Tuesday, November 11. 2008
[Image: Photo by Filip Dujardin, courtesy of the artist].
Belgian photographer Filip Dujardin makes images of unexpected buildings – that is, he "combines photographs of parts of buildings into new, fictional, architectonic structures," Mark Magazine explains.
The resulting projects look like old factory sites in the American rust belt – Mark describes them as "informal and often dilapidated structures with unspecified functions" – or, in some cases, new projects by LOT-EK, Simon Ungers, or OMA.
[Image: Photo by Filip Dujardin, courtesy of the artist].
From Mark Magazine:
Every montage, says Dujardin, is one project. It begins with an idea for a specific image. Often he starts off by building a model of the form he is trying to achieve – at first in cardboard, but he has recently discovered SketchUp. He then goes on a photo safari, often just around the corner, to find suitable buildings "with a lot of the same things," so that they can be cut and pasted and serve as building material. In fact most of the fictional structures are buildings in Ghent, just resampled
There seem to be multiple sub-themes, and even sub-projects, within the larger effort. There are surreal detached structures, for instance, like the image that opens this post, standing free amidst a recognizable but anonymous landscape. In some of these we see that even geological forms become subject to resampling.
[Image: Photo by Filip Dujardin, courtesy of the artist].
But then there are also what could be called a back series – that is, the backs of incredible buildings whose facades you can barely imagine.
These are groves of architecture, weird islands of form, like the city as seen from a rail line: sheds and retaining walls, stained by rain, their bricks chipped away behind piles of rubbish, their corrugated steel repeating ever onward in infinite ridges.
[Images: Photos by Filip Dujardin, courtesy of the artist].
Then there are Dujardin's relatively well-known images of impossible structures, buildings made from ambitious cantilevers and strained central masts. They form vertical braidworks of halls and corridors woven through the sky above otherwise empty parks and dead fields.
[Images: Photos by Filip Dujardin, courtesy of the artist].
As Dujardin comments to Mark Magazine, "Perhaps the works come out of frustration. That I actually want to play at being an architect, instead of only recording the buildings of others."
You can read more about the photographer on his website.
[Image: Photo by Filip Dujardin, courtesy of the artist].
(Related: Fictional ruins from fictional worlds).
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From BLDBLOG
Friday, November 07. 2008
The blockbuster of the Venice Biennale of Architecture is a quirky 58 minute film by Ila Bêka and Louise Lemoine.
Koolhaas Houselife visits one of the masterpieces of contemporary architecture: the Maison à Bordeaux designed in 1998 by Rem Koolhaas / OMA.
The Dutch architect designed this house on three levels with moving walls and sliding floors. The lower level is carved from the hillside as a series of caverns, and serves for communal family life. The middle level of glass is designed to accommodate the husband, who is confined to a wheelchair. The third level is divided into sections for the husband, wife, and children. At the center of each level is an elevator platform that moves up and down between levels.
The movie engages with the Biennale's theme 'Out there - architecture beyond buildings' by trying to uncover what happens after a house that has been plastered all over the glossy magazines is left in the hands of the owners.
The peculiarity of the movie is that it presents this icon of contemporary architecture through the eyes of Guadalupe Acedo, the cleaning lady, and the other people who look after the building. The charming and devoted cleaning lady struggles with the heavy curtains, the narrow staircase, the either oddly shaped or gigantic glass panels, etc. Clearly this house has not been designed for the people who have the bad idea to live outside of architecture magazines. Once in a while you can hear Guadalupe whisper gems such as: 'If I had money, I would not build a house like this.'
One of the highlights of the video is this snippet of interview which shows a Koolhaas surprised by Guadalupe's take and treatment of his building: 'You see here two systems colliding: the system of the platonic conception of cleaning with the platonic conception of architecture.'
Meet Guadalupe as she goes up the open lift :
This way for trailer 2.
I'm with you Guadalupe! i lived 3 years in an 'architectural masterpiece', waking up to the sound of tourists ringing my doorbell to get a sneak peek at the inside of the house, trying to figure out where to buy furniture that would fit the stupidly curvy walls and being burgled every single year because the alarm system was so delicate that we had to turn it off most of the time for fear that it would drill holes through the heads of the whole neighbourhood when we got up at night to visit the bathroom.
