Here's something you don't see every day: a town built in the middle of a lake. Not on an island, but actually below water level. It's the ancient city of Seuthopolis, in Bulgaria, which was discovered in 1948. Six years later, a dam was destroyed and it was covered in water, ending up at the bottom of a huge lake. Now, the city is being unearthed via the most insane architectural project ever.
This is going to be done via the construction of a huge circular dike that'll be a whopping 1,377 feet in diameter and 65 feet high. People will be able to access the recessed city by boat, heading down into it to see the city. And the focus isn't on archeology here, but rather on tourism, with Bulgaria looking to create a striking image that draws people in. And really, there are few things that make a town more striking than have it sit on the bottom of a lake. Cool stuff. [Battlestar Props via This Isn't Happiness]
In August this year, a design competition was launched to generate ideas to repurpose Quito's Mariscal Sucre International Airport after its planned closing in a couple of years.
According to the organizers, “the coming availability of 126 hectares of space with a flat topography, located in the midst of a consolidated area, which thanks to the decision of the Quito Metropolitan Council, will be transformed into a park, constitutes an exceptional event and a unique opportunity. This leads us to rethink the city and to take advantage of the opportunity to set forth solutions to multiple issues linked to: changes in the use and building capacity of land; improvement in mobility and transversal connectivity; expansion of infrastructure; provision of green areas and public spaces; improvement in environmental conditions, recovery of urban landscapes and environment; improvement of the quality of life of present and future inhabitants of the city.”
We only learned of this competition, because two teams that had submitted entries uploaded their images onto their Flickr accounts after the results were announced late last month. Both projects are quite spectacular, visually gorgeous and brimming with ideas. We'll post them separately, and should we find more entries and like what we see, we'll publish them here as well.
The first team, then, is Paisajes Emergentes, a studio collective based in Medellin and Bogota, Colombia. Its members include Luis Callejas, Edgar Mazo and Sebastian Mejia.
This is their Second Prize-winning entry, in all its linear awesomeness.
Per the competition brief, water has to be central element in the design. After all, the organizers refer to the future park as Parque del Lago.
In response, Paisajes Emergentes flooded the 3-kilometer runway to create an “active hydrologic park,” which they then partitioned into 6 programmatically discrete areas.
1. At the north end of the park are wetlands. These bioremediate water redirected from the south end of the park after having run its course through this outrageously elongated pool.
2. Relatively clean water from the wetlands is then used to fill an open air aquarium. The tanks here contain fluvial species from tropical ecosystems.
3. An aquatic botanical garden comes next in this hydrological assembly line. Whereas the faunal variety is showcased in the aquarium, tropical plants are the main attractions here, though both are equally essential to maintain any kind of a robust ecosystem.
4. From there, water moves into circular water tanks, where it is mechanically oxygenated and filtrated. Pedestrian walkways involve people with an infrastructure and a process that are usually hidden from them. Meanwhile, one has to question the placement of these tanks. Shouldn't it be at the head of the line to take care of the heavy duty stuff? Given the park's closed system and the proven ability of constructed wetlands to improve water quality biologically, is a “conventional” treatment plant, of that scale, even necessary?
5. In any case, the water must meet legal standards of quality if they are to fill the public pools and thermal baths. A combination of wind and solar energy is used to heat this aquatic complex.
6. Finally, we come to a recreational lake, where the water is collected in subterranean tanks to satisfy the need of irrigation systems and general maintenance of the park before.
Additional activities are also programmed adjacent to this central pool. For instance, the old terminal building is turned into a convention center. Soft materials and walls are removed, and the remaining forest of columns confine 3 theaters inside hanging gardens.
There is also an open air aviation museum, where a fleet of planes are allowed to rot in their obsolescence. A wetland fed by waters from the botanical garden is allowed colonize this area. In time, the planes become a sort of Picturesque ruins of the industrial age, sinking into deep mire, crumbling in the wilds.
Meanwhile, it would have been nice to see how the park relates to its context, apart from suggesting amenities the local community may (or may not) need. Graphically, the site looks divorced from the urban grid. All paths radiate out of the terminal building and one parking lot on the other half, then terminate just before they reach the edge of the park. Opportunities for more meaningful connectivity between the surrounding neighborhoods and between the north and south parts of the city seem to have been missed.
LED lighting project designer LightWild has just completed two software-controlled architectural projects on the newly opened, 17,000-seat, O2 World Arena in Berlin, Germany. The arena is located on 50 acres along the Spree River near the Berlin Wall East Side Gallery. On the exterior, a massive LED installation stretches across the building’s curved glass facade and inside, two lobbies glisten with thousands of controlled fluorescent and LED fixtures behind frosted acrylic lenses. Visitors to the arena are greeted by the colorful moving graphics and video effects that are driven across the installations on event nights. LightWild provided the engineering piece and the physical supplies. Installation was done by a German construction firm.
