A City set in Tradition

'Remember that the traditions of this City will be the traditions of Australia. Let us hope… that here a city may arise where those responsible for the government of this country in the future may seek and find inspiration in its noble buildings, its broad avenues, its shaded parks, and sheltered gardens- a city bearing perhaps some resemblance to the city beautiful of our dreams.'

– Lord Denman, Governor-General of Australia, Founding Stones ceremony, 12 March 1913

Indfastructeure as the Backbone

I thought this was an interesting diagram, in that it identifies the infastructer (what is underneath) is of significant importance i.e.the backbone - the structure - a facilitator of activity.

A Vision for our Capital

Architectural Membrane/skin Research

:: Saint Cyprien VTHR - Serero.

2008/04/09 16:36 from Architecture./- Exterior.

More from French architects Serero: this time their VTHR auditorium and theatre in Saint Cyprien, France.

The canopy design was the winning entry in a competition to design the new Auditorium et Salle Video Transmission Haute Resolution (VTHR).

See Serero’s competition-winning proposal to remodel the top of the Eiffel Tower in our earlier story.

The interior auditorium and cinema uses passive ventilation. Special panels combining wooden cladding and variable density insulation are used to achieve appropriate acoustics for both cinema and classical music performances. The complex shape of the interior is intended to reflect and diffuse the sound, creating an enveloping atmosphere.

Here’s some information from Serero (in French):
–
CANOPEE– AUDITORIUM ET SALLE VIDEO TRANSMISSION HAUTE RESOLUTION (VTHR)
Lauréat Concours, 2007
Canopy: Competition for the new Auditorium &. movie theater (VTHR) Saint Cyprien / France
First Prize Winner - Schematic design Phase
Design Team: David Serero, Taichi Sunayama, Rodrigo Garcia-Sayan, Fabrice Zaini, Min-Seung Shin.

“… Le site est couvert de grands arbres qui filtrent la lumière du soleil, et ralentis les vents qui balayent leur cime, et générant une ambiance de sous bois propre à la discussion, à l’échange et à la flânerie. La nouvelle salle de spectacle de Saint-Cyprien étend ce paysage naturel exceptionnel à l’intérieur du bâtiment en proposant une architecture inspirée par la cime des arbres, par le port des platanes, des acacias, des chênes et des peupliers de ce site. Le nouvel auditorium et salle de vidéo transmission haute résolution de Saint Cyprien n’est pas conçu comme un espace isolé ou encore une « boite fermée » en autarcie avec son contexte.

C’est plutôt un grand hall dont les colonnes répondent, à l’intérieur du bâtiment, au rythme des arbres à l’extérieur. Il est largement ouvert sur l’extérieur, il incorpore le paysage extérieur à l’intérieur du bâtiment. Cette impression de « canopée

The ‘Icebergs’, as seen at Bustler, are designed to be versatile spaces with minimal infrastructure and construction requirements, serving as architectural placeholders rather than real buildings. Woods Bagot envisions the temporary installations that look high quality and could attract top-notch vendors while encouraging developers to start working again. The unique spaces could support a wide range of uses, like pop-up retail shops, exhibitions, cultural events, or even temporary spaces for non-profit start-ups. A special lighting system could project images and brand logos up on the peaks of the icebergs to advertise the space.


http://bit.ly/aD8s1A

AUSTRALIA'S NEW PARLIAMENT HOUSE - Overview

Dates - commision / completion

 Project designed 1980-1988

Classification/Typologies:
Complex/ Post modern

Architect/s:

Mitchell/Giurgola & Thorp Architects (Canberra)

Design Architect:  - Romaldo Giurgola

Project Architect: -  Richard Thorpe

Design Coordination: -  Harold S Guida

Furniture and Interiors: -  Rollin La France

Protection status:

 Australian Government Heritage Register (Register of the National Estate (RNE)) and the National Heritage List. The building has been nominated to the ACT Heritage List.

Parliament House is listed in Royal Australian Institute of Architects National Register of Significant Twentieth Century Architecture as well as the UIA Register.

Status: Indicative Place/Historic Database No 017836,

File number: 8/01/000/0380

Context:

The building is pre-eminently sited on Capital Hill at the focus of Walter Burley Griffin’s 1912 plan for Canberra and the Parliamentary Triangle. The building restates the original profile of the hill and its curved walls reach out to encompass the radial avenues established by the Griffin Plan as the primary axes of the city. The building’s siting on the land axis creates a strong visual relationship and a linkage between the historic War Memorial and the Provisional Parliament House.

