Projections on the Sidney Opera House
Coliseum. Italy´s 150o Anniversary
Washing clothes in Bangladesh
March 19th 2011, the full moon in Madrid
Sunday, March 20, 2011
Saturday, March 19, 2011
La gigantesca araña de Bourgeois ya habita en el barrio de La Boca
La obra Maman fue instalada en la explanada de Proa con una grúa. / Foto Miguel Acevedo Riú
Las buenas noticias, tomadas del artículo de Silvia Premat para La Nación:
A la típica postal de La Boca que incluye puentes, barcos y edificios multicolores, se sumó desde ayer una araña gigante. De bronce, mármol y acero inoxidable, nueve metros de alto y diez de ancho, la obra capital de Louise Bourgeois que se expuso en los museos Guggenheim de Nueva York y de Bilbao y en la Tate Gallery de Londres, llegó a Buenos Aires.
Hasta el 19 de junio, Maman , la araña con la que la artista francesa fallecida el año pasado quiso homenajear a su madre -"ella era una gran tejedora"-, permanecerá en la explanada de la Fundación Proa como prólogo de la primera muestra individual de Bourgeois en América latina. "Louise Bourgeois: el retorno de lo reprimido", se denomina la exhibición de unas 75 obras que muestran la incidencia del psicoanálisis en la vida de la escultora, que se volcó al arte luego de la muerte de su madre y fue marcada a fuego por la infidelidad de su padre.
Continúe leyendo:
Friday, March 18, 2011
Interview with Jaime Lerner. His bright solutions for Curitiba, Brazil
Favela. From socialnojornalismo.com.br
I´ve selected a couple of questions and answers regarding the environmental clean up work and portable streets, but the full interview is a ¨must read¨:
Jaime Lerner
¨Beginning in 1971, Jaime Lerner was elected Mayor of Curitiba, re-elected two more times, and then served as Governor of Paraná, Brazil. Lerner has won a number of major awards for his transportation, design, and environmental work, including the United Nations Environment Award; the Prince Claus Award, given by the Netherlands; and the Thomas Jefferson Foundation Medal in Architecture, given by the University of Virginia. In 2002, Lerner was elected president of the International Union of Architects.
Fisherman onshore collecting garbage. Image credit: Jaime Lerner Associated Architects
When you were mayor of Curitiba, you devised a number of low-cost solutions that turned your city into a model green community where people also have incomes 60 percent higher than the Brazilian average. What kind of investments did you make in green space? What do you see as the relationship between livability and sustainability?
If you want creativity, cut one zero from your budget. If you want sustainability, cut two zeroes from your budget. And if you want solidarity, assume your identity and respect others’ diversity. There are three main issues that are becoming important, not only for your city, but for the whole of mankind. These relate to three key issues in cities: mobility, sustainability, and tolerance (or social diversity).
On infrastructure, there’s always the assumption that the government has to provide public transport. Every time we try to create a solution, we have to have a good equation of co-responsibility with the public. That means it’s not a question of money and it’s not a question of skill; it’s how do we organize your equation of co-responsibility?
For example, when I was governor we had to work hard to avoid reduce pollution in our bays. Of course, it’s very expensive to do environmental clean-up work and we didn’t have the money. Another region had taken out a huge loan from the World Bank, about $800 million. For us though, the question wasn’t about money; the question was about mentality. We didn’t have that money so we started to clean our bays through an agreement with fishermen. If the fisherman catches a fish, it belongs to him. If he catches garbage, we bought the garbage. If the day was not good for fishing, the fishermen went to fish garbage. The more garbage they catch, the cleaner the bays became. The cleaner the bay is, more fish they would have. It that’s kind of win-win solution we need. We need to work with low-cost solutions. And, of course, in public transport, we also organized a good equation of co-responsibility with the public.
You were also known for innovations in the delivery of city services. One program to clean up dirty, narrow streets that were inaccessible to trash collectors gave residents bags of groceries or transit passes in return for their garbage. You decentralized garbage collection. How well did this program work? Have other cities taken up this approach?
