An installation of an upside down house in Trassenheide Germany was opened to the public two weeks ago and was designed by Polish partners Klaudiusz Golos and Sebastion Mikuciuk for the Edutainment exhibition company. (Pics)
People who have visited the house reported feeling dizzy and disorientated. An interesting alternative view of every day items and the designers did a great job with the interior. Similar buildings have been designed upside down before but only from the exterior.
Here’s a time-lapsed video showing the Manhattan Bridge creaking and yawing under the weight of subway cars.
When does a building transform from a shell into a work of art within itself? Can artists improve even beautiful architectural wonders, turning them into something more creative and meaningful? Some architectural art installations are done out of necessity because the work is simply too large to be contained. Others use the building to make a political statement, to give value to an abandoned space or simply for the pure joy of it. These 12 installations encompass the whole spectrum, making use of everything from the Sydney Opera House to a decaying factory.
n 1995, artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude wrapped the entire Reichstag building in Germany with more than 100,000 meters of fireproof polypropylene fabric. The building, which housed the first parliament of the German Empire until it was severely damaged in 1933, had stood in ruins for decades and became a symbol for a divided Germany. The ‘Wrapped Reichstag’ installation was only up for two weeks, but drew five million visitors. Onlookers described it alternately as ethereal and graceful during the day, but ominous at night.
It may seem ironic, and even a bit preposterous, to use a large amount of energy to light up the Sydney Opera House as a statement about global warming. But musical producer Brian Eno’s goal was to turn artists into advocates for action against climate change when he curated the Luminous Festival, a sound and light festival that involved images being projected onto the sails of the Opera House. Eno told BBC News, “…[A]rtists can create a sense of what is cool and what is not, what is acceptable, exciting, timely… I would like to see a future where artists think that they have a right to contemplate things like global warming.”
An artist calling himself ‘FilthyLuker’ installed inflatable octopus tentacles in the windows of an unnamed building in June of 2009, making it appear as if the building is being devoured by a bright green kraken that somehow emerged from the sea and got stuck inside.
In 2006, artist Erwin Wurm had an art exhibit at Austria’s MUMOK (Museum Moderner Kunst), displaying work that was often architectural in nature such as ‘fat houses’. Outside the building, the theme continued with an installation called ‘House Attack’ – an actual house imbedded in the museum’s roof.
People passing by this building in Houston may have wondered whether it had suddenly turned into a black hole, or was the setting of some kind of explosion that defies the laws of physics. In fact, the strange tunnel was an art installation called ‘Inversion’ by Dan Havel and Dean Ruck, which was created just before the building was due to be torn down and replaced with a larger structure. The tunnel actually goes all the way through the building, ending in a private courtyard.
“Light is only seen when reflected.” That is the observation that inspired an art installation called ‘Light’ by Studio ROSO for the Clarks Shoes headquarters in England. The work, situated in the communal courtyard in the center of the office building complex, consisted of mirrors strung from one end of the courtyard to the other. The strands of mirrors, organized into two ‘beams of light’, create a dynamic, ever-changing space as the wind and light changes throughout each day and as seasons pass.
Jennifer Marsh, crochet artist and director of the International Fiber Collaborative, saw an ugly, abandoned gas station and realized she could use it as the setting of a unique art installation that calls attention to our dependence on oil. Soliciting 3×3 foot squares from fiber artists all over the world, Marsh covered the entire building, along with two gas pumps, with the donated crochet squares.
At an abandoned four-story building in San Francisco, furniture is leaping for its freedom from open windows – clocks poking their heads out and looking up at the sky, chairs making a run for it down the peeling brick walls and tables pitching themselves off the roof. The project is called Defenestration, a word meaning “to throw out of a window”, and was created by 100 volunteers.
Artist Brian Goggin describes it on his website thusly: “Located at the corner of Sixth and Howard Streets in San Francisco in an abandoned four-story tenement building, the site is part of a neighborhood that historically has faced economic challenge and has often endured the stigma of skid row status. Reflecting the harsh experience of many members of the community, the furniture is also of the streets, cast-off and unappreciated.”
To some people, this art installation is nothing but a bunch of stacked cast-off chairs. But to Doris Salcedo, each of the 1600 chairs precariously balanced upon each other between two buildings in Istanbul stands for a victim of mass violence in her home country of Colombia. Salcedo wanted to commemorate anonymous victims, portraying their loss through empty chairs in a visual that resembles a mass grave. The installation was created for the 8th Instanbul Biennale in 2003.
The city of Lvov in Ukraine decided to give tourists an interesting enticement to visit: a crossword puzzle on the side of an apartment building that is completed by finding questions at major points of interests all over town. Walking around the city, visitors collect questions at museums, monuments, theaters, fountains and other locations and write down their guesses. During the day, the crossword puzzle is empty, but at night, special lights reveal the answers.