Evaluation

Technical: To design a building with a 200 year life span, the use of earth covered construction and the flag mast structure show a high level of technical achievement. Each of these aspects is beyond most briefs but has been successfully achieved in Parliament House.

Social: Through its function as the Federal Parliament the building, assumes its own social significance to the nation. The events which occur both within and

around the building often are influential in shaping the nation’s future. The building is directly associated by the community with the government of the nation and the relationship between the Parliament and the people

Cultural & aesthetics:  Parliament House has been skillfully designed to fit within the general form of Capital Hill. The curvilinear walls which embrace the chambers and offices create a new line to the hill, and simultaneously break down the scale and massing of the building. This design form allows a massive complex of over 4,500 rooms to appear to nestle within the hill where it could easily have dominated. One of the aspects which set the deign apart from other competition entries was the way it successfully dealt with this challenge.

The building design internally and externally incorporates numerous design elements which evoke symbolically the relationship between the Parliament and the people, between man and nature and European and indigenous peoples.  The modern design relates well to its site and evokes imagery in the north elevation from the provisional Parliament House which is located directly to the north on a lower section of the hill. This imagery when viewed from the north presents the two buildings almost as one; with the earlier building nested within the curved walls of the new Parliament House. The aesthetic value of the building has been acknowledged by the number of civic design awards it has received The building demonstrates a consistently high level of craftsmanship throughout, which is testament to the skill of the tradespeople and the designers who worked on the project. This quality is also reflected within the commissioned artworks and sculptures which adorn the building including the coat of arms at the front, the Arthur Boyd tapestry in the main ballroom.

Historical: The Opening of Parliament House was planned to commemorate the bicentenary of the Foundation of Australia and the 61 st anniversary of the opening of the provisional Parliament House in Canberra. Parliament House is associated with numerous politicians, community leaders and representatives at international, national and local level. In its 12 years of operation there have been many events occur within its walls which have significantly changed the political and social face of the nation, including the over throw of the Labour Prime minister Bob Hawke by his own party in 1993 and the passage of legislation to introduce a Goods and Services Tax 1999.

The siting of Parliament House at the Apex of theParliamentary Triangle, has association with Walter Burley Griffin the designer of the Canberra Plan, as this was a significant location within his planning of Central Canberra.The building was designed by the internationally recognised American architectural practice of Mitchell/Giurgola & Thorp Architects. The Design Architect for the project was Ronaldo Giurgola, whose talents have been recognised by Gold Medal awards in Australia and America.

General assessment: Parliament House is a unique building nationally and possibly internationally. Its site has been skilfully woven into the design to express the basic tenets of

the architectural brief. The building design could not be successfully translated to another site, such is its integrity. The use of earth sheltered construction on a building of such magnitude is rare. The building showcases a large range of Australian natural and manufactured materials. Such a collection is rare.

Statement of Significance:
<><>

Parliament House is a landmark building which has become an icon of Canberra with the flagmast. It is a building of great creative achievement, nationally and internationally, designed by Mitchell/Giurgola & Thorp. Ronaldo Giurgola was awarded the Royal Australian Institute of Architect Gold Medal in 1988. As the home of the Parliament and the seat of Government, this building has a significance unique amongst buildings in Australia, which is quite independent of its architectural, aesthetic and townscape values. Its historic value is already being established as the site in 1992 of the overthrow of the Labour Party Prime Minister, by his own party. The fundamental significance of the building lies within its concept of making a national place. It functions both as a working place for the Parliament and as a symbol and ceremonial place for events of national importance: a symbol of national unity and commitment to the democratic process of government. The building with its integrated works of commissioned art, craft and specially designed furnishings, reflects the history, cultural diversity, development and aspirations of the nation. The building’s design and siting on the land axis create a strong visual relationship and a linkage between the historic War Memorial and Provisional Parliament House. The building is pre-eminently sited on Capital Hill at the focus of Walter Burley Griffin’s 1912 plan for Canberra and the Parliamentary Triangle. The building design re-states the original profile of the hill and its curved walls reach out to encompass the radial avenues established by the 1912 Griffin plan as the primary axes of the city. The building, particularly the curved walls and flagpole, is a strong symbolic and sculptural element in the landscape. It was awarded the Royal Australian Institute of Architects (RAIA) National Sir Zelman Cowen Award and the RAIA (ACT Chapter) Canberra Medallion in 1989, and the Civic Design award in 1990.

