Geo Locating

Today I have finally added a feature that I wanted to include from the beginning, geo-tagging. Basically I will include a location map with every project that I post on this blog and that I can find. I have updated the two projects previously posted, coincidentally both museums, and placed at the end of the post the map locating them in their respective country and city. It really helps us architourists.

Renzo Piano's California Academy of Sciences

Image: Renzo Piano Building Workshop

Renzo Piano, who could very well be my favorite architect (I'm very anxious to see the Morgan Library Extension in NY), has just opened (and going on with the same theme as my previous post on the Acropolis Museum by Bernard Tschumi) the building to the curators of the exhibit of the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco. It has been newly renamed the Kimball Natural History Museum, and is scheduled to open in October of 2008, so we can't visit it right now. Although, you can get a pretty good view of the whole building from the free access viewing platform in the tower of the Herzog and de Meuron De young Museum.



The Academy of Sciences commissioned Piano to redo their outdated group of buildings into a "modern facility for exhibition, education, conservation, and research under one roof", which he literally did. Piano demolished most of the 11 buildings on the site, two of them are most prominent in the new design that places a "living roof" of native plants on seven rolling hills of varying sizes that represent the hills of San Francisco, this one roof manges to unify the entire building program while serving as an umbrella for the old buildings and becoming an exhibit in itself. In the center of this roof lies a glass canopy covering a Piazza, while the two larger "hills" are the two more important exhibits. The first one is a large domed simulated tropical ecosystem housing forest and wildlife from Borneo, Costa Rica, Madagascar and the Amazon rainforest's flooded river beds. The second one is the largest planetarium in the country.

The rolling "living roof" cantilevers over the perimeter of the buildings in order to produce shade to the glass facade and to place around 55,000 photo-voltaic cells.

If you want to know a little bit more, you can go to the article that the San Francisco Chronicle printed where they describe a guided walk through the museum's unfinished installations. The article is accompanied by updated photos and a video that's a definite must see, and the website of the California Academy of Science has an entire section dedicated to the new building, with photos, videos, and a time lapsed slideshow of the construction process.


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Sources:
Renzo Piano Building Workshop
San Francisco Chronicle
California Academy of Science

Robert Bruno's Steel House

Eikongraphia has posted information about this house in Texas, as with the previous house in Brazil I posted about this is a labor of love that has taken 23 years (and 110 tons of steel) to this date, and it's still unfinished. It's organic shapes and curves remind me of Expressionistic Architecture like the Einstein Tower Observatory by Erich Mendelsohn, and it definitely reminds of the movie Metropolis by Fritz Lang. Robert Bruno is a sculptor (though I haven't found anything else he has done on the web) who, like Richard Serra, works in what apparently is Corten steel. He has built the entire house out of steel, no concrete, and the only wood I've seen is on the stair treads.

Fritz Lang's "Metropolis"

Apparently he is influenced, or is of a new manifestation of the Expressionistic movement, although Bruno's work appears to be on the optimistic side of expressionism, instead of the pain and suffering that they usually portray.

The house appears to be a small group of steel trees sprouting out of the ground, the seemingly infinite amount of points of view that the interior offers appears to have come out of the mind of M.C. Escher, you could almost confuse up from down. It is built high on the side of of a river valley, so the views through the asymmetrical windows are incredible. There is little information on the house, for example, is the steel structure double layered so it works as a truss? (I would imagine so), how big is it? (it appears to have at least two floors).

Stimuli 0702

lj_scampo - "intricacies"

A Wonderful long exposure by one of our own Flickr Artists, lj_scampo. I find myself trying to identify anything familiar, you know it's a human body, but is male or female, is it light or dark.

BD Online Architects of the Year Awards

Yesterday, BD Online has announced the winners of their annual Architect of the Year Awards for established and young Architects, with Allies and Morrison emerging as the overall winner and Carmody Groarke earning the YAYA (Young Architect of the Year Award).
"Unlike most architectural prizes, the Architect of the Year Award is not given to a single building but to a body of work, with the judges rewarding practices who consistently raise the bar not just with one great project but several, and with more on the way."

The Young Architect of the Year Award (YAYA), "now in its 10th year, which is a reminder to more established firms that there is a wealth of talent coming up behind."

The list of the winners is:
Young Architect of the Year Award - Carmody Groarke
Leisure / Sports Architect - Arup
Affordable Housing Architect - Peter Barber Architects
Single Dwelling Architect - Seth Stein Architects
Private Housing Architects - BDP
Masterplanning Architects - Allies and Morrison
Education Building Architecs - van Heyningen and Haward
Interior Designer - Project Orange
Industrial Architect - 3D Reid
Retail Building Architect - John McAslan and Partners
Health Building Architect - Penoyre & Prasad
Public Building Architect - Allies and Morrison
World Architect - Foster & Partners
Office Architects - Lifschutz Davidson Sandiland
Richard Feilden Architect of The Year - Allies and Morrison

I still haven't had the chance to check them all, but definitely will in the very near future. Especially the unknowns, I am always craving for new information.