"MAXON has spent the last 20 years developing some of the industry's most advanced 3D software technologies; continually raising the bar for 3D animation software excellence," said Harald Egel, CEO and co-founder, MAXON. "CINEMA 4D R11 is no exception. This release contains the next-generation features our customers worldwide have come to expect from MAXON." Among the highlights included in today's release is the highly-anticipated Projection Man tool. "Projection Man allows our artists to quickly project a painting onto geometry in a scene, simplifying even the most complex setups which can be easily organized within a single Photoshop file," said Dennis Bredow, Texture Lead at Sony Pictures Imageworks." The flexibility of the tool and its ease of use allow our painters to focus less on the mechanics of the shot and spend more time creating beautiful imagery."
Expanded integration options, new workflow tools and boosts in performance for both PC and Mac users sit at the heart of the new release. On average, rendering speeds are now more than twice as fast as the previous version. CINEMA 4D R11 also boasts an all-new Cocoa-based architecture supporting 64-bit processing under Mac OS X Leopard. "We are pleased that MAXON has created the CineMan connection to Pixar's RenderMan directly from within CINEMA 4D," said Chris Ford, Business Director - RenderMan at Pixar. "Now, MAXON customers can benefit from Pixar's Academy Award-winning rendering technology featured in 'Ratatouille,' 'The Incredibles' and many others."
"Our customers told us what they needed and we listened," said Paul Babb, president and CEO of MAXON USA. "This exciting new version is as ideal for the novice as it is for the power user who wants to produce compelling imagery in today's fast-paced environments."
Room Arranger is a useful program which lets you arrange a room, house or garden in any way you want to.Design your room, office, apartment or house, plan gardens and more...Room Arranger - you sometimes reconstruct rooms or rearrange things placed in them. You move heavy furniture just to everything would fit with no problem, be handy, and have a good impact. Room Arranger enables you to simulate everything with no need to draw on a square paper, or to push things there and back repeatedly. Room Arranger can be used not only for designing the rooms or apartments, but also in the variety of other areas - garden architecture, housing development (houses as objects), webdesign (webpage as the room).
Room Arranger is a useful program which lets you arrange a room, house or garden in any way you want to.
Here are some key features of "Room Arranger":
· Design your room, an apartment consisting of more rooms, or the whole house with more floors.
· Wide standard object library, insert exact objects' dimensions.
· Create your library of objects you use more often.
· Walk through the project in 3D.
· Print the project in certain scale even over more pages.
· Measure the distances in the project.
· Multi-language support. Currently: English, Arabic, Basque, Belarusian, Bosnian, Brazilian Portuguese, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese (Simplified), Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, Galician, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Lithuanian, Macedonian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Russian, Thai, Turkish and Ukrainian.
version 5.04
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- Fixed: Selecting color for a single wall in rectangular project
- Fixed: Elliptical floor opening
- Improved: Measurement lines stay visible while editing walls
110 Color Plates | PDF (HQ) | 16,7 MB
What, exactly, is a Victorian? Many people use the term to describe an architectural style. However, Victorian is not really a style but a period in history. The Victorian era dates from about 1840 to 1900. During this time, industrialization brought many innovations in architecture. There are a variety of Victorian styles, each with its own distinctive features...
The most popular Victorian styles spread quickly through widely published pattern books. Builders often borrowed characteristics from several different styles, creating unique, and sometimes quirky, mixes. Buildings constructed during the Victorian times usually have characteristics of one or more these styles:
Gothic Revival Architecture
Victorian Gothic buildings feature arches, pointed windows, and other details borrowed from the middle ages. Masonry Gothic Revival buildings were often close replicas of Medieval cathedrals. Wood-frame Gothic Revival buildings often had lacy "gingerbread" trim and other playful details.
Victorian Italianate Architecture
Rebelling against formal, classical architecture, Italianate became the one of the most popular styles in the United States. With low roofs, wide eaves, and ornamental brackets, Italianate is sometimes called the bracketed style .
Second Empire or Mansard Style
Characterized by their boxy mansard roofs, these buildings were inspired by the architecture in Paris during the reign of Napoleon III.
Victorian Stick Architecture
Trusses and stickwork suggest medieval building techniques on these relatively plain Victorian buildings.
Folk Victorian
Just plain folk could afford these no-fuss homes, using trimwork made possible by mass production.
Shingle Style Architecture
Often built in costal areas, these shingle-sided homes are rambling and austere. But, the simplicity of the style is deceptive. The Shingle Style was adopted by the wealthy for grand estates.
Richardsonian Romanesque Architecture
Architect Henry Hobson Richardson is often credited with popularizing these romantic buildings. Constructed of stone, they resemble small castles. Romanesque was used more often for large public buildings, but some private homes were also built in the imposing Romanesque style.
Victorian Queen Anne Architecture
Queen Anne is the most elaborate of the Victorian styles. Buildings are ornamented with towers, turrets, wrap around porches, and other fanciful details.
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Autodesk® Toxik™ software is a node-based digital compositing solution with advanced image processing capabilities. The software’s architecture is built around its ultra-high resolution interaction and high dynamic range imaging (HDRI) core, which allows you to work interactively and intuitively with virtually any visual media, regardless of bit depth or image size. With its intuitive toolsets, open architecture, and high level of interoperability with Autodesk® Maya® software, Toxik is an ideal compositor for independent 2D visual effects artists as well as large-scale film and broadcast facilities.
