architectural grammar

Crise ou transição?

2011-11-21T22:55:00.022Z

Há muito que a crise na Arquitectura, enquanto profissão, está instalada. Este é de facto um dos temas mais falados por entre arquitectos e aspirantes a arquitectos. Em Portugal, há pelo menos uma década que jovens arquitectos e até mesmo ateliês de alguma dimensão se tentam reinventar na tentativa de se destacarem tentando por um lado, de se libertar de linguagens e modelos "caducos", e por outro de se aproximarem mais perto da sociedade.

Nos últimos 20 anos, os avanços tecnológicos e a revolução na mundo da internet veio não só permitir um grande avanço e rapidez na formulação dos mais diversos conceitos de projecto mas também auxiliar em grande medida nas suas mais diversas formas de representação tais como modelos 3D, animação, pormenorização, etc. A internet abriu a grande porta à discussão nesta área e é efectivamente responsável por estabelecer pontes entre profissionais, estudantes e/ou até mesmo curiosos. Há muito que em Portugal a Arquitectura estava afastada da Cultura e o seu contacto era feito através de revistas e publicações da especialidade tendo como principal alvo o arquitecto.

Felizmente tenho observado que esse tempo, essa era, culminou. A Arquitectura passou então a fazer parte da programação dos canais de televisão e tem se registado um aumento de colunas sobre o tema em revistas e jornais. Claro está que esta mudança cultural e intelectual ainda nada ou pouco se reflecte no volume de trabalho que muitos tanto anseiam. O lado positivo é que finalmente a Arquitectura está mais presente e em diálogo com a sociedade e isso irá sem dúvida reverter o estado actual da profissão.

Muitos problemas têm sido identificados e explorados por entre jornais, blogues, revistas, etc, e por isso não quero desenvolver este tópico. No entanto a manifestação do problema do Arquitecto e da Arquitectura É o tema da actualidade, não fosse este um momento de transição económica, social mas fortemente cultural. Muitos chamam-lhe de crise... eu cá prefiro palavras como as de reflexão ou transição.

Abaixo deixo o link para mais uma crónica sobre este último tema escrita pelo colega Tiago Mota e extraída do P3 do jornal "O Público".

Doce Controversa Arquitectura!

Texto: Rodrigo Ferreira Rodrigues

Imagens: Lara Jacinto, in "O Público"

Useless? A Dor errante

2011-11-02T19:40:00.001Z

De Hans Maier-Aichen e Max Bruinsma

Quando Phillippe Starck afirmou que “o design é absolutamente inútil”, tocou num nervo sensível. Afinal, a história do design está carregada da ideia modernista de utilidade. Desde inícios do século XX, o funcionalismo tem feito parte do ADN do design, enfatizando as características intrínsecas de um produto e em que medida este satisfaz as necessidades do utilizador.

Mas no actual mercado de massas, o enfoque transitou: a produção é direccionada em função da geração de receitas, e maximizar vendas com o mínimo de custos parece ter-se tornado principal objectivo do design. A funcionalidade básica de um produto é agora a sua capacidade de ir a reboque da mais recente e lucrativa tendência de mercado. E para esse efeito, cópias baratas são melhores que originais dispendiosos.

Em parte alguma se consegue experienciar mais intensamente este afunilamento – ou simplificação redutora – do que se considera funcional que nas feiras para profissionais: uma sucessão infindável das ditas últimas tendências. Para o observador que vagueia por estes vastos bazares de imitações e cópias a viagem é dolorosa. Mais que pés doridos, o que prevalece é a dor na alma. A esmagadora maioria daquilo que se celebra como “novo” é perfeitamente intercambiável com as novidades do ano anterior. A esmagadora maioria é redundante.

Um dos conceitos fulcrais do funcionalismo – suprimir a redundância, quer do desenho do próprio objecto quer do seu processo de produção – foi subvertido para o seu oposto: celebrar a redundância como a forma mais eficaz, do ponto de vista da rentabilidade, de simular inovação. Assim, numa interpretação simplista do funcionalismo, o que se considera sem utilidade do ponto de vista comercial é eliminado do projecto. A variação em aberto – este mecanismo essencial da evolução – é minimizada. A dialéctica de tentativa e erro cessa.

Nos anos 80 do século passado, houve um momento em que se pensou que a relação do design com a ideologia modernista do útil havia sido descontinuada, tomando uma direcção radicalmente diferente. O que foi o pós-modernismo senão uma tentativa espirituosa de quebrar com o regime da utilidade, enaltecer o capricho e louvar a forma?

Do ponto de vista funcionalista, o pós-modernismo pode ter celebrado o “ruído”, mas veio igualmente complementar os genes mais mundanos de resolução de problemas do design, focando as suas raízes culturais.

Permitiu restabelecer a ligação do design à função simbólica que desde tempos imemoriais tem sido o território das artes “aplicadas” ou decorativas. Esta fonte interminável de ornamentações aparentemente inúteis e de objectos sem aparente finalidade prática serviam não apenas como sinal de preciosismo e status, mas sobretudo como uma expressão de valor cultural – de civilização, por assim dizer.

As artes decorativas são o domínio de antigos processos e técnicas artesanais altamente desenvolvidas que hoje estão quase exclusivamente associadas a raros e caros objectos de coleccionador – bem como à tradição. Mas cada vez mais, esta é também a arena da experimentação com novas formas, materiais e processos de produção, bem como para o confronto crítico entre forma e função – precisamente o tipo de exploração em aberto que foi eliminada pela indústria mainstream como sendo pouco rentável.Muitos dos objectos de luxo e extrema sofisticação daí resultantes são hoje chamados de “design de arte”. Rejeitam noções banais de utilidade e podem mesmo parecer estar a anos luz da responsabilidade do design em resolver os problemas do “mundo real”, nas célebres palavras proferidas pelo decano do design sustentável, Victor Papanek, há trinta anos atrás.

Mas apontam igualmente para um redireccionar das quantidades colossais de recursos energéticos, materiais e humanos, canalizados para o desenho de bens de consumo produzidos em massa Apontam para um novo – ou renovado – paradigma de desenho, produção e consumo conscientes de produtos mais preocupados em fazer sentido de forma sustentável que em ter lucro a qualquer preço.

O objectivo de Useless? A Dor Errante é encontrar as repercussões do “ruído” na temática do uso. Levantar questões a partir do confronto entre o que parece “sem uso” e o que aparenta ser funcional; entre consumo ostensivo e os fundamentos culturais do uso.

Transferindo o nosso enfoque da eficácia de mercado para a dialéctica de exploração, a exposição explora o proveito do “sem uso”.

Siedlung Affoltern Apartements

2011-07-31T12:45:00.002+01:00

O edifício longitudinal que se dispõem ao longo da Wehntalerstrasse, Affoltern em Zürich transforma-se num pedestal público sobre o qual descansam pequenos blocos criando uma dialéctica urbana contra o espaço verde que foi projectado no interior do quarteirão. No piso térreo da construção longitudinal (paralelo à Wehntalerstrasse) podemos encontrar espaços comerciais, os acessos ao interior do quarteirão mas também a administração desta cooperativa habitacional. Este modelo de habitação permite um acesso mais imediato à habitação, indo ao encontro dos jovens e famílias com recursos reduzidos. A característica principal dos apartamentos reside no modo como estes estão estruturados em relação directa com as generosas varandas que permitem a extensão da habitação para o exterior, promovendo o contacto com a Natureza envolvente.

Images credits: João Amaral & Müller Sigrist Architekten

Architects: Müller Sigrist Architekten
Location: Wehntalerstrasse, Affoltern, Zürich, Switzerland
Construction: 2005-20010

World´s slums

2011-06-09T18:43:00.001+01:00

Graphics credits: João Amaral

SLUMS FOR SALE?

2011-06-09T15:42:00.000+01:00

Mega-cities of 10.000.000 or more are on the rise across Asia, while cities like Dhaka, Jakarta, Lagos and Delhi will cross the 20.000.000 threshold by 2020. Planning and building ins not keeping pace. The world ignores the slums at its own peril.¹

1. E. Eaves, ‘Two Billion Slum Dwellers’, Forbes.com, 2007.

In the 1950’s, poverty was a condition for post-war European architects to work on. In the 1970’s, when favelas hit the architectural media, poverty became a source of social and architectural inspiration as it contained models alternative to the existing order. In the 1980´s, poverty was overshadowed by postmodern musings, but in the late 1990’s and early 2000´s, it began forging its architectural comeback – this time in full colour and high resolution. We have now entered an era where poverty tourism (poorism) has become a popular holiday; Favela Chic is a hot nightclub in London, and the words ‘slum dog’ and ‘jai ho’ were among the 15 finalists in contention to become the 1 millionth English word. How long will poverty be in fashion this time? If ´all press is good press´, how can we take advantage of the latest wave of slum popularity?

In: Visionary Cities.

Graphics credits: João Amaral

Project S

2011-06-08T17:59:00.005+01:00

It used to be that the best architects did the biggest work, while the smaller work was left to all the other ones. Now, it is the opposite. While Pritzker Prize-winning architects are designing clean-sharp tap’s and cutlery, unknown developer-architects are building entire cities from the ground-up in the Middle East and China. In the age of the “scratch-built metropolis”¹, the call for (good) architects to return to big design is more critical than ever. Where have all the “big-design” architects gone? Can large-scale design ever be glamourous again? Will we ever see a master plan in Wallpaper magazine?

As China plans to set up 20 new cities annually in the coming 20 years², there will be millions more. Historically, tasks of this scale and magnitude would have been awarded to the world’s leading architects. Le Corbusier´s masterplan for Chandigarh, Lúcio Costa’s vision for Brasilia, or Haussamann´s rebuilding of Paris – these were the big visions on a large scale, each plan looking at the city as an integrated whole.

Now almost 15 years after the “death of urbanism”, there is a generation of architects whose scepticism of the “macro” has led them to steer clear of any large-scale work. Instead they are focused in smaller scale projects they can control. Interiors, furniture, a specific material, a fabrication technique... over time, everyone becomes a specialist in one tiny, digestible facet of the field. These projects are easy to understand and they are easy to digest. If a project can´t be explained by a sound bite and a image, if it can´t fit on a spread in MARK Magazine, it is clumsy and uncool. And why not? Architects are enjoying the benefits of being in fashion. More media coverage means more attention, more money, and more freedom to pursue small, glamorous projects. Wallpaper architects get invited to lot more parties than city planners.
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1. D. Mcgray. ‘Pop-Up Cities: China Builds a Bright Green Metropolis’, Wired Magazine, Issue 15.05

2. ‘Twenty New Cities to Be Set Up in China Every Year’, People´s Daily, 2000.

In: Visionary Cities.
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Graphics credits: João Amaral

Death and birth of the iconic architecture

2011-06-08T16:28:00.003+01:00

The demands of the new globalized world have elevated cities to new levels of direct competition. While Shanghai and Hong Kong fight for who will be the financial capital of China, Dubai continues to challenge New York, Paris and London as the world’s leading global cities. The defence mechanism in any battle for supremacy comes naturally to almost all creatures in the animal kingdom – make yourself look bigger than your opponent. Puff up your chest, stand up on your hind legs, or raise your tail feathers. In the urban world, you built an icon. Proof of your position as a global city. Build the biggest and – most importantly – the newest icon on the market. But in an age when 15 minutes of (urban) fame has been reduced to five minutes, how can we overcome the inevitable? What will happen when another city builds something bigger, newer, by an even more famous architect? If something is created just to be an icon, can it ever really last?

In: Visionary Cities.

Graphics credits: João Amaral

Social Contradictions - A housing issue

2011-06-07T23:02:00.002+01:00

Graphics credits: João Amaral

Skysckraper ON HOLD!

2011-06-07T22:11:00.002+01:00

As if on an assembly line driven by market protocols, city after city around the world has stamped out the same inevitable pattern of urban development: Industry out (port, factory, mill), developer in (condo, housing, boardwalk, marina complex). We have relied on the predictable fluctuations of the market to tell us what to do, where to build, and what to design, but we have suddenly lost our beacon.

Without emerging markets, without money, without incentives, architects around the world are now without prospects. Is it hopeless, or can we imagine new models of development in the wake of near economic collapse?

