Monday 12 September 2011

Cloudy Dunes. When Friedman meets Bucky on Air-Port-City


[Tomas Saraceno at MACRO, Roma _ 25 Giugno - 6 Novembre 2011]

"I have summarized my discovery of the option of humanity to become omnieconomically and sustainably successful on our planet while phasing out forever all use of fossil fuels and atomic energy generation other than the Sun. I have presented my plan for using our increasing technical ability to construct high-voltage, superconductive transmission lines and implement an around-the-world electrical energy grid integrating the daytime and nighttime hemispheres, thus swiftly increasing the operating capacity of the world's electrical energy system and, concomitantly, living standard in an unprecedented feat of international cooperation."
R. Buckminster Fuller. Cosmosgraphy, 1992
Yona Friedman. Space Chain, 1959

Saturday 6 August 2011

great builders!

sceliphron caementarium
mud dauber's nest perfect sponge structure 
a straw structure nest
section of straw nest's capsules

Sunday 17 July 2011

Panacea

Saint Green
…This is not another greenish cant! STAR strategies+architecture unmasks hypocrisy behind sustainability fever, scoffing at the most worshipped architecture's sacred cow.
So because  the guiltier we feel, the greener we try,  there's something irrevent that emerges from a sustainable Cenotaph and an eco-Pantheon, the greener temples ever!
And it goes even more twisted when it comes to Auschwitz camp's houses graciously shrouded with the greenest ivy!
The Green is the common lie, the secret consensus, the perfect crime...
Green has the capacity of reducing all that matters to one single problem, and one single solution: green!
Don't  you feel reassured looking at a green Monumento Continuo? well, if you felt prudish before the naked body of architecture, keep calm: now it's dressed in green! Polite, correct and sustainable…
Green is the new black!
Finally O'Mighty Green will save us all. Even has the power to redeem pornography…so, here comes Green Porno! Isabella Rossellini's sexy short documentaries series…funny and sultry with a twist of surreal.



http://st-ar.nl/o-mighty-green-summary/
http://www.sundancechannel.com/greenporno/

Friday 1 July 2011

world's species

Ingo Gunther, worlprocessor catalog 1988-2005

[This is how space begins, with words only, signs traced on the blank page. To describe space: to name it, to trace it, like those portolano-makers who saturated the coastlines with the names of harbours, the names of capes, the names of inlets, until in the end the land was only separated from the sea by a continuous ribbon of text. Is the aleph, that place in Borges from which the entire world is visible simultaneously, anything other than an alphabet?]
 G.Perec, Species of Spaces

Tuesday 14 June 2011

[D].elaunay dress by Continuum Fashion

"The future of fashion, and the future of consumer products in general, lies not only in more advanced technologies and materials, but also in reevaluating the very infrastructure of design, manufacture, and retail. By blending rapid fabrication, interactive software, and the accessibility of the web, we can let individuals participate directly in the design and production process. 
In short, the "D" collection is actually a piece of software. The D.dress app lets you draw a dress, turns it into a 3D model, and exports a cutting pattern to make the real dress, sized to your measurements. A laser cutter or plotter cuts the pattern out of fabric, which is then sewn into the dress. All the designs are unified around the theme of the little black dress, and the triangulation used in the software. This allows basically everyone to create their own innovative dress design."

Lo-res models created using D.dress application 

Tuesday 31 May 2011

foolish

“You must not attempt this approach to parallels. I know this way to its very end. I have traversed this bottomless night, which extinguished all light and joy from my life. I entreat you, leave the science of parallels alone...I thought I would sacrifice myself for the sake of the truth. I was ready to become a martyr who would remove the flaw from geometry and return it purified to mankind. I accomplished monstrous, enormous labours; my creations are far better than those of others and yet I have not achieved complete satisfaction. For here it is true that si paullum a summo discessit, vergit ad imum. I turned back when I saw that no man can reach the bottom of this night. I turned back unconsoled, pitying myself and all mankind ... I have travelled past all reefs of this infernal dead sea and have always come back with broken mast and torn sail. The ruin of my disposition and my fall date back to this time. I thoughtlessly risked my life and happiness — aut Caesar aut nihil.”
[Farkas Bolyai]
Lucien Clergue, Sand 



Monday 16 May 2011

early

Vittorio Giorgini, The Liberty Center in Upstate New York,
protptype built by Giorgini's students at Pratt Institute, 1976
R&Sie(n), Swarm Town,
topological city planning in Korea, 2006

Tuesday 10 May 2011

Seeing pattern everywhere!



TREASURE WHAT MIGHT OFTEN GO UNNOTICED
LOOK UP WHEN YOU SHOULD BE LOOKING DOWN
FIND BEAUTY IN THE BANAL
STOP TO WONDER WHEN YOU SHOULD BE WALKING PAST
GO SLOW WHEN YOU SHOULD BE GOING FAST
VENTURE INTO THE UNKNOWN
GLORIFY THE NON-PLACE
PATTERNS ARE EVERYWHERE, FROM THE MUNDANE TO THE MAGNIFICENT
SEE
INSPIRE
IMPLEMENT
ENJOY
///   ///   ///

Monday 9 May 2011

Homage to Gilles Deleuze

[Essay about the smooth and the striated]

Hector Zamora, 2010

split-up



London 27 April 2011

Dear Friend of FOA,

We are writing to inform you that after 16 years of successful collaboration we have agreed to split Foreign Office Architects (FOA) into two separate practices. FOA itself will cease to exist from around 28 April 2011. Over the past few years, we have both developed  individual interests which we now wish to pursue via independent practices. Farshid Moussavi will be practising as Farshid Moussavi Architecture Limited and Alejandro Zaera-Polo will be practising as AZPA Limited.

All current work for current clients will continue smoothly and all FOA staff will be offered
positions in the two new practices.

We would both like to thank you for your support and help for FOA over the years and hope that opportunities may arise for either or both of our successor practices to work with you in the future.

Yours sincerely
Farshid Moussavi
Alejandro Zaera-Polo


Saturday 9 April 2011

Threnos

 of Dorian Gray 


[...] For it was an unjust mirror, this mirror of his soul that he was looking at. Vanity? Curiosity? Hypocrisy? Had there been nothing more in his renunciation than that? There had been something more. At least he thought so. But who could tell? . . . No. There had been nothing more. Through vanity he had spared her. In hypocrisy he had worn the mask of goodness. For curiosity's sake he had tried the denial of self. He recognized that now.


Wednesday 6 April 2011

patches

Spatial ecologies of European farmlands

Netherlands
Greece
Germany
Serbia
England 
Portugal
Northern France
Southern France 
Italy 
Spain