New Songdo City

¨Approached from the 7 1⁄2-mile-long suspension bridge connecting to the airport, NSC emerges from the coastal fog like a mirage. The most striking feature is KPF’s 68-story Northeast Asia Trade Tower, South Korea’s tallest building to date. Multiblock housing by HOK and the tree-studded Central Park gradually come into focus as the air clears. But they vie for attention with vast stretches of still-empty land and the broad boulevards binding everything together. Already well trafficked, the roads are the most visibly populated part of town. Though NSC has yet to acquire the vibe of a bustling urban center, it is also hard to imagine that only a few years ago, the 1,500-acre reclaimed site did not exist.

While South Korea has been engaged in large-scale landfill construction since the 1970s, necessitated by a shortage of buildable area near the nation’s capital, the impetus for building NSC came after the South Korean economy hit the skids in 1997. At the urging of the International Monetary Fund, the South Korean government designated the site as a free economic zone with a full-fledged city to attract foreign investment. To jump-start the influx of money from abroad, the government made an unprecedented move by selling the land to this private, international joint venture and putting the new owners in charge of the city’s development. “Basically, it is a free-market experiment,” says KPF principal James von Klemperer, FAIA.

Given its lack of overseas experience, Gale was an unlikely partner for POSCO. But the challenge and opportunity to build a whole city from scratch — schools, museums, shopping, and entertainment, as well as housing and offices — was too good for the American developer to pass up.

The firm’s approach entailed synthesizing a number of complex conditions, such as building codes and infrastructure elements prescribed by local authorities; programmatic requirements stipulated by the client with guidance from the South Korean government; and common market practices, including the South Korean penchant for multilane roads and megablocks many times the size of their Manhattan counterparts. Not to mention an ambitious conceptual agenda that championed architectural innovation and sustainability. “Because NSC is a kind of entrance to South Korea and meant to showcase the free economic zone, we had high standards for building quality,” explains S.J. Lee, professor of architecture and engineering at Yonsei University and a former government design review board member.

KPF’s design process began with the development of a hypothetical master plan authored by a small team of architects, engineers, and client representatives. Ten new teams then produced 18-blocks worth of building prototypes to probe the scheme’s strengths and weaknesses. “We needed to test densities, scale, and the feeling of material,” explains von Klemperer. Based on the findings, KPF adjusted its model, discarded the temporary architecture, and, in 2004, got approval from South Korean authorities to proceed.

Inspired by precedents from around the globe, KPF’s cityscape brings to mind London’s garden squares, Paris’s tree-lined boulevards, and the canals that once riddled Seoul. As in New York, the heart of the city is Central Park. Adapting traditional South Korean landscaping, KPF’s 100-acre green space incorporates indigenous geographic features in miniature — craggy granite mounds, topiaries shaped like tea bushes, and a saltwater canal symbolizing the country’s extensive waterfront.

A retail and entertainment center designed by Studio Daniel Libeskind

The city’s tent-shaped density distribution peaks near the park, which is ringed with NSC’s tallest buildings. “In every major city, the most expensive real estate surrounds a park,” comments Charles Reid, executive vice president of design and construction at Gale International. Here, too, high-end office and residential towers face its greenery but will taper off as the city propagates outward, ending in a golf course at one end and a hospital at the other.

While this formation will yield a coherent, Manhattan-style skyline, KPF’s “planned heterogeneity” forms the guiding principle at ground level. It consists of a patchwork of distinct neighborhoods, each one traversable on foot in under 15 minutes and linked by public transportation. Within each sector, KPF specified volume and mass restrictions plus street-wall requirements, but left architectural decisions largely up to the local and foreign firms in charge of individual buildings.

“For us, a pedestrian city is the first measure of sustainability,” says von Klemperer. Because green thinking is fairly new to South Korea, the team adopted the American LEED system as its ecological design standard. In addition to designating 40 percent of the land area as open green space, the central, saltwater canal neither utilizes potable water nor freezes in winter, enabling it to host water taxis year-round. And the reuse of gray water plus a citywide, pneumatic garbage collection system are just two ways that NSC will handle waste efficiently. “Sustainability is no longer a footnote,” says Daniel Libeskind, the architect of Riverstone, a 1 1⁄2-million-square-foot shopping center slated to begin soon.

