Beyond Architecture

is a book that documents the creative exploration of architecture and urban propositions in the contemporary arts. the projects collected in this book demonstrate how not only architects and designers, but also artists are taking architecture as a starting point for experimentation. they range from performance, installation art and crafted sculptures to architectural models, alternative ideas for living spaces and furniture, as well as illustration, painting, collage and photography. through stunning photography, visuals and complementary texts, these visionary concepts reveal the hidden creative potential for architecture and urban environments in inventive ways. some of the works are really interesting and they had and will have a place of honour in this blog.
in this hard times for architects all over the world, that book shows that there is an alternative. so just dust your old conceptual models and photoshop collages and make art out of it!
Editors: Robert Klanten, Lukas Feireiss
source: Gestalten

Flughafen Tempelhof

presentfuture
this airport, one of Europe’s three iconic pre-war airports (the others are Croydon airport in London and Le Bourget in Paris) was first opened in 1923. in 1926 the German airline company Lufthansa was founded here. its main building, constructed in 1927, was the largest building in the world, before it was beaten by the Pentagon building in 1934. Tempelhof however, is still the largest building in Europe. as part of Albert Speer's plan for the reconstruction of Berlin during the Nazi era, Prof. Ernest Sagebiel was ordered to replace the old terminal with a new terminal building in 1934. the new terminal was built between 1936 - 1941 and one of the airport's most distinguishing features was its large canopy style roof that was able to accommodate most contemporary airliners until the early 70's. it’s considered by many to be an architectural masterpiece. the architect Norman Foster described Tempelhof as no less than 'the mother of all airports' (sounds a bit like a middle-eastern expression. Saddam Hussein's threat before the first golf war 'the mother of all wars'...). after the war, the airport became famous during the Berlin Blockade (1948 - 1949) where it was used for the Airlift, the Lufbrücke. on 30 October 2008, despite the efforts of some protesters to prevent the closure, the runway and air field lights were switched off. in the present days the empty terminal host events as Bread and Butter, concerts and the Berlin marathon fair. as for the future, it is still not clear and the city of Berlin is evaluating dozen of suggestions, but that is for another post.

ICC Berlin

before i even imagined of moving to Berlin, somewhere in the 80's, i saw some shots of this building in a movie and i was deeply impressed by its bionic architecture. a huge spaceship on earth.
the Internationales Congress Centrum Berlin (most known as ICC Berlin) was opened in 1979 (four years after the official "end" of the space race between USA and USSR). it was designed by the architects Ralf Schueler and Ursulina Schueler - Witte. the building is 320 metres long, 80 metres wide and 40 metres high, perhaps one of the largest conference centers in the world. its particular "machine like" architecture made it a landmark of the post-war German architecture in Berlin.

Haiti

once i had a neighbour that his mother used to live in Haiti (she still lives there and luckily she was found alive). every summer when he went to visit her, he used to bring me t-shirts with the print 'Haiti' on them. i felt so special that i used to wear them for the whole summer, until they were practically decomposed. even my friends from high school remember me as the one with the 'Haiti' t-shirt...

the horrible earthquake (with still unknown number of casualties) who attacked the Caribbean country is the latest in the chronology of disasters made by nature and men.
the beginning was promising. inspired by the French revolution, the slaves on the western part of the island Hispaniola (brought by the french to work in the sugar cane fields) upraised against the french troops and defeated them in 1804. they then founded the only nation in the world born on a slave revolt. to defend the island against future French attacks, the new king Henri I, constructed the largest fortress in the Western Hemisphere - Citadelle Laferriere (a world heritage site by UNESCO).
in the following 200-year history, Haiti has seen 32 coups. the US occupied the island between 1915 - 1934. from 1957 - 1986, the Duvalier family (Papa And Baby) reigned as dictators, turning the country into a hermit kingdom with a personality cult and corruption. under pressure of the US, those two went to exile leaving the country in a political chaos between attempts for democracy, coups and corruption.
Haiti is the poorest country in the Americas. it has no natural resources and the most available fuel for domestic use is wood. in 1925, Haiti still had 60% of its original forest but since then, the population has cut down an estimated 98% of its original forest cover. the deforestation has caused soil erosion and flooding leaving more then 3000 people dead after the tropical storm in 2004. what a sad story

Happy Holidays!