Can we use this crisis as an opportunity to break away from our current tendencies, to escape from urbanism autopilot? This could be just the thing our cities needed.

Right now, the projected five tallest buildings on each of the five continents are on hold.

Based on: A. Stern, ‘Global recession stalls skyscraper construction’ Reuters UK (March 2009).

In: Visionary Cities.

Graphics credits: João Amaral

Oscar Niemeyer Footbridge - Rocinha, Brazil

2011-06-07T20:28:00.000+01:00

The FIFA World Cup is heading to Brazil in 2014 and the Olympics to Rio de Janeiro in 2016. Curving into Rocinha, Rio's largest favela, is a new concrete footbridge designed by Oscar Niemeyer, now 103 years old. The bridge is the product of an ambitious and ongoing attempt to improve Rio’s notorious favelas in time for the global sporting events.

The government initiative – Morar Carioca (Living Rio) – involves hundred of Brazilians designers who are instigating radical and diverse urban interventions in city’s slums. Rocinha is extremely volatile: larger areas are run by drug lords, whose ongoing battles with the police frequently result in disturbingly violent shoot-outs. The favelas have a colourful and rich environment but a highly unsafe one.

Only in the past 20 years have the favelas begun to be recognized as a legitimate part of the city. Rio has moved away from the idea of uprooting them and displacing their residents to poorly executed social housing. The economic stimulus of the upcoming events is enabling the successful integration of the favelas into the city by creating community buildings and new public space, improving infrastructure and taking back control from the drug traffickers.

The bridge is a dynamic example of such integration. It establishes a pedestrian path over a busy main road and connects a major favela to a new sports facility, while further contributing to Rocinha’s strong identity. Niemeyer’s design, which he gave free to the city in which he grew up, is a typically grand concept but one that has been executed humbly, constructed on a human scale from locally prevalent concrete, it is a simple and absent of detail.

The bridge is a gesture, emblematic of Rio’s changing attitudes towards the favelas.

Text: Peter Dykes in Mark Magazine

Sol LeWitt, Master of Conceptualism

2011-06-04T18:12:00.002+01:00

LeWitt helped establish Conceptualism and Minimalism as dominant movements of the postwar era. A patron and friend of colleagues young and old, he was the opposite of the artist as celebrity. He tried to suppress all interest in him as opposed to his work; he turned down awards and was camera-shy and reluctant to grant interviews. He particularly disliked the prospect of having his photograph in the newspaper.

His work — sculptures of white cubes, or drawings of geometric patterns, or splashes of paint like Rorschach patterns — tested a viewer’s psychological and visual flexibility. See a line. See that it can be straight, thin, broken, curved, soft, angled or thick. Enjoy the differences. The test was not hard to pass if your eyes and mind were open, which was the message of Mr. LeWitt’s art.

He reduced art to a few of the most basic shapes (quadrilaterals, spheres, triangles), colors (red, yellow, blue, black) and types of lines, and organized them by guidelines he felt in the end free to bend. Much of what he devised came down to specific ideas or instructions: a thought you were meant to contemplate, or plans for drawings or actions that could be carried out by you, or not.

Sometimes these plans derived from a logical system, like a game; sometimes they defied logic so that the results could not be foreseen, with instructions intentionally vague to allow for interpretation. Characteristically, he would then credit assistants or others with the results. With his wall drawing, mural-sized works that sometimes took teams of people weeks to execute, he might decide whether a line for which he had given the instruction “not straight” was sufficiently irregular without becoming wavy (and like many more traditional artists, he became more concerned in later years that his works look just the way he wished). But he always gave his team wiggle room, believing that the input of others — their joy, boredom, frustration or whatever — remained part of the art.

In so doing, Mr. LeWitt gently reminded everybody that architects are called artists — good architects, anyway — even though they don’t lay their own bricks, just as composers write music that other people play but are still musical artists. Mr. LeWitt, by his methods, permitted other people to participate in the creative process, to become artists themselves.

Eye-candy opulence emerged from the same seemingly prosaic instructions he had come up with years before. A retrospective in 2000, organized by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, which traveled to the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, concluded with some of these newly colorful wall drawings. (Mr. LeWitt always called them drawings, even when the medium became acrylic paint.)

Some people who had presumed that Mr. LeWitt’s Conceptualism was arcane and inert were taken aback. He began making colored flagstone patterns, spiky sculptural blobs and ribbons of color, like streamers on New Year’s Eve, often as enormous decorations for buildings around the world. It was as if he had devised a latter-day kind of Abstract Expressionism, to which, looking back, his early Conceptualism had in fact been his response.

He decided to reduce art to its essentials, “to recreate art, to start from square one,” he said, beginning literally with squares and cubes. But unlike some strict Minimalists, Mr. LeWitt was not interested in industrial materials. He was focused on systems and concepts — volume, transparency, sequences, variations, stasis, irregularity and so on — which he expressed in words that might or might not be translated into actual sculptures or photographs or drawings. To him, ideas were what counted.

At the time, linguistic theorists were talking about words and mental concepts as signs and signifiers. Mr. LeWitt was devising what you might call his own grammar and syntax of cubes and spheres, a personal theory of visual signs. It was theoretical, but not strictly mathematical. Partly it was poetic. He began with propositions for images, which became something else if they were translated into physical form by him or other people.

He also liked the inherent impermanence of Conceptual art, maybe because it dovetailed with his lack of pretense: having started to make wall drawings for exhibitions in the 1960s, he embraced the fact that these could be painted over after the shows. (Walls, unlike canvases or pieces of paper, kept the drawings two-dimensional, he also thought.) He wasn’t making precious one-of-a-kind objects for posterity, he said. Objects are perishable. But ideas need not be.

“Conceptual art is not necessarily logical,” he wrote in an article in Artforum magazine in 1967. “The ideas need not be complex. Most ideas that are successful are ludicrously simple. Successful ideas generally have the appearance of simplicity because they seem inevitable.”

To the sculptor Eva Hesse, he once wrote a letter while she was living in Germany and at a point when her work was at an impasse. “Stop it and just DO,” he advised her. “Try and tickle something inside you, your ‘weird humor.’ You belong in the most secret part of you. Don’t worry about cool, make your own uncool.” He added: “You are not responsible for the world — you are only responsible for your work, so do it. And don’t think that your work has to conform to any idea or flavor. It can be anything you want it to be.”

Gary Garrels, a curator who organized Mr. LeWitt’s retrospective for San Francisco in 2000, said: “He didn’t dictate. He accepted contradiction and paradox, the inconclusiveness of logic.”

He took an idea as far as he thought it could go, then tried to find a way to proceed, so that he was never satisfied with a particular result but saw each work as a proposition opening onto a fresh question. Asked about the switch he made in the 1980’s — adding ink washes, which permitted him new colors, along with curves and free forms — Mr. LeWitt responded, “Why not?”

He added, “A life in art is an unimaginable and unpredictable experience.”

In: The New York Times

Can Informalization be a revitalization factor of the city?

2011-06-02T14:46:00.002+01:00

In our understanding of the City we must acknowledge it as a place of contradictions and conflicts¹, and so Formal Urbanism and informal actions are two extreme modes of creating and appropriate urban space, and so Housing dwellings.

As strange this must sound informal business and transactions are fundamental for major cities global economies which result in a phenomenon where two different classes (low and high-income workers) have to fight for their right for stay and use the City, a right for Housing and Social Facilities.

In Brazil 6.6 millions of individuals don’t have a place they can call Home, 30 millions live in precarious housing conditions, while in the 2010 Census was proven that the number of vacant dwellings is larger than the housing deficit in Brazil².

This created a guerrilla phenomenon where homeless people started to occupied abandoned buildings right in the center of cities as São Paulo or Rio de Janeiro. Nevertheless, the huge speculation that controls the real-estate markets in these cities compel that others classes also have to enter into this process in order to have access to low-cost spaces for ateliers, products shops, art galleries, boutiques.

This informal actions might be a way of fighting gentrification, a process of downgrading “low-cost equivalent of gentrification”³ that will generate a social and economic dynamic and will create a more democratic and transversal cities for the future, avoiding the dying process of cities central areas.

Also the Federal Republic of Brazil Constitution specifically states that each Brazilian as the right to have a house and property should reflect a social function. These gives somehow legal basis for an informalization process that is happening in the city centers, which might be a solution for the death of cities.

São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro city centre are references concerning urban polis in South America. Equipped with a vast and complex infrastructure and services network, with an important architectural patrimony, is nevertheless under-use, pierced by numerous empty plots and abandoned buildings resulting in the decrease of inhabitants in the city centre. This situation as helped to create a fake lack of housing offer, increasing exponentially the price for square meter, banishing the lower-income classes to the outskirts slams, reducing the economy vitality and social variety and dynamic in the centre³.

In the present situation the underprivileged social classes occupy the ruins of these abandoned buildings, operating for the recapture of urban space which are constantly excluded from, building a process of reclaiming the city.

It’s my belief that the entrepreneurism of the low-income social groups, and their understanding of public space make them use the city as a resource to create opportunities to improve their lives, economically and socially, and trough that the urban and private space is somehow altered, redesigned, new uses are re-invented. An informalization process takes place with the qualities recognized in it. I believe that it would be reasonable to acknowledged that the dynamic and enthusiastic urban life characterizing Brazil slums might contaminate the city with a more cultural and diverse social environment, that it once had.

The recognition of the actors involved in this fight for the urban voids in the city centre, the understanding of how the central residual urban spaces are generated, who occupies them, how they are occupied, and how happens their subsequent dismemberment, or revitalization will define my route through this investigation, assuming that in the end I might be able to respond affirmably to my first question: Can Informalization be a revitalization factor of the city?

For the research, was defined two case studies occupations of abandoned buildings, one located in the neighbourhood of Luz, at the centre of São Paulo: Ocupação Prestes Maia, and the other in Rio de Janeiro, the former Instituto Nacional de Colonização e Reforma Agrária (INCRA): Ocupação Chiquinha Gonzaga.

1. RAMOS, Diana. (2009). “A Guerra dos Lugares – nas ocupações de edifícios abandonados do centro de São Paulo”.

2. DANTAS, D., ALBUQUERQUE, E., STREIT, P., Souza, R. (2007). “Direito à moradia – Famílias ocupam prédios abandonados para sobreviver”.

3. SASSEN, Saskia. (1997). “Ethnicity and Space in the Global City: A New Frontier?”

Images and text credits: João Amaral

Residential complex in the Paul-Clairmont-Strasse - Zurich

2011-05-04T22:23:00.001+01:00

Near the hospital Triemli in Zurich, the Rotach housing cooperative has managed to achieve a major residential complex, consisting mainly of large homes. This is a bar that sprawls over three to seven levels and, in addition to homes, also includes workshops, a garden children and a medical spaces.

The urban logic arrangement provided from the architects Gmür & Steib is the base of the building. Toward the noisy highway in north-east, it presents a perforated front relatively closed, while the main facade southwest, with a layer of staggered balconies, opens onto the quiet neighborhood.

With a depth of 3.70 meters and a floor space of approximately 25 square meters , balconies are characterized by an unusual generosity.

What is essential on this elevation is the staggered arrangement, which allows the creation of outdoor spaces on two levels. This avoids creating shadows in the living room, while because of the alternating position of their kitchens and windows placed high up, it was possible to avoid the prying eyes of neighbors.

Due to a zoning by day and night with a central corridor, depth on homes is skillfully used. Plans are free and flexible, while providing the necessary individual parts at a certain privacy. An interesting synthesis, which combines the advantages of a home classical pieces composed of independent to those of a continuous space fluid was found, generosity shown by the homes, this despite an economic framework binding.

Concrete has played a decisive role in the implementation of the concept; the skin of the building is fully realized as a concrete shell, which extends without expansion joint along the entire length of the bar. The facade was painted using a whitewash intended to homogenize and to ennoble the volume, while leaving reflected the structure of exposed concrete.