New Acropolis Museum

"Situated at the foot of the southern slopes of the Acropolis, the new €94 million complex will provide a central unifying focus for the archaeological sites clustered around the monument."

Bernard Tschumi won this international competition in 2001; this year has seen the completion of the building itself and has marked the start of the curatorial process for the exhibitions. Although parts of it are already in place, during excavations for the supports a small town called Makriyianni was found as "the excavations unearthed important ruins, including private houses of the early Christian era (400-600AD), and more than 50,000 portable antiquities".

The new museum is what Tschumi calls an anti-Bilbao museum. It does not intend to attract visitors with fascinating architectural shapes that resemble abstract sculpture. Maybe the reason is that it had, what probably is, the greatest competition, the already considered perfect Acropolis Complex of buildings and temples. Tschumi rather decides to retract from his usual dramatic architecture, and created the museum that the Acropolis needed, delivering a "heart-stopping sense of space and light."

"How to make an architectural statement at the foot of one of the most influential buildings of all time; how to design a building on a site already occupied by extensive archaeological excavations and in an earthquake-prone region; and how to design a museum to contain an important collection of classical Greek sculptures and a singular masterpiece, the Parthenon frieze, currently still housed in the British Museum."

Bernard Tschumi

The museum is built on top of the 2,500 square meter archaeological site of the town Makriyianni, levitating atop slender columns, respecting the past. And as you come into the building, you walk on the glass floors that allow you to view the ruins of the excavated town.

Transcribed from Bernard Tschumi's website:
"Three concepts turn the constraints of the site into an architectural opportunity, offering a simple and precise museum with the mathematical and conceptual clarity of ancient Greece.

A concept of light
More than in any type of museum, the conditions animating the New Acropolis Museum revolve around light. Not only does daylight in Athens differ from light in London, Berlin or Bilbao; light for the exhibition of sculpture differs from that involved in displaying drawing or paintings. The N.A.M. could be described as an anti-Bilbao. It is first and foremost a museum of natural light, concerned with the presentation of sculptural objects within it.

A movement concept
The visitor's route forms a clear three-dimensional loop. affording an architectural promenade with a rich spatial experience extending from the archaeological excavations to the Parthenon marbles and back through the Roman period.

Movement in and through time is a crucial dimension of architecture, and of this museum in particular. With over 10,000 visitors daily, the sequence of movement through the museum artifacts is conceived to be of utmost clarity.

A tectonic and programmatic concept
The base of the museum design contains an entrance lobby overlooking the Makriyianni excavations as well as temporary exhibition spaces, retail, and all support facilities.

The middle is a large, double-height trapezoidal plate that accommodates all galleries from the Archaic period to the Roman empire, with complete flexibilty. A mezzanine welcomes a bar and restaurant with views towards the Acropolis, and a multimedia auditorium.

The top is the rectangular Parthenon Gallery around an outdoor court. The characteristics of its glass enclosure provide ideal light for sculpture, in direct view to and from the reference point of the Acropolis. The Parthenon Marbles will be visible from the Acropolis above. The enclosure is designed so as to protect the sculptures and visitors against excess heat and light. The orientation of the Marbles, which will be exactly as at the Parthenon, and their siting will provide an appropriate context for understanding the accomplishments of the Parthenon Complex itself."


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Sources:
The New York Times
http://www.tschumi.com/
The Tommy Flynn Index

Bitfall and the Water Pavilion

As most of you know that an Expo with water and conservation as a theme is on the works for 2008, it's called Expo Zaragoza 2008. Well... a couple of months ago there were publications all over the web covering the design of the Expo's Water Pavilion designed by a group of architects and students over at MIT with dozens of partners. I found the building utterly fascinating including the possibilities that it opened.



This morning I found via Dezeen a video of what I assume to be the technology that's going to be used in order to use water as a graphic element, water printing I think they call it. Apparently the technology has been around for quite a while (I seem to remember having read somewhere that it started in '92), traveling all around Europe, like on the Nuits Blanches in Paris. And has even been featured in a commercial of the Brazilian flip flop brand Ipanema with Gisele Bundchen.

Enjoy the mini documentary on the German artist responsible for several installations around Europe using this technology, his name is Julius Popp. His installations are a combination of technology and art, technology used to inspire feelings in visitors and people who experience his works, which happen to be immersive.