Designing a New Town Square for Our Crowded Urban Future
With most of the world living in cities, urban space is going to be at a premium, so we need to design ingenious and important ways to create public gathering spaces. But we can’t just copy the High Line everywhere.
A new exhibit from the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association showcases the simple visualizations of complex ideas that have changed how we live.
‘What I’ve always been very skeptical of is the fact that our quality of life is so fixed to numbers. On Euros, for example, and Euros per square meter,’ he told BMW Guggenheim Lab. ‘When you look for an apartment, for example, the first thing you look at is the location, and then at the numbers—how many rooms, how many square meters? But when you really think about it, the square meters say nothing about the quality of the apartment, about the view from the window, how it smells, if the neighbors are nice. These are all things that you can’t put into numbers.’
Thoughts?
Now, THIS is what I’m talking about! This article pretty much encapsulates everything I believe about how the relationship dynamics between design and social change should be.
Architects Palatre & Leclère restored a 1940′s Parisian building into a colorful kindergarten haven named Ecole Maternelle Pajol. via
A building with color in Paris? C’est très bizarre.
Qu’est-ce que c’est?
C’est la tour Eiffel from below!
Pedestrian Bridge: Austin, TX
Located in a densely vegetated site in Lake Austin, this pedestrian bridge connects the main house in the property with a newly-constructed guest house.
With a design inspired by the reeds and other native vegetation that cover the shores of the lake, this bridge is a light and maintenance-free structure integrated in its beautiful wetland setting. The bars/reeds intertwine at the abutments and “grow” over the bridge, camouflaging it and turning into a symbiotic, almost invisible link.
The recent process of urbanization in China invites debate as to whether architecture should be anchored in tradition or should look only toward the future. As with any great architecture, Wang Shu’s work is able to transcend that debate, producing an architecture that is timeless, deeply rooted in its context and yet universal.
Article featuring this project: http://www.domusweb.it/en/news/playhouse-by-anna-eugeni-bach/
The interior becomes what children understand as an essential house: a larger space that could be the living room, a lower space where the kitchen could be imagined and a higher ground where there could be the rooms. The abstract nature of the interior spaces allows a child’s imagination to flow, and those spaces that could be identified as a domestic interior can suddenly become play spaces.
This whole project is so sweet that now I’m wondering why I didn’t see any unicorns prancing in the background.
Arc de la Defence, Paris
Wow, props to the photographer for capturing this shot. It really shows the gems that can be found in urban exploration.
Just watched the documentary, Tokyo: Small Town in the Big City on National Geographic and it’s really fascinating to see how people have come up with such innovative solutions when having to live in small quarters. The video above is just a small snippet from the program.
These churches were flooded and drowned by men’s own doing, in their cavalier hurry to change nature’s path for dams and reservoirs.
The Box Office
Last October I was lucky enough to see the grand opening of this building. Located on a former lumber site that had been abandoned for years, this new space holds 12 offices constructed from recycled shipping containers. It uses 25% less energy than a conventional new office building to operate.
Now, opening day always implies PARTY and it doesn’t help that it was a Friday night. However, weather-wise, it was a terrible night. It was unusually chilly, windy and it unexpectedly rained. Now the party was inside so all was well for the party-goers, but as for my friend and I who were manning the registration table outside, it wasn’t so much fun.
However, after a couple hours we were done with our shift and free to explore the building and mooch off some delicious catered food. One thing that I noticed that I didn’t expect was that the temperature was well regulated because once I came inside, I didn’t feel any drafts coming in at all. Now on the subject of the interior, if I had been blind-folded and dragged inside without seeing the exterior, I wouldn’t have guessed that I was in a used shipping container. The rooms look like a typical modern workplace but it doesn’t have that dreadful cubicle atmosphere. Also, with all its staggered levels of elevation it was pretty fun walking from room to room.
Architect: distill studio
Builder: Stack Design Build
Developer: truth box inc.
Official website: http://www.boxoffice460.com/
Time-lapse video of construction: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9bHzeN31gQ