ArchiCAD gives users the ability to create great architecture and increase productivity. From day one, ArchiCAD has been designed by architects for architects, and over the years it has gradually become more and more refined to allow its users to better:
Focus on design,
Manage change,
Evaluate design alternatives,
Collaborate,
Coordinate.
ArchiCAD® offers a different approach to your workflow process, which gives you more control over your design, while maintaining accuracy and efficiency in documentation. While you raise walls, lay floors, add doors and windows, build stairs and construct roofs this Building Information Authoring Tool creates a central database of 3D model data. From this you can extract all the information needed to completely describe your design - complete plans, sections and elevations, architectural and construction details, Bills of Quantities window/door/finish schedules, renderings, animations and virtual reality scenes. That means while you're designing, ArchiCAD is creating all the project documentation so there's little repetitive and tedious drafting work. And unlike designing in 2D software, the Virtual BuildingTM approach also means that you can make changes at any time maintaining the integrity of your documents, without risking costly errors or costing you productivity.
MicroStation is Bentley's flagship product for the design, construction and operation of the world's infrastructure. MicroStation and ProjectWise, Bentley's server line for AEC collaboration, form a robust foundation for Bentley's comprehensive portfolio of software solutions.
This 3D, solids modeling software provides a robust set of capabilities for object management, geometric modeling, drafting, information and standards management, visualization, drawing and report extraction, integration with analytical tools, and interference review.
TriForma improves communication and coordination by laying the foundation for a suite of discipline-specific applications that address the needs of the many fields involved in a building or plant engineering project; resulting in faster, better, more cost-effective projects. These solutions include:
* Bentley Architecture
* Bentley Structural
* Bentley HVAC
* PlantSpace Raceways
* PlantSpace Support Modeler
* PlantSpace Orthographics
Roof Designer for 3dsmax 9-2008-2009 | 4.38 Mb
Roof Designer is a new plug-in, currently only for Autodesk 3D Studio Max which helps architecture visualizers to model roofs. Roof Designer lets the user constrain mesh faces to geometrical planes, making all of the face's vertices reside on one flat surface. Roof Designer automatically texture the output and can even put mesh tiles, of the user's choice, on it.
Simplistically, postmodern architecture emerged in the 1960s as a reaction to the Modern Movement that had commanded world architecture since the mid-1920s. Its theories were first expounded by the American architect Robert Venturi and realized in his Chestnut Hill Villa of 1962. Within less than a decade, designers were willfully denying the pervasive geometrical glass boxes that Henry-Russell Hitchcock and Philip Johnson had dubbed the International Style. Ornament (which the modernists had once equated with crime), color, and texture were again accepted, rather embraced, by architects. Historical precedents were revisited and often transposed into the language of twentieth-century technology to become a new visual language, an architectural patois. Eclecticism, for years a pejorative term, became a basis for design. And at first it was just design, because architects made more drawings and models than buildings. Although it is difficult to choose from a plethora of examples, among the icons of this new way of making architecture were Philip Johnson and John Burgee’s AT&T Building in New York (1978–1984) and Michael Graves’s “flamboyantly decorative” Portland Public Service Building in Oregon (1930–1983). As one commentator has observed, postmodernism became “the style of choice for developers of commercial buildings” everywhere. It has the same kind of stylistic anonymity of “globalness” as the Modernism it replaced.
Johnson (b. 1906) received a degree in architectural history from Harvard in 1930 and immediately became and first director of the Department of Design at the New York Museum of Modern Art. In 1940, inspired by the work of the Dutch modernist J. J. P. Oud, he returned to Harvard and emerged with an architectural qualification four years later. He worked alone and with others and became widely known from the early 1950s for his puritanically modernist buildings—some consider him a clone of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe—such as the Seagram Building in New York (with Mies, 1958) and the Glass House (1962) in New Canaan, Connecticut, until he formed a partnership with Burgee in 1967. Johnson then renounced Modernism (he had castigated Oud for doing that in 1946) and converted to postmodernism. His final artistic position was as an anti-postmodernist, leading the English architectural historian Dennis Sharp to opine that Johnson was philosophically fickle, with “more interest in [architectural] style than in substance.”
Be that as it may, the AT&T Corporate Headquarters at 550 Madison Avenue, New York City, is a milestone in the development of twentieth-century architecture, the first postmodern skyscraper and a key building in the popularization of postmodernism. The 600-foot-high (184-meter), bland rectangular prism covers its site. Perhaps in reference to nineteenth-century skyscrapers, perhaps to a classical column, the main facade is divided into three parts: an entrance at the base, a tall shaft of identical floors, and a wide band of windows near the building’s crown. The base, which originally enclosed public open space, includes portals of epic proportion. A central 110-foot-high (33-meter) arch, surmounted by oculi is flanked by three 60-foot-high (18-meter) rectangular doorways. Some critics suggest it borrows from Alberti’s Sant’ Andrea in Mantua, of 1472–1494. Unlike the featureless window-walls of modernist office towers, the shaft, is sheathed in pink granite, and the fenestration is designed (like the early skyscrapers) to express the steel structural frame beneath.