Randy Jones, LightWild’s Director of Engineering, added that a key feature to the project’s success was the company’s “ability to work early on with the architects and engineers and achieve both the light output and the look — aesthetically — that was appealing to the owners. It was a rewarding challenge doing it long distance across the globe.” Using its LightWild Pixel as the LED light source, LightWild worked closely with the arena’s architects — HOK Sport and JSK Architects — and owner Anschutz Entertainment Group to engineer a building mullion that houses the Pixels while blending seamlessly into the building’s exterior facade. In the lobbies, LightWild’s project engineering team and building architects designed a blue aluminum housing with openings for lenses that encased the Pixels and installed directly to the arena walls.
LED façade
The LED façade is 380 feet (116 m) long by 40 feet (12 m) tall and is built on a 104-degree curve with an average radius of 213 feet (65 m). There are 117 vertical mullions spaced slightly more than 3 feet (1 m) horizontally across the façade. In all, there are 7020 LightWild Pixels installed in the vertical mullions on the façade of the arena. With 40 LEDs/Pixel, 280,800 LEDs are in use on the façade.
“The curved façade presented an optical challenge more than a physical challenge. Physically, each section of glass on the facade is flat but there is a slight angle (<1°) between each section so that collectively the façade is curved. Therefore, the horizontal light from our LEDs tends to separate more than it would from a flat surface,” said Jones.
“Added to this natural separation of the light was the desire of the owner for maximum view-ability from both close-in and from the side of the façade. LightWild’s solution was to develop a secondary optical lens that allowed maximum light transmission (88%) but also created light dispersion in the horizontal direction. Multiple samples were created and reviewed with the US architects and the German project team to find the perfect solution,” continued Jones.
“The furthest I saw the façade was from a mile and half away, from the 200 m tall TV tower at the Alexander Plaza. We actually could read some of the lettering at that distance,” said Jones.
A PC with LightWild’s proprietary software controls content scheduling. Within the system, the operator can do quick text interrupts. For example, if a player inside scores a goal, they can replace the exterior façade to read “Goal!”
The ‘Medien und Raum’ Studio is a master course subject taught by Dr. Haeusler at the HfT Stuttgart – Hochschule für Technik. The Studio is part of a new research focus at the university on media architecture and interactive architecture. ‘Medien und Raum’ focused on the architectural integration of state of the art media technology. The two projects presented ‘Concrete LED Façade’ by Angela Renz and Dominik Kommerell and ‘Lochblech LED Façade’ by Ute Schweinle, Melek Güler and Andrea Fackler are prototypes resulting from this studio. Both projects were conducted as scientific research projects where conditions and materials were tested and documented and the prototypes are a result of the research.
Can a deactivated media façade transform back to an architectural surface or to ask the question the other way around can an architectural surface temporarily become a media façade? Both presented projects offer a possible answer to the question – the architectural surface is, when activated, a media façade that can display media content without having a persistent urge for new media contents. This urge is the result of media technology that exists as an added element onto architectural surfaces that when deactivating the technology unmasks the assembling of parts. Through an amalgam of architectural surface and technology one can create a media augmented element that is able to transform either to a space-defining element or a message-delivering vehicle.
Le résultat visuel n'est évidemment pas encore très intéressant... et l'on devine la masse de câbles cachés derrière le bloc de béton. Cela me rappelle un autre projet d'écran en béton... Il s'agissait en réalité "simplement" d'un béton rempli de fibres optiques, mais le résultat était surprenant. Si non, bien entendu, cela rappelle aussi les bétons semi transparents (cf. liens ci-dessus)
Revisiting Postmodernism A new podcast series curated from the League's historic audio/video archive of lectures and panel discussions dating back more than thirty years
Through the Digital Archive Project, selections from the League's archive of more than six hundred audio/video recordings are being digitized and made available for online audiences. This week, the League launches Revisiting Postmodernism, a curated podcast series of original audio recordings from the early and mid-1980s. The series includes presentations by leading theorists and practitioners of postmodernism, including John Burgee, Michael Graves, Charles Jencks, Charles Moore, James Stirling, and others. New presentations will be available once a week over the next several weeks and will be announced via @theLeague, the League's weekly e-newsletter.
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For more information about the complete series, click here.
To have new episodes of Revisiting Postmodernism automatically downloaded to your computer or mp3 player, subscribe to the League's podcast series on iTunes. Search for "Architectural League" in the iTunes Store and follow the instructions for how to subscribe.
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