Here's an unedited, silent film I made of the Kilometro Rosso (Parco Scientifico Tecnologico) for Brembo, designed by Jean Nouvel. It's located alongside the A4 highway near Bergamo. Previously I featured the project on my weekly page and daily blog.
La Biennale di Venezia
I'm in Venice this week covering the 13th International Architecture Exhibition of la Biennale di Venezia for World-Architects.com. Check out the Insight feature in today's eMagazine for some Day-1 photos and impressions.
Today's archidose #613
Here are a bunch of photos of the PHZ Luzern (Teacher Training University of Central Switzerland) in Lucerne, Switzerland, by Enzmann + Fishcer (2011), photographed by John Hill.
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Today's archidose #612
Here are a handful of photos of the Lindenrinde ("Linden Bark") apartment building in Zurich, Switzerland, by Ken Architekten (2011), photographed by John Hill.
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Today's archidose #611
Here are a handful of photos of the Community Centre Aussersihl in Zurich, Switzerland, by EM2N (2004), photographed by John Hill.
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Reversible Destiny Website
Ever since discovering the work of Arakawa + Gins in the mid-1990s, I've been fascinated -- if not always fully understanding of -- the duo's work. Their mantra of "WE HAVE DECIDED NOT TO DIE" is nonsensical at first, but underlying it are very intriguing ideas about movement and how our environments shape our lives. Equally intriguing is the newly relaunched Reversible Destiny website, designed by Brooklyn's Tronvig Group. The gravity-defying movement that Madeline Gins and the late Shusaku Arakawa translated into installations and environments comes across in the tumbling website. Upon visiting, be sure to drag the words and images around.
[reversibledestiny.org screenshot]
As IT News reports it, via a press release:
[reversibledestiny.org screenshot]
As IT News reports it, via a press release:
An ever-shifting kaleidoscopic display conveys in one fell swoop to a visitor that enters here all the content this rambunctious website contains. Clicked on, moved around and sorted through by a visitor, words and images jostle plus slosh about on the screen.
Today's archidose #610
Here are a few photos of Dock E at Zurich International Airport in Zurich, Switzerland, by agps architecture (2003), photographed by John Hill.
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Monday, Monday
A Weekly Dose of Architecture Updates:
This week's dose features Porsche Pavilion in Wolfsburg, Germany by HENN Architekten:
The featured past dose is the BMW Plant Leipzig in Leipzig, Germany by Zaha Hadid Architects:
This week's book review is Architecture on Display: On the History of the Venice Biennale of Architecture and Four Conversations on the Architecture of Discourse, both by Aaron Levy and William Menking:
: : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : :
**NOTE: The next weekly dose will be 2012.09.10. Daily doses will still be happening in the interim.**
: : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : :
World-Architects.com U.S. Building of the Week:
Lakewood Garden Mausoleum in Minneapolis, Minnesota by HGA Architects and Engineers:
This week's dose features Porsche Pavilion in Wolfsburg, Germany by HENN Architekten:
The featured past dose is the BMW Plant Leipzig in Leipzig, Germany by Zaha Hadid Architects:
This week's book review is Architecture on Display: On the History of the Venice Biennale of Architecture and Four Conversations on the Architecture of Discourse, both by Aaron Levy and William Menking:
: : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : :
**NOTE: The next weekly dose will be 2012.09.10. Daily doses will still be happening in the interim.**
: : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : :
World-Architects.com U.S. Building of the Week:
Lakewood Garden Mausoleum in Minneapolis, Minnesota by HGA Architects and Engineers:
Book Review: Precedents in Architecture
Precedents in Architecture: Analytic Diagrams, Formative Ideas, and Partis (Fourth Edition) by Roger H. Clark and Michael Pause
Wiley, 2012
Paperback, 352 pages
My first exposure to Clark and Pause's Precedents in Architecture was during a semester in Italy in the mid-1990s, where studio was a mix of analysis and design. An earlier edition of the book was in the small but quality library at the study center, and in its pages was the church we were analyzing. Like any student, I copied the diagrams into my sketchbook and showed them later to my professor, only to be berated for going that route, of making the analysis too simplistic. For him, analysis was not just diagramming circulation, hierarchy, symmetry, geometry, and so forth; it was a creative process, like design, that resulted in each student having his or her own take on the building. In other words, Precedents in Architecture was objective analysis and our work was subjective.