The most controversial feature of the AT&T Building was the 30-foot pediment, ostensibly to mask mechanical equipment on the roof. Many regarded it as kitsch, and critics immediately dubbed it “Chippendale” because it evoked the work of the eighteenth-century English cabinetmaker. Indeed, the epithet was applied to the entire building, and Johnson interpreted the bestowal of a nickname as complimentary; otherwise he described his building as a “neo-Renaissance essay on the use of stone.” In January 1992 the building was leased to the Sony Corporation.
Graves (b. 1934), one of the most honored twentieth-century architects, trained at the University of Cincinnati and Harvard. His early practice was limited to mostly domestic buildings. Among the notable examples are the Hanselmann house at Fort Wayne, Indiana (1967); additions to the Alexander house at Princeton, New Jersey (1971–1973); and the Crooks house, also at Fort Wayne (1976).
The Portland Public Service Building was the first of his large-scale projects to be realized. With subsequent commissions including the Humana Building at North Carolina State University (1982–1985), the San Juan Capistrano Public Library (1981–1983), and extensions to the Newark Museum (completed 1989), it placed him beside Venturi and Denise Scott-Brown, Frank Gehry, and Charles Gwathmey in the hall of champions of American postmodern architecture and design.
The freestanding fifteen-story municipal office building on Southwest Fifth Avenue, Portland, Oregon, houses the municipal Building, Planning and Design Review departments. It was the winning entry in a design-and-build competition sponsored by the city fathers. Johnson, as adviser to the jury and the client, was influential in securing the commission for Graves over the other shortlisted designs by Arthur Erickson and the Mitchell-Giurgola partnership.
Built on an entire 200-foot-square (61-meter-square) city block in the urban precinct, it is flanked by the city hall and county courthouse buildings on two sides, and a transit mall and a park on the others. To emphasize the association with other local government functions, Graves deliberately organized the facades in what he described as a “classical three-part division of base, middle or body, and attic or head,” an approach that Johnson adopted for the AT&T Building. Described as a “wildly innovative and controversial postmodern landmark,” the hefty building, rising from a heavy four-story base, has facades of diverse designs, clad with strongly colored tiles—brown, blues, and terra-cotta—against an ivory background. The square windows are relatively small, and they puncture the walls at regular intervals, another denial of the glass curtains of a decade or so before. The symmetrical park front has two huge seven-story pseudocolumns with boxy, floor-height capitals and flutes evoked by vertical bands of windows. Above the central main entrance there is a 40-foot (12-meter) hammered-copper sculpture of “Portlandia” (the female figure on the city seal) by sculptor Raymond Kaskey; it was added in 1985 at Graves’s initiative. Around the corners, the facade is adorned at the tenth-floor level with a stylized swag of blue ribbons, made of concrete: on one, they hang sedately in place; on the other they appear to be blowing in the wind. Inside the building, Graves used the same colors as the exterior (a decision that provoked some criticism); he also designed the furnishing textiles and other details for the offices. Since 1995, the building’s structural problems have become evident and are worsening. Despite costly repairs, the building may soon become unsafe to use.
London’s underground railroad system, popularly known as “the Tube,” is the oldest in the world. As early as the 1830s Charles Pearson, the city of London’s solicitor, suggested that the mainline stations could be linked by an underground railroad with as many as eight tracks. Despite the potential economic and social advantages of the scheme, it could find no financial backing, and Parliament refused to approve it. The city’s first above-ground passenger service was the London and Greenwich line, opened in February 1836. Within four years it was carrying nearly 6 million passengers annually between the major mainline train stations on the borders of the metropolis and the edge of the central business district. With an area of 60 square miles (154 square kilometers) and a population of 2.5 million, Greater London was then the world’s largest city, and the most crowded, plagued by street congestion.
To find a solution to a worsening problem, the City Terminus Company (CTC) revived the underground railroad idea in 1852 and placed it before Parliament, only to again fail. The following year the Bayswater, Paddington, and Holborn Bridge Railway Company submitted a plan for a different line, ostensibly at half the cost. Parliament endorsed the North Metropolitan line in 1853, and the company promptly had the CTC line approved as part of its own. The Great Western Railway Company agreed to finance construction of the underground in return for direct access to the city. In 1854 an act of Parliament was obtained to begin the Metropolitan Railroad. A sum of £1 million was raised by December 1859, and the following February the first shafts were sunk. The earliest tunnels were made by the “cut and cover” method: a deep trench would be excavated, side walls and roof built, and the ground surface backfilled. The process was expensive and slow, and it created chaos along the route of the railroad, not least of which was the dispossession of citizens and the demolition of buildings, often the homes of the poor. The first trial run was on 24 May 1862, and on 10 January 1863 the Metropolitan Railway opened, the world’s first underground line, between Bishop’s Road, Paddington, and Farringdon Street. There were 38,000 passengers on that first day, and from that moment the London Underground began to grow. In 1868 the first section of the Metropolitan District Railroad from South Kensington to Westminster was opened.