Images credits: João Amaral

Architects: Gmur & Steib Architekten AG, Zürich
Location: Paul Clairmont-Strasse, Zürich, Switzerland
Construction: 2003-2006

Conjunto Habitacional - Hofwiesenstrasse Zürich

2011-05-01T12:21:00.002+01:00

Images credits: João Amaral

Autores: Althammer Hochuli Architekten
Projecto: Complexo Habitacional
Ano conclusão: 2011
Localização: Hofwiesenstrasse em Zürich

Chiesa di San Giovanni Battista at Mogno

2011-04-27T12:45:00.006+01:00

Seen from outside, the building is elliptical in shape, with a slanting roof and black and white stripes. The interior has a dizzying checkerboard design in the same colors. This is the church that was designed by the well-known architect, Mario Botta - the Chiesa di San Giovanni Battista at Mogno.

Mogno is a small hamlet in the Maggia Valley (Val Lavizzara) at 1,180 m, which has only been used as a Maiensäss (assembly of houses in the mountains used during the cattle grazing period) since the 19th century. In 1986 an avalanche destroyed the church and about a dozen houses that were fortunately uninhabited. In the 1990s the Ticinese architect rebuilt the small church, which is dedicated to John the Baptist.

The innovative building made from alternating layers of native Peccia marble and Vallemaggia granite was extremely controversial, but eventually became a landmark that is known far beyond the borders of Switzerland. The church has no windows, and the interior (which seats about 15 people) is only illuminated by natural light streaming in through the glass roof.

Images credits: João Amaral
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Architects: Mario Botta, Lugano
Location: Mogno-Fusio, Maggia Valley , TI, Switzerland
Commissioned: Mogno Church Reconstruction Association
Construction: 1992-1998

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Mario Botta – Philosopher Architect

"There are no aesthetics without ethics, there are no immoral aesthetics," Mario Botta tells me. The architect behind the recent Santo Volto Church views architecture as an almost spiritual duty. Like a baroque architect, he once said: "To build is a sacred act, an action that transforms a condition of nature into a condition of culture," Yet is Botta's striving for ethics and purity in architecture a reactionary stance from a national redoubt in Lugano or a personal crusade? Probably both.

Botta's work has a real sense of paradox, making him one of the most original architectural voices of our time. He is also notoriously difficult to define.

Crowned in his earlier career by Charles Jencks as a leading genius of 'postmodern classicism', Botta has since been described as a 'neorealist' and a 'fundamentalistic classicist'.

A decade ago he declared war on post modernism and what he saw as its resultant 'global Disneyland architecture'. One of the few living architects to have worked with Le Corbusier, Botta's sense of the epic is reflected in his opinions.

"I think architecture is a civil duty that relates to mankind, a social duty that concerns society and an ethical duty, as architecture can represent values related to the way we live," Botta tells me from his office in Lugano, the Alpine town that has inspired so much of his work since he opened his practice here in 1970. Separated by the Alps from the rest of Switzerland, Lugano is a suitably lofty base for Botta.

Sensitive historical design

Much of his work has an awesome appreciation of history. You only have to visit the Church of San Giovanni Battista in the tiny mountain village of Mogno, with its walkway jutting into the mountains, to see this. "Architecture is the shape of history," he tells me. "Therefore it has to portray the expectations, hopes and contradictions of its own time.

"Architecture is a discipline that gives an order to the space in our life, therefore it can give a structure to the organisation of the space," says Botta. "Heidegger once said that man can only live when he is able to orient himself in a space, that's why the buildings in our cities have to offer some reference points that enable man to know his own space. You feel more comfortable when you are able to control the space around you." Unsurprisingly, he tells me that he thinks the German philosopher would have made a great architect.

Botta addresses his philosophical and spiritual questions using geometry, yet there is a hermetic defensiveness in his designs. He describes much of modern architecture as commercial, disposable and artificial. So, does he seek refuge from society by creating churches, offices and apartments that look like citadels?

"'Architecture is a discipline that gives an order to the space in our life,' says Botta.""The main idea of protection is part of architecture," he says. "Home remains in our subconscious as our shelter, our protection and these values are very important in a discipline like architecture." Does he, like Heidegger, see the natural world as separated from our eksistent essence by an abyss? "I don't think we can talk about natural world. The natural world is already modified by man's work and is constantly changing."

If anything, Botta's work seeks to improve the quality and appreciation of life. Indeed, the most important thing Botta learnt from Le Corbusier is that architecture can have a far-reaching influence on society.

"There are good examples like the Masters of Rationalism and Le Corbusier, who aimed to improve the quality of life," he says. "Then, there are others who work with rubbish."

It is not just Le Corbuisier who has had a profound influence on Botta. Between 1964 and 1969, Botta was at the Universitario di Architettura in Venice. During those years, through a combination of good luck and perseverance, he was able to make contact with three giants of the architectural world – Le Corbusier, Louis Kahn and Carlo Scarpa, one of his teachers and his thesis professor.

While Scarpa taught Botta the importance of a philosophical appreciation of material structure, Kahn, in particular, held a fascination for his reduction of architecture to the essentials. "He was the one who understood the limits of technological development and the need for going back to the origins," Botta explains, adding that "going back to the origins is in fact the strongest cultural element in a society that constantly focuses on the future."

"Botta addresses his philosophical and spiritual questions using geometry."Botta has strived throughout his career to merge his buildings into the landscape they exist in. His motivation stems from an almost primeval instinct to create shelter. "The primitive still exists in what's new in the society," he says. "Architecture has the ability to demonstrate these primitive values and this is something really important for me." Yet he also strives for simplicity in creating uncomplicated, expressive designs for both the metropolis and the mountains.

via designbuild-network

New Carver Apartments

2011-04-07T11:21:00.000+01:00

At six stories tall, the New Carver Apartments doesn’t exactly tower over the Santa Monica Freeway that zips past its windows. Yet the drumlike structure is impossible to miss, even at 65 miles per hour. Los Angeles–based architect Michael Maltzan’s design is as formally iconic as the cylindrical Capitol Records building, which makes the fact that it was built for one of L.A.’s neediest populations—the chronically homeless—even more surprising than the novel architectural expression.

The client was the Skid Row Housing Trust, a nonprofit that has spent more than two decades building supportive housing—first by renovating dilapidated hotels near downtown L.A., then by embarking on new construction. The Rainbow Apartments (completed in 2006), Maltzan’s first building for the organization, is adjacent to Skid Row (otherwise known as Central City East), but the New Carver Apartments is farther afield, sited in South Park, a rapidly developing neighborhood near L.A. Live and the Staples Center.

The location is strategic on two levels. It houses residents in an area with access to transit and grocery stores, and it is a statement to Los Angeles: Affordable housing is not a blight that needs to be hidden away.

“It is a controversial concept. When we first showed [Maltzan’s design] to the investors, they wondered why we were making such a dramatic building,” says Molly Rysman, the Trust’s director of special projects and external affairs. “We had to convince them that it doesn’t need to be bland. Affordable housing improves the neighborhood and creates an anchor in the community. It’s not about blending in, but about having an impact.”

The interplay between urban fabric and the community that is fostered inside the 53,000-square-foot building begins with the ground floor, which hosts gathering spaces and tenant support services: a communal kitchen and garden, counseling rooms, and staff offices. There, Maltzan expressed the public character in exposed concrete, a choice inspired as much by the elevated freeway just outside the lobby doors as by the material’s economy and durability. The concrete continues into the central courtyard, forming a dramatic stairway (that also doubles as stadium seating).

The New Carver’s 97 units loop around the central courtyard. Fins of custom-made bent galvanized sheet metal form a privacy screen around the 40-foot-diameter void and disguise the structural steel columns, roof drains, and guardrail posts. Individual apartments are efficient: At 304 square feet, they’re monastic studios with small kitchens—so residents rely on the shared spaces. They gather on the sixth-floor deck to smoke and take the occasional yoga class. Painted bright yellow, the space offers residents a sweeping view of the city.

However, it takes a lounge and laundry room on the third floor to see Maltzan’s design at its most polemic. A window looks out over the freeway, and L.A. drivers can see through the thick, acoustic glass into the all-yellow space where the formerly homeless fold laundry, check e-mail, and watch TV.

“The excruciating irony of the homeless is that because they are so much in the public view, they are shut off from the world. The building creates opportunities for public interactions, and gives them a chance to re-emerge,” explains Maltzan. “It is important that people see that [the residents] are part of the greater community—it’s not to put them on display, but to see them as real.” It’s a charged, eye-to-eye situation, a risky attempt to humanize an outcast group.

And Maltzan’s employees take pride in having a quick and direct impact. “I’ve found that many of the people in the office are clamoring to be involved,” he says. “These projects have just as much potential to be ‘architecture’ as any of the projects we do. And because they are such a fundamental part of the urban, social, and political fabric of the city, architecture is even more necessary.”

Images credits: Iwan Baan

Rainbow Apartments

2011-04-07T10:33:00.000+01:00

Skid Row Housing – Rainbow Apartments, affordable housing project in Los Angeles was designed by Michael Maltzan Architecture. Located in an area of downtown Los Angeles, United States, becoming one of the largest homeless populations in the country, Skid Row Housing 43.000 sf Rainbow Apartments examines the role of creating a space in a transformation urban context and socio-economic extremes. As a dense mass of 6 floors, Skid Row Housing consists of 88 units of transitional housing with a series of common spaces such as a dining area, common kitchen, meeting rooms, gathering areas open air, and a laundry. In addition, the building includes offices and conference rooms on the ground to provide social services and workshops for tenants as part of their aid in the transition back into society.

The project deals with how to counter insularity and hermetic nature of the daily lives of residents amid concerns about the safety and security through the introduction of open and social spaces in order to enable their reintegration into public life. Arranged in a partially open U-shaped configuration of five floors of residential units cradle a central courtyard over a basement parking and administrative functions on the ground floor. A chain of public spaces and gathering places are carved out or extruded from the mass of eroding apparent solidity of the building, creating a variable depth of connection and views between the internal life of the court and the outside world.

Also interesting this NY Times article about the project.

Souto Moura wins the Pritzker Prize in 2011, the Nobel of architecture

2011-03-28T21:16:00.000+01:00

The atelier of the architect Eduardo Souto de Moura confirmed the public award of the Pritzker Prize 2011 world, the largest prize in the field of architecture.

"During the past three decades, Eduardo Souto Moura have produced a body of work that is of our time but also has echoes of traditional architecture. Its buildings have a unique ability to reconcile opposing characteristics, such as power and modesty, courage and boldness and subtlety, simplicity-at the same time" read the statement issued by the jury of the prize.

Among the projects mentioned, the jury highlighted the work of the Braga Municipal Stadium, commonly known as estádio AXA, built in an old quarry.

"When I received the call to say that I would be awarded the Pritzker Prize, I couldn't believe it. After I received confirmation that was even true, and then realized the great honour which is the fact that it is the second time a Portuguese architect is chosen makes this even more important, "said Souto Moura, quoted in the statement.

Born in 1952 in Porto, Eduardo Souto Moura is the second Portuguese architect to receive this distinction, after Álvaro Siza Vieira won in 1992. The architect is, thus, names like Oscar Niemeyer (1988), Frank Gehry (1989), Norman Foster (1999) and Zaha Hadid (2004). Last year the Hyatt Foundation distinguished the Japanese Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa.

Among his best-known works include, besides the Estádio Municipal de Braga (2000/03), the House in Cascais, Casa das Artes in Porto (1981/91), the Metro station of the Trinity, the Centro de Arte Contemporânea de Bragança (2004/2008 )the Hotel of good success in Óbidos, the market town of Braga (1980/84), the Marginal de Matosinhos-South (1995), the Crematorium of Kortrijk (Belgium), the flag of Portugal in the 11th Venice Architecture Biennale (Italy) (1985) or Llabia (Spain).

In the same communiqué, in relation to the work of the architect, the jury underlines the confidence it has in Souto Moura "use a stone with over a thousand years or inspire a modern detail of Mies van der Rohe".

Throughout his career, Souto Moura saw his work was recognized several times, having received the Prémio Pessoa (1998), the Prix Secil architectural (1992 and 2004), first prize Bienal Iberoamericana (1998), the international award Architecture in stone (1995)the Heinrich Tessenow Gold Medal (2001) and the International Prize for architecture in Chicago (2006).

The architect of 58 years will receive the prize, worth 100 billion dollars (about 70 thousand euros), at a ceremony to be held in June in Washington, D.C.

