Arch. Myriam B. Mahiques Curriculum Vitae

Monday, February 28, 2011

Zaha Hadid´s Guangzhou Opera House


The Opera House is located at the foot of Zhujiang Boulevard across from the new Guangdong Provincial Museum. Adopting state of the art technology in its design and construction it is slated to be a lasting monument to the New Millennium, confirming Guangzhou as one of Asia’s cultural centers.
“We liked erosion and stones. It worked well next to the Pearl River. The metaphor is two pebbles picked from the bed of the river and placed on the river bank.” Simon Yu, Project Architect
Keep on reading about the Guangzhou Opera House. All pictures from Iwan Baan.





Saturday, February 26, 2011

El deterioro de los edificios históricos de Buenos Aires

El Palais de Glace, en Buenos Aires. En su lamentable estado. Aquí he tenido el placer de exponer concursos con trabajos seleccionados de arquitectura, junto a mi esposo y colega, más otros colegas amigos. Tengo muy lindos recuerdos de esos días.

Leía la nota de Pablo Tomino para La Nación, sección Sociedad, y no lo podía creer. Me partió el alma ver nuestro patrimonio edilicio en semejantes condiciones, y pensaba si de pronto yo ya me he acostumbrado a vivir en un sistema distinto, donde las ciudades son limpias y la policía terriblemente estricta. Entonces, me cuesta mucho más aceptar este abandono, porque no todo es presupuesto, sino políticas de mantenimiento, o políticas, en general y sin distinción de partidos.
No sé en otros estados, la ciudad de New York está bastante sucia, pero al menos en California, si la policía ve a alguien pintando graffitis, esa persona va a la cárcel o es arrestada por unas horas y luego se la envía a trabajo comunitario más cursos, según la gravedad del delito. Por supuesto hay multas, además hay brigadas anti graffiti, de voluntarios que son entrenados para remover las pintadas con pericia, sin cometer la barbaridad que comenta Pablo en la nota, que han dejado los ladrillos expuestos de tanto rasquetear. Además, existen las hot line para graffiti y los vecinos pueden denunciar en cualquier momento. Los nuevos edificios públicos, deben ser pintados con pinturas anti graffiti. En conclusión, sumado a las multas por tirar basura, se pueden ver las parquizaciones hermosas, las veredas, las casas, todo muy bello. No debiera generalizar, porque el Este de Los Angeles es otra historia, y el sociólogo Mike Davis cuenta en uno de sus libros sobre la muerte de un muchacho chicano, que fue baleado por la policía, cuando pintaba una pared de Los Angeles junto con un amigo, esto fue hace muchos años ya, bajo tolerancia cero. Sin llegar a estos extremos, creo que nuestro sistema en Buenos Aires, tan superpoblado, debiera cambiar. No nos podemos deshacer de los inadaptados, pero al menos intentar educarlos con trabajo comunitario y talleres.

La pared lateral del Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes de Buenos Aires. Contra esta pared, viven 9 personas. Aún recuerdo cuando íbamos a la confitería del parque, y de allí a visitar exposiciones y participar de conferencias. Caminábamos por el costado del edificio, sin toparnos con nadie....

También he visto homeless o gente sin techo caminando por San Francisco, y en otras ciudades, pero, se los lleva a campamentos de instalaciones semi fijas, con pequeñas habitaciones prefabricadas, como trailers, no se deja familias enteras en las calles, y la toma de terrenos no existe. NO SE PERMITE y así se evitan enfrentamientos, muertes e injusticias.
Dejo acá el link y unos párrafos de la nota. Hay cuatro fotos -lamentables- de las cuales sólo reproduzco dos. Y espero en unos meses poder hacer un post con la situación revertida.
¨Varios edificios de valor histórico de la ciudad, emblemáticos por su importancia arquitectónica, cultural y social, y que están al cuidado del gobierno nacional, muestran hoy un deterioro que es motivo de numerosas quejas. En la lista se apuntan desde el mismísimo Cabildo, desdibujado en su fachada con viejos grafitis, hasta el tradicional Palais de Glace, entre otros sitios desmejorados, como El Palacio de las Aguas, en Córdoba y Riobamba, y hasta la Secretaría de Cultura de la Nación, en la avenida Alvear 1690.
Por caso, el Palais de Glace, un histórico centro de exposiciones enclavado en el corazón de la Recoleta, tiene hoy un visible abandono. Y quedó en evidencia, más aún, en una zona en la que en los últimos dos años mejoró sensiblemente con la remodelación de la plaza Francia, donde se construyeron veredas y se sembró césped.
Paredes descascaradas, pintadas con grafitis y visibles parches de revoques de cemento, en tres caras de la estructura son los signos del abandono que muestra el Palais de Glace, que sólo conserva una aceptable imagen en su fachada, sobre la calle Posadas.¨...