It was soon realized that, a citywide underground network must eventually pass beneath the River Thames. “Cut and cover” methods would not be appropriate to build such lines, but an “old” technology was already in place. Completed in 1843, Marc and Isambard Brunel’s Thames Tunnel had been dug using the former’s tunneling shield, patented in 1818. The machine had been improved in fifty years, and the engineer James Henry Greathead finally built a
lighter and (more importantly) circular version. In 1870, with one Peter Barlow, he drilled the 6-foot-diameter (1.83-meter) Tower Subway Tunnel from Tower Hill to Vine Lane. Its system of elevators and a twelve-seat car, all wound by steam-operated wire cable, was unreliable, and within months it was reduced to a pedestrian passage. Although extremely short-lived, it was the first tube railroad, and the construction method obviated all the disadvantages of “cut and cover.” Greathead’s tunneling machine had a diaphragm within, which segments of the cylindrical, cast-iron tunnel lining were bolted together as the excavator was advanced hydraulically; the gap between the excavation and the lining was filled with cement grout. Because it was circular in cross section, the tube was structurally stronger.
The next route to be completed was the Circle line in 1884. At that time all trains were drawn by steam locomotives, filling the tunnels with smoke and fumes. Steam trains could not operate in the deeper tunnels, and after considering cable-hauled cars, the decision was made to employ electric traction. Most of the transition took place in the first decade of the twentieth century, although the world’s first successful electric tube route, the City and South London Railway, was opened in December 1890. In 1902 an American, Charles Tyson Yerkes, financed the expansion of the network and by 1907 five new lines—Central, Northern City, Bakerloo, Piccadilly, and Charing Cross Euston and Hampstead—were opened, and electrification proceeded. Yerkes formed the Underground Electric Railway Company of London (known as the Underground Group). Between 1902 and 1905, they built the world’s largest power station, at Chelsea, to electrify the District line. Powering the Tube for almost a century, it was closed in 2000 when the Underground moved to the national grid. By 1913, mergers had brought all lines except the Metropolitan, into the group.
Underground services expanded from 1907 through the 1930s. In 1933 the Underground Group and the Metropolitan Railway were subsumed by the London Passenger Transport Board, which managed all public transport systems in the London area. Following World War II (when no fewer than eighty Underground stations served as air-raid shelters for Londoners), the Passenger Transport Board was nationalized and renamed the London Transport Executive, which in turn became the London Transport Board. More administrative changes began in May 2000, with the establishment of Transport for London, an executive body of the Greater London Authority.
In September 1968 the first section, of the Victoria line was opened, and extensions were completed by 1971. In May 1979 the Jubilee line opened, bringing the total number of routes beneath London to eleven: Bakerloo, Central, Circle, District, East London, Jubilee, Metropolitan, Northern, Piccadilly, Victoria, and Waterloo and City. Upgrades and improvements continue. Recently, computer signaling was introduced; the Central line was modernized and the Victoria line converted to automatic operation. The most significant addition to the complex system, begun in 1993, was the construction of the £1.9 billion (U.S.$2.8 billion) Jubilee line extension, the largest engineering project undertaken in Europe since the Channel Tunnel. Completed in May 1999, the new route from Westminster Station to Stratford via North Greenwich (to serve the Millennium Dome) involved negotiating the already crowded undercity with its myriad railroad tunnels, cables, drains, and service ducts, as well as overcoming subsidence problems.
Nearly 80 percent of Londoners working in central London travel to work on public transport, most of them on the Tube. Trains traveling at an average speed (including stops) of 20.6 mph (33 kph) move a total of almost a billion passengers annually over a multilevel underground network—some tubes reach 221 feet (67.4 meters) deep—that extends 45 miles (72 kilometers) east to west and 28 miles (45 kilometers) north to south. The first underground railroad in the world, which began with a track a mere 3.57 miles (5.7 kilometers) long, now covers 250 miles (392 kilometers); 42 percent of that is in tunnels.
The Dynamic Tower, the world's first building in motion, takes the concept of green buildings to the next level were it will generate electricity for itself as well as other nearby buildings, making it the first skyscraper designed to be self powered.
The building generates electricity from wind turbines mounted horizontally between each floor, eighty story building will have up to seventy nine wind turbines, making it a true green power plant while traditional vertical wind turbines have some environmental negative impact, including obstruction of views and the need for roads to build and maintain them, the Dynamic Tower's wind turbines are practically invisible and extremely quiet due to their special shape and the carbon fibre material they are made of.
Another environmentally green element of the Dynamic Tower is the photovoltaic cells that will be placed on the roof of each rotating floor to produce solar energy, approximately 20% of each roof will be exposed to the sun, so a building that has 80 roofs will equal the roofing space of 10 similar size buildings.
