abdi handa hsb: Mei 2012

A Daily Dose of Architecture

Tuesday, May 01, 2012

Walking Tour: Changing West Side

This Saturday, May 5 at 11am I'll be giving a walking tour of parts of Tribeca, Soho, and the West Village. The focus of the tour, which is organized with the 92YTribeca, focuses on recent changes to the west side of Manhattan in these neighborhoods, particularly new residential developments. Click here or the image below for more information and to get tickets.

Monday, April 30, 2012

Monday, Monday

A Weekly Dose of Architecture Updates:

This week's dose features House in Piedra Roja, Santiago, Chile by Riesco + Rivera Arquitectos Asociados:

The featured past dose is the Concrete and Water Building in Cerro Blanco, Chile by Philippe Blanc C.:

This week's book review is (L:) Architecture of Authority by Richard Ross, (C:) The Raw and the Cooked by Peter Bialobrzeski, and (R:) Structures of Utility by David Stark Wilson:

american-architects.com Building of the Week:

27 Coltman Townhouses in Cleveland, Ohio by DIMIT Architects:

Unrelated links are now found in the left sidebar and on My Diigo Bookmarks page.

Sunday, April 29, 2012

Today's archidose #581

Handelsbeurs Bridge in Gent, Belgium by Office Kersten Geers David Van Severen, 2008. Photographs are by victortsu. See more on the project at Public Space.

To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just:

:: Join and add photos to the archidose pool, and/or
:: Tag your photos archidose

Friday, April 27, 2012

Half Dose #103: sLAB Costa Rica

[All images courtesy NYIT/Holler Architecture]

sLAB Costa Rica is a design-build initiative of the School of Architecture and Design at New York Institute of Technology (NYIT) located in Nosara, Costa Rica. Led by Tobias Holler of Holler Architecture, the research-driven studio developed designs and held a competition in fall 2011 for a communal recycling center that the students will help build this summer. To aid in expenses for housing students and making a film by Ayana de Vos documeting the project, a Kickstarter campaign has been set up to raise $15,000 by May 21.

As the top image attests, the Costa Rica locale is a beautiful one, veering between lush forests in the rainy season (as pictured) and almost desert-like conditions during the dry season. What drew Holler to the area was the fact the natural beauty and its related eco-tourism is offset by a severe solid waste management problem. As the Kickstarter page explains, "over sixty percent of the 2,400 tons of waste produced daily are put into open, unregulated dumps and less than ten percent gets recycled." Therefore the design-build studio proposes a recycling and education center.

The design is the result of four competition-winning teams (the Facebook poll winner, two jury-selected winners, and one runner-up). They presented their schemes to the Nosara community in January, and then the various teams merged and refined a single scheme to the renderings and plan illustrated in this blog post. The one-story, linear building features two volumes: The larger space is semi-enclosed, used for sorting recycling; the smaller space includes an office area, small room for a bed, and a bathroom; the covered open space in between features a ramp and stair to negotiate the grade change. This last element also unites the two offset volumes, giving the building its distinctive kink.

Check out the Kickstarter page for more information on the project, which you can also follow via Facebook and Twitter. If you're in the NYC area, NYIT is hosting a reception and film screening on Thursday, May 3 at 6:30pm in the NYIT Auditorium on Broadway, 1871 Broadway (at West 61st Street).

Thursday, April 26, 2012

Today's archidose #580

Here are some photos of the Oriel Mostyn Gallery in Llandudno, Wales by EllisWilliams Architects, 2010. Photographs are by Mr sAg.

To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just:

:: Join and add photos to the archidose pool, and/or
:: Tag your photos archidose

Wednesday, April 25, 2012

Lynette Jackson's iPhone Art

The folks at Spillman Farmer Architects tipped me off to the digital art of Lynette Jackson, whose images reside on Flickr. Jackson, of Atlanta, Georgia, attests that the images are "taken, edited, and processed with the iPhone." Knowing this, I'm more amazed by the images -- in many cases equal blends of architectural photography and illustration or painting -- that are appealing even without this process made explicit.

Below is a smattering of the 148 images (to date) found on Ms. Jackson's (aka Page67) Flickr account. Images appear to be created in short series of four, whereby colors, patterns, and sometimes buildings are consistent. Each is a free-form canvas with manipulations that tend towards the orthogonal. All of the images have an evident balance of parts and careful means of leading the eye. With the square format, I could see many of the images gracing album covers, if such things exist anymore.

