuesto, Arthur me dijo que su software no había sido pensado para ¨morfología urbana¨, pero verían de mejorar la aplicación. Así fue, y les estoy agradecida.

No obstante, Fractal Explorer no es para mediciones fractales. En el 2002 y un par de años más, hube de hacer las mediciones dibujando arriba de una fotografía aérea grillas en AutoCad. Y haciendo las cuentas con ayuda de una calculadora y la tabla de logaritmos.

Un proceso engorroso que causa grandes demoras.....

En cada cálculo de D (Dimensión Fractal) la pregunta de mi amigo resonaba en mi mente. Y con razón. Porque algunos colegas ven la forma urbana como un juego donde se agregan, quitan partes, se logra una imagen –fascinante por cierto- y se arriba a un resultado de llenos y vacíos donde la dimensión fractal es similar o igual a la anterior, antes de la intervención urbana. Desde mi punto de vista, esto no es más que un juego de sistemas visuales que no reconoce la cultura de los habitantes, ni las características del lugar donde se ha aplicado. Se ve la fractalidad porque cualquier imagen que es irregular es plausible de ser medida según el Box Counting Method.

Postulado 1: LA APLICACIÓN DE LA FRACTALIDAD EN EL ANÁLISIS MORFOLÓGICO URBANO NO DEBE SER UN JUEGO FORMAL DE COMPOSICIÓN

Volviendo a la pregunta de mi amigo arquitecto, existen los llamados ¨fractal rabbits¨ o ¨conejos fractales¨ que indican fractales ficticios que surgen de escalas en baja definición, incluso cuando la figura analizada es euclidiana. El término lo aplica Brian H. Kaye en su libro ¨A Random Walk Through Fractal Dimensions¨ (pág 24), que si bien es muy específico de fractalidad de partículas finas, la teoría puede ser aplicable en todas las escalas.

El inconveniente de los ¨fractal rabbits¨ se da en extrapolaciones, ya que la figura a estudiar debe ser transformada en pixels (celdas) para utilizar el método de medición de celdas.

Un fractal de partículas que puede ser asociado a morfología urbana basada en densidades

Al acercarnos, las partículas muestran una alineación que no era posible ver a simple vista

Patterns de alineación de partículas. Asimilable a densidades cerca de ríos, carreteras, etc.

Nota: las imágenes fractales fueron generadas por Myriam B. Mahiques a los fines de citar ejemplos. El software utilizado es Fractal Explorer 2.02

Reflexiones sobre la fractalidad aplicada al estudio de la morfología urbana 1 by Myriam B. Mahiques is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Beauty definition x 2

2012-01-16T17:21:00.000-08:00

Santa Maria Novella. Facade by Leon B. Alberti. From http://m.eb.com/assembly/15888

¨We cannot reflectively think of beauty as an intrinsic quality in physical objects or even in human actions or dispositions, but only as a relation of them to the sensibilities of this or that person.¨

Edgar Carritt aprox. 1914

¨I shall define Beauty to be a harmony of all the parts, in whatsoever subject it appears, fitted together with such proportion and connection, that nothing could be added, diminished or altered, but for the worse.¨

Leon Battista Alberty, SXV

What is a reasonable accommodation?

2012-01-15T11:44:00.000-08:00

Richard Pimentel. From nihrecord.od.nih.gov

Yesterday I´ve been watching Music Within, the story of how Richard Pimentel became involved with ADA applications, resumed in an urban-architectural code for handicap people that can be downloaded on line.

Richard Pimentel is a disability rights activist who developed significant training materials aimed to help employers integrate persons with disabilities into the workplace, and was a strong advocate for the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act.(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Pimentel)

Pimentel is a partner of Milt Wright & Associates, Inc., and from their papers, I´ve selected this question and answer (below), because, as the movie shows, some retails´ tenants or owners do not want to upgrade their facilities under the ADA Code, and some of them want to, but the upgrade has to be a reasonable one.

If the facilities have been approved years ago, without ADA implications, they are still fine, but, once the retail is rented again under a change of use, all the rigor of the current Codes falls upon them. But, the City official would understand if any issue of the upgrade couldn´t be done for a hardship reason, as explained below.

I had a case that was pretty weird for us. A tuxedo rental with two stories, where the factory (the sewing machines) had to be on the second floor, the exhibition room was all the first floor. Incredibly, the plan checker asked for handicap facilities in the second floor, even when per Building and Safety Code no elevator was needed.

And the owner said, how could I hire a blind person, or anybody in a wheelchair with these machines? The very nature of the job made it impossible for a handicap to apply to work with the sewing machines. Maybe you´d like to remember another movie, Dancer in the Dark, the lady was becoming blind and it was too dangerous for her to keep on working with the machines.

Question: What is a reasonable accommodation?

Answer:

Basically it is some change in the job or the interview/evaluation process that takes into consideration your disability job-related limitations and enables you to still do the job or be properly and fairly evaluated.

In the interview these accommodations could be providing a sign language interpreter for someone who was deaf or hearing impaired and needed that assistance. It could be giving more time for someone to complete a test if they have a learning disability, or assisting someone to fill out an application if they have cerebral palsy and cannot fill it out on their own.

On the job, an accommodation could be many things. Changing the work schedule for someone who needs medical treatments, buying or changing equipment such as a blinking telephone or TDD for someone who is deaf or hearing impaired, changing the way that work is traditionally done as long as it still gets done. You should study what the ADA says about reasonable accommodation. One important thing to remember is that an employer may be obligated to provide an accommodation only if it is not an undue hardship on the business to do so, and reducing performance standards below that of other employees is not a reasonable accommodation. If an accommodation will not allow you to perform the essential functions of a job, then you are not qualified for the position.

Read the article in full:

http://www.miltwright.com/articles/ArtOfDisclosingYourDisability.pdf

Space perception of the ¨once blind¨ person

2012-01-14T08:47:00.000-08:00

The Graeae´s eye. El ojo de las brujas grises. Pintura digital de Myriam B. Mahiques

I´ve begun reading a very interesting book, ¨The Visual Dialogue. An Introduction to the Appreciation of Art¨, by Nathan Knobler. In page 14, he quotes professor J. Z. Young, an English physiologist who experimented with individuals born blind who, in their later years, were enabled to see.

I´d like to reproduce some paragraphs, as we, architects, tend to think that spatial perception is the same for everybody. At least we recognize cultural differences in our way to comprehend the space (let´s say the architectural space) but this is related to knowledge and brain training. Let´s read:

¨The once-blind person, now physiologically normal, does not ¨see¨ the world immediately.

The patient on opening his eyes for the first time gets little or no enjoyment; indeed, he finds the experience painful. He reports only a spinning by sight, to recognize what they are, or to name them. He has no conception of a space with objects in it, although he knows all about objects and their names by touch. ¨Of course,¨ you will say, ¨he must take a little time to learn to recognize them by sight.¨Not a little time, but a very, very long time, in fact, years. His brain has not been trained in the rules of seeing. We are not conscious that there are any such rules; we think that we see, as we say, ¨naturally.¨ But we have in fact learned a whole set of rules during childhood. (*)

Young goes on to say that the once-blind man can learn to ¨see¨ only by training his brain. By expending a considerable amount of effort, he can gradually understand the visual experiences of color, form, space, and textures.

These experiments suggest that the sensations we receive have no meaning for us until we know how to order them into a coherent perception. Sensation is only one part of perception. Also included in the construction of a percept is the past experience of the observer and his ability to combine sensations into a meaningful form. To perceive something requires that the observer make a selection of the numerous sensations which are significant for the construction of a particular experience and disregard those which are irrelevant. As Young points out, this requires training. The untrained observer cannot make sense out of what he sees before him.¨

(*) J. Z. Young. Doubt and Certainty in Science. Oxford University Press, London, 1951, p. 62

Inhabitants of caves

2012-01-13T06:54:00.000-08:00

Sea caves. Grutas marinas. Digital painting by Myriam B. Mahiques

¨the old potentate determined on reform and, setting vigorously to work, ejected whole nests of vagabonds out of the fortress and the gypsy caves with which the surrounding hills are honey combed.¨

W. Irving. Tales of the Alhambra. Governor Manco and the soldier. P. 249. Granada, edition of 1994

W. Irving´s words made me think. In an urban morphology analysis, should we consider the inhabited caves surrounding the city?

What´s the geographical extents of the analysis?

The urban grid that shaped Manhattan

2012-01-12T07:06:00.000-08:00

The view south from Park Avenue and 94th Street around 1882. Museum of the City of New York

“The Greatest Grid: The Master Plan of Manhattan, 1811-2011,” now at the Museum of the City of New York, unearths that 1879 picture of the Brennan Farm among other historic gems. The show celebrates the anniversary of what remains not just a landmark in urban history but in many ways the defining feature of the city.

After all, before it could rise into the sky, Manhattan had to create the streets, avenues and blocks that support the skyscrapers. The grid was big government in action, a commercially minded boon to private development and, almost despite itself, a creative template. With 21st-century problems — environmental, technological, economic and social — now demanding aggressive and socially responsible leadership, the exhibition is a kind of object lesson.

Simeon De Witt, Gouverneur Morris and John Rutherfurd were entrusted with planning the city back in 1811. New York huddled mostly south of Canal Street, but it was booming, its population having tripled to 96,373 since 1790 thanks to the growing port. Civic boosters predicted that 400,000 people would live in the city by 1860. They turned out to be half-right. New York topped 800,000 before the Civil War.

The planners proposed a grid for this future city stretching northward from roughly Houston Street to 155th Street in the faraway heights of Harlem. It was in many respects a heartless plan. There were virtually no parks or plazas. The presumption was that people would gravitate east and west along the numbered streets to the rivers when they wanted open space and fresh air, and not spend lots of time moving north or south. That partly explains why there were only a dozen avenues.

Excerpt from:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/03/arts/design/manhattan-street-grid-at-museum-of-city-of-new-york.html?_r=1

Last two pictures from:

http://www.mcny.org/exhibitions/current/The-Greatest-Grid.html

Lost London: the revival of psychogeography in a game

2012-01-11T06:55:00.000-08:00

Image from http://lostlondon.org.uk/

Emilie Giles is an interaction designer who launched Lost London, a pervasive game that focuses on the forgotten places and networks that exist within the city of London. Based on the principles of psychogeography (“the study of the specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organised or not, on the emotions and behaviour of individuals”), Lost London makes use of Foursquare and Twitter to set the pace of the game. Giles chose to use disused Tube stations as starting points, since the participant is already having to open their eyes a bit more, and notice that which is normally not obvious.

REFERENCE:

http://popupcity.net/2010/07/psychogeographic-london/

Image from http://lostlondon.org.uk/

2012 International Human Science Research Conference. Montreal, Canada. CALL FOR PAPERS

2012-01-10T07:14:00.000-08:00

Renewing the Encounter between Human Sciences, the Arts, and the Humanities

The 2012 International Human Science Research Conference will take place on the 25th to the 29th of June, on the campus of the University of Quebec at Montreal, Quebec, Canada.

In our preparations for the International Human Science Research Conference of Montreal, 2012, we are guided by the hope that the conference may lead us all to a deeper questionning of the inherent, ancient and interdependent relationship between the human sciences, the arts and the humanities. We therefore warmly invite presentations inspired by that theme, but with the understanding that we do not mean to discourage others from addressing different topics of interest to our community.

Both Husserl and Gadamer –and many others– have extensively commented on the perverse effects of narrow scientism, materialism and objectivism on our culture in general and on the practice of the human sciences in particular. Their criticism remains as relevant today as when it was first formulated by Husserl more than three quarters of a century ago.

The conference at Montreal wants to be an occasion to reflect on the distorting effects of narrowly conceived methods, theories and practices that forever send the human sciences on new paths that do not connect with the older, nor set the stage for future ones.

http://www.ihsrc2012.uqam.ca/

The conference is the perfect occasion to share the product of your researches, your experiences and your reflections with your colleagues from around the world. We invite you to submit your contributions, including academic papers, posters, and other type of scientific report before de January 29th, 2012. Lectures will last 30 minutes, if the number of attendees permits it, and 1.5 hours periods are planned for the symposium. Symposia Organizers will be free to use the 1.5 hours as they wish to accommodate their presentation requirements. Also, they should discuss ahead any particular or unusual proposals with the conference organizers to plan the details of their symposium.

Please submit an abstract of up to 250 words (maximum) if you wish to present a standard talk or poster using the online form below.

For other formats, please attach a brief (up to 500 words) outline of your proposed contribution (including time and space requirements), details of contributors and contact details.

Please take note that the deadline for the submission of abstracts is January, 29th 2012.

http://www.ihsrc2012.uqam.ca/?page_id=371

Should Delhi go vertical?

2012-01-09T08:19:00.000-08:00

Projects of towers in India. From http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=610384

Should Delhi go vertical? Town planners believe it is a wrong question to begin with. The question we should ask is how best we can house our people and manage population densities within the city, says author and urban studies expert Gautam Bhan, who is currently pursuing a PhD in urban planning at University of California, Berkeley.

While talk of Delhi going vertical - an idea mooted by urban development minister Kamal Nath - conjures up images of gigantic highrises painted across the Delhi skyline, experts in urban design say the best way to solve Delhi's housing woes lies in high-density low-rises . "When we think of Delhi going vertical, why are we thinking of going from three floors to 45 floors? Why don't we think, instead, of going from three to five floors?'' asks Bhan. He believes that the debate about Delhi going vertical has more to do with the image of the city as a worldclass metro like Manhattan and not about filling the gap in Delhi's housing market.

While Manhattan may have ten times the density that Delhi does, New York, unlike Delhi, has the infrastructure to support high-rises, says AGK Menon, convener, Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (Delhi Chapter).

REFERENCE:

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/delhi/Unshackle-land-go-for-high-density/articleshow/11346969.cms

Flowers that blow at midnight

2012-01-08T17:33:00.000-08:00

Photo: Zarko Vijatovic. Courtesy: Gagosian Gallery.

Sharing from arcspace.com:

As fall cedes to winter, the Jardins des Tuileries in Paris will be enlivened by Yayoi Kusama's vibrantly colored Flowers That Bloom at Midnight, a series of unique large scale sculptures. This is the first time these sculptures will be seen in France.

Read the full article:

http://www.arcspace.com/architects/kusama/flowers/flowers.html

Bulldozing a 12 million dollars house

2012-01-07T08:30:00.000-08:00

I really don´t like this house, even it it´s worth 12 million dollars. But, if somebody tells me to demolish it completely, I´d think it twice, can we rescue something, anything?