In addition, natural and recyclable materials including stone, marble, glass and wood will be used for the interior finishing.
To further improve the energy efficiency of the Dynamic Tower, insulated glass and structural insulating panels will be employed.
Energy will also be saved during construction, which involves pre-fabricating individual units in a factory, this Fisher Method not only reduces construction time, but it also results in a cleaner construction site with limited noise, dust, fumes and waste, the shorter building time also results in a less energy consumption than traditional construction methods.
Reichstag, Berlin, Germany; Foster and Partners, architects, 1993–1999. Interior of glass dome, showing the inverted cone used for climate and lighting control.
The restored Reichstag in Berlin, designed by the London architectural firm of Foster and Partners, epitomizes a new kind of architecture—one that respects the physical and cultural environment and takes account of the past while assuming responsibility for the future.
The institution known as the Reichstag was set up in 1867 by the German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck to allow the bourgeoisie to have a role in the politics of the new empire, a confederation of princely states under the King of Prussia. From 1871 the Reichstag met in a disused factory until a neo-Renaissance building (1882–1894) was created for it by the Frankfurt architect Paul Wallot. After the reunification in 1990, the new Germany’s Parliament, comprising the two houses known as the Bundestag and Bundestat, made Berlin the capital of the Federal Republic of Germany in June 1991. It also voted, by a small majority, to move its own seat from Bonn to Berlin, locating it in the historic building.
The monument was in a sorry state and held memories of the failure of the Weimar Republic and the disastrous Third Reich. Before the notorious Berlin Wall came down, it was cut off from the old center, just outside the boundary; now it is in the middle of the city. The Reichstag building had been patched up in the cold war years, and the facades and the interior underwent desultory restoration in the 1960s. It was used as a historical museum between 1958 and 1972, and spasmodically for meetings of the West German Parliament. In June 1992 an international architectural competition was held to restore the Reichstag, and eighty architects submitted proposals.
Following some debate and a second stage of the competition among the three shortlisted entries, Foster and Partners were awarded the commission in July 1993. The consulting engineers were Leonhardt Andra and Partner, the Ove Arup Partnership, and Schlaich Bergermann and Partner. The Foster partnership originally proposed a huge mesh canopy supported on columns to enclose Wallot’s building and extend it into the Platz der Republik. Axel Schultes and Charlotte Frank’s urban plan for the Spreebogen district of Berlin, the result of a contemporary competition, set the framework for new buildings and called for a rebriefing and consequent changes to the design. Building work began in July 1995 and the new Reichstag was opened in April 1999; it cost DM 600 million (approximately U.S.$330 million).
According to the architects, their final design was constrained by four factors: the history of the Reichstag, which in its earliest days had symbolized liberty; the day-to-day processes of the Parliament; questions of ecology and energy: and (naturally) the economics of the project. Because Wallot’s building was to be preserved as far as possible, the Reichstag is a living historical museum that frankly shows the scars of its past—pockmarks caused by shells, charred timber, and Russian graffiti from the post–World War II occupation are all left visible. Because it was believed that the processes of democracy should be transparent, Wallot’s formal west entrance was reopened to serve for all users of the building, politicians and public alike. The great steps lead to a tall, top-lit narthex; on entering, the visitor is confronted by a glass wall that defines the lobby; beyond that, another transparent partition gives a view into the parliamentary chamber. Members of the public may occupy public balconies or follow interlocking spiral ramps to a viewing deck that looks down into the chamber from within the cupola. The functional needs of the Parliament required the demolition of many of the accretions of the earlier refurbishment.
Visually and structurally, the design is dominated by a new glass-and-steel hemispherical cupola at the center of the restored building, which replaces and evokes the war-damaged original dome, removed in 1954. But the cupola is more than an esthetic or symbolic choice. At its center a curving, inverted cone of mirrors reflects daylight into the plenary chamber. The cupola is fitted with a movable sunscreen: in summer it tracks and blocks the sun to prevent overheating of the interior; in winter it is set aside to allow warming sunshine to penetrate into the building. The cone also acts as a convection chimney; fresh air enters the building through air shafts and rises through the floor of the chamber. As it heats up it is drawn into the cone, and an extractor expels it from the building. An aquifer at a depth of 100 feet (30 meters) stores cold water that is circulated through pipes in the Reichstag’s floors and ceilings in the summer. Warmed in the process, the water is then pumped into another subterranean lake, 1,000 feet (300 meters) beneath Berlin. At that depth it retains its heat, and in winter the process is reversed to heat the building. The Reichstag power plant that drives the pumps is fueled by renewable grape seed oil. In the 1960s the restored Reichstag emitted 7,700 tons (7,000 tonnes) of carbon dioxide a year; the new building emits 440 tons. Germany has been a world leader in energy conservation, and the building that now symbolizes national unity fittingly exemplifies that mind-set.
