digital aesthetics | architecture

The Guatemala City Abyss

By michael ⋅ March 3, 2007 ⋅ Post a comment

[Image: The abyss, courtesy of National Geographic News].

“After rumbling for weeks,” we read, “part of a poor Guatemala City neighborhood plummeted some 30 stories into the Earth on Friday.”
The gigantic sinkhole into which those homes plummeted is referred to as “the Guatemala City abyss.”

(Via gravestmor. But don’t miss The town at risk from cave-ins, earlier on BLDGBLOG).

Originally from BLDGBLOG by Geoff Manaugh
reBlogged by michael on Jan 1, 1970, 12:00AM

Sleep Labs of the Soviet Empire

By michael ⋅ February 27, 2007 ⋅ One comment

[Image: A "garden suburb" outside Moscow. Via Cabinet Magazine].

In the new issue of Cabinet, we read how, following the implementation of Stalin’s first Five-Year Plan â€“ and in the wake of food rationing and extended work hours â€“ “the shock-troops of Communism were edging perilously close to physical and mental exhaustion: what they needed was rest.”
Soviet authorities thus “announced a competition to design a garden suburb outside Moscow, where workers could be sent to recuperate from the strains of factory labor.”
Without getting into specifics â€“ for that, be sure to pick up a copy of the magazine, issue #24 â€“ one detail about the garden suburb that I particularly love, and that the article’s author specifically highlights, was a sort of colosseum of slumber. A dream academy.
Designed by Konstantin Melnikov, the building was a purpose-built structure referred to as the “Sonata of Sleep.”

[Image: Konstantin Melnikov's "Sonata of Sleep." Via Cabinet Magazine].

Specifically, we’re told, “the building consisted of two large dormitories either side of a central block,” and the dormitories each “had sloping floors.”
This would “obviate the need for pillows.”
Even more amazing â€“ or is it absurd? â€“ we read:

At either end of the long buildings were to be situated control booths, where technicians would command instruments to regulate the temperature, humidity, and air pressure, as well as to waft salubrious scents and “rarefied condensed air” through the halls. Nor would sound be left unorganized. Specialists working “according to scientific facts” would transmit from the control centre a range of sounds gauged to intensify the process of slumber. The rustle of leaves, the cooing of nightingales, or the soft murmur of waves would instantly relax the most overwrought veteran of the metropolis. Should these fail, the mechanized beds would then begin gently to rock until consciousness was lost.

While all this certainly sounds ambitious enough, apparently “Melnikov’s original impulse had been much more far-reaching.”
His original dream had been to create an Institute for Changing the Form of Man.
The whole article is awesome, frankly, encompassing the resurrection of the dead, a house designed by Melnikov in which residents felt as if they “were floating in thick golden air,” and further thoughts about how Melnikov “recombined industrial iconography into a series of spatial adventures,” most notably with a building that was “a delirium of gigantic stairways and roller bearings.”

[Image: Konstantin Melnikov's "Leningrad Pravda" tower, as modelled by R. Notrott].

While I’m on the subject, though, don’t miss this page full of Melnikov’s other architectural projects, including the tower, pictured above, where “each floor should turn around the central core,” and this outrageous parking garage, to be constructed as a bridge in Paris, over the Seine. Note the bronze, Oscar-like statues holding up either end of the structure.

(Thanks to Leah Beeferman for emailing me the first two images, hot off the press from Cabinet).

Originally from BLDGBLOG by Geoff Manaugh
reBlogged by michael on Jan 1, 1970, 12:00AM

The knot driver

By michael ⋅ February 25, 2007 ⋅ Post a comment

Northern Baltimore’s I-95/695 highway interchange is a “topological masterpiece,” and its superb “mathematical aesthetics” might just save it from being destroyed.

[Image: â€œI was in a web of braided highways." New Scientist].

“In the spring issue of The Mathematical Intelligencer, Michael Kleber, a topologist at MIT, waxed enthusiastic about [the interchange's] ‘non-trivial braiding‘: while it is possible to just lift I-95 up and away from I-695, the northbound lane of I-95 braids both over, and then under, the southbound lane, making it impossible to pull them apart without cutting one of the lanes.”

