Archive for the 'Architecture' Category
New Museum is literally a new museum located in Bowery, which is supposed to be one of the new cool hip neighborhoods in New York city. I imagined New Museum to be sub-cultural, much more modern than the MoMA. I was expecting this trip to New Museum would be something exciting and inspiring. However, it turned out rather gloomy and distant, besides the fact that it was unlike a museum, but a large gallery with a couple of average, minor exhibitions. In other words, the context of the museum gave me the impression much like the exterior of the museum: squared, inflexible, unstable, or unearthly suffocating, with a mocking twist. In Paul Chan’s The 7 Lights, silhouette images of “life” through a windowpane are projected on a wall and floor. The images were not changing fast and it seemed as though time had stopped like in the surrealist paintings of Chirico. The captions read something like. “the 3rd Light” and that’s about it. I couldn’t figure out what the artist’s intention was, in the concrete surrounded closed space with only lights and shadows. I felt uneasy. Perhaps, intellectual patient introverts would have found the exhibition more stimulating. In Double Album by Daniel Guzman and Steven Shearer, there were paintings, installations, and some art pieces. All I remember was a colorful skull sitting on a column with some element tormenting it, and obscene words such as, “molestations” and “necrovomit” as a part of their works. There also were images of exposed genitals, suicide, and a noose…
I thought the whole experience in New Museum was weird and absurd, but perhaps that is just me. I think New Museum offers personal experiences rather than homogenized ideas. In the end, I still hope to visit New Museum again in the near future. Maybe.
Frank Lloyd Wright is a world famous American architect in 20th century who designed more than 1,000 works. His most famous works are Fallingwater and the Guggenheim museum in New York. He is called one of the three great master of modern construction only with Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe. His works are in USA, Canada and Japan only in the world. In Japan, the most famous of his works is Imperial hotel but it is no longer exists. However, there is a still exist his work that called “Jiyu-Gakuen”.
The building was built in 1921 in Tokyo. The building used to be school, which called “Jiyu-Gakuen” which, means freedom. The concept is simple: to be a happy place for children. The building is small, but it is very a refined environment to visit as it is located in very quiet place in middle of an urban city yet only 5-minute walk from Ikebukuro Station. It is now open to the public when not in use for weddings and other events.
The building has some interesting characteristics. The building has 2 wings and it has an inverted U- shape structure, which was inspired by a Japanese temple called “Byodo-in”. The windows face south onto an open courtyard, with the symmetrical wings on the east and west. The central part of the building is twice as high as the wings. Jiyu-Gakuen is constructed by 2 x 4 wood. The floor is also made of wood and when people are walking, the floor is creaky giving it an old flavor. Some parts made by stone such as part of wall and pillar. These materials create warm atmosphere.
The visitor can find a lot of his original design in the details. He is one of the first an architect to design windows frame or furniture in the building. He try to get consistency between the site location and the building, so he created some pattern such as windows frame, light and furniture in the building and these are composed of geometric line. For example, the window frame is beginning full of sunlight to inside, and it also reminds the shoji pattern, and the chair consists of hexagonal shapes.
If you come to near here, you should visit the great building any weather is fine, because the building has high potentials to receive your expectation. You can walk each rooms to look at his style, and you can enjoy to drink a cup of coffee or tea with on the chair which is off cause Wright’s design.
I will focus my topic by examining about how architecture can be successful to combining different ideas. This architecture is Diller and Scofidio’s works and it is for the Eyebeam Museum. I am interested in the model which has unusual structure and concept because the museum is for art and technology. This architecture is not realized yet. There is difference between art and technology. The architecture has to be combined with those 2 different ideas. There are stairs in the middle of the building. As one goes up through the building, each floor alters between art and technology. So one can understand clearly, how can art and technology developed. The architectural concept begins with a pliable ribbon that can make 2 faces. And they use colors which is blue for the art space and gray for the technology space. Possibly, blue signifies human’s emotion and gray communicate empty emotion that is technology. But one can see it is easy to understand where is the each space. It can see easy to understand which is production space to one side and presentation space to the other. So one can feel how different between two clearly.
People want new sight but also keep traditional buildings in their city. How do architects solve this problem? There is a good example in N.Y. It is the store of COMME des GARÇONS built by Future Systems in 1998. The Chelsea area where the store is located is surrounded by many galleries.
They didn’t destroy the exterior of the old building and utilize it to the store effectively. Its exterior is made by old bricks and they didn’t change except for the entrance. The entrance and interior are totally new. They are very futuristic and attractive so it might surprise people who are walking through the front of this store but it works effective way because of the area this store is located is Chelsea. There are many art pieces in the windows which attract people. In order to give the strong impressions to people, the contrast of old bricks exterior and futuristic interior woks well. For the company, the building is not just a space they sell their products, but they also use it as an advertising tool. For designers especially fashion designers, their stores are pavilions for their exhibitions. COMME des GARÇONS always makes people surprise because of their way to express their creation. So this building has a big part of their creation because it makes people surprise.