Imagine the world in 2050 with almost 80% of the planet’s population living in urban centers and our fruit, vegetables and even animals are grown in … skyscrapers? One man’s vision has sparked a series of designs leading closer and closer to what will be the first real-life vertical urban farm in Las Vegas, Nevada of all places. Here are five of these remarkable architectural designs for sustainable (and stylish) urban farm towers that may revolutionize agriculture as we know it. In the long run such structures may not only provide food for hundreds of thousands of people per building but they will also relieve much of the burden on other flat landscapes where fewer and fewer usable growing spaces exist.
One of the first designs of its kind, the compelling vertical farm project above was undertaken by Chris Jacobs in cooperation with the grandfather of skyscraper farm concepts: Dr. Dickson Despommier of Columbia University. His ideal: all-in-one eco-towers would be actually produce more energy, water (via condensation/purification) and food than their occupants would consume. His mission: to gather architects, engineers, economists and urban planners to develop a sustainable and high-tech wonder of ecological engineering.
Architect Pierre Sartoux of Atelier SOA has gone a step further and put some serious design talent behind his proposal for a vertical farming skyscraper. A light-shading skin wraps around the structure and opens to admit sunlight at particular locations for various functional (and aesthetic) purposes. The building’s air, heating and cooling systems are wind-driven and circulate oxygen and carbon dioxide between growing and living spaces. The simple but reinforced structure is designed to handle additional dead loads from the weight of growing floors and also serve to make the entire building more durable (and thus sustainable).
Given that most urban cores are already densely built, one designer has proposed an auxiliary series of structures to be attached to existing structures in downtown areas. These modular constructions would provide garden and recreation spaces for residents as well as light and air filters for the adjacent buildings. In some cases, these retrofits could even provide structural stability to aged buildings and prevent the need to tear them down. Architecturally, these modular units stand out and add another layer to the visual hierarchy of the cities around them.
The Pacific Northwest regional architecture firm Mithun developed a compelling vertical farm building design to incorporate various green building strategies in a mixed-use residential and commercial complexdesigned for downtown Seattle. The concept? Simply put, the structure is designed as a kind of built organism - completely self-sufficient and adaptive to its surroundings. The design includes water and energy self-sufficiency from rainwater and gray water collection and reuse, solar cells, vegetable and grain growing spaces and even a chicken farm - all built on a small-footprint downtown urban lot.
Architect Gordon Graff may succeed in the more green and progressive city of Toronto with his plans for a sky farm with 48 floors and millions of square feet of floor space (and even more growing space). This building, if constructed, will be able to feed tens of thousands of people per year. Best of all, particularly in Canada, the success of the building’s crops isn’t contingent upon climactic conditions. As an architectural and urban design gesture this structure both fits into the city skyline and differentiates itself with simple layers of green.Depending on your point of view Las Vegas might be the first or it could be the last place you’d imagine the 30-story world’s first vertical farm. Of course, the food isn’t going to feed the famished masses. It will instead grace the dinner plates of Vegas tourists at local casinos and hotels. Still, as a prototype it has a lot of potential to generate further buzz and interest that could in turn lead to future projects. If the model proves both profitable and sustainable (always the best combination) it will likely (and hopefully) be the first of many.
CITY FARMS VIDEO
Mir space station
Mir (Russian for “peace”) was conceived in 1976 as the climax of the (then) Soviet program to achieve the long-duration presence of a man in space. Its first component was launched into orbit ten years later. The first modular station assembled in space, it is the pioneer work of extraterrestrial building; constructed in a virtually gravity-free environment, it is unique among architectural and engineering works. Earlier space stations had been integral units, completed before launching. Mir circled the earth for over fifteen years. As first proposed, it was 43 feet (13.1 meters) long and 13.6 feet (4.2 meters) in diameter; its mass was 46,200 pounds (20,900 kilograms). By 1985 the Russian Space Agency had decided that four to six additional modules, each with a mass of 46,000 pounds (20,800 kilograms), would be moored at docking ports on the station. By the time the final module was in place, the total mass was about 221,000 pounds (100,000 kilograms). Mir, humanity’s first landmark—if that is the correct word—in space, orbited the earth at an altitude of 225 miles (390 kilometers) and an inclination of 51.6 degrees.
The primary function of the station was as a location for scientific experiments, especially in the areas of astrophysics, biology, biotechnology, medicine, and space technology. At various times, Mir was “leased” as a laboratory. Cosmonauts, astronauts, and scientists of many nationalities—Russian, American, Afghan, British, Canadian, German, Japanese, and Syrian among them—conducted over 20,000 experimental programs on board. However, space-watcher David Harland observed that Mir was the first station
to be permanently manned, extending the time spent in space for periods between one month and six; “learning how the technology degrades, and how to repair it, and do so in space” showed its real mission as a technology demonstrator.