But high-quality, environmentally sensitive architecture and urban planning alone do not a city make. A lot of square footage was built here in a short time, yet NSC still needs a viable downtown where people do business. Despite brisk sales of housing units, the townscape seems underinhabited. Although the international school is poised to open, the city is short on cultural, entertainment, and shopping facilities. And unless the tax code changes, NSC is not likely to become the next Singapore anytime soon. Unquestionably, the economic downturn has not helped the cause. Yet construction has slowed, not stopped. “Based on satellite cities around Seoul, I think it is almost inevitable that people will move here,” says Lee. That may be. But whether NSC will reach its ambitious goals remains to be seen¨.

REFERENCE: 

Paragraphs from Naomi R. Pollock´s article, at Architectural Record.com

http://archrecord.construction.com/features/new_songdo_city/default.asp

St. Bonaventure´s fair, Huntington Beach

Another example of instant settlement: every year, the catholic church of Saint Bonaventure, in Huntington Beach, California, organizes a great fair to raise funds.  The fair lasts a couple of days, and as one of my daughter´s friends put it ¨it is to gather all people we haven´t seen in 10,000 years¨. That was a nice comment, because it´s a kind of true. Everybody is together, regardless religion, celebrating and having fun. The event brings lots of people together and they socialize while playing and eating. Congratulations to St. Bonaventure´s!

All pictures by Myriam B. Mahiques

3D artistic creations by arch. Luis Makianich

In his own words this is ¨extreme architecture¨. All rights reserved.

Euclidean Structure II. All rights reserved.

Great Zimbabwe Ruins

Great Zimbabwe ruins, aerial picture. From wayfairing.info

Great Zimbabwe are the largest and most extraordinary ruins in Africa, covering approximately 1800 acres. From this ruins, the modern nation of Zimbabwe took its name.

They are located 30 km beyond the town of Masyngo,   South Eastern Zimbabwe.

The  undulating structures of rectangular granite stones, were built by indigenous African people between AD 1250 and AD 1450 by Bantu speaking ancestors of the Shona.

There are 300 similar complexes in the Zimbabwean plateau, but Great Zimbabwe has an impressive scale; the Great Enclosure (as commonly referred to) has walls of 19.5 feet wide, by 36 feet in height with a length of near 820 feet. This art of building with stone without the use of mortar persisted along the years, so the ¨venerated houses¨ (per the words origin) are numerous.

Entrance. Picture from wayfairing.info

Chambers. Picture from wayfairing.info

Picture from wikipedia.org

Great Zimbabwe was an early example of a state with much political, economic, and military power. With its formation, social and political organization became more hierarchical. This involved a move from village level organization to a larger, broader social and political organization resulting in the Kingdom of Great Zimbabwe.

In SXIX, European travelers and English colonizers, stunned by the structures, attributed them to alien powers. Many of these have been severely impacted and almost demolished, at least 50, as a result of the hunger for gold by Europeans.

Picture from exploringafrica.matrix.msu.edu

Picture from wayfairing.info

REFERENCE:

Text adapted from:
 http://www.places.co.za/html/greatzim.html

http://www.wayfaring.info/2007/07/10/important-looking-stone-structures-in-great-zimbabwe/

Los edificios se visten de rosa para luchar contra el cáncer de mama

Centro Cultural Bicentenario, Buenos Aires

Estatuas de Lola Mora, Rosario

Varias campañas buscan crear conciencia sobre la enfermedad con acciones como la iluminación de monumentos emblemáticos.

Con el comienzo del mes nacional de concientización sobre el cáncer de mama, se lanzaron varias campañas para lograr la detección temprana de esta enfermedad que afecta a miles de mujeres cada año.

Bajo el lema "Conectar. Comunicar. Vencer. Prevenir el cáncer de mama de una vez por todas. Comparta este mensaje", más de 70 países participan de la campaña organizada por Estée Lauder Companies, donde más de 200 edificios de todo el mundo se iluminan de rosa para llamar la atención y crear conciencia.