However, those simultaneous right/left exits don’t seem to be helping with traffic flow, and the system’s moving circular symmetry may soon be traded-in for something far simpler.
“I don’t want to encourage more cars onto the roads,” the New Scientist writes, “but if topology and beauty mean anything to you, get out there and enjoy I-95/695 now. It may soon be too late.”

This leads me to wonder, of course, if you could take-over the U.S. Department of Transportation, and rebuild the nation’s highway infrastructure as a massive textbook in driveable knot theory.
Seattle to Chicago, you drive achiral knots; Los Angeles to Phoenix, trefoils; New York to Miami, Brunnian links; while the most complicated ones are saved for a private highway system built between Washington DC and Denver.
All the tunnels of Manhattan, recurved and cross-torqued through themselves, with some so maddening only postgraduate researchers can find their way out of the city.
A new Olympic sport: driving the New York knots.

(Earlier: BLDGBLOG’s Wormholes).

Originally from BLDGBLOG by Geoff Manaugh
reBlogged by michael on Jan 1, 1970, 12:00AM

Interchange Tiles

By michael ⋅ February 25, 2007 ⋅ Post a comment

[Image: Four tiles by Jim Termeer].

“This is a set of 25 ceramic tiles,” artist Jim Termeer explains. “The patterns are based on satellite imagery of major highway interchanges that have been built worldwide.”
So you can decorate your bathroom with the freeways of Barcelona.

[Image: The Barcelona tile, by Jim Termeer].

(Discovered via Mason White, thanks to a tip from Theresa Duncan. If you like these images, meanwhile, be sure to stop by BLDGBLOG’s Return of the Knot Driver and, of course, The Knot Driver).

Originally from BLDGBLOG by Geoff Manaugh
reBlogged by michael on Jan 1, 1970, 12:00AM

Cities as Billboards

By michael ⋅ February 17, 2007 ⋅ Post a comment

The train of thought that I started as I discussed Fabien Girardin’s Flickr heatmaps a few posts back, and which led me to thinking about mining consumer line-of sight data to target advertising, seems to be continuing here in a recent New York Times article about how advertisers are now looking to use what they would consider "unsold" space to place their messages. This phenomenon even has a name, urban spam.

But why just post the same ad for everyone to see? Why not use an individual viewer’s line of sight as they travel as a "channel" into which to project ads and messages where blank space exists? Fabien’s recent post, illustrated here, shows the "traces" left by Flickr photographers as they transit Barcelona. Where his heat maps showed the locations of single images, the traces follow the path the photographer takes through the city, or his visual corridor, if you will.

Originally from Smartspace by Scott Smith
reBlogged by michael on Jan 17, 2007, 6:41PM

Funky Little Shack

By michael ⋅ February 17, 2007 ⋅ Post a comment

[Image: Courtesy of the Art Shanty Projects, via Metropolis].

Though it’s hidden behind a subscriber-only link, I’ve got a short article in the new issue of Metropolis. So if you’re standing in the check-out line at the supermarket and you need something to read…

[Image: Courtesy of the Art Shanty Projects, via Metropolis].

“For the past four winters,” the article goes, “a kind of sci-fi skid row has sprung up on the temporarily frozen surface of Medicine Lake, in the western suburbs of Minneapolis.”
The structures have all been put there by the Art Shanty Projects, an “annual folk-architecture experiment” that now “features nearly two dozen cabins â€“ each a unique variation on the traditional Minnesotan ice-fishing shed.”
Organized and run by Peter Haakon Thompson and David Pitman, this instant city on ice â€“ part community festival, part architectural happening â€“ includes a long list of participating artists and their often wildly different little buildings.

[Image: Courtesy of the Art Shanty Projects, via Metropolis].

There are teahouses and karaoke rooms, a pinhole camera shanty and a place to knit scarves; there’s a functioning post office, a shack for misfit toys, and even a science shanty “themed around limnology â€“ the study of lakes.”
But one of my favorites this year is actually the shanty in which you can “engage the community in a conversation about… cactus.”
Last winter, the shanties included a structure made of ice shells by the folks behind Materials & Applications; there was an artificial drumlin; and there was a “work of art” produced by local high school students â€“ who also supplied this memorable description of the event itself: the Art Shanty Projects is a “five-week exhibition of architecture, performances, science, art, zombies, spear-fishing, videos, robots, pinhole cameras, sculpture, knitting, readings and karaoke.”
There was even a glass-blowing shanty and a peepshow on ice.