But, when you get 100 million dollars for a divorce, you can do it without pain :)

¨There are times when divorce forces people to do strange things. Burn sheets. Throw out clothes. Toss rings into the ocean. But when you get $100 million in your divorce, you can trump just about anything and that's what happened with Tiger Woods' ex-wife when she bought a $12 million home and bulldozed the whole thing.

Yes, according to TMZ, Elin Nordegren bought a $12 million home in North Palm Beach, Fla., but didn't like it, and has plowed the whole thing.

The house, which had six bedrooms and eight bathrooms, is now just rubble, with no word yet on what is going to replace the beautiful building you see above, but I guess when you have nine figures in the bank, it doesn't really matter what you want.¨

From Shane Bacon´s article:

http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/golf-devil-ball-golf/tiger-woods-ex-wife-bulldozes-12-million-home-232405259.html

Pictures courtesy of Pacific Coast News and With Leather

El Guggenheim de Frank Lloyd Wright con una muestra colgante en su espacio central

2012-01-06T07:38:00.000-08:00

Caballo embalsamado (¿Muerto o vivo? Ud. decide!) colgando de la espiral del Guggenheim, New York. De la obra de Maurizio Cattelan. Foto de http://www.lanacion.com.ar/1436825-por-que-le-habran-puesto-caballos

¿Maurizio Cattelan abandona mientras está ganando o antes de quedar demasiado rezagado? La pregunta sobrevuela la muy anticipada retrospectiva de 21 años del Guggenheim donde, como es ampliamente sabido a estas alturas, todo el arte está suspendido en el aire. Esta muestra inusual ha sido descripta por Cattelan como "su canto de cisne". Aunque sólo tiene 51 años, lo que en años artísticos es poco, ha anunciado que se retira del trabajo de hacer arte. Quizá para celebrar, ha convertido su retrospectiva en un estallido, hecho de piezas anteriores -128, para ser precisos-, lo que exige una delicada ingeniería. Toda la producción de Cattelan, salvo dos obras cuyos dueños se negaron a prestarlas, cuelga en una masa gigante distendida de cables conectados a una viga de aluminio cerca del techo de la rotonda del museo. Titulado Todo , llena uno de los vacíos arquitectónicos más grandes del mundo con lo que sin duda figurará como uno de los móviles más complicados y visualmente fallidos de la historia del arte.(....)

Visto desde abajo especialmente, Todo es un catálogo completo razonado, en la forma de una piñata explotada. Al ascender la rampa, el caos continúa: todo parece venirse hacia uno a la vez. Desplegadas aquí y allá, por ejemplo, hay piezas conceptuales de sus primeros años de "estética relacional".

Fragmento de la nota de Roberta Smith (The New York Times). Traducción de Gabriel Zadunaisky.

http://www.lanacion.com.ar/1436825-por-que-le-habran-puesto-caballos

Las siguientes fotos son del New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/04/arts/design/maurizio-cattelan-at-the-guggenheim-review.html

THE NATIONAL COUNCIL FOR PRESERVATION EDUCATION. CALL FOR PAPERS

2012-01-05T09:58:00.000-08:00

The editors of Preservation Research & Education invite paper proposals for the fifth (2011) edition of the journal. Papers and special reports on all topics related to preservation education, research, and scholarship are considered. In addition, we invite essay proposals for PER Forum, which address articles published in PER’s previous volumes.

The deadline for submission of papers is FEBRUARY 15, 2012. Papers will be blind reviewed and authors notified of publication status by April 2012.

Complete guidelines for paper submission can be accessed on NCPE website (http://www.ncpe.us) or are available through the co- editors, Anat Geva and Kevin Glowacki, Texas A&M University (PERjournal@gmail.com).

http://www.ncpe.us/

My last pictures from Chinatown, San Francisco

2012-01-04T07:16:00.000-08:00

That´s me at the plaza

The oldest building

Cesar Pelli´s tower at the rear

Cathay´s restaurant at the left corner

San Francisco Chinatown is the largest Chinatown outside of Asia as well as the oldest Chinatown in North America. It is one of the top tourist attractions in San Francisco. Learn more about Chinatown:

http://www.sanfranciscochinatown.com/

My last pictures from Walt Disney Concert Hall. Los Angeles, California

2011-12-25T22:31:00.000-08:00

Downtown L.A. from Walt Disney Concert Hall. By Frank Gehry

An entrance from the plaza level.

Downtown L.A. from Walt Disney Concert Hall. By Frank Gehry

The rose sculpture at the Plaza Level.

That´s my sister and me.

That´s my architect husband

Lotte, Korea's First Supertower

2011-12-18T08:08:00.000-08:00

Lotte World Tower, once called Lotte Jamsil Super Tower, is the fifth-tallest building under way in the world, says the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat. Chaebols, other than Lotte, have built the world's tallest towers. Yet the tallest building in Korea is the 308-m North East Asia Trade Tower at the Songdo International Business District.

The Lotte tower is just coming out of the ground. If finished by October 2015 as currently scheduled, the 123-story tower would rank as the seventh tallest of the world's eight supertowers over 500 m. The tallest is the 828-m Burj Khalifa in the Arab emirate of Dubai.

Since 1989, Lotte's founder and general chairman, Shin Kyuk-Ho, weighed 10 designs by three other architects before selecting the current design by New York City-based Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates PC. KPF's.

The construction of the mega columns

The temporary platform

REFERENCE:

http://enr.construction.com/buildings/building_types/2011/1212-65279Koreas-First-Supertower-Is-an-All-in-the-Family-Affair.asp?elq=2976529b3a554072bae1eed99

Kauffman Center designed by Moshe Safdie. Kansas

2011-12-17T08:55:00.000-08:00

JE Dunn Construction's Kyle McQuiston takes us on a hardhat tour of the Moshe Safdie-designed Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts.

Urban camouflage

2011-12-15T07:39:00.000-08:00

Urban environments are crowded with all kinds of sights that are so common they often just seem to fade into the background. Signs, buildings, cars, the odd package waiting on a doorstep – they are all so ubiquitous that our minds somewhat block them out. Artist Ceyetano Ferrer takes the things that our minds gloss over and makes them almost disappear with clever urban camouflage.

Using photo stickers, Ferrer shows passers-by exactly what urban objects obscure. The sign on the street, the box in the corner, the billboard downtown: they all cover up another layer of the city. Ferrer’s clever method of peeling back the layers actually involves building up another layer that is ultimately akin to an invisibility cloak.

Reference:

http://weburbanist.com/2010/11/24/under-the-city-street-art-peels-back-urban-layers/

Analyzing disaster after Japan´s tsunami

2011-12-14T05:55:00.000-08:00

Over the course of two hard-driving weeks in April, seven engineers and researchers comprising the ASCE/Structural Engineering Institute Tohuku Tsunami Reconnaissance Team, in collaboration members of the Japan Society of Civil Engineers, examined nearly all the towns and cities with significant damage from the March 11, 2011 tsunami.

Artists to intervene City Planning

2011-12-13T07:45:00.000-08:00

Rirkrit Tiravanija's "Bike Share," part of the "Civic Action" exhibition at the Noguchi Museum and Socrates Sculpture Park.

¨when all else fails, the visionary thinking of artists has become public policy. Ten years ago an artist turned mayor painted dilapidated buildings with bright primary colors in Tirana, Albania, performing a kind of art therapy on a depressed city. And in Bogotá, Colombia, traffic police were replaced with mimes in the hope of supplanting corruption and violence with playful street theater.

The situation in Long Island City isn’t as dire as in those localities. But that section of Queens has been threatened in recent decades by unchecked development, the loss of affordable housing and the chemical hangover of industrialization. And so the Noguchi Museum and Socrates Sculpture Park asked four artists to take a crack at city planning.

Long Island City has a history of artist involvement. In 1961 Isamu Noguchi, the celebrated Asian-American sculptor, moved there to be near stone suppliers and metal fabricators, into a building that would later became his museum. In the early ’80s Mark di Suvero, whose 11 behemoth sculptures occupied Governors Island this past summer — and who became obliquely affiliated with Occupy Wall Street, since his red steel sculpture looms over Zuccotti Park — turned a landfill across the street from Noguchi’s building into an outdoor studio, which eventually became Socrates Sculpture Park.

when all else fails, the visionary thinking of artists has become public policy. Ten years ago an artist turned mayor painted dilapidated buildings with bright primary colors in Tirana, Albania, performing a kind of art therapy on a depressed city. And in Bogotá, Colombia, traffic police were replaced with mimes in the hope of supplanting corruption and violence with playful street theater.

The future solutions in the exhibition “Civic Action: A Vision for Long Island City” at the Noguchi Museum range from site specific to silly.¨

¨If only the city could speak¨ intallation by Mary Miss

“Civic Action: A Vision for Long Island City” is on view through April 22 at the Noguchi Museum, 32-37 Vernon Boulevard, Long Island City, Queens; (718) 204-7088, noguchi.org.

Read Martha Schwendener´s note in full:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/09/arts/design/noguchi-museum-features-art-as-urban-planning-review.html?_r=2&scp=1&sq=urban%20pl

Plaga (?) de palomas en Buenos Aires

2011-12-11T09:22:00.000-08:00

Buenos Aires, Plaza de Mayo. Yo también he tenido una foto de niña, junto a las palomas....

Foto de itaka.es

Como ya he contado en este blog, hace más de diez años ya, estuve haciendo peritajes en las escuelas de la capital de Buenos Aires. Y recuerdo un día, entrando a un aula, le pregunté a la maestra, aparte de las patologías constructivas que notaba a simple vista, si había algún problema que quisiera reportar. Y me respondió ¨las palomas, vea, cómo se acercan a la ventana, los chicos se encariñan, pero dejan todo lleno de heces y por supuesto traen psitacosis-¨

Esta cuestión más el hallazgo de dos escorpiones en el aula, fueron además parte de mi reporte sobre los inconvenientes constructivos del edificio. Ahora, luego de tantos años veo que la inquietud de esta maestra era bien fundada, baste mirar las cornisas de los edificios antiguos de Buenos Aires, muchos llenos de alambres para evitar que se posen estos lindos animalitos, de los cuales aún no se declara que sean plaga.

En el Sur de California, el mismo problema podría haberse suscitado con los cuervos, que cada día son más. He leído en Los Angeles Times que la mayor causa es la basura que los alimenta. Sin embargo, los residuos se dejan en contenedores de plástico bien duros, con tapa, que no pueden ser siquiera mordidos por roedores. A diferencia, en Buenos Aires aún se ve la basura dentro de las bolsas de consorcio.

De la nota de Laura Rocha para La Nación:

Palomas en Plaza de Mayo; atrás a la derecha, el Cabildo. Foto de turismoyargentina.com

Las palomas no son una plaga en la ciudad de Buenos Aires. Por lo menos, en los papeles. Y, aunque no son una especie invasora, aún no han sido declaradas oficialmente una amenaza, tal como sucede con las ratas o las cucarachas, especialistas en aves, funcionarios y vecinos se quejan de un aumento en la población de estas aves.

Una de las razones de la proliferación de estas aves es que no tienen un predador, por no ser especie nativa. Otra, también se apunta, es la cantidad de comida disponible que tienen que sólo fomenta su desarrollo.

En la Capital, muchos edificios, sus balcones, los equipos de aire acondicionados, los monumentos, bancos de las plazas, parques y varias iglesias son las más afectadas por las palomas, tanto por sus nidos como por sus heces.

En el parque Rivadavia, por ejemplo, se levanta un monumento al libertador Simón Bolívar, que muestra los vestigios del paso de estas aves. Ese monumento podría demarcar la línea divisoria entre los que piden que se controle su población y entre quienes la alientan. (...) Claudia Nardini, investigadora de la ONG Aves Argentinas, explicó: "En la ciudad de Buenos Aires habitan cinco especies silvestres: torcaza, torcacita , picazuró, ala manchada, yerutí y, por supuesto, la paloma doméstica. Se cree que tanto los gorriones como las palomas llegaron a nuestro país de la mano de los inmigrantes provenientes de Europa y Asia, donde era común que estas especies formaran parte de la dieta. La famosa «polenta con pajaritos» no es un cuento y como no sabían qué irían a encontrar en estas tierras, era lógico traer las provisiones necesarias. Aunque también algunas personas las criaban como palomas mensajeras".

Cabe recordar que la ley nacional 12.913 prohíbe la matanza de las palomas mensajeras. Y, para aplicar políticas de control de población, es necesario atravesar la instancia parlamentaria.

"Hoy en la Capital hay una población en aumento de la paloma doméstica, problema que se repite en muchas ciudades del país y del mundo. Esta paloma que habitaba originalmente en acantilados del Viejo Mundo, encontró en las cornisas de los edificios de las ciudades una suerte de sucedáneo de aquellos lugares de nidificación. Además encontraron alimento y muy pocos predadores, hasta ahora. Desde hace unos años, se observa un número interesante de especies de aves rapaces, como el chimango o el halcón peregrino, que llegan a la ciudad para buscar ese alimento", indicó Nardini. En las grandes ciudades, el problema principal se centraliza en el daño que las heces de estos animales producen en los edificios antiguos. Asimismo, la ornitosis (anteriormente conocida como psitacosis) es una de las enfermedades que pueden transmitir a través de la materia fecal, que resulta riesgosa para la salud.

Según indicaron en el gobierno porteño, las plazas del Congreso y la Plaza de Mayo son dos de las más afectadas por la proliferación de las palomas. Incluso, en esta última, ya son parte de la postal turística.

Pedro Acevedo es barrendero en la zona desde hace seis años. "Se ve que hay más palomas. La gente muchas veces le da de comer al borde de la vereda y los pájaros mueren aplastados por los autos", contó. Acevedo también apuntó que desde hace un tiempo nota la presencia de más aves rapaces: "En Sarmiento y Maipú, se ven dos o tres halcones sobrevolar para buscar su alimento".

Recoleta y Belgrano son otros de los barrios afectados por las palomas. Las paredes del cementerio, las terrazas, los pulmones de manzana y las columnas son el lugar propicio para los nidos. En la parroquia de la Inmaculada Concepción, también conocida como La Redonda, en Juramento y Vuelta de Obligado, por ejemplo, un grupo de cotorras y palomas se disputan los capiteles de las columnas para armar su nido. Las cotorras han logrado quedarse con la columna principal del edificio, mientras que las palomas habitan aquellas que lo rodean.