It’s been working for more than 20 years in Curitiba. In many cities, there are places where it’s difficult to provide trucks access to collect garbage. In many cities, if the slums are on the hills or deep in valleys, they’re difficult to access. In these places, people are throwing away their garbage and polluting the streams. Their children are playing in polluted areas. In 1989, we started a program where we said, Okay, we’re going to buy your garbage as long as you put your garbage in a bag, and bring it to the trucks, where it’s more accessible. In two or three months, all these areas were clean, and these very low-income people had an additional source of income.
We also started a public education programs on the separation of garbage because we realized that we could transform one problem if we separated garbage in every household. We started teaching every child in every schools. Children taught their parents. Since then, Curitiba had the highest rate of separation of garbage in the world for more than 20 years. Around 60 or 70 percent of families are separating their garbage at home.
Portable Streets. Image credit: Jaime Lerner Associated Architects
At the street level, you’ve been experimenting with portable streets, which you say can enable vendors to set up easily anywhere, creating informal and spontaneous market street life. Why do we need this infrastructure?
Some places in some cities have become decayed. There’s no life. When that happens, it’s very difficult to bring back life because people don’t want to live in a place like that. However, the moment we bring street life, people will want to live there again. That’s why we designed the portable streets. On a Friday night, we can deliver a portable street and remove it Monday morning. We can put a whole street life in front of a university or any place, bringing street life back.
Read the full interview at The Dirt:
Thursday, March 17, 2011
If We Want To. An exhibition on the role of the forest in a sustainable future. Sweden
Sweden forest. From annaknos.com
Welcome to the VIP-viewing and inauguration of "If We Want To" at 5 pm on Friday, March 18 in the Skellefteå town hall. The travelling exhibition If We Want To is produced by Virserum Art Museum.
As one of the chosen cities of Wooden City 2012, Skellefteå is the obvious choice to host If We Want To. The exhibition will focus on the importance of wood as well as create a dialogue on how climate friendly timber construction can contribute to a sustainable society.
When Virserum Art Museum embarked on their third major exhibition on wood and wood architecture, the issues of sustainability and the climate were impossible to ignore. There was a sense that these issues had lost focus following the COP15 climate change conference in Copenhagen. Which made the issues even more pertinent. The future will look very different. But in what way? The exhibition ”If We Want To” presents the international call for an Architecture of Necessity. The exhibition is accompanied by a rich, hardbound catalogue in both Swedish and English. ”If We Want To” will now go on a tour.
SUBJECTS
1. We’re screwed. This scene describes climate change and its consequences for humanity through various fluorescent graphs and scatter diagrams.
2. The lure of the city. An installation that depicts a typical slum-dwelling.
3. At night I dream. Climate disaster creates climate refugees.
4. Kisses or growth. This scene deals with the pursuit of happiness
and wealth. The consumer hysteria that leads to a wasteful use of resources.
5. The architect’s room
6. Sustainability
7. The forest will save us
8. Sustainable countryside
9. Wood construction today
10. The world’s premier wood architecture
Information/contact:
Henrik Teleman
Director
henrik@virserumskonsthall.com
This touring exhibition will possibly go to Canada this autumn
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
CALL FOR PAPERS Modern Catholic Space Symposium — London, 9-10/12/2011/
Catholic Church of the Transfiguration. Project for Lagos, Nigeria. Image from http://www.mymodernmet.com/
Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral. From http://www.aboutliverpool.com/
Call for papers: MODERN CATHOLIC SPACE
Symposium dates: 9 and/or 10 December 2011
Venue: Mount Street Jesuit Centre, London
Modern architecture for the Roman Catholic Church in the twentieth century could be experimental, transgressive or progressive, comforting or shocking; sometimes it appeared within a culture of intense theoretical and theological dialogue between architects and clergy, and sometimes it challenged orthodoxy and innovated at the fringes of the Church’s complex structure. At various significant moments, modern architecture was either repressed and quenched, or welcomed and widely adopted. Architects could be concerned with the symbolic potential of modern architecture to evoke newly emphasised ideas in theology. In church architecture throughout the twentieth century, the liturgy was a central focus of development, as space and ritual were intimately connected. Monastic life was subject to modern interpretations of ancient ideals. Mission stations far from Rome might echo modern architecture’s development of a ‘critical regionalism’. Conventionally, the Second Vatican Council has been seen as a pivotal moment in the shift towards a modern form of church space, but increasingly scholarship is revealing the Council to have been only one marker of broader trends. More recently, architects have sought continuity and reattachment to the past instead of innovation.
