Automatic sketch of Los Angeles

This is my automatic sketch of Los Angeles. And this is not Los Angeles, but the concepts I remember. The old and the new, the different levels, the postmodern architecture, some basements, some bridges and tunnels across the mountains, a few trees only in the plazas, the city against the mountains and the sky behind. And nobody walking around.

Moshe Safdie´s building in Kansas will be dismantled

The building that will be dismantled in Kansas. Picture from the article

I´ve been reading today about the controversial building designed by Viñoly´s UK Art Center, it was finally opened after a litigation: the reason, rising costs, redesign of the structure on site. And this is not the only example. Starchitects sometimes seem not to care about huge construction costs. Best example, Calatrava. Now, it was the time for arch. Moshe Safdie to suffer the consequences. Or maybe the contractors are not selected with the required experience to build difficult shapes.

Moshe Safdie. Picture downloaded from the article

Moshe Safdie. From e-architect.co.uk

By Kevin Collison. The Kansas City Star:

Water poured into the unfinished West Edge building’s atrium last March through an open ceiling. Mike Allen of Caymus Real Estate toured the project.(..)

More than one observer has compared the imposing curved balconies that architect Moshe Safdie designed for the grand atrium of the new Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts to the iconic swirl of the Guggenheim Museum in New York.

A similarly dramatic interior was created by Safdie in Kansas City, but most of us will never see it.

That’s because the office building he designed for Kansas City advertising executive Bob Bernstein at the West Edge near the Country Club Plaza is slated to be dismantled.

In a recent interview, Safdie said he was “heartbroken” that building wouldn’t be completed.

“It’s really sad,” he said. “We spent five to six years of our lives laboring over every detail. … A lot of love and care went into this.

“I feel particularly sad for the Bernstein family. It was a noble undertaking. They wanted a headquarters but obviously wanted to do something for the entire city.”

For several years now the exterior of the forlorn, unfinished structure at 48th Street and Belleview Avenue has been part of thousands of people’s daily commutes on Southwest Trafficway.

What has not been visible is its six-level interior atrium. Safdie’s “tornado” design slightly shifted the curves of each interior office balcony to create the illusion of motion, energizing the soaring space.

Over the next few months, if all goes as planned, that atrium — and the rest of the building — will be dismantled and replaced by a more conventional office building designed by 360 Architecture for the Polsinelli Shughart law firm.

Seven years ago, Bernstein searched for an architect to design what was to be the headquarters of the Bernstein-Rein advertising agency. Top designers, including Zaha Hadid and I.M. Pei, were considered before Bernstein chose Safdie and his “hillside village” concept.

In December 2004, a beaming Bernstein joined Safdie in unveiling the model. A year later, construction started. But by early 2007, Bernstein and the builder, J.E. Dunn Construction Co., were embroiled in a dispute over rising costs.

“I tried to be an intermediary,” Safdie said. “I called them individually and tried to have a meeting of the three of us, but it never worked.”

Keep on reading:

http://www.kansascity.com/2011/09/19/3153908/renowned-architect-is-sad-that.html

Viñoly´s Art Center. From

http://archrecord.construction.com/news/2011/09/Firstsite-Art-Ctr-Grand-Opening.asp

Botticelli and Leonardo: different ways of seeing landscapes

St. John on Patmos. 1490. By Sandro Botticelli. Google images

Sandro Botticelli. Agony in the garden. 1500. Google images

Botticelli didn´t paint landscapes but if so, they were as a background where the main frame was acquired by the addition of arches, architecture in general. Even rocks seem to be built by humans. From Au-dela de la peinture, 1936; first published in Cahiers d´Art, Special Issue, 1937, the words by Max Ernst:

Sandro Botticelli. Virgin and the Child enthroned. Google images.

Landscape detail. Sandro Botticelli.

¨Botticelli did not like landscape painting, regarding it as a ¨limited and mediocre kind of investigation.¨He said contemptuously that ¨by throwing a sponge soaked with different colours at a wall one can make a spot in which a beautiful landscape can be seen.¨ This earned him a severe admonition from his colleague Leonardo da Vinci:

¨He (Botticelli) is right: one is bound to see bizarre inventions in such a smudge; I mean that he who will gaze attentively at that spot will see in it human heads, various animals, a battle, rocks, the sea, clouds, thickets, and still more: it is like the tinkling of a bell which makes one hear what one imagines. Although that stain may suggest ideas, it will not teach you to complete any art, and the above mentioned painter (Botticelli) paints very bad landscapes.¨

Reproduced in Surrealism. By Patrick Waldberg.