In N.Y. there are a lot of buildings built more than 100 years ago. Some people want to keep the atmosphere itself, not complete building and interior because people care about sight so they made success to keep a balance between the needs of people who want to keep city sight, their client and make the Architecture unique.
NY City. It’s the urban environment that is not quiet everyday, but it is strongly connected with nature.
When I went through a park, which is located in the town, I found a squirrel inside of the park. He wasn’t afraid of people, and he was watching us. This park isn’t located in nature, but the squirrel was enjoying himself in the park. Also dogs, which are kept by owners, were enjoying playing with other dogs in the park. Then I realized that people who live in NY are enjoying with beautiful green to refresh their mind.
They have also different kinds of places to make them free, which are called Community Gardens. 10years ago, the city of NY gave people empty lots in the middle of the city. They worked intently to make a garden for a long time. Now they have beautiful gardens in the city. They make vegetables by themselves, and they sell them.
The green is also used for skyscrapers. It’s called Roof Gardens. Usually, the top of the roof uses black tar, which traps sunlight and heat. This material makes rises the temperature of the surrounding area. For this problem, they made the roof gardens. They changed roof to cool roof that is white, which reflect sunlight and heat. And it increases roof life span. They are considering reducing the urban heat island effect. In the roof gardens, people make vegetable, and they provide it.
Today, there are done many greening in NY, but also it’s possible to do such projects in any countries. It’s not easy to change a current environment, but if each and every person focuses on making better, the city definitely will be clean.
What is the utopia? The answer will depend on personal opinions. In 1960s, one architecture group introduced their ideas for the ideal city in very strong and effective way. The name of group is Archigram.
Who is Archigram?
Archigram was a British architectural group that was composed 6 members mainly, Peter Cook, Warren Chalk, Ron Herron, Dennis Crompton, Michael Webb and David Greene. What do you feel about the year of their proposals were drawn? These ideas were drawn in 1960s, about 40 years ago.
One of the famous ideas of their work was titled “Walking City”. The concept was “portability” and “sustainability”. The city had mobile structure with own intelligence and it could move wherever people wanted to go to get fuel for the city.
“Plug-in city” is other representative work showing the idea of switching elements of the city. The city doesn’t have a shape of building but just have a framework and some cell-shaped components for the framework..
Not only these ideas but also every work of Archigram never turned reality as architectures because the proposals were extremely conceptual. However it isn’t a great matter. The real value of their work is not only about each project itself, but the influence the project image made. They showed people to the first step of changing possibilities to reality with existing proposals of experimental architecture. Their work became a great help to image unavailable in a city and gave people the chance to think about a dreamlike society.
The idea pieces of Archigram came true now
Today we can see some idea pieces of Archigram in actual architecture that later architects who are influenced by Archigram designed. “House of Bordeaux” was designed by Rem Koolhaas in 1998. This house design was for a man who uses wheel chair, and the main characteristic of this house is a moving room. The private room is an elevator platform, the size is 3 x 3.5 m, and it can rise and lower to other flat of house. Moving structure, the important element of the Archigram, is in his idea.
Also we can find similarity between ships and walking city in function. The largest ship American Nimitz-class aircraft carrier is over a quarter of a mile long, and it can take over six thousand crews. The ship moves everywhere to get resource on the sea.
Visually, there is good example to see the effect of Archigram. Pompidou Centre that was constructed 1971to1977, designed by Renzo Piano, Richard Rogers and Gianfranco, Franchini has similar atmosphere of Archigram, and actually the designers said the great avant-garde works influence them.
The power of Experimental Architecture
The goal of Archigram experimental architecture project is not only show their ideas to the world, but also to make people recognize of their own “common sense”, it means here negative feeling that sometimes restrict the possibility of ideal world. They proved the power of “experiment” that is one essential element to turn ideal plans into reality.
Harima Chemical-park Town is a quite new town that was established in 1997. The concept of the town is that to create a city that is rich in nature and technology sources. It is located in Hyogo-prefecture, Japan. The population of the town is about 5100.
Urban Design Plan
Harima chemical park town has been designed under the project, called Urban Design plan. It involves 3 Japanese architects, Arata Isozaki, Makoto shin Watanabe, Tadao Ando and also a landscape designer, Peter Walker who used to be a professor at the University of Harvard. As they mentioned green network as one of the important points for creating this city, there are many town parks in this city. Another good thing, if we see it from the sky, the big architecture or town parks are mainly created with circles.
Features
One of the main features is the development of the chemistry especially for the lights. So, there are many laboratories. The biggest laboratory is Spring8 (Super Photon Ring 8GeV). It is the latest frontiers of laboratories for the research of cancer. They can occur a radiant light with the world highest quality. There are many other small laboratories that supports Spring-8. There is also a university who has chemical department.
Education
For Education, there are very few students at school. Elementary school approximately has 100 students and Junior High school has 50 students. The best thing is those schools are designed and constructed by Tadao Ando who is a Japanese successful architect. The main buildings of the schools have a circle shape. The architect produced open space by making a big stairwell in the center.