Souto Moura, who is currently travelling, scored a press conference for the Hotel Flórida, Lisboa, 22 hours.

Created in 1979 by the Hyatt Foundation, headquartered in the United States, the Pritzker Prize is considered the Nobel of architecture. The award distinguishes a living architect each year for their exceptional work.

Born on July 25, 1952 in Porto architect Eduardo Souto de Moura, recognised as one of the greatest names of Portuguese modern architecture, began his professional career alongside Siza Vieira, with whom he worked until 1980 for five years.

In 1980, the architect graduated from the Escola Superior de Belas Artes do Porto, starting their activities as free-lance. In the same year, Souto Moura would receive its first prize, António de Almeida Foundation.

Throughout his career, the architect has been repeatedly approached to teach in the most prestigious schools of architecture, activity which began in 1981 at the Faculty of Architecture of the port, but that has led him to teach in the schools of Paris-Belleville, Harvard, Dublin, Zurich and Lausanne.

"Casa das Histórias" - Cascais - Lisbon

"Casa da Música" Subway Station - Oporto

AXA Stadium Sporting de Braga - Braga

Serpentine Pavilion - London

Burgo Tower - Oporto

The Programmed Wall - ETH Zurich

2011-03-27T13:57:00.000+01:00

If the basic manufacturing conditions of architecture shift from manual work to digital fabrication, what design potential is there for one of the oldest and most widespread architectural elements -- the brick? Students investigated this question in a four-week workshop, designing brick walls to be fabricated by an industrial robot. Unlike a mason, the robot has the ability to position each individual brick in a different way without optical reference or measurement, i.e. without extra effort. To exploit this potential, the students developed algorithmic design tools that informed the bricks of their spatial disposition according to procedural logics. Positioning this way it was possible to draft a brick wall in which each of over 400 bricks took up a specific position and rotation in space. The students defined not the geometry of the wall, but the constructive logic according to which the material was organised in a particular temporal order, and which thus produced an architectonic form.

in: http://www.dfab.arch.ethz.ch/index.php?lang=e&this_page=lehre&this_page_old=&this_type=&this_year=&this_id=81

Álvaro Leite Siza - Fez House

2011-03-13T10:54:00.000Z

This home and studio space, ‘the work of my life’ according to Álvaro Leite Siza, took 12 years to complete, assembling the site, designing the house, and then building it. The home’s size is almost statuesque with its lines and angles.

“To do architecture it’s necessary a client, a promoter. When I realized, in certain moment of my career that to continue my path I would need to occupy that role too, I didn’t hesitate. I conciliated objectives, interests, goals, I pursued an ideal and I achieved a dream. I also had the need to be, in this work, supervisor, coordinator and project director, in an organization in direct administration. I started this work in 2004 and I finished it in early of 2005. The construction begins in February of 2006 and was concluded in July of 2010. The project of personal house-atelier is the first where is present touching figures in their own atmosphere, exalting pieces, personalities that derive from history, versus the sensibility, recreating individually realities, with no intention previously defined. They appear in the middle of delivery to ones believe beyond what we need (specific program and functional), sublimation underlying to authentic communication of the creative process.”

“Transitional spaces, the porticos, the lamps, the light, the doorknobs, the doors, the hand rails, even some paintings and the furniture was designed for me, but also other of XIX century (timeless pieces) that came from my family that fit the environment perfectly, beyond other elements, complement the creation of environments that exalt Mozart, Leonardo da Vinci, Miguel Angelo and surrounded by a lot of extraordinary Art works, that aren’t limited to the atmosphere of purely imaginary architectural.”

by Álvaro Leite Siza

Architects: Alvaro Leite Siza Vieira

Location: Porto, Portugal

Project Year: 2010

Photographs: FG+SG – Fernando Guerra, Sergio Guerra

Laufen Forum by Nissen & Wentzlaff

2011-03-05T13:31:00.001Z

The LAUFEN Forum exhibition and visitor centre, completed in 2009 by architects, Nissen&Wentzlaff, impressed the judges of this year’s Award for Marketing + Architecture. LAUFEN Forum won the prize in the “Office and business premises, industrial and commercial buildings” category.

The building has a clearly defined concept. It is a meeting place dedicated to the LAUFEN brand. It includes a spacious section for exhibitions, test bathrooms and an area for training and presentations. The impressive 6,500 cubic metre large structure on Wahlenstrasse aims to offer a range of facilities and satisfy a variety of demands. Basel architect’s office Nissen & Wentzlaff designed the two-storey, made of exposed concrete virtually throughout. Viewed from the outside the building looks like a receptacle.

And that is not far off the mark. When visitors walk around the building, or from a bird’s eye view, the building ultimately reveals itself to be a scaled replica of a familiar LAUFEN ceramic washbasin. Symbolically the building was cast in one piece exactly like its ceramic model. Unlike the product, the building does not contain water but the company’s products.

Economising on space, the architects situated the new LAUFEN Forum on the edge of a slope. Two thirds of the building project over a car park and the structure is only supported by one single, off-centre point. Several precisely defined radii determine the building’s free-form structure. This free-form structure was implemented with the aid of computer-aided milled templates in a concrete shell.

The two-storey concrete facade was cast in one mould, giving it a similar appearance throughout. The ceilings were added later on. The main entrance looks onto the street and offers disabled access. Visitors are received at an info desk and then walk around and view the exhibits. Starting upstairs, visitors first discover the exhibition booths, separated by partitions. These house a permanent exhibition of LAUFEN designer bathrooms. Test baths also invite the visitor to take a dip. The gallery is linked to the ground floor by two staircases.

House in Tokyo by Mamm-Design

2011-03-03T21:32:00.001Z

With a 5.50 meter high covered terrace, complete with tree, in the center of their latest house, Akira and Maya Mada of Mamm-Design escape the inevitably claustrophobic living situation in Tokyo. Take one step over the threshold of this whimsical home it´s as if you´re back outside in the open air. To achieve this level of comfort on a plot wedged between virtually identical prefab houses, no less than a third of the total surface are of 66m² was reserved for the terrace. With its grey brick floor and centrally positioned Evergreen Ash, it forms an attractive theatrical setting for everydau life.

“Walking around the house we sometimes experience the garden room as totally outside, but at other times we experience it as part of the interior”, explains Akida Mada. “It´s the co-existence that gives this house its unique atmosphere”. Situated around the terrace are the kitchen, a studio, a study, the bathroom and the bedroom, all of which have and open connection with the central void. The terrace acts as a buffer between the two occupants working spaces, so that they don´t have to live in each other´s pockets. Using a modern interpretation of the concept of “borrowed scenery” by including the background landscape in the composition of a garden, the architect pair have managed to create a challenging balance between openness and privacy. “In a Japanese city, we have to leave a 50cm gap between neighbouring buildings to project the structures from earthquakes”, explains Akira Mada. “By carefully making openings towards those unused in-between spaces, our minds can extend beyond the borders of this tiny site. As a result, the interior feels much larger than its physical floor area would suggest”.

Duplex House in Tokito by Hidehiro Fukuda architects

2011-03-03T15:14:00.000Z

The design concept is based on the traditional Japanese folded paper crane. These designs begin with a square sheet of paper and involve a lot of diagonal folding. The crane in Japan is a holy creature that is believed to make a person’s wish to come true; such as long life. The architect incorporated the notion of longevity in the design which consists of a single level house and a two level studio.

Two rectangles are arranged on the site. The first volume is set parallel to the existing park and accommodates the studio along two levels and the home’s living areas on ground level. The second volume is placed at an angle creating a triangular area between them used as an entrance, corridor and garden of the home accommodating its private spaces. Its transparent roof with little square windows are arranged irregularly brings the light in connecting the inhabitants to the outside. The interior walls and roof, lined with oriented strand board, provide a seamless continuation of space. White colour is used in corridors and to connect the rooms with each other.

Architects: Hidehiro Fukuda architects
Location: hakodate, hokkaido,japan
Structural engineer: Ryozo Umezawa
Project area: 152.28sqm
Conclusion: 2010

House of Trough by Jun Igarashi Architects

2011-03-03T14:58:00.000Z

'house of trough' by japanese studio jun igarashi architects is a dwelling for a couple located east of hokkaido. the site, which is a less-than-desirable plot next to an iron factory, called for a design that limited the interior's visual interaction with the exterior to maintain a calm living atmosphere for the inhabitants.

In order to ensure that the living space was sufficiently closed-off from outside site conditions, various programs of the house act as 'buffer zones' and are distributed accordingly to push certain spaces more inward than outward. the square-shaped plan sandwiches the living/dining/kitchen area between a service/storage volume to the north and a bedroom/storage volume to the south. this middle zone is largely devoid of windows but remains open vertically to promote a spacious quality.

Much like mezzanines, the two volumes to the sides remain open, enabling the inhabitants to overlook the rest of the house while still illuminating the lower level.

The south side accommodates a guest room in the partial basement, a bedroom on the ground floor and a generous storage space on the elevated level. the washroom and utility closet are housed on the north side with an additional lookout stoop accessible by a ladder. white translucent curtains act as temporary walls when needed.

Structural design: daisuke hasegawa & partners

Construction: yamada industry co., ltd

Structure: wood

Storeys: 2

Site area: 208.06 m2

Total floor area: 98.44 m2

House M by Jun Igarashi Architects

2011-03-03T13:38:00.000Z

This is a house built by the japonese office Jun Igarashi Architects in the centre of Hokkaido, on a very tight site. The neighboring houses vary in height and quite high buildings around it are expected to be built in the near future.

The design aspires to be autonomous and claims its own identity providing its inhabitants with a peaceful quiet ‘steady’ place. The architect took inspiration and makes references through his design to [orudosu] of the Mongol autonomous region of the People’s Republic of China, established in 1947. The House is a large space subdivided into smaller parts, achieving privacy at any time for all its inhabitants. A large corridor-like space, the hallway, is punctured showing leeway to the more private spaces whereas the double volume accommodating the main living areas unifies the social aspect of the home.

Space Block Hanoi by Kazuhiro Kojima

2011-03-03T13:09:00.000Z

This is an experimental housing complex that sought to regenerate the shops-cum-houses in an old area of Hanoi, Vietnam. This district, popularly known as “the 36th street district”, is composed primarily of houses inhabited by traditionally large Chinese families. The buildings have narrow frontages and an unusually extended depth of 70-80 m. These high-density, low-rise buildings were considered to be a comfortable domestic environment until the changes of government in Vietnam during the 20th century.

Han,” became such a high-density city (1,000 people per hectare} that many families began to live together within one unit and even to transform courtyards into actual rooms. As a result the standard of living deteriorated.

The porosity of space: where the breeze comes through.

The objective of this project was to make a lowemission, 4-storey townhouse that would not rely on air conditioning. Instead. good natural ventilation was established within a high density environment. Were the renewal of the old city to progress in accordance with this model, our research shows that it would be possible to realise an environmentally friendly model for a compact city. The porous layering of Space Blocks would achieve this. However, this project was finally built within the University campus. The porosity ratio (exterior ratio) is 50% and the courtyards intertwine three-dimensionally with the building volume itself. The way of stacking the boxes was determined by CFD (computer fluid dynamics) analysis and by ensuring privacy between neighbours.

The wind analysis that we implemented in this project became a starting point for how we conceive of an architecture with “fluid direction”. This approach seeks to design by flow, rather than by the organisation of objects in space.

We were able to create fluid design by having air movement where it would seem no air could flow. People in this area have the experience and knowledge to use such exterior spaces for a variety of activities , such as dining . There are only a few courtyards that are open to the sky; all exterior spaces are filled with strong natural light, coming from the north. A flat double roof shape was adopted in this project, since the flat roof is traditional in Vietnam. a country that used to be a French colony. The double roof reduces direct heat loads. The size and shape of vertical slits on the upper surface of the roof were also determined by CFD.

This is the aspect of the project in 2010, 7 years after its conclusion.