Arno´s landscape. By Leonardo da Vinci. Google images

A storm over a hilly landscape. Leonardo da Vinci. Google images

Landscape near Pisa. Leonardo da Vinci. Google images

Guatemalan schools built with bottles

Picture by Hut It Forward

The cost of building new classrooms and schools shouldn't prohibit students in the developing world from accessing a quality education, but new construction, even using inexpensive materials like cinder block, can run up a five-digit bill in construction costs. Now, Hug It Forward, a nonprofit in Guatemala, has figured out how to build new schools on a shoestring budget by turning the plastic bottles that litter the countryside's villages into raw construction materials.

A plastic school might sound like it's better suited for Barbies than for people, but the technology—developed by the Guatemalan nonprofit Pura Vida—is actually quite clever and allows for schools to be built for less than $10,000. The plastic bottles are stuffed with trash, tucked between supportive chicken wire, and coated in layers of concrete to form walls between the framing. The bottles make up the insulation, while more structurally sound materials like wood posts are used for the framing.

Keep on reading the article by Zak Stone:

http://www.good.is/post/guatemalan-schools-built-from-bottles-not-bricks/

Reconstruction plan for Haiti

¨Over the last 18 months, Trans_City architecture and urbanism, has developed a comprehensive plan for the reconstruction of Jacmel, Haiti based upon the concept of satellite cities located at the edge of the existing, earthquake-ravaged city center.(A concept developed in accordance with the universal design principals of the Housing Reconstruction Framework of the Haitian Government)

The concept includes an urban masterplan, and a proposal for prefabricated houses, in which the building shell is industrially manufactured in Austria, and finished by local hand workers. In line with the content of the project, the architecture does not attempt to be spectacular. Rather, it is the holistic integration of the many levels of an urban system that makes this project interesting. More images and project description after the break.

The urbanism proposes an ecologically sustainable planning for a topographically challenging tropical site. We have divided the site into three basic zones, depending upon their topographic qualities.

1) Steep hillsides, which are not buildable, are to be reforested.

2) Valley bottoms, which are also not buildable due to flash-flood dangers, will be terraced and converted to middle intensity agriculture for local consumption.

3) Ridges and plateaus are inhabitable for the built environment.¨

From the article by Alison Furuto. Pictures courtesy of  Trans_City architecture and urbanism

Keep on reading:

http://uk.ibtimes.com/articles/216034/20110919/reconstruction-plan-for-haiti-trans_city-architecture-and-urbanism.htm

City in the night. Ciudad en la noche

This digital painting is tricky and it´s influenced by my research on urban morphology. Seen from a satellite, the cities show areas of different colors with more density, usually called ¨urban sprawl¨ or in Spanish, defined as ¨manchas de aceite¨ (oil stains). In this case, the clusters appear to be in a desert land with spots of water, like some areas in Peru, for example. But the light color in the edge of the sea is tempting us to look at the picture as a ¨vertical¨ landscape, being the sea the blue, the stains with lighting an urban horizon, and the rest, a dark-brownish sky. We can read it both ways.

Megaciudades: el desafío de convertir desechos en recursos

Un niño bañándose en aguas altamente contaminadas por desechos, Manila

Un barrio arriba de aguas con desechos, Manila

Reproducido del diario La Nación, sección Ciencia y Salud. Una nota con un video imperdibles:

Una motocicleta tras otra. El ruido se hace insoportable. En "hora pico" el aire es tan denso que a uno llega dolerle la garganta. Es la megaciudad de Hanoi (Vietnam), en un día normal de la semana. Una escena familiar en muchas otras ciudades de los llamados "países emergentes", donde crecen, incontroladas, las megaciudades de este mundo: cada día unas 160.000 personas más.

La infraestructura de estas ciudades, por lo general, no alcanza a crecer en armonía con la población -no tan rápidamente-. Cada vez se hace más difícil proveer a todos de agua potable, recolectar y depurar las aguas residuales, la basura. La cantidad de habitantes de Hanoi, la capital de Vietnam, se ha elevado a casi siete millones en los últimos años. Pero en toda la ciudad no hay ni una planta de tratamiento de aguas residuales. El líquido de sus duchas e inodoros termina -luego de un largo recorrido- en los ríos de la región y, en algún momento, seguramente en el manto freático, sin previo procesamiento.