INFASTRUCTURE, STRATERGY, PRESENCE

In the 1960s, the English Archigram group proposed individual buildings and an entire city made of prefabricated components attached to fixed infrastructures. Plug-in City, designed by Archigram’s Peter Cook from 1962-64, had an infrastructure with rail-mounted cranes that would install and replace prefabricated housing, office, and shop modules planned for obsolescence. The organically responsive, self-refreshing city would support change and growth. This organic quality gave the name “Metabolism” to a parallel movement in Japan which shared many of Archigram’s ideas.

http://s3files.core77.com/blog/images/mgrd.jpg

ADAPTIVE improvisation

"We want to work on an architecture that allows for improvisation, adaptation and change."

Brabant Library

Brabant Library

The Brabant Library was a proposed, but never realized “Library of the Future.” It was designed by MVRDV for the Libraries 2040 Project. The Dutch province of Noord-Brabant had a library system incapable of managing a large enough quantity of books to accommodate all of its inhabitants. An increase in urbanization, population density, and the value of knowledge created a larger and more diverse demand for books and most importantly, information. The Brabant Library was a solution for this demand.
The proposed library was to be 230 meters tall and contained shelf space large enough to hold over five million books and many magazines. Various reading rooms, glass study rooms, Internet cafes, and even a theater were also included in the program. The glass study rooms or “booths” were designed to move throughout the building, allowing an individual to explore the library collection quickly and easily. Mobile meeting rooms were also proposed to allow groups of people to converge and research together.
In addition to an inventive interior transportation system, the Brabant Library also incorporated into its program an equally progressive external transportation and material distribution system. Railways connecting to other locations of study such as cafes, schools, and offices would allow for a quick and speedy delivery of library resources.

ADAPTIVE Architecturale Skin

Distorted Architectural Skin

Unit Morphology

Taipei Performing Arts Center by Emergent Architecture

 

Australian Symbolism

On the Australian coat of arms the Emu and the Kangaroo were selected as symbols of Australia to represent the country progress because they are always moving forward and never move backwards.

 'Democracity' - 1939 by Henry Dreyfuss




Expansions are in vogue, at least in America. 'Democracity' (Img. _15) is on display at the New York World's Fair V.) 10 in 1939.
Resolving the volume of traffic as well as coming to terms with prosperity shift focus. Horizontality and mobility are at the centre of attention in master plan simulations of the time.

Architectural Membrane - Research

Visions of the Future

Connected Communication
eyes and ears - hands and mouth
 
Architects are communicators.  We express ourselves verbally and dimensionally; however, as communicators, we must also have the capacity to observe our world, listen to many interests, and synthesise this into our own source of wisdom and inspiration.  In other words, we must find meaning from our experiences and add substance to our expression.  History has shown that not all proposed architectural solutions have proven beneficial.  As a visual profession, architecture has the power to ‘show’ people what is possible.  This is part of the alchemy of architecture and ideally, it is a response to and a reflection upon our connection with our local community.  
 
 
I find that Architects’ biggest challenge is connecting the profession to our communities and successfully relating to the local human condition.  In 1925, Le Corbusier proposed the Plan Voisin for Paris.  The modernist vision, to which Le Corbusier greatly contributed, lead to the building of St. Louis's disastrous Pruitt-Igoe social housing project.  In a similar spirit of innovation, well respected Frank Lloyd Wright proposed Broadacre City (1934-58) where deurbanisation was the answer to a better way of life.  At the beginning of the 21st century, we are faced with the disequilibrium of suburban sprawl and environmental degradation.
 
 
From the concrete to the virtual:  the power of the image is competing with the once powerful presence of the built environment.  The media for communicating ideas have evolved.  Take for example, the power of television, movies, and the internet.  Images of the future from Hanna-Barbera’s cartoon, The Jetsons in the 1960s, movies such as Ridley Scott’s 1982 film, Blade Runner, and the city of Coruscant from George Lucas’ Star Wars II in 2002 are full of social commentary.  Are these images becoming self-fulfilling prophecies?  Are these the societies that we want to construct?  Architect’s have a role to play in proposing healthy solutions that respond to social concerns, local economics, and the environment.
 