Eloísa Avellaneda, que vive en Uruguay, entre Juncal y Arenales, está cansada de luchar contra estas aves. "Estamos indefensos, ya no sé qué hacer. Probé todos los métodos y nada funciona. Estoy encerrada en mi propia casa: no puedo abrir las ventanas porque me invaden y entran en mi casa", contó.

Muchos consorcios y vecinos recurren a los exterminadores de plagas, que tienen varias soluciones disponibles. Sin embargo, no las eliminan, sólo las ahuyentan.

Más palomas en Plaza de Mayo. Foto de andryjko. http://www.panoramio.com/photo/23619355

Palomas de Buenos Aires. Foto de http://www.flickr.com/photos/ignaciogobato/5735473943/sizes/m/in/photostream/

Palomas comiendo de las bolsas de basura. De http://www.revistaelabasto.com.ar/defendamos_BA_amparo_recolecion_residuos.htm

(....) CUÁNDO SE LA PUEDE DECLARAR UNA PLAGA

Para la Organización Mundial de la Salud una especie es una plaga cuando su aparición masiva puede dañar a poblaciones animales, vegetales y humanas. En la ciudad de Buenos Aires la declaración de una plaga es emanada desde el Ministerio de Salud o vía una ley de la Legislatura. En el Congreso Nacional hay un proyecto que declara plaga la superpoblación de palomas, al tiempo que el Ministerio de Agricultura de la Nación estudia un plan de manejo. "Si bien todas las aves transmiten enfermedades, nosotros no hemos tenido aún denuncias sobre las palomas", indicó Oscar Lencinas, director del Instituto Pasteur.

Lea la nota completa:

http://www.lanacion.com.ar/1431830-las-palomas-mensajeras-de-problemas

The sublimity of landscape

2011-12-09T10:34:00.000-08:00

J. M. W. Turner. The decline of the Carthaginian empire. 1817. Google images

¨The interest of a landscape consists wholly in its relation either to figures present—or to figures past—or to human powers conceived. The most splendid drawing of the chain of the Alps, irrespective of their relation to humanity, is no more a true landscape than a painting of this bit of stone. For, as natural philosophers, there is no bigness or littleness to you. This stone is just as interesting to you, or ought to be—as if it was a million times as big. There is no more sublimity —per se—in ground sloped at an angle of forty-five, than in ground level; nor in a perpendicular fracture of a rock, than in a horizontal one. The only thing that makes the one more interesting to you in a landscape than the other, is that you could tumble over the perpendicular fracture—and couldn't tumble over the other. A cloud, looked at as a cloud only, is no more a subject for painting than so much feculence in dirty water. It is merely dirty air, or at best a chemical solution ill made. That it is worthy of being painted at all depends upon its being the means of nourishment and chastisement to men, or the dwelling place of imaginary gods. There's a bit of blue sky and cloud by Turner—one of the loveliest ever painted by human hand. But, as a mere pattern of blue and white, he had better have painted a jay's wing: this was only painted by him—and is, in reality, only pleasant to you—because it signifies the coming of a gleam of sweet sunshine in windy weather; and the wind is worth thinking of only because it fills the sails of ships, and the sun because it warms the sailors. (....) Only natural phenomena in their direct relation to humanity—these are to be your subjects in landscape. Rocks and water and air may no more be painted for their own sakes, than the armor carved without the warrior.¨

J.M.W. Turner. Modern Rome. Campo Vaccino. Google images

John Ruskin. Lectures on Landscape.

These Lectures on Landscape were given at Oxford on January 20, February 9, and February 23, 1871

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/20019/20019-h/20019-h.htm

New bridge design for Los Angeles rail

2011-12-08T08:44:00.000-08:00

Image courtesy of Metro Gold Line Foothill Extension

I'm not sure I like it, because the 3D render is not helping, it looks more like an illustration. But, anyway, I'm anxious to see the development of this original design for a freeway's bridge.

From Greg Aragon's post:

Traditional art and modern-day seismic technology will join in an iconic structure to be built as part of the first phase of the $735-million, 11.5-mile Metro Gold Line Foothill Extension in Los Angeles County. Last month, the Foothill Extension Construction Authority unveiled the winning design for an $18.6-million bridge over the 210 freeway in Arcadia that will also sport "smart column" seismic-assessment wiring.

Dubbed the "Gateway to the San Gabriel Valley," the 584-ft-long bridge is scheduled to be completed next summer. It is the first phase of the overall Gold Line's Pasadena-to-Azusa light-rail extension, which broke ground in August 2010 and is scheduled to finish in 2015.

"We started the design process with an artist's concept paying homage to the region's historic Native American basket-weaving tradition," says Habib F. Balian, CEO of the Foothill Extension Construction Authority, the entity in charge of building the line from downtown Los Angeles to the eastern county line, along the foothills of the San Gabriel Valley.

The unique design was created by award-winning public artist Andrew Leicester, who was selected through an international competition seeking a signature bridge facade that would best embody the San Gabriel Valley. His winning idea features two prominent "basket" columns as well as the superstructure's serpentine-like underbelly.

Leicester says he researched the area and discovered an ancient trade route used by Native Americans that paralleled the 210 Freeway.

"The Tongva [tribe] were the earliest dwellers in this area, and they are famous to this day for their skill in basket making," says Leicester, who was born in England and has created public art projects throughout the U.S., U.K. and Australia. "I thought this was a good opportunity to wrap the columns in an ornamental sheathing and basket textile patterns as an attractive way to disguise the columns."

Image from thesource.metro.net

Rebar for one of the columns rises from the ground. Picture by Walt Mancini. http://www.whittierdailynews.com/news/ci_19033343

Keep on reading:

http://enr.construction.com/infrastructure/transportation/2011/1205-65279Los-Angeles-Rail-Structure-To-Feature-Tradition-High-Tech-.asp

New York. Through Kafka´s imagination

2011-12-05T09:17:00.000-08:00

New York City, 1937. From nyc-architecture.com

NYC 1900. From timefreezephotos.com

¨To a certain degree, by creating his own conception of America, Kafka takes the role of master and creator, producing for himself a feeling of power and superiority over the supposed land of freedom. This sense of superiority enables Kafka to criticize the capitalist and industrialized America through his description of the streets of New York. He writes, from morning to evening and far into the dreaming night that street was the channel for a constant stream of traffic which, seen from above, looked like an inextricable confusion, for ever newly improvised, of foreshortened human figures and the roofs of all kinds of vehicles, sending into the upper air another confusion, more riotous and complicated, of 4 noises, dust and smells, all of it enveloped and penetrated by a flood of light which the multitudinous objects in the street scattered, carried off and again busily brought back, with an effect as palpable to the dazzled eye as if a glass roof stretched over the street

were being violently smashed into fragments at every moment (Kafka 39).

The “confusion” that Kafka explicitly mentions is further revealed implicitly through his heavy incorporation of sensual imagery, ranging from the cacophony of human and car noises to the visual scattering of sunlight to the clash of smells, all of which introduce a bustling and industrious atmosphere into Kafka’s world.

The complex syntax of this lengthy sentence, with its prepositional phrases and subordinate clauses, engenders a sense of confusion in the reader’s mind that parallels the confusion that Karl experiences when staring down at the city from his uncle’s house. Austin Warren points out that “Kafka’s imagined America is not a land of broad cornfields shining in the sun but a chiefly metropolitan affair, already stratified, weary, and hopeless ¨a land of hotels and slums” (Warren 123). Any sense of individualism, of the individual achieving the American dream, becomes lost in the midst of this fast-paced America.¨

Excerpt from: Franz Kafka’s Amerika: The Amerikan Dream. Edmond Lau. April 30, 2001

http://people.csail.mit.edu/edmond/writings/amerikan-dream.pdf

NYC. A structural steel worker in the old times. From solarnavigator.net

Remembering ¨Into White¨ by Cat Stevens

2011-12-01T20:07:00.000-08:00

Barley House. Digital art by Myriam B. Mahiques

I like Cat Stevens´ old songs, but I´m not crazy about them, except for this one -Into White- that tells us about a mystic house:

I built my house from barley rice

Green pepper walls and water ice

Tables of paper wood, windows of light

And everything emptying into white.

A simple garden, with acres of sky

A Brown-haired dogmouse

If one dropped by

Yellow Delanie would sleep well at night

With everything emptying into white.

A sad Blue eyed drummer rehearses outside

A Black spider dancing on top of his eye

Red legged chicken stands ready to strike

And everything emptying into white.

I built my house from barley rice

Green pepper walls and water ice

And everything emptying into white

The booming of Hanoi´s ancient quarters

2011-11-30T20:09:00.000-08:00

Pattern of Hanoi´s tube houses. Picture from García Lamarca´s post.

Hanoi´s street. Picture from García Lamarca´s post.

I´m sharing an interesting post at Polis by Melissa García Lamarca:

¨Hanoi’s “36 Streets” or Ancient Quarter, an area that has existed since the city was founded in A.D. 1010. Originally the center of supply for Vietnamese rulers in the Imperial City and a residential area for “commoners,” the area emerged as an important trade and craft center in the early 13th century. This was due to its privileged location nestled between the country’s seat of power, the old citadel destroyed by French colonizers, and the Red River, whose flow provided an important connection to nearby regions.

The urban morphology and function of the Ancient Quarter has, remarkably, remained largely intact throughout Vietnam’s more recent history of French colonization and decades of war. Its "spaghetti" street pattern remains from the 15th century, when trade streets emerged that specialized in a particular craft or good, still reflected in street names today. Constant division of properties over the centuries led to the creation of the Quarter’s characteristic "tube" or "tunnel" houses, providing live-work spaces for the residents of the area.(...)

Since the late 1980s, the Ancient Quarter has undergone a massive entrepreneurial boom. A high proportion of the local population has benefited, as they have transformed their "tube" house living quarters into shops, cafes, restaurants and hotels. There is a thriving pavement economy, with street hawkers — overwhelmingly women — commuting in daily from the countryside to sell vegetables and other goods. Foreign tourism is also booming.¨

Read the complete post:

http://www.thepolisblog.org/2011/11/changing-face-of-hanois-booming-ancient.html#more

An artificial glacier in Mongolia´s capital for air conditioning

2011-11-26T08:50:00.000-08:00

Ulan Bator, the capital of Mongolia. Photograph: Doug Kanter/Getty Images

From Guardian.co.UK:

¨Mongolia is to launch one of the world's biggest ice-making experiments later this month in an attempt to combat the adverse affects of global warming and the urban heat island effect.

The geoengineering trial, that is being funded by the Ulan Bator government, aims to "store" freezing winter temperatures in a giant block of ice that will help to cool and water the city as it slowly melts during the summer.

The scientists behind the 1bn tugrik (£460,000) project hope the process will reduce energy demand from air conditioners and regulate drinking water and irrigation supplies. If successful, the model could be applied to other cities in the far north.

The project aims to artificially create "naleds" - ultra-thick slabs of ice that occur naturally in far northern climes when rivers or springs push through cracks in the surface to seep outwards during the day and then add an extra layer of ice during the night. Unlike regular ice formation on lakes - which only gets to a metre in thickness before it insulates the water below - naleds continue expanding for as long as there is enough water pressure to penetrate the surface. Many are more than seven metres thick, which means they melt much later than regular ice.

A Mongolian engineering firm ECOS & EMI will try to recreate this process by drilling bore holes into the ice that has started to form on the Tuul river. The water will be discharged across the surface, where it will freeze. This process - effectively adding layers of ice rinks - will be repeated at regular intervals throughout the winter.

The qualities of naleds (also known as Aufeis, German for "ice on top") have been known for hundreds of years. The North Korean military used them to build river crossings for tanks during the winter and Russia has used them as drilling platforms. But engineers usually see them in negative terms as a threat to railways and bridges.¨

Keep on reading:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/nov/15/mongolia-ice-shield-geoengineering

Disertación del arq. Clorindo Testa con complicaciones

2011-11-24T11:30:00.000-08:00

Arq. Clorindo Testa en la UNLP. Foto UNLP

No es la primera vez que suceden rencillas serias en el Centro de Estudiantes, del que nunca participé, bajo ningún partido político. Mis soportes a la FADU fueron trabajar como docente gratis (Ad honorem) por un tiempo, hasta ser rentada con un sueldo que no se puede ni mencionar (al que hay que descontar estacionamiento, gastos varios, viáticos, etc) y aún sigo siendo investigadora Ad Honorem, pero lo hago con mucho cariño.

Mi esposo, el arq. Luis Makianich, también dió clases Ad Honorem y cursos de ArchiCad para los alumnos, gratuitos, con las computadoras del Centro de Estudiantes, hasta que ellos mismos, en estas rencillas políticas nos las quitaron, es decir, no se las llevaron, sencillamente no permitieron que los alumnos de nuestra cátedra las usaran, por supuesto todos los profesores teníamos computadoras en casa.

Sigo avergonzándome de su comportamiento, tanto en La Plata como en la UBA, y puedo entender que no son todos culpables, algunos se acercan al Centro con buenas intenciones. Del diario La Nación, transcribo un párrafo sobre el escándalo por la disertación del arquitecto Clorindo Testa, quien no se merece semejante actitud, menos aún considerando su prestigio y edad avanzada.

Dejo el link para que sigan leyendo y saquen sus propias conclusiones:

¨Y finalmente Clorindo Testa, uno de los más prestigiosos arquitectos del país, pudo brindar su conferencia académica en la Facultad de Aquitectura y Urbanismo de la Universidad Nacional de La Plata (UNLP), tras la controversia desatada entre las autoridades de esa unidad académica y la municipalidad de La Plata.

Sucedió que la conferencia de Clorindo Testa, con el título de Clorindo x Clorindo, estaba prevista a comienzo de este mes. A último momento, fue suspendida por el decano Gustavo Azpiazu porque en plenas elecciones estudiantiles Franja Morada y una agrupación kirchnerista se disputaban la exclusividad de la charla del arquitecto.

La iniciativa había surgido desde la Municipalidad de La Plata, por medio de la Dirección de Articulación Ciudadana, y fue propuesta a las autoridades de la facultad. Antes de que estallara la disputa estudiantil, la intención de la comuna era reconocer la trayectoria de Testa. Por eso, el intendente Pablo Bruera (FPV) iba a entregarle un diploma como ciudadano ilustre.

