The Neo-classic use of drapery

The architect´s dream. 1840. Thomas Cole. From google images

Panel 3 of The Course of the Empire. (Consummation). Thomas Cole, 1836. From google images

The phenomenon of life imitating art may be observed in the elaborately developed art of window draping in the early nineteenth century. Neo-classic taste required the use of drapery in clothes and for domestic interiors to carry the look of antiquity even into the usages of everyday life. The spell of Classical drapery, never entirely broken, was asserting itself yet again in cloth-conscious industrial Europe. Ultimately, in the late nineteenth century, it appeared in the draping of absolutely everything from bustles to banisters. (....) But once the High Renaissance convention was inaugurated for using ornamental drapery off the figure, either randomly or formally arranged, without any visible specific function, it became a universally useful element. (..) Reconstructed Classical scenes in the art of both periods, displaying great efforts at accuracy in costume and architecture, might also include a profusion of invented drapery to clothe columns and arches. An exaggerated example from early-nineteenth-century Romantic Classicism is the third panel, Consummation, of the set of five paintings entitled The Course of Empire (1836) by Thomas Cole. This shows an imaginary, more or less Roman triumph taking place in a harbor city glittering with riches celebrations. The procession occurs in the foreground under arches decked in huge, unimaginable and unmanageable lengths of bright-colored draped material. Indulging this grandiose fancy, Cole goes further with such colossal curtains in The Architect´s Dream, in which literally thousands of yards drape the architectural elements in the foreground, dwarfing the tiny figure.

REFERENCE

Seeing through clothes. By Anne Hollander. P. 32-35. USA 1980

An interview with Fumihiko Maki

Mihara Performing Arts Center. Photo by Toshiharu Kitajima

MIT Media Lab Complex. Photo by Anton Grassl

Annenberg Public Policy Center. Photo by Jeff Totaro

Spiral. Phto by Toshiharu Kitajima

During his many decades practicing architecture, Fumihiko Maki has accrued an impressive collection of awards, including the Pritzker Prize (1993) and Japan’s Praemium Imperiale (1999). Now, the American Institute of Architects has announced that this year’s Gold Medal will honor the esteemed architect, known for such projects as the Sam Fox School of Design and MIT Media Lab.

A graduate of both Tokyo University and the Harvard Graduate School of Design, Maki was one of the first Japanese architects to study and work in the United States after World War II. Following his graduation from Harvard in 1954, Maki worked and taught in the United States before opening his practice in Tokyo in 1965.

To date, Maki and Associates has completed a range of projects worldwide. The firm currently is working on Tower 4 of the World Trade Center redevelopment, in addition to a host of other buildings overseas.

Architectural Record's Tokyo Correspondent Naomi Pollock recently met with Maki to discuss the architect’s long-standing relationship with the United States.

Read it here:

http://archrecord.construction.com/news/newsmakers/1101fumihiko_maki.asp

Introduction from architectural record

The city and its symbols

Palmanova

Consecration cross, Norfolk, UK.

The city is a place, a center of meaning, par ecellence. It has many highly visible symbols. More important, the city itself is a symbol. The traditional city symbolized , first, trascendental and man-made order as against the chaotic forces of terrestrial and infernal nature. Second, it stood for an ideal human community: ¨What is the Citie, but the People?¨ True, the People are the Citie¨(Shakespeare, Coriolanus, act 3, scene 1). It was as transcendental order that ancient cities acquired their monumental aspect. Massive walls and portals demarcated sacred space. Fortifications defended a people against not only human enemies but also demons and the souls of the dead. In medieval Europe priests consecrated city walls so that they could ward oof the devil, sickness, and death -in other words, the threats of chaos.

Lotus garden, India

Masonic church

REFERENCE:

Space and Place. By Yi-Fu Tuan. P. 173. Visibility and Chaos. University of Minnesota. 2007

Pictures´references:

Palmanova http://www.fsgfort.com/DB/C083/30/19a.jpg

Consecration cross http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/1394962

Lotus garden http://debu7370.blogspot.com/2009/10/shri-shirdi-sai-speaks-2nd.html

Masonic church http://media.photobucket.com/image/city+and+symbols+/FangShen/

Taipei 101 Aims To Be World's Tallest Green Building

Taipei 101, Taiwan. Image from google images

TAIPEI, Jan 17 Asia Pulse - The Taipei 101 skyscraper, a landmark in Taiwan's capital, is expected to become the world's tallest green building by the third quarter of this year at the latest, its management said Saturday.