The images below are presented without comment, but I interpret Jackson's images -- at least the ones with architectural subject matter -- as providing new ways of looking at buildings. The layering of photography, color, and pattern creates an emphasis on certain parts of a building, particularly details of facades. Most of the photos are of a vantage point from below, one we can all relate to, so the new way of seeing isn't literal; it derives from architecture used as a component in a piece of art. If anything, a stronger appreciation for architecture -- especially for modern architecture, which most people supposedly don't like -- should arise from looking at Jackson's iPhone canvases.

[No._408]

[MSCED_02262012_No._379a Remixed]

[MSCED_02092012_02a Remixed]

[No._351]

[MSCED_01302012_01]

[No._322]

[MSCED_01152012_04]

[No. 285 Mixed-Red]

[No._254]

[Mixed_003_01]

[Remix_The Theme Building at LAX_01.]

Tuesday, April 24, 2012

World-Architects eMagazine

Yesterday saw the launch of a new eMagazine on World-Architects.com, something I've been working on for a while now and for which I serve as Editor-in-Chief. The eMagazine is sent out as a newsletter every two weeks -- alternating with the existing W-A Newsletter -- with an online version appearing simultaneously. The new eMagazine builds upon existing magazines for the Swiss and German platforms, but the World eMagazine is all in English, covering international topics.

Here is a snapshot of the first issue online; below the image is more information on the eMagazine and its parts.

The six parts of the eMagazine, keyed above, are as follows:

1 - Insight: A long feature, which includes interviews with clients, visits to architecture offices, and discussions with academics, curators, and other voices. The first Insight is an interview with Director Andreas Stadler on the 10th anniversary of the Austrian Cultural Forum's completion, the 20th anniversary of Raimund Abraham winning the design competition.
2 - Found: A short piece that focuses on a visual that struck our fancy.
3 - Headlines: Three bits of news from the previous week or two.
4 - Building: A Building of the Week feature from one of the national platforms. This week we feature a building in Claremont, California by LTL Architects.
5 - Film: A short clip related to architecture, but not always directly about a building or architect. The first once focuses on twin brothers Ryan and Trevor Oakes's attempts at creating a drawing machine.
6 - Product: A spotlight on a product and its application. For the first one we feature MDT-tex's Telescopic Umbrella in Topotek1's bright-red plaza in Berlin-Köpenick.

Please subscribe here if you'd like to receive the newsletter, and feel free to email me if you have any tips for eMagazine stories.

Next Van Alen Walking Tour: April 28

Looking forward to the weekend, it looks like Saturday will be a great day for a walking tour.

At 1pm I'll be giving a walking tour that starts at Van Alen Books (30 West 22nd Street) and heads south to Union Square Park, meandering past Gramercy and Stuyvesant Parks. Head to Van Alen's event page or Facebook for more information. Send an email to rsvp@vanalen.org to reserve a spot.

Monday, April 23, 2012

Monday, Monday

A Weekly Dose of Architecture Updates:

This week's dose features Family Crèche in Drulingen by Fluor Architects:

The featured past dose is the Hazelwood School in Glasgow, Scotland by Gordon Murray + Alan Dunlop Architects:

This week's book review is (L:) Architectural and Cultural Guide Pyongyang edited by Philipp Meuser, and (R:) Architecture 11: RIBA Buildings of the Year by Tony Chapman:

american-architects.com Building of the Week:

Claremont University Consortium Administrative Campus Center in Claremont, CA by LTL Architects:

Unrelated links are now found in the left sidebar and on My Diigo Bookmarks page.

Sunday, April 22, 2012

Today's archidose #579

IMG_8342-43, originally uploaded by trevor.patt.

Galaxy Soho in Beijing, China by Zaha Hadid Architects, 2012 (under construction). The description from the architect's web page:

Five continuous, flowing volumes coalesce to create an internal world of continuous open spaces within Galaxy Soho – a new office, retail entertainment complex devoid of corners or abrupt transitions – a re-inventing of the classical Chinese courtyard which generates an immersive, enveloping experience at the heart of Beijing.

To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just:

:: Join and add photos to the archidose pool, and/or
:: Tag your photos archidose

Friday, April 20, 2012

Today's archidose #578

Here are some detail photos of a couple Carlo Scarpa-designed showrooms in Italy. Photographs are by d.teil, whose captions follow each photo. Be sure to check out d.teil's Scarpa's world flickr set for more photos of these and other Scarpa projects.

Olivetti Showroom, Venice (1957-58):