[Image: Courtesy of the Art Shanty Projects, via Metropolis].

However, if you’re hoping to see the shanties in action, be aware that they’ll be dismantled on February 17thÂ â€“ three days from now. So hurry.
Otherwise, check out the Art Shanty Projects webpage for more info; and pick up a copy of Metropolis if you stumble upon one.

Originally from BLDGBLOG by Geoff Manaugh
reBlogged by michael on Jan 1, 1970, 12:00AM

Like Watching Paint Dry. Really Beautiful Paint.

By michael ⋅ February 17, 2007 ⋅ Post a comment

Just got a press release from The Exploratorium (the best place on earth, btw, period), announcing the win of an AIA award for the design of the “Wave Wall,” a kinetic skin on the surface of the new Science Education Center at the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) in Livingston, Louisiana. Super-apt for its context of course, but there was only a small pic in the email. Hopped over to YouTube, did a search, and presto. You get some Rockettes-style action at the 2:30-minute mark, but we suspect that this thing is even more wonderful when it’s only slighly moving. [more]

…

Originally from core77.com's design blog
reBlogged by michael on Feb 16, 2007, 4:35PM

Churches of remathematization

By michael ⋅ February 17, 2007 ⋅ Post a comment

[Image: "Adams in Saint Flour Cathedral," a 360Â°x180Â° panorama by Seb Przd].

Flickr user Seb Przd has been re-mathematizing his photographs of French cathedrals, using a program called MathMap.
The results are delirious whorls of rock and decoration, space folded onto itself and circled round again to match up with itself at the beginning. All very M.C. Escher-esque â€“ but nonetheless exhilirating.

[Images: "Saint Etienne Two Times," taken inside Saint Etienne du Mont, Paris; another view of Saint Etienne du Mont; inside the same church; and a final view inside Saint Etienne du Mont, Paris. All photographs by Seb Przd].

Further clicking took me through to an entire Equirectangular Pool on Flickr, and further still to a specific Equirectangular set by another Flickr user called HamburgerJung. In particular, I like his shot “Treppe.”
However, even then I found myself clicking back to look at images by Seb Przd, including “On the side of the cathedral,” “Don’t drink and pray,” and “Notre-Dame de Reims.”
If you look at enough of these, though, you begin to see that specific styles of architecture are better than others when it comes to this sort of optical distortion. The old stone cathedrals of Europe are fantastic, for instance, but modern â€“ even art nouveau â€“ structures look pretty lame, frankly. I also think meadow shots, or straight-up landscapes, just look really gimmicky.
So perhaps we should send Seb Przd, armed with a camera and loads of film, on a six month trip through Europe, photographing every Gothic cathedral from within…
A kind of optical encounter between Christianity and mathematics.

[Image: "The Ceiling and Columns of the Cathedral" by Seb Przd].

(Discovered via MetaFilter).

Originally from BLDGBLOG by Geoff Manaugh
reBlogged by michael on Jan 1, 1970, 12:00AM

Pods and perforations

By michael ⋅ February 8, 2007 ⋅ Post a comment

The Architectural Review has released its newest Awards for Emerging Architecture; included this year is architect Kazuya Morita’s “pod-for-all-occasions.”

The pod is “delicately perforated,” made from “a combination of white cement, lightweight aggregate and glass fibre. This mixture was meticulously hand trowelled onto a carved styrofoam mould by skilled plasterers (the traditional Japanese plasterer’s art is known as sakan).” Meanwhile, we read, “[t]he perforations were created by attaching styrofoam rings to the dome-shaped master mould. When the concrete hardened, the mould was dismantled and removed.”
Whilst the “concrete skin” is only 15 millimeters thick, it is “immensely strong and can easily bear the weight of a person.”
These structures should be built by the thousands on every rooftop in Manhattan, and lit from within by candles every last Saturday night of the month.