Location: Hanoi, Vietnam

Architects: Kazuhiro Kojima + Taller Kojima, Kojima Lab, Tokyo University of Science +, Magaribuchi Lab, University of Tokyo

Design years: 1999-2002

Completion date: 2003

Surface area: 466 m2

Marcos Cruz foi premiado pelo Royal Institute of British Architects

2011-03-03T12:04:00.001Z

Deixo-vos com esta entrevista interessante que descobri na Revista Ípsilon sobre o arquitecto Marcos Cruz, premiado pelo Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) para a Outstanding PhD Thesis 2008.

Vamos poder vestir os nossos edifícios?

A arquitectura contemporânea "é fria". A arquitectura contemporânea "falhou o corpo". Se isso não tivesse acontecido, talvez hoje já tivéssemos um envolvimento diferente e mais intenso com ela. Poderíamos, quem sabe, ter paredes de látex que funcionariam como fatos, com sensores que nos permitiriam comunicar uns com os outros à distância. "A pessoa podia sentar-se dentro dessa pele hipersensível. E vestir a arquitectura tornar-se-ia um acto literal", afirma Marcos Cruz.

Foi destas ideias que este arquitecto português a viver e a trabalhar em Londres partiu para a tese de doutoramento que lhe valeu o prémio do Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) para a Outstanding PhD Thesis 2008. Uma tese a que chamou The Inhabitable Flesh of Architecture (o corpo habitável da arquitectura).

"Muita da arquitectura hoje não é feita pensando em quem a usa e a vive. É feita para agradar a arquitectos e para alimentar todo um discurso montado dentro das academias, e que é muito auto-referencial", diz Marcos Cruz, em conversa com o P2, durante umas curtas férias de Natal no Porto, cidade onde cresceu e onde estudou arquitectura.

Na mesa à nossa frente está uma cópia da tese, cheia de imagens, algumas desenhadas por Marcos, outras de peças de artistas plásticos que trabalharam massas, formas mais ou menos disformes, matérias orgânicas. Marcos, que propôs que a conversa decorresse na Casa da Música, vai enumerando as suas referências e fala de eXistenZ, de David Cronenberg, ou Coma, de Michael Crichton, de Barbarella, de pintores como Bosch e Bruegel, de artistas plásticos como Louise Bourgeois ou a francesa Orlan, que usa cirurgias plásticas para alterar o próprio corpo.

"Não sou 'sizesco'"

São imagens de objectos cheios, maleáveis, mutantes, viscosos, viscerais. Não há aqui lugar para brancos, para linhas puras. "Não é uma coincidência que num país com tanto caos como Portugal tenha havido essa necessidade do branco, das linhas puras", diz. Mas ele nunca se identificou com isso. "Já não sou dessa geração, e essa é uma das razões porque não me considero 'sizesco', ainda que o [arquitecto Álvaro] Siza tenha sido uma referência importante enquanto estudava. O meu Portugal já não era esse Portugal caótico, por isso não conseguia sentir-me parte dos produtos brancos da arquitectura portuguesa".

Fez um caminho sempre para mais longe desse universo. E encontrou o que procurava quando foi para a Escola de Arquitectura Bartlett, em Londres, onde hoje dá aulas. "A Bartlett é uma das poucas escolas onde se faz arquitectura experimental. Preparamos os alunos para terem uma mentalidade inovadora". Para quem lá anda, "a arquitectura não tem limites, está toda por descobrir".

Começou a interessar-se pela ideia da "flesh". "Há uma metáfora que os arquitectos usam que é a da pele. Os edifícios têm pele. Mas é uma pele plana, sem espessura, sem profundidade. Muita da arquitectura comercial que se faz é uma chapa-quatro de pisos com uma pele bonita à volta. Não é mais do que uma membrana superficial que nos deixa frios, indiferentes".

Marcos procurava algo mais profundo, e a palavra "flesh" surgiu-lhe como a ideal. "Não é 'body' nem 'meat', é uma palavra que pode ter um sentido espiritual, metafórico, biológico".

Mas mesmo numa escola com as características da Bartlett, os seus trabalhos causaram algum desconforto. "As pessoas olhavam com cepticismo para as minhas maquetas em látex e diziam 'isto é muito estranho, é muito feio'. Mas não era o lado estético que ali me interessava, era poder trabalhar com uma arquitectura que era flexível". Era, para ele, uma forma de ultrapassar "a arquitectura à nossa volta, que é muito dura, muito estática".

Ao contrário de outras áreas, como as artes plásticas, por exemplo, que foram ao ponto de "remover a questão do belo", na arquitectura não houve um momento de ruptura, afirma. "Nas escolas em que estudei, aqui, havia professores que diziam 'para quê essa vanguarda toda, se continuamos a fazer como os romanos?'. Eu tinha uma sensação de claustrofobia criativa brutal. Podíamos de facto continuar a fazer o que os romanos faziam porque já estava tudo inventado".

A esta espécie de paralisia soma-se, por razões sociais, uma perda de funções da arquitectura. "Hoje já não precisamos de um espaço arquitectónico para comunicar; a arquitectura já não carrega consigo a memória necessária para a sociedade continuar; e já nem sequer é a carapaça de protecção mais importante que temos - um cartão de crédito pode dar-nos mais segurança do que um edifício".

O corpo ciborguiano

É preciso, por tudo isto, que a arquitectura encontre um novo sentido. Para Marcos Cruz isso passa pela relação com o corpo. Um corpo que descreve como "ciborguiano".

A primeira parte da tese de doutoramento traça a evolução do corpo ao longo da História - do clássico ao moderno, passando pelo grotesco e o burguês. E o que Marcos defende é que o corpo grotesco medieval - "que é deformado, bizarro, com uma pele porosa" - é o que mais tem pontos de contacto com o corpo ciborguiano de hoje. São ambos corpos que fascinam ao mesmo tempo que repugnam.

"Há no corpo contemporâneo um lado estranho, imprevisível, que nós aceitamos e que há 20 ou 30 anos não aceitaríamos. Nas artes plásticas existe um mundo imenso de artistas que o deformam, manipulam, misturam com outros corpos, com animais, vão para além dos limites da nossa pele e da nossa anatomia". Em arquitectura, o que se está a tentar fazer é ainda muito pouco. Marcos Cruz reuniu alguns dos exemplos mais vanguardistas no número de Novembro/Dezembro 2008 da revista Architectural Design, que foi convidado a editar. Chamou-lhe Neoplasmatic Design e, enquanto passa as páginas da revista, com um evidente entusiasmo, explica porquê. "O neoplasma é um tumor, cresce gerindo-se pelas suas próprias regras". Fascinou-o a variedade de neoplasmas artificiais (synthetic neoplasms) - termo por ele inventado - encontrados nas artes plásticas, e, em particular, o neoplasma do filme eXistenZ, que se torna vivo ao ser colocado na coluna vertebral dos jogadores.

Mas ao mesmo tempo que foi mergulhando cada vez mais neste universo ciborguiano, sonhando com o uso de pele artificial e com edifícios com paredes de látex que, em vez de separarem as pessoas, permitem-lhes comunicar, Marcos foi também sentindo que ainda faltava alguma humanidade a todo este mundo. Foi por isso que achou necessário olhar para certos edifícios do nosso passado mais recente que demonstravam uma relação especial com o corpo. Decidiu reler a história da arquitectura do século XX de uma nova forma e encontrou exemplos importantes Domenech i Montaner, Alison and Peter Smithsons, Charles Moore, Rudolf Schindler e Richard Neutra, Jorn Utzon, e também Le Corbusier (interessaram-lhe, por exemplo, os confessionários à escala humana da igreja de Ronchamp).

Um edifício "vivo"

Reconhece que tem ainda poucas oportunidades de pôr em prática a arquitectura que quer fazer. Uma dessas ocasiões surgiu com a construção, em 2003, em Graz, na Áustria, do edifício Kunsthaus, também conhecido como the friendly alien - um projecto de Peter Cook e Colin Fournier do qual fez parte na fase de concurso. A cobertura em acrílico, que tem por baixo uma membrana em borracha, é mediatizada, e pode ser usada para passar filmes, por exemplo. O projecto inicial era mais ambicioso, era ter uma cobertura flexível e fazer com que o edifício fosse "quase um ser vivo" que se movesse como os bancos de corais. A tecnologia disponível na altura não permitiu ir tão longe, e o projecto teve que ser adaptado à realidade.

O mesmo aconteceu em Lisboa, quando Marcos e o seu sócio Marjan Coletti (conheceram-se na Bartlett e juntos formam o atelier marcosandmarjan) foram convidados a desenhar o pavilhão da Feira do Livro, em 2005. "Fizemos imensos projectos mais arrojados e complexos, até percebermos que havia 500 mil euros para gastar na feira inteira. Tivemos que refazer o projecto numa noite e trabalhar com meios primitivos - um edifício sem fundações, uma estrutura interna de andaimes - e tentar mesmo assim fazer uma arquitectura que fosse experiencial, que tivesse algo de descoberta." O resultado foi um edifício vermelho, assimétrico, como uma nave espacial que tivesse aterrado no topo do Parque Eduardo VII.

A higiene, o tacto e a visão

O futuro está aí, e Marcos Cruz acredita que o que hoje é sonho poderá vir, mais cedo ou mais tarde, a tornar-se realidade, ainda que formalizado de uma maneira diferente do que imaginado hoje. "A visão foi o grande meio de comunicação do século XX. O tacto e a audição, que são muito importantes no espaço arquitectónico foram rejeitados". Isto tem a ver, acredita, com uma "estética da higiene" que surge no final do século XIX, início do século XX, por razões de saúde pública, e que os arquitectos aproveitam. "Dizem 'isto é um grande momento para demonstrar que, se tirarmos tudo das paredes e tornarmos o espaço minimal e ascético, estamos a torná-lo mais saudável'".

Como a sociedade não estava preparada para isso, tinha que ser "educada". O branco e o minimal foram associados à seriedade e à exigência intelectual, enquanto "o material foi desprezado". Todo o trabalho de Marcos Cruz é uma rejeição destes "dogmas". "É uma resposta a um sítio onde me eduquei e onde cresci e é uma grande crítica a certo tipo de dogmas que me incutiram como arquitecto e dos quais muitos arquitectos nunca vão conseguir livrar-se ao longo da vida, porque nem sequer têm tempo para os questionar. O traço claro, o gesto forte que explica tudo é um dogma absurdo que vem do século XIX".

Espera que o futuro seja diferente. E com as suas experiências não está a tentar discutir o que é que é mais ou menos bonito. O que lhe interessa são outras perguntas. Por exemplo: "Será que há uma arquitectura que se pode viver mais pelo tacto do que pela visão?". E, já agora, que se pode vestir?

House in Minamimachi by Suppose Design Office

2011-02-20T11:03:00.002Z

Japanese architects Suppose Design Office have completed a residence in Hiroshima, Japan, with offset floors allowing natural light from above to penetrate each level.
The house can can be naturally illuminated while maintaining privacy on a small, crowded plot of land.
The interior comprises a series of terraces, each shaped differently according to its intended purpose.

House in Minamimachi

"During the process of designing for a small plot of land, there are a lot of times in which the form of the building is steered by legal constraints.
If you are thinking of how you can have the most floor space, the outer shape of the building is automatically decided by how the permitted ratio of square footage to property size, so the architectural design comes out of the number of stories built just to increase the floor space.
Here, I’m thinking about the possibility of space that can be made by subtraction.
This building was made to slightly exceed its allotted coverage ratio, so each floor fluctuates in shape.
The sections that slide out function as lighting design elements, bringing in the outside environment.
I’ve changed the shape of each floor freely according to its intended purpose and features, turning them into spaces with a sense of distance and perspective, maintaining privacy even in crowded urban areas where housing units are close together, creating a bright, well-lit living space.
Before you know it, design that starts from the rules, from the legal restrictions, can become stronger restrictions than the rules.
By starting the design away from the legal constraints, by designing the way we start to plan, we can have buildings that possess a degree of freedom. Just by changing the bottom line a little, I want to pinpoint the things we’ve overlooked, the elements of richness, and design richness around that subtraction."

Information from Suppose Design Office

Universitá Luigi Bocconi

2011-02-18T11:14:00.001Z

A university faculty building in Milan by Irish practice Grafton Architects has been named World Building of the Year at the inaugural World Architecture Festival, held in Barcelona in October 2008.

Here is a description of the building by the project authors.