Si bien las elecciones estudiantiles pasaron, ayer se percibía un clima tenso en la facultad. La charla había sido anunciada a las 10.30 pero comenzó a las 10. Esto indignó a Bruera, que había ido a la facultad a entregarle el diploma.¨

http://www.lanacion.com.ar/1425937-tras-un-escandalo-testa-pudo-disertar?utm_source=n_tip_nota1&utm_medium=titularP&utm_campaign=NLCult

A fractal as a concept of an urban intervention

2011-11-19T20:24:00.000-08:00

This is a fractal I´ve generated myself and it´s not a real urban intervention. But, while I was making zoom, I´ve seen they show the concept of the influence of an urban intervention.

Let´s suppose it´s an important huge building or a recreation area, shopping mall, whatever. All the blocks around will be directly affected and the influence will spread through the urban tissue.

Depending on the scale, maybe the intervention is smaller, but we shall always see the changes in the city.

A fractal as a concept of an urban intervention by Myriam B. Mahiques is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

What is GeoDesign?

2011-11-17T07:25:00.000-08:00

Image from Redlands.edu. University of Redlands

From the article of Ken Snyder:

Shannon McElvaney at ESRI is working on a book on GeoDesign -- a growing movement of academics, community planning and development practitioners, ecosystem managers, and geospatial tool developers interested in the nexus between geography, design, planning, ecosystem management and community decision making. (....)GeoDesign is about decisions connected to place. It’s about context sensitive process, perspective, action, and implementation – nature and nurture integrated. The interplay of the two words offers a framework and paradigm for decision making. Geo can be as simple as 2 coordinates pinpointing location or as complex as the geological, biological, social, economic, and built elements associated with a park, city block, neighborhood, town, region, or watershed. Because the word Geo is often associated with the earth and its natural components – natural systems are given appropriate prominence in GeoDesign decision making. Design adds intention to decisions. It can lead to art, economic strategies, building construction, environmental mediation, or conservation priorities to name a few. It can be a single event but is more often an iterative process of continuous improvement. The GeoDesign movement represents a broad range of professionals interested in making the world a better place with belief that location-based decision making provides a valuable framework tackling a wide range of challenges.

A description of the arabesques in the walls of the Alhambra. By Edmondo de Amicis

2011-11-13T08:21:00.000-08:00

Alhambra palace with arabesques in walls. joeherbertinspain.blogspot.com

" We entered the tower called the Tower of Comares, or vulgarly, of the Ambassadors.

The interior of the tower forms two halls; the first is called the Hall of the Boat: some persons say because it is shaped like a boat; others, because it was called by the Arabs Hall of the Baraka, or benediction, a word which the 81 ignorant have corrupted into that of boat (barca). This hall does not seem of human workmanship; it is nothing but a stupendous interlacing of embroideries in the form of garlands, rose-work, branches, and leaves that cover the ceiling, the arches, the walls, on all sides, and in every way, crowded together, twisted, in net-work, one upon another, and combined in such a manner that they are all seen in a single glance and present an astonishing magnificence and an enchanting grace. I went up to one of the walls, I fastened my gaze at the beginning of an arabesque and tried to follow its twistings and windings: impossible ! the eye loses itself, the mind becomes confused, and all the arabesques from the pavement to the ceiling seem to move and commingle to make you lose the thread of their inextricable net-work. You may make an effort not to look around you, concentrate your attention upon one little place of the wall, put your very nose in it, and trace the design with your finger: it is useless; in one minute the patterns become involved, a veil spreads between the wall and yourself, and your arm falls. The wall seems to you to be woven like a textile, crinkled like brocade, of open-work like lace, and veined like a leaf; you cannot look at it closely, you cannot fix the design in your mind, — that would be like counting the ants in an ant-hill."

Alhambra dome. From musalaha.com

From Romantic Castles and Palaces, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers, edited and translated by Esther Singleton; New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1901; pp. 78-88.

http://elfinspell.com/RomanticCastlesAlhambra.html

2nd International Congress on Ambiances. CALL FOR PAPERS

2011-11-11T10:53:00.000-08:00

The second International Congress on Ambiances will be held under the aegis of the Ambiances International Network. The congress, organized every four years, is one of the network’s main events, an international gathering for researchers, artists and players engaged in analyzing the ambiance-related dimensions of the built environment and in the sensory construction of the contemporary world.

Many approaches are at work in the field of architectural and urban ambiance, and these multiple contributions nurture its rich diversity. The International Congress on Ambiances aims to give voice to this activity, feeding on work exploring new forms of exchange between what is designed and what is experienced, between the measured and the qualified, the projected and the tested, the material and the immaterial.

The Congress will be held for four days at the Canadian Center for Architecture (CCA), in Montreal, from 19 to 22 September 2012. It will seek to express advances in learning and new hypotheses proposed by the various disciplines and fields of activity which address the question of ambiances.

http://ambiances2012.sciencesconf.org/

Comentarios acerca del derrumbe del edificio de la calle Mitre al 1200, Buenos Aires

2011-11-10T09:46:00.000-08:00

Edificio colapsado en la calle Mitre al 1200, ciudad de Buenos Aires. Foto de http://www.urgente24.com/noticias/val/16856/

Foto de http://m24digital.com/

Estoy siguiendo consternada las noticias sobre el colapso del edificio de la calle Mitre al 1200 en Buenos Aires, y recuerdo cuando hace varios años cayó un balcón en Capital y fue una gran noticia: los hierros estaban mal ubicados. Pero en estos últimos años, cada vez es peor, aún está presente el caso del gimnasio derrumbado en Urquiza, y hoy leo sobre el juicio a un arquitecto a quien lo acusan de mezclar basura en el hormigón de las columnas.

Me he tentado a comentar en el diario pero, he visto que mucha gente acusa sin conocer cómo son los procesos. Si bien hace varios años ya que no trabajo en mi país, puedo dar fe de los procesos clásicos de supervisión-dirección de obra, en los cuales, no siempre se presenta el inspector de la Municipalidad, por no decir que nunca, a no ser que venga a pedir ¨coimas¨ por alguna razón, las que tengo el orgullo de no haber pagado nunca, ni siquiera para conseguir entradas para recitales.

Una torre así se calcula con ingenieros estructuralistas, y los cálculos deben ser aprobados por el inspector de la Ciudad al que se le haya asignado el proyecto.

Difícilmente se pueda esperar un margen de error cuando los cálculos son hechos con softwares, debiera ser un error mayor, para que cualquiera de los profesionales intervinientes lo note por experiencia, a simple vista.

Que existan vicios de obra (como agregar basura a las bases, cambio de hierros, etc) podría pasar, generalmente por obreros malintencionados o constructores irresponsables, pero siempre debe haber una supervisión de la estructura ANTES del llenado.

En un edificio en construcción, intervienen los siguientes profesionales: el jefe de obra de la empresa constructora, el arquitecto e ingenieros que firman, el inspector de la Ciudad. El propietario está representado por el arquitecto y lo bueno del sistema es que está confrontado por otros profesionales ajenos al propietario. Cabe aclarar que no siempre el arquitecto que firma el proyecto es el que firma la dirección de obra, que se paga aparte.

Cada día, cada parte, anota en cuadernos por triplicado lo sucedido, los pedidos, sugerencias, conclusiones, reuniones, descargos, etc, es decir, como los diarios de a bordo, los hechos e inspecciones visuales deben quedar registrados por escrito.

Fisura lateral, edificio Mitre al 1200. Foto de http://www.cronica.com.ar/diario/

Foto de http://m24digital.com/

Realmente me extraña que a todos se les haya pasado un problema que, según la foto de la gran fisura lateral, da la impresión que han cedido las bases.

Uno de los lectores de La Nación, preguntaba, de qué universidad es el arquitecto? A tantas preguntas ridículas, respondo que la justicia, a través de los peritos, determinará las culpabilidades y grados de responsabilidad, mas espero que estos tristes ejemplos ayuden a sanear la corrupción entre los inspectores de la ciudad.

NOTA al 12 de noviembre, 2011: Estas noticias las leo en los diarios argentinos on line. Hoy me entero que el derrumbe podría haber sido ocasionado por la construcción de un edificio lindero. Porque éste ya estaba construído hace años. Entiendo que los periodistas van publicando información sin conocer bien los hechos, induciendo a la gente a opinar en contra de los profesionales y la empresa constructora de este edificio que no debiera haber caído. Sea como fuere, mi intención es explicar procesos de obra relacionados con responsabilidades.

A controversial house design by Zaha Hadid in La Jolla, San Diego

2011-11-07T08:54:00.000-08:00

I live close to La Jolla, maybe 2 hrs trip. This is a beautiful coastal city in San Diego, and its architectural style is like any other city in California, Spanish and post modern emulating Spanish. Most valuable for me is the landscape, the architecture is not interesting, from my point of view. With some exceptions, like The Salk Institute by Louis Kahn. So, it´s curious for me that the City Council has approved the request of a house design by Zaha Hadid, an enormous one, and we´ll see what happens next with the neighbors´ opposition. This is true that many decisions from the City Council are based on politics.

Salk Institute by Louis Kahn. La Jolla, California. Wikipedia.org. Picture by Jim Harper

From Archpaper.com:

Despite strident appeals from some neighbors, it looks like Zaha Hadid is coming to San Diego.

The city’s planning commission on October 20 approved a request to have Hadid and San Diego firm Public demolish an existing house on 8490 Whale Watch Way in La Jolla and replace it with a 12,700 square foot residence with four bedrooms, six bathrooms, and an indoor pool.

The project, which has been described by the firm as an “introverted sculptural structure,” displays Hadid’s trademark focus on elegant plasticity. Sitting on a tight half-acre site, its roofline will curve up like the prow of a ship, making it easily identifiable and marking the boundary between inside and outside. Hadid’s office has posted renderings of the project on its web site while London-based Rove Gallery has posted an artwork by Hadid called “La Jolla Residence.” (...)The La Jolla Community Planning Association would not comment on whether it planned another appeal, but if that were to happen the next step for the project would be approval by city council, an environment that Public Brown admits is much more challenging. “There’s nothing about city council with a design attitude,” said Brown. “It’s 100 percent politics.”

Read the full article:

http://archpaper.com/news/articles.asp?id=5741

The pictures of Zaha Hadid´s project have been downloaded from the article at Archpaper.com

Fallecimiento del arq. Mario Roberto Álvarez

2011-11-06T08:01:00.000-08:00

El arq. Mario R. Álvarez junto a Clorindo Testa, Daniel Silberfaden y Enrique Pichon Riviere, 2008

Edificio IBM, Retiro, Buenos Aires

http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=398935

Hotel Hilton, Puerto Madero, Buenos Aires

http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=398935

Con gran tristeza la SCA informa que el 5 de noviembre falleció el arquitecto Mario Roberto Álvarez, decano de nuestra matrícula y en actividad hasta el presente.

El Arq. Álvarez, socio vitalicio de la entidad, recibió en 2008 el Premio Trayectoria SCA-Batimat Expovivienda (en forma conjunta con el Arq. Clorindo Testa) en su primera edición, como reconocimiento a su trayectoria de excelencia en la arquitectura y como profesional.

Nacido en Buenos Aires el 14 de noviembre de 1913, egresado con Medalla de Oro del Colegio Nacional de Buenos Aires y de la Facutlad de Arquitectura de la UBA en 1936, obtuvo en 1938 la beca Ader -por concurso entre los mejores promedios de los años 1935-1938, que le permitió recorrer ciento quince ciudades de Europa en un viaje de estudios que se ve reflejado en su reciente publicación del “Cuaderno de viaje”. Durante ese viaje conoció a los más importantes representantes del Movimiento Moderno del momento: Gropius, Mies van der Rohe, Breuer, Neutra.

En 1939 obtuvo su primera obra por concurso: la Corporación Médica de San Martín, (---) A partir de entonces conformó su estudio, con el que siguió trabajando incansablemente.

Era Académico de Número de la Academia Nacional de Bellas Artes desde 1983, Doctor Honoris Causa de al UBA y otra universidades del país y del exterior; recibió perstigiosas distinciones como el Premio del Fondo Nacional de las Artes.

En la SCA integró en dieciocho períodos (hasta hoy) los Colegios de Jurados y Asesores en Arquitectura y Urbanismo, y ocupó la vicepresidencia de la entidad en 1961.

REFERENCIA: Sociedad Central de Arquitectos, Buenos Aires

http://www.socearq.org/index.php/noticias/arq-mario-roberto-alvarez-su-fallecimiento.html

Torre Galicia y Banco Ríos. Buenos Aires.

http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=398935

Torre Le Parc, Palermo, Buenos Aires.

http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=398935

Myth about the Palace of the Alhambra.

2011-11-05T08:32:00.000-07:00

Palace of Carlos V, Alhambra. From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Palacio_Carlos_V_west.jpg

¨A massive gateway of Grecian architecture, built by Charles V., forming the entrance to the domains of the Alhambra. At the gate were two or three ragged, superannuated soldiers, dozing on a stone bench, while a tall, meagre l varlet, whose rusty-brown cloak was evidently intended to conceal the ragged state of his nether garments, was lounging in the sun shine and gossiping with an ancient sentinel on duty. He joined us as we entered the gate, and oifered his services to show us the fortress.

I have a traveller s dislike to officious ciceroni, and did not altogether like the garb of the applicant.

" You are well acquainted with the place, I presume ? "

" Nobody better; in fact, sir, I am a son of the Alhambra! "

Alhambra Palace Towers. From http://www.iho-ohi.org/index.php/category/spain/

Alhambra Palace. From dailymail.co.UK

" The common Spaniards have certainly a most poetical way of expressing themselves. A son of the Alhambra ! The appellation caught me at once ; the very tattered garb of my new acquaintance assumed a dignity in my eyes. It was emblematic of the fortunes of the place, and befitted the progeny of a ruin.

I put some further questions to him, and found that his title was legitimate. His family had lived in the fortress from generation to generation ever since the time of the conquest. His name was Mateo Ximenes. "Then, perhaps," said I, "you may be a descendant from the great Cardinal Ximenes?" "God knows, seflor! It may be so. We are the oldest family in the Alhambra." There is not any Span iard, however poor, but has some claim to high pedigree. The first title of this ragged worthy, however, had completely captivated me, so I gladly accepted the services of the "son of the Alhambra."

