The Buckminster Fuller Challenge from Buckminster Fuller Institute on Vimeo.
Wednesday 6 May 2009
Friday 1 May 2009
Friday 24 April 2009
Thursday 23 April 2009
Monday 30 March 2009
death by architecture ! Comp !
http??www.deathbyarchitecture.com/viewCompetition.html?id=674
low2No- a substainable development design competition;
sitra,thefinnish innovation fund
comp website !
is anyone else up for it ? if so give me a shout wanna put a design team together to smash this one!
Monday 23 March 2009
Wednesday 18 March 2009
Monday 23 February 2009
Friday 20 February 2009
Wednesday 18 February 2009
Tuesday 17 February 2009
Rem Koolhaas
Toward The Contemporary City
This text is a piece of Rem Koolhaas’s research into emerging form of architecture in contemporary cities and the search for possibilities of actual mutations. It was done as a documentation to interpret a number of spontaneous and independent processes that occur in cities that are as different as Paris, Atlanta and Tokyo. Koolhaas believes that these ‘processes all seem to led to an unforgivable fragmentation of the existing city, a displacement of the center of gravity of urban dynamics from the city center to the urban periphery and a remarkable ingenuity in avoiding urbanistic rules.’ (GUST, 1999. P.32)
He talks about there being a shift of emphasis from the city center to the periphery and the processes that happen on the city edge. These sub areas contain ‘unrecognized beauty’ according Koolhaas who leads to a conclusion that ‘The Contemporary City will be a retro-active manifesto for the yet to be recognized beauty of the last twentieth-century urban landscape.’ (Nesbitt, 1996. P.325) He also claims that the modern city is yet to be realized.
His theories and research seem to oppose postmodern ideals such as Colin Rowe’s collage city. He seems interested in furthering modern architecture but with revisions. Koolhaus is generally characterized as both a Modernist and Deconstructivist, however many critics claim that he leans toward Humanism. ‘The modern is the industrial society of technological, economic, politic and social change, while modernity is the cultural spirit of the modern, and modernism different collective professional forms of cultural expressions and practices as reflections and interpretation of the modern and modernity.’
(http://hjem.get2net.dk/gronlund/Koolhaas.html)
Koolhaas observes that the project of the modern city was built only in fragments of modernity and the challenge is to now remodel and augment the different parts of the city without destroying them. He gives examples in the way Milan and Paris were remodeled in the nineteenth century. By working in between the different fragments, both the idealism of modern urbanism and the scale of the traditional city are compromised, but valuable new themes to work with are opened up that allow us to deal with the complexities of contemporary life.
When looking at Atlanta, the city can be defined as not having a center but having many centers that hinge on a series peripheries or as Koolhaas describes, no periphery and an infinite number of centers. This has made Atlanta iconic in representing a shift in the modern city from center to periphery, to beyond these limits. It can no longer be called suburbia, Koolhaas says:
The contemporary city, the one composed of these peripheries, ought to yield a sort of manifesto, a premature homage to a form of modernity, which when compared to cities of the past might seem devoid of qualities, but in which we will one day recognize as many gains as losses. Leave Paris and Amsterdam - go look at Atlanta, quickly and without preconceptions. (Nesbitt, 1996. P.328)
In Koolhaas' understanding, the contemporary city is the generic city. The word generic has a double meaning: it is general for a whole group or class of phenomena or species, and it has no particularly distinctive quality or application. Meaning that the urban is now so pervasive, that old ways of thinking about cities is not relevant any more. To Koolhaas the generic city, is an expression of general urbanization and globalization. It’s ‘is a displacement to the urban periphery, a territory that can no longer be called suburbia, distorted and stretched beyond precedent, big enough for all, and with a remarkable ingenuity in avoiding urbanistic rules.’ (http://hjem.get2net.dk/gronlund/Koolhaas.html)
By spreading and sprawling, the generic city frees the city from its center and identity. A city that is free from history, it self-destructs and renews according to present needs and abilities almost ‘superficial’ it has become repetitive through its architectural structure.
But the generic city, the general urban condition, is happening everywhere, and just the fact that it occurs in such enormous quantities must mean that it's habitable. Architecture can't do anything that the culture doesn't. We all complain that we are confronted by urban environments that are completely similar. We say we want to create beauty, identity, quality, singularity. And yet, maybe in truth these cities that we have are desired. (http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/4.07/koolhaas_pr.html)
He questions whether it’s the fact that these environments are so characterlessness that makes them the best setting for living. He argues is that in its reflective similarity, the generic city is a more accurate reflection of contemporary urban reality than our nostalgic visions of New York or Paris.
