A new concert hall by Frank Gehry opens on January 25, 2011, in South Beach, Miami. Howard Herring, president of the New World Symphony, takes us on a tour of the building.
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Monday, February 21, 2011
ULI Awards for excellence in Downtown revitalization
Los Angeles Downtown. Development strategy in the area of Staples Center. From http://www.migcom.com/
Three 2010 ULI Awards for Excellence winners—Sundance Square: Fort Worth, Texas; the Columbia Heights revitalization in Washington, D.C.; and L.A. LIVE in downtown Los Angeles. Theodore Thoerig makes a brief explanation of the before-and-after look at each city’s downtown.
I copy here the paragraphs about Los Angeles, as this is the most interesting for me. See the link below to read the article in Urbanland.uli.org:
South Park, Los Angeles, late 1990s. The South Park neighborhood is dominated by industrial uses and automobile dealerships. The struggling Los Angeles Convention Center is in the red, costing the city more than $20 million a year. Despite its location next to the central business district and at the confluence of two major freeways, the area remains unnoticed and underdeveloped—a place no one would think to go.
Sunday, February 20, 2011
The Chinese conception of a house
Traditional Chinese house. From http://dreamhouse.onsugar.com/I
" The Chinese conception of house and garden is therefore determined by the central idea that the house itself is only a detail forming a part of the surrounding country, like a jewel in its setting, and harmonizing with it. For this reason, all signs of artificiality must be hidden as much as possible, and the rectilinear lines of the walls must be hidden or broken by overhanging branches.
A perfecdy square house, shaped like a magnified piece of brick, is justifiable in a factory building, because it is a factory building where efficiency is the first consideration. But a perfectly square house for a home to live in is an atrocity of the first order. The Chinese conception of an ideal home has been succinctly expressed by a writer in the following manner:
Inside the gate there is a footpath and the footpath must be winding. At the turning of the footpath there is an outdoor screen and the screen must be small. Behind the screen there is a terrace and the terrace must be level. On the banks of the terrace there are flowers and the flowers must be fresh. Beyond the flowers is a wall and the wall must be low. By the side of the wall, there is a pine tree and the pine tree must be old. At the foot of the pine tree there are rocks and the rocks must be quaint. Over the rocks there is a pavilion and the pavilion must be simple. Behind the pavilion are bamboos and the bamboos must be thin and sparse. At the end of the bamboos there is a house and the house must be secluded. By the side of the house there is a road and the road must branch off. At the point where several roads come together, there is a bridge and the bridge must be tantalizing to cross. At the end of the bridge there are trees and the trees must be tall. In the shade of the trees there is grass and the grass must be green.
Above the grass plot there is a ditch and the ditch must be slender. At the top of the ditch there is a spring and the spring must gurgle. Above the spring there is a hill and the hill must
be deep. Below the hill there is a hall and the hall must be square. At the corner of the hall there is a vegetable garden and the vegetable garden must be big. In the vegetable garden
there is a stork and the stork must dance. The stork announces that there is a guest and the guest must not be vulgar. When the guest arrives there is wine and wine must not be declined. During the service of the wine, there is drunkenness and the drunken guest must not want to go home."
FROM: The Importance of Living. By Lin Yutang. P.267/268 New York, 1937
Friday, February 18, 2011
A Skyscraper Brings Danish Urbanism to Manhattan
From Good Design Daily:
It's impossible not to be downright envious of Denmark, what with their bike superhighways and a harbor so clean you can swim in it. But now the United States will get a little slice of Copenhagen with West 57th, a new residential tower planned for Manhattan's Upper West Side that promises to bring the Danes's appreciation for green urbanism to New York.
The building is designed by BIG, where principal Bjarke Ingels has become a poster boy for groundbreaking sustainable architecture, including plans for a ski run that doubles as a waste treatment plant. West 57th will have more of those dramatic sculptural qualities BIG is known for, plus it will transform an underdeveloped industrial site adjacent to the Hudson River into a verdant architectural destination.
Keep on reading the article by Alissa Walker:
Thursday, February 17, 2011
Selection of pictures from the book ¨Earth from Above¨. Author Yann Arthus-Bertrand
Boat Houses in Nigeria
Yann Arthus-Bertrand has sold more than 3.000.000 books of his title ¨Earth from Above¨.
Here, a selection of a few pictures.