We now found ourselves in a deep, narrow ravine, filled with beautiful groves, with a steep avenue and various footpaths winding through it, bordered with stone seats, and ornamented with fountains. To our left, we beheld the towers of the Alhambra beetling 1 above us; to our right, on the opposite side of the ravine, we were equally dominated by rival towers on a rocky eminence. These, we were told, were the Torres Vermejos, or vermilion towers, so called from their ruddy hue. No one knows their origin. Ascending the steep and shady avenue, we arrived at the foot of a huge square Moorish tower, forming a kind of barbican, through which passed the main entrance to the fortress. Within the barbican was another group of veteran invalids, one mounting guard at the portal, while the rest, wrapped in their tattered cloaks, slept on the stone benches. This portal is called the Gate of Justice, from the tribunal held within its porch during the Moslem domination, for the immediate trial of petty causes a custom common to the Oriental nations, and occasionally alluded to in the sacred Scriptures. " Judges and officers shalt thou make thee in all tliy gates, and they shall judge the people with just judgment."

The great vestibule, or porch, of the gate is formed by an immense Arabian arch, of the horseshoe form, which springs to half the height of the tower. On the keystone of this arch is engraven a gigantic hand. Within the .vestibule, on the key stone of the portal, is sculptured in like manner a gigantic key. Those who pretend to some knowledge of Mohammedan symbols, affirm that the hand is the emblem of doctrine; the five fingers designating the five principal commandments of the creed of Islam fasting , pilgrimage, alms-giving, ablution,

and war against infidels. The key, say they, is the emblem of the faith or of power; the key of Daoud or David, transmitted to the prophet. " And the key of the house of David will I lay upon his shoulder; so he shall open and none shall shut, and he shall shut and none shall open" (Isaiah xxii. 22). The key, we are told, was emblazoned on the standard of the Moslems in opposition to the Christian emblem of the cross, when they subdued Spain, or Andalusia. It betokened the conquering power invested in the prophet. " He that hath the key of David, he that openeth and no man shutteth ; and shutteth and no man openeth" (Rev. iii. 7).

A different explanation of these emblems, however, was given by the legitimate son of the Alhambra, and one more in unison with the notions of the common people, who attach something of mystery and magic to every thing Moorish, and have all kind of superstitions connected with this old Moslemfortress. According to Mateo, it was a tradition handed down from the oldest inhabitants, and which he had from his father and grandfather, that the hand and key were magical devices on which the fate of the Alhambra depended. The Moorish king who built it was a great magician, or, as some believed, had sold himself to the devil, and had laid the whole fortress under a magic spell. By this means it had remained standing for several hundred years, in defiance of storms and earthquakes, while almost all other buildings of the Moors had fallen to ruin, and disappeared. This spell, the tradition went on to say, would last until the hand on the outer arch should reach down and grasp the key, when the whole pile would tumble to pieces, and all the treasures buried beneath it by the Moors would be revealed."

Aerial view of The Alhambra and the Palace of Charles V in Granada,

faariscar.blogspot.com

REFERENCE:

Tales of the Alhambra. Washington Irving. New York, 1901

Pruitt Igoe today

2011-11-01T21:48:00.000-07:00

Pruitt Igoe collapse series. From Wikipedia.org. Source U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development

For whoever has learnt about the implosion of Pruitt Igoe, this post from strangeharvest.com will help to figure out what has become of the land. I´ve forgotten about it, and never thought what had become of this doomed place.

¨Pruitt–Igoe was a large urban housing project first occupied in 1954 and completed in 1956 in the U.S. city of St. Louis, Missouri. Shortly after its completion, living conditions in Pruitt–Igoe began a qualitative decline; by the late 1960s, the extreme poverty, crime, and segregation brought the complex a great deal of infamy as it was covered extensively by the international press. The complex was designed by architect Minoru Yamasaki, who also designed the World Trade Center towers and the Lambert-St. Louis International Airport main terminal.

At 3 PM on March 16, 1972 – 16 years after construction was finished – the first of the complex's 33 buildings was demolished by the federal government.¨

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pruitt%E2%80%93Igoe)

Charles Jencks defines the event as the death of Modernism.

Now, it´s landscape with a few memories of the buildings.

Picture from http://strangeharvest.com/wp11/?p=3011

Keep on reading:
http://strangeharvest.com/wp11/?p=3011

Vanke Center, by Steven Hall

2011-10-30T08:41:00.000-07:00

Vanke Center. Picture: Iwan Baan

Enjoy this post by Gwen Webber:

The Vanke Center in Shenzhen, China is a culmination of architect Steven Holl’s long-time pursuit to defy gravity. Although physically elevated above ground on broad concrete pillars, the secret behind this levitation effect is the building’s lighting design. “Steven thinks of light as an integral material, like stone or glass,” said Jason Neches a principal at L’Observatoire International, the New York-based lighting design firm. The firm’s contribution to the design is evident: the solid concrete-core supports, for example, which house the circulation up to the first floors, are wrapped in glass and lit to give the impression that the building floats. “Steven wanted uplighting, which provides a dramatic effect,” said Neches. “But since people are drawn to light, they would have looked down when we wanted them looking up at the building. So it is lit top-down.”

Keep on reading:
http://www.archpaper.com/news/articles.asp?id=5703

Design-History-Revolution Workshop. NYC. Call for papers

2011-10-28T07:39:00.000-07:00

CFP: Design/History/Revolution Deadline: December 7, 2011 Conference: April 27& 28, 2012, The New School, NYC

Whether by providing agitprop for revolutionary movements, an aesthetics of empire, or a language for numerous avant-gardes, design has changed the world. But how? Why? And under what conditions? We propose a consideration of design as an historical agent, a contested category, and a mode of historical analysis. This interdisciplinary conference aims to explore these questions and open up new possibilities for understanding the relationships among design, history and revolution. Casting a wide net, we define our terms broadly. We seek 20-minute papers that examine the roles of design in generating, shaping, remembering or challenging moments of social, political, economic, aesthetic, intellectual, technological, religious, and other upheaval. We consider a range of historical periods (ancient, pre-modern, early modern, modern, post- and post-post-modern) and geographical locations (“West,” “East,” “North,” South,” and contact zones between these constructed categories). We examine not only designed objects (e.g., industrial design, decorative arts, graphic design, fashion) but also spaces (e.g., architecture, interiors, landscapes, urban settings) and systems (e.g., communications, services, governments). And we welcome a diversity of disciplinary and inter-disciplinary approaches. This conference brings together scholars from the humanities, sciences, and social sciences with designers, artists, and other creators. We hope not only to present multiple methodological approaches but also to foster conversations across traditional spatial, cultural, and disciplinary boundaries.

We list some possible subject areas below, and encourage you to propose others:

Design and political / cultural / economic revolution

Design and the everyday

Design and technological revolution

Design and government

Design and social movements

Design and surveillance

Design and historicity

Designed landscapes

Design and empire

Design and the sacred

Design and the avant-garde

Design and memory

Design and the print revolution

Design and philosophy/philosophies

Design and literature of design

Design and consumerism

Design and the city

Design and science

Design and the environment

Design and cybernetics

Design and the domestic sphere

Design and education

Please submit a 250-word abstract (maximum) and 1-page CV to: designhistoryrevolution@gmail.com

Web: http://designhistoryrevolution.wordpress.com/

Spaceport America Terminal and Hangar Facility

2011-10-26T07:13:00.000-07:00

Spaceport America Terminal and Hangar Facility. Image from Clarin.com

Image from http://www.space.com/

The hangar-dedication ceremony is the latest in a string of opening events for the spaceport. In October 2010, officials dedicated the facility's long runway, named "The Governor Bill Richardson Spaceway."

The hangar itself is a Tomorrowland-looking piece of work. It is expected to house up to two of Virgin Galactic's WhiteKnightTwo launch planes and five SpaceShipTwo tourist-carrying rocket planes, in addition to all of Virgin's astronaut preparation facilities and a mission control.

Excerpt from :

http://www.space.com/13294-spaceport-america-virgin-galactic-dedication.html

Now, let´s read Morey Bean´s opinion, (I agree with him)

The winning competition entry that Foster + Partners provided to the New Mexico Spaceport Authority makes no reference to the innate femininity of the firm’s design for Virgin Galactic’s Terminal and Hangar Facility at Spaceport America in southern New Mexico. My response to this intuitively sensual design, however, was an immediate attraction to the curvaceous feminine symbology of the Terminal building.

Although the competition entry documentation describes the view of the Terminal building from the air as a reference to the logo of Virgin Galactic, the anchor tenant of the New Mexico Spaceport, the Terminal building undeniably appeals to our collective sexual unconscious. The Terminal building relates well to the incredibly captivating landscape of New Mexico: In my opinion, it is indescribably voluptuous and beautifully proportioned, indeed lying subtly and sumptuously on the landscape.

Excerpt and following pictures from http://buildipedia.com/in-studio/featured-architecture/foster-partners-spaceport-america-terminal-and-hangar-facility

Lea sobre Spaceport America en español:

http://www.clarin.com/sociedad/listo-aeropuerto-viajar-espacio_0_573542742.html

The knotted curtains of Chazen Museum, University of Wisconsin, Madison

2011-10-25T07:07:00.000-07:00

I´ve always thought that the designs of the Argentine born architects Machado and Silvetti were like old fashioned, post modernist and didn´t show new investigations on design.

But this time, I am satisfied to see this beautiful project of knotted curtains inside the lobby of the Chazen Museum, University of Wisconsin. Though, this particular design do not belong to them but to the Dutch textile designer, Petra Blaisse, at least Rodolfo (with O) was bright enough to hire her. From the post by Molly Heintz, for Archpaper.com:

Rudolfo Machado, principal at the Boston-based architecture firm Machado and Silvetti Associates, was seeking a way to create a sense of place and privacy in the new glass-walled lobby of the Chazen Museum. Located on the campus of the University of Wisconsin in Madison, the 86,000-square-foot building is a freestanding extension of the existing museum designed in 1970 by Harry Weese. The new three-story structure, which opens to the public on October 22, houses galleries but will also serve as a space for performances and events, including both university-sponsored and private soirées in the lobby. “We needed something to help visually define the lobby from the courtyard, and we wanted it to be contemporary and site-specific,” said Machado.

Machado proposed commissioning a piece by Dutch textile designer Petra Blaisse, whose work had made an impression on him during a visit to the Casa da Musica in Porto, Portugal. Blaisse’s firm Inside Outside created massive knotted curtains that added texture to the OMA-designed space and also acted a screen for concert hall windows. Machado organized a trip for the Chazen’s director Russell Panczenko to Blaisse’s studio in Amsterdam, and Blaisse in turn visited the site in Madison. When she began to sketch out her vision of a semi-transparent curtain, Panczenko was convinced of the project’s merit as an artwork in its own right. “We have a textile collection here, so we were able to use accession funds for it,” said Panczenko, describing how the museum was able to cover the roughly $250,000 cost of Inside Outside’s installation.

Pictures and excerpt from:

http://www.archpaper.com/news/articles.asp?id=5706

Kevin Lynch Memorial Lecture 2011: Christopher Alexander

2011-10-24T08:13:00.000-07:00

Christopher Alexander. Picture from eng.archinform.net

Location: The Gallery, 70 Cowcross Street, London EC1M 6EJ

Date: Wed, 23/11/2011 - 6:30pm

For this year's prestigious Kevin Lynch Memorial Lecture, the highlight of the UDG's events calendar, we are delighted and honoured to welcome Prof Christopher Alexander. Architect, theorist and winner of the UDG lifetime achievement award for 2011, Christopher will be in conversation with the UDG’s patron John Worthington, discussing his career, his tremendously significant and influential ‘pattern language’ and his forthcoming new book.

Ticket prices:

Cabaret seating: £35.00 for UDG members & Academy of Urbanism / £40.00 for non-members

Stalls seating: £25.00 for UDG members & Academy of Urbanism / £30.00 for non-members

Concession places for students & unemployed: £10.00 for members / £15 for non-members (this rate is limited to 10 places)

Prices include a reception with drinks and light buffet.

We anticipate that this event will be extremely popular. Pre-booking and payment in advance is essential.

To book, please email admin@udg.org.uk after 25 October 2011 and you will be advised on how you can pay.

Booking will open on Tuesday 25 October 2011 - We are unable to take bookings before this date.

http://www.udg.org.uk/events/london-and-south-east/kevin-lynch-memorial-lecture-2011-christopher-alexander

Buenos Aires, digital art

2011-10-23T08:51:00.000-07:00

Two of my Buenos Aires´ digital art, from my blog A Woman Architect´s Sensibility

About prisons: From The House of the Dead

2011-10-21T11:24:00.000-07:00

Alcatraz, California. From http://www.intomobile.com/

Cárcel de Devoto. Photo by Maxie Amena

Abandoned prison, Mexico. From solo-opiniones.com

¨Our prison was at the end of the citadel behind the ramparts. Looking through the crevices between the palisade in the hope of seeing something, one sees nothing but a little corner of the sky, and a high earthwork, covered with the long grass of the steppe. Night and day sentries walk to and fro upon it. Then one perceives from the first, that whole years will pass during which one will see by the same crevices between the palisades, upon the same earthwork, always the same sentinels and the same little corner of the sky, not just above the prison, but far and far away. Represent to yourself a court-yard, two hundred feet long, and one hundred and fifty feet broad, enclosed by an irregular hexagonal palisade, formed of stakes thrust deep into the earth. So much for the external surroundings of the prison. On one side of the palisade is a great gate, solid, and always shut; watched perpetually by the sentinels, and never opened, except when the convicts go out to work. Beyond this, there are light and liberty, the life of free people! Beyond the palisade, one thought of the marvellous world, fantastic as a fairy tale. It was not the same on our side. Here, there was no resemblance to anything. Habits, customs, laws, were all precisely fixed. It was the house of living death. It is this corner that I undertake to describe.