Dubai’s ‘Waterfront City’ (above picture) is fast becoming the realization of what Koolhaas calls ‘The Generic City’. The enclosed island is an elaborate vision by OMA with a mixture of unremarkable skyscrapers and few architectural masterpieces, set inside an urban experiment covering six and a half square miles.
This text is a piece of Rem Koolhaas’s research into emerging form of architecture in contemporary cities and the search for possibilities of actual mutations. It was done as a documentation to interpret a number of spontaneous and independent processes that occur in cities that are as different as Paris, Atlanta and Tokyo. Koolhaas believes that these ‘processes all seem to led to an unforgivable fragmentation of the existing city, a displacement of the center of gravity of urban dynamics from the city center to the urban periphery and a remarkable ingenuity in avoiding urbanistic rules.’ (GUST, 1999. P.32)
He talks about there being a shift of emphasis from the city center to the periphery and the processes that happen on the city edge. These sub areas contain ‘unrecognized beauty’ according Koolhaas who leads to a conclusion that ‘The Contemporary City will be a retro-active manifesto for the yet to be recognized beauty of the last twentieth-century urban landscape.’ (Nesbitt, 1996. P.325) He also claims that the modern city is yet to be realized.
His theories and research seem to oppose postmodern ideals such as Colin Rowe’s collage city. He seems interested in furthering modern architecture but with revisions. Koolhaus is generally characterized as both a Modernist and Deconstructivist, however many critics claim that he leans toward Humanism. ‘The modern is the industrial society of technological, economic, politic and social change, while modernity is the cultural spirit of the modern, and modernism different collective professional forms of cultural expressions and practices as reflections and interpretation of the modern and modernity.’
(http://hjem.get2net.dk/gronlund/Koolhaas.html)
Koolhaas observes that the project of the modern city was built only in fragments of modernity and the challenge is to now remodel and augment the different parts of the city without destroying them. He gives examples in the way Milan and Paris were remodeled in the nineteenth century. By working in between the different fragments, both the idealism of modern urbanism and the scale of the traditional city are compromised, but valuable new themes to work with are opened up that allow us to deal with the complexities of contemporary life.
When looking at Atlanta, the city can be defined as not having a center but having many centers that hinge on a series peripheries or as Koolhaas describes, no periphery and an infinite number of centers. This has made Atlanta iconic in representing a shift in the modern city from center to periphery, to beyond these limits. It can no longer be called suburbia, Koolhaas says:
The contemporary city, the one composed of these peripheries, ought to yield a sort of manifesto, a premature homage to a form of modernity, which when compared to cities of the past might seem devoid of qualities, but in which we will one day recognize as many gains as losses. Leave Paris and Amsterdam - go look at Atlanta, quickly and without preconceptions. (Nesbitt, 1996. P.328)
In Koolhaas' understanding, the contemporary city is the generic city. The word generic has a double meaning: it is general for a whole group or class of phenomena or species, and it has no particularly distinctive quality or application. Meaning that the urban is now so pervasive, that old ways of thinking about cities is not relevant any more. To Koolhaas the generic city, is an expression of general urbanization and globalization. It’s ‘is a displacement to the urban periphery, a territory that can no longer be called suburbia, distorted and stretched beyond precedent, big enough for all, and with a remarkable ingenuity in avoiding urbanistic rules.’ (http://hjem.get2net.dk/gronlund/Koolhaas.html)
By spreading and sprawling, the generic city frees the city from its center and identity. A city that is free from history, it self-destructs and renews according to present needs and abilities almost ‘superficial’ it has become repetitive through its architectural structure.
But the generic city, the general urban condition, is happening everywhere, and just the fact that it occurs in such enormous quantities must mean that it's habitable. Architecture can't do anything that the culture doesn't. We all complain that we are confronted by urban environments that are completely similar. We say we want to create beauty, identity, quality, singularity. And yet, maybe in truth these cities that we have are desired. (http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/4.07/koolhaas_pr.html)
He questions whether it’s the fact that these environments are so characterlessness that makes them the best setting for living. He argues is that in its reflective similarity, the generic city is a more accurate reflection of contemporary urban reality than our nostalgic visions of New York or Paris.
Dubai’s ‘Waterfront City’ (above picture) is fast becoming the realization of what Koolhaas calls ‘The Generic City’. The enclosed island is an elaborate vision by OMA with a mixture of unremarkable skyscrapers and few architectural masterpieces, set inside an urban experiment covering six and a half square miles.
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