La Universidad Técnica de Darmstadt (Alemania) ha desarrollado un concepto que debe solucionar este problema: un sistema de aguas residuales, que puede crecer conjuntamente con una megaciudad como Hanoi, que recicla las aguas negras y que, además, produce energía eléctrica a partir de excrementos. "Semicentral" llaman los científicos a su concepto. En un par de años deben surgir en la capital de Vietnam instalaciones del tamaño de un gran parqueo de autos en las que se puede lograr mucho más que el simple almacenamiento de aguas sucias.

Las negras aguas cloacales serán procesadas y transformadas en clara agua potable que retornará a las casas de la ciudad. Los lodos residuales y la basura orgánica se convertirán en corriente eléctrica en una estación de biogás. Lo que no sea aprovechable en ninguno de estos procesos acabará como abono en los campos de la región.

Nigeria

Lagos

Manila

"Las aguas residuales no son simplemente basura para nosotros", explica el profesor Peter Cornel , que dirige el proyecto en Hanoi, "son un recurso". Sobre todo las megaciudades no pueden darse el lujo, bajo ningún concepto, de usar el agua sólo una vez, insiste Cornel. Es difícil que el manto freático a su alrededor resista tal cosa.

Lo más interesante del "Proyecto Semicentral" no es sólo el reciclaje del agua. Sus sistemas, además, son capaces de crecer con la ciudad y sus habitantes: si Hanoi vuelve a ganar 100.000 hanoienses, se agrega sencillamente una nueva estación en el nuevo barrio. "Cuando las ciudades crecen de esta forma descontrolada, hay que repensar constantemente cómo solucionar los problemas de la gente con sistemas bien distintos de los que tenemos en Europa", dice Cornel.

Las fotos y el video fueron bajados del mismo artículo.

http://www.lanacion.com.ar/1407058-megaciudades-el-desafio-de-convertir-desechos-en-recursos

The ¨lilypad¨ artificial floating island for the State of Kiribati

The Lilypad floating city, a concept by the Belgian arch. Vincent Callebaut. Photograph: vincent.callebaut.org

From John Vidal´s article Artificial island could be solution for rising Pacific sea levels:

Sea levels are rising so fast that the tiny Pacific state of Kiribati is seriously considering moving its 100,000 people on to artificial islands. In a speech to the 16-nation Pacific Islands Forum this week, President Anote Tong said radical action may be needed and that he had been looking at a $2bn plan that involved "structures resembling oil rigs":

"The last time I saw the models, I was like 'wow it's like science fiction, almost like something in space. So modern, I don't know if our people could live on it. But what would you do for your grandchildren? If you're faced with the option of being submerged, with your family, would you jump on an oil rig like that? And [I] think the answer is 'yes'. We are running out of options, so we are considering all of them."

Kiribati is not alone. Tuvalu, Tonga, the Maldives, the Cook and the Solomon Islands are all losing the battle against the rising seas and are finding it tough to pay for sea defences. Kiribati faces an immediate bill of over $900m just to protect its infrastructure.

But history shows there is no technological reason why the nation could not stay in the middle of the Pacific even if sea levels rose several feet.

The Uros people of Peru live on around 40 floating villages made of grasses in the middle of Lake Titicaca. Equally, the city of Tenochtitlan, the Aztec predecessor of Mexico City that was home to 250,000 people when the Spaniards arrived, stood on a small natural island in Lake Texcoco that was surrounded by hundreds of artificial islands.(...)

But Tong's imagination has been stirred by a more futuristic vision. It's possible he's seen the "Lilypad" floating city concept by the Belgian architect Vincent Callebaut. This "ecopolis" would not only be able to produce its own energy through solar, wind, tidal and biomass but would also process CO2 in the atmosphere and absorb it into its titanium dioxide skin.

Bangkok architects S+PBA have come up with the idea of a floating "wetropolis" to replace eventually the metropolis of Bangkok. They say that Bangkok is founded on marshes and with sea levels rising several centimetres a year and the population growing fast, it's cheaper and more ecologically sound to embrace the rising seas than fight them.

Wetropolis. From http://spluspba.weebly.com/a-post-diluvian-future.html

Kiribati could emulate Spiral Island in Mexico. This was constructed by British artist Richard "Rishi" Sowa on a base of 250,000 plastic bottles. The island was destroyed by Hurricane Emily in 2005 but is being rebuilt. With millions of tonnes of rubbish already floating in the Pacific, and plans to collect it, Kiribati could solve two problems in one go.

Spiral Island, Mexico. 2000. Wikipedia. org

Read more:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2011/sep/08/artificial-island-pacific-sea-levels?cat=environment&type=article

Read about my proposal for a fractal analysis for the Uros´ islands:

http://myriammahiques.blogspot.com/2009/10/proposed-fractal-urban-analysis-for.html