On penetrating into the enclosure one sees a few buildings. On each side of a vast court are stretched forth two wooden constructions, made of trunks of trees, and only one storey high. These are convicts' barracks. Here the prisoners are confined, divided into several classes. At the end of the enclosure may be seen a house, which serves as a kitchen, divided into two compartments. Behind it is another building, which serves at once as cellar, loft, and barn. The centre of the enclosure, completely barren, is a large open space. Here the prisoners are drawn up in ranks, three times a day. They are identified, and must answer to their names, morning, noon, and evening, besides several times in the course of the day if the soldiers on guard are suspicious and clever at counting. All around, between the palisades and the buildings there remains a sufficiently large space, where some of the prisoners who are misanthropes, or of a sombre turn of mind, like to walk about when they are not at work. There they go turning over their favourite thoughts, shielded from all observation.¨

From The House of the Dead. By Fedor Dostoievsky. 1911

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/37536/37536-h/37536-h.htm

Auschwitz, main entrance. From dailymail.co.UK

Vik Muniz´s Prisons VII, the Drawbridge. From http://www.theage.com.au/news/arts-reviews/imaginary-prisons-gb-piranesi-and-vik-muniz/2007/05/02/1177788197572.html

An imaginary prison by Piranesi. Google images

Architecture, urbanism, design and behaviour. By Dan Lockton

2011-10-20T10:22:00.000-07:00

Chepstow; Monmouthshire (restored 1524) and Philips High Tech Campus, Eindhoven (c.2000). Photo downloaded from the article below

This is an excerpt from researcher Dan Lockton´s article (part of his PhD tesis) Architecture, urbanism, design and behaviour: a brief review. Below, there´s the link to read it in full:

Where there is an explicit intention to influence behaviour, the intended behaviours could relate (for example) to directing people for strategic reasons, or providing a particular ‘experience’, or for health and safety reasons, but they are often focused on influencing social interaction. Hillier et al (1987, p.233) find that “spatial layout in itself generates a field of probabilistic encounter, with structural properties that vary with the syntax of the layout.” Ittelson et al (1974, p.358) suggest that “All buildings imply at least some form of social activity stemming from both their intended function and the random encounters they may generate. The arrangement of partitions, rooms, doors, windows, and hallways serves to encourage or hinder communication and, to this extent, affects social interaction. This can occur at any number of levels and the designer is clearly in control to the degree that he plans the contact points and lanes of access where people come together. He might also, although with perhaps less assurance, decide on the desirability of such contact.”

“Designers often aspire to do more than simply create buildings that are new, functional and attractive—they promise that a new environment will change behaviours and attitudes” (Marmot, 2002, p.252). Where architects expressly announce their intentions and ability to influence behaviour, such as in Danish firm 3XN’s exhibition and book Mind Your Behaviour (3XN, 2010), the behaviours intended and techniques used can range from broad, high-level aspirational strategies such as communal areas “creating the potential for involvement, interaction and knowledge sharing” in a workplace (3XN, 2010) to specific tactics, such as Frank Lloyd Wright’s occasional use of “very confining corridors” for people to walk along “so that when they entered an open space the openness and light would enhance their experience” (Ittelson et al, 1974, p.346). An appreciation of both broad strategies and specific tactics is valuable: from the perspective of a designer whose agency may only extend to redesign of certain elements of a space, product or interface, it is the specific tactical techniques which are likely to be the most immediately applicable, but the broader guiding strategies can help set the vision in the first place. For example, the ‘conditions for city diversity’ outlined by Jacobs (1961)—broad strategies for understanding aspects of urban behaviour—have influenced generations of urbanists.

http://architectures.danlockton.co.uk/2011/09/12/architecture-urbanism-design-and-behaviour-a-brief-review/

Abandoned televisions. Urban installations by Alex Beker

2011-10-19T07:02:00.000-07:00

Driving through a city block or suburban neighborhood anywhere, you'll often see discarded items chillin' on the street corner, abandoned and left for the trash man or those who might find it valuable. "Abandoned Televisions" is a series by Miami-based graphic designer/photographer Alex Beker that is meant to conjure up nostalgia in us about our favorite childhood television shows. The TV screens feature moments during the show, frozen in time to help us remember.

"We travel back to our younger years, recalling the house we used to live in, the room where the television set was, the chair we sat in to watch, the smells of our house, and those we watched the show with. A snapshot of popular culture tells a piece of our own personal story."

Pictures and text from:

http://www.complex.com/art-design/2011/10/abandoned-televisions-photography-series-freezes-our-favorite-childhood-tv-shows-on-discarded-tvs

Kevin Roche Retrospective Opens in New York

2011-10-18T06:59:00.000-07:00

New York, New York (1963-68). Ford Foundation Headquarters. Photo Ezra Stoller

New York, New York (1969-75). One United Nations Plaza Photo courtesy Kevin Roche John Dinkeloo and Associates

J.P. Morgan and Company Headquarters. Photo courtesy Kevin Roche John Dinkeloo and Associates

New York, New York (1980). Metropolitan Museum of Art, American Wing Court. Photo courtesy Kevin Roche John Dinkeloo and Associates

Oakland, California (1969). Oakland Museum of California. Photo courtesy Kevin Roche John Dinkeloo and Associates

¨The exhibition and catalogue—researched by Eeva-Liisa Pelkonen and her students at Yale, where the exhibition was first staged—argue that Roche is influential for considering architecture as a nexus of complex systems: urbanism, the environment, infrastructure, workplace organization, and architectural history. For his corporate clients, for instance, he researched organizational needs by systematically interviewing employees. This resulted in suburban office buildings of fractal intricacy, like the Whitehouse Station, New Jersey, headquarters of Merck (1993), its floor plan a colossal, crenellated hexagon, or the snowflake-like wings of the Union Carbide headquarters (1982) in Danbury, Connecticut.

Stylistically agnostic, Roche built in concrete, steel, and glass in vocabularies ranging from Brutalism to minimalism to postmodern classical references—or with some combination of the three. Much of his work is justifiably acclaimed, although the squat, yellow-and-green Kimmel Center (2003) at Manhattan’s New York University shows the limits of the systems-analysis design methodology when it neglects aesthetic components like form, proportion, and material.

The New York installation of the show emphasizes Roche’s influence on the city, particularly the landmark Ford Foundation Headquarters (1968) and his complete transformation of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (ongoing since 1967). Even better, the city itself is a perfect showcase of his work, with 13 completed buildings still standing throughout Manhattan.

Roche will join former New York Times architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff for a sold-out conversation at the Ford Foundation Headquarters on October 17, 2011. The exhibition closes on January 22, when it will travel next to the National Building Museum, Washington, DC, in July 2012, followed by the Eric Arthur Gallery, University of Toronto, next October.¨

Excerpt from Carl Yost´s article for Architectural Record, read it in full:

http://archrecord.construction.com/news/2011/10/Kevin-Roche-Retrospective.asp

Amplían el área del casco histórico de Buenos Aires

2011-10-17T08:01:00.000-07:00

Catedral de Buenos Aires. De tripadvisor.com

He leído sobre la peatonalización de más calles en el microcentro de Buenos Aires, dando prioridad al transporte público. Una buena medida, que es acompañada por la extensión del área del casco histórico.

De la nota de Ángeles Castro, 7 de octubre de 2011:

Cabildo de Buenos Aires. De sobreargentina.com

Congreso de Buenos Aires. Al frente, estatua El Pensador de Rodin. Imagen de http://www.cityimage.net/buenos-aires-plaza-congreso-pensador-de-rodin/

Las calles Reconquista y Florida, la recova del Bajo, edificios emblemáticos del centro porteño como la Bolsa de Comercio, la Iglesia de la Merced y el Rectorado de la Universidad de Buenos Aires, entre otros, integran una nueva área catalogada ayer por la Legislatura como de protección histórica (APH), con restricciones de altura para futuras construcciones y de emplazamiento para la publicidad callejera.

Por una ley aprobada anoche, que fue impulsada por el diputado Patricio Di Stefano (Pro), los legisladores categorizaron como APH al polígono delimitado por Florida, Rivadavia, Leandro N. Alem y San Martín, al que denominaron Catedral al Norte. Asimismo, ampararon con similar catalogación a la zona de la plaza San Martín.

Dentro de esos límites, los diputados impusieron diversos niveles de protección a 192 edificios de valor patrimonial, lo que impide demolerlos y obliga a mantener sus fachadas. Entre ellos, figuran los ya mencionados, así como el ex Banco Francés (Perón y Reconquista), el ex banco Alemán Trasatlántico (Reconquista y Mitre), el Nuevo Banco Italiano (Reconquista y Rivadavia) y la ex Compañía Naviera Dodero, hoy sede de la Sindicatura General de la Nación (Corrientes y Reconquista).

De esta manera, recordó Di Stefano, se aseguró la conservación de todo el frente costero fundacional de la ciudad de Buenos Aires, desde el parque Lezama hasta la plaza San Martín. Desde la década del 90, uno de los rincones más antiguos de la Capital, entre Paseo Colón, Rivadavia, Perú y Brasil, ya contaba con la declaración de APH, al igual que todo el eje de la Avenida de Mayo.

En el caso del área ahora denominada Catedral al Norte, que coincide geográficamente con la city porteña, los legisladores buscaron que se respetara en el tiempo la particular morfología urbana que se consolidó cuando, tras una modificación del Código de Planeamiento que flexibilizó las alturas, a los edificios más históricos se fueron sumando otros modernos y altos por el arraigo de la actividad financiera.

A partir de ahora, con el objetivo de preservar los inmuebles de valor patrimonial en esta zona céntrica que sigue siendo atractiva para las inversiones inmobiliarias y en la que también se radicó gran parte de la oferta hotelera de calidad, los diputados aprobaron la catalogación.

Por eso, las futuras construcciones deberán respetar los 32 metros de altura sobre las avenidas del polígono y los 21 metros de altura, sobre las calles.

En tanto, los dispositivos de publicidad exterior también deberán guiarse por normas específicas. Se prohibió la colocación de marquesinas, de modo que sólo serán permitidas las ya existentes que sean parte integrante de la arquitectura original del edificio.

Por otra parte, se autorizan únicamente en las plantas bajas toldos rebatibles que no superen con su proyección la mitad del ancho de la vereda, mientras que los toldos fijos quedan prohibidos.

Asimismo, no podrán instalarse anuncios salientes, estructuras publicitarias ni cualquier otro elemento sobre fachadas, techos y medianeras de los edificios.

Finalmente, las cajas de telefonía, electricidad y cualquier otro elemento -excepto el alumbrado público y el mobiliario autorizado- no podrán ocupar la vía pública ni el espacio aéreo del APH.

http://www.lanacion.com.ar/1412585-amplian-el-area-del-casco-historico

The coolest fictional cities

2011-10-16T11:30:00.000-07:00

Gotham city. From intramuros.es

Gotham City. From http://paavo.tumblr.com/

My favorite fictional city ever is Gotham City, designed by Tim Burton for Batman.
And from the 50 coolest cities selected by Complex City Guide, I´m sharing the ones I like most:

Atlantis

Dark City

Hogsmeade

Kings landing

Los Angeles (Blade Runner)

Metropolis (Fritz Lang)

Neverland

New York (Futurama)

The Citadel

Venusville

See the rest of the selected ones:

http://www.complex.com/city-guide/2011/10/the-50-coolest-fictional-cities#3

Architects and interdiscipline

2011-10-15T08:51:00.000-07:00

Structure in Mars. Fractal generated by Myriam B. Mahiques

What I like most in Architecture is that it is so extended to all careers... an architect has an important general culture. He/she knows about philosophy, mathematics, design, history, arts, also music (even if he doesn´t know about the theory of music), gardening, computers, physics, and so on. Of course in more or less degree. Vitruvius adds ¨medicine¨, ¨astronomy and the theory of heavens¨, one would say it´s exaggerated now, but if we remember the ADN of spiders is used to build strong cables, why not agreeing with him?

From Ten Books on Architecture. Chapter I, The Education of the Architect;

3. In all matters, but particularly in architecture, there are these two points:—the thing signified, and that which gives it its significance. That which is signified is the subject of which we may be speaking; and that which gives significance is a demonstration on scientific principles. It appears, then, that one who professes himself an architect should be well versed in both directions. He ought, therefore, to be both naturally gifted and amenable to instruction. Neither natural ability without instruction nor instruction without natural ability can make the perfect artist. Let him be educated, skilful with the pencil, instructed in geometry, know much history, have followed the philosophers with attention, understand music, have some knowledge of medicine, know the opinions of the jurists, and be acquainted with astronomy and the theory of the heavens.

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/20239/20239-h/29239-h.htm

Architects with practice and without practice

2011-10-14T14:02:00.000-07:00

Here I was working for a remodel and addition a few years ago

I don´t know in other Universities, but in mine (Buenos Aires), there is some criticism to architects that are theorists and never built a single building, whatever it could be.

I think there is no need to build to be called ¨architect¨. Some say that for being a real architect, one needs a license, as a minimum requirement. Here, I disagree, because there are legal issues for practices outside the restriction of our licenses, but nothing removes the title of architect, if you acquired one.

Now, I´ve been working in construction companies, many years, and also have mine for 20 years, and I understand what Vitruvio says, you also need to know ¨the substance¨:

1. The architect should be equipped with knowledge of many branches of study and varied kinds of learning, for it is by his judgement that all work done by the other arts is put to test. This knowledge is the child of practice and theory. Practice is the continuous and regular exercise of employment where manual work is done with any necessary material according to the design of a drawing. Theory, on the other hand, is the ability to demonstrate and explain the productions of dexterity on the principles of proportion.

2. It follows, therefore, that architects who have aimed at acquiring manual skill without scholarship have never been able to reach a position of authority to correspond to their pains, while those who relied only upon theories and scholarship were obviously hunting the shadow, not the substance. But those who have a thorough knowledge of both, like men armed at all points, have the sooner attained their object and carried authority with them.

From Ten Books on Architecture. Chapter I, The Education of the Architect

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/20239/20239-h/29239-h.htm

Casa del Virrey Liniers, Buenos Aires

2011-10-13T07:14:00.000-07:00

No conocía esta casa, pero parece que no hubiera tenido oportunidad de hacerlo, ya que recién en diciembre 2010 se abrió al público. Reproduzco la nota de Silvia Premat con la esperanza de conocerla algún día:

Después de medio siglo de estar cerrada, la casa que fue del virrey Santiago de Liniers, donde los ingleses firmaron la rendición luego de la reconquista de la ciudad, en 1806, atrae cada vez más turistas y vecinos deseosos de conocer la historia del país. Desde diciembre, cuando se abrió al público, se registran unos 2500 visitantes por mes.

A pocas cuadras de Plaza de Mayo, la Casa del Virrey, una construcción de estilo colonial típico del siglo XVIII, está unida por medio de un patio con otra edificación de valor histórico para la ciudad y el país, dado que allí funcionaron los primeros talleres de diarios argentinos y perteneció a Angel Estrada, un mentor de la educación y pionero de la industria gráfica nacional y de los textos escolares.