A Piece of City

We saw this brief as an opportunity for the Luigi Bocconi University to make a space at the scale of the city.

To this end we have built at the scale of the site,50m x150m.

Inside, our building is thought of as a large market hall, directly influenced by Il Broletto.

As with Il Broletto, this hall acts as a filter between the city and the university.

A Window to Milan

The northern edge of the site fronts onto the artery of Viale Bligny, with the clatter of trams, the rush of busses, general traffic, people passing.

It addresses the throbbing urban life of Milan, weaves into the mesh of the city.

This frontage becomes the architectural opportunity to have a ‘window’ to Milan, a memorable image to confirm the important cultural contribution that the Bocconi University plays in the life of this city.

For this reason, the public space of the aula magna occupies this frontage, asserting a symbolic presence and a register of the prestigious status of the University.

Social Lebensraum

This building is set back from the Viale Bligny & Via Rontgen edges to make a public space 18m x 90m inspired by the space forward of Hospital Maggiore.

It’s much larger frontage, of approximately 200m , creates a vibrant socially active edge to a building which inside is a maze of secret cloistered courtyards and walkways.

The widened pavement and new urban space acts as bridge, the ‘Social Lebensraum’ and keeps the city at a respectful distance.

This new deep ‘finger’ of space reaches out to the city and beckons. the visitor into the heart of the interior.

This public space continues into the building, bringing with it it’s stone surface, the floor of the city.

A Place of Exchange

The world of the offices / and research is suspended between the ground and sky – a low- rise labyrinth with an interactive weave of courts, bridges terraces, corridors, all of which encourage overlap, expansion, contraction, new mixes, chance discussions, vertical and horizontal possibilities.

Moving Skyward:

In order to make this grand place of exchange we thought about the research offices as beams of space, suspended to form a grand canopy which filters light to all levels.

The offices form an inhabited roofscape which is generally 3 /4 floors deep.

This floating canopy allows the space of the city to overlap with the life of the university. Allows internal and external public spaces to merge.

Undercroft:

The undercroft is cool and shady in the summer, with reflected light and warmth in the winter.

The underground accommodation is treated as an erupting landscape which offers support to the inhabited light filters above.

The point of energy is where the sky world meets the underground world.

Spatially this underground world is solid, dense and carved.

By contrast the large spans allow the offices above to float like bridges slung in space.

We tried to establish a continuity between the ‘landscape’ of the city and the ‘made landscape’ of this undercroft.

Inside Out:

Because we have blurred the division between indoor and outdoor spaces, and because the scheme is a weave of courts, gardens and ‘halls’, this allows the building to expand and contract be it on a seasonal basis.

The external public spaces are microclimates protected from extremes of heat, cold and rain.

The internal public spaces are capable of being opened up to merge with the protected external spaces.

There is the potential for a surreal interchange to occur between inside and outside, between informal semi -internal landscapes and formal semi-external halls.

Inhabited Roof:

The beehive world of the research offices hovers over the city below, over the public spaces below, over the campus below.

It is physically separate but always visually connected to the life of the lower levels.

It is an adaptable and interactive labyrinth.

In search of gravity:

With regard to the structure and the assembly of this interactive labyrinth we thought we could perhaps establish a real sense of gravity or defiance of gravity. Our concrete piers are anchored in the ground and reach up to support the heavy roof from which the office levels are hung.

By banishing to roof level, this point of transfer from one scale of structure to another, we perform a number of tasks; the boundaries between lower and upper levels are blurred; the thinness of the division between lower and upper levels adds a sense of weightlessness to the suspended offices; thermal mass is located where it is needed….at roof level.

And what will this ‘construct’ look like?

The two components of the brief which are given expression on the street edge are the Aula Magna and the Library. For both architectural and environmental reasons these volumes are expressed as solids, either embedded and rising out of the ground as is the case with the Aula, or cantilevered and floating over the street as is the case with the Library.

Responding to the character of Milan as described by our Milanese colleagues…”hard on the outside, friendly on the inside” ,we have made an edge which is like a crusty ‘shield’, constructed in a robust material i.e., stone,render or concrete.

We have worked this material in order to give a sense of depth, density and mass as is the quality of so many buildings in Milan.

Our quest is to make something resolutely robust but beautifully bold.

Aula

The external wall to the sunken Aula Magna reaches the full height of the building with the upper level offices inhabiting it’s roofscape /attic.

The volume of the aula invades this roofscape for air and light and this ‘invasion’ which happens in the section becomes evident on the external wall.

The wall is deformed and fractured in order to provide a more generous pavement and to turn the corner.

Our priority was that the presence of this space be given expression on the street.

The full bulk and scale of this great room ‘the embedded boulder’ sits directly on the street edge and is the anchor for the totality of the building.

The acoustic intimacy of the Aula Magna and the conference rooms is achieved by lining and folding the inner walls and ceilings.

The two interlocking volumes of this space are designed to accommodate 600 people at the lower level and 400 at the upper level.

The volume of the light scoops act as mini fly towers.

The 400 person space is separated from the larger volume by means of a twin walled acoustic screen which is lowered from this roof recess above.

A podium for the speaker in this smaller space, slides out from under the lower seating rows.

A backstage area is provided behind the main aula with a larger roof recess to accommodate backdrops etc.

This is the most dramatic light shaft in the space.

Blackout is via automatic blinds.

Information from Grafton Architects

see more information about the project here.

Boscolo Hotels Milano

2011-02-18T10:37:00.003Z

Studio Italo Rota have designed luxury, modern and colorful interior of Boscolo Exedra Hotel in Milan, Italy. The goal ideas for this design is make the hotel become places that identify the city. The hotel is a place where cultures come together and meet so this is must be open to everyone and not only the resident guests.

Boscolo Exedra Hotel is the seventh five star hotel located in a building which dates back to the 1920’s in premises which were formerly occupied by a bank and after one year of hard work and 150 million Euro on renovations the brand new Boscolo Exedra Hotel // Milano runs over a surface area of 15,000 square meters. All of the Boscolo Hotels respect for architecture as each one has been established following renovation work on historical buildings, a distinctive trait, that has made it a true mission for the company to restore the heritage of architecture and buildings.

The striking scenography of the hall, with its harlequin sculptures, creates the ideal environment for a warm and unforgettable welcome. The hall, the reception and the elegant restaurant are designed as a single large space, ensuring visual continuity of their various functions. The property also provides guests with a glamorous bar/ lounge and an original Champagnerie, the perfect location in which to enjoy delicious cocktails and excellent light meals. The hotel was built in 2009 and is spread over 9 floors. It has a total of 154 guest rooms and luxury suites.

The guest rooms and luxury suites are decorated in contemporary style and embellished by a number of dynamic design features. The designer has appointed them using soft colours, choice materials and design pieces. Spacious and welcoming, the suites are specially designed to cater for guests’ complete physical and spiritual wellbeing. Each suite is different, with its own unique layout. Each one comes with an en-suite bathroom with shower and bathtub, a hairdryer, a double or king-size bed, a direct dial telephone, a satellite/ cable television and Internet access. A safe, a minibar, individually adjustable heating/ air conditioning and a terrace also come as standard features.

See more information about this project here.

Luzern University

2011-02-18T10:18:00.001Z

Project: UNI-PHZ Luzern
Author: Enzmann + Fischer
Conclusion date: 2011
Location: Frohburgstrasse 3, Luzern, Switzerland

Swiss Transport Museum

2011-02-18T09:38:00.000Z

Annette Gigon / Mike Guyer Architekten

The current project is based on the 1999 competition. At that point the brief represented an urban design vision for the gradual renovation of the museum complex with its various buildings exhibiting the different means of transport, as well as a new building for the Road Transport Hall.

At the beginning of 2005 the project was resumed. In the first construction phase a new entrance building (Futurcom) was also to be provided in addition to the replacement building for the Road Transport Hall. This urban design strategy enables the generation of a central open courtyard (Arena), which in the new scheme should remain undeveloped and creates space for temporary, themed exhibitions.

The new entrance building forms a bridge-like link between the existing buildings on Lidostrasse (the IMAX, the Rail Transport Hall and the high-rise building). It contains on the ground floor the ticket office, shop area and both restaurants – one offers table service and opens towards the lake, the other is conceived as a self-service restaurant that stretches out like fingers into the arena. On the first floor are accommodated the exhibition areas for communications, the new entrance to the Planetarium and also the services area. On the second floor is the conference area with a conference hall that seats 500 guests and three smaller meeting rooms.

The façades form roughly transparent ‘vitrines’ for all kinds of wheels, propellers, wheel rims, turbines, cogs, steering wheels, etc. The mechanical parts hang densely in front of the building insulation and are behind the façade panes, forming a shimmering, shiny and in parts revolving façade ‘undergarment’. The omnium-gatherum of the various manifestations of the wheel pays homage to this basic element of mechanical movement.

The concept for the new Road Transport Hall differs considerably from the first design during the 1999 competition. Where originally a three-storey building was conceived with concrete shear walls, a load-bearing, glazed façade construction and bridge-like ramps on the exterior, the new building should be two-storied, like a black box, more flexible and in particular more economical. It should be a structure that is reminiscent of those buildings countrywide that are designed for the storage and housing of cars, i.e. multi-storey car parks. Instead of negotiating the floors via ramps, an automated parking system is employed; a shelf-like structure operated by a mechanical lift displays the collection of classic cars (or even new models) densely positioned one above the other and out of reach. At the touch of a button visitors can bring one of the cars closer to them and look at it up close. The connection to the open areas on the ground and first floors enables the possibility of running different themed exhibitions parallel to this. A workshop shows the visitors how the vehicles are maintained and repaired.

The facade cladding of the mainly closed building volume is composed of sheet metal in differing formats and colours. However, standard facade sheeting will not be employed, nor metal from car bodies (as envisaged during the preliminary project), but rather they will be clad from the sheet metal boards that direct traffic – we are referring to traffic signboards: destination and orientation boards, instruction signs, manditory signs, prohibition signs, placename signs. The signboard walls, which spatially delimit the Road Transport Hall, indirectly refer to the great latitude of private transport, which is directed and regulated with the help of such boards. The signs also refer to numerous localities that are connected via different road networks. Amongst them might be the home towns and cities of the visitors, who arrived at the Swiss Museum of Transport via diverse traffic routes and with different means of transport and here can discover more about (their) mobility.

On the rear facade, towards the neighbouring buildings, the signs are reverse mounted, meaning that the printed side faces into the building while the untreated, metal side faces outwards. Thus the neighbours see these boards just as road users would see those signs meant for the oncoming traffic - from the rear side.

information from Gigon/Guyer Architekten

Hotel City Garden

2011-02-18T09:14:00.001Z

The Parkhotel in Zug planned to erect a temporary ancillary hotel building on a public site that in 12 to 15 years time will be used as the services area for a road building project.

Despite the limited life–span this hotel was to meet the requirements of a four–star facility and to have an unmistakeable character.

The Swiss office EM2N developed this project from the serial character of hotel buildings. The standard layout of bedrooms next to each other is transformed into an expressive building volume by swivelling the module. The sculptural façade corresponds with an internal corridor figure; the building is given a head and an end.

The idyllic location between the trees on the edge of the woods led to the idea of a reflective façade of polished chrome steel. The facetted building volume mirrors its natural surroundings and transforms the place into a kaleidoscope of building and nature.

The short period for which the building will be used called for a time-saving construction method, which led to the use of a combined system (timber frame braced by a concrete core).

Project: Hotel City Garden
Author: EM2N

Conclusion date: 2009
Location: Metallstrasse 20, CH – 6304 Zug
Client: MZ–Immobilien AG, Zug
Cost: CHF 18 Million

Postcards from the Future

2011-02-17T19:14:00.001Z

Make this trip! Postcards from the Future.

Who hasn’t had yet made this trip, having visions of the future, or at least imagined a different world?

To share images that bring new ideas to life and, ate the same time, frame the climate change debate, it’s the main goal of the exhibition “Postcards from the Future” in London. If you plan to travel to London, Until 6 March 2011, a display of 14 impressive images will be on display at the Museum of London. Food scarcity, rising sea levels and how all Londoners will need to innovate and adapt to survive are highlighted in this exhibition.

