Cool Modern Architecture

[staff]

Reminds me of some stuff in Ruhr.

[amor de cosmos]

reminds me of Gasworks Park in Seattle

[Coldrsx]

Edmonton, Alberta - new art gallery:

[Aleks]

That. Is. Awesome!

[honte]

Man, that steel museum is a dream come true - literally. How I wish they would do (would have done) something like that in Gary or South Chicago.

[initiald]

I'm curious what you guys think of this - the new Betchler Art Museum here in Charlotte.

[muppet]

A very safe design, but I like it - its cute that way, and classic.

[muppet]

Magna Science Adventure Centre, Rotherham, UK

Wilkinson Eyre, Stirling Architecture Prize 2001



www.visitmagna.co.uk



http://adaptivereuse.ne, www.vam.ac.uk



www.visitmagna.co.uk


water exhibit


www.flickr.com


The Big Melt


www.wikimedia.org, www.flickr.com


www.flickr.com, www.patrickryanassociates.com



www.flickr.com, http://livedesignonline.com



http://livedesignonline.com, www.rotherham.gov.uk,www.flickr.com,

[Aleks]

The Betchler Art Museum looks okayy. The column is pretty nice though. And I like the color. When I saw the renderings I thought it would look bad but when I scrolled down I saw the real color an it looked better.

[Avanine-Commuter]

Are you saying that since Art=/=Architecture, that there shouldn't be an aesthetic involved with architecture? You keep saying that there are cheaper ways, cheaper solutions. Architecture is so much more involved with art that you claim, and if that weren't the case we'd all be living in cheaply made and efficient little boxes. I'm sorry, but architecture has evolved to be artistic in nature.

Your logic just seems to say: make it easy and cheap. If it functions efficiently, then leave it alone.

I'm glad you aren't making any buildings for anyone.

Originally Posted by Nowhereman1280

Again Adrian, I have read these things about these buildings, but you continue to prove my point, all of these "rationals" are purely aesthetic, not based upon anything more than a desire to make art out of architecture. For example:

- Right off they bat they talk about how verticallity is boring so they are looking for a different form. That is saying "we don't like how this looks so we are going to make it look different". In other words they are saying that they have an object that is taller than it is wide, a naturally vertical shape, and for no other reason than "as verticality soars, creativity crashes" they are attempting to override that shape.

-Then they talk about how they are specifically designing these buildings to be "icons". How more clear do you want it? They are admitting that the main purpose of these designs is to be "iconic". If they decide form starting from "we want an icon" that means the design is aesthetic and not based at all off of it true function or constraints. They literally admit the exhibitionism I have been accusing them of right there...

-Then they talk about how they wanted it to look 3D because 2D is boring, again, "we don't like how this looks, so we'll make it look different" AESTHETIC.

-They talk about how the buildings connect at the top to bring all of the people in the two parts of CCTV together. Sounds legitimate right? I dunno I think there are much much cheaper ways of linking two buildings than building one of the largest cantilevers in the world.

-They hardly say anything at all about TVCC, but they do throw this little tidbit: "forming a spectacular atrium above the landscape of public facilities". That seems to suggest that the only purpose of the atrium is to be "spectacular" which is a completely BS reason to build something.

So what you posted really just hits home my point, their "rational" is not rational at all. Its all based upon how the building will look, not how that look could in any way benefit the users of the structure. To sum that description up "we don't like how traditional skyscrapers look, so we built these crazy ass ones to show y'all a good time!"...

[stormkingfan]

Originally Posted by wrabbit

http://guggenheim.org/exhibitions/pa...mes_31pop.html

You could slip a couple of giant baguettes in those.

[stormkingfan]

Originally Posted by muppet

Museo del Acero (Steel Museum), Monterrey, Mexico.
Conversion by Nicholas Grimshaw Architects


www.photobucket.com

OMG, they should have done something like that with one of the furnaces in Bethlehem! (no "D'OH!"smiley??)
Instead they had to build that muthaf****n' casino!


pardon my French

[staff]

http://www.worldarchitecturenews.com...pload_id=11098

Jury for the “Shenzhen 4 Tower in 1” choose Coop Himmelb(l)au design

The jury for the “Shenzhen 4 Tower in 1” Competition chaired by Mr. Arata Isozaki, selected Coop Himmelb(l)au's design for Tower C, the new “Headquarter of China Insurance Group” as the winning scheme. Other participants include Morphosis, Steven Holl Architects, Hans Hollein, MVRDV and FCJZ Atelier.

The new “Headquarter of China Insurance Group” will be part of a lively business quarter in the heart of the Central District of Shenzhen made up of a carefully composed ensemble of unique, individual towers creating a landmark silhouette.

The project is a high-rise structure with a height of approximately 200 m with 49 storeys. The footprint area has the size of 40 by 40 m. The required program is distributed vertically. A clear separation of public and private functions is given. All public functions are organized in the base building while the office program is situated in the tower. Semi public program like meeting rooms, conference center, recreation areas and gardens are concentrated in the middle of the building. This zone is designed to create a pattern of meeting facilities, gardens and recreation areas for all employees and become spaces for an exchange of knowledge and creativity and a synergy of form and function.

The “Headquarter of China Insurance Group” is not only recognizable by its significant form but also by its façade. The design of the façade is driven by generation of energy. The second skin of the façade is shaped by climate conditions and inner functions. This skin includes photovoltaic cells to generate electricity and also cells to reduce excessive wind pressure, shade the sun and create multi media displays. Strategies employing the form of the building to assist natural ventilation together with the use of renewable energy sources (wind and solar power) assure an energy efficient design and reduce energy consumption and reliance on fossil fuel energy sources.