En Buenos Aires, se iluminará desde el 3 hasta el 6 de octubre, el Centro Cultural Bicentenario (Ex Palacio de Correos), y desde el 1° hasta el 4 de octubre se iluminarán el Friso de la fuente central de la Plaza independencia, en Mendoza, la Estatua de Lola Mora, en Rosario y el Palacio de la Legislatura, el Arco de Córdoba, la Municipalidad de Villa María y la Municipalidad de Laguna Larga, en Córdoba.

http://www.revistaohlala.com/1311254

Municipalidad de Villa María, Córdoba

Palacio de la Legislatura, Córdoba

Plaza de la Independencia, Mendoza

SUNDARAM TAGORE GALLERY (New York, Beverly Hills, Hong Kong)

Material Exploration. New York

A work by Edward Burtynsky

Contemporary Asian Art

Talking with the walls. Nathan Slate Joseph

Tatoo and Taboo. Kim Joon

Established in 2000, Sundaram Tagore Gallery is devoted to examining the exchange of ideas between Western and non-Western cultures. They focus on developing exhibitions and hosting not-for-profit events that engage in spiritual, social and aesthetic dialogues. In a world where communication is instant and cultures are colliding and melding as never before, their goal is to provide venues for art that transcend boundaries of all sorts. With alliances across the globe, their interest in cross-cultural exchange extends beyond the visual arts into many other disciplines, including poetry, literature, performance art, film and music.

http://www.sundaramtagore.com/

Goats in a roof triggers a legal case

Manager Lars Johnson in front of the advertising sign of his family´s restaurant. Oscar, the first goat was settled atop this roof in 1973, until the family thought the restaurant´s roof would be a better place.

From the Wall Street Journal, excerpts from the article by Justin Scheck and Stu Woo, September 17, 2010. All pictures posted at Wall Street Journal:

SISTER BAY, Wis.—Lars Johnson is proud of his restaurant's Swedish-meatball sandwich and pickled herring. But the signature offering at his Al Johnson's Swedish Restaurant isn't on the menu; it's the goats grazing on the grass-covered roof.

Any other business thinking of putting goats on the roof will have Mr. Johnson's lawyers to contend with.

Some patrons drive from afar to eat at the restaurant and see the goats that have been going up on Al Johnson's roof since 1973. The restaurant 14 years ago trademarked the right to put goats on a roof to attract customers to a business. "The restaurant is one of the top-grossing in Wisconsin, and I'm sure the goats have helped," says Mr. Johnson, who manages the family-owned restaurant.

So when a tourist spot 750 miles away decided to deploy a rooftop-caprine population, Mr. Johnson made a federal case of it.

Last year, he discovered that Tiger Mountain Market in Rabun County, Ga., had been grazing goats on its grass roof since 2007. Putting goats on the roof wasn't illegal. The violation, Al Johnson's alleged in a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, was that Tiger Mountain used the animals to woo business.

The suit declared: "Notwithstanding Al Johnson's Restaurant's prior, continuous and extensive use of the Goats on the Roof Trade Dress"—a type of trademark—"defendant Tiger Mountain Market opened a grocery store and gift shop in buildings with grass on the roofs and allows goats to climb on the roofs of its buildings."

Al Johnson's "demanded that Defendant cease and desist such conduct, but Defendant has willfully continued to offer food services from buildings with goats on the roof," the suit continued.

Danny Benson, the offending market's owner, says that "legally we could fight it, because it is ridiculous." But it would have been too expensive to fight, he says. He considered replacing his goats with pigs before deciding their heft and tendency to "root around" would pose a danger to people below.

Earlier this year, Mr. Benson agreed to pay Al Johnson's a fee for the right to use roof goats as a marketing tool in Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina and Tennessee.

Al Johnson's is on constant lookout for other cloven-hooved intellectual-property violations. Mr. Johnson says the restaurant's Milwaukee law firm has sent letters to other alleged offenders, such as a gift shop in Wisconsin with a fake goat on its roof. It removed the ersatz ungulate.

In July, Virginia news outlets reported that goats on a hillside routinely hopped onto a platform under a billboard advertising two International House of Pancakes restaurants. Drivers pulled over to snap pictures, and one IHOP manager was quoted saying he enjoyed the publicity. Mr. Johnson says his lawyer is monitoring the situation in case "they take it a step further." Lisa Hodges, who manages one of the restaurants, says she doesn't plan to intentionally use the goats for marketing. "We can't help it that they climb up there," she says.