Happy Holidays and a fantastic New Year!
Buone Feste e un Nuovo Anno meraviglioso!
Frohe Festtage und schoenen rutsch ins neue Jahr!
שנה טובה

Klaus Buergle

was born in 1926 in Stuttgart. he started to illustrate for magazines in the beginning of the 50's focusing on technical and scientific illustrations. His work became famous in the late 50’s and 60’s when he produced hyper technical images of futuristic world for science fiction books and magazines. his drawings show what people thought about our time in the last century reflecting the collective optimism that the society had for space and technology at that time. other works in retro-futurismus.de or in achtung poster

Koyaanisqatsi

life in turmoil, life out of balance, life disintegrating or a way of life that calls for another way of living' (referring to the modern life). the film consists primarily of photography of cities and many natural landscapes across the US showing different aspects of the relationship between humans, nature, and technology. the film was followed by two others - Powaqqatsi (1988) and Nagoyqatsi (2002) creating the Qatsi trilogy. definitely something to see in Copenhagen, today.

Copper houses

so yesterday i went to celebrate the anniversary of the Bauhaus school in Dessau. the famous building of the school first opened its gates in 4th dec. 1926 and was in use as a school for design until 1933, when he was shut down after the National Socialist came to power in Germany. the german architect Walter Grupios (1883–1969) was the founder and the first director of the school that was founded in 1919, originally in Weimar. Grupios was also the designer of an experimental and innovative housing solution made of copper.
in the beginning of the 30's he was hired to refine the existing models developed by the Eberswalde based firm Aron Hirsch and Son, a global player in the copper and brass industry. In 1932 he presented two prototypes displaying the slogan 'Sun, Air, and Housing for All!'. various domestic firms were interested, as well developers and planners in the US and the USSR. in 1932 the Hirsch company went bankrupt and the collaboration with Grupios was ended. but with the National Socialist in power, a new market for the copper houses arose - the Jewish emigrants to Palestine. in August 1933 the company put out a special catalogue, with models designed specifically for the Palestine market, called 'Haifa', 'Jerusalem', 'Tel Aviv' and 'Sharon'. the largest model, with a living space of 280 m2 was called 'Lebanon'. a branch of the German Copper House Company was opened in Haifa and at least fourteen houses found their way to the British Mandate of Palestine. when the National Socialists began to rearm, copper came to be in short supply, and its export was forbidden. it is said that the last copper house delivered was immediately melted down on arrival in Tel Aviv and that the value of copper was higher then the houses themselves.
the exterior walls and roofs of the houses were made of copper, insulation was provided by aluminum foil and asbestos (very healthy...), the framing was of wood. their interior walls were sheet metal ornamented with intricate patterns (perfect to hang your Chagall on...). they had nothing to do with the radiant, white modernism of the Bauhaus or the White City of Tel Aviv, on the contrary, they were almost black.
the exhibition Heimatcontainer - Deutsche Fertighaeuser in Israel runs in the meisterhaus Schlemmer in Dessau until 7th March 2010.
source: Housing.com

I need an explanation

once it was a humble theatre in the heart of Tel Aviv, originally designed by the architect Oskar Kaufmann in 1935, with a facade that reminded somehow of another theatre built by him before in Berlin - The Volksbühne. today, thanks to the design of the architect Ram Karmi, it will become a huge concrete block shadowing its surroundings. a closed box that looks more like a bunker rather then a public space. the plaster covering these unproportional walls is made so bad that even the quartz particles, that suppose to give them a glittery touch, won't help...
thanks to Tel Aviv Fever

56 Leonard Street New York

is the address of a new 56-storey residential tower in Tribeca, New York City, designed by the top swiss architects Herzog & De Meuron. the tower will house 145 high-end apartments, each with its own unique floor plan and outdoor space, piled one above the other randomly. 'houses stacked in the sky' as the architects describe. they propose a new alternative to the iconic American skyscraper designing a pixelated vertical layers of customized spaces, the video shows this concept perfectly. i'm also sure that the apartments will be amazing however i think the building is a bit too noisy. the 3D development of Manhattan creates pixelated surfaces even if the single 'components' have simple geometry or rational design. that's its strength. the building would probably work better in another context, flat and sober. the video is great though! source ArchDaily
p.s. and the crisis?