El gobierno porteño adquirió en 2009 ambos inmuebles ubicados en Venezuela 469, la Casa del Virrey, y en Bolívar 466, la de Estrada, y trasladó allí la Dirección General de Patrimonio Cultural e Instituto histórico, cuya titular trata de unificar las dos viviendas bajo el denominación: Casa del Historiador y Espacio Virrey Liniers.

"La gente no sabe que ambas casas están conectadas", contó a LA NACION la directora de Patrimonio, Liliana Barela. "Entran en la casa de Liniers como si lo hicieran a un templo, pero este templo fue tirado abajo y quedaron sólo pocos muros y algunas cosas de gran valor simbólico", admite la funcionaria.

"Para que los visitantes no vengan a buscar algo que no existe", la funcionaria advirtió que "no está la cocina, la cama, la mesa, las pantuflas del Virrey, como generalmente se espera encontrar en una casa histórica", sino que hay dos salas donde se hacen exposiciones temporarias, un salón y un patio.

Ingresar en la casona que perteneció a la familia Estrada, recorrer sus pasillos y ambientes es viajar al pasado. Allí Angel de Estrada vivió con su familia. En 1869 fundó una empresa comercial que fue el origen de la editorial que lleva su nombre y, en 1871, inauguró la primera fundición nacional de tipos de imprenta.

La editorial y la imprenta funcionaron en la casona de la calle Bolívar donde los inmensos vitraux con motivos florales, los pisos, las puertas y ventanas de madera y los techos altos transportan al visitante al siglo XIX, cuando esa casa de familia era visitada por otros ilustres ciudadanos, como Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, Emilio Mitre, Amancio Alcorta y Miguel Cané.

En el lugar en el que ahora está la biblioteca de la Dirección de Patrimonio se conserva una pequeña imprenta instalada con la intención de mostrar, sobre todo a los niños, cómo se imprimían los libros de antaño.

Después de pasar por las oficinas vidriadas de arqueólogos y paleontólogos y verlos trabajar con piezas rescatadas de algún rincón porteño, los visitantes acceden a un típico patio colonial de la Casa del Virrey.

Allí, los baldosones, los gruesos muros y los techos de tejas españolas trasladan al visitante al siglo XVIII. Antes de Santiago de Liniers vivía en esa casa la familia de Martín Simón de Sarratea, un comerciante dedicado a la venta de sedas. Su "local a la calle" estaba en lo que hoy es la sala más pequeña, sobre la calle Venezuela.

El patio conduce a un salón donde se da un curso sobre la historia del barrio Montserrat. "Queremos recuperar la identidad de este barrio que fue un poco fagocitado por San Telmo", explicó Barela, al recordar que la Casa del Historiador está a 200 metros del límite con San Telmo.

Un retrato de Martina Sarratea, segunda esposa de Santiago de Liniers, preside el salón donde el 13 de agosto de 1806, un día después de la reconquista de la ciudad, el general británico Guillermo Beresford firmó allí la capitulación de su tropa. Por ese motivo, en 1942, la vivienda fue declarada monumento histórico. Y, desde pocos años después, permaneció cerrada al público en general.

Ambas casas se pueden visitar gratis, de 12 a 18, de martes a domingos, y se organizan recorridas con grupos escolares que pueden revivir costumbres de la vida porteña en los siglos XVIII y XIX..

http://www.lanacion.com.ar/1413367-dos-siglos-de-historia-en-montserrat?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=titulares&utm_campaign=NLCult

Fotos: Fernando Massobrio y Graciela Calabrese

Projects by developers or by architects?

2011-10-12T17:38:00.000-07:00

Arch. Marcel Wisznia. Photo by Tina Brown Sachs

I have been reading architect´s Marcel Wisznia´s interview for AIA, and the part that was most interesting for me was his opinion about the projects, if the architect should act as a developer or as a real architect. It bothers me to say that sometimes developers consider that money gives them the power of all decisions, but the architect´s mission, as Wsznia says, is to educate our clients, we know what is best for the project, though, of course we are open to suggestions and experiences. And this is true, that one gets tired of educating others, even at the smallest scale, some people do not realize that to change the house is to change their lives, their habitat and habits.

You don´t got to the doctor and tell him what he has to do, but regarding construction and design, most clients think they know everything.

From The American Institute of Architects, an excerpt from this interview:

AIArchitect: You started out as an architect, not a developer. What made you change?

Marcel Wisznia: Early in my father’s career, he was consistently asked by developers to provide schematic design services for a proposed project, but without compensation. The developer promised he would get the commission if and when the project moved forward.

My father quickly realized he was absorbing a good part of the developer’s risk, but without any upside. So, in the late 1950s, he began to develop medical office buildings, and in 1961 he designed and developed the first residential condominiums in Texas. My father and I merged our firms in the early 1980s, and continued to develop real estate together, primarily office buildings, until his death in 2004.

But in 2005, I changed our firm’s workload from 20 percent self-developed projects and 80 percent traditional third-party client commissions to the opposite. I had gotten tired of taking the time necessary to educate clients. I realized for a client to make good design decisions, an architect must spend a lot of time educating. In many cases, the enlightenment comes through an architect’s effort to show that a well-designed and cohesive solution will rent or sell for more than one that is solely bottom-line, numbers-driven.

Today, architects say I am lucky to “wear both hats”—that I can do whatever I want without having to sell our solution to the client. In fact, my firm faces the same difficult daily decisions required to turn any project from a dream to reality. The only difference is that we clearly see both the architect and the developer points of view, and blend the two in ways that add value to the solution.

http://www.aia.org/practicing/AIAB089973

La acumulación de objetos en la vivienda: ¿desorden compulsivo?

2011-10-11T07:16:00.000-07:00

Foto filtrada. Archivos personales

Estuve leyendo con interés una nota de Josefina Salomón para La Nación, acerca de acumular compulsivamente objetos en una vivienda o por el contrario, vivir en el minimalismo.

¨En el departamento, ubicado en un barrio céntrico de Buenos Aires, no hay más que cosas. El oscuro pasillo de la entrada, con las paredes chorreadas de historia y nicotina, lleva, tras unos diez pasos, a lo que en algún momento fue un living, donde apenas hay lugar para pararse.

En cada rincón, pilas de revistas, diarios viejos, teléfonos de Entel, muebles rotos y una pared prefabricada que esconde otra habitación, repleta de más cosas.

La única lamparita que funciona en la cocina deja ver, aun con una luz mínima, lo que allí habita: paquetes de fideos viejos, bolsas repletas de algo, una heladera que no se sabe si funciona.

Detrás, una puerta cancelada con un pedazo de cartón esconde otras dos habitaciones, rellenas de cajas, bolsas de consorcio con lo que algún día fueron hilos, plásticos, juguetes, muebles viejos, rotos, cajas de medicamentos, ropa sucia.

"Son cosas que algún día usaré," dice Pedro, su dueño.¨

Foto filtrada. Archivos personales

Lo interesante, es que casi todos acumulamos cosas, en mayor o menor medida, y este comportamiento queda disimulado en la cotidianeidad, hasta que se vuelve enfermizo y afecta el ambiente de la misma casa, que se transforma en ¨no saludable¨. Mientras leía, recordaba un caso que una vez me tocó vivir con una cliente en California, quien nos contactara para una legalización de ampliaciones ilegales en su casa, en una zona histórica. La casa estaba absolutamente atestada de objetos de arte, al punto que no había ni lugar en la cocina, no se podía caminar, ventanas y puertas habían sido bloqueadas, dejando un paso para cocinar algo rápido, ir al baño que sólo tenía los artefactos libres y pasar a la cama.

Supuse que tal vez su cultura de Medio Oriente la llevaba a juntar tanto arte, pero un día me llamó el inspector de la Ciudad y me pidió que fuera a verlo, con toda la documentación que tuviera sobre la casa en cuestión. Recuerdo que trajo sus propias fotos y empezamos a compararlas, en pocos días, la señora había hecho otros cambios, a veces mínimos, como bloquear los herrajes de las ventanas, para que no pudieran abrirse.... Nos miramos con asombro y dijo ¨ésto es como el de un cuento que leí una vez, el personaje cambiaba y obstruía los espacios de su vivienda, constantemente, yo creo que es una enfermedad¨.

El caso, siguió con abogados, denuncias de vecinos, llamados y reuniones que hubimos de atender para dilucidar qué podría quedar legalizado y qué no. Finalmente, viajó el hermano de la señora desde Europa, demolió las obras insalvables -condición para aprobar los planos-, y me confesó que su hermana estaba enferma, hospitalizada y que por favor guardara conmigo los viejos planos originales de la propiedad, que por supuesto llevo conmigo en cada mudanza.

El artículo también explica:

"El acumulador típico es quien colecciona diarios, revistas, libros, ropa, computadoras, cualquier cosa, de forma compulsiva. Se apegan emocionalmente a los objetos y no tienen la capacidad de tirar nada, porque esas cosas con las que se rodean los hacen sentir más seguros", explicó a LNR Satwant Singh, un terapeuta británico especializado en trastornos de acumulación compulsiva.

"La vida que llevan fuera del hogar puede ser completamente normal. Podés estar sentado junto a un acumulador compulsivo y no saberlo hasta que ves cómo vive. La acumulación compulsiva es una afección médica. Para cualquier persona, una silla es una silla, pero para alguien que sufre de acumulación compulsiva, esa silla tiene un significado emocional mucho más grande. Tanto que es casi imposible deshacerse de ella", agregó Singh.

Según el especialista, no existe un perfil definido del acumulador. El síndrome afecta a hombres y mujeres, jóvenes y adultos, personas con muchos recursos y con menos. Lo que es común a todos los casos es que a causa del tabú que genera, pocos hablan del tema públicamente.

En casos leves, afecta a personas que logran continuar su vida con aparente normalidad. En los más extremos, impide que la persona lleve adelante una vida social y familiar y puede crear complicaciones físicas profundas.

Uno de los casos más públicos en el Reino Unido fue el de Edmund Trebus, un hombre de origen polaco que murió en 2002 en su casa de Londres atrapado entre bolsas y pilas de cosas, viviendo en el único espacio libre, un rincón de la cocina.¨

Creo que en el apego emocional reside el mal; como dice Singh, no me había dado cuenta de la situación hasta que comparamos fotos y notamos los cambios sucesivos.

Hard critics to the project of Apple´s headquaters in Cupertino, California

2011-10-10T07:13:00.000-07:00

From the Philip´s Langdon article, pictures courtesy of Alan Hess:

The reviews of Apple's proposed headquarters in Cupertino, California, are coming in, and they're the opposite of the accolades that the company's consumer products receive.

Though plenty of people are ecstatic about the iPod and the iPad, few knowledgeable individuals are impressed with Apple's facilities planning, which seems decades out of date. Architecture critics such as Alan Hess at the San Jose Mercury News and Christopher Hawthorne at The Los Angeles Times have recently given the headquarters—a gigantic glass donut of a building—a much-deserved drubbing.

Steve Jobs, before he stepped down as Apple's CEO, released renderings of the building, which is to have four-story walls of glass that curve continuously to form an enormous circle, over four stories of underground parking. The perimeter of the 150-acre property is to be fenced to keep the public away.

"It's a little like a spaceship landed," The Times quoted Jobs as saying of the building, which is intended to hold 12,000 employees and have its own power plant, fueled by natural gas. Jobs expressed pride that Apple had chosen the design despite the fact that a curved building "is not the cheapest way to build something." (...)

Some aspects of the choice surely reflect the predilections of the architect, Foster + Partners. Norman Foster's firm, though celebrated, has repeatedly paid inadequate attention to human scale and urban context.

Read the full article:

http://newurbannetwork.com/news-opinion/blogs/philip-langdon/15267/apple-builds-suburban-lemon

Request for Expressions of Interest: Existing Eco Neighborhoods

2011-10-09T10:47:00.000-07:00

The Earth Advantage Institute of Portland Oregon, a nonprofit green building resource that has certified more than 11,000 homes nationally, invites Expressions of Interest (EOI) to participate in an innovative Eco Neighborhoods pilot program that will rate and certify the livability and accomplishments of existing neighborhoods. The request for EOIs is intended to determine whether there is sufficient market interest in such a certification program. EOIs will be accepted until November 30, 2011.

Eco Neighborhoods Concept

Neighborhoods are critical elements of community vitality and prosperity, and essential contributors to social, economic, and environmental well-being. A wide variety of neighborhoods across the country are working to create exceptionally livable residential and commercial districts, including:

- Residential neighborhoods

- Public housing projects

- Business districts

- Office and industrial parks

- Shopping centers

- Resorts

- Education and medical campuses

- Military housing areas

Certifying the accomplishments of these existing neighborhoods can strengthen local participation, reinforce values, and improve outcomes. To achieve these results, the Eco Neighborhoods concept is distinguished in two respects. First, it will focus on existing, fully developed neighborhoods that are at least five years old and have a demonstrated record of accomplishments. Second, the program’s rating and certification will be grounded in the principles of sustainability, but, importantly, will “go beyond green” to encompass a broader set of social, economic, and cultural accomplishments.

Apply for the Expression of Interest: Form Request

http://www.earthadvantage.org/eco-neighborhoods/

Submission of an EOI does not obligate the submitting organization to participation in the Eco Neighborhoods program.

Una esfera para resguardarse de los tsunamis

2011-10-07T07:32:00.000-07:00

Sabemos que Japón está en la vanguardia tecnológica, pero aún me da dudas si la esfera que inventaron para que la gente se resguarde de los tsunamis será efectiva o no, de todos modos, espero no hay oportunidad de usarlas, y si la hay, que sea con mucho éxito.

Éstos son párrafos de la breve nota en Clarín, las fotos corresponden a AP e ilustran la nota:

La compañía de ingeniería Cosmo Power diseñó un dispositivo de flotación que permite albergar a cuatro personas en caso de que se repita en la isla un desastre natural como el de marzo pasado.

La cápsula asemeja a una enorme pelota de tenis de 1,2 metros de diámetro y está hecha de fibra de vidrio reforzada. El presidente de la compañía, Shoji Tanaka, aseguró a la prensa que “Noé” (como la llamaron, por el pasaje bíblico) fue testeada con éxito en numerosas oportunidades.

La “pelota” posee una ventana para que los ocupantes puedan observar al exterior y agujeros de respiración. Según explicaron desde la compañía, mientras no haya necesidad de usarla como refugio, a Noé la puede utilizar los niños para jugar.