Any business that sells food and uses goats to lure customers may be violating the trademark, says Lori Meddings, the restaurant's lawyer. "The standard is, is there a likelihood of confusion?" she says.

Al Johnson, Lars's late father, opened the Swedish restaurant with a partner in 1949 in a former grocery store in this tourist town on Lake Michigan. In 1973, he imported a wooden building from Norway to replace the old structure, and covered it with a traditional sod roof.

Al Johnson's best friend, Winky Larson, brought him a goat named Oscar as a gag gift that year, the Johnson family says. Someone then put Oscar on the roof, where he attracted passersby, inspiring the family to accumulate a herd.

Two decades later, the business was booming. Summer tourists packed the restaurant, says Mr. Johnson, making it one of the largest U.S. importers of lingonberries. The family in 1996 registered the "Goats on the Roof" trademark. Mr. Johnson, whose father died in June, recalls his lawyer telling him: "Lars, you have something very valuable here."

Keep on reading:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704285104575492650336813506.html?KEYWORDS=scheck#project%3DSLIDESHOW08%26s%3DSB1000142405274870374350457549412427151

Un mural de Antonio Seguí sobre la fachada de 9 de Julio del ex Mercado del Plata, Buenos Aires

Este es el antiguo Mercado del Plata, casi frente al Obelisco. Para los arquitectos, ¨la Muni¨. O sea, la Municipalidad. El edificio es la sede del gobierno de la Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires, y lo conozco muy bien, hasta he sacado fotografías de la avenida 9 de Julio a través de sus cristales -sucios-. No sé cómo se verán ahora, pero desde ya mucho mejor, embellecidos con esta obra de Antonio Seguí. A continuación, la nota de revista cultural Eñe, por Nora Iniesta, publicada el 30 de Septiembre de 2010. Las fotos han sido bajadas del artículo:

No podría titularse de otro modo: “Los mitos de mi infancia”, una enorme pizarra de 34 x 88 metros –casi tres mil metros cuadrados– es la estupenda gigantografía que se despliega como una gran ventana sobre la 9 de Julio, muy cerca del Obelisco y con Obelisco dibujado en la obra. Su autor es, claro, Antonio Seguí, el pintor cordobés que conquistó París; artista que actualmente Buenos Aires permite ver en plenitud y en gran tamaño a todo ciudadano que pase por la fachada del ex Mercado del Plata, rebautizado como Edificio del Plata. Situado en Carlos Pellegrini 211, el ex mercado inaugurado en 1962, que fue originariamente un lugar obligado de compras para familias que buscaban variedad de productos y buena calidad, hoy ha sido convertido en un edificio de oficinas, sede de diversas áreas técnicas y de gestión del Gobierno de la Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires. Para suerte de los porteños, su fachada se ha vuelto una pantalla gigante desde donde emana y emanaron con una programación pautada y puntual y, cada cual a su turno, cronológicamente hablando, las obras de los artistas Fabián Burgos, Guillermo Ueno, Max Gómez Canle y Marcos López, siendo ahora el momento de ver y apreciar la obra de don Antonio Seguí. Porteños y no solo porteños, habitantes de Buenos Aires: no dejen de verla, vale la pena pararse por un rato ante ella e ir descubriendo gozosamente un mundo donde seguramente encontrarán cual libro abierto, como juego de acertijo, más de un ícono que les disparará muchas fantasías y o aventuras de infancia.

La verdad es que dan ganas de pasar mil veces delante de ella; como todo gran cuadro sus lecturas son múltiples como múltiples son sus personajes, los dibujos a carbonilla en blanco y negro y las palabras que lo habitan. Figuras contorneadas, algunas con un toque de color; otras con los emblemáticos sombreros, una suerte de diccionario ilustrado de lo que fuese la geografía y la historia de la Argentina compendiado en un racconto simultáneo, disperso, en continuidad, con un gran aglutinamiento de personajes diminutos esparcidos por la superficie del cuadro.