The company that manages Taipei 101, also known as the Taipei Financial Center, has filed an application with the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) for a platinum-degree certification so it can be recognized as the world's highest green building, Hsu Chao-fa, a manager of the building, said.

The building had been the world's highest building from 2004, when it was officially ranked as such, until the inauguration of the Burj Khalifa in Dubai last year.

Hsu said the building has invested NT$4.83 million (US$166,348) in energy conservation and the move has paid off by enabling the building to save about NT$12.42 million in electricity bills a year.

As early as 2008, the building's management had seriously considered how to make the building more energy efficient and it had taken a series of coordinating measures to achieve energy savings and carbon dioxide emission reductions, Hsu said.

In addition, Hsu said, the building also changed its lighting to energy efficient systems and began using ultra red ray sensor control equipment, which cut energy consumption by 9.6 per cent between 2008 and 2010.

The manager added that the building's management watches closely the temperature each day to adjust air conditioning systems, while adopting time control to manage lighting.

The owner of Taipei 101 is among the business operators in Taiwan to echo the Ministry of Economic Affairs' goal of cutting carbon dioxide emissions.

The ministry successfully convinced the local business sector to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 3.93 million tons last year, which created about NT$1.8 billion in economic value.

http://archrecord.construction.com/yb/ar/article.aspx?story_id=154720738

The musk scent of temples

Image from travel.paintedstork.com

It seems that walls in some temples really smelled. The literal architecture of senses:

¨In the ancient world plant perfumes were enjoyed and made use of in religious ceremonies, as a disinfectant in the sickroom and for embalming. Hebrew women wore perfume balls suspended by a chain from the neck or the waist, like the later pomanders. Distilling was unknown, and perfumes were first made by boiling vegetable substances in fat to make a fragrant ointment. It is said that the mortar used in teh building of some ancient temples was partly mixed with musk, and for many years the walls continued to give out a powerful scent.¨

From the book Magic Green. By Lesley Gordon. P.14. London, 1977

Los vitreaux de la catedral de Chartres

Imagen de ulbs17.antipode.info

Foto de La Nación

¨Las vidrieras de la catedral de Chartres son únicas en muchos aspectos. En ningún otro lugar ha sobrevivido tanto vidrio medieval a las guerras, las tormentas, la intolerancia religiosa y la desidia de siglos. De las 173 ventanas originales, 143 se encuentran en su mayor parte intactas, y hay en total casi 1500 vitrales con escenas y figuras que componen una biblioteca en imágenes prácticamente sin igual sobre la vida y las creencias medievales. Aparte de esto, consideradas en conjunto constituyen un programa artístico de una calidad y ambición rara vez vistas, comparable por su complejidad iconográfica con la Capilla Sixtina, de Miguel Angel, o la capilla de los Scrovegni, de Giotto. La catedral que vemos hoy es en su mayor parte posterior al incendio de 1194, que destruyó todo el antiguo edificio románico, salvo el ala oeste. El clero vio la ocasión de construir una catedral mayor y mejor en el nuevo estilo gótico, y los responsables de la reconstrucción concibieron un programa que integrara vitrales, arquitectura y escultura en una enérgica afirmación de la autoridad y el dogma de la Iglesia. Una de las grandes innovaciones de la arquitectura gótica fue el arbotante, que liberaba los muros de la carga de la bóveda y hacía posible abrir vanos más amplios. El espacio así ganado para los vitrales permitió desarrollar la iconografía y todo un nuevo vocabulario y unos nuevos medios de expresión en vidrio de colores. El resultado fue una explosión de creatividad durante la segunda mitad del siglo XII, que alcanzó su culminación en las catedrales góticas del XIII, en particular las de Bourges, Reims, Amiens, París y, sobre todo, Chartres. La instalación de los vitrales de Chartres se prolongó durante treinta años o más, comenzando hacia 1205.