This symposium seeks to present new research on specific manifestations of these larger historical currents. Paper proposals might address the following themes:
- Church architecture and liturgy, at any point in the twentieth century;
- The effects of patronage on architectural production;
- Catholic theology, soteriology and eschatology and architecture;
- Approaches to the past in twentieth-century Catholic architecture;
- New materials and building techniques and their effects on Catholic space;
- New spatial forms of pilgrimage, monasticism, or popular devotion;
- Symbolism and modern art in Catholic architecture;
- Politics, identity, nationality and ethnicity in Church buildings;
- Architecture and ecumenical engagement.
Keynote speaker: Prof. Richard Keickhefer, Northwestern University (tbc)
Proposals for papers of around 15-20 minutes, should be a maximum of 300 words, accompanied by a one or two page CV (to include full contact details and a list of any relevant publications or projects).
Deadline for receipt of proposals: 21 April 2011
Deadline for decision and advice on proposals: 10 June 2011
Symposium dates: 9 and/or 10 December 2011
Venue: Mount Street Jesuit Centre, London
Please send proposal and CV as a single MS Word or PDF file by email only to : catholicspace@ntu.ac.uk.
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Galería Nacional de Groenlandia/National Gallery of Greenland
Danish architects bjarke ingels group has won the invited competition to design greenland's new national gallery of art in the capital city of nuuk. a collaborative effort with TNT nuuk, ramboll nuuk, andarkitekti, the proposal was unanimously selected over six other nordic architects including norwegian snøhetta and finnish heikkinen-komonen.Conceived as a projection of a geometrically perfect circle on the sloped site, the new
3000 m2 museum is a courtyard building that combines a comprehensive layout with a sensitive adaption to the landscape. the resulting form resembles a melted ring that follows the natural topography to imply the metaphor of a glacier or drifting snow.
La oficina de arquitectura danesa bjarke ingels group ha ganado el concurso por invitación para el diseño de la nueva galería nacional de arte en la ciudad capital de Nuuk, Groenlandia. Un esfuerzo de colaboración con TNT nuuk, Nuuk Ramboll, andarkitekti, la propuesta fue seleccionada por unanimidad por otros seis arquitectos nórdicos incluyendo al noruego snøhetta and heikkinen-komonen.
Concebido como una proyección de un círculo geométricamente perfecto en el sitio con pendiente, el nuevo museo de 3000 m2 es un edificio con patio, que combina un diseño integral con una adaptación sensible al paisaje. la forma resultante se asemeja a un anillo fundido que sigue la topografía natural que implica la metáfora de la nieve, los glaciares a la deriva.
Siga leyendo:
Monday, March 14, 2011
Tokyo: buildings that didn´t collapse thanks to Building Codes
Noda, Iwate. From Clarin.com
From Inhabitat.com, an excerpt from the article by Diane Pham:
From seawalls that line stretches of Japan’s coastline, to skyscrapers that sway to absorb earthquakes, to unrelenting building codes, there is no other country better prepared for an earthquake than Japan. Over the years, the country has invested billions of dollars developing new technology to aid in protecting their citizens and infrastructure against earthquakes and tsunamis.
Buildings in the country have been built to be earthquake proof, and construction focuses on deep foundation and massive shock absorbers to dampen seismic energy in the event of an earthquake. Another method that is often employed in construction is to create a base for the building that would allow it to move semi-independently from the total structure, in turn reducing the shaking caused by a quake. As seen in the video taken above by an onlooker in the neighborhood of Shinjuku, while the buildings sway, they do not collapse. In fact, not one building in Tokyo fell despite the record breaking magnitude – a true testament to the level of engineering involved in the construction of their structures.