Guadalupe's experience also reminded me of the Vitra Fire Station in Weil am Rhein. I visited the place a few years ago with a local guide who explained us that it had been designed by Zaha Hadid as a working firehouse within the Vitra furniture design and manufacturing complex. However, the firemen found the building impossible to live and work in. Now the edifice is used by Vitra as a showplace for part of its permanent collection of chairs. Looks great on images though!
Check out Gizmodo's interview with Ila Bêka. And if you're in the neighbourhood, the Venice Biennale of Architecture is screening the movie in a stuffy little room of the Italian Pavilion until November 23, 2008.
Edgar Gonzalez is preparing a tour of Spain for the movie but the dates of the screenings have not been released yet. Stay tuned!
Tuesday, November 04. 2008
A couple of weeks ago, someone called 'koobcat' started an EarthSwoop tour of buildings designed by the famous arhictect Frank Gehry. Turns out some of his buildings have been modeled in 3D and added to the 3D Buildings layer of Google Earth. His buildings are really unique, and recognizeable with interesting twisted surfaces and shapes. GoogleMapsMania featured the collection this past Saturday which brought it to my attention. I spent a few minutes this morning updating the EarthSwoop collection to add a few more of Gehry's most famous buildings which are available for viewing in GE. I also added thumbnails and brief descriptions to each one. You can either view the Gehry collection in EarthSwoop (if you have the Google Earth plugin). Or here is a KML file so you can view it in Google Earth directly. Either way, I suggest turning on the Panoramio layer so you can see the many photos people have taken of these unique buildings.
By the way, one of Gehry's most famous buildings is the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao. I noticed that building hasn't made it in the 3D Buildings layer yet, but there are at least three well done 3D models in the 3D Warehouse. Hopefully they will add that one soon.
Personal comment:
Pas facile de faire du mapping automatique sur les bātiments de Gehry...
Monday, November 03. 2008
UrbanSpaceStation, an installation that Natalie Jeremijenko developed together with Ángel Borrego.
Natalie Jeremijenko and Ángel Borrego, UrbanSpaceStation
This prototype of a parasite for urban buildings was designed to sequester the carbon dioxide emissions from buildings and return oxygen-enriched air in exchange. The "greenhouse-laboratory" for rooftops constitutes an intensive urban agriculture facility that reuses building waste streams to produce nutritional resources without burning fossil fuels.
[Image: Dubai's "carbon-neutral" ziggurat, designed by Timelinks].
I'll be in Chicago next week to host a panel on Saturday, November 8, as part of this year's Chicago Humanities Festival. The other participants are Joseph Grima, Jeffrey Inaba, and Sam Jacob.
More info:
Look abroad: Whole cities are planned, built, and inhabited in less than a generation. Artificial islands, indoor ski slopes, and the world’s tallest this-and-that are being constructed, not in the West, but in the Middle East, China, and beyond. The result: a sense that the West’s cities are falling behind and, increasingly, watching from the sidelines. A dynamic panel will discuss the accuracy of this assessment of today’s architectural situation. What are the urban implications of so-called offshoring audacity and how can the phenomenon be described without resorting to nationalism, nostalgia, or even uncritical celebration?
The panelists will be Joseph Grima, executive director of New York’s Storefront for Art and Architecture and author of Instant Asia; Jeffrey Inaba, principal architect, Inaba Projects, and professor of architecture at SCI-Arc and Columbia University; and Sam Jacob, visiting professor at Yale University and founding director, Fashion Architecture Taste, a London-based practice. The discussion will be moderated by Geoff Manaugh, author of BLDGBLOG and senior editor of Dwell magazine.
The panel, called Offshoring Audacity, will begin at 2:30pm, lasting till 4:00, and it will take place at the Chicago History Museum, 1601 N. Clark Street. It costs $5.
I hope some Chicago-basedreaders might stop by.
[Image: Park Gate, Dubai, by Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture].
The overall theme for the Humanities Festival this year is "big ideas," inspired by architect Daniel Burnham's (possibly apocryphal) statement that one should "make no little plans." Since we're coming up on the 100-year anniversary of Burnham's urban plan for Chicago, not only does a "big
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