Cosmo ya vendió dos cápsulas y recibió, por lo menos, unos 600 pedidos desde fin de mes. No informaron cuánto cuesta el dispositivo.

http://www.clarin.com/mundo/Japon-gigantesca-pelota-tenis-anti-tsunamis_0_566343600.html

Excerpt from The Radical Technology of Christopher Alexander

2011-10-06T07:13:00.000-07:00

By Michael Mehaffy and Nikos Salingaros

Chances are, you have heard of Christopher Alexander because of his most famous book on architecture, A Pattern Language. What you may not know is that Alexander’s work has spawned a remarkable revolution in technology, producing a set of innovations ranging from Wikipedia to The Sims. If you have an iPhone, you may be surprised to know that you have Alexander’s technology in your pocket. The software that runs the apps is built on a pattern language programming system.

How did an architect come to have such influence in the world of software — and as it turns out, a lot of other fields? (To name a few: biology, ecology, organization theory, business management, and manufacturing.) It’s a fascinating story — and it might just have something to say about the state of architecture today, and where it might be headed.

Among architects, Alexander is often thought of as a kind of trendy architectural mystic. But in fact his career spans half a century, with work that is almost universally acknowledged as landmark theory on fundamental topics of design and technology. His first book, Notes on the Synthesis of Form, was widely hailed at the time; a typical review by Industrial Design magazine described it as “one of the most important contemporary books about the art of design, what it is, and how to go about it.” And from the very beginning, Alexander’s work has always been concerned with the fundamental processes of technological creation.

Alexander, the mathematician, was always concerned with the processes by which parts transform into wholes. He wants to know how we are implementing this part-whole synthesis; how nature does it; and especially, where we, in our own human version, might be getting it wrong. This core interest was what occupied his work documented in Notes on the Synthesis of Form. As it happens, an earlier generation of computer programmers, organization theorists, design theorists and many others, were struggling then to figure out how to generate and manage the large new design structures of that era — computer software being one prominent example. Alexander gave them some very helpful conceptual tools to do that.

In essence, the tools were patterns: not things, but relations of things, which could be identified and re-combined and re-used, in a language-like way. (We will have more to say about this kind of relational technology in an upcoming post.)

But this was more than a useful innovation. That first book — and the classic paper “A City is Not A Tree,” and really every work by Alexander since — amounted to a kind of technological critique, revolving around the observation that we’re doing something wrong in the way we make things. We’re substituting an oversimplified model of structure-making — one more closely related to our peculiar hierarchically limited way of conceiving abstract relationships — in place of the kinds of transformations that actually occur regularly in the universe, and in biological systems especially. Ours is a much more limited, fragmentary form of this larger kind of transformation. (...)in biological systems, there is more than a single linear reaction to each of the series of challenges that face an organism. There exists a kind of whole-systems optimization, a way of sorting through many contextual variables and finding a solution that not only satisfies any single condition, but is likely to be perfect in balancing and coordinating a great many conditions. (That’s how organisms achieve resilience — but that’s another long story!)

Nowhere is this more evident than the way that organisms generate form — what biologists call “morphogenesis”. The form is not a mere collection of parts that are stamped out and gathered into a composition; rather, it emerges from a continuous transformation of elements, in an unfolding process that follows something called “symmetry-breaking.” That means that the original symmetrical form (say, a round egg) gets broken down the middle, and a new symmetry forms — the beginning of a tube, say.

Alexander noted that in this process, there is usually a step-wise sequence that re-uses and articulates what came before, and that differentiates it into more articulated parts. The egg cell starts as one whole… then it divides, and makes more wholes with a differentiated order. And in complex processes like embryogenesis, this form-generation continues through more stages, until, through the power of compounding, the result is fantastically complex and ordered.

Harold Edgerton’s famous 1937 photograph of a milk drop transforming through symmetry-breaking, and articulating remarkably well-ordered new structures. A very similar process occurs in the morphogenesis of living structures.

Keep on reading:

http://www.metropolismag.com/pov/20110906/the-radical-technology-of-christopher-alexander

Pictures downloaded from the article.

West Hollywood new library

2011-10-05T07:04:00.000-07:00

I like this building, sometimes I feel a little tired of so many weird shapes, this building as a library looks correct to me. I hope I could go this month and take my own pictures. The pictures and following excerpt are from Christopher Hawthorne, for LA Times:

The new West Hollywood Library, set to open to the public Saturday on a curving stretch of San Vicente Boulevard across from the Pacific Design Center, is a building that offers a freewheeling tour through centuries of architectural history. Explicitly or implicitly, it points back to the work of Charles Moore, Pierre Koenig, Frank Gehry and even Michelangelo.

The library includes long expanses of floor-to-ceiling glass, in the great California midcentury tradition, as well as bands of marble and generous helpings of architectural ornament. Along with computer terminals and shelves full of actual books, it incorporates a pair of parking garages, rooftop tennis courts, murals by the street artists Shepard Fairey and Kenny Scharf and new chambers for the West Hollywood City Council.

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-weho-library-review-20110928,0,314033.story

Urban trees and the value of properties

2011-10-04T07:07:00.000-07:00

Trees in a street of Buenos Aires. From Tam Muro at http://news.bbc.co.uk/

Jacaranda trees in Buenos Aires. From http://www.flickr.com/photos/machteld/2515975677/

I´m not surprised to see that urban trees generate extra value for the properties. I can´t imagine somebody disliking them, though, I know a case in Colombia, exposed at a Symposium by a Colombian architect who explained that in some areas of Bogota, people preferred no trees in the streets because the trees were reminders of the fields, and the fields reminders of guerrillas.

Platano trees in a street of Santiago de Chile. Picture by YYC at http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=1113329&page=52

From the article by Eric Jaffe:

¨In his quest to quantify, (Geoffrey) Donovan has investigated the influence of trees on neighborhood crime, electricity use, even the health of babies. Over the past few years he's focused much of his energy on measuring the effect trees have on home prices in Portland. The results suggest that "nice" and "good" can be pretty valuable words.

In the latest issue of the journal Urban Forestry & Urban Greening, Donovan and coauthor David Butry of the National Institute of Standards and Technology examine the impact of trees on rental prices. They looked up the asking price of about a thousand Portland rental homes on Craigslist, then collected data on the number and size of trees in the vicinity using Google Earth.

After controlling for the factors that someone examining the effect of trees on rent should control for — most notably, neighborhood desirability — Donovan and Butry determined that a tree on the lot of a home increased its monthly rent by $5.62, while a tree on the street near the home increased it by $21. Not exactly budget-busting figures. When combined with previous research, however, the results point to a clear preference for trees among Portland residents.

In a 2010 paper in the journal Landscape and Urban Planning, Donovan and Butry found that a tree in front of a Portland property added more than $7,000 to its sale price. Earlier this year another team of economists reported that walkability, in the form of nearby businesses, raises a Portland home's value by about $3,500 in a treeless neighborhood, but more than $22,000 [PDF] in a tree-lined one.¨

Read the full article:

http://www.theatlanticcities.com/housing/2011/09/where-trees-rule-real-estate/223/

Some urban sculptures by Claes Oldenburg

2011-10-03T07:28:00.000-07:00

Pennsylvania Academy of Arts. Picture by Tom Crane

Hats in Salinas, California. From http://www.agilitynut.com/08/8/shats2.jpg

Spoon bridge and cherry, Minneapolis. From http://www.agilitynut.com/07/7/mcherry3.jpg

Claes Oldenburg unveils his latest outdoor sculpture — a giant paintbrush — outside the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia this weekend. At first, Oldenburg's giant clothespins and spoons made him a target for ridicule. But now you can find examples of his work all over the world. And like all of his work, it's intended to provoke a response.

Pop art master Claes Oldenburg will officially unveil his latest sculpture outside the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts on Saturday. Oldenburg is known for taking everyday objects and blowing them up to impossible sizes. At first, his giant clothespins and spoons made him a target for ridicule. But now you can find examples of Oldenburg's work all over the world, from Cologne to Cleveland. And they've been embraced — for the most part.

REFERENCE

http://www.npr.org/2011/09/30/140929475/pop-art-master-oldenburg-unveils-another-big-idea

The Chinese city of Chaohu has vanished....

2011-10-02T09:29:00.000-07:00

Chaohu. Picture by Louisa Lim.

Chaohu government building. Picture by Louisa Lim.

A few days ago I had a conversation with my eldest daughter who works in Sunset Beach, Southern California. It was hard for the inhabitants to accept but at least they had the opportunity to know that their ¨nobody´s land¨ would become part of Huntington Beach (Orange County), instead of belonging to Los Angeles. Many people aroused their voices, the consequences, some irregular businesses had to close, and now police is everywhere. The neighborhood looks the same, but it isn´t.

Now, I´m reading about Chaohu, that´s worst because it seems the inhabitants didn´t know the City would disappear -administratively speaking- and what is worst, it was degraded, now it´s a town.

¨Imagine a city like Los Angeles disappearing from the map completely. That's exactly what happened to Chaohu, a city in eastern China's Anhui province with a similar population — about 4 million. The people have remained, but the city has vanished in an administrative sleight of hand.

That was the Kafkaesque reality for Chaohu's inhabitants, who went to bed one night and woke up the morning of Aug. 22 to find out that their city no longer existed. For many, their first inkling that something had changed was from the local news.

"Anhui province is today announcing the cancellation of Chaohu city," the broadcast said. It went on to explain that the city once known as Chaohu had been divided into three. The nearby cities of Hefei, Wuhu and Ma'anshan each absorbed a piece of territory. The broadcast confusingly described the move as "an inherent need at a certain level of economic growth."

(...) Rumors had circulated for a few weeks beforehand, but there had been no public consultation and no official notice, with residents not being told about the new boundaries in advance.

This division of Chaohu has led to some strange anomalies.

For example, in Lintou town, a bridge serves as the new boundary dividing Hefei from Ma'anshan. This means that, for some, the five-minute bicycle ride between home and work has become a trip from Hefei to Ma'anshan and vice versa. The residents of Lintou complain that the redistricting is illogical. (....)In the longer term, residents worry that being hitched to Ma'anshan will be bad for their village. Everyone is aware that Hefei is the major beneficiary of this move: Its area will increase by 40 percent, and it will become the biggest city in China in terms of area, according to the local media.

Hefei will also now take over the whole of Chao Lake, after which the city was named. Some argue this is good for the lake, since Hefei will be able to spend more money cleaning it up.

Read the article by Louisa Lim:

http://www.npr.org/2011/09/21/140633602/the-curious-case-of-the-vanishing-chinese-city?ft=1&f=1001

Nunavut vertical cave. Concept in the Artic.

2011-10-01T07:32:00.000-07:00

Well, something different today. From Planetizen.com the preview from Tim Halbur:

Toronto architect Reza Aliabadi took a trip into the far northern reaches of Nunavut, the Inuit territory above Canada. There, the flatness of the tundra and the stone stacks made by the Inuit inspired him to propose a stacked housing tower.

The fanciful design, which Aliabadi entered in a contest looking for "fresh approaches to adding density," will never be built.

Aliabadi's idea is "...a high-density residential structure designed along the lines of the Inuit sculptures he saw at Pond Inlet, and deposited on an ice floe in the Arctic, one of the lowest-density spots on earth. The imaginary tower consists of large stacked boulders, each hollowed out to provide one or more apartments per rock, and arrayed vertically along a service and elevator shaft."

Pictures courtesy http://www.rzlbd.com/

Automatic sketch of Los Angeles

2011-09-30T16:50:00.000-07:00

This is my automatic sketch of Los Angeles. And this is not Los Angeles, but the concepts I remember. The old and the new, the different levels, the postmodern architecture, some basements, some bridges and tunnels across the mountains, a few trees only in the plazas, the city against the mountains and the sky behind. And nobody walking around.

Moshe Safdie´s building in Kansas will be dismantled

2011-09-29T07:08:00.000-07:00

The building that will be dismantled in Kansas. Picture from the article

I´ve been reading today about the controversial building designed by Viñoly´s UK Art Center, it was finally opened after a litigation: the reason, rising costs, redesign of the structure on site. And this is not the only example. Starchitects sometimes seem not to care about huge construction costs. Best example, Calatrava. Now, it was the time for arch. Moshe Safdie to suffer the consequences. Or maybe the contractors are not selected with the required experience to build difficult shapes.

Moshe Safdie. Picture downloaded from the article

Moshe Safdie. From e-architect.co.uk

By Kevin Collison. The Kansas City Star:

Water poured into the unfinished West Edge building’s atrium last March through an open ceiling. Mike Allen of Caymus Real Estate toured the project.(..)

More than one observer has compared the imposing curved balconies that architect Moshe Safdie designed for the grand atrium of the new Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts to the iconic swirl of the Guggenheim Museum in New York.

A similarly dramatic interior was created by Safdie in Kansas City, but most of us will never see it.

That’s because the office building he designed for Kansas City advertising executive Bob Bernstein at the West Edge near the Country Club Plaza is slated to be dismantled.

In a recent interview, Safdie said he was “heartbroken” that building wouldn’t be completed.

“It’s really sad,” he said. “We spent five to six years of our lives laboring over every detail. … A lot of love and care went into this.

“I feel particularly sad for the Bernstein family. It was a noble undertaking. They wanted a headquarters but obviously wanted to do something for the entire city.”

For several years now the exterior of the forlorn, unfinished structure at 48th Street and Belleview Avenue has been part of thousands of people’s daily commutes on Southwest Trafficway.

What has not been visible is its six-level interior atrium. Safdie’s “tornado” design slightly shifted the curves of each interior office balcony to create the illusion of motion, energizing the soaring space.

Over the next few months, if all goes as planned, that atrium — and the rest of the building — will be dismantled and replaced by a more conventional office building designed by 360 Architecture for the Polsinelli Shughart law firm.

Seven years ago, Bernstein searched for an architect to design what was to be the headquarters of the Bernstein-Rein advertising agency. Top designers, including Zaha Hadid and I.M. Pei, were considered before Bernstein chose Safdie and his “hillside village” concept.

In December 2004, a beaming Bernstein joined Safdie in unveiling the model. A year later, construction started. But by early 2007, Bernstein and the builder, J.E. Dunn Construction Co., were embroiled in a dispute over rising costs.

“I tried to be an intermediary,” Safdie said. “I called them individually and tried to have a meeting of the three of us, but it never worked.”

Keep on reading:

http://www.kansascity.com/2011/09/19/3153908/renowned-architect-is-sad-that.html

Viñoly´s Art Center. From

http://archrecord.construction.com/news/2011/09/Firstsite-Art-Ctr-Grand-Opening.asp