Keep on reading:
http://inhabitat.com/despite-record-breaking-earthquake-no-buildings-in-tokyo-collapsed-thanks-to-stringent-building-codes/
The aftermath of the earthquake in Rikuzentakada
From npr.org, excerpts from the article by Alan Greenblatt:¨Japan could not protect its entire coastline against tsunami with its system of seawalls. And with sizable aftershocks still occurring, the final death toll will not be known for some time. But it will be a fraction of the 230,000 deaths seen in Haiti following last year's earthquake.
That's in spite of the fact that the Port-au-Prince earthquake was far smaller in magnitude than Friday's, which was 8.9 — one of the largest earthquakes ever recorded.
"The biggest difference between a place like Haiti and Japan is that in Japan, they experience earthquakes frequently and they build the habits of a high level of earthquake technology into their engineering," says Miyamoto, who is president of a structural engineering firm based in California.
"They get a magnitude earthquake of 7 or 8 every decade, so naturally they get good at it," he says.
ncome inequality rarely matters so much as it does when it comes to surviving earthquakes. Japan is a wealthy nation that can afford to build structures capable of standing up to sustained shaking. But places like Haiti, which was already one of the world's poorest nations before its devastating earthquake struck, can't.
Japan faces enormous recovery and rebuilding costs, but it can afford to pay them, says Roger Bilham, a University of Colorado geologist. "Basically, when you have an earthquake in developing countries, they die," he says. "In the developed countries, they pay."
In poor countries, Bilham says, badly constructed houses are "an unrecognized weapon of mass destruction."
Corruption And Collapse
The type of brittle, poorly mixed concrete often used in Haiti was a major factor in the enormous death toll there last year, with thousands of buildings damaged. According to Bilham, Haiti's earthquake caused more than twice as many deaths as any previous 7.0 earthquake.
Building failures also accounted for the bulk of the nearly 90,000 deaths caused by an 8.0 earthquake in 2008 in Sichuan, China. That earthquake led to loud complaints about corruption and shoddy materials used in school construction.
Bilham co-authored a study published in Nature in January that found 83 percent of quake deaths from building collapse over the past 30 years happened in countries that were especially corrupt.
Builders sometimes find it cheaper to pay bribes than build according to code.¨
Read the full article:
Do streets in Washington DC have hidden symbols in their pattern?
At sunrise, a jogger reaches the top of the 56 steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Photograph by Dan Westergren. National Geographic.com
I´m reading the novel The Lost Symbol, by Dan Brown; not that I want to recommend the book, for me, it´s like a copy of The Da Vinci Code, but it´s fun when you don´t want to think hard on real life work. At least, I´ve learnt some interesting facts about the history of Washington DC and its architecture. Of course, I can´t forget the book is fiction, but it was my first time, for example, to learn about George Washington´s Aphoteosis.
The dome showing George Washington´s Aphoteosis.From learnnc.org
The George Washington´s Masonic Memorial. From http://gwmemorial.org/index.php
Trying to see what is fact an what is not, I´ve come across with an article by Brian Handwerk for National Geographic. There are a couple of questions, based on the intrigues in the book The Lost Symbol that are answered by two Masons and a historian of the ancient Christian order. Here, the excerpt about the streets:
An old map of Washington DC. Google images
FREEMASON MYTH 4
Washington, D.C.'s Streets Form Giant Masonic Symbols
It's long been suggested that powerful Freemasons embedded Masonic symbols in the Washington, D.C., street plan designed mainly by Frenchman Pierre L'Enfant in 1791.
The Lost Symbol is expected to prominently feature "Masonic mapping," detecting pentagrams and other symbols by connecting the dots among landmarks. Pre-release clues released by author Dan Brown, for example, include GPS coordinates for Washington landmarks.
"Individually, Masons had a role in building the White House, in building and designing Washington, D.C.," said Mark Tabbert, director of collections at the George Washington Masonic Memorial in Alexandria, Virginia. "And [small scale] Masonic symbols can be found throughout the city, as they can in most U.S. cities."
But there's no Masonic message in the city's street plan, Tabbert said. For starters, Pierre L'Enfant wasn't a Mason.
And, Tabbert asked, why would Masons go to the trouble of laying out a street grid to match their symbols?
"There has to be a [reason] for doing such a thing," said Tabbert, himself a Mason. "Dan Brown will find one, because he writes fiction. But there isn't one."
Read the full article:
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