Caged: A reflection on the subaltern self in Absurdia

An Exhibition by Rajitha Rupasinghe

Graphics and text by Rajitha Rupasinghe

ada louise huxtable dies at 91

Ada Louise Huxtable, who pioneered modern architectural criticism in the pages of The New York Times, celebrating buildings that respected human dignity and civic history — and memorably scalding those that did not — died on 7th Jan. in Manhattan. She was 91.

Read Newyork Times article

eating milk and honey

This is my mate Sandamali's blog.

Hmmm.... When was the last time I met her? Most probably 15 years ago. I think it was during my uni days (as a student). Being a self confessed lousy writer I have never ever written to her, though I have kept in touch with her through my mate Sujeewa, who as usual keep me updated on everybody who have gone on their separate way to different parts of the world.

Eating Milk with Honey

jonas eliasson: how to solve traffic jams

oscar niemeyer dies at 104

Brazil is mourning the loss of one of the country's best and brightest creative minds, famed architect Oscar Niemeyer.

A couple of weeks ago the Brasilia architect Oscar Niemeyer passed away at 104. His architecture redefined the Brazilian identity in postwar era. An unabashed modernist and dyed in the wool communist he never took a foot back from his architectural style and his political ideology. As famous as he was, still he had to pay a heavy price for his convictions.

During the military dictatorship of the 1960-70 he he had to live in France on a self imposed exile to avoid the wrath of the military dictatorship. Being the man who provided the identity for the the newly created capital of Brasilia was not good enough for the dictators.

More than his modernist architectural style, it was how he managed to interpret his political ideology through that style that left a deep impact on the common man in Brazil. He designed for his people, most of whom are poorest of the poor in the world.

Can we feel the same about leftist / socialist ideologists or for that matter architects of Sri Lanka?

Wikipedia
Obituary @ the Economist
Pictorial Essay @ The Guardian

linus torvalds on linux

Linus Torvalds

CD is 30 years old

Sony announced the CDP-101, the world's first Compact Disc player, on October 1st, 1982. When the CD came out, it was like something from another planet.

In 1982, no one except computer nerds had computers. It wasn't until the late 1980s that hard drives were seen commonly, and then they were only 10 megabytes, an astounding number. By 1985, computers still only used 5-1/4" floppies, which held only 720 kilobytes if you had the HD ones. Microfloppies, the 3.5" kind with two sides, were crazy stuff when Apple first used them on a computer in 1987. They were small, tough, and held an amazing 1.44 megabytes. Even until about 1992, only engineers had computers at work.

The CD in 1982? It held an unfathomable 650 Megabytes, or as much as 65 hard drives would be able to hold three years in the future! Even in 1985, no one could afford a 10 MB hard drive. I worked in defense in 1985, and we did our calculations on computers with dual 5.25" floppies; no hard drive. That's why hard drives are called the C: drive; the A: and B: drives are your two floppies: one for the program, one for your data.

Anyway, CDs were always laser rocket science. It wasn't until about the year 2000 that anyone could afford a CD burner.

A piece of wood signed by Ohsone was used to show his engineers the size they were to aim for with the D-50.

"We're going to commercialize a CD player of this size," said Ohsone, head of the General Audio Division (of Sony) while showing his staff a piece of wood which was 13.4 cm across and about 4 cm thick. This was about the same size as four CD cases stacked one on top of another. He added, "I don't care how you do it, or whether you decide to put cicadas or grasshoppers in it, but just make this produce sound." Everyone laughed.

From kenrockwell.com

Pearl TV - 1st Web TV In Sri Lanka

Pearl TV

වාස්තු විද්‍යාව සහ ජ්‍යෝතිෂය

වාස්තු විද්‍යාව සහ ජ්‍යෝතිෂය from Young Asia Television on Vimeo.

Architect Anura Dayaratna on "වාස්තු විද්‍යාව සහ ජ්‍යෝතිෂය".
This discussion is in Sinhala.

walking the talk on galle fort with channa daswatte @ thuppahi's blog

A repost from Thuppahi's Blog on an interesting article by by Namali Premawardhana as published on Sunday Times 12 February 2012. Thuppahi's Blog as a whole is really interesting including his explanation of th eblog's name.

visit   Thuppahi's Blog

plagiarism leads to hungarian president's fall

Plagiarism is becoming serious problem in Sri Lanka as well. With the increasing accessibility to the web, it has becoming an 'entrenched practice' especially due to the ease with which you can 'rob' information using the web.

