Wednesday, January 20, 2010

lebbeus woods

The Mayor of the city wanted to set a good example, so he rebuilt his house on some broken walls that were still strong. He was richer than most, so it stood alone near the center of the city. (from AFTER THE WAR: LEBBEUS WOODS)

  
Before the war, all the buildings had been similar. After the war, those that had to be partially rebuilt were each different. People said this was so because each building had had been damaged in unique ways and its residents had unique stories to tell of what they had experienced. (from AFTER THE WAR: LEBBEUS WOODS)


Lebbeus Woods (born 1940 in Lansing, Michigan) is an American architect and artist. The majority of his explorations deal with the design of systems in crisis: the order of the existing being confronted by the order of the new. His designs are politically charged and provocative visions of a possible reality; provisional, local, and charged with the investment of their creators.

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

metabolic materials:







Venice, Italy is sinking. To save it, TED Fellow Rachel Armstrong says we need to outgrow architecture made of inert materials and, well, make architecture that grows itself. She proposes a not-quite-alive material that does its own repairs and sequesters carbon, too. (via ted talk blog)
some more infomation 

Friday, January 8, 2010

the burj dubai khalifa opens: the tallest and the emptiest!


One of the odder, more complicated moments in the history of architectural symbolism will arrive Monday with the formal opening of the Burj Dubai skyscraper. At about 2,600 feet high -- the official figure is still being kept secret by developer Emaar Properties -- and 160 stories, the tower, set back half a mile or so from Dubai's busy Sheikh Zayed Road, will officially take its place as the tallest building in the world.
......... And so here is the Burj Dubai's real symbolic importance: It is mostly empty, and is likely to stay that way for the foreseeable future. (via Los Angelese Times) Read the rest of the story

Sunday, January 3, 2010

DUNE: arenaceous anti-desertification architecture


"For an ambitious landscape design project, Magnus Larsson, a student at the Architectural Association in London, has proposed a 6,000km-long wall of artificially solidified sandstone architecture that would span the Sahara Desert, east to west, offering a combination of refugee housing and a "green wall" against the future spread of the desert." (bldg blog)
Read ccmplete article at BLDG BLOG.


Also read about the limited success, conventional green barriers such as ‘Barrage Vert’ in Algeria and China’s ‘Green Wall’ having against desertification.