A decade and a half later, finding myself teaching a second-year design studio that included a two-week building analysis, I was confronted with the decision to use Clark and Pause's book. While I did not require that students use it, I noticed that many of them did, given that by the fourth edition the book's line weights and shadings were unmistakable. But traces of my professor's comments lingered in my mind, so for me and my students the diagrams became a step toward realizing a deeper analysis of a particular building, not an end in themselves.
The book's consistent approach to the various issues of analysis (the author's define those as structure, natural light, massing, plan to section or elevation, circulation to use-space, unit to whole, repetitive to unique, symmetry and balance, geometry, additive and subtractive, hierarchy) allows students to see a building as abstractions akin to their own design partis, as if they're seeing the project in its design stage. This is helpful in terms of cross referencing the various buildings (118 are included in the fourth edition) and finding the essences of the designs, but the tactic must be balanced by a prolonged look back at the building itself. For what is gained in the diagrams is lost in the fact that all but a few of the projects in the book are actual buildings; they exist and are made of materials and light, they sit on the earth and change a landscape. Analysis must also take these and other conditions of the built reality into account. So for students heading back to school, go ahead and pick up this new edition of the classic book, but realize that architects have dealt with issues beyond what Clark and Pause define, so there is much, much more to be discovered.
US:
CA: 
UK: 
Wiley, 2012
Paperback, 352 pages
My first exposure to Clark and Pause's Precedents in Architecture was during a semester in Italy in the mid-1990s, where studio was a mix of analysis and design. An earlier edition of the book was in the small but quality library at the study center, and in its pages was the church we were analyzing. Like any student, I copied the diagrams into my sketchbook and showed them later to my professor, only to be berated for going that route, of making the analysis too simplistic. For him, analysis was not just diagramming circulation, hierarchy, symmetry, geometry, and so forth; it was a creative process, like design, that resulted in each student having his or her own take on the building. In other words, Precedents in Architecture was objective analysis and our work was subjective.
A decade and a half later, finding myself teaching a second-year design studio that included a two-week building analysis, I was confronted with the decision to use Clark and Pause's book. While I did not require that students use it, I noticed that many of them did, given that by the fourth edition the book's line weights and shadings were unmistakable. But traces of my professor's comments lingered in my mind, so for me and my students the diagrams became a step toward realizing a deeper analysis of a particular building, not an end in themselves.
The book's consistent approach to the various issues of analysis (the author's define those as structure, natural light, massing, plan to section or elevation, circulation to use-space, unit to whole, repetitive to unique, symmetry and balance, geometry, additive and subtractive, hierarchy) allows students to see a building as abstractions akin to their own design partis, as if they're seeing the project in its design stage. This is helpful in terms of cross referencing the various buildings (118 are included in the fourth edition) and finding the essences of the designs, but the tactic must be balanced by a prolonged look back at the building itself. For what is gained in the diagrams is lost in the fact that all but a few of the projects in the book are actual buildings; they exist and are made of materials and light, they sit on the earth and change a landscape. Analysis must also take these and other conditions of the built reality into account. So for students heading back to school, go ahead and pick up this new edition of the classic book, but realize that architects have dealt with issues beyond what Clark and Pause define, so there is much, much more to be discovered.
US:
CA: UK:
Today's archidose #609
The Blönduós Church in Blönduós, Iceland, by Dr. Maggi Jónsson (1993), photographed by Bryan Chang.
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Today's archidose #608
Here are some photos of the Metzler Dairy Farm in Egg, Austria (2012)*. Photographs are by Frank Stahl. See also earlier farm buildings designed by Klaus Metzler and Michael Ohneberg (2001).
*Architect is unknown...for now.
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*Architect is unknown...for now.
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Book Review: Peter Zumthor: Hortus Conclusus
Peter Zumthor: Hortus Conclusus: Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2011
Serpentine Gallery | Koenig Books, 2012
Hardcover, 104 pages
Every summer since 2000 (minus 2004) Kensington Gardens in London has been the site of the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion, a temporary structure designed by a superstar architect. For a few days around the unveiling of the built work, this part of London is the focus of the world of architecture as journalists, architects, and the curious flock to see the newest thing. Removed in the fall, the pavilions live on in photographs and in documentation of the events taking place within them. This year's design actually picks up on the temporary nature of the buildings, aiming to unearth the previous foundations and incorporate them into the pavilion (not finding any foundations, architects Herzog & de Meuron and Ai Weiwei rebuilt them as cork surfaces instead).
