Snail shell system

I knew about the cabins in Japan where anybody can sleep, but didn't know about this portable system. The difference (apart from the construction system) with the other one in Japan is that it can be yours. From its manual:

The SNAIL SHELL SYSTEM is a low cost system that enables persons to move around, change their whereabouts and live in various environments. One unit supplies space for one person. It is mobile both on land and water. One person can move it slowly, either by pushing it like a wheel, walking inside it or on top of it.

On water it can be rowed, moved by a kite or hooked up to a vessel, for example, a ferry. The unit rests on one flat side and can be anchored in lakes, rivers, harbours or at sea. On land, it can be placed in city spaces, fields, forests etc.

The SNAIL SHELL SYSTEM takes up very little space and can easily be placed in a discreet way. It can be buried in the ground, exposing only the entrance. It can also function as a comfortable space inside existing buildings.

Several units can meet up and form temporary communities.

The unit can be hooked up onto existing infrastructure like telecommunication lines and electricity cables (for example, by connecting it to street lamps).

If special devices are added, the unit can supply its own energy.

The SNAIL SHELL SYSTEM can also be used for transporting different items and it can provide protection for persons when they participate in situations like demonstrations.

http://www.n55.dk/MANUALS/SNAIL_SHELL_SYSTEM/SSS.html

Michel Bauwens says " The Snail Shell was pretty cool but a bit too small for anything but a fun experiment. It lacked any insulation and the tiny manway was difficult for most people." Thanks Michel for sharing!

Teaching architecture

The window. Acrylic on canvas by Christina Ramos.

Young people go to the university with the aim of becoming architects, of finding out if they have got what it takes. What is the first thing we should teach them?

First of all, we must explain that the person standing in front of them is not someone who asks questions whose answers he already knows. Practicing architecture is asking oneself questions, finding one’s own answers with the help of the teacher, whittling down, finding solutions. Over and over again.

The strength of a good design lies in ourselves and in our ability to perceive the world with both emotion and reason. A good architectural design is sensuous. A good architectural design is intelligent. We all experience architecture before we have even heard the word. The roots of architectural understanding lie in our architectural experience: our room, our house, our street, our village, our town, our landscape –we experience them all early on, unconsciously, and we subsequently compare them with the countryside, towns and houses that we experience later on. The roots of our understanding or architecture lie in our childhood, in our youth; they lie in our biography.

Picture from wikihow.com

REFERENCE: paragraphs from chapter Teaching architecture, learning architecture. 1996. From the book Thinking Architecture, by Peter Zumthor. Berlin

Manteros en la calle Florida: la degradación del espacio urbano

Foto: lanacion.com.ar

Siempre estuve orgullosa de mi ciudad nativa, Buenos Aires. Tan hermosa, con sus torres, el río, los edificios eclécticos, la variedad de su arquitectura, la vegetación, las calles llenas de gente. Antes de viajar a EEUU, me paré con mi hija mayor en Plaza de Mayo, y le dije, mirá bien a tu alrededor nuestra ciudad. Porque no sabemos cuánto tiempo pasará antes que volvamos. Así fue. 

Desde hace unos años, mis amigos arquitectos me hablan del boom de la construcción, veo fotos de avances y me alegro, hasta que leo noticias como esta, de nuestra calle Florida, tan conocida por los turistas, llena de gente que no paga impuestos, tirados en el piso como linyeras, vendiendo baratijas, al frente de los locales distinguidos, que son mantenidos y por los cuales se paga altísimas rentas e impuestos.

Hace algo el gobierno, la policía? Pues no. Porque muchos policías están ¨arreglados¨ con estos ¨vendedores¨ callejeros y reciben sus pagos para cerrar los ojos. 

Como dicen en La Nación, cómo se siente un ciudadano argentino que paga sus impuestos y ve que la AFIP no se inmuta ante estas cuestiones?

Alguna vez he visto estos callejeros en la calle Florida, pero eran unos pocos, asustados. Y, en la ciudad balnearia de Mar del Plata, se aterraban si veían llegar a la policía. Jamás imaginé tanta degradación del espacio público, ni hablar de las casas tomadas y destruídas.