The Changping district. Beijing, China
Favelas in Rio de Janeiro, Brasil
Pigeon Houses Mit Gahmr Delta, Egypt
Ruins of the medieval city of Shali, Egypt
Suburbs of Copenhagen, Denmark
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
La ciudad y la basura
Basura en las calles de Palermo. Foto de Palermonline.com.ar
Hace unos 17 años, vivía en el barrio de Olivos, provincia de Buenos Aires. En ese entonces éramos 4, y vaya, que generábamos basura, entre pañales y comida. Recuerdo que los recolectores de la cuadra me ofrecieron bolsitas de plástico para residuos, y yo me negué a comprarles, aduciendo que en el supermercado estaban más baratas. Al día siguiente, mis bolsas llenas, las que se dejan en la calle en espera de recolección, estaban totalmente rotas, toda la basura desparramada, desde mi casa hasta la esquina. Me pregunté mientras juntaba todo, a quién me quejaría, la empresa, el Sindicato, seguramente los protegería y culparían a algún perro.
Hoy leía la nota de La Nación, sección Opinión ¨La falta de higiene urbana¨ y veo que mucho no ha cambiado. Entré a un sitio de Palermo, y sí, sigue habiendo basura en las calles, incluso luego de juntarla. No incluyo aquí algunas provincias, que se ven tan limpias y cuidadas, como Mendoza.
Luego, hay una cuestión de educación. Mucha gente, ve basura e incorpora más basura, como los boletos de los colectivos, los papelitos varios que debieran ir a los bolsillos hasta llegar al cesto correspondiente.
El autor de la nota hace mención a EEUU, y sí, acá hay otra cultura de la basura, aunque debo reconocer, que Los Angeles es mucho más sucio que Orange County (impecable) y New York, más sucio que San Francisco, etc. Además, la cultura viene de la mano con el rigor. Tirar un papel a la autopista, dependiendo de la localidad, implica 200$ de multa, por ejemplo.
Un plano de restaurante que no muestre un recipiente para basura, grande, de un material a prueba de roedores, no sería aprobado, es más, hay que mostrar en el plano dónde se dejará la basura, si el lugar de los contenedores está lejos, habrá que construír otro más cerca, para evitar que alguien se tiente a dejar la basura afuera. Dicho espacio, se construye con bloques y posee un portón metálico.
Entre las curiosidades, leía en el 2005 en Los Angeles Times, que la cantidad de cuervos que nos despiertan día a día junto a las gaviotas, se debe a toda la comida disponible dentro de los contenedores metálicos que se dejan en los alleys o calles de servicio. A ellos se suman los possums o comadrejas, tan gordas, de un tamaño que jamás había visto en mi vida -están muy bien alimentadas-. La recolección doméstica se hace una vez a la semana, con todas las bolsitas dentro de contenedores plásticos o los grandes metálicos, resistentes a ratas, perros, comadrejas, coyotes, osos y ardillas.
Los invito a leer la nota de La Nación:
¨Es lamentable el aspecto de algunas ciudades, empezando por Buenos Aires. En las esquinas se acumulan residuos, sobre todo durante los fines de semana, y abundan desperdicios y los olores nauseabundos que estos despiden por doquier. Esto no es nuevo. Se ha agravado en forma proporcional con el aumento de la población. Es común culpar a las autoridades de una situación tan desagradable que afecta tanto las pupilas como el olfato.
¿Es realmente culpa de las autoridades? Tienen parte de la responsabilidad, desde luego, pero ocho de cada diez argentinos admiten que la gente contribuye poco o nada a la limpieza de la ciudad, según un revelador sondeo de TNS Gallup. Las opiniones están divididas, en realidad. Seis de cada diez argentinos consideran que su ciudad está algo o muy sucia; el resto, cuatro de cada diez, opina que está limpia.
Es innegable que existe un abismo entre Buenos Aires y el conurbano bonaerense y el interior del país, en algunas de cuyas ciudades se preservan sanas costumbres como barrer a diario la vereda y ufanarse de una higiene que a menudo no reconoce el límite entre lo público y lo privado. En la Capital, como en toda ciudad de grandes dimensiones, no hay condena social entre nosotros mismos si alguien arroja basura en la calle y, de ese modo, no sólo contribuye a afear su aspecto, sino también a tapar las bocas de tormenta o poner en riesgo la integridad de los demás.