South Sudan is planning its new Capital

A scale model of the new capital of Southern Sudan. Photo by Pascal Ladu
Juba Town
Southern Sudan, a semi-autonomous region that has just voted to become fully independent, is to build a brand new capital city, replete with modern town planning and expansion possibilities for generations to come, according to a government official. Juba, located in Central Equatoria State, is the current capital of Southern Sudan.
The oil-induced expansion of Juba has been chaotic and unplanned. It is in this context that the authorities have been making provisions for an alternative seat of government.
The proposed plans for the future capital city are now on display in the meeting hall of the Council of Ministers in Southern Sudan. Last week, the GoSS Council of Ministers proposed two sites including Ramshel (also spelled Ramciel), which was first proposed in 2003 by the former Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) chairman, the late Dr John Garang De Mabior.
Ramshel is in the centre of Southern Sudan, located in the border areas of Lakes State, Jonglei State and Unity State. The second possible location – which remains nameless at this stage – is in the Northeast of Central Equatoria State, bordering Eastern Equatoria, Jonglei and Lakes States. Basing a capital in either of these locations would ensure proximity to the principal oil-producing areas.
REFERENCE:
Excerpts and pictures from Pascal Ladu´s article. At 

Friday, February 25, 2011

Ozymandias

Aerial View of Thebes' Ramesseum. - showing pylons and secondary buildings

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away".

The 'Younger Memnonstatue of Ramesses II in the British Museum. From wikipedia.org

Ozymandias is a sonnet by Percy Bysshe Shelley, published in 1818. It is frequently anthologised and is probably Shelley's most famous short poem.
The central theme of "Ozymandias" is the inevitable complete decline of all leaders, and of the empires they build, however mighty in their own time.
The 'Younger Memnon' statue of Ramesses II in the British Museum is thought to have inspired the poem. Ozymandias was another name for Ramesses the Great, Pharaoh of the nineteenth dynasty of ancient Egypt. Ozymandias represents a transliteration into Greek of a part of Ramesses' throne name, User-maat-re Setep-en-re. The sonnet paraphrases the inscription on the base of the statue, given by Diodorus Siculus in his Bibliotheca historica as "King of Kings am I, Osymandias. If anyone would know how great I am and where I lie, let him surpass one of my works." Shelley's poem is often said to have been inspired by the arrival in London of a colossal statue of Ramesses II, acquired for the British Museum by the Italian adventurer Giovanni Belzoni in 1816.Rodenbeck and Chaney, however, point out that the poem was written and published before the statue arrived in Britain, and thus that Shelley could not have seen it.
The 2008 edition of the travel guide Lonely Planet's guide to Egypt says that the poem was inspired by the fallen statue of Ramesses II at the Ramesseum, a memorial temple built by Ramesses at Thebes, near Luxor in Upper Egypt.  (wikipedia.org)

100 Eleventh Avenue Jean Nouvel's Kaleidoscopic Condo

On the far West Side of Manhattan, adjacent to Frank Gehry's IAC Building, Ateliers Jean Nouvel's new residential project features a jumble of tilting glass on one facade and simple punch windows framing views of the skyline on the other. We speak with Nouvel's project manager, Francois Leininger, and Marc Simmons of facade consultant Front about both faces of the building.

Thursday, February 24, 2011

Upcoming exhibition: Frank Lloyd Wright: Organic Architecture for the 21st Century

“Frank Lloyd Wright: Organic Architecture for the 21st Century” runs Feb. 12-May 15 at the Milwaukee Art Museum. For more information, visit www.mam.org

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 Read more about Frank Lloyd´s Wright: 

http://www.expressmilwaukee.com/article-13738-frank-lloyd-wright-for-the-21st-century.html

Beekman Tower Frank Gehry's Rippled New York High Rise

Gehry Technologies near the top of what--at some 867 feet high--is New York's tallest residential building to discuss how the design team produced the tower's distinctive, wavy skin with a cost-efficient and easily constructible process.

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Earthquake in New Zealand

Christ church
¨At 12:51 p.m. on Tuesday, a 6.3 magnitude earthquake struck the Canterbury region of New Zealand's South Island, near the country's second-largest city, Christchurch. It is an aftershock of a massive, deeper earthquake that hit New Zealand last September, and has already caused more damage, injuries, and fatalities than the earlier quake. Hundreds of structures in Christchurch have now been severely damaged or collapsed completely. At the moment, at least 65 deaths have been confirmed, hundreds have been injured, and many are still missing.¨
From The Atlantic. See a gallery of 54 so sad pictures:

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