Hace dos días, un cliente mexicano, nos preguntaba si valía la pena invertir en Argentina, que era una idea que tenía pendiente. Luego de media hora de charla, lo convencimos que hasta que no cambie esta situación, que vaya pensando en otros países, cómo haría para cuidar su propiedad a la distancia?. Lamentablemente.

Foto lanacion.com.ar

Acá dejo un link del diario La Nación, que he leído con mucha pena

http://www.lanacion.com.ar/1388077-los-manteros-de-la-calle-florida?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=titulares&utm_campaign=NLOpi

Stavros Niarchos Cultural Center by Renzo Piano

Construction of the $803 million Stavros Niarchos Cultural Center will start later this year and conclude in 2015. The building will rise on the Saronikos Kolpos waterfront in southern Athens, within the new 42-acre Stavros Niarchos Park. Piano has folded the park over the structure, lifting the landscape to a height of 32 meters. SFNCC’s submerged interior will include a 1,400-seat theater for the Greek National Opera, as well as a 400-seat experimental performance space. The new building also replaces the 1832 National Library, providing a home for more than two million books.

REFERENCE (Article and pictures):

http://archrecord.construction.com/news/2011/06/110629-Stavros-Niarchos-Cultural-Center.asp

Knut Hamsun Center By Steven Holl Architects

Steven Holl designed elements of this museum, dedicated to the Norwegian writer, as emblems of a human body and figures in Hamsun's work.

Floating pools in the rivers, New York

+ Pool is a proposal by Dong-Ping Wong, Archie Lee Coates IV and Jeffrey Franklin, to build a plus-shaped floating pool in the East River. That’s right, just floating in the river right off the banks of Manhattan. With the rising summer heat in New York, it’s no surprise that people are imagining creative ways to dive into the surrounding waters and cool off. But the idea behind + Pool is hardly new, in fact, “floating baths” as they were known, are a part of the city’s history.

As early as 1817, Manhattan had private marine baths. As the immigrant population grew, people who lived in buildings that lacked bathing facilities flocked to the river. To accommodate this trend, the first floating river baths were built in 1870, separated by gender, and situated around 51st Street along the Hudson River. These were popular for decades, until they were eventually phased out in the 1930s due to concerns of congestion, hygiene, and pollution.

But the Clean Water Act of 1972 allowed people to think about using their rivers again, and ideas similar to + Pool were explored in the last few years. In 2004, Metropolis Next Generation finalist, Meta Brunzema introduced a 20-foot river pool to the Hudson River in Beacon. Decorated with a rainbow-colored perimeter, the river pool is a modular design composed of low-impact fiberglass seats and a flexible mesh made of Dyneema twine. The floating wading pool provides an experience of swimming in the middle of the river, as the mesh bottom allows the river water to flow through, bringing with it the rhythm of the natural tide.

REFERENCE:

Excerpt and pictures from the article by Cheryl Yau at metropolismag.com

http://www.metropolismag.com/pov/20110629/pool

The tower of Babel. Illustrated by Gustave Doré

And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech.

And it came to pass as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there. And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar. And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.

And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the children of men builded. And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech.

So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city.

Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.—Genesis xi, 1-9.

REFERENCE

THE DORE GALLERY OF BIBLE ILLUSTRATIONS. Vol. I. Edition of 1891

Paul Gustave Dore was born in the city of Strasburg, January 10, 1833. Of his boyhood we have no very particular account. At eleven years of age, however, he essayed his first artistic creation—a set' of lithographs, published in his native city. The following year found him in Paris, entered as a 7. student at the Charlemagne Lyceum. His first actual work began in 1848, when his fine series of sketches, the "Labors of Hercules," was given to the public through the medium of an illustrated, journal with which he was for a long time connected as designer. In 1856 were published the illustrations for Balzac's "Contes Drolatiques" and those for "The Wandering Jew "—the first humorous and grotesque in the highest degree—indeed, showing a perfect abandonment to fancy; the other weird and supernatural, with fierce battles, shipwrecks, turbulent mobs, and nature in her most forbidding and terrible aspects. Every incident or suggestion that could possibly make the story more effective, or add to the horror of the scenes was seized upon and portrayed with wonderful power. These at once gave the young designer a great reputation, which was still more enhanced by his subsequent works.