Del sondeo surge un dato esclarecedor: siete de cada diez entrevistados han coincidido en que la gente es la responsable de que la ciudad en la que viven esté sucia. Es diferente esa percepción en la Capital, donde el 79 por ciento cree que está "algo o muy sucia", respecto del 66 por ciento y el 59 por ciento que piensan lo mismo en el Gran Buenos Aires y el interior del país, respectivamente.¨
Continúe leyendo:
Hermès Rive Gauche´s interior design. Paris
Hermès’s newest emporium has an unassuming facade and a pair of store windows with displays of furniture and flowers that fit neatly into the bourgeois row of shop fronts on the rue de Sèvres in Paris’s 6th arrondissement. They little prepare the visitor for what lies inside: the dazzling renovation of an Art Deco space that once housed a swimming pool, the Piscine Lutetia, next to the fabled and still extant Hotel Lutetia.
In this adaptive reuse converting an indoor swimming pool into a store, Denis Montel, the architect and managing and artistic director of Rena Dumas Architecture Intérieure (RDAI), which has designed a number of Hermès stores, created the undulating structures. These intimate yet permeable display pavilions are intended to “inhabit and divide the space” of the 16,000-square-foot main floor, Montel emphasizes, and establish a dialogue with the rectilinear lines of the 1935 pool interior originally designed by Lucien Béguet. The new biomorphic insertions also successfully mediate the scale between the atrium’s volume and the smaller display counters and merchandise.
Since the site is a registered “monument historique” but is not classified, the law allowed some stylistic leeway in its restoration.
Hermès Rive Gauche´s exterior
Read the full article by Erich Theophile and Steven Yee
All pictures from http://archrecord.construction.com/
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
The Precolumbian city of Cahokia
Cahokia mound. From sacred destinations.com
Preserving the remains of an ancient Native American city near Collinsville, Illinois, the Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site is across the Mississippi River from St. Louis, Missouri. Covering more than 2,000 acres, Cahokia is the only prehistoric Indian city north of Mexico.
Best known for large, man-made earthen structures, the city of Cahokia was inhabited from about A.D. 700 to 1400. Built by ancient peoples known as the Mound Builders, Cahokia's original population was thought to have been only about 1,000 until about the 11th century when it expanded to tens of thousands.
Cahokia Mounds. Photo: Illinois Historic Preservation Agency.
From the article by Tim de Chant, for ¨Per Square Mile¨, I´ve learnt about the ancient city of Cahokia. Read a paragraph and keep on reading:
Cahokia is one of the largest historical American cities you’ve probably never heard of. Peaking around 1250 CE, Cahokia is considered the first Mississipian settlement, a culture which spread to throughout the central and southeastern United States. The city’s inhabitants built over 100 mounds, eighty of which remain. One of them still towers 92 feet over the surrounding fields and is easily visible from the scratched postage-stamp windows of St. Louis’ Gateway Arch. With somewhere between 10,000 to 15,000 people, it held the record for the largest American city until around 1800, when Philadelphia finally overtook it.
With that many people crammed into just under three-quarters of a square mile—the estimated size of the city’s neighborhoods—it may sound like Cahokia was as cramped as the slums of Upton Sinclair’s Chicago. But it probably didn’t feel that way. Sweeping plazas and towering mounds added nearly three square miles of open space, keeping much of the city open and airy like Baron Haussmann’s Paris. Yet unlike the city on the Seine’s astronomical modern density of 58,890 people per square mile, Cahokia’s population lived at a positively suburban 1,000 to 1,500 people per square mile, thanks to the plazas and mounds.
http://persquaremile.com/2011/02/08/density-in-the-pre-columbian-united-states-a-look-at-cahokia/
Woodhenge
From cahokiamounds.org:
After a summer of intense excavation, Dr. Warren Wittry was studying excavation maps when he observed that numerous large oval-shaped pits seemed to be arranged in arcs of circles. He theorized that posts set in these pits lined up with the rising sun at certain times of the year, serving as a calendar, which he called WOODHENGE. After further excavations by Wittry and other archaeologists, more post pits were found where predicted, and evidence that there were as many as five Woodhenges at this location. These calendars had been built over a period of 200 years (A.D. 900-1100). Fragments of wood remaining in some of the post pits revealed red cedar had been used for the posts, a sacred wood.
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