[amor de cosmos]

just for the people who like the freaky/weird stuff...

Huaxi city centre by MAD and others
February 17th, 2009
YOUNG INTERNATIONAL ARCHITECTS COLLABORATE TO
DESIGN HIGH-DENSITY URBAN NATURE IN CHINA

In 2008, MAD organized and invited 11 young international architects to carry out an urban experiment: to design the Huaxi city centre of Guiyang, in South Western China. The architects invited by MAD included: Atelier Manferdini (USA), BIG (DENMARK), Dieguez Fridman (ARGENTINA), EMERGENT/Tom Wiscombe (USA), HouLiang Architecture (CHINA), JDS (DENMARK/BELGIUM), MAD (CHINA), Mass Studies (KOREA), Rojkind Arquitectos (MEXICO), Serie (UK/INDIA), Sou Fujimoto Architects (JAPAN). The masterplan was developed by Shanghai Tongji Urban Planning and Design Institute, Studio 6, together with MAD.

In the past 15 years, around 10 billion sqm of built space has been created in the urban areas of China. In 20 years time, another 200 to 400 new cities will be built. Until now, the results of this overwhelming urbanization have been defined by high-density, high-speed and low-quality duplication: the urban space is meaningless, crowded and soulless.

Are we going to continue copying the skyline of Western cities created over a hundred years of industrial civilisation? Will Manhattan and Chicago continue to be our model city, even after 15 years of urban construction in China? Is there an alternative future for our cities that lies in the current social condition, where new technologies leave the machine age behind, and where the city increasingly invades the natural space? Based on an Eastern understanding of nature, this joint urban experiment aims to explore whether we can use new technologies and global ideas to reconnect the natural and man-made world.

The site of Huaxi is famous for its dramatic and beautiful landscape, as well as a diverse mix of minority cultural inhabitants during its history. Its future is defined by the local government’s urban planning as a new urban centre for finance, cultural activities and tourism. MAD brought the young architects together here in the summer of 2008, for a 3-day workshop to create an experimental urban vision for Huaxi.

Each architect provided a unique design for a single part of the masterplan, based on their own understanding and interpretation of the local natural and cultural elements. The result is a series of organic individual buildings, growing from the natural environment, and working together to produce a compound of diverse urban activities. In this high density urban environment, the limits of urbanization are controlled and set by nature; the buildings take on the dynamic topography of the site, touching the landscape in a more interactive way.

Generic verticality is replaced by a complex taxonomy of urban activities, defined by a multiplicity of connections, detours and short cuts. The natural and the artificial are fused together, revealing an image of a future architecture. The ecological method here is not just focused on saving energy; rather, the goal is to create a new, balanced urban atmosphere which can evoke the feeling of exploring the natural environment. The city is no longer determined by the leftover logic of the industrial revolution (speed, profit, efficiency) but instead follows the ‘fragile rules’ of nature.

This collaborative experiment thus provides an alternative, responsive model for the development of the urban centre: a man-made symbiosis, in harmony with nature, in which people are free to develop their own independent urban experience.

China has become the global laboratory for urbanization, where the logical endpoint of current architectural trends can be seen, and the effects of leaving private developers to create cities can be most keenly felt. This urban experiment is not intended as an idealized urban reality, but as an attempt to push these trends to their purest forms, with all of the benefits and problems that this brings. MAD is aware of, and actively encouraging, the failings and successes of this project.

http://www.dezeen.com/2009/02/17/hua...ad-and-others/

[staff]

Crazy shit.

[muppet]

it looks mad, I wonder if it will ever get built - one place to go for the surreal.

I like the roof pool:

[hammersklavier]

I'm actually not a fan of current urban trends in center cities throughout China (you know, like Pudong, Shanghai...). Density is more than just tall towers and wide plazas. It also needs an active street scene, a way to engage passers-by--in other words, it matters just as much what's at the base of those towers as what those towers' architecture is.

Plazas can look, feel, and act great when done in moderation. But the problem with all these Chinese skyscrapers is that every tower has a bloody plaza attached! When this happens, the separation between structural elements becomes so severe as to create a sort of tower-in-a-park image, and when this happens in large quantities it can effectively kill a neighborhood. Look at a distinction between two skyscrapers in Philadelphia: Kling's Municipal Services Building (1501 Arch) and the recently-completed Comcast Center. Both have plazas, but Kling's plaza covers the whole block and is slightly elevated from the street in places and sunken in others--the whole effect of this is that 1501 Arch's plaza is a ghost town, with little to glorify it other than a glut of sculptureware--this sort of setup seems to be the norm in Chinese supertall districts (again, Pudong). The contrariwise pattern is set by Comcast: although it, too, has a plaza, the CC's building platform consists of .75 of the block (the remaining quarter being Arch St. Presbyterian Church). Two structures were planned for the site--the Comcast Center and the (as yet unbuilt) 2 Pennsylvania Plaza (whose site is currently occupied by a temporary Suburban Station headhouse); the plaza only occupies a quarter the block, or a third of the building site, and is completely surrounded by extant density...The effect of this is that CC Plaza functions as a pocket park (rather like Seagram's plaza originally did), unlike the way 1501 Arch's plaza does...

Sorry to get off-track but amor's post led me into a rant about what I feel to be the primary problem with Chinese supertalls...

[Aleks]

Well anyways....

That building staff posted is trippy! I think it'd look good without the middle section.

[muppet]

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[muppet]

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