Foto de La Nación

Imagen de commons.wikimedia.org

 La impresión que recibe quien visita Chartres por primera vez suele ser profunda. A muchos les sorprende la oscuridad del interior incluso en un día soleado. Los intensos colores del vidrio -principalmente rojo, azul, amarillo y verde, y en menor cantidad, morado, marrón y rosa- crean una atmósfera mágica. Se trata de un efecto deliberado, al menos en parte; al fin y al cabo, las catedrales góticas eran, en cierto sentido, una evocación de la Jerusalén celestial descripta en el Apocalipsis de San Juan, y los vitrales eran las joyas de la ciudad celestial. Lo más llamativo son los tres grandes rosetones situados en los puntos cardinales Norte, Sur y Oeste del edificio. Estos maravillosos despliegues de luz, color y geometría celebran la vida de Jesucristo y la Virgen María (incorporando también las armas de soberanos seculares, Blanca de Castilla y un duque de la región) y marcan la pauta para el resto de los vitrales. El alto ventanal oriental en el coro vuelve a subrayar lo importante, con la Virgen sosteniendo al Niño Jesús. La preeminencia concedida a la figura de María en Chartres no sólo se debe a que la catedral le estaba dedicada, sino también al hecho de que la reliquia más valiosa que en ella se guardaba era su túnica -la Sancta Camisa-, que había sobrevivido milagrosamente al incendio de 1194, al igual que el célebre vitral conocido como Notre-Dame de la Belle Verrière («Nuestra Señora del Bello Vitral»). La ventana oriental del deambulatorio, tras el altar mayor, refleja los intereses del capítulo catedralicio. Este importante lugar se reservaba tradicionalmente al árbol de Jesé (con la genealogía de Cristo) o la Pasión, pero en Chartres lo ocupan las vidas de los Apóstoles. Ello revela la importante deriva que se produce en la Iglesia occidental a principios del siglo XIII desde los grandes temas místicos hacia las ilustraciones de la vida cristiana activa. Por la misma razón, casi todas las ventanas que circundan el edificio al nivel del suelo -las más visibles para los fieles laicos- muestran vidas y relatos de santos y parábolas evangélicas.¨

Imagen de fr.academic.ru

Del artículo publicado en La Nación Revista

http://www.lanacion.com.ar/nota.asp?nota_id=1343688&origen=NLRevis&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=suples&utm_campaign=NLRevis

Hotel rooms as containers

The cabin hotel room (Tree Hotel), Harads – Sweden (2010). Diseño, Mårten Cyrén & Gustav Cyrén. A design for Tree Hotel.

Bayside marina hotel, Yokohama – Japón (2009). Arquitectura, Yasutaka Yoshimura architects.
Pictures from 
http://blog.bellostes.com/?tag=hoteles

Prince Charles to build ¨shanty town¨

Dharavi slum. From mail on line

This is an excerpt from the article by Fay Schlesinger for Mail on line. Before anybody could feel surprised at Prince Charles´ declaration that the slum has order and harmony and it is self organizing, I have to explain that he refers to a non Euclidean order, fractal indeed, under the Chaos theory and Complex systems, that´s the ¨self organizing¨ principle. Those words are probably taken from Dr. Nikos Salingaros, who is an urbanist advisor of Prince Charles.

Prince Charles meets members of the Dharavi slum, 2003. From mail on line

The Prince of Wales is building an eco-friendly ‘utopia’ for 15,000 poor people in India, inspired by the shanty town in Slumdog Millionaire.

The development will include schools, shops and 3,000 homes in a tiny area the size of 14 football pitches, the Daily Mail can reveal.

His multi-million-pound venture plans to turn a 25-acre swathe of Indian wasteland on the outskirts of either Calcutta or Bangalore into a ‘mini oasis in the desert’.

It will be modelled on Poundbury, the Dorset model village that has been Prince Charles’s 30-year pet project.

Building on the Indian scheme – expected to be the first of a series of eco-developments on the subcontinent by his charity, the Prince’s Foundation for the Built ­Environment – is set to begin in the autumn.

The project comes after Charles praised Mumbai’s vast Dharavi slum, later to be featured in Oscar-winning film Slumdog Millionaire, despite it housing up to a million people in a place less than half the size of the prince’s Highgrove Estate in Gloucestershire.

He wrote: ‘When you enter what looks from the outside like an immense mound of plastic and rubbish, you immediately come upon an intricate network of streets with miniature shops, houses and workshops, each one made out of any material that comes to hand.’

Unlike the ‘fragmented, deconstructed housing estates’ built in the West, the slum has ‘order and harmony’ he claimed, adding: ‘We have a great deal to learn about how complex ­systems can self-organise to ­create a harmonious whole.’

Keep on reading:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1345926/Prince-Charles-build-Slumdog-Millionaire-style-shanty-town-India.html?ito=feeds-newsxml