Housing
There is a couple of residential area. The area looks very nice and organized. There are nice houses, which are alike lined up. Houses are close to each other but each houses has open space. We cannot see any utility poles, which make the town look nicer. There is workability to school and grocery store.
However, there are many strict rules for visual, no use of fancy colors where it is facing to sidewalk, no hedge or block wall to create an open space and grow the relationship between neighbors; they even asked to be peaceful.
Access
About the access to city, the town is 20minites away from the JR bullet station; there is also a choice to take buses, but people generally use highways to get there. it had taken more time to get to a city before, but a new highway has set up 3 years ago and has been more convenient. There is also a heliport that is mostly used from people at spring-8. Still, since it is countryside, there are some issues of the number of slopes in the town.
Conclusion
The town has many positive points and Utopian qualities. There is a lot of nature and people who live there can feel free, relaxed and safe. The town is well designed and we can even call the town itself as art. Even though, the town is remarkable, there are some issues for population or access. Access is not bad for now. But since it is such a small town, I think there can be a faster and more convenient way to get to city, then more people visit the city and the town may activate more. “If I would say one things, I would like more people to live here, then there should appear more stores “, Mrs.Ito who has lived there for 5 years said. Even though, this town is remarkably designed and developed in technology, it is not convenient enough if there aren’t much stores and entertaining places like movie theaters, night club and so on. If population there increases, there are more possibility that the city activate more. So I would say this is still a developing Utopia. What I mean by developing is that this city is still in process. So I hope this small town would be more aware of people all over the world and be the developed Utopia some day.
What is Tree House
Do you know “tree house “? “Tree house” is a house like a secret base which was built on the tree. Have you ever longed like the house? “Tree house” recalls child hood and it gives a dream. The house is coexisting with the tree and the nature world. What kind of people built the house in what thought.
Do you know “tree house “? “Tree house” is a house like a secret base which was built on the tree. Have you ever longed like the house? “Tree house” recalls child hood and it gives a dream. The house is coexisting with the tree and the nature world. What kind of people built the house in what thought.
Prince of building of Tree House
In 1994, USA, one of the book ”TREE HOUSES” issued that was written by Peter Nelson. He spend his childhood with tree houses all around him and without notice, he spellbound to the attraction. Consequently, in 1997, he founded a company for building of tree house. Now he is a prince of building of tree house and the tree house built by him is so wonderful and fantastic as everyone was dreaming in childhood. A lot of people spellbound to his architecture and people have a dream that want to have own tree house. Now the commission is increasing from a lot of kind people. For example, for child, for a parson who wants to live with an animal and for couple but maybe everyone are having same thought which want to relax in the nature. Tree house gives ease mind and relaxing mind for people.
In 1994, USA, one of the book ”TREE HOUSES” issued that was written by Peter Nelson. He spend his childhood with tree houses all around him and without notice, he spellbound to the attraction. Consequently, in 1997, he founded a company for building of tree house. Now he is a prince of building of tree house and the tree house built by him is so wonderful and fantastic as everyone was dreaming in childhood. A lot of people spellbound to his architecture and people have a dream that want to have own tree house. Now the commission is increasing from a lot of kind people. For example, for child, for a parson who wants to live with an animal and for couple but maybe everyone are having same thought which want to relax in the nature. Tree house gives ease mind and relaxing mind for people.
How to build?
When makes a tree house, have to choose a main tree. The tree as grows up to upward like a cedar or oak is suiting for build a tree house. The tree blooms flowers or fruits like a cherry or dogwood may be also wonderful. However, so young tree or so old tree can’t use for build because if it is so young, glow up very fast and if it is so old, the strength is very week. If you build a tree house, you should think about tree of the strength, quality and also the place of the climate. Practically, it is better to ask to the lumberman of the place. Tree house is existing as nestle up to the tree so doesn’t cut any tree for built a tree house. The important things when build a tree house are understand well about the tree and use tree kindly and the finished your house is sure to give a ease for you.
When makes a tree house, have to choose a main tree. The tree as grows up to upward like a cedar or oak is suiting for build a tree house. The tree blooms flowers or fruits like a cherry or dogwood may be also wonderful. However, so young tree or so old tree can’t use for build because if it is so young, glow up very fast and if it is so old, the strength is very week. If you build a tree house, you should think about tree of the strength, quality and also the place of the climate. Practically, it is better to ask to the lumberman of the place. Tree house is existing as nestle up to the tree so doesn’t cut any tree for built a tree house. The important things when build a tree house are understand well about the tree and use tree kindly and the finished your house is sure to give a ease for you.
Tree house is attractive so there are people who may wants to build for own actually house, but now we can’t build a tree house for an actually house by legal problem. However recently it was admitted to build a tree house in Oregon, USA and also in Japan, there is a plan to make a village of tree house. It may be close which is chance to feel tree house more close to our life.