 
In the 1960s and 70s, the utopian future of Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic domes was contrasted by films such as Michael Anderson’s, Logan’s Run in 1976 and Richard Fleischer’s, Soylent Green in 1973.  I believe that the challenge for Architects is to participate in an accretive architecture that repairs existing built conditions and helps a community to evolve within its cultural and historical context.  The era of tabula rasa is over.  We cannot afford to throw our buildings away and start again.  The future success of cities will depend upon how well they adapt their existing conditions to ecological and democratic practises.
 
 
Through our skills of observation and our talents for visual creation, Architects are very well positioned to supply healthy ideas and images to the social discourse.  This is a public role that Architects can continue to play and as such, it must also be a democratic role so that ideas can be openly vetted and understood.  This does much more than improve the ‘image’ of the architectural profession; our thoughtful intervention can contribute to the meaning and experience of civilisation.
 
 
14 March 2005

Plan Voisin for Paris, 1925, Le Corbusier
The vision of the zoned modernist city built with 
standardized industrial construction

Plan Voisin for Paris, 1925, Le Corbusier
Economically 'efficient', yet shown to be an urban 
disaster around the world.

Visions of the Future:


Walking City, 1964, Ron Herron
Is that a pedestrian city or a machine oriented city?

Expo67, 1967, Montréal
An era where everything was possible and the future
would see high-tech cities rebuilt over established city
footprints/patterns.

Expo67, 1967, Montréal
One of the principal themes was efficient people moving
from one mode or scale of transportation to another.

US Pavilion, Expo67, Montréal, Buckminster Fuller

Geodesic dome over Manhattan, 1962, Buckminster Fuller
Would domes save humanity or would it be better to save
the planet for humanity?

Robots Retrieve Books in University of Chicago’s New, Futuristic Library

The underground storage facility at the University of Chicago's new Mansueto Library holds 3.5 million volumes that can be accessed by robotic cranes.

If Google Books was a physical place instead of a web service, it would probably look a lot like the University of Chicago’s new library.

The Joe and Rika Mansueto Library, opening next week, is designed to accommodate the way people study and research today — online. The structure’s large spaces are made for computer work and have no traditional bookshelves.

Instead, the library boasts a massive underground storage area holding 3.5 million volumes on 50-foot-high shelves. The collection is managed by robotic systems that help create an environment where scholars can scour the web for hours for academic papers and still get a hard-to-find volume from the stacks.

As more books and journals become easily accessible online, it’s easy to wonder if brick-and-mortar libraries could go the way of the video store. But research at the university has shown that the more people look to digital resources, the more they consult physical materials as well, according to Judith Nadler, director of the University of Chicago Library.

“For scholars, the two formats complement each other, opening the door to a new era in research — and new libraries designed to make the best use of print and digital options,” Nadler said in a message e-mailed to Wired.com announcing the library’s upcoming opening.

The dome of the university's new library has 700 panels of glass.
Images courtesy University of Chicago

Designed by architect Helmut Jahn and covered in 700 panels of glass, the library looks like a half-buried crystal Fabergé egg from the outside. Under the dome sits the library’s 8,000-square-foot main reading room.

All books can be requested online, then pulled up to the surface by an automated retrieval system that keeps track of every volume through barcodes. (The video below explains the process.)

The library’s reading room opens Monday. The university hopes to have all printed materials moved to the underground storage area by the fall.

Construction on the Mansueto Library, which gets its name thanks to a $25 million gift from Morningstar CEO (and UChicago alum) Joe Mansueto and his wife, began in the fall of 2008. The compactness of the subterranean storage facility means the volumes in the library require one-seventh of the space those same books would need on traditional shelves, not unlike the shelf space saved by keeping e-books on Google’s servers.

All that technology means scholars at the library won’t have to fear the phrase “Some pages are omitted from this book preview,” or get a couple hours into their research only to find that a key book they’re looking for isn’t available digitally.

Even though many universities and libraries, including the University of Chicago, have offered up their collections for scanning and cataloging through the Google Books Library Project, copyrights prevent many full-text volumes from being posted online, leaving a lot of information trapped on paper.

“Surveys have estimated that about 80 percent of a typical research library’s holdings are not in the public domain, which often means that projects such as Google Books cannot share these volumes in their entirety,” Nadler said.

Until all the world’s knowledge is truly online, a few lucky students and researchers in the Chicago area will be able to access the best of both the digital and physical worlds at the Mansueto Library.

It just might be the library of the future

ADAPTIVE Modelling