Fortunately, it is very easy to detect the 'web lifted' information using the same web. Unfortunately what we still do not have is a robust set of academic rules and regulations which could be mitigated effectively and quickly in the event of proven  plagiarism, even though the academia in Sri Lanka has long recognized the illegality and the seriousness of  plagiarizing others work. The other problem the academia facing today is the shear volume of  plagiarism.

Here is what has happened to the president of Hungary. Apperently the the fellow has lifted a cool 95% of his doctoral thesis from others. A true politician.

"The Pál Schmitt academic misconduct controversy refers to the allegations of plagiarism concerning the 1992 doctoral dissertation and the circumstances of the doctoral defence of Pál Schmitt, the president of Hungary. The controversy began in January 2012, when Hungarian news organizations published a number of articles claiming that about 197 pages of Schmitt's 215-page dissertation had been lifted from works by other, foreign scholars, without giving appropriate credit.

On 11 January 2012, Hungarian news portal HVG.hu published an article which claims that material that amounts to around 180 of the 215 pages of Pál Schmitt's 1992 doctoral (dr. univ.) dissertation, titled "Az újkori olimpiai játékok programjának elemzése" ("An analysis of the programme of the modern Olympics"), had been lifted from a 1987 manuscript by Bulgarian sports reseacher Nikolay Georgiev, together with a page's worth of material from a work by Hristo Meranzov and Georgiev. On 19 January, news organizations found that an additional 17 pages had been lifted from a paper German sport sociologist Klaus Heinemann. The late Georgiev's daughter said she did not know of any cooperation between Schmitt and her father in the preparation of Georgiev's work. Heinemann denied any knowledge of Schmitt, and expressed concern about the allegation of plagiarism.

Further concerns about a conflict of interest were raised when it was reported that multiple members of Schmitt's thesis committee had also been members of the Hungarian Olympic Academy and the Hungarian Olympic Committee, organizations Schmitt headed around the time the dissertation was defended."


Link to Wikipedia article "Pál Schmitt scientific misconduct controversy"

R.I.P. Whitney Houston

2012- 1963 = 49 (Whitney Houston)

2011-1955 = 56 (Steve Jobs)

2009 - 1958 = 51 (Michael Jackson)

Nowadays, average life span of a genius = 53 ?

breakdown of blog hits

After a bit of a hitus I am back. As I was away from the blog, I had a quick look at the hit counter and what struck me most was the disparity between the hits from Western Province and the rest of the country. Is this a case of  less interest of architecture outside Colombo or just that we do not have enough  Internet access to the other parts of the country? May be both.

And also look at the disparity between  Southern Province and the provinces like Sabaragamuwa and North Western.


Western             - 10,356
Central               - 287
Sabaragamuwa   - 124
North Western   - 93
Southern            - 85
Uva                    - 31
North Central     - 21
Northern             - 7

titus thotawatte 1929-2011

Remember "handaya" and "Doctor Honda Hitha".

Titus Thotawatte was a great film maker and perhaps the best film editor Sri Lanka ever had. He made several popular and technically skilled Sri Lankan action movies in the 1960s and 1970s and later developed Sinhala children's pro grammes and perhaps made the most significant contribution by producing properly dubbed foreign language children's programs to Sinhala hence making these films accessible to a wider section of the Sri Lankan society. He passed away on October 15, 2011.

steve jobs 1955-2011

top architecture prize jury gets a real judge

Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Breyer and the architect Zaha Hadid will join the jury that selects the Pritzker Prize, architecture's highest award, Thomas J. Pritzker, chairman of the Hyatt Foundation, the prize's sponsor, announced on Wednesday.

Justice Breyer has long been interested in art and architecture and wrote the foreword to the 2006 book, “Celebrating the Courthouse: A Guide for Architects, Their Clients, and the Public.” Ms. Hadid, who received the Pritzker Prize in 2004, has projects in numerous countries including the United States, China, Germany, Spain and Italy.

With these two additions, the Pritzker jury will now consist of eight people, including its chairman, Lord Palumbo of the United Kingdom.