Is curious to perceive scenarios created for areas that some of us might well know. Is the case of the Norman Foster building, the Swiss Re Tower in London squatted after the collapse of the global economy. This iconic City office tower is here transformed into a high-rise housing building. Originally converted into luxury flats, the block soon slid down the social scale to become a high-density, multi-occupation tower block, and currently triggering a potential vertical slum.

THE GHERKIN

PARLIAMENT SQUARE RICE PADDIES

This view across Parliament Square shows paddy fields running up to the walls of the Palace of Westminster. The land that once housed political protest is now part of the city’s food production effort.

In this scenario London has adapted to rising water tables in radical ways. Managed flooding is now the name of the game, as is self-sufficiency in food. Central London is a network of rice paddies – and Londoners’ diet is largely rice-based.

BUCKINGHAM PALACE SHANTY

The climate refugee crisis reaches epic proportions. The vast shanty town that stretches across London’s centre leaves historic buildings marooned, including Buckingham Palace.

The Royal family is surrounded in their London home. Everybody is on the move and the flooded city centre is now uninhabitable and empty – apart from the thousands of shanty-dwellers. But should empty buildings and land be opened up to climate refugees?

TRAFALGAR SQUARE SHANTY

Nelson looks down on a shanty town of climate refugees. As the equatorial belt becomes uninhabitable, people are driven north in search of food and security. People settle wherever they can and many reach London.

This is the political dilemma of the day for all European countries. The numbers are overwhelming. London’s strategy is to cluster the new arrivals in the historic centre, rather than spread them through the suburbs, where most Londoners now live.

LONDON AS VENICE

London has become uninhabitable. Every year spring tides surge through the Thames Barrier, making London the new Venice. But whereas the city of gondolas has come to terms with water, London is overwhelmed.

This image shows the impact of 6-metre flooding, the level required to breach the Thames Barrier.

CAMEL GUARDS PARADE

Traditional rituals have altered beyond recognition, along with the climate. Here, on Horse Guards Parade, horses have been replaced by camels – animals that can withstand the heat of the parade ground. The change was controversial but the London Tourist Board argued strongly in favour. Tourism remains important for London’s economy.

SKATING AT TOWER BRIDGE

As the Gulf Stream slows a mini ice-age brings temporary relief to heat-weary Londoners. Winter skating becomes London’s most popular sport and Tower Bridge is a favourite spot.

The scene harks back to the 17th century when artists loved to paint London’s Frost Fairs. Then, the Thames froze over because the river flowed sluggishly. Now, the river flows quickly but every winter the temperature falls to new lows.

THE MALL – ROYAL POWER

That archetypical British driveway The Mall, has become a wind-farm. Wind turbines tower over flags, as the desperate quest for renewable energy takes precedence over any remaining notions of Britishness. Cars? Now what on earth were they?

Wind farms are usually associated with bleak moors, distant hillsides or faraway patches of sea. But will we see more in our own back yards, even royal ones?

“We want to create a space in which people can consider how climate change may impact on their lives. We are committed to making beautiful and arresting images which tell their own story. We have deliberately chosen ‘postcard’ shots of London, places that all of us are familiar with. By focusing our creative energy on these well- known panoramas, the images have taken on a life of their own.

Even we were surprised by the way the story unfolded as the scene was created. Each picture has become a mini soap-opera, alive with colour, drama, triumph and adversity as our city is transformed and Londoners adapt to meet this change.” in: The city digitally transformed by the illustrators Robert Graves and Didier Madoc-Jones.

After several months of “harassment”, I finally accepted to share something in this blog.

House in Aichi

2011-02-17T18:36:00.002Z

Project: House in Aichi
Author: Studio Velocity

Residential development Goldbrunnenplatz

2011-02-17T18:16:00.000Z

Finished in 2008, this housing complex was designed by Bollhalder & Eberle AG. Located on the southeastern edge of the city of St.Gallen, the area offers the best of two worlds thanks to its proximity to the downtown and to nature - high quality of life. The architecture is accentuated within the subtle and harmoniously embedded with the environment. This house is designed so that all the flats have good sun exposition, a bright and friendly atmosphere inside the flats. Large windows allow natural light into the house interior, which is characterized by individual and flexible floor plans.

Residential Buildings Achslengut

2011-02-17T16:04:00.001Z

This project is characterised by a very specific history: Baumschlager- Eberle were asked to participate in the planning after the project had already been awarded to a Swiss architecture office. However, the construction plan for the entire project had been defined by this time. Therefore, the first construction segment was completed according to previously established wing depth and length parameters. Finally, a change in the construction plans was agreed on after all. Hence the second segment is a radically different, much more useful urban structure. They are housing »dots«, compact structures with interior access and projecting balcony zones. The placement of the buildings is important: it is a composition based on the view of Lake Constance.

Glass sliding elements are located in front of the apartments, some are transparent, some aren’t. This allows for ideal regulation of two things: spacing and interior view problems between the residential buildings. If, for example, someone slides two such panels in front of the bedroom, nobody can look inside, the tenant’s privacy is protected.

On the other hand, the individual turbulences of use on the balconies that often disturb public spaces are concealed this way. Thus a clear separation between public and private interests was achieved with these simple means.

The residents make use of the possibilities this facade solution offers in a very matter-of-fact fashion. It should be noted that the specific geometric appearance of these residential buildings is not affected by the individual behavioural patterns of the tenants. They are never really closed nor ever really open. This was intended from the beginning and it is what makes this projects architectural design so special. Somehow, it stands up to everyday use with complete ease.

Project: Residential Buildings Achslengut
Author: Baumschlager- Eberle
Conclusion date: 2002
Location: St. Gallen, Switzerland

Stadtlounge St.Gallen

2011-02-17T15:19:00.002Z

The idea for the unusual project of creating a public “city lounge” originated with architect Carlos Martinez and multimedia artist Pipilotti Rist. Their piece of art transforms the “Bleicheli District” into a 24-hour accessible leisure, relaxation and business oasis. It invites you to linger and offers a perfect setting for meeting people. A red “lounge” carpet covers the ground and glowing lamps are suspended overhead, bathing the neighbourhood in diverse, subtly changing lighting moods. Location: in the centre of St. Gallen, approx. 5 minutes on foot from the St. Gallen Main Station in the direction of the pedestrian zone.

Story of Stuff - Completo e legendado em português

2011-02-05T11:16:00.000Z

Dear architects

2011-01-11T23:06:00.003Z

Dear Architects, I Am Sick of Your Shit,
.

Once, a long time ago in the days of yore, I had a friend who was studying architecture to become, presumably, an architect.

This friend introduced me to other friends, who were also studying architecture. Then these friends had other friends who were architects - real architects doing real architecture like designing luxury condos that look a lot like glass dildos. And these real architects knew other real architects and now the only people I know are architects. And they all design glass dildos that I will never work or live in and serve only to obstruct my view of New Jersey.Do not get me wrong, architects. I like you as a person. I think you are nice, smell good most of the time, and I like your glasses. You have crazy hair, and if you are lucky, most of it is on your head. But I do not care about architecture. It is true. This is what I do care about:

* burritos

* hedgehogs

* coffee

As you can see, architecture is not on the list. I believe that architecture falls somewhere between toenail fungus and invasive colonoscopy in the list of things that interest me.

Perhaps if you didn't talk about it so much, I would be more interested. When you point to a glass cylinder and say proudly, hey my office designed that, I giggle and say it looks like a bong. You turn your head in disgust and shame. You think, obviously she does not understand. What does she know? She is just a writer. She is no architect. She respects vowels, not glass cocks. And then you say now I am designing a lifestyle center, and I ask what is that, and you say it is a place that offers goods and services and retail opportunities and I say you mean like a mall and you say no. It is a lifestyle center. I say it sounds like a mall. I am from the Valley, bitch. I know malls.

Architects, I will not lie, you confuse me. You work sixty, eighty hours a week and yet you are always poor. Why aren't you buying me a drink? Where is your bounty of riches? Maybe you spent it on Merlot. Maybe you spent it on hookers and blow. I cannot be sure. It is a mystery. I will leave that to the scientists to figure out.

Architects love to discuss how much sleep they have gotten. One will say how he was at the studio until five in the morning, only to return again two hours later. Then another will say, oh that is nothing. I haven't slept in a week. And then another will say, guess what, I have never slept ever. My dear architects, the measure of how hard you've worked and how much you've accomplished is not related to the number of hours you have not slept. Have you heard of Rem Koolhaas? He is a famous architect. I know this because you tell me he is a famous architect. I hear that Rem Koolhaas is always sleeping. He is, I presume, sleeping right now. And I hear he gets shit done. And I also hear that in a stunning move, he is making a building that looks not like a glass cock, but like a concrete vagina. When you sleep more, you get vagina. You can all take a lesson from Rem Koolhaas.

Life is hard for me, please understand. Architects are an important part of my existence. They call me at eleven at night and say they just got off work, am I hungry? Listen, it is practically midnight. I ate hours ago. So long ago that, in fact, I am hungry again. So yes, I will go. Then I will go and there will be other architects talking about AutoCAD shortcuts and something about electric panels and can you believe that is all I did today, what a drag. I look around the table at the poor, tired, and hungry, and think to myself, I have but only one bullet left in the gun. Who will I choose?

I have a friend who is a doctor. He gives me drugs. I enjoy them. I have a friend who is a lawyer. He helped me sue my landlord. My architect friends have given me nothing. No drugs, no medical advice, and they don't know how to spell subpoena. One architect friend figured out that my apartment was one hundred and eighty seven square feet. That was nice. Thanks for that.

I suppose one could ask what someone like me brings to architects like yourselves. I bring cheer. I yell at architects when they start talking about architecture. I force them to discuss far more interesting topics, like turkey eggs. Why do we eat chicken eggs, but not turkey eggs? They are bigger. And people really like turkey. See? I am not afraid to ask the tough questions.

So, dear architects, I will stick around, for only a little while. I hope that one day some of you will become doctors and lawyers or will figure out my taxes. And we will laugh at the days when you spent the entire evening talking about some European you've never met who designed a building you will never see because you are too busy working on something that will never get built. But even if that day doesn't arrive, give me a call anyway, I am free.

Yours truly,

Annie Choi

from www.partiv.com. originally published in Pidgin, a Princeton School of Architecture Publication under the title “Dear Architects, I am sick of your shit.” Annie Choi is an independent writer, you can visit her website at http://www.annietown.com/.

How to intervene in Favelas - Working the Tools

2011-01-11T19:35:00.005Z

INTRO/ANALYSIS

After our research on the macro-scale Finance of Rio das Pedras and the entire Barra da Tijuca area, we have come to the conclusion that Rio das Pedras is an area under extreme pressure by the local real estate capital that seeks the opportunity to invade the favela and develop some large-scale residential and commercial projects. In the current situation Barra da Tijuca is home to some of the biggest companies in Brazil, hosts the largest convention center in Latin America, the largest shopping mall in Latin America, many luxurious hotels and housing condos. As a matter of fact, some of the wealthiest people of Brazil live in this area, since it’s the 2nd most expensive area in the country [after some parts of the capital, Brasilia].

This dynamic is further enhanced by the major event of the 2016 Olympic games in which the area of Barra da Tijuca holds a key role. Since the announcement of the Games, the properties of Barra already had an ap lose its cultural and demographic identity and be turned into another high-class suburb of the upper and upper-middle class of Barra da Tijuca?

OPERATION

According to the project scenario, 40.000 new inhabitants will enter the favela of Rio das Pedras by the year 2050 doubling the total population. The proposed solution examines the effect of implementing a series of programmatic tools. These tools reflect new types of buildings that host a variety of uses to the favela: the differentiating factor is whether these new typologies are inserted within the existing fabric or they are used as driving forces of development of a new sprawl fabric. These interventions that are both spatial and institutional [establishing the business association] have as goal the financial empowerment of the favela thus closing the gap between favelados and inhabitants from the surrounding mid and high-class areas.

At the same time, the new typologies introduced appeal to different urban actors involved in this context. By actors we identify three main ones: the inhabitants association; a social structure already present and powerfull in many others favelas all over Brasil, the commerce association; an actor introduced by as that we consider necessary in order to organize and promote the very large business activity that is already taking place in Rio das Pedras- and finally the private investor; meaning the large capital real estate development companies that are very active in Barra da Tijuca [as analises above] and are eager to invade Rio das Pedras.