The Mir module, the core of the station, was launched on 20 February 1986. Most of it was occupied by the main habitable section—crews’ quarters, a galley, a “bathroom” with shower, hand basin, and toilet—and the operational section, forward of which were the primary docking module and air lock. The galley was furnished with a folding table with built-in food heaters and refuse storage. For privacy, each crew member had a separate cubicle containing a folding chair, sleeping bag, mirror, and porthole. To provide a familiar environment in microgravity, the living quarters had identifiable surfaces: the floor, above several storage compartments, was carpeted in dark green; the light green walls had handrails and devices for securing articles; and the white ceiling had fluorescent lights. The other part of the core module was the station’s control area, set up for flight control, as well as systems and medical monitoring. There were six docking ports on the core’s transfer compartment for secondary modules or the Soyuz and Progress-M transport vehicles: one on the long axis, four along the radius, and another aft, connected to the working module by a 6-foot-diameter (1.8-meter) pressurized tunnel. The engine and fuel tanks were in the assembly compartment.
Five more modules, added between 1987 and 1996, completed the space station. The first, located on the aft docking port, was the astrophysics module known as Kvant-1. Nineteen feet (5.8 meters) long and 14 feet (4.3 meters) in diameter, it contained a pressurized laboratory compartment and a store. Kvant-2, about twice as long as Kvant-1, was the scientific and air-lock module added in 1989 that allowed cosmonauts to work outside the station. It also included a life-support system and water supply. Kristall, a 39-foot-long (12-meter) technological module, was attached to the station in 1990; it carried two solar arrays as well as electrical energy supply, environmental control, motion control, and thermal control systems. In 1995 U.S. astronauts installed a special docking port that allowed the U.S. space shuttle to dock without obstructing the solar arrays. Also in 1995, the Spektr remote-sensing payload arrived at Mir with equipment for surface studies and atmospheric research and four more solar arrays. Mir was completed when the Priroda remote-sensing module arrived on 26 April 1996.
The station could not remain in orbit indefinitely, and two options for closure were available. Mir could be fitted with booster rockets and moved to a higher orbit or simply abandoned and allowed to crash into the ocean. Mir fell into an uninhabited part of the South Pacific late in March 2001. That course of action was chosen so that efforts could be refocused on the construction of the International Space Station (ISS). The decision fits in with the claim of NASA (the National Aeronautics and Space Administration) that the nine U.S. collaborations with Mir since 1994 formed Phase One of the joint construction and operation of the ISS.
The ISS is a joint venture of the United States, Russia, Belgium, Britain, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and Brazil. The first components of the station, the Zarya and Unity modules, were put into Earth orbit in November and December 1998, respectively. Scheduled for completion in 2004 after a total of 44 launches deliver over 100 components, the ISS will have a mass of 1 million pounds (454,500 kilograms) and measure 356 by 290 by 143 feet (109 by 88 by 44 meters). It will orbit Earth at about the same altitude and inclination as its predecessor. A crew of up to seven will have pressurized living and working space about twice as big as the passenger cabin of a jumbo jet. Mir was there first.
In the years since September 11, 2001 terrorist attack in New York City, engineers and other experts have been studying the collapse of the World Trade Center towers. By examining the collapse step-by-step, experts are learning how buildings fail, and discovering ways we can build stronger structures.
1. Impact from the Terrorist Planes
When Boeing jets piloted by terrorists struck the Twin Towers, some 10,000 gallons (38 kiloliters) of jet fuel fed an enormous fireball. But, the impact of the planes and the burst of flames did not make the Towers collapse right away. Like most buildings, the Twin Towers had redundant design. The term redundant design means that when one system fails, another carries the load. Each of the Twin Towers had 244 columns around a central core that housed the elevators, stairwells, mechanical systems, and utilities. When some columns were damaged, others could still support the building.
2. Heat from the Fires
The sprinkler system was damaged by the impact of the planes. But even if the sprinklers had been working, they could not have maintained enough pressure to stop the fire. Fed by the remaining jet fuel, the heat became intense.
Jet fuel burns at 800° to 1500°F. This is not hot enough to melt structural steel. However, engineers say that for the World Trade Center towers to collapse, their steel frames didn't need to melt, they just had to lose some of their structural strength. Steel will lose about half its strength at 1,200 degrees F. The steel will also become distorted when heat is not a uniform temperature.
3. Collapsing Floors
Most fires start in one area and then spread. The fire from the terrorist planes covered the area of an entire floor almost instantly. As the weakened floors began to collapse, they pancaked. This means that floors crashed down on floors with increasing weight and momentum, crushing each successive floor below. With the weight of the plunging floors building force, the exterior walls buckled.
When the Twin Towers were constructed in the 1970s, the builders were granted some exemptions from New York's building codes. The exemptions allowed the builders to use lightweight materials so the skyscrapers could achieve greater heights. But, the consequences were devastating. According to Charles Harris, author of Engineering Ethics: Concepts and Cases , fewer people would have died on September 11, 2001 if the Twin Towers had used the type of fireproofing required by older building codes.
A tragic legacy of September 11 is that buildings in New York City must now adhere to more demanding building codes. Tall office buildings are required to have more durable fireproofing, an extra emergency exit, and many other safety features. Based on suggestions outlined in a lengthy government report published by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), New York's building codes have been adopted by cities across the United States.
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