“The members of the Pritzker jury are now, and always have been thoughtful, outstanding individuals from diverse backgrounds providing sometimes surprising insight to architectural achievement in our time,” Mr. Pritzker said in a statement. “Our family is constantly proud and honored that these individuals are willing to give of their time in choosing architects to be singled out for excellence.”

By ROBIN POGREBIN
from here 

London's Strata tower wins Carbuncle Cup as Britain's ugliest new building

The Carbuncle Cup is an architecture prize, given annually by the magazine Building Design to "the ugliest building in the United Kingdom". This year it has  been awarded to   London's Strata Tower.


"It was hailed a breakthrough in urban wind power: a 42-storey tower with built-in turbines to deliver 8% of its electricity needs. But today the Strata tower in south London found itself becalmed when it was named Britain's ugliest new building, pipping a rival that the judges said resembled a giant pair of buttocks and a bus station that looked like a jelly mould." - guardian.co.uk

Read more about Carbuncle cup @ Wikipedia
Read more about Carbuncle cup @ Building Design  Online
Read more about this year winner of Carbuncle cup, Strata Tower of London
Photo - guardian.co.uk 

open source software for architects

Is it possible to run an architectural office solely based on open source software? Perhaps yes.

Reliability and the ability (to handle complex tasks) has never been an issue with open source software now a day. The issue, most of the time is to do with the compatibility with their more expensive big brother software. Would I be able to read my Open Office files in MSWord? Can I open AutoCAD files in this particular application? The more established ‘Openware’ has continually sought to solve this issue and succeeded considerably in the past few years.

By the way what is ‘Open source software’? Technically speaking Open source software’ is the category of software that is available in source code form to the general public. When source code is not available to the public but still public are free to use them they are generally called ‘freeware’ or ‘public domain software’. But for this discussion let’s call all of them as ‘Openware’.
Wikipedia reference for Open-source software

So what are the pros and cons of ‘Openware’

Pros

1.      Obviously the cost factor. They are either free or very cost effective compared to big brothers.  Eg. Ms Office between 150 to 450 $ vs. Open Office which is  free

2.      Increased security Eg: Linux vs Windows

3.      Better performances in selected areas of application. This may come a s surprise, but some ‘Openware’ are better at certain tasks than their more expensive proprietary big brothers. Eg. I think Blender is more efficient at certain aspects of animation than 3DMAX

4.      Sometimes better customization or ‘tweakability’, if you are in to these things as the code is available to you.

Cons

1.      Compatibility with established file formats. ‘Futureproof’ness is also a related issue as big brothers keep on changing their file formats. Eg. AutoCAD updating their .dwg fiel format now and then.

2.      Comprehensiveness in capabilities.  Eg. Can do this and this but not that particular thing.

3.      Stability. Largely sorted out in more established ‘Openware’

4.      Difficulty in installing. Again this is sorted out in more established ‘Openware’

5.      Less user friendly. Used to be like that. But they are getting better and some of the big brothers are getting worse.  Try to find the …. Try to find anything in Auto CAD 2010!

You have to weigh these pros and cons against what exactly you do or want to do. AutoCAd is a good case in point. Unless you are a very large office with work group sharing or in to highly specialized type of work, you don't need anything more than AuotCAD 2004 or of equal capacity. You may not be able to find an 'Openware' program equivalent to AutoCAD 2011. But instead look for a program with equal capacity of AutoCAd 2004. Same thing with MS office or Adobe Photoshop

So what are the “Openware’ available for an architect's office? Here is list from the blog ‘design in the world of open source. 

Free and Open Source Software for Architectural and Design Applications:

Word processing, Spreadsheets, Presentations, Graphics, Databases Applications: Open Office

2D Drafting Applications: DraftSight

3D Modelling, Rendering Applications: avoCADo and Blender

Image editing and manipulating: Gimp

Movie editing and manipulating: AVS Video Editor

Please give your comments and feedback.

Posted by archifour2010 
archifour2010@yahoo.com

Original source

Let’s add a few more items to those and see what we have;

Operating systems:
Linux based systems
You don’t have to look any further, Linux based systems provide better stability (less crashing) and security (less prone to virus attacks etc.). If they are so good why aren’t we already using them? We may not but lot of other already do! Eg. Canadian Govt, Russian Govt. Brazilian Govt. to name a few. Remember these are not small companies, they are BIG bureaucracies and they are also from the left, right and the center of the world.
Some popular Linux Distributors (Linux based systems)
Ubuntu (Most probably better suited for Desktops)
Fedora
openSUSE (Better for Laptops)

Office Applications
(Word processing, Spreadsheets, Presentations, Graphics, Databases Applications etc.)
Open Office
Standard for the free office ware. Does pretty much everything that MS Office does and then some more, like native export to pdf format. Also known as Oracle Open Office or before 2010 as StarOffice. Anybody still remember the good old Wordstar from the floppy disk days! That is the precursor of this program.