With all his love for nature and his power of interpreting her in her varying moods, Dore was a dreamer, and many of his finest achievements were in the realm of the imagination. But he was at home in the actual world also, as witness his designs for "Atala," "London—a Pilgrimage," and many of the scenes in "Don Quixote."

When account is taken of the variety of his designs, and the fact considered that in almost every task he attempted none had ventured before him, the amount of work he accomplished is fairly incredible. To enumerate the immense tasks he undertook—some single volumes alone containing hundreds of illustrations—will give some faint idea of his industry. Besides those already mentioned are Montaigne, Dante, the Bible, Milton, Rabelais, Tennyson's "Idyls of the King," "The Ancient Mariner," Shakespeare, "Legende de Croquemitaine," La Fontaine's "Fables," and others still.

Take one of these works—the Dante, La Fontaine, or "Don Quixote"—and glance at the pictures. The mere hand labor involved in their production is surprising; but when the quality of the work is properly estimated, what he accomplished seems prodigious. No particular mention need be made of him as painter or sculptor, for his reputation rests solely upon his work as an illustrator.

Dore's nature was exuberant and buoyant, and he was youthful in appearance. He had a passion for music, possessed rare skill as a violinist, and it is assumed that, had he failed to succeed with his pencil, he could have won a brilliant reputation as a musician.

He was a bachelor, and lived a quiet, retired life with his mother—married, as he expressed it, to her and his art. His death occurred on January 23, 1883.

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/8701/8701-h/8701-h.htm

Restaurarán la iglesia San Francisco de Asís en La Plata

Iglesia de San Francisco de Asís en La Plata. Foto de nestor_lp en http://www.panoramio.com/photo/16171294

Interior de la Iglesia San Francisco de Asís. Foto de Santiago Hafford para La Nación

El ministerio de Infraestructura bonaerense licitó la restauración y puesta en valor del Templo Parroquial Iglesia San Francisco de Asís ubicado en La Plata, en el marco del Programa Bicentenario y Obra Pública Patrimonial de la Provincia de Buenos Aires. Según se informó oficialmente, las obras del templo que fue declarado Monumento Histórico Provincial en 1975 y donde se casaron Juan Domingo Perón y Eva Duarte, el 10 de diciembre de 1945, contará con un presupuesto de poco más de 2.400.000 pesos. “Esta obra es fundamental para recuperar la Iglesia San Francisco de Asís, que tiene un gran valor histórico y religioso, y que es muy preciada dentro de la comunidad local. Todas las tareas de restauración del interior y el exterior se harán con la rigurosidad necesaria para respetar la mirada patrimonial de este lugar, que fue construido hace más de un siglo”, precisó la ministra de Infraestructura provincial, Cristina Álvarez Rodríguez. La dictadura militar la eliminó del catálogo de monumentos históricos, pero fue reincorporada en 1987. Los trabajos comprenden dos grandes áreas. Por un lado se van a restaurar la nave principal, las capillas, los confesionarios, los altares laterales, y las fachadas de la casa parroquial. También el campo de deportes adyacente al templo y el interior de la torre del campanario. Tanto en la colocación de molduras y elementos decorativos, como en la reparación de las carpinterías, vidrios rotos y vitreaux, se respetará el diseño original. Además se realizarán tareas de reposición en todo el sector comprendido en el Teatro: en los cielorrasos, contrapisos interiores, desagües, la herrería y la fachada del local de la Liga de Madres de Familia y de la casa parroquial, en el tramo que vincula la Iglesia con el Teatro. También se reemplazará la vereda por otra que se adecue a la normativa vigente, y se cambiará toda la instalación eléctrica y las luminarias. Al acto licitatorio presentaron sus propuestas tres empresas y los trabajos tienen un plazo de ejecución de 300 días.

REFERENCIA:

http://www.lavozdelaprovincia.com.ar/2011/07/restauran-la-iglesia-de-la-plata-donde.html