Arch Tracker

Our friends at Studio Banana TV have shared with us their latest production, an interview with Ole Bouman, director of the Netherlands Architecture Institute (NAI), Holland.

Ole Bouman has been director of the Netherlands Architecture Institute (NAI) since April 2007. Before taking up that position he was editor-in-chief of the periodical Volume, a cooperative venture of Stichting Archis, AMO (the research bureau of OMA/Rem Koolhaas) and the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation of Columbia University. He has curated a series of public events for the reconstruction of the public domain in cities that have been hit by disasters, such as Ramallah, Mexico City, Beirut and Prishtina. Bouman has been lecturing Design at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the United States.

Studio Banana TV is an on-line platform dedicated to the promotion of multidisciplinary creativity in an audiovisual format. Studio Banana TV broadcasts its own video productions which are produced upon demand and which range from interviews to notorious artists, designers, architects, musicians etc. to documentaries on exhibitions, projects and studios. Through its thematic channels it also features a rich selection of videos edited by specialists in each field.

Tune in to http://youtube.com/play at 8pm ET (New York) for the full live streamed event! Music, collaborations, art and incredible video. This video is just a taster of the exterior projections, on the facade of the Guggenheim Museum in New York.

YouTube Play: Live from the Guggenheim will celebrate the 25 videos selected by the jury for YouTube Play: A Biennial of Creative video.

• 8pm ET (New York)
• 1am (Oct 22) London
• 2am CET – Paris, Amsterdam, Madrid, Berlin, Rome
• 4am Moscow
• 9am Tokyo
• 11am Sydney

The LighLine of Gotham is a working collaboration with Vimeo to conclude the Vimeo Festival Award. The Frank Gehry IAC HQ provided the perfect canvas for the transformation of sight and sound with the projection of mapping 3D content.

Studio Banana TV features Benidorm West Beach Promenade with explanations by its author, Carlos Ferrater
The proposal for the Benidorm West Beach Promenade puts forward a radical innovation with respect to the result of the other promenades with which we are acquainted.

Normally, seaside promenades are designed with the object of building a line along the seashore to project the building a line along the seashore to protect the built-up areas from the sea breakers, at the same time as organising a transit area parallel to the coast and building the seafront façades of the towns and villages along the same lines.

Our proposal for the Benidorm West Beach Promenade was designed as a transit area that would, apart from the various problems arising such as the sewage drainage, rainwater courses, access to the beach without architectural barriers, access to the underground parking areas underneath the promenade itself, etc…Facilitate the promenade for this to become a place with its own lifestyle. With an organic layout, recreating the shape of the cliffs and the waves, the project included unusual honeycombed surfaces generating areas of light and shadow, convexities and concavities making up a series of platforms and levels allowing their use as play, leisure and meditation areas.

The promenade was constructed with just one material, this being White concrete, incorporating the benches and street furniture in varied shapes, differencing the finish of the pavements by means of various textures and colours.

Christ’s College Secondary School was nominated for the Stirling Prize 2010.  Christ’s  College was designed as part of an overall campus with Pond  Meadow Special Needs school, in Guildford and sets the standard for  exemplary sustainable school design in the UK. This clever design for a secondary school is a worthy companion to the adjoining special-needs school by the same architects, which won an RIBA Award in 2009. But whereas that was single storey as befits the needs of young people with many and real learning and physical difficulties, this one achieves a great deal on three compact levels, yet has a gratifying generosity of circulation and inner courtyard spaces.

Project: Christ’s College Secondary School
Architect: DSDHA
Location: Guildford, UK
RIBA Stirling Prize 2010 shortlist

The second BIArch Open Lecture of the Spring 2010 cycle was delivered on June 11th by Stan Allen, principal of Stan Allen Architect and Dean of the Princeton University School of Architecture (SOA). The lecture was titled “From Object to Field (and back).” Stan Allen will be part of the faculty for the first edition of the Institute’s MBIArch Master’s Degree in Architecture program. For more info visit http://www.biarch.eu

Back in June 2009 we featured the Danish Pavilion by Bjarke Ingels on its conceptual stage, then we featured some pictures in arquinauta once it opened to the public and now we present a video where you have the chance to “ride” the pavilion with its author, Bjarke Ingels from BIG and get a closer experience of the loop the pavilion offers to the visitors.

From XPO, editor of the video:

We reintroduce the bicycle in Shanghai as a symbol of modern lifestyle and sustainable urban development. The Danish Pavilion and the entire exhibition can be experienced on Danish designed city bikes that are free for the guests to use. The building is designed as a double spiral with pedestrian and cycle lanes taking you from the ground and through curves up to a level of 12 meters and down again. In this way you can experience the Danish exhibition both inside and outside at two speeds – as calm stroll with time to absorb the surroundings or as a bicycle trip, where the city and city life drift past.

Franco di Capua has shared with us another of his amazing videos, Minimetró by Jean Nouvel. 

In 2001, the Perugia Municipality decided to hand over to AJN the architectural design for the “MiniMetro” project. The project covers a length of 3 kilometres, including a 1.5 kilometre viaduct that connects the city outskirts with the town’s historical centre. The new line, its 7 stations and 2 end stations, Pian de Massiano and Pincetto, were inaugurated in January 2008. The project is inscribed in a complicated topography of hills that characterizes the land of Perugia. More info and pictures after the break. 