Unité d'habitation

is the name of a modernist housing solution developed by Le Corbusier, with the collaboration of the painter-architect Nadir Afonso. the concept was to create a 'universal' building, which could be built everywhere with the same design principles: the 'free' ground floor on columns, duplex apartments, corridors 'streets', service floors for the inhabitants and a 'living roof'. the planning and the design followed the 'Modulor'- Le Corbusier's idea of a perfect ratio of scale. these principals formed the basis of several housing developments designed by Le Corbusier throughout Europe (between 1947 - 1965). one of them in Berlin (1957).
in 1953 the Senate of Berlin organized an international building exhibition - 'Interbau'. well known architects as Oscar Neimeyer, Arne Jacobson, Alvar Aalto, Pierre Vogo, Walter Gropius and Le Corbusier were invited to participate in the event. because of the huge size of the building, Le Corbusier built his Unité d'habitation in an area close to the Olympic stadium and not in the district of the exhibition - Hansa. the building contains a total of 530 apartments, mostly one bed-room apartments. the regulations of social housing at that time forced Le Corbusier (who tried to oppose) to change some of the basic design features; the use of the roof as a communal space (famous in the Unité d'habitation in Marseilles) was not allowed and the the 'Modulor' ratio was stretched (Germans are taller...).

Kill Macaluso

(a topic in common with the movie Divorzio all'Italiana)seems very contemporaryAcademy Award in 1968.

East - West, North - South

officially called the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), is a single party (political...) state created in 1948 with the support of USSR while the south got the support of the USA. an attempt to invade the south led to the Korean war in 1950 which was also the first armed confrontation of the cold war. actually North and South Korea have never signed a formal peace treaty so technically they are still at war. In 2002 the US labeled North Korea part of an 'axis of evil' together with Iran and Iraq mainly because of its nuclear ambitions (you can guess what the girl in the poster is dreaming of...). the North Korean economy is completely nationalized, which means that food rations, housing, health care, and education is offered from the state for free. taxes has been abolished since 1974! (so maybe it is the Capital of Paradise...) however your monthly salary will probably be around 47$. the media in DPRK is one of the most strictly controlled in the world. the information is tightly controlled both into and out of the country. tourist must be accompanied by one or two tour guides (some nice trip diary can be found in the blog The forbidden railway: Vienna - Pyongyang). your cell phone will be sealed at the entry (even if technically there is no reception anyway). only news that favours the regime is permitted, while news that covers the economic and political problems in the country, or criticisms of the regime from abroad, is not allowed. the media upholds the personality cult of Kim Jong-il, regularly reporting on his daily activities. Both North and South Korea signed the June 15th North-South Joint Deceleration (2000) in which both sides made promises to seek out a peaceful reunification but there are still many steps ahead.

Oscar Niemeyer

for his upcoming 102nd birthday and for the election of Rio de Janeiro to host the Olympic games on 2016, i dedicate few lines to Oscar Ribeiro de Almeida Niemeyer Soares Filho (born Dec. 1907 in Rio). he graduated as architect engineer in 1934. although he had some financial difficulties at that time, he decided to work for free (some things never change...) in the architecture studio of Lucio Costa and Carlos Leao. Niemeyer was involved in two important projects commissioned to the office, the new headquarters for the Ministry of Education and Public Health in Rio and the Brazilian pavilion at the New York's world fair (1939). both projects had all the elements of what was to become recognized as the Brazilian modernism. in 1940 he was commissioned to design a series of buildings in a new suburb of Belo Horizonte called 'Pampulha'. the church of São Francisco de Assis in Pampulha provoked some controversy and the conservative church authorities refused to consecrate it until 1959 (because of its unusual form and some art work inside). in 1947, his worldwide recognition was confirmed when Niemeyer was invited to be part of the international team (Board of Design) working on the design of the UN headquarters in New York. Niemeyer's proposal was approved by the Board of Design, but he eventually gave in to pressure by Le Corbusier and they submitted a common proposal. during the late 40's and the 50's he continued to design projects in Brazil and South America until he was requested in 1958 by the new elected president of Brazil to design the new capital of the country. Niemeyer organized a competition for the masterplan of Brasilia and the winning project was of his old master Lucio Costa. Niemeyer however would design the buildings that became a UNESCO world heritage site. in 1966, following the military coup and the dictatorship, Niemeyer went to exile in Paris. Niemeyer that was a member of the Communist party (Fidel Castro once said that Niemeyer and he were the last communists of this planet) lost commissions and his office in Rio was raided. in the mid 80's, with the return on democracy, Niemeyer returns to Brazil. he was involved in the design of new buildings in Brasilia and in other cities around the country. in 1996 (age of 89...) he design what many consider his greatest work: the Niteroi Contemporary Art Museum. in the last years, he is still involved in the design of new projects and art works around the world. unbelievable.