Seguí despliega en la tela un tesoro mayor: su gloriosa memoria intacta, situada en la Argentina que él vivió; llámese escuela primaria, fútbol, tango, las sierras de Córdoba que lo vieron nacer, Buenos Aires, la Casita de Tucumán, el Cabildo, la Cordillera de los Andes, el deporte representado por un auto turismo carretera, un ring de boxeo y dos jugadores de fútbol de River y Boca; los símbolos patrios. El artista nos invita a descifrar, descubrir y encontrar el hilo en esta trama, archivo colectivo de esta tierra sureña. Billiken, Gatica, la Negra Sosa, la Casa del Viejo Vizcacha, Roberto Arlt, Fúlmine, Florencio Molina Campos, la Misa Criolla, Vito Dumas, Fangio, Froilán González, Patoruzú, San Martín, Manuel Belgrano, el hotel Castelar, el Aguilucho, hasta la advertencia ¡no corten árboles!, son todas palabras que van creando un solo tejido; el de nuestra identidad e historia. Seguí reside en París desde hace 47 años, pero su memoria se mantiene intacta para abrirnos este portón de sus recuerdos tan genuino y generosamente argentino como la yerba mate o el dulce de leche. La composición ha sido dividida en tres franjas horizontales cual tres guardas bien definidas: oscuro, medio y claro, desde lo más profundo hasta lo más alto. Como si ellas no existieran, todo lo que se muestra y acontece en superficie parece deambular sin importar mucho la demarcación en la totalidad del campo compositivo donde van sucediendo los hechos. Digo y afirmo campo porque es a la intemperie donde todo ocurre, como lo es también donde se muestran estas escenas, partes de un todo a cielo abierto, cual horizonte pampeano. La primera capa, la más cercana a la tierra, al suelo, la más oscura, es la más copiosa y abigarrada de personas y personajes en esta bidimensionalidad. No hay ni existen puntos de fuga. No hay por donde escapar, aunque campo, ello, lo propio se vuelve encierro, bagaje insustituible. Es lo que vivimos, es lo que portamos, es definitivamente lo que somos. Cual dibujáramos en la escuela primaria, ese sector por debajo de la línea de tierra recuerda a aquella en que ubicábamos las raíces, justamente, de árboles y plantas, estando bajo superficie.

La que sigue, algo más clara, está entre las líneas de tierra y de horizonte; por allí Antonio sigue contándonos su historia; así llegamos a la radiante y luminosa, la más alta, cercana al cielo. En ella, ya nada, despojada de grafías y palabras, cual liberación de lo terrenal, alcanzando vuelo sólo la banderita argentina, flameando desde la cúpula del Cabildo se alza bella, única, invocando esa unión e igualdad que siempre soñamos por estas tierras desde chicos.

Un sinfín es esta historia inconclusa que, puesta y expuesta en plena calle, presencia silenciosa la otra realidad que acontece en simultáneo, la de la incesante cantidad de autos que día a día circula por la avenida más ancha del mundo en ambas direcciones. La generosidad de un artista es mucha. Unica e irrepetible; y Seguí sabe de ello. Mención aparte merece el bello texto de la curadora Clelia Taricco sobre la obra: El retorno a la infancia es, en Seguí, casi una marca registrada. Para este artista cordobés –“que trabaja en París pero vive en Córdoba”–, la infancia es, y ha sido permanentemente a lo largo de toda su producción, la fuente de donde abreva sus ideas. De la infancia provienen sus imágenes, sus recuerdos, hasta sus comidas.

Y me viene a la mente otro artista residente en París, el argentino Alfredo Arias quien hace semanas presentó en plena calle Corrientes su obra Tatuaje; otro enclave; la misma historia, memorias de un Alfredito que pasó su infancia en el conurbano bonaerense, en Remedios de Escalada, quien puso en escena sus recuerdos de modo impecable, con gran rigor y extremo sentimiento.

La memoria selecciona aquello que recuerda; ambos artistas ya son patrimonio legítimo de este suelo al que sin duda muy a pesar de donde vivan, pertenecen. Como pertenece aquello que puedan crear, recrear y hacer.

Buenos Aires y la Argentina, agradecidos.

Arte en el Plata es un emprendimiento de los ministerios porteños de Cultura, de Espacio Público y de la Fundación Banco Ciudad. Sus curadoras son Eva Grinstein e Inés Katzenstein.

http://www.revistaenie.clarin.com/arte/mil-metros-cuadrados-identidad-argentina_0_341965918.html