Each actor is related with different tools which represents different goals and interests:

Irregular grid: From the analysis of the self build urban matrix of the “favela” we pretend to create a design that translate the recognized qualities in terms of the street profiles and networks. The irregular shape of the public space, the labyrinth feeling, the narrow streets profiles, the alley-ways, the irregularity of façades and plots, all this elements create a unique atmosphere that benefit the pedestrian and stimulate the appropriation of the street by the inhabitants. Gathering all these ingredients with a more formal approach we pretend to achieve the same result but solving the inequalities related with the informal approach.

Hybrid housing: It´s a concept that pretends to mix the self built system adequacy to these urban realities with a formal system in order to improve the quality of the basic infrastructure of the dwellings. This way providing part of a formal structure for the housing (could it be an all floor or just the basic structural elements) we guarantee the minimum of the requirements desirable for the human habitat, but also some coherence in the urban layout, leaving space for the self appropriation and diversity of façade designs and uses. By that we allow to create a city based on mixability and mutation. Financially this is a low budget system allowing low income families to achieve their first house unities.

Formal Housing: Defined as a final product that could be sold in the real estate market, we pretend to develop a typology related with the middle class, or families with a fixed reasonable income, where there is a special attention to create a flexible house that allows different uses besides the habitat itself, such as the commercial and production ones. Incremental growth should also be take into consideration as a essential characteristic of the final design.

Hybrid Condominium: Integrating the condominium with other functions will generate a new typology to be placed inside the “favela” urban matrix. The goal is to bring a new input into the slum area, financially and socially wise. More than a different architectural approach is a social statement that we pretend to achieve. Combining different social classes in a same building, in an unthinkable urban reality, might just be possible if the balance between their different individualities and needs is respected. In a Real Estate market where prime locations and landscape dreaming scenarios are the most valued characteristics to achieve profits, the site surroundings of Rio das Pedras is very desirable for any type of investor. If this is a reality how can we take this as a plus for the “favela”? It´s our belief that informal and formal city, condominiums and slums, rich and poor, are part of society mysterious balance, one exist because the other makes it possible, and they are depending on each other for survival. This particularly study area despite of its informality is a prominent commercial centre and has one of the most beautiful views from Tijuca Bay, and it is surrounded by nature landscape as well by several real estate prime condominiums. The pressure of the formal market over this territory is enormous, so only placing the favela in the middle of this game we can make it strong enough to survive. Maybe surviving will mean changing, but that´s evolution.

Community Units: As an analysis result of the micro entrepreneurship reality in the Brazilian slums we realize that most of the times the lack of spatial infrastructures is the main reason for not starting a business or a community activity. To tackle this situation we propose to place inside the urban matrix, in the few open areas, a flexible structure that is easily assembled, that optimizes the lack of urban space through vertical growth, and offers different spaces that allows diverse uses.

The strength of this structure is related with its flexibility of growing and the range of solutions that offers in a small plot, mainly because of its vertical definition. These units must be assembled in free areas inside the urban matrix and must establish a level of connections between the other Units and existing facilities. This network will give cohesion and structure to the economic and social reality of the slum community. Nevertheless, the most important function of these Units is to provide a workshop place for starters without other opportunities.

Using an inviting rental system, we create an opportunity reservoir for the community development dynamic, and since these Units are managed by the Commercial and Production Association (C.P.A.) they can use the rent income to upgrade other strategic areas.

Combining the desires of the formal investor that prefers the condominium typology as a way to achieve high profits in a prime location with low land cost, among the commercial ambition of this slum, we are aiming for a typology that mixes high income housing, with a shopping mall (one of the most successful models for social mixture in Brazil), and also low income housing. The low income group may benefit from the facilities of the condominium and by job opportunities that this structure always creates.

Through verticality we can take advantage of the views and place there the most valuable housing units, leaving the first levels for commercial uses and the low income dwellings. The shopping mall concept as behind it a strategy to allow formal brands entered slums areas, and also a way to formalize some potential commerce activities that begins in this dynamic territories. Also using this successful social model - the shopping mall – we want to slowly start the interaction between the different social classes that now will leave in the same part of the city.

In the end we expect to create a gentrification process that will increase the financial and commercial value of this area and consequently improve the living quality of this territory.

CONCLUSION

We believe that the best way to protect Rio das Pedras proper identity - its positive aspects - from the charging real estate development, is to invest in the favela’s economy, empower it and upgrade its role within the surrounding urban context. Apart from that, an upgraded economy will also upgrade the social status of the inhabitants. The capital produced can then be re-invested in order to improve current infrastructure acknowledging the need of the community for self-help. The scenarios proposed in the project aim at both social and financial sustainability and balance.

Open City - PechaKucha Zürich

2010-12-20T00:05:00.007Z

The Architecture of Social Investment

2010-11-30T14:23:00.001Z

A Tiny Apartment Transforms into 24 Rooms

2010-11-29T15:10:00.000Z

City of Darkness

2010-11-12T11:58:00.004Z

"1966 saw the Cultural Revolution in China and the Communist flag was briefly raised in the city. Official attempts to remove it were met with more rioting. British policy came to regard the Walled City as something of a hornets nest — best not to be kicked unless absolutely necessary. In the meantime, the Kowloon Walled City continued to develop and regenerate within itself. Buildings twelve stories high sprouted up without any adherence to planning law. Businesses blossomed — without the slightest concessions to legislation or taxation. Every nook and cranny within its tiny acreage was expanded out, and crammed into, until its intricate labyrinth of thoroughfares and pathways received not a ray of sunlight, even at high noon. The health authorities kept away. So the City just developed its own legion of ad-hock clinics and dental surgeons. In the absence of telephone and utilities companies, the City’s inhabitants just by-wired their own electricity and connections. The same nick-it-yourself approach applied to plumbing and water. As a result, a tangled network of pipes and wiring dripped and hissed above the city’s dark, dank walkways. Cheap amenities for the residents, and, considering the extremely limited access, either in or out of the compound — a potentially catastrophic fire-hazard.

For years, the Kowloon Walled City became a no go area. In the control of Triads and drug dealers, with an estimated population in excess of 30,000. Many residents were illegal immigrants; exempt from extradition, encased within its walls. A lone European venturing into its midst would most probably never be seen again, no Chinese went in without appropriate reason. Only after Margaret Thatcher had signed away Hong Kong’s sovereignty did its future landlords, the communist Chinese, have the ability to finally evacuate the Walled City’s stubborn population between 1988-92 and then destroy its derelict, decrepit, rat infested shell. It was only in these final years of gradual abandonment that a few journalists, photographers and investigators were able to wander unchallenged, around the Walled City’s uncharted labyrinths and give embellished accounts. Two of them were photographers: Greg Girard and Ian Lambot, who spent four years exploring the City. The vast collection of photographs they amassed during this time can be seen in their book City of Darkness: Life in Kowloon Walled City."

FAVELA RAISES! The new economic power.

2010-10-16T11:59:00.003+01:00

MARKET

„The market produces non-specific, clone buildings, that are empty of any substance and disconnected from the place. I believe this is a terrible menace to its structure.“ Peter Smithson

The “Favela Rio das Pedras” is located in one of the most predominant areas of development of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. In the upper East area of Barra da Tijuca, a upper/middle class residential area, this 40.000 inhabitants community has a very lively economic life, resulting of their inner informal commercial growth, as well the need for manpower that the formal city requires, resulting as a fact in the enhance of the quality life of this so called “favelados”.

A huge challenge is presenting itself to this community that true the years have fought to keep their identity and social and economic independence. The major events that had put Brazil in the World agenda – the 2014 FIFA World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games – will intensify the real estate speculation in this area, resulting in a strong pressure to overtake the “Favela Rio das Pedras” and transform it in some private “condominio”. How can these communities survive? Well, we believe that’s only possible trough economic power. Only enhancing the informality of the small scale business operating inside favelas, together with strategies to create labels and tourism attraction the favelas can gain their independence and became part of the formal city and not just dependent of it.

Micro Business Brazil

2010-10-15T21:46:00.002+01:00

Im Birch School

2010-09-14T18:44:00.002+01:00

"Peter Märkli demonstra que “grande” não significa necessariamente “anónimo” mas pode também significar “denso”. Com um comprimento de 250 metros, esta escola em Zurique é completamente gigantesca. Mesmo assim, cabe na escala da zona industrial existente e podemos contemplar o seu conjunto num todo. Dois volumes de 4 pisos, desalinhados ligeiramente, enfrentam-se. O terceiro volume é dedicado ao gináso, um dos mais grandes na cidade. Apesar do rectidão das linhas e da severidade, nunca há um sentimento de monumentalidade. Isto deve-se á escala dos volumes do edifício, porque Märkli é um mestre da proporção; a textura vertical do betão articula-se com todas as façhadas, e a tira mais alta dos edificios, dando forma à borda do telhado, recua ligeiramente. Isto impede que os cantos do edifício apareçam fora de conjunto. Märkli aplica este conhecimento completamente naturalmente, mesmo que não seja familiar nos dias de hoje. As mudanças de imagem espacial e material que distinguem o seu trabalho continuam no entanto a ser identificadas como uma incapacidade no domínio da linguagem arquitectónica."

in MIMOA

Projecto: Im Birch School
Autor(es): Peter Märkli

Ano conclusão: 2004
Localização: Margrit Rainer Strasse 5 Oerlikon, Zürich, Switzerland

MFO Park

2010-09-14T17:40:00.004+01:00

A reutilização de espaços obsoletos consiste num dos maiores desafios que a nossa classe enfrenta diariamente. As cidades, e o seu modelo de crescimento, são ávidas na criação de zonas urbanas, edifícios singulares obsoletos, que devido à velocidade da mudança de gosto e paradigmas levam a que as novas tendências ocupem o espaço de destaque que antes lhes pertenciam... a tendência precedente. Estes locais, que são deixados para trás na memória de quem neles viveu, são esquecidos por aqueles cujo interesse passa pela mestria em vender imagens de modernidade e sofisticação - o chamado brand-new! Apesar disso, são esses espaços remetidos ao abandono urbano que acarretam a maior das qualidades, a absorção das diferentes vivências que os seus utilizadores proporcionaram, são espaços que contam histórias, que nos fazem lembrar de onde viemos, quem somos e nos abrigam para podermos sonhar, porque acarretam nas suas paredes, nas suas cores, nos seus materiais o conforto humano que somente existe num espaço que já foi habitado. Definirei essa característica como um zeitgeist vivencial.

Pois bem, o projecto em causa demonstra claramente como uma estratégia simples poderá devolver um espaço perdido ao mapa de uma cidade.

Este projecto possui duas qualidades, uma já referida, o facto de ter reaproveitado uma estrutura edificada existente, neste caso concreto uma antiga unidade fabril, e a outra característica importante, foi tê-lo feito através de uma estratégia de baixo custo, mínimo impacto, assente numa ideia social tirando partido da força transformadora da Natureza. No fundo o autor do projecto procurou fazer o contrário do conceito de humanização da paisagem, procurou naturalizá-la. Esta estrutura per si existente, decadente, sem qualquer uso específico e demasiado agressiva ao contacto e vivência humana, transformou-se num Jardim de Éden, um local de encontro, de descanso, de introspecção, de contemplação...

A arquitectura nos últimos séculos acentuou uma tendência que privilegia a tecnologia e a matéria fabril na criação de ambientes, de espaços, na busca de materiais que transmitam prazer e sensações. Têm-no feito através de diversificados tipos de revestimentos, com diferentes texturas e opacidades, com os mais sofisticados sistemas de iluminação com diferentes colorações e intensidades. No entanto tudo isto deixa de fazer sentido quando nos apercebemos como é revigorante sentarmo-nos num banco de jardim e deixarmo-nos envolver pelas cores, cheiros e sons que a natureza nos oferece.

Este é o dom que este espaço me ofereceu.

Projecto: MFO Park

Autor(es): Burckhardt+Partner / Raderschall Landschaftsarchitekten

Ano conclusão: 2002

Localização: Oerlikon, Zürich, Switzerland