Last year's pavilion, Hortus Conclusus, designed by Swiss architect Peter Zumthor with Dutch garden designer Piet Oudolf, is documented in this handsome catalogue. Most of the roughly 100 pages are devoted to color photographs of the pavilion's outside and inside, making the theme of "a garden within the garden" very clear. Zumthor's essay, which comes after a lovely watercolor of the design's plan and section, makes as much clear as well. But what makes the book worth the price of admission -- what takes it beyond just an assemblage of the same photos that can be found online anyways -- is the documentation of Oudolf's design of the garden, which takes up about about a dozen pages, most of them photos and descriptions of plant species. It may be strange that a book on a program that charts the progress of contemporary architecture on a yearly basis is most valuable in terms of landscape design, but that follows from Zumthor's design. The heart of the built project was the enclosed garden, and the plants that comprised it defined the short-lived experience. In this book that experience lives on.
US: CA: UK:
Serpentine Gallery | Koenig Books, 2012
Hardcover, 104 pages
Every summer since 2000 (minus 2004) Kensington Gardens in London has been the site of the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion, a temporary structure designed by a superstar architect. For a few days around the unveiling of the built work, this part of London is the focus of the world of architecture as journalists, architects, and the curious flock to see the newest thing. Removed in the fall, the pavilions live on in photographs and in documentation of the events taking place within them. This year's design actually picks up on the temporary nature of the buildings, aiming to unearth the previous foundations and incorporate them into the pavilion (not finding any foundations, architects Herzog & de Meuron and Ai Weiwei rebuilt them as cork surfaces instead).
Last year's pavilion, Hortus Conclusus, designed by Swiss architect Peter Zumthor with Dutch garden designer Piet Oudolf, is documented in this handsome catalogue. Most of the roughly 100 pages are devoted to color photographs of the pavilion's outside and inside, making the theme of "a garden within the garden" very clear. Zumthor's essay, which comes after a lovely watercolor of the design's plan and section, makes as much clear as well. But what makes the book worth the price of admission -- what takes it beyond just an assemblage of the same photos that can be found online anyways -- is the documentation of Oudolf's design of the garden, which takes up about about a dozen pages, most of them photos and descriptions of plant species. It may be strange that a book on a program that charts the progress of contemporary architecture on a yearly basis is most valuable in terms of landscape design, but that follows from Zumthor's design. The heart of the built project was the enclosed garden, and the plants that comprised it defined the short-lived experience. In this book that experience lives on.
US:
CA: UK:
Literary Dose #46
"I remember when I was about to publish my first book and I said to this friend of mine, Larry Rickels, that I had to get used to the idea of people reading it. He said no, you have to get used to the idea that people don't read books. I found that incredibly liberating. And I would say that with books it's the same as with exhibitions. The purpose of an exhibition is not to be seen, but to have a good party that will allow the people who are engaged to engage each other. It's the same with books. The purpose of books is not to be read. I buy books but do not read them. I own a lot of books. I write books, I collect books, I think about books, I copy books, I pay for books -- I'm in the book business. But I don't read books. Don't assume that exhibitions are meant to be seen, and that books are meant to be read. Buildings are by and large invisible, and that's to their credit."- Mark Wigley, in Four Conversations on the Architecture of Discourse, edited by Aaron Levy and William Menking (Architectural Association Publications, 2012, p. 83)
Monday, Monday
A Weekly Dose of Architecture Updates:
This week's dose features Sølvgade School in Copenhagen, Denmark by C. F. Møller Architects:
The featured past dose is the Tietgen Residence Hall in Copenhagen, Denmark by Lundgaard & Tranberg:
This week's book review is The Shape of Green: Aesthetics, Ecology, and Design by Lance Hosey (L):
(R): The featured past book review is Cities for People by Jan Gehl.
World-Architects.com U.S. Building of the Week:
Cotillion Pavilion in Dallas, Texas by Mell Lawrence Architects:
This week's dose features Sølvgade School in Copenhagen, Denmark by C. F. Møller Architects:
The featured past dose is the Tietgen Residence Hall in Copenhagen, Denmark by Lundgaard & Tranberg:
This week's book review is The Shape of Green: Aesthetics, Ecology, and Design by Lance Hosey (L):
(R): The featured past book review is Cities for People by Jan Gehl.
World-Architects.com U.S. Building of the Week:
Cotillion Pavilion in Dallas, Texas by Mell Lawrence Architects:
Today's archidose #607
Here are some photos of the Apartments at the end of Borneo Island in Amsterdam, the Netherlands by Dick van Gameren and Bjarne Mastenbroek (1999). Photographs are by asli aydin.
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:: Tag your photos archidose
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