LibreOffice
An open office fork so pretty much equal to Open Office. Ubuntu comes with this.

IBM Lotus Symphony
Again based off of OpenOffice source code. But apparently ‘better’ layout.

Google docs
Don’t forget that you can use web based Google docs for a quick memo or two.

2D Drafting Applications:

DraftSight: I had a quick look and looks very comprehensive and 'AutoCAD like' to me. I mean similar to the good old AutoCAD not the very much bloated new versions. If you know AutoCAd you can straight away start drafting with this application. I think this is as good,  if not even better than AutoCAD Lite. Looks  like these guys want to give AutoDESK  a good run for their money. Actually Dassault Systemes is one of the few companies who can do that. After all these guys are the developers of CATIA used in companies like Boeing and Toyota. I think eventually they will start charging money for this, but it has to be much less than what AutoCAD chargers now. What AutoCAD does now is daylight robbery :). They are actually turning their users in to AutoCAD addicts with their current  licensing policy, Once you are hooked, not only you can't get out, you also have to upgrade, every year.
Interview with Draftsight people 

3D Modelling, Rendering Applications:

Sketchup: Better than 3DMax for visualization
Blender: (Open source Modeler + Renderer)
 Avocado (Open source modeler)

Kerkythea (Renderer, works well with Sketchup)
Brazil Rio (Renderer, ideal for 3DMAX , which is not free!) 

Image editing and manipulating:

Gimp (Open source)
Paint.NET (Open source)
Photoscape (Free)

Desktop Publication
Inkscape: An Open Source vector graphics editor, with capabilities similar to Illustrator or CorelDraw
Scribus: An Open Source program that brings professional page layout to Linux and Windows with a combination of press-ready output and new approaches to page design.

Movie editing and manipulating:

AVS Video Editor (Free)

Photography 

Canon Photostitch: Stitches photos to create panoramas
Picturenaut, FDRTools, Essential HDR: For creating HDR Photography
 

There are zillions of other free and opensource applications on the net, especially for one off tasks like file recovery, ripping and converting files which are thousand times better than more expensive big brothers.

Few of my favs are;
DVD Shrink: for ripping DVDs :) The Best. Ripping DVDs is easy. What is difficult id fitting it back in to another DVD for burning as  most of the time you end up with a set of files bigger than the DVD's capacity ( This is I think due to consumer DVD compression algorithms being less efficient than those used in creating those original DVDs. Blas, blas, blas……) Any way this program manages the whole thing without a hitch.
Screen Hunter: for screen capturing
Treesize: shows the size of each folder in your hard disc graphically
CCCP: Audio and Video CODEC Pak
GOM Player: Media player (GOM Player + CCCP  can virtually  play ‘anything’ on the internet; so far)
Font Explorer: Show all the fonts in your computer whichever way you want
CCleaner: Cleans up your windows registry and other leftovers. Oh, and also all those history files and cache files from your web browser.

Here is a list of Free apps for further references.

But remember there is no such thing as a free lunch. Some of these products may will definitely give you trouble  at the beginning . Also don't take this as advice. This is only my opinion!

P.S. I’ll keep on adding bits and pieces to this post as we go along. And some of the info is based on a chat I had with P.B. Prasad Botejue (thanks Holly!)

Also read this before touching Opensource stuff :)
"Dell laptop with Ubuntu leads woman to drop out of college" 

Open source opening doors to IT 

Archt. Channa Horombuwa is on Inside/Outside

Work of [my mate ;)] Channa Horombuwa has been published on the Indian Interior / Architecture magazine Inside/Outside.

See more images of the house.

"World Architecture Community" web shortlist Channa Horombuwa's work

Archt. Channa Horombuwa's Jayampathi Aluvihare House in Kandy has been shortlisted in the top 20 by the World Architecture Community in their 7th Cycle of awards.