Perugia-City.com

Leer el resto de esta entrada »

Our friend Franco Di Capua has shared with us a stunning video from Vulcano Buono. Located in the contryside outside Naples, this mixed use centre is a modern version of the traditional marketplace: all the activities that were once located in Naple´s Piazza Mercato were moved here. The Centre includes a superstone,a shopping mall, entertainment and public spaces, restaurants, a hotel, offices and other facilities.

Image Credit NNSANews

We have published several videos about buildings being demolished, yes we are fans of this kind of videos, today we present a colossal demolition, so potentially dangerous that members of the public were not allowed near the scene. On May 24, South Carolina´s K Cooling Tower became the second largest of its kind to be consiged to oblivion by a controlled demolition, this demolition required more than one thousand pounds of explosive. The demolition was funded by the ARRA(= and was part of a project to reduce the ecological footprint of the site. The pictures do only little justice to the huge size of K Cooling Tower – it was 450 feet tall and 345 wide.

The tower was built in 1992 and its function was to support nuclear production at the K Reactor at the SRS.  Ironically, 1991 – the year before it was built – is now widely regarded as the year the Cold War ended and so there wasn’t much use for the new reactor or tower.  All the motorized equipment and control rooms were removed in 2003 and the unloved concrete structure has been standing redundant ever since. More images and the video after the break.

Leer el resto de esta entrada »

Via Dutch Profiles we found this interesting interview with Rem Koolhaas, principal at OMA, the interview has english subtitles.

The iconic buildings of the Office for Metropolitan Architecture, OMA, and its core principles as embodied by Rem Koolhaas, have gained worldwide attention since it’s foundation in 1975.

The philosophy and aesthetic developed for competition submissions for and the Centre for Art and Mediatechnology in Karlsruhe, La Villette, the Jussieu campus and the Très Grande Biblioteque in Paris, garnered frenzied international attention and were finally realised in De Kunsthal in Rotterdam.

Rem Koolhaas’ intensive conceptual thinking about architecture and social circumstances ran simultaneously from the very early stages of his career. With a background in journalism and scriptwriting – his curiosity, research and urge to analyse are basics of his and OMA’s working process.

It is this approach that makes him a highly debated thinker and architect – although he staunchly refutes the label “Starchitect”. This image, he feels, blinds the public to a clear view of what his and OMA’s work is really about.

Casa da Musica in Porto provides a valuable steppingstone for one of OMA’s latest commissioned projects, the Taipei Performing Arts Centre. Treatment of form, innovative techniques, and the celebration of context are key elements of the design. Rather than relocating the roaring Shilin night market from the site of the forthcoming Taipei centre, OMA will instead build its 3 theatres above the market.

The vibrant, dynamic culture of the East forms a crucial element in Koolhaas’ pre-occupation with Asia. As a child he lived in Indonesia for several years. This experience is central to his current fascination with the region –  and its architecture.

Koolhaas’ seminal 1978 book Delirious New York, a Retroactive Manifesto, explores the Culture of Congestion in the big city. Nowadays, his focus is shifting to the wider consequences of the rapid growth of mega-cities.

On november we featured a video from the top of the Burj Dubai, the tallest building in the world. This time we present you a new video filmed on December 31. The Burj Dubai is finished and will be oficially inaugurated on January 04, 2010

Archiculture is a feature length documentary that examines contemporary issues in architecture by following five university students during their final thesis semester. The film follows the students through the development of their senior thesis projects and the internal and external conflicts that arise during this intense year long process. The students’ stories are supplemented by interviews with family, friends, significant others, industry professionals, architects, and design professors, helping to build a connection between the students and audience. The progression of Archiculture will reveal a breadth of experiences, ranging from the 4AM deadline dash, to the fulfilling sensation of graduation. The film provides viewers with an in-depth look into the creative yet competitive process of architectural education while also depicting current issues such as the role of architecture in society, technology’s impact upon the modern building process, and what lies ahead for environmentally conscious design. The film concludes with the students’ final thesis presentation, where they find themselves on the brink of their adult and professional lives, and the closure of their adolescence.
More info after the break.

Leer el resto de esta entrada »

The following video is not related with architecture, but we found it very funny and its worth sharing with our readers, enjoy.

UNStudio has released a new video featuring the recently realized Music Theatre in Graz.

The building is structured to combine a unit-based volume (the black box of the theatre) and a series of movement-based volumes (foyer and public circulation). Because this organising principle is made constructive, a fluent internal spatial arrangement is actualised, efficiently connecting spaces to each other. The multipurpose auditorium can seat up to 450, and that is adaptable to a great variety of performances. The free-flowing space of the foyer is made possible by a spiraling constructive element that connects the entrance to the auditorium and to the music rooms above, thus welding together ‘with a twist’ the three levels of this side of the building. This twist forms a 3D interpretation of the repetitive pattern, executed in the muted tones of stage make-up, which  is applied to the facades and then enveloped by a glittering mesh.